Busy Sunday

I didn't see much of this today.  Apparently there was a lot of it about but I could not see much of it.  As I slouched down the road to St Paul's I noticed it in between dodging the Sunday drivers.  It was there above me but as the cold wind was on my back and I was hurrying slowly along I did not take time to look.  If I look up I note someone always removes the pavement from beneath me or sticks a kerbstone in front of me and then enjoys the sight of my prone body flattened on the pavement.  On the way back after a jolly good morning I met the gale force wind and again avoided looking up and catching frostbite.  So that was the closest to seeing blue sky all day.
The reason was simple, football!
As I microwaved a healthy dinner of something or other I set up to watch the English Conference play-off.  However some Italian stuff showing a feeble A.C. Milan came first, how the mighty have fallen, and then the English game.  However at three thirty I had to leave these big galloots kicking lumpsout of one another and move to Ibrox where Rangers and Queen of the South played football almost as it ought to be played.  The almost arises because Rangers won which has depressed Scottish football fans everywhere.  Gallant Queens lost in spite of their talents.
So the next game arrived within minutes just leaving me time to cook my tea and settle down for Alloa v Forfar Athletic.  For years the term 'Athletic' has been a bit of a joke around Forfar but no longer, leading three one from the first leg all they had to do was stop Alloa scoring.  They failed and lost four three on aggregate.  However I enjoyed watching it as they slugged it out in the rain over Clackmannanshire, indeed so enjoyable was this that even Wullie Collum as referee could not do anything wrong, his decisions were correct in my view and that is a shock!  He is not known as 'Gollum' for nothing!

So now all has finished I look out the window and high above the clouds were gathering for the rain that promises to cover us all week.  So I saw the blue sky at last.  Naturally as I write this it has gone and darkness creeps towards us as the sun dips below the horizon and the clouds join together to form one large gray cloud.  
As I look to the filthy gray sheets that once were white when I put them on the bed all those days ago, or is that weeks, I note that Australia will be heralding the dawn in the next hour or so.  How typical of them to wish to be first at the bar!  
A couple I knew went to China in 1935 as missionaries right in the middle of the country.  To contact home somewhere in south London a letter would have to be sent.  This would travel by boat for around a month arriving at the destination somewhat crumpled.  The contents would be digested (by this I mean read, not eaten), understood and answered.  The answer would board ship, probably at London or Southampton docks, and cruise its way slowly back to Chinaland.  Within two months, or maybe three communication would have been achieved!  Marco Polo would have been happy!
Today a phone call from the middle of China, if not interrupted by the secret police, would bring two people together in minutes.  An email would inform over vast distances, and some use 'Skype' for face to face contact over the same distances, how the world for us has changed and improved!  I never cease to marvel that contact is so easy today.  Rich folks travel these distances within twenty four hours, not months, however I still take an hour and a half to get fifteen miles into the big towns by bus!

Australia are you there?  USA are you there?  Operator, operator, I've been cut off!


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