Sons and Daughters, Brothers and Sisters...

Boys

Sons are just the best, they like to play with cool toys, they are full of laughter and they surprise you every day with just how much they grow into a damn cool guy. Alex is doing this, he is great fun to hang out with and it is amazing that it was not that long ago that he was a boy. Well now he is a man and as such he drinks, farts and fiddles with motorbikes. We could not be more proud. So when my Brother Pauly came to visit, we had to go out to play in Pauly's truck.

You can just see Alex sat about a third up the way the cliff face

So we headed out into the hills of Somerset and tried our hand at a bit of local offroading, which we loved. Pauly is an expert driver and approaches any challenge with his usual gentle humour and then climbs his truck up the sort of rocky slopes we loved to ride our bikes down so many years ago. While out and about we checked out some of the old places we visited as kids, including the caves we explored while on a school trip in 1990!

The entrance to Sidcut Swallat cave, Mendip.

Going underground!

Nothing like a bit of solo climbing forty feet up a cliff with no rope!

More solo climbing at height

So after a whole day of adventuring we wandered home and Alex declared that he was in love with Pauly's truck and we both had a new hobby. Let's OFF ROAD! A massive huge thank you to my dearest brother Pauly and my lovely step son Alex, who made a day out a pure pleasure.

Girls

Girls are just great, they are pretty, they smell nice and they like cuddles. Can you tell that I always wanted to be a mummy? So when Alex announced that his lovely girlfriend Beth was moving in with us, I was overjoyed. You see, Beth is lovely, she has filled our home with laughter and seeing Alex this happy is just wonderful. You have never seen such a beautiful couple who compliment each other so well. 

The thinker goes Gothic!

Well, once Beth was moved in and had settled into the comfortable life of enduring Jayne's almost continuous farting and Carol's horrendous snoring, she let us know that she would like to travel north to visit her Mum and introduce her to Alex. Well, any excuse for a ride out...

So we decided to take the motorbikes and ride the ninety three miles to Beths Mum's house. Only Carol's bike had packed up, with leaking fork seals, blowing exhausts and a failing cooling system. Noreen needed a lot of work to make sure that she could make the journey. 

No forks or cooling system

So over two weekends Carol tore Noreen to bits and put her back together again. 

Going back together

It took some time, a lot of work and a few cups of tea. Once sorted, it was a quick test and then we discovered that the cooling fan had melted. Thankfully a dear friend of Curious Adventures, Wayne of the bashed up ZXR sports bikes stepped in and offered us a new fan. With Carol off the road, another friend of Curious Adventures, Rich stepped in and rode over to Wayne's to pick up the fan. Both of these men are utter gentlemen and with out them, we would have been stumped. So huge thanks to them both. 

So with the bikes sorted, we hit the road and headed North...

Beth and Mummy

Jayne meets long time hero, Vlad the Impaler...

Then as we left Tintern on the way home, Carol discovered that during all of her work, she had not adjusted her head light correctly. Oops, but it was a simple fix... until her bike over heated once again and spewed coolant all over the road. So we stopped for a short break and took in the fabulous view that we could see in the dark, in the woods on the edge of Newport.

Finally, with Noreen fixed once again, we hit the road, quite literally in the case of Beth when Sylvie dropped down an unmarked bump in the road and hurt her ribs. Cue another pain relief stop in Oarst services. Damn that place is shit. 

Three numb arses and one case of sore ribs later...

Finally at just after midnight, we rolled up the hill and home. I dropped Sylvie back in the garage and as we were locking up the bikes Alex came back and told us that we were locked out. The front door was locked from the inside. Fortunately it turned out that he was just so tired, he forgot that the door has two locks! Bed that night was welcoming for us all and after two hundred miles of riding Jayne's shoulders were completely ruined, her hands no longer worked and just keeping her eyes open as she took off her leathers was a challenge! 

This was Beth and Alex's first Curious Adventure together, just as it was Pauly and Alex's first Curious Adventure too. A month of firsts and a month spent with some of the most beautiful people I could ever ask to be with. After many years of wanting, I have the family I always wanted and I could not be happier.

A huge thank you list this month and in no particular order

Alex - for being so much fun and the perfect son

Beth - For being so lovely and the perfect daughter

Pauly - For being the brother every sister wishes for

Rich - For going beyond the call of duty and being a true friend

Wayne - for being a fountain of knowledge and so kind

Finally, I want to thank my beautiful Carol, the woman who has given me so much over the years, so much love and happiness, the family I always wanted and the partner who makes Curious Adventures so much fun. Thank you my family, I love you all.

You Madam, are clearly an Arse Hole

Yesterday afternoon,  I popped into the local sorting office of the Post Office to collect a packet that they needed me to sign for, but could not get when they delivered due to me being out. This is a common enough task I am sure and many of you will have also undertaken such a task.

Yet, while I stood waiting in the queue that stretched not only across the room, but into the next room and then through the front door outside into the cold, I noticed a sign on the wall. I am sure that you are no doubt well aware of the tedium that is a long queue and rather than strike up a conversation with someone who could potentially be a maniac, I chose to read  that sign. It was a a piece of laminated A4 paper and was typed in Bold large print and read as follows. 

Verbal abuse of Post Office workers will not be tolerated. Any such abuse will cause the counter to be closed and the Police to be called. 

It all seemed a little harsh, after all how many of us grew up loving Postman Pat? Are people really that bad tempered, rude and obnoxious that they can shout abuse at lovable Pat and his black and white cat Jess? 

When I am waiting in a queue I have noticed that time becomes strangely relative. Maybe you have noticed this too. While waiting in line to be served by what ever counter you are waiting for, keep an eye on your watch and see if time slows down for you too? It is an unusual effect of queuing and I am sure that Einstein also noted this. Outside, life continues at normal speed, but inside, time slows down and then when you step outside, it all jumps on you with a sudden leap forcing you to catch up with a jolt! 

When I finally got to the front of the very long continent crossing queue, I came face to face with the woman behind the counter, let's out of congenial politeness call her Postwoman Patricia, although she really did not have a cat, black and white or otherwise with her. It was however right at that very moment that I suddenly understood the need for the big bold  print sign. 

It seems that the Post Office are now employing people who have no understanding of basic manners or customer service. I was spoken to with such venom and bile that I was utterly taken aback and started to laugh. Which caused others in the continent spanning queue behind me start to laugh too. I remained polite through out our brief relationship of service user meeting service provider and not once was I given even the vaguest of half smiles or the slightest nod of fake good will. I am forced to ask what could have possibly caused such an attitude from some one who no doubt has a home and a family and maybe even a black and white cat? 

Was it perhaps the excessively long hours she was forced to work by an uncaring system of Governance, simply to be able to provide sustenance for her family? Maybe it was an uncaring management system that forces her to be placed in a position where she must spend all day indoors in a building that slows down time? Or just maybe, after a long hard shift of dealing with other human beings, she was simply tired and grumpy? I seriously hoped that by giving her the opportunity to be rude to me, she could go home and relax, probably by cuddling her precious cat, black and white or otherwise. 

So that was the post office, but what else do we deal with on a almost daily basis? Have you ever met a Chugger? Do you know what a Chugger is? Well, a Chugger, my dear reader, is a person employed by an agency for an hourly wage to stand on a busy high street and charity mug shoppers, no matter who they are. These are the people who charities hire at vast sums of cash to stand there in town, with their fake smiles of joy and then tell you what a terrible time what ever Polar Bear, Political Prisoner, Starving Child or Patch of Rain Forest is having right at that very second. In fact that very second that you are wandering about enjoying the richness of your own fat contented lives. They tell you this while they stand there, noble and brave, unafraid of the elements, the hunters, the torturers, the warlords and the loggers and try to make you part with your top secret bank details, so you can pay their charity some of your hard earned cash.

Now remember, there are some things that you really need to consider when dealing with Chuggers. Namely, how much of your charitable donation is going to fund Chuggers likes them? How much of your charitable donation is being paid out into a large salary to the Chairman of the board of the company that runs the Chuggers? Also bare in mind that some of these Chuggers will be on commission,  the more suckers they get to sign up to their very worthy causes, the more cash they can earn, so that they too can give it all to charity! Of course they give all of their wages to charity, because after all, they can survive on the warm glow of just smug self righteousness.  These people will also tend to step right into path and try to engage you in conversation. How do I know this you may ask? Because in this last week I have encountered these people and it left me feeling rather annoyed, both with my self and with them. 

My reason for feeling cross with myself is because I broke the golden rule of dealing with Chuggers, I acknowledged their existence. They work in packs you know, I managed to slip past the first and then was almost tripped up by the second, causing me to have to stop in my tracks. Yet it was the third who got me. As I tried to walk around him, he walked into my path and just kept coming. Now as much as I hate being rude, I could take no more after a day of bad news and worse officials. So as he closed in me I told him to Fuck off! This is not like me, I am a member of several charities and pay directly from my bank, having researched my chosen charity and then found them myself. 

The young man did not stop smiling as he continued to close in on me, but he did inform me quietly and while still smiling that big fake smile that I was in fact, an arsehole! Now, as much as this may be true and yes I can admit it, I did not need such a man dealing with my emotions on a day when I am barely able to deal with them myself. One swift word later and the man with the fake smile was silently think that I was an arsehole, but at least he then had the good grace to keep it to himself. However, the town council are aware of Chuggers and they know that they can be trouble. I know this because I phoned them up once I got home and made some inquiries. Chuggers it seems are able to work our streets by the good grace of our councils and they have conditions placed upon them.

So I have some advice for you if you encounter Chuggers who are annoying, make a complaint, talk to your local officials and get these annoying people off of our streets. Then because you are caring and do want to give to charity, go and research one. For me, I chose a couple of human rights charities that works world wide, a local wild life charity and another one that has meaning to me. It is not that hard to find a group that represents your beliefs and you know what? If you do this, you really do not need chuggers. 

As for the Post Office, maybe they do get people in there who are so rude and violently aggressive that it justifies the bold print sign, but does that really justify them being rude to all of their customers?