30 days of...day 8

Write about a ridiculous hoax that you once thought was true.

I actually stalled on continuing with the meme because I couldn't think of an answer to this.  I'm quite sceptical of EVERYTHING and more often disbelieve true things than believe unlikely things.  However, just the other night it came to me....

When I was 13 we went on a school residential outdoor activity trip to Wales. We kept seeing signs and road markings that looked like this;


We asked the Welsh activity instructor, and our school teacher what it meant.  They told us all about the very rare Welsh wild animal, the 'Araf'.  Apparently it was part of the Giraffe family but was about the size of a goat and whilst it had the same markings of the typical African giraffe, it was shade of brown.  We were all told to keep a look out for these rare, beautiful animals in the bushes by the side of the road.

Somehow, it was a long time before it actually dawned on me that Welsh road signs are all written in both Welsh and English - and 'araf' is, predictably enough, the Welsh word for slow.  Apparently there are no mini giraffes in the Welsh countryside, I'm gutted.

For along time being that gullible made me want to claw my face off, now I can't breathe for laughing.

And that is the story of how I became a sceptic.

30 days of...day 9

If your favourite smell could be described as a color, which colour would it be?

That really crisp white colour that has more blue in it than any of the other colours in the spectrum.

My favourite smell is the smell of laundry drying outdoors on a crisp spring day when the smell of dew is in the air and the sun is gradually burning it off - not in the fast and humid way it does in the summer when the sun gets hot early - with a gentle breeze just strong enough to move the laundry and release the scent.


Today my friend S, who was in the crash a week ago, was finally released from a hospital. He was home by 1pm and I went round to visit at 3:30ish. He's a lot sharper than he was but still a long way off being normal. He also views the last week with a bit of a haze and many big gaps. He has absolutely no memory of me and our other friends visiting him on Thursday - despite the fact he was talking to us reasonably coherently.  He apparently had some crazy delusions when he was in hospital; insisting he had to install an outside tap (he's a plumber) in the hospital ward at 2am one night, for example and, even more humorously, claiming to be the Duke of Cornwall - presumably not married to Camilla, but who knows?!

He tells me he feels as though one of his legs feels much heavier than the other when he walks and he is very much shuffling about when walking.   I suggested perhaps his leg has always been heavier than the other and he's only noticing it now.  I think focussing too much on what isn't normal yet is only going to frustrate him more so I keep trying to make light of such things.

As I left he thanked me for visiting and I thanked him for not dying; which caused his girlfriend to choke on her tea and start crying with laughter so that was good!