View from the Window

Remember last week I said the Lancashire heatwave would arrive in the afternoon, well it didn't, but the rain did. This morning it is damp, the rain turned up during the night, it is grey and showing no signs of brightening up so no doubt more on the way. I can't see Ingleborough or the windmills, I can see that there is a fairly strong wind as the flags hanging outside the window and along most of the buildings are fluttering. I say flags, they are actually triangular pieces of tea towels, bed sheets, curtains etc. with the odd pair of knickers and bra inserted for comedic licence.

Why flags? Well it is the village Childrens Sports Day next Saturday and we are wearing our Sunday best. I usually make an effort and go along to show my face as an upstanding member of the community and to schmooze, both of which have had no effect on my customer base so far. The Sports Day was revived years ago and has been on the verge of disappearing like a lot of things, bus services and library for instance, but manages to survive due to the unstinting work of a small number of people who refuse to give in to apathy. I helped out one year in a proper heatwave at the coconut stall, despite my lads being grown men and nowhere near the village, the organisers thought I had also volunteered the missus, and I was left to do a two man/woman job alone in blistering heat. I ended up so done in I started elbowing the bloody things off the sticks and giving them away just to end my torture. It was a very popular sideshow for about half an hour.

I am not good with over exertion and heat, not so bad when I was a young gazelle on the borders of Empire, eyeball to eyeball with the Yellow Peril in the Malacca Straits but as I got older the less tolerance I had. I took part in my third American Civil War re-enactment at Spring Hill in Tennessee and my outfit decided to forgo tents for extra realism and campaign like men, so we slept under gum blankets on straw. Normally that would have been fine as the weather was pretty warm, but on the first night we got torrential rain, I pretty much did not sleep at all, only people in tents did. After a gruelling days fighting and marching we retired, but decided to put up a small tent for three of us, it was a pretty tight squeeze and I snore like a bear. The snoring pretty much didn't matter as the rain came back and soaked the tent so much that if you touched the canvas the rain simply latched on to you through the canvas. At some point in the early hours we abandoned ship and went and slept in the car, well I did, no doubt my companions were wishing they had left me in the tent. The next day I went through more mud and bullets but I could not take part in the finale, I chickened out, I had had enough and joined a growing number of deserters back at the camp. When my comrades dropped me at my hotel in Nashville and before I took a well earned shower I looked at myself and it was if I had just been through a mugging, I was black and blue all over from the musket straps, the haversack and other bits and pieces I had been carrying. Despite this all three adventures were fantastic experiences which I am glad I took part in.

I am on the left.

Shattered.

 Would you buy or do you have a personalised number plate? One of the guys who is always in the pub of a Wednesday afternoon mentioned he had a number plate which would just suit me and especially the Batmobile "GEO 8X". I have a small number of possessions which give me more joy than others and I see as 'mine' rather than 'ours', not including the troops of course, and the Batmobile is one of them, when I bought it I was at one of life's crossroads, if I don't get this car now I may as well get a people carrier and be done with it. Needless to say I did not get the people carrier. Reckless as I can be however I refuse to pay £1,000 for a number plate, so I am changing my name to PE57 WUU! Come on, you gotta laugh.

Some time last week someone hacked my sons game account on Steam and began to play the games as him, this allowed him to take advantage of around £400 of games and of course my sons carefully built up characters and experience. However this was not enough for our socially-challenged wizard, he also found my sons business website and proceeded to destroy it. This is the type of person who used to pass phone boxes in the old days throw away the telephone book and then proceed to rip the phone from the wall, or is of the same mentality as the morons in the village who regularly break in to our one public toilet and steal the supplies of toilet roll, cleaner and hand towels while destroying anything else which does not take their fancy. The worst thing I ever done was knock on a door and leg it, and after being chased and caught one night suddenly lost my enthusiasm for pranks. A tad harsh perhaps but anyone caught hacking or cyber bullying for me goes up against the wall.

Ah, the wall I hear you ask. I had the threatening letter actually in the mailbag only to have the firm come back to me at the eleventh hour and promise to send a guy to fix the wall. Sadly I am obliged to let them try, I have however given them a date and warned that if it is not up to standard I will get the guy I want to fix it. What a bleeding carry on.