Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated May 13, 2009
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Afterthoughts
I was really pleased to get home after that week I spent on board with my old shipmates from the Yacht, and yet at the same time I was sad to leave, if you know what I mean. Little did I know that I would be seeing them very soon after saying my farewells to them…
When I got home I parked the car and took all my gear back into the house. Well, when I said all my gear, I mean I thought I had all my gear, but it was not long before my wife asked 'where is your suit?' and this sudden thought entered my brain where I could see it hanging in the open wardrobe back in my hotel room.
And I had been so pleased with myself for being able to find my way home without getting lost: I have never been any good with finding my way around when I cross that Forth Bridge into Edinburgh in the past, along with the fact that my sat-nav had packed up the same day I left to go there in the first place.
That in itself had not been a good day for me, as even though I had looked up the map the night before, and written out the route I should take, I still managed to get lost trying to find my way to where the Yacht was moored up, and managed to add another 25 miles onto my trip. Mind you, I do have the fact that all the roads on the other side of the Bridge have recently been totally replaced, and even my sat-nav would not have recognised those new roads, so I can claim that in my defence.
However, this was not going to get my suit back. I thought of phoning the hotel and asking them to send it on to me, which would have been a good idea, if I could remember the name of the hotel so that I could look the number up in the book. Yet I could tell that would have been a no hoper when I saw the look on my wife's face, it had that familiar 'I mean now' look, which going by past experience meant I was soon going to be driving back over the Bridge.
At least this time I had the advantage of knowing where I went wrong previously, and knew exactly which road I was going to take. So I left home with the confidence that I knew where I was going, even though I looked rather sheepish having to return in the first place. This made all the difference, and it was not long before I pulled up in front of the hotel, as I hadn't added on those extra 25 miles this time. Of course I got the expected banter from the blokes I had said goodbye to just an hour or so earlier. They were still sitting in the hotel foyer drinking coffee to kill the time before they went to catch their flights or trains home. The other lads, who I had not seen earlier, soon got to hear of my misfortune and sure enough in true Navy tradition they took full advantage of my situation and added to my ribbing.
Of course I could do nothing but take all this in the humour that it was given, as I had, after all, done a stupid thing. They asked me to join them and stay a while to have a coffee but I thought that if I didn't get home soon, my wife would report me missing; besides it was only a 30 mile drive home for me and she would be expecting me back. Some of the lads had a much longer journey ahead of them as they had come from all over the UK to be there that week. It was the fact that I lived so close that persuaded me attend the do in the first place, as I felt obliged to attend when I saw just how far some to the lads were travelling. You see, I have this aversion to being in crowded places and mixing with people; it seems to be a symptom of the PTSD that I have, but it turned out OK for me as no one said anything when I slipped away or sat on the edge of things. Just goes to show what a great bunch of lads they are.
This is not the first time something like that has happened to me, as I seem to be more forgetful as I get older. The number of times I have gone into a room, and then forgotten why I went in there in the first place! Last Christmas I went up to the shed at the top of our garden, as my wife had asked me to go and get the extension cord for our Christmas tree lights. So I put on my jacket since it was snowing, went up to the shed, unlocked it and went in, stood there a while wondering what I went there for, could not remember, and so went back to the house.
A few minutes later my wife came back into the living room with the box of decorations for the tree. Then she asked me if I had got the extension cord for the tree: I made up some sort of excuse and rushed back up to the shed to get it. So you see, that little incident with my suit being left at the hotel was not really the first time I had done that. Maybe we all do similar things when we reach a certain age, but we don't always tell everybody, preferring to keep quiet about it. After all, we can all laugh at ourselves: no matter how old we are, our sense of humour is always with us.
