Canary Islander

Freedom - at last!

2012-01-09T21:39:00.005Z

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As I approach my 69th birthday, I hear a voice declare that he is being released from shackles that have, for over half a century, chained him to a sex-maniac.

Yippee!
Happy New Year!

: -)

The New Baby

2011-11-01T14:38:00.009Z

Yes, they laughed at me. Everybody laughed at me. And I dare say that you would have laughed at me too, during all those months when I remained steadfast in my forecast that the new baby would be a boy, and would be given a strong, virile, dynamic, forename like IAN.

Well, I was proved right. As you can see, Kathy’s new grandson has all the attributes of a fine wing forward - 21.3 inches tall and weighing in at over 9lb.

The proud parents had already agreed on a name for a baby girl, but they hadn’t quite settled on a name for a baby boy. And so the matter remained undecided for the next few weeks, whilst all sorts of alternative male names were successively mooted and then discarded.

And occasionally, I would chip in with my halfpennyworth: “How about a name like IAN?” I would suggest, helpfully.

So I was delighted when they settled on JACK.

You see, IAN is the Scottish for John, and a common nickname for John is JACK. Moreover, the first letters in IAN and JACK (I and J) are alphabetically consecutive, and both names share the same second letter (A).

And if we consider each letter in the alphabet to be represented by its sequence number (A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on), we find that the C plus K in JACK is equal to the N in IAN.

So the two names are virtually identical :-)

But the really exciting outcome is this: the letters J,A,C,K equate to 10,1,3,11 which multiply up to 330, and these digits sum to SIX, whilst the letters I,A,N equate to 9,1,14 which multiply up to 126, and these digits sum to NINE.

The answer is always 69.

Apart from the baby, what can possibly be more perfect than that?
: - )

Six out of Eight

2011-09-08T15:40:00.004+01:00

Progressively, over several weeks, a great feeling of lassitude had slowly and insidiously come over me. I felt that little bit weaker by the day, and more and more disinclined to exercise or otherwise exert myself.

I spent much more time than usual reading the financial press and watching the financial crisis unfold on Television, and I became increasingly angry at the state of the world.

My angers were followed by bouts of anxiety.

Then over the weekend, while walking with my daughters around the ponds at Alexandra Palace, I twice found myself losing my balance, to the extent of nearly falling into the water.

By Sunday evening, when back at home, the events of the weekend seemed to fade and become fuzzy in my memory, and I was losing track of conversation.

And I only just made it to bed before crashing into a deep sleep.

------

Next day Kathy joked that I had "Galloping Alzheimer's". But she was very worried when she showed me the small print on the leaflet that was tucked inside the packet of pills which my doctor had prescribed for me 5 weeks beforehand.

Tell your doctor if you notice any of the following side effects:
1. Muscle weakness
2. Excitement
3. Agitation
4. ‘Spinning sensation’
5. Confusion
6. Loss of consciousness
7. Coma
8. Death.

How someone with the latter symptoms is supposed to contact their doctor is beyond me!

I’m hugely better now, because I didn’t finish the prescribed course.

But six out of eight ain’t bad, is it?

:-)

Coincidences! I love them!!

2011-07-05T09:50:00.005+01:00

I know I’ve previously written a blog about an amazing sequence of coincidences that happened to me, but something new has happened recently that makes me write again.

I lived in Moorhouse Road up until the age of six, and at the age of eleven I went to a school that had a “House” system. I became a member of Moor House at that school. Many years afterwards, I left college to begin a six-month residential training course at a building by the name of Moor House.

Yes, I know that all this would hardly be considered as the most amazing sequence of coincidences, but please bear with me...

Two weeks ago, an old colleague of mine, David, whom I had last seen twenty years ago, made contact with me again via Skype. We’d worked together for many years as software developers for a firm of international chartered accountants. During our conversation he happened to mention that his son had followed in our footsteps and was now working as a software developer for an international bank.

That certainly sparked my interest, because my son also works as a software developer for a bank. And would you believe it - it emerged that both our sons work for the same bank, in the same building in London!

The building where our sons work is in Canary Wharf. And later in our conversation it transpired that David had recently returned from a holiday in the Canary Islands. And as you know, I live in the Canary Islands, and unbeknown to either of us, we had visited the same island, and been in the same building, at the same time last December.

I really must return that Skype telephone call soon.

You see, I’m wondering if my friend David Moorhouse and I have even more in common than we already know…
:-)

The Lost Blog...

2011-06-12T23:28:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time...

Hoot

2011-06-08T11:11:00.019+01:00

My mother was a great storyteller, and one of her favourite stories was about me when I was a little boy. She had taken me to visit a friend of hers who lived in a house with a large garden. It being a sunny day, she’d allowed me to play in the garden and after a while she and her friend had looked out to see me sitting on the lawn, surrounded by birds.

And it appeared as if I was holding court, engaging the birds in earnest conversation as they took turns to fly up and land on my outstretched fingers.

I’ve no memory of that incident today, but I’m sure my mother wasn’t exaggerating. I’ve had a lifelong interest in birds, and for my sins, I can still do a very good imitation of many different birdsongs today. I suppose that’s reflected in my choice of a Canary as my blog avatar, and why I spend so much time in the Canary Islands, where there is an astonishing variety of exotic birdlife.

I’m mentioning all this because Kathy and I are now back in the UK for a brief visit, and in the evenings I’ve been busy making friends with a tawny owl. I haven’t actually seen the owl yet, but we’ve exchanged hoots.

Barn owls in the UK tend to hoot, while those in the Canary Islands are mainly screech owls. I’ve become quite good at imitating the characteristic “Scree!” of the screech owl, which is absolutely ear-shattering at close range. So you can imagine my delight at the opportunity to practice my tawny owl “Hoo!” while I’m back in the UK. And Kathy is quite pleased too, because she seems to like my hooting much more than my screeching.

Anyway, I’ve been out in the garden every night waiting for the tawny owl to hoot. And I’ve not been disappointed, because it has made its presence known at around 11pm each evening. On the first evening, we only exchanged a brief “Hoo-Hoo!”, after which it fell silent. I’m sure that like me, it was being a little cautious. Tawny owls are extremely territorial, and one has to exercise a great deal of patience over many evenings before they will accept the presence of another owl in their vicinity.

But we’ve now got to the stage where we can exchange a full range of friendly hoots. I was up last night until 2am, teaching the owl to count, by replying to each single hoot with a double hoot, and then replying to each double hoot with a triple hoot. We got as far as six hoots, after which we ended the conversation by slowly counting down back to one.

But the really amazing thing is this. Kathy tells me she has just met the lady who recently moved into the house next door. And would you believe it? That lady’s husband is also a keen bird-fancier, and he spends a lot of time in their garden in the late evenings, just like me.

I can't wait to meet him...
:-)

Ashen Faced

2011-05-24T12:05:00.013+01:00

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Well, here we are in Tenerife, with our flight to Gatwick booked for the coming Saturday, and this happens. A volcano erupts in Iceland, again.

So we've been busy going over our various Plan B's, just in case...

The Plan B that I really, really like involves booking into the opulent 5 star hotel just down the road and reclaiming the costs from our nice benevolent airline. Yes, I know I wouldn't get away with it, but I can dream, can't I?

But seriously, the claims procedure does seem to be very complicated nowdays. I've just read an article in today's Telegraph which tells me what to say to the airline if our flight is cancelled.

Here's the advice given by the Telegraph:

"You should tell them that under Regulation (EC) 2004/261 Article 5 you are entitled to be reimbursed or re-routed under Article 8 and also offered assistance, including accommodation, meals and transport under Article 9.

You should also state that under Article 5, airlines are able to not pay compensation in accordance with article 7 in the case of 'extraordinary circumstances', but crucially that this extraordinary circumstances clause does not apply to the entitlement to assistance under Article 9."

Blimey! I turned quite pale at the thought of saying all that. But then I realised my bigger problem.

How could I say it with a straight face?
:-)

Another book nearly finished...

2011-05-20T21:09:00.002+01:00

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The final page in the book I began on 9th October 2006 will soon be writ. It will be the ninth book that I’ve written.

I began writing in 1966. That was 45 years ago, so on average, I’ve managed to complete one book every five years. That’s an indication of my character; if nothing else, I’m a painstakingly methodical researcher and writer.

1966 was the year of my first marriage, to a childhood sweetheart whom I’d known since I was twelve years old. Gosh, that was a happy year. Both families were ecstatic that we’d decided to tie the knot. And there was a mood of joy and elation in the general population, although that might have been more to do with England winning the World Cup.

It was my marriage, that hugely important step forward in adult life, which prompted me to begin writing. I was acutely aware of my lack of worldly experience – I’d been in my first proper job for less than a year since leaving university - and I desperately wanted to prove myself.

Most young writers that I knew at the time (remember, this was the height of the Swinging Sixties) were writing about sex, feminism, the Vietnam War, or something called “New Wave” culture. I wanted to do something radically different. After careful thought, I decided to write a journal that reflected life as it really was for a young married couple.

So I began. And the book was a huge success, because it covered the realities, the detailed minutia of everyday life. And the book became truly great because it helped predict the future.

I’ve got a photograph of my current book, which you can see below.

Each entry in the book shows a date, a shop name or an item purchased, the cash paid, and a running balance of the cash I have in hand to last me for the rest of the month. You can see some recent entries below (a bit out of focus - sorry!).

And guess what? I've never gone into the red!
:-)

SCARAMOUCH

2011-05-07T14:15:00.010+01:00

Here's a self-portrait of my famous Rugby scar. The scar runs down from the collar bone to just below the mole on my chest. It is majestic, isn't it?

I took the photo on my balcony, and you can see my favourite plant, a Dipladenia (or Brazilian jasmine vine), behind me. It is an energetic climber and flowers from late Spring through to the end of Autumn.

For proof positive that the scar is mine, you can click on the photo to enlarge it. And click on it again if you really, really like! Just above the balcony wall you can see the back of the sign above the infamous STARCO complex in Las Americas.

I've titled this blog Scaramouch because I'm a very boastful but cowardly person. Whenever I fear attack, I tear off my shirt to reveal the scar, and I scream. This sometimes frightens my attackers off. If that doesn't work, I start reminiscing about my time in Special Forces in Vietnam. If that doesn't work either, I launch into my pre-prepared speech about my open-heart surgery which had gone wrong because they'd operated on the wrong side of my chest. Otherwise I leg it.

But the really, really wonderful thing about my scar is that Kathy likes to run her finger along it.
:-)

Bijou Property for sale

2011-04-24T23:09:00.003+01:00

How could I resist sharing this photo with you? It appears on the website of a North Kent estate agent, and depicts a garage that is available for sale at an advertised price of £7,500.

Did it make you smile, too?
:-)

Carwash Solution

2011-04-10T08:22:00.011+01:00

Hello again!

After my previous blog we went back to the carwash and tried again, with great success.

See below!

And then we drove off to the local opticians...
:-(

PS Now we can see what an upside-down ticket really looks like!

Carwash

2011-04-09T17:01:00.015+01:00

Kathy and I had a bit of bother today when we took our car to the carwash.

Just to set the scene, here's a photo that I took of the carwash in operation on another car while we were waiting our turn.

Our problem was with the green-faced box which you can see fixed to the wall on the left. It has a keyboard on its facia which enables a customer to enter a six-digit password. This starts the carwash. Simple!

We'd been given our six-digit password on a printed receipt when we had paid for the carwash.

Well, as soon as we had parked the car inside the carwash, Kathy whizzed off with the receipt to enter the password into the box on the wall, while I did mundane stuff like checking that all the windows were closed, unscrewing the car radio aerial, and pushing the wing mirrors in.

When I joined her, Kathy was still busily typing the password into the box on the wall. "It's not working!" she exclaimed,"And I've tried ten times!"

So I had a go. I entered the password. And nothing happened. And I tried again, and again, and again, with no result. A queue of cars was building up in the waiting area behind us, and some of the drivers started honking impatiently.

Time was ticking on, and we had an appointment to keep. So we decided to leave the carwash and return again tomorrow.

It was while we were waiting at the exit to turn into a busy road that I glanced into the rear view mirror. And I could see the carwash operating perfectly normally on the next car in.

I wonder why it wouldn't work for us? Have you had a similar experience? We'll try again tomorrow, but in the meantime, we'll be interested in your ideas!

:-)

Chain Gang.

2011-03-23T16:45:00.057Z

I had a bit of bother today when I went to fetch a trolley at my local supermarket.

You are probably quite familiar with these trolleys, each embedded one into another, that are parked outside a modern supermarket. I call them "chain-gangs", because the back of each trolley has a dangling chain with an attachment that plugs into the lock of the trolley that is stacked behind it.

You have to push a coin into the lock of the rearmost trolley. This releases the chain from the lock, and you pull your trolley out. The chain is left dangling from the back of what is now the last trolley in the chain gang.

Simple! Then off you go into the supermarket with your trolley, with your coin visible and protruding slightly from the lock.

Afterwards, when you've finished shopping and you've loaded your car with goodies, you return your empty trolley to the chain gang. You push your trolley into the back of the rearmost trolley, then you plug the end of the chain hanging from that trolley into the lock of your trolley. This relinks your trolley to the chain gang and releases your coin from the lock. Bliss!

They are clever people, these trolley designers. I've often tried to prise my coin out, whilst wandering around the supermarket, in the hope that this would relieve me of the chore of returning my trolley to the chain gang. But no way! The trolley lock has clamped its jaw, bulldog- like, around the coin and the only way to get your coin back (short of a hammer and chisel) is to return the empty trolley to the chain gang.

But I digress. Or perhaps I should say that today the supermarket digressed from its usual policy of totalitarian control and order. The entire chain gang, fully chained together, had been pushed out of its railed enclosure to enable a cleaner to sweep the tarmac. And for the first time in my life, I found myself approaching the chain gang from the front, instead of the rear.

I admit I should have thought more deeply about this, and I should have walked to the back of the chain gang to get my trolley out in the usual way. But I didn't. Instead, I chose the easier option, which was the front trolley, which was nearer. And I inserted my coin into the lock of the trolley behind, which broke its link to the chain of the front trolley.

That's when disaster struck. Kathy was with me, and she was in a hurry. The supermarket was running a special promotion of cut-price goodies, and she was worried that these would become sold out. So she grabbed the front trolley that I had freed and disappeared into the supermarket.

I hope you can visualise the scenario: Kathy had disappeared with a trolley that had no coin in its lock. And I was left alone, at the head of the chain gang, which had my coin clamped into the lock of its foremost trolley.

What would you do?
:-(

Well, I'm sure that you can think of all sorts of solutions that I didn't consider in the heat of the moment. What I can say is this; people who had finished their shopping were arriving with empty trolleys and plugging them into the rear of my chain gang in order to retrieve their coins. And they outnumbered the fewer new arrivals who wanted a trolley from the back of my chain gang. My chain gang was growing by the minute. Something had to be done. So I panicked.

Determined as I was not to abandon my coin in the front trolley, I pushed the entire chain gang into the supermarket in order to find Kathy. I admit this caused some inconvenience to the shoppers inside, as well as some minor damage to the supermarket entrance, and to the special offer promotion display in the entrance foyer, and to several aisles. But I did find Kathy in the frozen food area, where she was examining some pork chops which were on special offer at a 30% discount from yesterday's price.

"What the hell are you doing!" she yelled, as I approached, pushing my chain gang. Somehow, I managed to bring the meandering train of trolleys to a full stop when the front trolley (the one with my coin in it) got wedged between frozen pork and frozen chicken container units.

I can't quite remember the exact detail of our subsequent conversation. But we did agree that a coin in the lock of a front trolley in a chain gang is irretrievable.

Maybe the supermarket knows this, too...

PS
Here's a photo of Kathy's coinless trolley.

PPS
I'm using this photo as a template for the production of copy chain attachments. I see an opportunity for making money in the supermarket aisles if I have some of these attachments to hand....
:-)

I need Ad-vice

2011-02-27T14:48:00.030Z

English newspapers like the Times and Telegraph cost a fortune here in Tenerife, so instead I follow the news on my laptop, or on television (we can receive Sky, CNN, and BBC World News).

However, there are several English language newspapers published in the Canary Islands that are aimed at the expat and tourist market. These newspapers are distributed to shops and hotels and are available free of charge. I usually browse through these whilst waiting in my local unisex hairdressing shop.

These free newspapers carry very little actual news; most of the pages contain advertisements. And since most of the advertisements are placed by small and medium-sized local businesses (mostly Spanish), the standard of written English often leaves a lot to be desired.

Here's a selection of very odd advertisements, possibly mispelt, that I discovered just inside the back page of one of these newspapers , under the mysterious heading "Services".

Los Cristianos Laddies, do Greek, various kisses, in front of bus station.

Las Galletas, French with dour glass figure, discret apartmento.

Las Veronicas, Transvesti 20 years, blond, 140 breasts.

I don't understand; what on earth are these advertisements all about? It's a problem, and when I'm confronted by a problem, all sorts of mental images flash through my mind. My imagination is still working overtime on the examples above, but I think I'm nearly there with the one shown below.

Puerto Colon, Miss age, Dutch, in privy place.

Do you think I'm on the right path here?
:-)

For love of the game

2011-02-20T21:40:00.010Z

It is a popular myth that the origins of the modern game of rugby can be traced back to an incident at Rugby School in Warwickshire, where there is a commemorative stone that celebrates the event. The stone is shown below:

The inscription has faded somewhat, and reads as follows:

THIS STONE
COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF
WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS
WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL
AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME
FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT
THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF
THE RUGBY GAME
A.D. 1823

An alternative theory, and one that is enthusiastically promoted by some followers of Association Football, suggests that Rugby was invented in Neolithic times, by Stone Age cave-dwellers.

THE ABOVE IMAGE
IS A REPRODUCTION OF
A PREHISTORIC CAVE DRAWING
DISCOVERED IN THE TWICKENHAM TUNNEL
AND WHICH IS BELIEVED TO DEPICT
THE AFTERMATH OF A PRE-MATCH ENCOUNTER
IN WHICH RETALIATION WAS GOT IN FIRST
BEFORE A GAME OF RUGBY
B.C. 13,823

So there we have it; two contrasting images, two quite different views. So which is the superior sport? Rugby, or Association Football? Is it possible to present a balanced and reasoned opinion in favour of one or the other?

I've got my views! And so, dear friends, lend me your ears!

If I were to present a serious case, I'd support rugby. A game of schoolboy rugby gives eight more boys the chance to participate; rugby provides more than just one way of scoring (try, conversion, penalty goal, drop goal); the oval ball provides greater technical challenges than the spherical ball; and the game offers opportunities for players with a wider variety of physical attributes to participate and to excel.

But why be so serious about this? There is a man who lives in my apartment block who comes home from work, and spends an hour outside practising football with his two teenage sons. And I'm reminded of me doing some similar stuff, using a different shaped ball, with my son.

It's all about love, really.

This is Me!

2011-02-10T18:35:00.005Z

I've just completed an on-line quiz!
The result is shown in the graph above.

I'm told I am a "centrist moderate social authoritarian".
(Left: 0.18, Authoritarian: 1.78).

I wonder where you chaps might appear in the graph?
The link is shown below.

http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html

:-)

Espionage at the Conference

2011-01-07T01:44:00.014Z

I've received an email from a lady I knew very briefly in New Orleans. That was a long time ago. I’ve no idea how she traced me, and I’m still unsure why she should wish to make contact, or what she is trying to say.

Yes, I’m sure the email is from her - from Maria - the lady in the audience. Gosh, I remember her. I remember that prickly feeling, like a wave of electric shocks, running up and down the back of my neck when I saw her enter through the doorway at the back of the hall. She inclined her head apologetically and sat down, and I carried on with my speech.

I caught another glimpse of her later at the evening cocktail party. She was talking to two other speakers, who I recognised as competitors of my company. Was she one of them? I didn’t know.

It was exactly a year later, at the same venue, when I saw her again. There’d been no cocktail party this time. Instead, the conference organisers had decided to throw a party in a Carnival Warehouse across the water. I’d decided to give the party a miss, because I had a morning flight to catch the next day.

And those electric shocks happened all over again, because there she was, in the hotel restaurant, dining alone. I guess you can guess the rest. I left her sleeping as I tip-toed away the next morning. And, not exactly inadvertently, I’d packed her delegate dossier together with mine in my briefcase.

In the following year, my company made nearly a quarter of a million dollars pure profit out of the contents of that dossier. We realigned our systems and created an advertising blitz that blew the other company away.

And now I’m sat here, looking at her email. And she’s writing to me in exactly the same slightly stilted, crazy English, virtually devoid of punctuation, that was her style of writing in her dossier:

”Canary - i want a man who knows what love is all about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. you have ruined me for other men i yearn for you i have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart i can be forever happy will you let me be yours Maria”

Well, I’ve unscrambled this text, just like I did her dossier all those years ago, and it reads as follows:

”Canary, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours? Maria.”

:-)

I showed all this to my beloved partner (we have no secrets about our past lives). This is her take on it:

”Canary - I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Maria”

:-(

My Clever Socks

2010-12-19T10:06:00.014Z

This is a somewhat detailed account of my first experience with a new pair of really high-tech socks. It is also something of an intelligence test, so I hope you will concentrate.

I should explain that this particular pair of socks has the embroidered motif ”Left” on the left sock, and there is a matching motif ”Right” on the right sock. The illustration above is only a basic model - my new socks are much more high-tech, as you will gather from the description below....

The ”Left” and ”Right” motifs are embroidered just above the sock toes, and each motif appears twice on each sock. Now you may wonder why each motif appears twice on each sock, but the explanation is really quite simple. You see, some people will look down at their feet to check that each sock is on the correct foot, and other people (like me) are in the habit of checking by looking in the mirror.

For this reason, each motif appears once on the upper foot facing the wearer, who can easily read it when looking downwards, and it appears again closer to the toes facing forward, away from the wearer. This makes the forward-facing motif easy to read in the mirror.

I think the chap who invented my socks must have been a keen driver, because the forward-facing motif ”Right” or ”Left” on a sock is written in exactly the same back-to-front and inverted way as the words “Police” or “Ambulance” on the front of emergency service vehicles. When you look at these words through a mirror, they appear the correct way around. Now that’s very clever, you may say.

But the really, really clever thing about these socks is that the motifs are embroidered with a bright yellow thread that is luminous. This is extremely useful for someone like me who tends to get up in the morning just before daybreak. Rather than switching on the light and disturbing my partner, I’d resolved to keep my luminous socks on my bedside table, where they would be clearly visible and easy to put on when I woke up. And I reasoned that I could use the luminous light that would be emitted from my socks to help guide me when I got up from the bed and started moving around in search of my underwear.

Well, you can imagine my consternation this morning. I was standing there in my socks in the dark, viewing the reflection of the luminous writing in my cheval mirror. And horror upon horror, I could see in my reflection that my socks were on the wrong feet!

But I hadn’t gone to all the trouble of buying these socks, only to find myself wearing them the wrong way round, had I? So I immediately sat back down on the bed, pulled the socks off, and put each sock back on a different foot.

Then I stood up to check my feet again in the mirror.

I was pleased to see that the socks were now on the correct feet. But the luminous writing had dimmed, and had a strange fuzzy appearance. Even worse, the inverted writing at the toe of each sock, which should have appeared in correct English in the mirror reflection, had magically been transformed back into an inverted format. And I was shocked to see that the writing was upside-down.

It must have taken five minutes or so of feverish intellectual turmoil, with me standing in the dark and staring at my mirror, before it dawned on me that I had pulled my socks off from the neck down. This had effectively turned the socks inside out before I’d swopped the socks around and put them back on again. So I had inadvertently inverted the inverted writing, and turned it upside-down. The writing on the socks had lost some of its luminous clarity because I’d exposed the reverse side of the embroidery.

So I sat back down on the bed, took each sock off in exactly the same way as before (thereby turning it inside-out) before replacing it on the same foot.

Then I stood up to check my feet again in the mirror. Yippee! I’d solved the problem!

That’s when a bedside light was turned on behind me. I turned and saw my girlfriend’s face grinning at me.

“Why have you got your socks on the wrong way around?” she asked.

I turned back to look in the mirror. “But I haven’t!” I exclaimed.

But I had. Can you figure out why?

:-)

A Sight for Sore Eyes... (Alter Ego)

2010-11-09T20:50:00.014Z

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Have you ever been a witness?

Photofit is a technique used by the police for building up an accurate image of someone to fit a witness' description.

Photographs, rather than drawings, of individual features are used to construct an image of a suspect.

Below, you can see just a few of the Photofits issued by police in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.

Personally, I can't believe my eyes at these disreputable discrepencies. So much for eye-witness accounts, I say!

Meanwhile, here in Tenerife, the police have issued yet another Photofit mugshot.

This man is, by all accounts, seriously deranged.

Do you trust your eyesight?

:-)

:-)

Deliverance...

2010-10-12T23:48:00.015+01:00

The Ancient Greek geographers described the islands west of the Straits of Gibraltar as the “Islands of the Fortunate” (" μακάρων νῆσοι “). They were referring to the Azores, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Madeira Islands, and the Savage Islands.

Well, after many visits to the Canary Islands which began in 1979 and which increased in frequency over the years, I became one of “the Fortunate” – and started living here in Tenerife, which is the largest island in the Canaries.

Four or five years ago, there was a wave of illegal immigration by the Less Fortunate from West Africa into the Canaries. They arrived in open boats, known as "Cayucos", which looked like large canoes, and which were typically powered by a couple of 40HP outboard motors, carrying up to 150 people at a time. They came from countries like Morocco, and from countries even further away like Senegal and the Gambia in the south. There were smaller open boats too, the "Pateras", which could carry up to 30 people.

I saw many of these fragile craft arriving, usually being towed into harbour by a Guardia Civil patrol boat after having been intercepted on the high seas. The condition of the would-be immigrants was, more often than not, utterly lamentable. Some had spent two weeks at sea, and were suffering from exposure and dehydration. Many had died en route.

Then they stopped coming. The Spanish government, helped by the European Union, stepped up its maritime patrols and negotiated deals with West African governments to prevent the would-be immigrants from leaving the continent.

Life here in Tenerife returned to normal - until one day two weeks ago. That’s when I took an early morning walk, far along the sea shore, beyond the man-made tourist beaches.

I’d left my car at the end of a dirt track, and started my walk by clambering over the breakwater that separates the last beach from the big Atlantic Rollers that attract so many surfers here. I’d been along this stretch – the rough surfer stretch - before, but this time I wanted to reach the headland point, and see what was on the other side.

It was slow going, picking my way step by step along the narrowing seafront, with the towering cliff on my left, and the sea swelling closer and closer on my right. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t particularly dangerous, just slow and careful steps. You wouldn’t want to slip on wet volcanic rocks and fall and possibly cut yourself.

As I said, it was slow and careful going. But I got to the headland point and worked my way around into a small cove. And the first thing I saw was a Patera, on its side, its bow smashed and wedged up on rocks that would have been below the water line at high tide. Apart from a couple of jerry cans, the Patera was empty.

Then I saw them, two forlorn figures, sitting on a patch of sand at the far side of the cove. I yelled and waved to attract their attention as I made my way over to them, but they just sat there, side by side, eyes downcast, staring at the ground before them. As I drew closer, I could see they were two young girls, without a single possession between them, lost in a world of their own.

I pulled out my mobile phone, but decided against calling for help. Instead I used it to take a photo of the scene, whilst deciding - for the first time in my life, to take pity and do the right thing on my own. I took them back, to my place, where I’ve been caring for them ever since.

I’ve included the photo in the space below.

Photo below...

:-)

Old Angers (1)

2010-10-05T02:15:00.006+01:00

:-(

Sorry, in my dreams last night I recalled one of my many angers.

My history teacher at Grammar School was an Intelligence Agent in WWII. He was a hero. He’d even married a Scandinavian Princess.

His trick, with eleven to fifteen-year olds, was to grip the hair of one of the seated boys before him. He gripped the hair just above the ear, and twisted. The idea was to force a boy's forehead down until it hit his desktop. The pain of having your hair twisted and pulled like that is excruciating.

Passive resistance hurts like hell. My head never moved, and, surprise, surprise, by the time I was an older teenager, over 6 foot tall, with lots of bone and muscle, he was as nice as pie to me. I can laugh about it now, and say that's the explanation for my slightly receding hairline.

But now it's nearly 50 years later. Why do I sometimes dream about it and wake up angry?

How strange, the way the subconscious works.

Double Dippy Doldrums

2010-09-03T14:36:00.014+01:00

Can anybody here tell dippy old me if the second dip in a double-dip recession is likely to be better or worse than the first dip?

I met up with my old mates Frank, Max, Joe and Charlie yesterday. Like me, they’d flown back to the UK from their winter homes abroad to catch up with family and friends. Of course, a major topic of conversation was the financial crisis. And each of us had a horror story to tell about the way in which the recession had affected our lives.

Frank told us he’d had a terrible time so far. He’d piled into the Stock Market when the FTSE plunged below 4000, and then sold out after it soared well above 5000. Gosh how I feel for him, because the poor chap doesn’t own a single share in anything now.

And Max had a hard time too, when the government gave him and his girlfriend £2000 each to swop their old bangers for brand new cars that cost far less to run. How sad; the poor souls really loved their old cars.

Joe told us how he’d been forced to stock up on lots of goodies when the VAT rate was reduced to 15%. Then Joe broke the sad news about his son, who had bought his first home after the threshold for stamp duty was raised, and after the purchase price fell to a level where the tax was not payable.

And let’s not forget Charlie, whose fixed rate mortgage of 5.09% on his London second home expired and reverted to a standard variable rate of 2.5%. Shocking, isn’t it?

I’m down in the dumps too. Last December I exchanged 10,000 Euros for Pounds Sterling, after which I waited until June when I exchanged the Pounds back into Euros. And would you believe it, in that period of time the Euro per Pound rate changed from 1.09 to 1.21.

Alas, there’s nothing I can do about it, so tomorrow I’m leaving the UK and heading back to the Canary Islands – with my 11,100 Euros of spending money.

I wonder if the second dip of this double-dippy recession will be just as dippy as the first dip for dippy old folk like me and my mates…

:-)

My Big Bang

2010-07-17T14:41:00.018+01:00

For some people, the Big Bang is a theory about the beginning of the universe. For other people, it's all about 27th October 1986, when the London Stock Exchange changed its rules and embraced the electronic age. But for me, my Big Bang was a quite different event; one that changed my life forever.

I’d just finished my first year at University, and what a hard year that had been. My step-father had committed suicide because of mounting gambling debts, leaving my Mum as our main breadwinner. Her stepmother had become unwell and had come to live with us. And I’d been working evenings and weekends as a factory delivery driver to help put food on our table.

So I was astonished when Freddie, an extremely wealthy fellow student, asked me if I’d be his co-driver on a journey to Madrid. The deal was that we’d share the driving in his car, he’d pay all expenses, after which we’d part company. He was planning to spend the summer with his fiancée, who lived in Madrid. I’d be left to make my own way home.

Well, the prospect of a free ride to Madrid was irresistible, especially as Freddie wanted us to start the journey when the factory that I worked for was closing down for a fortnight. I reckoned I could hitchhike my way back home easily enough. So I accepted.

The drive was fun. And so was Freddie. Yes, he’d been born with a dozen silver spoons in his mouth; he was rich, intelligent, good-looking, debonair, multilingual, and a brilliant raconteur. He certainly kept me amused on that drive. I guess it was all the laughter that made us miss a turning somewhere outside of Pamplona, and we got hopelessly lost in miles of winding tracks, with not a building in sight.

It was quite late in the evening when we spotted a grand-looking Hacienda high up on a hill. Freddie was driving at the time, and made a beeline for it. I stayed in the car whilst Freddie knocked at the door to ask for directions. After ten minutes or so of conversation with a lady who opened the door, he returned to the car with the good news that we were invited to stay the night.

Freddie explained that the lady had recently been widowed, and could not allow us to stay in the main house. But she had given him a set of keys for a nearby caballeriza – an empty stable block with extremely comfortable overhead staff sleeping quarters, and a hot and cold water supply. That’s where we stayed the night, before continuing our journey to Madrid the following morning.

It must have been around nine months later when I received the letter. It was written in Spanish, from an Attorney in Navarra. I got the general gist of the letter with the help of a Spanish-English dictionary, but just to make sure, I had it professionally translated. It took me a couple of days of quiet reflection to work out what had happened.

I met Freddie at College shortly afterwards, and asked him if he remembered the young widow at the Hacienda. And I asked him if he’d popped back to the Hacienda during the night to thank her for her hospitality. He grinned, and confessed he had.

But what really amazed him was when I asked if he had given her my name and address, instead of his. He turned bright red with embarrassment, and said “How on earth do you know that?”

All I could do was smile.

You see, the letter had informed me that a certain widow in Spain, the Condesa Maria Echeverria Corriente Delgado, had died. And she had left me her considerable fortune in her will.
:-)

Midsummer's Night Madness

2010-07-10T17:48:00.008+01:00

I’ve just rediscovered an old script for Midsummer’s Night Dream in my bookcase. Yes, I’ve done a bit of acting in my time, but what a disaster that production was.

I played the part of Lysander, and I remember being onstage with Demetrius, Hermia and Helena when I completely screwed things up by repeating a line that I had previously delivered in the earlier part of our conversation.

The conversational sequence was Lys: Dem: Herm: Helena: - at which point I repeated my earlier line Lys.

The funny thing was that none of us noticed my mistake. The other three actors had all learned their lines by rote, and so Demetrius responded to my cue by repeating his earlier line, and then Hermia responded on that cue, as did Helena, after which I repeated my mistake. We were trapped in a closed conversational loop, in which everybody repeated their earlier lines.

It took us about five minutes of repeating ourselves before it gradually dawned on us that our conversation was going nowhere. I still shudder now when I remember the growing sense of bewilderment, confusion, and sheer panic that beset us. We were caught in a conversational time-warp, and none of us could figure out who was to blame (me) or how to break out of our predicament.

I think it took another 5 minutes of us repeating ourselves, and our audience dissolving into laughter, before our director had the good sense to temporarily lower the curtain.

At which point the audience started to cheer – and demand an encore….

:-)

Sperm

2010-06-01T23:51:00.008+01:00

Nowadays my mind wanders ever more capriciously. Yesterday it happened again, whilst looking up the definition of a Spenserian Stanza in the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

It was while pondering this definition that my eye fell upon the run of subsequent entries in my beloved dictionary. The entry for Spenserian is followed by an entry for Spent, and then, by happy happenchance, with another entry for Sperm.

So it followed that at one moment I was thinking about Spenser’s stanza in the Faerie Queene, with eight iambic pentameters and an alexandrine, and in the very next moment my mind was absorbed in Sperm.

Did you know that the word Sperm is either singular or plural? Or that sperm contains spermatozoa, which is the plural of spermatozoon? And that a spermatozoon begins its life as a spermatogonium, after which it develops into a spermatocyte before becoming the mature motile sex cell that looks and moves like a tadpole?

Gadzooks, I thought! All this extraneous information! My mind was swimming. I imagined myself as a spermatozoon, swimming like a tadpole. Suddenly, I rediscovered my erstwhile interest in genealogy, and I realised I had missed a trick. We are all descended from tadpoles, aren’t we?

But not any old ordinary tadpoles, mind you, but winning tadpoles, by which I mean those precious few; those who create the world’s population; those who succeed where countless zillions of others fail.

We should therefore be far more proud of our immediate ancestor – that special tadpole - than all the ancestors that we normally think of. And I think that the humble yet winning spermatozoon (?) should really be given a name of its own, and be known as the spermato-ZOOM.

Credit where credit is due, that is what I say.

Three cheers for the spermato-ZOOM!
Yippee!
Yippee!!
Yippee!!!
:-)

PS
Yesterday, my girlfriend’s youngest daughter announced her first pregnancy. We were the first to know, and I am due to become an honorary granddad again. And in seven months time, I hope to rediscover the extraordinary delight of cradling a new-born baby in my arms again. We'll have to travel back 2,000 miles from our winter retreat to do that, but I’ll probably be browsing my dictionary en route...

PPS
Here’s the opening verse from the Faerie Queene:

LO I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far vnfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses hauing slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.

Argint Cell fur Hilp!

2010-04-21T09:03:00.008+01:00

Hilp!!! :-(

Es yua cen sii, O’m hevong truabli typong un my cumpatir. O thonk O mey hevi pat sumi uf my elphebitoc kiys beck oncurrictly eftir O tuuk thim uat tu govi thim e clien. My kiys eri rielly shony, bat ivirythong O typi os luukong solly.

Pliesi hilp – end bi sarprosid - loki O em.

Thenks! :-)

I

2010-04-11T12:48:00.007+01:00

I know I use the word I a lot when I write. I think I do it because I is such a simple character, and so am I. As a child I found I could write the character I well before I could write any of the others in the alphabet. And I found I could write the sloping I easier than the upright I.

Gosh, I used the word four times in each of the four sentences above, and I think I avoided using inverted commas by using I and I, so this sentence has five.

I think I like I and I even better than I like I, which is six.

Do you have a favourite word or character ?

The Crack of Dawn

2010-04-05T17:09:00.031+01:00

All this adventuring I do is very tiring, especially when it gets me out of bed at ungodly hours. You see, I’m an inveterate sleepwalker, and lots of my adventures happen at night.

The other night I happened to wake up with my head sticking out of the bedroom window. I haven’t the faintest idea why my head was sticking out of the window, because my short-term memory switches off as soon as I awake. But I was greeted by a wondrous sight.

It was daybreak, and my head was turned facing the rising sun. As it rose, the sun passed behind the peak of a small mountain and then came into view again on the other side. I’d never noticed this “double dawn” phenomenon before, but then I’d never had my head trapped under a fallen sash window before.

Anyway, as soon as I managed to extricate myself, it occurred to me that I’d never actually witnessed the absolute crack of dawn. I realised that my bedroom window might be the ideal vantage point, provided I was awake a little earlier the next morning with my head turned in exactly the same position as before.

Well, I spent an exciting day making preparations for the crack of dawn. There were lots of logistics to sort out, including thinking up a plan that would ensure my presence at the window at exactly the right time in the morning. The key issue was to ensure I would not be somewhere else - sleepwalking.

I came up with an ingenious idea. I wound up my alarm clock, set it to the right time, and strapped it to my wrist. Then I got a pencil and paper and listed all the places where I had previously woken up after a bout of sleepwalking. I got a local map, and carefully drew a circle around each of these places. This enabled me to identify the location that was furthest from my home, which happened to be the police station. Remarkably, and for reasons that are beyond me, I seem to wake up there quite frequently.

So off I went, to the police station, where I took a careful note of the time on my alarm clock, and then walked back home. On my return to my bedroom, I again noted the time on my alarm clock. I then set the alarm to ring at sunrise minus the elapsed time taken by my walk.

I reasoned that this would ensure my arrival back at my window in good time for the crack of dawn the following morning. I had even taken the precaution of wearing dark sunglasses on my trial walk back from the police station, to simulate the real night-time conditions that I was likely to encounter.

Well, to cut a long story short, the plan, which had left nothing to chance, worked brilliantly well. I can proudly say I was there. I actually witnessed the crack of dawn. And there were two cracks, not one.

I had propped up the sash window to prevent any further accident, and was knelt down in position at the very moment when the sun appeared. And as it appeared, I rose up in excitement, and heard the two cracks of dawn.

And would you believe it? One crack came from my left knee, and the other from my right. But my girlfriend, who always begs to differ, insists it was my head cracking against the bottom of the open sash window that woke her up.

Ho-hum. It is difficult for me to reason with her, because she says I was comatose at that precise instant in time.
:-)

Farewell, dear Blogs.

2010-04-01T05:15:00.005+01:00

It’s not much fun switching on your laptop, following your bookmark to your blog, and seeing that all your posts have vanished. A whole bunch of emotions well up inside you – disbelief, denial, desperation to do something, anything.

You come out of your page, retrieve the bookmark, and click again. Same result. You power down, restart, and repeat, with the same result. Then you follow your links, to the blogs of people you like on the same website, to see if they are OK. And shamefully, you half hope they aren’t, that they are also afflicted by a universal problem, which would be a problem shared. You find they are OK.

Except for one thing – you can’t see any images, like avatars, photos, U-Tube clips, that you know are part of these other blogs. You read a comment about your missing posts, and then another comment about missing images. So there is something wrong with the website! It’s not just you!

Aha! You add your own comments, trying to be happy, hoping that things will be sorted out. And to an extent they are, because later, all the missing images reappear. A temporary glitch!

But your own posts don’t reappear. They stay vanished.

I’m going to skip giving details of my torrid journey through Help facilities. I guess you have experience of these, and maybe you have views that are similar to mine. Somehow, the glorious precision of the English language is lost, and is occasionally replaced by black comedy. “Help! My kitten had crawled over my keyboard and deleted stuff – how can I get it all back?”

Over the next couple of days, it gradually dawned on me that nobody else, kitten-less like me, was screaming about their missing posts. I was alone.

Then, at least I think so, the penny dropped. I remembered using a newly installed internet "café" in the reception area of my apartment block. Just for fun, I’d popped a couple of euro into one of the slots and tried it out. I’d accessed my blog, and hadn’t bothered to sign out, expecting everything on my session to close down when the money ran out.

I’m thinking my session stayed alive after I left, and someone came along and deleted my stuff. Just like the kitten, except I wasn’t around to witness it.

It’s my best guess. And whether I’m right or wrong, I’m a complete nincompoop. :-(

Dawn Chorus

2010-03-29T20:55:00.004+01:00

There’s a big mistake that I always make
As I awake in the dawning.
I open one eye and then with a sigh
I wonder why I’m still yawning.

I know I’m awake by the noise I make
And so I fake some more sleeping.
But I don’t know why however I try
My other eye begins peeping.

I see I’m in bed asleep with my wed
But in my head I hear wheezing.
And then for my sins my darling begins
Her own loud dins and starts sneezing.

She sneezes and snores and bellows and roars
As if some wars she is winning.
So I blow my nose and tickle her toes
Inside her hose and she’s grinning.

We sigh and we moan we grunt and we groan
And then her phone begins pinging.
There is no mistake the noises we make
Bring birds awake with their singing!

:-)