View From The WIndow

It is early and cold, I can see snow on the hills through the gap off to the east, which is where I am heading in about twenty minutes. Washington House has scaffolding up so the chimney is now getting repaired so may in fact sell, but I doubt it, the houses on both sides of me are now on sale, have I upset anyone? The one to my left, a two bedroom cottage is £250,000, a ludicrous sum of money, the one on my right is £175,000 and is slightly smaller, the main difference is the expensive one has parking off road, but even so.

The road has now opened and I drove through it yesterday, I can't see what all the fuss has been about but it all looks fine now, although there are rumours that a traffic system will be employed at some point as they are not quite finished yet. Did you see the huge sinkhole which opened in the centre of a Japanese city, it would quite easily have swallowed both my house and Washington House, the Japs had it mended and back to normal in 48hrs, our man made hole has now been a problem since the middle of October and the saga is not over yet.

I have come to the conclusion that I have to give up on watching the BBC News, I am sick to the back teeth of having to correct the anchorman/woman/person to no avail as I shout at the box and bring the wrath of the missus down upon my head. I also hope that I am alive to witness the great gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands when someone in their right mind decides they should not get the licence fee any more.

Yes it is old, but you get the point.

I heard someone mention that the 'Chair' has to resign and be replaced in the ongoing child abuse enquiry, you know the one, it is going to try and beat all the records set by the Bloody Sunday enquiry, more expensive, more time and more pointless. Is it just me or is that a ridiculous phrase, why not chairman or if you feel that strongly about it it, chairwoman, for heavens sake I'll even go with chairperson to fit in, but 'Chair', come on.

The missus went to Glasgow last week, she was having a bad day as I found out on the phone when I innocently called to see how things were, all of a sudden I felt I had to apologise for her missing breakfast and that the workmen had not turned up, how do they do that? The upshot was that she would be getting a later train home and could I phone up and find out how much it would cost, simples, no. I had several attempts at getting a phone number for Virgin Trains, I got it and phoned up, using one of my lives to ask the question, what was my booking number, I did not have a booking number, I explained again I merely wanted to know the cost of rebooking on behalf of my wife. We need the number to book you on a train, no, I don't know which train she will be on, I only need to know the cost if indeed there is a cost, I don't need a train. This loop went on for far too long and having used up 7 of my 9 lives I put the phone down before I keeled over. I remember when I travelled up and down the country I arrived at Carstairs Junction, went to the ticket office and bought a ticket, if it was a return it was double the price of a single, I could get off and on again anywhere along the line without requiring a lawyer to plead my case, do you?

Another tax dodger.

  If you are thinking about learning another language, how about ditching Conversational French or German for Motherese? Another scientific fact is that if babies are cooed at, played with, hugged and generally loved they turn out better human beings than if the opposite is the case, all of that seemingly is Motherese.

Does your kitchen have old squeaky drawers which build muscles to close with a bang, a 70's cafetière, old, thumbed through recipe books you never use, or a giant metal box which heats the room but can't do you a decent frittata, a black cat walking over the worktops looking for mice, well if you don't you don't deserve to have friends and never invite them to eat. Willie, sorry, William Hanson a self centred, there I go again, self appointed etiquette expert has decided that if you want to be 'in' you need to have the kind of kitchen most of us ditched ten years ago or are suffering with until we can afford a new one. And these people coin it in!

Is that a sneer I see before me.......

I wonder when people like me are not going to be targetted as 'cultural appropriators' and the loons who get indignant about this are going to hound Japanese tourists in London for eating fish and chips, or Germans in Yorkshire for gulping down black pudding, or smiling Frenchies on the Royal Mile buying tartan scarves. They really haven't thought it through have they, what a terrible disappointment the real world must be to these snowflakes if they ever set foot out of their safety zones.

I wonder if that is a Swiss watch he is wearing...... god help us.