Misunderstandings!

The last couple of days have seen two misunderstandings - the first was when Mrs Blog told me what we were having for tea last night.
"It is a new recipe" she said "You will love it!"
"What is it?" I asked.
"Chicken stuffed with rocket" she replied
I then had one of those moments when as an adult man your brain suddenly reverts to five-year-old-boy mode. When I was five my mother took me to London and told me we were going to Piccadilly Circus - imagine my disappointment when I got there and there was no big tent, animals, clowns etc! Well that same level of disappointment was revisited last night at 6.30 when I expected this,-

  

 The second misunderstanding has more to do with my advancing years and not listening properly to what is being said. This morning  my chum Paul asked me if I still involveed with "Jericho House" - a soup kitchen for the homeless in Edinburgh. Unfortunately my brain heard "Genital House" - I promised Paul it would be part of my blog so I have kept my promise! I did have to think a while about about the accompanying picture though!

Time for a non-funny post

Occasionally on this blog I want to deal with issues of the day. This one is about the compensation paid to two gay men for discrimination by a Christian couple who ran a hotel. In brief the facts seem to be that the couple refused to allow any un-married couple (Gay or straight) to share a room with a double bed. The gay couple were registered civil partners and felt that this gave them the same status as a married couple and so sued successfully on grounds of discrimination. It is an issue which has been much debated this week in the media and privately. My observations are these - first it appears to be a case to establish the rights of this gay couple to share a bed in someone else's property.  Second that the gay men were sufficiently outraged at their treatment that they felt compelled to sue the hotel owners. Ignoring the legal and spiritual issues for the moment my observations are

1. If a hotel upset me ( and many have ) I would stay somewhere else
2. This was a devoutly Christian couple who acted in their minds according to their religious beliefs and applied their rules to gay and straight equally
3. The gay couple chose to go to court rather than simply find somewhere else to stay which implies an outrage far beyond what one would expect
4. The judgement has clearly put the legal rights of gays above the rights of the couple to practice their religion within their trade

Bringing in one key spritiual argument also puts a huge slant on the debate - marriage is of two types - state and religious. As a Catholic I recognise marriages which are conducted according to Catholic beliefs - which means I do not care if the couple are married by state law. Similarly the marriage of  a couple by state law is not recognised fully as a Catholic marriage. If this seems a theoretical point - it is not - I was married twice (to the same woman) as a direct consequence of the foregoing. What this means is that the definition of marriage in my head and the definition of marriage by the state are distinctly different. However following this case the law implies that I cannot hold my view any longer.

I am not alone in my beliefs and I know many others who are avoiding any open debate for fear of being branded homophobic.

What a week!

Compton is a little village in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It is so "in the middle of absolutely nowhere" that even the people who live there don't know where it is. How do I know? Because I had to be there for a training course on Monday this week that started at 10.00. Which meant to get there, I had to leave home on Sunday to fly from Edinburgh to Bristol to grab a hire car and drive to "the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere"!!
Not too bad in the scheme of thing perhaps - but followed up by a meeting in the Isle of Man on Tuesday morning it is. To get to the Isle of Man for Tuesday from "in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere and I never want to go there again" meant flying out of Gloucestershire airport! Yes I thought the same thing "Has Gloucestershire got an airport?" The answer is ... in name only. My flight was 8.55 so, as a seasoned traveller I arrived early to drop off the hire car at rental car returns. The first problem was finding the damn place in the dark. It is to aviation what Compton is to civilisation. At one point I thought I was on a track to a farm. Gloucestershire Airport is, like Compton, in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere. I arrived and went looking for the car rental returns and after a bried struggle -gave up. "Stuff it" I thought "I will leave the car in the main (bt veyr small) car park. As I drove into the car park I saw three bays market Avis and three bays marked Europcar.Quaint! With bag in hand I proceeded to the tiny terminal building ready to seek out the car rental desk for Europcar. There was no Europcar desk or Avis desk. There was a letterbox if you looked hard enough with a polite notice suggesting that you drop your keys through it - I did. Looking around there was a sign saying "departures" in the same small room was another sign saying "arrivals". Also in the same small room was an information counter which merged into the counter with a sign on saying "check in". I have not missed out the pluralisation - it was one counter - one check in sign. There was also only one person - a lady of middle age sitting behind the information section of the counter. I stood at Check in and she ignored me for a while before saying that check in was not open yet. This was 8.00 a.m. by the way. I took on of the five seats in the room and waited for check in to open. I looked for a shop - no chance - no paper no coffee. 8.10 the lady of middle age got up and sat in the seat behind "check in"  and called to me saying it was now open! After a brief discussion it was concluded that my bag was too big for the cabin locker and probably for the plane. At this point I noticed that the security check was next to check in - literally. After a while we taken out to the plane where we were greeted by a young woman I took to be the stewardess. She warned me to duck when I got on - a timely warning - I bent double till I got to my seat. Looking around I saw that there were no cabin lockers and wondered why I had bothered with discussing the size of my hand baggage. Also noticed - only one pilot. Mmm.After a minute the young lady joined us and went through the safety briefing whilst bent double at the front of the tiny plane.She then announced that she was also the co-pliot! I am not sexist - I had no doubt she could fly the plane - my concern was - no-one was going to get me a coffee! I landed at Ronaldsway Airport and thanked God I was at last in civilisation - I never thought in my life I would say that.
Now it is thursday and I have just bade farewell to our dear friend Peter Burgess and his son Keir - both of whom tower over me. I promised I would write about them in this blog - somehow the juxtaposition of tiny airplane and man-mountain sized friends seemed a fitting conclusion. See pictorial evidence below

London - some people love it. I can take it or leave it. Just back from three days in "The Smoke" and ready to stab someone, in fact ready to stab anyone!! Indeed if the beer sprite had not come to rescue me I might now be arrested and be facing lengthy police investigations. ( See picture)

Why so aggressive you ask? Because Londoners cannot bloody walk!!
It starts off that you get to London and you don't know where exactly you are going in the station or airport, but seemingly every other bugger does and you are getting "in their way". Not only
"in their way" but they are going fast and I mean fast - like the world is going to end. Which means you are likely to cause a fatal accident just trying to get to the exit. Because all the Londoners are doing the same thing at the same time - you will be the one left carrying the can if you do cause an accident. However after ten minutes you begin to get the hang of it and you start walking fast too. This is only a good thing, if by now, you know exactly where you are going. If you don't you could end up in Harrods when you wanted to be in Madame Tussauds.
For me, luckily, I knew where I was going. This leads to the next problem - deviants! There are far too many deviants in my view and London would be a better place without them. These are the Londoners who walk at the right speed but cannot walk in the right direction - they almost have it but not quite. So there you are walking directly to the exit, tube, wherever and there is the deviant slightly ahead of you and to the right (or left) and they start to deviate. Not at first in any noticeable way but relentlessly and unerringly they stray right in front of you. Naturally manners dictate that as they are slightly ahead - you give way. When you do they are now on the left (or right) ......and a minute later they deviate the other bloody way!! I followed one person all the way up Leadenhall street and counted 6 zigs and 5 zags in 800 yds.
The only thing worse than a deviant Londoner is the deviant Londoner with a roller-bag (See evidence below)! These bastards extend their footprint by dragging a bloody suitcase on wheels behind them. This means that they can not only force you to put up with their veering but, with the nasty little trick of "last minute change of direction"  can hospitalise you wiht serious ligament and tendon damage.
So there you have it - the case for the defence!!!

The Spite Goblin

As a kid you are told all about the benevolent Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and so on. No-one tells you that when you become an adult you have to deal with The Spite Goblin. If you haven't come across him/her it is the unseen malevolent little sprite that take a bad moment and turns it into a truly shit week!

An example - this week I took my daugther to the airport on Wednesday morning which meant getting up at 3.00 a.m. and going through the very sad process of bidding her farewell for three months. (She is in Corsica trying to teach French kids to speak English). I had to sit at the airport till 8.30 a.m. to wait for my own flight down south on business. So here is the bad moment The Spite Goblin looks forward to - saying goodbye, tears, sadness and nothing that can be done about it. So what does the evil little bugger do? Well - in order,-

1. Sees to it that I get a last minute dinner with work that means I don't get to bed till 11.15 p.m.
2. My boss cancels his trip to London leaving me to run a meeting I am unprepared for
3. My glasses break- a whole arm fell off while I was trying to look at least slighlty business-like
4. My return journey home from London was sat next to "Mr I have a cold I want to share"!

So an iffy moment becomes a shite few days thanks to the Evil and unconscionable Spite Goblin. Thank God for the Beer Sprite....

New Year Debate

That's it Christmas over for another year. But I am not sure if that is good or bad? Here is the debate raging in my head,-

Bad Back to work tomorrow. No more presents. No long lie-in till Saturday (unless Mrs Blog wants to go shopping then forget that idea). No beers with the mates during the day. Early starts are back on the agenda with Wednesday looking like a 3.30 a.m. start! Summer is a long way off and you can't look forward to Easter the same way you do Christmas

Good Too much of a good thing lessens its affect. My liver cannot take much more. I could easily start getting fat. I cannot afford to stay off. The garden looks dreadful and being away at work means I don't have to look at it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR