...

While I'd love to be writing you a blog post along these lines:

"On Tuesday, I drove to a book launch on a backroad highway that is under construction at a rate of approximately three inches a year. I arrived at the 'escorted one-lane passage' at a comparatively good time, only having to wait about ten minutes before the cortege coming in the other direction passed and we were able to resume our journey. Those people in the queue ahead of me had not only been there long enough that it made sense to turn off their engines, but had also got out a picnic, and were in the second innings of a cricket match."

Here is what I've really got to give:

Monday, forgit what did.
Tuesday, forgit what did. Nothing pertikeler for tea.
Wednesday, forgit what did.
Thursday, forgit what did. Wish I was a beter girl.

etc.

how many toasters does it take...

Some many months ago, I was (unsuccessfully) attempting to combat a bout of insomnia with repetitions of On Ilkley Moor Bar t'at, and its theosophy.

Last night, it was economics, thanks to 24 Hours from Tulsa.

In the mid-1980s, a petrol, or possibly oil, company had a tv advert to promote its reward card. Everybody used Green Shield Stamps back in them days, so although the reward card scheme was identical to that, racking up points in return for paying for petrol, there was obviously some need to preach to the suspicious who were not sure about a plastic card versus tiny slips of gummed perforated paper that you were supposed to lick and stick onto a cardboard...card. (In reality Green Shield stamps just got lost in the glove compartment or were whipped out of your fingertips by the wind as you crossed the garage forecourt to your car. As a kid, I found it hard to get a handle on the Green Shield stamp. It was so important, because it was like...money. But they were always crushed and coated with mud in the footwell, or dinged to shreds in the ashtray, and the card was never about, and then sometimes you would find one among the pile of parental pocket change on the sideboard, and...wonder).

So. The petrol company (I googled it; it's Mobil) did this advert about the things you could get with your points, and the song went: "I was only 24 toasters from Scunthorpe. Only 6 double beds from Torquay".

Now, we all know, until very recently at least, supermarket points things - aside from being calculated to confuse foreigners - buy practically nothing until you have been accumulating them for four hundred and ninety years, and then your options are an acrylic tumbler with the supermarket logo on, or a keyring. (The reason they are meant to confuse foreigners is the way you are asked for the card relating to a particular points scheme when you try to pay for things. It's not a quesion, as in, 'do you have a Nectar card?' The cashier just says, 'Nectar?' - or here, 'Optimum?' If you are confused, or are foolish enough to ask for elaboration, it is customary to simply repeat, 'OPTIMUM?').

So to reach even ONE toaster, even a hundredth of a double bed? You would surely have to drive a considerable distance. Yet the singer is in a car, 24 toasters away from Scunthorpe. And six, count them, six double beds from Torquay.

You're wide awake now too, aren't you?

The furthest point in the UK from Torquay has to be John O'Groats. Torquay is way in the south west. It's only about 100 miles from there to Land's End. The driving distance from John O'Groats to Torquay must be something just over 620 miles.

If I can earn 6 double beds from driving 620 miles, then...I can get a bed for going about 100. I could drive to London from Leicester, and I wouldn't even have to go back.

Conveniently, probably the furthest point from Scunthorpe is Land's End, since Scunthorpe is in North Lincolnshire. It can only be about 400 miles. That's 17 miles for a toaster.

Mobil, I didn't take A Level Economics. I didn't even take GCSE Economics. But even I can see that's financial suicide on your part.

This song was written before the Channel Tunnel existed. I guess you could allow for car-ferry transport to, say, Zeebrugge, or Ostend, thus opening up Europe and a much greater distance for the 24 toasters and six double beds to cover, but I don’t think that’s really in the spirit of the song.

However, since I still was not asleep at this point, I decided to allow for that Channel Tunnel they’ve got there, and assume Mobil must mean a much greater distance than the UK could offer.

Since I was in bed, I made some guesses about reward-points-to-litres-of-petrol ratios, and random looking-it-up after the fact bore it out – a litre gets you a point. 4.5 litres per gallon = 4.5 points (can you keep up with the maths?).

A nice economical little car like the Micra (I wish they had them here, but can you imagine driving on the Prairies in one? The people in their monster trucks wouldn’t even see you as they chewed you up into their front grille) gets about 50 mpg when driving long-distance. 4.5 points for every 50 miles.

Now, points-to-pounds. I don’t live in England any more but I’d say you could get a decent toaster for fifteen quid. (Not one that does eggs, probably, or has a muffin-or-croissant cradle on top for when you want to defrost pastries. But one that toasts.) The best-known supermarket points scheme gives you £2.50 for 500 points. 3000 points for the toaster.

Times 24.

72,000 points.

If 72,000 points gets me 24 toasters, and 50 miles gets me 4.5 points..then...16,000 miles. 16,000 miles for my 24 toasters.

As the crow flies, that’s beyond New Zealand. Driving distance, overland and through the Channel Tunnel (remember that far back? Still with me? Getting sleepy? Good) it’s got to be somewhere in Asia. Mongolia, maybe (I’m adding miles to detour through Iran around... that sea there, above Iran. My geography is about as good as my maths. The Black Sea? The Caspian?)

None of this, though, approaches the question of why, if you had 16,000 miles worth of points under your belt, you’d think of getting 24 toasters. I hear you can get some really good stuff from those points things now. There’s more to rewards than acrylic tumblers and multiple toasters.

Unless.

Unless you have a large extended family in Ulaanbaatar who all really enjoy breakfast, and you are looking for holiday gifts to take them, I suppose.

my hero

I am a treehugger. You know this to be true. I take my canvas bags to the supermarket and my travel mug to tea and coffee shops and recycle and compost and don’t buy stuff or eat meat and I get fair-trade tea and use solid shampoo because it's made without palm oil and doesn’t come in a plastic bottle and most of all, I ride a bike and take the bus. I’m not on the map as far as cars are concerned. The Top Gear men would hate me (even though I actually find them quite charming and watchable, for ridiculously posh wealthy petrol-headed hoons). I don’t, in general, much enjoy the burning of petrol to get places you could get with the burning of a bit of leg energy just as well.

A year ago, I had a car, to get to a stupidly distant job. The best I could do was find a small and fuel-efficient one and carpool daily. Since that time ended, it’s been bike and bus all the way.

But I have to admit to you, that in the last week, my hero, whom I love with a love that knows no bounds at all, at all, is:

I have a new job, and a new home. It’s a long long way from where I last lived in Canada. More than 3,000 kilometres. And everything I own – which to many people, doesn’t amount to much, but is still quite a lot to me – was located near to where the old job and home were. It had to be moved from one to the other, and so did I.

This, my small and fuel-efficient hero, is what got me and everything I own – that is, EVERY. SINGLE. THING. I. OWN. – more than three thousand kms in three days, without a complaint. Without a squeak, a moan, a groan, a hiss, a crunch; without even a polite request for a refreshing drink and a bit of a sit down.

It took me safely around scary Detroit in the early hours with news of a gas station carjacking shootout on the radio;

through the centre of Ann Arbor because of my creative map reading; across the rest of Michigan in such a flash I hardly noticed;

over the Chicago Skyway, pointing out the baseball stadium and a building with funny white ears on the way, and politely ignoring the oddly pull-y camber of the road and the continuous stops for bizarre mini-tolls of sixty cents every ten paces;

into and through Wisconsin without requesting fresh cranberry juice, or asking to stop at the restaurant with the name you’d never hear in the UK (The Bog) or even at the Wisconsin Indoor Kalahari Experience;

purred happily along the beautifully-paved highway between La Crosse and Madison;

joined me in a juvenile giggle at Minnesota’s billboards for Stearns Vet Outlet and Pharmacy (We Do Cows!);

stepped easily up to the challenge of the 75 mph speed limit in North Dakota that meant we zipped through the state like a dose of salts;

nobly protected EVERYTHING I OWN through one night parked in Eau Claire and one in Brandon, Manitoba...and proudly rolled me home more relaxed and content than I’ve felt in a while.

It’s been treated to a nice new set of winter tyres and a service, and as a true hero should be, was allowed to rest on its laurels for an entire day before we headed off flat-hunting together.

Last week I was on the bus to my new job, outside temperature minus four. The woman sitting next to me commented, ‘well, I guess we’re getting our Indian Summer at last!’

Hi, Saskatchewan! I’m back!

here

I'm here.

I am here, I promise.

It's just that here, on any given day recently, has been an astonishing variety of places, most of which are extremely far apart, and it's a bit tiring and quite hard to think or even put my trousers on the right way round, never mind get the right vitamins and/ or any sleep at all.

So. I'm here. Soon, I'll be elsewhere.

Oh, also? The keys keep pinging off my keyboard. ('keep pinging off' = two keys. Have departed my computer keyboard, and I can't fix them back on). One of them, even the little rubber nobble beneath the key has come off. It's been suggested it's because I bang the living daylights out of my computer keys, having learnt to type on a typewriter as a wee girl. I say, they should stand up to that sort of treatment. Is nothing built to last any more?