Posts tagged with "Weirdness"
Friday, 15. May 2009, 11:09:41
history, Weirdness, mystery, envelopes
I guess most homes have at least one, a place where bits of paper secretly accumulate, we live in an old cottage and it has several. I just found another one, so here I am with a pile of old bits of paper, cardboard, and envelope; sorting.
That's the trouble with old bits of paper, you just can't chuck them out without checking them out first. You never know what might be in there.
Indeed you can't. I found a yellow envelope with the legend:-
Deke
#3
(the real one)written on it in large friendly letters. I have no recollection of it, or of what was originally in it. A few minutes later I found a blue envelope. This one said:-
Deke
#2
(the sexy one)You'd think I'd remember that one, but not me. I must be a really unromantic b@$#@£d but I'm completely lost. It's like I've lived a secret mystery life that I've been keeping from myself.
What's driving me crazy is that I can't find #1 or any of the contents. I'm guessing that they came over from the USA because we tend not to use # in that context over here, they were probably cards because of the coloured envelopes, and I reckon they all arrived in a single envelope because they're not stamped, but then again, I haven't found that container either so I can't even look for the return address.
Oh good grief, I hope whoever sent them doesn't read this blog...
Friday, 10. April 2009, 00:16:54
Weirdness, coincidence, seaside
Today's the day, it was time to take mum's prescription renewal form up to the docs. "Just nipping up to the vet's" I said.
"Ooh. I'll come with you," she said.
This would, of course, have been a good thing. For mum to take a brisk, or even leisurely, stroll up to the surgery and back would be a breakthrough moment, normally the only place I can get her to walk is round a supermarket. Unfortunately a brief exchange of words later revealed that she wanted to go up in the car, she said it would "Get her out a bit."
I painfully tried to explain that going from sitting in front of the TV to sitting behind a windscreen does not qualify as getting out a bit, but she was adamant, she just wanted to get out of the house. It was at this point that I conceived of a brilliant plan.
I would drive to the supermarket and we could walk around it buying Easter eggs.
We got into the car and I instantly forgot about going to take the meds renewal form up to the doctor's place and headed off in the other direction.
It was a beautiful day and as I drove the idea came to me that we could go to a supermarket in another town, that would get her about a bit, it would make me feel like there was a purpose to the drive, and it would also give her a bit of a walkabout. So I took a fairly random turn, my only intention being to head south, and I'm not certain at what point it was that I realised that I was now on the main road south to the seaside.
The trouble with main roads is that they don't tend to have supermarts on them, but I was now a bit obsessed with reaching the seaside, so apart from the odd detour through passing towns I stuck pretty much to the main drag and pondered which bit of the southern seaside I should head for.
So there we were driving along the road that serves a large chunk of the south coast, and suddenly hunger struck and I decided that I was going to head seawards right... here.
We hit the seaside and I noticed a little railway running alongside it, so instead of stopping to eat right there I drove alongside it to see if the trains were running yet. They weren't so I continued along my way looking for somewhere with a feeding hole.
By the end of the road, with nowhere to go except back or into the sea, we were both getting a little punch drunk with hunger, but fortunately I still had enough sense to head back, and there we saw a place amidst a load of gorse/broom/furze. Driving over to it it soon became apparent that it had been closed for a while, and mildly miffed as we were we set off to drive back onto the road, and there we saw a little kiosk with seats outside it.
Yay! I pulled into the car park and parked the car about as far from the kiosk as I could get. Mum was going to walk if it was the last thing I did, and we went to the kiosk and ordered some nosh, then went out to sit in the sun and the howling sea breeze to eat. As we ate a car pulled into the car park and just for a moment looked like it was going to pull up by the kiosk before changing its mind and going the other way, to pull up alongside our car. Seconds later I heard a voice.
"See? I told you it was."
I looked up, and there were my sister and her husband walking towards us. Like us they hadn't set out with the intent of actually coming to this place, but apparently they did know of this little kiosk so when hunger struck they simply decided to come thisaway. Everyone managed to avoid saying that it was a small world on account of to do so would cause the other three to shout "Small? Sammmallll???? Why, it's BIG! The world is humungous!" I have no idea why, it's just something that's grown up between us. Nevertheless it was a pretty weird coincidence. Just not as weird as the next thing to happen.
"When we've eaten shall we walk it off with a walk through the nature reserve?" asked my sister.
"O K" said mum.
Monday, 6. April 2009, 22:48:28
radio, Weirdness, sea, sun
...
There's one thing I always do when we go to the seaside, and that's page through all the radio channels on the car radio. The sea is great for carrying radio signals.
So there I was, flipping, and I came across a radio station that we agreed seemed to be playing the perfect music for a hot, sunny, slightly seamisty day. Unfortunately I'd tuned in almost at the end of the record, but before I could mutter "Oh well" and retune, a strangely similar record came on.
After a few minutes of listening whilst we devoured our ice creams (Or 'isis crims' as I will insist upon calling them in homage to The Marx Brothers) it became apparent that this was Radio Similar-Records we were listening to. Every track they played was a basic rhythm section of bass, drums, and electric keyboard. They all had Latin percussion, but it mostly sounded like it was generated electronically either by a machine or a tape loop. Over this there would sometimes be other instruments, like a guitar or another keyboard, and on top of that there'd be something else. Sometimes it would be a sax tootling at random, or a vibraphone tootling at random, or a voice tootling at random. The voice would always be talking in a quiet, relaxed sort of way, but never said very much that made sense, unless the ones who spoke in foreign, which I'm not very fluent in, were making some kind of sense.
The tootler on top was left to do his or her thing, but all the elements providing the background, which was always a repeated riff with just a few of the records having a bit of variation towards the end of the track, being faded in and out by some idiot with a mixing desk and nothing better to do.
After a while it got hypnotic and we got giggly. "The percussion's gone!", "The pecussion's back!", "Yeah, but the drums have gone now..."
Mum thought the station sounded Portugese, I don't think, even with all that water, that a signal could travel that far that well, I also couldn't establish exactly why it sounded Portugese, but what the heck, wherever it came from it kept us entertained just wondering who it could possibly be aimed at. Who'd want to listen to this stuff? As we drove off and the signal quickly vanished we suddenly realised.
It was aimed at us.
Friday, 3. April 2009, 12:29:30
Weirdness, nothing
It's just turned 4 in the morning again, and someone's talking outside.
It turns out to be a man in the middle of the road doing excercises whilst talking on the 'phone. He turns to speak at the top of his voice to someone standing in the shadows (Who I suspect is relieving himself again), and says "He says he's on his way!".
The second figure joins the first in the middle of the road and they jog together for while until one of them says "Here he is." The go back to a car parked on the access road to the new estate and stand by it.
A People Carrier comes down the road, misses the turn into the estate and pulls up just passed it. The two by the car just stand there staring at it. Apparently the idea of actually walking to it has long since been abandoned. This Mexican stand-off lasts for about 20-30 seconds then the driver of the oversized vehicle (Who actually appears to be a woman...) reverses around the corner and pulls up alongside the couple.
The driver and the freezing pedestrians stand and talk for a while, then one of them goes around the vehicle and gets in while the other opens the door of their parked car, and a girl gets out. The two of them stand and chatter for a few seconds then another girl gets out of the other side of the car and joins them.
Finally the guy gets into the Chelsea tractor and the two girls stand there alone still talking to the driver. One of them decides it's too cold for conversation and goes around the car and gets in. The driver and the remaining girl chat on...
Finally the remaining girl is ready to go and also walks around the vehicle and gets in. It drives off down the road leaving the orignal vehicle parked down the access road.
Again I find myself unable to attach a story to these events. Presumably two guys have picked up two girls... at four in the morning. But why have they abandoned their car and gone off with a fifth individual? Don't the girls themselves think it's a bit odd?
I think maybe they're spies checking up on whether I've now accepted daylight saving time.
But then they got a bit cold...
Thursday, 15. January 2009, 23:38:09
aaugh, Opera, certification, ecchh
...
I was going to say "I'm not here" but it wouldn't be true, I'm here, but Opera isn't. It looks like it's here, in fact I can see it in front of me, but alas it is but a mirage, a mere figbox of my fevered miragination, when I fired up the browser I promptly got a warning: "The server's certificate chain is incomplete, and the signer(s) are not registered."
Oh no
. The server's certificate chain is incomplete. I'm screwed. I don't know what that means...
Help is at hand. I clicked on 'Details'. It started with "*.opera.com" and went on to list the whole chain. Halfway down it says "Not valid before", then it says "Not valid after". That must be it then... Um. I still don't know what that means. Let's see what it says under 'Security'.
Ah ha. It seems that Opera doesn't recognize it's Certificate Authority and therefore "It is not possible to verify that this is a valid certificate."
At last it all makes sense.
Well, no, not really it doesn't, but seeing as how it's not really here nothing makes sense, so in that context it makes about as much sense as anything else.
What doesn't make sense is that I've not told Opera to accept or reject the connection, but it's still letting me post this blog.
At least I think it is.
I guess we'll all find out when I press 'Save'.
~
click ~
Thursday, 27. November 2008, 02:15:04
everything, universe, zone, controller
...
Last night I was sitting half asleep in front of the TV, I'd left the fire on wa-a-ay too hot and the room was all swimmy and a bit like a video of a shed somewhere in the everglades, and the cat leapt onto me.
As usual she managed to immediately tread on something really delicate, but I was too blasted to care, I managed a half-hearted stroke or two, but it wasn't enough, she wanted a full blown skritch-of-the-chin and if I wasn't going to do it, then she'd dang well do it herself!
To this end she started scratching her chin on a tin bus that holds biscuits which is (Was) balanced on top of a huge pile of magazines which I'm still wondering whether to list on Ebay or just give away on Freecycle. On top of this box was a TV listing magazine and alongside it was the remote for the TV. Over went the tin, taking the magazine and the remote with it.
The tin and the magazine wound up on the floor, the remote vanished.
I searched. I looked in all the logical places that it might just have slipped, I dug my hand into all kinds of nooks and crannies that it could never have fitted into, and then I dove though all manner of rubbish that there is no way it could have hidden under. In short, I left no stone unturned and no turn unstoned. I looked everywhere twice, and in some places thrice.
It 'ad gorn, and never called me mother...
Around mid-day today I finally grew tired of leaping up and down to change the volume and the channel, and I got really tired of not being able to adjust the screen size to match all the various ratios they broadcast stuff in, and I searched again. After all, I knew because logic dictated it that the damfool remote had to be somewhere, and not just any somewhere either, it had to be in that somewhere just there.
I crawled around the floor, peering under chairs and tables, feeling inside soft things, and generally making myself look like an idiot. Then I gave up.
Obviously the remote had gone to visit its relatives on the remotoid planet which these things all come from. I was going to have to replace it.
Have you ever tried to replace a remote?
When I went to the manufacturer's website to look up the ref. number of the controller I wanted they tried to fob me off with a 'universal remote' which had what looked like a million buttons on it and cost vast sums of money. When I tried a remote finder website it took so long to find the list of TVs that I had to choose from that the computer kept timing out. Finally I had the good sense to try Froogle and found myself in a morass of genuine and generic remotes all guaranteed to work with TV sets with a model or serial number almsot, but not entirely, similar to mine. I decided to go for the real thing, after that it was just a matter of finding which was the cheapest.
And that's another thing.
Why is it so hard to find out what the postage charges are going to be? You have to pay them, buying the product and then not having it sent to you would just be silly, so why don't most websites give the shipping charges with the price? Some sites you have to almost order the item just to find out what shipping they're going to charge. I couldn't be bothered, I decided that if the postage costs weren't listed somewhere easy to access I wouldn't bother with that store.
And that's when I found a site with not only a cheap genuine remote, but free delivery as well. It was with no little relief that I bought the snutting thing and threw myself back into my chair, exhausted with my toil. My mother enquired what I was getting so hot and bothered about. I told her I'd just ordered a new remote. She asked if I was sure I'd searched everywhere for it. I told her of course I had, there weren't that many places it could have gone, it would have had to have gone here, or down here...
I grabbed the remote for the VHS and demonstrated how a remote would fall. "See?" I shouted triumphantly as it fell to the floor in full view. Then I went to pick it up.
I don't need to finish this story really, do I? You know that seconds later the remote returned from visiting its relatives, completely unaware of the bother its disappearance had been causing us. It was down a little gap between another chair and the magazines that I've got stacked up, I'd checked down it numerous times.
There could be but one explanation. There was a portal to another world down there.
I rolled up my sleeve and thrust it down into the gap. The gap was only aboutthislong, my arm is at leeeeeast thiiiiiiis looooonnnnnnng.
I swear my hand went right through the floor as if it wasn't there...
Saturday, 16. August 2008, 19:26:55
Spencer, service station, cafe, BP
...
I was driving home on the A303 eastbound. For you foreigners and Brits with no intimate knowledge of the UK road network out there the A303 is a road that cuts almost straight down the middle of the leg at the bottom west of England then boogies on down to London, and since it's been motorwayised for a large part of its route it's now a very useful way of hurrying home (Although I rarely use it when I'm going somewhere else. Not picturesque enough. Well, except when it goes past Stonehenge anyway. That's picturesque enough for as long as the road vibrations haven't demolished it).
As I approached the Newbury/Winchester/Southampton intersection I espied a new service area. Fuel, food, and farting (C'mon, does anyone ever do anything else in those places? It sure doesn't sound like it to me), who could ask for anything more?
Well, some sign that intelligent thought was involved was involved in the layout would have been nice.
We turned in for a little light refreshment, by which I'm not referring to fuel or farting, and whoops! Almost immediately missed the turning into the 'Cars' area. I paused as I turned in, it seemed to me I was driving into the petrol station forecourt, but no, the other road was definitely labled 'HGVs' and there were... erm- five parking spaces, so I pulled into one.
Almost immediately a car to my left missed the turn into the cars area and came to a halt along the HGVs track. It reversed back and pulled into the last parking place, behind me. I surveyed the area and on the other side of the forecourt was a building labled 'Wild Bean Cafe - BP - M&S', I also noticed more parking spaces but the only way to get to them was to drive through the forecourt without buying any petrol. I could see that getting annoying if there was a queue for fuel. Meanwhile on my left another car missed the turn into the cars area. I could see that getting annoying as well.
So having ascertained that there was no marked walkway through the fuel dispensing area we walked across it to the building on the other side. I had expected three entrances but there was just the one, so in we went. It was an M&S food shop, very well stocked, but the 'Pay here' sign was right down the far end of the building, meaning you had to carry your purchases all the way back through the store and back through the petrol filling area to get to your car. I could certainly see that starting to get annoying. In addition, this was the same till you had to go to to pay for the aforementioned fuel. Yup, you had to walk right through the store even if you didn't want to buy anything. Deliberate I'm sure, but do I need to repeat 'Annoying'?
The 'cafe' turned out to be a small area in the furthest corner of the store. It had one table with seating for four people healthy enough to climb onto the seats, otherwise I guess half a dozen people could stand by it. Against the wall was a serve-yourself hot food area with tongs thoughtfully provided to get the food out with. On the wall was a sign saying we could use either till to order our drinks and pay for our food, so we went to the one in the corner of the cafe.
"I'm sorry," said the cashier. "But there are other people waiting to be served."
I looked around. There was a long queue of people waiting to pay for their petrol and maybe shop purchases. Slowly it dawned on me.
"You mean..." I said, my eyebrows dusting the ceiling. "That I have to choose my hot food, walk back out of the cafe, around the side of it to the back of the queue, and then wait my turn to pay for what would undoubtably by then be lukewarm food, after which I walk back into the cafe down this convenient little lane to sit down and eat?"
The cashier seemed surprised at the question. "Yes" she nodded, as if she was talking to a simpleton. I'm not claiming that I'm not a simpleton you understand, simply that I don't like being addressed like one. I searched through my mind for a big word, but none was forthcoming so I settled for 2nd best and adopted my trademark Clint Eastwood squint (Hey, it's Eastwood's fault for not trademarking it himself).
"Doesn't that seem a little... asinine?" I enquired.
"Yes" she replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I'm sorry but this was starting to get really annoying...
We went back to the cafe and I put the hot food back into the dispenser and we walked out. As we crossed over the fuel dispensing area again another car had just missed the turn into the cars area. We got into our vehicle and crossed the fuel pump zone one last time and followed the 'out' arrows. They took us down the side of the building, and there behind it we found more parking places.
Don't quote me on this, but I suspect Alice in Wonderland had something to do with the design of this place.
And the hiring of the staff.
Sunday, 25. March 2007, 02:30:00
Weirdness
When GB goes into BST (Daylight saving time) the hour between 2am and 3 am doesn't exist. People on the nightshift get paid for an hour they didn't do and the rest of us wake up wondering why we feel so...
wrong because of the hour we haven't slept (Or because we didn't set the clocks back and the whole world has moved one step on...).
I've decided I'm going to be different. I'm going to write this blog in the missing hour because I believe it really does exist, it's just outside of our usual space/time continuum.
Read more...
WIDGETIZE