On my birthday last month I was treated to dinner at The Ivy in Brighton (see PC 202 Others’ Manners October 2020) ; it’s become a little bit of a habit and I admit I’m a lucky chap. (Note 1) After our main courses and whilst perusing the dessert section of the menu, I decided to go downstairs to the loo. As I entered I saw a chap standing in front of the left hand of two urinals, so walked over to the free one. During these few steps my brain started processing what this chap looked like …… but within the confines of a gentlemen’s loo too much obvious staring could be construed in different ways. There was no sound and no movement from him and eventually I had enough confidence to look at him directly. He was a mannequin dressed in an absurd costume.

Phew! Thank God I got that right as in Brighton anything goes, is acceptable and maybe it was his particular penchant. Having completed my own business I thought I should take a photograph of him, as he was just such a weird thing to find in such an intimate space. I got out my iPhone, stood back a little and …… and at that point another chap opened the door. To find someone taking a photograph of another ‘pointing Percy at the porcelain’ as the euphemism goes, well, I could imagine what instantly went through his head. He recoiled ever so slightly but recovered when he heard me loudly say ‘He’s not real!’, although he probably thought … “to be on the safe side I’ll go into one of the stalls: funny people in here!”

It seems every time you want to order something the company concerned need all your personal details, including your shoe size and how often you change your electric toothbrush head. This mining of our data doesn’t worry me, but sometimes I have a real problem filling out the questionnaire. For example, a few weeks ago I booked a dental appointment, at a practice I have used before, so thought they knew all about me. Not so! Before my visit I have to fill out a questionnaire. I was doing OK until I came to this:

“If you are female, are you pregnant or could you possibly be pregnant?” and the options were ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. I could not leave the box blank!

So a ‘No’ answer could be I was a male, or that I was female but not pregnant.

Then further on, these two questions:

“How Did you hear About us?” Again a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ option, as it was with “What is your occupation?”

I was at the practice this week and asked the receptionist how I was meant to fill it out. “It’s a generic form, we have no say …..”!   

Three weeks ago the South Dorset village of Langton Matravers ……

…… joined a line up the length of Great Britain to Fraserburgh in the far northeast of Aberdeenshire as the three ‘norths’, true, magnetic and grid aligned.

True north, the direction of lines of longitude that all converge at the north and south poles, grid north, the vertical lines on maps, and magnetic north, the direction a compass will point in, will all be on one line. I find this stuff fascinating and vital in my past lives as soldier and sailor, where navigating by a magnetic compass was an important skill to master. You may remember in PC 209 (Off Arromanches) a skipper who I knew well asked whether he should have added or subtracted the magnetic variation, then some 4°, as they had missed the entrance for the French town of Trouville.

In PC 308 From Pillar to Post, I quoted a local guide John Cummings-Lee-Hynes and asked in a note whether anyone knew of a four hyphenated surname. My brother offered the name of his local South Dorset MP, a Richard Drax, as his full surname is Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. (Note 3)  Interestingly his grandfather Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax was an Anglo-Irish Admiral whose mother had extended the surname, initially to Ernle Plunkett-Ernle in 1905 and then adding Erle and Drax in 1906, both by Royal Licence. If you think the name Drax rings a bell, it’s because Ian Fleming was a friend of Sir Reginald and named his Moonraker character Sir Hugo Drax as a tribute!

In my innocence I had assumed it was a mixture of a God Father with a stutter and a hard-of-hearing Parish Church clerk at someone’s baptism.

“Who names this child?”

“I do and his names are Rrrreginald er er Errrnle Enrrle Drrrrax.”

So the clerk fills in the Baptismal Register incorrectly, a little like how Smith has been written Smyth and Smithe. You wouldn’t want to admit to not knowing how to spell someone’s surname so you just wrote it as it sounded!!

One’s age is, for some, a very personal thing and it was considered very rude to ask a woman her age. But the other day I thought, well, if you add the two individual numbers that make my age together you get 13. So there you are: what a disclosure! On that recent birthday my brother had sent me a slab of lovely chocolate Brownies by post from a Dorset company called Chococo.  It was only when the box was empty did I notice the cardboard lid:

Initially I thought it was amusing, using a little Dorset vernacular, dropping the ‘h’ but that didn’t make sense with ‘in’ – in where? Hey! Ho! No one is perfect.

Richard 25^th November 2022

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note I This might be the title of my next postcards.

Note 2 Such a delightfully name originating from Langton from ‘long town’ and John Matravers who owned land there in 1281. There is another village, Worth Matravers, so named after a William Matravers who was Constable of Corfe Castle in the C14th.

Note 3 I feel sure his nickname at school was Peed (?)