Funerals of septa and octagenarians from natural causes I have known

What did I learn in 2006- don't go to work, or you'll have to walk home. What did I learn in 2012: always keep ice cream at home. You never know when you are going to have a tooth extracted, be put on an icecream diet and find all the shops shut for 36 hours.

'teshuns I have known

My favourite rail station in Londinium is Charing Cross. Reason: The train (the 3:43 fast to Dartford) pulls out of the station straight onta a bridge. The views: On one side- Westminster, the London Eye and Not-so-much-Big-as-Tall Ben. On the other side- St. Paul's, the Gherkin, the Tate Modern power station, and the Embankment. All this through the latticework of rusty girders. Perfect.

In literary terms, Victoria carries the palm. This explains why:

Jack.  [Very seriously.]  Yes, Lady Bracknell.
I was in a hand-bag--a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag,
with handles to it --an ordinary hand-bag in fact.

Lady Bracknell.  In what locality did this Mr. James,
or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?

Jack.  In the cloak-room at Victoria Station.  It was given
to him in mistake for his own.

Lady Bracknell.  The cloak-room at Victoria Station?

Jack.  Yes.  The Brighton line.

Another special 'teshun is Paddington. Only because of the Bear with the battered hat and the marmalade habit who arrived there from Darkest Peru.

And Waterloo is beloved simply because the town by that name in Wallonia is pronounced in the Netherlands as Vaaderloo. Sounds very desi, somehow.

And then of course there's St. Pancras. While it sounds like the kind of place you go to have your intestines rummaged, it's actually a shiny new international train station. Airline-like procedures are followed, but at 10 times the speed. And there's the statue that sends you off to Bruxelles Midi, Gare du Nord Paris and other points continental. From a distance, it looks like a regular farewell. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and suddenly it looks a little less romantic. The woman looks like a man, and the man looks like a Vulcan, minus pointy pinnae.

House hunts I have known..

when you're as peripatetic as i have been, you get used to house hunting. a tip: treat it as a fun way to see the city and meet a few kooks.

kookiest bangalore experience: middle class home in bangalore with a reasonable rent, and a loo without a flush.
i didn't even notice, and moved right in! and then, gave my notice and moved right out.

washington d.c.- very odd experience involving ads placed on a housing website for flats at low rent in great areas. when contacted by email, the putative landpeople asked for a photograph and a message to be recorded at a slow speed on their answering machine. a quick search of the sender's name took me straight to a site for russian mail-order brides.
ye gads!

london- the oddest experience. flats offered for rent in fabulous locations in central london, for a pittance, practically. salivating at the thought, and having learnt nothing from my DC experience, i wrote to an owner, asking for pictures of the flat, and scheduling an appointment to view it. i got a diatribe in my inbox- about how the lady was alone, her husband dead, she didn't live in london and people asking to view the flat never seemed to actually have the money for it. references, bank statements or salary slips were no proof. she wanted money to be transfered about and proof of it sent to her.

i try not to be cynical sometimes, so i charitably ascribed the email to a poor ol soul, lonely and mistrustful.

until i got an email from the next apartment owner. who said that he wasn't in london either and would have to be really sure i was interested in the flat. he found it necessary to add that he had to be with his children, since "there (sic) mother was dead (sick)"

either it's me, or some major mortal coil shuffling off is going on.

phobias i have known

punctophobia- fear that a car tyre has developed a puncture. this usually happens while driving late at night, with nary a pancher repare bhooth in sight. this is a particularly annoying phobia for the other occupants of the car as they are forced to get out, stare at plump tyre and help* change it.

mahiphobia- fears of songs with the word mahi**, mahiya or other variations. i would list the offending songs, but I tremble as i type the words. (retires to another room and gulps down a strawberry smoothie, stiffish). the origin of the phobia can be traced to my fish-eating childhood in hawaii.

incompletophobia- fear of reading books that the author didn't end. austen and her Sanditon, Dickens and his mystery of edwin drood, adams and his doubtful salman, all those "Kafka never completed this work", and the technically-complete-but-but short stories of murakami. very frustrating, though i don't blame the authors for posthumous publication. i blame myself.

parkophobia- the fear of parking underground. partly there's the irrational fear that the building will collapse on top of me, and i'll lie there crushed but alive. and the fairly rational fears that i) i will bump into a pillar while negotiating a cunning turn; and ii) i will forget where the car is parked.

sachypoohobia- fear of watching sachin bat. he might get out any minute! and then what meaning would life hold?

What are the phobias you have known? Comment away..

* not so much helping, as actually doing the thing.

** 25 years of watching hindi films and i have no idea what it means. please, don't tell me.

Bandages i have known

was at the nurse's office last week. the wound in my right palm was cleaned with orange non stinging liquid, to the accompaniement of much clucking. then it was swabbed and dried and a soft cotton pad was laid on it. my entire hand was swaddled with gauze. some sticky plaster was rasped off and liberally stuck all over.

this sent me into bandage-musing-mode..

if i'd been a heroine in a hindi movie in the 70s- 80s, i would stub my toe and be sent to hospital where they would put a cute patti on my head. only the forehead portion would be seen, my long hair would drape well over the rest.

more likely to be in a nurse's office though, is a hero in a movie of the same era. he would hit his knee and get a cute patti on the head with a blob of blood showing on the temple. he would have to be tall to carry this off well- mithun and amitabh were very convincing cute-patti-sporters. nothing says macho, yet vulnerable, like a cute patti on the forehead of a tall hero, eh?

but the puffect bandage scenario would have to be the mother who falls in front of a car, scraping her knee and getting a p. on head. this is a patti of a different ilk - not particularly cute. shaped more like a helmet, it is wrapped around the forehead, sides of face and chin so as to present to the audience the maximum impact of wounded motherhood.

found some bandage-bustingly funny reviews at bollybob. a sample:
"the ultimate fate of every widowed mother in India is to receive a head wound" - from a review of Taarzaan- the wonder car

"Ruby (Amrita Singh) is a notably PECULIAR girl. I say notably, because she's even more peculiar than the characters Amrita usually plays. Bollywood directors loved to see Amrita Singh do two things: flamenco dance and get playfully tortured." from a review of Mard

(the bollybob link was suddenly down, keep trying)

for those of you for whom patti means grandmother, this is a very weird post.
for the rest of you, it's only mildly weird.