Sidetracked Charley

There are phrases to which there are no replies.  Make my day   comes to mind.     I remember the movie scene quite clearly and I cannot remember what the addressee said if anything. The reply to Paul Newman's, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," in Cool Hand Luke was a hail of bullets. Whether it was the bullets or his memorable line the conversation was clearly over. Most conversation stoppers in real life are not so memorable. But "I cannot eat gluten," generally halts any conversation about where to eat lunch. It is usually when I choose to go back home and fix myself something to eat. On almost all menus there is something a reasonable person can order which is not based on gluten but the mere fact someone brought it up while everyone was joyfully wanting to continue the day with lunch is not a good sign. Her chosen topic at lunch will be the evil of gluten. Mother always said to never talk about religion or politics but frankly they ...

As a photographer I can be attracted to the light through a window bouncing off a glass on a silver plate and spend several frames recording it only to get home and discover the glass was dirty or there was a fly on the plate, etc. In digital photography there is always something you can do to remedy most flaws but life isn't like that. A Canadian friend posted a photograph of what she could purchase for the $21 Canadian per week for groceries. The photo was still in my mind when I went grocery shopping yesterday.  Forget that where my friend and I live in the rural parts of our countries that going to get the $21 of groceries probably takes that much is gas or petrol. The closest store to my abode charges such high prices I would not even be able to get half of what was in her photo. So it is over the mountain, 50 miles round trip, to shop. I used to go weekly but being able to buy dry and canned goods from Amazon Prime has cut that to about once a mouth for fresh goods wh...