Not sure why these two separate memories should have pushed themselves to the forefront of my thoughts today but rather than fight it I am going to do as all the best plumbers do and just go with the flow.
Back at the tail end of 1999 I realized an ambition I’d had since my teens and went to Egypt. Although the whole thing was an organized tour I went on my own which was a big thing for me at the time. The furthest place I’d been to on my own to before then was Weston-super-Mare and, believe me, despite the sand and the dodgy food, there is little comparison.
My one all-abiding memory of Egypt isn’t the pyramids, or Saqqara, or The Valley of the Kings, or even the limbless beggars that lined the streets of Aswan.
It is of the toilets in the Cairo Museum.
After a weeklong Nile cruise I had three days in Cairo. The Museum was a must and it didn’t disappoint though I will admit that by this point of the holiday I was mummied out. I had also succumbed to ‘gypy’ tummy. The first spell had hit me at the Son Et Lumiere show at the Philae Temple a few days before but a quick necking down of a couple of Imodium tablets had set the potential avalanche like concrete.
Unfortunately, all this did was ensure the infection stayed within my gut where it wore away at the halting effects of the Imodium until, days later, at the Cairo museum, that particular train of matter decided it was going to make a break for it no matter what chemical cocktail I attempted to throw at it.
Thankfully, the Cairo Museum toilets were near at hand. I recall at knee-clenched wait in the inevitable queue before the cubicle became free. I dived in, already sweating uncomfortably with the effort of holding back both time and tide and was immediately faced with the single desolating sight of my life.
No toilet paper. Nothing. Not even a newspaper.
I must have staggered out of the cubicle looking like a very unsuccessfully desiccated mummy. And instantly met my saviour: a young Egyptian toilet attendant who without a single word but an understanding nod handed me an entire roll of toilet paper all to myself.
When I was done I gave him the most money I’d given to any of the locals on the entire holiday. Money well spent. Wherever he is now I hope his gods are smiling on him.
My second toilet memory is the ridiculous to the above’s sublime.
‘Twas a day visit to Dover. Part of a weeklong family holiday to Canterbury and environs. I’m not sure why we elected to have a day in Dover as my memory of the town was that it was rather drab, rather dirty and rather smelly. I was possibly not seeing it in its best light.
Part of the trip saw us at some kind of terminal. I’m not sure now whether it was for ferries or boats or whether it was just some kind of all-purpose visitor centre. I do know it was as far South-East as you could go without dipping yourself into the sea and we had a decent view of the coast. As with all visits to places new – and the undeniable thread to this post – a trip to the lavatory was necessitated by a can of coke.
In the cubicle there, on the edge of England, the very cusp of Europe, I came to face to face with the most astounding example of human organic graffiti that I’ve ever seen.
Picture if you will an entire toilet roll wedged down the bottom of the toilet. Packed so tightly that the softening effects of total submersion in cold water had been unable to destroy the toilet roll’s shape. Now, picture if you will, the kind of poo that a horse would have been shaken to produce harpooning the cardboard centre of the loo roll down its entire length with a good four inches to spare emerging from the top and indeed from the very surface of the water. It looked like a postmodern representation of Thor’s hammer.
My overriding thought at the moment of confrontation was simply: how?
How had somebody physically achieved this singular feat of faecal protest? Did they poo first and then fit the loo roll snugly over the top like some kind of grommet? Or did they install the toilet roll first and then ease the poo out inch by agonizingly slow inch, micro-managing and fine adjusting the angle of approach, ensuring the nose cone was lined up perfectly before fully opening the bomb bay doors and letting her loose?
As with my adventure in Egypt, philosophizing ultimately had to be put aside: I had a burning desire to “go”. Thankfully this time it was merely a number one and, after a quick hosing, I left the sculpture all but intact. There was no point flushing, believe me. That monster was going absolutely nowhere.
I often wonder about it even now and for all I know it’s still there… pinning this country to the Eurasian plate like a tin tack through a giant post-it note.
It would be a fitting addition to the Natural History Museum’s permanent collection should they ever be scouting for one.
Toilets, eh? What amazing adventures one can have in them. It’s often the best penny you’ll ever spend...
Showing posts with label poo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poo. Show all posts
Monday, April 22, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
No Man’s Land
When we first bought out kittens (now young cats) Karen and I were smug. We were smug and self-congratulatory.
Because, you see, they came pre-litter-tray-trained. They knew how and where to do their biz. No having to squish our way through warm wet carpet patches (or worse: cold wet carpet patches). No having to play Hunt For Brown October by smell alone.
We figured that we were set up for life. When the move came to allow them out into the big outdoors we had this plan whereby the litter tray would move out with them, placed under a secluded tree for a day or two to spell out to them that here – here in this shady, balmy spot – they could continue to carry out their motions al fresco without compromising the kid-safe, disease-free element of our back garden.
And then, due to inclement weather, the change of season, too much going on elsewhere to maintain a watchful eye on the garden we forgot about them. We left them to it. The cats came and went as they pleased. They looked neither constipated nor pathologically obsessed with their toilet activities. Apart from the odd fur-ball or grainy brown pool of cat sick (catnip OD) the house was clear of feline anal produce.
They were happy. We were happy. We all enjoyed the cleaner indoor air and life continued.
They’ve got it, Karen and I thought. They’re digging holes and disposing of their own soil either in our garden or (more likely) in someone else’s garden. Fantastic.
And then I had occasion to venture out into the garden during daylight hours over Christmas.
26.
26 cat poos were dotted around one side of our lawn. Oddly the other side was perfectly cat poo clear. Not sure why this is. Maybe some odd natural occurrence along the lines of moss only growing on one side of a tree thus enabling you to work out magnetic North... maybe cats only poo on the south-west portion of any given lawn? Hey – I may have just discovered the manner in which pigeons navigate their way around the globe: cat-nav.
Anyway, the worst of it was (a) they weren’t even buried but lay there glistening on the surface in the early morning dew like freshly fried sausages and (b) I knew they were from out cats because I swear to God, after months of cleaning out the litter tray, I recognized them.
So. We were hit with the horrible truth at last.
All that training had fallen at the final hurdle. All that conditioning had unravelled at their first taste of freedom.
Once out in the field they’d gone feral. They’d cut off ties with HQ and gone completely rogue.
And now my garden is not my own anymore and I’m at a loss as to how to claim it back...
...other than to follow their example and mark out my own territory in the language that they best understand.
The trouble is the little buggers have nabbed all the best spots...
Because, you see, they came pre-litter-tray-trained. They knew how and where to do their biz. No having to squish our way through warm wet carpet patches (or worse: cold wet carpet patches). No having to play Hunt For Brown October by smell alone.
We figured that we were set up for life. When the move came to allow them out into the big outdoors we had this plan whereby the litter tray would move out with them, placed under a secluded tree for a day or two to spell out to them that here – here in this shady, balmy spot – they could continue to carry out their motions al fresco without compromising the kid-safe, disease-free element of our back garden.
And then, due to inclement weather, the change of season, too much going on elsewhere to maintain a watchful eye on the garden we forgot about them. We left them to it. The cats came and went as they pleased. They looked neither constipated nor pathologically obsessed with their toilet activities. Apart from the odd fur-ball or grainy brown pool of cat sick (catnip OD) the house was clear of feline anal produce.
They were happy. We were happy. We all enjoyed the cleaner indoor air and life continued.
They’ve got it, Karen and I thought. They’re digging holes and disposing of their own soil either in our garden or (more likely) in someone else’s garden. Fantastic.
And then I had occasion to venture out into the garden during daylight hours over Christmas.
26.
26 cat poos were dotted around one side of our lawn. Oddly the other side was perfectly cat poo clear. Not sure why this is. Maybe some odd natural occurrence along the lines of moss only growing on one side of a tree thus enabling you to work out magnetic North... maybe cats only poo on the south-west portion of any given lawn? Hey – I may have just discovered the manner in which pigeons navigate their way around the globe: cat-nav.
Anyway, the worst of it was (a) they weren’t even buried but lay there glistening on the surface in the early morning dew like freshly fried sausages and (b) I knew they were from out cats because I swear to God, after months of cleaning out the litter tray, I recognized them.
So. We were hit with the horrible truth at last.
All that training had fallen at the final hurdle. All that conditioning had unravelled at their first taste of freedom.
Once out in the field they’d gone feral. They’d cut off ties with HQ and gone completely rogue.
And now my garden is not my own anymore and I’m at a loss as to how to claim it back...
...other than to follow their example and mark out my own territory in the language that they best understand.
The trouble is the little buggers have nabbed all the best spots...
Monday, March 26, 2012
Reasonable Farce
What a difference an A makes.
Not sure where this came from – just playing with words really – but it occurred to me the other day that the working life of us all (possibly even our home lives too) could be much improved by substituting “force” for “farce”.
Take, for example, using reasonable force. The police encourage the use of reasonable force when making a citizen’s arrest. Hell, they even say they themselves use reasonable force when apprehending members of the criminal fraternity (clearly innocent newspaper sellers lie outside this guideline). But what is reasonable force? A Half Nelson? A kick to the tenders? A quick crack across the cranium with a telescopic truncheon?
It’s too woolly. Too hazy. Someone could still get hurt.
But not if you used reasonable farce.
Arresting someone whilst dressed up as a carnival pirate with an eight foot long feather sword whilst singing an old Gilbert O’Sullivan number would ensure that their human rights are not impinged upon in the slightest and no bodily injury is caused to anybody. Even better if you used a batter pudding throwing machine that you just happened to have about your person. You could even change your name by deed poll to something mildly amusing like “Gay Abandon”. I mean, what self-respecting crim would object to going to the nearest police cell with Gay Abandon?
And instead of forcing the issue in difficult and emotional situations why not relieve the tension and expose the elephant in the room by farcing the issue? Don’t want to interrogate your other half about the affair you think they are having and stirring up a real shitstorm? Just dress up as the mistress / lover in question, add a Groucho Marx moustache and cigar to the whole ensemble and then strut around doing deliberately bad impressions of them. Your other half will certainly get the picture but will have their tongue-tying guilt and shame somewhat mediated by the Music Hall values of your impromptu performance. A major row will be instantly averted allowing you to proceed with an adult and meaningful discourse that could save your entire relationship! Hoorah!
And finally, for those times when the doo-doo really is hitting the fan, don’t bother pining for that sci-fi fantasy – a forcefield – what you really need is a farcefield. A sphere of benign travesty that extends a couple of feet outwards from your person and entangles all who fall within its embrace in bizarre pratfalls and extravagant vehicular chases that involve bathtubs on castors, pantomime horses and custard pie flinging trebuchets. Instant invincibility and a jolly good laugh to boot for all involved!
What a hoot!
So remember folks, next time you are being dogged by the Dark Side...
...just use the Farce.
Not sure where this came from – just playing with words really – but it occurred to me the other day that the working life of us all (possibly even our home lives too) could be much improved by substituting “force” for “farce”.
Take, for example, using reasonable force. The police encourage the use of reasonable force when making a citizen’s arrest. Hell, they even say they themselves use reasonable force when apprehending members of the criminal fraternity (clearly innocent newspaper sellers lie outside this guideline). But what is reasonable force? A Half Nelson? A kick to the tenders? A quick crack across the cranium with a telescopic truncheon?
It’s too woolly. Too hazy. Someone could still get hurt.
But not if you used reasonable farce.
Arresting someone whilst dressed up as a carnival pirate with an eight foot long feather sword whilst singing an old Gilbert O’Sullivan number would ensure that their human rights are not impinged upon in the slightest and no bodily injury is caused to anybody. Even better if you used a batter pudding throwing machine that you just happened to have about your person. You could even change your name by deed poll to something mildly amusing like “Gay Abandon”. I mean, what self-respecting crim would object to going to the nearest police cell with Gay Abandon?
And instead of forcing the issue in difficult and emotional situations why not relieve the tension and expose the elephant in the room by farcing the issue? Don’t want to interrogate your other half about the affair you think they are having and stirring up a real shitstorm? Just dress up as the mistress / lover in question, add a Groucho Marx moustache and cigar to the whole ensemble and then strut around doing deliberately bad impressions of them. Your other half will certainly get the picture but will have their tongue-tying guilt and shame somewhat mediated by the Music Hall values of your impromptu performance. A major row will be instantly averted allowing you to proceed with an adult and meaningful discourse that could save your entire relationship! Hoorah!
And finally, for those times when the doo-doo really is hitting the fan, don’t bother pining for that sci-fi fantasy – a forcefield – what you really need is a farcefield. A sphere of benign travesty that extends a couple of feet outwards from your person and entangles all who fall within its embrace in bizarre pratfalls and extravagant vehicular chases that involve bathtubs on castors, pantomime horses and custard pie flinging trebuchets. Instant invincibility and a jolly good laugh to boot for all involved!
What a hoot!
So remember folks, next time you are being dogged by the Dark Side...
...just use the Farce.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways...
Enemies.
They're everywhere. On the street. Down the pub. At work. On our Facebook pages. Tweeting us from the poisoned depths of their hatred addled minds. They infiltrate our social networks both real and virtual and we cannot escape.
We all have them. And you know how the saying goes, don't you?
Can't live with 'em...
...and, er, that's pretty much it really. You can't live 'em so it makes good sense to quickly dispatch 'em. And as horribly as possible.
If morality were not a problem, if justice was your bitch, if you had a greenlight to do whatever you wanted to your enemies and people would still give you a thumbs-up afterwards and say, "yeah, that was justified, they had it coming", how would you dispatch your vilest, most obnoxious enemy from off this mortal coil?
It is something I have been musing on a lot of late. Possibly there has been too much red meat in my diet. Possibly Dr Pinchworthy has done up my straitjacket a smidgeon too tight. Possibly I'm a donkey on the edge (thank you, Shrek fans, I'm here till next Thursday, please try the veal). But I have compiled my top seven list of ways to rid myself (and the world) of the malodorous, the malignant and the vacuously moronic.
1) Attach them to a 50ft bungee rope (think about this) and hoof them off the nearest motorway flyover. I guarantee a juggernaut will drag them a good 1.8 miles before the rope rips 'em back out again.
2) Hack into their computer, access various bomb-making web sites, change their email address to ObamaMustDie@hotmail.com and - hey presto - let the FBI do it for you.
3) Death By Botox - modify an iron maiden (available from any decent hardware store) so that the spikes are replaced with hypodermic needles that pump out an "above the recommended dose" of botox into every square inch of your enemy's body. Not only will they die horribly but their corpse will look like a doll made entirely from Walls' "thick pork" sausages. Especially effective if (a) your enemy is vain, (b) spent most of their life as mutton dressed as lamb and (c) they're vegetarian.
4) Death By Higgs Boson - as inspired by X-Men 2, inject iron filings directly into various body parts (the choice and number is yours) and cast your enemy into the heart of the Hadron particle accelerator just before it is activated by guest executioner, Professor Brian Cox.
5) Death By Perpetual Motion - insert a simple tube (akin to those used during colonic irrigation) into your enemy's anus whilst the other is attached to your enemy's mouth. A cheap pump should ensure that all matter produced is shunted upwards against gravity, creating a macabre Catherine Wheel of Delights that should keep you chortling for... ooh... hours. Good for those enemies who talk nothing but shite but think that every utterance that comes out of their mouth is Godly wisdom.
6) Utilizing the knowledge gleaned from your years of service with MI5 (which I know you all have), adapt and customize your enemy's make-up paraphenalia so that the lipstick, the eyeshadow and the blusher all secrete highly concentrated sulphuric acid. Merely encourage your enemy to pass a mirror and then sit back and - ta daa! - watch them rub themselves out. Why? Because you're worth it!
7) Staple their nipples to the ears of a rampaging cheetah.
Right, I don't know about you lot, but I am currently luxuriating in revenge fantasy bliss.
Do feel free to add you own delicious devices of destruction to the list - or even to nominate a few potential "clients".
'Cos one day, people, we will all have our revenge! They've got it coming! You hear me? They've got it coming!
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
Thank you, doctor, is it time for my Tixylix now?
They're everywhere. On the street. Down the pub. At work. On our Facebook pages. Tweeting us from the poisoned depths of their hatred addled minds. They infiltrate our social networks both real and virtual and we cannot escape.
We all have them. And you know how the saying goes, don't you?
Can't live with 'em...
...and, er, that's pretty much it really. You can't live 'em so it makes good sense to quickly dispatch 'em. And as horribly as possible.
If morality were not a problem, if justice was your bitch, if you had a greenlight to do whatever you wanted to your enemies and people would still give you a thumbs-up afterwards and say, "yeah, that was justified, they had it coming", how would you dispatch your vilest, most obnoxious enemy from off this mortal coil?
It is something I have been musing on a lot of late. Possibly there has been too much red meat in my diet. Possibly Dr Pinchworthy has done up my straitjacket a smidgeon too tight. Possibly I'm a donkey on the edge (thank you, Shrek fans, I'm here till next Thursday, please try the veal). But I have compiled my top seven list of ways to rid myself (and the world) of the malodorous, the malignant and the vacuously moronic.
1) Attach them to a 50ft bungee rope (think about this) and hoof them off the nearest motorway flyover. I guarantee a juggernaut will drag them a good 1.8 miles before the rope rips 'em back out again.
2) Hack into their computer, access various bomb-making web sites, change their email address to ObamaMustDie@hotmail.com and - hey presto - let the FBI do it for you.
3) Death By Botox - modify an iron maiden (available from any decent hardware store) so that the spikes are replaced with hypodermic needles that pump out an "above the recommended dose" of botox into every square inch of your enemy's body. Not only will they die horribly but their corpse will look like a doll made entirely from Walls' "thick pork" sausages. Especially effective if (a) your enemy is vain, (b) spent most of their life as mutton dressed as lamb and (c) they're vegetarian.
4) Death By Higgs Boson - as inspired by X-Men 2, inject iron filings directly into various body parts (the choice and number is yours) and cast your enemy into the heart of the Hadron particle accelerator just before it is activated by guest executioner, Professor Brian Cox.
5) Death By Perpetual Motion - insert a simple tube (akin to those used during colonic irrigation) into your enemy's anus whilst the other is attached to your enemy's mouth. A cheap pump should ensure that all matter produced is shunted upwards against gravity, creating a macabre Catherine Wheel of Delights that should keep you chortling for... ooh... hours. Good for those enemies who talk nothing but shite but think that every utterance that comes out of their mouth is Godly wisdom.
6) Utilizing the knowledge gleaned from your years of service with MI5 (which I know you all have), adapt and customize your enemy's make-up paraphenalia so that the lipstick, the eyeshadow and the blusher all secrete highly concentrated sulphuric acid. Merely encourage your enemy to pass a mirror and then sit back and - ta daa! - watch them rub themselves out. Why? Because you're worth it!
7) Staple their nipples to the ears of a rampaging cheetah.
Right, I don't know about you lot, but I am currently luxuriating in revenge fantasy bliss.
Do feel free to add you own delicious devices of destruction to the list - or even to nominate a few potential "clients".
'Cos one day, people, we will all have our revenge! They've got it coming! You hear me? They've got it coming!
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
Thank you, doctor, is it time for my Tixylix now?
Friday, June 24, 2011
CSI Leamington Spa
See this badge? I’m DCI McBlake and I’m gonna be the mutha who’s gonna be ripping off your head and spitting down your neck for the next 3 weeks until this case is closed. Capiche?
Whazzat? This ain’t the 80’s no more, you say? Wise guy, huh? Just push your jacket sleeves up to your elbows and walk your cheap loafers over here. You might learn something.
See, that there? Know what that is? A toilet stall? You’re half right, bozo. It’s a crime scene is what that is. This is the crime that has got the boys in the lab clawing their eyes out through their Medisave goggles.
We’ve lost approximately 14 this last week alone. Bodies? Are you nuts? Does this look like a homicide investigation? I’m talking loo rolls, son. Bog paper. Hole roll. Shit ticket. Some scrote has been coming in here, breaking into the loo roll dispensers and walking out with bog standard (if you’ll excuse the pun) 2-ply toilet paper and leaving the other patrons wishing they’d worn a longer tie to work today.
This situation cannot be allowed to continue. It is our job to track down this Izal sniffing pervert and see that he is appropriately apprehended and his paper snaffling days put firmly behind him. If we don’t we’ll be looking at a skid mark epidemic the like of which the world has never seen. Before you know it there’ll be a shortage of haemorrhoid cream and Top Man boxer shorts and then where will we be?
Back to Y-fronts is where. Try and keep up with me, son. Geez, I thought you were on the fast track straight out of Hendon?
I want these stalls dusted for fingerprints. I want casts made of the shit prints. I want DNA samples taken from the various effluvia that you see deposited around the toilet bowl. And yes those pipettes are standard issue. Get to it, son. I don’t keep a dog and bark myself.
Now to catch our man we’re gonna have to be a bit clever. We’re gonna have to get inside his head and think like him. Why does he want all this toilet paper? Could he have a bad case of Delhi belly? Well, it’s possible given the proliferation of curry houses in the district but when you got liquid fire running out of your bomb bay doors the first thing you reach for is an ice pack, not cheap loo paper made from recycled packing crates. Could he be selling it on the black market? It’s possible. Check our database for any Andrex puppy owners who are known to be making loo paper adverts at this current time.
Has he got some kind of weird sexual loo paper fetish that makes him want to insulate his entire body the better to contain and preserve his pubescent secretions? You betcha bottom dollar, kid. No, no need to say it. I can see we’re singing from the same hymn sheet. I can see that disgust written large all over your face. Well, maybe, just maybe there’s something about you after all, son.
So we need to trap this dirtbag. We need to get him to reveal his identity so we can swoop down on him like the ungodly angels of vengeance that we undoubtedly are. It says so right here on my Met badge. Ungodly. Angel. Of. Justice. Whoops, sorry, kid, that’s my Blockbusters membership card. Never mind that. See this? Know what this is?
No, it ain’t marijuana. It’s itching powder. Itching powder, dumbass. You get sprinkling it all over those loo rolls and then stick ‘em back into that there loo roll holder.
Some poor fool is gonna have himself a crack attack so bad he’s gonna rip a 5ft hole into his own arsehole. And when that happens we’ll be right here ready to jump on in.
We’re gonna get covered in glory on this one and no mistake, son.
Why you looking at me like that? Just button your lip and get sprinkling.
Boy, I could sure use a chocolate donut round about now...
Friday, June 10, 2011
Forget Orange Wednesday... This Is Technicolor Yawn Friday
We’ve all done it. Sometimes we’ve even been genuinely ill.
Most of the time though, I bet we’ve all been swinging the lead. Pulling a fast one. Pulling a flanker. Gilding the lily. We’ve had a slight cough. A teeny-tiny headache. A bit of a sniffle. Nothing to put us on our backs. And we know this because although we don’t feel up to work we’re quite happy to stay at home, play on the Wii and surf for dodgy German web sites on the internet.
Physically we’re capable of work but we just can’t be arsed.
So we pull a sickie.
The subtle protest of the working man who is wise enough to know that his masters deserve to be given the finger occasionally. Because they pull sickies worse than anybody.
And it occurred to me today that, in this neon-lit, plastic-wrapped world of Bluetooth technology, there really ought to be an App for that.
A Ferris Bueller’s Day Off kind of app.
An app where you can ring your boss / wife / lawyer / sergeant / hairdresser / vet for the insane and explain to them that you will not be in attendance today due to [insert ailment of your choice here] and then supply them with the appropriate sound effect. Just to drive the point home and convince them of your bona fide need for a day at home on the sick.
Now if there isn’t an app like that then I am up for making one.
And this is where you guys come in. I need someone to supply the sound effects. I have provided a list of what I require below but do feel free to add your own suggestions. I always find that the more bizarre and outlandish my claims the more my boss is predisposed to swallow them as gospel. And do feel free to use props if it helps and I’d prefer the files to be mp3 if at all possible. Now, I’m running this on a first come first served basis so I suggest you get in quick before all the good ones go...
1) Whooping cough / consumption
2) Vomiting (apparently gagging on vegetable soup is a dead-ringer)
3) Diarrhea / the galloping squits (please remember to include groaning and then vast splashing noises as if someone has performed a water bomb in the local swimming pool)
4) Prolapsed sphincter (apparently ripping a cotton shirt and then screaming will plant the appropriate image into a anybody’s mind)
5) Having a baby (wouldn’t try this excuse if you are male)
6) Delivering a baby (hey, but this would work)
7) Going on a gun rampage because well, the police, they’ve got it coming, ain’t they?
8) Stigmata (maybe say “ow!” and drop the phone a lot)
9) Hysterical womb (only works if your boss is a bit Victorian)
10) Unplanned for amputation of foot with garden spade
11) Advanced stages of E.coli poisoning (more believable if you were seen eating in the staff canteen the day before)
12) Temporary insanity (you will lose points if you don’t utter the words: wibble wibble)
13) Sudden recruitment to Islamic fundamentalist group
14) Elephantiasis of the tongue
15) Sexual exhaustion (kudos if your boss buys this)
16) Impalement on the kitchen implement of your choice
17) Rabies
18) Scabies
19) Rickets
20) Cuthbert Dibble Grubb (sorry, lost my train of thought there)
Yeah. I ran out of ideas towards the end but you get the picture.
Just make them sound good folks because we’re all entitled to approximately 12 days off sick per year. Well, I am anyway. Let’s make sure we all get them!
Friday, May 20, 2011
Super Junk
There’s a lot of talk in the papers and on the TV at the moment about super injunctions. I have to say that I haven’t read any of it nor listened to any of it – apart from a few gags about it on Have I Got News For You. Gags being the operative word, of course.
There’s a reason for my lack of interest which will become clear later.
Now, it strikes me that the whole situation is like finding a knot that someone has tied in a length of poo and then spending an unfathomable amount of time trying to unravel it.
Why bother? Why does anyone want to get their hands dirty with it?
Because, on the whole, there is very little moral high ground to be seen no matter which angle you approach the subject from.
I’ve heard lots of guff about freedom of the press and freedom of the individual to a private life. Which do you discern as being of greater value? We are all of us – celebs and Royals included – entitled to privacy. It is a basic human need. A basic human right.
But if some celebrity moral arbiter is then caught doing as he does rather than as he says, don’t we have a right to know about it?
We do. But that rather implies a moral imperative behind the exposé – and, let’s be honest, the only imperative behind most news stories these days (especially those that feature celebrities) is to sell more copy and make more money. There is nothing moral or edifying about that.
So then we have injunctions and super injunctions. Small, insidious cogs inserted into the gross machinery of the law to enable individuals to protect their interests / privacy from the rapacious, undiscerning appetites of the press.
I think I’d be more inclined to see these as a tool for individual human rights if they were freely available to everyone. They don’t appear to be. They seem only to be available to the super rich or the super influential. The superfluous man on the street can go and take a running jump.
At least, that’s how it appears. I don’t know. I haven’t read much into it or researched it.
Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think much to the press and I don’t think much of the politicians and the celebs they orbit. All of them have too much money – money that they all screw out of us one way or another – and too much say on things that matter to us more than it does to them.
I’d quite happily hang the lot of them.
Hence, I am exercising a super injunction of my own and am avoiding all news stories and articles about super injunctions. I don’t want to think, critique or in any way talk about them. They are off limits. Verboten. And if you feel the same way I will understand why you have bailed out of this post before this point.
Because even just talking about them is a waste of time, energy and money.
Super injunctions are the thief of time; the media wait for a court order from no man...
There’s a reason for my lack of interest which will become clear later.
Now, it strikes me that the whole situation is like finding a knot that someone has tied in a length of poo and then spending an unfathomable amount of time trying to unravel it.
Why bother? Why does anyone want to get their hands dirty with it?
Because, on the whole, there is very little moral high ground to be seen no matter which angle you approach the subject from.
I’ve heard lots of guff about freedom of the press and freedom of the individual to a private life. Which do you discern as being of greater value? We are all of us – celebs and Royals included – entitled to privacy. It is a basic human need. A basic human right.
But if some celebrity moral arbiter is then caught doing as he does rather than as he says, don’t we have a right to know about it?
We do. But that rather implies a moral imperative behind the exposé – and, let’s be honest, the only imperative behind most news stories these days (especially those that feature celebrities) is to sell more copy and make more money. There is nothing moral or edifying about that.
So then we have injunctions and super injunctions. Small, insidious cogs inserted into the gross machinery of the law to enable individuals to protect their interests / privacy from the rapacious, undiscerning appetites of the press.
I think I’d be more inclined to see these as a tool for individual human rights if they were freely available to everyone. They don’t appear to be. They seem only to be available to the super rich or the super influential. The superfluous man on the street can go and take a running jump.
At least, that’s how it appears. I don’t know. I haven’t read much into it or researched it.
Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think much to the press and I don’t think much of the politicians and the celebs they orbit. All of them have too much money – money that they all screw out of us one way or another – and too much say on things that matter to us more than it does to them.
I’d quite happily hang the lot of them.
Hence, I am exercising a super injunction of my own and am avoiding all news stories and articles about super injunctions. I don’t want to think, critique or in any way talk about them. They are off limits. Verboten. And if you feel the same way I will understand why you have bailed out of this post before this point.
Because even just talking about them is a waste of time, energy and money.
Super injunctions are the thief of time; the media wait for a court order from no man...
Monday, May 16, 2011
Pharaoh Toot’n’Pootin’
Apologies in advance for the scatological nature of this post but sometimes you just have to deal with the crap as it hits you.
OK. I’ll just come out and say it. I seem to be retaining more wind as I get older. Or generating more wind. One of the two. Maybe even both.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that I am someone who drops their guts at the, er, drop of a hat. Because I am not. I am, in fact, legendary in my house for not farting. My butt is, by and large, a smokeless zone.
Tight as a steel drum. The Royal seal unbroken.
This is great. Because when someone drops a 10lb silent but deadly in my house no one dreams of accusing me of doing it because, well, hell would freeze over first.
There is a downside though.
See, I still produce gas. The methane seams are still there and rich in ore. The pressure has to be released at some point.
My wife, Karen, says I just save it all up for “proper” toilet visits.
And this is true.
Prior to the main performance the orchestra will tune itself up nicely and noisily – wind instruments first – and a great trumpeting clarion call will signify the commencement of the William Tell Overture.
I swear to God I could probably play a trumpet with my butt and hold a single note for a good 10 minutes.
And the older I get the longer the duration of the air exchange seems to get.
This is fine when I am at home. When the kids and the wife are busy downstairs and are deafened by the sounds of life. It is not so fine when I am in the toilets at work. Because at work I prefer to run on silent. It’s like an unspoken rule. Processes of the bum shall be neither seen nor heard. It is a brave man indeed who lets his ack-ack gun blaze away in earshot of his work colleagues and cares not a jot who hears.
I am not that man. Which makes my ability to store up vast quantities of methane gas a distinct disadvantage.
What I need, people, is for someone to invent a bum silencer or a butt muffler. Like the kind of thing assassins attach to their long range rifles so they may do their nefarious deeds without alerting anyone to their presence.
It needs to attach with an air-tight seal but be non-invasive.
It needs to be easy to clean and portable. The kind of thing one could keep in a man-bag (or even a handbag) without arousing smirking curiosity.
It needs to be affordable.
So. All you inventors out there. Consider yourself duly commissioned. Think outside the box. Have some fun.
Even better: have a blast.
So that, unbeknownst to my work colleagues, I can have one too.
OK. I’ll just come out and say it. I seem to be retaining more wind as I get older. Or generating more wind. One of the two. Maybe even both.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that I am someone who drops their guts at the, er, drop of a hat. Because I am not. I am, in fact, legendary in my house for not farting. My butt is, by and large, a smokeless zone.
Tight as a steel drum. The Royal seal unbroken.
This is great. Because when someone drops a 10lb silent but deadly in my house no one dreams of accusing me of doing it because, well, hell would freeze over first.
There is a downside though.
See, I still produce gas. The methane seams are still there and rich in ore. The pressure has to be released at some point.
My wife, Karen, says I just save it all up for “proper” toilet visits.
And this is true.
Prior to the main performance the orchestra will tune itself up nicely and noisily – wind instruments first – and a great trumpeting clarion call will signify the commencement of the William Tell Overture.
I swear to God I could probably play a trumpet with my butt and hold a single note for a good 10 minutes.
And the older I get the longer the duration of the air exchange seems to get.
This is fine when I am at home. When the kids and the wife are busy downstairs and are deafened by the sounds of life. It is not so fine when I am in the toilets at work. Because at work I prefer to run on silent. It’s like an unspoken rule. Processes of the bum shall be neither seen nor heard. It is a brave man indeed who lets his ack-ack gun blaze away in earshot of his work colleagues and cares not a jot who hears.
I am not that man. Which makes my ability to store up vast quantities of methane gas a distinct disadvantage.
What I need, people, is for someone to invent a bum silencer or a butt muffler. Like the kind of thing assassins attach to their long range rifles so they may do their nefarious deeds without alerting anyone to their presence.
It needs to attach with an air-tight seal but be non-invasive.
It needs to be easy to clean and portable. The kind of thing one could keep in a man-bag (or even a handbag) without arousing smirking curiosity.
It needs to be affordable.
So. All you inventors out there. Consider yourself duly commissioned. Think outside the box. Have some fun.
Even better: have a blast.
So that, unbeknownst to my work colleagues, I can have one too.
Monday, March 07, 2011
I Mean It Ma’am!
You couldn’t move without risking a truncheon up the jacksy.
They left no stone unturned. Or stonehead.
Bins were checked and taped up. Sewers were probed. And then the big boys came in. The narks with peaked caps. The ones who mean real business. The proper coppers.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Leamington was about to become a hotbed for cultural revolution. That the battle lines had been drawn down the length of The Parade and today would not be a good day to purchase a new divan mattress from John Lewis.
But you’d be wrong.
Because instead of cultural revolution Leamington was in fact the venue for one of this country’s great cultural traditions: waving a little union jack flag at a lady in a big hat who waves like she’s been taught to do so by Mr Miyagi from the original Karate Kid, “wax orn, wax orf.”
Friday saw Her Maj The Queen visiting my home town of Royal Leamington Spa. She came dressed in shocking pink with Prince Philip in tow to formally open Leamington Spa’s brand new Justice Centre building.
That’s right. We no longer have a magistrate’s court. We have a Justice Centre. Sadly my suggestion to have a statue of Judge Dredd erected outside was met with askance looks and murmurs of “can we please relocate this geek to another country please?”
Leamington has at last put itself back onto the Royal map. You see, I’m pretty sure that the last time we had a Royal visit was in the 1800’s when Queen Victoria popped by to sample the spa waters and graciously allowed Leamington Spa to name itself Royal Leamington Spa. I find it somehow ironic that our response to civil disobedience has at last brought the currently reigning monarch back to our sleepy little backwater town to renew our regal connections.
Though I doubt the coppers of Victoria’s day checked the sewers quite so avidly (probably because there weren’t any sewers back then). What were our coppers looking for? Bombs I suppose. Or perhaps Royal souvenir poo hunters who were squatting down beneath the loos of the Justice Centre hoping that Liz or Phil might crack a little something off in the cells that they could sell on the black market. If any Chinese doctors are listening Royal poo has amazing healing properties but only if taken orally. Trust me, it’s true.
So did I go out and join the flag waving throngs? At first I thought no, sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m not against the Royals but I’m not a Royalist automaton either. I’ve got work to do. But the sun was shining and then I thought I’ve got work to do I’d rather be outside. So outside I went and joined the crowds. ‘Cos let’s face it, Liz is getting on a bit. The chances of her living long enough to ever have a justifiable reason to come back to Leamington Spa are pretty slim.
The crowds were as you might expect. Screaming school children waving flags, old ladies muttering, “Ooh she does a lot of charity work, she does, heart of gold she has, don’t she duck?” and cynical teenagers hanging around whilst cursing themselves for not having the courage of their convictions to moon in the face of a stern faced policeman or give the Royal convoy the finger.
The picture above is my own. It is the closest I am ever likely to come to England’s current monarch (unless my Knighthood comes through before she carks it). Annoyingly I was concentrating on operating my camera phone so much that I didn’t actually look upon her with my own eyes. I’m sure there is a life lesson in there somewhere but I can’t for the life of me be bothered enough to think what it is.
So there you have it. The Queen. Real news of national importance on this ‘ere blog. Proper journalism (almost). History recorded. The stuff of news. The fabric of our national identity interwoven with my own.
God Save The Queen! I mean it most heartily ma’am.
Though, of course, you do all realize there is little or no future in England’s dreaming...
Friday, January 07, 2011
Logging Off
I don’t know your name. Or your address. But believe me I wish that I did.
I don’t know what your problem is but I’m guessing it is gastro related. Certainly it is a very personal beef.
I’m trying to divine your mindset. Figure out what makes you tick.
Perhaps you are homeless and have no access to basic facilities? The dark corner at the back of my place of work has, perhaps, special significance for you? The place where you had your first kiss / shag / spliff / al fresco bowel movement? Who knows? But something keeps drawing you back to the same spot night after night no matter how vigilant we are about shovelling your hefty calling cards into the river (note to the RSPCA: sorry about the dead swans).
Maybe you see yourself as a street artist? The Human Pencil perhaps? And each night your return to the same spot to try and achieve the impossible: sign your name with your own excrement? But I’m guessing you run out of lead before you get to the second letter. Bet you wish you’d been christened something short and pithy like Bob or Joe. I bet your real name is Alexander Gregorin Blenkinsop III and you curse your mother each time you squat down and try to work up a sharp point. Your prune intake must be phenomenal.
But at the end of the day, Mr Blenkinsop or whatever your real name is, I don’t really care. I don’t care about your background, your upbringing, your dietary requirements... I just want you to stop shitting up the side of my work building.
Get yourself a life. Get yourself a toilet. Get yourself a butt plug.
Just get yourself something.
And stop dumping all of your shit on me.
I don’t know what your problem is but I’m guessing it is gastro related. Certainly it is a very personal beef.
I’m trying to divine your mindset. Figure out what makes you tick.
Perhaps you are homeless and have no access to basic facilities? The dark corner at the back of my place of work has, perhaps, special significance for you? The place where you had your first kiss / shag / spliff / al fresco bowel movement? Who knows? But something keeps drawing you back to the same spot night after night no matter how vigilant we are about shovelling your hefty calling cards into the river (note to the RSPCA: sorry about the dead swans).
Maybe you see yourself as a street artist? The Human Pencil perhaps? And each night your return to the same spot to try and achieve the impossible: sign your name with your own excrement? But I’m guessing you run out of lead before you get to the second letter. Bet you wish you’d been christened something short and pithy like Bob or Joe. I bet your real name is Alexander Gregorin Blenkinsop III and you curse your mother each time you squat down and try to work up a sharp point. Your prune intake must be phenomenal.
But at the end of the day, Mr Blenkinsop or whatever your real name is, I don’t really care. I don’t care about your background, your upbringing, your dietary requirements... I just want you to stop shitting up the side of my work building.
Get yourself a life. Get yourself a toilet. Get yourself a butt plug.
Just get yourself something.
And stop dumping all of your shit on me.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Speak Of The Devil...
No, that wasn't what I was expecting either but it was what I got last night.
Regular readers of this blog will know of my love/hate relationship with our window cleaner, Wayne. Well. I'm not sure it's love/hate. Possibly hate/hate. Certainly irritation/relief that I don't have to clean my windows myself.
Anyway, none of this is important. What is important is that through sheer wussiness I find myself putting up with his monthly visits to collect his £7 for cleaning our windows simply because I haven't yet told him to go and sling his chamois round somebody else's sash window.
Wayne is weird you see. As expounded further in the link above he is a commie hater. Beneath his cheeky-chappy gor blimey guvnor smile is a festering Bible spouting end-timer who wants to see all the bankers of this world boiling in the devil's own hot sauce. I don't really want to get into a protracted conversation with him. I certainly don't want to have to risk his ire by laying him off and then find myself on the wrong end of a McCarthyist witch hunt. I literally just want him to wash and go.
But - jumping through time to last night - we hadn't seen anything of Wayne for weeks. He hadn't been round to collect his fee for last month. It had lain in the kitchen untouched (amazing given how brassic we are at the moment) awaiting its master's call. Wayne didn't even seem to have been round to smear up our windows this month. Normally he puts a calling card through. But there had been nothing.
I know I was foolish to do this but I chanced fate. I turned to my wife and posited aloud the theory that maybe we had seen the last of Wayne. Maybe he had gone out of business, fallen off his ladder or had embarked on a crusade to the Holy Land? Maybe I could be allowed to reclaim that £7 and place it back into the forlorn pocket of my wallet?
Now this is no word of a lie. I haven't messed with the timings here just to cobble a blog post together and inject it with some semblance of drama. There was literally a knock at our front door the second after I had stopped speaking. A smart business-like rap.
I turned to Karen; it couldn't possibly be...? She had turned white. She suggested it was a late delivery of something or other. Clutchable straws perhaps?
I girded my loins and opened the front door... and found myself staring into the crazy shotgun eyes of Wayne the window cleaner. "Hello Mr Blake..." he announced and his Max Wall hair seemed to lift in a breeze that stank mildly of brimstone.
Not only had he come to collect last month's money but he wanted this month's too 'cos he'd done our windows on Tuesday. He just hadn't put a card through. Gulp. But I only had money for last month and I'm totally skint until I get paid on the 19th. From deep below Wayne's feet I swear I heard screams as if a billion souls were being tortured by trillions of imps who all (for some reason) looked like miniature versions of Russell Brand. What would he demand as payment?
He looked me in the eye and said, "No worries, Mr Blake, just give it to me next month, it'll be fine... er, by the way, is that a compost bin in your trailer...?"
Er. I told him that yes it was. It was our old compost bin in fact. We'd bought a bigger one. Emptied the contents of the old onto our winter beds and were going to take the old compost bin down to the local recycling centre.
"Oooo," said Wayne (though it sounded quite demonic to my ears and not so effeminate as it appears in text), "I could do with one of those..."
"Please do take it," I offered/begged. "It's yours if you want it; we're only going to dump it anyway..."
"Cheers, Mr Blake, I'll be back in the morning with my truck." And off he stomped into the night.
Now, Karen bless her, being an accountant, pointed out that actually that old compost bin cost about £7 - the equivalent of a month's window cleaning. If I'd been canny I could have bartered the month I owed for the bin and completely wiped out my debt.
That's a fair point. But I'm just glad - though slightly unsettled - that when push came to shove and the ol' devil could have demanded my soul fair and square he instead sized me up and went for our mouldy old compost bin instead.
But what the hell does that say about me?
That I'm untouchably saved? Or just not worth wasting good hellfire on? Or I have a superlative taste in compost bins?
Answers on a trident to the usual address, please...
Friday, September 24, 2010
Letting Rip...
I put the phone down with a weary sigh and performed a precautionary save of the revolutionary Word document I’d been working on all day which described a plan that, if implemented immediately, would save the council millions of pounds in these cash strapped times (sack ALL the managers and the executives. To be honest I’m not sure if my bosses will be willing to embrace this radical approach – curse them and their shortsightedness).
Great, I thought. Another vomit laced drunk with a scabby top lip and trainer bottoms that have failed to act as an emergency colostomy bag. I’ll have to call out the paramedics to scrape him off the floor.
I headed downstairs to investigate and for once was pleasantly surprised to find a young man in his early twenties merely asleep on the floor of our topnotch (cough!) baby change facilities. No smell of booze. No smell of vomit. No seepage of bum gravy warranting calls for BP to come in and clean up the immediate environment.
He was just asleep. Sound asleep. Breathing deeply and contentedly. His head lying on his carefully folded jacket and the nappy bin strategically placed between his head and the door so that should an unwary mother with a pewling toddler rush in to avail themselves of the baby changing mat he wouldn’t wake up to find his brains had been twatted out of his skull and splattered up the wall behind him.
Some considerable thought had obviously gone into this.
Although the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie” came into my head he just couldn’t stay there. This is a baby changing facility not a doss-house (Leamington’s drunks please take note).
So I tried to rouse him. I tried calling politely. I tried calling rudely. I tried shouting like Gerard Butler in 300 (this is not a youth hostel – THIS IS SPARTA!) but ol’ Rip Van Wrinkle wasn’t waking for anyone or anything. I even tried the old armpit poke but that had no effect whatsoever. He was so deeply asleep he was in danger of being kidnapped by 7 dwarves.
Part of me felt envious. As someone who is continually woken before 6am by my eldest boy bouncing action figures of the metal bars of his bunk bed I admired this youth's ability to shut out all external stimuli and remain furiously, passionately asleep.
Another part of me just thought he was a git and I therefore rang the police to see if a bit of politically incorrect truncheon action might encourage him to move on to his own bedroom or at least the nearest furniture store.
The police were amused and said they’d send someone out as “a priority but not an emergency”. I don’t blame them. It was plain this guy was in the best of health. He was just asleep. Asleep on the cold hard floor of a public amenity immersed in the sweltering odour of about 30 overflowing nappies.
While I waited for the police I thought I’d give waking Mr Sleepyhead another go. I returned to the baby change. I saw the sink in the corner and inspiration struck. A good handful of ice cold water was summarily dropped at great height straight onto Coma Boy’s head.
Boy did he wake up. I stepped back just in case he barked but he just looked nonplussed. He wiped his face and looked around at the immense puddle that had suddenly formed around him. I could see his brain formulating the question but thought it best not to be too forthcoming as to the source of the deluge.
I checked after his well being and suggested he move on. With much grunting (that surely only his mother could love) he concurred and shambled from the building a darn sight cleaner than when he came in.
I returned to the phone and called off the fuzz. I then returned to my Word document and felt... strangely buoyant. Strangely wired. It had been fun. I’d enjoyed it. Tipping water onto someone. Hmm.
Dear readers, I fear a cruel appetite has been awoken in me. Should you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods suffering from exhaustion or even narcolepsy don’t expect any sympathy or understanding from me. You see, I’m just waiting for the call. I have a large bucket under my desk now and a 2 litre bottle of water in the fridge. It’s chilling nicely.
And it has your name on it.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Leamington Is Full Of The Strangest People, No. 3: Tin Can Andy
For those of you that have missed the first two (what were you doing? Leading a life?) Number 1, Bob The Shopkeeper is here and no.2, Pooper-Scoop Pete is here.
Today though we are going to speculate on the strange existence of Tin Can Andy.
Like most towns across the UK our household waste collection service is divided over a 2 week period. One week it will be the pre-sorted, pre-flattened, pre-washed recyclable stuff. The next week it will be the uneaten food stuffs, body parts, landfill fodder and stuff the charity shops wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.
On the recycling waste weeks, so early in the morning that the birds are still brushing their teeth and gargling with Listerine, you can hear the squee-squee-squee of Tin Can Andy’s shopping trolley. Well. When I say Andy’s shopping trolley I really mean Asda’s shopping trolley.
As I’m so paranoid about having my bin nicked I don’t put my recycling boxes out until the very morning of the collection. I’m usually up pretty early anyway as I have kids and anyone who has kids knows that 6.0am is a lie-in.
It is during this early morning chore that, if I am lucky, like spying a red deer emerging from the mist, I sometimes spot Tin Can Andy moving surreptitiously amongst the red boxes and bags that his community has placed outside their doorsteps ready for the waste disposal team to empty.
Tin Can Andy you see likes to rummage around other people’s recycling waste and re-appropriate... you’ve guessed it... all the tin cans. By the time I see him he must be about half way through his “round” as his trolley is usually piled up already with his ill-gotten aluminium gains.
Now I confess I don’t know what to make of Tin Can Andy. Part of me feels an undeniable sense of indignation. Technically these cans are not his property. They belong to the people who have left them out in good faith for the council bin men. Technically what he is doing is theft. Isn’t it?
But then the other half of me thinks, what the hell. It’s only junk. Who cares?
Presumably – though this is yet to be confirmed – there is money to be made selling old tin cans to scrap metal merchants? Certainly given the number of drain covers that have been stolen from the Warwickshire area over the summer people are crying out for metal, whether it is “scrap” or not. But would the money you’d get from a tin can really make the sheer effort involved in acquiring it worthwhile?
So my other theory is that Tin Can Andy is building something out of the tin cans. He is, in fact an alien. One of those multi-morphing alien creatures from John Carpenter’s The Thing. And out in his backgarden, in a clumsily dug cavity under his B&Q shed, there is an underground tunnel leading to a half built spaceship. Once Andy has acquired enough cans of baked beans he’s buggering off home again to Alpha Centauri or Clacton, one of the two.
To be honest I couldn’t care less.
As long as I don’t have to see his upside down head scampering across my lawn on giant spider’s legs I’ll be more than happy. Though to be fair, he does keep the occurrences of cat poo invasion down to a minimum...
Monday, August 30, 2010
Michael Bentine’s Potty Time...
...has nothing on this.
Here in the Blake household it is potty training time. In earnest. After a couple of false starts we’ve figured that Tom is now ready to make the big jump from pull-up nappies to no-nappy at all.
He understands the concept mentally.
He understands the ploys him mummy and daddy are employing to get him to do his business in the potty. These basically revolve around bribery – both material and emotional.
We’re also employing a variant off the Pavlov technique. Each time there is a little golden shower on the carpet we sit him straight down onto his potty to establish the link.
Tom understands all this.
But he ain’t going for it.
“No potty,” is his answer. This is sometimes followed by the potty being forcibly ejected into another room.
This plainly is the wall that we have to break through.
The wees aren’t too bad. Kiddy wees aren’t horrible like grown-up wees (unless of course that’s just the parent in me talking). They’re easy to mop up. Not nice. But easy.
It’s the poos that are causing us headaches.
Tom’s always been a private pooer. To the point where he’ll completely remove himself from company, often by shutting himself in another room or the hallway where he can pass his motions without audience participation. I kind of feel the same about my poos so I know where he is coming from.
However, this makes throwing the potty under him when a log is about to fall extremely difficult because as soon as he spies our approach the bomb bay doors lock tighter than the Coalition Government’s budget. Arrested development. Not a dicky-bird. Just the high pitched whistle of foiled expectation.
Most kids have a problem with control. Holding it back. Not Tom. He can hold it in for a phenomenal amount of time. His problem is letting go. Saturday he refused to poo at all and Sunday looked to be going the same way. As Tom is prone to a touch of constipation if his cycle is broken we gave him a quick shot of lactulose; he finds constipation very distressing so we don’t want to colour his perception of potty training with that kind of experience.
So Sunday afternoon amid much foul smelling wind we knew our little boy (to continue with the bomb analogy) was about to drop his Little Boy. There is only so much “watching like a hawk” that you can do. Somehow he managed to sneak off, shut himself in the kitchen and, just as daddy valiantly arrived with the eager potty, dropped a brick of humungous proportions onto the welcome mat in the kitchen.
I felt like whistling the them tune from The Great Escape.
*Sigh*
Missed it again. So we put it in the potty. Sat Tom on the potty. And then we all trooped upstairs to give Mr Brick an honourable send-off (discharge?) down the toilet.
It blocked the toilet.
I’m not kidding.
It backed up. Right to the rim.
Great, I thought. Now we’re going to have to call out an emergency plumber (and you all know how I feel about calling plumbers).
But as it was the internet came to my aid. A fantastic site called www.howtomendit.com. On a forum for blocked toilets – yes, really – it recommended tying a bin bag around a mop and using it as a plunger.
Well blow me if the thing didn’t work a treat. Torpedo away. All clear in the tubes. And Tom was feeling pretty lithe too.
So. This is how we are spending our Bank Holiday weekend. We are re-enacting the blitz. There’s been no direct hits at present but the payload is all ready to be loosed.
I’ll keep you posted. I know you want to know.
P.S. News just in. Direct hit on Pottyville with a large incendiary device at 10.30 hours approximately. Street party about to commence.
Here in the Blake household it is potty training time. In earnest. After a couple of false starts we’ve figured that Tom is now ready to make the big jump from pull-up nappies to no-nappy at all.
He understands the concept mentally.
He understands the ploys him mummy and daddy are employing to get him to do his business in the potty. These basically revolve around bribery – both material and emotional.
We’re also employing a variant off the Pavlov technique. Each time there is a little golden shower on the carpet we sit him straight down onto his potty to establish the link.
Tom understands all this.
But he ain’t going for it.
“No potty,” is his answer. This is sometimes followed by the potty being forcibly ejected into another room.
This plainly is the wall that we have to break through.
The wees aren’t too bad. Kiddy wees aren’t horrible like grown-up wees (unless of course that’s just the parent in me talking). They’re easy to mop up. Not nice. But easy.
It’s the poos that are causing us headaches.
Tom’s always been a private pooer. To the point where he’ll completely remove himself from company, often by shutting himself in another room or the hallway where he can pass his motions without audience participation. I kind of feel the same about my poos so I know where he is coming from.
However, this makes throwing the potty under him when a log is about to fall extremely difficult because as soon as he spies our approach the bomb bay doors lock tighter than the Coalition Government’s budget. Arrested development. Not a dicky-bird. Just the high pitched whistle of foiled expectation.
Most kids have a problem with control. Holding it back. Not Tom. He can hold it in for a phenomenal amount of time. His problem is letting go. Saturday he refused to poo at all and Sunday looked to be going the same way. As Tom is prone to a touch of constipation if his cycle is broken we gave him a quick shot of lactulose; he finds constipation very distressing so we don’t want to colour his perception of potty training with that kind of experience.
So Sunday afternoon amid much foul smelling wind we knew our little boy (to continue with the bomb analogy) was about to drop his Little Boy. There is only so much “watching like a hawk” that you can do. Somehow he managed to sneak off, shut himself in the kitchen and, just as daddy valiantly arrived with the eager potty, dropped a brick of humungous proportions onto the welcome mat in the kitchen.
I felt like whistling the them tune from The Great Escape.
*Sigh*
Missed it again. So we put it in the potty. Sat Tom on the potty. And then we all trooped upstairs to give Mr Brick an honourable send-off (discharge?) down the toilet.
It blocked the toilet.
I’m not kidding.
It backed up. Right to the rim.
Great, I thought. Now we’re going to have to call out an emergency plumber (and you all know how I feel about calling plumbers).
But as it was the internet came to my aid. A fantastic site called www.howtomendit.com. On a forum for blocked toilets – yes, really – it recommended tying a bin bag around a mop and using it as a plunger.
Well blow me if the thing didn’t work a treat. Torpedo away. All clear in the tubes. And Tom was feeling pretty lithe too.
So. This is how we are spending our Bank Holiday weekend. We are re-enacting the blitz. There’s been no direct hits at present but the payload is all ready to be loosed.
I’ll keep you posted. I know you want to know.
P.S. News just in. Direct hit on Pottyville with a large incendiary device at 10.30 hours approximately. Street party about to commence.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Put A Cork In It
(Which reminds me of that famous book: The Cat’s Revenge by Claude Balls.)
But I cannot abide the neighbourhood cats where I now live.
Not because they stalk the bird feeders that the wife and I keep constantly replenished at great cost to the weekly budget. Not because their territorial wars often wake me at night with the resultant caterwauling.
But because they shit on my lawn.
Actually on the lawn.
For some reason this strikes me as odd. Even a little bizarre. Because in my experience of cats – owning 2, cat-sitting for other people on occasion, etc – is that when they need the bathroom for a number 2 they tend to dig a hole and bury it. Nice clean animals, cats. They hide it all away. This is the belief system I have carried around with me since childhood.
Even my sister’s cats – both housebound because of living on an upper story – used to dig little holes in the cat litter tray. It is natural and instinctive behaviour for a cat. When they start pulling up the gravel with a forepaw you just know a cat turd is on its way.
So why are the neighbourhood cats spurning this evolutionary imperative and dropping their revolting little logs all over my lawn?
It’s not just an aesthetic problem, you see. My little boy loves playing out in the garden. As soon as the door is open he’s off, dressed or not, more often than not barefoot, trotting his merry way all over the lawn.
Barefoot. As is his right in his own back garden. Barefoot with little pellets of evil lying in wait in the grass.
Animal poo and little kiddies do not mix. There’s a story in the paper today of a little girl who may be blinded because she fell into some dog poo in a child’s play area. It’s heartbreaking.
It also makes me angry.
Now I know it’s a slightly different scenario – dogs have to cleaned up after by their owners and the same rule does not and cannot be applied to felines. The owner of the dog is responsible for the girl’s injury but the owner’s of the various cats in my street can’t really be held responsible for their cats pooing on my grass. Even though I’d quite happily kneecap the lot of them in a kangaroo court.
The question is: what can I do about it?
Some have suggested a sprinkling of curry powder or pepper spray onto the areas that the cats frequent. Fine but I don’t want a half naked little boy – or even a fully clothed one – rolling about in it either. So that’s no go.
The only other solution I can think of involves a cork, a shotgun and me pulling the trigger to fill Macavity’s muck cavity...
But is that, strictly speaking, legal?
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Bread Crumbs
This week I have quaffed deep of the carafe of crapness. Supped long and hard on the soup-bowl of complete and utter work soddery. It is not an expression I use often on this blog but this week has been a shit sandwich. A shit sandwich of doorstep proportions.
There’s too much to go into here. Too much to discuss that would get me into trouble with my employers were I to share it openly – and you all know how I actively seek to avoid trouble of that nature. So let me satisfy external analysis by providing – for your delectation – one small vignette that not only began this week of work-based woe but also rather neatly sums it up.
Monday morning. We have just opened to the public. The foyer area is sparkling and smelling of pine fresh disinfectant. A contractor turns up to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and head back through the foyer to look at the faulty doors he has come to repair.
There is shit everywhere. Human shit. A trail of man-poo that slithers from the public toilets across the foyer to the library, across their cool blue carpet tiles, back out across the foyer towards the entrance doors and, yes, when I check, leads off across the parkland outside. Without any effort at all I bet I could follow the perpetrator all the way home.
The trail reminds me for some reason of the blood trail left after a seal has been clubbed and dragged back to a fur trading ship. Somebody has obviously clubbed a seal to death with an elephant sized turd.
I am gobsmacked. In fact I smack my gob and keep my hand there to prevent myself from inhaling the ripe aroma of freshly ejected effluvia that floats up from ground level like marsh gas.
In the space of a few brief seconds some scrote has – unfathomably – left the public toilets whilst soiling himself at a constant rate of one plop every third footfall.
Why? How?
How can you do this and not know you are doing it? ‘Cos I’m assuming it was an accident and not deliberate. Or am I wrong? Has the guy in question cut a hole in his trouser pockets like a POW in the Great Escape and carefully and surreptitiously dropped his load in the hope that the Nazi prison guards wouldn't notice what he was doing?
He’s failed. It sticks out a mile. And it smells. And – oh God – other customers are coming into the building and walking through it. As I watch, the wheel of a wheelchair carves a moist furrow in a particularly fetid looking dollop. There are now new shite trails beginning to spread out everywhere.
We get the cleaner. Bless her, she dons her marigolds with the stern expression of a vet about to remove a breach calf from the back end of a cow and gets to work. The clean-up operation has begun.
In the meantime a quick look of the CCTV cameras reveals a lost, confused, heavily bearded man wearing a woollen bobble hat despite the summer heat leaving the loos and wandering across to the library at the right time. Even with the dodgy quality of the CCTV footage you can clearly see that he’s not “all there” (indeed, a lot of him is spread across our floors). The phrase “care in the community” comes to mind. I.E. nobody cares and he’s been left to his own devices.
The cleaner reports that the loos are a bombsite (bum site?). Faeces and toilet paper in all the loos and all over the sinks. It’s going to be a big job (no pun intended).
*Sigh*
And that is how Monday began and – you know what? – the work week hasn’t got any better than that.
Like I said.
A shit sandwich.
There’s too much to go into here. Too much to discuss that would get me into trouble with my employers were I to share it openly – and you all know how I actively seek to avoid trouble of that nature. So let me satisfy external analysis by providing – for your delectation – one small vignette that not only began this week of work-based woe but also rather neatly sums it up.
Monday morning. We have just opened to the public. The foyer area is sparkling and smelling of pine fresh disinfectant. A contractor turns up to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and head back through the foyer to look at the faulty doors he has come to repair.
There is shit everywhere. Human shit. A trail of man-poo that slithers from the public toilets across the foyer to the library, across their cool blue carpet tiles, back out across the foyer towards the entrance doors and, yes, when I check, leads off across the parkland outside. Without any effort at all I bet I could follow the perpetrator all the way home.
The trail reminds me for some reason of the blood trail left after a seal has been clubbed and dragged back to a fur trading ship. Somebody has obviously clubbed a seal to death with an elephant sized turd.
I am gobsmacked. In fact I smack my gob and keep my hand there to prevent myself from inhaling the ripe aroma of freshly ejected effluvia that floats up from ground level like marsh gas.
In the space of a few brief seconds some scrote has – unfathomably – left the public toilets whilst soiling himself at a constant rate of one plop every third footfall.
Why? How?
How can you do this and not know you are doing it? ‘Cos I’m assuming it was an accident and not deliberate. Or am I wrong? Has the guy in question cut a hole in his trouser pockets like a POW in the Great Escape and carefully and surreptitiously dropped his load in the hope that the Nazi prison guards wouldn't notice what he was doing?
He’s failed. It sticks out a mile. And it smells. And – oh God – other customers are coming into the building and walking through it. As I watch, the wheel of a wheelchair carves a moist furrow in a particularly fetid looking dollop. There are now new shite trails beginning to spread out everywhere.
We get the cleaner. Bless her, she dons her marigolds with the stern expression of a vet about to remove a breach calf from the back end of a cow and gets to work. The clean-up operation has begun.
In the meantime a quick look of the CCTV cameras reveals a lost, confused, heavily bearded man wearing a woollen bobble hat despite the summer heat leaving the loos and wandering across to the library at the right time. Even with the dodgy quality of the CCTV footage you can clearly see that he’s not “all there” (indeed, a lot of him is spread across our floors). The phrase “care in the community” comes to mind. I.E. nobody cares and he’s been left to his own devices.
The cleaner reports that the loos are a bombsite (bum site?). Faeces and toilet paper in all the loos and all over the sinks. It’s going to be a big job (no pun intended).
*Sigh*
And that is how Monday began and – you know what? – the work week hasn’t got any better than that.
Like I said.
A shit sandwich.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Leamington Is Full Of The Strangest People, No. 2: Pooper-Scoop Pete
And so to continue with this sporadic series of Leamington vignettes (you can read the first one here if you are so minded) may I introduce you to Pooper-Scoop Pete?
I don’t know if Pete is his real name; I chose it purely for alliterative purposes and thought it sounded better than Turd Trowelling Trevor.
I encountered Pete last Friday as I made my way on foot to my employer’s HQ. Despite the day being so hot it would have melted Katie Price’s breast implants down to her ankles Pete was fully togged out in a tweed suit complete with matching waistcoat. And he was wearing a yellow shirt which I suspect (though cannot confirm) was buttoned right up to his Adam’s apple. He was sporting a full beard in a kind of way that said, “Yes, ruffian, even my face is properly dressed despite the excessive balminess of the weather”.
But strange though his appearance may have been it was not his sartorial qualities that attracted my eye... my eye that seeketh the strange and the paranormal in this bizarre worlde of Leamington upon the Spa.
No. It was the fact that he was very painstakingly picking up a large dog poo from the pavement.
And yet he most definitely did not have a dog. He was totally dog-less.
Worst of all his method of turd collecting was the old “stick your hand in a plastic bag and pick it up with your fingers and then turn the bag inside out” technique. Thus through the thin veneer of the plastic one can fully experience both the ambient temperature and the texture of the poo one is handling.
He had an old fashioned brown satchel slung over his right shoulder. I didn’t see him do it but I suspect the bagged up log was deposited within its leather innards.
The actions of this dedicated sausage removal expert have left me perturbed and confused. I mean why collect dog poo from the streets when you patently don’t have a dog in your possession?
Subsequent speculation on this conundrum has resulted in the following theories (do feel free to add your own):
1) he does indeed own a dog and said dog dropped a length earlier in the day but he found himself plastic bag-less and thus, being conscientious and mindful of his public duty, he returned at his next convenience to remove the offending article.
2) the government is funding some bizarre and secret research into the anti-personnel properties of canine faeces and Pete is collecting samples of the stuff to develop an anti aircraft missile that has true dirty bomb attributes.
3) Pete has a dog log fetish that has resulted in an entire backroom of his Edwardian terraced house (there are a lot of these in Leamington Spa) being given over to his personal “walnut whip” collection – all sorted and displayed according to size, bouquet, and canine breed (worked out using a clever algorithm that uses the diameter of the log to calculate the size of the canine rectum and therefore the most likely breed of the dog). This collection has been kept secret from his elderly mother who lives in a rocking chair in his loft and persists in calling Pete Norman.
Needles to say, I left Pete to his scatological endeavours and hastened on my way to Work’s HQ, praying that I would never have cause to see the insides of that buckled brown leather satchel that was visibly weighing down his right shoulder...
Leamington, eh? It’s full of the strangest people.
I don’t know if Pete is his real name; I chose it purely for alliterative purposes and thought it sounded better than Turd Trowelling Trevor.
I encountered Pete last Friday as I made my way on foot to my employer’s HQ. Despite the day being so hot it would have melted Katie Price’s breast implants down to her ankles Pete was fully togged out in a tweed suit complete with matching waistcoat. And he was wearing a yellow shirt which I suspect (though cannot confirm) was buttoned right up to his Adam’s apple. He was sporting a full beard in a kind of way that said, “Yes, ruffian, even my face is properly dressed despite the excessive balminess of the weather”.
But strange though his appearance may have been it was not his sartorial qualities that attracted my eye... my eye that seeketh the strange and the paranormal in this bizarre worlde of Leamington upon the Spa.
No. It was the fact that he was very painstakingly picking up a large dog poo from the pavement.
And yet he most definitely did not have a dog. He was totally dog-less.
Worst of all his method of turd collecting was the old “stick your hand in a plastic bag and pick it up with your fingers and then turn the bag inside out” technique. Thus through the thin veneer of the plastic one can fully experience both the ambient temperature and the texture of the poo one is handling.
He had an old fashioned brown satchel slung over his right shoulder. I didn’t see him do it but I suspect the bagged up log was deposited within its leather innards.
The actions of this dedicated sausage removal expert have left me perturbed and confused. I mean why collect dog poo from the streets when you patently don’t have a dog in your possession?
Subsequent speculation on this conundrum has resulted in the following theories (do feel free to add your own):
1) he does indeed own a dog and said dog dropped a length earlier in the day but he found himself plastic bag-less and thus, being conscientious and mindful of his public duty, he returned at his next convenience to remove the offending article.
2) the government is funding some bizarre and secret research into the anti-personnel properties of canine faeces and Pete is collecting samples of the stuff to develop an anti aircraft missile that has true dirty bomb attributes.
3) Pete has a dog log fetish that has resulted in an entire backroom of his Edwardian terraced house (there are a lot of these in Leamington Spa) being given over to his personal “walnut whip” collection – all sorted and displayed according to size, bouquet, and canine breed (worked out using a clever algorithm that uses the diameter of the log to calculate the size of the canine rectum and therefore the most likely breed of the dog). This collection has been kept secret from his elderly mother who lives in a rocking chair in his loft and persists in calling Pete Norman.
Needles to say, I left Pete to his scatological endeavours and hastened on my way to Work’s HQ, praying that I would never have cause to see the insides of that buckled brown leather satchel that was visibly weighing down his right shoulder...
Leamington, eh? It’s full of the strangest people.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Feeling The Strain
It’s a little known fact about our youngest son, Tom, that he has – without fail – been ill for every Christmas and Easter holiday since he was born. Everything from a bad reaction to the MMR jab to horrible gastro-bugs. If it’s out there he’ll do an X Files and find it.
This Easter we thought we’d got off lightly. Just a nasty cold.
But the nasty cold for some reason mutated into constipation.
And not the “nice” constipation either; the sort where you merely feel no compulsion at all to go. No, Tom got the nasty constipation where you feel bloated, fatigued and are plagued 7 or 8 times a day by stomach cramps and spasms that leave you in pain, upset and (if you’re 2 and a half) a bit frightened. Most of the time these spasms would be unproductive. They’d rack his little body, leave him discomforted and miserable and put him off eating (as eating the slightest little morsel seemed to bring them on in the first place). Finally, at the end of the day, after a titanic battle with his bowel, there’d be a weighty little pebble of poo in his nappy. The kind of thing that would have taken off the top of Goliath’s head if propelled from a well aimed sling.
It’s been harrowing and heartbreaking to watch. Tom (like his father, it has to be said) needs space and privacy when having a motion. Hence he’d shut himself away in the hall or the kitchen and groan and strain away in solitude and fend off any kind of outside interest or interference. Until he got so fed up with it that a “tuddle” (cuddle to the layman) was finally called for.
Karen and I turned to the chemist and got him some lactulose. As per the back of the box instructions he’s had 5ml twice a day since Friday. It’s had a barely discernible effect. In the end we decided we could stand it no longer and Karen took him to the doctor this morning.
Thankfully there is nothing seriously wrong – which is a huge relief. As a parent you automatically fear the worst and I’ve lived with the fear that he has had a blockage of some kind for days and days – a ridiculous fear given that he has been producing poos of boulder-like quality but who said parents were rational?
The doctor (as we suspected) issued suppositories and has told us to up the lactulose intake to 15ml twice a day – to be reduced slowly once he starts producing soft poos.
A two-pronged attack. A pincer movement so to speak.
Tom as you can imagine was not enamoured by the first suppository but as I headed back to work this lunchtime leaving him in the care of my good lady wife, there were sounds and smells that maybe that first efficient dart had found it’s mark and things had begun to move freely once again in the nether-world of nappies. Tom certainly looked a good deal happier.
I too certainly feel a darn sight more relieved than I have done for days (it’s so nice that I can empathise with my son).
I have asked my wife to keep me updated on the poo front and possibly to text me a picture of his first post-medication product. It sounds gross I know but those of you who are already parents will understand where I am coming from.
Those of you who are not parents may now have been put off procreation for life.
I can only apologize.
If it’s any consolation it’s something your own children will not thank me for either.
This Easter we thought we’d got off lightly. Just a nasty cold.
But the nasty cold for some reason mutated into constipation.
And not the “nice” constipation either; the sort where you merely feel no compulsion at all to go. No, Tom got the nasty constipation where you feel bloated, fatigued and are plagued 7 or 8 times a day by stomach cramps and spasms that leave you in pain, upset and (if you’re 2 and a half) a bit frightened. Most of the time these spasms would be unproductive. They’d rack his little body, leave him discomforted and miserable and put him off eating (as eating the slightest little morsel seemed to bring them on in the first place). Finally, at the end of the day, after a titanic battle with his bowel, there’d be a weighty little pebble of poo in his nappy. The kind of thing that would have taken off the top of Goliath’s head if propelled from a well aimed sling.
It’s been harrowing and heartbreaking to watch. Tom (like his father, it has to be said) needs space and privacy when having a motion. Hence he’d shut himself away in the hall or the kitchen and groan and strain away in solitude and fend off any kind of outside interest or interference. Until he got so fed up with it that a “tuddle” (cuddle to the layman) was finally called for.
Karen and I turned to the chemist and got him some lactulose. As per the back of the box instructions he’s had 5ml twice a day since Friday. It’s had a barely discernible effect. In the end we decided we could stand it no longer and Karen took him to the doctor this morning.
Thankfully there is nothing seriously wrong – which is a huge relief. As a parent you automatically fear the worst and I’ve lived with the fear that he has had a blockage of some kind for days and days – a ridiculous fear given that he has been producing poos of boulder-like quality but who said parents were rational?
The doctor (as we suspected) issued suppositories and has told us to up the lactulose intake to 15ml twice a day – to be reduced slowly once he starts producing soft poos.
A two-pronged attack. A pincer movement so to speak.
Tom as you can imagine was not enamoured by the first suppository but as I headed back to work this lunchtime leaving him in the care of my good lady wife, there were sounds and smells that maybe that first efficient dart had found it’s mark and things had begun to move freely once again in the nether-world of nappies. Tom certainly looked a good deal happier.
I too certainly feel a darn sight more relieved than I have done for days (it’s so nice that I can empathise with my son).
I have asked my wife to keep me updated on the poo front and possibly to text me a picture of his first post-medication product. It sounds gross I know but those of you who are already parents will understand where I am coming from.
Those of you who are not parents may now have been put off procreation for life.
I can only apologize.
If it’s any consolation it’s something your own children will not thank me for either.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Bum Explosion
Tom is usually very ambivalent about having his nappy changed. He is at that age where he assuming ownership rights over his nappy and its contents. His objections to a “bum change” (as it is termed) are usually expressed in the single assertion: “Mine!” A gentle tussle will then ensue as the old nappy is wrested away from his nether regions and a fresh one applied.
This morning, however, he marched into the bedroom at “getting up time” (can’t fault him on that) and insisted: “Poo. Poo.” This, for those of you who don’t speak Toddler, means “There is a horrible poo clinging to my buttocks like a limpet, please remove it forthwith.”
The horrible brown stain on his romper suit warned us that all was not right in the nappy universe and we had better go to “condition red” immediately. Envisioning a nappy leakage of Chernobyl proportions I headed for the nappy supplies – clean nappy, nappy sacks, baby wipes, etc – conveniently stored in the boy’s bedroom only to find the entire room was covered in a blanket of snow.
Well. Not snow exactly. But the contents of two packets of baby wipes. They were everywhere. Moist, soft and ready to use. All four hundred of them. We’re guessing that Tom, feeling distinctly uncomfortable in his southern hemisphere, had decided to try a bit of self help and had possibly tried to clean his own bum through his romper suit and his jim-jams. It was always going to be Mission Impossible, bless him.
So grabbing a few wipes from the drifts around me I set about peeling Tom out of his clothes. It wasn’t pretty. In fact I probably reacted like a battlefield doctor when faced with something extraordinarily horrific. The humble instruments I had to hand were just not going to do the job.
There was only one thing for it. An emergency splish-splash-splosh (or “bath” as it is known in common parlance).
The boy was summarily dunked and sluiced. The unclean bandages of his jim-jams flung into the washing machine. The gravy-filled nappy bagged up and dropped into the bin destined for the nearest landfill.
All this took merely ten minutes. A fact which, quite frankly, amazes me. When faced with bad situations, I guess the mind goes into overdrive. Time seems to slow down. The body exhibits a dexterity that has the exactness of clockwork. The wife and I work together like the parts of a well oiled AK-47. No jamming, even in hot conditions.
Before Tom knew it he was clean, presentable, dressed and having a long toke on a tumbler of milk. He looked slightly dazed. Shocked even.
I’m glad to say he had fully recovered within 15 minutes. The paras could stand down.
I, on the other hand, have gone into delayed shock. Battle fatigue. Post traumatic stress disorder.
It’s the only reason I can come up with to explain why I just can’t face eating chocolate this morning.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Snow Day
Why, in the UK, does the snow take us by surprise every year?
We act like we have never seen the stuff before.
Ohmygod! Snow! On the ground. On the roads. Everywhere! White stuff! I can’t possibly travel in that. Our modern technology just cannot cope with it! We’re just not built to function in snow! Stop the country! Back to the caves!
A hundred years of industrial revolution grinds to a halt in the time it takes for some middle class office worker to pull back the curtains, see an inch of snow on his people carrier and decide that it is simply too difficult to attempt any kind of journey into work.
Scott of the Antarctic would throw his frozen shite at us in disgust. I bet Sir Ranulph Fiennes is out on his front lawn right now sunbathing and eating a Cornetto.
What utter wussies we are.
The entire country shuts up shop. It’s ridiculous. My wife has had to take an unpaid day off work today because all the bloody schools are closed.
There’s barely an inch of snow on the ground here in the Midlands! It’s nothing. Nothing at all. When I was a kid I can remember weeks and weeks of heavy snow in ‘81/’82 and having to walk to school in it every day. The staff all turned up for work. And so did most of the kids. The only time the school ever gave us a day off was when the boilers broke.
Nowadays everybody leaps onto the smallest snowflake as an excuse to take a day off. To have an impromptu holiday. No wonder this country is the poor old man of Europe. Where’s our hardy British spirit gone? Over the last few decades it’s been replaced with a whiny, wheedling, shirking tendency to try and wriggle out of any onerous responsibility or task that requires even the tiniest bit of hard work. Nowadays I suspect schools and businesses close merely to avoid the possibility of litigation should someone slip and smash their buttock on a kerbstone while trying to gain access to their premises.
It’s cowardly, lazy and a little bit tawdry.
The snow up North has been far worse and I bet there’s a fair few people there who will still struggle into work nonetheless.
From the Midlands down to the South though (maybe I’m wrong) the snowfall hasn’t been nearly as bad. It should be business as normal with the added novelty of some beautiful winter views to gawp at from our office windows.
Instead most people are at home watching telly or building snowmen in the garden.
I’m not. I’m at work.
Harrumph.
Pass me another turd, Scott old man, I’ve got the ballista working properly now.
We act like we have never seen the stuff before.
Ohmygod! Snow! On the ground. On the roads. Everywhere! White stuff! I can’t possibly travel in that. Our modern technology just cannot cope with it! We’re just not built to function in snow! Stop the country! Back to the caves!
A hundred years of industrial revolution grinds to a halt in the time it takes for some middle class office worker to pull back the curtains, see an inch of snow on his people carrier and decide that it is simply too difficult to attempt any kind of journey into work.
Scott of the Antarctic would throw his frozen shite at us in disgust. I bet Sir Ranulph Fiennes is out on his front lawn right now sunbathing and eating a Cornetto.
What utter wussies we are.
The entire country shuts up shop. It’s ridiculous. My wife has had to take an unpaid day off work today because all the bloody schools are closed.
There’s barely an inch of snow on the ground here in the Midlands! It’s nothing. Nothing at all. When I was a kid I can remember weeks and weeks of heavy snow in ‘81/’82 and having to walk to school in it every day. The staff all turned up for work. And so did most of the kids. The only time the school ever gave us a day off was when the boilers broke.
Nowadays everybody leaps onto the smallest snowflake as an excuse to take a day off. To have an impromptu holiday. No wonder this country is the poor old man of Europe. Where’s our hardy British spirit gone? Over the last few decades it’s been replaced with a whiny, wheedling, shirking tendency to try and wriggle out of any onerous responsibility or task that requires even the tiniest bit of hard work. Nowadays I suspect schools and businesses close merely to avoid the possibility of litigation should someone slip and smash their buttock on a kerbstone while trying to gain access to their premises.
It’s cowardly, lazy and a little bit tawdry.
The snow up North has been far worse and I bet there’s a fair few people there who will still struggle into work nonetheless.
From the Midlands down to the South though (maybe I’m wrong) the snowfall hasn’t been nearly as bad. It should be business as normal with the added novelty of some beautiful winter views to gawp at from our office windows.
Instead most people are at home watching telly or building snowmen in the garden.
I’m not. I’m at work.
Harrumph.
Pass me another turd, Scott old man, I’ve got the ballista working properly now.
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