An Old and Forgotten Blog, Part One

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Writing.Com Entry Id: #606993
Chapter/Entry Title: Spit or swallow?
Last Modified: 09-13-2008 @ 4:47pm
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I guess this is a question we’ve all asked, answered, thought about or ignored.

Of course it is, like, “Ever had a threesome?” “Do you have cable in this street?” “How old are your kids?” “Your ex lives where!?” And, “ Can we leave the lights on?”

So, I went to the dentist today.

It seems all my teeth (and I still have the vast majority of them), are okay; but I need to see the Hygienist.

Now, the Hygienist at any dental surgery I’ve ever been to is usually young, female and beautiful, and ready to poke about in your mouth with an enthusiasm you thought was reserved for yourself. This particular blond bombshell was no exception. She inserted foreign objects into my mouth, injected a fluid and explored the corners of my facial orifice. Basically, I was reduced to a gargling, dribbling wreck of a man.

She did to me, precisely what I wanted to do to her.

The moral of the story? .... Swallow!!!! At least then, no one can blame you for the mess on the dentists ceiling!!!!!!!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #607079
Chapter/Entry Title: Why I hate Coffee.
Last Modified: 09-14-2008 @ 9:49am
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Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate coffee. I like coffee. I sometimes wonder what on earth I’d do without it. As soon as I get up in the morning I’d put the percolator on, if I had a chance. You see, I don’t have to put it on because my wife does, and already has all of the time. No matter what time I get up, it’s on. She’s there ahead of me and that wonderful, dark, rejuvenating; hyperactivity activating drink is ready to pour. Beautiful!

So I don’t hate coffee. But please don’t misunderstand me. I do hate coffee. Coffee is the bane of my life. Coffee has caused more arguments in our marriage than anything else. Coffee frustrates me. Coffee confounds logic, disputes the obvious and bewilders excitement. I’ve been so close to the most amazing discoveries only to be thwarted by coffee. Coffee gets in the way, obstructs, delays and prevents every adventure, encounter and new experience the world has to offer.

Let me explain.

We arrived, my wife and I, in Sydney. It was the early hours of the morning and the darkness prevented us from seeing anything. She reminded me of the sights she’d described so often because, you see, she’d been here before but this was my first time. I comforted myself that I would see all this wonderful city had to offer, tomorrow.
So, the next morning I followed my wife’s advice and decided to see the city from Sydney Tower. She explained how the view of the harbor from 260 metres would really put perspective on the grand scale of the natural harbor, the bridge and the Opera House. I can’t begin to explain the feeling inside me that day. I’d dreamed of this place since I was a young boy. I’d read every natural history book, studied the geology, absorbed travel diaries and collected memorabilia. Finally this was it. In the elevator she leant towards me and I imagined a moment of empathy. She said, “I need a coffee.”

“A coffee! Now!”

We got the Japanese bullet train, the shinkansen, from Tokyo to Hiroshima, jumped on a tram to the Peace Memorial Park. Now, just around the corner, was the A-Bomb Dome. An iconic symbol of man’s inhumanity to man and a reminder to us all that peace must prevail. “I need a coffee,” she said.

“Another fucking coffee? But you had one in Sydney!”

I love my coffee. I hate her’s!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #607192
Chapter/Entry Title: A Bedroom Conversation.
Last Modified: 09-15-2008 @ 5:43am
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I woke up alone this morning, rolled over, reached for the remote control and switched on the news. A moment later and I was joined by my wife who had been to put the coffee on. The morning had started like so many, a morning of certain predictability. But not so this morning, for this morning I had not woken up alone really. This morning I had a surprise under the duvet. As she slipped in beside me I slipped my ridged little object against her thigh.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, that. That’s for you,” and to encourage her to touch it, I rubbed it against her silky skin.

“It’s not very big is it?”

“Cheeky git. It’s big enough to satisfy your needs.”

“Well go on then, get it out.”

“I don’t want to now.”

“Oh stop being so silly.” Realising she’d hurt my feelings, she lifted the duvet and added, “It’s magnificent.”

“Yes, you want it now, eh?” I took her hand and moved it towards my magnificent piece.

“Wow, it’s hot.”

“Well I was working on it whilst you were making the coffee, so it was ready for you.”

“Give it to me!”

“Say, please.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

I gave it to her, before the coffee. She loved it, as the little moans of pleasure and delight indicated. “How long will the batteries last,” she gasped.

“About three hours.”

“That long?”

“Yep, and it’s wireless.”

Yes, she loved her mini notebook. I thought I heard her ask, “Does it make coffee?” but I’m sure she didn’t. After several minutes she did say, “It does everything I need. Thank you.”

“Well, not everything,” I said, and lifted the duvet once more.

“Now that is magnificent!”

“Yes? Well fuck off, I need a coffee!”



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #607214
Chapter/Entry Title: Guinness, My Lover.
Last Modified: 09-15-2008 @ 11:07am
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My wife introduced me to Guinness. Before I met my wife, my second wife by the way, I’d not met the tall, black, sleek object of desire (sounds like coffee, eh?).
But please, let me be totally clear on one important point, I love Guinness, I do, in so far as you can love a silky smooth black thing. But this blog entry isn’t about me and my feelings. It’s about Guinness, and Guinness truly adores me.

We were seen together in the local pub yesterday afternoon and you can ask anyone, we look good together. Guinness just suits me and Guinness knows it. Guinness is proud to be seen with me. She, for Guinness is to be known as ‘she’ from now on; she welcomes me as an old friend, she looks forward to seeing me and she never holds a grudge if I neglect her for a time. She is consistent, and what more could you possibly want from a lover? Guinness looks longingly at me, begs for me to play with her yet never displays disappointment if I ignore her. She is there for me, on my terms and has never asked for anything in return. Guinness is special, loyal and obedient and hardly ever shits on the kitchen floor. Yes, Guinness, a beautiful black Labrador who has welcomed me into the pack, adopted me as her own and sees me as an object of desire, loves me.



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #607218
Chapter/Entry Title: 100 Instinctive Skills Possessed by Man. ONE.
Last Modified: 09-15-2008 @ 12:00pm
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All men can read Braille.

We can, sort of. Let me explain.

There are three remote controls in our bedroom. There’s the TV remote, the Sky satellite remote and the DVD player remote. One hundred and two buttons all together and I can find every one of the little suckers in the dark. You want the subtitles turned off the DVD that’s playing; remote control number three, third row down and second button in. If I ask my wife to do it the first thing she does is turn the light on. How rubbish is that? Interrupts the whole viewing pleasure.



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #607366
Chapter/Entry Title: Infidelity.
Last Modified: 09-16-2008 @ 4:20am
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I think my wife suspects something. It seems the more I try and hide things, try to act normally, the more differences she notices. Now she’s started making little comments that lead me to believe she definitely knows.

The worrying thing is, I think she’s about to confront me with her suspicions and I simply don’t know what to do. If I’d have been listening to her I’d have noticed the signs earlier. You know, those tiny, almost insignificant clues that let you know something is wrong. Looking back over the last few weeks I can now see them quite clearly.

She used to say innocent things, cleverly worded romantic comments like, “Got an itch?” whenever I scratched my balls. Last night I had a little delve into the testicular department and she asked if I had genital distemper.
I cleared my throat this morning and she asked if I had kennel cough, and it got worse;

“Do you have to get up straight away?” I asked.

“Why? Are you going to lead me astray?”

“I thought we might have a special cuddle.” Hold on! A special cuddle? What is it that happens in life to change mad, passionate love making into a greeting reserved for your grandmother? Foreplay will be pinching each other’s cheeks and sharing a cup of hot chocolate at this rate. No, what I actually said was, “I thought we might have some wild kinky sex.”

“Kinky? And I supposed I get to wear a fur coat and collar, yes?

“No, I just thought we could, you know, watch some porn or something.”

Well that seemed to do the trick because she was up and inserting the DVD in no time. The next thing I know is we’re watching Lassie and she’s on all fours howling like a Wolf on heat. That killed any desire I had so I settled back to watch the film, not that I could see anything with her fat ass in the way. All I said was, “Roll over,” and she hit the roof. I was up and out of bed in an instant. “I’m going for a walk,” I said as I slipped on my shoes.

“With her?”

“Well she still sticks her nose up my ass and begs for the bone!”

“Come back,” she begged. “I’ll do anything. That S&M stuff you like so much.”

“You mean obedience training,” which, in hindsight, wasn’t the right thing to say. She leapt out of bed with a look in her eye. “Sit,” I shouted. Do you ever get those days when nothing you say comes out right? “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk. There’s something really important you need to know.”

“I need a coffee.”



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #607420
Chapter/Entry Title: Halitosis and White Bread.
Last Modified: 09-16-2008 @ 1:08pm
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Have you ever, through no fault of your own, found yourself involuntarily repeating everything someone is saying to you?

“Anything?” I asked.

“What?” There was a look of confusion on her face.

“What?”

“Mr. Perryman, you said anything.”

“You said, anything,” I said.

“I know. I said anything……….”

She did, I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was she really standing there telling me I can eat anything? She couldn’t be, could she? I’ve been eating anything my whole life and it hasn’t done me any good. How come I can start eating anything now and it’ll make a difference? It wasn’t as though I’d stopped or even paused from eating anything at anytime recently. But now, for just $10 a week, I can eat anything and get thin. It’s like some sort of miracle cure for the obese. Stop reading this now and tell all your friends, the fat ones. Sign up at the local diet club and get thin for ten bucks. Well, okay, so no one gets thin in a week but the investment is worth it even if it takes a fortnight!

“.......... off the core plan list”

“The core plan list?”

“Mr. Perryman, is there something wrong with your hearing?”

“No, I’m just fat.”

“Look, you can have anything off this list, the core plan list.”

“Potatoes! Potatoes are on the list! So I can have fries?”

“No.”

“No?”

“You can have boiled potatoes and mashed potatoes, but no butter on them.”

“Poultry, there, on the list. I can have chicken?”

“Roast or grilled, without the skin on.”

“Eggs?”

“Not fried.”

“Soup?”

“Non-creamy.”

“Fish?”

“Skinned.”

“Rice and pasta?”

“Whole wheat pasta, brown rice.”

“Fuck!”

“Two points.”

“Two points?”

“Yes, as well as anything on the core plan……….”

“Except the things on the core plan I can’t have.”

“That’s right, and you get twenty-one points a week as healthy extras. But you also earn points for exercise and activities, so you get two points for a, what you said.”

You see, nothing in life is as easy as you think. This overweight bitch from dietary hell is going to bleed me dry for however many years it takes to lose a stone, and I have to eat shit off the core plan so long as I buy the core plan cook book for $49.95, change my shopping habits and increase my shopping bill by 50%. Worst of all, I can’t eat white bread (my absolute favorite thing), and the lack of essential oils and vitamins will make my breath smell. How the hell is that going to get me two points for a fuck?

Tonight I’m having a giant steak with fries from my favorite restaurant, but I’m walking the fucking sixty mile round trip to earn the points!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #609286
Chapter/Entry Title: Drinks and Tinned Food.
Last Modified: 09-25-2008 @ 4:38pm
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Well you already know about Guinness, my besotted black Labrador. She adores me so much. If I could find a woman who looked at me in the same way as Guinness but had fewer whiskers, a smaller snout, less legs and didn’t leave me to pick her shit up in a nappy bag, well, she’d be the woman for me. To tell the truth, I’m being too picky here. There was this one lass, once, who would probably have come second to Guinness in the pretty pooch contest. It all depends on the judging criteria. She’s have lost on personal grooming and licking your own genitals but cleared up on messy eating. She was a dog.

Talking of dogs, did you know the UK have just reintroduced the Beaver back into the wild?
Well it’s a tenuous link but stick with me.
Anyway, because the indigenous British Beaver has long been extinct (and I should know), an alternative Beaver was sought. Several European Beavers were looked into, as well as some more exotic Beaver. My personal choice would have been the Brazilian Beaver but apparently there have been cut backs. So we went for the German Beaver. Ironic really, that we blew-up all their dams and now they’re building ours.

I digress.

I have three drinks accompanying me on my morning walk. Guinness, of course, is pack leader but I also have her sister, Tetley (both are seven years old), and Taboo (three years old) who is a Border Collie.
Tetley is an insecure, paranoid schizophrenic. A Labrador with issues. She knows she’s not as bright as Guinness but she tries to be with hilarious consequences, then worries about it for hours.
Taboo has balls, which is strange for a bitch. She’s just ball mad. I have at least forty tennis balls in the house and garden which she herds like sheep.

Which leads me to an abrupt end to this blog, but Guinness, Tetley and Taboo stories will have you crying with laughter in later entries.

Instead I’m going to leave you with this conversation I just had, just now, with my wife. She said….

“They rely on us so much.”

“Uh, yeh.” I knew right away it wasn’t going to be a topic I was interested in, but I was prepared to work with it.

“What would they do without us?”

(i)Oh, yes, I have to tell you that I have this little saying. Whenever my wife says something stupid (which is often), I say, “I enjoy our little chats.”(/i)

“They wouldn’t be able to get out the house for a start.”

“Seriously, how would they get on in the wild?”

“Well Guinness and Taboo would be fine, but Tetley would starve. She couldn’t open the tins.”

“What tins?”

“Their dog food, they wouldn’t be able to open it.”

“Oh no, someone would open it for them wouldn’t they?”

“In the wild? How do you think wild, wild dogs get on, and wolfs?”

“But they’re really wild. Our little girlies wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Right, you see my teeth? I have these teeth because I chew Hubbly Bubbly and eat spaghetti fucking Bolognese three times a week. Look at their teeth. They have those big fuck-off canines because they’re five fucking minutes away from hunting wild buffalo in a blood thirsty pack of hungry carnivores. You think they’re going to internet shop and have easy-open Doggy Chum delivered to a double glazed kennel in a nice part of town.”

“I fancy a coffee. You want a coffee?”

“Go on then. I enjoy our little chats.”



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #609559
Chapter/Entry Title: Clarity and Excuses.
Last Modified: 09-27-2008 @ 10:19am
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Okay, let me pull together the rather random entries of my new blog. I am on a diet and I am undergoing some dental treatment at the moment. My black Labrador, Guinness, does love me and I did just buy my wife a new mini-notebook. There, that’s cleared that up.

So, what have we learned so far? I’m fat and have bad teeth, and I sleep with a dog. When the dog isn’t available I sleep with the Labrador.

Which has led me to think about excuses.

Men make excuses for everything, and I’m making them now. I get back from the dentist and say, “Oh, my teeth hurt so much I need fries.” I made an excuse to eat fries. My teeth don’t hurt, I’m just fat.

“I’ve been so good on my diet this week, one little treat won’t hurt.” One little treat is a pizza, four chocolate bars and eight cans of beer. But I get away with it because I had an excuse.

One of the best excises I’ve found is, “It’s going to rain.” This gets you out of gardening, shopping, going to the mother-in-laws, fucking anything. “It’s going to rain,” is Gods way of letting men do anything. “Hey, Eve, you eat the apple. It’s going to rain.” And so it was that woman would believe the excuses of man for all time.

Another good one that women fall for is, “I forgot.” I fucking never! I just need an excuse for not taking the trash out, not sending you an anniversary card, not telling you I love you, not shooting your mother or not paying the mortgage.

“I sent you a text,” is great if you get home late, and “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow,” is good if you’ve just shot her mother.

“I’m a bit stressed at work,” is good if you can’t get it up, or if you’ve just slept with her mother.

“You said you’d do it,” is a classic for all occasions and has never let me down, apart from the time she caught me sleeping with her mother.

“It was on sale,” used to work until I spent $3,000 on a 50’’ HD ready TV with surround sound. But all’s not lost, I plan to use the same excuse next time she catches me sleeping with her mother.

If you have any excuses………….



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #610112
Chapter/Entry Title: How Big is Your Brain?
Last Modified: 09-30-2008 @ 4:25am
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You know that saying when you suddenly ‘get’ something? You heard it but didn’t understand it, so someone explained it to you and suddenly, Bam! “The light comes on.”
It’s happened to all of us at some time. There’s a glazed look to our eyes as the confusion rips through our mind, then Bang! A lengthening of the lips, a widening of the eyes and someone says, “Finally, the light’s on.”

Well there’s a scientific, neurological and biological relationship between the second the information hits you, and the moment of illumination. Psychologists have used this measurement for years to accurately gauge the size of a subject’s brain. They give you some abstract, contradictory piece of information and hit the stopwatch. Observing your reactions closely they stop the clock once they see the cogs have stopped and understanding has reached the frontal lobe. More precisely, there is actually a glow from your eyes as the brain signal transmits the information in light-waves, causing a physical reaction in the iris. Light travels from the primary functional brain stem to the eye and emits a light-beam, and it is this gap, this delay that is measured. It’s called the Nonsensical Situational Sensory Saturation Thing.

To measure the size of your brain you need to understand the common neurophysical brain-relation calculation first discovered by a married scientist whilst shopping for shoes with his wife……

Firstly, light travels at 186,000 miles a second. Excellent, but what does that mean, and what does it have to do with shoes?

Well, the moon is 238,857 miles away, average, because it has an elliptical orbit etc. But trust me, it is. So it takes light 1.3 seconds to reach us. That means when Neil Armstrong stood on the moon, if he’d turned on a flashlight we wouldn’t have seen it for 1.3 seconds. This is recreating the Nonsensical Situational Sensory Saturation Thing with a practical example. I’m not sure what effect it would have had if he’d been shopping for shoes on the moon. “That’s one small step for Oscar De La Renta, one giant leap for womankind.”

To recreate the same effect on Earth, if you want to, ask a friend to take the end of a piece of string and start walking. Once they have walked around our little planet about 19 times tell them to stop and turn on the flashlight. Following the piece of string, it will take the light 1.3 seconds to reach you. Your friend might not want to do this as it will take them over nine years to complete their walk. Pick a female friend and put them in a pair of Giuseppe Zanotti’s, that’ll keep her going.

For a little more perspective, the same experiment on Jupiter and your friend would need to walk around the planet less than twice.

On the sun they would only have to get 20% around the first circuit as it takes light just 7.5 seconds to go around once. I’m persisting with this because I want you to appreciate the importance of distance when calculating the Nonsensical Situational Sensory Saturation Thing to estimate the size of your brain.

Get this. There’s a Sun called VV Cephei A and it takes light five and a half hours to go round just once. Your friend walks around here 19 times and it’ll take four and a half days for the light to reach you! However, it will take them nearly 140,000 years so don’t wait up.

So you see, the time it takes light to get somewhere is directly related to the size of the gap. The bigger the gap, the bigger the object. That’s the fundamental principal of the Nonsensical Situational Sensory Saturation Thing. The next time someone calls you stupid because the light didn’t come on, tell them it’s because you have a big brain.

The other day I had to go to the cinema with my wife to watch Mama Mia. I must have a huge brain!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #613294
Chapter/Entry Title: Stephanie, her isms, and a match made in heaven.
Last Modified: 11-09-2008 @ 6:15am
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I know I harp on about her but she does make me smile. My eldest daughter, Stephanie, and her trips into blondness. See, "Invalid Item" .

You see, she had this interview with Argos, which is a large catalogue store, and did very well. She phoned me last Monday to let me know she’d got the job and had to be there the next day at 7.55am. This wasn’t to start work, but to attend for induction and health & safety training etc. We chatted about it and I told her how proud I was. She told me that Marc, her boyfriend, had received the good news by phone and informed her that the induction was on Tuesday at five-to eight.

Bless her, she called me again the next morning at 7.30. “Dad,” she said. “I’ve been up since 5am, left the house at 7.10 and now I’m here and it’s freezing, and there’s no one about.” I wished her good luck and asked her to call me when she got home.

The phone rang at noon.

“Dad, I’ve got something to tell you.”

Oh God, what could it be? You see, Stephanie is prone to moments of insane blondness and anything could have happened. Did she crash the stock system software? Burn the joint down?

“Oh, darling, what’s happened?”

“Marc took the call. He said I had to be there at five-to-eight.”

“Yes, and you were on time weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was there on time, and at 8am I had to bang on the door because the store was closed. A cleaning lady answered and asked what I wanted. I told her I was there for the induction and she got the manager. The manager just laughed at me.”

Because I know her so well I was able to guess the situation. “You were at the wrong store weren’t you? Don’t worry about it. What time did you eventually get there?”

“No, I was at the right store.”

“Wrong day? Is it tomorrow? Don’t worry about it. They’ll just think you were keen.”

“No, it was the right day.”

Okay, so this time even her often predictable calamities had even stumped me. “So tell me. What happened?”

“Marc told me it was_”

“Five-to eight, I know! What happened?”

“At five, until eight! PM!”

What a team they are. I bet he got an ear-bashing when she got home. It’s my granddaughter I worry about. You know, learned behavior and all that!!!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #617006
Chapter/Entry Title: Feathers and Ring-Pulls.
Last Modified: 11-06-2008 @ 2:55pm
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Watching the television the other day I was fascinated by the antics of a bunch of Crows at Poole Harbor in Dorset, England.

It seems they’ve found a rather ingenious way of getting to the Muscles, Cockles and Oysters from their protective shell. At first they started dropping them from height onto the pebbled beach, but this was rather hit and miss as they could quite easily land on a cushioned bed of seaweed. So the clever birds picked them up and flew to a nearby car park and dropped them on the concrete and tarmac surface, breaking open the shells and eating the juicy flesh.

Now if you think this is clever, try this_
There are Crows in Japan that have a more difficult problem to solve. They are partial to a hard shelled nut that simply refuses to break open when dropped. So what would you do?
These clever feathered friends drop them onto the local highway and wait for a car to run over them, but it doesn’t stop there. They actually drop them over a pedestrian crossing and wait for the green man to flash before walking across the road to retrieve their treat. Brilliant!

Okay, clever birds, but scientists decided to test their intelligence further. In a large bird cage they placed a table. On the table was a Perspex tube about one inch in diameter and six inches deep with a piece of meat at the bottom, impossible for the bird to reach. On top of the tube they put an eight inch length of thin wire. The bird quickly discovered it could reach the food with the wire, but it was too flimsy to pierce the meat. So, and get this, the bird purposely bent the end of the wire into a hook and fished out the food.

So here we go. Why am I telling you all this?

Well, this morning I broke the ring-pull on my tin of baked beans and hadn’t a clue how to get at the furry little bastards.
I took them outside and threw them in the air, but they landed on the patio table breaking my wife’s new Geometric Garden Furniture Ornament.
I threw them on the quiet lane outside the house, and an hour later when the first car came along in clipped the edge of the can shooting it like a bullet right back through the front window of the lounge.
Thinking of the Crow and the ingenious hook trick, I tried piercing the can with a screwdriver to lever open the top, slipped and took a large chunk of flesh from my left thumb.
Taking the electric drill from the garage I placed the can on the worktop. For twenty minutes I drilled until the bit was blunt. The heat generated set the can label alight which in turn set fire to the worktop. Thinking quickly I grabbed the hose from the wall and sprayed the garage, and the electric drill. The resulting flash burns took away my eyebrows and eyelashes.
The can was now twisted, bent, dented and scorched blue, but still perfectly sealed, so I put the fucker in the microwave.

The fire crew have just left and it’s been mentioned I may be interviewed by the anti-terrorist squad.

Scientists use a general rule of brain size and weight in comparison with body weight to gauge intelligence. This puts the crow on a par with the Chimpanzee, it leaves me wondering where I sit on the evolutionary ladder?

Am I stupid?

No, I’m just too fat for my brain!

"Invalid Item" 




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Writing.Com Entry Id: #617595
Chapter/Entry Title: Second time around….
Last Modified: 11-09-2008 @ 5:08am
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I did this in a blog once before, but I like the story so I thought I’d tell it again.

True story, I swear to God it happened just like this;

Three of us went on holiday, me, Martin and Bill. Bill’s real name is Gordon but I didn’t find that out until I’d known him for about two years. I’ve known him thirty-one years now and still don’t know why we all call him Bill. It’s one of life’s mysteries, just like how come his sister has a daughter? It was a fucking brave boy who slept with that lass! Anyway, Bill was one of my social friends, someone in the group of us that went out at the weekend.
Martin was a work friend, and quite possibly the most handsome man I’ve ever known. I real asset when we were out on the ‘pull’, even if you ended up with the ugly bird, ugly bird’s if the groups of women he knew were fucking gorgeous.

So we book this holiday, a week in a nice little, but licensed, bed & breakfast in Torquay, the English Riviera.

First two or three days were great. We clubbed, tanned (in my case, freckled), and drank ourselves silly. One evening, Martin and I met these two girls and we walked them back to their hotel. We did this individually, or separately, he with his girl and me with mine, and we arrived at their hotel at different times. We didn’t know or care what had happened to Bill. My girl wouldn’t let me in because she assumed her friend was in there with Martin, so after a quick kiss and grope (oh, how romantic it all used to be) I headed back to the B&B. Martin, it turned out, faced the same difficulty. His girl wouldn’t let him in because she assumed her friend was in there with me.

Martin and I sort of met up again close to our B&B and retired for the night.

Look, I’m dragging this out a bit, sorry. I’ll get to the point.

Bill is in bed when we get in. We didn’t realize it we had been quite some time, so Bill had acquainted himself with the bar and got really drunk. At some point in the night he pissed the bed.

Now, everything else that happened, happened without Martin and I knowing anything about it. Bill confessed what follows some years later.

He awoke wet and smelly in the early hours of the morning, and to save his embarrassment he decided to wash and dry the sheet. Silently, so as not to wake us, he removed the sheet and retired to the bathroom where he rinsed and rung the yellow stained fabric. Returning to the bedroom, he turned the mattress and pulled the covers up to hide the evidence. He now had to dry the sheet. If he could do this before dawn he would be home dry, to coin a phrase, and no one would ever know what happened!
He didn’t have time for it to dry naturally, and the hair dryer would be too noisy. What would you do? Remember, he’s still drunk too!

Well he gave up of course. He decided to get a clean sheet and throw the wet one away. He sneaked silently from the room and down the corridor, naked, only to find the storeroom closed and locked. Back to plan A. How to get the fucking sheet dry??

He hung it out the window. He opened the bedroom window and dangled the sheet from the third floor, closing the window to hold the sheet firm. Trouble was it was very windy and the sheet blew away. All Bill could think of was how to save himself from ridicule. From years of merciless piss-taking from so called mates. So he went out in the street to find it.

He walked up and down, searched side streets, gardens, looked under parked cars and behind garbage cans. It was nowhere to be seen and dawn was breaking. As the sun came up, he gave up. Fortunately for Bill, as he returned to the room the cleaner was in the corridor and he grabbed a clean sheet from her trolley, made his bed and as his head hit the pillow, we woke up.

“Morning Bill, sleep well?”

“Yeh, great.”

The lying fucker, but we didn’t know a thing about his nighttime adventure.

We showered, dressed and went down for breakfast, taking seats by the window we ordered eggs and bacon.

“Fuck!” Bill shouted out, to the annoyance of our fellow guests.

“What is it mate?”

“What’s that?” he said, with some difficulty, pointing through the windows.

Martin and I turned and stared, and there, hanging from a lamppost outside the hotel was a white sheet, with a faint yellow tint.

I don’t think the hotel found out where it came from or how it got there, but imagine being Bill that morning. What a fucking dick-head!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #617597
Chapter/Entry Title: Sexual Orientation.
Last Modified: 11-09-2008 @ 6:14am
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This is another old one, one I’ve posted before but not in this blog. The thing is, it’s just too good to leave out.

I mentioned my daughter, Stephanie, and her isms in an earlier blog entry; "Invalid Entry" .

Well, referring to this earlier entry and her job at Argos (which she has started now and thoroughly enjoys), I want to recall the day she filled in her application form.

This was an important opportunity for her. Having a young child she had found it difficult to get work that suited her circumstances, but this position offered her convenient working hours and it was local, so it was important to get the application just right. She set about filling it in, taking great care not to make any mistakes. Unfortunately she was flummoxed by one particular question. My dear, darling little girl had brought all of the blondness to bear and failed to both understand the question, and find the answer.

I was sitting quietly reading and listening to the radio when the phone rang.

“Hi dad.”

“Hello babe, you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” But I could tell immediately from her tone that something was on her mind.

“Come on, what is it?”

“Dad, can I ask you a question?”

I closed my book and turned off the radio. This was going to be far too much fun to be interrupted by other distractions. “Of course you can. What is it?”

“No, it’s okay, you’ll laugh.”

“Babe, I would never laugh at you. You can ask me anything.” I covered the receiver and held my breath.

“It’s this application form, I don’t know one of the questions.”

Well I thought I could save her embarrassment so I anticipated the difficulty and gave some dad advice. “Just tell the truth, babe. Fill it in accurately and be honest.”

“I know that, dad, I just don’t know the answer to one of the questions.”

“Well tell me, what is it?” I knew it could be anything, like her address or age. Not that she doesn’t know her own address or age, but she can put quite a spin on things and find some elaborate interpretations of the straight forward.

“You promise not to laugh?”

“Yes, I promise.” I squeezed the received harder and stifled a chuckle. I knew this was going to be a classic so I got a pen and paper so I could make notes.

“Dad, am I heterosexual?”

It seemed there was one of those questions on the application, for statistical data only, like what is your ethnicity, and it had asked her sexual orientation giving her three choices; Gay, Lesbian or Heterosexual. I think she was expecting a fourth choice of ‘straight’ and got confused, and I know I should have explained to her what heterosexual meant but…. “You are not, and if anyone says you are they’ll have me to deal with!”

Yes, I did explain to her, and yes I did laugh. I love that girl so much!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #619448
Chapter/Entry Title: One of Those Days.
Last Modified: 11-19-2008 @ 4:52pm
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There was no hot water this morning.

I got up a bit bleary eyed and went to the toilet, did what I wanted to do and flushed. I didn’t inspect the temperature of the toilet flushing water, as you might expect, so went on unaware of the dilemma ahead. I should say at this point that I never flush with warm water, in case you thought I was some sort of warm water toilet flushing diva beaver? So even if I had inspected the temperature of the toilet water and found it to be cold, as expected, my suspicions wouldn’t have been aroused. I’m glad I cleared that point up!

So having successfully disposed of yesterday’s indulgencies, I went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

Tea is a peculiar English tradition.

The Romans built Hadrian’s Wall to prevent the Scottish from stealing our tea. The Welsh want their own tea tradition but the Welsh for tea is Lllllythredidiangolleninagothyrethlly, so it kind of makes it difficult to export. The Irish love tea, or at least the Loyalist’s do. The French covert the English tradition of tea but it never caught on because tea doesn’t contain garlic or onions. They prefer Chateau Onionie Garlicia Neuf. I prefer Chateau Onionie Garlicia Neuf but not at eight in the morning! Americans love tea because it tastes like shit, reminds them that freedom was worth fighting for, gives Boston some recognition and helps them come to terms with the fact they aren’t cultured. Only cultured English people drink tea, and they can keep it!

So I took my tea back to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

The shower usually takes a few minutes to warm up, especially if my wife has turned on the dishwasher, washing machine or garden watering system, all of which seem to be timed to come on at the same time as my shower, or rather scarily about 30 seconds after I get in the shower. I step in and feel that initial invigorating feeling of the hot water cascade over my body and, FUCK....

“Have you put the dishwasher on?”

“Yes, sorry.”

Whilst the shower was warming up I went to the Lounge and turned on the news channel. Apparently there’s a credit crunch? You know, reported for the fifth consecutive week as if it’s new news and earthquakes, death and suffering are peripheral to the cost of LCD flat screen TV’s! Apparently you can get a 37inch LCD flat screen TV from Currys for £499 and it’s HD ready. Saving a starving earthquake victim costs £5 a month. You work it out!!

I don’t know how long it was, maybe ten minutes, but I went for my shower. It was cold.

I called the 24 hour emergency call-out service and they said they could be here on Monday.

I called the emergency response, immediate reaction hotline and they said they could be here on Saturday.

Finally I called the 24/7, Instant Response, Same Day Call Out, Any Area, No Job Too Small, We’re on Your Doorstep, Qualified Engineers, Great Customer Service company, and they can be here a week next Wednesday.

There was no hot water this morning, so I had a cup of tea.

Tea is cold water, bettered!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #620997
Chapter/Entry Title: True Story, quite often the best kind.
Last Modified: 11-29-2008 @ 1:29am
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I was about eighteen or nineteen and living in Birmingham, England.

Birmingham has large ethnic communities. Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and such, and certain parts of the city have become almost entirely populated with groups from these places. Small Heath, Alum Rock, Aston are almost entirely devoid of white people. Now I’m not here to comment on the rights and wrongs of this situation, but personally I value our diversity and colourful community.

Many industries, trades and occupations have become synonymous with particular cultures. Everyone knows that the good old fashioned British corner shop is almost certainly going to be run by an Asian. The British Fish and Chip shop by a Greek and our national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala. It’s also true that the driver of the local bus service will be from India or Pakistan.

Anyway, my uncle was a pub manager and his licensed establishment was in Alum Rock, next door to the bus garage. One Christmas he phoned me because he was short staffed and asked me to run the bar for him. Back then, when I was a young and handsome lad (I was), pubs used to open at noon and close at 2.30, open again at 6ish............

Oh, this reminds me of a routine the comedian, Steve Hughes, does (he’s an Australian comedian living in Manchester, you should check him out). It goes something like this;

Tony Blaire, he’s a funny guy. He makes me laugh. He goes on about terrorism and says,

"We in the west are educated, civilised, cultured people. Not like you in the east."

Then he has a debate about British pubs opening after eleven o’clock and everyone says, “No, we can’t do that Tony.”

”Why not?”

“Because they’ll fucking kill each other!”

”But we’re cultured, civilised.”

“Only till eleven o’clock, mate.”

So it was 12 noon and I open the bar. These two Asian gentlemen came in, having just finished their shift on the buses.

*IMPORTANT POINT*
You have to imagine a Pakistani accent!

“Two pints of Bitter and two Scotches, please.”

So I pour the beers and, “You want Jonnie Walkers or Grants?” I have to ask this because one scotch is more expensive that the other. Good customer service you see. I don’t fuck about, me.

“I don’t care, just two scotches!”

So I did him Jonnie Walkers because they were cheaper. I put them down on the counter and;

“What you doing? I say two scotches!”

“They are scotches, Jonnie Walker, one pound fifteen a shot. Four pence cheaper than Grants.”

“I no want this scotches!”

“You asked for two scotches, sir.”

“I no want these scotches!”

“I asked you which ones you wanted, you twat.” Customer service only goes so far.

“I want scotches!”

“You’ve got fucking scotches!”

“PORK SCOTCHES!!”

pork fucking scratchings

In America, you would call this pork fucking rinds.

It was the language barrier!




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Writing.Com Entry Id: #621126
Chapter/Entry Title: Follow up from last entry...
Last Modified: 11-29-2008 @ 8:59am
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I just thought I'd take a look at the comedy sketch I referred to in my last blog entry, and it does make me laugh. If you fancy five or six minutes of funny stuff, try the link below.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pjFc8CR_HBA

Now listen, this should be considered as strictly 18+, so don’t even go there if you’re easily offended. or if you’re Welsh. If you’re an easily offended Welsh person I just wouldn’t even bother considering it.

Really, I mean it.

You know when some TV program has offensive content and there’s a disclaimer at the start, but some daft bugger still writes in and say’s, “I was offended,” well don’t be one of those people. After he insults the Welsh and does his Tony Blaire thing, there’s an outrageous gag about gay blokes. You’ve been warned.



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #621136
Chapter/Entry Title: Help me, please!!
Last Modified: 11-29-2008 @ 9:56am
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Rather embarrassingly I’m here to plead, or beg if necessary, for your help and guidance. I’ve reached a dead-end in my search for answers, for inspiration, and the future looks bleak.

Twice before I’ve found myself in this situation, or at least some similar scenario where I needed salvation

1)

I was the victim of a vicious and savage attack that left me bloodied and battered, lying on the ground and in need of assistance. It was my fault really. I made an intellectually witty comment to four men carrying a dead goat and a machete. I was saved then, by a good and wonderful Samaritan who came to my rescue, stemmed the bleeding, comforted and reassured me until the paramedics arrived.

2)

But worse than that, I was late for the birth of our second daughter. Well the first one followed a twenty-two hour labor and a four hour delivery, so when I got the call that she had gone to hospital with the second one, I didn’t think there was any hurry. So I went to the pub. Actually, I was surprised when I found out she was pregnant with number two. After the exhausting marathon that was number one, that left me bloodied and battered, lying on the ground and in need of assistance, we said we wouldn’t have any more. Or at least I said we wouldn’t have any more. She was fine, she spend the entire labor and delivery in bed! So, I arrived as she delivered our gorgeous second baby in the waiting room. The midwife said it was the fastest delivery she had ever known. I had no excuse for my wife, who said my late arrival was unforgivable, so I told her I had been the victim of a vicious and savage attack on the way to the hospital that had left me bloodied and battered…..

So here I am for the third time, wondering if you can be my Samaritan?

You see, I don’t know what to get my wife for Christmas!! Oh God, this is the worst one yet!!

I asked her, quite discreetly, what she might like. She said, “Diamonds.” She’s always cracking jokes like that, but usually with a smile on her lips. She kept a straight face during this one for some reason.

I suppose I could give her a baby! No, that was a whole different wife anyway.

I’ve been trying to figure what she doesn’t have, because whatever that is, it’ll make the perfect present. So far I’ve identified a bottle jack, a cricket bat, boxing gloves and a gas mask. I know she needs a new vacuum cleaner but how the hell am I supposed to wrap that?

Please help!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #622516
Chapter/Entry Title: Snowballs and Light Bulbs.
Last Modified: 12-05-2008 @ 4:06pm
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My wife and I rarely argue. We really are best friends as well as husband and wife. We met on the first Sunday in April, 2004. Four weeks later we spent several weeks in a campervan touring Australia, so we learned a lot about one another. So it was a surprise last weekend when we fell out.

We went to the birthday party of one of Mandy’s friends.

At the end of the evening_. Well it wasn’t really the end of the evening but it was time for us to go. This wasn’t a close friend, just a friend who thought they were close. The sort to know, or want to know, everything about you but give nothing in return. So it was time for us to go, and the buffet was finished.
I phoned a taxi and we had ten minutes to wait. Time enough, I thought, to say our goodbyes.

You know, we actually got to the door at one point but I was premature in thinking we’d escaped.
At the last second, Steve, the husband of the birthday girl who was actually Mandy’s friend in the first place because they used to work together, called her over to meet someone. So I wasn’t even here to celebrate the birthday of a friend, just the wife of a friend.

The taxi arrived and I went to tell Mandy, but she dismissed me in the rudest way, right in front of Steve.
Steve is the most obnoxious man you could ever meet, and proceeded to take the piss out of me for what Mandy had said. I know, I should be angry at Steve and not Mandy, and I was, believe me!
Eventually Mandy comes for the taxi, followed by Steve who took the piss just once too often. After several people had pulled me off him, we got in our cab and went home. I was furious.

At home I went into auto-pilot. I did what I always do. I shut the bedroom curtains.

Well they’re quite high and Mandy can’t reach properly. Then I turned on her bedside lamp, walked around to my side and turned on mine. Unfortunately my bulb blew as I did so. It was too late and I was too angry and tired to change so I left it.

Mandy went to bed.

This is where it all went wrong!!!!

She goes in the bedroom and see’s I haven’t turned on my bedside lamp, so assumes I’m so angry I don’t want to sleep with her. She closes the bedroom door.

We never close the bedroom door. We push it almost closed but leave it open so we don’t wake one another up if we get up in the night.

I assume she closed the door because she didn’t want me to sleep with her.

The sofa was so uncomfortable. I mean, I shut the bedroom curtains because I’m six foot three and can reach. The sofa must be five foot if it’s a yard!

Next day we exchange all the usual pleasantries but the atmosphere is distinctly frosty. Anyway, at some point during the day she changed the bulb in my bedside lamp, bless her.

That night I closed the bedroom curtains, turned on her lamp but left mine because it didn’t work. Well it didn’t!!

Yes, that’s right. She went to bed and saw just one light on and she knew it worked so why hadn’t I turned it on? So she shut the bedroom door. I heard her shut the bedroom door so bent my legs in two, scrunched my spine in half and settled down for a night of contortionist’s heaven.

It became a snowball, bigger and bigger the whole light bulb/bedroom door scenario became.

Three nights I spent on the sofa. I now have a hump on my back, a club foot, dislocated hip and an embarrassed look on my face!!!!

Grownups are such children!!!!

I guess what I’m trying to say is; never shut any doors and keep a light in the window!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #622994
Chapter/Entry Title: The season of good will.
Last Modified: 12-07-2008 @ 1:54pm
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WDC wouldn’t be possible without the participation, hard work, time, dedication, enthusiasm, imagination, interaction, community spirit, support, encouragement, guidance and friendship of you and I, and thousands of other extraordinarily talented, ordinary people just like us.

I thank you for making my time and participation so worthwhile and rewarding.

If you feel you’d like to thank someone today, please go check out "Invalid Item" 
This is a project that has rewarded wonderful writers throughout 2008, and organized by someone like us. A dedicated community member who has given all of the above, and then some.

ID: 1490111 Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. by Not Available.

I’d like to be a Golden Award Winner one day, but that’s only possible if the project is supported and continues to recognize talented authors (and I grow a brain and learn to write better, of course).

So go ahead and take some few minutes to review the wonderful work up for the converted annual prize. Next year it might be us (well, it might be you lol).



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #624000
Chapter/Entry Title: Christmas Trees, the Credit Crunch and Sex!
Last Modified: 12-12-2008 @ 6:42pm
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Oh, what order to take them in?

Okay, the credit crunch, or as I like to call it, The Relationship Deficit.

Has anyone noticed that relationship trends pretty much follow the financial situation? I mean, when it’s up, it’s up, and when it’s down, its limp. I can only give you my example, or my experience, but I think I’m quite typical of the average English male. Probably a little more handsome, and definitely taller, but absolutely typical. Trust me!!
My love life has followed the housing market, down 28%. This isn’t so surprising given that pre-lovemaking flirtatious fun is down in accordance with the FTSE Index Top 100. If I were one of life’s pessimists, and my pension fund was suffering like my love life, well, I’d be cashing in all those lost erections from the past. You know the ones! A man only gets so many in his life and I want all the ones back that didn’t get anywhere. If hard-on’s were money and everyone was invested successfully there wouldn’t be a credit crunch. But what happens is, we worry about where we’re putting our investment, when we should be thinking about the returns. My deposits produced daughters. That’s one human in return for me. 100%. One for one. If we all go out now and have sex, we all have financial security. Don’t we?

Christmas Trees.
What are they all about?
I spend all spring cultivating seeds, planting cuttings and burying bulbs. I nurture then, talk to them, water and feed them and support them with sticks. I’m proud of them when they grow, and disappointed when they don’t. I show them to friends and family, give them blooms to take away and take photographs of them. I curse the weather when it doesn’t rain, and I resent the weather when it rains too much. I love nature, I adore plants and flowers and I just erected my artificial Christmas Tree. What a fucking cop out. I’m sorry, but real Christmas Trees belong in the forest, like Tigers of Elephants. I’m just going to kill this beautiful wonder of nature and stick in my house for a couple of weeks? Why? In a week you’ll complain about the pine needles all over the floor, or not even get that far because it didn’t fit and you had to cut the top or bottom off, or you couldn’t even get it to stand up straight. So buy an artificial one, but not a white one. Who buys a white tree? Or a red one? Are you mad? Did Father Christmas have a ginger beard? No! Its traditional, it’s a tree, its green!! Buy an artificial, green Christmas tree and worry about your hard-on!

So, sex.
I don’t have anything new to say about sex, other than I’m supposed to think about it every eleven seconds. However, my investment in sex thoughts is down 28% in line with the credit crunch, so I’m only considering it every 14.3 seconds at the moment, which isn’t exactly going to worry my wife to be honest. Unless, of course, she utters the frightening words, “Are you giving me all you got?”

Well, yes, but interest is down.

“So you’re not interested in me anymore?” She’s hearing what she wants to hear.

Of course I’m interested, but I’m worried about my investment.

“So you’re wanting a return on your deposit?”

Now you’re talkin’!

“Have you considered depositing anywhere else, with a better interest?”

Is this a trick question? No, never. I love you.

“Then it’s about time we adjusted your balance then, isn’t it.”

Please!

“Do you have any ID?”

Are you kidding?

“I just want to know that what little you have, is yours.”

Ugh, ah, ehh, agher… no, it’s yours now.

“So I got short changed again!!”

Do you want me to put your Christmas tree up?”



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #624354
Chapter/Entry Title: Six Hours That Will Last Forever.
Last Modified: 12-15-2008 @ 5:31am
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There was a heavy frost again this morning. I first noticed when I opened the back door to let the dogs out. So, because I had my slippers on I ventured onto the deck to take a look around at the white trees and shrubs. Our very own Robin was on the bird table waiting for us to put something out for him, and the Woodpecker was on the shed roof waiting to steal something off the Robin. Robins are territorial and we have had this one for a couple of years now.
The stream that runs down the right hand side of the garden was frozen over, as was the dog’s water bowl.
The next thing that happened made me so proud!

I tapped the ice on the water bowl with the tip of my slipper, but it didn’t break. I tapped it a little harder and it cracked immediately, and my foot went through it all the way to the bottom. Just then, there was a sound from the back door.

“Get your foot out of the dog’s bowl. How old are you?”

”Twelve, nearly furteen.” I put on my best, twelve going on thirteen, voice.

It’s just wonderful when we (men) realize that we’re still kids. The worse thing that can happen to a man is growing up. That’s why we welcome a real good hangover. It reminds us of how we used to feel when we were teenagers.
I’m forty-nine next year, but only in years!!

Anyway, that has nothing to do with the six hours that will last forever. Just thought I’d share my wonderful immaturity with you.

My wife and I separated in September, 2000. There was absolutely no one else involved in this event. In fact, as my first love she was the only woman in my life up until that point, but I quickly made up for lost time. I dated all sorts of women. The only woman to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra, an actress who starred in the series, At Home with the Braithwaite’s, the Markets Editor for the Financial Times, a ballet teacher, a university lecturer, blonds, brunettes and twins. Okay, so I made the twins up, but it was on my list.
One day in 2002, approximately two years to the day since I'd found myself single, I met my brother for lunch in Birmingham. A lunch that finished about 2 p.m. The start of the six hours that will last forever. There was an hour or so until my train so I went for a beer. I don’t know why, but I just realized how lonely I was, and how stupid. I missed my children (who I saw often but it’s just not the same as living with them), I didn’t have anywhere to live, you know, no home of my own. I lived out of hotels with work and stayed with my mother, brother or sister when I was in the area. I’d had memorable experiences with beautiful women but really, I had nothing. By 3 p.m. I was quite depressed, so I made the most of the feeling and had a mid-life crisis right there and then. By 4 p.m. I was miserable, unhappy, filled with regret and self-pity and drunk! So I got a tattoo. It’s a great tattoo that has my daughters names within it, Stephanie and Emma. Miserable, unhappy, filled with regret and self-pity, drunk and in pain, I went to another bar, and another. It was now 6.30 p.m. and I found myself in the area of Centenary Square where Birmingham City Council had erected a Ferris wheel. The biggest transportable Ferris wheel in Europe, and it opened for the first time in an hour. I decided to queue.
At about 8 p.m. I was at the very top of the Ferris wheel, in a carriage on my own, miserable, unhappy, filled with regret and self-pity, drunk and in pain. I looked out over the city with all its lights, buildings, lines of car headlights and people milling about on the ground and had an epiphany. I was on top of the world, I had beautiful daughters, and loving family, and rewarding career. Suddenly I was sober, optimistic, filled with love and warmth for everyone who had entered, and left, my life. A few months later I fell in love for what I believe was the first time, and a few months after that I had my heart broken for what I know was the very first time.

I had experienced a mid-life crisis that lasted six hours, but recall that moment every time I see my daughters names on my shoulder. I grew up that day, I became a man for the very first time, and today I put my foot in the dogs frozen water bowl. I love being a boy!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #624413
Chapter/Entry Title: Not Funny, Just Real Emotion.
Last Modified: 12-15-2008 @ 2:58pm
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I went through this period of being really guilty about leaving the girls, and blamed myself for every bad or unfortunate thing that happened to them. Finally, after several years, I came to understand that mostly they were just experiencing growing up, and who knows, things might have been worse if I was there.

I deal with the past much better today, and my heart is commoved every time they say, “Love you, dad.”

I’ve just experienced one of those magical moments, an unforgettable message of love, forgiveness, gratitude and family bonding from my eldest daughter. A message of hope for the future, a lesson in appreciation for the past and a reminder that I am, I was, and I will always be a good father.
It was a text message and she said;

the yuletide is comin
n my arse is getting fat
i hate fukin xmas
santa is a twat
the credit crunch is on
n times r realy hard
so u can consider this
ur fukin xmas card!

Bless her!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #624542
Chapter/Entry Title: Reindeer, and Triggers Broom.
Last Modified: 12-16-2008 @ 9:03am
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Is everyone familiar with Triggers broom?

Trigger is a street cleaner, a dedicated council worker who sweeps up all the litter dropped by residents of Peckham, London, from the comedy series, Only Fools and Horses. He’s had the same broom for twenty years, but it’s had five new heads and six new shafts, or something like that.

I once went to see Bill Bryson give a talk on his writing and make some readings from his books. Afterwards, I queued for his signature on a couple of books I’d bought from the book stall.
You know I met Mandy just four weeks before we went off to Australia for several weeks together, locked up in a campervan, right? Well I read, Down Under, the week before we went. I read it again whilst we were there too. Anyway, I took it with me (the original book I’d read twice) to get it signed too. I told him (Bill Bryson) that I’d had it years, this book, sort of, but it had had two new spines and three new covers, and he said, ”Like Triggers broom.”

With me so far?

Now then, there’s this school teacher who got the sack, got fired from her job this week, because she told a class of children that Santa didn’t exist. Was this the right thing to do, to sack her? You see, I don’t think she told the truth. I’m not saying Santa exists, I’m just saying that if you explore the theory a little she could have said so much more….

What about the Reindeer?

They can’t be the same fucking ones can they? Even if Santa lives forever, how can the Reindeer live that long? And, how come Santa is so old, and looks so old. Did he always look that old? What the fuck will he look like in another two-hundred years? Can you imagine some decrepit old Santa with Alzheimer’s delivering all those presents? I can, and it’ll be great!! Every time you watch the wife open her Christmas present and that disappointed look comes over her face, you just sigh and say, “Fucking Santa, the old twat.”

So Santa has to replace his Reindeer on a regular basis, like the Budgerigar you looked after for the neighbors and it dies, so you replace it with one that looks just the same, like Triggers broom.

”Shit, Rudolf’s dead. We’ll have to get another one before all the children find out. Quick, chief Elf, get a new Reindeer, and make sure it has a red nose.”

“Where the fuck am I going to get a red nosed Reindeer on Christmas Eve, you daft old twat?”

Or, perhaps it’s a different Santa and the Elves change him when he dies? Now that makes sense. But what if his senility catches up with him before he passes away? You know, and little Jonny gets a Barbie instead of his toy Obama Doll. I guess the Elves just kill him, right? So somewhere in the North Pole there’s a Reindeer breeding program, a Santa cemetery and killer Elves, right?

Wrong, they have a Santa retirement home where lots of dear old Santa’s sit and watch Miracle on 34th Street all day long, interrupted by the occasional bouts of Santa coughing. Twenty-eight piss smelling Santa’s with lunch in their beard Ho, Ho Ho’ing phlegm into red hankies and saying, “I used to be the Tooth Fairy.” Then one by one they all stand up and shout, “I am the Tooth Fairy!” before the Elves crucify them along the ice road to Santa Cemetery, leaving the last two to fight it out with plastic pirate swords and a bow and arrow with suckers on the end. Tell that to the kids in class!

That poor school teacher got fired for telling the cleaning up, sanitized version of Santa non-existence. Didn’t she?



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #624940
Chapter/Entry Title: Some Things Never Change, Some Things Do…
Last Modified: 12-18-2008 @ 5:14am
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“Put the hook on the end of the line.”

“Right, right, I’ve done that.”

“Put the maggot on the hook.”

“Right, yes, done that.”

“Now throw it in the river.”

And I laughed so much. It was what Christmas was all about. Classic moments that live in the memory, although at the time you don’t realize they’re classic moments, you just accept them as, tradition.
This particular tradition was a sketch from the Two Ronnies, and in about 1970 (the year that Santa delivered me a cassette tape recorder) it was as expected as Christmas pudding, turkey, the Queens speech and Morecambe and Wise.
I held the microphone against the TV speaker and recorded this particular sketch, and thirty-eight years later I still have the cassette, although I have nothing to play it on. Of course, I’m the only one who would find it funny these days because now, if I were ten years old again, I’d be Sky Plussing the Simpsons or using my memory card to save my place on, Behead The Bastard Burglar, or whatever xBox game it is this year. And, not least, because it was a visual gag….

“Now throw it in the river.”

Then he threw the whole thing in the river. The line, hook and rod. But who would know?

How things change!!

So now our bin-man (trash/garbage man) won’t empty our rubbish if he can’t pull the wheelie bin with one finger. It’s health and safety, you know?
Do you remember when the bin-man used to open your gate, collect the small steel bin from your back yard, carry it out to the truck, empty it and carry it back? And shut the gate after him! Now, some ninety-six year old pensioner has to drag a fucking huge wheelie bin the size of a small landfill site out to the street, but it’ll only get emptied if the eighteen stone, strapping muscle bound hunk of brainless body can pull it with one finger!
Yet our postman now has to walk at 4mph or get fired. Our seven stone, effeminate postman {who wears shorts even when it’s -4 outside otherwise the fake tan was a waste of money), is forced by his employer to risk shin splints and stress fractures to deliver the latest notice from the trash collection operator telling us that we now have to bury our own garbage in the garden.
The world’s gone mad.

Why, when this twat council bin-man has decided that my bin is light enough to empty, does he have to leave it blocking the drive so I can’t park the car? Then the fucker knocks on my door at Christmas for a tip.

“I’m the man who empties your bin.”

I offer him my hand, shake his firmly (making sure not to hurt him) and say, “I’m the man who fills it, now fuck off.” Yes, I know it’s a crap old joke, but my father used to actually say this to our bin-man every year. But I add, “Yes, I do have a tip for you. Become a postman and do real days work for once.”

Imagine this utopian world where there’s a person on the bus who helps you on with your shopping. Folds your pushchair and shows you to your seat, takes $10 off you for your ticket and gives you change.
Actually, if you’re around my age you’ll remember when this wasn’t a fantasy.

Now, imagine a world where the bus driver is caged behind bullet proof glass, wears a stab proof vest, only sells you a ticket if you have the exact change and won’t let you on at all if you’re a pensioner with a shopping trolley. Yes, that’s what it’s actually like these days.
Just last week we read in the newspaper that a bus driver wouldn’t let a little old lady on his bus with her green tartan shopping basket for….? Well, do you know?
Health and safety reasons.
There wasn’t even a test. He didn’t get out to see if he could pull it with one finger (not that he can get out of his survival cell without the help of a cave rescue team), and he didn’t time her to see if she could pull it at 4mph.

So now, as I rapidly approach that time of life where I’m closer to a broken hip than a broken heart, I reflect on how things change. Although some things do stay the same. There are constants in our life. Like an immoveable object, like the strings of reliability and comfort that hold our wistful memories of the past, and our hopes for the future, together….. there is, and always will be…..

















fucking green tartan shopping trolleys!!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #624961
Chapter/Entry Title: Women, the Enigma Machine and Phone Sex!
Last Modified: 12-18-2008 @ 9:23am
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Apparently, there are moments in any relationship when no words are necessary.

My wife believes that these moments occur due to profound mutual understanding, the reading of minds, two hearts beating as one, two minds in perfect synchronicity, two souls chosen by angels to merge as one, two needs and one wanting, two….. you get the point.

I usually find that these moments occur when I’m home alone!

Seriously, I discussed this magical telepathic phenomenon with my wife last night.

“If I wink at you, you know I’m happy and I love you.”

“But that’s a physical action, a visible sign and not just a blank unspoken word. If I feel your tits you know I’m happy and love you, but it’s not telepathy.”

“So, what about a smile?”

“No, because that could be a clue or it could put me off.”

“Do you want a coffee?”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

“Haha! You see, you knew I was going to say that.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Right,” she said with that, right, sort of tone to her voice. “So what you’re saying is, they only count as unspoken understandable words if you don’t know what they are and don’t understand them?”

She thought she had me, but, “Okay, what am I going to do next?”

“Feel me tits?”

“Absolutely! But to prove this unspoken understanding thing it has to be a moment of surprised empathy. Does that exist?”

“Of course it does. We can lie in silence after making love can’t we? But we still know what we’re thinking.”

“You can lie in silence whilst we make love. And anyway, I’m not lying in silence, I’m sleeping.”

“You’re impossible. What about if we’re watching television and a program ends? I pass you the remote without being asked.”

“Learnt behavior.”

Actually, my first wife and I split up because of unspoken words. No, not exactly, there were a thousand reasons but unspoken words were one of them. She only ever told me she loved me twice. Not just twice, ever, but on two occasions. If I was working away she would tell me she loved me over the phone. Secondly, she would tell me she loved me after we made love. Never told me as we passed in the hall, or stood in the kitchen, or just because she could. I did a million things for her to want me to leave also. I’m not blaming anyone here.

Anyway, sometimes even spoken words don’t get the message across.

My wife can inform me, as she goes out to work, that the recycling is collected today. Then she’s surprised when it’s still in the back yard when she gets home. Why? She didn’t say, “Put the recycling out.” How am I supposed to know what she means? She wants me to understand her unspoken words when she can’t even communicate clearly with noisy ones!

“I’d love a cup of tea,” she’ll say.

“Me too.”

Then she hurries off in a mood. Why?

I’ll sleep in on a Sunday morning whilst she goes to her mothers. When she gets back I’ll be on the computer, or putting a shelf up, or some other really worthwhile contribution and she’ll say, “You haven’t made the bed.”

“Oh yea, I haven’t have I.”

Then she’ll go and make it all angry like.

How can I ever understand and appreciate the non-spoken vocabulary of a woman if she doesn’t speak the same language as me? That’s why I’d bet my shirt that the bloke who invented the Enigma Machine was married. He couldn’t possibly have come up with that mind bending cryptic contraption without being subjected to the mind of a woman. If you want to send an unbreakable coded message, get your wife to make the call. My new wife and I speak on the phone when one, or both of us, are working away.

I’ll call her up and say, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“I wish you were here right now.”

“Mmmmm, do you know what I’m thinking?”

”NO!”



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #625023
Chapter/Entry Title: Lost and Found.
Last Modified: 12-18-2008 @ 3:01pm
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I found something today that I used to have in my port.
I don't know how I lost it, well I do but that's a long story.

Anyway, this is an extract from the diary I kept during my first......

Read it first.

I strolled across the manicured lawn towards the big old Oak Tree.

The Oak had determined it was autumn and was distributing its foliage all about, carpeting the lush green with hues of brown and gold.

I brushed the fallen leaves from the bench at the base of the trunk and positioned myself to best appreciate the splendour of the Scottish castle, its towers and battlements.

William Vivers had settled here in 1832, and it was his nephew, George, who had built this 28 room monument in honour of his Scottish heritage.

It was magnificent, and the tree was full of Parrots.

.... visit to Australia. Gotta love that place!!




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Writing.Com Entry Id: #625732
Chapter/Entry Title: Once is a blessing, twice is a worry.
Last Modified: 12-23-2008 @ 1:11pm
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Stephanie called this morning. It’s positively the best moment of my day because I know it’s going to leave me feeling lovely and wonderful inside.

“Hello dad.”

“Hi babe. How you doing?”

It started just like one of those delicious conversations that makes me feel all warm and tingly, and so proud to be her father. She told me about her morning, about Kaitlyn (my granddaughter) and about life, in that unique way only Stephanie can. Then she told me that it was her last day at work.

She was so thrilled to get her job and it fitted perfectly with her circumstances. But it seems the credit crunch has undermined her situation and today is her last shift. Stephanie shrugged it off as one of those things, as she always does. Then she told me all the things that I’m sure she thinks make me happy. Like, how Kaitlyn can now count to fifty (and she’s only thirteen….. no, she’s just two really), and grandma is okay despite granddad being poorly, and Marc (future son-in-law) has passed his driving test. And then she told me about her thrifty shopping trip and all the buy one, get one free offers. She was particularly pleased with the shampoo and conditioner offer, and told me all about it, in detail.

It was a beautiful start to the day, and as always, a blessing.

~^~

An hour later, Stephanie called me again.

“Dad, I can’t go to work.”

I wasn’t immediately worried because, well, this is Stephanie and it could be any inconsequential, absurd, random thing like her feet had grown over-night and her shoes don’t fit, or a meteor strike. But she did sound a little concerned this time.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“It’s that shampoo and conditioner I bought. It’s wrong, it’s bad, it’s….”

“What? What is it?”

“Dad, the conditioner is bad. It’s made my hair go wrong and I’m outside work now but I can’t go in.”

I didn’t know what to say. I mean, what could it be? Was the product contaminated, sabotaged? My God, my little girl was in trouble, she had been violated by a hair conditioner and I couldn’t do anything to help her! So I asked her to calm down and explain exactly what had happened……

It seems she used the product exactly as directed.

“Tell me again, what did the label on the conditioner say?”

“Dad, I’ve told you twice already. My hair looks like a pineapple on acid so what’s the point?”

“Just once more, babe. What did it say?”

“Wash into hair and leave.”

“And that’s it? It didn’t say anything else?”

“I’ve got it here, it says wash and leave, that’s it, and then the sticker.”

“What sticker?”

“The buy on get one free sticker.”

“Take the sticker off.”

There was a moment’s silence, so I added, “What’s it say now?”

“Wash into hair a leave for two minutes then rinse out.”

I just love her!!!!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #625827
Chapter/Entry Title: Today, I followed a star.
Last Modified: 12-24-2008 @ 6:32am
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My step-sister has moved in with my dad and step-mother.

My step-mother is the widow of the former Burmese ambassador the Britain, and a very strange lady.
When she sold her home in London and moved to Birmingham, my brother helped them pack. Most of her stuff went into storage. When she and my dad married, they bought a house and I helped them move their stuff from storage to the new home.

With me so far?

So my dad picks me up in a big van he had hired. He was driving, step-mother was sat in the middle and I got in alongside her. We dropped her off at the new home before heading off to the storage depot.

Right, were sitting in the van outside the new home….

My dad just checks that Mary has the house keys.
She said no, he had them.
He said no, she had them.
So she checks through her handbag. It was a large handbag with lots of zippers and compartments and stuff. She pulled out a piece of old string about three inches long. Old, pre-decimal coins and an old five pound note. These are like thirty-five years old. Then she pulls out a package with pre-decimal stamps on it, and it’s unopened. Can you imagine having an unopened package in your bag for thirty-five years or more?

Anyway, my step-mother has two daughters and they live in Spain. One of them has split from her partner and has moved to England and in with my dad. Well I had to send her a Christmas card then, didn’t I. For some unknown reason, some crazy, insane inexplicable reason, I thought her name was Star. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I could have assumed it was Doris, or Betty, or Jennifer or anything, but I had to imagine it was Star. And I wonder where my daughter gets it from??!!

Actually, her name is Angel and her sister’s name is Star, so I wasn’t a million miles out, but getting your step-sister’s name wrong on her Christmas card. What a twat!



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Writing.Com Entry Id: #625838
Chapter/Entry Title: Dear Santa....
Last Modified: 12-24-2008 @ 8:40am
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Merry Christmas everyone!