Wednesday, May 4, 2016

What is TX3TW? who cares? What day is it? Are you here with my dinner?




Calling all Lums, a message from the Reeking one.

Yes, I know, they are infrequent, but productivity is down right across the country, haven't you noticed?

Anyhoo, how are you both?  I'm assuming any remaining followers are still here because they have either lost their wits or have passed away alone and the body hasn't been discovered yet, though if that is the case, there will be 5 months of milk on your doorstep, so it seems unlikely.  Madness it is then, that should make things easier.

Despite all that time away I haven't come up with any new or original ideas so I'm going to float this as one, its called my Three Things This Week column, or TX3TW column, see how clever that is, and I've called it a column, like a a grown up newspaper has columns and indeed columnists, a Reeking CoLUMnist even, this is worthy of a BAFTA or something.

So, here we go, Three Things This Week;

1. Burger King deliver.  
I'll say that again, Burger King DEE-LIV-ERR!  

Not here of course, but not solely in the most whimsical corners of my own imagination either, but in Madrid.  I saw it with my own eyes, the Burger Kings little pawns, scooting about the city on little electric magic monkey bikes, there panniers jammed full of Chicken Royales and big Whoppers on their way to the hungry masses, keeping the restive populace happy,  the ground  less likely to catch a spark of a flame grilled revolution that could threaten The Kings bundom.  But why Madrid and as far as I can tell, only Madrid? Did Cortes bring the ancient ways back with Inca gold?  Who knows, but I want burgers on a bike coming up my street. 

2. Old people's playgrounds are Da Bomb.  
In the middle of Madrid there is a beautiful park called the Parque De El Retiro,  it appears to be, to be fair, a monument to Spains bloodthirsty colonial past and measles spreading but nevertheless, a lovely place to spend a few hours.   I did,  I sipped coffees and watched the beautiful people of Spain meander past on there way to  lie down somewhere else other than the place they were lying down before.  All that lazing about is OK for the young, the workers charged with keeping the economy parping along, but the oldies, they get to work out in geriatric jungle gyms.  Its great to see, special playgrounds for old folk to get some gentle exercise, I saw some old ladies sitting on a bench chatting away , probably about the good old fascist days,  but pedalling away on some cranks cemented into the ground and an old man, who might have waved The Armada off from Cadiz winding a big gear, like he was raising a bucket of gold from deep inside an Incan tomb, there were balance beams and little flights of stairs, no more than 3 steps, for them to climb.   It didn’t look the greatest fun, but Spanish pensioners looked fit and happy and I bet would beat ours in a race if it came to that.

3. There are worse places than Luton.
As well as magical Madrid, I also visited lovely Luton for the first time recently, I say lovely like a compulsive liar might say it when he really feels the urge to lie about something.  Its not great,  though the taxi driver said it was OK, there are worse places he said, and who could argue with that? Not me, there are planets that if you set foot on, your lungs would boil and your eyes would shoot out your head like a chameleons tongue before the contents of your body cavity rapidly expressed through your arse, propelling you like a shit powered rocket into a low and uncomfortable orbit.

I think Luton is well known for something, is it Bedford vans?

I don’t know, anyway, first of all the airport is a chaotic building site that extends beyond the arrivals area all the way out to the car-park, you get funnelled along between temporary plaster board walls, spat out into the concourse and funnelled some more between temporary fencing to the teeming bus stops, by the way, Luton is like the entry point for  millions  of Eastern European joiners and plumbers, I can only suppose that none of them have learned enough good English by this time  to offer to get the airport finished for a very reasonable price.  The Welcome to England experience isn't over yet though, the  Heras fencing is like a see through maze and it takes no little wits to find the taxi rank and when you do its not clear if you are at the back or the front of the queue.
The airport also seems to be the place where the Arnold Clark of private jets has set up shop.  There is a big Gulfstream place there with dozens of billionaire buses parked like second hand cars for sale minus the bunting and porta-kabin.  Big Trump size ones and tiny little ones like you might buy from Argos, well not that small, but small.
Things got better for a while, I was staying at Luton Hoo Hotel, very nice with grounds so large, when I left, the taxi meter had gone to £5.60 before we had even reached the end of the drive.    I got dropped off at a forgettable train station in what looked a forgettable town centre, circled by the usual retail park filler and hashed by the standard one way systems. There will be worse places no doubt.

More TX3TW next week, maybe.

How was that?  Apologies for the no doubt countless spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, or flourishes as I like to call them, it is 1am though, but, It might get better, I'm ever the optimist.

Lang may yer lum reek

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