tagged by fathorse

Thanks fathorse, btw I found your own answers fascinating and illuminating. Hilarious how we "B"s tread similar paths. Luckily you caught me with a slot in my busy schedule so here goes.

4 jobs I've held:

1. My first job was stacking shelves at Sainsburys Supermarket. I started while still at school, working Saturdays and holidays. It was there I met Debbie as we stamped prices on tins of sardines! I was sixteen and hadn’t a clue about anything. However it paid for rivers of booze. My head was in academia and selling food was the last thing that interested me.
2. After school I passed entrance exams to Oxford University but was rejected after three days of interviewing (in French would you believe). So I drifted into Banking and spent thirty years mostly hating it.
3. The best period in my banking career was the early 1980s. I had some superb colleagues in one particular high street branch who could have been successful at anything they chose. However we got pissed every lunchtime and every evening and despite running a tight and efficient office we took banking not at all seriously.
4. After decades of responsible roles like financial consultant, mortgage advisor and manager’s assistant I slid down the greasy pole as the jobs were all dumbed down. Like most of my colleagues I ended up at a shitty call centre taking calls from fools with idiotic queries.

4 places I've lived:

1. Born in Bournemouth on England’s sleepy southern coast. Old retired people live there and complain about the youngsters.
2. My dad was moved with work to Truro in Cornwall during the 1960s. We spent just two years there. I remember watching England win the World Cup and my sister was born.
3. We all moved back to Bournemouth and twenty years I struck out on my own with a new house and a new wife. Our boys were born and soon we moved to Dibden Purlieu in Hampshire some thirty miles away. I believe something once happened there but no one can seem to remember!
4. We lived in two nice houses there but all good things come to an end. I jumped ship in a big and (to my family) unfathomable way. I moved to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada where I have a gorgeous new wife and a whole new life.

4 places I've holidayed:

1. I used to drive my family to the French Alps every summer to stay in deserted skiing village. I can’t imagine being there when it snows.
2. Florida. I didn’t fly in an aircraft until I was forty-five for reasons linked with fear. However straight after 9/11 we jumped on a 747 and proceeded to do the same every year for the next five years, fear of flying duly conquered. Orlando was of course our first destination but thereafter we spent quiet time on the Gulf Coast in a subdivision called Rotonda, holidaying in those gorgeous luxury villas of theirs with a private pool.
3. USA road-trip. In 2005 I spent forteen days driving through Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and back to Georgia and staying in hotels. The variety was amazing and the best bit was staying off the Interstates and using the little county roads. A glimpse of real small town America.
4. Camping with my wife in the wilds of Cape Breton last week right by the Atlantic Ocean. Bears, Moose, wolves and eagles everywhere you turn.

4 favourite foods:

1. Baked beans on toast topped with melted grated cheese.
2. Poached salmon with peas and boiled new potatoes.
3. Tomato soup
4. Pills and a liquid would suit me fine when nutrition can be delivered that way. I am not a food connoisseur.

4 places I'd rather be:

1. Alaska
2. Antarctica
3. England
4. 10,000 miles away from civilisation

I don't have four people to tag so I'll just ask Michelle to join in. http://www.md1979.blogspot.com/

fifty

I need more strength. “Hand me down a strong panacea, one that’s guaranteed to make me feel like Hercules.”

Summer’s furnace roars and cranks. High blue sky towers above. The Island’s rock station crunches from the stereo. Let’s roll down the windows and cruise. Hay bales, cows, potholes and ancient Buicks slide by in a hazy panorama.

In the heat of the night nothing moves, not even the air. Sleep is further off than Pluto and the pillow sweats. Old memories return to taunt me. Synaptic connections tease and scold in the witching hour.

Soon I will pass the half-century milestone. Will I feel old? No, just the same – and still wondering how far past halfway I am. One thing is fairly sure – fewer solar orbits remain to me than have already passed.

September dawns are cool. A crispness hints at the big freeze to come. Time is running out. Soon we must batten down the hatches and hunker through the long white months. But before then we will journey to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The tent, stove and air mattress are all tested. The itinerary is planned. Un-noticed by most, a certain 50th milestone will slide by somewhere in the swirling blue waters off Bay Saint Lawrence while we are whale watching.

Soon too there is land to be bought, acres of grassy sanctuary in which to sink new roots. An investment into timber and fields. A house to refurbish and hammer into home. Lists of “to do” items stretch to the horizon – that’s far enough into the future for me.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

famous last words

Life caught up with me...

... the end.

That month back in England

Too much to do and see, not enough time... but we still managed to take over 1200 photos. I picked just a few to post and here they are on Through the Lens.

London and the Shires

More to follow on "Through the Lens."

May 2007

We have flown to England for the month of May to travel on historic highways and by-ways, staying mostly in deepest rural Wiltshire. Days out in London, Bath, Bournemouth, Southampton, Salisbury and Poole have reminded me how exceptional this small birth-country of mine is. Time is rushing by and there is still so much to revisit but there will be a next time... You never really notice what is right beneath your nose until it is gone. How does eleven hundred photos so far sound? (No I won't be putting them all on "Through the Lens!")