American Fez

Du Maurier Bus Tour

Last night I dreamt I took the bus again; the shoreline route.

How much is a single fare to Mandalay, I asked the driver.

I don't go to Mandalay, he said.

But it says Mandalay on the front of the bus, I said.

Oh that's just the name of the bus, he replied. It only goes as far as Jamaica Inn. From there you can arrange for a private piggyback if you want to go further along the coast.

In my dream, the coast was a huge cliff divided into three distinct sections: Old Novel Point; Adaptation Point; and the modern part, Sea Quell, which had no point, literally or figuratively. 

Mandalay was down a dirt road, midway between Adaptation Point and Sea Quell. I had to change piggybackers twice and made a note to write a negative review of the poor service on TripAdvisor.

After all, in dreams begin responsibilities, so I have a responsibility to warn other sleeping tourists thinking of riding the somnambulant Daphne Du Maurier Bus Tour.

My advice is this: if your dream budget allows, for God's sake hire a car. 

Skulls On Parade

Should there be any sort of sentient afterlife, preferably spent lounging on a cloud rather than impaled on a red hot pitchfork, I wonder how my immortal mind would respond if my mortal remains were displayed in a museum by anthropological curators of the future.

Frankly, provided such extracurricular activity does not disturb my eternal sleep too greatly, I doubt I would be overly bothered. Better your bones reside in an air-conditioned glass case, surely, however public it may be, than reduced to ashes of this and that poured into the funeral home's second cheapest urn. 

No doubt our old friend Sir Thomas Browne would have something to say on the subject. But the reason I ponder the "duration of (my) reliques" is because I'm going to England in a few weeks time, where, at the Museum of London, five 2nd century skulls form part of a Roman-era London exhibition I intend to visit. 

These skulls are the severed heads of gladiators, apparently, stars of the arena, so I suppose they are used to being stared at: the show must go on, and all that. At least, I hope that's how they feel about their fate. 

Time and Motion

Staggering up a city hill in summer, sweatier than an ape's armpit, the high humidity hanging on my shoulders like a particularly weighty rucksack.

In those brief moments of respite when my mind is not consumed by the overpowering fact of how needlessly hot it is, thoughts turn inevitably to those other fabled hillwalkers: Jack and Jill and their doomed quest to fetch a pail of water.

Jack and Jill's failure, obviously, can be blamed squarely on the idiotic idea of sending two people to perform an assignment easily accomplished by one. Getting in each other's way, Jill accidentally tripped Jack, causing him to fall and pull Jill down with him while breaking his crown in the process. They tumble unceremoniously to the foot of the hill once again; their only bucket lost, possibly broken beyond repair. Injured and dehydrated, bereft of the life-giving waters they sought, Jack and Jill slowly die of thirst in an arid landscape of mishap and misadventure.

It's an unsatisfactory state of affairs simply avoided by streamlining workflow and delegating tasks.

Indeed, the inefficient staffing example of Jack and Jill provides a great case study for business; and as I collapse on the sidewalk from heat exhaustion, unable to proceed on my own journey, I resolve to write a memo on the subject should I ever manage to make it to the office.

Horror of the Internet

Even the briefest survey of the Internet is a confrontation with bowel-evacuating terror: the Creature from the Black Lagoon's blog linking to Frankenstein's Facebook page posting a photo from Dracula's Instagram account and so on.

The political trolls, the snuff film ghouls, the selfie-taking depraved: monsters are crawling through the sewers of our ISPs with their hideous opinions and shocking images.

It's enough to make any God-fearing Internet surfer drive a stake through the heart of the nearest modem; or at least wrap a string of garlic cloves around their Wifi router. 

"Never read the comments" we are warned, like weary travelers told to avoid the road that runs past the ruined castle by frightened locals: the global village reduced to a cursed village in the Carpathian mountains.

As for me, judging by this page's visitor stats, I am one of the Internet's many restless ghosts. Doomed to haunt the darker corners of the World Wide Web for mysterious reasons. No clanking chains, winding sheet, shrieking in the corridor or slamming doors for me though. Just a vague, cold spot on the floor indicating some sort of shadowy presence is here.

Occupy Boutique

The problem with the stock market, if you ask me, is that it is a market; and we all know what's wrong with markets:

The trader selling over-ripe fruits and vegetables has a stall next to the trader selling day old fish on ice, who has a stall next to the trader to selling perfumed hippy oils, who has a stall next to the trader selling low quality leather goods, who has a stall next to the guy selling fake Rolexes stitched into the lining of his raincoat.

Markets are noisy, overcrowded, foul-smelling mazes. A greasy mInotaur crouches at the center pitching two-for-one deals on three packs of polyester socks. Ten yards further along, lying in wait, the minotaur's goat faced friend offers the same deal on generic brand odor eaters. Not a place any sane person would do their shopping.

This is why I support the idea of a stock boutique: trendy, specialist, discreet, well-appointed and air-conditioned. No riff-raff.

Brokers in a stock boutique would be far too cool to scream "Sell! Sell! Sell!" into the mouthpiece of a telephone. There would be no unseemly panics leading to financial meltdown. 

Also, being by nature small, a stock boutique could never be accused of being too big to fail. Perhaps it might even be located inside a converted barn in the country instead of Wall Street, with rustic touches rather than unappealing stone and glass. 

None of this boring, unhip Dow Jones, Nasdaq or S&P nonsense, I'd call it Chez Moolah.