This week I'll be mostly unconscious on a plane

Erm, where am I?

Back in 2006 I was on the Flybe Exeter to Jersey.  We were about 10 minutes from landing when I started feeling decidedly unwell.  I mean, quite definitely not very well at all in quite a big way.  I frantically worked out where the sick bag was.  Next thing I knew, we'd landed, the plane was empty, and a flight attendant was saying in mono "excuse me sir, are you ok?"  As her voice came back into stereo, I mumbled something, got up and staggered off the plane.  I felt like death warmed up.  I must've looked bad too, because I got stopped by airport security on the way out.

Well that was a bit odd.

This week I'll be mostly running out of tea

"I put my trousers on, have a cup of tea
and I think about leaving the house"
Albarn/Coxon/James/Rowntree 1994

This time last year when Checkers was closing down, we went over on their last day for a bit of legal looting.  The soft drinks aisle was full of hoodies loading their trollies with 2 litre bottles of coke at less than half price.

I was mostly interested in the tea.

I did a quick calculation, and checked the use-by date of every box of Assam they had left on the shelves.  Basically we'd have a year's supply, the last couple of boxes would be just within their use-by date, and it would cost the same as about 6 weeks worth of bog standard tea.  It was a no-brainer.  Wheel the trolley up to the shelf and push the whole lot in.

This week I'll be mostly blogging on the outside

Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X ...

If you're reading this (which you are), then you're on Blogger.  Blogger has been owned by Google for about a decade.

If you're paying attention (which you may be), you'll notice that the posts on this blog earlier than 2012 are suspiciously similar to my Facebook Notes.

If you're really paying attention (which you're not - I know this from the stats page), then you and the other two readers of this blog will soon realise that most of what follows has been suspiciously posted elsewhere on the interweb.

So why would I start blogging out here, when I had a perfectly good thing going on in there?  Well...

This week I'll be mostly on a boat

"It's very very nice here"
Bown 2002

Right now I should be sitting at home, with my feet up in front of the fire, reading Autosport.  Instead, I'm on a boat half way across the English Channel.

Why?

Well, yesterday evening I should have been sitting on a plane, with my seat-belt on and my seat-back upright, reading Andrew Benson, Freakonomics, and Bel's Randomness on the Kindle.  Instead, I was on a train from Southampton to Chandlers Ford.

Why?

In a word - fog.

The fog has rolled in across the Channel Islands for a few days, and there is mayhem.  All the flights have been cancelled.  There have been no newspapers (or Autosport) since the mail plane can't land.  You've got hundreds of people at dozens of airports all thinking the same thing - catch the boat.  While BA, Flybe and Blue Islands might be making a loss, the cabbies at Poole harbour and doing a roaring trade between station and ferry terminal.

This week I'll be mostly covered in cellophane

"When you wake in the morning,
wake and find you're covered in cellophane"
Banks/Collins/Rutherford 1981

On Sunday we woke up to a world of white outside.  However, unlike the rest of the British Isles, it wasn't snow.  In the space of a day the folks who farm the surrounding fields had got out there, planted the Jersey Royals, and got the covers on sharpish.

I've thought on occasion that I'd quite like to get out there and give them a hand planting up those cotils.  Or even just help getting the plastic sheeting all lined up nice and tidy.  But I could never be a farmer.  On the one hand, I'd love a working environment that depends on the predictability of the seasons, rather than on next quarter's IT budget of whatever financial services institution I'm working for this month.  But the unremitting, incessant, inexorable relentlessness of it!  That would just freak me out.

This week I'll be mostly in a very, very mad world

It's a very, very,
errr, mumble cough...

For years, in fact decades, a generation of us have convinced ourselves that we know exactly what Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith meant when they sang the line at the end of Mad World: "It's a very, very, mad world, halogeon world".  Or something like that.  When singing along in the back of the car, it was always best to cough or mumble at that point, rather than sing it out loud and embarrass yourself.  Conversations in the school playground, or in later years in the back of a Peugeot 505 estate on the A2, would always end badly: "I think it sounds like imagian."  "Imageean? That's not even a word!"  "Well neither is halogeon."

Of course misheard lyrics are nothing new.  There's a whole website (not a very good one) dedicated to the subject at kissthisguy.com.  Yes, yes, Hendrix: "Excuse me while I kiss this guy".  There was also a survey a while back, listing some favourites like: "See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen".

This week I'll be mostly playing with my food

"If you strike me down, I
will ... erm ... cause a mess
more difficult to clear up
than you can possibly imagine."

Well, it was an excuse to buy a few more creme eggs than are necessary...

First there were the Creme Egg tv ads.  These inspired me to make my own Here Today, Goo Tomorrow, which inspired Dave to make the excellent Indiana Jones and the Eggs of the Lost Ark, which inspired me this year to also do a remake of a classic film scene.  So here it is:

Egg Wars - Episode IV - A Goo Hope.

This week I'll be mostly writing again

The pen is mightier...

Erm, hello.  Again.

It's been 7 months since my last 'Mostly'.  In fact, now that I look, I see it's been 6 months since my last vaguely meaningful post of any kind (other than a quick bit of wedding anniversary prose and a Christmas video).

So first, let me say 'thanks' to all of you who wished me a happy birthday 5 months ago.  Sorry I ignored the lot of ya, but I was embarking on an episode of cyber-phobia.  Not for the first time.  The less said about it the better.  Probably.