A belated happy new year!

For me, it has already started in fairly manic fashion. 

I am sitting in Dublin airport writing this update surrounded by some pretty dismayed faces. My plane is delayed as usual. Flying on budget airlines, getting delayed seems to be the norm. Every plane that starts late then causes chaos across the day for every other flight.

Fog is a complete nightmare, as it adds a random start time to many flights simultaneously. There are few services that you purchase that fail to deliver this often and yet are just accepted by all.

But apart from the flying challenge, I really love fog. It creates a world of isolation unlike anything else.

Last night I was driving around in the dark with no lights on my lawnmower taking up the recycling and rubbish to the top of our drive.  The lawnmower has a slow puncture, so the first trick was pumping up the tyre as it hadn’t been used for a couple of weeks. Fumbling around in the dark with a foot pump and tyre valve is always good fun.

Once I had got the tyre usable, I jumped on the mower and turned the engine over. It coughed continuously and refused to start, almost as if it was waking up from a deep sleep. Finally, with a rebellious air, it fired into action.

The fog was down and I literally felt like I was driving with my eyes shut, navigating the garden in a swirl of cloud. I have not gone completely mad, the light is broken on the mower and the bin men were coming today, so I had to sort out the rubbish that had accumulated. I had a torch by my side which when switched on created a cacoon of light for about 10 feet in a circle. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of the fog or the frightened face of a fox that was passing across the garden and stopped in my path.

For a few seconds we looked at each other wondering, “what are you doing out here in this weather?”.

How do animals survive in this climate? For something like a sparrow hawk it is impossible to catch anything. They must dread fog even more than pilots.

The Inflatables

At this time of year our two inflatable cats are at their maximum pressure. They have ballooned in weight and have changed shape to be more spherical. Tango has now fully regained his ability to eat and jump, meaning that nothing is out of reach and everything is devoured as soon as he gets the opportunity.

I am thinking of changing his name to Gilbert as he is basically a rugby ball on legs. (For those people who don’t know Gilbert, see the link below).

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rugby+ball+gilbert&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB707GB708&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=XLj1kqvODHEPlM%253A%252Cjo4nJ-ylh9_D0M%252C_&usg=__buB2G7ki5I8YnT0LTfy2rmX-RO0%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7q7z62NHYAhUBOsAKHYLfAUwQ9QEI1QIwBA#imgrc=XLj1kqvODHEPlM:

But just like his fat human, he has no shame. Most days are spent sleeping in the warmest place he can find and then consuming the food that he would normally eat after a hard day’s running outside.

I do have absolute sympathy for him though as I too am a comfort eater. When the world is not as it should be and things aren’t going as planned, there is nothing better than a decent meal, accompanied by a pint of guiness, my current tipple.

At least he hasn’t learned to like Guiness!

Last weekend we had our whole family over for dinner. Having spent the whole week shifting from one radiator to another, we thought we were on pretty solid ground with the cats. No mess, no casualties for a change.

Well we were wrong!

As I cooked some of the food for our guests, Tango decided to give our visitors a lesson in eating a whole mouse, at a safe distance that they couldn’t intervene.

Charlie then followed this up with a lesson in filling my bedroom with feathers. He had surreptitiously brought a bird in and had obviously “played” with it for some time.

As I opened the door to pay a visit, he was lying on the floor practising to be Hannibal Lector with the bird above his head while he lay on the floor.

I grabbed the bird from his clutches and took it outside. Amazingly, it was completely unscathed and did not obviously have any feathers missing. Maybe it was a new breed that automatically regrows its feathers as soon as they come out.

I let it go outside and it flew away perfectly into the trees.

I had so much to do that I went back into the house and got on with the cooking.

As I crawled into bed after midnight that night I remembered the feathers that surrounded me in the bedroom. On the floor, on the chairs and around the bed. That feeling of “yuk” welled up in my mind, but it was too late and everyone else was in bed. There was no time to hoover them up now.

I climbed into bed and pretended I was somewhere else. Once the light was off I couldn’t see them, and what you can’t see won’t hurt you 😊.

This Year's New Growth

It is the second weekend in January. We are already  4% through the year.  As I mentioned at New Year,  I have set myself a target of doing at least one thing I have never done before each month.

Well I got the month off to a good start – good being a measure of whether I have achieved something new, rather than what the achievement is 😊

The first thing I did this week was to travel First Class on a train to London. It was a few quid more than second class and boy was it worth it. Free drinks (two G&Ts), a small meal, some water, a packet of crisps and waitress service all for a little extra. When you are travelling from Coventry to London late in the evening, it is the only way to go.

I then had my second "first of the year". I went to the Indian Visa office in London to get a same day visa. I had already enjoyed a similar experience in December in Newport to get a new passport, but this took waiting in a queue to another level.

Firstly, it is described on the internet by previous attendees as something to get in early for. It seems that there are serial queue joiners that regularly get there early and hog all the capacity for the day. I decided to ensure that I would get a slot by getting there are 7.30am when the office opened at 8.30am.

For the first 15 minutes I felt a bit stupid. There was not a soul there. Initially, you think, “Am I in the right place?”. But then you realise that believing what people have written on the internet is not always a good thing.

However, a second person turned up at 7.45am and then by 8am there were 20 of us. Maybe I wasn’t so stupid after all.

As the office opened we all rushed in with me at the head of the queue. “I will be served first”, I thought.

Once inside we were all given a ticket with a number on it and told to sit and wait for the number to be called out.

Within minutes, the whole process had started. After ten minutes everyone else that was in the queue had been called and gone. But I was still sitting there.

Twenty minutes later, I was still waiting and it was now after 9am. I started to fidget. “What did I do, or say that was wrong?”, I wondered.

I stood up to go and ask and as if by magic my number came up.

I was ushered to a desk where an official looked through my paperwork.

I had collected six documents including four letters from various organisations, all requested on the web-site for urgent visas.

The official ignored half of the documents I had patiently gathered and marked the passport and sent it away. “Next”, she said as if I had become invisible.

To cut a long story short – I got my visa. I had to wait three hours in total but at last it was done. Not something to repeat.

With a few different things to stress about and a big weekend coming up, I have chosen a real childhood favourite track of mine this week.

It is a short story that just represents the madness of the rat race.

I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s359OsWRBLM

Have a great weekend!

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