Dylan Dusmal

The weather, that is. Solidly dill and dusmal, day after day, with a fair old wind gusting. The solar panels are coping but my goodness me, they’re working for every single solar erg. Periculiarly though, it’s not really cold – oft too warm for a jacket, and Mr Stove thinks that I am just being a wuss and remains reluctant in the matter of exothermic discoalicities.

The nearest I’ve come to any excitement of late was an early trip to the Audlem services, walking along the somewhat gloomy section shown in the lead photograph in the pitch-darkness of an 0600 hours o’clock morning. My rinky-dinky new uber-bright head-torch works wonders but it does tend to attract moths and laddy donglegs about the face. Note to self; learn your lesson and never yawn again while wearing… the beast.

The sluice room door (room? it’s more of a cupboard) is the black one at the top of the ramp-ette. A door to the left at the top of the same ramp leads to the conveniences. The gate to the left of frame leads to the dustbin compound, where the wild wheelie-bins roam.

Immediately to the right of the ramp is the Shroppie Fly public house. That wasn’t open at 0600 hours o’clock for some unfathomable reason. The has to be some strange reason why the services block looks to be nicely painted, the pub is nicely painted, but the plaster is falling off that intervening section faster than the last shreds and vestiges of basic credibility from a currently-serving (“serving”!) politician’s reputation.

In the blustery darkness I disturbed a cat, or possibly stumbled upon a pre-disturbed moggy. Whichever was the case, the wee beast resented my presence. An owl “buzzed” me by swooping low over my head. At least, I think it was an owl. Could have been a terrier-sized bat for all that I could really see in the brief moment of our encounter. Something that had little regard for remaining unnoticed followed me, cracking sticks and twigs and generally making noise on the other side of the trees and hedgerow.

I resolved that if attacked by cat, bat, or whatever, then I’d hit ’em with my Elsan cassette and damn the environmental consequences.

Talking of environmental consequnces, Audlem’s main drag is having a bit of work done this week.

I hadn’t noticed the surface seeming to be particularly bad, but the tarmac-monster has been up and down, eating the top dressing, and it looks very much as though a small army of chaps is about to give it the once (or twice) over.

So odd that nothing can apparently be done for local roads that really need it… Calling Inspector Darren… and his magic measuring stick…

QUESTION: I am familiar with the green lights now shown on most buiding site vehicles, these indicate that the driver has buckled up his seat-belt, but what are these blue lights? Blue is for ‘mergency services only, surely? Most of the vee-hickles in use here had a blue light mounted high on both sides and to the rear, angled downwards. Any ideas?

Incidentally, green always used to be the colour of lights used by medical vehicles, “First Responders” in un-marked cars, Boy Scouts cycling frantically towards accidents brandishing their tools for removing horses from Hoovers. I can’t keep up. With the changes to the lighting rules, not with the emergency vee-hickles.

Taupe strobes were for builders and plumbers on emergency calls.

Mauve strobes were for beauty therapists speeding to the scenes of eyelash disasters.

Papal Purple strobes were for use [only] by priests and convent vehicles, rushing to administer the last rights [or chasing Boy Scouts].

That sort of thing.

Green and now blue, eh? Whatever next.

What colour I wonder will the strobes be atop the vehicles moving when all roads are reserved solely for the use of politicians, senior bureaucrats, and party officials? The way things are going on we’ll find out soon enough.

The Audlem Co-op is doing sterling work keeping my broccoli quotient kicking the meters over into the red. Brussels sprouts too, they have, and lovely it is yes indeed Myffanwy. I’ve put them on to boil ready for Christmas 2022. Mind you, their £1 a bag spuds have to be the most taste-free spuds I’ve ever not tasted.

Incidentally, tangentially, and purely co-incidentally, my previous shout-out for my images as Christmas Cards, Jigsaw Puzzles, wall-art and manifold wotnots was so successful [so successful that I almost sold one] that I thought I’d do it again – and remind you please to NOT purchase, seriously, but to simply do the “share” thing instead, and to tell ten thousand of your closest friends on Twitter and FaceBook and suchlike. Let them do the purchasing!

Greetings cards from £1.29 each if you buy a packet, your own message inside, that sort of thing. Production in several places on the planet, delivery world-wide, payment possible in magic beans.

Clickez-vous adventurous helpful types on the image above or clickez-vous here, many thanks. Then please maybe click on your first one-hundred favourites and tweetez vous those or share on Facebook or something, the buttons appear on the individual item pages…

That’s about as undignified as I am prepared to get. 🙂

So.

Quo vadis, Doris, and when? I don’t know. That requires Mr Wind to relax a little first. Then it will be a slow mooch north again I suppose, back to where people know me but still talk to me anyway because they’re nice like that. What’s that old saying from Confucius? Home is somewhere where when you have to go there they have to take you in.

Might have been the Custody Officer at any one of Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs, Brixton, Feltham, Belmarsh, and Wandsworth rather than Confucius now that I come to think of it, and it wasn’t “home”, it was A-Wing, Maximum Security.

Memory fails me. Custody was the best thing about school meals when I was knee-high to a policeman. Regular vanilla, pink strawberry, or chocolate. Hmm. Delicious.

Anyway.

Using a crowbar and a formal Freedom of Information Request I managed to pry my “sightings” record from the cold, lifeless clutches of the Canal Rozzers. In the first half of this licence – in fact, all year long – they’ve seen me absolutely nowhere except moored on their favourite patrolling ground. Not a sniff of a spot on the Llangollen, not a whiff of a sniff here in the deep south (Audlem!). Nor anywhere in-between.

I do wonder if perhaps Duct-Tape used to affix a “spotter” to the Cardinal’s bow might be in order, give the Corporation a sort of figure-head’s viewpoint. I do wonder if perhaps the gentleman from last year’s lengthy debacle has been quietly a-clicking on “Delete” a few times in the old Excel spreadsheet, building the foundations for the vendetta he so obviously desired. One never knows. Cynical of me, I know.

Hey ho.

The wildlife in these parts is a tad limited. There are the usual rats in the rubbish bin area (and don’t you just meet them all in the dark by the light of a head-torch, gleaming little eyes everywhere – not unlike the House of Commons). Fowl play appears to be limited to the usual hedgerow nonsense and a slack handful of moorhennery.

Zombies too on the towpath of course, the usual horrors are passing by. My god are they passing by. I am neither hip nor down low and cool with mooring this close to even a small town, not even a nice little one such as Audlem. It’s as though the Asylum Bus crashed into a branch of Miss British Home Stores, and they all got dressed in the dark, in a hurry, without mirrors and without medical, adult or even sane supervision…

That’s about it, really. Far fewer private boats oiking about, the traffic is eight tenths share-boat and hire-boat, all desperate to complete the Four Counties Ring in a week, or something. It’s school half-term, so the Llangollen is closed again (broken lock at Quoisley).

Plus ca change, plus c’est easier to pay by card.

Chin-chin for the mo, Muskies.

Ian H., Blethering On for England.