Playing Trains

Robbie has abandoned me again. He headed off to work this morning with his weekend bag ready for a weekend ‘playing trains’. He did try not to look too eager to go, but he failed dismally and he darted off into the station like a greyhound. OK, I know that comparing Robbie to a greyhound is a bit if a stretch of the imagination (or pure fantasy) but you will just have to use your imagination.

On the subject of animals Sam asked me a very odd question the other day. Sam has an incredibly wide general knowledge, but I sometimes wonder where he gets his information from. He wanted to know how they got Mr Ed the Talking Horse to move his lips. The Mr Ed television show was before my time so I have no idea how Sam knows about him. That boy could be a genius if he didn’t fill his head with so fascinating (but useless) facts. The answer to his question was that they used to put peanut butter on his lips to get the ‘talking’ movement. When I was a child I had a pony that did a very similar thing if he had jam on his lips (we found out by accident when he took a jam sandwich out of someone’s hand).

I had a very odd encounter with a courier delivery man yesterday. He annoyed me before I had even opened the door because he knocked on the door in such an aggressive manner that my neighbours must have thought it was a police raid! When I opened the door he shoved a box into my hand, I glanced at it and realised it was yet more ‘junk’ from Robbie’s union. The man then demanded to know my name and address; it left me speechless for a moment he was standing on my doorstep and the number is on the front door, surely his one brain cell could work out my address. I told him that I would willingly sign his machine, but I was not prepared to give him any personal information. Usually they give you their little machine to sign and print your name, that is no problem but he insisted he had to fill it in and it all felt very odd so I refused. Robbie and I don’t have the same surname, and an unsolicited pile of papers from his union does not give anyone the right to demand my personal information. The man got really aggressive so I gave him the package back and shut the door on him. It was a very odd encounter and it still doesn’t feel quite right