where art collides philosoperontap

You have to walk the path. Keep off the grass. If requested. There will be a sign. Usually a small metal rectangle embedded in the grass itself. Green. Both sign and grass, though the lettering on the sign will be in a different colour to allow it to be read. White is practical.

Keeping to the path may often be counter intuitive. It would probably be easier to take the short cut across the grass using the hypotenuse as opposed to the other two sides of the triangle. Often when there is no sign requesting you to keep off the grass one will see a muddy brown train across the green to the exit point at the other side of the lawn. A door into the clubhouse perhaps. Or the entrance to a museum.

The grass is more likely to be pristine at the museum. Visitors to museums are the more respectable type. Conformists. They understand the value that rules bring to society. They will queue up in an orderly manner to buy their entrance tickets exhibiting signs of great patience at busy times when the single ticket sales person is over worked and constantly flustered. They should have put more staff on if they knew it was going to be busy. It happens every year.

A nice green lawn looks good. It also feels good to walk on in bare feet. Unfortunately this will not be possible on the lawn in front of the museum. As you know. Walter, the head gardener, would be most upset. Distraught even. It’s a little bit of a stretch to call him “head gardener” because he is the only one. He is only part time because the garden isn’t that big. Just the lawn and bushes at the front of the building with a little bit around each side.

There is no garden to the rear. It’s mostly car park and access for trade vehicles. Refuse van and so on. That’s refuse as in rubbish. Not refuse as in the van won’t go there. Had a tantrum or perhaps mechanical problems. They should get it serviced more often, were that the actual version of refuse used. It isn’t so it doesn’t matter. They also use the rear entrance to deliver new exhibits to the museum. Especially the larger ones such as statues of Greek gods with only one arm. No idea where the other arm went to. I don’t think anyone knows or they would have stuck it back on somehow. With cement probably. I can’t see superglue working for a Greek arm. Stone.

Occasionally the museum lends exhibits to other similar institutions and the rear entrance is also used to ship these exhibits. They can go all over the world though thus far never to Paraguay or Bolivia. To my knowledge. There is no reason why this is the case other than nobody from Paraguay or Bolivia has ever asked to borrow one. An exhibit. Recognising the nature of the museum there isn’t much call for that sort of thing in Paraguay or Bolivia, or anywhere else in South America.

It’s a long way, especially by boat. Quicker by air obv unless you were trying to get there by hang glider which wouldn’t be hugely practical. Against the prevailing wind and you would need to come down for a rest and a bit of a sleep at the end of every day. Hang gliders need a bit of a cliff to take off. Somewhere they can get some uplift. Sea level doesn’t fit that bill. No sir.

Assuming you could hang glide non-stop to Rio De Janeiro you would need to take enough grub and water to last the journey. They haven’t invented in-flight refuelling for hang gliders yet. Afaik. The problem is going to be weight. Ok it’s easy enough to take a pack of sandwiches and a flask for a long hang glide but I’d say you would need supplies for at least a week. That would be fourteen meals plus maybe 28 litres of water. Probably more. You would be flying across the equator and it will be hot.

You will therefore need to make sure you have enough suntan lotion to last the trip. Factor 30 at least. This is all adding weight. I would suggest taking a change of clothes but I’m not sure how you would go about getting changed whilst airborne. Having to carry a dirty set of clothes for the rest of the way from say half way is also going to be a bit of a faff. You might as well just stick with the one set of togs. Might end up ponging a bit but let’s face it, there’s not going to be anyone else up there to smell it. I doubt the boids will care.

There are undoubtedly places in South America that are nearer than Rio but I’m not here to be sensible. We are after the exotic. The exciting. We are living life to the full. We don’t want to look back and regret not having done more when we had the opportunity. All of this is hypothetic anyway. Or should that be hypothetical. Probs.

Continuing with the theme were someone to hang glide to Australia that would be even more impressive. Assuming that the original challenge of hang gliding to Rio impressed you in the first place. It did me. Believe you me I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.

Not that the mundane doesn’t have its place. Most of our lives are filled with the mundane. Have you done your grocery shop yet? Mostly mundane I’ll bet. Difficult making the purchase of a can of baked beans seem exciting. Maybe if they have an offer on. Bogof. Or buy one get 50% off the next 4 pack. All good stuff.

My favourite deal was at Tesco when buying sausages. It was something like buy one pack get 50% off the next expressed as a sum of money discounted. Anyway on this particular occasion they were selling off the sausages at a reduced price and there were a lot of them. To cut a long story short the offer combined with the reduced price meant that two packs of sausages cost one pence. I had this figured out but took two packs to the check out to test the theory. It worked. Back I went and put something like twenty packs in the trolley and at the checkout handed ten pence over to a surprised member of staff. That deal got me a lot of brownie points when I got home. Good job I like sausages. Innit?

Some shopping trips are of course exciting. This I am not denying. Can’t quite think of an example at the moment but I’m sure there are plenty. Buying a new car maybe. You turn up at the Ferrari garage and drive off in your new red number. It would have to be red. The Ferrari. Any other colour doesn’t seem right.

If it’s a Ferrari you are after you’d better make sure you’ve budgeted for the petrol. Pretty thirsty beasts. I imagine. Never driven one meself or had to fill it up. Bit of a contrast with the hang glider which doesn’t use any fuel. Neither mode of transport has much space to bring back the shopping. One you have the kid’s car seat in the Ferrari you have a bit of room in the foot well to shove the bread and the milk and then that’s it. I suppose Ferraris must have a boot. That’s trunk for the elephants amongst you.

How do you get four elephants in  Ferrari? You can’t. You might be able to stick a Ferrari on the back of an Elephant though. Handy for getting across those snowed up mountain passes when invading Italy. Been done before. An invasion of Italy by elephant. Not carrying a Ferrari though. Ferraris hadn’t been invented at the time. Wouldn’t have been much use because the roads weren’t tarmac’d in those days and petrol wasn’t invented.

All they had was oil for lamps and olive oil for culinary purposes. Nice with a bit of vinegar. Balsamic. You can also use wine vinegar with a bit of mustard to give you French dressing or vinaigrette. Add a bit of pepper and salt to taste, as they say. Goes well with lettuce and tomato. I’ve often wondered why we bother with lettuce. It’s okaay but nothing special. It’s almost as if it was designed to work with oil and vinegar. Without the dressing there isn’t much point to it.

And at that point we move on to the subject of ice creams. They have to be made using real ice cream. Not Mr Whippy or whatever they call that soft stuff. I don’t mind a flake occasionally. Now the thing to know about ice cream is that if you are buying more than one, for a friend or the kids maybe and if it is a hot day, as it is wont to be when you are buying ice creams, you don’t want to be walking too far with them because they will melt and drip all over your hand. It’s ok if you only have the one because you can lick it to stop the drips. If you have one for someone else they won’t appreciate that. Ice creams are pretty personal things. They will definitely notice the illicit lick and will probably mention it. I would. In fact I wouldn’t even think of having it myself after you have licked it. Pretty selfish of you I’d say. You should have walked faster.

3rd Law Part 58 here 

3rd Law Part 60 here