well, for reasons beyond me, and ones wisely well out of my control, a post called "Saturday" from a good while ago has all of a sudden become very popular reading here. far be it from me to prevent you reading more of the same, look you see, so here are some selected highlights of, as i think you will find the title indicates, another Saturday.
on this particular Saturday me and the family, or if you like the family and i, went on a travel into town. it was not, however, a travel via car or by train. no, we didn't fly. we, as is my way on a Monday to Friday basis, took the bus. all and sundry were quite excited about this.
we didn't just take the bus exclusively, of course. we were obliged to do some walking, in particular to the bus stop from which we would make our merry boarding.
oh yes, that is indeed one of them bags of pick and mix type sort of sweets that James has there. except that what he picked and what he mixed were effectively the same style and flavour of sweet, just with size variations. what were they? some sort of bubblegum flavoured thing. i tried one and, if i am honest, did not care for the taste at all.
McDonalds is not a taste that i am at all excited about either, in truth. as a food thing it is OK; it serves its purpose in that it has a reliable consistency and taste wherever you order in the world, and is of a reasonable price. the younger elements of my family, which would be "all of them" who are not me, do however quite like the cuisine offered by the big clown place, and so that was that for any sort of decision on where we would sit and have a spot of lunch.
what were we in town for? to buy an item or two. James in particular had good reason to purchase a gift for someone, but that would be a private matter, one which is not for me to reveal. i did not, as it happens, take all that many pictures of places we went, so be prepared - indeed braced - for a lack of shopping observations via the still image. there is one, mind.
was it all some sort of success? why yes it was. William had not been in to what one would call town before, so he was all excited. James is an old pro at it, after all our football adventures. my (considerably) better half has frequented it before, but keeps her thoughts to herself on the subject. which is, yes you are quite right, an unusual thing, but there you go.
he thought to stop and send me the occasional picture, which was nice. in particular this one, which i believe is now some sort of role model or other such aspirational figure in the life of Spiros.
yes, you are focusing on the correct element here. Sprios is indeed quite impressed by the tramp that is so clearly and patently trashed on something or other that he has simply decided to sit down and play a traffic cone like some form of trombone, or indeed vuvuzela.
as far as i know, dear reader, no, not yet. Spiros has not yet gotten to the state of alcoholic bliss where he too sits down and plays an official police item as some sort of musical instrument. there have been one or two close calls, but thus far he has only journeyed into the world of out of control alcohol consumption to the point on the map which found him fighting with himself in the middle of traffic. his aim is to very much live a life like the chap you see here, and as a friend all i can do is wish him the best and hope he reaches this dream. i might well send him some turpentine or similar to help him on his way.
sitting down, of course, is not the reserve or if you like preserve of drunken tramps who have happened to find a particularly enchanting traffic cone. at one stage of our travels the boys were particularly tired after a challenging bout of spending as much of Mummy & Daddy's money as they could, and so took to a bench to have a little bit of a rest.
that is indeed a tree protected by some sort of metal or iron fencing you can see there. our town, you see, is bordered by certain communities - squatter camps seems to be a more appropriate term than settlement or fellow town - that are not so much imbeciles and morons as they are misguided. they try to steal our trees in order to fashion some sort of special space rocket from them, in the hopes of landing "on" Luxembourg, which they believe to be a different planet.
why do they not use their own trees to this purpose? they got rid of them all, which in fairness they admit in retrospect they did rather hastily, when a mistranslation of an ancient text from the 1970s led them to believe that trees were both "wicked" and "French".
back to the shops, then, and it is not often that i am confronted with remembering old Stumpie and his "mistaken" shooting of a blonde lady, thinking it to be a black intruder, no less than four times. however, i saw this books was for sale very much in town.
it is very rare, as followers of this blog shall know from my book reviews, that i read any non-fiction, and i really cannot see me trying this one. i imagine it's going to be a tough and emotional tale for anyone that does read it. there's lots i could say, but instead let me leave it that i hope when Stumpie is brought back before the courts it is not all as farcical again and the lady in the picture gets some kind of actual justice.
onwards and indeed homewards, then. yes, we took the bus back home too, as you can observe in this very next picture, and a few more after that. two, i think.
why, you may well ask, did we take the bus when we have a perfectly good car, or if were all that bothered about not driving could have called a very affordable taxi, or even taken the train? because we could, that's why. it is weird the things you can take for granted. after twenty years of a dangerous, unreliable and generally avoid at all costs system of public transport, i am thrilled to find safe and reliable variations once more. yes, it's far from perfect and i fully agree with the calls to renationalise it, but it's still boss.
but what of the Gautrain that i loved so much, you asked? it was smart, but doesn't exactly go to many practical locations. anyway, with the leccy knacked, i suspect it rarely runs properly anymore.
away from that, then, and back to the world of Spiros. one of the most important aspects of what London has and calls "culture" is, of course, gambling. Spiros has taken to a world of the bookies with some passion and enthusiasm, it has to be said, but it is not perfect. he gets quite distressed by the fact that a gent may not drink booze or meths inside a bookies.
here is a picture of a pint that a chap has left outside as he went in to place a bet.
from what i recall, in Australia they sort of bypassed this problem of not allowing alcohol or anything intoxicating to be brought into a bookies by simply putting all of the bookies in pubs. it can only be a matter of time before Spiros works this out and, as a consequence, i will be sending you pictures of what he has been up to in Sydney, or Perth, or any of them other cities that they have there. Billabong or something, i suppose.
back to the bus, and one of them rare pictures in this world that features my (considerably) better half with me. yeah, it is one of them selfie things, except it isn't a selfie as such as someone else is in it.
indeed my hair is getting quite long, as i may have mentioned in an earlier post. i cannot recall when it was last of the length it is - probably when Guns N Roses were both recognizable and active. note i didn't say "when decent" because Chinese Democracy was/is pretty good. There Was A Time ranks, for instance, as being a great a song as anything else they have done. whoever was in the band.
a last picture, then, from our ride on the bus, and an image which might, or indeed might not, be familiar to Richard and Gillian, should they be reading.
it might not because, from what i recall, we all used to go in via the entrance at the back, or the rear if you like. i do not, as it happens, remember ever once going in through the front door that you can partially make out there, if you know what you are looking at.
and, as it were, there we have it. a mega ace great day out and about, really, and one that was very much a success. i can only hope and trust that your Saturday, indeed weekend entire, was also a most splendid thing.
that's a wrap for here, and just about the weekend. Bullseye repeats shall commence in a moment, so i am off to watch them.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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