We were walking to Nimborio on Wednesday when we spotted and old bird. Stop it now. Be nice, I wasn’t talking about a person. I was talking about this great big winged beast that took off from down at the water’s edge below and then made its lazy way across the sea to another cove.
Neil managed to grab a photo, though it was at a distance by then so he had to crop in. Looks like a heron to me, but I’m not sure which kind. I looked at Symi Flora and Fauna, on the birds page, but didn’t see anything that looked similar, so I will have to hope that Lyndon sees this and identifies it. I am sure Neil won’t mind if you use the image either, as you always credit photographers I notice.
That was just one of the day’s highlights, others included a wonderful lunch, long chats over too much wine, and a lift home again afterwards, followed by some unnecessary Andrew Lloyd Webber – there’s one note that Emmy Rossum hits during ‘The point of no return’ that I wanted to hear again, it’s a low note, no disrespect intended to Miss Rossum.
I just went to check up on the spelling of her name and found myself at the Wiki page for the show and that reminded me that I went to the first Saturday performance at Her Majesty’s Theatre, an event I remember well. I’d caught the train down from Lancaster where I was living at the time (because it would be silly to catch it from there if I was living somewhere else) and had arranged to stay with a friend in London overnight. This was on Saturday 11th October 1986 and I had arranged to meet said outside the theatre after the show as I didn’t have anywhere else to stay that night and couldn’t afford a hotel. The show happened, that’s another story, and I waited outside in a very busy Haymarket. And I waited, and waited, until about an hour later, when all the traffic had died down, there was still on said of friend.
This was long before mobile phones and all that jazz (that’s another show) so there was nothing I could do apart from consider a night at Euston station, not a nice thought. Then I hit upon the idea of heading to the bar and searching for the soon to be ex-friend there, but could I remember the name of it? Could I buffalo. I stood there for ages (even saw Miss Brightman and Mr Crawford leave the theatre, separately) watching the cars going back and forth and trying to remember the name of this damn club. Wandering through Piccadilly and crossing the busy streets the name if it would not come back to me. So, there was nothing else to do but head to the station and see what time the first train was. About seven or eight hours later, at least.
In the end I wound up in a very sleazy hotel in Kings Cross where the sounds from within the mattress kept me awake most of the night. In the morning I had breakfast with some very nice homeless folk and eventually caught the train back. Back in Lancashire I phoned my mate and found out that he’d completely forgotten due to a christening party and too much tequila, so thanks very much (Rad, you know who you are). Oh yes, and the name of the club I’d tried to recall while dodging traffic? It was called ‘Traffic.’
And the reason I know the exact day is because I looked it up on a ‘find what day you were born’ site where I also discovered that I am 18,854 days old, which is a bit scary, but not as scary as it would be if I were a dog, then I’d be 357 years old. Even scarier would be the fact that a dog wrote what you’ve just been reading.
