Day of Rest
Its 9.52am. At 9.00 I got out of bed having read a Chapter of my book "How the Dead Live" by Will Self. I decided not to have a shower so I put 4 part baked croissants in the oven for my son and I and put on my Birkenstocks for my sunday mornig ritual walk to the paper shop. Rounding the corner on the end of my street I was greeted by a scene unlike any other sunday morning I remember. Vehicles covered in dayglo yellow and green; red and white tape across the road; people stading by their front gates looking on. I walked up to an onlooker.
"What happened? I said
"I don't know".
I approached the next man. He told me there had been a stabbing about 15 minutes ago - a man had walked out of the paper shopped and was stabbed in the stomach and next by a random nutter.
"What - just now!.... 15 minutes ago... did they get him?"
"I don't think so - I think someone said there was another stabbing around the corner also. It could have been me - I was on the way to the paper shop".
"Or me....."

Northbound?
"Crunch" is a word which approximated the sound made when someone went into the back of my car earlier today. I felt my neck and shoulders whip forwards - looked in the the rear view mirror and noticed a woman driving a car too closely behind me. I was on the M5 going south on the way from work to pick up my son - a journey I do every friday between 4pm and about 4.45. The traffic had become heavy a few miles after the Portishead turn as as far a I was concerned I had been stationary when the woman in the Audi had invaded my bumper so rudely. I touched the pause button on the touch pad of my MP3 player and halted the new Arcade Fire album I had ripped from a work colleague this morning. I turned the handbrake on and leaving the engine running I got out of the car.

A quick examination od the rear of my vehicle found it unharmed - thank god for my tow bar. The Audi woman adjusted her broken number plate and headed back towards her car with a frown. She muttered some words which I translated as
"Try looking in your mirror..."
"What!" I yelled, "I wasn't moving."
"Yes you were" she said getting in her car, "You were going backwards."
I got in my car also - contemplating the possibility that in an Arcade Fire dreamworld - I may have been slipping backwards town the middle lane of the M5 (Southbound) without noticing.
Not a bloody chance - I concluded - not with that "Crunch" the lying cow - no wonder she was off so quickly.
I started to rub my neck - worrying about whiplash.

Business Meeting

"Hi its Mike from ChangeYourMobile" he said. "Is it still OK to meet at two?"
"That's fine" I said "Its in my diary. Do you know the way?"
"I'll just feed it into the SatNav - and hope it gets me there" he chuckled, "See you at two".
Oh my God - I thought. I don't know if I can cope with a cheery corporate man selling me mobile phone contracts. It seemed like a good idea at the time - when I volunteered to meet him - as the people in charge of the phone contracts at my work admitted to me that they didn't know much about them and couldn't answer my questions. Now I feared that the worlds we occupied would be too hard to bridge without me doing something foolish.
"Hi, I'm Mike" he said shaking my hand as I ushered him into the back office "You must be Baruch". I was surprised and slightly relieved to find him bald.
He asked me about the work we did and showed interest. He complimented us on our systems and told me "Off the record" that he couldn't understand why we were being offered such a good deal. He listened to my questions answering them with knowledge and patience. He tried to find more info for me by making a call. Whilst he was on hold he asked me about my plans for the weekend. He spoke with familiarity to the woman on the other end of the line and spelled out relevant postcodes using FOXTROT TANGO ALPHA etc. This was when I started to lose it and went out off the room to get a pen and quash a grin.
He insisted on me taking his card before he left. I glad I didn't read it there and then because I would have struggled to contain myself when I read under his name in brackets was his nickname (Mike the Mobile).

Caruncle

We went to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge today. We saw some black necked swans. My son asked what the red fleshy bit above the beak was called. We didn't know. A few moments later we saw a sign which told us it was called a Caruncle. It is a salt filtering gland.

According to the internet it is also an unpleasant growth that some women get in their urinary tract.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/caruncle

And I was just getting to like the word.

Home from home

I went to Norfolk for the first time this weekend. I stayed in a rather pleasant seaside town called Sheringham. I felt especaily at home there because of the anti-tescos campaign they're running there.

Gender
"Do you know the post code?" I said
"BS34 0...um...E I think... oh I don't know - I'm a bloke" he said.
"I don't know that sort of thing - my wife knows".