Tag Archives: French Foreign Legion

What’s Five Foot Four and Scares the Life out of Me?

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After a day that alternated tedium with periods where I feared for my life, I am not quite sure what to write about.

I did think of a witty piece on the perils of being married but she’s been tidying all day, with regular pauses to snarl like a rabid badger, so I’m not going to risk that. I too have been tidying all day, but at a less frenetic pace. I have just put the vegetables in for tea and taken my chance to sneak to the computer while Julia is upstairs beating some poor junk into submission.

I am seriously thinking of making up one of those bundles on a stick that you used to see illustrated in kids’ books and running away to sea. My other choice, joining the French Foreign Legion under an assumed name, is not really a viable proposition for a man approaching his sell by date.

You have to be under 39½ on joining, and I don’t think hair dye and a cunningly doctored birth certificate are going to help me much with that. Apart from that I am amazingly eligible to join one of the toughest military units in the world. Their list of disqualifying medical conditions misses most of mine out and as long as I can meet the requirements of the BMI I only have the sports tests to do. Unfortunately, at the moment, I would need to be about fourteen feet tall for the BMI calculation to work.

This is probably too tall for a long and successful military career – it is usually felt to be a good thing if the soldier is shorter than the generally available cover.

Looks like I might just have to do what I’m told and offer her chocolate.

I saved two books on photography from the pile she gave me to throw out, so as from tomorrow you can expect better photos. For now I’m just going to chuck in a few old ones before returning to my roasting vegetables.

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Don’t be fooled by the smile…

 

Things I Think About in the Car (Part 1)

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Just one trip to the other side of town to take Julia to work has given me more than enough subjects to fill a blog for a week.

One is obviously the morality of taking the car to work when we have a good bus service in Nottingham, and trams that run close to where she wants to be.

Two is the fact that she had four bags with her. Two contain things she is removing from the house. One is phone, sandwiches and such. The fourth is stationery and gym gear. Would she take four bags if she had to use the bus? Discuss.

Three – why do women need a bag to carry the things that go in my pockets? Even in summer I can manage, with a jacket in winter I have a pocket surplus.

Four – decluttering.

Five – decluttering, with special reference to the two bags she has removed today. One only arrived yesterday, the other last Saturday, so my view is that they represent clutter rather than declutter, particularly as most of the Saturday stuff is still here.

Six – the theory of two steps forward and one step back,  and how it applies to our decluttering policy.

Seven – differential decluttering. Her stuff is essential (I am told) but mine is fit for the skip.

Eight – do I need treatment for my obsession with clutter?

Nine – design of roads, junctions, traffic lights, bus lanes, cycle lanes and such stuff.

Ten, with reference to Nine, is all this done to make driving so hard we use buses?

Eleven – what is actually in the bus drivers’ test – bullying, cutting corners, pulling off at short notice, providing cyclists with near death experiences? (This question was asked early in the journey, but asked again as I tried to change lanes with a bus bearing down on me.)

Twelve – should I have bought one of those flats by Trent Bridge when I first moved to Nottingham?

Thirteen – would we have had a family if we had a flat there?

Fourteen – if we had a flat, and a family, and had moved, would we have less clutter?

Fifteen – am I obsessed with clutter?

Sixteen – if I had realised that you only had to do five years in the French Foreign Legion would this have altered my attitude towards parenthood?

That covers the journey to work and the first few hundred yards of the journey back. For the second part, which is just as interesting as the first, please call back in a later.