The Perils of a Burned Out Clutch

Ah my fervid yeomen, I fear that sometimes that my clutch needs a good service. I am not talking about that my automobile is suffering a fault, but the mechanism that sits between my brain and my mouth.

When I am dealing with the written word, be it for work or pleasure, my brain tends to switch to this strange mode. Things happen around me and my brain reacts.

Yesterday, a group of colleagues were engaging in conversation near my desk and were talking about various ways to cope with stress (see Note 1) while I was trying to write the weekly great work of fiction which is the progress report.

One of my colleagues mentioned that to relax he likes to play the clarinet. My brain, absolutely determined to divert from the boring business of justifying refactoring, saw its opportunity and escaped off onto a tangent.

What I meant to say was “Is that a Euphemism?” what actually came out was “Do you do it in private with a bottle of baby oil and some tissues?”

As you may imagine, this was not met with a universal reaction of mirth. A woman with the group appeared most offended (see Note 2) and I felt the need to apologise.

It reminded me of the kitten naming incident I wrote about in my blog yesterday. (See Note 3)

Not all of my interventions into other people’s conversations result in disaster. Only this morning another, recently married colleague was in need of lawn mowing advice. (see Note 4) I was only too happy to help and suggested two options, the Suffolk Punch and an alternative. Of course, the alternative caused my brain to fire up and all sorts of synapses to flare up. One-liners from “Remember to keep your over-sized wellies by the back door” to far, far worse sprang to mind. (See Note 5)

I really don’t have much of an excuse for coming out with conversation stoppers like that. I’m a grown man and should by now have found away to ensure that the clutch is engaged in such circumstances.

Some would take the easy way out and blame the pressure, the stress, the dodgy air-conditioning, but I really cannot do that. My writing tends to take away the stress, the more stress I’m under; the more I retreat to my virtual reality. When I feel pressure, the end result is normally a ‘Rat & Ferret’ post and after one of those, I feel a lot better.

Besides, what I do can hardly be considered stressful, real stress can be found in this very poignant tale of Major Edward "Mick" Mannock VC.

Note 1: My own favourite way is to down a few dried frog pills and sit down with a blank document open in Word. I just let my brain take me on a merry jaunt and I let my fingers tap away and see what results. Today, you got this. At the time of writing this footnote, I have no idea what ‘this’ actually is, only the opening gambit. As in chess, the end result is a matter determined by random synapses as my brain tries to out manoeuvre me.

Note 2: No, I mustn’t say it. Such comments usually serve to line lawyer’s pockets.

Note 3: Thinking about Mike yesterday, I decided to see if he had left his foot fall somewhere on Google. I did a couple of searches and discovered a lead in Melbourne, Australia. I fired off an email and discovered it was indeed he! This is an object lesson for all those former yeomen who have had expensive therapy and moved to the other side of the world to forget. Be afraid, be very afraid. I have Google and I am not afraid to use it.

Note4: Recently as in last year, but it is recent enough to have me think that this is the first time in a while he has looked out of the window and realised the grass has got long.

Note 5: Those who didn’t follow the links may be confused, but hey! I was just thankful the guy wasn’t Welsh, or I am sure the clutch would have burned out and I would have been in trouble again.

 

A Bewildering Air of Unmatched Non-conformance

Anyone interested in purchasing this hilarious party attire should visit funnfrolic.

It seems that I have picked up some kind of strange ailment. It is one of those horrible illnesses where you feel bad, ache, get tired quickly and feel a little ‘odd’. (see Note 1)

This has been made worse by somehow tweaking a rib muscle in my sleep. For those of you who have never managed to tug an intercostal, I can testify that it is a particularly painful affliction whenever you twist your torso. (see Note 2)

This second problem is probably best fixed by getting plenty of rest and maybe a trip to the ‘Rat & Ferret’. Sid always has a couple of bottles of Ethaniel Nightswerve’s Thoracic Embrocation under the counter for such emergencies. Had I not felt quite so ‘odd’, I might have even paid the premium to have Mattress Madge and her amazing manipulating digits apply it, but, at the moment, I’m not quite sure that I would get the most from the occasion.

I know my cognitive yeomen will suggest I should go visit my doctor’s surgery.

This is probably good advice, but sadly my past experiences tend to suggest otherwise.

My last visit was on a balmy sunny day. The surgery was hermetically sealed from the outside world with the heating turned up to full (see Note 3). As I walked in, a neighbour with her sick child waved at me and I felt obliged to sit between her and on old man with a complexion of a medieval manuscript.

While I was treated to the latest gossip, her son coughed, sneezed and wheezed. Then in apparent contradiction to his mother’s assertion that he was an angel, wiped his nose on my arm. The old man was replaced by a woman who seemed to have an angle grinder in her chest cavity.

When my neighbour was called, I was left to contemplate a geriatric copy of Reader’s Digest while a man with a face not unlike an over-ripe Victoria plum, coughed into my left ear threatening hearing loss.

Eventually my name was called over the crackly PA and I got to see the doctor. Ignoring my detailed description of my symptoms, he shone lights into every orifice, poked planks of wood around my mouth and stuck his stethoscope places I’d forgotten I had.

Ignoring my obvious discomfort and weakened state, he snapped on a latex glove with far too much glee for my liking and then decided an impromptu prostrate exam would be fun. It wasn’t.

After having me climb on the scales and him give that long intake of breath normally the preserve of car mechanics, I expected him to reach for the prescription pad. He didn’t.

Instead, he told me I had a virus (see Note 4). What I needed to do was to lose weight, drink less, take more exercise and rest and drink plenty of liquids – which seemed the most contrary and contradicting diagnosis.

So, I sit here feeling ‘odd’, but not odd enough to visit the quack. I think I can guess what he would say should I pay him a visit. I have an idiosyncratic virus. I should rest, sit quietly at my keyboard and regale the world with my feeling of ‘odd’ while drinking copious amounts of liquids in the form of beer.

You know what? I think I’m beginning to feel better already.

Note 1: I realise that there is a fair proportion of the population scratching their heads at this. It is generally accepted that ‘they’ have already observed my behaviour, produced their clipboard and written ‘odd’ against my name in green biro. However, I still stand by my claim of feeling ‘odd’. To try and make this odd state off affairs easier to explain, I decided to consult an on-line thesaurus to see if I could find the correct state. There are a huge range of words there. I particularly liked wacky, weird and screwy. I did consider kinky for a while, but as I said, I’m getting tired quickly so it was discounted. In the end, I decided that the best I could come up was odd, but decided to add a pair of quotation marks so you realised that I am in an odder state of odd. 

Note 2: Which is another reason why the word kinky was discounted.

Note 3: I’m undecided whether this is a marketing ploy by the medical profession to ensure that all the happy germs floating around the waiting room have a chance to find a new host to guarantee future income or if it is to make sure that people don’t start to feel better and wander off before their turn to see the doctor.

Note 4: It is absolutely impossible that a single virus could have caused me to be that ill. At the very least it was a whole army of the little bleeders all behaving like they were on a stag weekend in Blackpool.