Tuesday 12th January 2010 - Hi-Yo, Silver, Away

          The waitress at breakfast brought me the Sunday paper with my picture on the front page.  I got my pen out to autograph it, but, rather disappointingly, she said I could keep it.  They're such fickle things, women, aren't they.  I thanked her as graciously as I could, omitting to mention that I had just been to the Post Office to send several copies off to my National Archive.

 

          Then it's off to the rental company to sort out my new steed.  Most people who have read Don Quixote, have read the translation which names Sancho's donkey as "Dapple", but that is just a little too English and dated for my taste.  A more literal translation (I'm told) might be "grey".  So I have decided that since I am ranging alone (geddit?) across the US, and this car, which wafted me away from the accident with barely a hesitation, is actually silver, I shall call him that.  Perhaps a posh name like that will get him to stay with me for the rest of the trip.  So it's "Hi-Yo, Silver, away!"  (I always thought it was "Hi-Ho", but that's not what any of the web sites say)

 

          When I went to Australia, about ten years ago, I noticed that the lady newscasters clearly weren't human.  I suspected aliens were planning an invasion, and were testing out clones to see how easily they could fool us.  American sports programs are testing a much later marque, which can walk about with facility.  They're still using females.  I guess they think that if they can fool us chaps in a sports program, they've passed the hardest test.  They have obviously already infiltrated the fashion and adverting industry, in an attempt to modify our view of what real women look like.  But they're not fooling me.  Look, for instance, at their teeth.  They're clearly false.  Nobody's got teeth as white as that.

 

          Later that night I meet up with someone who's decided to take my advice and come back from Europe on the QM2.  He says they'll have seven days in Europe beforehand, and he's thinking they could go to Dublin, Poland, the Fiords.  I remind him that modern air travel is hanging around for days in airports, waiting for men with guns to look up your bottom, all the while amusing themselves with their new lady-stripping machines.  Better to concentrate, choose one, hang out.

          So he wants to know which of those I would choose.  After the usual bumbling fumbling, I decide it would have to be Dublin, the superficial, but none-the-less genuine, friendship of celtic stranger management.