Author: graybo

A grey and not particularly cheerful day outside, but inside, the good mood marches on.
Last night I went for beer with Fi, Alison and Sarah, as well as a few of their mates, and also bumped into Arron and GSWUTWBTB in W2. The triumvirate returned here for coffee post-pub and we discussed rye biscuits – it was one of those nights. Today we’re meeting up for lunch.

oh, and for those who are wondering, I’m trying to be a cool cucumber at the moment.

today I went to St Albans to give a lecture. quite good, although I’ve got a feeling I may have got myself a speeding ticket as I rushed up the A3 – bummer. at least there was a guy with a speed camera, and I was doing 85. not good.
St Albans is an interesting looking place – it was Sarah’s home town when she was small. Roman ruins, a cathedral, a bustling market, and a distinctly unchanged-for-years feel to the city centre – the branch of Marks and Spencer has very old-fashioned neon sign, the sort that the branch here dispensed with years ago.

last night: drinks with DA, Kearn, Paul F, Paul C and a couple of their mates. nice, to use a well-worn word.

I love piccalilli

highlight of the day so far in a work sense – the man from the Ministry dropping by to check us out for noxious pests. Looks ok, so that’s good.
Today is one of those busy days in which not a great deal is actually achieved – I need better time management. Or a holiday. Not sure which.

If things go as well as I hope they might, then I may just get to be in an even better mood than I already am at the moment. I’m not prepared to say any more than that at the moment, because I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but things are, as they say, looking up.

Bad day: yesterday my brother dropped something onto a can of luminous yellow spray paint that was in his car. The can ruptured. The inside of his car and everything in it is now covered in yellow paint.
Moral of the story: do not carry cans of yellow spray paint in your car without making sure they can not be damaged.

Barnham now has a speed camera – the most exciting development in the village since the arrival of the cash machine at the NatWest. Be still, my beating heart.

What is it that sometimes provokes us to remember things from yesteryear? I remembered an incident the other day which occured when I was around six or seven. I was on holiday with my family in Norfolk. We were staying at a cottage that belonged to a neighbour in Swaffham. On this particular day, we had gone to the market in the town (we led adventurous lives) and I was fascinated by the huge array of wares on display. I’m still fascinated by markets now, and could quite happily spend hours wandering around somewhere like La Boqueria (and have done so).
I stood before a particularly large stall which was weighed down with every variety of nut, bolt, screw, nail and other fixing you could imagine (where are stalls like that now? all you get these days is old tat). I was utterly transfixed by this. As I stood there, I reached out and took my father’s hand, and stared at all the boxes of steel, iron and brass.
I must have been like this, mesmerized, for three or four minutes, not letting go of Dad’s hand. I noticed someone close by was laughing, and turned to see that the hand I was holding wasn’t Dad’s, but was that of a older man, a total stranger, who was smiling at me. His wife was standing next to him saying something along the lines of “How sweet!”.
Panic. I looked round and couldn’t see my family, so started running in the general direction of the cottage where we were staying. And then I heard my Mother’s voice calling my name and ran towards them. I was in tears by this point and blathered some gibberish about “you weren’t there, and there was this man, and .. and..”
Mum produced a nectarine from a bag (I’ve always loved stonefruit) and I was soon appeased. I was angry they had walked off without me (they insisted they had called after me).
Looking back on it, wasn’t it good that you could let a child out of your site in a crowded place, and be pretty sure that no harm would come to him/her. Of course, plenty of children did have a terrible fate befall them in that sort of circumstance, but it probably didn’t cross my parents’ minds that such a thing could happen to me. Today, most people I know who are parents would be terrified to think that their child was somewhere like that and alone. That’s a sad reflection on life today – not so much that these horrible things happen (I’m sure they are not a new thing, merely better reported), but that we fear them so much.