The Curse of the Monkey's Paw.

To the Laboratory!.

Oh, I’m a very grumpy old Hector tonight. I’ve been tagged again. Perhaps my good yeomen don’t know what happened to the last person who crept up behind me and shouted “TAG”, but suffice to say that it took weeks to get the blood out of the llamas..

Well, obviously NikkiD either knows no fear or has had her house protected against killer fluffy bunnies. Apparently, I must now spill the beans about six things that are weird about me. I must be weakened by my visit to the dentist, because I’ve actually found myself considering the idea. (Note 1)

As a person so thoroughly grounded in reality and conforming to all the expectations of that reality - this is a little difficult. Quite simply, fair yeomen, nothing about me can be considered in the slightest bit weird. That is how thoroughly I conform to the expectations of reality.

The problem is that there is no one, single definitive version of reality. Everyone has their own. This gives us billions of different versions of reality; some being more radical than others. (Note 2)

For the more sceptical yeomen amongst you, I give you proof. Whenever there is a crime with many witnesses, the police find that all of the witness statements and descriptions of the suspect vary. That doesn’t mean that all the witnesses are wrong. It is just that in every person’s particular reality, things happened slightly differently.

The same can be said for time. Mechanical devices like the Atomic Clock allow us to measure time incredibly accurately. Physicists tell us that ‘time’ is a constant. (Note 3) Of course, this is a blatant over simplification. Time is a mechanical constant, but every reality has the ability to warp time (hence Warp Drive in Start Trek).

Now I sense a tidal wave of scepticism sweeping down the information superhighway. You require some proof. Well, when I worked shifts, all shifts were the same length in mechanical time. (Note 4) Yet a Night Shift was always longer than a day shift.

Further proof, if any is needed is that time varies according to the reality you inhabit is that some people always seem to have more time than others. I’m sure you have met them. They are the ones who hold down a full time job, are on the PTA, organise the soup kitchen for the local down and outs, bake their own bread daily, play lacrosse every Sunday after Church and still have time for an affair with the gardener. Yet there are others who most days struggle to find the time to change out of their flannelette nightie. Mechanical time is the same for both, only it is warped differently in the differing realities.

None of this will please the scientists. The rules of physics would be thrown into disarray if they were forced to treat time as a variable. It would be a bit like discovering that Albert Einstein used to live and work in a beach hut in Norfolk. (Note 5)

That’s the trouble with science. Everything has to be totally objective and described by mathematics. Even chaos has to have its own Theory. (Note 6).

Not that any of it actually helps much. With me so firmly set in my personal reality, I’m rather stuck. There is absolutely nothing about me that is slightly strange let alone weird. It looks like this particular tag has well and truly floundered. Sorry Nikki. You’ll have to look elsewhere for a victim.

While you do that I am going to dream up a few things that should happen to taggers. They should be forced to go out in public wearing Bernard Manning’s underpants. They should be served with cold sprouts as every meal. A kipper should be hung under their nose. Their car should be re-upholstered in pink faux fur. No! No! I’ve got it! They should be forced to live in Wales.

From 14th June, the industry standard Crozzy Standard has been applied to footnotes.

NOTE 1: I’m not at all good with dentists. Not that this is any way weird, you understand. A lot of people have problems with dentists. It is just that I cannot stand metal against my teeth. It is worse than nails on a blackboard or watching Keith Chegwin. Given that the mirror is metal and the dentist and hygienist insist in poking things into my mouth, I find the visit no picnic. I have the unfortunate tendency to forget to breathe while trying to rip the arms off the chair. Click to return

NOTE 2 : The longest essay I ever wrote was when I was studying Geography at ‘A’ Level. We had been asked to write an overview of a West African country of our own choosing. I think I knocked up something on Sierra Leone. However, that wasn’t the essay that I spent longest on. On of my fellow students held rather extreme, right wing views of the world. So, a group of us decided to satirise them by making up a country that suited his rather warped view of the world. We really went to town. When the papers were handed in, his was removed and the satire substituted. He got an ‘A’ and the teacher circulated the paper widely around the staff room. I never had a lot of success with geography. I once did a whole essay on soil erosion where I spelt ’soil’ as ’siol’. I got a ‘D’. My girlfriend copied the essay the following year, correcting the spelling and using a few coloured pencils. She got a ‘B+’. Click to return

NOTE 3: I absolutely hate rushing anywhere. I would much rather leave ridiculously early than end up having to rush anywhere. It doesn’t help that in my particular reality, arriving late for an appointment is the absolute height of bad manners and punishable by a long weekend in Port Talbot (Which proves my theories on time being variable. Time moves at glacial speed in Port Talbot). Come to think of it, anyone who sends me a Tag should be punishable by spending January in Port Talbot. Click to return

NOTE 4: I really did used to work in an abattoir. My job as a computer operator used to involve the delivery of ‘recipe cards’ to the abattoir and to the actual factory. The place has long gone of course, they turned it into a park. The legacy of that time lingers on. I don’t eat sausages or pork pies – but I still have a taste for GOOD Black Pudding. I’m not sure this counts as astoundingly new information as I wrote a blog entry about it called “Everything but the Squeal”.

However, I didn’t mention the perils of wearing the wrong hat. All the hats had a coloured band around the rim. Before you were allowed to enter the factory, you had to pick the appropriate coloured hat to cover your hair. Computer people were allocated yellow. Strangely, on Night Shift near the offal lines, only the red rimmed hats of quality control were ever available. You see, all of the factory staff were paid according to production and hated Quality Control as a condemned batch would have a serious impact on their pay packet. So in order to keep them out, they would bombard anyone in a red rimmed hat with bits of offal. Quality Control weren’t daft, they simply wore our hats. So you could always tell a computer operator who had visited that line. They were the ones picking out bits of pig innards from their under garments. Click to return

NOTE 5: Just how anyone could live and work in a beach hut is totally beyond me. Everyone knows that when you are on a beach, you are supposed to grab your bright red spade and start digging in the sand. You keep digging until you hit water. This is a universal beach activity enjoyed by all regardless of age. Or is it just me that once they get on a beach has an irresistible urge to start digging? Click to return

NOTE 6: Now I have to admit that I like numbers. In the mind numbing environment of the supermarket, I will amuse myself by adding up the bill in my head (Or, if I’m not the one throwing stuff in the trolley, trying to work out the menus contained in other people baskets. Some people eat some weird stuff). Mind you, I take this a little too far. All too often, I’ll recognise a face and remember the telephone number that gives with the face – but sadly, not the persons name. Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : Trivia ; Fiction ; life ; reality ; Comedy ; red1hols.