Let's Talk Crazy

Well, bye bye warm and sunny weather, hello cloudy and cold. So glad Gareth cut the grass yesterday afternoon. Poor Tortie looking glum went to bed in her box of straw without eating the lettuce or even the dandelions I brought back for her. 

A day of interesting - surreal at times - conversations that felt like swimming through mud as I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. 

It was after walking in the park, where Rufus met his furry friend Connie and enjoyed chit chat (bow wow?) and crazy zoomie chase, that we decided  to walk to the retail park. In Hobbycraft, as I looked for watercolor brushes, I fell into the strangest conversation with a chap who initially opened a dialgue with Rufus - and I will never know whether I met the most interesting man in England, or Walter Mitty, or someone who just enjoyed entertaining a gullible stranger with tales of the fantastic. 

Light hearted and articulate throughout our conversation, he told me that  he cannot draw, (we were by all the sketching materials) but he can play the piano - his forte is jazz - but these days plays more guitar. His mother was an international concert pianist. As a child he lived on a yacht with his father until it was destroyed at sea somehow, although the cat on board survived.   He himself has retired from a professional life as a yacht master in the UK sailing all over the world and teaching these skills to others.  No, he can't write his memoirs cos he can't spell having only gone to school for a total of four years. Oh, and the final Dali moment - in the middle of all this bizareness, a young woman came up to me to ask if I thought the blue ribbon she had in her hand would make a good bow for her project. Calling me by name, she said she thought I could give advice as she knows I am creative (bless). The utter bewilderment on my face prompted her to then introduce herself as one of my niece's friends !  I was so embarrassed - I've only met her once before, for twenty minutes - and the context was so, well, bizarre that I just didn't recognize her.  Anyway, the blue ribbon would make a nice bow I told her, we exchanged pleasantries and then I continued listening to stories about cats on boats and jazz piano till Rufus, made it clear he'd like to go home whereupon the man cheerily said 'toodle-oo' and strolled out of the shop.

Toodle-oo? Really?

Conversation of a more cerebral kind filled my evening when Maddy came round for another 3 hours session on her uni assignment. Her topic is the impact of globalization on international private security companies about which I know less than nothing. However, the academic structure of the assignment, is familiar to me and I am able help her with that. How to write, not what to write.  We also laughed about the blue ribbon incident with her friend Megan who'd already told Maddy about it!  I am still embarrassed.  I'm a crazy woman. It was a Crazy Day.