A few months after my Grandmother passed away I got a letter from a law firm with a cheque enclosed. Yogi, as she was affectionately known in our family, had left her five grandchildren a small inheritance. This left me with a quandary I hadn’t expected; How can I make this gift really mean something.

As I stood in my kitchen holding the letter printed on the kind of high grade paper you would expect a law firm to use, I felt a little strange looking at the cheque, almost uncomfortable, as if somehow I had cashed in my grandmother for a little bit of loot. Yogi wasn’t a rich lady by any means so it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that there might be even a small inheritance.

Make no mistake, I was not in the least bit ungrateful, just unsure as to what to do with this money. If I banked the cheque I knew it would just be swallowed up in the benign expenditure of day to day life, and I didn’t want my Grandmothers money to bleed away paying some boring bill or a portion of my monthly rent. I wanted to do something special with this money, something that she might have done herself, but what?

It then occurred to me that Yogi had always enjoyed hearing about my travels. The postcards that I sent her from various locations around the world were always on the wall when I visited her. Despite my asking she wasn’t one for telling her own stories, but she always seemed to enjoy mine, asking me how long it would take to get to this place or that, and what I had done while I was there. It seemed to me that Yogi enjoyed my wandering ways so I had the perfect idea of what to do with her final gift. I would travel.

Thanks to the emergence of low cost airlines the money she had left could go long way if spent wisely. So I purchased a pre-paid MasterCard and reserved it solely for the purpose of buying flights to places I’d never seen before.

Pretty soon I had booked two trips. First would be a weekend in Oslo, followed not long afterward with a trip to Italy, and all for the grand total of a little less that £40!

I was of course delighted at the bargain tickets, but also pleased that while she’s no longer around to send postcards to, Yogi gets to be a part of these trips, and at the price of these tickets I suspect she might be a part of quite a few more to come too.

Thanks Yogi!

I was never a serious ‘LOST’ addict. The hit ABC TV series was never more than light entertainment for me, but after having just watched the series finale I find myself thinking ‘was that is?’

Plenty of people said that the finale of the series would inevitably be a disappointment that would answer few of the shows intriguing mysteries. I was expecting that, but come on, the ending could’ve only been a fraction more anticlimactic if Pam Ewing from TV’s Dallas had appeared in some dodgy looking 1980′s night frock to announce that the whole thing had all been one of her convoluted dreams.

Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I was still none the wiser as to what the heck was happening, even as I was half way through the finale episode. Desmond was running people over, Ben was a nerdy teacher, Sayid was coverting his brothers wife, and Sawyer was a cop! It was all a little confusing, but surely headed for a real head-bender of a finale.

Sure, I had already accepted the fact that there would be loose ends. I didn’t for one moment expect the script writers to tell us what the DHARMA Initiative was and why it had branded sharks. I knew that there would be no explanation as to why Walt had special powers, why polar bears were on the island, and how it was that everyone seemed to have the tracking abilities of Pocahontas.

I did, however, at least expect some of the bigger more pressing plot lines to be addressed. Like what the heck the island was, what was the infamous black smoke that somehow became Jon Locke, and who was Charles Widmore and what the heck was he after?

In the end though, while it wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t much better. Everyone we have been watching for the one hundred and fifteen hours that I spent following the show was in fact dead!

There wasn’t so much of a mention about all the other people who perished on Oceanic 815, not a whisper about ‘the others’ or indeed the other ‘others.’ Instead the whole series is wrapped up with some cheesy soft focus flipping back and forth through realities with people crying and saying “I remember” while Jack (and I) struggled to grasp what the heck was going on.

I can only imagine the dissapointment of the die-hard ‘LOST’ fans out there, crushed that there their complex calculations and theorizing were all for nothing. I’m not among them, in part because TV rarely pulls me in that much, and also because my brother told me when the show first started that the script writers had already got one disastrous series finale (Alias) under their belt so this was likely headed in the same direction.

But come on, ‘they were all dead’ … Really? The collective imaginations of the people who led us all down this make believe path, introducing us to the black smoke, the hatch, the diversionary sub plots, and ‘the others,’ couldn’t have come up with something just a little bit more imaginative than ‘they were all dead?’ For me I think that is far more disappointing than the ending itself.

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I’m Lost
‘LOST’ Finale Explained: Answering the Unanswered Questions
‘LOST’ finale explanation has Twitter users, err, Lost
‘LOST’ season finale ends series six with more questions for fans
‘LOST’ leaves viewers a lesson on faith
Could ‘LOST’ Have Ended Differently?

So I’ve been watching ‘Lost‘ since it began in 2004, and now in it’s final season I’m none the wiser as to what the hell is going on. In essence, I too am utterly lost.

So here’s the thing; I have forgotten more questions about ‘Lost’ that I can remember. The show has confused the hell out me, and now it seems the characters are shifting through time and alternate universes or something.

So far it seems Jon Locke in dead, but he isn’t. Jack’s Father is dead, but is also alive maybe. Sweet little Claire has become a bunny boiler. Sawyer is a cop. Richard is Peter Pan. Hugo is getting fatter despite spending years on a desert island. Jack and Sawyer’s stubble never ever grows, and nobodies hair has grown either.

There are a few theories floating around about what the heck is happening, some suggest that everyone is actually dead or in some kind of purgatory. At this stage though, I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if it all ended up being another narcoleptic episode of some woman from Dallas!

I’m pretty sure that the script writers won’t answer all of the questions. For example; Why did the DHARMA Initiative have robotic sharks? Why did Walt have special powers? And who did Horace work for?

I’m still enjoying the show, but each time I get to the end of the latest episode I’m always left with the same question, the one it seems that those in the TV show have asked over and over themselves as demonstrated in the video below.

So, do you have questions or a theory about what the heck is happening in ‘Lost?’

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Lost (Wiki)
It was all a dream (from Dallas)
Why is Hurley still fat?
[Video] Lost University

If you’re an iPhone user then you may already have my free iPhone app that seems to have become known as ‘Bif.’ However, this blog is now fully smart-phone friendly.

Viewing BEFOREiFORGET through your smart-phone’s usual web browser should now offer you a somewhat different, and ‘lighter’ version of the site that works on the iPhone and all other smart phones.

It’s key advantage over the ‘Bif’ app is that you can make comments on posts just as you would on the regular website.

I don’t actually have a smart-phone myself, but I’m told that my blog now works in a much more mobile friendly way on both the iPhone and Blackberry. So if you have a smart-phone then check out this blog on that and let me know what you think.

My friend Romy is a colorful character, she’s the kind of person a lot of people probably wish they could be like. Energetic, accomplished, and well travelled, Romy is a pleasure to spend time with. So when she invited me to join her and her friends in celebrating her 60th birthday I was delighted to accept.

Perhaps I should have known it wouldn’t be like any other party I’ve been to. The celebrations were to run over the entire weekend, and people had quite literally come from all over the world to her home in the depths of the rolling hills of mid Wales.

I hadn’t really examined Romy’s detailed email invitation after my friend Jeffrey had offered to share his guest house room with me in the nearby Welsh village of Carno. Jeffrey is an organised fellow who often works to a meticulous plan, so I relied on my assumption that he would know everything that was required for the weekend. Such a haphazard and cavalier approach to the weekend might be seen as somewhat wreckless by some, but in truth I think it made the unfolding wonder of the events that much more enjoyable for me (thank you Jeffrey!).

On Saturday, at Romy’s secluded country cottage, people began to arrive for “brunch and bubbly.” After a while, in a party of some fifty or so people, we were taken in two buses to catch a historic steam train on the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway.

Under a clear blue springtime sun the narrow gauge steam train threaded its way through lush green fields full of sheep and lambs on a 16 mile ride that felt just wonderfully British. Along the way strangers who all knew Romy were in turn getting to known one another, chatting as the train gently trundled along the tracks.

At the end of the line we were met by a historic bus and coach that took us to Powis Castle where some of us were taken on a guided tour of the castles famous gardens, while others relaxed in the grounds and took Camel rides that Romy had organised for the day.

Eventually we all gathered on the castle lawn to present Romy with her birthday cake and sing happy Birthday to her before taking afternoon tea in the castle. (I swear, I’m not making this up!)

That evening Romy threw an Arabian themed dress-up party complete with a bedhouin feast, performing musicians, a magician, and dancing. I’m not sure of the exact number of people but there must have been over 100 people there. Just as had happened throughout the day everyone asked the same three questions upon meeting somebody new. “Who are you?” “How do you know Romy?” And “What do you do?”

It was a pure delight meeting Romy’s impressive assortment of friends ranging from the serious down-to-business types, to the outright hippy-dippies who presumably beamed in from the 1970′s. It was nothing like I imagined a 60th birthday part would be like as people of all ages partied, ate, drank and danced into the small hours.

The next day guests returned to Romy’s cottage for camel racing! Romy has a love of Camels and had brought in Camel racers to entertain guests while we stood around chatting in the glorious spring weather. As the day went on people began departing in dribs and drabs, reluctant I think to leave such a wonderful atmosphere and unforgettable event.

Jeffrey and I eventually left, deciding to head out into the Welsh countryside in my open top MG. I know he especially enjoys the escape from his busy London life and I don’t need much of an excuse to put the roof down and drive on the winding welsh roads. We slowly made our way to the coast before eventually stopping at a pub for hearty and generous dinner.

As Monday morning came around and the masses returned to work, Jeffrey and I ate breakfast at the guesthouse in Carno. Laughing loudly about our ability to talk utter nonsense we enjoyed a relaxing morning in no particular hurry to get back home. Eventually we packed up our things, said goodbye to one another and headed out.

Once again the weather was spectacular so I decided to take the scenic way home. This entailed the simple tactic of just keeping the sun to my back and heading north in the knowledge that I couldn’t really get that lost, though I could enjoy feeling so. Each time I saw a narrow road going in roughly the direction I wanted to go in, I took it. They curved and wound their way through country scenes that looked like paintings and villages with impossible sounding names like Llanfihangel-yng-ngwynfa and Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant.

I could have taken the main roads and been home in under two hours, but just look at what I would have missed. A visit to the stillness of Lake Vyrnwy with it’s castle like tower that reaches out into the still waters. The lanes lined with daffodils trumpeting the arrival of Spring. And the towering mist filled forests more magnificent and stirring than even the most awe-inspiring cathedral.

In the end it took seven hours to eventually get home, but that was just about the most perfect way to end a most perfect weekend.

Thank you very much to Romy for her staggering generosity at laying on such an elaborate and grand weekend of celebrations. And thanks also to my friend Jeffrey for his generosity in sharing his guesthouse.

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To breakfast and beyond
As the summer fades (Pt 1)
A weekend at Romy’s
If this place were home
Pictures from another world (Pt 1)
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It could be the plot of a bad 80′s comedy film, but over the Easter weekend two women were arrested at Liverpool Airport in the UK after it became apparent that a “sleeping” family member whom they were attempting to take to Germany, was in actual fact dead.

Staff at Liverpool Airport became suspicious that Curt Willi Jarant, who was strapped into a wheelchair and wearing dark glasses, had already checked-out before he had checked-in.

Family members traveling with the “sleeping” man were attempting to board a flight to Berlin and insisted the 91 year German national was merely tired after the taxi ride to the airport.

Airport employee, Andrew Millea, who aided the family upon their arrival, said Mr Jarant was already dead when he helped him out of the taxi. “I did my best to help by carefully lifting the man from his seat,” he said. “To my horror his face fell sideways against mine, it was ice cold.”

Millea told reporters “I knew straight away that the man was dead, but they reassured me that he ‘always sleeps like that.’”

According to reports, when officials established the man was indeed dead, one of the adult family members asked if they would still be able to board the flight.

Early medical reports suggest Mr Jarant died approximately 24 hours before the flight. However, his wife Gitta Jarant, and his step-daughter, Anke Anusic, are thought to have decided to press ahead with boarding the afternoon flight to the Berlin in order to avoid paying up to £5000 in repatriation fees.

Leah Gandy who was working on the easyJet check-in desk when the incident happened said: “I’ve worked at the airport for three years, but this is the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen . . . Fortunately, they had done a good job of disguising the truth and the other passengers did not appear to notice that the man was dead.”

The audacious attempt to fly Mr Jarant’s dead body, which echoed the 1980′s comedy film ‘Weekend at Bernie’s‘ was always doomed to fail due to standard airport security checks. But the family insist he was alive and well on the morning of the flight and that he must have died at the airport.

Police arrested Jarant’s wife and step-daughter on suspicion of failing to give notification of death.

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Women ‘take dead relative to the airport to catch a flight’
Women arrested at airport over dead relative