“You love that song, don’t you?”

“What, the one I’m whistling now?”
“The one and only song you whistle.”
“Don’t fence me in?”
 “Yup and I bet you don’t even know who wrote it.”
“Irving Berlin wasn’t it?”
“See, what did I tell you. No, it was Cole Porter, and who sang it and made it popular?”
“That one I know. It was Frank Sinatra.”
“John, before I correct you yet again, why is it you whistle the song?”
“Well, I would sing it but I don’t know the words. It’s just a very pretty tune.”
“And very old. I think it was composed back in the 1930s.”
“Wow! I didn’t realise it was that old.”
“Yup. Can you believe it, there’s something in the world that’s older than you.”

“Sir, sir, excuse me sir. We’re closed now, you need to leave.”
I looked up the man addressing me. He looked very stern as he stood by the door with his left hand on the light switch. I remained seated in a large room where about half an hour ago it was filled with people. I looked down again. “Sir, sir,” he addressed me again, “you need to leave. I have to lock up the place.”
I looked up again and he could tell by the look on my face that I was sad, very sad. “No more dogs?” I asked in a voice just louder than a whisper as if I was afraid me would hear me.

“Where’s Joe?”

“Went running.”

“I thought he went running yesterday. Does he run every day?”

“No, only once in a while.”

Sam drew in a deep breath, “what are you trying to tell me?”

“That he hasn’t returned from his run.”

“The run from yesterday?”

“Yup. He headed down the road and disappeared.”

“Disappeared? How can he disappear?”

“Oh, that’s very simple. He began running and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Where does the road lead?”

“Belgium.”

“Belgium? Don’t be daft, Belgium is in Europe.”

A little about myself before I talk about my favourite pastime of roasting almonds.

I was born in June, though there are in some quarters the feeling that I was actually born in July because someone had forgotten to turn over the month on the calendar, which was glued to the wall in the kitchen of the trailer I was born in.

Even the year is in slight dispute, but for the sake of my sanity let’s say I’m somewhere around 52 years old give or take a few months. My earliest memory is waking up one morning and feeling the trailer was moving. I opened my eyes and looked out of the window, and indeed we were moving. That had never happened before. I was quite confused. I was around 3 or 4 years old. I looked across the cupboard which doubled as my bedroom and saw that the bed next to me, which housed my sister and her dolls when she wasn’t there, was empty. It was obvious that my sister was up.

One of the things I love to do, and have done for many years, is to take the Sunday newspaper and go out on the deck if it’s a warm sunny day, and spend the morning reading and dozing off until lunch time.

Lunch time on a Sunday is a tradition begun by my mother when I was a child. No doubt inherited from her mother, before which the origin of the tradition becomes murky. Even now, with my children grown and with families of their own, when they are in town they look forward to Sunday lunch. In fact, some have decided to carry on the tradition in their homes. I am sure my mother is looking down from heaven very pleased that her little tradition has multiplied over the decades.

There isn’t much that can be said about Edith, that hasn’t been said already. Throughout the annals of history, Edith whether she knew it or not or in fact approved of it or not, had been the one person who everyone who knew her thought was bonkers.

She had her entire universe upside down. She thought North was South, left was right and anything one said she always took the opposite position, whether it warranted an opposite position or not was superfluous.

Dipping back into his memory bank, John closed his eyes for a brief moment to allow himself some time to sort through his memories. He opened his eyes a few seconds later, “eight days a week,” he said emphatically, which caused his friend, David, to raise his eyebrows.

“Eight days a week,” David repeated.

“Yes, eight days a week,” confirmed John.

“You asked me what my favourite song was when I was growing up, and it was Eight Days a Week sung by the Beatles.”

David found that hard to believe. “With all the songs we grew up with, the one that’s your favourite was Eight Days a Week, but why?”

Whenever I went to stay with my grandparents in their old farmhouse, which was situated at the end of a five mile unpaved driveway, which in turn was off a second rate lane which in turn was off a second rate road which in turn was off the main road in a town which time had forgotten, I would always have to park my Land Rover about half a mile away from the house itself and walk the rest of the distance. Whenever I took people there for the first time, their jaws would drop when I pulled up my Land Rover next the carcass of a cow called Bessie, who had died generations ago but nobody felt it necessary to bury, “let nature do it,” was my grandfather’s answer when asked, and he would continue, “If I had to bury every cow on the farm that died, then we would be nothing but a cemetery and wouldn’t be a farm.”

“What do rabbits and humans have in common?”

I looked at my friend rather perplexed. At first, I didn’t understand his question and then when I took a stab at answering it, I got even more confused. I repeated the question back to him. “Yes,” he replied, “what do rabbits and humans have in common?” I decided not to engage my brain and instead treat the question with the disgust it deserved.

“Nothing!” I replied and then went back to the ham sandwich I was eating and quite enjoying until he had asked me that asinine question.

“We have a lot of rain here in June.”

“Oh dear,” I replied, “I came here with the intention of seeing if this was a place to move to and according to everything I read, it doesn’t rain a lot during the year.”

“That’s correct,” continued the real estate agent as we walked around the large house with seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, 2 half bathrooms and a beautifully large kitchen, fully equipped with an AGA stove and other such high quality appliances, situated in the side of a mountain overlooking the bright blue Pacific Ocean.

“It doesn’t rain at any other time of the year, just in June.” I felt somewhat relieved.

Olivia died yesterday at age of 56, about a year after receiving the devastating news from her doctor of a disease that was ravaging her body.

Olivia was, and in my opinion still is, one of the most beautiful people anyone has ever met. She had her entire life to live for. She was excited. She was going marry the love of her life in October 2026, after decades of living alone. Her fiancé wasn’t at her bedside when she passed way in the company of her parents and siblings and indeed, some neighbours.

About a year ago while preparing dinner for Paul her fiancé, she was in the kitchen of her small apartment trimming a brisket, when she dropped the knife she was using. Thinking nothing of it, she picked it up again and began using it. She shook her head at her clumsiness and put it down to her excitement.

Over the years I have collected club memberships as if they were going out of style. Akin to people who buy things because they’re on sale, whether they truly want them or not. Well, I collect memberships in a similar fashion.

I belong not just to one gym, but three. Why three, I am sometimes asked. Well, I reply that’s because I have three very good friends who call me up occasionally and ask if I want to go to the gym together, so they can have someone to talk to whether they are on the treadmill or the stationary bicycle. Because of the type of personality I have, I usually agree to accompany them, unless of course I have better offer.

They came from two completely different backgrounds. Erin grew up in New England in a large seven bedroom home, even though her parents only needed two. She was an only child. The other bedrooms gathered dust, though her father’s rationale was that, “one day I’ll come across an advertisement in the paper,” he proclaimed more than once at a dinner party, “that someone or the other would love to move to our glorious part of the country but couldn’t, because they had five children and everything he has been shown was for a much smaller family and I’ll jump up and say ah ha, I’m your saviour. Please move here I have a seven bedroom home and I’ll sell it to them at a premium.”

Every seat in the house was filled. Not only that, but there wasn’t any standing room either. The place was so packed that a fire marshal who happened to be in the crowd, clapped his hands and told people they had to leave at least the centre aisle open.

As he was doing that, someone sat in his seat and refused to move when asked to. “There isn’t any assigned seating,” the man, a small impish looking loser, who knew he probably needed to leave soon before the fire marshal a man of considerable heft with a frame of 6 foot 8 inches sat on him. He oozed out of the seat and slid along the floor disappearing through a connecting door which he soon found led to the boiler room. A scream a few seconds later brought smiles to the fire marshal’s face.

I live in a log cabin on an immense property. I’m not quite sure how many acres my property is, but let me tell you, its vast. I’ve never been asked to measure my property for the simple reason because there isn’t a single soul anywhere within a hundred miles of me, and I certainly have no intention of selling it.

People visit me occasionally, but I do not encourage them to do so. But once in a while, I’ll get someone drive onto my property to try and find out who lives here. That’s why I have a very long driveway, littered on both sides with the bones of animals that I’ve either shot or who have just died from old age. So, that unwelcomed visitors will eventually tire of not reaching the end of the driveway and let their imaginations grow wild to where they think the carcasses are of people who died years ago attempting the same trip.

Strange things happen in the jungle at night. Leopards sometimes lose their spots, only to find them the next dawn when they catch the jackals trying to run off with them. While tigers’ stripes get broader and eventually become one big wide stripe and the blue parrot which is a rare breed of bird, drives by a hitchhiking mongoose.

“Ma!” shouted John, “Ma!” he shouted even louder when his mother didn’t come running into his room to see what the matter was that time.

For the past three or four years, ten year old John has woken up at 1am believing that it was indeed time to get up and go to school. Eventually, after the third of fourth time of shouting for his mother, Mildred opened the door to John’s room and poked her head in.

“Have you ever been driven anywhere by Karen?”
“No, I haven’t,” my friend john answered and then added, “wait a minute. Yes, I have,” and he laughed, “up a wall. Yes, Karen has driven me up a wall on many occasions.”

“I’m being serious. Yes, I know she drives everyone up a wall, but I’m talking about in her car or any other vehicle, when she’s the driver.”
John thought for a second and then replied sarcastically, “I don’t know why I’m thinking. I know for a fact she hasn’t and I don’t think she ever will, after what I’ve heard about her driving skills or lack thereof.” John looked at me intently, “why are you asking the question?” He paused and then added, “don’t tell me you have.”

“What are you doing out here, you’re halfway to France?”

I looked at my friend John and shook my head. “First of all, I’m not half way to France, I’m only about half a mile off the beach and secondly, didn’t you read the article today in the local rag?”

“What article and what local rag?” I felt my friend had decided to continue his backwards slide from quasi adulthood back to his infancy, where he scolded everyone who tried to get him to talk. His parents had threatened to throw him out of the house at age 5 because he wouldn’t stop stealing his father’s cigarettes. But then what was worse, was lighting them with a gold-plated Ronson lighter that was his grandfather’s during World War One, when it failed to stop a German bullet and ended his life. In all the thirty odd years I’ve never known John to have a real job. And that’s no lie. His logic was simple. He had not asked to be born and therefore it wasn’t up to him to earn a living. It was up to his parents while they were alive to pay him, and then after that the State. But taking part in his own future wasn’t of any interest to him.

During late autumn, from somewhere around the end of October until late March early April, Barry hibernated. He hated that time of the year. Barry prided himself with having the best and largest vegetable garden in the entire neighbourhood. Now he sat indoors sometimes with his nose pressed against the window making marks which his wife Gertrude would then have to rub out, she had given up asking and then pleading with himself to stop looking at the light frost which morphed into heavy frost and then finally gave way to snow squalls followed invariably by heavy blizzard like conditions.

A word of warning to the readers of my column. Whatever you do, never seriously date a TV anchor.

Why do I say that? Well, simply because when we went back to my home after our tenth date she used the pretence of having an after-dinner drink as the reason, though that was not correct.

I had decided on terminating the relationship before this because every time we went out to dinner, she attracted a crowd while I attracted the crazy people. What I mean is that once we had sat down, people from surrounding tables would come up to us ignoring me and introduce themselves to her which she loved. They then took photographs with her and would you believe it in some cases ask me to step aside so I wouldn’t be in the pictures. I felt like saying ‘hey what about me? I’m a famous writer,’ but I don’t think that would’ve mattered. They wanted pictures with this 30 year old blonde bombshell who they saw on their TV screens every night reading the news, while some may have read my columns but hadn’t put two and two together or if they had, it didn’t add up to much.