Since the coming of this pandemic I've been doing my shopping earrrrrly, as I type this I'm thinking m+ms advert, small minds eh? Whatever. I always get to the store before they're open and I'm always near, if not at, the front of the cue and one of the first out of the door. Anyway, I shop at Aldi's and the Co-op which means I get up at five-thirty if I'm going to the Co-op and six-thirty when I go to Aldi's. This morning I shopped at Aldi's and it was barely light when I got up. The next time I go to the Co-op I shall be going out in the dark and soon it will be the same for Aldi's.
About a mile from where I live, out in the sticks, there's a string of lakes, flooded gravel-pits basically, and they're home to a fair number of Canada Geese (Branta Canaensis). Yeah okay, I googled it. For the past week or so there has been much honking over head as formations of said geese flying from the lakes heading for who knows where. And then, if I happen to be out at sunset, they can be seen heading back to the lakes. I would think that they're probably hoovering up spilled grain on nearby stubble-fields soon to be ploughed in readiness for next year's crop, and to think, back in the day, when oi wuzza laaad, roaming the fields in the pursuit of game, to see Canada Geese was really quite something. Nowadays, I know of one lakeside strip of grass that's so coated with goose-droppings you have to take quite a detour to walk around it. The memory of having walked it one time has me thinking, it had been rain-sodden and like a skating-rink. Imagine if I'd gone sprawling in it.
Well, as I exited Aldi's this morning and upon hearing them over-head I looked up and thirteen geese in a perfect V formation. Now I'm not superstitious but ..... I notice, and I think about things like that. Why here, why now, why [me]? And what does it mean? It doesn't mean anything of course. It's just me, over thinking things as usual.
Life eh?
Yeah, I know, but wtf? Just the ramblings of a silly old fart.
THIRTEEN CANADA GEESE:Since the coming of this pandemic I've been doing my shopping earrrrrly, as I type this I'm thinking m+ms advert, small minds eh? Whatever. I always get to the store before they're open and I'm always near, if not at, the fron
The last few years of my working-life involved my waiting at a bus-stop at around seven pm to make a ten mile bus-trip to work every night. I worked nights, and, most nights, this same old guy would come ambling up to me as I stood at my stop and gave me the same old chat about not working a day beyond retirement age and that I should pack in work as soon as I was able. Would go on about how a "money-grabbing"friend of his had put off retiring and ultimately died just a few months after he'd called it a day.'I told him' he said,'you've got money, you don't need that ****, but nooo, would he listen? It wasn't going happen to me, ohhh no. I got out as soon as I could.'
And now here he was, walking the streets, bored witless, pestering complete strangers like me for a few minutes of social interaction. I'm convinced that he'd studied the bus timetable and then turned up knowing full well that he'd have my full undivided attention for as long as it would take for the bus to pull in, and what could I do? What a way to end up. It was sad to see. I would umm and ahhh as he rambled.
Well now I'm a bored witless retiree just like him, only not quite ... just like him, and it ain't no fun but I keep it to myself. So bored in fact that after getting so fed up waiting for the day to break, I was out there before seven this morning, walking as slowly as I could, into town to but a newspaper. Found a bench, out of the way, in a small public gardened area, and sat.
No sooner had I opened my paper than an old man came shuffling along, looking down at the ground, as though he might be looking for ****-ends, 'the kids have been coming here at night leaving a right old mess' he grumbled. And I'm thinking 'no! fk off! I really don't need this.' I didn't respond and he shuffled off. Then as he exited, an old woman, struggling to walk entered. She plonked herself down on a bench close by and just sat staring into the middle distance.
As I sat I noticed the old man who having turned left out of the park was now walking back the other way, looking as though he'd lost something. He lingered for a while, chatted with someone outside the news-agent's and then went on his merry way. Old men prowling the streets like zombies,ambushing unsuspecting dog-walkers trawling for someone to talk to.
Life eh?
THE UN-DEAD: wtf?The last few years of my working-life involved my waiting at a bus-stop at around seven pm to make a ten mile bus-trip to work every night. I worked nights, and, most nights, this same old guy would come ambling up to me as I stood a