almost witty

Sorry I’ve been away for so long but I’ve pretty much spent the last six weeks with the good Miss R travelling the length and breadth of the UK - from Edinburgh to Somerset - to minimise our carbon emissions by not flying. Honest.

And now I’m back and trying to figure out what to blog about. It’s all such a distant memory…  but in the meantime, if you want an insight into what *really* scares me, look at this photograph…

"Middleaged" ?!

Originally uploaded by applegrass.

Whilst on holiday down in Somerset (typical, the sun shines brightly for four weeks in North Wales - as soon as we head out on a weekend away in England, the sun disappears!) we popped into the helpful tourist information office to enquire about accomodation.

The B&B owner enquired to the helpful young woman behind the counter about our age - to which the woman bashfully said that we were middle-aged.

MIDDLE-AGED ?!!! We’re barely into our 30s!

This has now of course prompted a 3/8 life-crisis and we are (seriously) spending the weekend going on helicopter rides and jet-ski-ing.

Honest. Pics to come. In theory. Depending on if we recover.

First off, sorry for disappearing from the digital world for oooh a month, but you’d be surprised how much time it takes to settle into a new fab home, complete with *two* washing-lines. And maybe a new houseguest, but I’ll tell you about that later!

Anyway, at the beginning of July it became time to move all my worldly goods up to North Wales. So I hired the biggest Transit van that I could get - which turned to be a bruised and battered white van which had to come all the way from Liverpool.

It being a hot summers day, I thought a big huge American-sized tumbler of Diet Coke would be just what I need before I started the four-hour journey down the motorways of Western England. So I drove into a nearby KFC drive-in. Neglecting the fact that it had a height-limit, and I had a huge Transit van.

Thus, the first warning I had about the sheer size of the thing was when I drove right into the handy mobile height-metre warning on the KFC drive-in. So I thought I’d better try to get out of the drive-in before I courted any more damage. But I didn’t want to run into the height-metre thing again - so I thought I’d just go a little forward and try to ramp my way out of the drive-in lane.

Another bad mistake, since I managed to scrape past a yellow post on the corner (leaving yellow markings all over the side of the van) mount the kerb and come down with a thud on the other side before I made it to the relative safety of a parking spot. Although it’s lucky I did that since the *roof* of the drive-in was just around the corner.

After that little incident, I drove to Cardiff and even managed to park outside my temporary flat without any further problems. Then I was invited to the pub - and as it was now dark and raining by now, I thought I’d drive the van down there. Spotted a parking space between two cars, thought I could get the van into there without a problem. Except not really.

Before I knew it, a man had come running out of the pub screaming “what the hell do you think you’re doing to my car?” - and on further examination, I was a wee bit too close to his BMW. Reversing the car revealed the awful truth - I’d made quite a few scratches on his precious car.

Once he had calmed down and realised I wasn’t just going to disappear quietly into the night, I popped into the pub where I saw my friend, grabbed a pen and exchanged insurance details. At one point I asked him who his insurer was, he muttered something about Glamorgan County Cricket Club, and I asked him why there. Both my friend and him looked at me as if I was mad or stupid. Which I may well be, but that’s another matter!

Anyway, details were exchanged, and the man left to carry on his drinking with his pals. Whereupon my friend told me with some glee that I had managed to scrape the car of not just anyone, but Robert Croft, captain of the Glamorgan County Cricket Club. Which makes it my second scrape, and my second scrape with a famous Welsh celebrity.

More moving disasters next time, once I gradually get my office set up!

Sorry for not entertaining y’all with words of wit and songs of erm… song but my life is currently the equivalent of four headless chickens wandering merrily down the M4 just waiting for the big truck to come and turn me into so much Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I’ve developed a pecuilar habit of suddenly mixing up my consonants, so that when I think I’m saying “sleeping like a log”, I’m actually saying “sleeping like a dog”. I did 8 hours of train travel on Monday (beat that, Joe!), and the eternal sunshine outside isn’t exactly helping. Yesterday one answerphone message gave me some slight hope for the future but of course I misintrepreted it with hilariously dubious consequences. Oh and I’ve lost my watch.

On the plus side, plans are firmly in place for a move up to North Wales for some point in early July. On the minus side, it’ll probably involve a huge convoy of truckers, and then the hunt for cheap/free furniture.

But I shall leave you with an example of just how scatty and disorganised my brain has become.

Last Wednesday, I had a meeting in London. So I jump onto the train, before realising I’ve forgotten the handy piece of paper that tells me where the meeting is. Not a problem, I think. I’ll just log onto work when I get to work and retrieve my email.

Not so simple. The computer refuses to log me in - indeed, I try three times and it locks me out of my account. The IT staff won’t accept proof of my ID unless I either fax them my ID or go up to their office in person. So no score there.

Next step - go up to reception and ask them if they know. The charming receptionist looks through all her papers but can’t find any mention of said meeting. But HQ is a big place, it might not be on the list.

Final step - call the switchboard, randomly pick the relevant department and hope the other person on the line knows where the meeting is. Thankfully, she does.

Unfortunately, it was the day after. I’d gone to the meeting a day early.

but this morning, I did something that I haven’t done for fifteen years. It was curiously and strangely satisfying basking in the glory of the sun, getting wet and dirty with it, and I look forward to years of doing it with Miss R.

Yes, I put some of my laundry out to dry on the washing line.

Ever since I left home at the tender age of 18, joys such as hanging washing out were denied me as I lived in a succession of student, then bedsit, then one-bedroom flats in city suburbs. With no garden or back space, I had to hang my damp clothes on radiators that would slowly turn dark with damp, and wait about a week before the clothes would dry out.

But when I moved into my new temporary digs, it not only came with a cool resident landlord and a huge airy room with jungle plants and wireless internet, it also came with a garden complete with washing line. So early this morning, I was taking my clothes out of the washing machine and hanging them on the washing line, juggling clothes pegs and sagging lines in the glorious sunshine. And lo it was good, working slightly in the sunshine. I stood back, and admired my handiwork as if I had personally handcrafted the Holy Grail of washing.

Fast forward four hours later, and it’s raining in Cardiff and my clothes are probably extraordinarily damp again. Sod’s bloody law.