Just do as you're told

Waitrose, where I love to shop, has had a self-scan system for quite a while. You collect a handheld device when you go in, which makes beeping noises when you pick things from the shelves, and then somehow it works out how much you have to pay at the special till. I've never used it, I enjoy chatting with the checkout ladies and I'd hate to think I was doing them put of a job. We got our Christmas food from there, pork and sausage-meat for Little Petal, Craster Kipper and Sushi for me.

Tescos, where I hate to shop, has recently introduced a pair of checkout counters where you can scan the shopping through yourself. Little Petal loves it. I didn't want to use it when she first introduced me to it, because the queues at the normal checkouts weren't long enough to mean we'd be waiting for too long. But Little Petal had to use the new device. I watched as she tried waving the shopping in front of the scanner, and tried making helpful beeping noises, but it didn't work until I took the packet from her and held it upside down. I was pushed away and told to watch and not touch anything while she carried on.

I picked up a bag and began to put the shopping into it. The machine made a low-toned warning sound. Little Petal turned to me and hissed in her angry mummy voice "Don't touch anything until you're told to, is that too difficult for you to understand?"

A Tescos girl hurried over and Little Petal said "He touched the shopping." They exchanged a knowing look, she reset something, and Little Petal started all over again. She pointed to the instructions on the screen, which said that each item of shopping was to be scanned and placed on the out tray and then not touched until payment had been completed. It took us twice as long as the normal checkout counter would have taken. And it was all my fault.

And so it came to pass that, after Christmas, we returned even unto Tescos to get such things as we had run out of as bread, flour and cheese, and because we were now both penniless, Little Petal would use her Tescos voucher to pay for the bulk of the shopping. And, she was going to pay for it at this same self-service station.

"Do not muck about," I was told. "Just do exactly what you're told to do on the screen." In the mummy-will-be-angry voice, of course.

So I stood and watched as she put the flour through, then the cheese, and the salt, and then she went onto the payment page, and waved the voucher at it. There was a deep beep, and the page changed.

"Payment Voucher not accepted at this time" it read in large letters. "Please call for help."

"There isn't a help button," Little Petal said, puzzled. "What do we do now?"

And so I did exactly what it told me to on the screen. I opened my mouth and called at the top of my lungs "HELP!"

Everyone stopped and turned to look at us. I looked back, raised my arms, and said "Will nobody help the Widow's son?"

And somebody did. Joy of joys, Little Petal was politely shown where the screens told her to present the voucher. She had ignored what the machine was telling her to do.

There is a God. Or was it a late Christmas present?

I burnt my Boots

so there's no going back now.

Luckily I wasn't inside them at the time. It was a stupid accident. I'd stood them on top of the solid-fuel boiler to dry them after getting soaked to the soles digging out tree stumps. The old chipboard I was burning made the flue pipe get hotter than normal, and by the time I had noticed the smell, the right boot was a charred mess.

I was going to say the right hand boot, until I realised how clumsy it would have sounded, but then I tried changing it to the right foot boot, and that sounded even worse. So, regardless of which part of the body should or shouldn't be used when talking about footwear, I was now unable to working in muddy fields. Even worse, I wasn't going to be able to go fishing on Christmas Eve with my brother.

In the end, I went to the country stores and found a boot sale in progress. I got a pair of lace up working boots and a pair of rubber boots for less than I had paid for my old cremated leather walking boots. I christened the rubber boots with a trip to the river and caught some more pike on the fly. My brother, who ties the absurd creations that we dangle in the Stour to tempt the fish to play, has named them. I caught my fish on a Dame Edna Everedge, while he caught his on a Dame Barbara Cartland. We have yet to try the Dame Shirley Bassey, the pink and mauve lures seemed to work well enough in the chilly winter waters.

If you're still wondering why I said there was no going back at the head of this post, it's because I live with a Geordie, and often find myself saying things with a Geordie accent. "He burnt his boats" would, said by a Geordie, come out as "He burnt his boots".

Geordies, pronounced Ji-aw-dees, are the people born within a certain distance of a part of Newcastle, a large city in Northumberland. It, the county, sprawls on the Northeast coast of England close to Scotland, and is a home to several other dialects as well. Most Geordies have disparaging names for these, such as "Makhams", but I have not been able to understand the reasons why, let along the dialects themselves. The rules of pronunciation are haphazard, and have to be learnt by rote.

When I first visited Northumberland, I was driving around the area of Hadrians Wall, and told Little Petal (trying and as usual failing to use the maps properly,) that we were on the road to Hawick. I pronounced it "Horwick", as in Hawthorne the tree, or Lord Haw-haw the traitor, or even Horlicks the perversion.

No, I was told, it's pronounced "Hoick". Aha, I thought, drop the middle portion.

"So should Newcastle really be pronounced 'Nestle'?" I wondered. I began naming things according to my new-found whim. The atmosphere inside the car became dour, like the scenery outside.

I drove around the border counties, desperately scanning signposts and village name signs, hoping that one of these places we arrived at would be called "Bottom of the Locks". I would then be able to drive into the place and announce, triumphantly, "This is Bollocks". But there was no such place anywhere, so bollocks anyway.

Christmas 1954 style

The war years were a fading memory, and building steam-powered meccano things to celebrate the festive season was de rigeur. What is he going to use that engine for? Will it power a carousel with reindeer going merrily up and down? Or a flying Santa and his sleigh ride? She seems to know, that look on her face suggests she's looking forward to something once he stops fiddling with his tools. I can't get over the smartly-knotted tie and buttoned-up jacket. So this is what the internet has lead us to: we don't make things, just buy them off ebay, and sit around at home wearing pastel-coloured tee-shirts and ripped jeans.

We are such stuff

as ice-creams are made on

Little Petal and I couldn't be more different when it comes to dreaming. She can rarely remember a dream from the night before, but when she does, it is invariably a nightmare. I can nearly always remember at least on of the dreams I had when I wake, and I almost never have bad dreams.

I feel cheated if I can't recall anything from the night before, but trying to bring back the memories of some of them is still a puzzle to me. Sometimes, something in the day will just bring back a fragment, but mostly I have the strange feeling of knowing that I have an image or sensation in my mind that I can sense is there, but just can't quite touch. There is a similar sensation when you jolt awake after dozing and realise that you were dreaming, but can't picture or describe it to yourself. It's as if a shutter comes down, and it seems to be instantaneous. Tommy wrote a poem that describes it in another way. Her poem reminded me that I sometimes remember a forgotten dream when I am in another dream, and yet again, when I wake, I know I remembered a dream within a dream, but still can't picture it.

I dreamed the other night that I took a car (not mine or Little Petals's) to a garage because the brakes needed mending. I wandered away from the garage and found myself wading along a shallow stream, passing underneath a road bridge. I turned a bend and saw that trees arched up above me, and then once I had gone beyond the leafy section, found the water plunged down over a weir into a series of little pools. The water was suddenly very much warmer, but I climbed out of it and stood on the rocks. The pools were full of shellfish. I saw clams with the water swirling in and out of their open shells, and purple brown lobsters, and large crabs moving slowly through the clean bubbling water. I knew the name of the village where this was happening, but I also knew it had never had these pools, or even a shellfish shop.

After I woke up I tried to remember the name of the village, where it was, and if I had ever owned a light brown car like a Golf or a Polo. I did once own an old Passat, and it had a partial brake failure once which I fixed myself,but it was a much deeper red than the car I saw in this dream. And, once awake, I had no idea at all of what the village really looked like.

All I know, and I'm not even certain that it is true, is why the shellfish might have appeared in the dream. The night before, when I had been grabbing songs from the net, I had been humming to myself

Limpets,
There's no Limpets,
There's no Limpets,
No No, there's no Limpets

Mindless Cruelty

My dilemma is this: I know it is morally wrong to kill something needlessly but nature does not make such a distinction. If I follow nature's way and kill something, does that make it alright?

I hate slugs, they are repulsive, and destructive to our plants. The only good that I think they do is to provide a food source for birds and other small creatures. For that reason, and probably that reason alone, I don't like putting down slug pellets to poison them.

I put a log on the fire, and as I fiddled it round into position I felt something slimy in a spot where the bark had peeled away. I turned the log around and found that a slug was stuck to the bare wood.

So, what would you have done? Left it on the log and put it back on the fire, or taken it off and thrown it outside?

I did what I felt was right, much to Little Petal's scornful amusement. But then, I have to live with myself. The distinction I make is that a Thrush eating a slug is nature's way, but my knowingly putting on the fire to burn is mindless cruelty.

Side-tracks

I'm still new to blogging, I'm still learning what you can do with blogs. I spend a lot of my on-line time wandering around a small list of blogs, most of which you can find in my sidebar. On these blogs I visit, once I've read the latest posts, I often start wandering through their sidebar links. Using the principle that, if I like their posts I'm also going to like the people they've selected to link to, I can find myself miles away, blog-wise, from where I started. There aren't the hours in the day to travel enough of the net.

I put up a link to an MP3 blog in my side bar some time ago. It was a site I had discovered even before I started my own blog. It's quite easy to spot if you want to take a look. The good Doctor visited here once and decided it was the most noteworthy thing about the site. He was at least honest enough to say so on his own blog.

Today, though, I'm honouring Taiga, firstly for her Superloner Advent Calender, and secondly for one of her sidebar links that I've only just discovered. First of all, have a look at Taiga-Tails, as I call her, and then have a look down her sidebar for The Hype Machine. I'm holding off from putting it straight into my sidebar because I didn't discover it for myself; I'd feel guilty stealing from Taiga.

Of course, you don't have to go look: not everyone likes the surreal, which Taiga excels at, or new sounds, which the Hype Machine pumps out effortlessly. If you want something a bit more mundane, Albert's playing with trains. It makes a change from bicycles.

The Gene Kelly Strain

It makes you realise just how tough some actors were. Remember Gene Kelly, trotting around in the downpour? I wonder if they heated the water up before filming so that he didn't catch a cold. I know it sounds silly, but they could have set up a tanker run from some hot springs somewhere or other and turned one of the Buzby Berkelely sets into a temporary storage reservoir before using Nellie the Elephant and friends to spray it into the air on a parabolic trajectory. Knowing Hollywood there would even have been lighting to ensure there was a rainbow.

No such luck here in Wiltshire, where the rain has been intermittently persistent. I say intermittent, because I kept realising that it had stopped, and persistent because as soon I went outside with a saw and began to cut up the drier pieces of wood, it rained again. After three days of this, I woke up with a burning nose and percussive sneezing.

At least I have the sneezing. It is one of my top pleasures. I can understand the appeal that snuff had during the Seventeen Hundreds, although I believe that sneezing while taking it was as frowned on as it is today while snorting other stuff. Lack of self control, you see, showing lack of social graces. When LP found an old snuffbox in a box of auction goodies I had to try a pinch, much to her disgust. Sadly, I didn't get the sneeze I was hoping for either, just an ear-bashing from a Geordie who's never smoked and has no understanding of those who do or did.

Of course, the sneezing is just a by-product, the real reason for taking snuff is to get a nicotine hit. I did try using snuff once when I thought I ought to try and control my cigarette habit. I was wandering through Lapland at the time, and noticed these little round tins with "Snus" written on them, so I started sticking the odd pinch of it up my nose.

I didn't get any sneezes out of it at all. All I got was a burning sensation in my nose, and eyes that streamed so much I had to get on the bike and pedal like crazy to blow the moisture away so I could actually see the world around me. After a few more failed attempts to get a sneeze or two from the stuff I gave up and let the tin stay in the bag. Only an idiot would stick that stuff up their nose, I grumpily told myself.

Later, an American cyclist I met up with put me wise. I had spread out some of the contents of a bag to sort, and he spotted the tin of Snus.

"Can I try a pinch of that?" he asked. I told him he could have the whole tin, and watched to see how tough he would turn out to be.

He took some and rubbed it on his gums.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"It's like chewing tobacco, but you don't need to chew it," he said. "Don't be fooled by the name on the tin, only an idiot would stick this stuff up their nose."

I didn't tell him I had tried chewing tobacco once and had ended up almost vomiting the filthy brown stuff onto the ground. I couldn't be an actor, not even one with a bit-part sitting on a porch in a rocking chair and making the spittoon chime. And you can forget about dancing through pouring rain with an umbrella, too.