Nonchalance Shall Pass.

I was strolling nonchalantly along the banks of the River Severn a couple of days ago, contemplating the bizarre notion that the Forest of Dean, although a mere two hundred metres or so away across the water there, would take me the best part of forty minutes to get to because the nearest bridges are either in Gloucester or via the M4 into Wales.

A nonchalant stroll is an acquired skill, like throwing shurikens or making balloon animals that don't look like sex toys. I've been watching true experts (old blokes) do it, and it requires one to clasp hands together behind one's back, lean to the side and slowly, but forcefully, throw the opposite leg out and around to take a step. At the same time, one must glance up at the sky, then down to the ground, out to the west and then back to the front, all without rushing, before leaning the other way and throwing the other leg out and around for the next step. Every five or six steps, the nonchalant stroller should stop and rotate 180 degrees to ascertain either the position of the rest of his party or, if alone, to nod sagely at the distance already covered. Forward motion is achieved, albeit at the rate of a tortoise on diazepam.

For added effect, one can occasionally blow one's cheeks out and mutter "tum-te-tum", but that is beginning to enter the realms of the fouth dan nonchalant stroller, the type of person who wears stroll fatigues of beige and brown, finished off with leather sandals and light blue socks. Competing at that level would be like entering the Ultimate Fighting Championships and flicking someone's nipple. Viciously. I know my limitations.

Old women can't stroll nonchalantly. Even if they attempt it and do all of the above, they invariably smile benignly and it turns into an amiable meander, which is entirely different.

This is not a bad thing, because the only reason I do the nonchalant stroll is so that I can look at attractive ladies and, if they catch me, I can be completely unfazed because I was looking at other things as well.

You may have thought I was glancing at your chest, but I was also looking west. And is that a stratocumulus up there? Why yes, I believe it is.

Also, boobs.

After an hour or two, I had covered about twenty feet, so I gave up and reverted to normal walking, much to the relief of the people around me who must've thought I was a bad spy.

The river is a marvellous place for musing on stuff. Walking along with the breeze whispering through grass on the banks and the silent flow of the mud-rich waters alongside is a refreshing aid to philosophising. I was taken by the notion that there are things in this world that are mysterious and enigmatic, things that one might never understand even if you were to devote a substantial amount of brain power attempting to reason them out. Infinity, time travel, love, tapirs, and a host other baffling conundra which can be as influenced by subjectivity as revealed by reductionist observation.

Some things we just don't seem destined to understand.

On my walk, I came across one of those things:

I can tell I've grasped your attention with that one.

It was initially brought to my attention by some tourists, who were gathered around it like crows at roadkill. I wandered over, my curiosity piqued and said, as I tend to with crowds blocking my view, "Let me through, I'm a nosy bastard."

The group made way, and I saw the above pictured item.

"Are you local?" a lady asked, well-to-do in slacks and brand new Berghaus jacket, pointing at me with one of those odd metal walking sticks that look like skiers should use them.

"Ar." I said, conforming to stereotype.

"Well, do you know what this is for?" she asked, reasonably. I examined it more closely, seeing that it was a plastic jug which had been screwed to an old picnic table beneath a metal hoop. There was even a little rubber washer around the screw inside to stop fluids leaking out of the jug.


"Aha!" I said, as I dawning realisation hit me like a wet fish.

Unfortunately, it was the dawning realisation that I had no idea.

The crowd leaned forward as one, intent on my revelation as to the function of the thing. I felt bad. Some local had set up a cryptic item to undertake an obscure task, and if I didn't give them an answer these poor tourists would suffer the agonies of non-closure for possibly minutes afterwards. I decided I would make an answer up, and it would relate to one of the local unfathomable pass-times that was relatively common on some parts of the Severn.

"It's for eeling." I told them, matter of factly. I knew people hunted eels up and down the Severn, for reasons best known to themselves. I would suggest for food but, lets face it, only cockernees from Landan eat them.

"Ealing?" someone asked.

"No, eeling." I corrected.

"I thought that was 'elvering'. " another smart arse asked.

"There's no such thing as elves." I pointed out, and looked at the river as though I had spent all my years battling eels in it. They all nodded in grateful understanding and wandered off, apparently not wanting to know how a jug and hoop on a table could possibly be used to hunt eels.

This was a good thing for them, because they can now go home without an unsolved mystery cluttering their minds.

I, however, am not so lucky.

The items pictured are probably not used in the eel-wrangling trade, or even for hunting elves. I looked around furtively and snapped a couple of photos for the Gravel Farm blog.

The loyal readers scattered across the globe will know, I thought. Or at least they will pretend to know and they're not shy about venting their maniacal babblings expert opinions to all and sundry.

So, go on then. Put me out of my misery.

What the hell is it for?

The Mystery of Work

Work has once again got in the way of an appropriate blogging schedule, with the tawdry necessities of feeding and clothing my family forcing me to prostitute too much of my precious time for the interests of others.

I'm very lucky in that I actually enjoy my job, and don't mind going to work, although one or two shifts a month would be preferable, just to keep my hand in. In the absence of a lottery win (made even less likely because I only did the lottery once when it first came out, and gave up as I didn't win even one million quid), I have to make my presence felt three or four times a week, for twelve hours a time. And because I'm a bit skint at the moment, I have to go in even more for the overtime.

It's not very fair, when you've got blogs to write, ukulele's to play, the park to mess about in and camping trips to go on, but the powers that be seem oblivious to the emotion in my emails on this subject. "Not our problem" they reply, and "Please stop emailing the chief exec with your rants." they opine.

I would complain, but they threatened to pay me what I was worth and if they did that I'd probably have to live in a hedge and lick the insides of abandoned crisps packets to survive.

I'm not greedy though. I could get by on just one billion.

Pounds, not crisp packets.

Work then. My presence was felt, and we were clearing the garage out because one of my colleagues is pregnant and therefore has decided that she can't bear the thought of any clutter on the premises whatsoever. It's called nesting, I think.

She was initially threatening to throw all the personal mugs out, including mine, simply because it's washed so infrequently that the build up of tannins inside has left an almost solid block of cup, with a small hole down the centre where the next brew goes, like pushing a test-tube into a cylinder of soft clay.

My argument that it gives a beverage some character if you only rinse a mug out every couple of months or so didn't have quite the appeasing effect I was hoping for, so we diverted her by saying how cluttered the garage was at the moment, and perhaps she should go and have a look.

She did, and then announced that it was no good, it needed clearing and we would all just have to chip in and do it.

Arse.

So, there we were, finding paperwork that had been stored safely in a box under the sink and now resembled something you'd put on a plinth in the Tate Modern and call 'Essence of Chaos", mucking out the cleaners cupboard which is paradoxically the filthiest space in the area, and tentatively opening sacks of bulging items with the faint but tangible fear of finding the King of Rats holding court in it.

There was quite a lot of crap.

There was quite a bit of unidentifiable crap as well. Some of it from vehicles that we hadn't used for years, some from equipment that was now seen as a potential health and safety risk, and the occasional abandoned Tupperware lunchbox with labels proclaiming them to be the property of long dead colleagues. Opening them was a bit like the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where tormented, screaming souls erupt from the pretty box and tear apart Nazi's in a blaze of of mediocre special effects, but apparently can't get through Indiana Jones's closed eyelids.

There was also a BabyBel cheese, which was still edible. Well, as edible as they ever are.

One thing I did find was this:

It felt sort of heavy and expensive, and looked like it belonged to a kit of some sort. If I had to describe it in terms that everyone could relate to, I suppose it was like holding the spine of a robot monkey that had overdosed on diazepam.

I passed it around for people to have a look at, hoping to be enlightened as to it's function. In return, I recieved various explanations ranging from a Homeresque "Ahdunno." to the frankly inspired "It's one of those things you use to, you know, thingy."

The mystery wasn't helped any more when I found another one, so they're either a useful thing or they're breeding.

Any ideas anyone?