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June 23, 2013
disgusting drain
disgusting drain unblocking by hand job took several washes to feel clean afterwards should have used rubber gloves but I didn’t the folly of youth but at least the drain now drains somehow there was a stone down there together with a lot of silt which is understandable though no leaves
That feeling of disgust as the slime and fat of many loads of the dishwasher envelops your hand as you scrape around in the drain, sleeve rolled up.
3rd Law 45 – internet dark matter
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
June 21, 2013
Knowledge
“Knowledge,” said the slightly drunken grey-bearded man, “is the pursuit of anger.”
“Anger?” I challenged.
“Anger.” He confirmed.
A pause.
A sip.
He contemplated.
“You can’t be angry ’bout stuff you don’t know. Kids these days, they’re only angry ‘cos they know… Or think they know.
“Take that whistle-blower guy…”
“Edward Snowden?”
“No, that other one.”
“Bradley Manning?”
“Not him… The one in the embassy; let him rot, he’s made a generation miserable…
“Kids getting angry at the government when they should be out living… Never concerned me what no government did… Didn’t ask questions, just kept us heads down and was grateful for what we got.”
June 17, 2013
The Ceiling at Temple Church.
I went to London recently, as a tourist, and visited Temple Church.
I loved the ceiling in the nave so I made this image.
June 16, 2013
3rd Law Part 44 – the typewriter and the pile of cigarette stubs – yeugh
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
Safety first
Was having a father’s day breakfast with an offspring in the restaurant of a shop downtown when I noticed a young couple arrive at a table with their baby. He was clean cut wearing shorts, tshirt and some sort of culotte type show with no socks. He brought over a high chair to put the kid in but first proceeded to open a packet of wipes and thoroughly wipe down the whole chair. He went through several wipes to do this. Not my kind of guy I thought.
When he was satisfied he went off to dispose of the dirty wipes and she lifted the baby into the high chair. The kid instantly made a grab at the cup of coffee on the table in front of him. I assume it was a him. I think he was dressed in blue. She reacted, took the cup off him and moved the tray out of reach.
When the bloke came back I could see her relate the tale, pointing at the cup and fanning her hand in front of her brow.
Interesting innit? In one sense we’ve all been there but it seemed to contrast beautifully with the excessive hygiene consciousness. A Howard Hughes of the future?
June 15, 2013
3rd Law Part 43 – there is no tennis
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
June 14, 2013
Civil, war
Sat high in the hills where love is norm:-
The basis for life, everyday.
Where the absence of love fuels a desire to love,
And love a desire to live.
Over, again, looking down on crater lakes;
On flora vivid in the equatorial sun.
Yet, unseen, deep in the valley, grouped and in convoy;
A void of permanent want.
Of fear, and poison;
Hatred flows and the cities crumble.
Cruel meager lives,
Punctuated only by acts of extreme violence.
The old man dreams of nothing but peace;
But his boys know nothing but war.
3rd Law Part 42 – the dawn chorus
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
June 13, 2013
Crisis what crisis?
Well there’s the antibiotic crisis, the global banking crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the South American crisis of 2002, the crisis in the theory of dynamical systems, the omg we’ve got no milk crisis, the what am I gonna wear crisis, the hair colouring went wrong crisis, the mid life crisis, the baby sitter can’t come tonight crisis, the almost out of petrol and there’s no garage for miles crisis, crisis at Christmas, the existential crisis, the crisis of confidence, the Syria crisis, the crisis in the kitchen, make up crisis, beard trimmer battery goes flat in middle of trim – stuck on chin hair crisis,
To be continued…
June 12, 2013
The crisp sandwich
Up there in the gastronomic stratosphere where reside the world’s finest culinary concoctions lies the humble crisp sandwich. Much has been written of this delicacy and a great deal is to be found on the subject through the services of Google. I offer to you the simplest of instructions.
Some of the basics of this recipe are identical to other sandwich recipes to be found on Philosopherontap. Fresh crusty white bread sliced not too thinly and then spread with soft butter. The two slices should be laid butter side up on a large plate. An entire packet of cheese and onion crisps is then emptied onto one of the slices ensuring that any bits that fall off are retrieved and carefully stacked on top of the others.
The brand of crisp is important. Supermarket own brands don’t cut it. It has to be Walkers or Smiths. Interestingly enough the more expensive, premium crisp such as Pipers doesn’t really do the job either. We are looking for the right combination of taste and crunchiness here. Pipers crisps are too thick for the perfect crisp sandwich.
Once the rogue crisps have been carefully stacked the second slice of bread is placed on top butter side down (obv). At this stage you will find that some crisps do escape around the sides, probably in fragment form. It is perfectly acceptable to hoover these up and eat them without bread.
You may now eat the crisp sandwich taking care to hold it over the plate because no crisp sandwich put together by human hand is ever going to be totally crisp tight. Leave the excess crisps to fall to the plate and consume the whole sandwich. Note you should not cut the sandwich in half as you might with cheese prawn or ham. It needs to be eaten as one large slab.
The crisp sandwich is often accompanied by a glass of cold milk, semi skimmed or full fat to your own taste. Under no circumstance should skimmed milk be used. Skimmed milk is not only an affront to the senses of the crisp gourmet but its total lack of body is not well suited to washing down the crisps.
When the last corner of bread has been consumed you should now run your finger over the plate to mop up any loose crisp crumbs, licking your finger clean at appropriate intervals. You may then place the plate in the dishwasher or, if you are poor, wash it in the sink. Paper plates should not be used to eat crisp sandwiches.
And that dear reader is the crisp sandwich. I have no illustrations to support this text because on this occasion I am trying to lose weight and crisp sandwiches are off the menu.
As a footnote it should be mentioned that flavours other than cheese and onion may be used according to individual taste. Beef flavoured crisps offer almost the same experience but ready salted should probably be avoided.
3rd Law 41 – good weather for a funeral
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
June 11, 2013
3rd Law Part 40 – death by falling piano
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
June 10, 2013
Nobody will miss me
I can’t got home,
And I can’t stay here;
I have nowhere to hide…
My heart beats faster,
Each day lived in fear.
When the hit-man calls,
You won’t learn what I’ve done.
When the drone strike hits,
Nobody will miss me.
I spilled your secrets,
Put at risk your defence;
The valiant protectors of state,
Don’t like it up ’em;
At great expense,
They will get me;
With a bullet, a toxin,
A false charge or a blast;
I can’t hide.
Though I thought I could,
I can’t lay low;
The worst, worst option:
A nonentity erased.
Nobody will know,
So I’ll tell you myself.
The whole world can’t guard me,
But my guardians may witness,
How they destroy me.