My two daughters and their friend came to stay with us in Cornwall for a week. It was a joy to have them and we hope they enjoyed themselves. The weather wasn't marvellous for August, but then it hasn't been marvellous for August for a very long time. Still, the girls enjoyed three days on the beach, two days shopping and one day at the Monkey Sanctuary. Not to mention their father's lip-smacking barbecues, ahem. Sadly, after the fastest-passing week in history it was time for them to return home - on the train.
I drove them to the station, waited with them on the platform and the train arrived - a mere minute late. Not bad. They clambered aboard carriage 'D' and headed for their reserved seats. I observed them through the window and walked along with them on the platform. I expected them to find their seats, settle in and return my waving as the train departed. But, no. They carried on, right through the carriage to the other end. Something wasn't right. I boarded the train to ascertain the problem and, as I had half-expected, their reserved seats weren't.
At this point the guard boarded the train and closed the door behind him. He asked if there was a problem. Ah, I thought, a kind, helpful gentlemen who will sort out this little faux pas. After all, my daughters have more than three hours on this train and, only rightly, should sit in their reserved seats. The conversation went something like this...
"Is there a problem?" How helpful of him.
"My daughters have reserved seats on this train, but there are people sitting in them."
"There are no reserved seats on this train." Deadpan. Emotionless. Almost robotic.
"But my daughters have reserved their seats. They are going to be on this train for more than three hours."
"There are no reserved seats on this train."
"What do you mean, there are no reserved seats on this train? My daughters have reserved them."
"There are no reserved seats on this train."
"Oh, for Goodness' sake. Well, girls you'll just have to find somewhere else to sit."
I turned to get off the train, but the guard held his arm across the door, a barrier to my safe exit.
"Excuse me, please. I need to get off."
"I can't open the door, once the train is moving, sir."
"Well, the train isn't moving, so if you don't mind, I'd like to get off."
"I can't open the door, sir."
"Well, I'm not travelling on this train. I need to get off."
"How am I supposed to know that, sir?"
"Now look, I wouldn't be on this train at all if my daughter's seats had been reserved, as they should have been."
"I can't open the door, sir."
"I'm trying to help my daughters, who aren't used to travelling by train. They have reserved seats. You haven't reserved them. Now, just let me off this train!"
"I can't open the door , sir."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, just open the door."
"I've pressed the yellow button now, sir. That means I can't open the door."
"Well, unpress it. I need to get off."
"I can't open the door, sir, once I've pressed the yellow button."
"The train isn't moving. You could have let me off by now. Will you please just open the door!"
"I've told you, sir, I can't open the door."
"You have to be kidding me!"
I was becoming a little irate. If I asked you to imagine what a jobsworth on the railways looked like, you'd have this guy to a tee. No need for me to describe his mealy-mouthed officiousness, his prim spectacles, his immaculate uniform. I believe he picked up on my growing irritability and somehow sensed a tirade of abuse coming his way, albeit toned down profanity-wise for the benefit of my daughter's tender lug holes. And just as I opened my mouth to allow my vitriol to flow...
"You can go down to the front of the train. There are plenty of seats down there - in first class."
Well, the girl's eyes lit up. They didn't need asking twice and off they charged down the train, towing their overnight bags behind them, oblivious to their nudging and bashing of other passengers on the way. As my girls disappeared rapidly towards first class, I turned to the guard, the wind taken out of my sails. How could I harangue him now? Before I could say anything, he apologised - officiously.
"I'm sorry, but there really is nothing I can do once the yellow button has been pressed."
I sighed deeply, rejected the idea of suggesting where he could deposit his yellow button and shuffled off down the train to catch up with my upgraded daughters. They had settled in very comfortably either side of a large table in cosseting leather seats. They were within six paces of the buffet bar, which pleased them immensely and whilst the rest of the train was packed, only two other passengers occupied the entire carriage. They were straining to find the right balance between concern for my plight and outright hysterics at it, seeming to settle for wide grins and raised eyebrows and, bless them, managing not to laugh (which is more than I can say for my wife when she found out what had happened via a rudimentary telephone message). The girls would have a very cosy journey without the intrusion of pleb-class passenger noise.
I, on the other hand, would be sitting with my girls until the next stop - Plymouth - a 25-minute journey. Okay, I was in First Class, but I couldn't quite manage to see or feel the benefit of that at the time. My only consolation was to be spending another 25 minutes with my girls, albeit under unusual circumstances. Oh, and crossing the Tamar bridge by train - the first, and hopefully last time I would do that - except for the return journey of course, but you know what I mean.
So, I waved my girls goodbye, spent 45 minutes in the grey, perfunctory environs of Plymouth train station, sipping at an over-priced latte and caught the return train which, I noted, was liberally sprinkled with RESERVED SEATS!
Sunday 22 August 2010
Sunday 15 August 2010
Flying ants can't fly...
There must be a couple of dozen ant colonies dotted around our 'estate'. Most of them the kind of ant we all see - the little blackish ones. Some are a reddy orange colour ( are they worse? ). And this time of year seems to be the point at which the blighters grow wings and decide to fly off somewhere. All at once. All in the space of about 15 minutes.
I was happily satisfying my hunger pangs with a marvellous ham, lettuce and whole-grain mustard mayo roll when my wife, who had lovingly created said roll, drew my attention to the porch of Cosy Nook. The porch is of a wooden construction, painted a glorious Windsor blue and was gleaming in the August sun. Also gleaming were the wings of several hundred 'flying' ants who had clearly decided that the porch made a splendid take-off point. Without my glasses, this mass exodus may have appeared as an overflow of water from the gutter, spilling in a rippled flow down the side of the porch. But my glasses were in place, bringing the horror of a legion of flying ants clearly into focus.
My wife, determined to sort this predicament out, busied herself in the outbuilding, searching, hands a-blur for something chemical with which to obliterate the evil flow, while I ducked inside for my camera. I ducked out and ducked in again after realising my memory card was still jammed into the card reader on my computer. And by the time we'd both organised ourselves; me with camera switched on, lens cap removed, setting on 'close up'; Karon with some Nippon product or other in her hand - they'd gone. All of them.
Later that day, we experienced yet another colony of ants setting up a mini Heathrow, right next to where I was perfectly barbecuing some sausages (plain pork for the wife; pork, basil, pepper and olive for me - nom nom nom ). These eejuts were smaller yet far more irritating. Those of the Windsor blue porch simply launched themselves off into the air with, much like Easyjet passengers, little idea of where they were going but up they went, high into the sky and away. Those of the barbecue area equally had little idea of where they were going but insisted on alighting on me, in my beer or on my fabulous food.
Now, when your average fly does that it's only natural to attempt to kill the bloody thing, n'est ce pas? And as devious, surreptitious or downright cunning one's efforts are, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it'll clear off - just as you're within an inch of a successful kill. Also, ninety-nine times out of a hundred one ends up breaking, spilling, knocking over or flicking six feet whatever it was that the damned fly was wiping its feet on at the time.
Not so with your flying ant. It's hopeless. You could take a run up in slow-motion a la Chariots of Fire, bring your poised flicking finger down at a nudge under snail's pace, daub a protester's placard with 'Look out ant, I'm going to flick you into oblivion' and present it to the muppet with your non-flicking hand, yell at it to get the hell out of the way and still have approximately five minutes in which to line up your shot. Ping! It's gone. Doesn't even make any effort towards an escape. It just lands on you, which seems to throw it into a whole world of confusion, turns round a couple of times and then starts a drunken crawl. What's the point?
I'm no naturalist. There's obviously some great reason for it in the mysteriously fascinating world of nature - easy pickings for hungry swallows? Whatever it is, I wish they wouldn't do it when I'm enjoying a beer in the sun and a deliciously turned out sausage or two...
I was happily satisfying my hunger pangs with a marvellous ham, lettuce and whole-grain mustard mayo roll when my wife, who had lovingly created said roll, drew my attention to the porch of Cosy Nook. The porch is of a wooden construction, painted a glorious Windsor blue and was gleaming in the August sun. Also gleaming were the wings of several hundred 'flying' ants who had clearly decided that the porch made a splendid take-off point. Without my glasses, this mass exodus may have appeared as an overflow of water from the gutter, spilling in a rippled flow down the side of the porch. But my glasses were in place, bringing the horror of a legion of flying ants clearly into focus.
My wife, determined to sort this predicament out, busied herself in the outbuilding, searching, hands a-blur for something chemical with which to obliterate the evil flow, while I ducked inside for my camera. I ducked out and ducked in again after realising my memory card was still jammed into the card reader on my computer. And by the time we'd both organised ourselves; me with camera switched on, lens cap removed, setting on 'close up'; Karon with some Nippon product or other in her hand - they'd gone. All of them.
Later that day, we experienced yet another colony of ants setting up a mini Heathrow, right next to where I was perfectly barbecuing some sausages (plain pork for the wife; pork, basil, pepper and olive for me - nom nom nom ). These eejuts were smaller yet far more irritating. Those of the Windsor blue porch simply launched themselves off into the air with, much like Easyjet passengers, little idea of where they were going but up they went, high into the sky and away. Those of the barbecue area equally had little idea of where they were going but insisted on alighting on me, in my beer or on my fabulous food.
Now, when your average fly does that it's only natural to attempt to kill the bloody thing, n'est ce pas? And as devious, surreptitious or downright cunning one's efforts are, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it'll clear off - just as you're within an inch of a successful kill. Also, ninety-nine times out of a hundred one ends up breaking, spilling, knocking over or flicking six feet whatever it was that the damned fly was wiping its feet on at the time.
Not so with your flying ant. It's hopeless. You could take a run up in slow-motion a la Chariots of Fire, bring your poised flicking finger down at a nudge under snail's pace, daub a protester's placard with 'Look out ant, I'm going to flick you into oblivion' and present it to the muppet with your non-flicking hand, yell at it to get the hell out of the way and still have approximately five minutes in which to line up your shot. Ping! It's gone. Doesn't even make any effort towards an escape. It just lands on you, which seems to throw it into a whole world of confusion, turns round a couple of times and then starts a drunken crawl. What's the point?
I'm no naturalist. There's obviously some great reason for it in the mysteriously fascinating world of nature - easy pickings for hungry swallows? Whatever it is, I wish they wouldn't do it when I'm enjoying a beer in the sun and a deliciously turned out sausage or two...
I dropped some cherry tomatoes - should I pick them up?
Before I get to the point of this blog, I need to paint a picture...
We live in the verdant Cornish countryside, overlooking a weaving valley, atop a small hill in a 170-year-old cottage that stands solid due to its four-foot-thick stone walls. There are twelve neighbouring properties, each of which feeds and waters at least one cat. Cats do what cats do: sleep, prowl, preen, hunt, spray what they consider to be their territory (although the Land Registry says it's ours) - and poop. They also test each other's bravado - usually at night, always loudly and more often than not, right underneath our bedroom window.
Birds, it seems of almost every British variety, have made their presence known if not in aerobatic display then in song. I say song - most are beautiful, uplifting, relaxing, delightful. Some are simply annoying. Crows. Baby buzzards. They glide by, high up in the sky. Or they swoop and flit closer to the ground. Or they crash about in fumbling amorousness on the telephone wires ( Wood Pigeons ). And birds do what birds do - poop. Bats. There are long disused lime kilns at the bottom of the hill in which we suspect an indefinable number (cos we're certainly not going in there to find out) of bats suspend themselves during daylight hours. They entertain with marvellous swooping displays at and after dusk - and, it can't be ignored - poop.
We are cosseted by woodland, bushes, shrubs and weeds that have clearly burrowed through the Earth's crust to imbibe from an underground lake containing an ocean-going-liner-full of plant-specific steroids.Within our legally defined boundaries of ludicrous plant growth , a billion insects and arachnids crawl, wriggle, scurry, flutter, fly, hop and slither - yes, slither. More than one slow worm has surprised the wife. At night, particularly a wet night, slugs and snails, to the background orchestrations of a greater variety of grasshoppers and crickets as I have ever seen, make achingly slow progress from A to B : some the size of a Cuban cigar. It is not possible to go for an evening stroll without crunching down on an unfortunate snail or squelching down on a Cuban cigar (unfortunate or not, who cares?).
It's brief, but I hope that has described our location. 'Rural' doesn't seem quite emphatic enough. To us, it feels more than rural - Jurassic perhaps. But then we've never lived anywhere quite like this before. The cottage is tiny. So small that our American-style refrigerator ( you have to say 'refrigerator' after 'American-style' ) has no place in our kitchen. It has been relegated to the stone outbuilding. This is not as inconvenient as at first it may seem - the outbuilding is a mere eight feet or so from our front door which leads straight into the kitchen. I was bathed in the light of our fridge ( allowed as 'American-style' not mentioned ) gathering salad items. Happy with an armful, I left the outbuilding carrying lettuce, peppers, coleslaw, spring onions and... cherry tomatoes. And this brings me to the point of this blog...
I DROPPED THE CHERRY TOMATOES! An entire punnet! They leapt from my arm, totally unaided by me, leaving their chums behind without a care.The feeble plastic punnet hit the ground as my eyes widened and my jaw began to drop. It exploded in a profusion of tiny red bouncing bombs. Choice words expressing my dismay left my lips and floated off down the valley. I stared in disbelief as they rolled off in all directions. Some made it as far as the greenhouse, some the garden gate. Others, seemingly less interested in the potential for new life, simply lodged under the front doorstep. I was dumbstruck. I carried the remaining salad items into the kitchen less they should decide to follow, setting them down safely on the worktop.
Should I go out there and pick them up? The sweet little red fruits, so vital an element to my salad, the essential accompaniment to my smoked chicken risotto. Those lovely juicy balls bursting with flavour that have rolled and gambolled over the ground? Ground that has been pooped on by birds, bats, cats and insects. Ground that has been slimed by snails and Cuban cigars. Ground that has been lolled over by lazy toads. Ground that has seen incontinent mice and shrews dart and swerve in avoidance of a feline swiping paw. Ground that has borne the footfall of residents and visitors carrying God knows what on their footwear. Should I?
I didn't. I left them. My salad would be incomplete. Mild disappointment. Not only in the flavour and colour so obviously lacking but in the effective loss of the 82p that they had cost - not forgetting the time invested in carefully selecting them from the several hundred on display at Morrison's. I had only benefited from four of the little chaps on the previous evening. That left twenty or so sniggering quietly in the garden. I could have gone out there to pick them up. I could. But it was dark and I didn't fancy a tomato hunt by torchlight.
My only consolation is that maybe, just maybe, one or two of them might find the conditions in the garden conducive to reproduction. Their tiny seeds could find their way to accommodating soil, grow big and strong and compensate me for their outrageous behaviour with a vine full of their offspring. That is, if I could ever find them in the garden so well disguised with trees, weeds, bushes, shrubs, flowers, firs, roses...
We live in the verdant Cornish countryside, overlooking a weaving valley, atop a small hill in a 170-year-old cottage that stands solid due to its four-foot-thick stone walls. There are twelve neighbouring properties, each of which feeds and waters at least one cat. Cats do what cats do: sleep, prowl, preen, hunt, spray what they consider to be their territory (although the Land Registry says it's ours) - and poop. They also test each other's bravado - usually at night, always loudly and more often than not, right underneath our bedroom window.
Birds, it seems of almost every British variety, have made their presence known if not in aerobatic display then in song. I say song - most are beautiful, uplifting, relaxing, delightful. Some are simply annoying. Crows. Baby buzzards. They glide by, high up in the sky. Or they swoop and flit closer to the ground. Or they crash about in fumbling amorousness on the telephone wires ( Wood Pigeons ). And birds do what birds do - poop. Bats. There are long disused lime kilns at the bottom of the hill in which we suspect an indefinable number (cos we're certainly not going in there to find out) of bats suspend themselves during daylight hours. They entertain with marvellous swooping displays at and after dusk - and, it can't be ignored - poop.
We are cosseted by woodland, bushes, shrubs and weeds that have clearly burrowed through the Earth's crust to imbibe from an underground lake containing an ocean-going-liner-full of plant-specific steroids.Within our legally defined boundaries of ludicrous plant growth , a billion insects and arachnids crawl, wriggle, scurry, flutter, fly, hop and slither - yes, slither. More than one slow worm has surprised the wife. At night, particularly a wet night, slugs and snails, to the background orchestrations of a greater variety of grasshoppers and crickets as I have ever seen, make achingly slow progress from A to B : some the size of a Cuban cigar. It is not possible to go for an evening stroll without crunching down on an unfortunate snail or squelching down on a Cuban cigar (unfortunate or not, who cares?).
It's brief, but I hope that has described our location. 'Rural' doesn't seem quite emphatic enough. To us, it feels more than rural - Jurassic perhaps. But then we've never lived anywhere quite like this before. The cottage is tiny. So small that our American-style refrigerator ( you have to say 'refrigerator' after 'American-style' ) has no place in our kitchen. It has been relegated to the stone outbuilding. This is not as inconvenient as at first it may seem - the outbuilding is a mere eight feet or so from our front door which leads straight into the kitchen. I was bathed in the light of our fridge ( allowed as 'American-style' not mentioned ) gathering salad items. Happy with an armful, I left the outbuilding carrying lettuce, peppers, coleslaw, spring onions and... cherry tomatoes. And this brings me to the point of this blog...
I DROPPED THE CHERRY TOMATOES! An entire punnet! They leapt from my arm, totally unaided by me, leaving their chums behind without a care.The feeble plastic punnet hit the ground as my eyes widened and my jaw began to drop. It exploded in a profusion of tiny red bouncing bombs. Choice words expressing my dismay left my lips and floated off down the valley. I stared in disbelief as they rolled off in all directions. Some made it as far as the greenhouse, some the garden gate. Others, seemingly less interested in the potential for new life, simply lodged under the front doorstep. I was dumbstruck. I carried the remaining salad items into the kitchen less they should decide to follow, setting them down safely on the worktop.
Should I go out there and pick them up? The sweet little red fruits, so vital an element to my salad, the essential accompaniment to my smoked chicken risotto. Those lovely juicy balls bursting with flavour that have rolled and gambolled over the ground? Ground that has been pooped on by birds, bats, cats and insects. Ground that has been slimed by snails and Cuban cigars. Ground that has been lolled over by lazy toads. Ground that has seen incontinent mice and shrews dart and swerve in avoidance of a feline swiping paw. Ground that has borne the footfall of residents and visitors carrying God knows what on their footwear. Should I?
I didn't. I left them. My salad would be incomplete. Mild disappointment. Not only in the flavour and colour so obviously lacking but in the effective loss of the 82p that they had cost - not forgetting the time invested in carefully selecting them from the several hundred on display at Morrison's. I had only benefited from four of the little chaps on the previous evening. That left twenty or so sniggering quietly in the garden. I could have gone out there to pick them up. I could. But it was dark and I didn't fancy a tomato hunt by torchlight.
My only consolation is that maybe, just maybe, one or two of them might find the conditions in the garden conducive to reproduction. Their tiny seeds could find their way to accommodating soil, grow big and strong and compensate me for their outrageous behaviour with a vine full of their offspring. That is, if I could ever find them in the garden so well disguised with trees, weeds, bushes, shrubs, flowers, firs, roses...
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