Thursday 21 April 2022

Many Impertinent Questions & A Dozen Mere Trifles


Even NASA must have looked for answers to impertinent questions.

Have you ever wondered, Dear Reader, if you may have crossed paths with Your Correspondent?  How could you know?

Maybe we stood on the same train platform at Frankfurt airport, you en route to Milan, me waiting for the following train to Prague, perhaps? 

Or did we bob about on foam noodles in the same swimming pool of a timeshare apartment complex on the Big Island of Hawai'i? 

Or perhaps we just passed on the escalators in David Jones department store in Sydney, me on the way up to Haberdashery, you on the way down to Small Electricals. 

Or, more likely, you overheard me Carrying On about a pet topic on the adjacent bench in a park, anywhere really. Stranger things have happened. 

Is it not time, then, to acknowledge that we've known each other long enough now for me to come out of my customary shell, cosy as it is, and so shed some anonymity? 

A flyer advertising long-haired women, to be sure.
But how to tell whom here is Pipistrello?

Forthwith, I shall provide you with some trifles (beyond the unhelpful description of tall, slim, greying long brown hair, spectacles & presently clocking in at age 56) that may help to identify me in the wild, so to speak:

  • I do not drive a car: The woman [insert unhelpful description above] shaking her fist at you as you sail through a pedestrian crossing without stopping could be me**.
  • I have a peculiar sense of humour: The only person (read: woman) laughing in the darkened cinema at odd times could be me.
  • I am allergic to horses: If you own a harras of horses and it is rustled in the night, it won't be me.
  • I was once expelled from a packed lecture hall in front of the other First Year Pure Mathematics students for the mistaken Crime of Flirting (!!): If you recite Miss Ann Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, with emphasis on the throat clearing, at a woman who then weeps with uncontrollable laughter such that she needs to be removed from a 1000-seat public forum, that could be me. Nota bene: I have more recently discovered Mr. Frank Key (dec.), formerly of Hooting Yard, and believe the same result would have occurred if the interwebs had been at our disposal in 1984.
  • I have convict ancestry: If you have as a skeleton in your family's closet an Anthony Steel or a Margaret Irwin, themselves expelled from Ireland in the early 1800s for Crimes requiring Transportation, we are probably related.
  • I have Swedish ancestry: If you have in your family tree one Augustus Lindberg AB, who may have jumped ship from the barque Choice in Sydney in 1879 (sailing from the Port of Takis in Lithuania, bien sûr), we, too, are probably related.
  • I once travelled on the Concorde: The woman weeping silently behind you on a long and tedious subsonic aeroplane journey could be me.
  • I have never been rescued from a crisis except in the medical sense: If you are a fireman and you carry a woman fireman-wise down a ladder during a conflagration and she perhaps babbles to you that on a scale of 1 to 10 she is not sure if the titanium in her head will set off a metal detector, it could me me.
  • I might occasionally make things up: The woman overheard at the table next to you in a café reminiscing about the time she kissed a (Lesser European) Prince, might make you pause to wonder both if it could be me and is this is one of those occasions? (How will you ever know? ...)
  • I am law-abiding to a fault: The woman who flashes a fake Sheriff's badge at you after having first shaken her fist at you as you sail through a pedestrian crossing without stopping could be me.
  • I believe exceptions always prove the rule: viz.:
  • I once (accidentally) travelled from England to Holland and back without a passport: If you work for Interpol, I shall not divulge my home address.

This dozen mere bagatelles should be enough to be getting on with as a handy taxonomic guide to identifying Pipistrello when out and about. So, if you think you have spotted me, don't be shy and do say Hullo!





* These so-called little known facts are quite likely to have been spoken of before around these pages, or will sometime in the future.

** Both you and I know this is a mere fiction for that would never happen when you are behind the wheel.


Image credits: 1: via: Mr. P but long forgotten and thus unattributable, possibly NASA; 2: Nathaniel Russell's Fake Fliers


33 comments:

  1. Oh Pipistrello,

    we have almost an identical description:
    1. I used to depend on my car, but less so once the Covid lockdowns struck.
    2. I am allergic to lit or extinguished cigarettes
    3. My grandmother said our ancestors were beyond reproach, not a crim or convict to be seen. And she never exaggerated.
    4. I have happily travelled on cruise ships, but my beloved lay in bed holding his stomach every ..single... day :(
    5. My passion is a labrador or a golden retriever dog. If you see an elderly lady crawling around approved dog kennels searching for a puppy, it is probably me.

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    1. Ah, Hels, we've illuminated the myriad opportunities to identify one another on the basis of probability today!

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  2. Such a fabulous post Pip - as are all the ones you regale us with.
    Totally unexpected subjects full of fun, info, even craziness, haha! What a great feeling to read first thing on a sunny, birdsong filled April morning here.
    BTW, you being still so young, I am thrilled to know we will be hearing more from you for a long time to come. Thanks in advance.
    Have a wonderful week, and I hope some day we meet when at an old fashioned European train station - my foam noodle in the pool days are long gone!
    Hugs, Mary

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    1. Thank you, dear Mary! Like a bag of mixed nuts, you'll never know what you'll get next when you rustle around in here. My pool noodle days are also done but there are plenty of train platforms yet to visit! Have a wonderful week, too.

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  3. To begin with the end: Were I able to list the names of all seven ladies in a caption, Lady Pipistrello would be the first (from right).

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    1. Close but no banana, dear Sean!

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    2. Ah, loveliest of all Signoras Pipistrella, as you could tell not easy it was for me to pretend against my better judgement that I did not recognise you. Wouldn't it have been extremely unfair, though, to end the game right away? So, instead I have therefore decided to improve the probability of a hit to 6:1 for those GUESSERS who enter later.

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    3. Such chivalry is admirable, nay noble, dear Sean, but your reticence to elbow others out of the way and shout out the correct answer forthwith does not bode well for unparalleled success on a wireless game show, I fear.

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    4. Don't fear for me, Milady, I don't do game shows. ;-)
      And so far, six commenters, did not even try to guess who you are.

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  4. MOTHER! I recognised you at once!

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    1. Hush now, dear Cro, and finish your Clanger.

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  5. Dear Pip - I don't believe your description re: greying long brown hair, spectacles & presently clocking in at age 56. From the brief glimpse that I spotted of you (I believe in your bathroom mirror) you resemble someone far younger and with a really beautiful, enviable, head of hair.

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    1. Hair, dear Rosemary, you are too kind, but I could fully Bore for Britain on that subject and shall not now digress into its (perceived) Issues and Shortcomings but do admit that it's not a bad thatch for mid-50s and the grey at this point is gently dispersed and suggests not that a Mallen Streak is waiting to burst forth.

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  6. I have met quite a few rather pleasant slim tall ladies in their fifties, but sadly you have not been one of them, it seems, so far...

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    1. Dear Andrew, if you are a Scot who may have have been dining in the off season at a Loch Fyne seafood emporium and see a woman who consumes a seafood-platter-for-two and tackles even the previously shunned mollusc known as the oyster with relish as heretofore the culinary delights had been presented battered and from a deep freeze, it could have been me.

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    2. This Scot has passed the marine-meat emporium you refer to on many occasions but has never stopped to dine. I probably should do sometime; but quirkily enough I have dined in its version in Bristol in England (now closed, possibly wisely, for I was not greatly impressed).

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    3. Well, at least I can relax and be confident you did not bear witness to the gluttonous spectacle.

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  7. I immediately thought of an event at Camden School for Girls when you would have been about sixteen, in which a nice woman came to talk to the young ladies about careers in civil engineering. The idea of becoming an engineer whose job also involved being civil sent these flighty creatures into such fits of giggles that one by one they began falling off their chairs and rolling on the floor. Their hysterics were so distracting that they had to be picked up by the back of their school shirt collars and slung out of the hall by a relay of teachers. I do feel one of them must have been you, as she was tall and thin (no grey hair but then she was only 16) (and no specs, but she may well need them now.) And, she WAS allergic to horses!!!!! Please tell me if I am right.

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    1. That flighty feckless creature could not have been me, dear Jenny, as I was indeed at that same age attending, as a taster for choosing among the already desired disciplines, an Engineering Summer School at the university where the later disgrace occurred! Although the exotic Aeronautical had turned my head in the Engineering direction, it was the civilised Civil which did prove where any talent lay but neither were ultimately pursued, yet lo a year later, it was a cheeky young Electrical fed upon the regulation boys' school Monty Python diet that stoked the hysterics leading to my crimson-cheeked expulsion. So close!!

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  8. When I start traveling again, I shall be on the lookout for you. Chance meetings are wonderful and I must admit, I've had a few.

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    1. The world sometimes feels like a very small place, doesn't it, dear Susan.

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  9. So it WAS you, dear Pip, on the train platform of Frankfurt Airport, and do you remember the tall slim woman who waved at you and tried to say something, but the conductor of the ICE shouted "Get in, Lady! Rein mit Ihnen" and pushed me, so I had to obey (which normally I seldom do).
    How I would have loved to speak with you!

    Being of a very curious nature, I might have asked you "What is a mistaken Crime of Flirting?" and would have convinced you - if that is necessary, which I doubt - that Flirting is never a Crime. Never.

    Getting expelled for giggling is a streak which runs as a sort of Schicksal (fate?) through the blue-blooded part of my family - my mother told me she was (in one hour) three times expelled from the class-room ("Come back, when you stopped laughing!") - every time she entered the class she started again... And my fried Anne and I were asked to leave instantly by a very infuriated uni-teacher instructing us students in Serenity&Calmness through Mindful Breathing - unluckily he had told us that we should inhale deeply and concentrate, otherwise our arm on which we concentrated would fall off... (NO, we still have two arms).

    As I wrote before, in the beginning of our blog-meeting, seeing your list of reading, those lovely quotes, your eye for beautiful things and your skill to write, I feel we have met before. In this life or another. As I have met Tom in Bath, and Susan from Prufrock's Dilemma in New York - in real life.

    So we still have a chance! We might weep a bit because we cannot get the Concorde - but having imagination we will find another vehicle of transport.

    PS: Though: both we should not forget our passport!

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    1. How right you are, dearest Britta, our imaginations will have us as travelling companions for many a year, Concorde or no! And thank you for the typo nudge ... it was through misty eyes of wistful reminiscence I dropped my e there. And heaven forbid I might drop my aitch in Hullo!ing you across the shoulder of an ICE conductor bustling one or other of us inwards toward destinations fresh, passports clutched!

      You are correct, too, Flirting is never a Crime. The mistake was in its being labelled so when, forsooth, in modern parlance, I was even the Victim of the boyish high jinks and yet was still banished from the hallowed hall of learning. Ah, the Patriarchy. Such larks ...

      And speaking of Great Learning, I think your Mindful Breathing instructor is now a lofty Yoga Instructor at Brother's local Institute for Napping on a Mat at your Company's Expense and he mesmerizes the devotees toward their blood flowing through their bodies, first one way, then another. Ah the New Age. Such larks ...

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  10. Ah yes, everybody on blogs I have met and our paths have crossed, every blogger I remember him and her and her and him when we sat across from one another in the Gare du Nord and the café in Montparnasse and the bar in Camden and we exchanged words of wisdom before resuming our conversations with who we were with without a word of explanation and everyday I believe this to be true. xx

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    1. And your words of wisdom to me, dear Rachel, I well recall: "A man fond of jugglers will soon enough possess a wife whose name is Poverty. If it happens that the tricks of jugglers are forced upon your notice, endeavour to avoid them and think of other things."

      I thought you said, as you turned back to your conversation that you were quoting from St Bernard of Clairol, but I couldn't be sure but I would have to trust you for I was not raised a Roman Catholic and all their philosophies are still but a mystery to me. But I harked your words well and to date I've shunned all jugglers.

      Oh, and you may be astonished to learn that on that day, back in 2004, it may have been a Tuesday (?), one Mr. Frank Key (dec.) evidently eavesdropped our shared words as he'd posted your St Bernard quote on his own blog verbatim! But he's attributed it to St Bernard of Clairvaux. So I may have misheard you. Again, I have to leave the RC scholarship in your hands. xx

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  11. I’m sure I would know if our paths had crossed Pip but, I think I was mistaken for you in New York ….. they kept saying I was Australian and would I show them my passport ! I am sure that many of us have walked past each other unknowingly . XXXX

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    1. Such impertinence in insisting you brandish your bona fides as you go about your business. And to be mistaken for Your Correspondent might intimate a Bad Hair Day was in play, to boot - I hope you weren't annoyed by this, dear affectionately Anon!

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  12. WELL NOW I FEEL WE ARE BEST FRIENDS!
    WHICH ROYAL DID YOU KISS? I HOPE IT WASNOT PRINCE ANDREW........
    YOU ARE SO FUNNY!
    XXX

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    1. Dearest Contessa, for it could only be you behind the exuberant and lavish use of the keyboard, thank you and rest easy, the brief encounter (if there ever was one, hoho ...) definitely hailed from a small and no doubt now merely symbolic principality that once fell squarely in the middle of Europe. No-one scandalous, I rather expect! xx

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    2. This was jolly good fun reading. Alas, something is awry at Blogger and I cannot point comments my usual way. Spo.

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    3. Dear Spo, I'm glad you found some merriment within but your cheery face is sorely missed from the Comments Department! The drab Anon tag is just not the same. Sigh, Blogger's shenanigans always come unannounced ...

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  13. OK, I'll come clean -- you know that guy, two weeks ago? Probably me.

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    1. Hullo Martin, you are a dear to admit it was you. I did pause for a moment and wonder, could it be ...? but it just seemed so unlikely and I was hastening off to the dentist and couldn't stop anyway. I think it was your top hat that threw me.

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It can be a challenge to persist in the matching up of street signs and other exciting pastimes this comment feature may send your way, so if it gets too annoying, feel free to email your comment to me at pipistrello (at) flyingwithhands (dot) com and I'll post it for you.

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