well on tuesday the agent came again with another couple. the agent told us they'd be over at 1 and i had a lesson at 12 so i thought ah then this would be a good opportunity for me to come home while they're there and take my sandals off in front of them. you know, to make them feel embarrassed.

but as luck would have it, i came back too late. they just left when i returned.

but as luck would also have it, mindy, who was at home, told me they took off their shoes when they came in.

the potential buyers were an asian couple. the agent followed their example.

what to say? nothing to say. so that's that.

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while in the shower, this popped into my mind again as it does every once in a wandering while:

when i was in the army as an rp, i had to attend pt sessions in the evenings at a cement track surrounding a field near my camp. physical exercise usually doesn't stoke my fire that much but in camp it was quite a welcome break from guardroom monotony.

so one session after we finished off with a i don't know how many rounds run around the track, my rsm, who is the warrant officer in charge of the rps and thus my boss and who periodically attends these sessions to show (off) how fit he is and cast a disdainful and disapproving eye on us unfit louts (especially me since i happen to answer directly to him and am sort of his personal assistant), suddenly called out to us to come to the starting point as we were panting our way to the training shed for some water.

when we got to him he told us to walk backwards one round around the track. that's right. backwards. and i don't mean go in the opposite direction we ran in. i mean walk backasswards.

of course, all of us were confused and i guess a little bemused at this instruction but him being the rsm, and we being the maggots he loves to dish bile on, we just acquiesced without question. we looked at each other exchanging wide-eyed half smiles and proceeded to walk backwards around the track. just another case of in the army don't think just do.

the rsm, being the excellent example that he is, also walked around the track with us, also backwards. and after rounding the first two bends in the track he proceeded to tell us why we were making like we were participating in some primary school p.e. game.

his logic: your whole life you spend going forwards and doing things in a forward manner etc etc. so it's good to once in a while go backwards and...and...oh fuck this is so fucking stupid i don't even know what to say. i can't even remember the illogic he used as an explanation. go backwards and rewind? go backwards and balance your body? all i remember was thinking he's an even bigger loony than i thought.

i don't think i have really told anyone this before which is quite amazing i think but it's just something that is that bizarre that you're not really sure if it is as senseless as it is. bizarre to the point that you think hey maybe he's right. maybe there is some school of thought out there that does this backwards shit. seriously, i can't be arsed to search the internet for shit like this. this is one of the things i totally believe does not exist anywhere else except for that one moment in the time space continuum where about ten of us were walking like fuckwits around the cement track backfuckingasswards. the one instance in the whole history of time itself where god or elvis or some higher being can rewind history and do a double take and say "hey what the fuck how come these bunch of morons appear to be going in the right direction as i'm rewinding the world?". after that pt session, nothing seemed senseless anymore, nothing was too stupid to comprehend. after that pt session, what emerged was approximately ten individuals who could face the world and not be jaded and fazed by its machinations. we had gone through this one thing. and we had seen it all.

i have no answer to the question of why does man wage war and kill himself and destroy his environment. i can only relate to you the story of this particular pt session as an answer and you will ask no more.