Because I'm Ian

It's still raining, although the chap who was coming on Monday to touch up up a few chips and scratches on my car did actually make it today, so that was a good start. Actually that wasn't the start, the start was a 9:30am call from Mother to pick her up from my sister's where she had spent the night after they had been to my Barry Manilow loving Aunt's house for dinner and and girly night chatting in the conservatory; not a musical conservatory, just one of those glass things that you have attached to the back of your house. Quite hot in summer and bloody freezing in the winter and possibly just about bearable in this weather.
I digress (surprisingly), so I went to get her, she asked if it was possible to go out on a shopping trip to try and find a particular garment that my sister had purchased for her from a certain high street retailers catalogue. The neck was too big and so Mum wanted a size smaller. Of course the shop didn't have it, the lady helping us was very....helpful, but every time the dear thing checked a stock level in her shop or another she insisted on telling us that the stock system was 24 hours behind. I wouldn't mind but she explained this 4 times in a terrible whiny dialect that in synonymous with the Potteries (for anyone not from the UK - and possibly a few from the UK - the Potteries is the area of North Staffordshire which encapsulates the 6 towns of Stoke-on-Trent, and makes pottery surprisingly enough - Doulton, Wedgwood etc.). The dialect, although softer now in the older generation than it was was I was a child, is as confusing for the outsider to understand as Geordie or Glaswegian, this is not a bad thing, just an observation. It does, unfortunately, sound horribly unintelligent and dare I say even moronic though (this is an observation and a bad thing). Whereas the other 2 I mentioned do sound lilting and somewhat charming.
I managed to go shopping for a few groceries with only #4.20 (where is the sodding pound sign?) in my pocket, which meant I could only buy what I needed so that saved me a few quid.
Next I went to get my hair cut, granted this was done on a bit of a whim and was not at all thought out. I now have a summer hair cut, rather like a U.S. Marine, not a fresh recruit mind you, it's short around the side and the back and with a bit of length on top. More akin to a Colonel or a Major, you know someone who has been around a while and does not have to have the degrading stubbly slap head whilst yelling Hoo Yah! every thirty seconds. Why do they do that? It can't work very well in the field approaching the Taliban can it? Imaging crawling across the Afghan dessert singing, "I don't know but I've been told, blah blah something that rhymes with told......Hoo Yah Sarn't Major" they would get shot to shit doing that!
So, my car is shiny, my head is shiny (in parts), it's still raining, Mum didn't get a new top and N**t's stock control system sucks as it can't track anything in a shorter time frame than 24 hours.
By Jove you live and learn don't you?

So, home again, home again, lah dee dah. It would be lovely if it were not for the fact that it has pee'd down nearly everyday for a week, I mean it is seriously wet out there. For those of you reading this (if anyone is reading this) living outside the UK who may think "It always rains in England, it's what it does!" Well yes and no; granted it does rain a lot but not as much as you think. Scandinavia should be especially grateful to the UK as we are the first landfall the weather systems make as they come up the Atlantic and hence we break the weather, get the rain and cloud and they get all the sun in summer, at least we have daylight in the winter.
Anyway, it doesn't always rain here, it just seems that way as it rains whenever you (whoever you are) visit. This truly is one of the most beautiful places on earth when the sun is shinning, there is nowhere like the UK on a hot balmy summer's day no matter where on the island you may be.
Mind you, as I said, it has pissed down for a week and a couple of days already and that is quite enough thank you. Especially when I have only been in the country that long on this vacation, it really is enough.
It now looks like I shall be back on the ship by the last week in August, two months on the Symphony and then two months on the Serenity is not too bad, a little change of scenery to keep the boredom away.
That's enough for now, it's time to make a meatball sandwich, set up my new printer, pour a glass of wine and settle down to read a little more Christopher Hitchens. You never know, I may even have a wander up to the pub, rain or not it is summer you know.
Ian