I'M LIGHTER THAN AIR

Been a pretty quick week, all in all. The wedding is a few weeks away and the Dark Lady is in organisational overdrive.
There are lists. There are suppliers to contact. There is music to sign off. There are speeches to prepare. There are clothes to fit. There are vows to write.

VOWS?

Apparently so. We are going for the secular option, so no churches for us. However, it seems vows are something that need to be thought about. Being a cynical old Hector, I hadn't thought about any in case they are so cheesy I fall to the floor weeping with mirth. The promissory equivalent of having "Angels " or "I Will Always Love You" played at your funeral.

So far I haven't been able to think of anything other than "Your eyes are like limpid pools". That and maybe I should promise to obey.

All this for what is going to be a very low key affair with mainly family. No children (well, with the exception of The Dark Lady's children, ofcourse!) No dancing and an early night. We are off to New York the following morning about 3 so not sure we'll be propping up the bar until the taxi arrives.

People are asking if I am getting cold feet. Not a bit. Can't wait in fact. It will be a fabulous day. Just how we wanted it. However, even a relatively simple ceremony like ours takes a lot of organisation. How the Beckhams or the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arranged theirs I have no idea. They must have used a party planner. What they both had in common was thrones. Cut the throne and that's a whole heap of trouble sorted.

What has this got to do with the blog title? It's all about constraints of time.

I have been trying to keep up with my flying. Am currently converting from the German made Ikarus C42 (who said the Germans have no sense of humour?) to the Australian Jabiru.

Have had several lessons with instructor Keith in Upminster. All going well but just waiting for a run of decent weather that coincides with our diaries.

Last couple of weeks wind has been too strong. Got an hour in yesterday but still a little gusty to be allowed up by myself.

Dark Lady has said she wants to be my first passenger. Odd but am in no hurry. I am ok flying alone. I have a very strong self preservation instinct so have no desire to make a smoking crater in the earth. However, it seems a lot more serious when there are two of you. Especially someone as precious!

Hmm. "You will always be my precious"

How does that sound for a vow?

NIGHT MOVES

After the success of the breakfast party yesterday, I was awake rather earlier than normal so went home and got stuck into the post. The post was like any other post: comprising bills, circulars, pizza parlour fliers and letters for other people.

I have an excellent post lady. However, when she is on a day off that is when the problems can occur.

My address is fairly straightforward but it is similar to some of the streets around which means there can be the odd bit of confusion. So I frequently get mail for houses from surrounding streets and this morning I actually received a bank statement for the previous occupier of my house. Bearing in mind I have lived here since 1999, I am surprised the bank have not realised that the guy has long since departed.

One day I spied the Estate Agents Nark putting a “For Sale” sign up on the house next door. So I did what I am sure most people do (I hope you do anyway!). I phoned the estate agent to ask how much the house was worth as it was very similar to mine.

"Er, that is not the address of the house for sale," said the agent.

"Well your guy is putting the sign up next door and he is leaning on the street name sign as he does it!"

The council get confused as well. And it’s their street.

One day the street lamp failed. So up popped the council and put another one up next to it. This didn't work either. They eventually turned up, removed the original one and fired up the new one. A week or two later they came back and removed it and replaced it with an older looking one in the same place. Maybe it was all a cunning plan. People criticise the BBC for inefficiencies but we are not alone.

Pizza fliers you just have to live with, but on one day I heard an almighty thump and spotted a young lad dumping several dozen pamphlets for a nearby hairdressers’ through my letter box.

I wasn't having this so gathered them all up and popped round the corner to the shop and handed them to the barber, thinking he must have paid a company to deliver them for him.

I was wrong. As I left I heard the man shout "Erriiiiccccc!!!" as he called to his son. I think we can guess what was going on there and who wasn't going to get any pocket money ever again.

My Dad once noticed a kid dumping a bale of free sheet newspapers over his garden wall and wrote to the distribution company suggesting they weren't getting their money’s worth.

Two sides to every story though. I was once told the story of a leaflet distributor who was leafleting cars in a multi-storey park by putting one under the windscreen wipers of the parked vehicles. He was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by a furious man and informed that if he went anywhere near his car he would be dismembered and the various bits would be ground up and sold for dog food. Discretion being the better part of valour he dumped the remaining paper in a nearby stream and headed for home.

What has this to do with the title of the blog today: "Night Moves"? Well, after my early start it was an early night. That for me is round about 7.30pm. This always make 8 year-olds laugh as they stay up way past my bedtime. I like to think that having a child's bedtime keeps me young (although I do draw the line at wearing a school cap and shorts!) Having said that, it never seems to have harmed the careers Angus Young of AC/DC or Ruxton Hayward for that matter.

About 11pm and in a deep sleep I was rudely awakened by a high pitched "peeping" sound. The smoke alarm had decided that it was low on battery power. Along with chiming clocks - which you forget to silence - or a full bladder, there are certain things that you can try and ignore but in the end they will defeat you.

The alarm did just that. I stood it for about half an hour but in the end I realised that it was no use and had to take the battery out.

Accomplished and back in bed and I heard a distinct "peep"!

I have two alarms and had removed the battery from the wrong one.

DOH!

By the way. Hope you are enjoying the new style blog and thank you for the advice on the € symbol which I was unable to access before due to computer ignorance.

€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ Ha! I Sooo can do this!

PARTY PARTY

With Christmas approaching, Guy Fawkes night and the American festival of Halloween, there is a lot of whooping to be done.

This year even more so with Dark Lady wedding her Dark Lord (AKA Dark Dork, Duff Fader, Tub of the Pub and also "//:;(())!!!" all being used to describe me from time to time). There are of course other events to be held; rather against our will I refer, of course, to Hen and Stag parties.

More on them shortly. First to this morning and a 60th birthday breakfast bash for Barry. DL used to be married to Baz and they still get along famously and, as the father of her two children, he is very hands-on.

So as he was 60 there was a re-run of his 50th in a cafe in London's Soho.

This involved gifts, cake, a glass of champagne and a fry-up as it was breakfast time. All very civilised as people had to go to work and children had to go to school.

The cafe owner was a jolly man although bent low with arthritis. If we reconvene for Baz's 70th the poor chap’s nose will be touching his shoes!

The Dark Lady who, like me, is the shy retiring type has just discovered that on Friday some friends and colleagues are throwing her a Hen party.

She is very touched but a little concerned that it may be a tabloid TV tale of drunken excess.

Not for her a fat suit, bridal veil, fairy wings and L-plates. Perhaps a well oiled strippergram briefly dressed as a traffic warden, plus a selection of sparkly sex toys, each gift accompanied by drunken shrieking. All of this before the evening ends with her being arrested for kissing a policeman after being sick in a flowerpot outside an Essex nightclub.

So far luckily no one has mentioned the dreaded "S" word. Not sure I am the right guy to go off to Amsterdam or Prague for the weekend with lairy mates in rugby shirts with "Al's European Tour" printed on the back. The lagers flowing at the airport at 6am and culminating 22 hours later in a urine-soaked back-alley with vague recollections of bars. Hooting. Fighting and unprotected sex with a large hooker called Hildegarde with a suspiciously deep voice and a Swastika tattooed on her left buttock!

However there is another DJ Nerd night coming up on 11th November so to head off any thoughts of it deviating from its intended purpose, which is to ensure that anyone within earshot will lose the will to live more or less instantly. To that end, everyone is under the strictest instructions that any conversation other than jingles and who was on Drivetime at 108 "The Grate" in 1987 is strictly Verboten!

Verboten!!!! Oops! Hildegarde is that you?

LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

Went off to France at the weekend, as I often do, to see friends and generally bask in the tranquillity. Blissful silence, save for something in the roof marching up and down and creating a terrible smell at times. These are Stone Martens, apparently. They take up residence. Chew through everything. Make a terrible racket and are protected species. There are a lot of them. Think they may be in league with the roofing profession!

As the Dark Lady was unable to come with me this time, I decided to do the ferry there and back from Portsmouth. Normally we will leg it after the show and take the tunnel. However, it’s a 300 mile drive in all, so we keep each other awake. Really we should share the driving as she is a far better driver than me. However, I am a bad passenger so we haven't reached an elegant compromise yet, other than I have no qualms about her driving my car providing I am not in it at the time!

The six hour crossing enables me to grab some breakfast, read the paper, then retire to my cabin for a snooze. The only bugbears with this are occasionally during school holidays hordes of excited kids running up and down the corridors. They fling you out of the cabin half-an-hour before you arrive. Night-crossings are even worse as they play an irritating "morning" folk tune an hour before landing which - no matter what controls you fiddle with on the in-cabin sound-system - you cannot shut off and it goes on for ages. Bit like a Matt Cardle record!

In the last year the French have opened a new stretch of motorway which lops about twenty minutes off the journey. However, for the first few trips it added about thirty minutes to the excursion as my sat nav is rather out of date, and so it would go berserk and tell me I was driving across ploughed fields and heading anywhere but the right direction. Now I have the hang of it, although I am still using the old sat nav but now just ignoring it at certain points.

The motorway is also a toll road, a "Peage". As a result, after a few miles you pull up at a tollbooth to fork out 3 Euros 50. (I have a Euro symbol on my computer but don't know how to activate it).

Therein lies a small problem: alone in a car driving on the wrong side of the road, how do you hand over the money to the attendant without getting out and walking round?

Simple. The attendant pokes a shrimping net through the window. You pop the cash in and away you go.

On the way back Sunday afternoon the ferry was blissfully un-crowded. Sleep would be no problem and with the ferry arriving at 10.15pm; I would be up in London in time for a few minutes bed rest before the show.

Into the cabin, clothes off and lie down.

"RRRRR donka donka donka RRRRRR donka donka donka RRRRR"!

There was a terrible vibration from somewhere nearby.

Clothes on and to the information desk.

"There is a terrible vibration. Can you give me another cabin, please"

"We have no more 2 berth inside cabeeens" (Perfect English but with a French accent, you understand)

"That is not really my problem. The cabin you have allocated is not suitable for purpose," I retorted pompously. No wonder we have marched around the world making enemies over the centuries!

So without a further murmur I was upgraded to a 4 berth, which frankly was little different but two decks higher. Quiet with a hint of muzak playing in the corridor.

Slumber ensued. Then instead of half-an-hour before arrival 45 minutes ahead of time, the PA announcement told us we were going to be late arriving by 15 "Minewts". Again perfect English with a French accent.

As I drove up to the passport control I realised I was on the right of the booth so would have to get out of the car to walk round and hand it in. Unless they had a shrimping net, of course.

They didn't. However, the lady officer looked at my three year-old passport complete with "convict" photo. (I had pulled my hair back in case it fell out during the life of the passport or I was venturing into some of the less sophisticated U.S States by direct flight at any point).

"You look a lot younger than you do on your photo," she beamed.

I preened and then realised it was dark and I now had a beard covering a multitude of age-related sins.

I'M A STRANGER HERE

Success: the tiles arrived. So with that triumph at the forefront of my mind I skipped lightly to the bus stop in order to go to a meeting with other BBC Presenters and Senior Production staff which was to be chaired by Director General, Mark Thompson.

The way these things work is that the famous TV Stars stick together and I talk to Ken Bruce whilst sipping a glass of usually-not-very-nice wine.

There is usually a short-ish pep talk about the state of the BBC, then a couple of people we don't recognise ask a whole slew of questions which usually veer off the subject until everyone wishes they would shut up so that we can get back to the wine, as there is only usually enough for two glasses and in between the first and the second we have forgotten how rank it was

"Weris Hngrlane"?

Asked the foreign-looking gentleman also waiting at the bus stop.

"Hanger Lane"?

"Ys. Hngrlane"

He responded.

"You definitely mean Hanger Lane"?

"Ys" He assured me.

"Well" (using the old punchline popularised by Black Country comedy duo Aynuk and Ayli years ago)

"I wouldn't be starting from here"!

"WherHngrLane"? He entreated.

I have been a stranger in a strange land where my language was not the one spoken so I knew how he felt. Bearing in mind we Brits have a reputation for being kind to foreigners (providing they don't actually try and settle here!) it was my duty to help.

Firing up the GPS in my phone I showed him that at the very least he needed to be at the bus stop over the road as this was going in the opposite direction towards central London.

The wild pointing then started. This way, that way the other way and some directions that would take a rocket or a mole as a means of transportation or certainly as a guide.

"Hngr" he repeated for the umpteenth time. There is only so much help a body can give and patience was beginning to wear thin.

I was tracing the directions for him on the phones screen when I became aware of something: the bus had tip-toed up to us and at the moment I noticed it. It slammed its doors and drove off.

Well I now had another 20 minutes to wait so there was plenty of time to sort this chap out.

Trying to stifle my impatience I went for broke.

"H.A.N.G.E.R"?

"Ys: H.E.N.D.O.N"!

He spelled with obvious satisfaction at this command of an unfamiliar language and the reaction of his new found friend.

"£$%^&*("! I spelled out slowly and carefully in my mind.

I pointed him up the street to the turning. He would be able to walk it and would be there before my bus arrived.

I was late. Half-an-hour late. However, not as late as a woman who also arrived late and to make up for lost time launched into a diatribe about staff quotas. No idea who she was. Obviously important.

So glad I am but a simple Disc Jockey!

SPLISH! SPLASH!

We have been sorting out a new bathroom. Or should that be updating a little. New shower and taps, towel radiator and some tiling.

Simple? Er…no!

Went to the big orange DIY warehouse and bought a shower we liked. Unfortunately they didn't have matching taps in stock. Went online and found them at another store. Reserved a pair and rushed off to collect. Then another simple job: tiles. Er…no!

Went to Acme Tiles and selected the ones and the amount we required. None in stock; however, the way this operation worked was that they would phone from head office and take the money, then they would deliver the tiles to the store.

"We've received your order if we could just have your credit card details" chirped the cheery chap on the phone.

After this portion of the transaction he asked, as so many companies do these days:

"Can I ask you on a scale of 0 to 10 what you think of the service for Acme tiles?"

"Erm…can't really give you an answer as so far you have only taken the money. When I receive the tiles and check they are the ones I ordered then I will be in a position to give an opinion.”

"Erm…oh yes," he said, sounding a little chastened.

As I was arranging the taps and the shower in the boot of the car ready to take them home from the Dark Lady's house, I noticed some handwriting on the box which had been sealed with a security tag at the shop: "Parts missing"

Feverish hands opened the container to find only half the bits and no instructions. Grrrrrrr!

Back to the store.

None in stock. However, Andy (for that was his name) offered to collect a replacement from a nearby branch the following day.

So now I had the right shower. The right taps and the phone has just rung and the tiles have arrived.

Now to get them fitted!

ROCK LOBSTER

Today is the day I must conclude our exciting cliff-hanger about the Dark Ladys' charm bracelet. I bought her a bracelet and a selection of charms. The idea was to take it to the jewellers to get the charms attached. I put it in a safe place and now can't find it. What to do?
The excellent Eleanor McEvoy tweeted to suggest I replace the charms then 'fess up saying "she'll be blown away by the effort you've gone to".

Before we hit the final instalment, we were at the Classic Car Show last weekend (as featured on yesterday’s blog) as part of Hastings Week.

After I'd finished the judging and the Austin/Nash Metropolitan had been awarded the prize, Nigel - who along with a string of enthusiasts and volunteers makes these events happen - asked the DL and myself what we were going to do for the rest of the day.

"Buy a Crab"

I must point out at this juncture that this was for eating purposes and hopefully would be quite dead by the time it was purchased. People are welcome to pets and some folk have very unusual ones which strike me as having no "play" value at all. i.e. you can't take them for walks, they won't curl up on your lap whilst you watch TV and you can't teach them to do tricks. When was the last time you saw someone in the park clearing up after their Stick Insect or taking their Lobster for a walk on a lead?

When I lived in the North-East during the 80's I learned how to dress crab. I was taught by the landlady of a pub conveniently and coincidentally called "The Cod and Lobster".

Dark Lady seems quite impressed by my one culinary skill and suggested, as we were by the seaside, I should hone these skills further. If you get it wrong and don't remove the "Dead men fingers" you can cause a stomach upset. This is not quite in the same league as removing poison sacs from Puffer Fish but it gives me a bit of a thrill when guests have eaten and are still alive the following morning.

Nigel told us "Johnny Swann is the man for crab". We went to find his stall and were introduced. This is a man who knows the meaning of hard work. He is up at 1am six days a week. Drives up to Billingsgate fish market in London buys and sells, and then drives all the way back and then delivers his fish to shops and restaurants around the area before knocking off in the late afternoon before he starts all over again that night. The man not only has excellent stock but also excellent taste in music and entertainment as he listens to the "BTOTD Show" on his way to and from London each morning.

We selected and purchased fine specimen when Nigel asked Johnny if we could have a look inside his shed. This is where his live Crab and Lobster are kept awaiting cooking. Thousands of gallons of fresh seawater are pumped through huge concrete baths. Stirring with a net revealed the most enormous specimens which had they grasped you would have pulled you screaming into the murky depths never to be seen again.

Back at the house DL curled up on the sofa to watch a bit of TV before we went out to see some friends and I dressed the Crab. I decided to do it before we went as the last time I was not as manually dexterous as normal upon my return from the pub and lacerated my hand with a sharp bit of shell.

It may be a boy thing but it’s all about having the right equipment. If you tinker with cars you need tools; spanners and the like. If you do woodwork you need drills and the like. If you dress crab you need Crab craw crackers and crab hooks to scoop the flesh out of the legs and other hard to reach places.

In my kitchen I have a whole selection of stuff I inherited from my Mum. She liked to have all the gadgets. Like me, she rarely used them. That is not the point. They are there if you do suddenly decide to make your own pasta and Ravioli. The pasta machine and the ravioli moulds are to hand. As are the egg coddlers and the Fish Kettle just in case.

Reached into the draw to locate the crab equipment and what did I find?

The envelope with the silver charm bracelet!