It all started innocently enough as I saw 3 magpies on the side of the road. That was it, I thought, three for a girl, I thought...that'll be me - I'm a girl (well I used to be one anyway...I guess I'm a bit more womanly these days...)
I must admit, I wonder about magpies as well. I think when I was a child (about 100 years ago) there really weren't that many magpies about and I've often thought that that was why the one for sorrow verse was invented. The strange thing is that these days, there seem to be lots and lots of magpies about -of course, plenty of single ones but also lots of 2's, 3's and more and I think if they were really so common when the verse was written, why would anyone bother to write it. Surely the point of poems like that, is because seeing five magpies (for silver) is a rarity... Or am I missing something here?...Anyway, here I am, digressing and waffling again (I don't do that often, do I?) LOL! Anyway (I don't say that much either, do I?), shortly after that, I saw three wood pigeons together and that I really did think was odd. I mean, we get wood pigeons in our garden, but only either singly or in pairs...in fact, our pair, really looks like "a couple" - like they were married or something, but I don't think I've ever seen 3 at the same time. I guess they could have been gearing up for a menage a trois or something but its still odd. So, anyway
as in the great tradition of things happening in threes, I then saw 3 long tailed tits together and I thought they were pretty rare too. So there you go, all quite a strange start to my journey really, but it didn't end there...oh no...I told you I saw a lot of odd stuff and so it carried on....and on...It was not long past the magpies that I came across a sign indicating a layby 1 mile ahead - nothing strange there you might think except the sign said:
"Layby 1 mile. For Emergencies only" !
(They did not add the exclamation mark!)
I fell to wondering, am I going to have a breakdown in exactly one mile - is anyone going to have a breakdown in exactly one mile? How do you know you are going to break down in one mile's time - do you hear a strange noise coming from under the car and think 'Hey, I think my car is just about to break - I'll wait a mile and see what happens' - maybe you feel sick - 'Ew, yuck, I feel sick, I'll just hang on from hurling my breakfast for another 60 seconds until I get to that layby'.... Now, I know I'm labouring the point here, but I'm sure you know where I am coming from...it was kind of a strange sign to see...It got even more surreal and bizarre after that as the next sign I was an overhead gantry sign which simply said "Animals in the road" - just that - no more information than that, even though these new matrix signs allow way more space than just for that. They could have said "Warning Animals in Road" or "Warning Cows in Road" or anything like that but just animals in road sounded like it could be anything - I wasn't far from a safari park - maybe it was lions (or tigers or bears) I even idly wondered if it was an instruction - was it compulsory? If I had a dog in the back of my car, should I put him in the road? Should animals be on the road and not in cars? Maybe it meant that only animals should be in the road - maybe it was me that was in the wrong in my little car - do humans classify as animals??.... OK OK so, you can tell, I was really rambling by this point but in my defence, I had had a late night the night before and I'd had to get up early to drive across the country - anyone's mind would be wandering...
It was about this point, when my mind had gone off on a tangent and I was thinking that I really did need to stop at the next services and as a bare minimum get caffeine inside me (and hopefully chocolate too) that I saw an even odder sight. In fact, I couldn't quite grasp it with my befuddled mind and when I did get my head around what I was looking at I really started to rue the lack of a camera. I saw ...wait for it... a man on a motorbike...not just any man though, this one was wearing a tutu....yes, a tutu....the kind of thing ballerinas wear...that kind of tutu. Hairy legs, motorbike boots, ape-hanger bars on the bike, Harley Davidson sticker on the tank and a tutu (like this one)...and in pink (of course!). OK, now get this when I say it didn't end there...he was wearing a proper bike jacket with this - black leather (no fringes though) and attached to the back of the jacket was a pair of wings. These were not the kind of typical Hell's Angel type wings you might see on such jackets - but I guess they did go with the tutu as they were pink and looked like they were a fine net stretched over a coat hanger - very fetching as they flapped around behind him in the breeze. To this day I'm not really sure if the lack of coffee was making me hallucinate but all in all, it added to quite one of the weirdest trips I have ever been on....
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