The car park attendant

A friend sent me this story in an e-mail.

Outside Bristol Zoo there is a car park for 150 cars and 8 coaches.

There also used to be a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 and coaches £5. This parking attendant worked there solid for all of 25 years , then one day just didn't turn up for work...

"Ho hum", said Bristol Zoo Management - "better phone up the City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant" ......

"Err no", said the Council, "that car park is your responsibility" ...

"Err no", said Bristol Zoo Management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?" .....

"Err NO!"

So, sitting in his villa in Spain is a bloke who has been taking daily the car park fees amounting to an estimated £400 per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years.... Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to 3 million six hundred & forty thousand pounds!!!!!!

My immediate reaction was 'Bloody Hell - a pound of that was mine' . But I thought at the time 'What cheap parking it is' and hey, good luck to the bloke says I, he's shown more initiative and luck than many of our captains of industry who end up costing us a lot more and earning more than this chap did. At least he put in his hours for it!

It also reminded me of two Council auditors I knew who sat in a car on Southport promenade watching the car park attendant from a distance to make sure he gave everyone a ticket and wasn't pocketing some of the entry money. (He was - about a tenner a day until they caught him). Anyway, these two blokes were happily sitting in their car all day until a bus drew up alongside and the driver leaned out and shouted "You dirty buggers - why don't you go somewhere private!" He'd obviously passed them a few times on his route during the day and his homophobia had got the better of his common sense!!


 

Therapist joke

Partner-who-loves-tea being a psychotherapist I have altered this joke (which appeared on Granny's blog) accordingly:-

A group of psychotherapists were attending a convention. Four of them decided to leave, and walked out together.

One said to the other three, "People are always coming to us with their guilt and fears, but we have no one that we can go to when we have problems".

The others agreed.

Then one said, "Since we are all professionals, why don't we take some time right now to hear each other out?"

The other three agreed.

The first then confessed, "I have an uncontrollable desire to kill my patients".

The second psychotherapist said, "I love expensive things and so I find ways to cheat my patients out of their money whenever I can so I can buy the things I want".

The third followed with, "I'm involved with selling drugs and often get my patients to sell them for me".

The fourth psychotherapist then confessed, "I know I'm supposed to, but no matter how hard I try, I can't keep a secret...


Thanks to Granny for yet another great laugh.


 

A Saturday Ramble

Mice may like cheese but getting butter on your mouse is not a good idea. Moral - don't work on the computer while having breakfast.

I slept badly again on Friday night but at least it gave me the chance to enjoy the morning mist and dew.







You should always write things down as you think of them. (I thought of something. Wrote one sentence on another matter and when I came to make a note of what I had originally thought it had gone. What is the brain's equivalent of cyber-space?)


I thought I had got a photo of a new (to me) species of moth today and was very excited about it. However, it turned out to be a variant of the Map-winged Swift (Hepialus fusconebulosa), a moth I had seen and photographed once before - on 8th July 1981 at Ainsdale National Nature Reserve. So it’s not an addition to my list but it was good to get some better photos.


My Father’s Day present from Bryony and Mark arrived on the Island today - a Rubens Barrichello Brawn cap. (Photo courtesy of GB.) I’ve liked Rubens since he first came into Formula One. When I saw the European Grand Prix at Donington Park in 1993 Barrichello started 12th, but was 4th at the end of the first lap. He was on course to finish on the podium, but a fuel problem ended that possibility. Next to Johnny Herbert and Ayrton Senna he was my favourite driver of the 1990s. I’m in a real cleft stick this year because I would love both Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello to win the championship. Hopefully it will be one or other of them.

GB and I went into Stornoway this morning and I took some photos of “textures” in anticipation of next Friday’s My Town Shoot Out.


Another moth that has been common for a few days is the pretty, day-flying Magpie Moth (Abraxas grossulariata).

 

Rambling on about this and that

A darned cleg bit me the other day - just behind the ear where my glasses catch it. Everyone is complaining how bad they are on the Island this year. I cannot blame the above injury on the clegs though - this was self-mutilation caused by a coffee table stepping out and hitting me. Ironically since I took that photo I've done exactly the same thing again and now have a second mark about an inch lower. That was one of the many reasons I gave up work - I kept falling over and walking into things. I'm sure people used to think I was drunk. It's the neuropathy - it causes the sensory and motor nerves to pack in. So next time you see someone staggering or slurring their speech please don't automatically assume they are drunk. Unbeknown to you, they might have a neurological problem or Parkinson's disease or some other disorder. That's my lecture for the day over and done with...



GB's water jug and its glasses were much admired when they were used the other night. They are beautifully thin glass and a lovely shape to hold. The pattern of the decoration is moons and suns. They are definitely not the sort of thing to put in the dishwasher. The last time I used them was when they used to live in Mum and Dad's sideboard and it was a nostalgia trip for me to handle them again. I think they were a wedding present to Mum and Dad so that would make them 70 years old this month.


A wander around GB's garden produced a couple more weeds/wild flowers to add to my list including this beautiful little Wall Speedwell ( Veronica arvensis).



This is Shepherd's Purse, a weed I recall from my childhood.


As children we were shown how the seedpods resembled the shape of a medieval purse (as seen in this picture from http://www.longago.com/medievalmen.html )


A Large Red Damselfly settled on the vegetation of the pond.


Whenever I can I grab the opportunity for a walk down to the shore. On my last visit a Great Skua was harrying the Terns.


And a Rock Pipit kicked up a fuss at my presence.


This seaweed is Bladderwrack.


It is also known as Popweed because you can 'pop' the little air sacs.

 

I've lost my ankles

I've lost my ankles. Where did they go?

They were there a few years ago when I was about 55 and went into hospital and had my gall bladder out. The nurses had to put tights on me to ensure my circulation was OK while I was lying down and more than one nurse admired my leg shape and said they wished they had ankles like mine. But someone's stolen them.

For the first time in ages the weather has been so hot that I've worn shorts. So instead of my lower legs being hidden by trousers they are exposed for all to see (and mock). Having lost a knee cap when I was a teenager my knees are not a pretty sight at the best of times but at least they used to be compensated for by my ankles. Now, because of heart problems, it's just a straight line from knee to foot. I want my ankles back!


A question for my readers from abroad. Do you have the same sort of corned beef tins as in the UK? Ours have a separate key which is detached and slotted onto a flap.


The key is then wound and the flap unrolls around the tin, opening it. The idea comes from the days of the Boer War when cans of bully beef were sent out for the troops. Why do we still have them? Tradition? Whatever the reason I suspect they will disappear one day so I decided to photograph one for posterity.


Whilst photographing tins may seem a weird sort of pastime it may one day help with folk who want a blast from the past. There are a few things from the fifties and sixties that I wish I had photographed but which were so ordinary it would never have occurred to me. Things that we just don't see nowadays like toilet cisterns with chains, policemen directing traffic from a little box in the middle of the road, men with umbrellas and bowler hats, and my ankles....