Category: Flounce

Honestly you couldn’t make this up…

Thursday, late lunch-time- and only a small window of time, but may just enough to nick across the road from the office where I was based that day, to get to the cash-point, and pick up some spends ready for the reunion weekend and to put the promised £10 on Techie’s phone, plus get a bite to eat from the Co-op?

The first hurdle was the pedestrian crossing. Dum-de-dum. Come on. So slow….but not worth the risk of trying to run across with lorries thundering past.

Then I reached the cash-point and with the sun glare on the green screen I couldn’t see the display, but I pushed in my card and then shaded the screen with my hands.
Still no display.
Darn it, I thought -or words to that effect, it’s not working.
I pressed the card return and no card rolled back out… but instead, weirdly,  a small screw driver head poked out and waved around – a bit like a worm blindly sniffing the air. I looked about — looking for the camera. Surely this was some kind off joke? Continue reading “Honestly you couldn’t make this up…”

Sport

There is a part of the game of cricket that many foreigners don’t get, even people from other cricket mad countries. When I lived in America, Indians would try to taunt me about the latest defeat for England, but for me cricket always meant sitting in a deckchair at a village game, slightly disorientated from the alcohol and unable to get out of the chair except by slowly toppling over sideways and collapsing in a heap on the grass. Sometimes something would happen on the field and an uncertain applause would trickle around the edge of the green as the spectators tried to figure out what had transpired.
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5 years and counting

I first decided I wanted to come to China when we studied Chinese history at O level.  Everyone else did the traditional WW2 gig, for some reason our teacher decided on an alternative path.  We hurtled through the dynasties, paused for breath at the Boxer rebellion and rolled on to Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-Tung before he changed his name) and Jiong Jieshi (the politician formerly known as Chiang KaiShek) before grinding to an abrupt halt at 2nd December 1949. It was if nothing of interest happened after that as far as the Oxford Examination Board was concerned.  We still had time left so we padded out our knowledge with British parliamentary reform in the 20th century.  I think our class must have had the most warped perspective of any examination candidates that year.

Continue reading “5 years and counting”