Odd People

I've decided I am drawn to odd people. This morning at the train station there was the strangest little fat man. He was only slightly taller than 5 feet, in his fifties, with a flat hat, and wearing a watch on both wrists. He was like a cartoon character. It was only his appearance was definitely strange of course. I didn't speak with him, but he could have been tediously normal in every other way. I wanted to ask him why he wore two watches, but apart from the fact that it may have been a rude question, I would have been so upset had he given me a rational answer and turned out to be just another ordinary human. I want to believe that one of his watches didn't work but was given to him by his father who told him the titanium case would protect him from werewolves or something. It would have been so dissapointing to hear that he had a daughter in Borneo and he used the second watch to check her timezone.

On Saturday, British Heritage had a special, "everything is free" day. This is not a bad thing. British Heritage run lots of historic sights around Britain. The only problem was that it was badly advertised. I heard about it at 10am on Saturday and went straight to the web sight to find somewhere close to visit. Unfortunately everyone else in Britain did the same thing and the web sight was almost unusable. In the end I gave up. We had planned other things for Saturday anyway. We painted the conservatory and the only wooden window frame in the house, all ready for winter.

Sunday we went out to Corsham Court. The dargon likes historic houses and castles, because they just don't have them in Taiwan. It was a pretty good day. It wasn't free, but it's not a British heritage sight, so it wouldn't have been free on Saturday either. They had an enormous collection of Italian art which must be worth literally millions. I made a complete arse of myself. Pointing to a high painting I asked the guide, "I don't want to sound like a Philistine, but what's that guy up there doing holding the huge head?" "That's David and the head of Goliath", I was told. Oh, the irony.