According to my husband I have some sort of 'weird magnet' that makes me an interesting target for assorted 'odd bods'. He does have a point even when I visit new places I seem to attract the 'square pegs' of this world. Last autumn I visited the Severn Valley Railway for the first time, as I stood in Kidderminster Station chatting to Robbie a little man (he was considerably shorter than me) entered the station area from the platform and marched straight up to me, shook my hand and launched in to a long explanation of why steam trains are better than diesels. Suddenly he stopped talking about trains, informed me that he had important things to do and marched off in the direction of the refreshment room. Robbie thought it was very amusing that the man singled me out when he had a whole crowd of people to choose from.
I had a similar odd experience earlier this week. I gave my daughter a lift to work, on the other side of town. Her office is located in an area that was once a village but it got swallowed up by the town many years ago. I dropped her off, turned the car around and I was just about to pull away when a middle aged man approached the car and knocked on my window. He didn't look like a mad axe man so I opened the window a little and he asked me if I would like to take him to town. I was rather shocked, I am not in the habit of picking up strange men especially before 9am! I told him that I was not going to town, he said "never mind, I didn't really want to go to town anyway". It may not be a village any more but clearly they have at least one contender for the position of village idiot!
I don't know why I have such a well developed 'weird magnet' perhaps it is because I find people interesting. A friendly smile costs nothing and makes everyone feel better, very often you find that people who seem a bit odd at first are very interesting when you get to know them. The trouble is I seem to attract the waifs and strays of the animal kingdom too. Looking back through the blog I am reminded that we have had a parade of uninvited guests over the years. A toad once came through the cat flap to visit us. On two separate occasions birds have fallen down the chimney - and lived to tell the tale because I went to to considerable trouble to rescue them. One was a collared dove and the other was a huge and rather stupid pigeon. Then there was Dave the cat, he turned up ill and exhausted and set up home in one of our recycling boxes - he is still here! Now there is 'Bernard' the cat who kept coming in and hiding in the utility room, she is still here too.
The problem is that I don't have infinite resources. When Dave found us a few years ago we were strictly a one cat family, but he was so poorly and so much in need of someone to care about him that before I knew what had happened we had become a two cat family. I had no idea how much time effort and money it would take to restore him to health. He is now very much part of the family, in fact he thinks that he runs the house. He and Oreo are good friends and we love them, but they are expensive to to maintain and looking after them is time consuming. Bernard is really sweet and she is becoming less timid but we really can't cope with a third cat. I can't turn her out and all my efforts to find her original owner have proved fruitless, so we really have to find a new home for her.
According to the vet she is about 3 and in good health. She is very clean, we haven't had a single accident since she moved in. She is timid but she enjoys attention, she just needs gain trust in the people around her. She is scared of other cats and she tends to hiss if they go too near her, but she is not vicious, she just keeps out of their way. Please contact me if you know anyone who can offer her a loving home.
For once we had a fairly quiet evening with no one needing to go anywhere or to be fetched from anywhere. Christine sat down to get on with some work on the laptop and having finally wrestled the TV remote from Samuel, she insisted that there must be something better to watch than the Simpsons. A tour through the menu demonstrated that there probably wasn't anything better and she was left to choose between The Bill and the off switch. A conversation about the early days of The Bill ensued and Chris stated with a smug grin that 'Yorkie' Smith was her all time favourite because he was good looking and just her type. I correctly guessed that he must have been rugged with dark hair and dark eyes! This made me wonder what she had seen in me as my hair is not especially dark and my eyes are blue. It seems odd that I have never asked her that question before and I must confess I was shocked by her answer - but I am not telling you!!
Christine paid very little attention to the TV for quite sometime until she startled me by shouting out "It's an obscenity, it shouldn't be allowed. We should boycott the shop". She continued to express her disgust along the same lines for sometime and I realised that the cause of her displeasure was an advertisement for a book by Chris Moyles. There are one or two people that Chris detests and he is TOP of the list!
I hear that a certain loud and opinionated 'mcp' of Robbie's acquaintance had recently revealed that he is not getting any female attention. He is obviously a slow learner if he has only just worked out that he is not impressing the opposite sex, but perhaps I can offer him a few pointers. Admittedly nature has not been kind to him, he will never be an adonis but at present he makes Homer Simpson seem refined, so despite his limited resources a few simple changes may help.
1. Be clean and smart, wear modest quantities of (quality) aftershave and avoid alarming hair styles/colours. Have a good look in the mirror, realise your wife has to look at that every day!
2. Search the house somewhere you will find an iron and an ironing board - learn to use it! It will win loads of brownie points!
3. Look around the kitchen, you should find a kettle, a cooker and a washing machine, learn to use those too, pamper your wife a bit.
4. Have another look around the house, you will find a hoover, a toilet brush, cleaning materials - none of these are labelled women only - USE THEM!
5. Put the TV remote control down - it is not a phallic symbol!
6. Be quiet, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it. You may be the only person who likes hearing your voice. Listen to what your wife wants to talk about and show an interest in what she is talking about.
7. Forget the sexist comments (unless you enjoy celibacy). Remember what you saw in the mirror, don't make matters worse!
8. Learn some manners - and use them. Complement your wife on her hair or outfit, but don't go over the top.
9. Be thoughtful, do things that she enjoys sometimes, remember she may not find football on TV much of a turn on!
10. Be careful what you eat/drink, beer and curry are a big turn off - so is flatulence.
Follow this advice and with a bit of luck and a darkened room you may (eventually) get lucky!!
