A place to park those random thoughts, stolen images, hidden conversations and incoherent babble from beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down.
We loaded up the instructional words directly from the Book of the Gatekeeper:
"All I'll ever ask is the honest answering of these three simple questions."
1. Are you human enough to take a first step through the ever shifting doorways on this incredible journey?
2. Is it important to you to remain fully dust free or is a modicum of dust on your cuffs or lapels something you can tolerate?
3. Do you suffer at all from travel or motion sickness if you are restrained by a device of some sort?
Maybe a few more of them need to gravitate to taxi use and so lower their aspirational image a bit, as happened to the Prius (a once desirable car nobody really wants anymore). A local driving school already has a Tesla, the rot may be slowly setting in. In any event I'll just sit here and watch what happens - but who really needs a Tesla when you have a free bus pass anyway?
I was somewhat disappointed to discover that 26 of the 31 guitars on offer were in fact ukuleles. Clearly the precise definition of "guitar" has been changed by market forces one rainy afternoon, as I lay sleeping on the couch no doubt. Thankfully I've caught up with the revised terminology now and somehow resisted the serious temptation (?) to spend £49.99 on one of these tidy but tiny guitar shaped objects.
A big thanks to the Automobile Association (AA) man for explaining to me the difference in car battery charging rates between the actual alternator of the car and a trickle charge system direct to the battery. The alternator is about 20 times more effective than the trickle charger, that's 20 amps v 1 amp at a time or 20:1. There is some time related calculation I could do on this to get an even clearer picture but I'm going easy on myself. I'm 66 and only now learning this basic stuff.
Armed with this knowledge my winter motoring behavior will change, a bit. I was also able to view all the relevant figures on the screen of some magic AA device or other. With the money I've saved I'll likely go to a nearby music festival or perhaps purchase some high quality take-away foodstuffs. In weaker moments like this I'm always tempted by the prospect of banjo ownership but thankfully not this time.
The world's shortest (the review not the book) and least relevant book review: so, "boil the soup, spoil the soup" is suggested as being good advice. In cookery terms (not just heating up a tin or a carton of soup) this may well be inaccurate or misleading information when applied to the many soup recipes available. Otherwise all fine bookwise, in my opinion.
In other unrelated news I have decided against applying a coat of Turtle Wax to the large mirror in the bathroom until the plumber has been and installed the new boiler. The delayed timing of this minor task makes perfect sense to me.
Roaming freely in the kitchen I see there are many sights and I hear that there are many sounds. I have decided to capture at least two today. I've failed to record any sounds because apart from the hissing of the almost defunct boiler and the sinister gurgle of the dishwasher there aren't that many sounds at the moment (cookery sounds are in there I suppose but they are not generally long lasting).
As you can see I'm more focusing on detail here rather than display the visually stunning grand vista that the kitchen normally might present to the casual if slightly stunned visitor (try not to forget the "safe" words or "safe" statements please). These are simple, muted visual details I've stumbled upon when exploring the kitchen's finer points. There are more, many hidden behind cupboard doors, deep in the waste bin or inside the actual fridge, but enough is enough for one day. That's yer lot for the indoors.
I'm comfortable with being behind the curve, possibly many years behind the curve. There's just too much happening out there and my connections can be wonky at times. Plus I don't actively seek things out, they have to fall into my lap. So it turns out that this turn of phrase is also a font, or is it the other way round? I find it a useful term to use to categorize certain things based on my life experience and so I quite like it. If only this wasn't true of most established and respected (by some) religious groups and their leaders. It's also a rather cruel reflection on Muppets who by and large are quite genuine and amusing characters. I was also going to insert a noisy Metallica video here but thought better of it.
All thoughts are born in the simple act of waking up:
"I think that whatever you think you can only ever live a human sized life. This applies to everyone; rich, poor, billionaires and politicians, superstars and members of the elite. You are human. Even if technology moves on you'll be human even if you are inhuman or by surgery some kind of hybrid or cyborg. The life you live will always have human proportions. Big, little, fat or skinny ones."
Charlie was their oldest child. He was 6 going on 7. The oldest of three. Charlie had never been what you might call an easy child. He was very bright. He didn't ask, he made demands. He bullied his younger sister and brother. He bullied his parents, teachers and other children who got in the way. He was never pleased with anything, there was always a problem. He was disagreeable.
Today they are driving home from a visit to the park. A largely uneventful visit and Charlie has behaved himself. He has agreed to sit in the back seat of the car with his siblings but has refused to use the booster. He is reading, or at least looking at a book about film about a computer game. Mum and dad are up front, enjoying the journey home silently. They think about the up coming evening meal. They imagine Charlie will be displeased with it. Traditional meat loaf that granny made. It's in wrapped in tinfoil on Mum's lap.
From the back seat a strange noise is heard. It is like air escaping. Like a vacuum cleaner hose pumping suction. Dad is squinting into his mirror and slowing the car down. Charlie is making a peculiar noise. An animal noise. The car is pulling over and stopping. Brother and sister are both asleep in their child seats, oblivious.
Mum and Dad are turning around. The noise is building. They see Charlie, who is still engrossed in his book. Charlie looks up at them as they look at him. Then in an instant Charlie is sucked suddenly into the gap between the the seat back and the seat bottom. All is silent. Then Mum screams. Dad jumps out to check the back seats. The other two children remain sound asleep. Dad is pulling at the seat, stretching open the gap. The gap that Charlie has just disappeared into. There's a lot of desperate shouting and searching going on. The other children awake and instinctively begin to cry.
By the side of the road, parked up, all doors, windows and tailgate open. The car is surrounded by police and ambulance staff. Blue lights flash and it's starting to get dark. There's a pale glow on the horizon as the sun goes down. It seems to be pulsing slowly.
Mum and Dad are waking up, they are home but everything is beyond peculiar now. A policewoman is on the couch taking a phone call. Charlie hasn't made it. He's gone. He's travelling. Very fast and very far. Nobody knows anything and the questions won't stop. The meatloaf sits on a kitchen work surface. Still in the tinfoil. Meanwhile the earth is spinning on it's axis at close to 1000 miles per hour and orbiting the sun at 66,660 miles per hour.
"Whatever we may say or do", says Dad, "sometimes I think the universe just knows best". He opens up the meatloaf from the foil, places it on a plate and begins cutting it into neat slices. He puts the greasy foil into the recycling bin. "Charlie is a beautiful boy but also a very disagreeable child".
The Dyson died yesterday, like some alien lost and battered and left for dead in an intergalactic battle. Some say it was the cat fluff, the odd screws sucked up, unfair wear and tear or just old age. It fought to the last, always resisting getting into the cupboard with an angry flick of a hose and refusing to release it's precious dust to the confines of the inner bin unless poked with a sharp stick. We'll never know the truth of it's demise but there was a smell of burning and an odd, sharp, plaintive sound - the death rattle. Bought well before Brexit and before the Dyson fella came out as a buffoon. It's replacement is a no-brander from Screw-fix. Take that you economic pirates!
I feel I need to mention the peculiar circus that is COP 26: What can you do to help? I really don't know how we stop doing the things that create further bad things with grim consequences when those things have become almost essential and common parts of our lives and when the global industries and governments that preach better practice are clearly unable to deliver any kind of meaningful and honest program of change and recovery that will be equally beneficial to all regardless of status and location.
Ailments include arthritis, digestive issues, possible cancer, thyroid trouble, heart murmurs, dental decay and all the awkward symptoms and manifestations that go with these. This generates ongoing dramas whereby top and bottom end events are regularly monitored and managed, food is rationed and carefully prepared and often rejected and middle of the night unplanned events are common.
Back in the day the cats lived a "wild woodland" kind of existence and we hardly saw them some days, just the bloody and broken evidence of their regular murdering sprees. Now, and through a perpetual lockdown, we're all like fellow travelers in some cat/human space ship mash up, heading to colonize a planet troubled by belligerent mice and cute but dangerous spiders made of soot.
Packed into our tiny crew quarters we've never quite managed to provide a clear brief to the cats that this is in fact a space craft and that different rules must apply if we want to succeed i.e. the sardine paste is definitely not for sharing nor are the sleeping spaces. In the end the mission, like all missions, is just about survival, anything else being a bonus ... so on we travel.
