Day 86: Summer Round The Bend

Slightly seedy this morning, courtesy of red wine enthusiasm last night.  I was in Muswell Hill visiting friends - hence yesterday's 99p Stores experience.  (I didn't go to Muswell Hill purely to visit the shop - we've got one in St Albans, although its stock-range is nowhere near as exciting.  If they did stock a Warrior of Virtue it would be Meh, Virtue of Averageness.)

This is my friends' woollen bowl (or hobbit beret).  I've never seen a woollen bowl before.  Last night it was used to serve chocolate mints.  Bob claims it is a 'camping fruit bowl'.  I am very taken with it.  And glad that I took a photo for use here, as an internet search comes up with nothing for 'woollen bowl', but unpleasantly suggests a 'swollen bowel' alternative. 



Because it is a cold, and slightly seedy Sunday, I dedicate the day to the sofa and catching up with 'Downton Abbey'.  Only seen a couple of episodes of the second series, so way behind everybody else in the UK.

I once spent a summer at Highclere Castle, working for Landrover on their 'Days of Discovery'.  Which were events dedicated to wooing journalists and buyers, with plenty of opportunity for the Landrover Discovery to twirl, simper and generally flash its knickers. 

But journalists and buyers inevitably come with offspring who get bored and whingy around torque talk.  I am one of a motley bunch hired to entertain the children, and my dedicated domain is the Scalextric marquee.  Children rush the tent in a swarm of sticky hands and matted hair, pupils dilated on limitless Sprite.  Controls are grabbed, cars shoot off the track immediately into the canvas walls.  There is one ridiculous Gambon bend which requires the Teutonic control of Schumacher.  Co-ordinated ten-year-olds are vastly outnumbered by goggle-eyed, mouth-breathing five year olds, welded to the controls like mini-tyrants, but jigging up and down, wee-needily.  I spend a summer of my life at this bend, replacing tiny metal cars on tiny metal tracks (wax on; wax off).  The tent smells of crushed grass, red sweets and child fart.  There is a photo somewhere of me, at the end of a day's car-shepherding, sitting on a Spacehopper outside the tent, looking emotionally and physically drained.  I love that photo. 

In one of the Downton episodes, Lord Grantham flirts stiltedly with Jane in the grounds of the castle.  And in the background, that familiar view framed exactly as I used to glimpse it from the Scalextric tent, where it wobbled hazily in the August heat, like a mirage of tranquility.  For a split second, I smell the ghost memory of crushed grass, red sweets and child fart.  It fades quickly.  Mercifully, I'm on a sofa, not a Spacehopper.