The Word Cloud

If I had a hammer… I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with it. Seriously; I’m sitting here in the sun… er… job hunting… and EzBird wants me to do some kind of manual labour thing. Has she no sense?! These fingers should be insured. For gazillions. They are the tools of my trade; hell they are my trade, my art, my craft. Without these fat little sausage blobs, I would be destitute. A hammer? A bloody hammer?! That conjures up images of far too many comic fails; a thumb in-situ, an “I’ll nod my head, you hit it” farce or worse; a blister!

Chuff me, the things I have to put up with. Did JK have to put up with this shit when she was singing about Virtual Insanity? Or writing about a bunch of children running around waving sticks and cursing expel-your-anus? Well? No. I didn’t fricken think so.

I have to admit, on things DIY, I’m more of a DDIYYTYOFIUATHTPSETPIR man meself. Don’t Do It Yerself Y’Twat You’ll Only Fuck It Up And Then Have To Pay Someone Else To Put It Right.

EzBird knows this. Personally I think she is still smarting because EzPop once introduced me as a glorified typist and spent an embarrassing second or twenty staring at her before finally giving in with a “what is it you do, dear?” The answer is “fuck all” by the way… maybe I should quantify that…; she is a lady of leisure. As opposed to a lady of pleasure… if you get my drift.

So what the fuck am I supposed to do with this ugly lump of wood with the bloody great lump on the end? I decide the best thing is not to chance a major injury and tap gently, y’know, to bed it in properly before giving it a damn good banging; only trouble is when you’re just close you tend to shut your eyes tight shut and then you miss the opening and ram the damn thing into bone and then you’ve got to fiddle around with numb fingers trying to get it all set up again and she’s off on one about making a meal of it and I’m yelling at her that if she could just hold bloody still for a fricken minute it would all be over and done with and she can go back to reading her book and I can get back to putting that fucking picture up…

I don’t really do DIY. It’s too bloody messy.

 

Ez

Hullo. My name is Sheldon and I am procrastinating. Ooops; Maybe I should put a warning on here first...

For those of you that know me, you know the score. For those of you that don’t… look away now. No, really. I implore you. Sigh. Do not say I didn’t tell you.

 

So today is going really slow here in the sun. This, by the way, is me *cough* updating *cough* my CV and hunting for a job. I am out of contract y’see. Well… I have been out for a while now; since the 2nd September but I had to have my birthday week off and then, right, I fell poorly sick with a snuffle and, right, I got up yesterday because the sunlight hurt my eyes and I thought… hold on a cotton picking moment what the fuck is this brightness all about?!

It took me a while but eventually, scraping the barrel of my memory, I dredged up some garbage about sunshine in summer. I had a mild panic whilst my head decided it was now 2012 and I’d slept through the Autumn/Winter/Spring… again… sigh. Thankfully EzBird, also not in gainful employment –ok, so she hasn’t worked since 2001… - brought me to my senses by turning on the radio and news soon spread across my face that summer had been delayed like a British Rail service and would be this week instead of its proposed mid-July slot. I feel for the school-kids, I really do. Ok… I don’t; but I was trying to be nice. Oh how I grinned.

Anyway, EzBird pointed out that the grand I spent on this loverly laptop was a waste unless I sat in the garden with it. Job hunting. I tell you, the woman’s a menace and no mistake.

So here we are. Job hunting. Anyone reading this got a job for me? No? Tch. Cheap as chips, me. Not the high-street, wrapped in newspaper, stained with vinegar, salted and hiding ‘neath a slab of highly endangered North-Sea Coddiness, though. No. I mean the wafer of silicate, etched and doped to electronic perfection and sold in dinner plate sized biscuits to chop-shops that then duly flog ‘em for £1k wrapped in plastic and electronics. I’m saying I’m actually expensive. Interestingly, I have been told this by my usual agency too. Which is sad, because I really liked them.

So. No jobs then? Tch. I’ll just have to stay here in the garden pretending to write my CV and look up prospective jobs on Monster, Jobserve and what’s that one on the telly again?

In the meantime I want to ask you something; how do you deal with the car-starers? You know the ones; they cross the road in front of you, slowly, and then use their super-power to stop your car. I know it’s a super-power because what else can you call it when you place your life in your faith that just staring at a one-tonne lump of metal moving at, granted, thirty miles an hour, will prevent it from mowing your in-bred small-town mentally challenged fat-arse down? And what am I expected to do when you bounce off my bonnet, disappearing like a loose scarf over the top of my car? Sympathy? Oh, yes. You’ll get sympathy alright. So long as sympathy includes the word “twat”, you’ll get loads of sympathy.

I’m not saying it has happened to me or anything. It was just a thought experiment.

Why is there never any jobs in the Maldives as a long-term sun-lounger safety tester? Hmm? I have the, wait for it… weight for it. Sigh.

Right. I’m off to look up “humorous fiction” to try to work out why I can get a bloody book deal... oh... wait... sigh.

 

Ez

 

Well, EzBird and I are alone again. Our gorgeous two interlopers – both home and heart – have been reunited with their true parents. I can’t believe it has taken six months to sort out but finally the lovely lady from Cats Friends (there was a genuine “Monty Python” moment – Life of Brian – when I mistakenly associated her with The Cats Protection League... splitters!) scanned the little ones and found their chips.

 

Good luck to Puss-Puss and Mittens (AKA George – which I doubt he is really called because he really didn’t seem to like it – and Bobbi, which –with heavy heart – I have to say got her trotting excitedly up the path) as they return to their original owners and a new house where they won’t be bullied by a neighbour’s cat into running away.

 

I’m crap at pome’s but I just get this irrational urge to blub one out when I’m sad. So, sorry for this but...

 

The good news is,

It must be said,

That my two cats

Are not dead

 

The sad news is,

It must be said,

That my two strays,

Are home in bed

 

The good news is,

The owners said,

That their two cats,

Were not dead

 

The bad news is,

The owners said,

It’s goodbye time,

And tears be shed

 

The good news is,

I barely said,

At least they’re loved,

And well fed

 

The bad news is,

I think I’ve said,

Is were alone,

Again. Instead.

 

:o(

 

Ez

It is two-fer day you lucky people...

Enjoy;

I had a summer job once... well twice, in truth, though how on earth I got a second season I will never know... at a local theme park which shall remain nameless. Bearing in mind I was only young, about 16-17, I shall undoubtedly be chastised for my antics. I am fairly sure the following events  actually occurred to me, by me, or at me and I’m hoping everyone believes it to be neither dangerous or litigious...

The first year started well. I sat amongst peers nervously awaiting the first “interview”, filling in the application form. Not far away a lad completed his and passed it round, as we all did, to make sure it was going to be ok. Surname; Hurley. First Name: Andrew Hurley. Forever after called Andrew Hurley-Hurley...

From here I am in complete confusion of order and/or accuracy...

There was this one time on the giant old plastic slide... A seventies monstrosity of six or eight parallel, undulating, gaudy-coloured slides nailed to a large open metal frame that towered at least, oh, I don’t know, thirty? Forty feet high? Down the slide would come child (sometimes accompanied by adults) sat upon sacks of finest ratty old hessian.

Now, it is important to note that for the slide to work it must be polished. To achieve this, a highly specialist, dedicated and expensive waxing substance must be applied to the ride every morning without fail. I think they ran out of that stuff about ten years before I got there so we used spray cans of pledge instead. Kneeling backwards on the hessian sack, a tin in each hand we’d empty the lot on the way down and polish it off on a second run.

What one should understand about the difference between pledge and wax is that wax is predominantly hydrophobic and therefore on a rainy day causes no pain. Pledge, on the other hand...

So come with me to a rainy day; or “drizzle” as the management chose to call it. I knew we were going to have a bad day when, on the first polishing run I had picked up enough speed to skip the middle two humps completely and slammed down on the lowest part of the slide, jarring my arms, head and back until tumbling arse over tit at the dead stop that was the large coir mat at the bottom. Lying on my back, winded, offered me the opportunity to examine drizzle as it floated down from God’s urinal and a ticking off from the area manager for “fucking about”.

Despite my misgivings the ride duly opened and all went relatively well whilst children alone took the plunge. The trouble began when a heavyweight father, despite my protestations, decided he would accompany his offspring. Remarkably, having also missed the middle two slide and dip combinations whilst bicycling majestically through the air, the father managed to avoid crushing said child on their speedy reconciliation. Sadly, however, whilst the child shuddered to a sudden stop at the bottom, father’s feet were so placed as to grip the coir solidly and his velocity of such extent that he was duly launched, with cart-wheeling arms and failing-to-connect legs, onwards. Consequently nutting one woman out of the way before hugging the cross-hatched security fence twenty feet from the bottom of the slide... at speed.

It is my duty to inform you that scarlet skin and fierce white scars in a square, tartan-like, pattern are not a good look to have. Oh, and never use the words “I told you it was a bad idea...” either as it does not seem to be helpful in any way.

Instead of closing the ride down management agreed to add the words “Super Fast” over the name of the slide and we continued the day in the same way but mostly to teenagers and the odd (very odd) adult.

Before we move on from this ride I have one more, true, tale.

This was a dry day, so it is safe to assume that such shenanigans as mentioned above are out of the question. No, for this tale I bring you back to the coir mat and, dutifully, guide you through its reson d’être. It is the soft braking mechanism to gently reduce forward momentum, bringing your child to a safe stop. Once forward motion has ceased, please rise as vertically as possible from the hessian rag provided and move swiftly away from the slide, not to the left or to the right, but directly away from the slide. Once off the mat, if you have another go, then... have another go, otherwise hand your tatty ex-tatty sack to me and fuck off.

The coir braking mat is not by any means a small item. It is easily ten feet long by eight foot wide (and, at least it was when it was new and “pert”, a good two inches tall. Now... not so much so; I would imagine it is the same mat as in my day only worn thin and shiny from thirty years of wear and tear. Which reminds me... I must go back there on a rainy day. Musn’t forget my video camera or Harry Hills email address...).

The golden rule is singular and simple. Stay the fuck away from the mat unless you’ve just arrived there at speed from the slide. How hard is that to remember? Hmm? How hard?

So there was this one day...  we’re talking early eighties... and this very very proud father. I knew he was a very proud father because he had two, very large and very expensive looking camera’s which were virtually permanently trained upon his toddling daughter.

You get a couple of goes for your ticket on this ride, but on a slow day, and with a bored and friendly “operator” you can probably just keep going round and round until hell freezes over or your child becomes sick from pledge burns whichever is the sooner.

Our doting daddy is ready to take photo’s and the little girl is heading downslide. She is in the middle set of eight slides and daddy is slowly encroaching across onto the mat to take his photo. I call him up on this and he duly steps off. It’s not a real problem, they’re pretty much alone on there, there is only one other little one doing the rounds and the sliding is fairly infrequent due to the long and exhausting climb up to the top.

Three or four turns late and he’s only stepping across onto the mat again isn’t he? Told him again, and he backs off again.

It’s the time I thought “fuck it, I can’t be arsed to have another go at him” that really stands out in my mind...

The other little chap has changed lanes. He’s now in the lane before the little girl and he’s off before she gets settled and nudged on her way. Across comes daddy, again, camera glued to one eye and focussing intently on his darling daughter, creeping further and further across the “no twat zone” mat. He’s so intent on his girl he doesn’t see the little boy, way ahead and heading towards him. Daddy’s stand is a perfect, strong A-frame, legs wide, proffering a low stance that keeps the camera steady. The little boy panics and leans back as he hits the last hump and piece of the slide. Now I reckon even a little lad like him must be travelling easily 10 – 15 MPH when he hits the braking mat. Amazingly he slides right into the gap between doting daddy’s legs. Absolutely amazing.

Well... up to a point. See, as I‘ve already mentioned the slide is a stickler for physics. So the little boys mat duly stops quickly, the laws of physics kick in and up comes the little boys head...

Half a fucking hour I had to close that ride whilst “daddy” remained foetal and refusing to move or speak save the occasional, barely incomprehensible, squeak .

It took me all that time to find most of the big bits of his bloody camera too.

It is testament to the British people, though, that all through that time there were still people coming up to me, glancing sidelong at the prostrate man seeking a replacement prostate, asking “is it still three tickets for a slide, mate?” And I swear to this day that I had more customers once the ambulance crew had stretchered him away than I did any other day that season.

God I miss those days.

 

Ez

Don’t ask me how we got onto the subject but I just found myself regaling colleagues with a tale from my childhood.

I recall vividly the journey home from West Germany to England via a car ferry and the Hook of Holland. Not so epic one would have thought but you have to understand that I was but five or six which makes it, well, early seventies.

So EzPop is taking his family on this quest by car. Now, let’s see... there was me dad driving, naturally, and me mum in the passenger seat being shouted at because she couldn’t navigate like they do on car rallies. Or, for that matter, like they do when not on a car rally...

In the back would be my middle brother (eldest brother had been left in Jersey some two years previously... you’d think they would have remembered...?) and three sisters. Which left me. In the front foot-well at me mum’s feet...

So that would be seven of us in a Fiat 124 Special T (one of these...). Travelling from Germany to Holland with a one night stop-over half way.

Stacked on the roof were suitcases and boxes wrapped in a huge plastic sheet and roped down with all the strength and weight my sixteen stone dad could muster. Now I could be exaggerating (I know, I know, it is sooo unusual for me, but you have to appreciate the perspective of a small child here...) but I swear the roof rack was stacked as high again as the height of the actual car. A veritable double-decker jalopy if you will. It took us hours to do, with me dad getting all flustered and shouty because, for example, I had let go of my end of the rope; probably when the forty year old soldier he was yanked the fucking thing out of the hand of the five year old child that I was... Brother and sisters I do not remember helping but that is unlikely because we all had to be traumatised equally, it was only fair. All packed, stacked and tethered, one last chance for a pee was declined and we set off. It wasn’t until about two or three hours onto the autobahn that me mum realised the passports were “in the little brown case” as in “you know the one, the one I distinctly told you not to put on the roof rack...” Oh how we laughed... not.

Germany and the seventies had not heard of paedophilia so it was custom to hand out lollipops to small children when change came below a pfennig – the Deutsche equivalent of a penny. My brother had, as we stretched our legs and after my inquiry as to why we kept stopping in these lollipop shops,  pointed out that cars needed fuel. And dad was just paying for the “special” long journey kind.

Oh how we laugh today about the skidding and the screeching of brakes and the weaving and the sudden banging our heads on the dashboard/seat in front when I innocently inquired “when’s our next stop for pixie-piss, dad?”

Personally I don’t remember much of what happened after that; it all seems rather dark and bloody.

Sigh.

You just don’t see people making journeys like that anymore, do you?

 

Ez

Something struck me the other day and it wasn’t the rocks that children traditionally throw at me either. I have realised, perhaps significantly later than many others, that our era is historically irrelevant. Ok, maybe not irrelevant, maybe... invisible?

Think about it. We are slowly eschewing the tactile physicality of media for the ephemeral nuance that is electronic information. As we abandoned vinyl so are we abandoning CD’s and to what replacement? Media players and downloads.

But what good is an iPod to tomorrow’s archaeologist? Sure, they have a physical object that can be poked and prodded and dissected, but to what end?

As we rapidly run out of oil, plastics with the half-life of Uranium become scarce, and new equipment will be made from bio-oil, grown on plantations around the world predominantly at the expense of the indigenous wildlife and until Orang-utans get a bank account are pretty much persona non grata. Bio-oil has the added disadvantage of attracting swarms of mice and rats to the electronics graveyards as the little critters feast upon version 6 of the iPad. So we will, as we have done in the past, leave scant physical evidence of our entertainment.

Maybe somewhere, in a moisture-free cave deep within the French countryside will be hidden a treasure trove of today’s toys-for-boys (and girls... chortle) and our descendants will, in, say, a thousand years, discover this time capsule and rejoice at the artisan that fashioned such a wondrous device.

But what is the point? Granted, the battery will probably be flat but that can be overcome by a quick boost from the portable thermo-nuclear recharger they carry as a matter of fashion. But once the machine is charged, then what? Ultimately, electronic devices are not going to maintain their state indefinitely so the state of the “toons” or “vids” will be degraded or perhaps just not even there. This is for solid state equipment, but even the old pit-and-plateaux of CD’s/DVD’s would, in that thousand years, become pit-and-more-pits as the metals oxidise or the plastic melts allowing the platinum to leach out at the speed of the ultimate tomato ketchup.

So they can power it up; maybe. Actually... this is unlikely too as time is the great leveller in many respects. Once a sufficient time has passed all the baby atoms in a material, straining like Charles Atlas on steroids (...!) calling out “look at me! Look at me!” and after a thousand years of no-one looking are likely to suddenly, one day say “ah, fuck it. What’s the point?” and relax causing a chain reaction amongst its atomic brethren who all follow suit and what was once bright shiny resistors and capacitors in day-glow colours or moody black become sad tramp-like blobs with their arses hanging out and their taupe duffel coats on back to front.

At least with vinyl you had a chance of playing it back. At least with vinyl you could see, under a microscope (ever done that?) the grooves and deep within those grooves the mountains and valleys that represented the pinnacle of musical talent such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles or... The Sex Pistols. So long, of course, as the temperature remained at a steady state; i.e. room temperature on typical English summers day (not too hot and not too cold but with the threat of rain...). Too cold and the records will become brittle and possibly not recover, and not too hot or you could pretty much drape the bloody things over your arm and create Roman gladiator wristbands (ever done that?)

And then... to be topical for this website... we have books. Books, for their delicate material have a proven track record of, in limited cases granted, survival. Of course, ignoring combustibility, both physical and metaphorical, with content igniting prejudice slightly earlier in the day than the prejudicial igniting a bonfire...

But what of eBooks? Like eMusic, eFilms and eByGum (I made that last one up so don’t go looking for it) the issue for me is, as a wannabe author, fame and fortune today are fine but will become quickly passé, so immortality through prose is my ascendancy. I can rise amongst the immortal and take my place in the pantheon next to Socrates (curiously... does anyone else call him so-crates? No? Must just be me then...), Plato, Homer (the hirsute historian not “Duff!” the tragic buffoon) and JK Rowling (I really must commend her on her choice of moniker; naming herself after an already famous and widely marketable musician was inspired; even I was fooled into picking up the wizard books in the mistaken belief it was Jamiroquai’s (or JK as he is known... for those of a classical bent) autobiography recanting his days as a scarred orphan with a cupboard fixation...)

So what chance do I stand when, one thousand years hence, the media upon which we are currently fixated will need someone to fix its current? The chances of an archaeologist of the future being able to critique my tome and declare “schmah, could do better...” are rapidly disappearing.

And if you think the Internet is eternal, think again. Check out http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. It is the first ever web page and it no longer exists in situ. A copy exists, granted, that is two years old, but even that bastion of everything web, Google, does not contain an original copy – but then, why would it? Google didn’t exist in those days. In fact Google didn’t exist in the days of my first foray onto Internet. Now there is scary! (Also Google, whilst phenomenally comprehensive, falls short of having the whole Internet at your fingertips.)

Just a thought.

This is an EzBloke blog; the warnings are implicit and the content used to be (think about it...); read at your peril... or at your desk, whichever is closer. This one is about two foot from the ground... if you are sitting down... two foot from the ground...

                    *** (Abandon lunch all ye who enter here) ***

Some of you may know what I do, but most of you can only guess and, for the most part, get it horribly wrong. (No, Whisks, I am not a fluffer, but thanks for the heads up...) So I’m going to share. I work, have worked for 25 years, and will in all likelihood still be working long after I’m dead, in IT. In the vast cosmos that is the term IT, I inhabit a small, spinning system that includes such heavenly bodies as Programmer, Project Manager, Team Leader, Database Analyst and, of late, ETL specialist. These are just five of the planets that drift lazily around my vast frame in tune to Ravels Bolero.

 

Into this calm and quiet quadrant of the universe occasionally is thrust riotous disruption and discord. Today is no exception.

 

First, though, I want to talk about political correctness and lament the passing of an era. It is sad, as I gaze longingly back over the years, that we are so deeply scarred that morality has to take precedence, and the risk of offence is seen as such a threat that we are to fear it lest its next foray into close proximity wipes out all but the hardiest of us dinosaurs. With this in mind you cannot possibly imagine the joy with which I found a longed for bastion of downright puerile incorrectness that just made my heart sing, my lungs ache, my eyes – and, yes, a little; my willy – weep.

 

The heavily sol-centric precursory passage is setting the scene for my most recent discovery; that not only does someone who works with me have a sense of humour, but that it is juvenile and completely inappropriate too. The man is a god.

He named the companies servers after planets.

 

(So who is way ahead of me? Can you see where this is going? No?)

 

Let me continue, then. So we have Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Data repositories, exchange, domain and time servers and an internet firewall. What of the seventh planet from the sun, I hear you ask? Uranus, says I? Well... if you’re going to be like that, I hear you huff...

 

The server, as is the planet, is pronounced “your anus”. Not, as a slim minority would have it “Yure-an-uss” or “Urr-an-uss”. To these people I would quietly melt the term down to “you’re an arse” but possibly not to their face... or their arse, for that matter. I don’t care what you think; 99.9% of the worlds population call it “your anus”, it is how it is spelled and how it is pronounced, live with it.

 

It is with this nom-de-plume and the inimitable fact that whilst I may have aged beyond seven, my sense of humour resolutely failed to follow that I share the following discourse;

 

“What’s going on?”

 “Uranus is jammed and we can’t free it up.”

“What do we do?”

“We need to get in to see what’s jammed.”

“It will be hard.”

“Agreed.”

“Would a network probe help?”

“Not really; we can see Uranus from the office, so I’m not sure a probe would tell us anything we don’t know.”

“That’s good. Last time I probed Uranus I lost my wedding ring and a watch...”

“...? Anyway... I called Bob...”
“Why Bob?”
“He had a hand in Uranus when he first started.”
“What did he say?”
“He said there isn’t a back door.”

“Then we’re buggered.”

“We’ll need to tear it down and get it up again.”

“How long will it take?”

“About an hour or so; once we have it to ourselves we should really take a look around.”

“What for?”

“I don’t think we should let everyone back in to Uranus unless it is squeaky clean.”

“Yes, but it’s a repository so everything is backing up.”

“What is?”

“Uranus.”

“No it isn’t; it’s a web serv... oh... hold on... sorry; My mistake. Uranus is fine; it’s Neptune that’s gone down on me.”

“Ahhh. Ah well, fuck it. Neptune is a web server it can wait until Monday.”

“... But it’s only Thursday...?”

                                                   *** (Exeunt) ***

I may have paraphrased some.
I may have removed some over-use of the word Uranus (chuckle)
I may even have left out the bit about not sticking my hand in Uranus because it was full of shit...
I may also have ommitted the sidebar about FaceBook and being poked in Uranus. Or that YouTube was naturally the next step on from Uranus.

And I definately never mentioned the bit about "the shit can't possibly hit the fan if Uranus is down."

S'True

Ez

Have you ever had one of those days where nothing seems to go right?

I am trying to pen a witty ditty to invite some of the best colleagues I have known in my illustrious career to join me as I wave them goodbye and head out for pastures new.

It’s just... well... I can’t seem to get past this;

 

Some of you may know me

Some of you may not

Some of you may know what I do

Some of you may not

Some of you may like me

Some of you may not

Some of you are invited to the pub for my last day

The rest of you can fuck off

 

Sigh.

Ah well, suppose I should just keep it to myself, eh?

Oh... bugger.

Ok. The following blog needs some warnings;

Don’t read it if you are of a delicate disposition, if you are eating or if you are a prude or if you are eating a prude. Wait... no... that’s not right... Anyway perhaps not a prude but maybe someone who thinks self-gratification is not for “water-cooler” moments. I do use bad language and the context is of a sexual nature. Read between the lines there.

So if you are, say, under... oh, I don’t know... 30?... You should not read it. If you are a male over 70 you must not read it as there is a good chance you’ll get ideas and put your back out. The only people I would suggest it is recommended reading for are weak, lonely, easily influenced males with a high susceptibility to subliminal messaging even when the message is blatant and not subliminal. These people should post their names in the comments section and I will duly keep an eye out for them in the tabloids over the weekend.

 

*** (Line break to signify “last chance to change your mind”) ***

 

Sooo... how can I put this? Right. Well... So I was in the loo at work the other day where they had just installed a new hand dryer. One of those Dyson Airblades. And I’m thinking to myself... that’s quite a powerful blow it has on it... and... were I to stand on tip-toes... maybe... just maybe...

There is, however, a slight technical issue. See, at first blow the Dyson Airblade begins quite cool. Cold in fact and could quite easily dampen one’s ardour. So a person (person/pervert tom-ai-to/tom-ah-to) would have to start the machine going for a while. And then... well... to be honest the thing gets bloody hot bloody quickly and at the risk of toasting John Thomas it would have to be over well within the British standard (2 minutes 35 seconds. On average. According to an online poll of London prostitutes. As opposed to the 355 minutes 2 seconds of an offshore Pole called Wassili Czecnizski, although I think he was just boasting. Or I made him up. Like I made up the online poll...) otherwise A&E would be a fascinating place to be. If you were anyone but the person that tried to get his jollies from a Dyson Airblade.

Of course, having had this train of thought you can probably see how awkward it was, once I’d washed my hands, to use the bloody thing. I nearly had a panic attack about the noise it was making and the thought that people outside would be counting the seconds it was going; one, two, warming up – ok, three, four, drying hands – ok, five, six, being thorough – okay, seven, eight, what the hell is he doing in there?, nine, ten, oh my god this is disgusting, eleven, twelve, oh, I can  ever look him in the eye again...

Later I checked online and the Airblade is only £600 and I figured... with a little bit of adaptation... I reckon I could start a new business. Adaptation would be along the lines of less of a “heating” element and more of a “warming” element and perhaps a deeper trough for those who are well endowed. Well... maybe they (“those-who-are-well-endowed” should never be spoken aloud in the presence of men lest their very souls wither and die or you want to send them whimpering back to the fourteenth level of hell where their arms are tied behind their backs and the only way to get sustenance is to touch a button that is six and a half inches down a tube) wouldn’t perhaps need the assistance of a plastic fantastic fan dance. So fuck ‘em, no, the trough stays as is.

So I’m thinking Spearmint Rhino will want at least half a dozen units per club. So that’s... er at least six then. I may need to do a bit more market research here.

One thing I am sure of; I can’t see me selling any units to Tesco’s...

 

*** (Line break for the cessation of open-mouthed staring) ***

 

Told you not to read it.

Ez

There are some amongst this learned fraternity that, having been around for aeons, are aware of my personal distress and mental anguish this time last year when I lost my beloved son Charlie (a large, loving, dribbling, purring, ginger cat.) I was distraught and, to be honest, I am sure I have not been the same since.

For the last four months, EzBird and I have been tentative hosts to two of the most gorgeous creatures on this planet. Uninvited, we have been blessed with the increasingly regular and increasingly longer visits of two (as yet unnamed) cats.

The first, one dark winter night, was a frightful sight. Investigating curious noises from the shed roof (hidden from the house behind pine trees) I was confronted with nothing but two bright, round, green eyes. No cat. Just eyes. Alice in Wonderland style (eyes not grin, granted) but even so. I was spooked and no mistake. And that was the last of that, I thought.

A month later, at work, I received a text from EzBird. "Am in lounge. Have visitor. Is gorgeous. Been here half an hour so far."

 "Ah yes. The pure black cat with the gorgeous green eyes." I replied.

"No..." she texts "I would say she's only just still a kitten. Tabby. And unbelievably cute."

"Eh?" Was my unresponsive text.

So. Here we are. Charlie's photo looks down upon our lounge from the mantlepiece and we are twelve months gone. Not one neighbour, across the road, across the alleyway behind, down the road, up the road knows of, has lost or knows who has lost two cats. One so black I have yet to be able to get a decent photo of him and one so soft and cute we have pre-emptively named her Mitts. (Short for mitten.) She obviously does not respond to the name but hell, I'm nothing if I'm not pig-headed. Puss-Puss (the black cat) also is an ignorant git, although we are considering he thinks his name is (shake of box of cat biscuits) although to be fair, so does Mitts...

Currently, and this is why the delay for the update (I guess it's like announcing a pregnancy too soon) the local vets have had no response to our enquiries and descriptive poster (like I said, we can't photo Puss-Puss without it being nothing more than a cat-shaped absence of colour or texture. Curious...)

They are beautiful and I fully believe ephemeral; no-one could lose these two cats and do nothing about it. No one. I revel in this time, in every precious moment.

Charlie has sent these two cat-gods to look after us, to cheer us up and it is working.

Pictures will follow. I promise.

Ez

Oh... forgot the point of this blog; I'm back. Be warned. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

:o)