Idle thoughts and white noise of the brain

My brain throws me random images from time to time. By random images I mean a perfect picture of some scene or other I've encountered at some point. Never very exciting they range from the high street in Abagavenny to my mate's road in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Its like a polaroid of an instant. One is the back garden of a house in North Wales where I stayed when I was little. Its just after the rain, droplets running off the green green plants, snails and fat orange-fringed slugs are creeping across the steep steps, which are made of earth held in place by planks. The memory of the smell of wet earth and smoke from coal fires accompanies this one. I can feel the drops of rain brush off on my face and clothes as I walk past the shrubs.

There's no real narrative, these scenes are a glance through a window or the flash of an instant. None of the "scenes" hold any particular significance, but are coupled with a mundane activity like washing up or sharpening a pencil. They are on the periphery of my conciousnes and I hardly notice them. But sometimes I'm struck by the weirdness of this funny brain filing. Does this happen to everyone?

Slightly more concious, but also a consequence of this white noise of the brain are recurring obsessions which absorb me on the way to work, but then evaporate. I idly obsess about all the iron railings that were taken down and melted during the second World War, more of which later. But my top idle obsession of the moment relates to the poster for the new Merrill Streep film, "The Devil Wears Prada". It features a picture of a high heeled shoe, with the heel substituted for a diabolical trident. But I can't help looking at the ad, from the bus or wherever, and consider the praticaticalities of wearing such a shoe. It really bothers me.

The little tridents would mean you'd get stuck in the mud and have to walk around with grassy clods stuck to the bottom of each heel. But more troubling, the tridents couldn't bear the weight and would snap off! Its wrong and makes me feel itchy.