Mad Dogs.

Well, Sri Lanka was ace.

More (much more) to come. But for now, Caruthers, it's time to relax....

NDC

Such A Perfect Place To Start.

Tomorrow we're off on another adventure, this time to far flung corners of The Empire.

Oh I love an adventure......

NDC

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

I’ve never really been a chap who keeps things based upon sentimental attachments. I’ve always felt that William Morris hit the rustic-style nail on the head with his quote that serves as title for this post.

I’m not really entirely sure why I have this deep seated desire to avoid clutter, but I think that The Dad was probably quite central to my views as he was at the other end of the scale. When he downsized from the home we grew up in to his bungalow a few years ago we spent an entire weekend and 3 skips clearing out just the garage. Edited highlights include:

• A roll of cream carpet that The Dad found in a ditch (and you could tell)

• A boiler that wasn’t working even when it was put in the garage in the first place

• Several offcuts of timber that were older than me

• Half of a large garden swing seat that last saw the garden in 1978

Some of these things actually had to be negotiated into the skip. His mantra was ‘it might come in useful one day’.

When he died I kept very little of his stuff. There is a set of plans for the last house that he built in a cardboard tube, a fireguard that he made as an apprentice piece and a roadsign. The roadsign is the only thing I know I won’t throw away.

The beautiful Mrs A and I were talking about such things during one of our morning chats the other day and I mentioned a weird thing that The Mum has had in her house for as long as I can remember. It’s a small, green china ashtray featuring a large cone (such as you might see on an old gramophone, but without the gramophone itself) and two pigs sitting and looking into the cone.

No, I have no idea either. I guess it must have been designed in the 60s during a particularly successful experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. Think Franklin Mint from a parallel universe and you’ll be about right.

Unfortunately, Mrs A mentioned my recollection of this ‘unique piece’ to The Mum when she met her for lunch yesterday.

Even more unfortunately The Mum got quite excited about this (apparently there is a big long list of Things I Don’t Remember from my childhood) and has confused ‘recollection’ with ‘wish to possess’.

I think from now on I’ll just have strong childhood memories of her nice car that she bought a couple of years ago.

NDC

Hello Sailor.

Today I had to head south on business, an appointment that didn't fill me with joy given the recent weather. I was delayed in setting off by an overenthusiastic German colleague wanting a chat about valves which did little to cheer me up.

However, by the time I hit a largely empty M5 the sun was shining, with barely a cloud in the sky apart from those clipping the tops of The Malvern Hills. I had some tunes on the radio and a road almost to myself.

The sun glistened off the wet tarmac and as I crossed the River Avon (which looked about four times the width it should be) I happened to check my wing mirror as I overtook a slower car. The spray from the surface water kicked up by my car caught the bright sunlight at just the right angle and it looked for all the world like a rainbow was shooting out of my arse.

Days like this can only be good, right?

NDC

The Life Aquatic.

This picture tells you a lot about me.

Not in the way that you might imagine - although I quite like a swim, I'm not what you'd call a regular swimmer, I've never been scuba diving in my life (although it's something I've always wanted to do) and I think the last time I actually I put on a mask and snorkel Jacques Cousteau was probably still bothering the fishes.

No, this particular item tells a story about my outlook on life.

The long suffering Mrs A and I were on one of our wandering around the town expeditions yesterday looking for travel guides (for a bit of a jaunt we have coming up very soon, more of which later), when I spotted it in a charity shop window display (not for sale, mind you. Just for decoration). I mentioned that it might be quite a useful thing for me to acquire, Mrs A pulled the 'what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you?' face, and the saga began.

We had a brief chat in the shop itself, I wanted to ask if they'd sell it to me but Mrs A has a pretty low threshold for public embarrassment and asked me very nicely not to, so I left it alone and we headed off to look at floaty frocks and confusing cardigans.

But the seed had set.

After a bit of discussion we arrived at a quite nice compromise - Mrs A would go and look at Nice Lady Things, whilst I went back to persuade the nice ladies in the charity shop to sell me one of their props. We'd meet up in the pub for a bite to eat. Happy days.

The reality of the conversation in the shop itself was not quite as easy as I had first anticipated however. The nice ladies had been replaced by a nice young chap behind the till, who had to get confirmation from the shop manager that he could sell the thing. Once this had been established he asked me to point it out in the window display so he got the right one.

I didn't say that there was only one mask and snorkel in the display so it'd be pretty bloody hard to make a mistake, but you can bet I thought it quite hard.

I played along and pointed it out to him, at which point the lad looked worried and came out to tell me that he couldn't sell it to me as it was part of the display. This was the point at which I realised he had learning difficulties and began to feel hugely guilty about my earlier thoughts. I pressed on regardless and reminded him that the manager lady had said it was fine to sell.

He reluctantly went back to double check, and once he was satisfied I wasn't trying to pull a fast one went off to get the gear from the window whilst I waited at the counter. It was at this point the situation really started to get away from me.

The chap arrived back at the counter with the mask, snorkel, a cheeery smile and flippers.

Massive flippers.

I told the lad that I didn't want the fins, just the mask & snorkel, but he was not to be dissuaded from his sale now. Each of my objections was met with a big grin and an "enjoy your purchase" statement. I decided that the best approach was to just shut up and buy the lot. My heart sank when he handed over the bag with half the fins still sticking out.

The thought of wandering across a busy pub on a Friday evening in a Midlands town 100 miles from the sea in the middle of winter with a pair of flippers sticking out of a plastic bag was too much even for me, so I headed out and handed over the flippers to a different charity shop 2 doors down the road. I strode up to the counter confidently and said to the nice old lady, in my best 'this-is-not-weird-in-any-way' tones, "Would you like my flippers?"

She took them off my hands, I breathed a sigh of relief and went to meet the beautiful Mrs A for a beer and a bite to eat, which was all rather nice.

This morning I realised that the mask and snorkel is for a child. Every day's a school day, eh?

NDC

Tales Of The Unexpected

My colleague is a funny old stick. He’ll be 50 in a couple of months and he’s one of the most engineery men I know (and given my employment background that’s no mean feat). He is logical and methodical and he likes a scientifically reliable fact.

Just recently he had been quite poorly and was been bemoaning the aches and pains and general inconvenience of it all. A couple of his desk neighbours had been badgering him to go to the doctor (a thing he seemed singularly unwilling to do). All the persuading and cajoling and pressuring came to an abrupt halt however, when he recently announced that he’d been made well overnight.

He explained that he’d gone to bed as normal in the evening and the following morning had suddenly felt entirely better. Nothing too unusual so far, until we got to his view of the reason for this sudden recovery.

The spirits did it in the night.

We asked how he’d arrived at this slightly leftfield reason for feeling better and he explained that when he’d gone to bed he’d been wearing his socks (with his pyjamas tucked in to them, mind you), but when he’d woken up in the morning HE NO LONGER HAD SOCKS ON (pause for dramatic music).

Now I know very little about either spirituality or medicine, but a sockectomy seems to be a pretty unusual activity for spooks or doctors to be involved in whilst working on curing a bit of a cough.

However, just to be on the safe side, he went to see the doctor anyway. I asked how it’d gone and he told me that the doc had said it was just a virus that his immune systems had sorted out and he just had to take things easy for a while.

He also told me that he’d asked the doctor if it might have been spirits that took the illness away. Apparently the doctor thought it quite unlikely.

Sometimes I worry that I’m just imagining these people.

NDC

Of Mice and Men

I know that those of you more organised than I (which means pretty much all of you) will have already made your New Year’s resolutions. I’m sure that you will have stuck resolutely to them, wavered and discarded them by now. Some of you may even still have one or two intact, in which case I salute your tenacity.

I, however, have only just got around to thinking about such things, which has a couple of positive aspects to it:

• They aren’t concocted in the alcohol-hazed aftermath of Christmas.
• I can say with honesty that I haven’t given up on any of my resolutions yet.

 So I am hereby committing my harebrained schemes to the ether.

1.  Travel

Last year we didn’t really get to too many places. This year some more weekends away are on the cards.

2. Get back into shape

I’ve been slacking terribly for a while on this front (as my half-arsed half-training debacle illustrates beautifully). I’m thinking that the backbone of this will be running 3 times a week, but there may be swimming and cycling involved too.

3. Wrestle a tiger

Well, everyone has at least one exciting but wildly optimistic New Year’s resolution and I figure that it might as well be super exciting if it’s not likely to happen. This is mine.

4. Dust off the camera

I’ve been letting my one and only creative outlet slip for a long time. I’m thinking that the 365 project may get another go, maybe with some themes along the way. All suggestions gratefully received (but only stuff that won’t get me arrested/sectioned/put on a register please).

5. Charidee

At least 2 things. Nuff said.

So that’s the plan. By December I will have interesting tales and images of foreign lands. I will be able to tell these tales without being out of breath and with a sense of balanced karma. Hopefully the scars from the claws will be healed too.

We shall see.

NDC