I saw three ships come sailing in...

For the past month or so, I have been doing quite a number of shipping deals, mostly involving LNG carriers, oil tankers and those large container ships - rust-encrusted and nomadic metal coffins bobbing on the high seas carrying everything and anything to anywhere and everywhere.

I never see the actual ship that is the subject of a week's worth of planning and anxiety, but I clink my glass of complimentary champagne in the early hours of the morning in the comfort of my office when I am informed that all is well, and all parties are happy.

Just a couple of days ago, I glanced into the newspapers and saw that one of the "Monsters" I helped "deliver" into the loving arms of a consortium of banks had sailed into the headlines. For a while, as I looked at the picture of the rolling iron behemoth, I must confess Reader that I was actually impressed...

ULSAN, South Korea, Sep 09, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc.
Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc
Last: 59.07+0.25+0.43%4:03pm 11/20/2007Delayed quote data
Sponsored by:
OSG 59.07, +0.25, +0.4%) announced today the naming of the LNG Carrier Al Gattara, heralding a new generation of Q-Flex Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) carriers - the world's safest, most advanced and largest ships to transport this critical energy source. This vessel is the first in a series of four sister ships to be delivered to OSG Nakilat, the joint venture between OSG and Qatargas Transport Company (Nakilat).

...and then I snapped out of my delirium! Thank God! You can breath a sigh of relief Reader. The riverman~~~ is safe and well!

Lets get one thing straight! I do like ships... but ONLY the ones with SAILS!

Yes, the riverman~~~ is a romantic at heart, and if you know me at all you would know that I love all things from and of the "Age of Sail" (the period between 1739-1815) which also constitutes (in my humble opinion) the height of the 'age of fighting sail' i.e. the age of sailing warships.

This week I would like to pay homage to the great Age of Sail (a wondrous period for all lovers of things maritime and nautical)... more so, since this coming weekend I will be at Portsmouth Harbour visiting the HMS Victory - one of the best known and loved warships ever ... (more on that later!)...

However, instead of plodding through the history of the period which you can easily obtain anywhere else on the web from cleverer and more learned enthusiasts than me (which is something the more doggedly inclined of you will undoubtedly set about doing), I propose to focus on three ships I believe sum up all I that I love and that feeds my imagination about the period.

HMS Endeavour

This was a true explorer's ship, and was captained by Captain James Cook, probably best known for his exploration in the Aussie-New-Zealand area. To the world, the Endeavour's voyage was a scientific expedition to observe an eclipse of Venus, June 1769, but secretly it was a commission by the English admiralty to find a mysterious southern continent, which had already been discovered and visited by Dutch explorers between 1605 - 1636. This secret commission effectively led Cook to explore New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia.

The ship nearly went down on the coral reefs north of Botany Bay, and many of her crew died of fever when she headed further north to Batavia (i.e. Indonesia), the political and commercial centre of the VOC in Asia, before finally heading for home.

The Endeavour was a solid, broad beamed and shallow draught Whitby collier, an all round excellent ship for exploration as fully recognized by James Cook, who said "A better ship for such service I never could wish for".

This ship is very special to me as it was also the first ship that I ever built a wood model of. It was the first time I tackled a wooden model, and it was a little bit of an exploratory voyage of sorts for me into the splinter-filled world of carpentry. It took up most of my summer holidays for a year and was an exercise in the virtue it was named after. It wasn't the best wooden model ship ever made, but it is still standing and holding sound on a shelf at home.

HMS Bounty

Ah! Notoriety... Notoriety! Adventure and Mutiny! The Bounty has it all!! The tale of the Mutiny on HMS Bounty has been told and retold through the ages, with some understandable embellishment.

You must have heard of the grand saga Reader. Why! The cast of characters on board HMS Bounty was remarkable as the ship itself.

You had William Bligh, the Captain of the expedition, who was born September 9, 1754. He was somewhat heavily built and below average in height (a little bit Napolenic too!), with black hair, blue eyes and a pale complexion. He gained a reputation in the Royal Navy for having a volatile temper and he used foul language when angered (and according to ship records, that happened very often!).

Starring opposite Bligh was Fletcher Christian, who was born in Cumberland on September 15, 1764, was from a well-to-do family and was a little bit of a Mam's-boy as well! He went to sea at the age of sixteen, and two years later he sailed aboard HMS Cambridge where he met William Bligh for the first time. Christian was about five feet nine inches tall (I guess sailors in those days were pretty short!) with a dark complexion and (according to the dockyard wenches) well muscled. He was sometimes described as swashbuckling, a slack disciplinarian, a great favourite with the ladies, conceited but also mild, generous, open and humane.

HMS Bounty sailed from Spithead, England on December 23, 1787 with Bligh and a crew of 45 men bound for Tahiti. Their mission was to collect breadfruit plants to be transplanted in the West Indies as cheap food for the slaves. After collecting those plants, Bounty was underway toward home, when, on the morning of April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian and part of the crew mutinied, took over the ship, and set the Captain and 18 members of the crew adrift in the ship’s 23-foot launch (a small boat) which according to Bligh, did not even contain enough food and water for the men on board.

The cruelty of Bligh was blamed for the mutiny. Once cast off his ship, the captain sailed the launch and 17 of the crew 3618 miles back to civilization. The mutineers took HMS Bounty back to Tahiti, and, with 6 Polynesian men and 12 women, took the ship to the isolated site at Pitcairn Island. After burning the ship, they established a settlement and colony on Pitcairn Island that still exists.

My adventure with the HMS Bounty started at the age of nine, when I read a book which featured Fletcher Christian's exploits and told of Captain Bligh's cruelty to his men on board. At that time I was just interested in the romance of a mutiny and the exploration of Tahiti and the outlying islands close to it. Years later I visited the greenhouses in Kew in London and saw first hand the almost- fabled "breadfruit trees" that Bligh brought back from Tahiti.

HMS Victory

HMS Victory is the Royal Navy's most famous warship. She is the world's oldest commissioned ship and a wonderful memorial to Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, probably Britain's greatest Naval hero. She stands proud in her home in Portsmouth, No. 2 dry dock, and remains one of the most famous warships ever built.

Built between 1759-1765, HMS Victory was a first-rate, "ship-of-the-line" (meaning: a warship armed powerfully enough to take a position in the line of battle).

In 1805, Nelson on board his flagship, HMS Victory, led 27 British ships into battle off Cape Trafalgar against a much larger combined French and Spanish fleet. With Nelson's inspired leadership, the British won a great victory and the Battle of Trafalgar has become a defining moment in British history. So defining that a massive memorial to Nelson stands in Trafalgar Square today. Nelson however paid the ultimate price - he was struck by a single bullet as he paced the quarterdeck with his captain, Thomas Hardy, and in true mythological fashion, he survived just long enough to learn the outcome of the battle.

HMS Victory is a wondrous work of engineering and art. Three gun decks bristling with cannons on both sides, 3 main masts and a bowsprit... Over 26 miles of rigging and nearly 5,500 metres of canvas in the 37 sails, the largest of which is still in existence in a museum in Portsmouth (complete with over 90 shot holes). The ship was built from mainly oak, but also elm and fir, from an estimated 6000 trees.

The thing that captures my imagination most vividly is the Victory´s main guns and how they may have worked in action. The Victory had three types of guns. There were 12 pounders (on the top deck), 24 pounders (on the middle deck) and 32 pounders (from the bottom deck). The biggest gun was called a carronade and named aptly, "The Smasher". Once the powder hole had been filled, it was fired by a slow match or flintlock. The cartridge and shot were laid by a rammer after cartridge fragments had been removed by the worm, and the damp sponge had put out any sparks there might be in the barrel.

Ah yes, the riverman~~~ has spent many hours in maritime museums and nautical-souvenir shops gazing at models of this particular ship. The Victory is definitely my favourite ship and sums up all that captures me about the age of fighting sail. It jolts me when I close my eyes and imagine tired and grimy men running between the ship's guns under-deck, heaving sweat-drenched pound-shot balls in quick sucession into steaming cannon barrels... or the whiz and tear of chain-shot against the smoke stained sails... the taste of the salt of the sea mingled with the salt of sweat... and all the time the creak and grind of the iron bones of the ship as it rocks and rolls over choppy waves...

...and then I open my eyes and find myself staring at a 60-page sale agreement for a container ship ploughing it's course through the waters of Korea, and breathe in deeply and sigh!

Well Reader... such is life! Guess I will put away my compass and sextant for today, throw down my anchor and pull out my Chitty!

~~~

Autumn in-between

AAAAARGH! Facebook... Facebook!! What hast thou done to me??? Thou swell... thou pretty... thou sweet... thou witty-maleficent-knavish work of art!

Yes, Reader I have been imprisoned in the charms of Facebook and guarded by an army of its applications... finger shackled to its little impudent poking games, splattered with sploches of Graffiti on my SuperWall and innundated with Growing Gifts, Hatching Eggs and those gawd-awful grinning Pumpkins!

Somewhere between fighting off the Sith; slinging sheep at my friends; surfing the waves of virtual Booze and swimming against the tide of trout-slaps... I realised to my horror that I had a long-suffering blog sitting and waiting quietly on the shores of Forgottenmore.

So I have stuffed Facebook away in a cupboard, and come back home to Bloggerland to update you on the riverman~~~ and the Autumn in-between.

Ah! The pretty picture that is Autumn! She comes around with a kick in the air and a crunch under feet.

Summer technically turned into Autumn for the riverman~~~ when I stopped by the side of the road on a little grass verge beside the road and took a picture of this little leafy mosiac, and didn't even realise that Sarah, John and Danny boy were sitting in a car chuckling away at my little attempt at artistry.

Blame it on the cinnamon-apple in the air... for Autumn makes fools of us all, and the riverman~~~ is an autumn creature, and has always been!

Autumn is the time for country walks and sweet ripe apples in your pockets.


Autumn is a time for raking in the garden and discovering hedghogs under trees.

Autumn is acorns on the ground and nuts on the table.

Autumn is blue jays and cardinals and robins and doves.

Autumn is a festival of trees in competitive costume: scarlet-n-russet, burgundy -n-brick, pumpkin-n-orange, copper-n-crimson-n-burnished-amber-gold.

Autumn means friends around a fire and a bowl of mulled wine... and most of all...

... Autumn is a time for stories... and here is one of the riverman~~~'s favourites:

The anxious little leaf

Once upon a time a little leaf was heard to sigh and cry, as leaves often do when a gentle wind is about. And the twig said, "What is the matter, little leaf?" And the leaf said, "The wind just told me that one day it would pull me off and throw me down to die on the ground!"

The twig told it to the branch on which it grew, and the branch told it to the tree. And when the tree heard it, it rustled all over, and sent back word to the leaf, "Do not be afraid. Hold on tightly, and you shall not go till you want to."

And so the leaf stopped sighing, but went on nestling and singing. Every time the tree shook itself and stirred up all its leaves, the branches shook themselves, and the little twig shook itself, and the little leaf danced up and down merrily, as if nothing could ever pull it off. And so it grew all summer long, till October.

And when the bright days of autumn came the little leaf saw all the leaves around becoming very beautiful. Some were yellow and some scarlet, and some striped with both colors. Then it asked the tree what it meant. And the tree said, "All these leaves are getting ready to fly away, and they have put on these beautiful colors because of joy."

Then the little leaf began to want to go, too, and grew very beautiful in thinking of it, and when it was very gay in color it saw that the branches of the tree had no bright color in them, and so the leaf said, "O branches! why are you lead-color and we golden?"

"We must keep on our work-clothes, for our life is not done - but your clothes are for holiday, because your tasks are over," said the branches.

Just then a little puff of wind came, and the leaf let go without thinking of it, and the wind took it up and turned it over and over, and whirled it like a spark of fire in the air, and then it dropped gently down under the edge of the fence, among hundreds of leaves, and fell into a dream, and it never woke up to tell what it dreamed about.

~~~

Life in cartoon motion...

Last week I finally managed to download and watch Michael Bay's "Transformers: The Movie"", and no Reader, this post is not going to be a review of that 144 minutes of glorious CGI that left me stunned and speechless for a good half hour after the end credits vanished into darkness, and kept my eyes peeled for Camaros and 18-Wheelers over the next two days on the streets of London.

Yes I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and yes, unlike many Transformer purists, I have already forgiven Mr Bay for not keeping with "Bumblebee" being a Volkswagen and making "Jazz" sound like a ghetto thug... Instead, I will thank Mr Bay for re-enacting an almost forgotten institution that every child of the 80's would remember with fondness. Cartoons in the 80s were exciting and funny and cheesy and outrageous all at once and (thank God!!) made long before political correctness went silly. It was the standard routine to rush back after a morning session of school, mop up as much homework as you could before 4 pm and then plonk in front of the television for a daily inoculation of MASK, HE-Man, Masters of the Universe, Scooby-Doo, Tiny Toons, Dinosaucers, Dungeons and Dragons, Count Duckula, Heathcliff... awwwww Lo-o-oord! The list could go on and on and on...

Funny thing I realise now - I probably never watched any cartoons before the 80s. Cartoons were always frowned upon in my family as being violent and brash splashes of colour that kept me from completing my Math homework, and so I had to watch them on the sly. My mother kept me under very close scrutiny throughout my primary school days, and my TV diet then consisted of Michael Landon's Little House on the Prairie at 7.30 pm garnished with two little squares of a Cadburys Fruit and Nut Bar before I went to bed. Yes, those were the days when I was made to go to bed at 8.30, and I invariably fell asleep and into dreams of running through daisy dusted meadows and fishing in creeks chock full of little trout. I got a little Mickey Mouse from time to time of course, but my exposure to animation was set firmly within the boundaries of wholesome Disney for a good while, until I turned 12.

My most vivid memories of my secondary school days include me and my sister sitting in my living room, our eyes fastened on a flashing cartoon, and our ears straining towards the front door for footsteps or a jangle of keys. The moment I heard any kerfuffle behind the door, it was all systems go for the both of us. Operation Cover Up was a marvel of skill and speed - rivalling even good ol' Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michaelangelo in all their "Turtle Power". Within three seconds, I would fling myself towards the power point and flick the switch off; my sister would smooth out the couch free of any tell-tale creases; and the piece of genius I was responsible for was the cold wet cloth we kept nearby, which we very quickly draped over the top of the TV for a whole two seconds to cool off the hot surface. My father would come home, and among the first habitual things he did after he took off his shoes, was to run his hand over the top of the TV to detect if we had been watching those confounded cartoons again. Naturally, if Operation Cover Up failed (as it did on more than one occasion) we resorted to Operation Run Away... which was a last ditch effort to escape the "rotan" (a long thin bamboo-like stick my father kept in his room) which had no difficulty in finding out the location of our most tender and sensitive skin. Ouch!!!

So what was your favourite 80s cartoon Reader? Didn't you just LOVE those theme songs!? Can you remember this one?

Masked Crusaders, working overtime, Fighting crime, fighting crime!

Secret Raiders who will neutralise, as soon as they arrive (at the site!)

Trakkers gonna lead the mission...

And Spectrum's got such super vision!

Muh Muh Muh Muh M.A.S.K!!

It's the mighty power that can save the day...

Muh Muh Muh Muh M.A.S.K!!!

No-one knows what lies behind the masquerade...

Muh Muh Muh Muh M.A.S.K!!!

Always riding hot on Venom's trail...

Come see the laser rays...

Fire-away!!!

Or what about this?

Life is like a hurricane
here in Duckburg

Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes -

it's a duck blur

You might solve a mystery

or rewrite history Duck Tales, Oo-oo

Tales of daring-do, bad and good luck tales, oo-oo

...D-d-d-danger, watch behind you -

there's a stranger out to find you

What to do? Just grab onto some Duck Tales, oo-oo!

Not pony tails or cotton tails but Duck Tales, oo-oo!

Or this one:

Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no one should
Terrify their neighborhood

But Heathcliff just won't be outdone

Playing pranks on everyone...
...The gang will reign supreme

And no one can deny

They'll make some history

And always have an alibi
So join in the jubilee

The cats are great, they'll all agree

You'll find in each calamity

The cat's superiority

Oh....

Remember the time when it was all about these little blue creatures in the forest?

La, la, la, la, la, la, sing a happy song

La, la, la, la, la, la, Smurf the whole day long

(whistle) - Smurf along with me

(whistle) - simple as can be

Next time you're feeling blue just let a smile begin

Happy things will come to you so Smurf yourself a grin.

(Gargamael speaks) "Ooh, I hate Smurfs! I'll get you, I'll get all of you, If it's the last thing I'll ever do!"

La, la, la, la, la, la, now you know the tune

La, la, la, la, la, la, you'll be Smurfing soon.

and remember when every one knew the words to this one:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Heroes in a half shell

Turtle power!

Splinter taught them to be ninja team,(he's a radical rat)

Leonardo lead's, Donatello does machines.(that's a fact jack)

Rapheal is cool but crude,(give me a break)

Michaelangelo is a party dude.(party)

Well Reader... what can I say... they don't make 'em now like they used to hey?!

I found these cartoon montages on YouTube, and watched them through with a mixture of nostalgia and embarrassment last night. So, why don't you do the same, and then let me know which ones you still remember and smile about...

And I promise not to laugh if you admit that you liked "My Little Pony and Friends"... (*snicker!!*)

~~~

What makes the evening news?

I stood wedged somewhere between Liverpool Street tube station and Waterloo last Friday evening and flicked through the papers. It's the typical "London-thang" to do: attempt to read a newspaper while suspended in an impossible entanglement of arms, feet, scarves and iPods on the way home for the weekend. I shuffled through the sections, and then suddenly the pages flipped up and fairly hit me in the face.

On page 1, a massive picture of a face numb-nailed into every Londoner's mind, and on page 12 just after the one that featured Posh Spice blubbing about missing "Davy-boy" and being oh-so-homesick in L.A. (poor baby!) - a little blurb of an event that almost nobody noticed. (More on that further down this post.)

Meanwhile, I am pleased to inform all concerned parties that the "Amazing Madeleine McCann Glacier" maintained its steady progress as it pushed aside mountains of evidence,and tracked its way from Africa to Portugal and back to London leaving behind widespread devastation and confusion in equal measure and in all directions.

Reader, did I hear you right? YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT MADDIE McCANN??? Well now, that is impossible! You must be mistaken... Land sakes Love! How could you presume to be knowledgeable about world affairs otherwise! Let me jog your memory.

Maddie McCann: that delightful little girl brutally snatched away from the loving arms of her two wonderful and caring professional parents on an innocent holiday in Portugal earlier this year by some undoubtedly depraved foreigner with nefarious intentions involving a number of Lithuanian mafia clans and a link to an African pedophilic ring or two? Remember how her poor careful parents left their little "blond-eyed-and-blue-haired-Gem" sleeping in her bed in their holiday flat, and went out to swill a little wine with their friends over a tortilla or two, only to return to find her missing? Oh, the unimaginable horror that must have been!! It is no wonder they spent all that time and money travelling to Rome to secure the Pope's divine blessings on a polaroid snapshot of their lost lamb, and then proceeded to hire every editor in Fleet Street to plaster those polaroids in every conceivable corner of the civilised world... I suppose, ANYONE would go a little crazy if they misplaced their daughter.

Why didn't they get a baby-sitter if they wanted to go out on their own on that night when little Maddie went AWOL? We-e-e-ll, re-e-eally now, I am not sure... but then again, the poor-poor precious Darling was snatched away from her BED!! How DARE you even insinuate any form of negligence here! Both parents are DOCTORS for goodness sake! Have you ever heard of doctors being negligent???

And just for the record, I am most definitely not sure about that report on sedatives being found in the DNA samples in that car-booth. You know... DNA samples are RE-E-EALLY tricky things and can be left in so many ways. DNA traces can even transmit from a secondary source like a squishy-soft-toy or the leather cover of a bible for instance. In fact, my very extensive knowledge of DNA leads me to believe that DNA can transmit from almost anything and from absolutely no-where! Scary huh?! Well, if you don't believe me, go and watch Season 3 of CSI Miami Episode 6. You simply must do your research before you read the newspapers.

Reader, it is very important to familiarise yourself with all the facts of the case before you jump to any conclusions. The press have been really helpful here and published maps and daily satellite snap-shots of the resort where little Maddie vanished. It's wonderful what technology can do today, isn't it! I mean, we even get to see what their swimming-pool looks like! Cool hey?

What did you say?? What makes Madeleine different from all the other children that go missing every day in the UK?? Goodness, how heartless you are!! Just look at those mournfully pretty eyes under those lovely lashes. Just how many children like that have you seen in the missing-people-pages on the local council's walls??? Furthermore, her mother really knows how to dress for the camera... and surely that can't hurt! Tell me honestly: Can you look at that picture (a copy of which I have - by the way - staring at me from the coffee corner in my office) , and say that you honestly DON'T CARE???!!!

Oh, and by the way, you simply have to stop calling the poor thing "Madeleine"... I mean, her parents call her "Maddie", and it would be just so cold and clinical to call her "Madeleine"... I mean she's practically become our own little girl after all these months, don't you think?

Oh, and now we hit page 12! And what's this thing we hear about this place called Burma??...?

... and errrr... by the way, can anyone tell me: where exactly is Burma?

~~~

Ad rem...

Awww... hang all snively apologies! Yes - yes... call me irresponsible, shower me with your titters and tut-tuts and dismiss me to the flames of Blogger-Hell, but let me assure YOU - faithful Reader that the riverman~~~ is back with a vengeance... armed and not a little dangerous... rigged-out with a revitalised PC medicated with all manner of antivirus protections and, yes, pin-pricking-prepared to wreak havoc on the web yet again.

So away with anymore delay... let's dive into the update:

This is the riverman~~~'s new office...

...and therefore the place you will most likely find the riverman~~~ nowadays. Yes, it is beside a very big wharf, and yes, it is all very new and clean and tall and glassy and yes, it reflects the sky and its windows open into spectacular views of more windows that open into sterile grey towers where, yes, rows and rows of oppressed bankers huddle into their grey suits and stare into flickering screens where neon figures crawl up and down and from side to side, and yes, they forget the sunshine on grassy parks outside, the shimmer on the Thames and the yes, even the weekend jazz band that blares out a little summer into the air and drums a little heartbeat into the concrete...

But YES, rest assured though: the riverman~~~ stays the riverman~~~, and no ship-closing-deadline, two-week-long-training-programme or raspy throat from late night cafeteria pasta will divert me from the little things that make me grin... the things I hope you take time to grin about too!

Here are just a few examples:

The pub just 500 metres away from my desk... (yes, I measured!)... You simply KNOW you HAVE to go in!

Sexy Madame Moggy who sashays over to wish me good morning before I leave for work...

See, even strawberries have a sense of humour... I simply have to decide to notice...

It's a kind of magic that transforms greasy potato chips into light sabres...

And if all else fails, and the thought of yet another weekend in the office buried under paper and studying for an exam brings me down, I simply remember that I still have wonderful friends to spend my Friday evening with, drinking up the bar and realising how happy I am to be alive...


There now, becha you're smiling! Now, go get back to work! See you next week! Yes... yes... I promise!

(Oh, and by the way, I finally saw Harry Potter 5 last week... and in commemoration of that over-postponed and long awaited pleasure, I have embedded two very irreverent homages to the films for you to enjoy... so do!)

~~~

The Days of Wine and Roses

Reader, these are magic days... soaking up sunshine, probing the politics of the garden squirrel gangs, conjuring clouds into cats'n'cushions, weaving daisies into dilly-daydreams... and allowing the hours to flit-flutter away so quickly... much-too-much-too-quickly...

Then the evening sunset arrives, performs her alchemy... and diva-like slips away before we can ask for an encore... pulling a cloak of stars around her. Ah yes Reader... and now I have this grabbing urge to rummage into my dusty childhood for that warm wonderful song...

Now how did it go...? Oh yes...

The days of wine and roses,

Laugh and run away,

Like a child at play,

Through a meadowland,

Toward a closing door,

A door marked never more,

That wasn't there before.

The lonely night discloses,

Just a passing breeze,

Filled with memories,

Of the golden smile,

That introduced me to,

The days of wine and roses,

And you!

I pottered around on the Internet today and found a wonderful guitar version of this classic song, which is embedded above. Go on Reader and play it... and then close your eyes and imagine sitting back on your deck chair out in the garden in the evening. Come on then, sit beside me, swirl that wine around your glass and watch the night stir into the sky... Now aren't you awake to how alive you are!

How wonderful... how intense... how exhilarating: this dreamy-delirium so peaceful and yet so intense with a sharp nip of caffeine in the side. Oh okay! Hang the attempt at poetry! That "nip" is probably courtesy of a small family of red ants that have made their nest under my table... and *ouch!* those dastardly critters are now attempting to invade my slipper... Fine... fine ...so be it! ...Time to get indoors!

(FYI: Those who know me best are persistently bewildered that the same riverman~~~ who spent more than two years in the Singapore army feeding leeches and eating fruit bats, is frightened of flying cockroaches, bee stings and red ant bites! It is a measure of my special regard for you Reader, that I make this confession here, to the detriment of any reputation I may still have!)

And as sure as I will continually get chased back into my house by marauding ants that pitch camp under my garden furniture... these Days of Wine and Roses, as glorious and as warm as they are now, will end.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate;

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes,

Within a dream.

(1867-1900) (From Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam)

And in a couple of weeks I will put away the barbecue grill, fold away the patio umbrellas and take down my autumn jacket from the top shelf of my cupboard. But for today, I raise my glass to magnificent summer memories... to "livin' easy... jumpin' fish and cotton so high...." ...and to "lazy-hazy-crazy-red, pink-n-polka-dotted-skies" and the "Slam-Bang-ALA-CA-ZAMMM-of-it-all"!!

Yes Reader - Here's to the Days of Wine and Roses...

Now drink up... don't waste a drop... and then pour us another glass each!

*HIC!!!*

~~~