Category: Pastime

Alone In A Bar?

What If You Are Alone In A Bar?

Queue the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – not in a bar anyway! This post will help you find your way down those rabbit warren back streets and alleyways of life.

Take care if you see a woman or man sitting alone in a pub or bar. Not me, of course, because I keep myself to myself anyway and bring my own book to read if I am not meeting anyone.

But if someone (else) starts to listen to your conversation with others and then joins in with their own tales, you can be pretty sure that, before long, they will try to separate one of you from the general conversation. Next thing, they will be telling their life story. And then pretty soon you will want to lie down in the dark, maybe with a damp flannel over your head, listening to Leonard Cohen while visions of a possible afterlife float through your head.

One of those people came into my orbit on Saturday night when I went to meet friends in the local pub and we were discussing local affairs (as you do!) with a couple of other friends who just happened to turn up too.

Within ten minutes I had learned that my new Best Friend worked for a local utility, that the said local utility had saved millions by changing their location (fascinating!), that she liked camping out alone in rented motor homes on managed sites and that she was thinking of going to a local beauty spot for a  holiday in a couple of weeks’ time.

I also learned what other sites, National Parks and beauty spots she had visited and which ones were accessible by long distance bus services – remind me to travel by train in future! Totally nothing wrong with going to places on your own – I do it all the time – but keep it to yourself! Now, where did I put that Leonard Cohen CD…?

Retired

t shirt with caption

Favourite t shirt

Isn’t it just great when you are free as a bird and don’t HAVE to do anything? But if you have empty moments in your life, how about filling them with a … PASTIME?

Some of you may feel that you already have enough in your life with activities such as photography, knitting, cooking, crocheting, feeding the piranhas, watching paint dry, but TRUST ME –you will need a PASTIME that can offer hours of amusement, especially if you don’t want to be used as a child minder / taxi service by your offspring / grandchildren / neighbours!

Why not become a film critic?

I recently went to see ‘Meet Me in St Louis’, starring Judy Garland, and the screening was well attended – mainly by people who were old enough to have seen the film when it was originally shown in 1945.
Basically, the plot revolves around Judy Garland and her sisters who lead a lovely, comfortable, upper-middle class existence in St Louis at the turn of the 20th century in the year leading up to the World’s Fair to be held in 1904. (I assume the World’s Fair is rather like the World Series in baseball, where no one else other than the US takes part.) Judy and her elder sister have their eyes on two young men whom they hope to marry, although the young men in question know nothing of these plans. The story takes us through the seasons of 1903 from summer (sunny), through autumn (sunny but with fewer leaves on the trees) to winter (sunny but with snow) and eventually into spring of 1904 (sunny with lots of flowers). There are lots of parties and jolly japes, plus a rather creepy Halloween scenario where the youngest daughter proves to be a bit of a madam who throws flour into the face of a neighbour (she also likes burying dolls in the garden and chopping the heads off snowmen) and the local children, totally unaccompanied by any responsible adult, build a bonfire in the middle of the street. This is a ‘feel-good’ film with a happy ending.

Watching films and writing about them on your blog will keep you far too busy for anyone to dare ask you to run errands or drive them anywhere.