Будь готов!

In 1908 Lt Gen Robert Baden-Powell (Who you really should have heard of), Hero of the Second Matabele War and possible repressed homosexual,  Wrote a book called 'Scouting for Boys'.  Had it been written more recently, I fear that it would have had slightly different connotations.  But at the time it was a rewrite of some military manuals that B-P (As his friends called him) had written some 20 years previously.

In part 3 of that weighty tome, Beepy (As I liked to call him, during our times of fraternal intimacy) decided that the Scout motto was to be:  BE PREPARED.

Nice, simple, straight to the point... Be prepared for anything that might happen, be aware of the situation, and plan for things that might happen.  It's good advice - I mean he also says that you should also be prepared to give your life for your country and suchlike and he goes off on a bit of a 'Dulce et Decorum est' kick for a bit.  But generally good advice.

Most of us do it, we're aware of danger, we sort through the possible outcomes of our actions and generally plan, using our previous experiences as reference.

This should scale up wouldn't you think?  I mean, if I can look after my two children, out of the kindness of my heart, with the bare minimum of lost limbs and emergency replacement of bodily fluids, then surely... Someone whose job it is to look after something should be able to look after it.

I'm talking, in a roundabout way of course, about the people who look after our transport infrastructure.  The average range of temperatures that we have to put up with in England is somewhere between about 6 and 14 deg C during the year and we get about 3 feet of rain and 1,500 hours of sunshine. Now do you foreign types understand why the English are usually depressed?

So, in the Winter, it snows on the high ground - Which mainly inconveniences people who have chosen to live in places where there's a nice view, or have particularly hard sheep.   You'd expect there to be all kinds of carnage wouldn't you?  But strangely, the people who get hit hardest by this weather tend to plan for it, they drive proper Landrovers (not the new ones that look like that one they designed for the first Judge Dredd movie) - You can tell the people I mean by the way they're always using phrases like 'Southern Softies' and 'This isn't snow - We've not had real snow since 1963'

Then comes the Spring.  Now, two things happen in the spring (Well, a lot of things happen in the Spring, but we're only interested in a couple of them).  In a warm Spring, the snow on the high-ground melts, runs down the mostly granite mountains and quadruples the volume of water that's being dumped into little streams.  These streams carry on as best they can, flowing themselves out to the coast until they hit something man-made, like a canal, or a diverted river that now goes through a town-centre or a housing estate that was built on the cheap on a flood plain by a company more interested in profit than anything else.  So you get a few weeks of news reports showing new Ford Focus' (Because it always seems to be a Ford Focus, or at a pinch, a Renault Laguna) being carried out to sea, and sandbags, and worthy people who can't get insurance sleeping in the local church.

If it's a cold Spring, we get snow on the low ground.  Not Northern Territories of Canada fifteen feet deep snowdrifts, not majestic untrodden snowfields as you might see on the rolling Steppe of whatever we're supposed to call what we used to call Russia now (Probably something with 'Stan' on the end) but about four inches of grey slush that's only really a problem for motorcyclists who've forgotten their waterproofs.  What happens after the first afternoon of snow?  The entire country shuts; Offices close, public transport stops, Electricity pylons are brought down.  Councils complain that they've not bought enough grit and everyone else complains that we should be more like Iceland in our preparedness (But not necessarily in our banking or volcano situations)

Then, as surely as Summer follows Spring... Ah... Perhaps I should have used a different simile there... We have Summer.  A usual English summer is six weeks of moaning about not having a summer, a week and a half of all the red-top newspapers having the words 'Phew!', 'What', 'a' and  'Scorcher' on the front page every day and then eight weeks of people meeting up at random and saying 'Well, I guess that was Summer then.'  Ice-cream sales septuple, as do those for suncream and ironic sunhats.  Everyone who has a caravan makes for the coast, there are a couple of pileups due to inexperienced drivers being hit by crosswinds but it's pretty quiet really.

But there was one thing... On my way into work this morning I heard a traffic report that was about a stretch of road that I use every day being partially closed for emergency maintenance as... Wait for it... ONE OF THE CARRIAGEWAYS HAD MELTED!

British roads are coated in something called Asphalt (or Tarmac...Which you will probably have some spare of and can do a lovely job on my drive, If you happen to be a member of the Irish Travelling community) which has a melting point of about 120 deg C... The temperature yesterday was about 26 deg C. - So, how does that happen?  Well, a lot of asphalt isn't exactly 'new' It gets re-used, melted down, mixed with thinning agents and re-laid.  If you do this on the cheap, it can lead to it taking on the consistency of toffee - Highways Agency doing things on the cheap? Surely some mistake!

Phew! what a Scorcher!

Then Summer rolls into Autumn, and Mother Nature covers the English countryside with a beautiful golden cloak of leaves.  Or, as the rail companies call them, thin sheets of uncontrollable, train-stopping organic matter that bring the country to its knees!  OK, I admit that modern commuter trains have fairly piddly engines, about 800 Bhp or so, but you'd think that there'd be a mechanism for handling the track being a bit slippy, like a brush in front of each set of wheels, or one of those 'cowcatchers' that you see on front of trains in Cowboy films, or an unemployed person strapped to the front with a couple of cheap wallpaper scrapers and a determined expression.

But all these things happen every year, If I can write about them and I'm effectively a know-nothing chancer who lives to make people smile, why can't clever people think about them and solve them before they happen?

This country was called Great Britain for a reason you know, (Actually, they say that it was to distinguish it from Brittany in France... Brittany in this case meaning 'a bit like Britain' - like Irony means 'a bit like iron') And we should go back to those times and resurrect Baden-Powell, he'd have us sorted out in minutes.

For as the great Man said himself, 'To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.'

Actually no, that doesn't really... erm... Oh Bugger-it!

Boobs, Melons and Jumper-Lumps

Soooooooo... It seems you enjoy hearing about my misfortunes! - Yesterday on the blog was the most popular so far, with over 100 hits and 72 of those on the 'Barnaby Wilde' page itself.

Thanks guys, you made a bald man very happy.

The idea for today's Blog was suggested by my dear Wife, in a 'Well, they liked that, so they'll probably like this too' kinda way - But it'll only be short.

I'm a confirmed Asda (Walmart) shopper - They're cheap, you often don't get food poisoning from their own-brand range and the opportunity for shenanigens is quite high. I mean, you try the sort of crap that you'd quite happily get away with in Asda in Sainsbury's and you're looking at being escorted from the premises quick-smart by a security guard with the peak of his hat so close to his face that he looks like a jobsworth Judge Dredd.

I quite enjoy just wandering around the place and looking at the people - I mean, don't get me wrong, it's no People of Walmart - But it gets pretty close on occasions, you get a few people in their pyjamas and crocs, who I just assume to be escaped mental patients, but most of the time things are pretty sensible.

That is, of course, until LARP season starts...

For those of you who have managed to live your lives without encountering LARP, it stands for Live Action Role Playing - Dungeons and Dragons but with a far higher incidence of personal injury - Rubber swords, people dressed as elves, the whole nine yards. Hundreds (literally) of people congregate in the grounds of the old Leper Hospital up the road and bash seven different kinds of poop out of each other with maces and swords and hammers made of sponge-foam and Duct-tape. It would be all too easy to dismiss these people as boobs, really, it would, but when you see the obvious time and work they put into their costumes and how seriously they take it, they demand a certain respect. Add a bit of cleavage, and a fair smattering of acne cream and shampoo and some of those guys could be classed as cosplayers. (I'm not going to explain that one too - You can't be on the Internet and not know what a Cosplayer is - look it up, it'll be educational) That is, right up until you see them in the cream cake aisle at lunchtime, with a basket full of sausage rolls, scotch eggs and chocolate flavour milk - The studded leather jerkins, ring-mail vest, thigh boots and studded flails lose a bit of their mystique under those circumstances.

But you didn't come hear to listen to me opine about people who choose a different entertainment lifestyle, you came to hear about things that caused my physical pain and/or embarassment.

-oOo-

I show off... A lot... I mean, give me an audience and I behave like a five year old. It's the main reason for this Blog. I'm constantly being told to grow up by my children and I often turn around after shower-juggling a couple of (full) wine bottles in any shop I've not previously been banned from, to be confronted with the rapidly retreating rear-ends of my family as they melt into the crowd slowly repeating their manta - 'He's Not With Us... He's Not With Us...'

One time, I performed a trick that I'd seen in a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, where you run down a supermarket aisle throwing a watermelon to yourself. You know, that's when I found out that real-life physics and cartoon physics work slightly differently. I don't mean you can't do it, you can, the first three or four throws work perfectly, but as you gain speed, you have to throw the watermelon further and further ahead of yourself...

You've worked out what happens next already, right? I knew I could count on you.

Watermelons make an absolutely brilliant noise when they hit the floor from about 10' up, and the pieces go for miles - I think that I might have actually spread my arms wide, slowly spun around in a circle to the assembled audence and cried 'Tah-dahhhh!'. The look of horror on my wife and daughter's face was worth the price of entry alone. I'd never heard my wife growl before, and it's not a noise I care to get her to repeat.

'Pick... It... Up...' She growled,

'What?' I replied, as innocently as my ear to ear smirk would allow,

'The melon, Pick... It... Up... Now..."

'Yes Dear.'

Did you know: It's possible to fit an entire watermelon in one of those small plastic bags that come on a roll in the fruit and vegetable aisle? Providing you make the pieces small enough that is. The cashier, when we went to pay, was pretty confused too. She tried to put it through as melon slices rather than a whole watermelon.

My wife made me explain what had happened.

Then she made me apologise.

I felt very sorry for myself.

I have not been allowed to forget this momentary lapse of judgement since, as every time my wife meets someone new she introduces me thusly,

'This is my Husband, he likes to throw fruit at himself in Asda.'

I think it makes me sound mysterious and interesting.

-oOo-

Another Asda moment that has entered the annals of Dandy history started with an innocent trip to the shops to get the ingredients for a summer picnic. It was the middle of the kids summer holidays and the store was pretty busy. The weather was hot (well hot for the UK - Maybe 25 deg Celcius) and most of the clothing worn by the customers was of the shorts and t-shirt variety. In fact, some of the female customers were wearing less, with vests and the occasional bikini top on display.

Mrs Dandy had chosen to wear a somewhat structural top with what are called, I believe, spaghetti straps, which served to accentuate her more than ample feminine charms. I use the phrase 'served to accentuate' here as a synonym for the more vulgar 'struggled to contain', and obviously it was only so long before I resorted to childishness.

I waited until we were surrounded (mostly) by adults, turned to Mrs Dandy and... well... made the action with both of my hands that indicated that I thought my wifes... erm... jumper-lumps were some kind of squeaky-toy.

What happened at this precise time helped convince me of my Super-Villain status.

The 'Honk-Honk' noise actually sounded, in perfect time with the squeezing of my hands. I looked down at my hands as if looking at them for the very first time. The surrounding shoppers looked at me, at the rapidly reddening Mrs Dandy, at my hands, at her upper ladies area - all with their mouths hanging open.

I burst into raucous laughter, which, luckily proved infectious and of course I tried to do it again - But this time I was thwarted, it seemed that this particular Super-Power was a one time only deal.

It remains a mystery to this day, completely unexplained and unexplainable. We did see a guy dressed as a clown a little further around the store making baloon animals, and he did have one of those old-style car horns with the black rubber ball, but I don't think that had anything to do with it.

See you next week, Dandy-Fans