Golf

I'm off to Sun City tomorrow for the gowf.

At dinner last night I told a brilliantly imagined story about peering through my binoculars on the 1st fairway watching Miguel Angel Jiminez repeatedly trying to mount a recalcitrant Sergio Garcia from the safety of my safari jeep. It's an enduring image.

This is a golf tournament. I ain't gonna play Sun City.  Just watching.

Brian

A broad categorisation of Celtic and Rangers fans might be:

Celtic : nasal whiney

Rangers: slow witted

M'colleage and erstwhile friend Brian suggested that, if this were true, then that made me a "generic Old Firm supporter".

He's wrong though. I'm not nasal and whiney at all.

SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!

History

On the way here I decided I'd get myself a book. I love the idea of buying books at the airport but the reality never quite matches the anticipation.

The idea:

Buy a book. The world is your oyster. The freedom of the open road. What gem of literary wisdoms to take for company.

The reality:

Airport bookshops are a bit rubbish. They never really have any books.

 

This time, for reasons which elude me at time of writing, I decided that I'd buy a history book. Something weighty and worthy and learned. Something I almost certainly wouldn't read. That's what I wanted.

So I bought Eric Hobsbawm, Age Of Extremes : The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991

Thought:

It's not that fucking short!

This isn't the first time I've erred on the sign of stupidity in this regard. I seem to make these monumentally stupid choices based on a delusion that I will read and understand history whether I like it or not. 

It will come as no surprise to you that I like it not. It's brilliant and incisive but I can't concentrate for so much as a minute on the brilliant, incisive, lumpen text. 

A terrible decision and one I will have to carry home with me. Literally. One thing is for sure though. I will make the same mistake again.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

Statues

It takes a very long time to get anything at all in the canteen. Notwithstanding the coffee debacle they just tend to stare at you (me) whatever you (I) say. Like you're (I'm) some kind of foolboy. Then, when they finally take something closely approximating what you've (I've) ordered they spend minutes (seconds) staring into space. 

Like statues before they're even famous. 

Coffee

When I order coffee from the canteen I ask for black coffee with hot milk. 

But this confuses them because if you put hot milk in black coffee it ceases to be black coffee and becomes white coffee. They're quite right to look at me quizzically like I'm an idiot before ignoring the hot milk bit and just giving me black coffee. 

And anyway, who do I think I am to coming over here and demanding white coffee! 

It's as if truth and reconciliation never happened.

Stomach

I've had a bit of a dodgy stomach recently. Perhaps it was something I ate although it could have been a bug. Come to think of it, I think it was a bug. I shook hands with eight people yesterday and five of them are sick with a stomach bug. Such power.

Stomach still wasn't 100% last night so I went to a Thai restaurant and ordered some hot and sour soup and then some angry duck to try and find some kind of gastric equilibrium.

This morning I'm happy to say the stomach bug is 100% cleared up. 

The duck is now livid however.

Prostitutes

Coming home tonight there was more than the usual Tuesday night gathering of prostitutes demanding sex. It felt more like the Monday crowd in fact.

I tried to sneak past them by hiding in some long shadows but one evil looking one (the leader if I'm not mistaken) saw me and immediately demanded, not sex, but details of what I was carrying.

"A book", I told her.

"Which book?", she demanded.

"The Book Thief", I told her.

"Did you steal it, Baba?", she asked, slyly.

"No, I did not steal it", I said, tears welling. 

I looked her in the eyes and told her angrily that the title of the book was The Book Thief. That didn't mean anyone had stolen it. I may have called her a harlot.

She looked away from me in disgust. Not even bothering to demand sex.

What is the world coming to!

Bookless

I once knew a chap name of Bookless.

(Hold on who said this was a Limerick!)

Bookless once sent an hilarious email round the company asking who had stolen his book.

Of course, he didn't use the word "stolen" but like all emails of that ilk he implied it.

There was a veiled threat in his tone of email.

And here's something funny. I'm reading a book called The Book Thief. I wonder what Bookless would say to that! 

Lunch

If you're buying a roll for lunch and it's filled with salami, mozzarella, lettuce and tomato and the friendly woman says to you "Baba can I make it hot for you" you should do none of the following:

1. Get all giddy with the sexual frisson of the moment and say Yes
   
2. Assume she knows what she's doing and say Yes
   
3. Say Yes
   

Why not?

Hot lettuce is shite. 

Andy

I just like to have a little joke about not speaking to Andy except in the pub about McGonagall. But I don't really mean it. Not much anyway. No more than about a third.

I can say anything I want about him on here though. 

Like how he was scared to go into pubs on his own til he was thirty-eight. He used to hang about outside til his mates turned up. Heavens above, can you imagine! 

He still thinks it's a bit sad for a man to drink alone. I counter with the argument that it's sad for a man to drink with other people. But only for comedic effect.

And I can say all this because he never reads his intanet. He refuses to follow links, you see. He hasn't followed a link since he was thirty-six. I think the last link he followed was disgusting and he's never clicked on one since. So the only way he'd find this link is if he typed in http://forthewaywelivetoday.blogspot.com/2008/12/andy.html by absolute mistake. 

Unlikely happenstance.

Why Andy doesn't follow links.

He'd argue...  

If we were in the pub having a pint and some crisps, you'd never make reference to another source, e.g. a book, and say there you go look it up there and see what you think about that. You'd have to explain it manually. 

He has a slight point but remember this is a man who has turned having slight points into an art form.

I was reminded of this no speaking thing this very morning at a meeting I was called to unexpectedly and unnecessarily. Someone, lets call him Davy Bond, said something quite extraordinary that I'd love to tell you about. But I can't because I think it might be in breach of work/blog confidentiality and I might get fired (at).