Whooopeeeee!!!!!!
Sunday I'm back in the UK!!!!!!
I don't really mean whooopeee but I'm trying to make the best of it......feels really strange.....
Obviously it'll be brilliant to see family and friends but peculiar to be out of my life, fledgling as it is.....
And odd to be controlling the rebuild of my house from 5 thousand miles away......
Luckily my pal Marco is overseeing the work for me.....quite an undertaking, especially in a foreign country and for someone else.....
But he already ran the build on his and Ornella's house last summer (here) and you should see it.....it's stunning.....I wrote here about it and it's otherworldly view in September a while after I busted my wee leggy......
Hannah's gonna stay with them for a few days either side of Carnaval......I'm quite jealous.....
But I of course have my shed, I mean erm single bedroomed bungalow with disco sized lounge.....
Well, have is not quite the word as I'm of course no longer allowed to be in the country where I live.....
so hence back to UK.....
.....trying to wangle a permanent visa by becoming officially retired.....
Actually, I always reckoned I retired from gainful employment at 16 after me and my dodgy cousin worked 3 weeks in a festoon lighting factory in Stockport.......we got fired and 2 weeks later they closed down completely......I like to think we helped......but I don't have to think as I know for a fact we did......
......we destroyed such massive amounts of material and machinery that no single moderate sized factory could have survived our onslaught......
Their first mistake was to get us to cut 2 complete drums of cable to size......well, we worked fast on this one, even clipped the outer cover and pared the ends with a Bib wire cutter.....thousands of pieces, miles of cable, days of graft.......only, unfortunately all to a size that was way shorter than they ever used for anything .....oh, in inches....ooops...
Next job......hammering copper contacts into the moulded plastic lamp bases.....ok, think about it.....copper ....hammer ....moulded plastic.....nahhh it's not gonna happen really is it.....
It didn't......
Hundreds, thousands laid to waste.......
Next Job.......they can't fuck this up surely.....hahahaha.......they only set us up with an injection moulding machine each......ohh the fun.....oh the power......oh the carnage......
D'you know how much fun it is to take a couple of bits out of a moulding machine ( the mould as I remember....) and then fill the entire machine with molten plastic.......
D'you know how long it takes to dismantle the machine, clean out all the cooled plastic, reassemble it and get it back into production again.......
The answer is much much longer......
So sorry about that then, festoon lighting company.....
And if you've ever in the last 35 years looked up at the coloured bulbs illuminating your outdoor festivities and wondered "I wonder who made those for us to enjoy.....", just remember, it wasn't me.
I don't think, I know.......