Don't get me wrong but...
I like What Ifs.
There is no end to them, and various of them will keep me out of mischief for ages.
So What If – Nobody had invented tarmac? What if the world were exactly the same, just without tarmac?
The important roads would have been surfaced – The Romans would have seen to that! The Romans were really good at roads. For a start they made them straight.
First they decided where they wanted to go, and then they sent out some men with poles, reckoning if the poles were in line then the road was straight. I wonder what happened if they got to the far end and discovered that they should have gone left a bit 20 miles ago?
I’ll allow our modern road builders compasses; that way they are less likely to miss their target – it’s easier to move a road than a whole town, just because someone swatted a fly during lunchtime yesterday and their pole fell down. Then we’ve got to build our road. First we have to dig a bed for it to sit on. No problem; the Spanish love their diggers, they would be delighted.
That was the easy bit. Now we have to surface it. First big stones, then smaller stones, and lastly gravel or if it’s a really posh road little square stones, like the ones down the main road through Albox*.
Diggers have no problems – diggers can go pretty much anywhere, and if they get stuck they simply dig themselves out of trouble. But lorries carrying stones? Not so much! The lorries would have to be small enough and light enough not to make ruts in the earth bed of the road. So it would have to be small lorries with not very many big stones in them coming on-site a lot more times. I can see the natives getting restless at the constant comings and goings of traffic. Assuming that the big stones are all securely bedded, not wobbly or too bumpy, it’s time for the smaller stones. Compared to the troubles we’ve had with the big stones this is a piece of cake!
Except that a man will come along with his school geometry set to measure the height of the road – it has to be higher in the middle so that rain (what rain?) can run off. He would have to be attended by a man with a pick and a shovel, so that any irregularities of height can be rectified there and then. I bet those two were really unpopular – ‘Oh, don’t be such a jobsworth, it’s good enough for now!’
Then lastly come the gravel layers. Dead easy! But someone has to spread the gravel. Spreading gravel on a patch of garden is one thing, but spreading gravel from here to Vera – That’s another!
Then the digger men come back to create a little pavement on the sides of the road so that the gravel doesn’t wash off when it rains. (Rains?) If you’ve done all that, and you’ve just sat back to admire a good job jobbed you will not be pleased if the Mayor then turns up, looks at your lovely new road, and says ‘I wanted bricks.’ I think if he says that he is quite likely not to get re-elected!
* Reading this back I can’t help thinking about the main road through Albox – it is appalling! Go get the man with the geometry set to smooth it all out!!
Don't get me wrong but...
I am feeling picked upon.
I have been misled, and I am cross about it. I have got my head pretty much round Mercadona, but as Mercadona is out of bounds for me at the moment I’m obliged to go to Coviran, which is a substantial step further. I am not familiar with Coviran, and on my first visit I wandered around the shop like a turkey in a trance, and came out with very little except a bill much larger than I had anticipated.
The second time I was more organised, but still came out with only half the shopping – if only the bill had reflected that! But I learn by my mistakes, so for my third foray I was organised and prepared. I had a shopping list, and I entered the premises with high hopes and a steely resolve – I was not going to be beaten! I gazed apathetically at the fruit and veg, breathed in so that I could squeeze past the middle of the aisle display of cakey, biscuity things, settled for a cholesterol yoghurt at twice the price and half the flavour of my usual.
I meandered past the cheeses without success – there was cheese a-plenty, but no blue cheese – it was going to be my Christmas treat to myself. Never mind, I thought; I’ll get some mince pies instead. And there I saw it – a Stollen! I love Stollen, particularly as it is only available at Christmas, but the bit I like best is the marzipan in the middle. I had one last year from Lidl - their ministollens – they had no marzipan, therefore to me they were not stollens!
I completed my scour of the shop with a stupendous lack of success – I had a list of 14 items that I needed, of which I had found five. But never mind, I’ve got Stollen to look forward to!
I unpacked the shopping and fell upon the Stollen – I felt I deserved it. I cut a goodly slice, raised it to my mouth and then noticed – no marzipan! A Stollen without marzipan is like bacon and eggs without the bacon! Never mind, I’ve got mince pies, Walkers Luxury Mince Pies. That will make up for the Stollen shortcomings.
I checked the sell-by, November 2021, opened the box and the cellophane wrapping, and was nearly knocked over by a strong smell of petrol. Must be the wrapping, I told myself. I extracted a pie and sniffed it. I didn’t need to, so strong were the noxious fumes of petrol. Cautiously I took the pie’s lid off – the filling was a baked hard congealment of black stuff that could quite easily have seen service as piece of tarmac, so I took it outside and filled a pothole in the drive with it.I tell you, the whole experience was a black mark in my calendar. And I couldn’t even cheer myself up with a glass of port, another Christmas treat to myself – there was every sort of alcoholic beverage on sale, except port!
Never, ever again will I criticise Mercadona!
Don't get me wrong but...
Where Am I?
I don’t mean Where Am I? I mean Where Am I?
The difference is between the Wheres...
Where Am I suggests that I am lost in the vastness of the Universe. Or perhaps more likely in the not so great vastness of my house.
Where Am I, however, has a whole different connotation. It suggests that I know where I am physically, but not mentally. (Be quiet, you in the back there, no giggling! See me after class.)
Now, before I was so rudely interrupted, I will explain.
I made the grave mistake recently of attempting some previously unheard of culinary delight. It was some sort of a cross between cake and bread, and according to the Web it was very easy and only required 3 ingredients. Buoyed up by a totally misplaced confidence I embarked on my cooking adventure. I got out all the things I thought I would need and arrayed them on the kitchen surfaces. Then I got out all the wherewithal in the matter of ingredients; or so I thought!
For a start the recipe called for more than the stipulated 3 ingredients. Then I was supposed to do complicated things with them, like whisking most of the mix into stiff peaks. But before all this stiff peak malarkey I had to mix certain of the ingredients but not others. And not only mix, but measure quantities.
I began to feel a certain confusion coming on. However, I battled on, and the further I battled, the more confused I became. It was a classic case of the Wheres. I knew where I was – I was in my kitchen. But I didn’t know where I was.
Had I mixed the right amounts of the right ingredients in the right order? I referred back to the recipe. Had I done Step 1? I think so –or maybe I had got bored with Step 1 and had skipped it in favour of Step 2? Possibly!
Maybe I should go back and check Step 1 again – or should I trust to the Great God of Kitchen Confusion and go straight on to Step 3. I don’t know; I had no idea Where I was in the grand scheme of things!
However, having got almost every known piece of kitchen equipment out, including some pieces I didn’t know I possessed, and assembled and mixed various edibles I felt I should persist. Maybe it would all become clear as I pressed on?
I pushed Where to the back of my mind and soldiered on. Eventually I got my misbegotten mixture to the oven stage, bunged it in and set about restoring order to the kitchen. But Where still lurked – how long did it say to leave the mixture in the oven? Check the recipe again – 25 minutes, got lots of time to get cleared up. At this point the Great God of Kitchen Confusion tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Have you any idea what the time was when you put it in?’ He/She asked.
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