Old joke - I hate people who take drugs. Like Customs officials.
Smuggling is bad, smuggling affects the economy of your country, it's a naughty thing to do. It has also been a UK tradition since about 2 days after the first introduction of import tax, boats whisking back and forth across the Channel by dead of night, Customs officials hurriedly created, and a very quiet war has raged ever since.
I smuggle one thing - cigs. I've been caught once, and had 5 cartons confiscated
but on the whole I was lucky and my last few trips to the Continong have been to countries in the EU, where you can bring back as much as you are likely to need to turn your lungs into kippered flappy bits of cardboard.
Since I was in Spain in March, and in Portugal in April, it's been a while since I had to buy at UK prices. My last carton had packets of 20 cigs, from Portugal, with the price pre-stamped on them, 4.20 euros, so the carton was 42 euros. That's Portuguese law, the price is set by the government across all brands.
So I bought this morning - 68 smackers for a carton of 10 packets.
Now guess how many cigs there are in each packet. Go on. Guess.
SEVENTEEN.
So I guess I'm about to turn smuggler. That's just GREEDY, Britain. GREEDY.
I have, in my time, smothered, knifed, strangled, hanged, shot, poisoned and bludgeoned them to death.
I have injected air bubbles into their arteries, dropped them into cellars to starve to death, hired killers to see them off, set up fake suicides, and now I’ve run out of ideas.
I still need to kill off between four and six characters over the space of two books, ideally using ways that you or I could do, or for that matter solve, without needing fantastic skills, special equipment, or untraceable poisons distilled from a mushroom found only in one acre of the Amazon forest.
Common or garden murders, tricky to solve, easy to achieve either remotely or without getting spattered and therefore instantly spotted. Easy.
I got a couple of excellent suggestions and a couple of suggestions I suspect were taking the Michael when I raised this briefly in another blog
but you know what, you ever wanted to murder someone, now's your chance.
Typing this cautiously with freshly painted nails and I got to thinking while I painted them – why long nails?
Originally they were worn by men as a sign of privilege, you had people to do things for you so you grew your nails to show you were far too rich to have to work. Over time it has become attractive for men to have short well-kept nails, and it is women who want longer nails. I keep mine quite long and curse if I break one and have to cut the whole lot down because suddenly I struggle to pick things up
NOT as long as this! These are horrendous!
How many women would be slightly freaked if the man they met on a blind date had long painted nails? I don’t even like the long pinky nail some men insist on.
Better, or worse, though, than bitten nails?
Made me wonder if there are other things that women do that men would like to do? Or, for that matter, that they wish women wouldn’t do
We've all had our little grumbles in the past, scammers, miserable buggers raining on blog parades, but how good has CS really been for you?
We've got people talking, laughing, dancing, singing on vlogs : people housebound with illnesses or issues socializing and joking and flirting
People who would otherwise kick doors or self-destruct let off steam here
We share hurt, get encouraged, and pick ourselves up and stride on
and all of it, or a lot of it, thanks to CS
Agreed?
why is it when you need to pop into the house to get something for what you doing in the garden, and you scrape your shoes on the wire scraper, and then on the washable mat, until nothing is coming away, they are spotless ...
why is it within 2 steps you are leading clods of mud over the lino and the carpet?
Garden is definitely looking better. Kitchen lino and carpet are now in dire need of TLC.
Second page comments:
We've headed into UK Brexit and Remain comments at the end. For now, anyway.
Change of subject, anyone?
When you think about it, I mean. We write down odd symbols and other people look at those odd symbols and they make sense, create a conversation or a picture.
They can move us to tears, make us laugh, make us understand someone else's life, make us angry.
Odd little symbols which reach across time and space and enter other people's minds. Poetry - literature - a scribbled handwritten note through your door - newspaper headlines -
Sometimes we have to read them two or three times to take in the message. Most of the time, though, the message is immediate. The odd symbols have done their job.
To jest, tylko kiedy czytamy cos, ze nie ma zadnego sensu w ogóle ze nawet zdajemy sobie sprawe, to robimy.*
*It's only when we read something that doesn't make any sense at all that we even realize we are reading. To a Pole, that's the first sensible thing I've said.
The link below leads you to an article on villages for sale in Spain. Yup, whole villages, and while few of us (any?) could afford one on our own, CS, this is our chance to turn our global on-line village into the real deal for returning to a simpler, happier life, or even just time-share holidays
We could squabble in PERSON!
For those who don't follow links, $230K (negotiable) will buy us 100 acres, 6 houses, 2 farms and even a stand-alone bread-making kitchen ... a nice little starter village, plenty of room to expand.
okay that's Northwest Spain, not many of our resident bloggers in that area (actually probably none) and even the article doesn't rave about the weather. Still knocks holes in Scottish weather, mind.
But it isn't the only village, probably just the cheapest. There are hundreds - even thousands - in lush fertile areas left abandoned as rural Spaniards move to the cities. We could be onto something amazing here.
In the first comment I will put the description of the village in question. Oh boy.
So that's today's Sunday dream.
Photos from my garden - I have no idea where to start. Or how.
Clearing the path so Postman Pat can get through would probably be best but
I have almost exactly a month before the gala days start, and that means parades through the Scottish country towns, of which mine is one, and literally thousands of international visitors who have nothing better to do with their holidays than follow parades through Scottish country towns. It is quite a tourist attraction so gardens that look like jungles are frowned upon. The parade in my town doesn't just pass my garden - I am on the corner of the road the parade turns up. It will be sneered at by many, many, many people.
This is what happens when you spend too much time writing or chatting on CS
okay and when it rains most weekends so you can't get out there ...
Postman is getting restless. Health & Safety is being mentioned in a grumbling undervoice.
Glimpse of house behind black acer, forsythia and rioting honeysuckle
my dishwasher seems to be having a sort of a fit. It spat the dummy (ok, the dishwashing tablet) and has rinsed everything rather than washing it and damn.
Listen, that has reminded me all over again, I really need about 5 men in my life. The one I need right NOW is the one handy around the house and appliances.
Make it so, CS.
I love the old swing stuff but I don't know the words, it's before my time, I just like it in the background. Tonight Frank Sinatra sang something that caught my attention. I listened again. And again. And wrote down a few of the lines. And thought yes. That's me, tonight. That's where I am.
I’ve been a puppet a pauper a pirate a poet a pawn and a king, I’ve been up and down and over and out and I know one thing, each time I find myself flat on my face, I just pick myself up and get back in the race –
That’s life, that’s life and I can’t deny it, many times I thought of cutting out but my heart won’t buy it, but if there’s nothing shaking come this here July –
I’m gonna roll myself up in a big ball, and die. .
Well, maybe next July.
I know, I know, dramatic. I have moods. Welcome to this one.
But just putting one foot in front of the other - that's not LIFE. That's existence. I want it all. And I want it now.
So how's your Friday going?
It’s taken a few years – okay, lots - but I finally know what I want.
Sell more books. That opens up more options and funds everything else. Earning cigarette and holiday money from present levels of sales is handy but that income needs to increase, hmm, ten-fold.
Action required – study marketing and stop wasting marketing time on CS Write more books. 13 non-best-sellers isn’t enough, more books published is more books to sell. (See above)
Action required – stop wasting writing time on CS Enjoy life. I like where I am, but I do know I won’t feel this good forever. So far I have met men I like, men I trust, and men I fancy. If the universe would just be a darling and send along someone I like, trust, and fancy, who likes, trusts and fancies me, that would be just peachy.
Action required – some time on CS? Move to a better climate where people speak English and I can nip back regularly to see daughter in England without going into meltdown because the flight is so horrendous.
Action required – pick another language and learn it, to open up options Pretty simple. Prepare for blast-off.
Sorted your life plan? How's it going?
A computer big enough to cover a city block in the 60s and 70s was less powerful than a modern laptop, and the phone is rapidly reaching full computer status. Some unexpected results:
the biggest taxi company in the world doesn’t own any cars - Uber is just a software tool
Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, without owning any properties.
The point is that any idea that was designed for success using 20th century thinking is doomed for failure in the 21st century. If it doesn't work with your phone, forget about the idea! The cheapest smartphones are already sold for 10$ in Africa and Asia.By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone and access to global information, entertainment, thinking, and education.
Today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow -
Elegsabiff Blog (358)
