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Lots of stuff including Art

Lots of stuff including Art
Newport lad from Crindau, and Ceredigion resident for 27 years: former firefighter Roger Bennett

21 February 2012

Exercise

Well today was the day of days. It turned out to be a compendium of physical and mental exercise. 52 lengths in the pool followed by a 10 minute sauna. Then the library for some ancestry research followed by a good read in a nice large but quiet room. Followed by pancake practice (nope not the mixing and the tossing, just the eating) and then chess club this evening.

Which in itself is not that remarkable, except that I haven't been to chess club for 14 years since I suffered the first of my numerous nervous breakdowns. I lost all of the games, but to be quite blunt, I couldn't care less. You see, I played and enjoyed and part of the enjoyment was about going along to play. The only thing wrong; there wasn't a cup of coffee in sight. Full, spilled or otherwise, nope, zero, nothing. Now I wonder if Costa would let a chess club meet there? 1.e4 e5, 2.f4 fun, oh Happy Days :-)

The triple three lady and the spreading coffee

The only thing that I have that can match the four pencils and the four fingers of the last few Blogs; is the four unintentional extra lengths in the pool this morning. Gosh it was cram packed in there, and yet again a fool tried to swim backstroke. Unreal I know, but there you have it. Twenty five people in the water and all swimming lengths and one little lady swim’s without being able to see where she is going and can’t manage a straight line. Phew, it’s enough to wind you up. But then again I am a bit of a cool customer when it comes to problems.

If you don’t believe me, then track down and ask the ‘triple three lady’ from Costa. A lovely thing from North Wales who like me has three daughters. So that’s two of the number 3 sequences. The third number ‘3’ being the number of sugars that she brought me when she bought me the coffee that she insisted on buying. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a nice looking pleasant woman, and I like my coffee, and I also like free coffee. So the unnecessary sugar is just a story filler that fits in with the other two three’s if you get my drift.

Anyway, there I was engrossed in the latest of my ‘three on a go at any one time’ reads (two about Passchendaele in the Great War and one about the official history of MI5). Oops, there’s another ‘3’ then, so it’s four three and not three three’s if you look closely enough. The 300 odd pages one was balancing partly on the edge of the table and resting on my reading glasses case. When the vision approached me and asked if she could sit down. I mean, what is a hot blooded man going to say. “No lady that seat is taken, and while you are at it, please leave me alone to read another 30 pages of this historical tome with the Germanic slant”. Nope, not on your Nelly. The book was closed as quick as you could say “Jumping Jack Flash”, or in this case, "Yes, please do”.

This of course makes a nice story but doesn’t necessarily link into my temperament comments at the start of this Blog entry. No, there must be more say you. Well of course you are right. There were no flaying fingers in sight, she sat calmly and did not practice the backstroke, but alas she did hit the ‘sweet spot’. Gosh, I was super impressed and when the lovely lady from the North made a lasting impression on me. There is no getting away from it, offspring co-incidences aside, we are certainly kindred spirits. We share a liking for the corner and a liking for a glass of water with the coffee. Unfortunately as her hand moved eloquently across the table while holding the water, the glass, so gingerly, touched the glass containing her hot drink. Whoosh, and there was a total disintegration of the second static vessel with shards of glass swimming in a volume of coffee. Some of the drink on my new book, some inside my glasses case and on the lenses of my designer reading glasses, a lot on my trousers and shoes. But not a blink of an eye or a harsh word from me. As the eternal gentleman I played down the situation and tried my best to put her at ease. I probably didn’t do as well as I thought as within a few minutes of buying me a drink, she was off on her way.

The second lady from the north to make a lasting impression on me, the other was back in Africa.
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