Where the Corn Grows Higher than your Eyes

Those of you who have come late to this tale might be interested in knowing that you are joining in the middle of the epic. May I suggest that you first acquaint yourself with the innovatively named Part One followed, in the nature of radical nomenclature, by Part Two and then Part Three?

Should you be rejoining the story, or do not have the inclination to read the previous parts, allow me to recap.

Inspector Jones is a policeman with problems. He appears to be married to person or persons unknown, he has grown a moustache that has turned out ginger and the case he is working on is making very little sense. Something inside his brain his telling him that he isn’t investigating the international macramé racket. However, his Superintendent believes he is and wants to know why Jones suspects the late, lamented Horace Adkins, the renowned Barbers Shop Quartet Impresario, of being involved.

Apart from the nagging doubts, bands of enraged Buddhist monks, marching bands and a growing affection for a pink Ford Zephyr Mark III, all Jones has to go on is an old paperback and the body of an unknown man that was dragged from the Thames after he drowned; the post-mortem suggesting a tragic accident caused by swimming too soon after taking a large high tea.

Now read on...

Jones took the evidence bag and locked it in the top drawer of his desk. Slowly and distractedly, he walked from the office. In the briefing room, four constables on night shift were practising for the upcoming championship. Sergeant Collins was leaning against the doorway observing. Jones walked over and stood behind him.

“Evening, Sergeant Collins.” He greeted the rotund sergeant cheerfully. “How are they coming along?”

The sergeant turned, held a finger to his lips to silence him and turned back to the four burly constables. They were well into their high energy dance routine, dressed as Judy Garland while singing a cappella to the title number from ‘Oklahoma’.

The dance routine ended with the four making a human pyramid. Jones stayed silent until the pyramid had broken up and the constables were towelling themselves down next to the lockers.

“Well, what do you reckon to our chances when we take on ‘C’ Division?” Jones asked Collins.

“I dunno.” Collins shook his head while sucking in breath noisily. “Losing Constable Singh to that trifle related injury was a big blow, best falsetto in the force he were, but yer know? I reckon we’ve got the measure of ‘em this year.”

Jones nodded and patted the Sergeant on the back. The inter-divisional light entertainment championships were a big event. Winning brought great prestige and a year’s subscription to a tanning salon for the winning station. Collins had drilled their entry for as long as anyone could remember.

Jones waited until he was downstairs before ringing his bookie and placing a bet on ‘C’ Division.

In the car park, Jones pressed the unlock button on his key fob. A Datsun Cherry flashed its indicators and chirruped happily. Jones tried again and the same lime green Datsun responded. Jones screwed his eyes shut and tried a third time, but the same car still chirruped cheerfully in response.

The drive home was relatively uneventful. Jones had to take evasive action when a llama carriage bolted along the Embankment and there had been some slight delays south of the river due the crowds waiting for a personal appearance by Saintly Sam Smiley and his Syncopated Souls.

While he crawled through the crowds in the congested traffic, he listened to the news. It was all about the untimely death of Horace Adkins and the myriad of conspiracy theories already warming the circuits of the internet.

Eventually, Jones turned the Datsun into his quiet South London street, bounded by rows of neat, terraced houses before swinging it into his driveway, narrowly missing the expensive Mercedes parked in front of the double garage.

Jones looked at the large, whitewashed art-deco house with its sweeping curves and geometric features. He got out his wallet and checked the address against his Driving Licence. They tallied.

“Well, this is getting odder by the minute” He muttered to himself as he got out of the car.

Getting to the front door, he tentatively tried his house key in the lock. It worked perfectly. Jones took a deep breath and walked in.

The sight of the leggy blonde stopped Jones in his tracks. She was stood in the archway that led to the kitchen posing provocatively wearing only a short, pink, silk robe trimmed with white fur. Blue eyes sparkled under her straw blonde fringe as she pouted and winked at the Inspector.

“There you are, Darling” Her voice oozed, causing Jones to shiver. “Does my poor, overworked, husband need to be relaxed?”

“Pippa..” Jones stopped himself before adding Hucknell. “What are...”

“What am I doing here?” She sashayed slowly towards the Inspector before pausing mere inches in front of him. “I’m here to welcome my husband home after a long, hard day in the office.”

Pippa run her hands slowly down Jones’ chest, adding, “to make all that horrible stress disappear.”

The kiss that followed was long, slow and made Jones moan. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been kissed like that by a beautiful woman. He couldn’t remember when he had been last been kissed. His hands started to glide over Pippa’s back and pull her even closer and the lack of memory didn’t worry him.

Pippa broke the kiss.

“Why don’t you get comfortable while I rustle up some dinner?” Pippa’s eyes sparkled. “I know it’s only Tuesday, but I have had a big scoop today and I want us to celebrate.”

Pippa turned and walked towards the kitchen, paused, looked over her shoulder and gave a playful growl. “I hope you have some energy left, tiger.”

Jones bolted into his study. It was just as he remembered it, cluttered and lined with shelves that bowed under the weight of hundreds of books. He went directly to a shelf and pulled out his hardback copy of ‘The Cat Crowed at a Little After Two-thirty’ by Archie McRamie.

He sat down in his leather wing-back chair and started to read. The first paragraph made him give a start.

“Mr Adkins arrived for his appointment twenty minutes early, dressed in his third best grey suit, white shirt and crimson tie. His black shoes shone as brightly as the faux diamond in his gold tie-pin.

He looked around the empty waiting room and the dozen or so tubular chairs for several minutes, before selecting the one in the corner furthest from the door.

Very deliberately, slowly, he lowered himself into the chair. He sat upright, knees and ankles pressed as tightly together as his thin, pale lips. Small, well manicured hands, with white knuckles clutched an ornate box on his lap. His grey eyes flitted around the room.

Occasionally, his head would twitch violently and a strand of oiled black hair would fall from across his balding pate and over his face. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, Horace Adkins would lift it back and meticulously place it back before the hand darted back to the box.

"This is it then, Horace Adkins." he spoke to himself in slightly shrill adenoidal tones. "This is good, very good. We will certainly make an impression today."

Celebrating Blood and Gore

The synaptic tangent to end all synaptic tangents.

There you go, my intellectual yeomen, ‘Pick the bones out of that’ as they say. Here it is, October the 31st and I open up with a picture of the Christmas Market in Regensburg. I shall leave you puzzling for a while. (Note 1)

According to the Merkin National Retail Federation Halloween remains the sixth-largest spending holiday in the U.S. Merkins are expected to part with $4.96 billion this year, up from $3.29 billion a year ago. $1.81 billion will go on costumes, $1.31 billion on Decorations, a waist busting, tooth rotting $1.57 billion will be shelled out for ’Candy’ and for a reason that somehow escapes me for the moment, $260 million worth of greeting cards will be sent. (Note 2)

It is probably no surprise when you see the money involved that UK retailers have jumped on the bandwagon and the annoying Trick or Treat custom has spread to our streets.

I’m not a fan. In fact, I dislike the custom with a passion. I would shout “Bah! Humbug!”, but that is reserved for another holiday. Instead I content myself with purchasing the cheapest sweets that are absolutely packed with artificial colourings and sweeteners. I then spend the rest of the evening chuckling at the idea of parents trying to prise their kiddies from the ceilings in a vain attempt to get them to bed.

The tradition in Britain is that we are celebrating All Hallows Evening. (Note 3) Of course, in simpler less commercial times, the celebrations were simpler.

The Christian religious holiday falls tomorrow on 1st November when All Saints Day is celebrated.

Oh well, I better put you out of your misery on the synaptic tangent. In the Calendar of Saints of the Catholic Church, October 31st is the day set aside for Saint Wolfgang - also known as Wolfgang of Regensburg. So simple – yet so, so obscure!

Oh, fancy a touch of sick humour? CLICK HERE or CLICK HERE.

Oh and to prove I’m not a total grump at Hallowe’en, here is a little story I wrote on the subject.

All Hallows Eve.

Gather up your pumpkins, my munchkins. It’s that time again. October the thirty-first, the date you know as Halloween. The evening you dress up as witches and ghouls and ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. The evening you win sweet morsels by chanting ‘Trick or Treat’.

The sound of innocent children fills the streets as you go from house to house gathering the tooth-rotting bounty. Chaperoning parents will give you a smiling escort before returning home to count and share the spoils.

When at last you retire to bed, those same parents will tell you that witches, ghouls, ghosts and goblins are mere fantasy. They will laugh and tell you that there are no monsters lurking in the shadows. They will smooth your brow, twiddle with your hair and tell you what you hear outside is the wind enjoying the freedom of the night.

Well, my dears. Listen to the wind. Hold your breath, lie perfectly still and open your ears. The wind will not be the only thing abroad on what you call Halloween.

You see my candy-filled little ones. Your parents, pull the blinds, lock the doors and stubbornly try to block out this night. They turn up the TV and talk that little bit louder lest the darkness proves them liars.

Your bed seems warm and safe, doesn’t it my darlings? Repeat the word ‘Halloween’. Repeat it in your mind over and over. Halloween. Halloween. Halloween. What a foolish word it is.

Grown ups call tomorrow ‘All Saints Day’; they tell you it’s a Christian festival. Yet they have you celebrate the evening before. Celebrate by dressing up as creatures of the imagination and accepting treats to not play tricks.

I know what you are thinking my pretties. What a strange idea it is to celebrate long dead Saints to minor for a day to call their own. Even stranger that the evening before should be marked with such blackmail.

The adults must really think you have no brain at all. You have seen your local church and you have seen your local priest. Your parents must think you so gullible to believe that a priest would be involved with such shenanigans.

Well my dears; if you were to ask the priest, he would tell you that All Hallows Evening is about remembering your dead relatives. Press him and he will tell you that the dead sometimes return to make their peace with the living. A more somber explanation perhaps, yet it doesn’t explain why your house is so carefully sealed this night.

Think about it my innocent little cherubs. The adults have tired you out by having you rush around after candy. This is to make sure you sleep through the night. They have sealed the house and drawn all blinds tight to keep something out.

Listen! The wind squeals in agreement. The blinds twitch in assent.

You see the Priest and his church have tried to hijack my night. They have failed. On Halloween night I roam free.

I am the Magrog! I am the oldest of the Pagan gods that Christians hoped to wipe from history. Other Gods rolled over and seeped way. I refuse to die.

I am the Magrog! I ride the wind and proclaim my freedom. Strain your ears and hear my call. I am the master of the storm. The wind carries the screams that grown ups try to drown out. The wind carries me in my glory!

I am the Magrog! As I approach in my jeweled chariot, the priest fiddles with his rosary and falls to his knees. He fears that I shall turn the stone of his church to gravel.

I am the Magrog! The six white horses drawing my chariot paw at the wind and cause golden sparks to rain down on hamlet, village, town and city. This is the night I seek out my tribute.

I am the Magrog! This is my Night! As I pass the trees bow down before me. Their discarded leaves leap and dance in the deserted streets.

I AM THE MAGROG! I bring with me the ghosts of your ancestors. See how they scream in anguish as they run before my summoned tempest. See how their eyes scan the earth for souls that failed to hide. Skeletal fingers try door and window seeking out the ill-fitted latch and bolt.

I AM THE MIGHTY MAGROG! THIS IS MY NIGHT! This is my revenge for man’s attempts to eradicate me. The priest may be beyond my grasp. Grown ups might be immune to my call, but I will have my revenge.

So, my dears, enjoy your Halloween. Enjoy dressing up as witches and ghouls and ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Take pleasure from the sugary rewards of the ‘Trick or Treat’. All Hallows Evening is yours for fun and frolic.

I am the Magrog! Mine is the night! Double check locks and latches. When the wind howls and screeches to herald my approach stay in your bed. If I can reach you, I will surely part you from your spirit.

I am the mighty Magrog! I own All Hallows Night! There is always room for one more tortured soul behind my chariot.

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

NOTE 1: If you don’t read German, you will be doubly puzzled. I guess there were a number of you who eagerly followed this link to the footnote in the hope that I would be providing a translation. Sadly, I don’t read German either. Click to return

NOTE 2 : The story, in the IndyStar did make me wonder though. It suggested that 34% of Americans (about 100 million people) will dress in costume; 48.6% will decorate their houses; 73.4% (or 225 million people) will be handing out ’Candy’ but amazingly 43.1% will be carving pumpkins. That is at least 129 Million Pumpkins – yet these were not included in the stats. Are pumpkins handed out free for Hallowe’en?Click to return

NOTE 3: The traditional fare on All Hallows Eve being apples. It is said that if you peel an apple so that you get all the peel off in a single spiral thread and then throw it over your shoulder, it will fall to form the initial of your one true love.Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : Trivia ; Life ; Fiction ; Comedy ; Halloween ; red1hols.

Velvet Cudgel

The shortcut to the “Rat and Ferret”.

Your indulgence is required, patient yeomen. For the last few weeks, two ideas have fought over my creative juices. (Note 1)

These conflicting ideas buzzing around my skull is doing me no good. The squabble and fight for prominence. They buzz into consciousness at the most inopportune times. Whenever I sit at my keyboard, they grab and snatch at my fingers to deny other ideas freedom.

So it is that I have to let one idea take flight in the hope that I can settle into my routine. (Note 2) The really big idea is a political one, this is the bully. This is the one that thrusts its way into my mind every time I watch the news. The second idea is smaller, yet just as insistent.

Together, they form a symbiotic relationship. The big political idea has shaken my beliefs to the very core. It threatens my core values. It is so big that I doubt my ability to form the words to describe it and to explain in a way that others will understand.

The smaller idea, well, that is a creative idea. Something that just might offer an opportunity to give the political idea wings in a way that will not scare the horses or have my liberal friends chocking on their Chardonnay. It isn’t new. I employed it in my entry, Imbibing the Spirit.

So it is, good yeomen, I share with you the opening few paragraphs of something that is to Jonathan Swift what Kinky Friedman is to Political Correctness.

The recipe for Dr. Ethaniel Nightswerve’s Velvet Cudgel started out as a nerve tonic. With Ethaniel’s gift for weaving magic with words, a confidence built from never getting caught, an almost endless supply of purple glass bottles and access to a printing press, the fortune that followed was never in doubt.

The recipe changed over the years. Governments have declared a number of the herbs used in the fermentation illegal. One or two of the fungi added to give body are almost impossible to find and harvest. A couple of the minerals now require a special license to enable purchase.

Yet Albert Nightswerve, the Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson of Ethaniel, aided by the great fortune, keeps the recipe alive. Along with the breeding of exotic amphibians and the growing of exotic orchids, he brews a few kegs of “Doctor Ethaniel’s Velvet Cudgel” which he sells to my local as a guest beer.

Nigel and Anne, the hosts of “The George”, don’t include the beer on the little blackboard that proudly announces the ‘beer of the month’, the place of origin and the ABV. (Note 3) The beer engine is in a corner of the bar, hidden behind the charity collection jar, various boxes of dominoes and a sign advertising the Christmas Club.

All guaranteed to exercise my curiosity. For over a year, I would ask about the “Velvet Cudgel”, only to be politely told that it was off, or settling. It became a routine. I would wander in and greet my hosts and the regulars. When asked what I wanted, my eyes would scan the pumps at the front of the bar and the blackboard. After appearing to give the question much consideration, I would ask for a pint of the “Velvet Cudgel” only to receive a broad smile and an excuse, forcing me to make another choice.

A little over eighteen months after starting this routine, I walked into “The George” on a particularly cold, wet grey February evening. Only a handful of the hardiest locals had ventured out and clustered around the fire.

I went through my routine, but Anne gave no excuse. Instead, she looked at Nigel who stopped reading the “Daily Telegraph” and gave a little shrug. Anne opened a drawer and withdrew a pair of industrial rubber gloves.

”I’ll serve you at the snug window.” Anne pointed to the corridor that led to the snug bar and the toilets. “Just in case of spillage, dear.”

I walked through the now silent lounge to the window. Leaning forward, I watched Anne hand the gloves to Nigel who pulled them on with great ceremony. Anne backed away as Nigel took a half pint glass and held it under the tarnished nozzle. His right hand flexed and grasped the black handle of the pump. He pulled. Dark brown liquid sloshed into the glass. The handle sprung back into place. Nigel gave it half a pull and the glass was full.

Nigel placed the glass gingerly on the drip cloth in font of me.

The drink was the colour of ancient furniture. There was no head, but inside the glass, streams of bubbles churned and swirled like a tissue in a washing machine. For a second, I thought the bubbles formed a picture by Edvard Munch. When I held it up to the light, the light bulb looked like the sun viewed through a bushfire.

”Best not to look too long, Sir.” Nigel chided me.

Bringing the glass towards my lips, there was an audible intake of breath from the regulars at the fire. My mouth filled with flavours. Salty nuts, smoky bacon where replaced by the richness of figs, and sweet honey. There was a brief explosion of redcurrant and then the bitter tang of raspberry as I swallowed.

The next swig started with the taste of shellfish and vegetables. There was hint of roast meet and apricots before my head filled with strawberries and the cloying aftertaste of rum.

Grinning, I turned to my hosts. Nigel took the glass from my hand and set it down on the mat. Before words could form, something inside of me twitched and shifted. Abdominal muscles that I had long thought retired clenched and cramped. Intestines started to quiver and quake.

Raucous laughter erupted as I sprinted to the toilets.

My footsteps echoed off the clinical white tiles as I burst into the gents and rushed into the nearest cubicle. Finding myself in front of the modern WC, I was unsure whether to kneel or sit. My innards continued to knot and lurch. A wave of dizziness had me staggering backwards. My vision blurred, clouded and then returned.

The clinical modern toilet had morphed. The walls were now half tiled with cobalt blue and white tiles. The individual urinals replaced by a large decorative trough. The stalls now sported WC that must have been the very pinnacle Victorian waste management.

I spun round in response to a cough to find myself looking at a ginning Albert Nightswerve holding a large plastic bucket.

”Welcome! Welcome!” He thrust out a hand for me to shake. “Welcome to the “Rat and Ferret”.

OK. It needs some work. That is a problem with the medium and my style of writing. I need to wait a week or so before I can effectively edit my writing. Keep a Blog requires that posts are almost immediate. Still, it gives you an idea.

Pint of Velvet Cudgel anyone?

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

NOTE 1: In some cultures, digestive juices are a highly prized delicacy which grace only the very best of dinner parties and restaurants where you have to predict your hunger pangs many months in advance. I hope you appreciate that I’m offering you samples of my own juices so generously and without thought for financial gain. Click to return

NOTE 2 : Claiming a routine is perhaps overstating the case. I tend to have this rather optimistic view of how my schedule will pan out over the course of the day. Then the actual course of the day tends to feel like I’m a leaf caught in a gale. Click to return

NOTE 3: The real ale mafia would want us to believe that this stands for “Alcohol By Volume”. It is actually a cunning way of measuring liver damage by use of the Richter scale. If you ever drink a beer with a ABV of greater than 9, in the morning, you risk your liver cracking the porcelain in its attempt to escape. Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : Fantasy ; Fiction ; Life ; Comedy ; red1hols.

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.

Shaking the Hand of Rory Liffey

Tidying up the week.

Forgive me yeomen, for I have failed. Yesterday my son shook the hand of Rory Liffey.

I’m not going to explain that for the moment. There is a risk that you might think that I am going back on my comment in Sean’s Blog. Although, I must admit, I’m close to it, but this entry is more of a confessional. A chance to pick up on a few loose threads and pull at them to see what unravels. (Note 1)

Last Sunday, a story broke that shows us what makes this country truly great and puts pay to all of the grand conspiracy theorists views on Britain. The BBC had already run a story about how councils used microchips in Wheelie Bins to weigh how much rubbish people throw out rather than re-cycle. A good idea. The more people re-cycle the better it is for our planet.

Last Sunday, the “Mail on Sunday” ran the story under a headline suggesting that we were being bugged in the style of the East German Stasi. In my attempt to stop myself going of on a rant and my blood pressure going through the roof. I’m going to aim for the silver lining here.

Two things make nonsense of the “Mail on Sunday” headline. Freedoms in the UK are alive and well. The first demonstration is that the story was printed at all. The second was that the evil plot was uncovered at a Rotary Club dinner when a council employee took a little to much of the falling down water. (Note 2)

For those of you thinking of popping down to the local Odeon this week, may I issue you with a warning?

It seems that Helen Mirren has got a new film out, The Queen. I’m afraid this caused me to reach for the dried frog pills. I’m not saying this is a bad film. From the clips I have seen, Helen Mirren seems to capture the mannerisms and attitude of HM Queen Liz perfectly. It’s just that Helen Mirren has got a bit of a reputation for getting her kit off on celluloid. (Note 3)

Call me a touch sensitive, but I find the idea of seeing Helen Mirren as Liz preparing for a touch of bedroom gymnastics with Phil the Greek is something that should carry a health warning – despite Helen still being in good shape for an OAP.

Being a good parent, I would make sure that both my children are warned about the film. Not that it is a film that I would think is to their tastes.

Well, perhaps I’m not such a good parent. Sure, I think they listen and make sure that Percy doesn’t come out to play without an overcoat, but I think I may have failed somewhere along the way with my son.

Yesterday morning, despite my best efforts to persuade him otherwise, he popped a few things into a red handkerchief knotted to a pole and headed off to London to play poker.

He arrived back at ten o’clock this morning.

I hope that means he is good at poker. Somehow though, I can’t help but worry when he tells me that he got to shake the hand of Rory Liffey (No, he isn’t a porn star). Rory Liffey is a professional poker player. Now is there anyone out there who can comfort me that this is somehow better than if he spent the night with a porn star? (Note 4)

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

NOTE 1: Which may well be my sanity. Still, I’ve stocked up on the dried frog pills and Mattress Madge has leant me an ex-demonstration model divan, so I might catch up on my sleep and be a touch less cranky. I had a little test drive of the divan this afternoon, surprisingly comfortable if you don’t plug it in. Click to return

NOTE 2 : In one of those strange links of fate, I notice that the Rotary Club achieved some controversy in the way it dealt with the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s. There is probably a lot of extra reading to be done here if I had the energy. Click to return

NOTE 3: As a teenager returning from the pub on a Friday night, one of the first things I’d check was the TV listings for the late night film on BBC2. If it was French or starred Helen Mirren, then I’d stay up for the pink wobbly bits. If not, I’d go to bed. Click to return

NOTE 4: He also played with a Chinese professional poker player. He couldn’t tell me his name, but was sure that he was famous because his picture was on the front of a magazine at the cashiers office. Now I’m convinced that HE must have been a porn star. Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : Trivia ; Fiction ; news ; life ; Helen Mirren ; Comedy ; red1hols.