not quite but almost

on the day after Friday 13th

Today has made me feel supremely weird.

As if I've made some connection with the goings on in the world around me.  There were four events that made me think about all the weird crap that goes on around my life, and wondered if at all it happened to anyone else.  And I learned that Frascato Mocha from Cafe Nero does not go well with a peach summer shirt.  More on that later.  The morning started very brightly indeed.  At 8am, our rugby boys took on the All Blacks, in New Zealand, attempting to overturn over thirty years of defeats.  England were on to a winning streak, having one each one of their last 11 matches.  We've beaten everyone in the world.  And now we've beaten New Zealand too.  It was a convincing win, though the scoreline of 15-13 hardly does it justice.  I had intended to leave early this morning, in order to get up to Carolynne's (oh yes, I haven't mentioned any of this yet.  Rest assured I'll go back and fill in the blanks.  Its been quite a week...)

Anyway, I was driving down to Winchester to meet Carolynne, and deliver unto her the clothes that she left behind after the wedding.  I was supposed (as you will eventually have known (man, I hate present pastification)) to have taken them down with me on Monday, but I forgot, its a long story which I will have already gone through by now.  (Dammit there I go again.)

It was a beautiful day, and truth be told I was really looking forward to the long drive to Wiltshire.  There was a bit of traffic on the way down, but it was clear running once I hit the M3.  As I passed the junction for Winchester, Carolynne called to tell me that it would be a great idea if we could meet in Winchester.  Typical.  I managed to find my way there on minor roads, and parked up.  Carolynne had said that I should find a parking lot somewhere, park, and she'd come and find me.  The car park that I found was, helpfully enough, right next to the major shopping "mall" that she wanted to meet in.  I stopped by to get a drink while waiting, and decided on one of these "iced coffee" drinks that I'd heard so much about.  Hummm.  Nice but nothing to write home about.  They do stain though.  Carolynne arrived, and then shortly after her friend Sophie joined us.  My quick pop by to drop stuff off was turning into a rather bigger affair than I'd planned for.  Carolynne, or C, had basically hinted that we might quite like to go and have something to eat.  I thought, how lovely.  A light lunch, and then back to London for the evening news.  Splendid.

Weird Event Number One : A pasty, of the cornish variety, hit the floor about two feet from where I was sitting in an open-area food court in this "mall".  It hit with some force, as it was practically flattened by the impact.  There were no ledges, or people, or anything from which a meat-filled pastry product could have come.  It was as if the damn thing just popped into existance 20 feet above my head and gravity had it's wicked way.  It was as if someone had just activated an Infinite Improbability drive.

(a side note.  The late great Douglas Adams wrote in his seminal works "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" about the planet Poghril in the Pansel system.  At the moment in which Ford and Arthur were saved from certain asphyxiation after being thrown out of a Vogon airlock, 239,000 lightly fried eggs fell out of a hole in the galaxy, materializing on the planet Poghril.  This was ironic, since the entire Poghril tribe had just died out from famine, except for one unlucky fellow who died of cholestorol poisoning some weeks later.  The point is that while the Infinite Improbability drive provided the Poghrillians with cooked poultry products.  I got a light pastry filled with chopped meat & veg.  I'm not saying another word.  I leave the connections up to you...)

We walked into the town centre, and watched a Mountain Bike display team for a while.  Those guys can really control a bicycle, athough calling it that always helps make it sound a lot less impressive.  Not a stabiliser wheel in sight.  We stopped at ASK for lunch.  I had a pizza.  It was time for Weird Event Number Two.

Sophie was telling me that she'd been for a few drinks in the Cheers Bar on Regent Street.  We eventually determined that was the bar she was talking about - she doesn't know London that well, and just said "we walked to it from Trocadero".  Aha, I thought. Anyway - about 5 minutes after we'd finished that conversation, someone walked past wearing a t-shirt.  A "Cheers" bar brand t-shirt.  I asked Sophie if she'd noticed that before, and she said no, why do I ask?  Its a hellishly freaky thing to happen.  To be talking about something, and then 5 minutes later, someone walks past advertising that thing, which is in a different city altogether?  Of all the wierd things I could have been talking about to her, it was that...

The rest of the afternoon was pretty standard.  I chatted to Russel while C and Sophie went shopping.  Once Soph and Russel departed, C and I went and did a bit of shopping of our own, I bought C Season Four of Buffy on DVD for her birthday.  I bought Me Season Three of Futurama for the Hell of it.

"Hmmm, interesting.  No, wait.  The other thing.  Tedious."
Bender

I followed Carolynne out of Winchester after giving her the stuff that I will have did speak / spoken about.  Two weird things happened driving back to London.  Weird Event Three - I hit something at 80 mph on the motorway.  The only thing I knew about it was when I heard a loud bang.  That was it.  I pulled off the motorway and onto the hard shoulder of a slip road that was just away from the roundabout beneath the M3.  I checked out the damage to the car.  A slight abrasion of the upper bonnet, and a minor scratch of the windshield.  If it had been a rock, it would have gone clear through the front windscreen.  I must have hit a bird.  The poor thing must have disintegrated on impact.  Poor stupid doomed creature.

Weird Event number 4.  Driving past Paddington, I was listening to the Propellorheads, and Shirley Bassey singing History Repeating.  There is a lyric in that song that runs along the lines of "Man or woman, girl and boy, yadda yadda something something with joy."  As Ms Bassey sang the word Joy, I was overtaken by a car with the licence plate "N136 JOY".

It was like karaoke, only Shirley was singing the words I was reading.

Weird.

I got home at around half seven.  My parents were still around, despite promises that they would be departed by 6pm.  As I drove past the yard of our garage, the light from the sun was reflecting directly onto some flowers that my mother had planted some months earlier.  They woudn't normally get this level of light, and certainly not this warm golden colour, so I parked, ran directly to get my camera and took a few photos.  Lumin, you might appreciate this:

I was in the mood to take a few more photos too - so I grabbed my camera and wandered onto the Heath.  I was feeling very reflective, and needed some time to think about things other than myself.  I needed to determine, for example, if everyone was real.  So many bizarre coincidences in one day can do that to a fellow.  I sat for about an hour on Parliament Hill, watching people picnicing, flying kites, and taking the occasional photograph.

The shot of London, well I didn't do it justice.  You can make out the City, with the new gherkin building, and St Pauls.  The London Eye is obscured by a white building on the right, I was pissed off that didn't come out.  Maybe I'll do some better shots later on.

When I got back home, around 9pm, I didn't feel up to much.  Too reflective.  I poured myself a beer, watched the end of There's Something about Mary, one episode of futurama, and decided to call it a night.

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