Bus bungle

Today I resurrected myself from my recent infirmity of flu, to go to town on the bus.

It was interesting. Our busses come every half an hour.

Our normal bus was late, but a bus came along from a nearby town and picked up all of us pensioners standing at the bus stop. Someone had gone nuts, providing an open top tour bus to celebrate the sunny day. Us pensioners declined to stagger up the stairs for two reasons. One, our arthritis didn’t allow it. And two, we didn’t want our carefully coiffured hair to be blown around in the wind thus exposing our pink spots and bald places. So we packed out the downstairs.

I don’t know what happened to our bus, but I found out on the way home.

I waited for the bus back at the terminal. A bus driver was waiting to take over the bus that hadn’t arrived yet. He’d been there waiting for twenty minutes already. Soon another driver came to take over his shift for the bus after the bus that hadn’t arrived yet and that was now half an hour late. So when the bus arrived that was arriving half an hour late, there were two drivers waiting to take their shift. And the due bus that was supposed to be arriving was nowhere to be seen.

Eventually after a long conflab at the door of the bus that wasn’t the due bus, but was the late bus, one driver took on his shift and the other went to sit forlornly on a bus seat in the shelter to wait for the due bus that was nowhere to be seen. He probably had to drive it empty because the bus that was half an hour late, picked up all the passengers for the late bus and the due bus.

The late bus that had now morphed into the due bus was crammed!

The last passenger on was a huge woman who draped herself over a front seat, the only one left, next to a Mum with a pram, a frail old lady with a walker-shopper, and a very thin stalk like man with a walking stick and a back-pack that I would have expected to pull him over backwards should he try to wear it.

I was so bemused trying to work out the math of how our bus service could solve the problem of late busses that became due busses, I almost missed my stop. Fortunately the frail old lady with the walker-shopper was getting off too. She must have pushed the bell.

She took so long to extricate herself from the walking stick, the rucksack, the pram and the fat lady, that I had plenty of time to follow her off the bus.

We all got home I presume.

I apologise for the “man flu”comment

Dear Mr Furlong, I apologise for the “man flu”comment I made on the day you were poorly with flu.

I didn’t realise quite how you were suffering.

Until

you gave it to me!

Wow, I have been feeling absolutely grim. I now realise why you kept on rambling around the house muttering “I don’t know what to DO with myself!”

Your flu absolutely poleaxed me. But I knew what to do with myself.

I went to bed.

It was ghastly.

Man flu? No! It was the real deal.

Horrible!

My new bathing costume

My new bathing costume is dreadful!

I tried it out today at the pool.

It has a skirt over short shorts.

The short shorts sort of dangle between my legs uncomfortably.

The skirt floats up in the water as if I have fallen into the pool with my parachute open.

Or, if you prefer,

it feels like a large black octopus has attached itself to my torso, that is trying to drag me down to murky depths.

My new bathing costume is supposed to be a replacement for my old one, also a modest two piece suitable for an old lady. I’ll be busy with my sewing skills as I discipline the new one to behave itself in the manner I expect.

Oh poop!

On our way near the end of the canal path that Bass and I walk, a man stopped us, babbling on about a baby bird on the path and seagulls which I could see swooping and screaming ahead.

As we proceeded, it became clear than the seagulls weren’t hunting a poor baby bird as I assumed, but were trying to protect one of their own. An almost adolescent baby gull was tearing up and down the path, probably squawking, but this was not audible in the cacophony of shrieking above.

There was a knot of people directing walkers, cyclists and dog walkers into avoiding the poor baby.

Bass went nuts.

With great difficulty, we got to the end of the path, where we turned. By the time we got back, all the humans had disappeared leaving the baby gull, Bass and me alone on the path.

Bass went more nuts. In fact, totally nuts! I often take him out just with his collar because he is so well behaved. So, today, he was leashed to his collar.

Well,

how he didn’t break his neck in his efforts to hunt the baby gull,

beats me.

A miracle.

But he coughed and gasped and scrabbled a lot as I dragged him along on his lead with his feet burning tracks on the tar.

The gulls overhead became furious with rage. They swooped and screamed and bombed us. And the last one through on the attack, pooped on my head.

It pooped right on the crown of my head.

And I could feel it dribbling down towards my left ear all the way home.

Stupid bird!

Famous Furlongs

We have appeared on TV.

For a second

in the opening shot

of a news broadcast

about the rescue dog reunion we were invited to, of all the dogs homed in 2018. It was fun.

We evidently looked quite respectable on the TV, the three of us, Mr Furlong, Mrs Furlong and Bass Furlong.

But we will never know what we looked like. We missed it!

How sad is that?

Bass Furlong got to choose a reward after his IQ test at his reunion. Here it is….

Reaching a meditative state

This is today’s meditation.

The point of meditation is to enter into a relaxed state of mind, with no thought, in which you loose yourself. One of the tricks to get there, is to imagine someone is going to touch you on your forehead, so you wait, in expectation for something to “happen”. The boredom of waiting for a non event, tricks your mind into forgetting itself, and voila! You are in a meditative state.

This is today’s meditation. Enjoy forgetting yourself…..

Do I Waddle When I Walk? How to Stop Tredelenberg.

I am trying to stop my shadow waddling when I walk. Well, I’ve always limped since I had my stroke in 1980, but the annoying thing is that on my daily walks, in good weather, this dam shadow follows me around everywhere, and I can see it when I walk.

It limps.

Or

does it waddle?

There’s a difference.

If it limps, that’s OK. It’s my disability. If it waddles, I’m showing my old person status. I’ve never understood why old people waddle. But old people do. My mother never waddled!

I will not allow my shadow to waddle.

I’ve got a stretchy rope thingy as they demonstrate in this video. So before I take my shadow out walking the dog, I’ll have to do this excercise first.

Tredelenburg

Discipline from the dog

In this Furlong house, We like a bit of discipline. We’re old fashioned in that way.

I have spent many hours training our new dog Bass. He’s going back to the animal sanctuary he came from for a “Reunion” day celebration of all the animals it found homes for last year in 2018. That’s going to be fun. Does that include all the pussycats, bunnies, lizards, totoises, goats, donkeys and horses too?

I think Bass will remember the place and the people. His memory is one of his strongest suits. He remembers things. He expects us to do exactly what we always do. His beds have to be in exactly the same places, his blankets exactly thus; his dinner served at exactly four o’clock. Bedtime is exactly ten o’clock.

He has a bedtime routine that must be followed by us in exactly the right order, otherwise we get THE STARE.

THE STARE is the indication we have erred.

Sometimes we have to work out what we have done wrong. Night before last, Mr Furlong was late coming home. I fed Bass. But Mr Furlong always does the feed. We had to work out why Mr Furlong got THE STARE for hours until he made a big performance of feeding Bass (with a teaspoon full of food). Then Bass was happy. We had been disciplined.

Yes, I think he’ll remember the place he came from, and the people who loved him there during the Reunion. He could even show off his tricks…..When we first met Bass, he was the happiest dog, in a place where everyone seemed to adore him. But I don’t think they had time to be disciplined by him as well as he disciplines us.

They never got THE STARE.

We shall have to tell them how good he is at that!

Hummingbird meditation

Aren’t these amazing creatures? There are none found here in the wild, or in any country other than those in America.

Here’s a hummingbird meditation for today…