It Is… Pt54 into… Tales from the Hip pt/pg7

Written by Prim on 17/02/2024

‘It Is… Pt.54
‘cf’

audio with extra

… Honking and hollering causing a right hullabaloo. Geese, Canuck ones at that, beeping in the morning, beeping in the evening. Must be horny season, well the daffs are sprouting so why not the bees. Light is in the air. Whoa oh oh oh oh, yeah light is in the air. Lots of oh whoa oh’s in there, room for some tap dancing too. I’m going to miss the winter. Short n sweet this week, things to do; here’s page/part/part/page 7 in all its entirety and not just some of it, nee part, but the whole page… geese, ducks and boomps a daisy…

Tales from the Hip

pg./pt 7

A shimmering glint morphed to a smudgy dot coming his way. A nebulas glow cruising the giant sky. Looming fast into his atmosphere, into his big blue. Closer, bigger, clearer, two black strips visibly formed as straps above a pair of dangling legs. It’s quick, nano seconds out of the sun like a pelorus missile, vision on, target locked. Seconds zinged to transparency. It’s him, hurtling towards him out of the brimming sky. Locks of black hair blowing in a G-force surge. Upon him, deep from his hypnagogic morn. He’s in a bloody parachute. Fifty feet away, ten feet away, he’s coming fast, inches, face to face, limpid as the pane of glass in front of him, which is all that divides him and him all that way high up in the sky. He knows it’s him, the pudgy nose atop a lunatic grin, it’s grinning, he’s grinning, the lunatic is grinning, unstoppable, head long, he’s going to smash that bastard glass to smithereens and bust both their heads, he’s grinning…

‘Hola. Hola.’… the tent doors ripple, ‘Hola. Buenos dias, quien esta ahi? Vertical shadows wobble down each side of the door flaps. Jax unzips it halfway allowing a riffle nozzle to butt in, jabbing and sniffing around like hound on the scent. Old school rifle with a wooden stock under the barrel.

‘Hola hola, come out please’, the man’s voice shifts to English. Jax peers up at two drab greened uniforms in peak caps hustling for credentials, ‘who are you, where are you from, do you have ID. Passport, passport please.’ The script impatiently rolls off the tongue. They look about the beach while they wait. They seem miffed, probably because it wasn’t a couple blondes. One is sporting a magnificent jet black tash, bristled in pride. He’s wearing rectangular steel rimmed sun glasses. ‘cool’ Jax thinks while rummaging through his hiding spot trying not to let them see. He pokes his head out of the tent offering his only legal reason for being there, here or anywhere. Tash man is still looking around bored, accepting the documents with an outstretched hand and he thumbs through the pages pretending to care. The other, a younger hollow cheeked weasel looking fella who looks like he’d sell his sister if the boss man said he’d make a peso, continues waving that barrel around, he’s the talker, ‘aqui aqui’. ‘Yeah, alright mate’ mumbles Jax whereby El Tasho immediately looks down at him unloading surprisingly gentle amusement. The beach is empty, Jax shuffles forwards on his hands and knees and bends his head round the side of the tent. Empty there too, except but a stone’s throw, where the end of the beach meets the road an army jeep is parked. Fully open plan with cut away doors and double benches opposite each other at the rear. Two more drab greens are sitting on those benches, another is standing in front of the jeep. All are smoking and all are armed with these seemingly WWII rifles slung over their shoulders, all young, kids really, all looking thoroughly bored. Policia is written on the side of the jeep. Tash man interrupts Jax’ surveillance, ‘holiday hey? ‘Si’ says Jax in full bilingual mode, ‘How long you stay, ‘I don’t know, couple weeks’, ‘bueno, ningun problema… ok, no problem’ Tash man smiles, ‘enjoy Mexico’ and hands him back his passport. Why didn’t the fat Yank desk clerk jobs worth say that in Texas, Jax grumbles, and sorts himself a breakfast banana, when there was flutter at his tent, ‘hola’, comes a male voice…

… till page/pt 8 folks…

He sat at the screen and pondered…

… while he gets the door flaps, let’s go to the World News…

Tokyo’s old houses are disappearing. It is harder to register them as historic than it is to demolish them. Enter Tomohiro Fujii and Shori Fuji who set up Kessaku, a shared ownership offering a stake in the property for as little as ¥1000 (€6.20). You then get to use it ‘X’ amount times a year. Their first no ties and void of inheritance is a 1930 wooden property in Nagano. Not only is a great private bolt hold but tourists are digging staying in these traditional homes. They’re the wooden joints with sliding doors and panels, small tables and judo mats – Hai ya.

South Korea is getting their first offshore airport. Basic plans for Busan’s Galicia Island project were laid down in December, but have been fast tracked 5 half years and now scheduled to be finished by the end of 2029. It is forecast to generate 29trn Won (€20bn) and provide 116,000 jobs in the country’s second largest city. The passenger terminal will be on land, while the 3,500m airstrip, capable of accommodating Boeing 747 – 400F planes direct to Europe and North America, will be a floating structure on the sea. There, that puts scary firmly back into flying, just in case you were getting over it. Sharks on Planes anyone.

French wine is on the wane. Consumption has dropped 70% in the last 60 years. Peaking €17.2bn in sales in 2022 it slunk 5% last year to €16.2bn. Inflation, Corona and Trump is mostly to blame, given the US is their biggest market but with 25% tariffs on many European wines, mostly imposed due to a completely unrelated backlash to EU aircraft subsidies, and the fact should the orange man get in again, who knows what will happen. And if you’d like to just think about that as a solitary notion, unrelated to everything and nothing, i.e. who knows what will happen, then I’ll just give you a minute.

Good news for the French though is Paris’ bouquinistes are to get a reprieve ahead of the Olympic games. The people spoke, the Macron listened. Vivre la cranky old rickety book seller and hut. Bon. It was truly bizarre in the first place; how they thought anyone was keen to come see western coffee shops and burger bars on le plonks tree lined treks and skip a country’s true culture is very Yank. I remember when the US Pres visited Vietnam, was it Clinton… or Obama… anyhoo, they cleaned and painted and swept all the street urchins under the pavement.