24th April 2014 - Home Alone Diaries 2 - Paper Clips and Condoms..

Thought for the day : "Time is never wasted if you're wasted all the time!"

Survived another day - or at least until she comes home and finds out that I have forgotten something!! That is what has happened in the past and I have been married too long to fall into the trap of quiet complacency!!!

Managed the Chicken Pellets (layers pellets), the visit to the mother in law, the gentle walk of the dogs, the learning of another couple of ceremonies coming up, the ignoring of the house work, the ignoring of the re-decoration of the rooms upstairs - it may rain again !!  Managed to get the lap top repaired, and am currently waiting for it to update the next 84 windows updates - I am sure there will be more afterwards - but at least it is not dying any more.

Dogs seem to prefer being downstairs - I think they are waiting for Susie to come back - they will have a long wait I think. Weather seems "changeable" that is I cannot quite work out if I need the heating on during the day or not  - but there is sun outside so it should be getting better.

Found an interesting little tip today and found it rather good. My mother seems to have an endless supply of paper clips - the notes she leaves for me often have a paper clip on them, as do the receipts that she keeps for me to file, and the occasional generous donation towards the drinking and celebrating fund...   so paper clips are available in the house.. 

This works just as easily on normal sellotape ...

Which causes me to cast my mind back many years to the time we were living in Hamilton Road, under the Brent Cross Flyover in North London - and Susie was working in the local East Hampstead Hospital. I was engaged in Carpet Cleaning and industrial cleaning while Susie worked on call duties in the Hospital Path Lab..  Now on exchange were two young lasses from South America - Alicia I recall - she was stunning, I shall be reminded in due course of the name of the other lass. I think they were from Brazil... the memory starts to fade after a few years ...

But Alicia it was that won the heart of Paco Pena the guitarist when he was playing a local concert and followed us back to the flat - but that is another story!

However the point of the connection is that one day the girls were asked to go and fetch the sellotape, which caused some consternation..  It appears that sellotape is a well known make - and mainly known only for being a condom in their country - and being good catholic girls - they were rather worried by the request..

In those days I would not have thought to use a paper clip - on the "Blue Peter single sided sticky tape" that is...

Just looked up Paco on the web - he has a facebook page and is touring this country - I wonder if he remembers calling at the house - maybe I should tell the whole story another day and send it to him ..

I could share a nice bottle of Chateau 41 and reminisce..

Salud!!