Lately a few things have happened to me which I felt would be well placed in a comedy, with just slight alterations to the course of events. A couple of weeks ago I went to pour tomato ketchup along side some chips on my plate, noticed it was a little runny, casually closed the lid and shook the bottle, only to have the lid fly open and the ketchup follow it out of the bottle and onto the walls, appliances and furniture in the kitchen. I am sure this has happened to most of us, but I seem to be having a season for these things.
I am not very good at having fresh fruit in the house, I either eat it all on the day of purchase or leave it to rot in the bowl. Somebody told me about Sainsburys new range of frozen fruit, conveniently frozen fresh fruit, cut to edible chunks where appropriate. I keep some in my freezer and eat it when I feel like having something fruity. Recently I decided to get frozen blueberries for the first time, having enjoyed many blueberry flavoured foods through the years. They were a little blander in taste than I had expected but still refreshing. The fruit was all I had eaten that afternoon and I was about to leave the flat when I wondered if I should brush my teeth, I remembered that I was out of tooth-paste and headed for the front door, I had a sudden change of mind and decided I could squeeze something out of the tube if I tried, so I went to the bathroom and beheld my mouth in the mirror, a bright glowing hue of blue. How embarrassing it would have been had I walked out of that door without cleaning my teeth and mouth!
As most readers know my wife is in a nursing home and from time to time we have a doctor or a consultant come to see her for something. A few weeks ago we were expecting a consultant and I was washing some jugs in the sink having just given Ladan a fruit drink. All the sinks in the care home are low so that wheelchair users can reach them easily, which also means that any splashes are aligned on the trousers to appear that an accident has been had, especially when your trousers are a light beige colour, as mine were that afternoon. How ironic it would be, I thought, if the consultant would arrive just after I have managed to splash water onto my trousers, I quickly grabbed a hair dryer to start drying them off when there was a knock at the door and the consultant walked in with a nurse. Ladan was up in a chair near the bathroom and the chair has wheels so I quickly positioned myself behind the chair and moved Ladan with me, in her chair, as I moved around the room to keep my trousers hidden. After a short while I was asked to get something that was on the other side of the room, I kept my body turned away from the guests as I walked to the drawers, then quickly moved into a new position concealed behind Ladan’s bed when nobody was watching and handed over the item. Several minutes later the water had dried enough that it was no longer visible and I noticed this. I looked down several times, trying to be subtle, to check I was right about this before proudly coming out from behind the bed to let my dry trousers be seen again.
Last year I was given a very nice pair of shoes by a relative and recently they started deteriorating. A few months ago the front of the sole had come loose from the rest of the shoe and I fixed it with super-glue. Many years ago I went to have shoes fixed under similar circumstances by a shoe repair specialist and he did exactly the same thing for four times the money, so since then I have resolved just to do it myself when required. More recently the same thing happened with one of my shoes shortly before I had to attend an interview. It would be embarrassing to attend an interview with shoes that were falling apart but I used super-glue before heading out and was optimistic that they would stay together, there was no time to get a replacement pair of shoes, even though I had now accepted that my sentimental attachment to this pair of shoes was no longer justified. I went to the interview, there were two people conducting the interview and I was behind a desk, there were some other people sat waiting further down the room, too far away to hear us but close enough to see. As the interview neared its conclusion I went to bring my feet forward and failed. My foot would not move. I used a greater force and my foot still remained fastened to the floor, not only was the sole glued firmly to my shoe, it was now fixed firmly to the floor too. I tried to look completely focused on the interview while I used more and more force to try and kick my foot free from the floor, eventually my foot flew forward and the people sat in the distance were sending some very strange looks in my direction. The interviewers seemed not to have noticed anything. I got some new shoes pretty quickly after that, I couldn’t help imaging the scenario of a boy trying to impress a girl on a first date and, after a lot of kicking around under the table, walking out of a restaurant with a carpet tile stuck to his shoe.
For the past decade 
Being Fooled by the Signs
October 9, 2006 in Comment, Diary, Humour | No comments
Over the weekend I made a brief trip to the South East corner of the country to meet my Mum at Heathrow airport and bring a car load of our belongings back with me. I set off from Ladan’s room at just after 6am and enjoyed the wide empty roads before me as the crisp light of dawn arose around me.
When I was about a third of the way down the country a sign above the almost deserted motorway informed me that there was a queue ahead and that I should slow down to 40mph. Sceptically, I started slowing down only to find that the next overhead sign, just around a bend from the first, said “End” meaning that I had passed the congestion.
I wondered, for a moment, what had prompted the sign to flash such an unlikely warning at me, before forgetting about it and pondering more interesting and important facts such as when and where I would get my breakfast. However, it was not to be the only overhead sign to flash nonsense warnings at me during my 14 hours of driving that weekend, I was warned numerous times of imminent danger by overhead signs on the A1(M), the M1 and the M25 and on every single occasion the warning was false.
There were a couple of occasions on the M25 where it is possible the traffic conditions had been different a few minutes earlier, but for the most part the warning signs were not just wrong they were verging on the impossible. The last instance of this that I experienced was on my way back where a sign warned of congestion ahead and suggested I slow down to 50mph, doubtful I ignored it and decided that I would only take notice if the next sign repeated the warning and recommended a drop to 40mph… actually the next sign did repeat the warning and suggested 30mph. The road was flowing so well that with all my experience of false signs I merely ensured I wasn’t above the speed limit, then the next sign was blank. Either it wasn’t playing along with the previous signs or it knew that nobody was taking any notice and took a “What’s the point?” attitude to giving any kind of warning. Of course, there were no delays and the next sign said “End”.
I am reminded of the parable of the boy who cried wolf. During my journey I saw a few accidents and delays on the opposite carriageway. One man I saw sent a cloud of smoke across the road as he burned his tyres coming to a sudden stop from over 70mph… had he seen a warning sign about queues ahead or were they only telling lies this weekend, or had he indeed seen so many false warnings that he had decided not to take any notice anymore.
I have no idea why the overhead warning signs were so outrageously wrong this weekend, but it is dangerous for them to be so. The overhead signs are a means of communicating important information to drivers but if the drivers lose their trust in the communications they are receiving then the communication becomes useless and it can no longer be used to improve safety on the road.
I had intended to get back to the old flat, pack our remaining things and give it a good tidy before collecting my Mum from Heathrow airport. I had forgotten how much stuff was still there and so I didn’t even finish the packing part, though I did pack as much as I would be able to bring back the following day. My Mum is in the country for a few weeks and should be coming up to Newcastle to visit me here soon. On Sunday morning I had the pleasure of seeing my brother Robert, his partner Anne and my nephew Finlay for the first time in over a year. It was a relatively short time before I felt the need to get back on the road but it was really great to see them all. Finlay is so very cute and cheerful.
Unfortunately I will need to make another visit to the flat to get the rest of our things from there, I had hoped this trip (my second quick visit) would be the last so that next time I go south I might just spend my time visiting friends or family rather than packing and loading. Hopefully the next trip will be the last.
Tags: motoring, speed