Thursday 12 December 2013

Number 3786, Memory Lane, Bath


I got this printed up as our Christmas card yesterday, so you can consider it as an e-card to you, a little early I know.

I spent about 3 hours going through all our old photos, trying to find one I took of the exact same comet (Hale-Bopp) when it payed a visit to the Bath area and flew picturesquely over that church with the Peregrine Falcon on it which you are now all familiar with, but I couldn't find the bloody thing.

Consequently, I just chose the best image I could find of it on Google, then shamelessly ripped it off. The chances of the author ever finding me out are pretty slim though, but maybe a bit less slim now I have posted it up here. Don't you go telling them, mind.

As always happens when I search my collection of old printed photos, the process of looking for one image takes about 50 times longer than it ought to, because I get side-tracked by images which I had all but forgotten about, and old memories come flooding in to overload my already brimming imagination. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I must have read about three copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica yesterday.

Look! There's my old girlfriend who looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor, but with gigantic breasts! I wonder if she still lives in Canada? The first time I spent a night with her (in Oxford) I climbed up to her wooden bunk bed and fell off, landing on a small dressing table and completely smashing her collection of cosmetics. She used too much make-up anyway.

Look! There's another old girlfriend standing completely naked in a wood. She was brought up as a Plymouth Brethren - actually in Plymouth, England.

Look how dark my hair is in that one, and see how my face is completely unlined!

And here is a picture of H.I. doing a hand-stand up against the wall of the Holburne Museum, taken by me about 35 years ago, long before I lived with her. I send this one to Grandson, along with another of her doing a handstand up against a different wall in Cornwall, only about a year ago. She - almost religiously - performs a handstand once a year.

Here is another picture of a German girl tourist to Bath, who I just marched up to and invited to stay the weekend with me. She spent the weekend with me and then went home to Germany. I never heard from her again.

Then there was the beautiful young black girl who came back to my cottage in the country, and when she walked up the path toward the front door, she cartwheeled the last few yards. I will never forget the flash of her bright white underpants as she spun through 360 degrees, her brown legs invisible in the darkness.

That's what I used to do in my youth - march up to tourists (girl visitors only) and invite them straight back to my place. They all said yes. Amazing.

I don't think I could get away with it these days.


12 comments:

  1. Bloody Lothario. I should have come to you for tips!

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  2. Thanks for the Christmas card!
    Sounds to me as though in your youth no female was safe within half a mile of you.

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    Replies
    1. Phew! I thought you said "... in your mouth..." for a minute.

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  3. I have just realise that it sounds as though I am bragging and am proud of all the above. Well, let me tell you, I am.

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  4. Thanks for the card - very subtly irreligious?
    And your photos - did you take any other subjects but your women? (what lovely memories, though).

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    Replies
    1. Not intentionally. Yes, there are dozens of work-related pics too, but somehow it'e the women which abide.

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    2. I've had a few men... (sshhhh). I hope I've abided.

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  5. Thanks for the card.... I have printed it out and put a copy on my mantelpiece
    I have even written on the back
    " love and kisses Thomas and Hi

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    Replies
    1. That's nice. Just my intention, and heartfelt too. What a nice man I am.

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