Well I’ve got a scarcely believable update on the family’s health situation but I’ll leave that to the next posting as hopefully things will have calmed in a day or so (including my mood). So this then is a completely different posting about two little airfields, still very much operational. Not my usual topic and not very interesting you say? Perhaps….
So here’s the thing, I was reflecting on that last posting where my fab grandson Sam, and mate Chizz, were interviewing me about things gone by. I thought to myself it was fun to reminisce but it’s raised some thoughts within me. When you get to my age the temptation must be to look back fondly on all those memories because your life is no longer cool. But mine is still vibrant. So what?
Well dear readers for the first time in a very long time I thought I’d do a posting not linked to a single theme but just a series of random thoughts zapping around in my mind at the moment. Each of these could be the subject of a separate posting but I thought I’d just shorthand it for fun.
Well regular readers may remember a posting by me from back in December 2019 after a visit by us to our daughter Sarah in NYC. The last time we were there in fact, from the old days when you could do crazy things like travel internationally. If you recall I’d left my mobile phone at her place and it was the usual pasta paulie horror story about delayed delivery, unnecessary spend, poor communication, surly Royal Mail staff and ultimate redemption and recompense. The title was drawn from a phrase we coined on a Eurocamp holiday we shared, when the kids were younger, with some UK and Dutch friends in the beautiful Dordogne. Again it all sounds like a million years ago when you could do his sort of thing. Anyway we dads spent our days watching over the kids swimming in the pool whilst we played pétanque (boules?), drinking many light beers and getting gently bronzed. Ah happy days. Burt was the Dutch dad and if anything slightly unlucky happened during the game Dennis and I, the English dads, would turn to him and say ‘Why Me Burt?’ It sort of became a catch phrase (you had to be there) and I’ve often thought that it’d make a very suitable title for my yet-to-be released e-book of those many, many unfortunate and embarrassing moments that seem to pepper my life (and provide rich content for this blog). Blimey this a long intro. The point is that this is another story about mobile phone calamity; this time totally self-inflicted.
Long term readers will know I have a penchant for unusual names of all sorts. I love the quirkiness of oddball celebrity names for their kids which I wrote about ages ago in baby names. Things have continued bonkers-wise with Sam Worthingon’s kid Rocket Zot and Uma Thurman’s hardly under-christened daughter Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence. A very early posting covered off some unlikely car naming policy on behalf of the big car companies which continues to this day with the Renault Kadjar and the Skoda Karoq. Krikey! Later I enjoyed recalling some of the more amusing drag names spotted in a publicity sign for a Brighton bar and I then revelled in some names from recent series of Ru Paul’s Drag Race with such classics as Baga Chipz and Bimini Bon Boulash. Now that’s magic. Continue reading
Bear with me on this one. A few days ago Carol and I had to pop out for an early lunch to our local restaurant. I was doing quite a bit of work for them before lock-down but haven’t heard a squeak from them since they re-opened. Hey ho. But let’s not bear grudges eh. We each chose to have their fishfinger/goujon sandwich. They have a new chef so we were interested to know whether they’d be as good as previously. Well when they arrived we were gob-smacked. The fish bit was generous but that was accompanied by a helping of salad bedded between two slabs of crusty granary bread at least an inch thick per slice. Then the two halves were placed on top of each other and skewered with a long cocktail stick. We’d ordered one apiece and each stood over 6” high. It was pretty spectacular and a bit more than we were expecting to be honest. So we decided to just share the two halves of one of the sandwiches and asked them to doggy bag the other. I wished I’d taken a picture to show you. The image below is from the internet – imagine the bread about twice as thick and it’d be close…
So hello again dear readers. It’s been a while since I last posted. I’m not sure why really. I like to write about stuff that interests or amuses me (even if the laugh is on myself) or stuff that really pisses me off and I feel the need to vent about it. I guess I just got fed up writing about the terrible covid situation and this Government’s hapless handling of the pandemic. Well 6 months or so later and, sadly, not a lot has changed has it? It remains a very difficult scene but I felt the need to hit the keyboard again because I’m not looking forward to what further restrictions the PM may be announcing later this afternoon. You could say I’m writing this with some trepidation.
I mentioned in my last post that I’m a noticer of things. I just can’t help it. So whilst doing our local walks around Brackley I thought I’d share some of the features I’ve spotted or come across which have intrigued me a little. And a bit of the history behind them might help – given that my recent posting on Brackley architecture seemed to attract some nice comments. So off we go on a little Brackleycal history tour …
Pasta Paulie 