Good afternoon, it’s Monday (Well it isn’t necessarily Monday while you read this or indeed a good afternoon, but it was when I wrote it, OK?) and I’m on Delta Flight 276 out of Sarasota going to Atlanta for an hour long lay over. I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned this before but when ever I find out a flight number I’m going to be on, I try it out in sentences to see how comfortable it would sound to hear a news anchor type person saying it; so for instance I will try out, “The doomed Delta flight 276 out of Sarasota…”, “The ill-fated Delta flight 276 took off from Sarasota”, and various others to set my mind at rest that I have at least a slim chance of getting to my destination without the words “Plummet”,”Cornfield”,”Fireball”,”Tragedy” or “The Brave Pilots Wrestled With The Controls Of The Stricken Aircraft Narrowly Missing A Local School” becoming involved in a news type way. Now the last flight I was on was Delta flight 1120 out of Atlanta. That sounds eminently safe as it doesn’t fit into either of my test sentences comfortably, I mean it just doesn’t roll off the tongue right? On the other hand “Delta flight 276” is a bit more of a worry and to top it all we’ve got a nun on board. I’ve seen the movies OK? And every single one of them features one of these Brides of Chucky. If she pulls out a guitar, I’m getting off. Did I also fail to mention we haven’t taken off yet?
Let’s go back to Florida, not literally, as I’m back to Ann Arbor today, but let’s go there in our minds shall we? I’ll lead, you follow and for gawds sake, try to keep your feet off mine? This suede is a bugger to clean. Florida has great roadside billboard adverts which kind of give you a clue about many of the people who live there. There’s ads for hip replacements, dentures, arthritis treatments, mole removal, and of course funeral parlours. A significant segment of the population here is O-L-D as Daphne and Celeste might say, and they probably never ever needed an alibi because they are all pretty much retired accountants. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve known some really nice accountants in the past, Dave, Trevor, Rhodri, Kevin, and other’s, all of’em diamond geezers to a man in a sorting-your-money-out type of way and in a social let’s-get-drunk-and-have-a-laugh way. But a state populated largely by geriatric accountants seems to me in some way to be lacking a little variety. I’m sure even the elderly accountants would probably agree with me on this one. They’d probably like to have a conversation on the golf course or over a bowl of the local chowder with someone who did something different to what they did. You know, just to get the brain cells kicking along a bit? Maybe I’m wrong.
Also as I go through a day I often just note down a couple of words if I think of, or experience something, that I think would be good to put in this big page of rubbish. The next note in my little black book (Moleskine) seems to say “Gay Locals”… I have no idea. Instead, I’ll commend the last Divine Comedy album to you. It really is very very good.
More flying to do now… Back probably when I get back to Britainland with more pictures and working technology…
Beers Tuesday next? Red Lion about 6? Oh yes…
x