Sunday 29 November 2015

Breezing Along


As well as hailstorms  ( lovely photo in the local paper of hockey match brought to a standstill last weekend  ) , there's been a decidely BRISK wind all week ... at one point today , the easterly wind was blowing so hard along the canal bank I had my bike brakes on in panic . It didn't make any difference ... I was jet-propelled . Had it not been for the supermarket entrance , I'd be crossing the German border about now !

 Apart from occasionally breaking the sound barrier , I've been methodically buying presents .
Boxes of sweets and bathproducts ... or , as they're referred to in December , confectionery and toiletries . Stray bits of Lego . Pretty books  and tins of tea . Treats . Basically the things that the people you're giving them to will be buying for you . Even encountered a friend on the hunt for a milk-chocolate iPhone ....

In amongst all this though , I did find the time , at last , to go to the Princessehof and admire the C20th ceramics exhibition . Nothing terribly exciting but if anyone wants to give me this 

 
or this

 
or this child's teaset

 
or these


for Christmas , I'd accept graciously . As always , the 20's and 30's stuff is much more striking than modern china .

But the most cheering part of the week had nothing to do with treats or trips ... it was a ten minute bus ride that ended up taking twenty five . The bus had just pulled away from the stop outside the theater when there was an unholy howl from the back and everyone started shouting . Someone seemed to be having an epileptic attack . The driver stopped and ran back to check ... and one of a noisy , skirmishing group of young lads in hoodies and gravity defying jeans stopped horsing about , calmly pulled out his 'phone , called for an ambulance , gave concise directions and a coherent description of the symptoms and put his 'phone back in his pocket . Even his mates looked impressed . I'd like to see him in ten years time . Once the ambulance had come the patient had recovered , so the crew , finding out that she lived alone , took her back to her flat to make her a cup of tea and settle her in  .

7 comments:

colleen said...

Lovely story. Gives you hope. Beats toiletries any day

love those cupcakes said...

Well done, that lad. And well done you for all the present buying. As for your speeding bike, it's brought me out in a sweat.....

rachel said...

How terrifying, being blown along like that. My very thin sister in law was once blown across an eight-lane highway in Toronto by a fierce wind, as she waited for the pedestrian lights to change....

English Rider said...

I saw my little sister blown from her bike, in front of me, as we rode to school in Holland. There's not much to break the wind in such flat lands. I also remember rain that froze when it hit the ground as the temps dropped. That's where we learned to put our socks on the outside of our shoes to be able to walk home. Skating on the frozen canal was fun!

Friko said...

Being blown about was fun here too. Walking up on the bailey with Millie was heart-stopping. I say ‘walking’ but what we did can only loosely be termed walking. At one point I held on to the back of a bench and had to give myself a stern talking-to to let go and cross the table top bit and get down the ramp to a more safe point of the castle grounds.

Millie didn’t turn a hair, well, except those the gale turned, of course.

Jenny Woolf said...

The black and white stripy ...whatever it is .. . has won my heart. I don't really mind what it is. The hoodie wearer was probably a medical student. You can't take anything for granted these days....

Jenny Woolf said...

Oh, and thank you for my comment. I would imagine Mick Jagger was a nice middle class little boy at one time. Am I right?