You’re having a laugh (I hope)

Good morning all. It’s Wednesday so my guest blogger, Rambler5319, is going to take over for some humour to start your day with.

 

After the last two weeks on Genetics & Education I thought I might have a more light-hearted post this week.

Many thanks to Sam Ignarski and his E-zine Bow Wave for permission to reprint these gems taken from his website.

(For any of you with an interest in the Shipping, Insurance & Container fields, this is one website you should visit: http://www.wavyline.com/current.php)

Here we go then. Enjoy!

Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at £2500 per month.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. Now she’s 97 years old and we don’t know where the heck she is.

I joined a health club last year, spent about £400. Haven’t lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there.

I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I’m doing.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

And last but not least: I don’t exercise because it makes the ice jump right out of my glass.
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THE FINAL WORD ON NUTRITION (IN ENGLISH)

After an exhaustive review of the research literature, here’s the final word on nutrition and health:

 

1. Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 2. Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 3. Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 4. Italians and French drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 5. Germans drink beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 CONCLUSION:

 Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

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Four old retired guys are walking down a street in Yuma, Arizona. They turn a corner and see a sign that says,

“Old Timers Bar – ALL drinks 10 cents.”
They look at each other and then go in, thinking, This is too good to be true.

The old bartender says in a voice that carries across the room, “Come on in and let me pour one for you! What’ll it be, gentlemen?”

There’s a fully stocked bar, so each of the men orders a martini. In no time the bartender serves up four iced martinis – shaken, not stirred and says, “That’ll be 10 cents each, please.”

The four guys stare at the bartender for a moment, then at each other. They can’t believe their good luck. They pay the 40 cents, finish their martinis and order another round.

Again, four excellent martinis are produced, with the bartender again saying, “That’s 40 cents, please.” They pay the 40 cents, but their curiosity gets the better of them. They’ve each had two martinis and haven’t even spent a dollar yet.

Finally one of them says, “How can you afford to serve martinis as good as these for a dime apiece?”

“I’m a retired tailor from Phoenix ,” the bartender says, “and I always wanted to own a bar. Last year I hit the Lottery jackpot for $125 million and decided to open this place. Every drink costs a dime. Wine, liquor, beer – it’s all the same.”

“Wow! That’s some story!” one of the men says.

As the four of them sip at their martinis, they can’t help noticing seven other people at the end of the bar who don’t have any drinks in front of them and haven’t ordered anything the whole time they’ve been there.

Nodding at the seven at the end of the bar, one of the men asks the bartender, “What’s with them?”

The bartender says, “They’re retired people from Scotland, They’re waiting for Happy Hour when drinks are half-price.”

 

Needs Funds

Merci Paul Dixon

A young man was having some money problems, and needed £200 to get his car fixed and roadworthy again. But had run out of people to borrow from.

So, he calls his parents via the operator, and reverses the charge and says to his father. “I need to borrow two hundred pounds,” he says.

At the other end, his father says, “Sorry, I can’t hear you, son, I think there may be a bad line.”

The boy shouts, “Two hundred. I need two hundred pounds!”

“Sorry, I still can’t hear you clearly,” says his father.

The operator cuts in, “Sorry to butt in, But I can hear him perfectly clearly.”

The father says, “Good. YOU send him the money!”

 

Quips and Quotes

Sales clerk to customer:
“These stretch pants come with a warranty of one year or 500,000 calories… whichever comes first.”

Woman huddled under blanket on deserted, wind-swept beach to husband: “Tell me again how much money we’re saving with this off-season deal.”

Man is the only animal that goes to sleep when he’s not sleepy and gets up when he is.
–Dave Gneiser

A good answer is what you think of later.
–Sam Ewing

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application.
–Ken Kraft

No one appreciates the value of constructive criticism more thoroughly than the one who’s giving it.
–Hal Chadwick

My wife and I have structured conversations:
firstly, she gives me her opinion, then she gives me my opinion.

I’m weird, but around here it’s barely noticeable.

The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she’d have children if she had it to do over again. “Sure,” she replied, “but not the same ones.”

Everyone should have a spouse, because there are a number of things that go wrong that one can’t blame on the government.

I accept good advice gracefully —
as long as it doesn’t interfere with what I intended to do in the first place.

I wrote this poem about 15 years ago in Ireland. In those days, that country was so strict you used to have to smuggle condoms through the airport in bags of heroin.
–Punk poet John Cooper Clarke

Never hit a man with glasses.
Hit him with a baseball bat.

Thesaurus: ancient reptile with excellent vocabulary.

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action. –Goethe

I like pigs.
Dogs look UP to us.
Cats look DOWN on us.
Pigs treat us as EQUALS.
–Winston Churchill

Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.
–Frank Crow

If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at maths.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

If things get better with age, I’m approaching magnificent!

You’re so open-minded, your brains fell out

You might as well take all of me — the parts you want aren’t removable.

I have an open mind — it’s just closed for repairs.

At least dogs do what you tell them to do. Cats take a message and get back to you.

I’ve gotta be me — everyone else was already taken.

Do not meddle in the place of dragons … you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.

We occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry on as if nothing happened.

 

One hello and one goodbye

Let’s start with the goodbye first. It’s a goodbye to my faithful little HTC phone. I have had lots of happy times with it. It has served me well for time telling, text messaging, phone calling, photograph taking, WordPress posting, Facebook checking and many other exciting things.

It was my first phone with a big screen. Previously, I’d been all into the clicky-buttons phones, sniffing haughtily at these ‘fancy new phones’ that were like mini computers. Just get a computer, thought I.

Well! I needed an upgrade as my clicky-buttons phone was caving in from oldness. The extremely young looking boy in the shop convinced me to get a big-screen phone. And it was like a revolution in my mind! What’s this? I can play music? And watch YouTube? And see when there are comments on my blog? And check emails? And play a game where you kind of tip the phone up and a little ball rolls around? Epic!

I was immediately converted. I jumped into the big-screen-phone gang with both feet.

And then, um, I, um, I kept dropping it. Um. Yeh. And it slowly got less and less efficient. And I kept needing photographs of every. little. thing. And it started going really slowly because I had taken a thousand million hundred photos (approx.). And I had had it for over two years which, in phone years, is, like, I dunno, a million years or something?

On Thursday, it was time to address this issue. This old-battered-phone issue. I went in the shop prepared for a lot of chitchat and signing things. Ten minutes later, I emerged with a beautiful slick Samsung SomethingOrOther which I love. I don’t have the history that I have with my HTC but the early signs of love are brewing in my heart for this new beautiful Samsung.

Now for the hello. It’s a big hello to the new Whole Foods in town.

I tried, people! I tried to be like, “Urgh! Whole Foods! They’re so big and take-over-the-world-y.” But then I went in there and I quite liked it. I was mighty confused about what to get for lunch because there was so much being thrown at me. I could have hot/cold/salad/soup/burger/burrito/fruit/biscuits. I just didn’t know where to look. I picked up a yoghurt after a while and wandered around like a lost child trying to find my friend.

I scoffed at their silly signs about how much they’d done in the local community since arriving and complained about the limited seating.

Then this rush of warm fuzziness rose up as if from nowhere and I realised I was loving the new Whole Foods. I very nearly bought one of their shopping bags made from recycled materials because I was so caught up in the moment. The staff were smiley and cuddly, like baby pandas. And the food looked wonderful. And the people in the fruit section were trying to offer me samples of their freshly whizzed smoothies.

And now, unfortunately, I love the new Whole Foods. Dammit.

Q is for…

QUESTION & ANSWER

Readers, we are going to have a little question and answer session, you and I. Well, we’re going to improvise a little. Rather than me actually sit round and wait for you to write questions in the comments section and then only get one anyway, which is like, ‘what’s your favourite colour?’ I’m just going to ask myself some questions that I think you might have asked me.

1. What was the most interesting thing you did yesterday?
Put some paper in the recycling bin out the front of the house.

2. That doesn’t sound very interesting. Why was it interesting?
Because I was dressed in my pyjamas, no shoes on, hair resembling a lion’s mane. And the front door closed and locked me outside.

3. I see. Hasn’t this happened to you before?
Yes. I had a pan on the hob at the time, pickling some chicory. There was no spare set of keys that time so I had to break into the house. This time, however, I knew it would be fine because two of my neighbours have copies of the keys. I specifically gave them to people I know don’t go out often.

4. And did you go and get the keys from one of them?
Well, I went next door first and knocked on her door. When there was no answer, I knocked again. The possibility that she was not there had not even entered my mind. After the second knock and a long wait, it became clear that she was not in. As I went back to my front door to make a plan B, a courier van pulled up outside and a man holding a parcel got out and approached the house. I stood there, helplessly, in my pyjamas and signed where he asked me to. Embarrassed, I explained that I was locked out and took the parcel he gave me, like a right divvy.

5. But Laura, of course you were wearing lovely pyjamas, weren’t you? Think Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I’ve got it, right? Cute, delicate, a bit sexy?
Readers, this is where I must disappoint you for this is far from the truth. Only a blind person would think that my pyjama-ed state yesterday morning resembled Audrey. For the truth of the matter is that I do not lounge around the house luxuriously, wearing eau de parfum and serenading playboys who live upstairs. I do not wear ‘silky numbers’ or sheer satin which clings to me in all the right places. The truth is that yesterday morning I was wearing a desperately unflattering pink number. I had long dark pink shorts, of a kind of cottony material which loses its shape after a few washes. They had a silly pattern of kiss marks all over them and were saggy around the knees. The t-shirt was probably the most atrocious thing about this outfit. It had once hung nicely and not made me look awkward and ill shapen and saggy-boobed. Once. But now it is old and faded and does all of the above. It also makes me look like I weigh about fifteen stone.

6. What did you do after you got the parcel?
I dumped it outside the door and faced the truth that I would have to go to my other neighbour’s house to get the key. Off I went down the road, shoeless, wild-haired, ugly pyjama-clad, in search of a key. I knocked at the door and my heart started to sink as the pause grew longer. I looked for his car, which is always there as he never goes out. And yep, sure enough, today was the day he had gone out.

7. So what did you do next?
There was only one thing for it. I needed to be able to call Danda and ask him to let me in. But I didn’t have my phone with me. I would have to walk to the end of the road, go in the deli (where I work, by the way) and use their phone to call Danda. Off I went again. And I’ll remind you again of my attire. Wild lion hair? Check. Saggy t-shirt which makes you look obese? Check. Stretched out pyjama pants with kiss marks all over them? Check. No shoes? Check. O, and I should probably add here, a little fuzzier than I’d have liked. My little stubbly legs stuck out the bottom of my pink shorts, pale from 7 months of winter and not yet defuzzed for the approaching summer. So there I am, like the trampiest hobo you ever seen in your life ever, walking down the road to the deli. I bit the bullet and just walked in, head down, and headed through the shop, inbetween the tables of coffee drinking mothers and espresso drinking suit-wearers having business meetings and went straight to the stockroom. The staff in there turned and, inevitably, fell about laughing, probably shocked at what a tramp I clearly am at home. I used the phone and called Danda, back to back, about five hundred times. Because, obviously, the one time in the day when he’d left his phone somewhere was the time when I needed him. He was in a shop and his phone was in his cab. He eventually picked up and said he’d be ten minutes. I waited in the back then heard a beep as he pulled up outside so I ran, with what dignity I had left (none) and jumped into the cab and was sped off home to pretend this all never happened. Danda, by the way, laughed uncontrollably when he saw me.

8. Good one. I had no idea you were such a nonce.
Well, readers, there you have it. I am, in fact, a big fat nonce. And when I got home from this pyjama-related trauma, I had a text from a friend saying ‘Good look.’ It turns out he’d been in the deli and witnessed my indescribable shame first hand. Brilliant.

9. Is there a silver lining to this story?
There is. I am going to Italy tomorrow and I think, with distance, I can start to heal. I’ve unofficially diagnosed myself with Post Traumatic Pyjama Disorder. I think that’s an illness, right?

F is for….

FLIGHT

I had a bit of a random dream last night and since you guys are pretty good at working them out, I thought I’d share it with you. It was obviously influenced by the fact that I watched that film, Flight, last night.

I seemed to be on some type of trekking journey somewhere, I think to find the plane. There were four of us, a woman, a man and a boy, about twelve years old, I think.

Two of us got into one of those small two seater paragliders and the others got into a bigger one with ten other people already on it. I had my phone and was filming the take off. We circled past the other plane then came out across an open delta area, all vivid blues and greens that, when I think about it now, reminds me of aerial photos I’ve seen of the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

We swooped lower and there was a big deep bit of water, like a huge lake. All four of us jumped in from our planes and started swimming to the edge. It took quite a while.

When we got out, we were on a busy shopping street in a town and we made our way to a cafe and then upstairs to a room above it. We were watching the videos I took on my phone of the first minute or so of the flight when the boy and the woman started to get really ill and shivery. I was hugging the boy and trying to warm him up and talking about how the water in the lake must have made them ill.

Then I woke up.

Danda, the phone and the dinner

Life with Danda is filled with fun. There are days out, there are long evenings talking nonsense and watching films, there are walks filled with Danda’s extensive knowledge of history, there are occasional bouts of cleaning and, weather permitting, lots of him gardening and me drinking tea and watching. Omygoodness, there is tea. So much tea. You can never have enough tea. But most of all, life with Danda is filled with hilarity. Stomach-clutching, eye-watering hilarity. Let me demonstrate.

Danda and the dinner
The other night, Danda offered to make the dinner. I’d like to think it’s because I had been working hard that day and was tired but I was probably just being lazy. We did one of those easy put-a-load-of-stuff-in-the-oven dinners. So I sat in the front room drinking tea, reading a book and listening to the sounds of Danda making dinner.

After about half an hour, he went to the oven to check and shouted that it was ready. I arrived in the kitchen and pottered around getting cutlery etc. As I turned around to collect my plate of food Danda had the two plates in front of the microwave as the microwave pinged.

In a moment of madness, he reached behind the plates and pressed the ‘open door’ button. The door did indeed open… sending one of the plates of food out at a hundred miles an hour before leaning gently to the floor and landing, surprisingly, facing upwards. The problem came with the speed that the plate hit the floor causing the fish and mushrooms to keep moving while the plate had stopped.

The plate that dropped, by the way, was mine.

Employing the three second rule, I whipped the food up off the floor quicker than you can say ‘clumsy’ and handed back to Danda to defluff.

I honestly couldn’t tell it had taken a little trip southwards as I ate it but, once Danda had got over his annoyance at himself, it was difficult to eat dinner because we couldn’t stop laughing about his casual lean around the plates to open the microwave door!

Danda and the phone
On Wednesday, Danda and I went to see Argo (fabulous, by the way). For those of you not in the UK, I don’t know if you get this thing called Orange Wednesdays. But basically, there is a phone company called Orange and if you are with them, you can text them on a Wednesday and they will send you a code to get two for one at the cinema. We have an old phone with a sim card in for Orange. Neither of uses it as our normal phone so this old phone sits in a drawer all week until Wednesdays, when we let it out.

So two days ago, Wednesday, I came home from work, turned on the Orange phone and sent the text to get a code. Until Danda came in, the phone was sitting on the table. When he came in, there was a flurry of phones and keys and purses, as the film was starting soon.

We walked to the cinema, it is only about fifteen minutes walk away. We got there with about ten minutes before the film would start.

“Two for one to see Argo please,” we told the boy behind the counter.

“Yep. Have you got your Orange Wednesday code?”

Danda turned to me. I checked my pocket. It wasn’t there.

“You must have it,” I said with certainty.

He checked his jeans pockets.

“I haven’t.”

My face dropped. I had made a point of tapping my pocket before we left and saying “Got the phone!” O man. I whipped off my jacket, held out my hands for the keys and said, “I’ll have to run back and get it.”

“No,” said Danda. “We’ll go together.”

I tried to insist on him letting me run back but he said we’d walk back together.

“Hold those tickets!” we told the boy and sped off out of the cinema and round the corner.

Laughing at ourselves, I mused aloud what had happened to the phone.

“I seem to remember something. Something about the phone and you keeping it or me keeping it. I had it in my pocket, remember? Where can I have put it?”

Danda chuckled good-naturedly, for he is a forgiving soul and wouldn’t hold it against me. It was a little chilly, so he put his hands in his coat pockets as we walked…..

And found the phone.

Yep.

It was in Danda’s pocket all the time…..

After a severe bout of laughing till we almost wet ourselves, we turned and ran back to the cinema. The film had almost started by now. We arrived a little out of breath, the same boy looking at us. We had only been gone about three minutes.

“It was in his pocket the whole time!” I exclaimed loudly, pointing at Danda.

At least I was in the clear….

P.S. I’ve got some time free today so will be on to some world-saving. I’ll report back tomorrow.

Danda and me and Hide And Seek

So, to understand the fabulousness of this story, I need to tell you about the history of Hide And Seek in our house. For some absurd reason, whenever I hear Danda’s key jangling as he approaches the door to come home, I have to hide. I have to. It’s like a compulsion. I can’t help it. Sometimes if there’s not time for me to find a real hiding place I’ll just throw a coat over my head and crouch down in the middle of the floor. On times like these, Danda play-acts not knowing where I am, then I leap out and yell ‘Boo!’ and he asks if the joke is over now and can we please be grown ups.

But so overwhelming is this compulsion to hide, like a small child, that I have hid when I thought I heard his car arriving back. I was so sure it was him that I quickly nipped out of the back door, holding it gently closed. And I waited. I listened. I waited. And I shivered a little, for it is cold in that little section of the house, which is basically like being outside.

Inevitably, he did not come in because it was not his car I had heard.

Sometimes I am upstairs when I hear him come in so I dive under the bed. Danda often forgets about me hiding and when he sees I am not downstairs, he simply puts the kettle on and sits down to watch the news. At times like these, I have to call him to remind him. The phone call usually goes something like this:

Danda: “Hello?”
Me: “Come and find me!”
Danda: “O! I thought you’d gone down to the shop.”
Me: “….noooo. Come and find me.”

He will then come upstairs and find me and we turn back into adults and continue our evening.

Well tonight, ladies and gentlemen, tonight I excelled myself. When I heard Danda approaching the front door, I ran into the front room and looked around. I’ve done every hiding place at least twice but this evening I hid somewhere new. I squeezed a little space inbetween the computer desk and the big comfy chair and I crouched in there silently.

Danda came in, looked in the kitchen and front room and didn’t see me and, remembering my recent phone call, checked upstairs, under the beds and in the bathroom. Upon not finding me, he thought I must have popped to the shop and re-entered the front room to turn the fire on.

It was at this point, with his guard lowered and not expecting me to be home, that I chose my moment and emerged from between the furniture shouting “BOOOO!” like a madwoman. I must confess, the longer he went on without finding me, the more my excitement built. I couldn’t wait to jump out and surprise him! Hence my almost-scream of “Boo!” when I saw my moment arrive.

Danda gave a startled “Aah!” then clutched at his heart and sat down heavily on the sofa laughing and just about staving off the heart attack from shock that threatened to take hold.

It took about twenty minutes of breathlessness and sitting quietly to recover from this one.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what keeps me happy day to day. Little pockets of fun such as this. I derive immense joy from a successful hide and seek escapade and am thinking about putting it on my CV as a ‘life skill.’

Try it one day. I dare you. When you hear your nearest and dearest fumbling about at the lock with their keys, just run and hide somewhere. Anywhere will do. It doesn’t have to be especially inventive. I go through long periods of hiding in the same place every day. It doesn’t matter. It’s the potential for fun which counts.

To my dearly departed Kindle

Last night, my Kindle – and my heart – broke. I am sad. Almost too sad to write. But not quite.

I put it in my bag yesterday morning and took it with me on the train to Cambridge to visit a special birthday girl. I opened the cover and looked at it. It had the battery empty symbol on it. I was annoyed. I had been looking forward to getting stuck into A Tale Of Two Cities. O well.

I had to wait until I got back home today to plug it in. This I did, at about 7pm. When I looked at it about half an hour later, there were lots of lines and white patches all over the screen….

My heart sank. This happened to my first Kindle. The one I have now is a replacement after the exact same thing happened. I called Amazon up and they can sort me another one but I have to speak to someone in the office when it opens on Monday about seeing if they can do it on my warranty.

Readers, I’m sad now. All the joyous celebrating after completing my first ever Nanny Rhino successfully within the deadline seems to have been forgotten. I am just very sad.

I miss my Kindle already….. (Yes, I have the Kindle app on my phone, but that’s not the point, alright?!)

The reality (?) of mobile phones

It’s my guest blogger’s turn to take over today. Enjoy!

 

Last week I went to the supermarket. Nothing strange in that except what should have been a straightforward, weekly event for me turned into a nightmare. How so?

Let’s begin with the car journey: it’s less than 1 mile. There is one set of traffic lights on the route. It is red when I get there. I’m second in the queue. I wait, like everyone else. Light goes amber then green, outside lane moves off, my lane doesn’t. As I look at the driver in front, the person has a mobile phone held to their ear and is obviously not paying attention to the traffic lights. After a couple of seconds I beep my horn and they wake up and start driving. I’m not convinced they finished the call but at least they put the phone down.

Now I’m approaching the supermarket entrance. A lady is walking back and to and side-to-side on the pavement. She is actually shouting and doesn’t see me trying to get past. As she turns round I see she is on the phone. She is having an argument in raised tones. She is telling the person on the other end: “You get out of my house RIGHT NOW!!” and this is followed by words I can only represent by ******* being said many times. She is blocking the pavement and I have to walk into the road to get around her so I can get to the trolley area. That’s two mobile obsessed people and I haven’t even got in the door yet!

I have a list. I grab my trolley and move quickly inside. I know exactly where I’m going and which aisles I need to be in. I speed through the first three aisles grabbing everything I need. I turn the corner into aisle 4 and, as I make my way down to the shelf I need, I see a problem. I can’t get to it. There is a person talking on their mobile phone but holding their trolley at right angles to the shelves so it is actually blocking the aisle. Why do people do that? I can’t get past. I wait a bit but no reaction.

Time for tactic no.2 – crash, apparently accidentally, into said trolley pretending to be looking the other way. Person looks round and moves trolley out of the way. They don’t stop the phone conversation. I carry on. Soon I’m at the last aisle and heading for the freezers as my last stop. I finish there in just a couple of mins with the items on my list going swiftly into the trolley. Time for the checkout. My bags which I’m going to re-use to collect my green points on to the loyalty card are ready, my bank card is ready, money off vouchers are ready. This supermarket has 15 checkouts but on a Monday morning at opening time (8.00am) they have only one or two with staff. Today it’s one but fortunately for me only one person is in the queue. It’s 8.25 and I’m doing well and should make it back home before the roads get clogged with school traffic which they will by about 8.40am. The person in front begins to unload their trolley and then I hear this ringing noise. Yep you’ve guessed it – their mobile phone! Now if I’m emptying my trolley onto a supermarket checkout belt answering the phone is simply a non-starter. I’ll get to the call later. (Just like if I’m talking to someone face-to-face and my phone rings, I don’t answer. That person is who I’m giving my attention to and I would consider it rude of me to just expect them to wait while I answer a call.)

However I’m not this person and they answer the call and then carry on a discussion while trying to put all their stuff onto the belt. Not surprisingly they now start moving more slowly so they can concentrate on what is being said. The fact that there is a person standing behind seems to be of no importance to them. Then they proceed to stack the trolley with the checked items from the cashier one-handed! The conversation goes on. It’s payment time and now out comes the purse, again one-handed, and then much fumbling through to find the right card to pay. Did they apologise for holding me up? What do you think? Oh well. Finally I get out and to the road near my house. I’m just too late to beat the standing traffic. The tailbacks are caused because there are two lollipop ladies, who are of just a few hundred yards apart on this road, who help children to cross safely. Of course it’s not them I’m complaining about. It’s their job to help the kids over the road and if they weren’t there the kids wouldn’t be able to get to the school. So there it is.

I’d been out of the house for less than 1 hour and FOUR yes 4 people had thought their phone calls were more important than letting the world go about its business in an unobstructed way. Let’s be honest – the calls weren’t that important. Not one of them was an emergency call. No-one dropped their bags and ran to the hospital or drove round the next corner on two wheels. Even the lady telling the person to get out of her house stayed where she was. Going shopping shouldn’t be that hard should it? But that day it was.

I’m sure you’ve all got examples of how people get so wrapped up in their phones that they don’t realise what’s going on around them. That’s why there was a question mark behind the word “reality” in the title of today’s post. I really do wonder, when answering their mobiles, if people actually just go into a different world – a mobile world. It’s a world which says, “Look at me, what I’m doing is more important than anything you folks in the real world want to do. You’ll have to wait because I’m on my phone!!” (Maybe for some it’s even a case of “I know it will wind you up if I take this call so I’ll take it in order to wind you up!”)

Most of the time it’s not a problem but there are a number of cases where accidents, sometimes fatal, have been caused by people using mobile phones inappropriately. Honestly would you want to be responsible for something like that. Of course you wouldn’t. And that’s what I tell myself every time the phone rings when I’m driving. Leave it. Get to it later when I stop or pull over if I think it’s something I have to deal with there and then.

I’ve been having a few thoughts in this direction and will run them by you next week. I think I may be onto something.

The Plan

Ssshhh! Don’t say a word. I’m too excited to not tell you all but you mustn’t tell, ok?

I am going to work now. Until 9.30am, when I will call Danda and ask him if he wants to come for breakfast at the deli. Fingers crossed, Danda will say yes.

When he gets there, we will sit down for breakfast and I will say, ‘Oo! Something came from Amazon for you.’

He will say, ‘Really? But I didn’t order anything.’

I will say, ‘Well, here it is. I guess just open it and see what it is.’

I will get him a box which I received something from Amazon in the other day. I am very sneaky. I have taken out the book that I was sent but kept the packaging neat. I have then put a different book in there then glued it all back together so it looks like it hasn’t been opened.

So he will open it. Inside is a book with a gold cover which says ‘ROME’ in big letters across the front.

He will be confused.

‘I didn’t order this,’ he will say.

‘Are you sure,’ I will say. ‘Check inside the front cover, there should be an invoice somewhere, it will tell you who’s sent it to you. Maybe someone sent it as a present or something?’

He will flip open the front cover and inside is a message from me, which says, ‘Flight at 5pm. Pack your bags!’

He will be shocked and surprised and excited…. Hopefully. There will then be a flurry of bag packing and disbelief.

And then off we will go to Rome for four days!

Fingers crossed that:

a) all goes to plan
b) my phone works in Rome
c) my battery can cope with the photograph-taking overload

And remember, no telling!

I’ll let you know tomorrow if it went smoothly.

My feelings about the Olympics

The months prior to the Olympics

O, the Olympics are coming. That’s nice. I’m not that interested in them though.

 

The week before the Olympics

The Olympics are soon. I guess I’ll see the torch as it’s going to be near my house. That might be interesting.

 

The day the torch passed

I’m here nice and early. This will be nice, seeing the torch. Not that ‘excited’, as such. It will be nice though. Waiting. Waiting. I wish that tall man in front of me would crouch down or something. Is this it?! No, it’s the convoy…. This?! No, more motorbikes and buses. Lots of people dressed in blue dancing about as though they’re at an exercise class. Wait a minute! The torch is coming! THE TORCH IS COMING! I WANT TO SEE! ME! ME! THERE IT IS! I CAN SEE IT! THIS IS SOOOO EXCITING! I’M SO EXCITED! O, there it goes. That was brief. Feel a bit emotional.

 

The day of the women’s cycling

Oo, I’ve got a day off. This will be nice. I’ll go and watch the women’s cycling. Ok, go and hang out with a sporty friend and some of his other sporty friends. Watching the race on TV. It’s quite gripping actually. Come on, ladies! Come on! Cycle faster! Ok, they’re getting close to us. Let’s go and watch them pass by then run back and watch them finish on TV. Off we go. O, there are more people than I thought there’d be. And there’s thunder and loads of rain. Right, found a good spot. Phone camera at the ready. The phone’s getting wet, o no! Stick it under these people’s umbrella. They look mildly annoyed that I have my phone under their umbrella. O well. There’s nothing I can do about it. I need to get a photo. Waiting. Waiting. Their umbrella is directing a stream of rain right down onto my head, over my eyes, down my t-shirt and onto my left shoes. I’m slowly getting drenched. But there are more important things to focus on here. Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY? O! Here they are! No, wait. It’s a policeman on a motorbike. Wait a minute. I can hear screams up ahead. They must be coming. Phone ready! A streak of colour! There they are. Click!

Little pause. Then some more coming. Click!

Ok, off we go back to the house to catch them finishing the race. We need to run if we’re going to make it. Wait a minute, Laura does not run. I DO NOW!! GO! GO! GO! My legs are hurting a bit. I’m a bit breathless. IT DOESN’T MATTER! KEEP RUNNING! RUN! RUN! RUN! OW! LEGS! OW! LUNGS! RUUUUUN! Made it. Can’t breathe. TV on! Woooooo! We got silver! WOOP! WOOP! I LOVE THE OLYMPICS.

The past week

Oo, there’s more Olympics on the TV. This is amazing. I love watching the Olympics. It’s so exciting. I’ve never watched discus so closely and been so enthralled by it. I can’t wait to go and watch the triathlon on Wednesday. Wait a minute…. It’s Tuesday… So why is BBC News telling me that the triathlon has been won by a British guy? I’m going to see it tomorrow! Aren’t I? Omygoodness. It’s not tomorrow, it’s today. And I had a day off. And I could have seen it. And I missed it. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more gutted in my entire life. I want to see the Olympics. I WANT TO SEE THEM! NOW! ME! I’VE GOT TO GET TICKETS! Ok, online, check ticket availability. Tickets for diving. In shopping basket. Click ‘request tickets.’ No tickets left! NO! NO! NO! I WANT THEM! I WANT TO SEE OLYMPICS! I WANT TO SEE THE OLYMPICS MORE THAN I WANTED A MONKEY WHEN I WAS 11 AND ASKED FOR ONE FOR MY BIRTHDAY. And I wanted that pretty badly. THIS IS MORE! I WANT TICKETS TO THE OLYMPICS. I NEEEEED TICKETS. How about the Paralympics? Those would be good too. In fact, they’d be amazing. Think how much more impressive it would be. Tickets to wheelchair basketball. Request….. NO TICKETS! Damn. Ok. Try requesting tickets for the tennis…. Nothing. Cycling?…. No. I’LL CRY IF THIS KEEPS GOING! I’LL CRY! I WANT TICKETS! I WANT THEM! Try swimming…. Wait four minutes, it’s telling me. I don’t want to. I want them now! Wait…. wait….. YESSSSSSS! GOT A TICKET! YESSSS! Paralympic men’s swimming, here I come! Woooop! Woo! I can’t wait. This is so exciting. It’s so historical and right here in London. I’d be mad not to get involved. I can’t wait. This is the most excited I’ve ever been. EVER.

EVER.