I guess I am just wittering away, but I've noticed a few things lately while I've been moving around my life in a slow and slightly stooped manner (still sore inside). Yes, the life of the Frog is still a delicate and sensitive one (sniff).
We've seen some vandalism in our nearest town, Monmouth recently. Boots the Chemist and Purveyor of strange mugs that no-one will ever fit into the dishwasher, was left with it's huge glass window smashed. They repaired it within around 24 hours.
The local Handyman shop was also damaged, again a very large glass window was smashed and consequently boarded up.
Now my point is, it's still boarded up after a few weeks.....and it's called Handyman House! I guess they're just not very handy.
I've had two Christmas Greetings from companies that I will now never, ever buy from. For goodness sake, it's still only November. I know shops want to advertise their Christmas wares as soon as the children go back to school in September, but surely it should be made illegal to send a Christmas Greeting before December the first.
I have, I admit, attended a few Christmas Fairs at Schools in the area because friends asked me to take my stock, but I'm a bit of a scardy cat at these things. I people watch and I'm scared something whizzing round my little brain will pop out my mouth so others can hear. At the last Fair I set up my stall and sat with a nice cool glass of water waiting for it to open...all was calm....
My mind wandered back to the last time I was there and I'd spent the whole evening laughing at a child's drawing of a woman with strangely large breasts; a child had drawn their mother, whom I imagine either had no idea the picture was on display or had a sight impairment.
Then I remembered the child from hell who stood in front of my stall the entire evening with a maniacal look on her face demanding the price of everything and scaring the hell out of me.
So, this year the first customer was, of course, that same child, bigger and rounder and yes even more frightening. I groaned out loud by accident, my heart sank. She bought a weirdly large number of stretch frogs, mostly the same colour and talked at me whenever I wasn't speaking with a customer.
Her mother was even more scary, she had the air of a baroness and the hairstyle of a sumo wrestler. As she swaggered gracefully around the school hall she tossed her smart wrap around her bottle green fleece, a strange combination tis true. I felt as though I was in a scene from Matilda with Miss Trunchbull the resemblance was uncanny.
And a story from my holiday.
We travelled with our lovely friends and their two children.
Coming home we journeyed by Train from the airport.
Trains don't stop too long at stations and so getting 9 of us on and off with 9 suitcases and 9 lots of hand luggage was quite interesting.
One train we wedged ourselves into was so crowded once we got on that the guard couldn't get out of his door to check tickets, our cases were piled high against it..I don't think we were too popular on that train.
But it got worse...our travelling companion is highly skilled in train maintenance and holds a position of high authority in a Welsh train company.
We managed to settle in First Class, got ourselves warm drinks and discovered it was almost impossible to drink them, such was the bumpiness of the train.
Darling Husband listened to the authoritative speculations of our friend as to the problem.
His wife and I rolled our eyes.
The Ticket Chappie/Train Manager arrived to throw us out of First Class and our friend deftly preoccupied him with chatter that he thought there was a problem with the train because he, himself was an engineer.
The manager hardly glanced at our tickets, left us in First Class and went away.
A few minutes later he came back, pointed at our friend and said loudly
"I want a word with you".
We all froze prepared to go to the chicken carriage at the back, Mr G (our friend) followed the Train manager to a table further down the carriage and a big discussion went on for some time.
Mr G swaggered back to us and sat down.
"I told him what's wrong with this train" he said, looking rather pleased with himself.
His wife and I rolled our eyes.
The journey continued with lengthy explanations about the technical fault, and we pulled into Swindon hoping no-one else would get in 'our' carriage and our journey into Wales would soon pass.
Next there was an announcement:
"This train will be terminated from service at Swindon. Would all passengers now leave the train taking all their belongings with them. Blah Blah...something about the next train to Wales will be in an hour"
Now I suspect in all the other carriages there was a groan.
In our carriage all eyes turned to Mr G and I suspected he might very soon become the victim of domestic violence.
There were comments like:
"Oh good one Dad!"
"That's you're bloody fault"
"Uncle G! What did you say?"
and "Why can't you just keep your mouth shut and be normal like everybody else?"
So..
it doesn't always pay to know everything...but it was very, very funny.
