The Wild West

One of the things I enjoy when visiting friends in Cumbria {which I did this weekend} is to read their Parish Magazine.  It tells of a whole different way of life on that side of the country.  I long to visit the 3-day bric-a-brac sale proposed for September, and I thought we might enjoy strawberries and scones at the Old People's Home open day but, on reflection, we rejected that idea for fear they might think us old and try to keep us in.

The best article in the magazine, however, was the crime report.  Allegedly, two people have shoplifted £3300 worth of goods from the local branch of Boots the chemist.  This is hard to imagine, given the size of the shop and the limited range of stock it carries.

We peered through the window on Sunday {probably looking quite suspicious, in the circumstances} and the only items that appeared to be in a secure cabinet were bottles of cough medicine.  So far as we could ascertain, this branch doesn't sell electrical goods, expensive perfumes, or even much in the way of make-up, so what, in the name of all that's fragrant, could the thieves possible have taken to that value?  Condoms?  Surgical stockings?

If we assume that the average price of an item is £10 {and I'm prepared to bet that it's less} then this couple apparently made off with over 300 items, albeit over two occasions.  That's at least 80 items each, probably more.  How could you possibly carry that legitimately, never mind in a concealed manner?  Even assuming they took mascara rather than toilet rolls, that's an awful lot of stuff to hide about your person.

And what were the shop staff doing, while Bonnie and Clyde scooped shampoo and bubble bath into their 'bags for life'?  Surely you'd notice that occurring?  I suspect that 'Clyde' must have created a diversion, perhaps involving the unlocking of cough syrup and discussion of its merits.  But that would have left 'Bonnie' with even more to conceal and carry.  How could they have not looked suspicious walking out of the shop, what with his hacking cough and her bulgy jumper?

I do hope there's a sequel in the next edition of the Parish Mag!

The bells, the bells!

"My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf...."

Actually, it's my great-grandfather's clock, and it fits very well on the windowsill of my spare room.  I like to think that Alexandr the meerkat appreciates its rather ornate style, which is why he's sitting next to it rather than poor Vassily, who seemed rather disturbed when I put him there.

Being of a somewhat rockerish persuasion myself I can understand his distress; during my teenage years I couldn't be doing with it at all.

It was fine when the clock lived with my grandmother; it was part of my childhood and symbolized dependability and continuity.  Then mum and I went to live with my grandmother too, and I realized that it chimed every 15 minutes, day and night.  As I recall, it played a little tune at a quarter past, which got progressively longer at half past and quarter to.  On the hour it was the full tune, followed by the appropriate number of chimes.  Sleeping was impossible; as soon as you dropped off, the damn thing would chime again, so mum and I decided to sabotage it.  First, we stopped winding the bit that played the tune.  That was a bit better, but the hourly chimes were still too loud, so we tried stuffing the bell with cotton wool.  That didn't do much good, so next we covered the bell with as many layers of fabric as we could.  Now, when the little hammer hit the bell, it just made a gentle thud.  Peace at last!  Except that then we started getting worried that we might have damaged the mechanism, because the little hammer would want to go further than it could.  We pulled all the fabric out, and stopped winding the clock altogether.

That would have been fine, except my grandmother noticed at this point that the clock wasn't going.  We wound it up, and re-set the time.  On reflection, it would have been better to re-set the hands and then wind it up, because as we changed the time from 5:15 to 2:25 we had to wait at each hour for the chimes to finish.  Or at least, we should have done.  It did its best to keep up as we whizzed the hands through the hours, but we discovered that it had saved up all the un-bonged chimes when, at 3 o'clock, it struck 17.  After that it never knew what time it was.  It always chimed something on the hour, but the number of bongs rarely related to the actual time.  It made life interesting, if rather unpredictable.

In the interests of getting a good night's sleep, I haven't wound the clock in years.  Now, however, I have the Minster bells to contend with.  They too play a tune every 15 minutes, but at least that's turned off overnight, and the number of chimes is generally consistent with the hour.  It's actually rather nice, and you can hear it all over the town.  The trouble is, the silences between the bongs often aren't the same length.  At, say, 11 o'clock, the first few chimes are evenly spaced.  There's an extra fraction of a second between the next two or three, then the final chimes are more (or possibly less) spaced out.  It's only a tiny amount of difference, but very noticeable if you happen to be counting, and hoping that it isn't time to get up yet.  The suspense of waiting to see if there will actually be any more chimes tends to leave you wide awake anyway.  In a way, I hope they don't fix it; I rather like quirky and unpredictable.

Don't label me!

My co-workers and I have decided that we should call our typist Father Jack.  She sits in the corner of the office facing the window, headphones on in a world of her own, completely oblivious to the rest of us - until she catches a fragment of conversation.  "What?  What's that?"  she demands, eyes suddenly alight with consciousness.  The resemblance is uncanny, but I should, in fairness, point out that her likeness to the elderly reprobate priest stops there; she's clean and tidy, rarely swears, and the only drink she ever demands is tea {at work, anyway}.  Apparently, I'm Father Ted - harassed all the time and somewhat paranoid.  I'd rather be Father Dougal; he seems to enjoy life a bit more, but my co-workers were adamant; Father Ted it is.  It was the same when we thought about characters from 'Friends'.  I so want to be Phoebe, but it seems that I'm Monica the control freak.  Must try harder.  Or perhaps less.

For the benefit of those readers who so often write to me but appear to be from Foreign Parts and may not be real people anyway, I'm referring to characters from TV sitcoms.  And, by the way, please stop offering me cheap sunglasses and trainers.  Do I look like the sort of person who wears designer rip-offs?  Or even designer originals?  I'm just happy if my clothes are clean; if they fit, it's a bonus.  I don't wear my own name since I lost my badge; I'm certainly not going to go around with someone else's name emblazoned across my clothing.  I cut all the labels off the inside of my clothes anyway, whenever possible.  Especially knickers, when the labels tend to be itchy and are often bigger than the garment.  There are few things sartorially worse than a label showing through flimsy fabric or protruding from one's apparel.  {Since you ask: socks with sandals, trousers that are too short and visible bra straps.}

'What about washing instructions?' I hear you ask.  I read them before purchasing anything and if I can't just shove it in the machine with everything else that's roughly the same colour, then I don't buy it.  Simples.