Dear All the Single Ladies (all the single ladies),

The effect that your - and Beyoncé’s - anthem has on you is mesmerizing.

With just the merest first few bars you become united in solidarity with your sisters everywhere. If you could harness just a little of the song’s awesome potency you would become the greatest political power the world has ever seen.

If you learned the dance moves too, you would rule the world.

Yours in admiration,

The Ragged Clown

So the answer to my riddle Has Sidcup changed? is an emphatic No! It hasn’t changed not even one tiny bit!

Except that now it’s full of drunk people pretending to be Mexican.

On Monday I will be visiting the town of my childhood for the first time in over 20 years.

I wonder if it has changed at all?

I wonder if I have?

Sidcup

The name is thought to be derived from Cetecopp meaning ’seat shaped or flat topped hill’; it has its earliest recorded use in 1254^. Sidcup originated as a tiny hamlet on the road from London to Maidstone.

But Sidcup is a relative newcomer. I actually lived in Footscray.

Foots Cray is a place in the London Borough of Bexley, near the town of Sidcup, in southeast London, England, United Kingdom.

It took its name from Godwin Fot, a local Saxon landowner recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and from the River Cray that passes through the village. It lay on the old Maidstone Road (now bypassed by the A20 road) leading from London to north Kent. Until the 20th century, Foots Cray dominated the nearby, less ancient hill-top hamlet of Sidcup.

In a couple of short weeks, I am off to sunny Spain.

I can’t wait.

Just over Grant’s Pass at 7:15pm and the sky turned black. Every mountain top was lit up with electricity and the rumbling of thunder was continuous. It’s not normal for it to be pitch dark so early. There are usually pauses between lightning strikes and the crash that announces their passage. I thought the apocalypse had arrived or, at the very least, I was under attack by Sauron’s minions or the Horde of Azeroth.

It was an apocalypse but it was Thor’s Apocalypse which is even worse than the other kind. I wanted to pray but I didn’t know any Norse prayers except the one you shout, sword in hand, before you give your life in battle.

There were no gaps between the lightning strikes now and finally the rains came. Just three big, lazy drops on my windscreen. Not enough for the wipers, but that was just a feint; cover for the ice storm which Thor cast down upon the citizens of Grants Pass and the weary travellers on I5.

The first one hit my windscreen so hard I thought it was a rock but I soon realized the real threat as the gods hit me with all the ice in Valhalla. I didn’t think my vessel would survive the attack so I pulled off the highway peering dimly through the hail to see the side of the road. My fellow travellers did the same and we cowered under the meagre shelter of a tree. I couldn’t bear to think of the damage that was happening to my car as the mini golf balls beat us into submission.

As quickly as it started, the deluge subsided and I u-turned back onto the now deserted highway. The on-ramp was already a torrent threatening to wash me away.

As I reached the highway, Odin pulled back Valhalla’s veil of darkness and showed me the bright, clear evening sky. A mirage of Shasta shone warmly in the dying sun, a beacon of hope after the madness and California whispered my name. Welcoming me home.

Click Map for gory details.

Had a fine time retracing the adventures of my youth on Blogabond

Click map for gory details.

S’funny how your perspective changes with a new piece of information.

While I was briefly under the impression that Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent was written by the cuddly old curmudgeon pictured on the back cover I rated it LOL for very funny. But once I found out that it was actually his first book, written when he was 33, his lovable vitriolic ways sounded a lot more spiteful.

The old people were noisy and excited, like schoolchildren, and pushed in front of me at the ticket booth, little realizing that I wouldn’t hesitate to give an old person a shove, especially a Baptist. Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that they would soon be dead.

I still enjoyed it though.

The book is a standard Bill Bryson travelogue with scathing, spur of the moment honesty uncensored by any regard for the recipient’s tender feelings. It’s funny to read the reviews at Amazon by all the people who’s town he trashed. They are all like, “No wonder he found BFE dead on a Thursday night. If he had come the night before, he could’ve have played bingo”.

Bill has an unnerving ability to say what you are thinking but in half the words and with twice the bile.

About casinos…

I wandered through room after room trying to find my way out, but the place was clearly designed to leave you disoriented. There were no windows, no exit signs, just endless rooms, all with subdued lighting and with carpet that looked as if some executive had barked into a telephone, “Gimme twenty thousand yards of the ugliest carpet you got.” It was like woven vomit.

That’s like every casino I have ever been in. When we lived in New York, G and I took the bus to Atlantic City - not to go to a casino, just for a day out.

As we got off the bus, they gave us $10 in quarters and a big plastic pot to keep them in so we felt obliged to go spend them. We managed to spend about $1.25 each and then wandered around for hours trying to find the way out. When we got back on the bus we still had about $18 in quarters.

…and who hasn’t done this?

And the toilet seat did not have a sanitized for your protection wrapper on it, denying me the daily ritual of cutting it with my scissors saying “I now declare this toilet open”.

The Lost Continent is very funny but not quite Bill Bryson funny. If you’ve read all the others, read this one too - unless you are a waitress or you live in BFE - but if you haven’t, read In a sunburnt country first.

Was planning to go to a customer meeting this morning but, with the huddles masses of my breakfast yearning to break free of their gastric bonds, we decided it was probably best if I skipped it and prepared myself constitutionally for my third and final presentation in the afternoon. It’s a good job too as I don’t think I would’ve survived the taxi ride and I know that their meeting rooms do not come equipped with buckets. 200 year-old bonsai plum trees in full bloom, yes. Buckets, no.

The presentation went well with lots of questions then I jumped in a taxi to make it to the bus terminal with 2 minutes to spare and I settled down for a nice, long bumpy ride to the airport trying my damnedest to keep everything inside where it should be.

The plane was pretty empty so when the cabin attendant invited the dude next to me to move to an empty row, I stretched myself out, set my sleep transducer to ‘coma’, adjusted my meal cart detector to ’sensitive’ and started manufacturing some serious ZZZs, waking every three hours for light sustenance and beverages.

With my ravelled sleeves of care fully knitted - and my lost day safely returned - I landed at SFO in the warm California sun refreshed and ready to face the new day.

It was a great trip - thank you, Yukio, Jeff and Mirek for your kind hospitality!

Arigotou gozai-masu!

For all their brilliant design skills, they designed my room with a usability problem.

When I dragged my jet-lagged, tired body into my dark, dark room, I couldn’t find the light switch because the room was too dark.

I turned on the bedside lamp so I could find the light switch - nothing. I went in the bathroom and put the light on there. Nothing.

I would have read the manual but it prolly would have been in incomprehensible squiggles instead of proper words and besides - I wouldn’t have been able to read it as the room was very dark.

I opened the door in case the light switch was on the outside - nope - and then I noticed the card slot thingie and a light went on in my head. When I put my card in the slot, the light went on in my room too. Oooh! I felt so proud!

I put my bags down and while I was rummaging in the cupboards to see what goodies were in my room, the light went off again! D’oh!

After three more times of stimbling over to the card slot in the dark, I realized that the light would only stay on if I left the card there….and then I didn’t feel so proud any more:-(