It sticks in my craw

My waist expanded yesterday evening by an inch and a half. I know just how much because I ended up the evening undoing the top button of my trousers and it was then I observed that the button was that far from the button hole. At the start of the evening the two had been pretty much in alignment. It was going out for a meal that did it. I had for some time been intending to take the Old Bat out for a quiet meal on our own but somehow had never managed to find just the right time to suggest it. I'll skip over the reasons for that and simply say that this week I got it right. Madam chose the local Italian restaurant. We have eaten there before with much pleasure and yesterday was no exception.

The Old Bat elected to have garlic mushrooms from the starter menu accompanied by garlic bread. She opted to go without a "main" course so that she could have dessert. I skipped a starter and ordered tagliatelle amatriciana. When it came to ordering desserts, we decided we would each order a different one and swap over half way through. I ordered tiramisu - which they do particularly well - and the Old Bat plumped for pannacotta. After just one bite she informed me that there was no way I was getting any of it! Naturally, I gave way with good grace.



When the bill came I glanced at it quickly before handing over my credit card. I noticed that a 10% service charge had been added with no "by your leave" and with no real option to delete it. I suppose I could have done if I wanted, but I would have left a tip anyway so I didn't bother. As it happens, the cash tip would probably, certainly have been more. I also saw that the cost of my pasta was shown as two items, the sauce and the pasta. I thought that the price shown for the sauce was the price I had seen on the menu but assumed I was wrong. In any case, the charge for the tagliatelle was, as you can see, only 50p.



On the way out I picked up a copy of the menu which they provide for take-away business. I see from this that the price for amatriciana is £5.95 and there is no mention of an extra charge for the pasta. No don't get me wrong. I would have been quite happy to pay £6.45 for my meal, but it does stick in my craw to find that I am being charged extra for something which is an integral part of the meal , which extra charge is not mentioned anywhere but on the bill when it comes after the meal. That smacks to me of sharp practice.

But it's only 50p.

Now, we don't eat out all that often but we do like this restaurant. The food is good, it is conveniently placed and we can always park pretty much right outside. But as a matter of principal I do not like being taken for a mug. But, as I said, it is only 50p. If a supermarket tried to charge me 50p too much I would certainly argue about it. If it were, say, £1 I would almost certainly argue about it. But do I really want to make a fuss and possibly create a scene by quibbling over 50p when we eat there again? Or do I cross that restaurant off the list on the grounds that I don't like their business practices? This is going to take some thinking about. And all over 50p.

Mungy weather

The weather today is distinctly mungy. It has been all week. But then, despite the evidence of snowdrops and crocuses in the garden (and daffodils elsewhere) we are still in January. Just. Although truth to tell, this has been a very mild January. I can count on the fingers of one hand - and that doesn't include the thumb - the number of days when I have looked out of the bedroom window to find that the lawn has turned white. And we have had none of that white stuff which descends like manna from the heavens.

Because of the general munginess of the weather I have been rather more busy distracted indoors than in the garden. What with the minutes of last week's meeting of Brighton Lions Club and the monthly newsletter, preparation of which I left much later than usual, I have found myself sitting at the computer longer than usual. I have also been distracted by finding several strands of relations in my family tree. It made me think when I discovered that one of my great aunts had died in the workhouse. Not that she was really just a great aunt: she was really 3 x great. Even in this backward country we had got rid of the workhouses before any of my 1 x great aunts would have needed them. I wrote "got rid of" but that's not entirely true. The Brighton workhouse still exists. It's a hospital now, and a pretty grim hospital at that.

Despite being so busy I have still found time to check out all the blogs I follow on a daily basis. I do find this taking longer now than it once did as I keep finding new blogs I want to follow! How on earth some people manage to follow what seem like two or three hundred blogs is quite beyond me. But I have been remiss - and I apologise to all involved. I have failed to respond to comments people have left on my blog, which is most rude of me. I am so sorry. I will respond - possible even before I have posted this!

Talking of comments reminds me. Some blogs have comments that are threaded. How come? What is it that I'm missing?

I rarely comment on other blogs. This is partly a time thing - I'm too anxious to get on to read the next blog - and partly a time thing - other people have got there before me and their comments are just what I would have written.

But those responses.

Buck said how lucky I am to live near to London and he would have liked to live there. You're welcome, Buck. I can't understand anybody wanting to live in a city the size of London - or anywhere near as big as that. Brighton, with it's 250,000 inhabitants, is really bigger than I would prefer.

Stephen's comment was that I live in a part of the world rich in culture and heritage. But so do you, Stephen. It's simply a matter of different cultures - and look at the terrific scenery you have!

And thanks to Buck (again!) and SP for your kind comments about my Roman Camp post the other day.

Responding to all those comments about Kodak and photo albums would have been a day's blogging in itself.

Oh, yes. Skip, what is that strange "SF" emblem that has appeared on your blog - in two different forms?

Now I must get on and read all those blogs I follow before I am taken to the butcher's to buy Sunday's joint.

Tantalising glimpses

In my last job before retirement I had on occasion to visit other parts of the country. I was working for a newspaper and although I had no editorial input, it was considered that I should go along to the annual conference covered by the paper. This lasted four days (so it was necessary to stay in an hotel for the duration) and was a peripatetic affair. Newcastle, Scarborough, Leeds, Blackpool, Southport, Derby, Bristol, Bolton, Huddersfield, Cardiff . . . I've seen them all. It was following an unfortunate experience with the hotel at Cardiff that the editor and I decided we should change our system. Up till then the editor had selected the hotel, a little more scientifically than sticking a pin in a list, but without any real, personal knowledge. The Cardiff hotel was a definite let-down. After that, I went along to the conference town a few months ahead to check out the hotel we had chosen and to look at others if the first choice was unsatisfactory. Naturally, I made these trips alone.

Have you ever walked the streets of a strange town or city at dusk? Just at that time when it is dark enough for people indoors to switch on the lights but not dark enough to close the curtains? It's funny, I'm not a person to get homesick, but as I walked the streets of those towns to get a breath of air before dinner, I would feel a definite twinge. I missed my own town; I missed my wife even more - and I had only been away for little more than 24 hours! It was something to do with the time of day. I find even now I can get a sense of that feeling when I'm in France, have perhaps just driven to the supermarket and am on my way back. But I digress.

It is at that time - dusk, dark enough for the lights but not for the curtains - that one can get tantalising glimpses into strange houses, strange rooms, strange lives. (Strange as in other rather than as in peculiar.) One sees the wallpaper chosen by other people, the pictures and light fittings, sometimes the furniture. One is allowed a tantalising glimpse into another person's life.

That, for me, is part of the attraction of those blogs to be found under the umbrella of City Daily Photos. People post photos of their home towns, towns and cities I shall never visit as well as some I have been to. Avignon, Sydney, Funchal and scores of others. But what most of those photographer bloggers seem to overlook is that what to them is everyday can be exotic to others. They try to show the (to them) unusual and artistic. OK, there's nothing wrong with that, but what about showing something of everyday life in Bangkok or Melbourne, Dallas or Stockholm? The souk in Marrakesh might not seem interesting to somebody who lives there, but to me?

I joined this happy band of bloggers some time back, albeit with my tongue in my cheek. I rarely post photos of my city (Brighton) because I rarely go into the city proper. I live in the suburbs (ghastly thought but true) and spend more time walking the dog over the South Downs and in the local parks and woods, so that's where most of my pictures are taken. But then, I suppose I'm back where I started, aren't I? I'm allowing other people to have glimpses of my world. Just see my Stanmer photo blog if you are feeling nosey!

The romance of travel

I have never subscribed to the theory that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Granted, there have been occasions when I have been disappointed in my destination but they have been very few and far between, both in distance and time. There have, more frequently, been occasions when I have found some part of my destination failed to meet my expectations or anticipations. On the other hand, I have usually approached travel with an open mind, neither expecting anything spectacularly memorable nor being wary that all I would find would be dismal and drear. Perhaps, then, it is just as well that I have never managed to visit some of the places that I have always associated with magic and romance.

There are three places in the east that have names which have always thrilled me with the promise of I don't know what. Arabian nights, perhaps, even though they are not in Arabia? Baghdad was always well up on my list of places to see before I kick the bucket - until I saw it on the television news: now I'm not so sure. Likewise those two cities on the Silk Road, Tashkent and Samarkand. I have always thought they sound dreamy, mystical. Then I learned that Tashkent is one of the foulest industrial cities sprawling across that part of the world. I doubt Samarkand is any different.

The Shenandoah River has always exerted a magnetic pull since my schooldays when we sang the song in music lessons. Like Samarkand, Tashkent and Baghdad, there is something about the name. The words of the song help, of course. Then one year we spent a holiday in the Blue Mountains of Virginia. That magnetic pull exerted itself, naturally, and I saw the object of my dreams, the Shenandoah. For once I was not disappointed: it was everything I had always dreamed it to be.

Another place that didn't disappoint was Carson City. The name has always sounded to me as though the place should be the epitome of the wild west, even though I knew before we went there that there would be no dusty street lined by boardwalks and saloons with gun slingers crouched around every corner. But I still felt a sort of frontier town atmosphere even as I entered a distinctly 20th century casino with its slot machines.

There are still some places that I would love to visit and that I think - at least, I hope - would not disappoint me. The Norwegian fjords, for example. But I suspect that my long distance travelling days are past. There used to be something exciting about travelling by plane, but not now. I'm too old to enjoy long-haul travel crammed into those ridiculously cramped seats in economy and I can't afford anything better. Besides, the sheer tedium of going through all that rigmarole just to board a plane is enough to deter me. Then there are so many hoops one has to jump through if travelling to or through the USA that the mere thought is exhausting.

I have always liked the sea, but frankly I cannot stand the thought of cruising, locked into such a small place with all those other people whom I would probably detest and finding interesting stopovers crammed by the very people I am trying to avoid. I have thought of those merchant ships that carry a few passengers, but that sort of journey sounds boring.

No, future travel for me will be to places I can reach in a couple of days by car. It sounds terribly unadventurous but there are still so many places even here in England that are crying out to be explored: Northumberland and Shropshire for starters. And just across the Channel there is the vastness of France, plus Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and parts of Germany and Italy. What more could I ask for?

Reflections on the Roman Camp

I went for a walk round the Roman Camp over the weekend. The Roman Camp is situated on a high spot of the South Downs at the northern edge of the city of Brighton & Hove - but if you look for it on a map you will be disappointed. It's not on any map. Actually, that last statement is untrue; it is on many maps, but is always described as Hollingbury Hill Fort, not a Roman Camp. Hollingbury Hill Fort might be the official title but generation after generation of Brightonians have called it the Roman Camp. I don't suppose the Romans ever used the spot as a military outpost and there is no sign of a Roman villa. It's too draughty a spot for one thing. If the fort did date from Roman times it would be between 1,600 and 2,000 years old, but when the Romans were busy building their roads across England the Roman Camp was already ancient. It is not a mere sixteen hundred years old but a full three and a half thousand years so when the Romans were teaching the Celtic tribes about central heating and hot baths, this camp had already seen at least fifteen hundred winters.

The Camp is situated in the middle of a golf course and to reach it I prefer to drive towards Old Boat Corner and park at the edge of 39 Acre Field. This is a triangular field, possibly 39 acres in extent, which is owned by the Council and left as open grassland. It is mowed just once a year but dog walkers keep open a path right round the edge and one across the middle. In the summer one can see scabious and knapweed, cow parsley and sow thistle, Harebells, clover, vetches and daisies among other flowers. The song of the skylark can sometimes be heard overhead although they rarely nest in this field as it is too busy with humans and dogs.

I walk across the field and through a scrubby wood the top of the Wild Park before turning right to go uphill, round the back of the 7th (or 8th or whatever) hole of the golf course, and continue uphill to enter the Roman Camp by the eastern gateway. I know this is a gateway as archaeologists have marked the holes where the ancient gateposts stood by sinking iron pipes and filling them with concrete. This weekend I glanced back, as I usually do on entering the camp. I looked east across the modern housing estates of Moulsecoombe and the even newer buildings of the University of Brighton. As usual, I could quite easily see the white of the chalk pits outside Lewes but this time I could also make out the houses in the streets creeping up the slopes of Mount Caburn. Through the gap between Caburn and Castle Hill I could see the hills of the High Weald, perhaps forty miles away. The light was so good and the air so clear that those hills seemed closer than usual. Was it just my imagination that I caught a glimpse of pinpricks of light as the sun reflected on glass somewhere there?

As I walked the rampart round to the south the view opened up and I could see the Isle of Wight over fifty miles to the west. The island seemed to be floating on a bank of low cloud, something I have often read about but don't recall having seen before. That hump is St Catherine's Down and it might have been 59 years to the day since I had first walked over St Catherine's. It was in January 1953 that I was sent to school in Ventnor, a town huddling beneath St Catherine's Down. To the south-east was the grandstand of Brighton racecourse. Had it been a race day I could have watched the horses as they passed the winning post although the distance would have been too great for me to say which was the winner.

The ditch and rampart of the Iron Age (or is it Bronze Age?) fort are still there, even if the ditch has filled up a bit and the rampart shrunk since t was built all those years ago. As I walked the rampart I thought of those men digging that ditch to a depth of, what? Ten feet, perhaps. Not for them the ease of mechanical diggers of JCBs. It was the strength of their arms that used primitive picks and shovels to fling the earth up from the ditch to build the rampart so that attackers would have scale a steep incline twenty feet high, or more than the height of three men. There they would have been faced with an almost impenetrable wall of branches cut from thorn trees. In those days an army would have been only a couple of hundred men and battles would have been fought hand to hand, looking the enemy in the eye.

I did once try to calculate the area covered by the Camp. I came up with the answer of 48 acres but I think I must have made a mistake somewhere in my calculations as I'm sure it is not that big. But it's big enough. The centre should be typical downland but it seems more like moorland. The wild flowers growing here are different from those on 39 Acre Field. There are plenty of violets and wild thyme, orchids and other flowers I am unable to name and which I have seen nowhere else. I do recognise the gorse bushes which cover about a quarter of the Camp. These grow to a height of eight feet or more and, with the labyrinthine pathways threading through them, they make a natural maze.

The three graves in the Camp are never covered by the gorse. Indeed, little grows on them except grass. These are disc barrows, the grave sites of chieftains of the tribe who built the Camp. They are empty now, having been excavated in the middle of the 19th century. The grave goods are, I think, kept in the Brighton Museum.

No matter how still the day might be, there always seems to be a wind up here. The tang of the sea is on the breeze and if you lick your lips you will taste the salt. Herring gulls and black-headed gulls wheel overhead and just occasionally I might spot a green woodpecker as it flies between the stunted, wind-swept hawthorn trees. As I approach the northern side of the camp I can see across the rolling Downs to the Chattri, the site of the funeral pyres for Hindu soldiers who died in Brighton in the first World War, and, further on, there is a glimpse of Jack and Jill, the windmills at the top of Clayton Hill. Closer are the massed ranks of trees in Stanmer Great Wood. How many other people have, over the centuries, seen the same views, I wonder? What were their thoughts as they trod these ancient ramparts? How many were joyful, with something to celebrate? Or sad and mourning? Or, more likely, oblivious to it all?

But we have returned to the eastern gateway. It's time to descent the hill, walk back through the wood and across 39 Acres to the car. Fern has enjoyed the walk and the wind has certainly blown the cobwebs away. I shall enjoy that cup of coffee when I get home.

39 x 39 x 39

Picture, if you will, a black, plastic sack. A black, plastic rubbish sack. A black sack full of rubbish with a draw string pulled tight and tied at the neck. OK, now just put that to one side for a moment.

Picture, if you will, a container with a capacity of one cubic metre. Need help? OK, it's a large box. The base is one metre wide and one metre long and the sides are one metre high.

(If you are metrically challenged and prefer imperial measurements, this little bit of doggerel might help:

A metre measures three foot three;
It's longer than a yard, you see.

If it's any help, you could always picture a container one yard by one yard by one yard. That would be a little smaller than a cubic metre but I don't suppose it would matter all that much.)

So, we now have a container with a capacity of one cubic metre (or one cubic yard) and a full, black, plastic rubbish sack. How many of those sacks do you think would fit into the container? No need to pummel and push and squeeze, just place the sacks in. How many? Four, quite easily, possibly five, maybe even six. For the sake of this exercise, let's accept four even though there will be room to spare.

So we have a container of one cubic metre capacity filled with four rubbish sacks. Now picture, if you will, a whole row of those containers, a row of 39 of them, each containing four rubbish sacks. That makes 39 cubic metres of rubbish.

In you mind's eye you now have 39 x 4 rubbish sacks. That's 156 sacks. Now it just so happens that 156 can be divided by 52, the answer being three. So if you filled three sacks of rubbish every week for a complete year, you would end up with 39 cubic metres of rubbish.

Do you know, I can hear the cogs in your mind going round and producing the tought, "What has happened? Has he finally fallen off his trolley?" But bear with me and all will become as dense as the old London pea-soupers.

I have recently received a bill in connection with the house in France. I think it is a bill for rubbish collection. It is printed on pretty pink paper and it tells me to return the slip with my cheque. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a tear-off slip - but that's just a minor inconvenience. I shall take a copy of the whole invoice and return that with my cheque. I say that I think this is a charge for rubbish collection, but what i can't work out is how it has been calculated. No, that's not quite accurate. I can work out how it is calculated - it says the charge is 39 cubic metres times 63 cents - but what puzzles me is the 39 cubic metres. Are 'they' suggesting that they have collected hree sacks of rubbish from our house every week for the past year? Never! I don't suppose there is a house in the village that ever puts out three sacks of rubbish in any one week let alone every week for a whole year. So it can't be that.

Last year's bill was for 37 cubic metres. In 2010 it was for 36 and in 2009, 30, while way back in 2008 it was 32.

You will appreciate that these bills are not exactly enormous and the Old Bat and I are quite happy that we should pay our way in the village. I'll do the same this year as every other year: just pay up.

Whistling dead bodies stopped by the police

Just for once I wrote the blog before the title. Then I found myself stumped, hence the bit above which has no bearing, or maybe a little bit of bearing, on what follows.

I read in the paper of a chap who took his mother on an outing. She died while they were out so he took her back home on the bus. Yes, really! It helped that she was in a wheelchair. For some reason the thought of a guy pushing a wheelchair with a dead body onto a bus just creased me up.

It must be about five or six weeks now. I did mention around then that I had lost my whistle. I had gone to call the dog who had wandered off a bit and when I pursed my lips and blew, all that came out was a feeble "phoo" instead of a "shree". I had thought at one stage that my whistle had come back, but I regret having to report that I still can't emulate the guy who had a hit record of himself whistling. It is really quite embarrassing if I forget my inability and try to whistle while I happen to be with somebody else, dog walking in the park being the social activity that it is. "The Man Who Lost His Whistle": sounds like the title of a novel by Agatha Christie or Alexander McCall Smith, doesn't it?

Anyway, a man was stopped by the police at around 2.00am and was asked where he was going at that time of the night.

The man replied, ‘I'm on my way to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body, as well as smoking and staying out late.'

‘Really? Who is giving that lecture at this time of the night?' asked the officer.

‘That would be my wife.'