Category: Meander

If you are Anna, you may want to consider yourself warned that this post may upset you. However, I know how inquisitive you are, and you’re going to read it anyway despite my warning, which is fair enough.

My latest mission puts me in the shoes of an *elite assassin*, or at least an *elite tracker*. An elite something, anyway. My task is to find and apprehend a small scampery foreign spy, who we believe has been deploying advanced foreign surveillance technology in our garage. Our scientists are hard at work analysing this high-tech gadgetry, which has been disguised to look like mouse poo.

The boys at the lab have come up with some very fancy cutting-edge equipment to locate and apprehend this villainous foe, including some things with lasers, some remote control thingys, a few explosive doodads and a magnetic whatchamacallit or two. For now, I have deployed a humane mouse trap with a proven record of being absolutely useless. My intention is to attempt negotiation, mutual understanding, and perhaps come to some sort of compromise that involves me getting exactly what I want. If this fails, I shall arrange for the scumbag to be kidnapped and dumped in a far-off and remote location, possibly the church yard round the corner.

We believe that we have narrowed down the spy’s hideout to two possible locations. It is only a matter of time until he makes a mistake, and when he does, we shall be there to catch him.

**UPDATIUM:** He’s onto us. Since deploying the traps, our quarry seems to have voluntarily left the vicinity. On his part, a very wise move. We shall monitor for signs of his return.

Today, everywhere you look is evidence of yesterday’s storm. As I drive to work, I pass men in high-visibility jackets feeding huge chunks of wood into chipping machines. I drive through the centres of magnificent trees, a matching stump on either side of the road. Just back from the edge of the road, I see hundreds of silver birches and pine trees that are leaning on their brethren like drunken hobos.

In a way, I feel like I, and millions of others, have cheated death this week. Across Europe, 33 people were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were killed by this storm. Like me, they probably didn’t think that they would lose their lives this way. Modern technology has come a long way, but the fact remains that when a tree is blown down in a 100mph wind, your mobile phone won’t catch it. Nothing will catch it. You forget how vulnerable you are.

I consider myself fortunate that my only loss has been two fence panels.

BBC “In pictures” here and here.

On another note, I feel that I can share one of my resolutions for 2007 with you:

*#10: When you see a blog entry that says “Click this link – it’s really cute!” then don’t bother. It’s just that fucking sneezing panda again.*

I went to the gym tonight, for the first time in a while.

How long is a while, you ask? Well, here’s a clue. I approached the counter, and handed my card to the soulless zombie behind the counter. “Gym, please.” I polited. She swiped the card.

“Braains,” she responded. Not really, what she actually said was “Uhm, you do realise that your account has expired?”

I felt that a “no” was implicit, so I didn’t say it. However, I wasn’t really surprised. I had had an inkling. It had been a while, you see. And I keep promising to tell you how long a while, but I never do. Sorry. Hang on in there.

“When, exactly?” I thought about asking. So I did.

She looked at her screen briefly. “Eleven oh eight?” she asked. This is not normally a question, but on this occasion it was. I assume that this can be explained by the presence of a silent “wtf?”

Clearly she wasn’t talking about 11:08am this morning. I assure you, nor am I. Now you start to get a picture about roughly how long a while is.

“Ah,” I said. And for good measure, an “eeeh” and a “hmnmm” and a “braains.”

Paused for thinkage.

“I don’t actually have my credit card with me, so I can’t renew right now. How much would it cost me to go in as a non-member?”

Tippity tappity chrunk klakkata. “Six ninety five.”

“I don’t have that on me either. Is there any… way… kinda…”

“Give me five ten and renew next time you’re in.”

And we’re in.

Inside the gym, I hop on a bike and manage about eight minutes before combined boredom and exhaustion fell me, so I wander off to do some pumping of the old ferrous. At some stage, I find myself in a corner, many metres away from anyone else, with a small bubble worming around in my colon.

The coast is clear. I can get away with it. Gently, I allow the bubble to depart from between my buttock cheeks. It emerges stealthily, like a ninja. However, much like the Spanish Inquisition, it has the element of surprise on its side. What it lacks in volume or grand entrances, it more than makes up for in maliciousness. It is, in a word, ferocious.

At this point, I spot a fellow gym-goer coming my way. “Oh no,” I moan internally. My brain starts performing calculations that involve inverse square laws, not that it would make any difference to the outcome. I say a silent prayer for the poor woman who is walking into my cloud of doom.

My salvation arrives in the form of a couple of moderately well built yet hideously ugly young men, who also choose to patronise my corner at that moment. I play both sides against the other with deft use of facial expressions, making it clear that though they may be suffering, they have no idea what I myself am going through, being as I am much closer to the despicable perpetrator. My cunning ruse works, and the rest of the session passes without incident.

And then it is time to walk home. I realise that my favourite aspect of going to the gym is the walk there, and the walk back. It gives me an opportunity to be well and truly alone, that kind of solitude that can not be attained in a shared office or with someone in the bedroom upstairs. It gives me a chance to do some aimless thinking, which there hasn’t been enough of between these ears lately. My brain drafts this post, and delivers it with a wink.

A year ago, I was in a European city with Karen for a few days, and it was dinnertime. We were walking through the streets, peering in windows and inspecting menus to find something that appealed.

Sometimes, this kind of thing just slots into place. Interesting eateries leap out at you, or you are in the company of a friend who has a plan of action, or you have an inexplicable confidence that it’s all going to work out okay.

Sadly, the situation in which we found ourselves did not conform to this specification. We were struggling, desperate, hopeless, forlorn. Neither of us had the gusto to take charge of this operation, and there was a lot of Do you like this one? and I don’t know, do YOU like this one? going on. As you are probably aware, this situation should be avoided at all costs.

We inadvertantly meandered into a nice-looking, albeit empty, restaurant. Empty of customers, empty of staff. It was the most promising menu that we’d seen, which seemed like adequate justification at the time.

The first thing that I saw this morning, upon leaving the house, was a small white French hatchback embedded in a gate, with considerable damage to the front bumper, and two guys tugging furiously to try and free it.

The arse end of the car was poking into the street, so naturally traffic flow was somewhat disrupted. While I idled in this queue, I pondered the possible steps that could have led up to this collision, as I often do. Taking into account the angle at which the car was embedded in this gate, and the nature of the road on which the gate dwells, I could only conclude that the driver had hurtled out of a side road at inappropriate speed and… well… kept going.

Presence or absence of skidmarks on the road (now now, don’t snigger at the word skidmarks) would have given more information: did the driver attempt to turn, but lose front-wheel grip? Did the driver attempt to turn, discover his route blocked, and straighten out, after deciding that a collision with a gate was preferable to a head-on with another vehicle? Did the driver faint at the wheel?

By the time I’d done my pondering, the number of guys tugging on the hatchback had swelled to half a dozen, including a couple of well-built road workers in high-visibility gilets ((Hmmm, that was strangely satisfying. Gilet. Gilet. Gilet.)), so I considered that my skills as a computer programmer were probably surplus to requirements, and I drove on. Somehow, I doubt that the cause of the incident was a software error.