It sounds like it! What a character! I'm guessing there was no second outing with him I've been one of seven people crammed in a Volkswagen but never in a car that was turned over.

The picture of the Eagle and Child pub on the Tolkien Trail mentioned in another thread reminded me of something that happened when Husband and I visited England in 1977. It was our honeymoon and we wanted to visit another country but thought we should make the first foray abroad to a place where we knew the language. So we toured London and then rented a car and wandered around the south part of that beautiful country. I wish we could go back. I had the worst case of culture shock, though. We arrived by train at Victoria Station and got one of those black cabs and the driver had an accent like I'd only heard in movies. I thought, "this is real, he's not just acting!" And he was a nice fellow but I was sure I'd gotten off the plane and landed on Mars or Jupiter. I spent the whole two weeks wanting to hide under the nearest bed. But I was a new and naive little wife then.

The embarassing thing that happend was at a Pub near St Paul's, I think it was the Hoop and Grapes. Husband has a fondness for pub atmosphere (so do I) and we stopped there for lunch and got a couple pints. Sat the glasses on a small table; I turned to sit and my shoulder bag swung and knocked both glasses right over. The barman was great about it and mopped everything up for us but I wanted to dissappear. I guess this is more of a silly story than an odd one and now I have good memories of it.

I think culture shock only happens once because I've been to central Europe and the West Indies since and never felt that odd feeling again..

I have caller ID and sometimes I don't get to the phone quick enough to answer it, so I'll call them back and say, "Yoouuu raaang?" I can't remember which radio/TV program I got that from. I also some time use Lilly Tomlin's, "Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"

WHAT , that is hilarious, for so did Nelson. He would answer and say "City morgue, you stab em we slab em.' I would turn so red from embarrasment from that.
Grondy, I LOVE the Lily Tomlin thing. I laugh just thinking about that.
Sian, someone actually helps you to your stall? That is the BEST (falls over laughing). I love it.

Yes; and I find machinery strange. How those electronic things work is beyond me I'm sure glad when they do, though, I'd be so lost without the computer.

And Christmas day can be misserable for everyone if Santa overlooked the 'Batteries Not Included" written on those boxes.

I had a Kodak Brownie once upon a time; it used 127 film and the pictures were quite small. I still have a Kodak Boy Scout camera that I paid $15 for in the late seventies; It uses 127 film. To view it, go to Kodak Boy Scout and type-in "13" for the lot number at the bottom of the page. It is slightly smaller than this picture and I imagine mine was manufacture in the USA back in the twenties or thirties.

Now THAT is thriller in want of writing. How wonderful. They would have to hogtie me to get me to part with anything to a conveyer belt that could possibly be strapped to my person from point a to point b. I saw an u nder cover video once of what some employees do to our things in an attempt to steal and it was so upsetting I felt phsyically ill for a bit. I think there should be cameras everywhere. Personal freedom is fine but when you cannot trust every second person to do t heir job with integrity well you need to take measures.
Where they get some employees is beyond me.

Once in the Southern States, and we had been there many times to visit friends and Celtic relatives now settled t here with no problems, we stopped by a seemingly very popular place to buy great looking food and drink and we ate and drank and bought some for later and put it in our little fridge thing in our huge and state of the art trailer.(My father was an inventor besides his regular occupation of Railroad Conductor on both freight and passenger and just had to be the first to purchase anything new out there and try it out).
Within about an hour all of us became sick in varinging degrees, my father and I the least. One of our group fell into a coma and we had just come to a medium sized town. We , my father and I left the others and frantically looked up the street of the police station, we could not find a number for a hospital. We got t here and the fellow was relaxing eating some chicken and some sort of home made looking salad that made me feel worse by the second. We begged him to come and help us and he didn't see the seriousness of things, thought my father was exaggerating. My father started yelling from despair and the man threatened to put him in the lock up and on and on it went. I was terrified and finally my father said thankyou and we took off. By miracle really we came upon a beautiful white house with a shingle that said so and so phd and we rang the bell. He came with us and treated everyone, got my uncle to a nearby h ospital and the rest of us got treated according to severity.
Needless to say when my uncle recovered we left the area and were careful not to take roads that we had not travelled before or stop at towns we did not know from all the other times we came that way. And I was truly glad to be at our desitination at last.

That was a scarey trip really. And the odd thing was that when we got home no one could remember the name of the town, period or what it was n ear. It was like a bad bad dream.

There is something about that little blue man t hat positively creeps me out Grondy dear.
Really fits the tale however.

Ron's father has said not to trust anything you can't find where it keeps its brains. Can you find where it gets or stores its power; makbe snip an internal wire, or could you give it a bath? I don't know how this doll works, but it is usually easier to render something inoperative than to repair it.

Are possibly its eyes silicon wafers that charge its battery, which has simply been depleted? After another lengthy charging hiatus, they provide just enough power to say but a few words before they run dry for yet another long quiet spell?

This might explain the happenings without resorting to spiritual explanations, which can be unsettling when children of any age are involved. Best we find a scientific explanation and not wait for a Stephan King-like explanation involving angelic or demonic beings.

Could it be the infamous "Chucky" in disguise; I hope not. (I never watched any of those movies about the psycho doll.)

I saw a black cat yesterday.

Did the black cat see you as well Vir?, did he react, now THAT would be odd wouldn't it. That's it, that is the oddest thing you can come up with. Please don't mock my interest dear Vir, for I believe that any one of what you call 'ordinary' days must surely be chock full of the oddest things. So come along now, share.......pleeze................

Thank you for that Grondy, I am all anticipation and interest. I never heard of that kid's series and I am sure I will love them.
Somehow I feel the very same about P.D. James. I honestly have never made it through one of her books and I honestly cannot tell you why.My absolute favorite of all Agathat's is They Came to Baghdad. I reread it a great many times.

Here is a rather odd thing that happened to me when I was women's editor of a newspaper in Trail British Columbia. I lived on Rossland Avenue, which was our Little Italy. Many of the older homes had flat roofs that were made so one could go and sit on a nice chair and enjoy the cool of the day and watch the twilight fade and the rich black star studded night appear.

It was a particularly cold winter and many of my friends and I were rather worn out from it. It was singularly beautiful and all that, and above Trail is the little city of Rossland where many world class skiers are taught and such. Now I honestly don't remember if Warfield was part of Rossland or not, I am not particularly great with geography.It was not my home city or anything.

Well, it was now New Year's Eve and the English fellow I was seeing , Kit, had been invited to a very swank soire in Rossland and he was encouraged to bring me along. So off we went.
The house was so large and spectacular it reminded me more of a museum and I was not terribly impressed. I grew up high middle class, we had servants and all that and I always gave most of my things away because I could not stand others to not have and I did not care about things.IT never benefited me in spirit or any other way.
There were glittering lights everywhere, table after ornate table loaded with food and drink and every one dressed in opulance. Well except Kit and me for he did not tell me it was formal and we had come in jeans and fancy sweaters.

Thankfully there were about ten others dressed as we were and we all eventually went under one spectacularly large table and ate and talked. No one either heard us or noticed, I think there was live m usic in the ballroom.

At just about midnight one of the other fellows mentioned something he had done once in another city that was h igh on a mountain like Rossland. He said he and his mates had all taken garbage can lids and slid down the mountain side and had the time of their lives.
Within minutes we all had gleaming garbage can lids and because this guy knew the streets and knew what was safe and such he led the way. I was quite exhilerated and terrified and it seemed we soared and turned and slid for a hundred years. Down and down on the hardpacked snow. We never saw a car anywhere, only houses lit up with partiers.

At some point we crashed into a bank of snow from the snowplows and that was it.
We made sure the lids were replaced the next day and for the rest of the night we hung out at my place sipping hot chocolate and recovering from frost bite and for me outright fear. I was not as brave as the others.
So I think that is a rather odd thing to do, don't you.

On another note about garbage can lids, it was also the custom there to take the lids off the cans on Hallowe'en and put them somewhere, I cannot remember where I of course did not take part in this. There were very wierd traditions there. I think it must have been all the lead from Cominco on the hill affecting everyone's brain.

That's neat Arath, your cat must have been the best looking or had the best sense decorum.

Back in my home town in eastern Washington, we used to snow sled on a two block long street hill that was closed to traffic for that purpose. I lived about a half mile from the hill, so I was glad I had a friend who lived at the bottom, where we could get warm and have a hot chocolate.

Later when I went to Uni at Washington State, we used to slide down the hill between the library and the field house in the dark of night when the campus police weren't around. We tried it with cardboard, but that soon got soggy, so we borrowed (requisitioned, purloined) food trays from the commons and they worked fine. Warning: Don't do this at home. Parents and the Law frown on purloining, it is considered the same as stealing.

Funny you should mention that, today I read in the newspaper that a Flemish girl on holiday in Canada around Calgary almost got eaten by a black bear... she was jogging near sunset when she met the beast and by acting dead she managed to make the bear lose interest, but not without suffering a few bites in the lower back.

Oh Joy, thank you thank you. I feel so elated to hear this. You are wonderful

You are so right about Grizzly bears Grondy. As for that incident in Calgary Vir, that has become quite common unfortunately in that area. Because Calgary is so huge in area, and I mean huge, it has taken over other small villages and communities until it is mamoth, and with people encroaching on bear territory and the bears enjoying garbage and such they become bold and if that bear was hungry or smelled something on her that interested him he would not h esitate. When you go to Banff, a little way from Calgary , at certain times you can have them approaching your car and smacking it and making a horrible noise because they want food. The park rangers are quite severe with anyone caught in any way trying to feed or leave food for the animals. It causes a great deal of grief for others.
By the way, Calgary has over a million people and just the city proper, not annexes and such covers a distance of 726 sq kilometers. Last year it was ranked as the cleanest city in the entire world.

That Yogi. We watched a yogi bear cartoon the other day. I used to love it. Somehow it seemed dreadfully irritating to me this time around. The voices I think. Oh well. I love Red Wall animation. Just got five of the novels . Yeah, something new to read.
This is odd.We have not had a cool day for nearly two weeks and the weather bureau warned that we are at red alert, the same as in 2003 when the next large city over from us was on fire in a complete circle. Then it was our turn. Cut off in all four directions and a wall of fire. Army helicopters all over dropping chemicals, people evacuating , those that could get out. It was a terrible fearful time and the acrid smoke lasted months.
And so we were all in despair. We had not used our air conditioner at all, I hate t hem and they make me feel ill despite the fact the filters are constantly being changed and the conditioner vacuumed and wiped down.
I gave in yesterday and put a new filter in and washed the air conditioner. We used it for the day and although it was cool it felt so artificial
And shock of all shocks, this morning there were actually clouds, the smell of rain in the air and it is much cooler. Oh please please please rain. We so need it. We are surrounded on all sides with pine and fir trees and such.

yes, yes I think she is trying to grab our attention. But because she has made so many errors on the nightly forcasts nobody is listening.


Just this very second the blinds began to move, a breeze started up and wonder of wonders I smell RAIN. oh joy.

The odd thing about this y ear is we had no spring, not a smidge. It was cold every day, you could see y our breath , the rain was bitterly icy. The wine grapes were in jeopardy, well except for those that make a special frozen grape wine but that is only one winery and it is a completely different process etc. And then just like that it was 33 degrees, then higher until about 38. People were staggered by it and even the animals acted strangely, especially the bees. Very very odd spring.

Are you sure they are pigeons, they sound a bit like our seagulls, which are often seen dumpster-diving for past-pull-date groceries.

Modern pets’similar to boats that are holes in the water into which you pour money’are gaping maws into which you pour money. For instance: all their high priced vets; their required paraphernalia; their specialty foods; and their kennel fees when you need to take a vacation and have no family or friends upon which to foist them. Almost as bad as children. Back when we were younger, my then wife and I spent a week as live-in dog sitters for our rector and his wife, oh come to think about it, we were also looking after her elderly father as well as the dog, so that sort of blunts my example. Odd the memories that have started popping back into my mind recently.

The world needs more people like her!

We had rattlesnakes in eastern Washington state where I grew up. In my experience, rattlers can be handled just like bears: with ten foot poles. Make lots of noise when you are walking and they will usually get out of your way. If you hear their rattle, back off and go a different way. However, during their molting season (when they shed their skins, which as I remember is a couple weeks in August), they might not rattle if they have only partially shed their skins and they probably won't slither away. And never ever look under rocks using just your hands or you might find yourself far from a hospital in need of some anti-snake-bite serum.

Also, everything I ever learned having to do with snake-bites as an Explorer Scout, has probably been refuted by now. Just as what the old-timers used to say about a bottle of alcohol being their best snake-bite remedy, it isn't and never has been.

I'm also glad for the dog. I have two and I have also seen how some people treat their dogs. My neighbours sometimes neglect their two dogs. Last time it was raining heavily and they left those two poor beasts outside it the rain and it was really to watch them cling to the wall for some shelter.

I know what you mean. I'm a great lover and nature and I used to sit on my window sill late at night and watch the stars when I wasn't sleepy.