It's Spring, no it is, really. IT'S SPRING and the magnolias are in bloom. I quite like magnolias but think that they're rather like Kate Moss on an evening out. They start off all neat and gorgeous and end up looking raddled and blowsy.
Friday, March 14, 2008
There are times in a man's life when he goes to bed secure in the knowledge of his Godhood. I would say that these times -sex apart, were based on booze. Light spirits confer a degree of Bacchanalian deification that is rapidly dispelled at about 4 a.m. when a hangover of Hadean proportions muscles its unsubtle way into your (un)consciousness. You go to bed revelling in the light of angels, and come the dawn the Devil drives his rusty pickaxe in somewhere between your Temporal Lobes and tries to lever your eyes out.
Monday, March 03, 2008
TMFFTTM14
It was one of those things that my Father failed to tell me, like if you are going to dress as a pirate make sure you know where you are, and don't be too convincing.
I had been surveying my surplus fat, more had been accumulating as I'd been off the bike for a month, due to the ravages of some form of tuberculosis and malaria combined (the women amongst you who have a male partner will recognise this as a cold), this with my dismal failure on the girlfriend front prompted me to leave the couch and go for a walk in the country, my first steps to a leaner and meaner me.
My thoughts were for a perambulation around the Chilterns, probably ending up at Ashridge Forest, I consulted the travel news on the Text service: Freight train has shed load at X, fear not your tickets will be valid on other alternative routes, number of alternative routes - none. I hoicked out the maps and decided to head off for East Grinstead and a mooch around the borders of Ashdown Forest instead. Back to the Text, everything seems to be working! So off I go to the bus stop to pick up a 48 to London Bridge Station.
There are no 48's scheduled for the next 20 minutes (it is at this point that readers familiar with my fortunes will be loosening clothing prior to a fit of chortling) so I decided to get the next 26 (5 minutes) and get the tube/metro/underground at Bank. Shut - engineering works. No matter, another bus will get me there - it does.
London Bridge Station at 10.50a.m, approximately 100 people are trying to buy tickets from the four ticket machines (two of them hidden by the queue of people for the two open ticket windows) I opt for a machine queue, failing to take account of the tumble in IQ of a person faced with a piece of machinery that asks them to make choices. While queueing I turn and scan the slightly out of focus departure board; "East Grinstead - see posters" this is a bad sign, I get the map out and rescan, "Haywards Heath 11.11" check map, too big, have to walk a couple of miles from the station to get out of town, let's backtrack up the map a way, Balcombe, looks ok, check departure board, hmm departure board now further away and on the limits of my myopic resolution but I think I can just make it out, "Balcombe 11.01"
So it was that I drew into Sevenoaks station half an hour later and started the trudge up the hill to Knole Park. On the way I pass a market, a rather twee market but a market nevertheless, there is a sausage stand, I peruse, they have Mergeuze, a personal favourite but I decide not to buy just yet as I really don't think that hauling a pound of sausage around, in a pack, in the sun, is going to do them any good.
I stroll around the park, taking in the air, the still-bare trees, the German School Trip, I manage to find two Roe deer amongst all the Fallows, I always think that Fallow deer look cute whereas Roes look menacing, the difference between a Standard Poodle and a Bull Terrier.
After a circumnavigation, punctuated with a brief chat with a father of two small boys on bicycles, who had discovered that the hill they didn't usually go up was steeper than the one that they did. At least I think that's what he said, it was a rather gasped conversation peppered with moments of sibling rivalry and five year old spleen.
Where was I? Oh yes leaving. As I left I decided that with my mergueze I would have sliced new potatoes cooked with lemon and olives to carry on the Moorish theme of my repast. I got to the market, there was a gap in the stalls, the buggers had gone.
Moral: After a morning of adversity, don't plan your supper until you have actually have it in the bag, this may avoid a wealth of disappointment, and make a saving on saliva.
I had been surveying my surplus fat, more had been accumulating as I'd been off the bike for a month, due to the ravages of some form of tuberculosis and malaria combined (the women amongst you who have a male partner will recognise this as a cold), this with my dismal failure on the girlfriend front prompted me to leave the couch and go for a walk in the country, my first steps to a leaner and meaner me.
My thoughts were for a perambulation around the Chilterns, probably ending up at Ashridge Forest, I consulted the travel news on the Text service: Freight train has shed load at X, fear not your tickets will be valid on other alternative routes, number of alternative routes - none. I hoicked out the maps and decided to head off for East Grinstead and a mooch around the borders of Ashdown Forest instead. Back to the Text, everything seems to be working! So off I go to the bus stop to pick up a 48 to London Bridge Station.
There are no 48's scheduled for the next 20 minutes (it is at this point that readers familiar with my fortunes will be loosening clothing prior to a fit of chortling) so I decided to get the next 26 (5 minutes) and get the tube/metro/underground at Bank. Shut - engineering works. No matter, another bus will get me there - it does.
London Bridge Station at 10.50a.m, approximately 100 people are trying to buy tickets from the four ticket machines (two of them hidden by the queue of people for the two open ticket windows) I opt for a machine queue, failing to take account of the tumble in IQ of a person faced with a piece of machinery that asks them to make choices. While queueing I turn and scan the slightly out of focus departure board; "East Grinstead - see posters" this is a bad sign, I get the map out and rescan, "Haywards Heath 11.11" check map, too big, have to walk a couple of miles from the station to get out of town, let's backtrack up the map a way, Balcombe, looks ok, check departure board, hmm departure board now further away and on the limits of my myopic resolution but I think I can just make it out, "Balcombe 11.01"
So it was that I drew into Sevenoaks station half an hour later and started the trudge up the hill to Knole Park. On the way I pass a market, a rather twee market but a market nevertheless, there is a sausage stand, I peruse, they have Mergeuze, a personal favourite but I decide not to buy just yet as I really don't think that hauling a pound of sausage around, in a pack, in the sun, is going to do them any good.
I stroll around the park, taking in the air, the still-bare trees, the German School Trip, I manage to find two Roe deer amongst all the Fallows, I always think that Fallow deer look cute whereas Roes look menacing, the difference between a Standard Poodle and a Bull Terrier.
After a circumnavigation, punctuated with a brief chat with a father of two small boys on bicycles, who had discovered that the hill they didn't usually go up was steeper than the one that they did. At least I think that's what he said, it was a rather gasped conversation peppered with moments of sibling rivalry and five year old spleen.
Where was I? Oh yes leaving. As I left I decided that with my mergueze I would have sliced new potatoes cooked with lemon and olives to carry on the Moorish theme of my repast. I got to the market, there was a gap in the stalls, the buggers had gone.
Moral: After a morning of adversity, don't plan your supper until you have actually have it in the bag, this may avoid a wealth of disappointment, and make a saving on saliva.
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