Winter wonderland

When was the last time something blue came out of your mouth? No, I'm not being figurative and quaint, I'm being literal. Probably never, unless you once gagged on a raspberry slush-puppy in Great Yarmouth. Well, here's your big chance. All you need is a large glass of Port (vintage irrevlevant for this purpose) and a tube of Arm and Hammer "baking soda" toothpaste. Enjoy the fortified wine within a couple of hours of bedtime (or for breakfast), then proceed to clean your teeth with the aforementioned cleanser. What will emerge when you spit is not a pristine white, or a nicotine yellow, nor, as might be expected, a pinkish cabernet / sanguine amalgam. No indeed, for some infernal alchemical reaction is taking place on your now blackened tongue, and your saliva is now an inky indigo blue, intermingled, if your particularly fortunate, with some dark particulate matter, possible some kind of diabolical "salt" or somesuch. But don't take my word for it; frankly you owe it to yourself to try this out in the comfort of your own bathroom, much as I do on a daily basis.

To give you a solid impression of how bad US TV really is, I have found myself watching "Hustle" by default. UK residents may recall this as a highly stylised and unconvincing portrayal of professional con-artists at work. Anyway, there's a certain episode wherein the old master (Robert Vaughn) teaches his apprentice the art of "cold reading" i.e. making assumptions regarding a person's situation from his/her appearance; a pastime popularised by the French and familiar to a lot of people with too much time on their hands and a solid grasp of sociological stereotypes - undergraduates for example. Commuting to work via public transport gives plenty of opportunity for this sort of sport, although often passengers are sufficiently vocal to alleviate the necessity for any fantastical inference: on one day someone will be discussing Voltaire's influence on the founding fathers, on the next someone else is loudly defending the moral virtue of sleeping with her sister’s boyfriend on her cell-phone. Still, the mind wanders: I see a blind man with his golden Labrador guide dog; I think to myself: if I become blind, I should like to have a ginger guide dog. But could I be sure it was ginger? What if there were no ginger ones left and they just told me it was ginger and pinned a sign on it saying, “if he asks, I’m ginger”? And then what if a small child, who couldn’t read, one day revealed that he was in fact black? How would I feel about that?

I take it you’re familiar with Google Earth? If not, I suggest you download it and fly around a bit, especially round my way where the resolution is pretty spectacular... But lo, what is that at 45° 24’ 40.68” N / 122° 42’ 03.60” W? Could it be my ginger car, parked outside Leon and Linda’s lakeside mansion? Yes, it could. FYI: the nearby black car is Julie’s Toyota; meanwhile the bimmers are safely locked away in the garage. Speaking of which, L&L recently decided to trade-in their 3-series convertible for a more refined 5-series, with ample room in the back for two child seats. Generously they let me take the old motor for a spin before they handed it over. It was a lot of fun but I don’t think I’d ever consider buying one (presuming I could ever afford to); the car seemed positively disgruntled to travel at less than 20 miles an hour, the steering heavy and the engine grumbling away before me. Still, the 0-60 in under 7 seconds seemed like a spec worth validating at the lights, and indeed it did feel rather like a plane taking off... It was Presidents’ Day and I took it down to Silverton Falls where the following photos were taken… it was something of a winter wonderland that afternoon...