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Apologies, but these things happen.
Years ago I had a wonderful idea in a vivid dream. I was so excited I woke myself up and scribbled it down on a piece of paper.
In the morning I eagerly searched for the note. It said, simply, “Rubber Hammers.”
The idea was you wouldn’t hurt your thumbs so much when knocking in nails. But of course they actually exist, and are used for knocking in wooden dowels and such.
I needed a rubber hammer to assemble some garden furniture. I went into Homebase, the local D-I-Y superstore, to find one. It had an elegant yellow handle and was priced at £15. I went out again.
A hundred yards up the road in Green Lanes is a mom ‘n’ pop tat shop, selling everything from plastic tablecloths to milk to fireworks. They had a rubber hammer for sale, same elegant yellow handle — £1.50. Sold.
Superstores have educated us to believe they are always cheaper. It’s not always the case.
Shopping is not for me because almost every shop I go into is a replica of another store in the next town, in the next county. We have handed our high streets over to chain stores, the only ones able to afford the rents. And a corporate mask has fallen over our shopping centres.
I yearn for parades of what Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker describes as ‘weird shops’ — outlets with just one or two branches, selling stuff you get the feeling the owner would really rather keep.
The city elders of Nantucket have written a law for people like me. No chain with more than 14 stores across the USA can open up on the island. So no Macdonalds, no Gap, no Old Navy, no Pizza Hut.
How wonderful.
You may have read an earlier blog of mine this year called That Schumacher Moment where I described my 230 mile journey from Harlech to London in Yvonne’s MGF, stuck in fourth gear.
It was simply a clip, said the MG garage, and charged just £65 to fix it.
I thought that was brilliant, until yesterday afternoon outside Swiss Cottage when the gear lever suddenly selected nothing. It was stuck in gear, and even a man of my mighty physique and rippling muscles can’t push a car which is stuck in gear. The car had travelled just seven miles since the repair.
And I’d left my mobile at home. So I left the car abandoned in the middle of Avenue Road, found a phone box and made a reverse charge call to Yvonne, to ask her to call Britannia Rescue. A reverse charge call from a BT phonebox now costs £3.90. Yikes!
Von made the call, and kindly drove over to Swiss Cottage to deliver my phone, then left me to go and record the Six Nations rugby in case it took longer than we expected. So I stood in the middle of the road with the awful BlackBerry, glaring at the oncoming traffic and waited for the breakdown lorry.
It took an hour and a half to turn up. In that time:
Eventually the breakdown lorry arrived. An agreeable Slovak driver hoisted the MG onto the back of the truck and we delivered it back to the MG garage. The car broke down at 20 to 2 and I got home at 10 to 5. I missed the France Scotland match, but managed to see the Wales England game.
Which Wales deservedly won. So it wasn’t such a bad day after all.
I’m amazed at the huge outpouring of interest in a mild snowfall.
OK, London shut down because of 10 cm of snow. We berated ourselves, we jeered at the local councils, London Transport, the Post Office, the mayor, the schools, all of which wimpishly threw up their hands and cried “We can’t cope! It might be dangerous! Send it away!”
The Sunday night bins haven’t yet been collected. The post hasn’t come since Saturday. The shelves of Londis down the road resemble Harare more than Haringey.
But yesterday a delivery van battled through the drifts to deliver a wicker cat basket to us, and today another courier delivered (how suitable) a large goose down duvet.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
There’s business to be done, and they’re doing it.
So while voices round the world are raised to mock London’s ineptitude when faced with a few flakes, remember this: the London couriers who delivered our parcels yesterday and today, aged 20 and 21, could not remember ever having seen snow before in ther lives.
Damn right we can’t cope. We hardly ever have to. We’re out of practice.
And do the men of Manitoba (on the same latitude as London) grin with delight as our men do when they see the first flakes of snow falling? I don’t think so.
Well, what a lucky pup.
He’s irresistibly drawn to things white, such as discarded tissues (why are people so disgusting?) and on an average walk he will consume about ten of these revolting objects. Ach-y-fi.
This morning the whole world was a discarded tissue. London was cloaked in white, a rare and lovely sight.
London Snow
Here’s the state of our garden this morning, and Milo doing his Elvis impersonation. For London this is thick , thick snow. The buses have all stopped running, only a couple of tube lines are working, and everyone is wearing a smile.
Britain slides to a halt if more than a few millimetres of snowflakes are seen. This is truly Slam Brakes On Britain. No buses, no tubes (well, maybe one or two). No bin men. No post. No recycling collection. We expect our country to hit the skids on the merest sprinkling of snow; this snowfall really justifies it.
At dawn we slid gingerly down the hill (very slippery) and made it along the virgin Parkland Walk to Krapy Rubsnif (local argot for Finsbury Park (backwards)). Snow to race around and tumble over in. Other dogs to join in the fun. And no mud!
Sometimes, to be a puppy must be very heaven.