People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!

Some of you may remember that when my son was about nine or ten he wrote a description of Robbie. That was a long time ago, he is nineteen now and a couple of years ago he wrote an updated description of Robbie. I'm grateful to him to him for giving me permission to use his writing on the blog, he is very brave! I think Robbie is brilliant to see the funny side and to allow me to share it on the blog. I should explain that both men are Aspie, they get on well and they are great allies when it comes to making jokes at my expense, but each likes to imagine that the other is seriously weird! In reality both are rather unique and awesome individuals and I wouldn't change either of them (except to make them both a bit more tidy!)

                          Robbie by Will

Of all the words in the English Language, there is one I would make a  tremendous effort to avoid when describing my step dad: evolved. There are brief moments when I feel as if I'm watching a mountain Gorilla without David Attenborough's riveting commentary, or even a Baboon displaying it's behind as it forages in the deepest crevices of it's rucksack. When we drive over a brand new road surface he emits a series of primal hoots which increase in volume and pitch as his excitement builds. Who else in this world derives excitement from a new road surface? Such sounds would not be out of place at Twycross zoo, but even the great apes have grasped the concept of volume. Never in my life, have I heard an animal eat with such ferocity, humming approval to himself with every breath. 

I'll admit, I have exaggerated his level of evolution, there are some notable attributes that spare primates from close comparison. Firstly, Primates have the knowledge of self preservation. Whereas a normal person would sit still in a car, a sign of respect to their driver, my step dad decides instead to direct everyone's attention to the train, bus, or Eddy Stobart truck that he has spotted by flailing his arms and yelping with excitement in a way that one can only compared to an epileptic puppy waiting for it's ball to be thrown. Aside from the fear for ones life that is felt by every passenger in the car, I fear for his life, as he now has to face the wrath of the driver; my mother. Yet still he does it!

It has been noted that Apes have an inquisitive personality, and are aware of the smallest changes to their environment, but on the whole they adapt to this change. Adaptation is one thing he struggles to cope with. The strops that occur because the bottle shape of the tomato ketchup has changed could be described as biblical. If he notices the slightest of changes to his anally retentive form of feng shui, or if he decided that the colour of a product label isn't of the correct hue, he huffs, and he puffs, and he blows his composure down.

On the matter of his inquisitive nature, my step dad has an extraordinary intelligence and the ability to retain vast quantities of detailed information but unfortunately he obsessively applies this ability to his two main fields of interest - trains and Lego! Somewhat ironic. Every so often, an observer is treated to the sight of him opening a new Lego figure, or the sight of him witnessing a certain train. It is on these occasions that he will let out a grunt of approval and enjoyment. This sound is somewhat reminiscent of Louis Armstrong trying to move a wardrobe.

Finally, one minor differentiation between these two is the use of tools. Research has shown that chimps are able to adapt and use objects as tools. I myself have never seen an Ape using a hedge trimmer in the wild, but I'm sure that it would avoid cutting the trimmer's ORANGE cable amongst the GREEN hedgerow? The irony being that all apes are colour blind. Furthermore, I have never heard of a chimpanzee wiring a switch, but even if it had, I'm sure it would understand the basic consequences of leaving the mains power on!

Maybe I'm just finding fault with a member of my family, or maybe I have finally found a missing link - that's for you to decide. But I don't know of any being, human or animal, with the ability to crunch sodden Weetabix!

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there - Lewis Carroll

I'm fairly used to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of my fellow humans - I have to be, life with Robbie is full of surprises. However I was startled when a rather odd looking man rushed out in front of my car as I drove down the road yesterday. I came to an abrupt halt and the man stood in the road in front of me, turned face the car and saluted! He then engaged in a series of repetitive hand movements as if he was conducting an invisible orchestra, but something about the movements reminded me of the mechanical movements of the figures on the Trumpton clock. Then the man stopped conducting his orchestra, saluted again and marched back to the side of the road enabling me to continue on my way totally bemused by the experience. 

As I drove away I wondered why seemingly insignificant childhood memories such as the Trumpton clock remain vivid in my mind so many years later. My daughter Emily introduced me to Pinterest a while ago and I have to confess I'm addicted to it, I've been creating a album (known as a board) of childhood memories. Pinterest enables you to create and share as many boards and add as many images as you like.  The comics and television programmes of my childhood took up so much space on my childhood memories board that they had to be moved to create boards of their own. Comics played an important part of my life when I was growing up and I looked forward to the arrival of my comics each week with a sense of anticipation which the children of today wouldn't understand. Every issue was read from cover to cover and then saved to be read again another day. Creating that board of all my old comic favourites brought so many memories flooding back.

One of my early favourites was a comic called Treasure which included a beautifully illustrated comic strip about Wizard Weasel who created all sorts of trouble in Princess Marigold Land. I have recently bought a few old copies of Treasure and I realise how wonderful the artwork was, no wonder that it could keep me occupied for hours. As soon as I could read independently I discovered the joys of Beezer, Topper, Sparky, Cor, Beano and Dandy. Cor was my favourite, but I had favourite characters in each of the comics so I read as many comics as I could each week. I liked Keyhole Kate, Beryl the Peril, Desperate Dan, The Bash Street Kids, Mini the Minx, Pop, Dick and Harry and Ivor Lott and Tony Broke to name but a few. I wasn't the sort of little girl who read the Bunty, my comic heroes were all rebels and none of them would be considered politically correct in this day and age. 

One of the characters who has stood the test of time is Minnie the Minx, she looks a bit like a female version of Dennis the Menace but to me she always seemed a bit cleverer and more rebellious than Dennis. I enjoyed her antics but it never occurred to me to copy them, I was a bit of a tomboy but I was a well behaved child and I knew the difference fiction and real life. I think what appealed to me about Minnie the Minx (and some of my other favourite characters) was that she lived life her way, being a girl didn't stop her doing anything. Jim Petrie the artist who drew Minnie the Minx for over forty years (from the beginning of the 1960's to 2001) died at the end of August 2014 and when I read his obituary I realised that I owe a debt of gratitude to the many comic artists and illustrators, whose work entertained us and helped to develop a lifelong habit of reading. The heyday of comics is long gone, times have changed, but Minnie the Minx is still going strong, she was 60 last year - she even has her own statue in Dundee.

"The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork" - Oscar Wilde

Robbie had undercarriage problems at the end of last week. On Thursday I bought him a Lego City police van set with the police dog and the police man minifigure. He sat down at the table to build it with a big smile on his face, but after a few minutes he announced that his undercarriage was missing. We checked but there was no sign of it in the box, all the other bits were there, but they were useless with the vital part missing. So Friday saw back at the shop in search of the missing part, the things I do to put a smile on his face! He was delighted when he got home and the part was waiting for him on the table. He built the police van, equipped the minifigure with an impossibly large pair of handcuffs and then called me over to admire his work - he even set the scene by creating a range of police dog noises! Okay, I  know he is a bit weird, but it is a harmless pass time, there are plenty of worse things that he could be doing. Anyway seeing him smile makes me happy too.


This morning he cuddled up to me in bed and somehow got on to the subject of one of his odd little obsessions. We have two different sets of cutlery, but Robbie will only use a three pronged fork while my son insists on only using a four pronged fork. They are as bad as each other, but both try to convince me that the other is much worse when it comes to weird obsessions! Robbie warmed to his theme and went on to tell me about the perfect dimensions of a tea spoon. Apparently there has been a serious upset at work, his personal tea spoon which was perfect in every way has been stolen! According to Robbie it is irreplaceable - but that will not stop him trying, he intends to scour ebay in search of a replacement! I scored a minor triumph, I managed to distract him before he got on to the subject of knives! I'm sure I haven't heard the last of his very specific cutlery requirements, but there is only so much that I can cope with in one day.  

One cat just leads to another - Ernest Hemingway

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.

An Early Start.

The insistent bleeping of the alarm clock roused me from sleep, but 'Sleeping Beauty' slumbered on oblivious of the cacophony of sound that filled the room as all three alarm clocks demanded attention. I shook him and yelled at him to turn it off, he said "yes dear" and carried on snoring! Clearly it was going to be one of those days. Trying to get Robbie out of bed is like trying to raise the dead - even when (as today) it is something he wants to do.


It took a minor miracle but at 7.55am we pulled out of Northampton on the London Midland service to Birmingham. It was a double set 'blue' train so Robbie had nothing to moan about (for a while at least!). As soon as we arrived at Northampton it was clear that this was no ordinary Saturday morning. The 'socks and sandals brigade' had donned their winter uniform and turned out en masse for the annual gathering of the weird, the worrying and the downright certifiable - otherwise known as the Warley Model Railway Exhibition. 


We left the train at Birmingham International and when we entered the National Exhibition Centre we were herded towards the exhibition hall. We waited for the exhibition to open in a tightly packed and ever growing crowd. I felt very small and outnumbered lost in the crush of men with backpacks who all had the same thing on their minds - trains! The crowd surged forward and I was carried along with it, down the stairs round the corner and in to the exhibition. Robbie was like a kid in a toy shop, he didn't know what to do first, but in true Robbie style he insisted that we had to stick to the same route that we take every year! 

There was lots to look at and Robbie's wish list grew by the minute. I wanted to look at things too but there were some very rude and hostile men around. Several times I was deliberately shoved out of the way and on many occasions men pushed in front of me as I was looking at stalls. Even Robbie noticed the hostile looks I got, as if they thought I had no right to be there. I got sick of dodging rucksacks. Being short is always a bit of a hazard in a crowded situation, but today was worse than usual. They are not going to get rid of that easily, my money is just as good as theirs and when necessary I have sharp elbows (at just the right height) so watch out!


Before long Robbie was walking around with a 'Roy Cropper' shopping bag as well as his rucksack. We bought some lovely books, one for me and four for him, as well as a stash of magazines a couple of little shunt engines and two very nice Hornby circus trucks. As I looked around I noticed that most of the other men were now armed with shopping bags as well as their rucksacks. It was rather like a Roy Cropper convention, or perhaps Where's Wally in reverse - If you looked hard enough you might be able to spot someone 'normal'. People watching is always fun, but at Warley it takes on a whole new dimension!


I am not sure how long we stayed at the exhibition, probably not much more than an hour but we managed to see everything and by the time we left we were absolutely exhausted. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it was as big or quite as good as last year. My favourites were the book stalls and the Stall selling Ivor the Engine books and mugs - I love Ivor the Engine! There was one other highlight, the ladies toilets, they were clean, practical and there were no queues, in fact they were almost deserted. If only it was always like this! 


Robbie and I left the exhibition exhausted but content and keen to take a closer look at our purchases. It was still early so we caught a train to Birmingham with the intention of having a day on the railways - but that is a story for tomorrow, I'm tired now. 

A Boy Called Sarah?

Robbie has been promising (or threatening) for weeks that he would take me on a charter trip so that I could experience the ‘wonder’ of Sarah Siddons, the oldest electric locomotive still in traffic. Today was ‘the day’ but when I woke up at some ungodly hour, I told Robbie that I would rather stay in bed. He was not a happy chap, he stomped off and came back bearing a cup of tea to find me still half asleep. When bribery didn’t work, he stamped his foot like Rumpelstiltskin. I am not sure if it was a war dance or a rain dance but it got my attention. Somewhat reluctantly I left my lovely warm duvet and prepared to face rush hour on the railway.

We had no problem finding a parking space at Northampton and after a quick visit to what turned out to be by far the best station toilets all day, we were on our way, heading towards Milton Keynes. We changed there for a Southern service to Harrow and Whealdstone, it was an OK sort of journey except for the catastrophe when I visited the toilet. It was compact in the extreme, I put my hands under the hand wash thingy and it dispensed a large dollop of soap onto my hands, then nothing at all, I tried everything but there was no water! I tried to wipe the soap off my hands with toilet paper, but the paper just stuck to my hands. I returned to my seat leaving a trail of soapy finger marks and attempted to clean my hand with hand sanitizer and wet wipes, but the soap made the wet wipes lather and it got worse rather than better. By the time I was able to wash my hands in the shopping centre at Harrow, there were stinging and sore.

When we reached Harrow and Whealdstone we had to get a bus to Harrow on the Hill. We found a bus with a driver who did not speak English, judging by the price he charged us he must have thought we wanted to buy the bus rather than travel the short distance to Harrow on the Hill! I expected Harrow to be rather posh but the places we saw looked a bit grim and ‘unloved’.

We got to Harrow on the Hill Station to find that the ‘the socks and sandals brigade’ were out in force and wearing their ‘winter uniform’ – I have never seen such a display of dodgy footwear in my life! In fact when I saw such a large gathering of the the gathering of the ‘weird and wonderful’ I had an almost irresistible urge to run . They ranged from the quietly confused through various categories of weirdness to the downright odd. Robbie had to hold on to me to stop me making a dash for freedom. Sarah Siddons was late, but eventually it arrived – I refuse to call a loco that turns up late and breaks down a lot ‘she’ when it is so obviously male!

We found some seats in a compartment and soon we were joined by a chap with a big simile and thankfully few words who liked class 37s. I could have cope with him but my ‘weird magnet’ was working overtime and two seriously strange bods from the South West came to sit next to me. They talked incessantly about quail maps and sections of track that they’d ‘had’. They made it sound like notches on their bedposts! It did not surprise me that they both turned out to be single! I did what any sane person does in such circumstances; I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

At Amersham I was entrusted with everyone’s bags, it was like lemming year! There was a mass exodus of men and cameras all hoping to get the perfect shot of Sarah Siddons. As I gazed out of the window at crowds of men milling around carrying cameras with formidable lenses, I couldn’t help wondering if train spotters like trombone players are over compensating for their deficiencies in other areas. After two trips from Harrow on the Hill to Amersham and back I was allowed to escape to the relative sanity of a normal service to Aylesbury. I hadn’t really enjoyed the experience, I was bored and trapped and I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Robbie said that perhaps I just don’t like electric locos, perhaps not, to me it just felt unreal and uninteresting, like a theme park ride with added weirdness. I think I prefer proper rail tours with interesting people and (preferably) diesels.

Aylesbury offered the worst station toilets of the day, they seemed fairly new but they were so badly designed that you had to straddle the toilet in order to shut the cubicle door. The tap that claimed to be the cold tap produced such a powerful burst of uncomfortably hot water that it soaked my top! Why is it so had to provide clean adequate toilet facilities? It may not sound important but passengers remember when companies/stations can’t even get the basics right.

We came back via Marylebone on a Chiltern service. That proved to be the greatest disappointment of the day. It was rubbish, the toilets were in a disgraceful state, no toilet paper, filthy seat, overflowing bin, floor flooded and a broken dryer. Also there was no air con and it was so uncomfortable when we were delayed by about an hour that my asthma played up. There was no wifi, some of the sockets were not working, there was a distinct lack of useful announcements, people had to get refunds for their tea and coffee because the milk was off and the train manager failed to apologise for the delay. The seats were very badly designed, impossible to get in and out of and very uncomfortable. I will steer clear of Chiltern from now on.

The best bit of my whole day was the Virgin Pendolino that we caught on the way home, it was absolutely perfect. We had to get the London Midland service from Rugby, but for once London Midland excelled themselves, it was one of the more comfortable ‘blue’ trains, the toilets were working and it was a pleasant trip back to Northampton.

Unbelieveable!

Just when I think I understand Robbie he does something totally weird and it leaves me feeling that I will never really see the world through his eyes. Yesterday as we were relaxing on the train, he announced that he'd had to make a serious complaint and he was very annoyed that he hadn't had a reply yet. I thought that he was perhaps talking about a railway safety issue or something like that but I was wrong. His complaint was about McDonalds in Birmingham, apparently they are not building their sausage and egg bagels to the correct specification! It wouldn't bother me a jot because I don't like McDonalds food, but apparently Robbie has provided them with a list of times and dates when he was sold incorrectly built breakfast bagels! Surely he must have more important things to worry about, in fact surely he could find better things to spend his money on!

The Things You Do For Love!

I have always known that Robbie and I have different tastes. Mostly I give in to his demands because I love him, I even let him eat onion rings - but I don't let him get anywhere near me afterwards! I can cope with his fashion sense, his music, his railway obsession and countless other things, but I have my limits. On Wednesday evening he begged me to do something that was way beyond my comfort zone, I told him that it was too weird, but eventually I gave in and let him watch Fred Dibnah on TV!!