Why Howard Hughes stopped using public transport

The single decked 49 bus is not a favourite of mine as you may recall from this post. Too many odd things can happen on a single-decker when all your whole muddled, post-work brain wants is the familiar stale sweaty smell and shrieking noises of a regular, overcrowded one-up-one-down on wheels.

Tonight a lady in her 50s sat down in the seat ahead of me on the single-decked 49 bus. Well-dressed with skirts that almost touched the floor, where her three or four bags of newly purchased Dunnes Stores clothes or home wares were nestled, she had on a smart camel hair coat or its fake equivalent. A nice, well-turned out lady you would think.

As the bus reached Aherns pub on the Old Bawn Road, she saluted it by tilting to the left on one cheek of her bum and letting off a smart, sharp, retorting fart that went "Fra-a-ap!" Then, quite unperturbed, she gathered up her bags and alighted at the next stop.

A young Asian man who was uncomfortably perched on an aisle seat threw himself gratefuly into the unoccupied space by the window.

I was thinking of tapping him on the shoulder and asking if he thought the seat was unusually warm.

I hope I'm on time for the double-decker tomorrow.

Rules of the Road

So we come to a halt as a line of non-bus traffic streams up Tallaght Village. The bus driver sits there looking at the "Republic & Northern Ireland" delivery van with its indicator on wishing to turn into the grounds of the Institute of Technology. We wait. The van driver waits. The sensors in the road detect the weight of the bus and turn the traffic light green. We continue to wait.

"You'll have to reverse!" one of the drivers waiting illegally in the traffic shouts out.

"Who'll have to reverse?" asks the bus driver through the open window. "I'm in a bus lane."

We wait. Someone honks a car horn.

"Frank," says the bus driver into his radio. "You'll have to get down here. The whole bus plug is filled up."

The traffic moves up a little in the opposite direction. The dog-faced delivery van driver peers solemnly at the bus passengers glaring out at him. He keeps his indicator on.

At the other end, a line of cars followed by a bus approaches and stops at the red light. To the left, a long line of traffic trying to exit the I.T. is stuck because our bus is stuck on the road across the gate.

A man gets out of an unseen vehicle and walks around the front of the bus. He walks up to the van driver and says something to him, waving the van off. The van driver looks at him impassively. Finally, after a ten minute stand off, there's enough room to move off and we make a run for Tallaght Village.

"Frank, you'll have to get the guards to go up there. I don't know what's going on."

Bad driving, that's what's going on.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a guard to arrive on a Friday evening either.

Trippin' to Malahide

So we ended up in Herself's aul' haunt, Malahide. Every time I go there, the tide is in. But I'm reliably informed there's a beach under the waves not far from the Sea Scout's HQ. Of course, the dunes start further along the coast and eventually become Portmarnock, but that's probably another story and one that would likely go way over the head of this out of towner.

The village is decorated with just-at-end-of-season hanging baskets of flowers which make a pleasant scene. The traffic is bloody well unbelievable, though. I had planned on taking pics of a few shop fronts for posterity but no matter what direction I pointed myself a convertible with build-in blonde or an SUV with God-knows what in it hove into shot.

Malahide Hardware had the fittings for our curtain rails we'd been searching for off and on for the past year. So I bought some to make more work for myself and will probably be found with drill in hand again this weekend straightening the rails out before Herself decides in another day or two that the whole lot need to go in the recycling bin.

Duffy's is the spot for lunch in Malahide. Very friendly staff and boiling hot food make for a perfect combination. I had the Lazagne special -- lazagne with a side order of boiled vegetables that must have been put in the pot so fresh they didn't realise they'd been pulled out of the gound yet. Herself went for roast beef that almost melted off the fork into the mouth. Herself's brother poked his head around the corner just as we were ordering, which was a pleasant surprise. We stuffed ourselves and waddled off down the side streets keeping a wary eye on the traffic warden and the reminder on the parking permit of when we should leave to avoid a ticket.

The Black Cat met a Purple Person

"Four years," the taxi driver says to me, holding up four Sri Lankan fingers. "Four years I worked for Domino's Pizza. I was top driver. I know all the local places."

I had mildly wondered to myself when he was going to ask me where exactly he was bringing me. I had told him the address when we started out.... about ten Euro ago.... and he had repeated it before setting off in the right direction. I supposed that like other taxi drivers he would know where Firhouse was, then ask me where the destination was nearer to home. But no. He knew it already.

"I have friends in all the stations," he said. "Stations"appeared to mean Domino's Pizza shops. I didn't know whether this was the official Domino's term or the Sri Lankan equivalent. My African neighbour complimented me once on tidying up my compound, which I found out meant my garden. Perhaps there was something of this going on.

"I got a fare once," my driver remarked. "He sat right there in the front..." He slapped the front passenger seat, in case I thought the passenger had been sitting on the driver's lap. "And he was amazed that I knew where Cill Cais was. Four years in Domino's Pizza."

He held up the same four fingers and peered at me over his shoulder and a pair of small, square-rimmed glasses. We were stuck in the same immobile traffic I would be stuck in had I not missed the bus by a whisker. With the tip, it cost me the best part of €20 to get home from The Square.

"I'm walking," I announced the next afternoon in work. "There is no way I'm spending another hour and a quarter on a bus journey, or paying €20 for a taxi."

So I found myself in a lather of sweat on the Old Bawn Road at half-past five -- empty buses passing by in the scant traffic (of course!) -- yesterday evening, marching determinedly home. At Killakee I took a shortcut that added ten minutes to the journey. I ended up crossing through the field opposite the house, knuckles dragging through the freshly cut grass, thankful that the front door wasn't another ten yards away because I probably wouldn't have made it.

"Hello, Black Cat," I gasped at himself, and he sitting upright on the garden wall.

Black Cat looked at me in terror. Who was this brow-drenched, purple faced person shambling ominously towards him from this unexpected direction? How did the terrible monster speak with the food monkey's voice? How did the monster's tongue loll out of its mouth so far? Black Cat flattened himself on the wall so only his ears and ever-widening eyes looked over the gate. Then as the stranger showed no signs of turning from his vaguely zig-zagging course towards the front door, Black Cat's nerve went entirely and he fled.

I sat for twenty minutes in an armchair without saying a word. Eventually, the red mist before my eyes lifted. In time -- a long time -- I could move one of my feet.

I hate commuting.

Tonight, I announced I may buy a bicycle.

The cat will only love that one...

Serving the Community

Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Gobble-ee-umph-umph-rattle...!

The bus stalled. A girl laughed out loud upstairs.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Er-ree-ree-ree-ree-ree..! REEEEEE...!

The driver started the engine again. We were one stop from The Square on the 49, heading for town, and the driver was not impressed. I wondered if we'd make the whole journey.

Passengers got on. The traffic light went red.

Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Gobble-ee-umph-umph-rattle...!

It cut out again. The girl upstairs shrieked laughter.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Er-ree-ree-ree-ree-ree..! REEEEEE...!

We limped along from stop to stop. Each time the engine had to idle in the stationery traffic the engine worked for a while then died. The driver called the controller on his radio.

"I had dis boss YES-ter-day and it was cutting owt. I put in a docket. I was told it was fixed. It is still cutting owt. It has cut owt six time maybe from The Square to Old Bonn."

The heavily accented Dublin voice of the controller came back.

"Errrr....!"

Aggrieved, the driver waved to an oncoming bus which stopped alongside. He said:

"Tell them I had dis boss YES-ter-day and it was cutting owt. I put in a docket. I was told it was fixed. It is still cutting owt."

At the Old Bawn junction, the bus went "Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Gobble-ee-umph-umph-rattle..!" and the engine stopped again. An orgasmic wail erupted from the upper saloon.

At The Old Mill pub, the driver had had enough. He had repeated his speech another time to the controller. The public address intercom then said:

"Everybody off da boss."

So we got off da boss and walked. I don't think the girl upstairs could have taken any more anyway.

Hail fellow...

"Is that an MP4 player?"

"Yeah."

"What's the memory?"

"Dunno. 2,000 CDs, or something."

"How much was it?"

"I don't know. It's my sister's. €180 or something."

"You paid €180 for 2,000 CDs worth? That's good."

"I don't know. My sister got it. It might have cost more."

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

"You might have seen me around Jobstown."

A pause.

"Cloverhill?"

"D-wing?"

"Yeah!"

"Have you got a smoke?"

"Yeah. Here. Something better."

"You have some."

"No. I don't want any. You have it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

The conversation turned to who knew who and who had prayer meetings every Wednesday because they were Born Again Christians. And getting out of jail.

"I spent three days in a bed and breakfast. And two days on someone's sofa. And two days in a hotel. And I went to them and said 'I need a place because I've spent three days in a B&B and two days sleeping rough and two days in a hotel.'"

"Yeah."

"What's your phone number?"

I just wanted the traffic to move so the bus could take me home.

I only have an ordinary music player. I've only been in a B&B on holiday. I've slept rough twice, because I chose to. To me, Cloverhill is on the way to Liffey Valley Shopping Centre on the back roads. Lucky.

Culture shock

The bus pulled in at the terminus at The Square and in keeping with tradition the passengers disembarked and the engine was switched off and somebody started to complain as the driver tried to go on his break.

"You're late!" the middle aged Dublin woman said to the African in the Dublin Bus uniform who was trying to wave her off the step so he could shut the door.

She stepped back down onto the pavement.

"I've been waiting here for hours and then you just go on a break!"

The driver calmly closed the door. He said:

"How many hours?"

There was a definite look of surprise on the woman's face. Not only was she, a native Irishwoman, being addressed by a black person, but also by a black person in a position of authority. It was evidently a shock to her system.

"How many hours have you been waiting?" he asked. "One hour? Two hours...?"

She looked at him in bewilderment.

"Half an hour!" he said. The bus arrives every thirty minutes or so.

She retreated to the relative safety of the bus shelter. No-one else joined in the argument on her side.

"That's right," she rallied. "You go on your break now and get your cup of coffee or whatever it is you're getting."

The driver spoke quietly to her and I couldn't make out what he said. But her reply must have included something along the lines of

"And what are you going to do about it?" because he then said, loud enough for all to hear:

"I can refuse to take you on this bus. All of these people can travel. You cannot."

He turned and walked off in into the Square.

Ten minutes later we boarded the bus. The complaining passenger politely proffered her fare and was given a ticket. A few stops on, a friend joined her. They spoke cheerfully abut the weather and about hospital appointments and stuff like that. Then after a quarter hour their voices lowered and they whispered together. I wonder what the subject was.

Nice one, driver. I think.

Boundin'

Alas, the Boundin' little lambikins is no longer available, so I've removed the movie window for now. It is available in German and in Spanish though over at You Tube. But as I speak neither German nor Spanish, I doubt I would enjoy the same level of charm as the original.

Today on the bus another little boundin' lambikins entertained us all the way from Tallaght as his minder -- Mom or sister, I do not know -- tried to figure out a way to keep him shut up. His feature performance was:

"Eeeeeeee-er eeeeeeeeeee-ek eeeeeee-eeeeeee-er..," in a thin, reedy voice which hardly met the basic standard for a two-year old's whine at all. I'm sure if there was another two-year old on the bus, it would have been embarrassed for him. Although... he had staying power. One had to admit.

Lovely little puddin' headed, ginger-haired boy.

Ah.

An elderly lady with an American accent got off the bus a few stops before mine and waved at him profusely. She turned around and looked me straight in the eye and grinned.

Now, was that a sarcastic Granny, or what?

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-er."

I'd have stuck them on the menu long before, lads

Two white Gobdaws by the names of Mark and Olly decide to make a television show about their interaction with a tribe called the Koombai in Discovery Channel's "World's Lost Tribes."

The tribe, who blame illness on sorcery and who only eat people if they consider them to be a sorceror, have so far been admirable in their fund of patience as the gormless duo fall around the jungle of Papua, scaring off meagre game and wasting the tribe's time and energy reserves.

To camera they manage to patronise their hosts regarding food and hospitality. Despite all this, the tribe has "adopted" them and treats them as idiot brothers, which I feel is genuinely charitable.

Discovery Channel on Tuesday evenings. See more about the programme here.

Contacting your inner pigeon

When the slightly eccentric looking Blond Woman of a Certain Age sat down and started rooting in her handbag I was already ten minutes into the bus journey and was at the very end of the outer limits of my nerves. I had spent the day in my least favourite work activity -- trying to balance accounts -- and all I wanted to do was get home, get fed, and get sat in my favourite armchair in front of my favourite television programmes.

The scent of Vicks chest rub wafted over the bus passengers from someone down the back.

Blond Lady of a Certain Age lifted a bottle of Benecol to her lips and took a giant swig. Then she opened up a bank letter (Balance more than €5,000 I noted, over her shoulder) before stuffing it back in her purse. Then, unexpectedly, she started eating the segments of an orange out of a tupperware lunchbox.

It was a slightly spoiled orange of the type that lets off a faintly acrid odour but is nonetheless edible.

Then the coughing started from somewhere behind me. A man, with a cough like the call of a wood pigeon:

"Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"

Oh bugger.

"Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"

Me nerves.

"Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-HOOOOO!"

Silence.

Thank God.

"Whoo...!"

We all waited for the next "Hoo!" Nothing. There was a palpable sense of relief from those of us not listening through headphones to scritch-scritch-scritching music.

"WHOO-HOO-HOO-HOO-HOO-HOOOOO!"

Only forty more minutes to my bus stop.

Next time I see that Blond Woman of a Certain Age I'm going to tell her to keep her oranges to herself. I'll probably get thrown off the bus.

I Spy

Were you the girl with last year's suede boots shuffling onto the bus? Maybe you were the tall Polish young man given the brush off by the red-haired Chinese girl expecting to be joined by her boyfriend? Were you the man with the long black hair dressed in a white shirt reaching into his car? Which one were you of the couple in white hoodies sitting far away on a bench overlooking the river: the one with his hood up, or the one with his hood down? Were you the young cat with one black sleeve that rolled joyously in the freshly-weeded topsoil of the garden of a house on Old Bawn Road? Were you sitting peacefully with a fishing rod on a rock as a dog on a leash looked on from the bank and swallows dipped in and out of the trees? Were you one of the three Traveller boys growing up so fast? Were you the woman hitting a tennis ball with a racket for a ginger dog to catch and fetch? Perhaps you were the youth whose shoe went as far as the football you kicked in Firhouse? Was it you? Was it you?

I saw you.

A little rain

I spent an hour getting from The Square in Tallaght to Firhouse today by bus because a little rain had fallen and so everybody had to pick someone up by car for fear of them getting wet. To be fair, it was really torrential "sideways rain", (as Mr Gump would have said) for quite a while, but Jaysus, lads: the traffic!

I was tired and not really listening to the students/office juniors/girls from Donegal who were chatting about staff structures in whatever place they were coming from. I had a vague notion they were student nurses, which wouldn't be impossible what with Tallaght Hospital nearby. As usual, I was mildly astonished by their lack of non-medical knowledge as one tried to explain where certain Middle Eastern countries were or would be on her plan for combining future work prospects with an interest in but fear of world travel. She spelled out "Quatar" for her friends. My mind was wandering far away from their conversation when a half-heard remark formed in my mind as "He's ten short of a packet of Major."

What a good expression, even if it never existed before!

Rain spattered me through an open window. The driver leaned out and flagged down a taxi coming in the other direction.

"Are there [traffic] lights broken or what?"

The taxi driver indicated he didn't think so.

"Fifty minutes to get as far as here!" the bus driver said. The taxi man waved his sympathy and drove away in the opposite direction, towards Tallaght.

A tall woman with short red hair was two seats ahead of me. Her hair was wet and small goosebumps rose on the sunburn across her shoulders. Her left hand had either a steel or white gold ring on the ring finger. Another had a fabric band aid. She had no coat.

When I stepped off the bus the rain had all but stopped.

Why I may not ever use an MP3 player on the bus

There were two young men behind me on the bus chatting away as I was on my way home one evening last week. From the conversation I figured out that the twosome were making their own way home from a day in a training centre for intellectually disabled people.

They spoke about the various jobs they were doing and who among their work colleagues had said this and that. They also discussed an upcoming trip to Wexford or Waterford. Then the conversation (in perfectly annunciated English, with every attention to detail, including all the "-ing" sounds) turned to a philosophical nature:

"What way would you like to die? I mean, exploded or what?"
"I don't know."
"This world is going to end and then be reborn with only the animals left living on it. So which way would you like to die?"
"What would the animals do with the world?"
"The same as us. Eat. Shag. Shit..."
"Mess the place up."
"Yes. There are only three things in life. What are they?"
"Alcohol!"
"Yes. What else?"
"Tobacco!"
"Yes. What else?"
"Hash."
"Say it again."
"Hash."
"Say it again, louder."
"Hash!"
"That's right. Well done"

I didn't miss my stop, thanks for asking. The new MP3 player, I think, will stay in the house a little longer.

Ireland of the Welcomes isn't dead and gone just yet, but it is different

I was walking through the Square shopping centre yesterday evening and a woman and a man were engaged in that last-minute conversation in a public place that people get into just as they are parting. You know the one: the last-minute instructions.

"Now," she said, loudly. "Text that number first. If there's no reply call it. Understand?"

"Yes," he shouted back.

I wondered what that was all about.

There was horrible weather over the space of about the next twenty minutes, not long after I'd got as far as the bus shelter, which was lucky, because this horrible weather consisted of squals of rain and wind that came down in wet sheets.

I was able to park myself into a corner of the shelter by its end, which provided a good wind-break. Several would-be fellow passengers took advantage of the not-inconsiderable shelter provided by me, and squeezed in behind. There was a dead chill coming in ahead of the waterworks, so nobody was particularly bothered about personal space, just enthusiastic about the idea of keeping relatively warm and dry.

I listened to a French man in his thirties discussing the location of Templeogue Bridge with a stranger, who happened to be from New Zealand, or had travelled there, I couldn't really tell which. The New Zealander (if that's what he was) was explaining that the bus would take him there and the French man was wracking his brain for as much English language as it could produce to understand and to check that the New Zealander understood his questions. Between them they managed to convince themselves that the bus driver would be able to confirm the location as soon as the French traveller asked about it. The plan being settled upon, the pair decided to strike up a simple-English conversation about everything other than Templeogue Bridge.

"Zee weather... It is better in New Zealand, no?"

"A bit."

When the bus pulled in at the stop, we all shuffled in misery into a queue in the rain while the French visitor delayed us by asking the driver about Templeogue Bridge. He turned and sought the eye of his erstwhile companion, then put that peculiar face on him that I thought only clichéd French caricatures did -- the bottom lip stuck out and the two sides of the mouth turned down while the eyebrows went up in the air. Obviously this was to indicate the New Zealander's information had been correct and that Dublin bus drivers did indeed know where they were supposed to drive their buses!

This evening, two other characters were standing at the same bus-stop when I got there. One was a stocky Pole wearing the batter-spattered outfit of an obvious plasterer. The other was a thin twenty-something Irish fella in a white knitted hat. The 49 bus-stop United Nations General Assembly was today discussing the pay scales of tradesmen versus unskilled labourers. As the duo had even less of a common language between them, they were engaged in what I thought was an ingenious method of communication: they were using the advertisement board on the end of the bus-shelter as an imaginary blackboard and were drawing invisible figures in the air with their fingertips.

"Me," said the Irishman. "No skill." He sketched a figure, complete with commas and decimal points in the air while the Polish man nodded in understanding.

"Now, you remember that room...?" He nodded encouragingly, but the Polish man frowned. The Irishman went on:

"The room...? You remember?" He mimed a large rectangle shape. "You plastered the wall? And the ceiling? It was this size..." He sketched a figure of square meteres on the bus-shelter in unseen digits. The Polish man nodded.

"That's worth €550. Per day."

The conversation continued as each compared prices of things, the cost of work and how much tax rates were (if you were to pay them and not receive money directly into the hand). Then a bus pulled in at the set-down stop. The Irishman held up a finger in the universal signal for "Hang on one minute." He bobbed off down the footpath and spoke briefly to the bus driver.

A hand emerged and waved again at the Polish plaster to indicate that the bus did go to where the Polish man must have earlier indicated he wanted to be. Although it was technically the wrong stop, the bus man let the visitor on and pulled away from the kerb. The Irishman returned to his own bus-stop.

Later, I saw him handing a dropped shopping bag to a woman on the bus as they were struggling to get off at a stop near Firhouse.

We're still friendly. Don't let anyone tell you differently.

But really.

Has anyone ever heard of a map?

Moving like a fat man on Friday

Since taking on the 9-5 office job, I've discovered a real pleasure. Heading out the door with the sound of the clocking machine echoing in the background. Boy, does it feel good walking across that carpark on the way to the bus, taking in the clean air and hearing no phones!

It's getting better too with the longer evenings. Already, on Friday, when we are allowed to quit around 4.30pm, the sky is brighter.

I was sitting behind a young Chinese girl on the top deck of the 75 bus this evening, thinking how easy it would be to steal her purse, and remembering just a little over a year ago when it was possible to come home, throw off the work shirt and stumble out into the back garden to listen to the sounds of nature, car alarms, screams and so on. Brilliant. It won't be long now until I can do it again.

In fact, I was reminded how much Springtime is approaching this evening while looking at the few straggling daffodils in our lawn. I must add to or subtract from them next year. One of our cats arrived with a sparrow's feather worn casually over his right temple like an eyepatch on an occasional pirate. We won't feel the time until the blue-tit chicks will be leaping blindly into his mouth from the nest hole in the front of the house.

Ah...! Breathe in a lungful of that spring air!

You wait for ages for one Briggie and then a bunch of them come along at once

Don't get me wrong, I love those funky tunes of Stevie Wonder. My childhood 70s were liberally sprinkled with replays of 'Superstition' and 'You are the Sunshine of my Life' on our life-threatening wireless set, but man oh man his harmonica sets my teeth on edge!

I was sitting here this evening gazing blankly at the Blog when I heard 'Isn't She Lovely' as a background piece to some soap opera playing on the TV in the other room.

Yes she is lovely, Stevie, but please stop blowing on that thing for mercy's sake...

When Old Nick finally gets to poke me with the barbeque fork, I reckon he's gonna have our old shockin' and rockin' radio set tuned to eternal 12-inch versions of 'Isn't She Lovely'.

Okay. Rant over.

So anyway, I finished doing overtime a few Saturdays ago and had to walk around in the afternoon from work to the LUAS terminus (the LUAS is a tram) to meet up with Briggie, the love of my life, who had kindly offered to pick me up in the car when the morning's extra work figuring out end of year accounts was over.

"I'll probably just drive around," she'd said earlier, meaning that with the LUAS terminus nearby, and Tallaght Hospital, and the Civic Theatre, and the County Council building, that the car park attendants were buzzing about on Saturdays trying to ensure that customers for The Square (The Square is a local shopping mall) had spaces in which to park their cars. If you were planning a LUAS ride, or a visit to the Theatre, you were politely told to move along.

I took this to mean that she'd probably find a space on a double-yellow line, like usual. And I'd just have to open the car door and step inside, like usual.

Nope. This time she really was circling. Like a plane waiting to come into land.

I walked over from the LUAS terminus and there was the car shooting by in a steady stream of orbiting traffic, most people looking for a parking space in the busy car park. She hadn't seen me, because of the traffic and the need to concentrate on avoiding a fender bender. Brig was steadfastly looking at the car in front, and not at the waving, smiling, suddenly feeling foolish man in her life standing on the edge of things.

"Maybe she's going to park," I thought, clinging to the hope of a simple open door, step inside scenario. I was sadly mistaken. The car went clockwise around on the far side, pausing to allow another vehicle to move out.

I stopped to size up the options for an interception.

I could run madly straight ahead, hoping to catch her eye before she pulled out into the circle of traffic again, or I could switch to the right and head her off at the pedestrian crossing. She moved off again. I had to jink right.

I scuttled past startled pedestrians pushing shopping carts and dragging children in their wake and came to a skidding halt at the zebra crossing outside the North Entrance. A large 4 x 4 security patrol vehicle stopped. I looked at the driver, who seemed to be expecting something. He looked back, then waved me over the crossing into the centre.

"I don't want to cross!" I mouthed, waving at him to move on. He looked at me with a strange expression and jerked the jeep forwards. I wasn't sure if I caught a hand gesture out of the corner of my eye.

I trotted down the roadway, thinking as I did so that people were probably giving me strange looks for good reason. I wasn't exactly the typical jogger, in waxed jacket, woolly hat and combat boots. And the massive, swinging beer-belly and rapidly purpling face were atypical health-nut features too.

Then, at last, just as lines of dayglo wearing happy-people catchers from the security firm were starting to nonchalantly converge on the North Entrance, muttering "It's alright, sir. The nice men will be here from the hospital very shortly now," here came the car tootling towards me in the traffic. I caught the door handle in relief and hopped inside.

"Did you have a good morning?" she asked me.

"Not bad," I said. "Although it got a bit hectic there towards the end."

My Cherie Amor. I could listen to that now, if Stevie goes easy on the harmonica.