Archive for the ‘3rd law’ Category

3rd Law Part 53 – discombobulate and punctuationless

Sunday, July 21st, 2013

It’s that finished the jobslist and it’s still not lunchtime yet feeling. Pretty good I’d say. The conservatory doors are open and the cricket is on the wireless. What more can a man ask for? This evening we are having a barbecue. It gets better all the time.  I lit the barbecue last night just for myself. Cooked three sausages. Didn’t use any charcoal. Just burnt some wood and cooked on the embers which seemed much hotter than had it been charcoal. Might not risk that this evening. The family likes certainty though I can’t say that there is ever certainty where charcoal is concerned.

We did have an Australian gas barbecue. It eventually rotted away and I’ve not got round to buying another, mostly because they are horrendously expensive. They also take a bit of assembling. Wots that all about? You don’t want to have to mess about assembling a barbecue. When we moved in to this house I nipped out and bought one. Opening the box I found about 200 nuts and bolts. There was no time to assemble it so I popped back to Tesco for some disposable ones. Disposable barbecues are never as good as the real mcoy.

I quite fancy a Weber. Guaranteed for 25 years apparently. That would probably see me through to the end of my barbecuing career. One wonders how many sausages would have been cooked in that time. It is possible to work it out – average number of bangers per bbq x number of bbqs a year. It will be different for everyone so you need to work out your own total. If you like.

Actually I’d like to think I will still be barbecuing in another 25 years. It will be something to look forward to – the next trip to buy another barbecue. Long wait. There will be other fun things to do in the meantime. Whist drives, bingo evenings etc etc. Never been to a bingo evening though it’s never too late to start. Used to go to the village whist drive when I lived in Waunfawr in North Wales. Long time ago now. Before the internet was discovered.

I say discovered but in reality it was invented. It’s not as if it was always there and one day someone came across it. “I claim this internet in the name of Queen Elizabeth The Second.” That’s the Head of State not the cruise liner. I can’t imagine anyone claiming something in the name of a ship unless we are talking about a berth which we aren’t. It would be a big berth for the QE2. Probably more than one gangplank too. Can you imagine 2,000 passengers all making their way gingerly down a plank onto the quayside. I’m not even sure the QE2 is still afloat, or sailing. These liners tend to end their days as floating hotels somewhere.

I stayed on the Queen Mary in Longbeach a couple of times. Quite dated rooms compared to a normal hotel but full of character. The ship has a great bar call the Observation Deck Bar. It’s a 20’s art deco job at the back of the ship. Top quality. The first time I was there they had a female trio singing Andres Sisters type songs. They did a terrific rendition of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. From Company B. The bugle boy that is not the singers.

The second time I stayed there was when Anne was pregnant. She flew out to meet me at the end of a business trip. On the way home I gave her my business class seat and I sat in coach. The rub was that being pregnant she could not avail herself of any of the free booze they dish out at the front of the plane. I on the other hand had kicked into my long haul flight survival mode. After early consumption of beer I fell asleep for the rest of the flight. Anne periodically came back to visit me during the flight but on each occasion I was dead to the world.  The sleep of the just. Ish.

Yesterday we got rid of our trampoline. You might ask yourselves where is the connection with trampolines and sleeping on planes? Well there isn’t. It came totally out of left field. It’s just like the kid in Anne’s class when she taught in London who one day announced to the world that his “daddy has a caravan”. Okaay.

There is nothing to say that when putting the third law into practice you can’t just flit from one unrelated website to another. This morning I bounced between sites with cut priced champagne offers and those selling Weber barbecues. There is a connection though not necessarily immediately obvious. You can drink champagne whilst cooking a barbecue.

In this case I’m after some serious quantities of champagne to service the guests at our Silver Wedding Anniversary bash in August. Problem is that whilst there are some good offers around I haven’t necessarily tried any of the champagnes concerned. One might consider it worth buying a single bottle to try but Anne doesn’t like champagne so I’d have to drink the whole bottle myself. Unless I invited someone round which I could.

I’m still mulling it over. I may let you know what I decide or I may not. Ve shall see. I quite like a decent bottle of Australian Shiraz but we aren’t talking about red. We’re on champagne although tbh I’m getting bored with the subject.

Bored bored bored bored bored. No comma. Quick fire. Punctuationless. New word for you. Doesn’t roll particularly well off the tongue but whoever said a new word had to be an easy one to say. When they invented discombobulate no consideration was given to ease of use. I imagine that these days when people invent new words they have focus groups and teams of marketing types that evaluate their effectiveness. They might also need to check the availability of the domain name. If the domain name already exists it can’t be a new word though that word doesn’t necessarily have a meaning.

I just checked discombobulate.com btw and the domain name is for sale. Bought by some loser sometime who thought they could make a bit of cash from the word. Problem is no one knows what it means except for my son Tom who used to learn difficult words from the Oxford English Dictionary and slip them into conversations with his teachers knowing full well that the chances were that the teach would have no idea what he was saying.

I prefer the word discombobulate to punctuationless.

3rd Law Part 52 here

3rd Law Part 54 here

3rd Law Part 52 – bird reading for beginners

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

The best is yet to come. That’s the only motto to live with. On a different subject just installed a new app on my phone. Motion detector. I have the phone pointing at the bird feeder resplendent with new bird seed. The feeder that is not the phone. For some reason the birds didn’t like the old stuff I put out for them. Bought it from a farm shop. This stuff is National Trust “certified”. They’re bound to like it. It’s a trusted brand, the National Trust, as the name implies.

I did consider leaving a note out for the birds asking if they had any mates that might like the old stuff but didn’t bother in the end. After all birds might be able to say “pretty polly” but I’m darned sure they can’t read. I mean whoever heard of a bird learning to read? Huh 🙂

For a bird, learning to fly and how to find food is far more useful. The concept of a bird landing on your shoulder and asking if you minded if he read your paper whilst you were reading it is pretty outlandish. If nothing else it could lead to awkward situations. If the bird is a slower reader than you you could find yourself waiting impatiently for it to finish a page whilst you wanted to turn to page 8 to finish off the article. There is also the scenario where the bird could plop on your shoulder whilst sat there. It’s what birds do. You can’t blame the bird. You only have yourself to blame for letting him perch there in the first place.

Also think of the extreme psychological damage you could do to a bird if you accidentally opened the cookery section while he was sat there. Doesn’t bear thinking about. Picture the scene. Bird sat there, happily browsing through the Sunday paper with you and you turn the page. It is summer and barbecues are all the rage. The recipe for the day is spit roasted blackbird. The blackbird on your shoulder does a double take, flaps his wings in agitation and poos on your head whilst taking off.

You don’t want that do you. Now I realise that barbecued blackbird recipes don’t appear on a regular basis in the food section of the Sunday paper but it could have been some other bird and the bird sharing your paper wasn’t necessarily a blackbird. Could have been a chicken or a grouse. You need to slot your own brand of bird into the story. Whatever frequents your deck or patio or patch of lawn small.

If you only have a small lawn you shouldn’t feel bad about this. After all it will be far easier to maintain and it’s unlikely that you would need to invest in a ride on lawnmower. Even though you might secretly hanker after one. If you had a lawn big enough for a ride on lawnmower then you would probably also have a gardener to drive it which would not be what you had in mind at all.

Personally I am totally cool with the idea of having a gardener. Gardens are for sitting in sipping a cool drink, or for playing footy with the kids, or both. Not at the same time of course unless you had a lid and a straw for the cool drink and were only playing in goal. The kids would also have to be happy with the fact that you weren’t trying that hard, concentrating mainly on the cool drink. Make sure you wear a suitable hat remember. If it’s nice enough to be out sipping a cool drink there will be sun involved.

I need to tell you that whilst sat here typing not a single bird has approached that feeder. I wonder if they can see me and are a bit suspicious. They needn’t be. I have no intention of putting them on the barbecue. We already have some filleted chicken breasts for that together with some Levi Roots Reggae Reggae Sauce of which we all approve.

Plenty of bumble bees this year I note. I like that. Far preferable to wasps and they don’t seem to come into the house which is even better. Tonight we will be putting some wood on the barbecue and turning it into a firepit. It’s going to be the perfect evening for it. Rare.

I have a penchant for drinking good brandy around the firepit. I have a nice bottle of Carlos 1 I brought back from Barcelona the other week but will probably not broach it. I’m being a good boy at the moment. I prefer Spanish brandy to French. Seems to have a mellower taste to it. A bit more woody or smoky perhaps. The only difference, I assume is the grapes.

We have a plentiful supply of wood to stick on the fire. The wood has the side benefit of scaring away the mozzies which I am particularly attractive to.

While I think of it I reckon the birds have got out of the habit of visiting our bird feeder because of my previous selection of nuts. It may take some time to regain their loyalty. Happens with birds. I read that somewhere. No I think it was here 🙂

The fat balls are very popular and they seem to go like a shot. It isn’t just the birds that go for them. It’s squirrels too. Unfortunately I can’t be selective. Come one come all. “The egalitarian method of feeding wildlife” by Trefor Davies. A best seller in the Eastgate School rankings for Wildlife Literature as chosen by Class R. Class R incidentally, have yet to learn to read. This allows them to identify with birds and is why they have a world famous register of bird feeding books. Or not…

3rd Law Part 51 here

3rd Law Part 53 here

3rd Law Part 51 – metropolish

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

Metropolish – quite a large town – almost a big city. The language continues to evolve. Whether that word gets adopted remains to be seen. I am happy with the concept that the written word does not have to conform. It can take its own shape as long as it is conveying what the writer meant to say. What the reader is meant to understand by that word.

The word metropolish does in one sense continue to conform with certain aspects of the English language and that is in its ambiguity. This morning I tweeted that I was just having a row. Someone came back thinking what I meant was I was having an argument. No no no:) I was on the rowing machine going a steady ten minutes on the flat. It’s a good time of day for it, early morning.

Well to metropolish could also mean to buff up the metro, make it gleam, shine, almost as if you can see your face in it. If this was the meaning then people would come from all over the world to see the polished metro. It would be the subject of documentaries. Such would be its popularity and fame that Japanese film crews would clash with American trying to bag camera positions. The BBC, unable to afford the filming rights would make documentaries about the filming of documentaries and David Attenborough would be brought in to comment about the human aspect of life polishing the metro.

I’m not quite sure why they chose David Attenborough because he normally does nature programmes. Perhaps he was under contract to film a certain number of documentaries and being of advancing years was not always able to fly to the Antartic to film penguins in winter.

We have now established that these documentaries are filmed in winter. Don’t ask why. Perhaps it gets too hot on the polished metro in summer, or it is too hot to polish and the polish melts. Disaster. You can imagine that when this happened for the first time the staff returned the tins of polish to the company stores complaining that it no longer had the consistency they needed for the perfect shine. Too runny and metropolish is no good, but you knew that.

They did experiment with spray polish but it was never quite the same and one of the funny things about those that practice the art of metropolishing is that they are quite old fashioned in their own way. They don’t like change. They are very proud of their jobs and when he (or nowadays she though the guild of metropolishers held off allowing female members for longer than any other trade body apart from the Honourable Guild Of Male Strip Tease Artists) completes his 7 year apprenticeship a newly qualified metropolisher considers himself to be in a job for life. It is only recently that the last pre-war metropolisher died, at his post. Metropolishers never retire. There is always that one last bit of polishing they need to finish off.

The fact that a metropolishing apprenticeship still lasts seven hears has raised some eyebrows amongst the political interfering class. How, they argue, can a job that only involves the application of copious amount of elbow grease take seven years to learn whilst being paid peanuts? I use peanuts as a turn of phrase here. They don’t actually get paid in peanuts. That phrase is used to represent a low value that is indeterminate, although I’ve never checked to see whether there is an actual definition for peanuts as pay.

I digress. The Grand Masters of the metropolishing world dismiss these arguments with a simple retort. They had to do it so they don’t see why anyone else should get more money. Or larger nuts! Activists, and there have been some over the years though they seem to disappear, wander off down a tunnel never to be heard of again, have occasionally stuck their heads through the entrance to the metro and suggested that if the pay was made in coconuts then at least these would have some resale value. If nothing else the apprentices could take their coconuts home and their mothers could use the flesh in the preparation of aromatic, coconut based curries.

Enlightened Renumeration Panels (for the Guild prides itself on conducting its business in a totally transparent manner) have considered these suggestions but have always reject them as impractical because of the altogether higher cost base of a coconut economy, not the least being transportation costs. Peanuts can be economically conveyed in sacks of manageable size. They can even be shelled/processed at their country of origin and shipped in plain, salted or roasted form packaged and ready to dish out.

The pre-processing of coconuts leads to accusations of tampering and contamination and precludes any sales outside of culinary markets. To fairgrounds for example. Don’t be shy, give it a try doesn’t work when the coconut on said shy has been replaced by a tin of coconut milk or a packet of the desiccated stuff.

There is no sign that the metropolishing profession is about to change any time soon. Jobs are handed down to family members and it is a very difficult trade for outsiders to break in to. Metropolishing families are very insular. The trade secrets are kept within their close knit circles. It is even rare for young metropolishers to marry outside of their immediate family. The resultant inbreeding which might explain why a practitioner is happy to spend a life elbow deep in polish. The average metropolisher is a simple soul.

There are no known cases of a metropolisher having been to university. Let it remain thus. They will not thank you for interfering. Get on with your own life.

3rd Law Part 50 here

3rd Law Part 52 here

3rd Law Part 50 – tomorrow is another day

Saturday, July 6th, 2013

The garden is mostly in shade which believe it or not is ideal for such a warm day. I can hear the occasional loud jet fly in or out of RAF Waddington. The airshow is in full swing. It is a perfect day for it though people will need to make sure they wear a hat and drink plenty of fluids. I’m beginning to sound like my mum now.

You have to hand it to the RAF they certainly know how to manage big events. A visit to the airshow gives you confidence that a full scale go to war effort would similarly be handled.

This, as I have mentioned, is a perfect summer’s day. It’s a chill in the shade not doing very much kind of day. That does sound a little contradictory doesn’t it – the contrast of the perfect, ie warm, summer’s day compared with a chill.

I came back from watching the Lions comprehensively beat the Wallabies at Ajax’s house. Most of the folk there were in full drinking swing. Party atmosphere. The barbecue was going and the sausages already cooked for the final whistle. A great day for it but not for me. I am heading to Boston tonight to hear Joe in a concert. It’s the 4th gig I’ll have seen him play inside a week. In fact this one is a repeat of last Sunday’s concert in Lincoln so I could have legitimately have dipped out of tonight’s do were it not for the fact that as a parent I have a responsibility to see that the lad gets home safe and sound. Leaving him to hitchhike back from Boston late at night doesn’t sound consistent with that level of responsibility.

At the tender age of 51 I still can’t get my brain around the responsibility thing. Being just a big kid it sits strangely on my shoulders. The funny thing is that when I listen to myself talking work type things I hear a person with a lot of experience who has seen it all before.

The time will come when I stand again at the side of the road with a sign saying St Tropez as I did after my first year at Bangor University. It got me there. I didn’t stay long as it was a very expensive part of the world and my budget didn’t extend to the drinks prices they charged. I’m not sure you see people hitchhiking anymore. I might try it sometime for old time sake. Just to show the younger generation how it’s done. I’m sure that students used to have hitch hiking competitions in those days. See who could get the furthest in one weekend. They all expect to hop in a taxi nowadays.

I have to be careful here. Don’t want to sound like some old fart, nosir. Given the choice between a sleeping bag under a hedge and a nice hotel it’s a nobrainer. In fact given the choice between hitch hiking and a first class train carriage that too is a nobrainer. Bob.

I’m even getting a little fussier about my hotels these days. I need comfort. Ideally a pool though I won’t necessarily use it. A nice bar is a definite plus especially if it has sweeping views.

The planes continue to take off from Waddington. The noise competes with the birds twittering happily in our hedge. Different kinds of birds. Steel and feathers. One after worms and the other firing missiles. Predatory both, I guess. There is something vaguely sinister about the plane type of bird when you think of it in those terms. The feathered variety perches comfortably on its nest and the metal monster sits at the end of the runway waiting to hurtle skywards. To kill. Or be killed. Winged fate.

Let us all enjoy our day in the sun. Or the shade. As you like it.

We do have a hammock that has not had an outing this year yet. I think this is the weekend for it. We will also normally have arranged a camping trip by now. I fear that I may not get a night under canvas this year though I do have the Annual Group Scout Camp as a backup assuming I don’t have to go to the mother in law’s 80th birthday on the Friday night. Ve shall see Meestar Bond.

Like tinterweb the aeroplane represents technological progress. I suppose. I think I’m getting into another of those sombre moods. It’s funny how moods can change just like that. Don’t worry. I’ve already pulled myself out of it. That’s what I call real mental strength. Confidence in my own ability. Comfortable in my skin. Except I could do with losing a bit more weight. Still I kept off the beers this morning and will be glad of it later when I enjoy the concert.

The enjoyment will be greatly helped by the fact that I heard all the pieces last week. You always enjoy listening to music that you already know innit. The finale was the Henry Wood medley that they sing at the Last Night of the Proms. Very enjoyable even if it doesn’t sit well with my non jingoistic Welsh upbringing. I guess you have to put politics aside when it comes to art.

Not that politics and art don’t mix. The art of the Russian Revolution for example is very striking and interesting to look at in its political context. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on this point 🙂

The one thing we don’t have that is quite useful for five days a year is a swimming pool in the back garden. I’d quite like one and would be in it now if we had one. My writing would suffer but that is just the price us writers have to pay for wanting a swimming pool. If that makes sense. It’s a law of diminishing returns. Become a hugely successful writer and earn lots of money so that you can afford to buy a pool. Stop writing because you spend all your time in the swimming pool. You can replace swimming pool with other distractions. Holidays in the Caribbean, Skiing in the Swiss Alps, a cruise around the Galapagos Islands. That kind of thing.

A cruise around the Galapagos Islands is never something I’ve seriously considered. I do quite like the idea of a month or so in de Caribbean man. Rum cocktails, hammock between two palm trees in what little shade there is at midday. Charter a yatch. One of those old fashioned schooner types that you anchor off a white sandy bay and jump into the water to do some snorkelling. Little fish swim around you. Taking a spear you catch enough for supper that night. Row ashore and light a fire on the beach where you cook the fish on sticks.

Back to the villa before it gets too late or maybe a night at sea in the cabin of the boat. The waves gently rock you to sleep and tomorrow is another day…

3rd Law Part 49 here

3rd Law Part 51 here

3rd Law Part 49 – patterns in the grass

Saturday, July 6th, 2013

It’s uplifiting. The conservatory doors are wide open. The birds are singing away happily knowing that they have a beautiful sunny day ahead. The lawn needs a bit of a cut but there is no rush. I was going to cut down the undergrowth at the bottom of the garden but I think I’ll leave it until tomorrow. Manyana. I’ve got some lively musing streaming over the wireless interweb. Radio Oxford fwiw.

I realise  I should be tuned in to Radio Lincolnshire and news of the Waddington Air Show but an offspring is reading the traffic and travel news in Oxford so I am being a dutiful parent. I’ve been to the Air Show a couple of times and it is a fantastic day out. Long queues very long queues on the roads though so if you’re thinking of going you need to get there very early. Waddington is probably three miles from our house and the cars back up on the road outside us. You have been warned.

I don’t know why we don’t go to the Air Show more often, considering it is such a good day out. The only times we have been are when one or two of the kids has been playing with the school band in one of the hangars. This is the best way to do it as we get a free family ticket and a car pass so that we can park right next to the hangar and not have to join the unwashed masses in the public car park. This also makes it easy to nip back to pick up the picnic.

Although there have been wet weekends for the Air Show on balance the weather has usually been great. On one of our visits one of the kids forgot to bring a hat and I had to share mine. The concept of hat sharing is quite novel I think. Probably not original though. Hey you can’t live your life doing completely new things all the time. Most of it has already been done before – taking a shower, making the toast, cutting the grass. You get my drift.

You’d never get anything done if it all had to be new and original. Spend all your time doing nothing trying to think of something new. I suppose you could cut the grass in a different way. Make interesting patterns with the lawnmower that gradually disappear as more of the grass gets cut. That would be a valid “new thing” because each pattern would be different even if the concept might not itself be new. You can’t spend all your time cutting the grass in a new way though because once cut the grass would need to be left a week or so to grow back to a cuttable length again. You could cut if very slowly but I don’t think it would fly. You are going to have to think of other things.

Paining a big landscape watercolour could be one way of doing it. Unfortunately I’m not a very good artist. Also I don’t have any watercolour paints and in any case this is just a mental exercise. You don’t actually have to do any of the things being discussed here although I’m not stopping you. You should let me know what happens. Take a pic of the grass half way through the mow for example and send it to me on Twitter. Simple to do and a highly effective way of sharing. I might even retweet it if I thought it was good enough to share. You could find that everyone on the planet ends up seeing your picture of the pattern in your lawn. Not that everyone is online yet but I’m sure someone would print off a copy and post it somewhere public so that everyone else could see.

The only drawback with that level of publicity is that you would find your house besieged by the press all wanting to take “exclusive” pictures of your lawn. You would spend all your time doing interviews and never have enough time to cut the grass. If you charged a fee for the interview you might be able to afford to hire a gardener to cut the grass for you but that would somehow defeat the object of the exercise. I imagine, and this is pure hypothesis you understand, people would even hire airplanes to fly over your back garden for photographs of your lawn. Google would redo its satellite shot of your house to incorporate the pattern on the lawn. How cool is that. Pre-pattern images of your lawn would begin to sell at a premium although that would not last long because we all know how easy it is to copy images on tinterweb.

This whole sad line of reasoning is of course built on the premise that there is actually a pattern to be viewed so you’d better make sure you don’t finish cutting all the lawn like  I originally suggested and leave  a pattern. Think how disappointed everyone would be if there wasn’t one after all the fuss. You would start getting adverse comments on Facebook and Twitter. People can be very cruel you know. It may all stem from jealousy and their own pathetic inadequacy but that is real life.

The alternative is not to stick your head above the parapet. Don’t do anything original. Nobody will then notice you and you can go to your grave in soon to be forgotten ignominy. You may get a few people along at the funeral. The odd passer-by and a priest, if you are that way inclined, paid to do a job of work.

“Shed not a tear for this departed brother for he was not different.” You may now cry if you think that person is you.

3rd Law Part 48 here

3rd Law Part 50 here

3rd Law Part 48 – pee haitch ee double yew

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

Pee haitch ee double yew. That’s what ah say. Just been watching our Andy at Wimbledon. E went two sets down but recovered to win three two. It went to seven five in the final set. Close man. C lose. Phew.

Don’t know why I’m talking like that. Andy is Scottish although as is ever the case the English media says he is British, which of course he is too. At least until the Scots vote for independence, dig a big trench the other side of Hadrian’s Wall and float off into the sunset.

I know I know Scotland isn’t exactly going to float off. It’s mostly made of granite. Faaar too heavy, man. Waaay too heavy. There I go again. It just slipped out. Funny innit? Funny strange not funny haha. Innit. I like the word innit.  It lets me slip into a pseudo colloquial yoof tongue, if I may put it like that dear boy. Or girl. It’s almost certainly the BBC equivalent of colloquial yoof, if there is such a thing.

I know this because I once went to visit my Uncle Mick in South London. His instructions included details of which tube to get off at and then which bus to catch. It was on the bus that I discovered the true London yoof accent. I can’t call it Cockney because it bore no relation to the chirpy Cockney Pearly King type of accent which threw in the odd frog and toad and gawd blimey guvnor bless ya.

I couldn’t even begin to describe the London yoof accent to which I was witness. This is partly because in reality I am quite a sheltered individual. Although my travels have taken me to a big chunk of the world these have been in the splendid and luxurious isolation of posh hotels and trendy bars with taxis to ferry me between the two. I rarely encountered the yoof although I do once remember taking the sun outside a hotel in Los Angeles and a guy sauntered by and asked me for money. People don’t know how to cope with such situations. I declined the request (it was not an offer as such). He moved on and I retreated to the safety of the hotel lobby.

I saw a similar scene in Barcelona last weekend. An old peasant woman came into the carriage proffering two packets of paper tissues which she was trying to sell. I call her an old peasant woman so that you can try to picture her in your mind’s eye. She had a walking stick and grey hair and looked totally forlorn. She might not have been an actual peasant but she certainly looked the part.

Everyone in the carriage studiously ignored her. I didn’t know the form. Was she part of an armed gang that ripped you off once you got your wallet out to slip her a few coins for the tissues? Were the tissues nicked in the first place? Fortunately she studiously ignored me. I looked the typical tourist – shorts sandals tee shirt and tattered straw hat. Maybe she only tried to sell to locals. We were all uncomfortable with the situation.

I’m not saying that a tattered straw hat is typical of the tourist because I don’t think it is. Most tourists pride themselves on wearing more standard headgear such as baseball hats that say “I love Barcelona” or “Hard Rock Café”. Obv the Barcelona bit is because we were in Barcelona. It would be different in Blackpool, Bognor and Biarritz, to name but a few “B”s.

The old peasant woman got off the carriage at the next stop and a short while later a cheery bloke got on with a karaoke machine on some sort of hand trolley. He switched on the machine and proceeded to sing a song. He was busking. I felt instantly comfortable with this guy and gave him forty cents. Having forked out I then felt comfortable in taking photographs of him. I don’t think anyone else gave him any money but he got more than did the old peasant woman.

Off he went and I soon arrived at my stop. I never saw him again. Bit melodramatic eh? Thought I’d chuck it in. I never see most people again. I matters not. Who cares? Some people I want to see again. A few mates, my family etc I’m feeling some kind of mood change in the air here. The violins are about to kick in. There is some dramatic music in the offing. Maybe a few crashed piano chords.

I pause for reflection. The music dances lightly in the background, not intruding. I can hear it  but it doesn’t get in the way of my thoughts. Sometimes I think I can also hear waves crashing against the beach. They keep coming. Slowly the sound of the waves gets louder and with it the orchestra builds up to a crescendo. The final notes crash into place and gradually drift away leaving me exhausted. My head is slumped forward and my arms hang limply by my side.

Slowly I come to. I look up, catch my bearings and walk offstage left (that’s right as you see it). The audience, for one moment held captive by my performance, springs to life and reacts with thunderous applause. I do not return to the stage. By this time I have left through the stage door and hailed a taxi to take me to the airport. Changing quickly in the back of the cab I cleverly alter my appearance and disappear.

Here is consternation back at the theatre and the audience gradually dissipates to the bars around the square where they spend the rest of the evening talking about the ending of the show and thinking how strange it all is. The next morning my disappearance is in all the press. A global search is set in place but they never find me.

I am in a remote cottage just beyond the line of the surf where few people go and where the locals do not talk to people they do not recognise. I am the once exception. They take me in as one of their own, referring to me as “the bloke in the cottage beyond the surf”.  I spend my time meditating and working on my book.

Each morning I swim in the sea and am completely happy with my life. One day a ship appears on the horizon and anchors in the bay.  A rowing boat comes away from the ship and heads towards the beach. Captain Cook wades ashore the last few feet and brings me some trinkets as tokens of his peace and goodwill. He also claims the beach in the name of the king at which point I have to tell him he is a few hundred years late.

Finding it difficult to hide his disappointment he turns around and tells his crew they must be off. “There be no rich pickings he me lads”. That night in the local pub I tell the villagers about my encounter. They look horrified at each other and ask me never to mention the incident again. There is something dark going on in this village. However I don’t like that kind of story so I’m going to move on to talk about the annual festival of St Eugenie that is held on the village green every August. Another time…

3rd Law Part 47 here

3rd Law Part 49 here

3rd Law Part 47 – I was up at half past three

Monday, July 1st, 2013

Tiredness is not normally a productive state of mind.  I thought I’d see what came out. Tonight I am tired. Not dead beat tired, almost asleep on my feet tired. Just a been up since 3.30 am tired that  I could probably shrug off or delay for an hour or two by going out and getting some fresh air.

Apart from the 3.30am start, which was to take our youngest to school for a Y8 trip to France (ohohiho) I went swimming on my way to work and then did a 10 minute stint on the rowing machine when I got home. The physical exercise has I think contributed to my fatigue and  I would be most surprised if I didn’t sleep soundly tonight.

The sleep of the dead? Not quite. I’m sure if necessary I would wake up. You know. If the burglar alarm goes off in the middle of the night or there was a terrific explosion just down the street from our house. Don’t ask me what caused the explosion. It was just a massive bang and I did not care to nip outside to investigate.  I guess it could have been a plane crash. We are very near to RAF Waddington. Heard nothing about it on the news though so I guess I’ll have to accept that it was totally a figment of my imagination. Not something that could come out of a mind in a state of extreme tiredness I suspect.

Hmm. I don’t know where this is taking me. That of course is part of the fun. The step out into the unknown. The great leap of faith. Takes some courage to do that sometimes. Either courage (mon brave) or the feeling that you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. Did you like the way I slipped a bit of French into the conversation. It seemed the right thing to do. I’m obviously being influenced by the fact that the lad is by now in France.

I quite fancied going on the trip myself. Taking off and leaving everything behind. Over the years I’ve often romanticised about taking off to Skegness for the afternoon when I should have been in work.  I also quite like the idea of dropping everything and drifting around the world, seeing where the tides take me. Only problem is the mortgage, the kids, the job etc etc etc. I put down the thre etceteras there but actually the three reasons I gave for not taking off around the world, or to Skegness, are exactly those initially articulated. There is no need for further material contribution to  the discussion.

There is one thing you do need to know and that is we do not have a pet dog. That barrier to going away for a long trip is therefore not present. Had we had a dog we would have had to leave him in a boarding kennel for an indeterminate length of time. In my mind that is no way to treat your best friend, your most faithful servant. Good that Rover can be both innit? Yes the dog that we don’t own is called Rover, or not, depending on whether you believe me, or not.

If it wasn’t calledRover I think that Aubrey would be a suitable alternative name. Rover makes me picture in my minds eye an animal constantly on the move. Sniffing smells in a variety of nooks and crannies as he makes his way around the garden/house/visitor attraction. That assumes they let dogs into the vistor attraction. He could be a guide dog I suppose but then he wouldn’t be mine as I am not blind and in no need of a guide dog.

Aubrey on the other hand, and before I forget, is somewhat more languid. He has large floppy ears and big eyes that often gaze up at me saying “do you really want me to do this?” Aubrey is not to be confused with Oberon. I have no idea who or what Oberon is. Might even be a bar of chocolate, likely containing some kind of nut.

I never used to like nuts when I was a kid. I do now. My dad used to have a big bowl of mixed nuts that he would crack open on Christmas Day. Use kids would volunteer to work the nutcrackers for him, or at least I did. Can’t speak for my sisters. Can’t actually remember. I also remember that dad used to get crate of pale ale for Christmas. The bottle tops used to have a detachable plastic lining that dad would remove and use it to affix the metal bit to our tshirts like a badge. Funny what you remember. I don’t really remember that I was wearing a tshirt. I can’t have been more than 5 or 6 years old. The clothes I wore then don’t fit me now and even if they did they would probably no longer be fashionable. I’d a chucked them ages ago on that basis.

Actually that isn’t true. I’m not known for chucking clothes. I always feel I’ll fit back into them one day. Funnily enough last year  I lost quite a bit of weight and now do (yes indeedy) fit back into quite a number of shirts and trousers given up a long time ago. Some of them I didn’t even remember I had. Must have known deep down I was right when I said I’d get back into them. Some kind of built in instinct. Like cows have when they lie down because it is about to rain.

Or racing pigeons. Not that racing pigeons lie down when it is about to rain. As far as I know. I meant like racing pigeons know where home is and head straight there not passing Go or stopping off at the George and Dragon pub for a pint of mix and a packet of peanuts. When I say mix I mean mild and bitter and not anything containing brown ale. Not sure you see either mild or brown ale being drunk much these days mind you. I do like a pint of bitter.

3rd Law part 47 was brought you by “I just can’t get enough of them 3rd Law blues, oh yea”

3rd Law Part 46 here

3rd Law Part 48 here

3rd Law Part 46 – the perpetual day of tinternet

Monday, June 24th, 2013

One of the features of the 3rd Law and its perceived ability to manipulate time is the perpetual day. You don’t notice the change between day and night and to all intents and purposes there is no night. This does assume that you have the stamina to last that long and that in the process of continuously getting up to go and make hot drinks so that they can go cold you don’t look out of the window, or at least don’t notice what is outside the window which is perfectly feasible.

There is also a counter argument that what we are talking about is the perpetual night. Some people think that this is a reflection of an individual’s personality – the glass half full/half empty debate. I’m not so sure. Who is to say that a creature of the night isn’t just someone currently working a night shift though if I was that person’s employer I’d want to know why they spent most of their shift surfing tinternet. If I was on night shift I’d want to spend the whole time surfing. It would make the time go more quickly. That is what the 3rd Law is all about.

It is easy to imagine people wanting to join a 3rd Law club. Somewhere for like minded people to meet up and ignore each other by staring into their screens. This club might as well be internet based. Makes sense. People would communicate via IM and leaving comments in each others’ Facebook or Twitter streams. It happens already. We just didn’t know it was because of the 3rd Law.

There is a dark side of the 3rd Law and that is addiction. It isn’t something most people like to talk about. This is partly because the addicts are hooked to their screens and don’t talk but also because they are in denial. This addiction is of the worse kind. It can be totally invisible, except to those closest to you who notice the gradual degradation in your ability to communicate, other than via social networking platforms.

For families blighted by 3rd Law addiction the yellow post it note is a thing of the past. Their only way of getting a message across to the addict is through the computer. Sticking a post it note on the screen of the computer is to be avoided as it can provoke violence. The only real answer is to call in the professionals and you know what? This form of addiction is so new that there are no professionals. The medical fraternity is still coming to terms with the problem.

3rd Law addiction is so new that it is possible to attract government grants if you say that you are studying it. There have been few takers of the grant because not only do families not want to come to terms with the fact that one or more of them is an addict but also, being a government grant, the number of forms that have to be filled in require a week off work to get it right because the slightest mistake results in the rejection of the grant by a civil servant who is incentivised to save the government money. Job creation schemes gone mad I say.

This isn’t entirely fair on the civil servant because 3rd Law addicts themselves have been known to apply for the grant and spend the money on expensive jars of coffee. Remember this is coffee that gets made but never completely drunk. It makes sense to stop wasteful public spending like this.

Coffee manufacturers (growers?/both?) love the 3rd Law. Profits have shot up since the advent of tinternet and this is despite the fact that the environment that fertile ground for the 3rd Law is the same environment that facilitates online shopping and finding the best deal for coffee. Despite this the price of coffee seems to remain high. No accusations of cartel have yet been made…

It is quite possible that there is no internet near to the slopes of Brazil, Colombia and Kenya where coffee is known to be grown. I could look it up but I wont. I quite like the smell of coffee but the taste rarely lives up to the promise. Especially when it has gone cold which it frequently does, obv.

As I write this I have just realised that I made a pot of tea about half an hour ago. Bloody 3rd Law! Stewed tea is something I have had to get used to since my head started getting into the 3rd Law. It’s just as prevalent as cold tea but worse in a way. You have to put up with cold stewed tea instead of just cold tea. Huh.

3rd Law Part 45 here

3rd Law Part 47 here

3rd Law 45 – internet dark matter

Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

I had a dream. Normally I don’t remember dreams. This one must have been on the edge of wakedness, if that’s a word. It is now. So I remember some aspects of this dream.

I was living somewhere on the coast when some massive disaster threatened the community. I think it was the threat of invasion from somewhere. The leaders of the community decided to evacuate to the beach where for some reason it would be safer. We all trooped into a jumbo jet (might have been another bit type of plane – it didn’t feature in the details of the dream) that had crash landed on the cliff edge above the beach and slid down the emergency chute onto the beach.

The beach was a hive of organisation with people handing out emergency rations and directing us towards shelters that were being built out of sheet materials that had miraculously appeared from nowhere. After a while I noticed that the shelters were being built below the line for low tide. This advice was contemptuously ignored so I took the family back to our house.

At some point a deputation of invaders arrived to look around. The only people left were us. We had in the meantime either managed to fortify our house with an unbeatable array of defences and weapons or we went out to greet the invaders and had a friendly chat with them – what had all the fuss been about? I don’t think I fully finished off the story in the dream but that was the gist of it.

Whaddaya think? Do any other readers have a strange dream they can remember. Don’t worry. I’m not about to set off on some line of psychoanalysis here, though I might if the dream is juicy enough. My dream wasn’t the Martin Luther King visionary type of dream though without getting a shrink in to look at it I can’t 100% guarantee that.

We might get invaded by aliens and have to hide on the beach because for some strange genetic reason stemming from the planet of their birth their vision is restricted to above cliff level. The planet of the cliff level visionaries. Had someone invented the varifocal lens on their planet that could have sorted their eyesight problems and allowed them to see below the line. Of course that would have meant we beach dwellers would have been toast. What a bit of luck!

The one thing that amazes me about the whole story is that a planet of aliens intelligent enough to invent intergalactic travel couldn’t invent a simple varifocal lens. I’m not sure what these aliens looked like but I do have this strong gut feeling that they were from a different galaxy. Otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it.

It’s important to get these things right. Some sort of journalistic integrity applied to the 3rd Law. It’s funny that a physical law of tinternet should be able to engender integrity as part of its sphere of influence. I keep finding new facets to the 3rd Law don’t I? If you’ve just joined the conversation at this point then you might not know what I’m talking about. In fact I might not know what I’m talking about most of the time but that, dear reader, is just, one, of, those, things. Commas inserted there to create a pause between words though the sentence didn’t really need it. That emphasis was unnecessary. Dear reader.

I must stop calling you dear reader. I’m sure you would prefer me to use your first name. Ok Leonard it is then. For now. Until I feel like calling you something different. After all it would be namist to stick with one reader’s name and I don’t even know if Len is reading. Notice I slipped in the abbreviation there. I don’t know if he is a Len or a Leonard. It matters to some people. Lesley, Les etc. Doesn’t matter to me.

I might have upset Len here but it’s one of the risks you take when you live life on the edge, when life is governed by 3rd Law rules. Life is short. Get over it. Len. Les. Des. Dave. Phil. Go out and cut the grass if it bothers you. The 3rd Law isn’t available as a podcast. Yet. Good idea though. Might put it to the publisher sometime. Sometime in the far distant future in another galaxy where time stands still long enough for me to do so. Time standing still is the polar opposite to the 3rd Law. It’s the dark matter of the internet. We are pretty sure it exists but nobody has been able to find it yet. Internet dark matter could be the source of lots of problems: page not found, emails not arriving, twitter fail whale. Yea yea I’m sure there’s a good reason but the unenlightened medieval believer in alchemy, superstition and the power of prayer in me tells me that there are dark forces at play here.

It’s always obvious with hindsight isn’t it? It takes someone to make that initial discovery, the eureka moment, to make it thus. I like that work eureka. Wasn’t sure whether it should have been capitalised. Eureka. Presumably it is Greek seeing as it is attributed to Archimedes though how that bit of the story got kept over the centuries of its telling I don’t know. Maybe the first thing Archimedes did after running naked from his bath and down the street shouting eureka was to realise his predicament, run home to grab a towel to cover his embarrassment and site down to pen his exact thoughts. After all it was one of those momentous moments in history. One you would want faithful capturing (of!?). You have to get these things right and I know for a fact that ole Archimedes would not have had a smart phone to immediately record his findings before he forgot.

It would have been a bit awkward having someone recording him running down the street in the nude anyway. The nude bits here are what I recall reading about the event in my youth and may not be totally accurate. However seeing as there was a bath involved there may be some truth in it.

I quite often whip out my phone to record a moment, lest I forget.

3rd Law Part 44 here

3rd Law Part 46 here

3rd Law Part 44 – the typewriter and the pile of cigarette stubs – yeugh

Sunday, June 16th, 2013

The toast pops up and I spring into action. Not quite the same as the whistle going and me climbing over the parapet to go into the line. Actually nothing like it at all so the analogy isn’t a particularly good one. The toast has been buttered and consumed in rapid order. We are off out for a Saturday night in Newark to watch a popular music concert. Madness you say, knowing what home loving types we are. Yes indeed Madness I say. Night Boat to Cairo, Baggy Trousers, Embarrassment etcetera etcetera etcetera.

I do like Madness though when I last saw them which must have been five years ago in Brum I remember saying to one of my pals “the didn’t do Come on Eileen. It’s one of my faves”. Course turns out Eileen was not a Madness song it was Dexys Midnight Runners. It’s a mistake anyone could have made. I made it. Haha. Hah. Wouldjabelieveit!

Next day and it’s my day, apparently. Father’s day. Not my birthday. I got a card from my daughter in Durham. Very nice. She sent it a month ago. Nothing like making sure it gets there in time. How often do you wake up realising it’s your little nephew Johnny’s birthday tomorrow and have to rush out and buy him a last minute card and hope it gets there in time.

Doesn’t happen in our house. Anne is super organised like that. If it was left to me it would happen every time. Years and years ago I bought a job lot of Happy Birthday Father cards from a closing down sale at a stationers shop. There were seven identical cards with the same picture of a red car on the front. My dad got the same card seven years running. Not sure if he ever noticedJ It amused me.

I do the writing of cards in our house. Something a bit more than “hope you have a great day, love xxx”. I can’t be more specific than that because every message is different. Tailored towards its recipient. The biggest problem I have with writing messages in cards is my handwriting. My handwriting is terrible and has grown steadily worse since computers arrived on the scene which is quite a long time ago now.

Word processors have killed off the art of handwriting. It occurs to me that there could be a typed equivalent of your handwriting becoming more of a scrawl as you get older and that is the number of typing errors you make increases. Doesn’t mean to say these errors are visible to the reader thanks to the power of the spellchecker. Means it takes longer to type though. I type pretty fast but sometimes find myself going over stuff and correcting it which is the bit that takes the time really.

Still I prefer typing to handwriting. My hand always used to get tired as I recall. Now I just get RSI! I went through a phase of having to use the mouse with my left hand because my right wrist got sore doing it. Seemed to have phased that one out and am back on the right hand now though half the time I use the pad on the laptop instead of the mouse.

Must have been a real pain in the old days when people used typewriters. The old fashioned ones with the levers that swing over and bashed the paper when you tapped a key. I can picture them now. A lone author hunched over his desk tapping away long into the night. A pile of scrunched up paper overflowing from the waste paper basket at the side of his desk. Several coffee cups on the table, all with some cold dregs in them.

I could add an ashtray into the scene. It would be authentic. The thought of the smell makes me feel sick though so I won’t. Especially as the pile of cigarette stubs grows.  You won’t find no pile of cigarette stubs in an ashtray in this house nosiree. Don’t even think we have an ashtray. Anyone daft enough to want to smoke has to go out into the garden.

The other thing that isn’t used a lot in this house is the sugar. Sure we use icing sugar and castor sugar in baking but the granulated stuff that goes in tea and coffee doesn’t get used. In the past whenever we’ve had some building work doing it’s been interesting to see how quickly the sugar goes down compared to normal. When I was a kid I’d have a couple of sugars in a milky coffee but at some stage of the game I weaned myself off it. Did it gradually by cutting down the amount I was using and eventually it went completely. Now the idea of sugar in tea or coffee makes me shudder a little although I have been known to stick a little in a latte if the coffee has been on the bitter side. Cue advert with woman smarting at bitterness of her coffee when a bloke arrives shaking coffee beans in one hand and holding a jar of Nescafe in the other. Might have been some other brand of cawfee but the concept is there.

On the subject of adverts I remember the time when I was a kid there was a strike on tv. Not sure if it was a ban on adverts or what but I do remember that when normal service was resumed I seemed to think that the adverts were more entertaining than the programmes they cut into. Probably have bigger budgets. Nowadays adverts are a pain in the arse. Not that I’m a big TV watcher but there are one or two compelling shows like Timewatch (yawn say the kids) and Storage Hunters (yippee say the kids).

I’m in to things like Timewatch even though there can be long stretches where very little happens and even when something does happen it’s usually just someone finding a tiny fragment of a bowl at which point a team of experts hurriedly gathers around to pronounce it early twelfth century or late 11th but not the circa 800AD that they had been looking for.

Storage Hunters is so bad it’s compelling. Yesterday I switched the box on in the middle of the day to see if there was any sport and found to my huge joy that SH was on. Imagine my disappointment when I found that I’d already seen it 🙂

3rd Law Part 43 here

3rd Law Part 45 here

3rd Law Part 43 – there is no tennis

Saturday, June 15th, 2013

There is no tennis. It is all repeats. It is raining. We all look forward to the British summer. We get fed up with the winter.  We sit there dreaming of sultry days where it is almost too hot to do anything other than sit eating a picnic in the shade then dozing off to the gentle sound of the languid river lapping away at the bank. As the afternoon cools we wander back down the river path and find the pub at the bridge. Day turns into night and we stagger merrily home to our beds in preparation for the following lazy day.

In practice it is rarely like that. Just think of Wimbledon and the number of times you’ve seen Cliff Richard entertaining the crowd on Centre Court. Ok only the once and since they put the roof on they’ve not needed to call on his services but you know what I mean. That’s an expensive way of avoiding having to listen to Cliff Richard in my book. Would have been cheaper to send him on a package holiday somewhere distant. A Saga one probs! Could probably have a whip round from people with Centre Court debentures to make sure he doesn’t come back the following year.

Now I know this line of reasoning isn’t going to be universally popular. Cliff has many fans. I don’t mind the lad but his stuff is a little clean cut for my liking. Mind you one of my favourites is “Those Were The days” by Mary Hopkin. Both Cliff and Mary have a Eurovision Song Contest pedigree. When I was a kid we used to have a chance of winning. Not any more. I don’t even watch it nowadays. Don’t really watch much TV.

Anyway I’m wandering off the subject with was British Summer Weather. The tennis in question is Queens which is the warm up tourney to Wimbledon. Not being the mega institution that is Wimbledon the folk at Queens can’t afford a roof. I think it would be a bit over the top anyway. Geddit? I’m pleased with that oneJ

It’s a funny thing the whole issue of being pleased with yourself. It’s ok being pleased in private but I suppose you have to suppress your visible self-pleasure, if that’s the right way of putting it, when in front of others. I guess when it is expressed as the written word and being read by someone who is not in your presence at least you are not around to feel embarrassed. Maybe you wouldn’t be embarrassed. I’m probably talking right out of turn here.

Thinking about it I wouldn’t be embarrassed myself. No idea where I got the idea from. I’m sure there are loads of other things that one can be embarrassed about. Going out with no clothes on for example. Not that that is likely to happen, especially in the UK in Summer. It is too cold and you would notice that you had completely forgotten to put any clothes on doh – puts palm to forhead having previously raised eyebrows.

I can’t say I’ve ever gone anywhere and forgotten to get dressed first. I’ve forgotten to get shaved. Probably done that more than once. I once forgot to drop one of the kids off at nursery school and was half way between Lincoln and Newark before I remembered. We even forgot Tom at home when the family went down to a photography studio for a bit family photo. We took three cars and assumed he was in one of the others.

Only realised when we were all there posing as a group and someone said “where’s Tom”. I had to bomb back to get the lad. I’d set the alarm and everything before leaving the house so when he came downstairs he set it off. Our Tom has always had his head screwed on and even at the tender age of whatever it was he managed to put the code in to disable it. All’s well that ends well and we got the family photo. It’s hanging up in the house somewhere along with a million others.

Actually we haven’t got a million photos. We wouldn’t be able to get anything else in the house if we did. Ourselves even. Not much point having a house in that case. Might just as well call it a self storage unit. These days a million photos would fit quite neatly into a 4Terabyte or so hard drive. Obviously it depends on the size of image file. I assumed most would be around 4.5Megs with some being smaller because they were taken with an older camera with fewer pixels. I’m boring you here.

You have to promise me that if I appear to be droning on a bit you’ll tell me. I don’t want to develop the reputation of being a bore. Zzzzz. If I am boring you I’ll just have to talk to myself for a bit. At least I appreciate my own jokes. Not stand up roll around holding your stomach because they were so funny jokes. Just intelligent witticisms from a lively and inventive mind. That’s ma story and I’m sticking to it. If you tell them something often enough they will start to believe it. Whoever they and it are. Innit.

I’ve noticed myself lapsing into the vernacular on occasion. Innit, wtf, probs, loosa even. Yer mother works at McDonalds was an early one the kids learnt at school. Useful stuff instead of all this readin ritin and hard sums. At this point I should make it clear that references to mothers working at McDonalds are in no way intended as a sleight on your mother or McDonalds. I quite like your mother 😉 and McDonalds.

My fave is a large Big Mac with diet Coke though it never really fills you as a meal. I also like KFC but I always feel crap after one of those. A KFC is something that tastes great whilst you are eating it and then greasy and ‘orrible afterwards. Also I suspect the chips fries aren’t as good as McDonalds though you need to make sure they are fresh at either.

How on earth we got to talking about fast food I don’t know. That’s the 3rd Law for you. It’s a law unto itself, as they say. They don’t specifically apply that saying to the 3rd Law. I just did it myself. Because I can. You need to appreciate that sometimes when I give you something it is because I can and not because it is written down somewhere. Life would be a bit boring if it had to be run according to what was written down.

Ok society has to have rules for it to function and in fact I typically won’t do a job at home unless it is written down but in general it is better if you act as a free agent. The open road lies ahead. Chose to go down it. Don’t look back. Just go…

3rd Law Part 42 here

3rd Law Part 44 here

3rd Law Part 42 – the dawn chorus

Friday, June 14th, 2013

The dawn chorus is in full voice.  With several part harmony. It’s the best time of day, no question though I am pretty fond of the end of a nice warm day. We don’t get em very often. Mornings are more consistent. Expectations are different. You are more likely to have an enjoyable early morning than early evening because the freshness is there whatever the weather is going to be that day.

Maybe part of it is being tired of an evening. It’s certainly a lot easier to decide to do some excercise in the morning than in the evening. You wonder if the birds know what the other birds are saying. The different makes of bird that is. Sounds a bit like different makes of car or washing machine doesn’t it? I could have used the word breed but I chose to give the impression that I was a child of my time, dumbed down and dangerous. The dangerous bit just sounded the right thing to say and not in any way relevant to the thread of the conversation. It was the poet in me coming out.

I, as a poet, am not particularly into dangerous things. It just rolled off the poetic tongue. Not one of those “roll around the tongue, chew it, spit it out and see what it looks like” rolls. Just a “spontaneous without thinking out it came” roll. Often the latter roll results in interesting consequences. It’s the writing that you look at and think, wow, how did that get there? Amazes me sometimes.

Early mornings are perhaps not really the time to be amazed. Tbh I’m too bleary eyed to be amazed. It’s a condition that is only party alleviated by rubbing the eyes with forefinger. You can probably do it with the back of your hand but I wear glasses and it is easier to slip my forefinger in underneath the rim to do it. That way I get to keep my specs on and not smudge them.

Smudging specs is an occupational hazard of the wearer of glasses. Real nuisance because you then need to clean them. That might sound simple enough but you also need to make the decision which cloth to use. Shirt or tie? Well I seldom wear a tie so it has to be shirt. However what you, dear possessor of 2020 vision need to know is that shirts can apply tiny scratches to the surface of a lens thereby rendering them opaque over time. Even silk ties can do this. Opaque lenses are clearly no good. Geddit:)

The only safe way of cleaning specs is to use one of those microfibre cloths they provide in the glasses case when you buy them. Using a proprietary specs cleaning liquid is also handy. Produces very good results. Crystal clear. I can recommend it. Never have any of the stuff in though. Gets used up and there are two specswearers in this house. Notice how I fused the two words there. It was to make you think I had a sweary side. I have been known to swear. When I’m with the lads. To make me sound big. You know how it goes.

Most of the time I don’t swear. Especially on twitter. Not sure I’ve ever sworn in writing like that. I’m sure I’ve used the word bugger a few times and perhaps bloody but these days people don’t count them as real swear words. Not like the too oft used “f” word or the “c” word which really shows you are upset. Or don’t have much of a vocabulary which is quite likely to be the case. Loser.

I do realise that vocabulary is a living changing thing. The words I use have evolved. Simplified really into acronyms. Perhaps that is the ultimate dumbing down. You dropped the apostrophe ages ago. Capital letters and grammar then got kicked into touch and acronyms, and abbreviations were the final phase. Wtf? That’s what I’m talking about btw. Note I didn’t drop the apostrophe. I’m into evolution in an acceptable way. You still know what I mean when I say wtf and btw but drop the apostrophe and I introduce ambiguity. You can also drop a capital letter without really affecting the sentence. If it comes after a full stop you know it’s the start of a new sentence. Drop the full stop and it makes the reading a lot harder.

I’m beginning to sound like a teacher here and a teacher I am not. I doubt that I’d have the patience. Bloody kids. There you go. I swore. I do have kids of my own as I may have mentioned but it’s hard enough keeping them under control without surrounding each of them with 29 partners in crime. The number 29 comes to you from the British education system which in theory has standardised class sizes at 30. Only the state education system. I’d be somewhat annoyed if I was paying a fortune to have my kid educated privately and find that they were in classes of 30.

That would be a nice little earner wouldn’t it. Let’s assume the kid is at a top public school and you, the parent are forking out around thirty grand a year for the privilege. Last time I looked htat is what they pay. Probably more now but hey. Anyway thirty grand times thirty kids is nine hundred k a year. Ok you have the hotel bills and other infrastructure cots to pay out of that but it would be a nice little earner. This is all an academic debate (geddit again?;) ) because privately educated kids are not squeezed into classes of thirty, as far as I know, except for games. You need fifteen a side to play rugby unless you are playing rugby league or sevens.

Anyway four kids at a top public school would cost  a lot of money. Anne would have to get a bar job. I’ve always thought that would be very handy, having your wife work behind the bar of your local. However if Iwas shelling out that much money for the kids education I’d probably not have any dosh left to go down the local even if she was able to slip me a quiet freebie every now and again. I’d have to buy some beer when the landlord was looking.

If I had that kind of money I’d probably not be going to the pub in the first place. More likely to be a wine bar or club. The champagne in pubs around here isn’t that good. In fact I’m not sure the Morning Star even stocks champagne. There would be no takers. Mind you I don’t think it stocks mild anymore either. I bet the yoof of today don’t even know what mild is. They are all into vodka. Mixed with pop. Huh!

3rd Law Part 41 here

3rd Law Part 43 here

3rd Law 41 – good weather for a funeral

Wednesday, June 12th, 2013

I see raindrops streaking the window. It has clearly just started to spit (ting). I’m wondering if this is the start of a heavier shower. Oops yes. It’s just come on. The reason I was a wondering is because my car is parked at the farthest point from the office it can get and today I am without a coat. Coatless. Naked but for a polo shirt that will do nothing to prevent me getting wet. Soaked even.

My spectacles have no protection. It matters not. A TNT lorry leaves the car park and a DPD van (Global Express Parcels) moves in. It’s the end of a working day. I’m thinking of heading east. I live in the east. Not the far east or the middle east. Just 15 miles east.

The raindrops are heavier now and are racing each other down the window. Something to do I suppose, watch the racing raindrops. People are leaving the office. They are off home. Workers of the world. I’m one of them but I’m still here for the moment being mesmerised by the raindrops and debating with myself whether to make a run for it.

I quite like the rain. I like the noise it makes when it lands on a roof. I don’t particularly like floods though I do like the sensation I get when I jump into a pool of water. As long as it’s not too cold. That would represent a shock to the system. Brr. I don’t mind the cold as long as I am wrapped up warmly. Obv not in a pool of water. I like the cold when winter sets in and I am forced to sit by the warm fire snoozing. I occasionally wake to shove another log on and then drift off again.

Of course it is only safe to do this if you have a fireguard. Especially when using wood. Wood has a mind of its own.  Crackles and spits though you can minimise this by using decently seasoned stuff.

Back to the rain before I totally move off the subject the farmers hereabouts will be glad of it. We have had quite a dry spell of late. Oo arr. I follow quite a few farmers on twitter. You follow one and one farmer leads to another as they say in the grain and potato store that is Lincolnshire. They also grow peas. I once rode on a pea harvester. Terrific. Peas are my fave vegetable and I came away with tow carrier bags full. Gave one to the mums at the Joanne Haylock School of Dance where my daughter had classes. They divvied the peas up amongst themselves. I kept the other bagfull.

I suspect all the peas are gone now though it is worth asking the question, especially as one of our freezers looks as if it is about to pack in. We have food farmed out to freezers up and down the road. Well one freezer over the road anyway. I think we’ve had that freezer for twenty years or more so it doesn’t owe us anything and we spotted the red light in time. It needs defrosting every year and bizzarely we do it in the middle of winter when it is sub zero outside. We stick all the food in a plastic bin in the back garden and hack away at the ice in the freezer in the garage.

If we get a new freezer that will be one job that won’t need doing next winter. Hooray. It used to get to the point where we had to strap the door shut with one of those straps you use to tie things down on a roof rack, such was the amount of ice in the freezer. The passing of that freezer will not be lamented. No wake. No gathering round the table in the dining room eating cheese and pickeld onions on a cocktail stick whilst drinking the free beer and reminiscing about what a good life old Walter had. A good innings. He didn’t owe life anything or words to that effect. Ya knowworramean.

I never really knew Walter. I just went along for the beer and cheese. And the crisps and sausage rolls of course. I’d quite like a crisp sandwich but I don’t think it’s the done thing at someone’s wake. You can never really tell what flavour the crisps are either – usually plain or salt and vinegar. A crisp sandwich needs to be made with cheese and onion crisps, or beef and it’s no good using the French bread that they usually put out on the buffet table. Needs to be sliced white or a nice fresh white sandwich loaf. Not really good for you anyway though that would never have worried Walter if I know the old boy. Oo what am I saying. I didn’t really know him. He was a passing acquaintance.  A friend of a friend who I occasionally saw in the street shuffling in the other direction in his overcoat and flat cap.

The nice thing about living in Lincoln is that you can just nip up to the Bailgate and see loads of people you know on the way. Not always but often. That sounds like someone’s catchphrase. A cheeky chappie who served his apprenticeship in variety and in the northern clubs before making it to the bright lights of London and getting top billing at the Palladium.

I liked his movies. Used to be on BBC2 on a Sunday afternoon when I woz a kid. Made a change from Lucille Ball. Most of you won’t have heard of Lucille Ball. Yes you, the growing number of people below a certain age. That age changes all the time. Goes up. The only way is up, baaaby.

I’m getting confused. Confused of Lincoln. Walks off in a random direction as if lost.

3rd Law Part 40 here

3rd Law Part 42 here

3rd Law Part 40 – death by falling piano

Tuesday, June 11th, 2013

There’s a trombone in my ear. Not literally. I’d either have to have a huge ear or it would be bruised from the slider on the trombone bashing it every time it slid in and out, or out and in, #yaknowworramean. Sometimes it’s a trumpet in my ear. There’s no way I can tell which it’s going to be because I’m in another room. It’s a lot more trumpet than trombone because that’s just the way it is. In our house. Might be different elsewhere. Maybe an euphonium/flute combo or piano/comb and paper. Having a piano in my ear is a totally different prospect again. Terminal quite possibly.

Piano on my foot is far more likely. Still pretty painful but given the choice I’d have a piano on my foot rather than in my ear any day of the week. Any road up “Do you know the piano’s on my foot.” “No. You hum it and I’ll join in”. The old ones are the best aren’t they? Perhaps not always but we like to think so.

Given the choice I’ve always said that the way I want to leave this mortal coil, shuffle off as they say, is death by piano. I have some pretty specific caveats. The piano must be jettisoned from a hot air balloon desperately trying to gain height. I would be stood directly under said balloon and therefore under the falling piano, accounting also for windage which wouldn’t amount to much considering the likely weight of the piano. If the wind was strong enough to move the piano then they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and take off in the first place. It could of course be the case that a sudden storm hit the area and caught everyone by surprise. Unlikely though. The weather forecast is pretty good these days.

That doesn’t mean to say that whoever was in the balloon was not stupid. I mean who ever heard of someone loading a piano into a hot air balloon in the first place. Asking for trouble. It’s no wonder they found themselves in the position of having to chuck it overboard.

Would be quite interesting to do it as an experiment. Stick a camera on top of the piano to record the fall. One with a transmitter in case the whole camera was smashed to smithereens upon contact with the ground. It would also make a great clanging sound as it hit the deck. The piano that is not the camera. I doubt that you would be able to hear the noise of the camera amongst all that piano clang. The last chord! You’d have to make sure the piano didn’t land on water or over a bog where all you would hear would be a kind of sucking ploppy noise. Not the desired effect at all.

Anyway I’m not going to do it. Tempting fate. Live long and stay happy. Avoid standing under hot air balloons bearing pianos.  That would effectively be the same as saying your balloon is the bearer of bad tidings which is an equally strange concept. Normally bad news travels fast but not in a hot air balloon. It is unlikely that you would use a hot air balloon to carry bad news. I suppose if you were stuck on a desert island and the only transport you had was a hot air balloon you’d have to use it. No choice really. If you tried to swim the sharks would get you or you would tire and drown. Not a nice death. I’d certainly opt for the death by piano option if it was still on the table, or in the balloon.

If the winds were as strong as they sound as if they might be for you to have to jettison the piano that would of course mean that the news would be travelling a lot faster than the normal sedate pace of a hot air balloon, drifting pleasantly across the Masai Mara Game Reserve. Wonderful views though. You can see the vast herds of migrating wildebeest. One of the natural wonders of the world, apparently. Saw it on some nature programme once. I don’t think I’m imagining it. The thing is if the purpose of your journey was to bear bad news you probably don’t want the distraction of watching wildebeest, or elephants or any other of the “big five”.

I once went to a game reserve in South Africa. We all sat in trucks with a cool box full of beer on each row of seats. It was a rugby tour so cool boxes with beer were the natural order of the day. The game reserve wasn’t a huge one but interesting enough. The different predatory animals were kept in separate pens otherwise they would have had to keep replenishing the stocks of antelop, gazelle and whatnot. Whantnot isn’t a type of animal btw. It was meant to denote etcetera etcetera etcetera. I was being kinda lazy just like I was when I replaced “by the way” with btw. Woteva.

Anyway there we were in this game reserve ooing and aahing at the big five and the medium sized everything else when one of the wheels of the truck started to wobble and proceed to nearly fall off. At this point we were in a lion enclosure. All perfectly safe apparently, provided we stayed in the truck drinking beer. Hmm. The driver radioed for a backup and we sat tight. Drinking beer. We did at one point have to get out of the truck. That’s a consequence of drinking beer. You need to find occasional relief. So we all got out and had a team photo. After the relief bit.

Then we got back in the truck and waited for the replacement to arrive which it duly did. As you may have guessed I lived to tell the tale. As I said my fate lies under that piano and not the horrible death by the gnawing of a lion’s jaws. That would not be nice at all. I seem to be going through a morbid patch at the moment don’t I? Sorry but I can’t help it. I don’t know why. I could shell out a fortune for some shrink to make some stuff up about how I must have been influenced by something in my childhood but no way jose am I going to do that. If you think I would do that you clearly don’t know me. I’d expect to get it free on the National Health. Marvellous institution. Won’t have a word said against it even though you now have to pay to park in the visitors car park at the Lincoln County Hospital. It’s a small price to pay…

3rd Law Part 39 here

3rd Law Part 41 here

3rd Law Part 39 – musical detritus

Sunday, June 9th, 2013

The table is littered with musical detritus.  A mute, a folder of music and a trumpet case that presumably contains a trumpet because I can’t see it on its stand. There are also two trumpet mouthpieces and, for what it’s worth, a vuvuzela. I must have bought the latter in a rush of blood sometime because it makes an infernal noise. I nearly forgot there is also an orange pbone which is a plastic trombone.

The pbone is quite a fun instrument. It plays just like a trombone.  Not that I can play it, or the trumpet. They aren’t mine. The guitars are mine. One in its case and the other on the stand next to the sax which is also not mine.

We do have a reasonably musical family although my efforts are somewhat pathetic compared to what some of the kids can do. My sister Sue is also a very good musician. Violinist. It comes from a misspent youth playing away at her violin in her bedroom. When I were a lad I learned to play the guitar instead of revising for my exams. The Beatles mostly though I can also play The House of The Rising Sun and one or two others. I’m terrible for remembering chords though I can usually play ok if I have the music in front of me.

It’s a slight regret that I can’t just pick up an instrument and sit in on someone’s jazz jamming session. In the pub maybe. I have a reasonable voice though I sometimes think I’m tone deaf. It annoys me that I can’t just listen to something and tell what the chord or note is. How we all manage to live through our disabilities. We have to although I’m not so sure that not having a very good musical ear ranks as a disability. Not like only having one leg or being blind.

Those of us who are not one legged or blind (other disabilities are available) are very grateful for the fact mind you. The Paralympics in London in 2012 changed all our perceptions in respect of people with physical disabilities. We should use the example of the paralympians as an incentive to look after our own bodies. I’ve had a dodgy foot for the last two weeks which has been hard enough, or at least a nuisance. It’s getting better now which is a relief for everyone concerned. ie me!

Note I didn’t say blessed relief there. Didn’t feel like it. I’m not in to blessings and stuff like that anyway. Smacks too much of a priest laying hands on me. I can sort it out meself thanks of at least I can call the AA. I’m a member. I get my membership as part of my bank account which is quite handy. I get a load of other benefits as well. Travel insurance for example. Used to get free entry to airport lounges but that has finished. I don’t think I flew anywhere in all the years that lounge entry was part of the deal. It doesn’t come free of course. I pay for it but presumably I must think it’s worth it. Never really checked.

I’m not particularly financially minded. Money isn’t a motive although obv we all need money to live on. I seem to spend all of mine. Never been able to save a bean. I’m not really into material goods. I prefer to spend my money on improving the quality of live. A better bottle of wine for example. Nice bread, a decent steak. You know the sort of thing.

I like my steaks rare. Just so’s you know.

3rd Law Part 38 here

3rd Law Part 40 here