What happened next?

Readers of this blog will know they sometimes need a vivid imagination. Some of you may have seen those quiz games which invite the contestants to hazard a guess as to what happened next?

On my walk with Teapot yesterday we came across this sight, and being in a sort of imagination runs wild frame of mind I thought to myself, I wonder what could have happened next. Here are some ideas:

* Teapot fell in and I rescued her

* Mr Darcy appeared from the water and rescued Teapot

* Colin Firth appeared from the water gasping cause he cannot swim

* Johny Depp comes out of the water singing the Pirate King from the Pirates of Penzance

* Keira Knightley enters from the right asking where is Darcy and who is this pirate person

* Englishblogger appears left saying it all needs another take as the sound equipment is shot

Any better ideas??

Spooks

Monday evening used to be the time that Mrs FreelanceNerd Teapot and I found ourselves in the world of make believe with the BBC TV drama called Spooks.

It was the programme that led you to think that all would be right with the world and especially the UK if only those charming guys at MI6 were in charge. At a stroke we would solve the problems of the middle east, sort out the religious fanatics and dispense summary justice to the Bosnian war lords.

It makes you wonder....especially when out walking in the Cotswold countryside you come across a helicopter minding its own business in a field next to a farm with outbuildings containing some very heavy looking not so agricultural machinery. We had been already been told that the manor was owned by an American who was very good at land management...nod nod wink wink..

Followers of spook like programmes will know that grand country estates have always been a cover for the shadowy goings on of the secret agent. Remember Emma Peel and the Avengers.....and as we walked the bird song from the hedgerows was interrupted from time to time by the sound of the shotgun!

I advised Teapot to put away her binoculars and digital camera and beat it down the lane but would she?? She has always had a strong streak of impetuosity. I spotted a group looking like the owner and his heavies in the distance and we managed to walk off with an innocent looking stride into a nearby coppice, out of sight.

I have noted from Englishblogger's account of yesterday that at about the same time as all of this was taking place he was having a spot of bovver with the sound system, the mikes and all of that nerdy stuff back in Sutton C.

It makes you wonder......taking out the binoculars, impacting on the force field around the rotar blades of the helicopter and hey presto it is anarchy on the sound desk......

...Teapot guilty as charged!

the Sequoia church

I was wandering through blogspace on Friday evening and picked up Gprophet's blog on his trip to Honfleur.

He describes a special time of the working of the Holy Spirit during his time there and mentions how the people he met are truly the people of God.

That phrase has resonated with me as I have thought about our experiences of the past ten weeks. We too have been among people who truly are the people of God.

This picture was taken by me of Teapot in Yosemite last year. The solidity, size and strength of the Sequoia and Teapot in the middle of it is just how our church has been for all of us these past weeks.

We have a garage full of dishes and plates which have brought us food to eat. We have calls. We have folk who will give us time and more time. They are those who are just prepared to listen. We have invitations out and have gone to football matches, a bonfire party and even a Cliff Richard concert! We have encouragement through a regular supply of postcards.

You read our blogs [and the reindeer blog!] and post your comments.

This may not seem spectacular but the words of Paul according to the Message are:

"If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt..."

......and that is it and why we are truly among the people of God.

Barclays Bank

On Wednesday I went to Canary Wharf with two colleagues to explore opportunities for business with Barclays Bank. It was my first visit to Canary Wharf and the scale of the buildings is like nowhere else I have been in the UK.

The reception area was big enough for a fo0otball pitch and we came out of the lift at floor 30. I turned to "hammy" one of my fellow partners and said "do human beings work here?". He gave a grunt of shared understanding. I also asked him if a good opening gambit would be to tell the Barclays guys how I used to live in a flat over a Barclays Bank and my parents had the job of cleaning it after the day's business. The moment passed.....

As we left and walked back to the station we both concluded the place had no soul.
We have been on a bloggers memory trip this week and I have enjoyed the pictures of yesteryear: some more yester than others. My trip to Barclays took me back to the time we lived at that flat, and how I would help out with the cleaning, especially the brass door handles and the stoking of the bolier in the cellar after school.

[This is beginning to sound like the famous John Cleese sketch of the upbringing of the lads from Yorkshire of old - although I am a Lancastrian, and don't forget it!] .

There were railway lines at the rear of the building, and I have managed to find one photo that goes back that far. The line has long been closed and the rails ripped up. Our back garden was just to the right across from a narrow unmade lane. This is where I pestered my dad after each day's work in the summer to finish his tea and complete the bank cleaning pronto, so we could begin playing cricket until only bad light stopped play. So I did my bit with the cleaning to hurry along the start of play.

Many a time was the ball deposited on the lines and it was 6 and out; my dad risking the wrath of the man in the signal box in the picture as he went on the line to retrieve the ball.

I played in Test matches in that garden and lane against the Aussies which brings me right up to the present; or next week to be precise.

Let's hope for the kind of beating for our antipodean friends like they used to take all those years ago behind Barclays Bank!

Olive Oil

More from the aisles of Sainsburys and that source of inspiration, my shopping list.

Today I included olive oil...not one of the usual purchases on the Timelord's list. In fact there was a time when I thought olive oil was just a character in Popeye......
...but more enlightened times have come especially since we came to live within walking distance of Four Oaks Park.

So off I went to the olive oil shelf to be confronted by a galaxy of choice. Was it really all olive oil?

There was sicilian, umbrian, ligurian, laodicean (presumably neither too hot nor too cold), hojiblanca, garlic flavour, basil flavour, rosemary flavour, eucalyptus, SO organic [what is this SO thing - oxide of sulphur or what?] greek, italian, spanish, kalamata, kazak, unfiltered, filtered, mild, bitter, speckled hen, and specialities from pilippo, berio, iliade, bertolli.......

...you may think I make this up (?), but try asking for H2O organic, and may be if enough of us do just that it will be there next time olive oil appears on the Timelord's list

Reindeer Food

Saturday morning and Sainsburys. I pick up the shopping list prepared the night before only to find added to it in strange writing -

ploughman's pickle
brown sauce
baked beans
turkish deligh options
brussels pate (please)

I can only think it is those pesky reindeers putting in their order for the special ingredients that make them fly.....
.....or could it be the diet that keeps Mrs FreelanceNerd so slim and has stunted her growth over all these years?

White Christmas

Like my friend Baddog I too have been in London this week.

Passing through the Tube on my way to Euston I heard a busker play White Christmas. Is this the first hearing this year??

I shall be going the same way next week. Any guesses as to what seasonal tune I will hear this time? Is there any song for Guy Fawkes night?

sheepgate

Funny place Havering. It's in Essex in case you didn't know.

Last year the planning committee at the Council had to consider an application for planning permission to site a mobile home on a farm alongside rare breeds of horses and sheep.........
........and the fun began because throughout the meeting councillors heard repeated baaing and bleating sounds?!

Spurred on by a complaint from one of their number the Council has been trying to find the guilty culprit ever since. After spending £10,000 and producung a 300 page report the list of suspects is down to 4. A sub committee will interview them all next month.

What made matters worse was that the chairman of the committee in calling for the votes for permission heard the sound baa and added it in as a vote in favour with the eventual decision being to grant permission 5 votes for and 4 against. There were only 9 councillors present and one has sworn an affidavit that she did not vote at all and at the key time was out of the room.

The names of those being interviewed has so far been a closely kept secret......
......until today, when lawyers, Sue Grabbit and Run, for Shaun the Sheep, went to the High Court and successfully secured an injunction preventing the sub committee taking any further action against their client.

They argued that the Council were acting in breach of their clients rights as a sheep by including one Councillor Bull on the sub committee!

So now we are down to 3.

And my money is on a certain Councillor Scrooge....and the hearing date - 22 December.

Bah Humbug!