Tag: Paul Simon

Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover

23rd June 2020 23rd June 2020 by Sleeper in , , No Comment

She said: “It’s really not my habit to intrude;
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued.
But I’ll repeat myself, at the risk of being crude,
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.”

Saturday

Got up pretty early. What with plans for Sunday, I moved my weekly long ride forward to today rather than skipping it. Left around 9:30, aiming for about thirty miles in two hours. My bike computer has been misplaced, annoyingly, so I made do with just the tracking on my watch; this proved to be a massive mistake.

Initially I headed south, up the hills to the outskirts of Banstead, then east through Woodcote and then heading back north through Wallington and up through Mitcham and Tooting. It was there did something very silly; rather than turn back towards Morden, I headed for Earlsfield, then Wandsworth. Before I knew it I was passing Richmond park, heading down into Kingston, where I repeated my error and did a lap of the Hampton Court estate before heading back through Worcester Park and Cheam, feeling incredibly tired and starting to struggle.

Thirty-six miles down, in a little under two and a half hours. For a little while I could barely walk; that’s nearly a 30% increase in distance over my usual route; no wonder. I had to keep getting up during lunch to stretch my legs; though that didn’t last long and by the afternoon I was back to my usual self with only a slight ache from pushing myself.

Cooked a lasagne for dinner, despite my heroic exercise efforts earlier (apparently 1600 calories down) I wasn’t massively hungry, and there’s plenty left for another day. The kids seemed exhausted, so we put them to bed relatively early, then settled down to watch Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. At least that was the plan; numerous interruptions in the first hour of “I can’t sleep!” and “I’ve left my teddy downstairs!” meant that we didn’t really get the uninterrupted time we wanted; never mind.

Sunday

Out of bed even earlier, greeted by rain falling. Will I never get another lie in again? This time it was to make sandwiches to take on our picnic, and pack the bag so we could leave as early as possible. The kids gave me some lovely home-made fathers’ day cards, plus some chocolates and other goodies, and shortly after breakfast we were out in the car, arriving at Alice Holt forest a little after 10am.

The forest car park was already quite busy; despite the signs saying that its capacity had been reduced to maintain social distancing, I didn’t see much in the way of a reduction of parking spaces, though, and there were plenty of people about, though all were being sensible about keeping their distance. We had a lovely amble around the forest before breaking for lunch and then carrying on afterward. We headed back home about 2pm having had a really enjoyable walk, with the sun shining. I’m making plans to come back with bikes, but need to sort out a few things first – like bike racks and trail gators.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with family movie afternoon – my turn to pick, and, inspired by our recent reading of the Borrowers books, I went for Arietty, which occupied most of the audience. I’m not sure Studio Ghibli’s deliberate style is suited to an impatient four year old.

J cooked us dinner while we caught up with my mum. Somehow the kids were in bed later than expected but all in all, a decent day.

Monday

What’s that Lassie? Another early start on the cards? Of course… Started work at 8am with a meeting with D to prepare for the afternoon’s presentation. Followed up that with more meetings with different members of my team about their work, and an interview with a candidate who did quite well and I hope to hear more from.

The presentation in the afternoon went fantastically; I had answers to every question and objection that came up; got a load of good feedback on that, which was fantastic. Finished up at the usual time and cooked burgers for dinner with spiced wedges and grilled peppers, finishing with ice cream in the garden. Summer is finally here!

Ended the day with a short Ring Fit session (leg day!) and Dark Matter‘s take on Groundhog Day. I want to know about far-future Android; she looks like someone not to mess with. Sadly I don’t expect we’ll get to see that revisited; we’re rapidly closing on the end of the series, cancelled way too soon.

You can call me Al

6th May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

A man walks down the street  –
It’s a street in a strange world.
Maybe it’s the Third World,
Maybe it’s his first time around.
He doesn’t speak the language.
He holds no currency.
He is a foreign man.

I’ve voted. Have you? The campaign here has certainly been interesting. Labout appear to have given up entirely on the constituency, leaving just the Lib Dems and the Tories to slug it out. And slug it out they have – well, in a way. Seems to me that the Conservatives have done nothing but sling mud at their opponents from what I’ve seen from meeting the candidates. Everyone else has calmly stood back and explained their positions and policies. Well, it helped in one way – it reinforced the views I already had.

All that was left was to vote – and that wasn’t straightforward either, at least not as easy as it should have been. When I went, queues were stretching out of the polling station – an encouraging sign at least. However, because the other half is out of town, I’d been entrusted with her proxy vote, and that was where the problems began.

I never carry my polling card – it’s not necessary. I was able to cast my own vote easily enough, but the proxy vote? Bugger me. First problem – you’re not allowed to take more than one set of ballot papers into a polling booth at once, so I had to queue up, cast my own vote, and then queue up again to collect the second set of papers. Secondly, I didn’t have the proxy polling card. The text on it said I didn’t need it.

“You can’t vote without the proxy card,” the presiding officer told me. I argued back, and eventually ID was demanded of me (which I produced, again protesting). Finally I was allowed to cast a proxy vote, but what an uphill struggle!

Ah well, it’s over now. Fingers crossed for a happy result tomorrow.