A case of the runs

What do the retailers know that we don't know? Go into Sainsbury's right now and all the toilet rolls seem to be on offer at discounted prices. The first thing that greets you as you go through the doors at my local superstore is a massive pack of 18 Sainsbury's own brand toilet rolls for £6.50. So naturally, that was the first item in my trolley.

Not, mind you, that I am planning to suddenly adopt a high-fibre diet, or eat packets of prunes, or pop laxatives. But you know, I have three young children who spill drinks, spill food, wet themselves occasionally, have runny noses... Faced with any of those scenarios, thirty-odd-pence for a toilet roll doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

Dumping Indian elephant courtesy of deviantart.

A holiday in Cornwall

My memories of childhood holidays in Cornwall are vague to say the least but I think we went there at least twice, and stayed on the same farm on both occasions. I'm sure we had a good time but my memory is shocking and doesn't improve with age. I do recall the burly - and somewhat grubby - farmer we stayed with and I remember him squashing a bluebottle on his net curtains. We all posed for a photo and my sister stood on the back of a rather large sow. I'm sure my parents still have that photo tucked away somewhere.

We played on the farm, chased chickens, and went out and about in Cornwall with my parents, though where we went to is now lost in the mists of my grey matter. I do remember looking for the giant's heart in the cobbles of St Michael's Mount and I remember too, the dead mouse under the table in the cafe we stopped off at on one of those cold and wet days which, often characterise holidays in England during the summer. Now, some decades since I was last in Cornwall, I have just returned from a week there and, before I forget where we went, am going to record the places we visited and what we did. At least this way, if my kids inherit my same shocking powers of recall, there will be something in black and white (not to mention the hundreds of photos that my wife clicked whilst we were there).


Day One - Saturday
Set off on what turned out to be an eight hour journey from Essex to St Clether near Launceston. It should have been a six hour journey but an accident on the M5 put paid to that. Found our holiday home tucked away on one of those typically remote lanes and settled ourselves in.

Day Two - Sunday
Drove to Bude, spent time on the beach, dipped our toes in the icy waters and then explored the town, picking up ice creams, local jam and a throw for our settee made in Kerala. India is never far away in our lives.


Later on, had a pleasant afternoon at Tintagel exploring the dramatic Arthurian castle there. We would have explored more, but parts of that castle involve walks down precipitous steps (see below) which, with three young children and a push chair, didn't seem to be a particularly wise undertaking.


Day Three - Monday
We walked up to the farmhouse where the children fed the goats, chickens, ducks and lambs and stroked various cats, three dogs and a horse.


I then drove as far west in Cornwall as it is possible to travel - to Land's End (below) and then later to St Ives where I was mugged by a seagull which deftly plucked my Cornish vanilla ice cream out of my hand whilst my back was turned.


Day Four - Tuesday
A two-hour tour around our farm which was probably a little longer than it could have been. We sat in a trailer pulled by a farm buggy and then bumped across seemingly all of the 300-odd acres owned by our hosts. They farm sheep and cows and the highlight for me was watching the sheepdog do his stuff. Drove over to Looe and watched people catching crabs. Took a glass-bottomed boat-ride out to Looe island and saw a couple of seals and plenty of seabirds. The rocking of the boat unsettled Shilpi but sent both the boys fast asleep.


Day Five - Wednesday
The Eden Project. What a fantastic day out, and we were there for around eight hours. We all sweated like pigs in the rainforest biome and had a great lunch in the bakery. You pick what you want from the generous self-service counters and then, when you've eaten your fill, go up to the pay station and tell them what you've had. It all works on trust and I presume that the system works. I think our meal for five came to about thirty pounds which wasn't at all bad.



Day Six - Thursday
Newquay and the beach. This was where my parents came on their honeymoon. We were rained off the beach after less than ten minutes and all dived into an aquarium where we changed from beachwear into our clothes. By the time we'd mastered that, the sun had come out and so we went back to the beach. Twenty minutes later, another shower saw us back in the aquarium and this time paid the entrance fee and walked around looking at the fish. Back to the beach in the afternoon where we stayed for a couple of hours, this time without rain breaks.


Left at around five and then stopped off at Paulo's Circus Americano on the way home. This was a family-run circus where there performers doubled up as vendors before and after the show. The girl on the tightrope served us hot-dogs and chips during the interval and her sister, in all probability, sold me three candy-flosses before the show and was later swung around by her neck in the second half. Good fun, and it's been years since I've been to a circus.

Day Seven - Friday
A soaking wet day with the rain coming down in stair-rods. Popped into Launceston which must be one of the few towns left with a wool shop on the High Street.



Launceston has a castle and arguably the highest concentration of hairdressers' salons of any town in England. We stayed long enough to realise that this probably wasn't the best place to visit and so turned around and drove down to a shipwreck and maritime musuem in Charlestown near St Austell. Charlestown would be a good place to live: small and picturesque but close enough to St Austell to pick up the essentials for 21st Century living.


Day Eight - Saturday
Back to Essex and a shorter seven hour journey with a couple of breaks for food and leg-stretching.

Moving on in England

We're moving house in a couple of weeks' time. I'm paying just over 400 quid to move the contents of one house less than 500 yards into the new house; and that' a rock-bottom rate. If I'd been so inclined, I could have paid closer to a thousand pounds.

My old friend and colleague Steve O'Donoghue reminded me yesterday that now would have been a good time to be able to call on 30 wiry Indian men and a battered old lorry. I still recall having a heavy fridge-freezer delivered to the first flat I rented in Bangalore. A little chap, probably not much over five feet tall, somehow managed to carry it on his back up four flights of stairs and still, incredibly, managed to slip off his shoes before entering the house. Delivery charges? About 100 rupees I think.

Sat-nav take-away

Take-aways have gone hi-tech in the UK. These days they just ask you for a house-number and a postcode which takes the hassle out of explaining that your road is behind such-and-such, just left of so-and-so; past the brown stain on the wall. In India it's obligatory to quote a landmark when giving an address, even though sat-nav is very much in use in the country (and probably developed there as well).

I've been busy on other projects recently, hence the lack of posting on this blog. One of these projects has been a new Punch cartoons blog to showcase some old Punch covers that I have, and I've also been pre-occupied with other matters. I always have good intentions of posting when I get home from work but then domestic matters take over. God, do we miss our Indian servants.

Here's a nice take on sat-nav from Roy Nixon though. Fortunately our Chinese take-away wasn't using the same system last night, and our meal was delivered in pretty good time.

A taste of winter weather

We had snow last night; not a lot, but enough to send my wife into paroxysms of joy, and the children into various states of amused fascination. This photo was taken when I thought I'd be going into the office. However, I soon realised that the snow had also been enough to send the road and rail networks into chaos and so shortly after this photo opportunity, I abandoned the work idea and jumped into jeans and a jumper instead. Today has been spent watching snowflakes falling, and what a pleasant experience that is, after many years in the land of heat and dust. Mind you, we don't half miss the Indian temperatures.

eBay ain't a bad place to be

In the interests of even-handedness, and having written about people's wastefulness, I suppose I should also comment on certain buying habits.

Years ago, my brother and a friend and I took ourselves up to Hammersmith Odeon, bought tickets from a tout and then shook our heads to AC/DC and Def Leppard. I kept my ticket stub from that concert and thought I'd put it up for sale on eBay. It's of no interest to me now, and anyway, it's been in my parents' loft for the past thirty odd years. I see from the ticket that the face value was £3.75 which means that we probably paid a fiver for those tickets. If I remember rightly, I paid for my brother's ticket because it was his birthday the previous day.

That ticket stub has now reached the heady heights of a £10.50 offer on eBay with the number of people watching the item now well into double figures. Here, you can bid on it yourself if you'd like to: AC/DC Ticket.

Hallowhere?

I was well prepared for Halloween this year. Having been reminded that the US-imported nonsense of trick or treat is now an annual UK occurrence as well, I thought that well, if you can’t beat ‘em, at least be prepared to dish out sweets on your doorstep to the local horrors rather than have them throw eggs at your door, or uproot your plants. And so I bought a tub of sweets from the supermarket and left it ready by the front door. I also somehow found my hairy werewolf hands and witch mask which I’ve worn at Halloween parties in the past, and I determined that if anyone did knock on the door, that I’d turn the hallway lights out, put the hairy hands and mask on, and try and scare the living daylights out of whoever was waiting on the doorstep.

I waited and I waited.

Finally, at around eight-thirty I think, there was a ring on the doorbell, and I went into action: hands on, mask on, lights off, hairy hand creeping slowly round the door, followed by the warty old witch face… There was a little gasp, a faint “Oh!” and… it was the woman from over the road delivering the local church newsletter.

So I invited her in, she exorcised my demons and I gave her some sweets from the tub for her and her husband. And that was the only visitor we had that whole evening.
Halloween? Hallo-WTF.