Life in The Fast Lane

Hi Michael
You arsked Wot noos

Have just returned from a morning mingling with the local wildlife down in Marbella.
Or, to use the correct Essex/Kent dialect, Mar-bay-ya.
Very interesting. When one is in the thick of it, what with one’s senses being assailed by novel stimulus with unfamiliar frequency; one gets an overwhelming urge to transmit one’s amusement to others. Unfortunately, the drive back to familiar surroundings brings one’s consciousness back to normal levels of disinterest., However, you are remarkably lucky because I will make a really serious attempt to dredge the memory of the past five or six hours and relate events to you.

Mar-bay-ya. is different to anywhere I have ever been. Well, not quite true.                   It reminds me of Gibraltar. Only it is a tad cooler maybe and is not nearly so surrounded by water.

It seems to be an area where the well-heeled people (read gangsters and their molls) try to duck under the radar of the YouK tax authorities; and I am sure that there is as much skulduggery going on beneath the polished veneer. Tatty though it may be in some of the dives.

This moaning we were blessed with an air temperature of just under 22 C.           Warm in the sun, but, if one is so unfortunate as to stay in a well-shaded area that in in the chill breeze for any length of time, it becomes uncomfortably cold.

We took quite a few pictures. OH is into pretty beach scenes, I am into the quirky. I took one of her pretending to perform with a fibre-glass elephant on the beach.        At last, I have something I can use against her. If she steps out of line I will publish.

Unfortunately I do not have the, expertise, speed or balls (like my de facto daughter-in-law) to get those really good shots that ones consciousness is exposed to for a few milliseconds every now and again. Whether, some of the characters that we saw this morning really were the Mr. Bigs, wanted, I suspect, by various judicial authorities around the world, or at least from London to Colombia, I have no idea, but, I must say for the life of me, I have never seen such good impressions of such and my file is now full of suspects.

We took our lunch on the terrace of an Italian Restaurant on the seafront and watched the world go by and waited for The Horse to show up. It was most entertaining. Nearly opposite the restaurant just the inland side of the wide palm-lined foot /cycle/jogger path between the restaurant and the beach. Just on the other side of the path was a lock-up kiosk whose shutters were covered with graffiti. There was a man who had spent most of the morning cleaning it off with the aid of a rotary wire-brush on an electric drill. I mused on the efficacy (and the level of noise) of this method over a good dose of paint stripper, or, for that matter, the wine which came with the meal and whether the man engaged in the task was the owner, employed by the council or an undercover policeman keeping an eye on local business activities.

There was a marked police presence. I got quite a few pictures of the personnel but (unlike my de facto step-daughter in law) even in my disguise of that of a tourist,        I haven’t got the balls to stand in front of a dark spectacled policeman that looks for all the world like he is right out of a Hemingway novel and should have been working under Papa Doc or the Sandinista.

There were many couples there which were a case of ‘Mix and match’ and ‘Guess which one has the money. One pair we saw really bucked the trend though. Tall big leggy blond model type, sunglasses, (which are almost de riguer) accompanying a not too pot bellied gut in shirtsleeves, who, excepting the lack of braces, might have been taking his lunch break from his job just off of Fenchurch Street. The really unusual thing was that he was wearing ordinary and not dark glasses.
Was this the breakthrough I had been waiting for?

No. soothing else happened. Just as we were finished eating, in a space next to the kiosk a shapely woman came and set some sort of box affair down on the ground.   No, she was not doing the splits.
I realised that she was a street performer about to launch into some act or other. She switched her box on and proceeded to treat us to a bit of flamenco dancing.,           You could tell by the precise steps and poses she was a pro. By which mean, she was a fine dancer with plenty of vocals thrown in.
It is not often I am moved to put my hand in my pocket, especially these days, but I was compelled to give her some money for my appreciation of her trouble. It was quite shock. When I got up close to her, I got to see that she was no spring chicken, perhaps only five years younger than OH.
The drive now it to get her enrolled in dancing lessons.

Oh well, time to hit the jacuzzi.

Hasta la vista
N

Everything is a Remix again

I am sorry that I have not devoted as much energy into this blog as I would have liked. Sometimes it seems that Life conspires against me. On the other hand, it could be that I am just a disorganised lazy dreamer. The fact that I am bothering to make this post is possibly proof that I have not forgotten what I set out to do. I have made a start.
In fact I have made possibly a dozen starts. It’s fairly easy, it’s just the middle bit that’s tricky, and, there will never be a conclusion or final analysis while consciousness exists.

I have just watched three parts of the youtube video Everything is a remix. I think that I first saw one or maybe two years ago. Subsequent parts have been added by its producer and IMO are well worth seeing. If you have not seen it and would like to, here it is.

The way I see it, the video broadly states that there are very few original ideas in art, innovation and cultural movement etc.

I would go as far as to suggest that this idea can go far deeper than that. It could be extended to the roots of everything that one can perceive,

I do not know very much about Hinduism except its fundamental tenet that life is a constant cycle of rebirth and death. Although I am not a Hindu (more an agnostic or reformed egonostic) I believe this for the simple reason that I have learned to understand some of the cause and effect principles which apparently underpin life.

If the tenets that we extrapolate from scientific principles are to be believed, all life on Earth relies on the recombination of a infinitly thin film of organic molecules that a very high percentage of which in a layer above and below the Earth that are not much more than a few miles thick.

Forms of life exist above and below the floors of the deepest oceans to the Arctic wastes to the limits of the atmosphere.

Life needs change of environment to exist.

One of the principal drivers of this change is the sun. The energy it releases relies on the reconstitution of helium atoms to hydrogen atoms so it is fair to say that all matter on the sun is constantly remixing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
Its energy drives the Earth’s weather, and, along with the moon, its mass the tides in the sea which, when viewed over time, is itself a mixture of atoms remixing life and land-forms in both implicit and spectacular ways.

The drivers of life go far deeper than that. The matter that makes up both you and everything else on Earth was once part of a star that was constantly remixing.

After its original formation the rock on top of the highest mountains in the world was once either deep in the Earth’s crust or on the bottom of some primeval sea.

Not much life exists on the tops of the higest of these mountains. It does not matter, weathering erodes the rock which is washed down the sides of mountains. The atomic particles of that rock which does not eventually find its way into the system of some living organism, only to be remixed again and again, may eventually find themselves in the basal mud of some future ocean in aeons to come only to be transformed back into rock which may, in time, become part of a mountain on dry land.

Indeed everything is a remix? Surely it is not beyond human comprehension?
What is, at least to more mortal minds, is how it all started.

Gods were invented when Homo sapiens brains developed to begin fill the void of knowledge. The concept of reason grew in an almost symbiotic way. Which is but another form of progressive remixing.

When resources (some of which themselves were presumably(?)the product of this idea of remixing) became scarce to these more intelligent primates (Which had, accordung to theory, remixed over incomprehensible time spans from the first sub-planktonic life-forms according to Darwin.) Gods were invented by the more itelligent and powerful primates who gained dominance in order to sanction their leadership and instill fear of legitimized retribution for problematic non-conformists of the regimes of those in power.

January 8th +One

The word Originally posted 2012 should replce date caption.

It was about fortysomething (+`1) years ago today (or was it last week?) that I joined the mob that facilitated this picture of my inmates and I being taken.

There I was, not yet sixteen and doing time in the thick of it……
when I realised this, I thought to myself ‘My, My, doesn’t time fly‘.

It was only a few days ago that I realised that I was not a teenager any more; or so it sometimes seems…. ..also, that if I was ever to achieve a goal that I set myself a few years after this picture was taken, namely to record the shambolic and somewhat deviant life that I had led thus far, just for posterity of course, I had better get my skates on.
The trouble was of course, that in spite of lengthy periods of my life that would have been an ideal time to do the business of actually writing, there was always far too much to do, and thus, it has remained so.

It seems that many would-be writers make New Year Resolutions. I have resolved not to do so. I hate feeling obligated to anything but I feel that I must try harder, and now I have realised that I am not a teenager any more and that I can be extremely forgetful. In fact, so much as to sometimes not being able to string the words Ga and Ga together, so now seems like as good a time as any to have another go at this tome to be.

So to begin (Again)

Some months (or was it more than a year?) before the picture above was taken I had resolved to leave the job as a counter assistant in a large department store in sunny Slough where I travelled to every day on the Magic Bus from my family home about three or four miles west of Slough on the Bath Road. I think that this was because although life in the big Wide World seemed so much more exciting than that of life at school, I instinctively still had the feeling that there was more to it. So School was out for that summer. Not really for good though. There was more to come as the school of life still lie in front of me.

8th January 2013
It has just dawned on me that whole year has passed since I posted the above. What happened?
I certainly have not been blogging much at all. Other more pressing things have got in the way.
As today is the anniversary of a day that will forever, well, as long as I am reasonably conscious anyway, remain in my memory. The trouble is, I have come to discover, that when telling stories one has to stick at it and needs a thing called discipline. That is not really me, and, it is a long time since I have been inspired to write.
Must try harder.

Confessions and Questions from Deep Water

I think we all might be aware how technology is taking over our lives at our own behest.

On several occasions in the past I can remember seeing two people who were obviously together, i.e. sitting in a car, or, at a filling station with one of them sitting in the car while the other put petrol into the tank (car;), both talking on mobiles and have contemplated whether they may be talking to each other. On some occasions it was obvious that they were not but on others, it seemed as if they were or might be. Just doing it for the craik (just having a laugh)perhaps? Or, because of something spelled similarly or something like that?

Anyway, here I am back in our bed, having served the High Priestess her tea and I have a confession to make. For quite some time I have been spending the morning in bed, playing with my laptop. (I think that it has not done me a lot of good. I must pay a visit to the opticians as soon as I get home.)

This morning as I delivered the tea I had a bit of a surprise. There was the High Priestess sitting up in bed, as opposed to being in the near comatose state that I find her in. The cheek of it! After nagging me for hours crying ‘Tea!’ as well. Not only that! She had her lap-top on her lap and was typing something on the keyboard. It seems like it is definitely catching and soon the whole world will be infected. The world is going viral.

Obviously, she has got it from me. It seems that we both have it pretty bad. I mean, when it becomes too much bother to glance over to the other side of the bed to look at something ones loved one is trying to raise your attention to only to have her give you a response via e-mail. I think that this is surely the sign of a phenomenon that humankind has never been confronted with before.
What next? One may ask.

Is this loony or merely something of a paradox?

This morning after I had bought her the usual morning cuppa, my other half asked me it I knew what a loon was.
I was under the impression that it might be some sort of bird; possibly something like a booby or frigate bird. Though I was not sure. So, with an aversion to uncertainty I googled loon and found that it is the name of a group of aquatic birds of the phylum Chordata of the superorder Gaviomorphae and order Gaviiformes in the family Gaviidae of the Genus Gaviia and a whole host of other ajectival nouns that mean very little to me. Except Gav.

I mused on significance of Gav. As many people who understand some French may know, it is part of the word gavage meaning to stuff or force-feed ducks or geese in order to enlarge their livers so as to provide the delicacy foie gras which translated into English means fat liver.

To get back on track, I read on and discovered that Loons, along with other birds, sometimes swallowed grit or small pebbles as an aide de digestion. I sometimes partake of a digestif, but, usually of the liquid variety and I always thought that getting stoned could be a prelude to an attack of the munchies rather than its conclusion. Perhaps I’ll give stones after a meal another try sometime.

One more time, back to the track, Jack.
It was discovered that the population of British swans (all of which belong to the queen in GB (or the UK or whatever) was diminishing due to them (along with certain species other birds, albeit without the Royal aegis) consuming the lost and discarded lead weights used by coarse fishermen, and, even more refined anglers alike 😉
The problem wasn’t confined to the use of swan shot either. 🙄 So, in order to try to lessen this problem, a law was introduced in Britain in January 1987 whereby it became illegal for anglers to use lead weights of below a certain size. Instead they had to use weights made of a less poisonous alloy.
Further research also uncovered that

‘Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act there is no legal defence if you’re caught using lead shot in prohibited sizes. In court, you can be fined up to a maximum £5,000 and risk the confiscation of any equipment involved.’ and that ‘Care should be taken when buying split-shot on holiday abroad (including the Irish Republic) and innocently bringing it back to the UK – it could well be illegal lead.
● Care should also be taken when using old split-shot bought from car boot sales, or retrieved from the attics or garages of friends or relations’.

So, take care what you bring back from abroad……
or for that matter retrieve from the attics or garages of friends or relations.

Strange I thought………It is ok to pepper wild life and the countryside with the shot and bullets (and the occasional person or animal in the wrong place at the wrong time, or, depending upon how one views the subject, in the right place at the right time)that are used by hunters and so-called sportsmen alike with lead,albeit of an alloyed variety, but, involve birds like the swan which has enjoyed the protection of the kings and queens of England for hundreds of years, or even loons for that matter and The Law is invoked.
The principle reason for this was that it was discovered that venison that had found its way into the food chain via sportsmen and assassins employed in culls. This was in spite of the meat processors taking the precaution of cutting the flesh around the bullet entry point in the shot animals that were used meat that was ground up for human consumption was still found to contain lead. Presumably its presence was due to the inclusion of the lead used in the projectiles that had been used to kill some of the animals.
So where was this lead coming from?
Perhaps Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is becoming noisier and she was not such a raving loon after all.
As is my wont I dug deeper and found that after the European Union (and the not so unified GB, or, for that matter great. Grate maybe.) had enacted laws to prevent the spread of lead, even the u.s. of good ol’ a. had passed laws to mitigate the use of lead shot in sporting weapons with the inauguration of a Federal Law In 1991 which banned any hunter from using or possessing shotgun shells containing any type of lead shot that was proscribed as being toxic while hunting waterfowl. Violators of this law could be fined up to $1,000. Note, That was, only if they used shot that did not conform to a bewildering variety of both physical configurations and alloys of bismuth, tin, iron, tungsten, nickel, bronze and certain polymers.
On consultation it can be found that the principle component of all of these alloys is overwhelmingly lead. Just as an aside from loons, swans or any other ecologically endangered species, I note that firearms themselves are still freely available in many parts of the world and that America has the highest rate of firearm related murders of anywhere in the world.
Hmm…..I suppose it could be time to inaugurate a law on guns per se. On second thoughts, it coud be some as yet misunderstood survival mechanism that is built into a species to keep the numbers down when it consumes too much; and, perhaps while the powers that be are at it, they might do something about this more recent form of gavage.

Perhaps it is worth remembering though that you and I are ultimately responsible

References
http://www.wildlifeextra.co.nz/go/news/lead-poisoning347.html#cr
http://www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/CurrentBirdIssues/nontoxic.htm

The Broadening of The Mind
Posted on February 19, 2012

There is a nostrum that declares that travel broadens the mind.

Perhaps this may have been true at some time, but these days, for the vast majority, it involves lengthy periods on the posterior and so serves to principally broaden just that.

As far as the mind goes, it can be submitted to such a diverse set of stimulus that it can be a bit troublesome for one to keep track. This has certainly been true in my case recently, as I have been skipping into different time zones; in both the geo-astrochronologic and the virtual sense, as when one is faced with one’s past.

The first step was taken to this enhanced state of consciousness more than a week ago, when, along with a prayer that it would come to no harm during our absence, my OH and I locked up our home and set off on a long house-swap holiday with a couple that we met during one of our frequent reconciliation’s that followed some international peccadillo’s that I had made, and, escaped the consequences of. Namely partner swapping in mezo America a while back.

Having left some friends of ours who had put us up for a few days, in order to facilitate getting the house ready for our swappers, the first leg of the journey was to Gatwick airport where we were to be met by a taxi that was to whisk us effortlessly to The Swan whih is a pulic house in Clewer, Windsor.

My OH had the good sense to pre-book both beforehand, thereby obtaining a reduced fee for the cab and having the certainty of finding a reasonable place to stay in an area that has always been known for its dependence upon tourism (at least since Prince Albert’s death) and the elevated prices that follow on from such a source of income.

Feeling a little smug when I saw the rates for the hire of a cab at the Airport Booking Centre, after collecting our luggage from the conveyor belt in Arrivals, and, having waited in the area in arrivals, where one would logically think that taxi-drivers would make for in order to pick up their fares, I began to feel both increasingly vindicated, but also disconcerted. The minute hand ticked from ten before the appointed rendezvous time to ten, twenty and thirty after and it became more apparent that the taxi was not going to turn up.

I became concerned that we were obviously going to have to succumb to a regular taxi.

After several enquiries and telephone conversations that culminated in something I rarely see; that is, my OH raising her voice to pitch loud enough to make anybody within 60 meters turn their head to see what the racket was about as she loudly explained to the controller of the cab company via her mobile (Who if the same character that I had spoken to ten minutes previously from a fixed line at the airport Help Desk, sounded like some Rasta in the throes of imbibing profoundly in one of the habits that the culture is famous for) that she and made the booking with the company and received confirmation that the taxi would be there at the appointed time via email, and, that it would perhaps be more profitable for the company concerned if they were to send an email informing people whose payments had not cleared that this was the case, rather than a confirmation of the pick-up.

Any vindication that I felt was mixed with a kind of misdirected Schadenfreude and probably due to a deep seated belief that I have of ‘Don’t buy a pig in a poke’ principles that I had voiced to my OH when she had booked the taxi being soundly demonstrated.

What can you do?

Eventually, after much consternation, we ordered another taxi. Although I noted that it was nearly double the price of the one previously ordered, it did in fact get us to our next destination (albeit with the aid of a sat-nav) where we would be spending the next week.

For myself, the journey to Windsor (where I had spent the earliest formative years of my life) was a weird experience. Although it was dark, and, nearly forty years separated me from the time when I knew the area we were in like the back of my hand, I was well aware of our position, but something extraordinary seemed to have happened.
Large tracts of land that had once been open countryside, were covered with new constructions. I wondered if there was any correlation between these and the freckles which had apeared on the back of my hand over the same period.

The new buildings were connected by freshly built motorways and upgraded main roads. Just as my blood vessles were now growing knarled and more pronounced! What on earth had allowed such a thing to happen?
The driver took us via some new road that looked just like all the rest to me. Was this the ?…
Eventually we reached Stains, where years ago, one would have got on the A308. It was at this point that I regained some sense of normality as we left the surreal landscape; my recognition of my surroundings having returned. I suppose that this was when I saw that the river was to the right of us at about the position the virtual map in my mind told me that Egham lie some miles to our left. As we drew into Old Windsor, I could see that it had morphed into something larger and more flashy than it was and I thought that perhaps the powers that be should rename it. Seeing as they seem to have renamed half the world that I grew up in.

After living with French hospitality for nearly half of the time I since I had last seen the area around us,about 15 years beforehand, it seemed as though it might be The Recession, a term that I seem to hear more these days, or something else that I couldn’t put my finger on.
It might have just been me being locked in a time warp.

The taxi dropped us outside The Swan at Clewer. It was a cold night, and, due to the lack of normal business procedure being adhered to when my OH had first booked a taxi on-line,vis-a-vis confirmation of booked taxi when it was not, we were left without sufficient cash to cover the additional cost of hiring the cab. Luckily, we did not have to take out a mortgage but it was essential that we find a cash dispensing machine. The town centre was more than a mile away but the driver told us that there was an ATM at a garage just around the corner to where the pub was.

My other half went of in search of said machine and I chatted to the driver, who although an immigrant, had been in the UK for over twenty years. I seem to remember that the subject of the conversation that we had been the recent influx of people from former regions of what had been part the so-called Soviet Union. I was overtaken by a certain sense of wryness as I listened to the way the driver described the hard times that the Poles/Lithuanians/Rumanians/Hungarians etc. (pick your own target) were undercutting the market and in doing so were ruining the economy.

On my OH’s return she paid the driver off and we made our way to the entrance of the pub just in time for us to meet the sole occupant of the Public Bar of The Swan staggering merrily down the pavement.

We entered the bar that he had just vacated to find it empty even though it was only about 21.30. It appeared that Business was not booming. The landlord’s son showed us to our room and the landlord’s partner told us that her husband would take our suit-cases up later.

Although our room was larger than many I have stayed in and its tired décor did not bother me, it had all the ambience of a cold-meat store, but, our options were severly limited, in fact there was no viable option, and so we returned to the bar for a nightcap.

The landlord, who had by now returned, asked us what we would like. I think I ordered half of bitter and my OH had a whiskey. Before I was able to remark about the temperature of the room the barman (who was also the landlord) explained that there were problems with the central heating but he would put an electric heater in our room as an interim measure. With that assured my OH and I engaged a spot of conversation about what we would do on the morrow.

To be continued.

Conundrum of the century.

Politicians and Piss-takers and Comidians

One and the same?
Stupidity.
If “We don’t know what’s causing climate change;”

How can ‘We’ know that “the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try and reduce CO2 emissions isn’t the right course for us.”

Just who are ‘We’ anyway?

Surreality Bytes

This morning after I had woken up, my other half, or perhaps my other third, started to tell me about her friend….

“You know Titch has been to Portugal on the bridge thing?”

“No!” I replied interestedly. :-&
“I would’ve thought that she should have flown”

* * * * * * *

After a while she started to tell me about what she had been dreaming about the previous evening.

“ I had a funny dream last night”

What’s new? I thought…I think that she probably meant that she had a dream about 1to 10 minutes before she had woken up, as opposed to ‘last night’, but, not having studied psychology, she can not really be expected to know that.

“We were filling this wheelbarrow up with stuff to make a hydrogen bomb.”

“Oh yes”

“and then we went and sat by the hedge and waited for it to work”

“When you say a hydrogen bomb, do you mean like a plastic bag filled with hydrogen or the type the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima?”

“ No. It was a load of gravelly hard stuff that sloshed around……and we were told that it would take a while to work……. and that there would be a big bang and so we sat by the hedge.”

“Oh yes…..
You do understand how a hydrogen bomb is made then?”

The question was ignored and OH/T went on……..

“Well, then we went around the corner and there were these cows and I said that we shouldn’t stay there as it might frighten the cows and if they stampeded we might get crushed…….”.

I pondered….

…….”So, then we went back around the corner again and the mixture was making a noise but we were told that it would be quite a bit longer before anything happened………..

and then we were told that things would get shorter and constricted………….

and I looked at people and their eyebrows were getting narrower……….

and then I woke up and went for a pee ……….

and I was very glad that I had gone for a pee before it went off.

At this point this was playing on the stereo in my mind………

In $ Pirate ion

¥A₦₭$! Don¢ha ju$t £ove €M.?

Th€y hav€ prin¢ipl€$?

The Broadening of The Mind

There is a nostrum that declares that travel broadens the mind.

Perhaps this may have been true at some time, but these days, for the vast majority, it involves lengthy periods on the posterior and so serves to principally broaden just that.

As far as the mind goes, it can be submitted to such a diverse set of stimulus that it can be a bit troublesome for one to keep track. This has certainly been true in my case recently, as I have been skipping into different time zones; in both the geo-astrochronologic and the virtual sense, as when one is faced with one’s past.

The first step was taken to this enhanced state of consciousness more than a week ago, when, along with a prayer that it would come to no harm during our absence, my OH and I locked up our home and set off on a long house-swap holiday with a couple that we met during one of our frequent reconciliation’s that followed some international peccadillo’s that I had made, and, escaped the consequences of. Namely partner swapping in mezo America a while back.

Having left some friends of ours who had put us up for a few days in order to facilitate getting the house ready for our swappers, the first leg of the journey was to Gatwick airport where we were to be met by a taxi that was to whisk us effortlessly to the room in The Swan in Windsor.

My OH had the good sense to pre-book both beforehand, thereby obtaining a reduced fee for the cab and the certainty of finding a reasonable place to stay in an area that has always been known for its dependence upon tourism (at least since Prince Albert’s death) and the elevated prices that follow on from such a source of income.

Feeling a little smug when I saw the rates for the hire of a cab at the Airport Booking Centre,  after collecting our luggage from the conveyor belt in Arrivals, and, having waited in the area in arrivals that one would logically think taxi-drivers would make for to pick up their fares, I began to feel both increasingly vindicated, but also disconcerted,  as the minute hand ticked from ten before the appointed rendezvous time to ten, twenty and thirty after it became more apparent that the taxi was not going to turn up.

I became concerned that we were obviously going to have to succumb to a regular taxi.

After several enquiries and telephone conversations that culminated in something I rarely see; that is, my OH raising her voice to pitch loud enough to make anybody within 60 meters turn their head to see what the racket was about as she loudly explained to the controller of the cab company via her mobile(who, if the same character that I had spoken to ten minutes previously on a fixed line at the airport Help Desk) sounded like some Rasta in the throes of imbibing profoundly in one of the habits that the culture is famous for, that she and made the booking with the company and received confirmation that the taxi would be there via email, and, that it would perhaps be more profitable for the company concerned if they were to send an email informing people whose payments had not cleared that this was the case, rather than a confirmation of the pick-up.

Any vindication that I felt was probably due to a profound belief that I have of ‘Don’t buy a pig in a poke’ principles that I had voiced to my OH when she had booked the taxi being demonstrated. Sort of a misdirected Schadenfreude.

What can you do?

Eventually, after much consternation, we ordered another taxi. Although I noted that it was nearly double the price of the one previously ordered, it did in fact get us to our next destination (albeit with the aid of a sat-nav) where we would be spending the next week.

For myself, the journey to Windsor (where I had spent some early formative years of my life) was a weird experience. Although it was dark, and, nearly forty years separated me from the time when I knew the area we were in like the back of my hand, I was well aware of our position, but something extraordinary seemed to have happened.
Large tracts of land that had once been open countryside, were now covered with new constructions. These were connected by freshly built motorways and upgraded main roads. What on earth had allowed such a thing to happen? The driver took us via some new road that looked just like all the rest to me. Was this the road to nowhere?…
Eventually we reached Stains, where years ago, one would have got on the A308. It was at this point that I regained some sense of normality as we left the surreal landscape; my recognition of my surroundings having returned. I suppose that this was when I saw that the river was to the right of us at about the position the virtual map in my mind told me that Egham lie some miles to our left. As we drew into Old Windsor, I could see that it had morphed into something larger and more flashy than it was and I thought that perhaps the powers that be should rename it. Seeing as they seem to have renamed half the world that I grew up in.

After living with French hospitality for nearly half of the time I since I had last seen the area around us,about 15 years beforehand, it seemed as though it might be The Recession, a term that I seem to hear more these days, or something else that I couldn’t put my finger on.
It might have just been me being locked in a time warp.

The taxi dropped us outside The Swan at Clewer. It was a cold night, and, due to the lack of normal business procedure being adhered to when my OH had first booked a taxi on-line,vis-a-vis confirmation of booked taxi when it was not, we were left without sufficient cash to cover the additional cost of hiring the cab. Luckily, we did not have to take out a mortgage but it was essential that we find a cash dispensing machine. The town centre was more than a mile away but the driver told us that there was an ATM at a garage just around the corner to where the pub was.

My other half went of in search of said machine and I chatted to the driver, who although an immigrant, had been in the UK for over twenty years. I seem to remember that the subject of the conversation that we had been the recent influx of people from former regions of what had been part the so-called Soviet Union. I was overtaken by a certain sense of wryness as I listened to the way the driver described the hard times that the Poles/Lithuanians/Rumanians/Hungarians etc. (pick your own target) were causing by their undercutting the market and in doing so were ruining the economy.

On my OH’s return she paid the driver off and we made our way to the entrance of the pub just in time for us to meet the sole occupant of the Public Bar of The Swan staggering merrily down the pavement.

We entered the bar that he had just vacated to find it empty even though it was only about 21.30. It appeared that Business was not booming. The landlord’s son showed us to our room and the landlord’s partner told us that her husband would take our suit-cases up later.

Although our room was larger than many I have stayed in and its tired décor did not bother me, it had all the ambience of a cold-meat store, but, our options were severly limited, in fact there was no viable option, and so we returned to the bar for a nightcap.

The landlord, who had by now returned, asked us what we would like. I think I ordered half of bitter and my OH had a whiskey. Before I was able to remark about the temperature of the room the, barman, who was also the landlord, explained that there were problems with the central heating but he would put an electric heater in our room as an interim measure. With that assured my OH and I engaged a spot of conversation about what we would do on the morrow.

To be continued.