i am, it seems, doing three or four things at once. tasks in their multiple, if you like - oh if there were a buzzword that combined "tasks" and "multiple" to throw around as something one is good at. actually, no one is good at it as such; just some are better at juggling.
this could then end up as quite a disjointed bit of posting, so apologies if required in advance. as more than a few of you really, really like these train things, i will try to make it a good one. it could, after all, be the last for a while.
but first, the present. sort of. you may recall my last post was about the jolly, billy-ho adventure i am about to have with the South African Post Office; an organization reluctant to work at the best of times. here i am, in good faith, posting the items.
i have every confidence that Royal Mail shall do their thing and get the items to South Africa. i have slightly less confidence that the SA end will deliver them on time, if at all. i would be delighted to be wrong.
there are a number of non-SA bound items in there too. well, two. i have every confidence that they shall arrive in good time, at the least.
onwards then, and indeed backwards to yesterday (or the day before yesterday if i only post this later than today, which is likely). i had reason, of sorts, for another train adventure. actually i could have gone by other means, but it seemed to make sense to do it all via train. so i did. but first, a stroll around the village.
yes, that road is indeed quite narrow, and yes indeed you can see two cars passing each other without quarrel or incident. they are good and polite drivers here, look you see. i am imagining a similar passing of cars on a road that narrow in Johannesburg. i sense a collision, that wall being knacked, the path being mounted, firearms and threats being drawn and a whole city brought to a standstill as everyone waits for the cops to come and do a gesture of a report and the tow truck companies to engage in fisticuffs, the winner presumably towing the cars away.
standstill, stop. think of what those words mean. now think when you hear on the news, or read in a newspaper, how stupid the speaker or writer must think you are if they decide to say "total standstill" or "complete stop". i have no idea what one would do with a phrase such as "partial standstill" or "slight stop". and don't get me started on "unique", rather look at a dictionary.
but enough linguistics, more images. i would have thought that some people around the world assume that wherever there is an village green in England there must be a game of cricket being played on it. not so, my friends, as this image shows off.
we wait until after morning tea, with scones and cream and a lovely preserve, before we take to a spot of cricket. this business of playing cricket before morning tea is some sort of ghastly, horrid notion come up with by the colonies as some sort of rebellion. it is also cheating; for if England played all their games after morning tea they would obviously win, every time.
right, i am tired. i am off to bed, taking a rest from all these tasks of a multiple nature i seem to be engaged in on a synnergy level or something. less is more, and all that. smarter not harder, if you like. more later, then.
some time passes.......
good morning, then. i am sat here with coffee and more than one task, but let me see what i can do.
also i am sat here with a new haircut and a much shorter, trimmer trimmed beard. no selfies of that yet, but of course there are one or two of me on my travels the day before yesterday. like this one.
yes indeed i am smiling in that picture, or at the least trying to. i thought it might be nice to try that instead of that usual sort of look i have in these selfie things. unconvinced that it has worked, but i have given it a try.
i would be pretty sure that very few of you are particularly interested in what's going on with that symbol of a failed life; the "i spotted Jimmy Hill" pencil off of the Viz. for those of you who are for some reason interested, the answer is no, not yet. in the mail i have not had my SAE delivered, so no pencil for me as of yet. if it does not arrive in the post today this will mean i face going through Easter without it.
a more pressing interest from many of you will be, i imagine, in if i have any pictures like the one above, only slightly different in so far as they do not feature me blighting, so to speak, the landscape. the answer, to the delight of many, is yes of course.
wow, it really is a beautiful part of the world that i am fortunate enough to call home. the purple haze tint that my blueberry camera has added for unknown reasons is nothing more than a bonus, i suppose.
another thing that a number of people seem to get all enthusiastic about would be video. specifically, to the point, no-nonsense video clips that do the job quickly. if you are one of the legion who see things this way, then here is a video for you.
here for your pleasure is a video of a tractor doing its thing. which is being driven about the fields by a farmer, of course, but you can see that in the clip. actually you can't as it is from a distance, but now that you know what you are looking at you can.
many of you may well find yourself singing One Man Went To Mow A Meadow as you watch the above, and that's fine. if i had either the technical know how, the actual name of the song or as point of fact the copyright permission i may well have dubbed that jolly tune onto the clip for you.
One Man Went To Mow A Meadow was, of course, basically the celebrated and to some highly successful basis of the Conservative Party's brilliant idea of fixing unemployment in the 1980s. well, fixing unemployment in that "unknown and unmapped" area of the country north of all known civilization, which for most Conservatives seems to come to an end in the upper regions of Watford. they took it as a given that it was just all big fields, full of huts and that, where sheep and cows roamed. meaningful employment, then, was "likely" if everyone in these wastelands simply took a bike, pedalled to a field and mowed it. nice one, cheers for that.
hey ho, moving on then, and another picture of me, and again i am trying to do that "smile" thing; that one that makes the world go around more better than if one did not smile, i am led to believe.
apologies, if you wish them, for all the me, moi and indeed i nature of some of the pictures, then. for some reason some people quite like seeing me and how i am getting on, although i would think more just want the adventures and the bits that are not me.
to that end, my battles with time and distance, in particular with regards to what google assumes about a combination of the two, seem to continue. my walk to the train station this time around saw me arrive even earlier than the last one, despite a good deal of faffing around on the high street and around the green. i can only assume the lack of me stopping to have speaks with anyone was at the heart of how i managed to somehow beat time.
how fortunate, then, that one of the shops in the village provided me with some reading material to pass the time.
no, this would not usually be the sort of thing i read. however, the shop was offering this current edition of this magazine at less than 25% of the cover price. words are words, really, when you think about it, so this was very much a case of "aye, that'll do". especially as it worked out a good deal cheaper than the majority of newspapers on offer.
as it turned out, however, words are not just words, after all, and i found the content of this magazine to have little in it that caught my attention. my (considerably) better half rather likes it, so it was far from a total waste. in fact it seems to have generated a rather good return on investment in the grand scheme of things. it just did not do the job that i wished it to do in respect of making the minutes move away full.
i had to, then, mess about with the camera and that on the blueberry for some entertainment, which meant i had a go at some sort of "artsy" if not symbolic images. like, for instance, this one.
yeah, not too artsy really, but then again i made no claim of being artsy or any sort of artist.
although i do try, i suppose. like, for instance, with this next picture of some train tracks. and no, i am not going to go off on one about vanishing points again; for that you are most welcome to go back to the other train adventure i recently had and read all about it.
it is quite class and trusting that one can access the tracks if they so wish, is it not? the warning sign about not doing it is, however, usually enough to prevent people from doing so. that and a natural sense that messing about on a railway line is an ill-advised thing to do. rather refreshing to be given the choice to be stupid; no fences or walls exist to stop you from following that path.
is this post as disjointed as i feared, suspected and warned? perhaps, so let us mix it up some with a look at how all that quitting / cutting down considerably on the smoking front is now going.
quite possibly not at all that well, but then again not entirely as bad as the above picture says. although look how nice and distracting all them lovely Spring flowers, daffs i believe, are.
cut down a lot, really, but yes i confess i could be cutting down a good deal more. i shall try and renew my efforts in this respect, honest.
electroniky cigarety is indeed, as point of fact, helping me and indeed my (considerably) better half to cut down on the less electroniky, more expensive ones. so that's a step in the right direction, at the least.
for those of you with an avid interest in the world of video content on a blog like this then here is another one that you can watch and, indeed, listen to. following on from the clip of a train leaving a station in the last post on this subject, i thought for some reason that you might want to see one arriving.
i am uncertain if the above is of any use at all to the more trainspotting member of this mostly fine world of ours, but if it is well then so much the better. i suspect that they would rather be out spotting the trains in person, as that seems to be what the hobby is all about, but this might do for those times when one cannot get out and do it themself.
did i feel somewhat slightly anoraky standing and filming this? of course, yes i did. but this is hardly anything new to someone who, for instance, sees it as a good idea to try and get a "free" pencil off of a magazine. deary me, this life i lead can be quite overwhelming and grind me down sometimes. i should, and in fact do, know better, but onwards i go with it.
as for why i was off into town on a train adventure once again, well, it was to conduct a little bit of business. business that, alas, means that train adventures in the future will be limited - possibly not happening much at all, really. i went to buy one of them bus pass things, look you see, to assist me in my travels.
whilst the sad and upset ways of the above sink in, why not distract yourself with a look at town bathed in the blue sky and sun that Spring has unleashed. no, i can't remember why i took this picture, so that description of it will have to do. oh look a traffic light.
i would love nothing more at all than to be riding the train tracks on a regular basis. it is cheaper, faster and a good deal more comfortable. the harsh, hard and stark reality of it all is, sadly, that the trains simply do not run at a time that i need to travel. it would be amazing if i were in a position whereby i only had to start travelling at 10am each day, but there is no such amazement for me, dear reader. or many others, really, which explains why twice i have been the only person at the station waiting for that service.
the bus is sometimes fun anyway, and gets me where i need to be pretty close to the time i have to be. it also allows me to play the class "famous person" spotting game pioneered by my mate Jeremy, but i cannot disclose further details of that here. and no it is not that Jeremy, not the lippy one off the TV that does the cars and that. a proper, real person of the same name is who i speak of.
my chum Spiros, you will be pleased and relieved to hear, is still wrestling with how to go about getting a suitable, lifestyle matching haircut. to this end, i decided to take another picture of the Turkish barber that he is currently stil considering coming up here to contract the services of.
we all, and indeed they, hope that Spiros makes a decision on where best to get his hair done soon. they cannot, i suspect, keep reserving a chair for him all day every day in the hope that he turns up.
you may have worked this out already, but i did not take all that many pictures as i was out and about this time. i sort of somewhat forgot to do so, but also my battery was running reasonably low. sorry about that.
i did at least take a picture of the station down town for you, basked as it is in the sunshine of the earlier image.
on the train back i did, i must confess, get a little bit camera happy. sadly the happiness was not matched by any sort of ability on the behalf of the blueberry camera. the time between me pressing the "take picture" button and the picture actually being taken was of a wild google nature and i missed various landmarks as a consequence. whoops, sorry.
i did however, i think, take a much more better image as i went through Nunthorpe this time. i had a particular request to do so, and it was a request that i was very happy to meet.
all them cars and that stuck there are victims of really bad luck. as trains only pass this way at the most six times a day, how unfortunate that they should happen to be on the road and heading across the railway line crossing at a time when the train takes moments to pass it. no doubt a number of the drivers were distressed about their misfortune; perhaps one or two even got quite cross about it.
mindful of the distinct and real possible chance that this could be the last train adventure i have for a while, i decided to be brave and bold, dear reader. yes. i took a selfie of myself on the train itself, figuring if anyone did not like it then that was more their problem than it was mine.
indeed no, i seem not to be doing that smile thing this time. see it, if you like, as a moment of sad reflection on the possibility that i will not be on the train again any time soon.
so goodbye, then, dear train. thank you for the wonderful, comfortable and very nicely priced transportation that i needed to have. i do hope that i get to ride in this way again soon.
a picture, then, of the train pulling away in its gentle ways, leaving the station.
but the above, of course, does not mark the end of this particular blog post. not when i have uploaded some more pictures (well, one more) and, indeed, another video for your further viewing pleasure.
why is it, you may ask, that i mess about with buses and trains when i have a perfectly good car at my disposal? those of you who know me are quite aware of the answer. i do not like driving, and driving really does not care at all for me. others have a better relationship with it all and that's great for them. i prefer to live a life as free of car use as possible, and in no way does that mean that i am better or worse than anyone who does opt for a more car using way of life.
here then is a video of a bit of river doing its thing.
feel free to relax, unwind and indeed chill as you watch the gentle flow of a stream right there. that's kind of why i put the video here, but i won't get upset if you ignore it. not that i will know if you ever play it or not.
a last picture, then, of the road back home. looking, if i say so myself, lovely in the sun.
and that, dear reader, is just about that. off i go now then to do a task or two of a multiple nature once more, including as point of fact seeing to see if i can think of one word that covers a description of doing a number of tasks all at once.
i can only hope the odd element of this post has been of interest to someone somewhere!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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