Bagpipes At A Funeral

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Definition of a “Gentleman”

Someone who knows how to play the bagpipes, but never does!

This one didn’t happen to anyone I know, in fact I don’t even know if it happened at all, but it is kinda funny I hope. (I do have a couple of good stories about funerals and they’ll probably make their way on to this blog eventually).

Anyway, for now here’s the story in the words of the bagpiper himself.

As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man.  He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the back country.

I was not familiar with the backwoods and I got lost. I didn't stop for directions and should have.

I finally arrived an hour late and saw that the funeral guy had gone because the hearse was nowhere in sight.  There was only the digging crew left and they were eating lunch.

I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.

I went to the side of the grave and looked down and saw the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play.

The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around.

I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends.  I played like I've never played before for this homeless man.

As I played 'Amazing Grace,' the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car.

Though my head was hung low, my heart was full.

As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say,

"I never seen nothin' like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."

Apparently I'm still lost....  

Lost In Transit

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I wrote a little while ago about Tommy who got lost in the fog in a field beside his own house, and about Thomas Nutall the worst explorer in the world. Well, sense of direction, or the lack thereof, has come up many times in my journeys.

I used to travel on business with a guy called “Bill”. Bill was a nice man, old-school, good manners, fairly prim and proper I suppose you would say. He was in his seventies when I got to know him and worked along with him.

He should have been retired from business but he had a wife who sounded a lot better from a considerable distance and luckily she was not unhappy about getting rid of him for a while – as often as possible as it turns out!

Anyway, domestic bliss aside, Bill made frequent plane trips which obviously meant using airports.

Getting him on to a plane usually wasn’t so bad, although if he stopped to buy something or talk to somebody and you walked on without him, he would always be the last man on to the plane.

But the real fun was when Bill got off the plane. Even on short trips, where the gin and tonics hadn’t been flowing in his direction.

Actually, I’ll come back to that in a moment – I’d forgotten about this until I started to write this blog post.

Bill even got lost once inside the airplane itself. I mean actually inside the airplane! Can you believe it?

He had got up, I presume to go to the bathroom – no, hang on, I absolutely refuse to call what they have on airplanes a “bathroom”; for a start there’s no “bath”, and for another thing there’s no “room” either; it’s a “toilet”, and a small one at that, okay! And for another thing why are they always so small, whether you are on a huge 747 Jumbo jet (I haven’t yet been on one of those Airbus monsters) or a piddly small 737, the toilets are still the same size. All for the sake of being able to offer a couple of extra seats to keep more passengers total discomfort. End rant. Sorry about that, back to today’s blog.

As I was saying, he had got up, I presume to go to the bathroom. There had been a queue at the toilet closest to where Bill was sitting, so he wandered to another one on the far side, and at the back, of the plane (it was 747, small toilets but a big plane!)

But when he opened the door and walked out he didn’t know where he was! I mean, he knew where he was, he knew he was on a plane, but he didn’t know where his seat was and he couldn’t remember the number. And his routine was to put boarding passes, tickets and other paperwork neatly away in his carry on bag before take-off, so he had nothing to refer to.  

He had a walk round first class and was gently ushered out of it by a polite, but firm, flight attendant, before he managed to make his way up the stairs. He inspected business class but saw nothing familiar. Then he spent the next twenty minutes walking up and down the wrong aisle looking for his seat in coach.

I watched what was going on. But I didn’t help him out. And I kept my head down so that he wouldn’t see me. We were sitting together and I didn’t want to give him a clue as to where to look. It was too funny and I was enjoying it, much better that whatever film they were showing at the time. And I knew there was a limit to where he could go.

After a good half hour he showed up.

“You were away for a while,” I said when he got back.

“I didn’t feel too well,” he told me. “And I went to ask one of the flight attendants for some water and an aspirin.”

“Oh?” I answered. “I though maybe you’d got lost or something.”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

I just left it, he’d already given me enough entertainment. He went to sleep and that was it until we landed.

Which is actually what I started to say in the first place. Bill was just a normal bloke when the airplane doors opened and everyone started to funnel out into the terminal. It was when he got out into the open that the fun started.

For some strange reason Bill invariably took off like a bullet. And always in the completely wrong direction. If he was going for a connecting flight he headed for baggage claim and the exit. If he was at his journey’s end he headed for connecting flights. And all at top speed.

The first few times I tried to run after him, but it was hard work, he had a remarkable turn of speed for an older man. After that I just let him run wherever he thought he was going. Once he even walked from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 at Heathrow airport, and back again, and that is quite a distance despite what the airport brochures tell you. It was perhaps fortunate that he didn’t get on the underground train and end up in the middle of London somewhere.

By the way, when an airport brochure says “close” reckon on at least half a mile or more, and if have lots of luggage that’s a long way.

Remarkably though, he always turned up – eventually. He never said what had happened or where he had been. And I never asked, so I don’t know.

I’m certain that made two of us!

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.

I Hate Thieves!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

“Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves and politicians.

All three need supervision.”

Dick Armey

One of the things that stupid bureaucrats do is make stupid laws. Increasingly they are making it harder to catch and punish criminals. It’s starting to happen more and more in the United States, it started happening a long time ago in Britain. When you take away punishment, or you make doing jail time ‘easy’, or you make it possible for criminals to sue the people they have perpetrated the crimes against, then all you end up doing is encouraging crime. It is as simple as that.

But let’s make one thing very clear before I go on with this blog.

The vastly overwhelming majority of people are decent and law abiding. That is true of almost every country and city you could mention, even those with unsavory reputations.

But unfortunately it is also true that every country and city does have its criminal elements, whether it be serial killers, one-off murderers, fraudsters, drug dealers, arsonists, or whatever.

I don’t like any of these groups. But there is one group in particular that I detest above all.

I HATE thieves!

It isn’t because their crimes are any worse than the others, in fact they aren’t. But your odds of running into a serial killer or even a murderer are thankfully very rare. Similarly, if you don’t deal in financial matters your chances of being defrauded are slim (banks excepted of course because along with the politicians they are currently committing the greatest fraud of all time and we are all the victims). If you aren’t into the drug scene then you are unlikely to mix with drug dealers, etc etc.

But unfortunately your chances of becoming the victim of a thief is not so rare. As a matter of fact sometime in the average person’s life they will experience some kind of theft, from the petty kind such as someone taking a cel phone or purse or wallet to the more serious thieves who feel they can invade your home and steal and destroy your property.

What is the mentality of these people that makes them think that they can take other people’s property or invade their space? It’s a bit like the mentality of an annoying fly that thinks it has the right to crawl all over your face or a mosquito that decides to feast on your blood.

Sadly when you report these crimes to the police they have reached the stage where they tell you the chances of catching the perpetrators are extremely slim. You’ve lost your stuff, if you can make a claim on your insurance, do it, otherwise tough luck! You are never compensated for the invasion of your privacy, however, nor the psychological damage some people experience as they ‘live in fear’ of another theft.

The problem is large, and getting larger, and it has spawned a multi $billion industry worldwide to try to prevent such acts. Many homes are now equipped with alarms and serious locks and bolts. A growing number now also have cameras and so forth.

That we should now all have to live inside our own small fortresses is testimony to the damage the bureaucrats have done to our countries. I fear if the economic situation deteriorates things will get increasingly worse on this front.

What can be done about it?

Well, for a start everyone has to realize that it does not have to be this way.

I have been in countries where there were hardly any thieves at all. It just wasn’t in the mindset of people to take other people’s personal belongings. I remember a friend of mine on holiday there a few years ago making a phone call from a public payphone on the street and using his Amex credit card to pay for it. A couple of days later he noticed that credit card was missing. Retracing his travels in his mind he remembered that the last time he had used it was at the public payphone. He was going to report the loss of the card to the credit card company, but before he did so he thought he’d better check for himself. He went back to the payphone and there was his credit card, untouched, just where he had left it two days ago!

Now I live in a country where thieves are everywhere. You could hardly get your credit card and wallet back into your pocket without someone’s hand in there first waiting to steal it!

The difference is down to two things, instilling a good moral attitude within the population and combining that with a zero-tolerance approach to anyone who steps out of line.

On a personal level you can take all the precautions you feel are necessary. But you also need get involved too. Complain to the bureaucrats and the politicians and do it regularly. Make their lives a misery for a while, they’ve been trying to do it to us for a long time, and get together with similar minded people and groups in your area and even on the social web. Whatever else you do, don’t sit back and accept it!

Okay, rant over. I don’t want people who read this to run and hide under the bed. That is both unnecessary and would be an admission that the bad people have won – and we can’t allow that. And anyway console yourselves in the knowledge that the thieves aren’t always that smart.

For example, this…..

Would-be burglars Matthew McNelly and Joey Miller hatched a flawless plan to break into an apartment in Caroll, Iowa. They also came up with the idea of drawing masks on their faces instead of buying masks. Money must have been tight!

However, the masterplan had one tiny flaw. These master criminals decided to draw on their 'disguises' using a permanent marker pen.

Police stopped their car after a witness reported two men 'with painted faces' were trying to break into the apartment. The caller added that the pair were wearing dark, hooded tops and had driven off in a big white car.

Police soon spotted a 1994 Buick Roadmaster matching the description and stopped it at gunpoint.

Inside they found the two men, both of whom had what appeared to be masks, beards or moustaches scrawled on to their faces.

McNelly, 23, and Miller, 20, were both charged with attempted second-degree burglary and released on bail. McNelly was also charged with drunk driving.

And this........

The Worst Explorer In The World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Yesterday’s blog about poor Tommy getting lost reminded me of the story, about another Tommy funnily enough, this time a guy called Thomas Nuttall. I didn’t know this guy, just remembered reading about him first in a history book about explorers in America (the main thrust of the book was about the adventures of Lewis & Clark), and then later in a compilation of stories about people who weren’t a great success in their ventures.

Thomas Nuttall was around in the early 1800s and fancied himself as an explorer. He was also a zoologist and botanist whose main field of study was the flora of remote parts of North-West America.

The two callings went well together.

All apart from the fact that this intrepid explorer spent most of his time like his namesake in the field years later, completely lost.

Yes, Thomas Nuttall was the least successful explorer there has even been! Not only did he seem to get lost, this poor man actually seemed to be permanently lost.

For example, on an expedition in 1812 his colleagues frequently had to light beacons in the evening to help him find his way back to camp.

Another night he failed to return completely and a search party was sent out. As it approached him in the darkness Nuttall, who never seemed to get anything right, assumed they were Indians and tried to escape. The highly annoyed rescuers pursued him for three days through bush and river until, by complete accident Nuttall wandered back into their camp. 

On another occasion, lost again, he lay down on the ground exhausted. He looked so pathetic that a passing Indian, instead of scalping him, picked him up, carried him three miles to the river and paddled him home in a canoe.

Despite his awful sense of direction, or the fact that Pacific Fur Company traders had declared him crazy after finding dirt in the barrel of his gun (Nuttall had been using it to dig up plants), he was nevertheless one of the preeminent botanists of his day.

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.