101 Things #85 - A Roll in the Hay

I've been compiling my set of bucket-list rejects, the stuff that others recommend and which has no appeal to me, for some time now. One of the sources that I have freely plundered for suggestions to ridicule is the Bucket List Journey website and, wouldn't you know it, they've come up trumps again. I shall be adding to my non-achievers bible, 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, the somewhat offbeat notion that one should

Sleep in a stable on a haystack.

I'm not sure how much experience BLJ have of stables or haystacks. They may, of course, have considerable expertise in sleeping and see this idea as a doddle. Be that as it may, let us consider the position for the rest of us.

Firstly, some light quibbling [He does like a quibble, you know: Ed].

Here are some haystacks.
 

Those huge structures that look like houses are actually haystacks, built on the Manor Farm site in beautiful Ruislip. The photo was probably taken before 1914 when hay for London horses was the main agricultural output of the area.


And, by way of contrast, here are some stables.

This photo shows the stables at Manor Farm. The building is still there, now converted for public use as a meeting hall.

Readers, do you see the problem? Haystacks are very big and stables, by comparison, are smaller. It is not possible to do anything in a stable on a haystack because it is not possible to build a haystack within a stable. Obviously a very, very small haystack could be put up in a stable but then it would not really be a haystack, just a pile of hay.

I also rule out, just to frustrate any pedants about to put their hands up¹, the idea that stables could be constructed on top of a haystack. I think we may assume that our friends at BLJ did mean you to sleep on a haystack within a stable and just worded it clumsily.

Having therefore dismissed the idea that one could even attempt to sleep in a stable on a haystack, let us now be generous and consider the more general concept of having a kip in some sort of farm building using hay as one's bedding. (I don't think I can make the wording any more generalised than this, but anyone who thinks they can do better is welcome to send in their suggestions to the usual address).²

Of course it sounds so romantic and daring. The runaway from home dossing down for the night with only the snuffling of the horses to disturb her. The escaped POWs listening with thumping hearts for the approaching boots. The lovers, burrowing deep into the hay as they lose themselves and forget the dreadful fate hanging over her when Uncle Silas starts the foreclosure proceedings. Yes, we've all read the stories and seen the programmes on telly. Let us return to reality.

Stables and most farm buildings stink of animals, manure, fertiliser and diesel oil. Straw is scratchy, apt to get everywhere in one's clothes and provides no real support for the back unless laid out on some suitable surface³. There is no electricity to hand so nowhere to charge one's phone and no reading light. If you need the loo in the night, the pitch-dark, muddy farmyard is your only option and you had better hope the geese are penned up and the dogs are asleep. If it is a cold night then wrap up in your warmest clothes and wait, shivering fitfully, for the dawn. If you wisely choose a summer night make sure you do not oversleep, you do not want to be prodded by a pitchfork and have goggling yokels eyeballing you. Of course what with the mice, or more malicious vermin, scurrying about and the horse-flies delighted to have found a change to their monotonous diet, you probably won't sleep much anyway.

Sleeping out in the open in fresh air is a better idea but way better still is to stay at the BnB that the farm offers, sleep comfortably in a nice airy bedroom and tuck into a proper farmhouse breakfast the next day.

No sleeping on hay in some freezing farm outbuilding for me, thanks very much, but I am so pleased to have been able to include some photos of beautiful Ruislip in one of these pieces.

Footnotes:
1. [I wasn't putting my hand up, actually, I just have this itch on the left shoulder blade that is hard to reach: Ed]
2. All submissions will be vetted with scrupulous care by the Editor before being carefully filed in the little wicker basket at the side of his desk, emptied into the big dustbin out the back on Thursdays, collected by the refuse service of Hillingdon Council and incinerated, probably somewhere near Slough.
3. Yes, I do know what I am talking about. I have slept on straw-filled palliases many times, whilst camping in my youth, and will gladly never repeat the experience.

101 Things #84 - Unwanted Fame

Most of us dream about being famous. We imagine ourselves on the red carpet, being photographed, being watched and admired by the ordinary people. As the author of the increasingly well-known anti-bucket-list 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, I may be closer to fame than most; however, as things stand, it remains somewhat at a distance. This may seem to open the door for the suggestion found on the Airrows.com website. Amongst the bucket-list items is found the proposal to

Get mistaken for someone famous, don't correct them

but it is devoid of true promise, as I shall attempt to show.

There are several parts to this wannabe bucket-list item; the being mistaken bit, the question of who it is one is mistaken for, who it is that is doing the mistaking and the consequences of disillusioning them.

1. Being Mistaken
This is the hardest part. How do you become mistaken for someone else? Presumably it has to be someone you closely resemble. Merely wandering around, say, Ruislip station, and going up to people saying "That's simply splendid and what do you do?" will not guarantee that you will be taken for Prince Charles. Equally, donning sunglasses and insisting on "No photos, please" as you sweep into the chemists will probably not mean the assistant gasping and saying "Oh, Clint, I loved you in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly." Nor will entering the South African High Commission and going "Zulus. Farsands of 'em" convince anyone that you are indeed Michael Caine.

Wearing a rubber latex mask makes it easier for the public to work out who you are supposed to be but reduces the chances of you being mistaken to pretty well zero. Because famous people do not wear masks depicting themselves.

In short you might spend a long time before anything happens and, if it finally does happen when you are sitting in your retirement home and another inmate decides you are Cary Grant, this is hardly going to count.

2. Mistaken for whom?
Who might some poor deluded innocent bystander take you to be? Do you, in fact, resemble anyone well known? In my case the answer is no. This means that, should some sort of ghastly mistake actually occur, then I won't know who it is I am supposed to be. The consequences are likely to be something like this

PDIB: "It's you. It is! OMG! I don't believe it. I thought you were in Japan!"
Self: "Er, no, well, I was, of course, but I'm not now. I'm here, as it happens"
PDIB: "They said you were having therapy and writing a novel. And Billy-Sue! You're not really going to give her up are you? It would break my heart"
Self: "Ah no, dear old Billy-Sue, we're going to get back together very soon"
PDIB: "I'm so glad. I adore that dog"
Self: "Umm ... yes, so do I ..."

And on you flounder, unable to come clean to the fan because the rules of this bucket-list item are that you don't correct them.

3. The Mistaker 
But now we should consider who it is that is button-holing you. In the ideal case they will be thrusting out a grubby envelope for an autograph and taking selfies. But suppose it is a large, well-muscled gentleman with a scar or two and plenty of gold jewellery on his big, gnarled hands:

"Harry Arkwright! Gord, I don't believe it. It's you, ain't it? Standing here large as life. Jeez, Harry, last I heard you were doing a ten stretch in Wandsworth. Put it there my old son, I gotta tell the boss, this is great, we need a getaway driver for our latest job and you're the perfect man."

Do you risk enlightening your new friend and put yourself at serious risk of several mouthfuls of knuckles and a clear threat to "Shut it or else"? Or go along with it and find yourself really doing a ten stretch in Wandsworth?

4. The Consequences
We have moved into the final part of our little discussion. Perhaps the forgoing was a little extreme but who knows what a disappointed and potentially angry member of the public may do when you finally let on that you are not really Rihanna/ United's new Portuguese striker/The President of the North Ruislip Fruiterers Association after all. Remember the whole point of this achievement is to string them along, either actively by telling them what you, Tiger Woods, Hugh Grant, a Kardashian and that ballerina got up to that steamy night in Acapulco, or at any rate by nodding, grinning inanely for the cameras and dropping in the odd "You're too kind" and "Do please look me up the next time you're in Monte".

Sooner or later the pretence will falter, the mask will slip and their adoring eyes will fill with the wild uncontrolled anger of the deceived. Will you able to outsprint them up the High Street or do you go down under a flurry of handbags and "Oogh, the cheek, did you hear who he said he was, the lying toe-rag"?

Usually with a decent bucket-list attainment there is something to look back on with pride or a lasting satisfaction. That long cycle road over the mountains. The glorious sunset over the Grand Canyon. Working the equivalent of a con-trick on innocent and unsuspecting members of the public does not stand comparison. I am not going to go along with it. The next time I am accosted in the street with the delighted cry of "Hey, you're that guy in the pub on Emmerdale" I shall stop, smile, and say pleasantly "No, I'm afraid not. I'm the guy he talks to but you never see me on camera" and I shall pass on my way leaving them baffled yet somehow vindicated.

101 Things #83 - Ascending La Tour

The good folk who make up well-meaning sets of bucket-list items frequently throw in all sorts of physical challenges. Slog up this mountain here, plunge into that bottomless ocean chasm there, run until your lungs try to climb out of your throat to escape, that sort of thing. I tend to ignore these as I steadily add to my collection of anti-bucket-list tropes that the world knows only by the name of 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die.

However, I find myself strangely drawn to an idea proposed on the Location Rebel website. By "drawn" I certainly do not mean that I wish to do it, or to wish that I had done it once, or to suggest that you may wish to do it. What I mean is, I am moved to say what a ludicrous idea it is to

Walk to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Pic: www.ce.jhu.edu

The highest one may reach on the tower is 276m but this is only attainable by lift to the general public. Walkers may go no further than the second platform, a mere 116m above ground. The stairs leading on up from there are not accessible to the public.

That height is, nonetheless, pretty high. At some 380 feet it is the equivalent of a 34 floor building. I used to work on the tenth floor of a block at Waterloo and tried on most days to walk up. I could do it, but often had to stop by the seventh floor for breath and then struggled on, wheezing a little, to my desk and an essential cup of tea. To climb more than three times that height would have been doable but would have needed a fair amount of time and a number of rest breaks. But to climb up the full height of the Eiffel Tower, assuming one was allowed to do so, would be do to attempt something like an 80 floor building. This would not be fun. It would a gruelling slog up an unyielding metal staircase. The usual rule of thumb for hikers is to allow an hour for each 1000 foot of ascent, which is almost exactly what we have in this case.

So why have this one on your bucket-list? You can't do it anyway and if you could, it is just another endurance test. Why not ascend the staircase in your own home instead - the "faux-Everest" technique pioneered by this very column. The 984 feet of vertical ascent is the equivalent of just 106 strolls up my own stairs and can be accomplished in a couple of days or so. The views are not quite so compelling, I must concede, but there is plenty of tea to be had (unlike on the barren wastes of the upper Eiffel), it doesn't cost €25 either, and nor is there a queue.

I can cheerfully grow old [older: Ed] without ever worrying that I missed out on climbing the Eiffel Tower. In fact, I am fairly happy never having gone up it at all, given the length of the queues the last time I passed that way. I have no plans to wear out my own stair-carpet either. If Location Rebel and those of his ilk wish to try their luck on La Tour, good luck to them, and I am fairly sure that, when they finally stagger down and reel along the unforgiving concrete of the Quai Branly, they will be asking themselves why.

101 Things #82 - Magic Moments

I am a fairly realistic, down-to-earth sort of bloke. I may tut-tut with irritation when there are extensive delays on the tube but I accept that these do happen now and then. I tend to carry an umbrella on most days, however sunny and settled the weather may appear. I take no heed of advertisements for casinos, on-line gambling or the national lottery because I know that the odds of success are against me.

Consequently, as I continue to add to my compendium of the pointless or risible bucket-list suggestions of others, which is known in these parts as 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, it is the work of a moment to consider worthy of inclusion the proposal found on A Backpackers Tale website to

Expect magic in each moment.

By magic I think we can rule out some fast-talking, dinner-jacketed smoothie who deftly shuffles a pack of cards in one hand whilst relieving you of your watch with the other. In this context it surely denotes an element of wonder, joyful surprise and a keen pleasure in some unforeseen turn of events. There is nothing wrong with hoping for something special, sure, but I would like to muse for a while on the word "expect".

We all assume the sun will rise tomorrow. We base this on the experience of the human race since time immemorial and on upon scientific understanding of the nature of stars. The probability of a sunrise is so enormously high that we can safely base our entire existence upon it. This is a good use of the word "expect". Another is that a train, already visible to us on our smartphone app as having left a nearby station, will shortly arrive in beautiful Ruislip to permit some quality commuting.

We may also expect there to be rain later in the day; this is never certain especially here in the UK where a highly complex weather system makes precise predictions hard. For this reason forecasters will often give a probability to their forecasts.

Expectation is borne out of experience and knowledge. If we have none, then we have no basis to predict anything. The cliche "expect the unexpected" is singularly unhelpful; we may be able to imagine all sorts of outcomes but we cannot expect anything until we have something to go on.

On these grounds, since "magic" is something utterly out of the ordinary, it is pretty damn unreasonable to try to expect it at all, never mind in each moment. We may glimpse it in the face of a loved one, or in a child giggling helplessly at at something we find quite ordinary, we may shiver with pleasure at a multi-coloured sunset over a sweeping landscape or tingle with the last bars of a stirring piece of music; all of these things are, probably, what our good backpacking friends intended to be denoted as magical and all of them are special precisely because they are are rare and arise only in special circumstances. Were we to expect them to occur in each and every moment we would be sorely and continually disappointed.

I contend that only the deluded would expect magic in each moment. The intelligent and rational expect the ordinary - that whatever happens will be roughly in line with the probability of it happening, that magical moments will occur infrequently and often unpredictably and that it is precisely this rarity that makes them special, worth savouring at the time and memorable ever after.

Thus I have no intention of expecting anything other than the normal. I may cherish the hope of the special, of course, but hope and expectation are different animals and should not be confused. I hope that you will be enthralled and delighted by this series of anti-bucket-list themes but I do not expect it.

101 Things #81 - Slapping Those Hands

There are bucket-list ideas that are highly specific and need effort to achieve - such as running a marathon. There are ideas that are a little woollier but still have a reasonable rationale - such as befriending an older person. And there are those really daft notions that are probably included to make up the numbers for those trying to find 101 things to do before they die and are stuck after listing the first 63. This piece examines one of these. It was suggested on the website Get Off The Couch .

I'm off the couch, thank you, and have no intention whatsoever to

Spend a day giving high fives to everyone you see.*

What I shall do instead is to add this to my still-growing, now four score in number, series 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die.

There were no high fives when I was young. Indeed, there were none for much of my adulthood. Stealthily, without fanfare, this form of social interaction has become acceptable and commonplace. This article, A Brief History of the High Five by Jessica Bloustein Marshall, seems fairly helpful in establishing how the high five become enmeshed within our culture.

If the high five has a value, it is to celebrate a worthwhile achievement. A cricketer scoring successive sixes perhaps or a sales manager acknowledging a new monthly sales record. It should be used sparingly so as to have a real meaning. But we find people high-fiving on the least pretext, and now, here is the ultimate expression of pointlessness, the idea that somehow you will have achieved something memorable if you do it all the time with everyone you meet during a day.

I wonder what the good folk of beautiful Ruislip would think were I to stroll down High Street extending my hand and waving it in the face of all who pass. The young mother with a child on one arm and pushing a pram with the other - will she gladly let go of one to rap my knuckles? The elderly couple moving slowly toward the supermarket, the traffic warden with his beady eye on a Range Rover, the group of teenagers engrossed with their phones - will any of these extend a hand to share a moment with me? Do I dare start high-fiving a couple of schoolgirls or will I instantly face a charge of sexual harassment?

I suppose one could try simply offering a high five to all-comers. This way only volunteers would be involved. But clearly this would not achieve the objective of "giving" high fives so must be disregarded. As to "a day" - what on earth does our couch-bound advisor do all day that makes this sort of activity worthwhile? Presumably he does not drive a taxi or a train; he is unlikely to be a policeman or a coastguard. A scientist carefully carrying radioactive fluids in a testtube is not, I venture, going to risk dropping it and melting his shoes just because a grinning colleague is sticking out a paw to be rapped. And as to the man at the controls of the crane on the building site, making minute adjustments to the five ton load being swung high out over the street - best left well alone, I dare say.

In any case merely looking at a stranger is more social interaction than most of us care to do, and in the wrong neighbourhood, can be positively dangerous. Even in the right neighbourhood there is likely to be a far amount of sideways glances, averted gazes and possibly crossing of the street when an enthusiastic high-fiver is spotted. I must admit that were I to encounter someone doing this, I would be narrowing my gaze, ensuring my wallet was safely buttoned up and putting a hand on my portable umbrella (always useful as an emergency club) just in case. And by extension, if others feel the same way then who am I to put them under such pressure?

 &-&-&-&

* This article was, of course, written some time before the present medical emergency.