I was having one of those days. It would appear I had forgotten how to eat. First of all, when having some toast in the office, I half coughed, half sneezed and somehow ended up with a small lump of toast stuck in the recesses of my nasal passage. Which irritated the hell out of my nose and made it run like a tap, but no amount of blowing or sniffing would dislodge the piece I knew was in there somewhere. It was half an hour before an especially big blow forced it out and into the tissue.
I suppose that should have been a hint and a half to stay away from bread, but on the way to writing I had intended to get a Maccy D’s, but it was chaos in there, so I got a sandwich from the Asda convenience store next to it. A plain cheese one on white bread, only for my first bite to not only get the sandwich, but also take a chunk out of my lip. Which meant I then proceeded to leave little red marks on the white bread with each subsequent bite I took as the blood seeped out of my lip.
On the way to writing I had a touch of vertigo and nearly careered off the road. The exit from the A27 at Shoreham down to the A283 is an interesting long loop down. I wasn’t going that fast, but I caught a glimpse of the drop down from the side and my head went funny and I had to slam the brakes on in a panic as I felt I was going to go sailing off the side.
It is my own fault for going that way. Every time I go to Horsham straight from work for writing group, I vow to myself I’m going to go the other way so as to not have to drive the damn A283, with its cyclists, tailgaters, and general fuckwittery. And every time I find myself coming down that loop and swearing at myself.
On the A24 after getting the sandwich I come out at the junction with the A272 and to go north there is a slip road for about quarter of a mile to allow you to get up to speed to get into the traffic. But can anyone else use the bloody thing? No, of course not, the SUV in front of me stopped blocking the entrance to the slip road as it waited for a gap in the traffic to get across into the lanes of the A24, and once it edged out, I went up the slip road, undertaking it and leaving it far behind. Learn to read the fucking road.
I was back in Horsham on the Friday as well and whilst in Deichmann I overheard someone say, “I couldn’t live without my Uggs”. I looked up and they were wearing a Packers (Rodgers) jersey. And thought to myself ‘that explains it all.’
In Ask I overheard another conversation where a woman asked what is Calamari? Her partner obviously didn’t know and Googled it and then read the search result entry out to her. I looked around expecting it to be youngsters, but no, it was a couple in their seventies. How does anyone get to being in their seventies and not have heard of, or know what Calamari is?
On the Saturday, the next-door neighbours were having an FA Cup final get together, and I’d agreed to put a quiz together. The teams ended up being males against females, and in a reversal of fortune not seen since Greg Norman’s collapse at the 1996 Masters to gift the victory to Nick Faldo, the males lost a five point lead going into the final round to lose by three points as they were clueless on FA Cup final songs, whereas the females listened to the lyrics (which gave massive clues) and had been paying attention to the answers from previous rounds.
It was good that there was a new winner of the FA Cup, and that Manchester City didn’t win a thing this year, even if they might have been a bit hard done by with the VAR decision on the handball outside the box. Though if I were a Manchester City fan, I would be laying the blame squarely at the feet of Puma. As I noted at the Charity Shield back in August, using comic sans as a font on the back of a football shirt for numbers and names is not a great look, and their season has been quite comic (at least from the view of a great many other teams’ fans).
Nipping to the local shop on Monday I saw the driver of a Red Bull van. Their saying is ‘Red Bull gives you wings’, but judging by the demeanour and gait of the driver of the van, it looked more like they were giving him chronic back pain and a bout of depression.
I was looking at a cardboard box dumped next to the recycling bin outside the house, fascinated by the big label with NAFOON written on it. It took a dozen passes before I realised that it would have been a parcel for Helen’s son, and that the name had obviously been taken over the phone and that was how they thought that was how you spell Nathan.