The Thoughts of Captain Autumn

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread,
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."

I don't know where to start.

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children, she didn't know what to do." Move out of the shoe, that's my first piece of advice. Even for a single person the largest shoe will be inadequate accommodation (unless perhaps it's one of those fibreglass ones you sometimes see in children's playgrounds, although they tend to be more of a boot than a shoe), so it simply won't do for a woman with a number of progeny which is indeterminate but definitely high. (The children to whom I was reading this suggested the number could be either 57 or six hundred million billion, either of which is definitely more than a shoeful. Six hundred million billion children is equivalent to one hundred million earth populations, and I'd like to see the shoe big enough to hold one hundred million earths. Then again, it's possible that the author of the rhyme was presciently (and somewhat offhandedly) referring to the recently discovered "cosmic horseshoe", which probably is big enough to contain one hundred million earths. Moreover it is 12 billion years old, definitely marking out its matriarch as an "old woman". But, uncharacteristically, I digress.)

The rhyme doesn't specify about what exactly she didn't know what to do - about living in a shoe, or about having so many children? If it's the shoe then a trip to the Citizen's Advice Bureau is in order, and if it's the children then Social Services should have got involved way before she got anywhere near even 57 (let alone the distant billions). She didn't know what to do about family planning, that's for sure. Although one would imagine that since she's an old woman, many of these children are now fully grown themselves. Why haven't they gone out and made their way in the world, settled down in their own footwear domicile? So many unanswered questions.

However all this is academic when we come to the second couplet. Faced with her inadequacy in housing provision and the positively bacterial quantity of her offspring, what does she do? Unlike most of us when we need a break from our children (we have a bath, we go to the pub, that sort of thing) she reaches for the Campbell's and the cat o'nine tails. I'm sure most parents can relate to that time at the end of the day when everybody is getting tired and tetchy, and the mantra comes out "Right, it's tea, story and bed". I think that's the accepted routine. I've never really gone in for whipping (of any intensity), and I'm not sure she's helping herself with this approach. Quite apart from the welfare issues, whipping that many children - and soundly, mind - must be exhausting. She could be using that energy in so many other, more productive ways. Baking bread, for example, to accompany her boring broth. I think that would make for a much nicer rhyme all round:

"There was an incredibly old woman who lived in a cosmic horseshoe.
She had six hundred million billion children so she clearly didn't know when to say no.
In spite of this she baked a lovely loaf of bread,
Which is why none of her grown-up children had moved out, the wasters."

I seem to have been duped by the wicked vendors of stupid number plates into making reference to one of their sites without any recompense whatsoever. Boo! Overwhelmed with excitement at the thought of 20 English pounds, I announced to all and sundry that a business link from this tiny window into a world of sad obsession was a genuine prospect, only for the lines of communication to have gone suddenly dead. Boo! again. I'm not quite sure how much the wicked vendors of stupid number plates will have gained from inveigling me into this naive act, but I imagine quite a lot. After all, if they are sophisticated enough to have made thousands of car drivers think that a 3 is the same as an E, an 8 the same as a B and a 1 the same as a T, I am confident that aspects of their Machiaveliian subterfuge will be beyond me and that somehow my weblog will have suffered while they ride around in gold-plated limousines waving wads of fivers.

As if to mock me further, I yesterday saw my first truly rubbish PNP for several months. It was V14KYP, only spaced like this - V14KY P - because, presumably, it was owned by a woman named Vicky P. Do you see what they've done there? Because obviously, a 4 looks exactly like a C. Spot the difference - 4, C, 4, C. What a load of 4rap.

Right, time for a little catching up I suppose. And I think I will attempt to combine this recapitulation of the last few weeks of slack inactivity with Mrs Somewhere's request that I provide seven habits/quirks/facts about myself.

1) I like lighthouses.
I don't know why, or whence it comes, but there is something I find incredibly seductive about lighthouses. Which is why, for my 40th birthday, my wife surprised me by farming our children out to various friends and family and whisking me off here for a couple of nights. We were The Lighthouse Without Family. It was stunning. As indeed is she, in so many different ways. But I digress. Which leads me on to...

2) I digress.
I do this all the time. I can't focus on the subject I'm talking about, allowing myself to shoot off at all sorts of different tangents. I'd like to say I feel bad about this, but the truth is I don't. Rather like the kid to whom Holden Caulfield refers in The Catcher In The Rye, a book I've not read for far too long now, I think that if you're on a particular subject and it puts you in mind of something more interesting, then you should run with that. Provided you eventually come back to the point you were making in the first place. This probably more or less also covers what I'm told is my most annoying habit, which is that it takes me ages to say anything. I pause a lot, not because I don't know what I want to say but because I want to say it precisely and using exactly the right phraseology. I can see why this is frustrating, but I would still rather be like this than be one of those people who speaks more quickly but in doing so fills up the gaps I leave with "um", "er", "kind of", "sort of", "like", or my pet hate, endless meaningless profanity.

3) I can't stand it when shoelaces are different lengths.

4) I am dismissive of most other people's taste in music. This is, I'll concede, a bad habit, because it seems arrogant and superior, even though for the most part it is just because I know better than they do. Music is a matter of taste but it is also a matter of fact, in much the same way that it is plain fact that Shakespeare's plays are better than those of Jeffrey Archer. Just the other day I was asked whether I watch Later With Jools Holland, and when I said that for the most part not because I don't really like him as a presenter and he's not much of a pianist, the person I was speaking to rolled their eyes as if I knew not what I was saying. But he isn't, and that's a fact. If you want to hear proper piano playing, try Jason Rebello's fabulous Jazz Rainbow album, wherein he interprets kids' TV and film music and manages what I thought was impossible before I heard it, jazz which is enjoyable to adults and children alike. If you buy the album you will also get to see a tiny version of this logo, which I created for him, as such making an infinitessimally small contribution to a Jason Rebello recording. Which is a much bigger contribution than I ever imagined I might make.

5) I have a mild obsessive compulsive issue with locks. Windows, doors, bike padlocks, that sort of thing. I have to check them and check them and check them again. It's annoying as hell but I can't seem to kick it.

6) I am overly analytical of subjects which don't merit deep analysis. Like song lyrics and nursery rhymes. For example, what the hell is Lionel Richie on about when he sings "You're once, twice, three times a lady"? If I told my wife she was three times a lady, her response would probably be "Are you saying I'm fat?"

7) I don't own a mobile phone. I hate mobile phones.

What a weird and wonderful world the land of weblog is. In the last few days alone there have been two reactions to mine which illustrate it perfectly.

First, on Friday, a passing visitor stopped by to agree with me that the sitcom 'Just Shoot Me' is rubbish. Which is fair enough, except this is an opinion I offered in May of last year. How did he happen to chance upon this entry now, nine months later? Had he specifically set out to surf the internet until he found someone else who hates 'Just Shoot Me', just to be able to send a message of support? He didn't respond to anything else on my weblog. No, of all the countless ridiculous opinions I've offered in the last couple of years, it was my dismissal of a crummy American TV show that connected with Danny Howard. He came, he commented, he went.

Then today I had an even stranger exchange. A chap who runs a personalised number plate website e-mailed to ask me if I would link those very words from this posting to his website, and if so how much would I want for doing it. I don't know where to start with how mad this seems to me. In the first place, this is the Captain Autumn weblog - it's hard to know since blog.co.uk started making up the statistics, but I must get all of seven people a day looking at it. In the second place, the posting he wants to link from (and which he surely can't have read in full) is about a personalised number plate on a hearse. In the third place, numerous other entries here refer to how daft I think such number plates are. Which is precisely why the idea of linking to his site appeals to me. I've asked him to make me an offer. Somewhat stupidly I've also told him I don't actually like the sort of number plates which form his business, so I don't imagine it will be a life changing figure. In fact I think it might have a zero in it.

I didn't realise there was a market out there for linking from your weblog. Maybe I should start writing about companies with a bigger advertising budget than http://www.capeplates.co.uk (damn, I've given him one for free!) Microsoft, BP, all those rip-off energy firms. EDF, they're good, aren't they? They provide some of the best electricity around.

That will be £8.50 please Mr EDF.