29 Jun 2008
How I came to be on a coach from Newark to Grantham along with the girls from ‘Kirsty’s Hen Party’ and the members of the ‘Esh Winning Senior Citizen’s Social Club Outing to Mamma Mia’ might sicken anyone sensitive to expositing opening sentences, so I’ll move on. Or at least branch off on a sideline...
Thoughts from a train.
The old and the young have surprising things in common.
Microwaves, for example - both pensioners and youngsters (especially students) couldn’t survive without them.
Public transport. Buses are full of both - anyone else seems to be driving blacked-out 4X4s, or Subarus, the non-thinking man’s bling on wheels.
Neither are interested in politics.
At the extremes, the very young and the very old both end up in nappies. The wheel of life...
We pass a pub called ‘Middle of Nowhere’. Now there’s some refreshing honesty - I’d drink to that. I sometimes go to one that should be called ‘Great local apart from beer’. At least you would be prepared - it could even be a perverse selling point. Like Italian restaurants (we all know one) where people go to be insulted - it’s their version of breaking plates... More inventive pub names: how about ‘The Paper Shop’, then you could tell suspicious wife - ‘I’m just nipping down The Paper Shop, dear’. Possibly ‘Toms’s Place’ might work just as well...
Thoughts from a B&B.
Who designs a shower where the control starts at scalding, life-stoppingly hot, then gets colder as you rotate it? Is it the same person who designed those little metal tea pots, that (a) you can’t grip since the handle is metal, and ...er... gets hot, and (b) always dribble down the side of the spout as you pour?
Public transport. Buses are full of both - anyone else seems to be driving blacked-out 4X4s, or Subarus, the non-thinking man’s bling on wheels.
Neither are interested in politics.
At the extremes, the very young and the very old both end up in nappies. The wheel of life...
We pass a pub called ‘Middle of Nowhere’. Now there’s some refreshing honesty - I’d drink to that. I sometimes go to one that should be called ‘Great local apart from beer’. At least you would be prepared - it could even be a perverse selling point. Like Italian restaurants (we all know one) where people go to be insulted - it’s their version of breaking plates... More inventive pub names: how about ‘The Paper Shop’, then you could tell suspicious wife - ‘I’m just nipping down The Paper Shop, dear’. Possibly ‘Toms’s Place’ might work just as well...
Thoughts from a B&B.
Who designs a shower where the control starts at scalding, life-stoppingly hot, then gets colder as you rotate it? Is it the same person who designed those little metal tea pots, that (a) you can’t grip since the handle is metal, and ...er... gets hot, and (b) always dribble down the side of the spout as you pour?
Breakfast is the single most important thing about a B&B. Even if the bed is too short, the milk is long-life that has still managed to go off somehow and the sheets are pink bri-nylon, a couple of pieces of top class black pudding and some really tasty rashers make it all worthwhile.
Thoughts from a short break
Is a doublet like a singlet, but twice as long?
I decide to be a sparky person who has a notebook on him at all times and whips it out in a flash to write down wild and unlikely ideas as they race through my brain. I make my first entry: “Bought notebook and mechanical pencil from WH Smith. Price £3.70. Got some Terry’s orange chocolate bar at a discount in consequence.” Can’t decide whether to make it into a play or a heroic poem.
Was it not Herbert Mangle, the Wallsend Poet and Ernie Wise impersonator, who once wrote
O wandering muse, help me not lose
Thy spark of poem or play
And let me note it and fast wrote it
Or I’ll be here all day!
Final thought
"Line works at Newark".
Oh no it didn’t.
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