Mistakes? I’ve Made a Few

The blog I wrote recently about trying to ward off dementia has reminded Caroline of some things I did in the past that caused her concern as to my acuity.  

As generous as ever, she has been kind enough to remind me of them so that I may share them with you.

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A day or so after we moved into this house in 2012, Caroline had gone to work and I went for a walk around the area to see what was here. When I got back home, I realised that I had gone out without my keys.  It was 10:30 in the morning and Caroline wasn’t due back for over seven hours.  I rang her to explain my predicament and an hour later, she arrived.  She did not look happy; in fact, she looked fairly cross.

“Why did you drop the latch?” she asked.

“What?  I didn’t.”

“You must have done or it wouldn’t be locked.  I left it up when I went.”

She pushed down on the handle and opened the door.  Without saying a word, she got back into her car and set off on the 18 mile trip back to Luton.  

She did say something about it that evening, though.

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We often go to Milton Keynes Theatre.  It frequently has shows that are about to open in the West End or are touring having just ended their West End run.  In January 2022, the theatre’s pamphlet arrived listing the shows later in the year.  Among others, I bought two tickets for a Sunday, ten months later in October, when the Glenn Miller Orchestra were performing.  

There’s a Chinese restaurant next to the theatre and so that evening we ate there, leaving at 7:10 to be in our seats for the start.

It was all surprisingly quiet at the theatre and it wasn’t until we saw a poster that I realised that the only performance that day was the matinee and that had ended some two hours ago.

Oops!

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I will not go into the details of how I once spent two painful hours on my knees, taking apart and reassembling the unit that powered a string of dysfunctional solar powered festoon lights, only to discover that the cable had been severed - almost certainly by Caroline’s over-enthusiastic pruning.

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Yet again this year, I failed to back the winner of The Grand National.  I am not a great follower of horse racing and like many people, virtually the only time I ever bet on a horse race is on the Grand National.

In Caroline’s opinion, the biggest error I have ever made in my life involved the Grand National.  In 2000, we chose four horses to back. 

One of the horses Caroline chose was Papillon, ridden by Ruby Walsh.

“No,” I said, confidently, “That will never win.  No female jockey has ever won the National and there have been a number who have tried.  They rarely even finish the race.  They always seem to fall, refuse or get pulled up.”  Reluctantly, Caroline chose a different horse.  

Papillon won at 10/1.  

How was I supposed to know that Ruby Walsh was actually a 20-year-old man named Rupert?  

The only Ruby I’d ever heard of was Ruby Murray and she was definitely a female singer.  The diminutive terms for Rupert are Roo or Rupe or possibly, Bert.  Certainly not Ruby!  

Every April for the past 25 years, I am reminded of that teeny weeny slip.

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I made a bit of a cock-up on Christmas Day 2013.  There were 14 of us for Christmas Dinner and I planned to serve it at 2 p.m.  

Our next door neighbour was spending Christmas in New Zealand and as our single oven was too small for roasting a 25 pound turkey, a joint of ham and lots of potatoes, he gave me his door key and told me I could use his oven as well.

The turkey would take 7 hours to cook and so at 6:30 a.m. on Christmas Day, I let myself into next door, set the oven temperature to 180°C and put the pre-prepared turkey into the oven.  The turkey would come out at 1:30 in the afternoon to rest for 30 minutes before I began carving.

At 11:30, after I’d made sure everyone had a drink, I went to check on the turkey.  

Disaster!  The oven was not on and it never had been.  I examined it and realised that there were two dials I should have turned.  All I had done was set the temperature.  I hadn’t turned the oven on.

That caused a few problems.

204 Bird Brained

At ten o’clock last night, just as the BBC television news was starting, my cell phone vibrated, indicating that I had a message.  

Rambling:  ‘Cell phone’ is one Americanism that I do use.  It is much easier and quicker to say than “mobile phone” and although a ‘mobile phone’ may be used in the way its name suggests, ‘cell phone’ is just as acceptable as it is named after cellular networks, where service areas are divided into ‘cells’.

Unlike the mobile phone which can never be anything but “mobile phone”, I foresee the day when the single word “cellphone” is recognised just as “telephone” is an established word now. Telephone is derived from tele (at a distance) and phone (sound or language).

I looked at my cellphone screen and saw a message that I had never seen before.  It read:

[Alarm] Anti-theft alarm triggered.  Check your vehicle.

Electric cars like ours have become very popular among car thieves but our model has Immobilisation Technology which is supposed to make their theft more difficult.  Nevertheless, I have read that a determined thief, with the skill and technology, finds it quite straightforward.  

Our car was parked right outside the front door and as I opened the door, hoping that I would not be confronted by a burly figure wearing a hoodie and a Covid face mask, I could hear the wailing of the car alarm and all four indicator lights were flashing.  It was pitch black but as far as I could tell, there was no one there.  The doors and the boot were still locked.  After a minute or two, the wailing stopped.

Twenty minutes later, the alarm went off again.  This time, I rushed out.  The alarm was sounding, the lights were flashing but again, there was no one there.

I thought that possibly, the thief had scurried off as soon as the alarm sounded and was hiding behind a bush somewhere nearby, watching me.  

I devised a shrewd plan: I turned on the outside porch light so that now, the car was visible.  I went upstairs, got a chair from a bedroom and sat on it so that I could look out of the window on the landing and watch the car below.

After a few minutes, the indicator lights started flashing and the alarm sounded, louder than ever.  No one had gone anywhere near the car.  There was clearly some kind of fault and so, we had a problem.  

Five houses are within 50 yards of us and if the car alarm was going off every now and then throughout the night, there would be justified complaints from angry neighbours.  I had to do something and the something I did was to drive the car some 200 yards away and park it a long way from any houses.  At 11:10 p.m., as I went back into the house, I could faintly hear the alarm in the distance.

At nine o’clock this morning, I went to the car to drive to the KIA dealership and get them to fix this irritating and annoying fault.  As I approached it, I was becoming a little worried.  All was quiet.

“Oh no,” I thought.  It’s happening again.  I’ll ask them to fix a fault when that fault seems to have fixed itself.  What if it starts again tonight?

As soon as I reached the car, I felt relief.  The problem wasn’t coming from outside.   I could see through the windows that what was causing all that fuss was inside the car.  A blue tit was on the top of the front passenger seat.

Its movement inside the car when the doors were locked had been what caused the alarm to sound.  How it got into the car, I have no idea but it just sat there, staring at me and it didn’t fly off until I opened the door nearest to it and then it was off and away. 

Problem fixed.

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Talking of birds, this photo shows an interesting fact that I've discovered recently about bird behaviour.

Blue tits in Wavendon prefer to eat to the left.

Both sides of this bird feeder, which is fixed to the outside of a glass patio door, were filled at the same time with sunflower hearts from one packet.  The birds, most of which are blue tits, are clearly drawn to the left side first.

‘Lateralisation’ among birds, akin to being right or left handed in primates, is a known characteristic.  It’s been shown that many parrots tend to be left-footed, meaning they prefer to use their left foot for tasks like holding food and some bird species prefer to use their right foot for picking up food or scratching their beaks. 

Apparently, lateralization in feeding is food-type specific and it somehow impacts on feeding success in wild birds.  Maybe, I’ll fill the feeder with biscuit crumbs next and see how they deal with them.

Interestingly (I think), while primates are usually right handed, orangutans tend to be lefties.