and, indeed, bye there. au revoir, if you like. i shall soon, in a matter of hours in fact, be experiencing a lack of internets and networks or whatever it is called, that thing that lets you put a computer in touch with the rest of the world. "big massive wire" if you like.
i would imagine that the majority of readers here are friends and family, so they know only too well as to what is happening. for those who don't, well, ask, really.
i have recently courted some controversy with posts about boots and, most recently, the apparent aggressive tone of fruit juice producers. no such controversies shall stem from this blog for quite a few days, unless i think of something really provocative in the small hours of this next day.
for those who were affected by the accidentally controversial post i listed on boots ("anything that starts 'boo' is good", one commented), you may be even more affected to see that i was not kidding. off they go to face trial by the treacherous sea.
in there also, somewhere, is my stag. i left some discs in, including my magnificent theme song by my good friend Jonathan. if pirates seize the ship, bother to unpack, hook up my stag and hear the theme, i fear they may steal it for their own use. some, like for instance Roger Daltrey who seems puzzled that neither the Krays nor Ronnie Biggs got knighthoods whilst they were alive and probably expects them to get the nod in the imminent New Year's honours list, will probably think this is quite class. let them steal a Daltrey song, then.
with my stag packed up, off on an adventure with boots of yet to be determined worthiness, i am at somewhat of a loose end as to what to do for entertainment. or rather i was. i invented a rather class sport, or if you like form of entertainment.
i call it watching laundry dry.
it is a good deal more exciting than you may assume. i have learned of many interesting things as i have engaged in this new activity. well, just one really - surprisingly, towels dry a good deal faster than t-shirts do. i eagerly anticipated this being the other way around, so it is just as well that i did not wager any cash on this. well, no cash of consequence.
how do you do watching laundry dry? conventionally, i suppose. it is usually best to wash some clothes (or towels, but as my mate Fraser has explained with his tales of prison, towels can be clothes in certain, often unfortunate for the wearer, circumstances) and then hang them on a suitable drying apparatus, like a clothes line. then you watch.
i claim no ownership over this sport or spectacle. if you want to give it a go please feel free to do so, and equally feel free not to feel obliged to credit me or pay over money in royalties.
how have the boys taken to what their father has been up to? mostly rather well, and indeed to a great extent highly supportive. it's just that when my (considerably) better half and i explained to them that just about everything was being packed up and sent to sea, they said that they understood but did not, as it turns out, expect just about everything to be packed up and sent to sea.
they pretty much understand this now, and to a large degree the issues surrounding their expectations have, mostly, been resolved. probably.
with everything that we recalled needing to be sent off to face the challenges of the open oceans, and indeed closed oceans if there are any (i do not know and my atlas is in one of them boxes and i cannot be bothered to google), it was time to send them off by an initial trial by road.
with the roads here being what they are (feel free to seek out my "twats of the road" post), the trial by road could in fact be more tricky, if not more treacherous, than the trial by sea.
of the items that we had somehow forgot to mention to the removal chaps that they needed to take away, few if any provided much in the way of entertainment or solidarity. watching a stagnant side table, for instance, is not something which can compete with the glamour or prestige of watching laundry dry.
i turned to the newspapers then, and read several interesting advertisements in the classified section. one in particular, the one in the picture below that pertains to a lady of apparent Portuguese origins, provided some mild entertainment as i discussed it with my Staines based friend Spiros.
Spiros, as regular readers will be aware, has embarked on a rather interesting journey of self-discovery; one that sees him trying to imbue himself in the world of the tramps of Lambeth, Tooting and various other London suburban areas, swigging meths, Spesh and, on certain days of the week, McEwan's.
when i asked if there were any adverts like this available to him in London, he suggested that there were ladies not too different from the Portuguese one listed above at certain Travel Lodge hotels for a fee of around £60. i am not at all expert in such matters, but that strikes me as a rather excessive fee.
also, probably wrong. whereas i am not as well versed in the ways of this cockney rhyming slang business, i am fairly confident that they have no specific rhyme for £60 and thus they would not use this as a price for anything. i suppose they could use a convoluted combination of variations in number of "scores" and "monkeys", but in this kind of exchange i would imagine speed is of the essence and the use of a special cockney calculator may kill the mood and the moment.
sadly, or indeed happily, my life is just bereft of the glamour and excitement Spiros has in his world of Spesh, Travel Lodges as sleeping by a canal. it does, however, feature my (considerably) better half constructing furniture out of random items in a very A Team way.
observe.
that's a perfectly serviceable table she has constructed there from a box and some washing baskets. quite a vision she had to do that; i would have failed in any similar effort. it worked too, insofar as tables work instead of just sitting there looking impressive.
this one certainly served its purpose, as eating Nando's and McDonald's whilst sat at it proved to be a most excellent experience. perhaps, i would suggest, the best meal i have ever eaten off a cardboard and washing basket table dressed in a bin bag.
the astute will have observed a distinct lack of regular, obvious furniture in the above, with particular emphasis on sitting paraphernalia. that would be because my (considerably) better half has given all of that away, perhaps has some sort of misguided retaliation over what i did with my boots.
and just how do i entertain myself on an evening? i have been experimenting with a day/night variant of watching laundry dry.
so far, alas, the night end of day/night watching laundry dry has not been a spectacular success. whilst a level of humidity, indeed a reasonable amount of briskness to the air, makes drying laundry partially possible on an evening, it just does not have the spectator value. it could be that i am using the wrong, or indeed none whatsoever, floodlights.
thanks to the vagaries of UK broadcast times and this nonsense that is time zones i appear likely to be needing to be awake for the next 2 or so hours. i may get spectacularly bored and thus do another post just now.
however, if i do not, i think this will be the last post for at least 5 or so days, depending on connectivity and that, as well as how it goes when i face a distinctly equatorial trial by air. i will do the best i can to be online and updating soonest.
in the mean time, as ever, thank you for reading
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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