Oh, Good Grief!

 So how about this for a dream? 

Ailz had sent me down the bottom of the hill in Oldham to buy a copper pan from the junkshop there. It cost me £45.

On the way home I went into the junkshop at the top of town and found a wooden skeleton- half life sized- and decided to buy it.

I went to the desk. The shop girl said."The copper pan will be £22."

"No," I said. "I bought that at the other shop."

"Sorry," she said, "But if you bring things to the desk I have to assume you sourced them from here."

 "Please " I said, "I'm asking you accept my word of honour as a gentlemen and a Oldhamer that I bought it in the other shop."

 "Can't do that," she said, "We have a policy."

"Alright, you win," I said- and reached for my credit card.

It wasn't there. I had put it down on the desk and one of the other customers must have stolen it.

"Did I give you my credit card?" I asked the girl.

"No," she said.

And I left the shop empty-handed.

Ailz met me outside. "That pan," she said. "It won't do for boiling milk. It won't do for cooking curry."

"Just cancel my credit card," I said...

At Gaze

 It's something we tell people who might be interested, that Ailz bought this house because of the kitchen and I bought it for the view. It's not altogether untrue.

I spent much of yesterday sitting on the bed- and when I wasn't reading a pamphlet about the pre-Reformation history of St George's, Southwark (well I found it interesting) I was gazing out the window.

Ailz doesn't get it. "I look out the window," she says, "And I think, yup, same as yesterday and that's it." Recently she came across a thing online which suggested it's a basic difference between men and women- that men spend time looking out the window and women don't. I wouldn't know if it's a true but I've thought about it and tried to explain it historically, how men were the ones who went ahead as scouts during tribal migrations and kept look-out on castle walls. We have it in our genes to be observant of what's going on out there in the world...

Anyway I love to gaze. And, no, I don't find it boring. The light is constantly changing, the sky is constantly changing (this might not be the case if we in the Mojave desert but this is Southern England) and the birds are always coming and going....