Sunday 27th September 2009 - Go on, Spoil my Day!

It's off to Ohio tomorrow. So there is a bit of preparing to do. Rozie needs fed and watered, and tidied and packed; and Dulcie needs to be instructed, so that she can get down to her calculating (and, no doubt, recalculating).

Everything went smoothly: I must be getting good at this. I even went so far as to reveal to Dulcie both Ohio destinations, and all three Pennsylvania ones. That should give her lots of time to make mischief. Perhaps there will be a Canadian diversion in the middle.

At the lunch counter, I had my day thoroughly spoiled. A truck driver sat beside me. I only knew he was a truck driver because he told me. He surveyed the scene, and launched into a conversation. He had a real, attention-grabbing, show-stopper of an entrée.

There was a plentiful supply of nubility on display, particularly among the serving staff. You could just imagine it was one of that kind of owner or manager.

Anyway, our truck driver catches my eye and launches: "How would you like to be twenty-one again?", he says. Twenty-one? No, not never: twenty-one was the worst year of my life! "Not much", I say, "these years have been hard earned. I wouldn't give them up easily. Anyway, being twenty-one was awful. I'd be gaping at these girls, wondering which one I could pull, and knowing it was going to be none of them."

I could see he wished he hadn't asked. Or, at least, not asked me. He must have had a better twenty-one than I had. Mind you, that wouldn't be so difficult: almost everyone on the planet must have had a better twenty-one than me.

I wonder if he'll use that conversation-starter again? Probably not with grumpy old men, anyway.

Later that night, (Well, they don't really have "later" on a Sunday in this part of the world), I was watching the NASCAR racing. Now that the football (American, that is) season has started, baseball has been edged off the screens, and I have decided that NASCAR racing is the next best thing.

I think American Football has a lot in common with cricket. It's lots of shuffling about, setting up to do something, and when they've managed to lull you into a false sense of boredom, they do something you miss. It's what action-replay was invented for.

NASCAR, on the other hand, is magnetic, it's a sort of ballet with death. They're travelling inches from each other in really confined spaces at frightening speeds. It has all the old motor racing spirit of mad daredevils. The fact that the cars look, superficially, like normal cars, gives me the feeling that I could be doing it.

American footballers wear skin-tight pants, probably to stop the other side getting a hold of them. Perhaps it attracts an audience of ladies, who, I'm told, like to look at gentlemen's bottoms. Although they don't seem to me to be those kind of bottoms. But what do I know about that?