Monday, June 11, 2012
New mugs for old
Impromptu visit to hook Road Arena yesterday to find both a festival of donkeys and a car boot sale, both of modest dimensions. The festival included a number of serious looking people wandering around in tweed jackets and black hats and about the same number of donkeys for them to judge. To one side was a tent soliciting money to save the donkeys in Luxor (see http://www.awol-egypt.org/), although I did not get close enough to find out what was special about the Luxor donkey. Perhaps I should have as I would have thought that there were plenty of donkeys in a bad way a lot nearer home, for example in Spain. Not to mention the goings-on on a Blackpool beach on a hot sunny day where, I am reliably informed, some operators do not even bother to provide their animals with sun hats.
The sellers at the car boot sale had been organised by the neat expedient of two tone grass cutting. Nothing so common as posts or tape to mark the lanes. And the clientèle was even more interesting than that at the rose garden the previous afternoon, with representatives of many races, sexes and orientations putting in an appearance. An impressive range of flesh, some of it tattooed, on display. Some may have even lived in mobile homes.
Did not part with very much money with neither suitable walking sticks (against leaving them on trains and in pubs) or jigsaws to be found. But I did find two tea mugs - that is to say a mug, but cup shaped in that the top has a bigger diameter than the bottom, thus enabling the piping hot tea to cool - which had once come from IKEA. Identical to the one I was given for a recent birthday and which has been in heavy use since. I explained to the vendor that at 2 clean ones for a £1 I did not need to bother to clean the one that I had already got. Vendor suitably impressed by my mid morning wit.
A simple experiment will demonstrate why not cleaning is a good thing. Make a cup of tea with hard Epsom water. Add some medium strength milk, that is to say the stuff with blue tops. Dip blade of a desert knife into brew and withdraw. You will be surprised by the amount of very unappetising gunk which has adhered to the blade. What on earth might it be doing to the lining of one's stomach, lining which is perhaps not quite as robust as the stainless steel of the blade of the knife?
The sellers at the car boot sale had been organised by the neat expedient of two tone grass cutting. Nothing so common as posts or tape to mark the lanes. And the clientèle was even more interesting than that at the rose garden the previous afternoon, with representatives of many races, sexes and orientations putting in an appearance. An impressive range of flesh, some of it tattooed, on display. Some may have even lived in mobile homes.
Did not part with very much money with neither suitable walking sticks (against leaving them on trains and in pubs) or jigsaws to be found. But I did find two tea mugs - that is to say a mug, but cup shaped in that the top has a bigger diameter than the bottom, thus enabling the piping hot tea to cool - which had once come from IKEA. Identical to the one I was given for a recent birthday and which has been in heavy use since. I explained to the vendor that at 2 clean ones for a £1 I did not need to bother to clean the one that I had already got. Vendor suitably impressed by my mid morning wit.
A simple experiment will demonstrate why not cleaning is a good thing. Make a cup of tea with hard Epsom water. Add some medium strength milk, that is to say the stuff with blue tops. Dip blade of a desert knife into brew and withdraw. You will be surprised by the amount of very unappetising gunk which has adhered to the blade. What on earth might it be doing to the lining of one's stomach, lining which is perhaps not quite as robust as the stainless steel of the blade of the knife?
# posted by Jim @ 6:03 AM 
