A trip to the post office…

I had to go to the post office to post a parcel the other day, but first I had to find it. Whatever happened to those imposing brick and stone buildings that used to sit proudly on high streets resplendent with flags and bunting and rows of bright red pillar boxes standing to attention on the pavement? They were easy to find back then, very apparent in their post office glory. Of course the trio of telephone boxes and the postmen’s carrier bikes, leaning against the post office wall, helped. These days forget posting a parcel, it’s more like a game of hunt the parcel.

Where did all the post offices go?

Of course the postal service isn’t what it was. No longer is it at the very heart of industry, finance, and trade in the way that it once was. For one thing there’s e-mail, for another there’s the bloody competition with their white vans and their knock and run deliveries. I hate those bloody cards informing me that they called but I was out, when I bloody know I was in.

Oh, for the days of Her Majesty’s Royal Mail when the postman had shiny brass buttons and a military style cap, the days when a trip to the post office was an exciting adventure full of anticipation. It seems that our Main Post Offices have become so ashamed and shy that they’ve gone into hiding, tucking themselves away in supermarkets, bookshops, and mini-marts. I’m sure they’d turn themselves to invisible greyness if they could.

Not like the old days. I remember when my town’s post office had shiny marble floors and the pens at the counter were full of real, rich, dark blue ink. There were always plenty of knowledgeable staff in suits and ties and nicely pressed skirts, and the ceilings were immensely high. The side counters were stocked with official looking forms – applications for temporary passports, dog licenses, post office savings accounts, and both television AND separate radio licences.

It was an oasis of peace and order, not unlike the town library or the post office’s big cousin the bank. You entered its hallowed ground with the doff of your cap and a smoothing down of your Fairisle sleeveless pullover, self consciously going through the large oak doors as if you were on camera – which of course you weren’t back then.

Any deviation from the not very long queue was met with horror by the horn-rimmed, tightly permed, counter assistants, and running around inside would result in a slap across the head from your mother her half-hearted punishment often followed by a jolly good thrashing from your father when he got home from work for causing such embarrassment.

Ladies wore hats to buy their stamps, men tapped cigarette ash into brown bakelite ashtrays whilst waiting for car tax documentation to be checked, bow-tied senior clerks frowned suspiciously at you over metal framed specs, and all information was imparted in secretive, nervous whispers. It was all jolly, jolly, good and you didn’t go to the post office without having a wash, combing your hair, and polishing your shoes.

Yaroo chums! Yes, back then it was like living in an Enid Blyton novel, and the post office was a mysterious, slightly frightening place run by Nazi sympathisers… Schnell, schnell, actung, and Fritz!

Despite the huge cream fans that whirred above the customer’s heads in summer, and the big brass, overly ornate, dolphin knocker screwed to the post office door, my clearest memory of the post office was the polished brass posting box that was set into the wall outside. For years I believed that there was a class system in operation with ordinary people posting their letters into the second class slot and the posh people posting their letters into the first. Maybe that’s where the Nazi connection came in.

It was quite a while before I realised that it wasn’t a status thing and only about the type of stamp you bought. By then I must have posted dozens of my parent’s first class letters by second class.

These days the shiny copper posting box has been painted, the copper all hidden beneath a coat or two of dark brown paint.

Drat those Nazis.

Manchester marathon...

I make people shout; I don’t know why people shout at me, they just do. Perhaps it’s a knack I have, or maybe when people look at me they see a big red flag and become bullish. I really don’t know, but sometimes it seems that I’ve spent my whole life being shouted at by one person or another and if I’m honest I’ve become very tired of it.

Maybe I don’t express myself very well. Sometimes when I say something it comes out wrong or my tone is wrong or my attitude is wrong or the words I use are wrong or, although I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with what I’m saying, others think that what I’m saying is wrong and then they shout at me.

Here’s an example.

You bloody runners get on my nerves. I’ve spent most of today turning around as most of the bloody roads have been closed so that people, who should know better, can run on roads which should be for cars not people. Just why you are allowed to do this is beyond me. Surely you can run in a big park. As for why you do it, well it takes all sorts, but my belief is that you just like lycra and sweat. Anyway you completely buggered my day with your stupid, selfish activities and I don’t care if it was for charity.

Shout away.

So about that plane…

I wonder what it is that makes us want to believe in conspiracy theories. Is it an inherent longing to make things more exciting than they actually are, or do we just enjoy distrusting authority?

I've been holding off blogging about that plane. I wanted to see if it turned up. Today the Chinese have reported signals from the black box recorder in the Indian Ocean. Another false lead, I wonder? 

Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory and rented by Britain to the United States. The US Navy operates their Naval Support Facility, a large naval ship and submarine support base, from the island. The remote island has a runway long enough to land a Boeing 777. Interestingly, the runway descent was programmed into the home flight simulator of the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, although the data was subsequently erased.

Philip Wood, a passenger on the lost flight, supposedly pinpointed the island when he allegedly uploaded a black photo with a message claiming he was being held prisoner by unknown military. Flight MH370 was under 'suspicious cargo' surveillance by the Russian Main Intelligence, 20 of the passengers work for a company which specializes in futuristic warfare and technology, Island residents of the Maldives (647 miles north of Diego Garcia) reported seeing a huge low flying aircraft heading South at 6.15am the morning after it 'disappeared' from radar.

Of course Glen Miller was shot down by his own side, Marilyn Monroe was taken out by the CIA, Area 51 is choc full of alien spacecraft, and Elvis, Shergar, Lucky Lucan, and Ritchie from the Manic Street Preachers are sharing an apartment somewhere in Rio. As all of us conspiracy theorists know, all governments are corrupt, they possess weapons of mass destruction given to them by aliens and if you remove their masks they are all lizard men underneath. Even so, a lot of conspiracy theories have turned out to be true despite attempted cover-ups.

The CIA really did have a mind control project and they did run drugs in LA, the asbestos industry managed to cover-up the substances link with cancer for decades, The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led to the escalation of the Vietnam War, never happened, and let’s not forget Watergate or Karen Silkwood.

Only a few decades ago we all trusted the banks. After recent banking revelations it’s easy to believe that The New World Order, a group of the world’s elite who have caused all the major wars for the last 200 years, is actually true. Some of these bankers will go along to Bohemian Grove where strange meetings, attended by the richest and most powerful men in the world including former US presidents, take place. These meetings happen in the Californian woods and a giant stone owl is worshipped by the all male congregation. It doesn’t ring true does it? Well, unlikely though it seems the Bohemian Grove meetings have been investigated by CBS and NBC and all of it is true.

For my part here’s my very own conspiracy theory on Flight 370, try this one to hang your hat on.

Perhaps, as originally reported, the pilot really was a terrorist and perhaps he was taking the plane on a suicide mission to Diego Garcia, intending to crash it into the naval base which houses nuclear submarines and stealth bombers. Perhaps, somewhere between the low flying and switched off navigation equipment, he got lost and had to carefully ditch the plane into the sea. Perhaps the rest of the passengers and crew were already dead when the plane glided into the calm sea, killed by the pilot with a lethal gas. Perhaps, after it was down, he found a way to sink it without leaving any floating debris. Maybe he simply opened a hatch or two.

Perhaps.

It’s been almost a month since Flight 370 went missing and nothing has been found. I don’t know what the truth is, but it seems odd that a Jumbo Jet can disappear without trace in this age of satellite technology where we can track a single shark, metre by metre, as it makes its way across the Atlantic.  If nothing changes soon I guess Flight 370 will become just another episode of Mysteries of the Unexplained and then forgotten. Who knows, maybe the people on that plane are still alive somewhere. Personally I hope that they find something. I’d like to know if those people are alive or dead. But in terms of what happened, beyond it being something very strange, I think it very unlikely that we’ll ever know for sure.

Infinity, cats, toast, and chickens…

Sometimes, late at night, I find myself pondering the imponderables.

How big is infinity, which came first the chicken or the egg, is that cat alive or dead inside his or her box, what persuaded the chicken (not the egg) to cross the road, just why does toast always seem to land butter side down, and of course: is there life anywhere else in the universe?

Yes, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I’m strictly a blue sky, helicopter view, million dollar question sort of chap.

Sometimes I worry that we might be alone, really alone, the first world to sustain life, perhaps the only world that will ever sustain life. What if we really are a one-off? Some massive long-shot that wasn’t in the plan, would that mean that there wasn’t a plan, and would that mean that without a plan there was no God? If there was a God.

It makes my head spin, not literally in an Exorcist sort of way, but that spinning, flashing thought thing where your mind races from one thing to another and you begin to see lights in your head, bright, bright lights and deep pulsating whirlpools of darkness, a kaleidoscopic internal picture show taking you to infinity and beyond…

Or is that just me?

Anyway, I wish I had the answer to the extraterrestrial life question. It would make it all so much easier to bear knowing that we are not alone, that we are probably not just an instrument of some all-powerful being, a game that Somebody or Something enjoys playing.

Will David’s lyrical question ever be answered, and will we ever resolve the life on Mars thing? Not to mention the moons of Jupiter.

Okay I’ll mention them. At least three of the four moons of Jupiter - Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede - could be likely candidates for life. Of course the Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) is on its way, the first large-class mission chosen as part of the European Space Agency’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. I don’t know much about the ESA’s Cosmic Vision or JUICE, but I do know that it won’t be launched until 2022 from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Now, despite the mission seemingly being named to solely produce a catchy acronym, I’m hoping that they find something. Jupiter and its moons are almost a mini solar system in their own right. Three of those moons have water and seas under their surface ice; one even has its own magnetic field, another internal heat. Maybe under that ice, deep in the water, there really is life - strange extraterrestrial fish slowly swimming in the murky waters.  

It’ll be a long wait. But if they do find life, any life, that one big question will be answered. Extraterrestrial life within our own solar system has to mean that life can occur almost anywhere, and that will mean that we aren’t alone and maybe there really are other intelligent beings somewhere else.

Best of all, when that day comes and the fish are found, only the cat, infinity, chickens, and the toast mystery will be left for me to ponder.

Summer boys…

There are a few places in my life that I don’t go. Hidden places, best forgotten places, long ago lost summer places. Ah, the boys of summer. Weren’t we all that once?

Look this isn't her, but it could be. There’s nobody on the road and nobody on the beach. I’m swimming in the salty sea back then, making for shore, too far out. Hell, it’s far too rough; any of those ten feet waves might knock me into the rocks and kill me. No sunshine, just the huge grey waves. What was I thinking of? That summer I didn’t give a toss lost between relationships and trying to impress with my too tight white cotton shirts, no money, and little boy shoes.

Well, I guess that you had to be there to be there.

A long time long ago, a big smile, but these days I wander and wonder.

Rollerball, caravans, sandy bay, and I see her. Her head’s thrown back, her hair shines in the sun as she laughs and looks over the top of her sunglasses. No, I don’t wander down here often. That summer is best left out of reach, dead and buried like one of us ended up, the other discarded like an old sneaker lace.

Yes, best not to visit those strange times to drown in that strange summer sea. I try not to look back; I really try to never look back. It was a long, long time ago and I don’t want the waves to lift me and throw me against the rocks all over again.

Was it a dream? I wish. Somehow I got lost in the swimming - all of us lost somewhere in that sea.

Yep, you had to be there to be there - I guess.

The dust that fell to Earth...

It's quiz time again. Can you guess where in the universe this is to be found?

I awoke this morning to find my car covered in dust from another world. Not an outer space type world, although it did resemble another universe as it lay on the black bonnet of my old Mazda 6, but a desert world. The Sahara desert to be precise.

It’s not the first time I’ve got up to Sahara dust, it happens every once in a while. It wasn’t just me either. The poor old prime minister’s car was also covered in fine dust outside No 10 after overnight showers, so we at least have something in common.

Poor old London too, air pollution reached level 10 - danger, danger - on Tuesday and the Met Office advised people with lung problems to avoid strenuous exercise, even healthy adults were told to take it easy outdoors. I better find my smog mask quickly.

How incredible to think that Saharan dust can be lifted by twenty mile an hour winds, reaching altitudes so that it can be carried thousands of miles around the world. Caught in rain droplets in the clouds, it falls to the ground when it rains, the water evaporates, and a thin layer of dust is left behind.

I wonder what’s in that dust; are there tiny fragments of mummy wrapping, silt from the Nile, camel droppings from nomadic caravans, nonexistent palm dust from oasis mirages? Maybe there are even tiny flakes of the binding of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s carried by Bob and Bing on the road to Morocco - who knows?

Tiny particles of the past of another continent smearing the surface of my car. It makes such a pleasant and romantic change from Welsh mud.

I wonder when the frogs and fish will begin to fall?

Cry wolf!...

My wife got me again.

Well it is April Fool’s Day and of course I forgot. This time the toilet was overflowing and coming over the top of the seat. Of course I rushed up the stairs when she called me in a panic, muttering complaints and accusations about ‘things’ being flushed down the toilet and it getting blocked. She even turned on the bath taps to make it sound realistic and stood looking so very agitated outside the bathroom door, seemingly staring at the fictitious overflow.

I pushed past her, expecting to see water everywhere… and she burst out laughing. I’d fully expected an hour of unblocking followed by another hour of mopping and bailing out.  

Every bloody year! She got me again. What is wrong with me?

Of course, I laughed with her, not least of all with relief that the toilet had not overflowed after all and had just been a jolly jape. Mind you, I’ll have nightmares about it for weeks. Overflowing toilets already appear in my catalogue of nightmares, along with locked hotel room doors, lost cars, keys and wallets, and wandering around strange cities stark bullock naked apart from a very small traffic cone.

Talking of nightmares - I wonder how many people had real a real crisis today and on rushing for help were met with ‘Yeah, April Fool. You don’t get me that easy.’

I really hope that my wife never has any kind of emergency on April Fools Day. Just imagine what I’ll say and do if the toilet really did overflow next year.