It's the Grand National horse race today. I have a full £5 bet on.
The first time I ever attended the race at Aintree I was on my way to my Gran's in Chester. I had discovered that a return to Chester from Northampton on the bus was £20 but a return to Aintree just up the road was a mere £14. So you might say that I went to the race because I was on my way to somewhere else.
I got lucky that day. First I found £40 (4 x£10) on the ground in the bookie's enclosure. Nobody seem to be claiming it so I did but of course didn't hand around very long in case someone came looking for it. I pocketed half and stuck the other £20 on Alderniti to win and it promptly obliged. Also, I managed to find my way into the royal enclosure. I'm not quite sure how this happened for the security was very tight. I guess it was because there weren't many wee lads on their own and the gate inspector must have confused the couple immediately in front of me as my parents and in the three of us went.
So somewhere not too far from where Queen Elizebeth the Queen Mother was standing I watched my horse come home and headed for my gran's in Chester about £100 richer than I had ever been before. Gran was amused, proud and disturbed all at once. Easy stuff this gambling I thought.
I went to the local police station yesterday to produce the relevant paperwork for them to process my three points for driving whilst on the phone. There was an air of nervousness about the place which I put down to the recent car bomb that killed one of their number at the weekend. It must be a very stressful job at times and a lightly stressful all the time when you're a police officer in Police Service Northern Ireland. When I first came to Northern Ireland all those years ago it was still at a time when it was prudent to check for bombs under your car - especially if you had anything to do with "the establishment". In those early days although I worked in Derry/Londonderry I first lived over the border in the Republic of Ireland in a place called Burnfoot which, it turned out, was something of a Republican/IRA heartland. The lady in the house opposite had a son serving life in Longkesh for a paramilitary killing whilst the family up the road had lost a son in a paramilitary incident. Late one evening I was in the bath after a hard day's battle in court. The lights were off, a few candles were on along with a bit of Mozart and I was chilling with a glass of red. I then heard a car pull into the driveway and stop right by my front door. Dripping wet and peering through a gap in the lounge curtains I could see the silhouettes of three me in the car. From what I could see none was talking. I was desperately trying to read this situation to work out what this meant and my next move. My car was around the back of the bungalow and with the lights out I hoped that they had come only to burgle the premises. I threw the lights on expecting to hear the screech of a car turning quickly around and making a quick get away. But there was no reaction at all. Instead, three inanimate men sat there in silence. Time to make a quick exit out the back of the property and up the back hill far away I thought. Just as I threw on a pair and jeans and a shirt and headed for the kitchen door I heard a car engine start and I watched as their vehicle calmly and coolly did a 3 point turn and make its way slowly down the driveway never to be seen again. The following day I asked a colleague at work who had a pretty good ear to the ground for her interpretation of these events. She surmised that I'd been sent a warning that "They" knew I was about and would return if necessary.
Yesterday evening at about 5p.m. a business friend of mine in Moscow popped up on Skype so we chatted via sms for a while to catch up on all the news. Just as she signed off my friend from Venezuela zipped in to chat by video link from Geneva. Through his concave webcam he looked a little like one of those squashed up creatrures from Lord of the Rings but I didn't think I should tell him this in case the humour got lost in translation. An hour later I was on a telephone conference call with 12 other people dotted around the UK for a phone seminar delivered by Richard Denny from his home in Morton on the Marsh in Gloucestershire. Driving home I wondered how we ever managed to get by pre the Internet. But we did. Just don't tell me that it was better "in them days" when times hadn't changed because I just don't believe it.
I laughed early this morning. I met an Earlybird swimmer in the car park. He had just been for a run along the edge of Lough Neagh. He told me that my ears must have been burning yesterday because the chatter amongst the Earlybird swimmers as they waited to get in the pool was mighty. He said it went something like this "Aye yee know that boyee is some boyee, never at home at the weekend but always away gallivanting somewhere. Yee know he's in Geneva this weekend staying with a Venezuelan boy he's not seen in 20 years. Next week he's in London at the Opera and latter this month he's in Red Square for the Moscow Parade. Some boy that boy. Oh and yee know he's got four hens but only one of them is laying any eggs?" Oh the local tittle tattle. There's nothing like it.
My second impression of Geneva was much better than my first. When I was first there a good 20 years ago working for a while at the UN the place seemed almost too perfect and too good to be true. Everything worked like clock work (as you might expect in a land famous for it's clocks and watches) but so well it almost became a bit predictable and dare I say it boring too. The bus for the UN in the morning from the university campus always arrived at 8.47a.m. and deposited me at work at 9.07a.m where I'd see largely the same people walking into work and the process pretty much happened the same in reverse at 5.30p.m. each week day too. The Swiss bought their newspapers each day not from a corner shop or newsagent but from a stand which also contained an honesty box for the price of the paper which everyone I saw at least, seemed to use. The city was impressively clean and none of its inhabitants would dream of crossing even an empty street unless the green man indicated it was lawful to do so. After I left Geneva I remember returning to my flat in a rough old part of Glasgow. Early one morning (possibly at 8.47a.m. who knows) there was a knock at the door and I fell out of bed still in a sleepy haze to answer it. I was presented with the sight of a lady who had clearly seen better days. She looked in her 50s but she might well have been 35. She was holding a pair of jeans she had probably robbed from a neighbour's washing line that she hoped I would buy from her. As I went back to bed I wondered if such a thing had ever happened in Geneva and whether it ever would. As I hopped on the plane last night back to Northern Ireland I wondered if the Swiss obsession of running everything so perfectly was actually getting worse for we had managed to take off a full 20 minutes ahead of schedule. However, this head start was cancelled out the other end for when we arrived at Belfast International Airport there was no-one there to take us from the plane. We had to wait a full 20 minutes for someone to lead us the 100 metres from the aircraft to the the terminal building. "For each action there's an opposite and equal reaction" wasn't that what one famous Swiss mathematician once said?
My holiday companion of 22 years ago hadnt changed a bit and I recognised him immediately at the airport in Geneva. A little greyer around the edges may be but still the same man I travelled with through three wild and crazy countries by upteen number of buses all those years ago.
I soon discovered that Oswaldo married a lovely lady called Valentina not long after I left Caracus and now has a delightful family with Ana Cecilia aged 22 and Sebastián aged 16. They have a lovely apartment in Geneva and by all accounts a wonderful life in this wonderfully cosmopolitian city.
Unsurprisingly we were soon asking questions of what the other remembered about our epic journey and it was fascinating to discover what we did and didnt recollect between us. I had no recollection at all of winning a pile of Bolivars at my first attempt at the roulette wheel in a southern Columbian town one evening and upsetting the locals by insisting that we leave right there and then as we were ahead. But it sounds plausible because thats what I do today. Ive always had a lot of luck at the routelle table and the numbers he mentioned (24 and 34) are those I normally go for.
He had no recollection of the time we went in search of soup from a local peasant woman doing her best to make a few Bolivars from the bus that stopped in her village once a day. Just as he assured me that it was vegetarian a chickens foot floated to the surface of the soup. Poor Oswaldo struggled to find me anything veggie to eat amongst a continent of carnivores. When he asked for how long I had been a vegetarian I think he expected me to reply all my life. When I told him “dos semanas” he near through a wobbler. But I knew then that it would be for the rest of my life and so far it has been.
He didnt remember the guy from Israel who joined us for the last two days of the trip and my attempts to keep them from arguing for they didnt get on at all. Its funny how Oswaldo seems to have just airbrushed him out of his memory even though he remembers some of the adventures the three of us had together.
We both remembered arriving to a hostel in Bogata and Oswaldo calling a number he had been given of a man who gave tours of the city. Its only now after we revisted that memory that I understand fully what actually happened. Apparently Oswaldo called the man but he explained that he had had an accident and was in plaster and unable to work as a tour guide. When he asked Oswaldo where we were staying he advised us to get out immedately as we were in the most dangerous part of Bogata in a hotel notorious for incidents with its guests. I do recall a conversation which consisted of little more than muy peligroso hombre vamos.
We both remembered the amazing single bus journey from Cucata in northern Columbia to Bogata in the middle of the country some 24 hours with the same driver at the wheel around and across some of the most dangerous and high mountain passes youre ever likely to see. We recalled how at the bus station the ticket lady gave us two plastic socks in which to hide the majority of our money. Bandits apparently had hit the last two buses over the moutain passes and this was our best chance of arriving with enough money to get back again.
We finished the day yesterday with a lovely walk along one edge of Lake Geneva. Geneva is such a beautiful city and I struggle now to work out how it is that I lived here for three months and remember only how miserable I was. Or may be I dont, for I was a student and broke at the time relying on a pot of marmite to keep me alive. That I do remember and clearly...
I have three friends staying over in my house this weekend. Two are former Hells Angels and a third is a gay dance instructor. Yes I have an eclectic bunch of friends and yes I can't help but think sometimes that it's a miracle they all get on so well.
It's the weekend but I have so much work to do. I've to prepare a mediation appeal for Monday.I've to draft our strategy plan for Tuesday test some software for Wednesday and prepare a conference speech for Thursday. Easy enough you might think in two days but I don't have two days for today I'm off to see an old friend in Geneva for the weekend and I just can't wait. The four hour return journey time is my only hope of keeping on top of these work assignments so I plan to choose my Easyjet seat carefully. It will be by no crying babies. It will not be amongst hen parties at the back of the plane. It will not be in a middle row and so squashed that I wont be able to open a folder and work. Better be first on I guess or should that be last so I can choose who gets me rather than the other way round.
I had planned not to take my mobile away with me this weekend. A daring thought I know. The prospect of being out of range of business calls and even messages from friends and family became increasingly appealing the more I thought about it this morning. But then I realised I have no camera other than the one secreted into my Iphone so it seems it and I will be travelling together afterall. Maybe I should just be really reckless when boarding the flight and leave flight mode on all weekend. Wow I can be hard sometimes. Wait till I tell the Hells Angels - they'll be terrified...
