My Trip Abroad approaches (I'm going abroad, by the way). I went to change my €s into £s (they've started to look very funny, in the last eleven years. Have you noticed? I've a feeling they've maybe launched a new lot of banknotes in my absence. Oh, and that reminds me of the time that I (last) went to Scotland - they still had pound notes when England didn't, and there was all sorts of fun stuff scribbled onto them by previous users - handsome handlebar moustaches on the Queen, that sort of thing. Och, you gotta love the Scots). At the currency exchange place, they kindly gave me a plastic pouch (pictured above) to keep my money safe. Loosely translated, the text on the bag says "ATTENTION! Handle your money without attracting attention." Chance'd be a fine thing, no? With the colour and rottweiler-sized text and everything.
But still, yes. I'm going Abroad, very soon indeed (although not until next year, mind. And incidentally, what is it with this out-going year - it turned out to be quite a bad one, according to my surveys and, more to the point, my experience? It didn't start out shite, it had no hallmark of doom on it from the outset, yet it's been pretty dreadful, in a whole heap of ways, really), to meet up with these two mad and wonderful people. It's going to be brilliant. That is, if I can get there alive. Anyone seen the film "Pushing Tin"? Nothing spectacularly special about it, as such, just thinking. It's about air-traffic controllers - apparently "pushing tin" is inside jargon for, well, air-traffic controlling. Before I saw the film, I hadn't really ever thought about the tin-pushers and their work very much - they're mainly on strike, in France, are they not? Apart from that, I'd focused my worries on the pilot and the plane itself, but oh, foolish me, for obviously, one should spare a thought, and maybe a quick stab or two of belly-turning terror, for the brave guys guiding the plane down. Planes, in fact. Suffice it to say that the film opens with a quote (which they claim is an authentic one not fabricated for the purposes of scaring the audience members witless) which goes something like "You push tin for years without a problem, and then you have one little mid-air and they never let you hear the end of it."
I'm just saying.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
And now for something completely different
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6 comments:
Funny (not the word I know) but my year started out feeling shite and I didn't expect it to get any better and, you know what, it got a lot better. A hell of a lot better. Not absolutely great, but with enough good moments and islands amongst the treacly swamps (and plates of pasta amidst the arid wasteland...you get the idea by now), that I feel far better with where I am now than I did this time last year.
I think that says as much as anything about my lack of expectations, and about where I was at such that expectations felt foolish.
Anyway enough about me already, this post is about you, and I fully expect that the start of this coming year, with your going abroad - and more to the point, with whom you're going to see - is at the very least going to be a fun, interesting, hopefully bewildering start to the year which will serve to cast all sorts of special insights into those particular friends and, as a consequence, into you your very self.
Enjoy. Make the most of it. I hope it will be as unique as it portends.
A very. very Happy New Year to you also. I may wish you the same tomorrow night, but I thought I would get this one in early.
And may 2009 bring many better things for you, for you deserve them.
Pushing Tin is fabulous, Billy Bob Thornton is so cheeky and sexy... when the turbulence hits just comfort yourself with the thought of one pound to a euro - the exhange rate is fantastic for incomers just now...and yes it still happens in england that they occasionally get hysterical about our scottish pound notes, although the way things are goin there will be no scottish banks left soon x
Sweet young housut, I'm just delighted to know that 2008 gets a mark of overall goodness from someone, and very happy to know you've had a good year (pasta or no pasta, wasteland or not). Yes, I'm thinking that the start of 2009 (once they've pushed my tin happily to the ground, yes) at the very least should be a delight.
(Not, obviously, meaning to sound like there's been no redeeming feature in 2008 - there's been plenty goodness, too, but it has also deepened the wrinkles a fair bit.)
And a very, very Happy New Year to you too - and there's no harm in wishing it more than once.
(And psst - thank you ever so for the kind thought at the end there. Too sweet of you, I might weep, hence the hidden response here.)
You're right, NMJ, Billy Bob is a delight.
I think I might just buy Scotland, then, you know? Anna, Queen of Scots. Hmmmmmm. I could get used to that. Trouble is, could Scotland? Unruly lot that you are.
x
The fabulous exchange rate is all very well, dear aeroflapper, but things have got to such a pass that you may find yourself having to use salmiakki pastilles as currency. And nothing in the shops but ham and cardboard by new year! I'll make sure there's wine and mince pies and leave the rest to providence. But the flight I can unequivocally say, will be a breeze (it's a metaphor so stop already), because I have put my very impressively effective etheric around the situation. Sorted, in other words.
The only thing you have to worry about now is just how mad me and the lovely Scottish one really are. Well you've already met her, but I may be a purple-shellsuit-wearing weirdo with gaps in my teeth. Er - did I tell you about the gaps?
Gaps, schmaps, dear sweet-pea of a sees-weirdo, I don't give two hoots for all that. You'll meet me off the plane with your beautiful (if gappy) "Give Way" smile, and I'm v. much looking forward to it (especially now when you've promised me it will all be fine, flying-wise).
Happy New Year, though, mainly, right now. x
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