Yes, yes, I know you all had a miserable Monday because my absence meant that you had no Monday Funny - how did you manage? By the way, I have written to TypePad because there was a gross misprinting error in my last post. When I gave you my forecast for last Sunday's critical 'footie' matches it should have read: Arsenal 1- Spurs 0, and Liverpool 1 - Man United 0. That is what I typed - no, really, I did - but entirely due to TypePad ineptitude it came out completely wrong! Honestly, you can't trust anyone or anything these days!
So on Sunday, after providing the 'Memsahib' with enough 'brunch' to feed a regiment I set off for East Sussex to spend the night with friends. Originally, of course, the two of us should have gone but Madam's big toe got in the way! It's a surprisingly long journey from the south west to the south east but happily the summer hols are over and traffic was light. One of the advantages of being retired is that you can build in enough time to take a good long break which is what I did at a suitable service area. The downside is that I stand in the central lobby wrestling with my conscience as I peer through the open door of the paper shop at the racks of 'pulp fiction' books temptingly on 'special offer'. As you may remember, I took a sacred oath sworn on a pile of 'pulp fiction' books never to buy any more until next year. Alas, I am damned! But I'll let you know what they're like later in the week.
Staying with really old friends is very relaxing. I think friendship is the mutual forgiving of faults. Old friends are only too well aware of one's faults but don't nag, and the compliment is returned. Friendship is the recognition that we are what we are and there's an end on't! Bit like marriage, really.
Part of my reason for making the visit was to scrounge an overnight bed in order for me to give one of my talks to a local ladies' lunch club in a nearby town. It was one of my Shakespeare talks - Shakespeare in Love: the Young, the Middle-Aged and the Don't Ask! Of course, you are quite right if you suspect that it just an opportunity for me to 'talk dirty' to middle-aged ladies. - which I do - and they love it! Well, not really dirty but old Will was frequently very near the knuckle, he knew the ways of the world. The most over-used - and abused - word in the English language must surely be 'love' but no-one can quite define it, you sort of know it when you come across it. Part of the difficulty, I think, stems from the fact that love comes in so many different forms from, say, Romeo & Juliet to Anthony Cleopatra. Anyway, the ladies were a delight and once again I thought that not the least of the signs of our increased prosperity is that older ladies today do not, like our mothers did, give in to old age, they still dress smartly and elegantly and in some cases even sexily.
Lunch over and it was time for the return journey. Out of curiosity I switched on 'Nursie', the rather bossy lady who lives inside my satnav, and allowed her to dictate my return route. Typical woman, she insisted on going on a completely different course from the one I would have used. She took me fairly close to Blandford but I relaxed because the annual steam fair for which that town plays host to tens of thousands of visitors finished a week ago so the roads should have been clear. Ah, but I hadn't realised that some of these old engines drive home, literally, under their own steam at an average speed of about 1.76 mph!
Here is a copy of a photo that won this year's photography prize:
I was stuck behind not one of them but two! Eventually, taking my life in my hands on the narrow country roads, I passed them but then came across a convoy of tractors and trailers loaded with corn it being, of course, harvest time. I had to telephone the 'Memsahib' and tell that the planned cooked dinner was off and ask if she could manage yet another salad?
So there you have it, dear reader, a fascinating - er, it was fascinating, wasn't it? - glimpse into the exciting life of your favorite blog writer - and, yes, you're right, I don't know how I manage the pace of life either!
