Wot no Table

I have been informed by Sparkling Eyes the table has gone. It's outside. In the garden. With the birds the bees and the flora. There it stands alone. Unwanted. Without a friend. Except for a stray cat who occasionally comes round and crys out loud. Not to mention any insects who like to use it for breakfast. I am mortified. Life without a table, whatever next? I've been told to "get over it" and "it's not your house" but I can't help it, I am still mortified. It just will not leave my mind. OK there may have only been one good chair. But chairs can be bought to fill empty places. A doom and gloom has descended upon my mind and the image of a room without a table is like a car without wheels, coats with no coat stand, fish flapping helplessly out of water and day without sun.

Ode to the table.

Oh table I love thee. I share my cereal with thee, the quite tender moments of a morning coffee and intent listening to the radio. Oh I beseech thee fair table, come on in from the outside. Into the warm, into my heart. Let me put my elbows upon you and gaze at my re pas. And thank the heaven's for your four legged support. Without you my knees and thighs would be bruised and battered. Oh Table, dearest table you are in my thoughts. Let me run my fingers over your hard smooth surface. Let me place a cup of coffee on your top, spread out my newspaper and read from you. Oh table, oh table don't go away. Be there when I need you. Be there because I will always need you, want you, and require somewhere to place my keys, lose change, wallet, mp3 player, books, glasses, and other accoutrement's. I lean on you when you are there, without you I fall over. Oh table, table come on in from the cold. There's no spys out there, just birds all a twitter and they'll not appreciate you as I. Table you're so useful, are you not? I cry, I ask oh table, come on in from the cold, let me warm you with my dinner plate, let me desire you no more. Sob. Sob.

Yes I have a fondness for tables, their usefulness predates the invention of fire for early man. Now it is as though my legs have been cut from under me. I sure hope I can sleep tonight.

Eyebrows Sir?

I took myself out for a hair cut. It was during the week but I had a couple of days due to me and my mop was getting untidy. It gets untidy at the point when I should consider giving it a comb. Being lazy is hard work and I now got to the stage of not combing my hair if I can help it. The only way to get away with this is to make sure it's cut short.

My hair dresser spoke English OK, in fact he was probably a second generation dude. Though I must state I really could do with finding a good Turkish hairdresser which there is lacking in the area I live in at the moment. They do great things with a burning taper. Anyway, this dude was young, probably mid 20s, at the age where looking good accounts for everything in life. He invited me to take his seat for my scalping. He asked a number of questions over what I'd like and how I wanted it cut. Generally, anything as long as its a short-back-and-sides. Then two minutes into the cut, after spraying some water on my hair to stop it waving about like a Mexican wave on LSD he asked "would you like the eyebrows trimmed sir?" Of course I said yes.

The thing was I'd checked my eyebrows earlier in the morning and thought they were passable. OK they needed a little bit of shaping, but for a hairdresser to ask meant these brows were out of control. I can see myself going off to B & Q to see if they got an weed killer at this rate. While my hair got damp from the sprayed water the dude took out a miniature clipping machine and gave my brows a twice over. I could feel clumps of hair cascade down over my eyes. I really didn't know or realise they had gone wild. I suppose I am now at that stage in life where looks if not hairy eyebrows are not everything. Well at least I don't have a uni brow then I'd be really, really uncool.

London Marathon and a rasberry chocolate cake

Tomorrow will be the Marathon. The Marathon. The biggest, bestest in the world!! YES!! So I went on down to Greenwich via Blackheath with Green Car man and The Little Oriental fella. It's not been a great day weather wise. Rain on and off, even a chill. But for runners I'm sure it would not be too bad. There's hundreds of porta loo's on Blackheath. Barriers are along the main roads, and big scaffolding structures arching over the roads with Flora advertising. Flora being the sponsors of course. Lucky the Marathon wasn't on last week this same time it had snowed. I read an article in a tabloid which indicated there would be 35 thousand runners. Way too many in fact. Although it must be an achievement to run this distance, having so many runners can not be a good thing. I know it would make me feel sea sick seeing a wave of people bob up and down. Lets just hope the Chinese don't take to running marathons.

Greenwich has a great little market, which specialises in all wonderful expensive things. Odd things you can't normally get anywhere else. One of the stalls there is a cake stall. And their raspberry chocolate cake is heaven. I bought a piece as well as the praline chocolate. No wonder I am fat. I just can't help myself. Regardless of the weeks I've put in at the gym, if I can't control my eating it will take a long, long time before I ever make any real in roads to both fitness and weight loss. Sod the weight loss. Give me cake any day. Hey lets not forget the odd pint of Guinness. Chocolate Guinness cake, hmm I wonder?

I am missing Sparkling Eyes. When I talk to her it seems she is forever busy, either working or doing good work in the community. It's been far too many weeks since I saw her eyes, had a hug, and learnt all over again my place in life. With a smile I'll add. Anyway thinking of you Sparkles.

Stuck on Sponge Bob and the gym

Little Monster boy is stuck on a Sponge Bob game. Employee of the month. I've seen bit's of Sponge Bob on TV but it don't quite appeal to me as a regular viewing item. Neither does Desperate House Wives, but because Little Monster Boy likes Sponge Bob I now have to help him. So for ten minutes which was just about bearable I loaded his game and played it. Hoping to get to the point the Little Monster is stuck. Unfortunately I haven't. Of those ten minutes I spent five laughing at the characters before their droning voices detracted my concentration. A bit like being at the fish factory with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum's inane incessant jovial chit chat centre on taking the mickey. I'll not say out of who. Yet with Sponge Bob all I had to do was hit a button and close the game down. I'll gather myself together and have another go tomorrow.

Did the gym this evening and my successful impersonation of a Fat Man running on the Tread Mill. A bloke next to me sat on a cycle machine, he turned the pedals a couple of times but really didn't bother to do much else. Being skinny, maybe it would waste him away had the pedals actually been turned. Instead he was engrossed in trivial conversation with another bloke. Also skinny. I listened to Nina Simone and the long version of her song Sinnerman on my mp3 player. The song is brilliant. It helped me put on extra pace and breath heavily while doing the athletic Fat Man shuffle. Which sounds a bit like a new dance. Labouring away, breathing loudly and even half singing along to the music had no effect on the two idiots. They talked continuously through my entire term on the wobble belly machine disregarding where they were.

I couldn't help thinking of the Smart come Dumb balance in the world. Where Dumb people go to a gym to talk rather than actually break a sweat. It's a common attribute to teenies and a certain extent posers, who chit chat and check out their body in a mirror. Which makes me think there are way too many mirrors in the gym. Mind if they only had the one mirror then they'd all be getting a small piece of it. Perhaps enough for their face. At least then they would be able to check their hair. Of course amongst these participants you have to include the pretty people, of which teens believe they belong by default of being a teen. Though some people are pretty and are not teens. They might be the ones who concentrate on stretching and again never favour a real exercise machine because sweating would be so uncool. Fortunately my exercise session soon came to an end and I could drift into a world of ordinary ugly people.

Now if only like the Sponge Bob game I could press an icon, and those who prefer to play Dumb are magically Smart. No, the reality is it will never happen. If they are dumb, they are just dumb and I'll just have to get over it. I wonder if they would be any good at Sponge Bob games?

Lunch and a moment to relax

Wednesday lunch times I have found myself frequenting a nice little haunt. It's the grounds of a church sat on a hill overlooking the Thames. There is a busy artery carrying traffic towards central London only a stone's throw away, but it's lower level muffles noise from traffic. I enjoy just sitting on a bench in the company of the odd dastardly pigeon (possibly related to the ones enjoying residence under my roof tiles) and a fat squirrel or two. Fat because we're coming out of winter and I'm sure a few patrons who use the church grounds as a short cut stop off and feed them with bags of peanuts. I sit there with a very tasty container of Chinese food from an excellent take away. Chop through my lunch (without chop sticks) and have a moment of quiet. There is nothing like getting out of the fish factory for lunch, and away from the busy throws of gutting and cleaning fishes. Odd such a small sanctuary can be found even in the urban settings of a hectic city, even odder there are not more people who eat their lunch there either. Then again if there were it wouldn't be the same.

From my seat I can see a few trees, grass, ferrys and the Thames. Which is cleaner than it used to be. To the left there are two new red residential blocks. These blocks don't have a ground floor because London is a vast flood plane it was stipulated by the powers-that be, each tower block had to be built on stilts and so effectively the ground floor has no residential accommodation. Good for them, but not for me because if there were a flood which breached the walls I'd get flooded. They are but one of many blocks being built along the whole of the Thames in what is now called the Thames Gateway. They look nice, their view unique, their price exhorbitant and their inhabitants quite mixed. Along another stretch of the Thames I know of many such places which although privately owned are rented out and their tenants from all walks of life. To use a diplomatic description.

After lunch heading out of the grounds there is a large stone lion. He watches all who enter and leave. Several yards behind him there is a wall belonging to buildings adjacent the grounds. But the wall can barely be seen, for various bushes and trees in front of it. Yet there are not just bushes and trees. There are also grave stones. And just at the point of egress it is possible to see them quite clearly. The wording has long since gone on many. Just streaks of dark acid rain runs in unintelligible groves where words once told their story.

So somewhere around where I lunch there are the bones of people who once walked this earth. Their graves perhaps now areas covered in grass or even where new buildings stand. Which is quite fortunate, because it's bad enough being pestered by the pigeons for my Chinese let other people. Maybe this is why it's so peaceful. Nah can't be, some of those squirrels look pretty mean to me. Fortunately I'm pretty good with a plastic fork. Beware, man in ex grave yard come church grounds fends of fat squirrels with fork. Lucky I can run fast.

Today it snowed in London

This morning a little treat appeared, not one I could eat, which came later, it snowed. Being a Sunday morning I woke at 8 a.m. and knew I should of got up earlier to get ready for gym. Looking out of my window snow was falling. Big massive third world war radio active lumps of it. Gently falling through the air, not being tussled by wind and neither mixed with rain. It was just snow. The odd thing though was it did not feel cold enough, it was warm indoors. To confirm this it melted rapidly on contact with road and pavements. But for the mean time, grass and plants were covered. Their leaves gathering a snow humped burden. Daffodils in the garden had white hats. The rhubarb an inch topping of icing sugar. I wondered whether the rhubarb would be killed off. A happy feeling came over me because it's a long time since real snow fell on London. However, by the evening it was almost completely gone.

For the second time I went out wearing my Russian hat. The grey furry one with a Russian hammer and scythe badge on the front. I've wrote about it in an earlier BLOG. Remarkably it kept my head warm, very warm. And with self justification it didn't matter what I looked like to the rest of the world. Because spectators of a snow filled day, like all spectators lose their judgement of fashion. Anything warm is grabbed and worn, no matter how silly. I'm sure a couple of people saw my hat and were jealous. Too bad. OK I may not be Russian but my ears were warm and my head very comfortable.

Now I'm tired. The day is over, I'll hit the hay and sleep like freshly fallen snow.

Ashes to Ashes, TV series

Just seen the first episode of this series, it's a successor to the original "Life on Mars" and a wonderful thing. Life on Mars was about a police officer in the present day who then goes into a coma and wakes up some time in the 70s or 80s. The same story line is used again for Ashes to Ashes. Music, cars and especially language, racist, sexist and fashion disasters throughout. The first episode is a little unreal, a bit like an over enthusiastic director has got his hands on the script and isn't actually mindful viewers are as dumb as he imagines. I mean, how would a police woman/inspector approach an armed man today? If she did it would certainly be wearing a bullet proof tabard. And with her daughter sitting inside her car then to run out and be taken hostage by the armed man. No, sorry, some idiot who put these scenes together needs shooting. As for our main character suddenly going back into the past, oh how wonderful. Delightful. To feel, experience and taste the 80s all over again and realise you were part of it. Although maybe not as a copper running around London catching criminals in the way they should be.

Great, another reminder of getting old. Or maybe, a reminder to indicate what an era it was.

New Blog

I've started a new blog and haven't yet put a counter on the page don't matter. I did want to title it as Serious Stuff, but the address had already been taken up. As with all some blogs, the person who last used it had written a piece a couple of years ago. It annoys me because when I wanted the Making Sense address this too was already in use. Someone again who had started writing blogs did a couple and then gave up. In the mean time, those more likely or more serious bloggers who could of used the address, like me, are penalised. Maybe the people at blogger.com should automatically deleted inactive blogs. Give them a suitable time and then zap them into some lost black hole of forgotten words. So my new blog is titled "Serious Stuff that makes me crazy."

I wanted to detract from my usual find a funny side in writing. In effect be a GOM (Grumpy Old Man), which all moany men are called when we get old. It's a life thing. We done it, been there, read the book, eaten the cake, got drunk, though not at the same time as cake eating and think we know everything. Or certainly know our own opinions. So if something annoys me such as politics, plastic bags or bad manners I'll write it in my other blog. Unfortunately as I can't do two things at once it could mean this blog gets put to one side. But it's still my favourite sounding board. Hell especially when I get more comments. Makes me think someone actually reads what I write. I just hope they are not dyslexic and it's not someone I paid to comment on my blogs. No, couldn't be I don't have that kind of money.

I don't know if it is me, but I find it even gets easier to write. Boggings becomes an outlet. Maybe it's about getting into the bloggers zone. This is not to be confused with the Twilight zone, something quite different and just as enjoyable. Anyway if there are any fans out there, who am I kidding? If you find a GOM at the bottom of your garden it's probably me. No I meant Gnome. If there is anyone out there, just don't, don't send me a signal in morse code because I'll not understand it. Thank you.