Oh to be in England.

Back again in the Land of the Falling Rain after a brief trip to England. Fortunately it was fine on IOM all week so the blasted motor bike races went off on schedule, otherwise we would not have been able to get from the airport to home as the buggers are authorised to close the circuit roads up to 9 p.m. if rain delays the start of a race. And we left England in shirt sleeves and today it’s –yes – raining here.

Only two bikers killed this year. One was a 71-year old competitor; the old fool should have been home with his grandchildren.

We had several memorable lunches, including one of my favourite venues, The George at Stamford, a fine old coaching inn that still has separate lounges marked ‘London’ and ‘York’ from  the days when the stage coaches used to stop there. The outcome was that in five days I managed to gain 3 lbs.

Impressions? This was our first trip to UK for a couple of years apart from our week-end garden party outing to Yorkshire in May 2010. Forget all the doom-and-gloom stories about UK being on the bones of its arse; prosperity shouts at you. The smallish town where we stayed has every  major retail outlet and the ones we visited were crowded with affluent-looking shoppers. The parking areas where our son lives are replete with up-scale SUVs, BMWs and the like; never a banger to be seen.

Dress styles have changed in the last ten years since we lived there. From scruffy-chic it is now sexy-chic. England is full of stunning women who know it and dress the part. How times have changed! When I was at school 60 years ago, there were perhaps two girls in the whole school who just made it as ‘pretty’. The rest were dogs. And with few exceptions they were all totally flat-chested. Today even the 14 year-olds are bustin out all over.

The gorgeous gal who sold me a couple of shirts had the most amazing tan. I commented that she sure didn’t get that in Huntingdon. She said she sure didn’t and gave me a whopping discount. There are Mediterranean tans everywhere, suggesting that hard times have not stopped the annual exodus to Spain. And it is reported that the average British woman has 34 pairs of shoes.

But the world continues on its dotty way.

As we predicted, the Great Storm was a bit of a wash-out. That didn’t stop the loonytoons from saying it was all Obama’s fault or that it was God’s, as a punishment for out wicked, wicked ways. Shades of the puritans and the Salem Witch Trials!

And Big Brother Watch has just released the top ten dottiest Elf ‘n  Safety bans of the year. Here they are:

1.Murray Mount closed at Wimbledon because of rain
2. Butlins ban on dodgem cars from bumping into each other
3. A ban on Royal wedding street parties
4. The removal of a bulky TV from a pensioner’s home
5. Carnivals with fancy dress parades
6. Kite flying on a popular tourist beach in east Yorkshire
7. Stopping pupils from going on playground monkey bars
8. Using pins to secure commemorative poppies
9. School football games without a sponge ball
10. Children banned from the sack race on sports day.