Belated Birthdays

I had my Burns Night dinner last night: swede (that's rutabaga to you on the other side of the pond) mashed with butter and pepper, mashed potatoes with gravy, and oven-cooked haggis.  I like my haggis cooked rather than the more tradition method of boiling because baking it produces a nice, crispy exterior.  It also precludes the mess that a burst haggis occasions.
 

 
My Burns Night celebratory meal occurred on Saturday because on Wednesday, the real Burns Night, I was busy picking up donuts for my obligatory birthday treats so I could bring them to work on Thursday.

Now, Thursday wasn't actually my birthday, but I still had to pick up birthday treats for two reasons:

1. It is mandatory.  Over here, instead of your co-workers taking you out for a birthday drink, you are required (by Parliamentary decree, they tell me) to supply cakes, cookies and other assorted goodies for everyone in your office.  A strange custom, but who am I to argue with tradition?

2. Bringing them in on my actual birthday was out of the question because there are so many people with birthdays in early January that we have to stagger the dates.

It's an unfortunate coincidence that, in a work force as small as ours, so many people have birthdays in the first half of January.  It would be bad enough if this surfeit of birthdays happened in, say, August, but the opening weeks of the year are the absolute worst time for this to happen.

During December, every other day someone brings in a tin of chocolates or mince pies, and then after Christmas, the excess everyone is trying to get rid of ends up on various unoccupied desktops.  And we just about get through all of that before the birthday glut arrives, playing havoc with people foolish enough to have made resolutions concerning their weight or unhealthy diets.

It has gotten so bad that we are actually proposing to ask management to screen future employees and only offer positions to those who were born between May and September.

But this is the situation I am stuck with, so Burns Night found me checking Google for the location of the nearest Krispy Kreme Donut distributor.  I've written about Krispy Kreme before, about my love-hate relationship with them while I lived in the States, and how I was relived to put them behind me when I moved over here, and how horrified I was to find out they had followed me over.

I managed to make peace with the presence of Krispy Kreme; I found they are a bit like the Killer Bees—as long as you leave them alone, they won't harm you.  I even brought them in to the office as my birthday treat on occasion, making fellow Kreme-addicts out of a number of my colleagues.  And so, this year, I decided to bring some in again, as a special treat (and so I could get a much-needed fix).  The closest store the last time I had bought some was twenty miles away, but I thought I'd have a look to see if any had opened nearer.  One had.  And it was within walking distance.

This is a bad turn of events, indeed.  Not only is this outlet within walking distance, it is in the massive, 24-hour Tesco just across the roundabout in Broadbridge Heath.  So now I have to adjust myself to the fact that, any day of the week, any time of day or night, I am a twenty minute walk—or 3 minute drive—away from Krispy Kreme Donuts.

I'm not sure if my willpower can take the strain.

At least I was able to gorge myself enough on the ones I brought in to work to satisfy my Kreme Kraving, but just for the time being.  I'll soon be longing for another bite into that heavenly sugar-rush, I can already feel the stirrings, and I hear them, late at night, calling to me...

The first step, they tell me, is admitting you have a problem.
 

 
This photo has nothing to do with the post, but I wantedyou to see it to let you know that while you are still in thethroes of winter, spring is already arriving here.Jealous?

The Advantages of Marriage

My Tin Jubilee is in full swing now, in fact, it is rapidly coming to a close.  Ten years ago I was preparing to make myself homeless and jobless in order to fly 3,000 miles to another continent trusting the promise of a woman I had only known for six months that, once I got there, she would take me in.  I arrived in the UK on 1 March (she did take me in) and 28 days later, I married her.

So the 28^th of March, in addition to marking the official culmination of my Tin Jubilee Celebrations, is also my 10^th wedding anniversary which, among many other advantages and obligations (I think she might be expecting a card or something) means that, for the past decade, I have never had to worry about running out of milk.

This is strange because my wife doesn’t even drink milk, yet she always knows how much we have at any given time and, more importantly, whether or not we need to buy any.  We’ll often be out for a walk in the evening and my wife will say that we need to stop at the offie on the way home to pick up quart of milk.

(ASIDE: We do buy milk in quarts and pints here, even though it is illegal.  The EU has decreed that we MUST sell milk in metric units, so we have containers with volume labels reading “2.272 Liters,” but we still say, “half gallon” because it’s easier than saying we need 2.272 liters of milk.)

But liters or pints or gallons, she always knows.  And when I make note of the fact that we just bought a half gallon, she’ll say, “Yes, but you’re working from home for the next two days and you drink a lot of it, and we’re having a tuna bake for dinner tonight and that will use a pint so we’ll need an extra quart to get us through the week.”  And when I say that maybe we should get half a gallon, instead, she’ll say, “No, you’re travelling for work two days next week and we’re having dinner with my parents on Sunday night so we won’t use any then.”
   

I did a Google search for "Milk photos" and this came up, it's not my fault.

I find this amazing.  If you see me wandering around the town center and run up to me to ask, “How much milk is in your fridge right now?” I will not have any idea.  More telling, if you wanted to know when I was next having dinner at my in-laws, I wouldn’t be able to remember that, either.

This isn’t to say that, while I was single, I was always running out of milk, but my life was more ordered then—I didn’t travel for work, I never went to my in-laws for dinner and I therefore tended to use a set amount each week.  And if it started to smell a bit funny, I’d stop at the convenience store on the way home from work and pick up a quart.

Those days are behind me, however; for the past decade, I have not had to think about milk—how much we have on hand or how much we might use during the upcoming week—at all.

Admittedly, as marriage perks go, this is pretty far down on the list, but that doesn’t make it any less appreciated.

The Santa

Okay, here’s my other Christmas poem; that should hold you until Boxing Day.

My favourite season and my two favourite poems welded into one; what more could I ask?

.

The Santa

By Edgar Allen Moore

Once upon a yuletide dreary, while my brain with sleep was weary

and sugar plum fairies danced in children's heads beyond the bedroom door.

Not a creature here was stirring; mamma in her kerchief was worrying,

I in my winter's cap was touring presents lying on the floor.

Train set, race cars, aircraft carrier and a purple dinosaur;

all in pieces on the floor.

.

Ah distinctly I remember it was in the chill December

and the moon its eerie light upon the fallen snow did pour.

Presently I heard a clatter, wondering what was the matter,

straight I spied an elf much fatter than any elf I'd seen before.

Drawn by reindeer in a sleigh this elf drew up outside my door.

Parked and sat, and nothing more.

.

Then this burgundy elf beguiling my wan spirit into smiling

By the jolly countenance and fir trimmed uniform he wore.

“Elf,” I said, “these reindeer brought you, but really don’t you think you ought to

let them go.  If PETA caught you, they’d firebomb your house for sure.

Are you immune from PC zealots?  Tell me why,” I did implore.

The fat elf smiled. “I’m Santa Claus.”

.

Then, me thought, the air grew colder, and my flagging spirit grew bolder,

cheered by memories of my pleasures drawn Christmases of yore.

“Santa,” I cried, “these memories hold you, like angels wings they do enfold you,

Sweet Virginia could have told you: doubters tried and failed before

to bend you to their narrow purpose and make you something to abhor.

Quote the Santa, “Never more.”

.

Be that word our sign of parting, elf or saint, I said, glad heartened.

Whether Coke created or sent by legends from the lusty days of yore,

you remain the true Yule Spirit, Scrooge himself was glad to hear it,

my soul is light, my mind is clear; it sadly was not so before.

But now this light will shine its tiding ever from my bosom’s core

I’ll keep the season evermore.
   

The Santa

The Night Before a Politically Correct Holiday

Christmas is coming, so it must be time to trot out my holiday poems again.  There must be someone out there who hasn’t read this yet:

A Politically Correct Night Before Christmas (um, I mean, A Holiday)

T'was the night before a Holiday, which one I can't say

or the politically correct will come take me away.

And I couldn't decide, for the life of me

if that thing in the corner was a bush or a tree,

when in front of my house a car horn did blare

so I put down my egg nog to see who was there.

A clean-shaven man in a gabardine suit

stepped out of a taxi cab near my front stoop.

"On Driver!" he said, and paid the cab fare

"Are you Santa?" I asked of the man standing there.

"I was once called Saint Nick," he said with a gleam,

"But lately that 'S' word has become almost obscene."

"I've been corrected for certain, though improved, I doubt it,

"Let's get out of this cold and I'll tell you about it."

I offered him cake, and bid him to try it.

"I can't," he replied, "You see, I'm on a diet.

"I'm not to have cookies or candy or sweets

"I must set an example for what children should eat.

"Overeaters Anonymous and dentists both feel

"that I need to stay slim and eat healthy meals.

"My clay pipe, of course, was the next thing to go

"The Cancer Society's lawyers said so.

"My fur suit and leather were found to offend

"militant vegans, so I had to change them

"for a synthetic blend in this neutral color.

"And I shaved off my beard to please one group or another.

"My reindeer all invoked their animal rights

"then the elves unionized and now they're on strike.

"But I no longer need toys, so they're free to go.

"Leaving presents in houses; that's illegal, you know.

"And my name has been changed, it's no longer St. Nick.

"It's now Shirley Abdul Jacob Dinosovitch."

I shook my head sadly, stunned by his speech,

was nothing beyond special interests groups' reach?

"But you aren't Shirley or Jacob or Abdul," I said,

"If you pretend that you are then you're out of your head.

"These groups want you to act as they think you should

"as if they are the ones who define what is good.

"I don't have a society, lawyer or cause

"but I do enjoy Christmas, and I want Santa Claus

"the way I remember, a jolly red elf.

"You're Santa, godamnit, get hold of yourself."

"You're right," he replied, "it's to myself I belong

"they've been holding me hostage to their values too long.

"I'm through taking cab rides, it's back to sleigh power

"and I'll offer the elves another dollar an hour.

"Let's cap this epiphany with a cup of good cheer,

"And for God's sake don't give me non-alcohol beer."

.

Coming soon: The Santa

Baaah! Not Humbug, Just Baaah!

A while back, The Council authorized a sculpture of some sheep to be erected in a busy roundabout on the A283 near the A27 bypass just outside of Shoreham to commemorate the founding, co-founding, current legal hold-up or latest petition in favor of The South Downs National Park.  Obviously, I haven’t been keeping up on The Park’s status as I should (I’m having a hard enough time keeping my eye on the EU) but suffice it to say the The South Downs National Park—according to Wikipedia—became fully operational on 1 April 2011 and covers an area of 628 sq miles in southern England.  There are a lot of people who are very happy about this and probably nearly as many who are not.

Settling the boundaries of The Park, of course, now allows B&Bs, Tea Shoppes and snobby Investment Bankers to advertize the fact that they are within the legitimate boundaries of an officially recognized area of outstanding natural beauty; these are the people who are in favor. It also means the lovely view of the downs the snooty banker enjoys can’t be flattened, paved over and adorned with several blocks of flats so unimaginatively ugly that they look like something out of the Borg School of Architecture.  Or, at least it’s not as easy as it used to be, which makes the developers—and people who hate snooty bankers—opposed to it.

(Aside:  It goes without saying that the development in question would have a sign hanging above it proudly proclaiming that 30% of the dark, cramped, shoddy flats would be “affordable.”  Now, I have addressed this before, but this is a different angle so don’t skip ahead—some of this material will be on the quiz.

If 30% of the flats are affordable, then by definition, 70% of them are beyond the fiscal range of the average buyer.  But, also by definition, there are more average people than above-average people, so who is buying 70% of the properties?  And where are the other 70% of the average people sleeping?  Under a bridge?

Okay, back to the sheep.)

It’s not unusual for councils to commission sculptures for roundabouts—there is a huge soccer ball in the roundabout just outside of Broadfield Stadium in Crawley, and in Dorking, on the intersection of the As 24 and 25, they have erected a giant cock.
 

The Dorking Cock - no, I am not making this up.

So the sheep should not have been a problem, except that some people thought they looked too real.  Apparently people were coming up to the roundabout and thinking, “Ohmigod!  There’s a flock of sheep loose on the A283.”  So the council, in their wisdom, attempted to ease people’s minds by painting the sheep green.  Then, of course (but you saw this coming, didn’t you) people drove up to the roundabout thinking, “Ohmigod!  There’s a flock of green sheep loose on the A283!”
 

The Green Sheep of Sussex

So instead of erecting a sign saying something like, “These sheep are NOT real!” they put yellow hazard barriers around them, so now people can’t see the sheep, but they can see the hazard barrier, which will make them think, “Ohmigod!  There’s an accident on the A283!  I’ll need to start rubbernecking and creating a traffic hazard!”

So now we have a sculpture, painted green and surrounded by hazard barriers for the safety of our commuters.

But that is not the reason I like Britain; the reason I like Britain is that, on the news, when they reported this story, the newscaster deadpanned:

“For those of you who live in an urban area, this is what a real sheep looks like.”
 

Actual Sheep

Really, you gotta love that.

Go here for the the rest of the story.

We Need A Little Christmas

Boy, don’t people just piss you off?  Is there no end to the things they will do seemingly just to get your blood to boil?  And I’m not talking about David Cameron, Obama, Newt or the morons running the EU, I’m talking about the “special” people – you know, those people to whom The Rules do not apply – who do things like move the bollards so they can drive through a pedestrian area full of Christmas shoppers.

The problem is, once you get into a rant about people like that, you’ll be there all day if you don’t stop; it’s like eating potato chips.  And that’s what I said to the lady at the till in the shop where I was making a Christmas purchase (in the interest of keeping it a surprise for my wife, I won’t mention what shop it was).  The woman agreed (shop keepers are generally agreeable when you are handing money over to them) and we decided it was best to just leave the special people alone and just let them go on being special; no sense letting them ruin your day.

By the way, the woman in the shop started it; I may be turning into a grumpy old man, but I had been feeling quite chipper—peace on earth, good will toward men and all that—when I entered the store.  Once she began, however, it wasn’t long before I picked up the refrain and starting singing from the same hymn sheet.

After our agreed cease-fire I left the shop feeling as chipper as when I had gone in, which is a good thing because it was such a lovely, sunny day and I was out Christmas shopping in a town where Christmas shopping is a delight.
 

The Market Place

Unlike in a lot of places—US or UK—where shopping involves fighting traffic on the way to the mall, vying for a parking space once you get to the mall and then contending with crowds as you make your way through the vast labyrinth from store to store to store, all I need to do is walk five minutes into town and I’m in a Christmas wonderland.

Although we have a mall, it is well hidden behind traditional shops and, inside, its halls are festively decked and some of the employees are encouraged to get into the spirit by dressing up.  Outside, the shops are likewise decorated and the Saturday market—throughout December—is complimented by a Sunday Christmas market.   And every Saturday at noon a band plays in the Carfax bandstand.
 

What a 101 Dalmatians theme has to do with Christmas,
I don't know. And what a green dragon has to do with
either Christmas or 101 Dalmatians, I don't know either.

The Carfax Bandstand

On days like today, when the sun is shining and it is agreeably warm, it is an absolute pleasure to wander among the stalls and peruse the wares in the shops.  It almost makes the startlingly long queue at the Post Office worth the hassle.

So despite Cameron and his ilk, and the moron bollard-mover, peace, tranquility and good will reigned.  At least until I get home and turned on the news.

Pyro-Economics

We had Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes Day) this past weekend (Remember, Remember...)  All you living in the US who don’t know what I’m talking about, go here and bone up on all things Guy; we’ll wait.

Okay, now that you have educated yourself, we aren’t actually going to discuss Guy Fawkes, bonfires or the significance of the 5^th of November at all; we’re going to talk about the state of the economy.  Your effort was not wasted, however: you have enriched your knowledge and expanded your world view—a commodity you cannot put a price on—so, give yourself a pat on the back.

And don’t worry if you know nothing about economics; neither do I.  As a prognosticator, I am remarkable only for my unwavering ability to be wrong (as I have mentioned before, I went with 8-track tapes, bought a Betamax and once wrote a memo to my boss telling him there was no future in Microsoft Windows), but I do know fireworks when I see them.

During my early years in Britain, I dubbed the weeks from the end of October into the New Year, “Fireworks Season,” as it contained Bonfire Night, Diwali, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, meaning there was a reason to set fireworks off on almost any given night.  And, by golly, they did.  It was amazing to sit out on the balcony and have the night lit up, accompanied by cracks and booms, as people randomly set fireworks off in their back yards.  Add to that the numerous official (and much larger, longer, noisier) fireworks and it seemed as if there was a display of some type going off every night.

Alas, that all came to an end a few years ago, when the bankers decided they needed our spare cash to pay for their bonuses, and then thought the government should take all the money they took from us and give it to them, as well.  After that, no one felt like celebrating much, and if they did, they had no money for fireworks.  It would have been a crime to throw money away on such frivolity while there was still a banker with a pool patio that needed re-grouting.  So the official fireworks, and the private parties, all came to a stop.  It was a dark time.

This year, however, I see some hope.  On Halloween, our town put on a festival that included an impressive fireworks display, and over this past weekend I was astounded anew at how much disposable income people seemed willing to literally send up in smoke.

Out on the balcony that night, it felt like I was in the middle of a battle—a really tame and wimpy sort of battle, but that’s the best analogy I can come up with.  The detonations were not timed or coordinated; instead explosions burst randomly from behind, to the left, the right, far in the distance, near at hand.  They filled the night sky with smoke and blazes of light and left the air heavy with the smell of gunpowder.  It was wonderful.

Now I can’t honestly say this display signifies the beginning of a lessening of the Big Squeeze, but I can’t deny that this is the first year I have seen so many fireworks—public and private—in a long time, and I know they aren’t cheap, so unless these people were using the grocery money for pyrotechnics, their personal economic situations must have improved to the point where they were at least able to save up some of their disposable cash and put it toward a bit of fun.

I like to think of it that way, rather than entertain the more likely scenario that they financed one last Hoorah! with the mortgage payment and will be out on the street next week.  Rest assured, the Banker will still get his pool patio re-grouted, which, after all is the important thing.
 

A Brave Beginning

My Favorite Things

The other day, as I was doing the dishes (or “the washing up” as they say here), I began cycling through my vast repertoire of songs, which is something I enjoy doing while up to my elbows in soapy water because it serves to occupy my time, entertain those neighbors foolish enough to leave their windows open and annoy my wife, who is in the sitting room trying to watch The One Show.  On this occasion, I delved deeper than usual and came up with that Austiro-Wehrmacht classic, “Edelweiss.”

I jest, of course; “Edelweiss” was written for the 1959 production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.  Its popularity, however, has led some to believe it is an authentic Austrian folk song.  Ronald Reagan reportedly had it played during the visit of an Austrian official, believing it to be their national anthem, but that’s hardly surprising.

(Note: Austria’s actual National Anthem is, “Land der Berge,” or “The Land of the Burgers,” a homage to their love of McDonalds, Wendy’s and Burger King.)

(Note #2: I was going to make a quip about the Horst Wessel song but a quick check of Wikipedia confirms that the lyrics and tune of that song are banned in Germany and Austria, and it is an actual crime to play it.  While you have to admire their apparent commitment to putting that part of their past behind them, the notion of banning a song probably seemed more doable prior to the advent of YouTube and iTunes.)

(Note #3: “Ol’ Man River” is not, in fact, a traditional Negro spiritual; Rogers and Hammerstein wrote that, too.)

(Note #4: Putting the # symbol before a number is meaningless over here; what we call “the pound sign” and use to designate a number, the Brits call “the hash key” and use for activating telephone menu options.)
 

Edelweiss

Now that we have all that cleared up, let’s get to the heart of the matter: the song, or more specifically, the lyrics.

As I sang the song, which I have done a myriad of times in the past, I noticed something I never have before: the rhyming scheme, while undeniably catchy, breaks the rules, making it, in my view, an illegal song.

Now, the basic rhyming sequence is AABCCB (A-del-VICE, A-del-Vice, la la la GREET ME, la la WHITE, la la BRIGHT, la la la MEET ME).  This works fine for the first verse, even though the similarity of VICE/VICE in and WHITE/BRIGHT in lines 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 might lead some believe the sequence is actually AABAAB, which could cause confusion when the second verse comes around if you are not paying full attention.

Having avoided that pitfall, let’s take a look at the second verse:

La la SNOW

La la GROW

La la la FOREVER

La la VICE

La la VICE

La la la FOREVER

Do you see what they did there?  They rhymed “forever” with “forever.”  That’s not technically a rhyme; it’s more of a repetition, which is fine if the words come one after the other, as in “A-del-VICE, A-del-VICE” but you can’t rhyme a word with itself at the end of lines 3 and 6 and think people won’t notice (OK, it took a while, but still…).  It’s just wrong!

This surprises me, because Dick and Oscar were generally quite professional; to let something like that slip by seems a bit sloppy.  Perhaps they were up against a tight deadline;

“Think!  Think!  We need that song now!  What rhymes with ‘Forever’?”

“You mean, besides ‘forever’?”

“Weather?  ‘Bring my homeland nice weather’?”

“How about, ‘Bless my homeland.  Whatever!’?”

“How about we just leave it?  Who’s going to care in fifty years?

“Believe me, some idiot will make an issue out of it sooner or later.”

Proud to be that idiot.

Queuing

In America, I waited in line, because that is what we do.  If we’re at the supermarket, in the bank or hanging around outside the ticket office for eighteen hours in order to get good seats for Wrestlemania, we are in line (and in the latter case, the people ahead of us would have been “in line” for several days).

We’re taught to wait in line early: from practicing foul shots in gym class (“form a line, everybody!”) to waiting for the bus to take us home (“Line up, now, children”) we did it in a line.  Some people waited “on line” but I was not one of them.  Any time I found myself in a row of people and looked down at the floor, I never noticed a line drawn down there to stand on.  What I did see were people, in front of me, in back of me, forming a line.  And I was in it.  Waiting.  In line.  Now that we have that straight, we can move on.

The one common element about waiting in line in America is that it wasn’t something we particularly liked.  A line is an inconvenience, a barrier between us and something we want, and want now.  Patience, as I recall, was not a virtue.

In Britain we queue, and I like that a lot better.  First of all, it just sounds better; it’s a friendly, inviting word that sounds almost fun.  That could be because, historically, it has been treated better: have you ever heard of people being queued up to be shot?  And that’s the other thing, it’s a versatile word; you can queue up, or just queue, or be queuing (whereas you cannot, no matter how hard you try, be “lining”).

Fascinating as all this is, it is largely beside the point; the point is, I found myself in a queue this past weekend.  A long one.

I was at the West Dean Apple Festival in need of some lunch and spied a hog roast kiosk selling roast pig on a roll.  We seemed to be a good match.  Unfortunately, so did 758 other people.  My wife fancied a vegetarian flan for lunch; so she just walked up to the vegan booth and bought one, but I wanted pig, so I suppressed my American distaste for lines and settled into the longest queue I have seen since standing in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World in 1978.  I tried to be British about it, but as the day progress and I began to notice that, not only was I in a very long line, but a line that wasn’t moving very fast, my Americanishness began pushing to the fore.

The reason for the long queue was the popularity of roast pig; the reason the queue was moving so slowly was down to the method they used to deploy it.  The pig was merrily roasting away in a pig roasting device some distance behind the dispensing kiosk.  At the kiosk was a large basket of rolls and a lone woman taking orders.  In my world, there would be rows of plates with open rolls on them, ready and waiting and, as each order came in, she would take them back to the carving guy, pick up the finished ones and serve the customers.  But that would be too efficient.  The way this pig-roasting team chose to operate was thus:

A customer would get up to the counter and the woman would ask for their order (NOTE: there was only ONE ITEM ON THE MENU!!).  When the order was placed, she would then prepare the requisite number of rolls.  Then she would carry the rolls back to the roasting pig where her partner waited.  He would carve off the meat and place it on the buns (and he wasn’t in a big hurry about it, either).  Then she would walk back to the counter to dispense the order.  The only reason I can think of for this odd behavior is that they were the only pig roast at the festival and, therefore, had no competition.  Even so, in America, that would never fly.

I noticed, however, that I was the only one getting irritated—all the others were taking it in stride—so I clenched my teeth and settled in with my queue-mates to chat about the weather, and places we’d been, and how our children were doing at school, and wasn’t the coalition government an embarrassment to Britain.  As I inched another step closer to the counter I began to wonder if I should get my money ready, so as not to hold things up when I finally got there.  I decided, however, that rather than go through all the trouble of taking a fiver out of my wallet, I perhaps should just send away for the proper government forms to allow me to open a small business and, once the paperwork was approved, set up a cottage industry right there in the queue and earn the five pounds.  God knows, I had the time.

When at last I arrived at the counter and had a hot pig sandwich in my hand, I turned to the people behind me, told them I was going to miss them and asked them to be sure to write (I really did do this, but I don’t think the woman at the counter caught the irony).  I then rejoined my wife, who had long since finished her vegetarian meal.  She didn’t remark on my lateness; she had seen the queue and knows how I disliked waiting in line.  But it wasn’t the wait that irritated me; it was the fact that it was so unnecessary.  Watching inefficiencies that cost me time makes me want to find the people responsible, queue them up and have them shot.

Summer

And so, belatedly, it is summer; Indian summer, perhaps.  That’s what the locals are calling it, anyway, despite the improbability of it meeting all the criteria.  But who would want to quibble over esoteric details on such a fine day?  Certainly not I, especially when I’m on a mission.

The days here are hot, the nights long and soft, leading me back to my younger days when, like today, I remained at leisure while my elders toiled these most enjoyable of days away.  (Or, at the very least, I happen to not be at work on a weekday, and that’s good enough for me.)  I’m heading into town today, going to a place I have never been before; a rare adventure, which makes the pull of my youth even stronger.  And so as I wander, past the shops selling mobile phones, iPads and the latest in electronic wizardry, I find myself yearning, with an intensity that make me ache, for those days when a game of hide-and-seek was enough to satisfy, and the latest in high-technology was a three-speed bicycle.

I wait in solitude at the edge of the market square, watching life buzz around me: Near the bandstand, a clutch of young mothers clucks and coos over the latest arrival while, at the bus stop, a doddering of matrons looks on with approval.  In the shade of the chestnut tree, an elderly woman stands still as a frightened fawn, watching other pensioners parade past in jackets and jumpers.  On the benches a languor of long-limbed ladies (heedless of the dangers of excessive alliteration) lounge lazily under the solstice sun, their white skin steamy in the sultry heat.  Nearby, an indolence of boys—bare-chested, tattooed and rugged—gaze on in anticipation.  There is nothing for me here, so I move on.

I’m on a reconnaissance mission to scope out a local village in preparation for a meeting I have there next week.  I find it advantageous to make a practice trip in such instances for reasons that become obvious even as the bus rumbles along the impossibly narrow country lanes: if you have never been to a place before, how do you know when you have arrived?

When we enter an area where there are at least a few houses, I get off the bus.  I had envisioned a twee village, perhaps with a cobbled main street lined with shops, an old stone church and the pub I was searching for.  Instead, there were just empty roads, some houses and, alarmingly, no people.  I walk up the road and down the road but find nothing promising.  At the opposite bus stop I see a young woman and, as she is my only option, I approach her.

“Do you know…” I begin.  But then I realize I have nothing intelligent to ask her.  “Where I am?” would make me seem hopelessly inept and, perhaps, dangerous.  Asking the location of the pub would be a good opening line, but I have neglected to memorize it.  I didn’t feel the need, as I have memorized what I regard to be the one piece of information I need to know: it is the only pub in the village.  But where is the village?

So I continue.  “Is there anything that resembles a village around here?”

She seems puzzled by the concept of “village,” so I take her to be a local.
 

The Village

“Well, if you go up this road and take a left, you’ll find a pub and a store,” she tells me.  I thank her and set off, but soon begin to wonder if, having noticed my accent, she has decided to play “trick the tourist.”  The road I am on is narrow and empty and I am about to turn around and try the opposite direction when I round a corner and find, just as she promised, a pub, a store and little else.

But the pub is lovely, old and dark with low, beamed ceilings, and the publican is cordial.  I had planned on a quick drink and a return trip but the waitress explains to me that the bus service is…well,…

“Crap?” I offer.

She smiles, relived at not having to break the news to me herself.

“So I’m going to have to stay here until four o’clock?” I ask, incredulously.

She shrugs and looks at the pristine sky.

“It’s such a lovely day; I shouldn’t think you’d mind.”

And, indeed, I don’t.
 

The Beer Garden

Post script: it is three thirty now.  I have had a relaxing lunch and a fine pint.  At three o’clock, the publican locked up and, without a word to me, left me here in the deserted beer garden with my pint, my cigar and my thoughts.  It has been—and continues to be—a lovely day, and I can honestly say that my mission is now well and truly accomplished.

Dances With Chickens

Sorry for the delay, but my wife and I were on holiday and ended up in yet another location that curtailed my Internet access.  For those of you unfamiliar with our “in country” holiday routine, our time away doesn’t resemble a vacation as you might know it, it’s more like living somewhere else for a week.  We rent a cottage, stop on the way there to do some grocery shopping, then settle in, arrange the place how we want it and establish a routine—all before dinner time of the first day.

The routine includes visiting nearby landmarks and beauty spots that the locals always mean to get around to visiting but never find the time, and in the evenings we carrying on much the same as we would at home, but in a different place.  This time, that place was a farm.

It was a little farm—what they call a small holding here—populated by a variety of rescued animals cared for by the energetic and affable landlady.  There were dogs, cats, sheep, guinea fowl, geese, three of the largest goats I have ever seen (when I first saw them, I thought they were horses) and chickens.  We had never stayed in a place quite like this before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how relaxing it was to sit on the porch and watch the livestock wander about.  And most surprising of all was how captivating the chickens were.
 

One of the girls

I’ve been inside chicken coups; they are noisy, malodorous and frightening places, and I never thought of a chicken as something I enjoyed the company of unless it was deep fried and on my plate.  So having these inquisitive fowls strutting and clucking around me was a strangely pleasant experience.  This turned out to be a good thing, because, writing wise, the week was a frustrating period of enforced slackerliness.  And it wasn’t my fault: I had great plans for the week, which involved getting up at dawn (when the rooster crowed) and writing a few thousand words on the new book before the day began, but the WiFi didn’t work.

The last time we were out in that area, I was disconnected for a week, so this time we booked a cottage with WiFi, but that turned out to be worse.  I was able to get on-line, the connection was fast, I could visit any web site (within reason—my wife was with me) and even stream videos.  All I could not do was access my e-mail.  There was no reason for this; everything else worked fine, it was just my e-mail that refused to work.  So every time I logged on, I checked to see if it was working yet, and then I tried cajoling it, reloading it, sneaking up on it until I made myself so frustrated I couldn’t write.  So after a few days I just shut the damn thing off and left it.

Now, another person (i.e. not me) might have resigned himself to not getting his e-mail and gotten on with the writing but, as we have already established, I am not that guy.  I mean, you can’t take someone’s e-mail away and not expect them to freak out, can you.
   

One of the many twee houses we saw in Herefordshire

All I can say is, thank God for the chickens.  Watching them strutting around, pecking and clucking, as the evening drew in, was unexpectedly soothing, like a dose of rural valium.  They each had their own personality and were each, in their own way, uniquely endearing.  They were curious about us, interested in what we were doing and often seemed to be trying to communicate with their coos and clucks and meaningful looks, especially the little red one, who took a fancy to us and followed us around, even into the cottage and the car, if we weren’t careful.

This was an epiphany for me, discovering that, although I have no great regard for chickens en mass, individually I find them engaging and really quite nice.  It’s sort of the way I feel about the French, though I can’t imagine they are anywhere near as tasty when introduced to the Colonel’s secret coating and dropped in hot oil.

The Coming of Autumn

The sky is that special shade of blue, the trees are starting to turn and the morning air is crisp and redolent with the scent of fallen leaves; autumn must be approaching.  This is the time of year I always associate with cider (real, cloudy, non-alcoholic apple cider) and apple-cinnamon donuts; even now—after ten years in Britain where I remain bereft of these familiar comforts—I still feel an ache of emptiness at their absence.
 

Autumn in the Carfax

In Britain, autumn has its own traditions: the reappearance of youngsters wearing school uniforms, the sudden overcrowding of the 7AM bus with sleepy teenagers on their way to one of the institutions of higher education in the Brighton area and the unwelcome availability of Christmas cards in every store from ASDA to Dixons.  The most enduring, however, is Conkers.

Conkers is a game children play in school involving horse chestnuts on a string and the subsequent banging of them together.  It is, I suppose, something you have to grow up with to understand.  My wife tells me that, in her day, this game was accompanied by hopscotch, jump rope and marbles as children returned to school and assembled in the play grounds.  In my day, we had jump rope and hopscotch, too, but I think all of those games, on both sides of the Atlantic, have fallen by the wayside, replaced by Xboxes, DS3s and iPods.  Only Conkers, it seems, remain, and I have to wonder why that is.  Is it because of it being so deeply ingrained in the British way of life?  Or is it because Health and Safety keeps trying to ban it, and the surest way to get kids to do anything is to tell them they can’t.
 

British school boys playing Conkers

Whatever the reason, Conkers, for the time being, at least, continues to remain an integral part of a British childhood.  This pleases me because, in my mind, Conkers has been woven into the fabric of the yearly cycled, and it serves as a signal, telling me when to start longing for cider, cinnamon-apple donuts, and The Tatter Digger.

As autumn traditions go, you will have to look hard to come up with one more esoteric than Tatter Digger Fights, but these were an important—and much looked forward to—part of my childhood.  Every autumn, the potato fields around our house were harvested by a gigantic, screeching, squealing and fearsome looking contraption called a Tatter Digger, and when it was left resting in the fields over night, it became our playground.  What we did was divide into two teams, with one holding the Tatter Digger like a fort, and the other dispersed into the dark field to plan and plot and launch attacks.

We used potatoes for weapons, as they are not as hard as rocks but still let you know when you’ve been hit.  Also, there were a lot of them lying about; the belts and conveyers and bins of the Tatter Digger were filled with them, and the field team had no problem gathering up an arsenal, even in the dark.  What The Tatter Digger Fight amounted to was a huge game of King of the Hill fought with potatoes and the prize being possession of the awesome machine.  Because of its seasonal nature, we played every night we could and stayed out until our moms called us in for bath time.
 

A Tatter Digger. And, you, those guys is farmers.

So I suppose, if it is my childhood I hear calling to me over the long years, perhaps I can recapture its essence by finding a potato field and sitting in the middle of it some evening.  Silly, yes; but I’ll have a better chance of achieving that than of getting a cup of real cider and a cinnamon-apple donut.