A Life on the Ocean Wave

So, a number of Royal Navy personnel were found to be positive to cocaine during a random drug screening test. It certainly gives a new twist to being on the high seas. If they had been in the merchant navy, it would also have given a new meaning to the P & O Line. I bet they felt like right Charlies.

Trick Cycling

Heartening to hear on the radio news this morning that Great Britain's successful Olympic cycling team have a psychologist on board, only figuratively in the saddle. This adds new meaning to the old description of psychologists as "trick cyclists".

Another thought occurred to me... with the government's new-found enthusiasm for "talking therapies", perhaps we should have a tag line - not a tag race - along the lines of "Trick cyclists not Tricyclics"?

Ice Cream Leakage

Another lovely traffic report - a leakage of icecream from a tanker on the A1 today. Can this really be a measure of the pleasure I find each day? The only thought I could come up with was the hope that any delays did not create a ripple effect.

Fantasy Folk Museum

The theme of misnomers continued when we had our holiday in Bulgaria and visited the small village of Bulgari, nothing to do with the designer scent of that name. But there was a distinct whiff of alcohol. We met a chap in the neighbouring village who was well set up for the day by lunchtime. As we waited in the local bar for our kufti, beer and chips, he swayed gracefully as he waited to board the small bus back to his bar-less village. When we arrived sometime later in the said village, he was there to greet us, beer in hand. I had a fleeting thought that he might have been dually employed by these villages to serve as their resident inebriated person to entertain the tourists, which at that time consisted of the five of us.

It was a cunning plan. He must have alerted the proud owner of the local folk museum that gullible people had arrived in the village. She approached us with a hungry smile, her eyes rolling with leva and sejinki signs (the local currency). She escorted us to the folk museum. An architecturally interesting building not far removed from the gingerbread cottage in Hansel & Gretel, and clearly a museum because the sign proclaimed it to be such. We entered to see a sad collection of old things, bits of agricultural equipment, some old costumes, all labelled with hand-written signs which explained nothing. Underfoot, old folk lino. We made appreciative noises so as not to offend, but our enjoyment clearly had a price out of all proportion to the experience. Such a contrast to the kindly woman in the local church.

Now we have plans to add a museum feature to our fantasy B&B. We have many old things, some of them we might even know something about, and plenty of sticky labels and marker pens. We can add more artefacts from our visits to the local car boot sale, thus providing an ever-changing display of old things, strictly within a folk tradition. We just need to put up the museum sign and we're in business. Come early to avoid disappointment.