Beach FairyI was just heading down to the Beach when Margie called over. She is lucky to have been blessed with a huge set of lungs and therefore her voice carries whether the wind is blowing in the right direction, or not. She is shouting over to see if I want a Kebab. Well it is Saturday night! She has Sid idling on the driveway” whilst she gets my response. I’m afraid its a “No from me!” Lovely people though they are (and they really are) having a Kebab on a Saturday night is not my idea of having reaching the highest pinnacle of the social echelons of the chattering classes. I continue my walk and my stomach relaxes. That was a lucky escape especially as I was out of Gaviscon.
Apart from that, it’s been very quiet on the Southern Front. Frankie Anne has been very kind and given up space in her garage for my possessions. She says that it can’t be nice living in a caravan. I want to correct her and say in fact it is a rather well-equipped static caravan, but she isn’t interested. She says she will invite me in for supper one night this week so I can eat properly. I think she has visions of me cooking over a primus stove like some intrepid explorer.
Speaking of acts of kindness, random or otherwise, The Pilot has been getting very annoyed. He has asked me to stop f***ing writing about him. I ignored it. He doesn’t like to be ignored as it makes him feel slighted and so he continues to try to get my attention! He does this by leaving notes on my work computer. I arrive at my desk and find a rather snarly note across the screen.
No he doesn’t do it on a piece of paper stuck to my screen, but logs onto our Server; accesses my pc and leaves it as a Word doc, so when I “wake the PC up” it is there staring at me leaking his annoyance . In the good old days he used to do this to leave me a billet doux when he was far away. I always got excited arriving at the office wondering what I might find, but lately he does it to complain about what I do – and don’t do. I continue to ignore it.
My IT guy has tried to block him out. He’s always up for a challenge, however impossible! I said firewalls; passwords and double encryption won’t stop someone that GCHQ has trained, so I suggest he give up now. In some ways I find it quite amusing that there is a silent battle going on between a very astute and wizzy IT guy who can manage to do just about anything you ask of him – and a rather dour old dinosaur who was trained when the Cold War was at its height. Thanks to some rather intensive training by HM Government, he still has the mentality of shooting first and asking questions afterwards. It will be interesting to see how they slug it out.
Anyway the Pilot has left a message to say that as he was “lifting” up from LHR ( he always speaks in abbreviations for some reason) he came across Squiggly holding over Schiphol. Squiggly is an old chum from the RAF days and if they pass each other across the skies they often have a quick chat. The Pilot said that whilst Squiggly was holding and he was flying nearby they fell into conversation about me. It would appear that Squiggly had come across my Blog and devoured some of it with glee. He said he particularly liked the bit where I had used the Pilot’s Emergency Credit Card to buy a pair of Gina Mules for five hundred dollars and hid them at the back of the wardrobe. He also liked the bit where I had said that I had hitched a ride across the Atlantic with Bill C. At this point the Pilot was almost incandescent with rage and told me again ( I sighed) that his position was based on discretion and secrecy and if I was sharing all of his details with the world, then he would question if he could stay in post much longer.
What we have to remember here, Peeps, is that the Pilot and I are no more and have not been for many a fair year. The fact that he still feels he has the right to question me and tell me what is and is not acceptable only encourages me to rise up against him and blog even more. Logging on to the work computers is just his way of flexing his muscles from afar. Maybe I am suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. I simply don’t know….
Anyway after The Pilot had got it off his chest about Squiggly having a chuckle at his expense, he went on to say that life had been a little hard lately and that his passengers had been causing a fair amount of trouble. He said he doesn’t mind flying “self-loading freight” (another name for passengers ) if they behave, but apparently last week someone had the temerity to die just after they had left Abu Dhabi. He was called down to assist the Hosties and he suggested they turn back or at least land at the nearest airfield. Apparently the wife and the daughter of the deceased were very much against this and kept muttering in pidgin English that “No stop. No stop. Keep flying. We have holiday!” Being somewhat stumped as to what to do next he called for the two male Pursers and asked them to help him drag the body out of “coach” and leave it somewhere away from prying eyes. The Pursers came up with locking the body in one of the rear toilets and calling ahead so that when they land in KL, medical staff can come on discreetly and remove the body. The Pilot said he was not keen on this, preferring to move the body somewhere less obvious, but also somewhere warm, so that the body wouldn’t freeze and be difficult to move ( ie not in the Hold). However, as he once told me, it is not wise to argue with Arabs because you are very likely to end up losing face or being knifed. Arabs, he continued, are only good for giving haircuts and shaves and very good they appear to be at it too! Yes I know it’s a wild generalisation but that’s the Pilot, so he said he flew on with one toilet out of action ( on a full plane of five hundred plus passengers , not great) and the bereaved family still insisting on being served the dead man’s meals and drinks allowance by the very upset Hosties.
Opps, just noticed that Mary across the road has had a car parked over on quite a few nights now. I shall assume that Mary hit lucky with the Third Age Internet Dating Site but her luck may run out if she exchanges bodily fluids currently with an unknown person. I think I may have to go over to her and say all further contact with this person should really be via a hazmat suit. I’ll just pop online and see if Amazon are still delivering…….
Beach Fairy
