Why does this little fellow fear Burns Night?Warning, the following picture may contain upsetting images.
New eyesight test for frequent users of screens. Can you tell the difference?
What crafty ideas did you get for Christmas?
What have you ordered on line recently? ‘Hoovering’ used to be a simple operation…
Let’s relax and play some games. Do you manage to fill in all the lines?
How is your language learning going?
Do you manage to win at Wordblitz or start off hopeful…
Still hopeful, but it usually goes wrong in the last round. Final results later perhaps…
Results just in, scroll down to the end.
Luckily I seem to have acquired a new friend.
Yup, beaten again. I’m the left hand side, I’m not saying who is on the right, it could be one of several friends who regularly beat me. A scientific study shows it makes no difference whether I am playing on my desk top, on my iPad or on my phone on the wobbly bus.
How do you like to pass these winter days or hot summer days?
My father came home one day, very excited with a new invention, Velcro! He worked in plastics, but I’m not sure if the plastic factory where he was manager actually produced it. Looking up Velcro I see it was commercially available in the fifties, but to us in the late 1960s it was a novelty. He kept trying to find ways of using Velcro around the house.
More exciting inventions lay ahead of course, Dad once said that he would like to live to a hundred to see what would be invented. Sadly he only got past seventy. August 2025 he would have been one hundred and I have thought for a while it would be interesting to think of how many new inventions he has missed. This is rather an overwhelming task; there is a difference between something being invented and most people being aware or getting to use it.
2025 also marks a quarter of a century gone by, whether 25 is the last year of the quarter or the first year of the next, doesn’t really matter. I can remember when, thanks to George Orwell, 1984 was The Future, then 2001 A Space Odyssey confirmed the start of a new century as the obvious FUTURE when we would be living in plastic bubbles on the moon.
All that seemed to happen at the turn of the century was the panic that all the computers would get confused and everything would be switched off. At work we were seriously considering whether we should all go home and fill the garage with tins of food and flagons of water. Chez Gogerty we didn’t in the end and luckily all was well.
How has life changed in those twenty five years? Before the millennium I naively thought the twenty first century would be one of peace after all the violence of the twentieth, how wrong could I be. We can definitely conclude that humans have tried everything to make the world a better place, following faith, education, new political ideas, better medical treatments, scientific improvements. Alas new inventions are hijacked by criminals and war mongers as well as doctors and scientists hoping to improve lives.
So what in your life is vastly different from 2001 AD or CE .
I seem to recall saying at the end of last century that had I known home computers were going to be invented, I would not have got married let alone had children! I cannot recall why. Probably children arguing over whose turn it was to use the one computer and me saying everyone was spending too much time on that ghastly second hand machine with green writing, my memories are hazy. I do know that fathers were saying they should get a computer for the children, when they actually wanted one for themselves.
Now of course I can’t imagine not having a computer and iPad and panic if I forget my phone, even if I am just popping to the greengrocers.
What has changed in your life over the past twenty five years?
If you live in a city or suburb you will probably hope to get away for a change of scenery. As you stand on top of a moor, hearing only sheep bleating, you will say to yourself ‘This is Real Life.’ The same thoughts will surface if you stand on a rocky outcrop feeling the spray from the waves pounding below, or perhaps you have visited a peaceful holy island, Iona or Lindisfarne.
Supposing you move somewhere remote and idyllic, or to the coast and can saunter down to the beach on a wild winter day, dodging waves. Sheer bliss. Then one day you go up to London to visit friends or relatives or for a cultural outing. As you arrive at a London terminus, descend into the underground, hear the rumble of an approaching tube train, then squeeze on board with the multitudes, you find yourself saying ‘Back to Real Life!’
Could it be that real life must involve cities, mainline railway stations and underground trains?
Those millions of us brought up in suburbs anywhere in the world are bound to feel we are never in real life; neither in the bustling heart of the city, nor in the countryside growing food and raising livestock to feed the nation.
When you turn on the television news real life takes on a different dimension. Why are your working on the cheese counter at Waitrose when that girl you were at school with is now a war correspondent standing on a heap of rubble?
Is real life the peace all great prophets have urged us to follow; cherishing the soil, creating harmony, music, arts, science and babies. Or is reality living on a knife edge beneath a volcano or on an earthquake fault line? Are you likely to see your home swept away by fire or flood or do you face death every day in war?
Have you experienced real life or are you still waiting to find it?
Be careful what you say, the gods are always listening.
‘Don’t come out again in this awful weather, I don’t need a lift, it’s much quicker on the train.’
It is March 2020, we are about to go into lockdown, but at Southampton Hospital it’s like entering a busy airport terminal with shops and a huge Costa Coffee and other eateries. The only precautions against the new ‘Corona Virus’ are instructions to use hand gel. We and I have been visiting my husband every day.
Now, on a miserable wet late afternoon I manage to find the right bus to the station and saunter in looking around for a window with a human being behind it, so I don’t have to bother with a ticket machine. An androgenous person in a uniform approaches, I wasn’t expecting a welcome party.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I just want a single to Bournemouth.’
‘There are no trains to Bournemouth.’
‘WHAT!’
‘Tree on the line.’
‘So when might there be a train?’
‘Not sure, do you still want to go to Bournemouth?’
‘YES.’
Luckily the platform west has a café and waiting area, now full of grumpy commuters. I am not there long when there is a sudden exodus to the exit, I follow them as they all pile onto a double decker bus, asking if it’s going to Bournemouth. No one actually says no so I rush upstairs and grab the last seat. It is dark and still raining, the windows immediately mist up. If this ‘Corona Virus’ really is so infectious, this is when I’m going to catch it.
I can’t see a thing, no idea where we are, but presumably on the motorway. After a good hour the lights of Bournemouth appear. The train journey takes only 28 minutes if you get a fast train, a fast train being one that mainly stops where I want to go.
There are many good reasons for going by train, keeping traffic off the roads, enjoying a faster smooth journey, looking at the scenery and into people’s back gardens… and of course people watching and eavesdropping.
Autumn 2024 and we are leaving the Isle of Wight. Our lovely little B&B is only minutes from the ferry. This time we have looked on line to check if the trains are running smoothly. They aren’t, it’s Sunday engineering works.
At Lymington we disembark and have plenty of time to file out to the car park and get on a comfortable replacement bus which leaves at exactly the same time as the train would have done. We enjoy a pleasant ride.
At Brockenhurst all was not going well. Confused people were hanging around outside the station waiting their turn to consult a chap with a clipboard and a phone. His jacket says ‘Bus Replacement Service Director’ or some such words. Also ‘on duty’ was a fed up South West Trains chap who wandered off at intervals and returned to make remarks such as ‘Don’t travel on a Sunday, I don’t know what they’re playing at’ and ‘Tell your friends Not to travel next Sunday.’ A young woman in a light blue tabard was trying to be helpful. These light blue people don’t seem to actually belong to the railways; at Bournemouth I had wondered if they were students on work experience as they were very young. I think they might be employed to pass on information, give stress counselling and to take the pressure off other staff.
In the meantime the Replacement Director was doing a grand job in an impossible situation with passengers going in different directions and not enough buses. He promised he would get us taxis if there were not enough bus seats. At one stage a coach turned up already full, turned round in the car park and looked like it was going straight back out again. The Director suddenly grabbed an elderly lady by the arm, frog marched her over to the coach and returned empty handed to address the crowd.
‘I know you’re all going to hate me, but that lady was traveling alone and had been waiting a while to get to Southampton, so I took an executive decision to put her in the only empty seat.’
We couldn’t argue with that and nobody did. We gradually herded ourselves into groups according to destination. A few taxis turned up and some left as The Director remembered who had been waiting longest. In the meantime more passengers drifted in or were dropped off by loved ones expecting to say farewell to them.
A black van with no windows turned up and our Bournemouth group was summoned forward, surely we were not going to be piled in the back of a van like prisoners? It turned out to be a luxury mini bus with tinted windows and curtains. There then followed a tour of the whole of the New Forest as we visited every tiny rural station and halt, seemingly only accessed by narrow winding lanes. At each one we dropped off or picked up someone. It was more than an hour before we arrived at Bournemouth station. The train journey takes 26 minutes. We got home safely, but had not even glimpsed a train all day, let alone been on one.
Did I venture on to a train ever again? Yes, but that’s for another episode…
‘Once we get to Waterloo we’re on the home run, we can relax and have lunch.’
How many times have I stood looking at the large departures board at London Waterloo? Generations of my family commuted up to Waterloo along with hordes of fellow office workers long before working from home was thought of. The last London terminus to have steam trains, they were still running when we lived in Farnborough in the early sixties. Nothing can ever beat sitting in a train as it builds up steam and leaves the station and what fun being totally enveloped in smoke as you walk to school over the railway bridge.
Now as I stared up at the board to check train times before we sauntered off to find lunch, I wondered if it was the board or my brain that had become jumbled up. Nothing made sense, though the words cancelled and delayed seemed to feature rather a lot. I suggested we go to the information desk.
‘When is the next train for Bournemouth?’
‘No idea what’s going on, signal failure at Winchester, you best get straight on the next train.’
‘Have we got time?’
A bloke standing beside us said ‘Don’t worry, you’ve got time, I’m the driver.’
We got on the South West train and off we went, but at Southampton we stopped and didn’t start again. We sat there for a while, chatting to someone who had just flown into the country to go and see her dying sister in Bournemouth hospital. We were apparently waiting for a driver – after rail mishaps to come we soon learned that any rail problems result in drivers everywhere being in the wrong place. Each message over the Tannoy contradicted the previous one. We were told this train was terminating and we all got off. At least we could have a comfort break. Train toilets are a subject for another time, preferably when you’re not eating your dinner. Then a message of hope for some of us, the next train was for Bournemouth only, hurrah. It was a ‘Cross Country’ not conjured up especially for us, just happened to be passing through on its normal route. And what of the other poor souls who needed to go to the other stations along the way? I don’t know.
When my sister came over from Australia for a long holiday I had suggested a trip by train and ferry to the Isle of Wight as it is pleasant and easy, all went well when I did the same trip last year with my friend. Bournemouth to Brockenhurst in the New Forest, change to the dear little train that just goes back and forth to Lymington Pier then saunter on to the ferry to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. We had booked three nights at a B&B yards from the little ferry terminal.
At Bournemouth station that morning all was chaos, car on the level crossing at Brockenhurst, how long does it take to tow a car off a railway line? All day perhaps judging by what lay ahead. The platform was full of staff, they didn’t know what was going on, but they were doing their best to keep up our morale or their own. Then a train appeared, we got on with our wheelie cases, found a seat then heard the announcement ‘This train is for Southampton only.’ We got off again.
A train did come along and we arrived at Brockenhurst where the platform was full of confused passengers wanting to go up to London or down to Weymouth. We went over to the empty platform to check if the train sitting there was for Lymington, it was and we jumped on quickly, but it didn’t move. It was waiting for a driver. We sat and sat, no more messages came.
Then thinking outside of the box I suggested we just get off the train, trek back over the bridge to the information office and ask what was going on. They had no idea and I proposed Plan B, just walk out of the station and get a taxi to Lymington Pier. Another passenger had already found one and was happy to share. I am still not convinced that this was a genuine taxi, I could see no evidence and the driver wanted cash only, £18. The other passenger was a local who needed to get back to his house in Lymington and I offered him a free ride, just glad that I always carry real money. He insisted on giving me a ten pound note, so we had made a bit of a profit. Whether or not it was a genuine taxi, he did take us to the right place. We relaxed at the little coffee shop in the tiny terminal while we waited for the ferry. The ferry is a delight, you just saunter up the gangway in minutes, climb a few stairs and sit in comfort at the front soothed by the smooth journey across the Solent.
You will have to wait to find out if we ever returned home from that trip, but if I mention we had to come back on a Sunday, some of you might guess.
Funny how English borrows from other languages to express thoughts and ideas. Vive la difference sounds much better than ‘long live the difference’. There are lots of differences to amuse us within the English speaking world, especially the words we use, or just local customs. I’m sure we have all had confusing moments visiting or being visited, or even reading a novel set in another country.
‘How long have I got till the shops shut?’
‘About five hours.’
‘I’ve just got to put the salt in the dishwasher’
‘WHAT!’
Which would you put on your dinner?
When I was young I was worried that I was going to get arrested for jaywalking, even though I wasn’t sure what that was. I have since realised that idea must have come from watching American cartoons, perhaps Top Cat? There is no such offence in Britain…
I was reading a novel and very involved in the plot, then the leading character, who seemed to be quite sensible, decided to have biscuits and gravy for breakfast! Had I misread that…
What oddities have you come across in your travels or reading?
Since early September I have often been AWOL from WeirdPress with assorted family staying and going on trips. Fortunately my sister is also a writer and always comes to my writers’ group when she stays, so we both did some writing. I took plenty of photos in strange places and we met plenty of weird people, so plenty of blogger fodder. In the meantime here are a few highlights. Can you guess where we might have been?
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 