Miscellaneous Things

It always rains on Sunday … well, actually it doesn’t; not here anyway, but it did today.

Back in the dim and distant past – 1947 to be precise, there was a movie by that name. It was based on an Arthur La Bern novel and was set in a very dreary East London. This was a time of stark austerity in
England, made all the more apparent in London. Few things are improved by wetness, except perhaps bronze nubile maidens at the beach. A grey old city ravaged by the best Herman Goring’s Luftwaffe could do, is made all the uglier by mist and rain.

How different that image is from the one I am used to here in
SW Florida. But is this SW Florida? My window reveals a sodden windswept landscape reminiscent of the Yorkshire Moors. Could it be that in the dark of night, aliens entered my bedroom and made me a victim of their loathsome technology and ‘matter transferred’ me to another place? There was one way I could find out. There is a place known only to me (I think), or perhaps a couple of others; where alligators lurk and leer locally. Arriving there, I was relieved to see them: as before, lurking and leering. But this time they seemed to be enjoying the rain. I guess life for an alligator is pretty boring, so the change from getting wet without slithering into the water comes as a pleasant change.

Rain and wind not-with-standing, I headed off to church. Religion is very popular here. My church doesn’t attract the vast congregations enjoyed by some churches, but it does average 300 per service on a Sunday; and there are three of them. If St James the Great, in my little Worcestershire village could attract that many for one service, they would hale it as a coming of the Messiah. On a good day we used to get nineteen: and that included the choir.

The Baptist Church is just up the road from here. Its not so much a church, its more like a stadium. I’ve lost count of how many services they have, but never less than 3000 cram into each one. In architecture it has no pretensions of looking like a church. It emulates a Toyota manufacturing plant in Kentucky. The nave is replaced by a massive auditorium that seats thousands. In the winter the congregation spills over into an adjacent auditorium with enormous load-speakers and video links to delude people into thinking they are part of the service.The service is essentially a large choir singing happy-clappy songs pretissimo as a prelude to the Pastor sharing an enlightening moment with us. This diatribe is punctuated with demands for money – for very good causes I have no doubt. As his rhetoric bombards us, the Christian cardinal virtue of humility seems to be lost on the good pastor dressed in $4000 suits, gold Rolexes and topped off with designer hair and spray that would support a ship.To me, living a Christian life is more than seeing how many times I can include the noun God in a given sentence. It is all about God being the father and we being the family. This influences me as I leave the crowded parking lot. It doesn’t seem very Christian to me to bang my door into the car next to me. Or spin my wheels so the manicured grass is ripped up, while I ace out the other drivers to get to the exit first. But I guess one can do all that and still be a Christian; only not a very good one.

The rain has stopped. It’s Florida again. The wind is still blowing but the brilliant sunshine masks the discomfort. The benefit of Florida is that it always defaults to sunshine. Even when it rains, you know that it really wants to be sunny – and it doesn’t always rain on Sunday. In fact it rarely ever does.

Pulling on my gloves and with my head well down, I headed into the

biting north wind on my usual morning constitutional. Just like any other February morning I hear you say. And there you would be wrong. This is
Naples,
SW Florida, and its supposed to be hot. I am not alone in this expectation. More than a million snow-birds have been disabused of this notion too.

Apparently, the temperature dropped below freezing last night.

Fortunately, a multitude of Mexicans covered our native plants to out-wit the weather. In my experience this has happened once before with equal success.

When the weather turns chilly, it is easy to separate the locals from

the visitors. Normally one only has their poor driving habits to distinguish them. But when its cold, they insist in wearing thin tee shirts and shorts while Floridians can be seen emulating Nanook of the North.

There are other interesting little telltale signs of the northern invasion.

Shop keepers find the living easy and are reluctant to offer the small kindness’ experienced during the summer. For example today I bought myself a special gift of a Bosca leather desk accessory. The one on display had some scuffing on one side of it, so I requested a ‘new one’. Such a thing was not to be found so I quite expected to be offered a modest discount of the damaged one. The fact that it is ‘the season’ quite slipped my mind until I was advised that I could have the display one at full price or nothing.

A cappuccino – you know in the opaque cups, is lighter now. A lot more froth and a lot less coffee. How often my heart sinks as I lift the cup off the end counter and notice the lightness of the cup. Of course one can ask for more, and some frequently do, but they are made of sterner stuff than I. When, in the early eighties Howard Schultz stole the idea of a coffee shop come meeting place from the Italians – from the Italians? Samuel Johnson was habituating such an establishment in
London in the 1750s. Whatever; Schults’s idea was a good one and he became very rich. Don’t take my word for it. He has nearly 4000 stores in 25 countries serving 25 million people a week.

Now we need someone to come up with a way to make the damn things more quickly, and they would be even richer.

The internet has statistics on what percentage of our life we spend sleeping, working, driving, waiting at traffic lights etc. Not to mention other things too delicate to mention here. Now we need one on how long we wait at Starbucks for our soy milk latté with an extra shot minus too much froth.

SW Florida is not very well served with coffee shops. Starbucks has the market, with precious few competing. In the small town of
Worcester in the Midlands of England there are at least five major coffee shop franchises chasing Starbucks for our soy milk latté with an extra shot minus too much froth. But then Mr. Schultz believes that Starbucks is just getting started, and with only 6% of market share of coffee consumption, he may be right.

With temperatures just above 60, one would expect the beaches to be empty. Not a bit of it. Hardy souls in scanty garb litter every approach, safe in the knowledge that whilst hacking coughs and streaming colds are uncomfortable, they beat skin cancer every time. Regrettably this may not be factually accurate as ultra violet rays have little to do with temperature. Or so I believe.

At last I am at home, and even this is a strange experience. It is the norm here it be assailed with a cold blast as one enters one’s home.

This is not as weird as it sounds. The average summer temperature is around the low 90s, and homes are kept at the mid 70s so that 20 degree difference impacts on entry. Today, temperatures were reversed and I was welcomed home by a waft of warm air. For most of the year one goes into cold air and out into warm. The opposite is the case today. These variations in temperature would kill a frog.