Off at a tangent

When I looked out the kitchen window this morning the duck’s head was in the middle of the path, again. I think it’s cats. That knock the head off. I’ve stuck it back on a couple of times but I think you probably need special glue for stone.

Anyway, come on Anna. Spit it out. It’s not like you to be coy. What have you done, you silly strumpet, that you think might make me ‘mad’? You know you can tell your Georgie. I am never surprised by anything you do. And I forgive you, in advance – for everything.
As long as you are well, that is all that matters to me. I can ignore your little peccadilloes.

You see, that’s the good thing about our relationship: neither us have any expectations. All relationships should be like that. If you have expectations you are setting yourself up for disappointment – or worse. People let you down. They can’t help it: they are human. So best not to expect them to be the way you think they should be. I have learnt this the hard way.

Talking of being let down, have you noticed how coffee always smells better than it tastes? Now why should that be? The aroma of fresh coffee promises so much; it is inevitable that the taste is a disappointment.


Oh, and whilst I remember, thanks for that piece about ‘The Waltons’. Yes, of course, I remember now. I must confess I am sometimes a bit lazy on the old research. No excuse. Slap on the wrist – or wherever takes your fancy, my Swedish siren.

I had my flu jab last week. Free of course on the National Health Service. I won’t do the joke about feeling a prick – but the nurse did hurt me this time. I told her so, too. She said, “ I have done 900 of these injections so I should be getting good at it by now.”
I didn’t quite know what to make of that, so I put my jacket on and left.

But I am going off at a tangent. That word ‘tangent’ reminds me of school geometry lessons, and Miss Hodge jabbing me in the ribs with that board rubbing-out thing – wooden it was – because I couldn’t do the problem on the board. She used to get you out to the front and make you stand looking at the blackboard (that’s not racist, is it?), and all the numbers and ‘figures’ would swim before my eyes, and my mind blanked out, and I wished the ancient wooden floor would collapse and send us all hurtling to our doom.
Those people who say school days are the happiest days of your life must have a bloody awful life.)

But I am being tangential again.

(I’ve suddenly had flash of déjà vu – I haven’t told you all this before, have I? You may find that I repeat myself from time to time – if I do, you must tell me.)

Glancing up from my typing, I see the family across the road returning from the supermarket, spilling out of the car, their arms full of plastic bags stuffed full of God knows what. I hope they haven’t been trying to buy booze because they have their fifteen-year-old daughter with them, and a lad of about ten. They go staggering up the drive like over-laden donkeys. The girl has a French stick, a yard long. At least I think it is a French stick. Not easy to discern from this distance. (I do have a good pair of binoculars, but it’s hardly worth the trouble of digging them out just to identify a French stick.)

I was thinking: the supermarket has replaced the church as the place to take the family on Sunday morning, (the Garden Centre comes into its own in the afternoon.)

Supermarkets! What happened to the old grocer’s shop? Like the one that we had in my village when I was a boy: sawdust on the wooden floor and a huge marmalade cat - it disappeared suddenly during the period of post-war rationing; my mother wouldn’t buy sausages for a month.

And Mr Hankinson, the ironmonger, in his brown overall. I used to love running errands to his wonderful Aladdin’s Cave of a shop that smelled of paraffin and candles: ten 1 inch nails in a paper bag; two sheets of sandpaper: one fine, one coarse; One six inch nail; a small tin of ‘scumble’ varnish; a pint of paraffin (bring your own bottle). I never knew why my mother needed all this stuff when she was baking.
(Ignore that last sentence, Anna: I put it in for “humorous effect”).

Where is that wonderful world now? All gone. Along with Diphtheria, Whooping Cough and National Service.

A bird staggers down the roof of Big Bill’s house. I don’t know his other name. I know his name is Bill, and he’s a big guy – so I call him Big Bill. Not to his face – I’ve never spoken to him.
I haven’t seen a bird stagger before. It looks drunk. But the roof is quite steep and is of tiles, not slate, (We’re not in Wales.), so there is a big overlap. Obviously this adds to a bird’s difficulty in negotiating the roof’s steep pitch.
I wonder what might be the evolutionary effect, on birds, of the gradual replacement of slate by tile as roofing material. Will natural selection favour those birds best adapted to the tiled roof?

But enough of this speculation.

Now, no more nonsense, my Scandinavian slapper (joking), I want a rapid reply telling me what this is all about.
Oh, and by the way, what’s all this about you lot burning rabbits to keep warm? I heard something on the news.


Just one incident in the life of George: I visited an osteopath (perhaps you call them chiropractor?) I’ve had trouble with my neck for a while. Anyway, it turned out that, like me, he was a drummer, so we had a pleasant chat about music. Then he broke my neck. Well, it sounded like that. He said I had 5 displaced vertebrae. I think he meant before he did that, rather than after.

Oh, and I have sorted out accommodation for us – so no worries on that score.

Your lover in waiting,

George

I have just seen the comment from the ‘French Lady’. She wasn’t trying to ‘correct’ but to enlighten.
I bet she’s a Buddhist.