The White Caterpillar – Part 2

We last saw Roger of Sicily dumping his scooter in a snowdrift, and setting off on foot to walk home in the blizzard of February 13, 2013.

Part 3 – The First Ice Field

All things considered, I was not as disheartened at the prospect of figuring out how to get home from the outskirts of central Leeds in a snowstorm as you might expect.

Firstly, I was quite well-dressed for the occasion – not a statement I have regular cause to make. I had on waterproof trousers, a water-proof and insulated coat, heavy gloves and – last but not least – a crash helmet. I was only wearing ordinary office shoes though, to which I will have cause for laudatory return to later.

I was unlikely to get too cold. However, walking in all that get up is fairly difficult.

The overtrousers are prone to a continuous downward trajectory, usually settling with the gusset a good six to eight inches below the ideal level. That means the upward lift of the armoured leg is more demanding than when otherwise unencumbered. Melting snow added to the weight.

I quickly gave up on wearing the crash helmet, as it made me look insane. I started off by carrying it, like a lady’s handbag. After half a mile or so, I realised that it now had about an inch of snow in the bottom of it. So I strapped it to my backpack instead.

Do you have a Buff? I have a Buff. It’s like a scarf for people who are not ponces. Mine is black with red flames on, because I am a rock and roll outlaw.

I pulled mine over my head in an LA gangsta bandana style. On viewing my image in a window – so on reflection in two senses – in fact, I looked more like an out-of-breath Hairy Biker Simon King.

Not like this...

...like this

Style, of course, was not my primary concern. Keeping my ears warm was.

So off I went, and I was soon trudging up a hill with no footpath – that is, I was walking in the road as there was no traffic coming at all.

And on and on it went.

I stopped at the occasional bus stop to catch my breath.

Eventually, I glanced behind and there was a bus coming! I started to run to the nearest bus stop.

Running after walking uphill in snow for a mile or so while wearing a lovely warm set of protective clothing was not – I soon discovered – something that made me go any faster. But I carried on anyway.

I’m the kind of person who would rather be half an hour early than a minute late. Knowing that the bus was coming – even if it would have had to suddenly accelerate to light speed to overtake me (a velocity Transdev's fleet has yet, to my knowledge, ever to attain) – I had to get to the bus stop as quickly as possible. Even if (i) that meant I moved in a manner that got me there no more quickly but used considerably more energy and (ii) it meant I had a long wait gasping for breath and watching the distant bus approaching.

I checked the distance I had walked the next day. It was just over a mile. It felt more like ten.

Part 4 – Hell Ride to Stanningley

As the first bus approached, my heart sank – 508!

But what’s that right behind it? Holy shit, it’s only ANOTHER BUS! And a 671!

The 671 goes to Greengates before turning off to Bradford city centre. Greengates is only a couple of miles from where I live. I can catch another bus from there or walk it, I thought. It will be a nice opportunity to catch my breath.

I got on board. The bus was largely deserted. There were maybe another seven or eight people on there.

I was steaming. That’s not some kind of metaphor. I was quite literally wreathed in a mist coming off my body. I doubt it was pleasant for the other passengers.

We had got to the crest of a hill where the road descends to Rodley when another bus driver – without bus – banged on the window.

He told the driver (and a woman passenger heading to Calverley who had by this time attached herself to the driver in a semi-official, self-appointed capacity as co-driver and general source of unsolicited advice) that there was NO WAY we could go down there, as there were a load of buses piled up unable to get out of the bottom of the dip.

And so began our journey to the outer limits.

The outer limits of West Yorkshire bus route 671, at any rate. We continued straight ahead.

Around 90 minutes later, we finally came into Rodley – probably about half a mile from where we had left the route.

We had been on a fairly wide diversion, which I – having nothing better to do than sit and try to dry my gloves, Buff and helmet out – followed closely on Google Maps.

What did we do before Google Maps, ladies and gentlemen? I suppose we got lost more. And were unable to follow and critique the improvisations of lost bus drivers.

Turns out, when heavy snow falls, a lot of people want to get home quickly. And the upshot of this is that nobody gets home quickly, because all the roads immediately grind to a halt under the weight of the extra traffic.

Weirdly, some of the roads we took were completely gridlocked and others were completely empty. Another reason to have Google Maps on at all times – you’re not then restricted to the four roads that everyone knows about.

Kasparek and Harrer: drying out

Returning to “The White Spider” I remembered reading that mountaineers typically resorted to drying out their wet clothes by wearing them, hoping that body heat would do the rest of the work.

Hanging over the back of the bus seat in front of me was clearly not having much of an effect on my gloves, so I put everything back on with the intention of steam cleaning my gear dry.

Very soon, I was shivering with cold but unwilling to take the soaked equipment off, as I would end up even colder.

We passed through Stanningley – past the big camping shop, where I wondered if I had time to hop off the bus and nip in for crampons – and into Farsley. Kids threw snowballs at the bus, as the heroic, off-route driver refused to pick them up. Soon we were crawling into Rodley. Very very slowly.

In the next thrilling and mercifully final instalment, Roger of Sicily returns heroically home – to be confronted with a two-year-old screaming for crisps. 

The White Caterpillar – Part 1

I am reading a book called “The White Spider” at the moment.

Yes, a book! Not an out-of-copyright free Kindle ebook. It was a birthday present.

It is the story of the first ascent of the north face of the Eiger, by one of the party that did it in 1938. By all accounts, it was a pretty unpleasant experience – mollified only by the fact that they, unlike a lot of the other people who attempted to climb it, did not die.

Well, yesterday I experienced my own snowbound odyssey. It wasn’t perhaps quite as steep, or cold, or risky, or indeed historic as Heinrich Harrer’s – but at the time, it felt not too dissimilar.

Even though I did end up on a bus for quite a lot of it.

So I am calling my own adventure “The White Caterpillar”, for the following reasons:

• Caterpillars are less dangerous than spiders (unless eaten)
• Caterpillars are a bit fat and generally unsuited to strenuous physical extertion – like me

I should point out at this point that the White Caterpillar has nothing to do with the “white slug” referenced in The Inbetweeners movie... I was fully trousered – double trousered in fact – the whole time.

Part 1 – The Ascent

I don’t know if anyone else saw it yesterday morning (February 13) but the sky was uncommonly red when I was walking the dogs around 7am. So red, in fact, that everything took on a pinkish hue, much as I would imagine it would in the aftermath of an atomic blast.

In both these sets of circumstances – red sky in the morning and immediately after a nuclear explosion – shepherds are exhorted to take warning. Some people say sailors – I say shepherds.

Alas! I did not take the hint. I merely commented on how pretty the sky was, hopped onto my oft-mentioned scooter and zipped away to work. As per my undertaking at the end of “Horsforth and my balls...”, I was wearing full waterproofs.

Now, it’s about 10 miles by road from my house to my office and the journey in was uneventful.

Part 2 – Leeds to Kirkstall

It soon began to snow. I wasn’t worried. It does that a lot around here, and usually it’s only the last 100 metres of my journey home (ie the road I live on) that causes a problem. Everything else is a main road and they tend to stay clear.

I kept an eye on a planter in the middle of the road outside my windows to monitor the progress of the snow.

First, the soil was coated with snow. That’s nothing to worry about, I thought.

Then the leaves of the flowers went white.

By lunchtime, the cobblestones between the two carriageways was getting a dusting, but the roads themselves were still clear. I had no cause for concern.

I had intended to leave about 2pm, so I could get home before it started to get colder/darker/snowier and so I could get some work done when I got back. I didn't believe that there would be a problem. After all, snow had been forecast - the gritters would have been out...

By about 1.45pm, the snow was encroaching onto the road from the edges and it looked like a blizzard was in progress. I decided that it was now or never. The main roads would still be fine.

I jokingly said to some colleagues as I left that I would probably be dead in 30 minutes.

As soon as I was on my bike, I realised it wasn’t fine.

Visibility was appalling – my helmet was continually steaming up, and even when I could see through it, my vision was impeded by the barrage of snow.

But worse still was the road surface. Maybe half a mile out of Leeds city centre and the snow was being compacted into ice. I was on Burley Road, which is very undulating (not unlike the motion of a caterpillar). I should have gone down Kirkstall Road. Maybe that would have been better.

Vehicles with front-wheel drive were swishing their back ends left and right. Vehicles with rear-wheel drive were only going forward at 10-20 degrees off straight. No one was going more than 10mph.

I was soon going along with both feet on the ground to try to steady my fishtailing back wheel, stopping repeatedly to let anyone coming up behind me pass, so that if I came off there would be no one to run me over and so as not to have anyone lose control and run into the back of me.

By the time I got to Kirkstall Hill, I was – for want of a better expression – shitting myself, as cars and lorries skidded around and ploughed into one another. I gave up on Kirkstall Lane, rang Elvira – who was expecting me to get home so she could leave Tancred with me while she picked Roger Jr up from school.

There was no way I could make further progress. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of losing control and coming off my bike – which I was. I was more worried about someone else losing control and hitting me.

I pushed the bike on foot into a car park – approximately 300 metres and it took me at least 15 minutes as I had no grip from my shoes and the bike weighs about 18 stone. It was like dragging an unconscious fat man on a skateboard across an ice rink, with a runaway Zamboni careering towards you.

I locked up, and set off on foot.

Come back tomorrow for the second exciting episode of Roger of Sicily’s attempt to get home in bad weather!

Top five things I look for in a barber

I am a simple man with simple hair. This is all I need from the person who cuts it:

1. No appointment necessary
2. No queuing
3. Under a tenner
4. Comfortable with long silences
5. Doesn’t smell bad

The place I went to in Leeds city centre yesterday fulfilled all these conditions. Plus, he had a jar of product on the counter called “Cholesterol”.

Coming soon: the promised second part of "How to Win School Appeals"...

London – Not as bad as expected

A few weeks ago, I scoffed at the thought of going to London during the Olympics. And right now, I am on my way home after having done so.

Like most people whose sole window on reality is what they see on TV and read on the internet, I had expected something resembling all-day Tokyo rush hour supervised by the Army with corporate blackshirts snatching anyone who looked out of place through secret doors - an early glimpse of the UK’s inevitable descent into dystopian, totalitarian nightmare.  

However, it wasn’t like that at all. It was much like any other day in London. That’s not saying much, but it certainly wasn’t 1984.

To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed not to see a single missile launcher or have to dive out of the way of a speeding dignitary in a Zil Lane. Indeed, the number of people in tracksuits I saw was no higher than a typical day’s viewing in Leeds.

I even saw a little shop with a set of Olympic rings in the window. I took a picture – no doubt scaring the shit out of the owner, taking me for a LOCOG goon – but I thought twice about sticking it on here. Let it never be said that Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. is a snitch. Bloggers and social media are already doing more than their fair share of turning the whole populace against the idea of freedom of speech.

Well, here’s my own little marketing ambush:

If you like the London 2012 Olympic Games, give me some of your money.

If you don’t hear from me again, assume I have been disappeared into the back of a migraine-inducing purple van.

From my experience today - apart from the splashes of lurid magenta besmeared across everything -  you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole event was actually being produced on a sound stage at Pinewood or in Pixar’s studios and that the entire idea of the Olympics actually “taking place” in London was some elaborate Baudrillardian joke.

While controversy surrounding the Games has focused on the cost and the restrictions on Londoners’ freedoms, for me there are some major issues that have not been given due attention:

1. Barbarians are allowed to take part – this is in clear breach of the Olympic spirit. Was their Greek even tested?

2. Competitors are also not naked

3. Total lack of chariot-based events

4. No oxen were sacrificed at all during the opening ceremony. Like myself, the gods are likely to have found Trevor Nelson’s commentary a poor substitute

Seriously LOCOG, Zeus is a volatile deity at the best of times. 

He has “enforcement officers” of his own, and I’d hate to see Paul McCartney get struck by lightning.  

Architecture and Morality

I have been wandering around Leeds city centre at lunchtimes since the start of the year.

Given that one can only get so far and still have enough time to get back to the office, as you can probably imagine, the novelty soon wore off.

However, seeing as I am doing it for exercise – having cancelled my gym membership at the end of the year – I have been persevering with it, while trying to find new ways of making it interesting.

First off, I am listening to my Michel Thomas German language course a lot. All I need to take this to the next level (as we say whilst inwardly dying in management meetings) is find someone else who wants to speak German and start speaking to them. In German.

Right now, all I’m doing is walking about whispering to myself – which is, of course, the international language of the mental patient.

Secondly, I am looking up.

Most of the people shuffling around the city streets rarely raise they eyes above the level of the shop-fronts. I, however, have been looking at the uppermost parts of Leeds’ buildings and I’ve reached two conclusions:

1. There is a hell of a lot of vacant commercial property in the city centre - so if you need business premises, you should be able to get a very good deal.

2. If you flooded or buried Leeds to a depth of about 15 feet, you'd actually be left with quite a beautiful place.

There are some really fascinating buildings around which you would never give a second glance to because of the staggeringly banal contents of their ground floors. The most extreme example of former "oooh" and present "meh" surely has to be the one-time Jubilee Hotel on The Headrow – now the "Red Leopard" lapdancing establishment.

My personal favourite is St Paul’s House in Park Square (right). It looks like the Doge’s Palace, only with an “office space to let” sign pinned to the outside.

The Leeds City Markets building (at the top) would not look out of place in Paris or Vienna, despite being inhabited primarily by people offering to unlock stolen mobile phones. And the Town Hall is also a thing of beauty.

THEN, you look at what’s in between these brilliant examples of Victorian ambition and craftsmanship and you realise that if the Victorians were wrong about one thing, it was that history moves forwards towards a better future. 

Pretty much every building from the 20^th century onwards looks horrendous, cheap and nasty.  The court buildings look like they’ve been made out of Lego, for example. And they probably have. 

“Ah, here he goes again, imagining the past was SO MUCH BETTER than the present”, I hear you say. “The reason why old buildings look better than modern ones is that the crap old buildings fell down or were knocked down years ago.”

Please excuse any Prince Charles tendencies here. Some modern buildings are indeed impressive and beautiful in their own way. The Gherkin in London is quite something.

But – to me - they are things you look at and say “that’s a clever statement” rather than “that is a work of art”. Same as the difference between Tracey Emin’s bed and a Caravaggio.

 So, present-day architects: more stone-work please. More domes. More intricacy, less concept please. OK?

Tetley Brewery - or what's left of it

Another thing you notice about Leeds’ buildings is how many of them are completely derelict. I’m not talking about boarded up shops – I mean entire city blocks of buildings going to ruin. The whole area just north of the bus station, for example, around Templar Street and Lady Lane.

Clearly, no one is going to buy them or rent them in their present condition. So why not demolish them?

In fact, here’s an early policy for my future dictatorship. If a building is left unoccupied for more than a year, it has to be EITHER opened up to homeless people OR blown up and returned to nature until someone can think of something worthwhile to put there instead. 

Dockland of the Dead

On days like today you could go snowblind from the sun’s reflection off the pavement.

That, and all the clammy white flesh on display around Leeds – you could be forgiven for thinking there had been a mass break-out from the veal farm.

Although my skin is fairly resistant to sunburn, my eyes are another story. I think I must be part owl or have ginger retinas or something. When the sun comes out, one or both of my eyes start to ooze pretty quickly.

Nevertheless, the sudden appearance of the solar deity’s winged chariot has turned my daily tramp around Leeds into an almost enjoyable experience. And not a day goes by on my wanderings on which I don’t learn something.

For example: getting punched in the face is clearly a much more commonplace event than I had previously thought, given the number of men and women staggering around the city centre with either black eyes or missing teeth.

Anyway, today I wandered down to Clarence Dock.

Apart from the Royal Armouries Museum, there is practically NOTHING there any more. The store directory website has four things on it...one of which is the Royal Armouries Museum.

It is pretty mainstream to bemoan the lingering death of British high streets, strangled by chain stores, stranded by traffic swarms and befouled by street drinkers, chuggers and other sundry mentalists.

Here is just the latest jeremiad I came across – in which former TV gobshite Wayne Hemingway puts a positive spin on it all by arguing that the ruination of city centres will “open up space for quirky start-ups”. Hilarious. Let them eat cake Wayne!

But spare a thought for the “luxury mixed developments” like Clarence Dock. The high street might be dying, but in terms of deadness this was like the goddam pyramids. No shops. No people. Just a barge decked out to look like a U-boat.

Which, I have to say, looked AWESOME. 

Things we did on our holidays - pt 2

Why can't air travel be more like rail travel?

By that, I don't mean "please double the prices, delay more aircraft and cram them so full of standing passengers that you can hardly breathe, let alone move, and god help you all if there's an accident".   

No. What I mean is, why is it beyond the wit of man to make air travel a walk-on affair?

Obviously, there are a few good security reasons that slow things down unavoidably. Then on top of those, there are the ludicrous post 9/11 overcompensations introduced for the sake of being seen to do something, regardless of any actual effect on security.

You know what I'm talking about. On going through Leeds/Bradford airport on our holiday:

1. Three-year-old Roger Junior was frisked down and made to take his shoes off, because he was the nth passenger through the security scanner. I was not subjected to any kind of search. Now, while Roger Jr can be a handful, I'm fairly sure it's beyond his capabilities to hijack or bring down a passenger jet.
2. We had to hand over some unopened cartons of juice – presumably to be destroyed in a secure environment where there would be no danger of hazardous spillage.

All of which begs the question why it's perfectly acceptable to carry anything you like onto a train without being checked. Many a train I have been on has seen the passengers all shut in and unable to get away for longer than a lot of long haul flights...

OK, you've also got to allow some time from bags being handed over to get them onto the plane. And clearly separating all the bags that obviously belong to the same family and making sure they go into different compartments of the hold - so as to ensure the maximum gap between the first and last piece coming out on the luggage carousel - doesn't just happen by itself. It requires careful planning as well as a powerful throwing arm.

So that's two sets of quasi-legitimate reasons.

I suppose part of this is our own fault. Check in usually opens around two hours before departure for European flights – but they close 40 minutes or so beforehand. Guess which timescale I have worked on EVERY SINGLE TIME I've been on an aeroplane? Correct. We always get there for the opening of check in, guaranteeing ourselves:

1. As many queuing experiences as can be crammed into a day.
2. Maximum waiting time – relieved only by the opportunity to buy things we did not feel the need to pack when considering what to take with us or which we were not allowed to bring through security.  

As long as you've got seats reserved, it doesn't matter when you check in, does it? How I wish I could be one of those people whose names are announced over the tannoy, warning them that the plane is waiting for them.

But I can't. I am too English, too middle class and – let's just admit it – still too in awe of the fact of air travel to treat it casually.

Airlines and airports want you to still believe that air travel today is like air travel in the 1950s. It's luxurious! It's exclusive! Cabin crew are there to feed you grapes and champagne, not to hard sell you wilted sandwiches and high street perfume at astronomical prices! Fly on a plane and be part of the jet set, queue for 20 minutes every time you want a piss and then get dumped on a wind-blasted airstrip miles from your final destination! I don't know about you, but I fall for it every time. 

Wasps of the road

When Piaggio named their new scooter model the "Vespa" back in 1946, they were definitely onto something.

Because scooters are indeed the wasps of the road. We're noisy, agile and very irritating.

Plus, if you hit us, we're almost certainly going to die instantly and leave a big sticky mess.

On my scooter, I like to imagine myself a graceful Mediterranean teenager zipping in and out of the traffic along the seafront in Cannes, even to the point of singing the "Papa/Nicole" Renault Clio music to myself.

It helps draw my attention away from the awful fact that I am an overweight man in his mid-30s, going to sit in an office all day, crawling up to some traffic lights on an industrial estate in Leeds.

That's not me on the right (no helmet), but it's slightly more suggestive of what you see out on the roads in the UK than the other picture.

Postscript:

"Vespa" is Italian for wasp - in case that was not clear at any point.

Hail to Alan Cartridge

This splendidly-named printer shop is right by Leeds-Bradford Airport. This kind of ingenuity in retail is highly worthy of laudation.

What's even better is that their website makes no attempt to capitalise on the joke. Maybe it's not a joke. Maybe the owner is called Alan Cartridge. Who knows?

Anyway, it is infinitely superior to any use of the word "plaice" in the name of a chip shop, or any kind of punning hairdresser's title – and I include in that my own (imaginary) chain of Weimar cabaret-themed barbers, "Mein Herr".

Sadly I don't have a picture of my absolute favourite-named shop in my home town of Boston – "I Can't Believe it's Not Stolen".

I do however, have this one (above, if the reference to "this" is overly confusing), also from Boston. I pity the fool who buys cheap underlay!

By the way, I now have a Twitter account for this blog, under the handle @RogerofSicily if you're into that kind of thing. Become my follower and I will lead you to salvation! All I require is 10 per cent of your gross earnings, for life.

Summer has set in with its usual severity

There's only one thing worse than an otherwise-healthy person complaining about back pain, and that's an otherwise-healthy person complaining about hay fever as well.

For me, the joy that the passing of winter and the onset of spring bring is short lived.

Much like the people of Leeds, who take the first glimpse of the sun a trumpet call ordering them to go out wearing as little as possible – within days of the annual six months of guaranteed gloom coming to an end, every plant in the UK is belching out its filthy spores.

And every year, I forget this fact during the winter and long for the days when the only time I spend outdoors (going to and from work) will not be conducted under cover of darkness.

As soon as they arrive, I am incapacitated by a host of respiratory problems that would put an inbred bulldog with the flu to shame.  

Apparently 12 million people in this country suffer from hay fever, and conventional wisdom seems to be that this figure is constantly rising. Certainly, year after year more of my friends and family who had never experienced hay fever before say that they've got it now.

Maybe that's just to shut me up and rebuff my demands for sympathy. I don't know.

I've had it since I was about seven years old when a friend and I hacked a rotten tree stump to pieces (that was how children entertained themselves in early 1980s Suffolk – incredible, innit?). My eyes blew up to the size and colour of tennis balls, I was rushed to hospital, issued with eye drops and nasal spray and I haven't looked back.

So I know what I'm talking about.

For once.

Still, predictable as its appearance is, hay fever never ceases to surprise me with its innovations.

In the last couple of years, I have started to come out in a rash on my legs if I walk through long grass in shorts. At this rate, by the time I'm 50, I won't be able to think about plants without my throat caving in and suffocating me from anaphylactic shock.

I realise that my previous excursions into palaeobiology have been somewhat controversial, but surely the only threats posed to our primitive ancestors from the vegetable kingdom were:

• Trees falling on them
• Falling out of trees
• Things and people falling out of trees onto them
• Assault by hostile plant-based life forms from other planets (eg triffids, pod people, Audrey 2 etc)

Grass, flowers and shrubs, then, have always been justly regarded as Mostly Harmless.

Unless - as the underlying implication in most commentary on the matter seems to be - people are just getting more feeble over time, it is reasonable to assume that people have suffered with hay fever throughout history.

However, the only instance I can find (from five minutes of Googling, which is what passes for research here at ODHSNM) of hay fever playing any significant role in historical events is as follows.

In 1925, Werner Heisenberg had a really bad bout and he went to Heligoland by the sea to recover.

Getting away from quantum pain-in-the-arse Niels Bohr for a few weeks gave him the opportunity to write "Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen" – which set the foundations for matrix mechanics and gave us the Uncertainty Principle. Which is something to do with science.

That's it. And he could have been planning on going on holiday anyway.

So, this is by way of an appeal. Let's uncover the hidden history of allergies and prove that we're not just modern weaklings. I want to know that Henry V sneezed his way through Agincourt; that Christopher Columbus came out in a nasty rash within hours of setting foot in the Americas; and that Julius Caesar didn't see Brutus coming because he was rubbing his itching eyes like a crazy person.    

Any takers? Meanwhile, here's the...

Postscript: I was going to call this article "Summertime and the living is sneezy" but Google returns 54,500 results for this particular pun. 

You don't understand it because you're an idiot

Just returned from two (working) in London, where people understand that the barriers at railway stations require you to put your ticket in, take it out and then walk through the gate that opens.

Ticket barriers were installed in Leeds about two years ago, and STILL every day thousands of people stand gaping at them like a dog presented with a tin opener: they know that this strange contraption in some way holds the key to getting what they want, but making it work is simply beyond their cognitive capabilities.

As a result of this, at rush hours there are at least two rail employees stationed at the gates opening them up for people who can't work out the whole "put the ticket in the slot" puzzle – one by one, upon the presentation of their ticket.

Naturally, this leads to a colossal build-up of people because instead of using 15 or so gates, the majority of rail travellers use two.

Like the prehistoric fish that first decided to chance their arm on the whole land-dwelling lark, a few brave souls then have free rein over the rest of the vacant gates.

Unfortunately, most of them end up metaphorically gasping and drowning in the fresh air of their new environment – trying to stick the ticket into the wrong hole, or simply gazing at the machine as if instructions for use will shortly appear on it.

Typically, I end up behind one of these people. Up they go, walking brisky and confidently towards a gate. "This person knows what they're doing", I think as I fall into line with them.

And then...stop.

Dum-de-dum...Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal....Hmmmm... what is this curious device blocking my way? It has a picture that looks a bit like that bit of cardboard I was given earlier on it by that man in the blue hat. I wonder where that is now? Maybe it's in one of my pockets. Or my handbag/wallet/purse, perhaps. Or maybe it's in the sky somewhere up there. I have no idea what to do with it if I do actually find it, but hopefully it will all become clear if I just stand here...

I express my rage and frustration at this state of affairs by sighing and tutting quietly when I'm sure no one is looking. How I long to simply hurl them bodily aside yelling "YOU DO IT LIKE THIS!!!"

Thank god they don't have them at Shipley. The locals would be round with pitchforks and torches in a flash.

Talking of dogs (which, you may recall, at one point earlier in this piece, I was) - if it's true that people come to look like their dogs, then there must be a hell of a lot of overweight basset hounds living in Leeds. Badoom-TISH!