The Grumbler

Eh? Storm in Eh? Teacup

2011-05-28T21:36:00.000+01:00

Canadians Kathy Witterick and David Stocker are causing a great deal of consternation.

But then confusion ought to be the default state in Canada - consider:

It's about the same size as the US, but has the population of Morocco, meaning that there are three and a half people per square kilometre - compared to the two hundred and fifty in the UK. So, it can get a bit lonely.
Half the populace speaks nearly English, while the other practices a disdainful French dialect which would shame a Parisian. (Not often a problem, given the population density you're lucky if you have someone to talk to anyway)
It's situated on the North American Continent, yet it's not a part of the United States and its inhabitants will bristle if you refer to them as Americans (can't say I blame them; I come out in hives if someone calls me a European).
It worked very hard to gain independence from Britain, yet retains the Monarch as its head of state.
Many Canadians put a great deal of effort into pretending to come from somewhere else. For example, James Doohan, famed as "Scotty" in Star Trek, was, in fact, Canadian despite the tartan accent.

So, given the background level of WTF, how have this couple achieved their not inconsiderable feat? Simple. They are refusing to disclose the gender of their latest child - who they have named "Storm". Their objective in fostering this ambiguity is to allow Storm to be whatever it (I'm sorry, but I don't see that I have a choice there, under the circumstances) wants to be, unfettered by the social norms associated with males and females.

Storm's two older brothers are only slightly less unconventional, being given complete freedom over how they dress and behave. Apparently, both have wardrobes which would have induced huge pangs of jealousy in the young Eddie Izzard and, with their braided hair, are almost always assumed to be girls. Of course, this cross dressing won't be too out of place in Canada since a recent survey conducted exclusively for and by the Grumbler has revealed that 72.3% of Canadians are lumberjacks. Those of us who have been enlightened by Monty Python will immediately recall the propensity of said tree-fellers towards flower pressing, dressing in womens' clothing and hanging around in bars. So. transvesticism is a national sport in Canada (the home country achieved all three podium finishes in the drag queen event at the Montreal olympics) and these kids have a head start - doubly so for Storm if it turns out to be a girl.

Storms dad maintains that "If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs." Bollocks! (And that was an exclamation, not an answer.) Several people asked me last month, and the answer was "It's a Triumph Tiger mate". Of course, this assertion falls down where Mrs Grumbler is concerned. If you were brave enough to ask the good lady that particular question, half the time she'd give you a funny look and say "Its called a horse, you fuckwit."

So, all things considered, it's clear that most Canadians must exist in a permanent state of puzzlement. Which actually explains one thing that's perplexed me for ages - which is why Canadians seem to end every sentence with a question.

I mean, if you lived there, you would, eh?

How Not to be Deluged by Lobsters

2011-05-15T19:59:00.000+01:00

Have you ever wondered why you never notice that something’s become a habit until someone points it out? Think about it for a minute - you spend years practicing something completely harmless, like saying the word “Burp” while belching, for example, only to absent mindedly perform in the middle of the office one day and cause your colleagues to look at you “in that way”… It’s perhaps fortunate (for me and any potential witnesses) that I have never become unconsciously competent at aping Le Pétomane’s rendition of La Marseillaise.

My pal Pete "Codger" Cogle (from PC Podcast) and I were in “The Sussex” when we discovered the latest ‘thing’ that we do regularly enough for it to be called a habit is to attend the Great Escape festival in Brighton. And yes, it was pointed out to us in startling fashion when the barmaid greeted us with “you were here last year, weren’t you?” How on earth does she remember two blokes who turn up once a year and get mildly sloshed? Please don’t tell me that this might be the only place I’ve ever successfully farted the French National anthem, because I really hope I could remember something like that!

Anyway, to the unusually serious point of this post. It's more than likely that you're reading this in the interwebby thing, and so its a fair bet that you're Facebooked, a member of the Twitterati and no stranger to the world of internet commerce. Do you know what Clickjacking is? Put simply, its one of the latest ways of having your information stolen, or your computer/account hijacked to do something you didn't intend. This might have consequences as simple as you posting on all your friends' Facebook walls something like "OMG, my ex-keeps checking out my profile!" or a little more complicated, like sending your bank account passwords to a bunch of intergalactic hackers from the planet Zog. Its hard to explain, so I'm not going to bother; see wikipedia.

I did try to explain to Codger in the pub, though; "It's like pressing the Espresso button on the coffee machine at work, and instead of being served a lukewarm cup of something that's nearly coffee, you actually get hit by a deluge of lobsters". We obviously weren't the only folk to find the lure of the beer in there to be impossible to resist because just then we were approached by a fellow #tge'er, doubtless attracted by our dayglo writsbands, and most definitely feeling no pain. "Were you guys planning who to see tonight?" Well, we had been planning to, before I got sidetracked into the murky world of internet toeraggery, and "Deluged by Lobsters" would be SUCH a good name for a band. I'm afraid I did tell a few little while lies before we supped up and parted ways...

So it only remains for me to apply to stage my own brand new concept show (a flatulent execution, in every sense of the word, of the greatest hits of Abba) at next year’s event, and to apologise to the poor fella who trundled beerily away from Codger and me late on that afternoon of the first day determined to see the superb New Zealand based “Deluged By Lobsters” perform tracks from their Psychedelic album “Drenched in Reverb” at a secret street gig…

And if you want a little more about The Great Escape, can I recommend Pete's Podcast, Episode #350?

Being horsey

2011-02-05T22:50:00.000Z

As anyone who's lived with a horse owner will be able to tell you, it can sometimes seem that they play second fiddle to the horse(s). It's certainly true that the good ladies of Grumbler Towers spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with their own animals and, as a grumpy old man, I've occasionally wondered what it takes to get some attention.

Well, on the one hand, you can try to be a little more horselike. Presumably one could undertake a certain amount of cosmetic surgery to attach a tail and it must be possible to apply for a licence to crap in the street from HM Government (these appear to be two of the primary attributes of the target animal). However, I'm not really up for a diet of grass and sugar beet, and there are only a limited number of circumstances in which I am prepared to let Mrs Grumbler anywhere near me while wearing shiny boots and carrying a riding crop. And I'm not sharing those with you lot.

There's also the old dictum "If you cant beat them, join them". Actually, I've tried that, having owned a rather nice horse called Max for a few months. As it happens, I didn't have the time or dedication needed, I just wasn't cut out for it. Now, I'm sure you're wondering "how hard can it possibly be?"

Well, for you, dear reader, here's how you can discover that for yourself, without actually having to buy a horse....

The Grumbler's guide to pretending to own a horse...

Dressing the part isn't essential, but if you want to be authentic you will need an anorak and a pair of skintight stretchy trousers which are at least a size too small and have holes where they shouldn't. Note that this is the inexpensive part of horse ownership; you need only one of each, since neither will be washed more than twice a year. You should be militantly indifferent to your appearance, because the horse doesn't actually care what you look like, and therefore neither should anyone else. Footwear, however, is important. You do need a pair of boots, which you should soak in cold urine every night. so that they quickly attain that 'Je ne sais quoi...' (That's French for 'pervasive smell of wee-wee').

Your pretend horse is going to require a certain amount of looking after - physically and financially. Be prepared to spend up to two hours before and after work each day in the middle of a field, shovelling wet twenty-pound notes into a shredder (note that shredded paper from companies who really do print money is sometimes used as horse bedding, the analogy isn't that far fetched) while a crazed accomplice pelts you with dung. Obviously, that should be horse dung, but since you don't actually have a horse yet, cowshit will do. One cautionary note - if you are using cowshit, make sure its fresh - those dried out "frisbee" shaped cowpats can have your eye out in skilled hands.

You have now successfully recreated the authentic mucking-out experience, while at the same time getting used to feed, accommodation and vet bills. You see how easy I'm making this for you?

You might be thinking this is a dirty, smelly job - and there's a grain of truth in there. But look on the bright side - it's not necessary that you be indifferent to how badly you reek because you wont actually notice it. That part of the experience is for other people, such as your loved ones (remember those boots? They should be about right by now...)

While I think about it, you must occasionally have someone knock you down, drive over your foot, smack you in the shin/stomach/groin/head with a hammer, or trap part of your anatomy in a door. Your accomplice must do this when you least expect, and when it will cause the maximum amount of inconvenience; it will acquaint you with being barged, stood on, kicked or bitten. Remember, though, that this is only happening because your 'horse' loves you, so the only thing you should do to your accomplice is offer a nice rosy apple or juicy carrot as a reward.

At weekends, you will have time to 'ride' - this is, after all, why you're pretending to have a horse. After the first field based money shredding experience of the day (yes, that happens at weekends too), obtain a bicycle, by borrowing or stealing if necessary (by now, you are unlikely to be able to afford your own).

Spend at least an hour cleaning the bike before letting all of the air out of the tyres and, if you are planning to go on a public road, loosening the nut which holds the handlebars straight. Its finally time for your reward for all of that hard work - ride that bike backwards and forwards across a field which has been freshly ploughed.

Once you are exhausted and have cracked at least two vertebrae, you may go out onto the highway, but only if there is traffic. Every time you hear a car, it's important to move a little further into the road and slow down. You must wobble alarmingly (this is why you've undone your steering) and, if at all possible, you must cycle sideways like a drunken crab, while pulling a series of spectacular "wheelies". This is all just to remind the driver that he needs to slow down and stay far, far away, since should he end up with a hoof (wheel) through his windscreen it will be his fault under UK law, whatever the circumstances.

By the time you arrive back at your 'stables, you should be almost too exhausted to move. Now you must clean the bicycle again, and finally remove the saddle and hang it in a shed. If you're very lucky, the saddle will still be there in the morning, unless you've been visited by a collection of thieving Pikey bastards (triple tautology) overnight. Now, cover the bicycle with a blanket, go back into the field and shred another wheelbarrow full of cash.

If you still want a horse after all that, then I heartily encourage you to contact a livery stable and learn how to do it properly, since you're clearly a nutcase with a bad case of obsession which I'll never begin to understand. Anyway, hope that's helped. I cant sit around here all day writing to you folk, I've got several motorbikes to clean and polish....

They Made Me an Offer I Couldn't Refuse

2011-01-11T22:46:00.000Z

In the weeks following my altercation with Reader’s Digest (and yes, Lady from a Small Village, I know the positioning of the apostrophe indicates they only have one reader, that’s wishful thinking on my part) I have been suffering from a nagging feeling that I’m missing out on something.

The thing is, this is an itch I don’t want to scratch - I am not going to play any of their silly games, I know that they lead only to disappointment. So I’ve been wracking my brains for an alternative and I finally had a great idea. I wouldn’t respond to them, but I would take advantage of every other hand-delivered leaflet/offer pushed through my letterbox in the course of a working week!

There could well be a side benefit to this brilliant plan; I might get to write about the experience (oh, look what you’re reading)! Lets face it, that bloke who went around pushing Mickey D’s into his face, and the one who wrote the Dice Man, they made MONEY out of it, didn’t they? So here goes, “The Man Who Says Yes to Everything…”.

The rules are simple. To be sure that I'm not "missing out" on anything, I must take advantage of every offer and, to be fair, give to every charity request, that gets pushed through the portcullis at Grumbler Castle, from Monday through to Friday for one week.

Monday:

An outfit claiming to help old people pushes a plastic bag through the door and invites me to fill it with clothes. Stifling a temptation to stuff half of Mrs. Grumbler’s wardrobe in there, I oblige with a number of old pairs of jeans which, while serviceable, no longer successfully enclose the ever expanding Grumbler waistband. I feel good and have more space in my wardrobe. What’s more, there’s some old duffer somewhere who’s teamed my cast off 501s with a sports jacket and is now zooming around the care home in his bath chair pretending to be Jeremy Clarkson.

A lady called Andrea who claims to be a native of Rio de Janiero (where the accent is very similar to that of the West Midlands, apparently) invites me to Latin Dance Classes for only a tenner a time and, after a quick phone call, I have something to do every night this week.

Tuesday:

I have engaged a company called Mr Sparkly-Trash to steam clean and disinfect my wheelie bin on a monthly basis. If only he’d take the bin to the end of the drive too he’d save me some pain, for I think I’ve slipped a disk at Samba class.

An agent acting on behalf of “the Ethiopians” and another one who looks after disadvantaged Old Etonians both dropped off plastic bags, inviting me to fill them with clothes. This takes care of all of the pullovers and sweatshirts which no longer fit.

I trundle off for my second session with Andrea ("call me Andy...") and its while I'm trying to work out whether that was a shadow, or does she really have an "Adam's Apple" that I trip and am convinced that I've dislocated my kneecap. At least it takes my mind off my back.

Wednesday:

I have saved over fourteen pounds by taking advantage of every cut-price item on the supermarket flyer which came my way this morning. I do have quite a lot of unwanted pasta and feminine hygiene items but you can’t win them all. On the plus side, I got a great deal on half a hundredweight of Brazil nuts, which are left over from the Christmas festivities.

Two men with Eastern European accents have resurfaced my drive with Tarmacadam which was apparently surplus to council requirements for a bargain five hundred pounds. D’you know, I had no idea it was as easy as spreading the hot mix over the existing gravel and flattening it with a garden roller!

A disabled-dog rescue centre leaves me a plastic bag and invites me to fill it with clothes. I feel a little guilty in consigning a few unwanted Christmas presents to it, but at least they are going to do some good. Though exactly what an accidentally tripedal pug is going to look like wearing a duck-egg blue XXL t-shirt with a picture of Garfield on the front is going to look like I shudder to think.

Andy teaches me ‘lifts’ tonight. You know, she’s got quite big hands and she's really strong, but I don’t like heights much so we wont do that again.

Thursday:

Today, I go everywhere by Taxi. It’s lucky I got the taxi special offer through the door, actually, because when I looked at the car this morning its up to its axles in my new tarmac drive and I cant move it. I call the police and report the erstwhile drive layers for their shoddy workmanship.

A new shop advertising “nails 'n' waxing” has opened up in the local parade. I’m a keen woodworker, and the car’s going to need a polish once I manage to get it off the drive. Apparently they’re busy today, but I arrange to visit them tomorrow.

Two more plastic bags, both printed with information relating to a deserted wives refuge, have arrived. This is awkward. I’ve no more old or unwanted clothes left. I fill one with socks and underpants. I can go commando if I have to, no one will ever know. The other is filled with shirts. It’s winter, after all, I’ll just keep my sweater on.

Tonight’s dance class is not a great success. Andy tells me we are to practice the Paso Doble, but I’m tired and confused and manage to deliver a Double Entendre. She’s calmed down by the time I leave, and the swelling in my eye is hardly noticeable now. Oddly, just before she hit me I noticed she had hairy knuckles.

Friday:

Some rotten bastard has stolen my freshly sanitized wheelie bin.

Two more plastic bags have arrived. I’ve given up even looking to see who’s sending them. I have only jeans and sweaters left. All the jeans go into one, and all the sweaters into the other. Now I know it’s breaking the rules, but there’s one thing I can’t give up. Every man has an item of clothing that he’s emotionally attached to, usually to the exasperation of his other half. In my case it’s a baggy cable knit sweater which I have had for so long I’ve given it a name. I’ve always said I wanted to be buried in it, and that looks inevitable. Reg is now the only item of clothing I own. Its perhaps fortunate that its so stretched it reaches to my knees, but less so that the somewhat loosened cable knit has lent it a transparent quality more usually associated with crochet, rather than knitwear.

In the afternoon I walk to my appointment at “nails ‘n’ wax”. I try to explain that we’ll have to forgo the latter, because I still cant move the car. However, this doesn’t seem to faze the rather large and very familiarly dressed Eastern European ladies who work there. I’m soon to learn that this place has been set up by ladies who live at the local deserted wives refuge. Apparently they had to move in after their husbands were arrested for stealing tarmac from the council. One of them is holding a pissed off looking three-legged pug in a t-shirt.

Now, I’ve always thought that ‘manicure’ and ‘pedicure’ were variants on some kind of alternative medicine, but I am seized and subjected to an ordeal which leaves my fingers and toes scarlet tipped and pointy. This is appalling. Assuming that I ever get the car out of the drive, the first time I hit a traffic jam (in which situation an unwritten but universally recognised law states that all drivers possessing a Y-chromosome must immediately begin a thorough nasal excavation) could prove very dangerous, if not fatal.

I’d rather not recount what happens next. Suffice to say, I have developed a fearful aversion to all things Brazilian. Andy can stuff the dancing, and they can keep their damned nuts. Between you and me, I feel quite lucky to have managed to hang on to my own.

I’m broke, sore, dressed in nothing more than a wooly mini-dress and its going to cost me a fortune to get my car dug out and drive fixed. Where on earth am I going to come up with that kind of money? Hang on, there’s a letter here from Reader’s Digest. It says I’ve almost certainly won a hundred thousand pounds…

A manual new year...

2011-01-05T22:56:00.001Z

Well, we’ve finished all the mince pies and trundled in to the office armed with tins of sweets containing the last and least favourite sweets which even the kids wont touch (coffee toffees, spring surprise and anthrax ripple) to see what the new year has in store for us. Doubtless work will be just the same as it was before the break, but will there be anything new, beyond death and taxes?

In the UK, the latter promise is already fulfilled by the rise of VAT (for our American readers, think of it as a sort of cheese-eating surrender-monkey version of sales tax) from 17.5% to 20%. Coupled with increases in duty, all of which is needed to repair the gaping holes in the UKs finances caused by greedy bankers wallpapering their houses with fifty-pound notes, it now costs over a million pounds to fill up a lawnmower with petrol.

We’re only half a week into 2011, and they’re dropping like flies - the year has already seen off some quality members of the acting and musical professions in the shape of Pete Postlethwaite and Gerry Rafferty. Slightly less well known, but also having run down the curtains and joined the choir invisible this week are author Dick King-Smith who wrote “The Sheep-Pig” (but might have inspired a different kind of "Babe" if he hadn't had a double barrelled surname), and Mick Karn, who had been the bassist in 80’s band Japan. Just last month, Elizabeth Beresford “wombled” off, and Captain Beefheart joined the Magic Band in the sky. Even Nigel from the Archers fell off his roof yesterday!

Quite a few people, if they recognized Rafferty’s name, will have the tune of ‘Baker Street’ rattling round their heads. It’s a fine song about a heavy drinker who has plans to settle down, but never quite makes it. The Grumbler, a heavy drinker who has somehow never quite managed to settle down, prefers an earlier effort of Rafferty’s, as part of “Stealer’s Wheel”. Picture the undercover cop Mr. Orange, tied to a chair by Mr Blonde - who’s about to slice his ear off and douse him in petrol - and I’ve no doubt that the sound of “Stuck in the Middle with You” will stay with you for quite a while.

The most recent film I’ve seen with Pete Postlethwaite in is Inception - in which he plays Maurice Fischer, a dying man. Also, quite recently, Postlethwaite appeared as the head of a puritan family whose last words, having been fatally injured, set the eponymous character Solomon Kane off on his mission. The first time I remember seeing him, though, was in “Brassed Off” - where he takes the part of Danny the Bandleader who is, er, dying. There’s a pattern here - every time I can remember seeing this guy on screen he pegs out. Steven Spielberg called Pete “The best actor in the world” after he played “Roland Tembo” (A Headless Tommy Gunner) in the 357^th Jurassic Park sequel and I have to agree with him. In fact, so convincingly have PP’s multiple demises been portrayed, That I suffered a repeated shock every time the fellow turned up in yet another film.

It makes you wonder who’s next - will Billy Connolly die in bed, exhausted by Pamela Stevenson’s newly minted energy courtesy of her successes in Strictly Come Dancing (and if he did, could he wish for a better exit)? Will Cliff Richard turn up at the Pearly Gates to find that they aren’t there after all and think to himself “Bugger, think of all those cocaine addled groupies I could have enjoyed”, or will God himself gaze down on Richard Dawkins and utter a rather satisfied “Sorry, you cant come to heaven, I simply don’t believe in you.”? Will Charlie the big-eared plant-conversing ecomentalist finally ascend what’s left of the throne? Who knows…

Anyway, what’s the point of all this uncharacteristic melancholy then? Well, my favourite window on the world, the BBC website, recently ran an article “Is working with your hands better than just with your head” which examines whether a shift to a more manual job might bring joy to the masses returning to office drudgery in the new year. It’s inconclusive, really, but I suspect there’s a lot to be said for it.

Which leads me to an inescapable conclusion. If you’re bored with your existence, quick, go and get a hand job - before its too late…

I hope something silly happens to you...

2011-01-01T17:36:00.000Z

Soul-searching can be fruitless when you're a heathen, but a recent bout has reminded me why I started blogging, long ago. It was primarily to have some fun, and hopefully to make some other people laugh in the process.

Looking back on 2010 it seems that, while it had its moments, it was generally short on fun and laughs. Not just for me, but for family, friends and a bunch of people I'd never have heard of if I hadn't read of their various misfortunes on the interweb. Maybe that's why I only posted twelve times, or maybe I could have had more fun if I had posted more often. There's an idea worth exploring...

I think I've also been quite cautious (you may find that hard to believe) about what I post. I don't want to accidentally upset anyone (deliberately upsetting someone is another matter) and there's been much made in the news recently that whatever you put into the public domain these days will hang around to haunt you till the day you die. Maybe so, but it will be more fun making a couple of mistakes than worrying so much that nothing ever gets written about.

Now, I'm hoping that there will be considerably more enjoyment and hilarity in 2011 than there was last year, but its no use me just moping around and waiting for it to happen. I've got to make it happen, and then blog about it. And if I cant make something happen, I'm going to lie and say that I did anyway.

Oddly, when I've re-read some of the posts which I know I pretty much spun around what might have been a grain of truth, or was more likely a speck of dirt, I can almost remember the events as if they actually occurred. I think that's weird psychology, though maybe a reader who knows better might tell me it isn't. That's going to be unlikely, though, because I suspect the only person that reads this is Floyd and, since he's a dog, he only bothers to read it when there's no decent action on the Animal Planet channel which as previously mentioned in these pages, he regards as pet-porn.

So, here are some rules for the blog in 2011.

I'm going to post more. This isn't a new years resolution, because I only make those to experience the fierce joy of breaking them in the first week of January. (As an example, I firmly resolved last night to give up drinking for a month, and am consequently looking forward to opening a bottle of wine in an hour or two.
I'm not going to plagiarise, but I may allow myself to be heavily influenced by the likes of Catweazle, Reginald Perrin, Father Jack Hackett, Rowley Birkin, alcohol and excessive cheese consumption immediately prior to bedtime.
I refuse to be constrained by fact. In the past year I've literally fallen over and hurt myself on evidence that facts have no place in government policy, the justice system, the Daily Mail or business process engineering, so I'll be damned if I'm going to spend time checking for accuracy and veracity. So, if I need a statistic, I'm going to invent one, just as 98.7% of statisticians already do on a daily basis.
The opinions expressed by the Grumbler (who doesn't exist, and therefore cant be negatively affected by them) are not necessarily shared by his alter ego (who, to his enduring disgust, is required to earn a living). In fact, they probably aren't actually genuine opinions at all, being largely expounded for little more than cheap comic effect. I may contradict myself - consistency is for wimps.
I hope you're not offended by what you might read here. (Unless you're the twelve year-old big-eared, smelly, stupid and fat pizza-faced copper who tried to nick me for speeding the other day, in which case I fervently hope that the fleas of a thousand camels infest your underclothing. Frankly, I doubt you could count to eighty-five, let alone measure it, but I digress.) Oh damn it, actually, I don't really care if you are offended, as long as you are reading. There's a comment button. Use it.

In summary, then, I hope we all have a happy, prosperous and preposterous 2011. If you're having one, mail me and tell me. If you aren't, then mail me and lets make one up.

Lights, tinsel and chocolate what??

2010-12-31T17:03:00.000Z

A few of my acquaintances have suggested that, as a heathen, I have no place celebrating Christmas and, probably because its expected of me, I usually ramble on about how the intrusion of religion into a long established orgy of consumption and consumerism does indeed threaten to water down its magic.

Be that as it may, we like Christmas round here and we always put decorations up. We're almost always late with this, and so a week or so before the big day I'll be dispatched to the attic with a flaming torch and a ball of string to ensure I can find my way back to collect the series of mouldering cardboard boxes in which we have stored a motley collection of tinsel and baubles collected over a period of a number of years. I'll also bring down the lights, and the tree. Its an artificial tree, by the way, we don't actually have pine plantation in the loft, though I have found ivy forcing its way inside in the past. Shame it wasn't holly really.

Those lights... oh how glad I am that LEDs have taken the place of those malicious little filament bulbs we used to have. It was inevitable, wasn't it, that the first time I plugged in the string of 52,000 bulbs each year I'd be rewarded with... nothing. One of the evil little buggers would have blown during the eleven and a half months during which they had absolutely nothing to do but sit there. Then I'd spend two hours searching for your spares - which always turned out to be at the back of a cutlery drawer which I'd already searched three times, lacerating myself badly in the process. Finally, I'd spend what felt like a lifetime swapping each bulb in the string for a new one until I found the culprit before, with bleeding fingers and terminal cramp, I could move on to erecting the tree itself.

Our tree has a 'base' which despite its innocuous appearance, has clearly been constructed from a parts left over after an explosion in a garden shears and spring factory. It has also, at some point, been gifted with a vicious personality, presumably by a disgruntled voodoo practitioner. One wrong move, one lapse in concentration, and I'm off to casualty with a bag full of fingers.

Finally, the tree's up, and the lights are on. Now for the tinsel. Which would, in times past, be on the dog. Our tree is 5 feet tall and, unsurprisingly perhaps, green. Our dog is three feet tall, near enough, and yellow. How the kids could mistake the one for the other, without fail, every year, is beyond me. But they managed. The thing is, the dog seemed to like being decorated and would quite strenuously resist any efforts to untangle him from his shiny accessories.

Finally, it would be bauble time. Again, there is much to be thankful for now that these are made of plastic. Until recently these would be little balls of blown glass, one of which would invariably escape only to be trodden on almost immediately with predictable and painful consequences.

So there I'd sit, utterly exhausted, sadly trying to pick tiny shards of broken ornamental glass from the sole of my foot with my teeth - because my right hand would be a mass of bandages under which the fingers had been superglued back on by a nurse, and my left had swollen to twice it's size having been bitten by a disgruntled golden retriever.

Eventually, it'd all be done, and be time for my reward - a dip into the brightly coloured tin of chocolates that I brought home from the supermarket not two hours previously. This is where I'd discover that the kids, immediately after their adventures in canine tinsel festoonery, had eaten every last bloody chocolate in the house, and the exciting rattle in the tin would be explained by the fact that they'd thrown all of the wrappers back in, along with a solitary half eaten coffee/butterscotch surprise, which would have been weighed, measured, licked and found wanting.

But this is all in the past. The LED lights don't go out, except as a feature of the exciting electronic sequence they're programmed with. Age and familiarity has tamed the tree base to the point where I'm lucky to get it to grip the tree itself, and we have three dogs - too much trouble for the kids to decorate them, so they don't bother. They still eat all of the sweets, though.

Except I think we may have found a solution to that last problem in the shape of one miraculous box of choccies given to Mrs Grumbler by her sister. That's right - a collection of tasty soft centres; dark, milk and white chocolate, all lovingly filled with creamy ganache by a lady called Ann Summers, and totally impervious to the kids. The simple fact is that each of these delicate little treats is shaped like a little "meat and two veg". Yup, confectioners "wedding tackle". The embodiment of the "wife's best friend" in, er, "the wife's best friend".

So, I can guarantee the availability of chocolate at all times next Christmas by the simple expedient of buying a box or two of chocolate Willies. They join Brussels Sprouts on the very small list of things my kids wont eat..

Thing is, though, neither will I...

Reader's bloody digest...

2010-12-14T22:49:00.000Z

Reader’s Digest

PO Box 5,

Isle of Man,

IM993UZ

Dear Reader’s Digest,

OK, I surrender. I’m sorry, truly I am, but I just can’t take any more.

It’s my own fault, I know, for ever responding to the mail shot you sent me a little while ago, but since then the rain of completely incomprehensible tosh which you have poured through my letterbox has bean unceasing.

I mean, honestly, how many prize draws, which, if the implications in the glossy missives that arrive on a more than weekly basis are to be believed, I have almost certainly won, can you actually run? There’s the immediate £5,000 draw; the immoderate £10,000 draw; the infeasible seven shillings and sixpence early bird bonus and the incontinent £120,000 draw. OK, I may have made one of those up, but you know exactly what I mean and don’t you dare to pretend otherwise.

Furthermore, have you ever tried following your own instructions? Good grief, people! Look, I’m no slouch at being able to cook up a process so complicated that a four digit IQ is required to stand a whelk’s chance in a supernova of successfully completing it. This will be attested to by, quite literally, legions at my place of employment who have been faced with the prospect of completing one of my fiendish puzzles or having their arms metaphorically ripped out and being beaten to death with the wet and bloody stumps.

I can even do a Sudoku puzzle in less than a week without getting my children to help me. But I am left bereft and gormless in the face of the convoluted directions in each and every letter you send me. Stick the green sticker on your post-code at precisely four o’clock next Tuesday if you don’t want to buy a book full of red stickers every three weeks until hell freezes over, or alternatively put the gold sticker in your left ear while whistling the stars and stripes forever.

Bah.

You make Ikea flat pack instructions look like a particularly instructive nursery rhyme. My irritation at being unable to follow your insane ramblings is only eclipsed by my grudging admission that you are clearly in a different league to me when it comes to forcing innocent people to perform mind-warpingly pointless menial activities. I salute you, while simultaneously detesting you.

The funny thing is that, at first I didn’t mind, because we have an open fire and I heat my home almost entirely on pulped junk mail because, in Bracknell, there is no council waste collection service. Instead of this, every two weeks we are lined up in the street by machine gun toting fascists and forced to eat the contents of our dustbins (which is why I have taken to putting the dog’s turds in my neighbour, Bob’s, trash). Oddly, perhaps, he’s looking well on it.

The thing is, yesterday was a bad day. You sent me so many offers to burn that when I came home from work the dog had roasted in her basket and my wife had melted. On the plus side, I don’t have to buy a turkey this Christmas, and I’m not being nagged, but I was quite fond of the old girl. I didn’t mind the wife much either.

Anyway, the thing is, I’d like you to stop now, please. No more. Unless you’re writing to acknowledge that you’ll stop, forthwith, or the next envelope from you contains a big fat cheque, I don’t want any more mail from you.

I fervently hope that this letter finds you well, and happy, and delighted to comply with my request to cease and desist all mail forthwith.

I remain your faithful and admiring (but preferably from a long way away) servant,

The Grumbler

Bondage

2010-11-18T19:00:00.000Z

Contrary to generally received wisdom/folklore, the Grumbler was not created fully grown and irritable. In fact, I experienced a (relatively) normal childhood. Born. Grew. Learned to walk. Learned to talk. Went to School. Got a job. Learned how to use the bathroom. Not necessarily in that order.

The ramblings in this post hark back to those days when there were 12 pennies to the shilling, the Mini was the last word in excitement (whether it referred to cars or skirts) and no-one in the UK had ever seen an avocado. (Indeed, when they were first introduced later in the decade, they were marketed as 'Avocado Pears', and many people's first experiences was a singular disappointment as, after their evening repast, their keenly anticipated and really rather expensive dessert consisted of a bowl neatly segmented avocado pieces with a generous helping of evaporated milk.)

I'm not one of those folk who claim to be able to remember everything that's ever happened to me - you know the sort: "The first thing I can remember is that I fell out of this weird furry window, it was freezing cold, there was this bright light, and then someone smacked my arse..." But I do have just a few very early memories which, having discussed with my parents, must date back to when I was about 18 months old. I think I remember this particular experience because it was both frustrating, and utterly terrifying.

I can recall, more than once, waking in the dead of night. My room would be pitch black - because there were no streetlamps on our road, and in any case, British children born before 1975 simply weren't allowed to be afraid of the dark. Such children were simply left outside on the doorstep for the wolves to carry away. I say 'wolves' but they were probably badgers. But they were wolves to us, and that's what's important. Of course, progressive parents who might have been prepared to leave a light on for their fractious and nyctophobic offspring would have found themselves outwitted by the frequent power cuts caused by industrial action on the part of Britain's coal miners. Its a little known fact that the miner's strike was actually orchestrated by a team of badgers, pretending to be wolves, who had developed a taste for doorstep takeaway Late Baby Boomers and early Gen-X'ers. Why do you let me digress like this?

Anyway, having awoken, I would quite naturally try to get up, in order to toddle in to my parents room and wake them up with demands for avocados, a drink of water or suggestions that there was a monster under my bed. (It was a porcelain chamber pot, but to me it was a monster and I'd be just as scared if I found one there now!) To my horror, I'd find that I could sit up in bed, but any attempt to get out of it would meet with solid resistance. I'd simply, physically, not be able to get my feet on the floor and walk away from the bed. I don't remember what would happen next, but presumably I'd eventually give up and fall back to sleep.

Much later, I learned that when my parents first put me in a bed, rather than a cot, I developed a habit of turning round and burrowing to the very foot of the bed where I would be trapped by the tucked-in sheets and blankets and, unable to get out, would howl until rescued. I don't have any idea why I'd taken to doing this, possibly I was practicing to become a strike breaking coal miner or learning how to escape from a badger set. But the end result was that it drove Mum and Dad to distraction. Their solution to this was beautifully simple. They had a set of 'baby-reins' which saw sterling service in preventing me from toddling off at high speed and running under trucks, jumping off cliffs, swimming with the ducks I was supposed to be feeding or any of the typical toddler pursuits of the day. They reasoned that these could see double duty by preventing the revolutionary nocturnal habits of their overactive offspring. In short, they tied me to the damned bed.

So why am I telling you this, my faithful if infrequent reader? Well, don't worry - I'm not about to recount any bizarre latter day bedroom athletics involving the neckties I no can longer be bothered to wear to work. I suspect its got something to do with work, though. No, I'm not physically restrained here either, though I'm sure there are those who wish I was. But we're going through one of those hellish phases where you just cant seem to move without the bindings of some process or other snapping taught, and I think my twisted subconsciousness has just joined the dots.

Still, looking on the bright side, if the parallels hold true, then this is all a bad dream, and sooner or later someone's gonna wake me up and feed me sugar-puffs. So that's ok...

Out of Context

2010-07-07T22:50:00.001+01:00

I was in the gym earlier today (yeah, I know it sounds unlikely, but unlike a lot of what I write, it's actually true) trudging dejectedly along on the treadmill and wishing that I had my iPod with me. For some reason, I need an aural injection of vintage 1981 Killing Joke when I'm on a treadmill. Preferably 'Primitive' and 'SO36' although - given my current state of health - perhaps 'Requiem' might become more appropriate, if I'm not very careful.

Across the road from the Gym, there's a pretty good Indian restaurant. I fixed my gaze on that, and imagined I was striding purposefully toward a reward of a Tandoori mixed Grill, Peshawari Nan Bread, and a pint of ice cold Kingfisher. So I didn't notice at first that the only other guy in the gym had wandered over to me and was peering at me, expectantly. Now lets be clear about something - I wasn't deliberately ignoring the fellow (actually, he had on the LOUDEST t-shirt I've seen for a while, so it wasn't actually possible to ignore him, even if I wanted to) but, well, you just don't talk to people you don't know in the gym, do you? So now he had my attention, he kicked off with "I can't remember your name."

Now, as a skilled ultimate charmer and mixer in polite company, I naturally and almost imperceptibly throttled the nascent reply of "That's because we've never seen each other before, you complete nutter" before it could do any damage. Because now I looked at him, he was vaguely familiar. "I can't remember your name, but you work at the same place I do, and you've got a blog called the grumbling dragon." "Well, bugger me," I thought - but thats another thing you don't say in a gym, "could this be a fan?".

To cut a long story short, we do indeed work at the same company, and had actually spent a pleasant week on a course together with an assortment of other jolly decent folk in the far away wilds of Hertfordshire in a strangely crumbly gothic hotel which was frequently surrounded by psychotic peacocks. Once he'd pointed that out, of course I remembered him, how could I not?

My point is, that when you're used to seeing someone in a specific context like, for example, slaving away on a bunch of strangely futile tasks dreamed up by a remote sadist with a barely tangible grip on reality - then you aren't necessarily gonna recognise said individual when you meet them happily skipping along on an assortment of gym apparatus, dressed in a fashion which would probably cause the aforementioned psychotic peacocks to fall completely and rather dangerously in love with them. So I'm sorry if I seemed bewildered, Ian, it really was nice to see you.

But it did get me thinking. How many other people have I utterly failed to clock, simply because they weren't where I'd normally expect them to be? It's actually the perfect disguise, isn't it? No make-up or subterfuge required.

For example, no-one is ever going to believe that's the septuagenerian Catholic Bishop of Westminster chucking the keys of the freshly TWOC'ed popemobile into the ashtray at the Penge wifeswapper's monthly cheese biscuits 'n' bonking soiree, which means he can actually go to it with impunity.

Public-spirited and ultra-helpful plasticine genius-dog Grommit wouldn't be caught dead digging holes to bury plastic bones on the 18th green and crapping in the bunker on the Old Course at St Andrews, which is precisely why that's the ideal way for him to satiate those irresistible doggy tendencies. If he got lucky he might even manage to hump the leg of the groundsman on his way back to Wallace's place, and no-one would ever be the wiser.

There's no way that's Adolf Hitler driving that Gypsy Caravan float as the London Gay Pride carnival marches though Golder's Green, that's not Jesus munching a bacon sandwich while having "Black Sabbath" tattooe'd across his back, and whatever else that might be, it's not a Dalek applying a fresh coat of dark blue paint to that old fashioned police telephone box.

And despite the fact that I promised you its true, no-one who know's me is ever going to believe that first paragraph of today's blog...

What the...?

2010-06-29T22:09:00.003+01:00

There's something I don't understand.

Well, OK, technically speaking there are an infinite number of things I don't understand, but as a rule I tend to avoid drawing attention to them in case I manage to irrevocably tarnish the Grumbler's aura of intellectual invincibility, and the carefully nurtured belief that there is a bottomless well of things I know all about.

For example, "Why," Mrs Grumbler once asked me "do you always have to be right?" I suppose I should have recognised from the querulous tone that the question was intended to be rhetorical, but it's a husband's duty to lend his wife assistance if she asks, so I pondered for a minute. "I think," I ventured pompously, "it's something to do with the fact that I don't flap my mouth unless I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.". To this day, even after the last of the bruises has long faded, I cant help but think she, the Moon of my Delight, over reacted. Ah well, no day in which we learn something is ever completely wasted.

So back to my state of perplexity. Regular visitors to this blog (there aren't many, its true) may have noticed that it doesn't get updated very often. In their disappointment, they may chose to hit the 'next blog' link at the top of the screen, which has been thoughtfully provided by the folks at blogger to take the adventurous reader on to other folks scribblings of a presumably similar nature. I've taken to hitting it myself, expecting to be transported off to the nefarious launchpads for the scribbly meanderings of other like-minded, beer drinking; politically incorrect and hopefully partially amusing observers of the human condition.

So why does blogger take the reader of the grumbler, invariably, to a daily diary of a god-fearing (and god bothering) Republican super-mom with an avowed ambition to adopt and church up any semi-sentient bipedal life-form under the age of eighteen unwise and unlucky enough to come within a mile of her presumably well-scrubbed doorstep?

Its just not on! I mean, what on earth have I written which makes the all-powerful servers at google decide that subscribers to the grumbler are going to enjoy reading the twisted burbling insanity of a middle aged bible literalist who truly believes that the long march to salvation is expedited by the act of locking teenage girls in their rooms with nothing to sustain them but bread, water and the word of God, with an occasion beating with a stick to enliven an otherwise boring day? I dunno, but I swear that's where it took me. Not once, but thrice!

Why would someone who's just enjoyed a rant about the similarities between Marmite and Earwax being interested in the illustrated diary of someone who spends their evenings crocheting woollen cosies for rolls of toilet paper?

I mean, come on lads, your own search engine returns this very blog as the number three hit for anyone typing the words "Elevator Facts" and hitting "go". And that little entry has less truth in it than the book of Mormon (Look, I had the facts delivered to me on huge tablets of stone, Ok, and I'd be happy to show them to you, but when I got up the next day they'd been stolen by an Angel).

Clearly I'm going to have to step up the contentious quotient round here if Im not to be trapped in some Wagnerian scale Ring-Cycle of Waltonesque niceness.

I dare say that even mentioning the kinds of blogs that people are being misdirected to is only likely to trick the servers into more of the same. So it'll be interesting to try it after this has been posted.

So, in the time-honoured interests of misdirection, be sure to come back next week when the Grumbler branches into investigative photo-journalism by gatecrashing the Penge and Norwood Naturist Star Trek Appreciation Societies' annual wife-swapping party, which this year play's host to the Dulwich Doggers' AGM, because the vicar needs the Church Hall that evening to set up for the following day's jumble sale.

PostScript. I make most of this rubbish up - that much should be obvious. Sometimes, though, I enter terms into google just in case my fevered imagination has hit pay dirt. I chose Dulwich Doggers because (a) Dulwich is near Penge (an area in south london which, to me, sounds more like a disease than a place) and (b) its nicely alliterative. Imagine my delight to discover that the lane leading to Dulwich golf is apparently a well known spot for this particular branch of social intercourse.

Postscript 2. Well, it didn't work.

Here's the 'profile' descriptions of the first two blogs that the 'next button took me to.

1) As you have probably noticed, I have been quite busy and unable to post much lately. The reason I have been busy is that I am participating in a Summer Chaplaincy program at a Hospital.

2) Wife of Jim, Mother of five, daughter of the King, I am saved by Grace, redeemed by the Blood of Christ, and being sanctified daily. Living in the world yet not being part of it is a battle to which I must rise for the sake of my family and the Glory of my Lord. Yet, it is Christ who works in me, Praise the Lord!

Why? I dunno, but Google works in mysterious ways. I pity any poor reader of those sites who ends up on mine.

Birdbrain?

2010-06-13T19:40:00.001+01:00

A lady of the Grumbler's acquaintance (she cannot be named because she made me promise not to) recently had an accident and ended up with a scratched cornea - an exquisitely painful condition. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better now, though there have been a couple of flare-ups.

After the last day spent sitting in the dark with a cold cloth to try and get some respite from the pain, a return visit to the local barber-surgeon was in order. Of course, the National health service isn't much round here, and if the quack can't diagnose your ills by the taste of your piddle, or fix what's broken by sticking leeches to it, then he or she will be pretty much stumped and may refer you to a more qualified authority; such as a hedge-witch, for example.

So it was that when I was chatting to the good lady she informed me that, having donned a feathered head-dress and cast the bones (presumably they belonged to someone he'd failed previously failed to cure) our local shaman determined that the auspices were good, but if the eye got any worse she should visit an ornithologist.

Now you may, as I was tempted to, scoff at this quite obvious malapropism, but may I point out that the root of the word 'auspices' is 'auspex' - latin for "one who looks at birds".

Still, since this amazingly clever comment was followed up with "Apparently, you can get some kind of contract lens thingy to stop it from hurting" perhaps it was a mistake after all...

Electoral boredom

2010-04-28T22:06:00.000+01:00

The newspapers and TV round these parts are increasingly full of barely credible election related stories. What puzzles me is if they’re going to the effort of making stuff up, why can’t it at least be vaguely interesting? It’s not that hard…

I was out in the garage on Sunday, cleaning one of the bikes. You know, time really flies when I’m doing that, and it’s immensely satisfying. This is the kind of wholesome practice that separates the grumpy old pillar of the community from the younger generations. If you don’t believe me, consider that any activity which involves a teenage boy spending a couple of hours on his own, enjoying himself hugely and ending up surrounded by soiled tissues would probably not be focused entirely on a Triumph Bonneville.

In some ways, though, it’s a good thing that age tends to mellow our habits (or at least we get to replace one set of socially unacceptable behaviours with another, slightly more curmudgeonly one), because roughly half way through my buffing, I was rudely interrupted by a thin and rather dyspeptic looking gentleman resplendent in blue and claiming to represent the local Conservative party. And let’s face it, one of the last things you’d want popping up behind you if you’d got yer trousers down is a prospective MP - they’re far to likely to try and take advantage of ANY situation they encounter…

He rattled on for a while about taxes, family values and fox hunting before going on to complain about immigration. It wasn’t until he started waffling on about Slough being full of Martians that I realized what was bothering me. Normally it’s the rosette that’s blue, not the entire candidate. OK, some of these guys hardly seem to pause for breath, but you don’t often see them change colour for lack of oxygen - not even in a hung parliament (there are some politicians for whom I believe asphyxiation to be too good but I digress and, if one were to be pedantic, that would be a hanged parliament).

Anyway, I just put his cyan hue down to him being an escaped Smurf or something (the Tories are quite desperate right now and will form a coalition with just about anyone - even a cult of little blue dudes who are led by a weird looking guy with a bowler hat and a ZZ-top beard) and got on with my bike cleaning.

Later on in the evening Mad Albert and I were on our way to the pub, bickering - as is our custom. I was reclining in a shopping trolley that we’d found in the lake and Bert was pushing, because he won the toss (which meant I’d have to push on the way back). We’d only gone a few hundred yards when there was this weird noise, sort of like someone farting in the bath, but higher pitched, and then four blue geezers appeared out of nowhere. Bert actually saw them first, because I was facing the wrong way in the trolley. Before I could say anything he’d already told them to bugger off because he’s voting UKIP.

Quick as you like, three of these blokes had grabbed Bert, there was another weird noise, and they all disappeared - except for the fourth bloke who looked just like the one who’d interrupted my polishing earlier - he’d just, sort of, wobbled a bit when the others vanished. He looked a bit confused for a minute, then said, “Sod it, that keeps happening!” and pushed the trolley, with me still in it, into a ditch while saying “Nothing personal, I’ve got to get back to Slough. We come in peace, and mean you no harm.” Then he ran off and as he vanished from sight round the corner I could hear him shouting “Bloody Earthlings”…

As you can imagine, by the time I got myself out of the ditch I was a bit peeved, and quite worried about Bert - who had quite plainly been abducted by Martians. I was concerned enough, in fact, that I only managed about a dozen pints and three bags of pork scratchings once I finally did get to the pub. Still, looking on the bright side, at least I didn’t have to push Bert all the way home in the trolley.

It came as a bit of a surprise, I don’t mind telling you, when I heard a damp moaning noise coming from the ditch as I staggered home. It was Bert, covered in wet leaves and trapped under the trolley! I dragged it off him, helped the silly old fool out up, and brushed him off - dislodging a snail from his lapel and what I originally thought was a small tortoise but actually turned out to be the near fossilized remains of half a Big Mac from his shoulder.

I was eager to hear about his encounter with the extra-terrestrials but, frankly, he was quite rude. Claimed to know nothing about any alien abductions and reckoned I’d made him drink two pints of cider (that’s four times what it takes to get him drunk) and then rolled him into a ditch. Anyway, he’s still not shut up about it, despite finding several “we come in peace” election pamphlets from the Smurfish Martian Conservative Party stuffed into his trouser pockets. It just goes to show you can’t trust the them. (Smurfs, not pockets, obviously, who ever heard of someone that didn’t trust his pockets?)

As far as the election’s concerned, I’m thinking of voting for the UK Independence Party. Like Mad Albert. Once I’ve been able to make certain that they’ll get Britain out of the Solar system, as well as the European Community.

Just Like a Viking (not for the faint of heart)

2010-03-30T22:52:00.001+01:00

Sometimes, very funny things happen to me, or I hear of funny things happening to others. It would be a waste to keep them to myself, especially if even just one other person will laugh. To be kind, though, (and I’m not inherently unkind) it’s sometimes necessary, and always desirable, to embellish and tweak in the cause of obfuscation and entertainment. Both techniques are employed here in what will be presented to you as a story. It’s entirely up to you to decide who’s who, and what’s true…

He was a callow youth - a fact to which many of his friends would attest - but also inclined to be gregarious. He rather enjoyed the occasional pint too - as long as an occasion could be defined as something that happens at least eight times a day. It would be pleasantly reassuring to suppose that this combination of ill considered, alcohol fuelled sociability is a occurrence rarer than dodo sightings, but that would be a mistake since, unfortunately, it pretty much sums up most lads in the eighteen to twenty-two age bracket.

Our particular lad was also blessed with two left feet, extreme myopia, a callous disdain for sartorial elegance and a distressing tendency to behave tactlessly to people whom he considered less intelligent than himself - which was pretty much everyone.

I paint this somewhat less than flattering picture for you so that when I tell you, at the time our story unfolds, that the lad has a girlfriend you’ll appreciate that this is an infrequent occurrence and one he’s as keen as mustard to nurture.

Now, no-one’s all bad and our hero does have a few plus points - he’s a fair cook, and has reasonable taste in wine too. This evening he’s had an opportunity to use both these skills in the pursuit of a greater aim (some might say the only aim of most lads of his age) as he and his girlfriend have her parents’ house to themselves while Mum and Dad are away for the weekend. Since he’s already been invited to stay over, he’s reasonably sure it’s going to be a lucky night. He’s prepared a chili con carne, fresh jalapenos and coriander mind you - none of your powdered or freeze-dried rubbish and procured a pretty decent bottle of St Emilion with which to wash it down.

An hour or so later the pair of them are having a “nice cuddle” on the sofa when our hero decides to try a little game of “Yellow Pages”[1]. At first, all seems to be going remarkably well - right up until the point where his little sweetheart emits a banshee shriek and runs to the bathroom as fast as its humanly possible to do with one’s best lingerie round one’s ankles. (I did say remarkably well, didn't I?)

Initially very concerned for the young lady’s welfare and puzzled by this extreme behaviour our boy is soon left in no doubt as to the cause of her ire as, to the accompanying hiss of a power-shower on full-cold, punctuated by a number of vile oaths worthy of the saltiest of sea-dogs she casts doubt upon his parentage, calls down on him a plague of misfortune and lets him know in no uncertain terms of the capsicum tainted error of his ways. She instructs him in tones that preclude any negociation to begone, permanently, from her sight by the time she leaves the bathroom if he knows what’s good for him.

I’m sure you, ladies and gentlemen of the world, can work the details out for yourselves without me having to stoop to further explanation. But you might be wondering what this has to do with Vikings?

Well, history has it that, just like our now rather chastened would-be lothario has just done, the Vikings ended many a loving relationship by setting fire to the man in the boat….

[1] Let your fingers do the walking.

Facebookery

2010-03-30T06:53:00.000+01:00

Some time ago, the grumbler managed to link together far too much of his online life, with the result that this blog automatically gets loaded onto facebook. Well, no more! The grumbler, and the other entity on facebook are two completely different entities - and the one is clearly cramping the other's style...

Now, if this note fails to appear on facebook, then I'll know Ive got the setting right, and the grumbler can blog, without the facebook fella getting the credit...

Phew, that was close...

2010-03-26T23:33:00.000Z

So, a few of us went for a meal last night at a brewpub not far from San Francisco international airport. One of my favourites, actually, and has been since I first set foot in the place.

I digress, but it seems to be a week for reminding myself that I'm not precisely a spring chicken any more (more of a crispy duck) - I've been going there for 15 years, give or take. Worse than that, its just a week (to the hour) that I was watching a band I've loved for 33 years play my favourite song of all time. The fact that they are still going (well, 75% of them) is proof enough to me that "No More Heroes" remains an inaccurate song title.

Anyway, back at the brewpub it was apparent from the off that it would be "one of those nights" as we marched in and - to the consternation of the waiting staff - demanded "a table for four and a half". Still, we were soon accommodated after a short sojourn in the back bar/billiard room in which Andy and I managed to obtain two of the nastiest pints of beer we'd encountered in a long time (soon rectified by switching to the ever reliable "Broadway Blonde"). Packed into a booth, we decided that it would be Andy's birthday today, and we dutifully informed our server of the fact that he had just turned one hundred and seven. This turned out to be a smart move, since they gave him a free desert. Next time we're here, andy wants me to take him to a Chevvy dealer so that he can claim to be a hundred and sixty-three and see if the give him a free Corvette. I cant say that its much of a spectator sport watching Andy pack in a fudge brownie (ooo-errr, missus) but the conspicuous consumption prize for the evening went to Graham, who ate anything that wasn't actually nailed to the table.

Anyway, a few ales meant that it was entirely necessary for me to head off to what the Americans euphemistically term a "rest room". Personally, if I want a rest, I'm not likely to do it in a place where the decor features more white tiles and stainless steel than the average post-mortem suite and which smells, distressingly, of poo, but t takes all types I suppose. Noticing that there was already a fellow in the place, I immediately took myself to the comfort zone furthest from him.

Isn't it weird how most blokes can instantaneously process the incredibly complicated rules of bathroom etiquette while half drunk (or worse) and single-mindedly bursting for a pee, and yet so few can complete a relatively simple puzzle like Rubik's cube in total sobriety even if given month of Sundays?

Anyway, I was irrevocably committed to the act of wringing out a kidney when a deep voice immediately behind me said "Hey Baby". Well, I was so shocked and disturbed by this that if I hadn't been busy doing what blokes do when standing in bathrooms I'd probably have wet myself. As it was, I performed the incredibly convoluted manoeuvre required to twist round and prepare to defend my honour, without actually splashing my boots, in mere fractions of a second.

Anyway, directly behind me was a guy, mercifully facing away from me, belt undone and jeans wide open, with his pride and joy in one hand and his iPhone in the other or, since this is close to Silicon Valley, maybe he had his pride and joy in one hand and was holding his willy with the other. The bloke was actually phoning his girlfriend while taking a gipsy's kiss[1]. I mean, I can appreciate the art of multi tasking, but its not exactly romantic, is it? More to the point, he scared me half to death and came scarily close to experiencing a violent misunderstanding. I can talk the hind leg off a donkey, but even I'd have had a hard time explaining that to the local Peelers.

Clearly, the world is a weirder place that I give it credit for. Time to go home...

[1] Rhyming slang. Work it out for yourself.

And another one...

2010-02-17T18:32:00.002Z

More neologism (thanks Trev!)

Reintarnation.

Coming back as a hillbilly...

Neologism

2010-02-12T00:00:00.001Z

A new word occurred to me recently while I was listening to a fellow in a meeting 'socialize' some ideas and simultaneously concentrating really hard on not chewing my fingers off in a futile attempt to find something more painful than the presentation in hand to take my mind off of the drivelstream(tm) I'd haplessly managed to jack into. I was trying to think of a less Anglo-Saxon version of my treasured favourite "F*ckwit".

At least, I think its a new word, because I got no hits on Google when I looked for it.

Whizklutz (noun)
(1) An individual who thinks they are a whizkid, but are sadly mistaken
(2) An individual who's klutziness is apparent to new acquaintances within microseconds of first contact.

As with all new words, I shall be utterly delighted if I ever see anyone else use it. I can only live in hope :)

Drivelstream: Technologically facilitated delivery of audiovisual bullshit to a mass audience. Example: "I see the XXXXX party has their annual conference available by drivelstream".

Earwax

2009-12-17T16:58:00.001Z

Few things distinguish the British and the Americans quite as much as breakfast preferences.

For example, many of us British will happily consume Marmite which I have heard more than one American refer to as “tasting of earwax”. (It is only male Americans who say this, leading me to assume that female Americans have never experienced the joys of an exploratory dig around the lug-ole followed by a tentative testing of the result – I believe the correct word here may be “Eeeewwwww”. Girls, you don’t know what you’re missing, and I advise you to keep it that way)

Similarly, many Americans (and I’m with you here) will enthuse over peanut butter and jelly (though I, as a snob, insist upon the finest conserves, with big lumps of fruit in rather than the rather insipid jelly). Lots of Brits, though, have less than complimentary things to say about this culinary combo.

Imagine, then, if you will, my mingled feelings of delight and horror when I encountered a person this morning (she runs our restaurant in the office, which explains a lot) who eats Peanut Butter and Marmite on toast for breakfast. Personally, I find the idea abhorrent in the extreme. However, it immediately presented me with a mental image of those “Venn Diagrams” I learned about as a kid, when doing set-theory. Remember, all those circles with intersections? In my mental picture, the circles have the entire American and UK populations in them but the intersection for PB&M (I cant bring myself to type it again) has one single, solitary, lonely person in it.

That explains the horror, but why the delight?

Simple, really. Usually, the lone occupant of the ‘Billy-no-mates intersection’ is none other than yours truly. For once, I can feel normal. Ish.

Bad Branding

2009-11-10T21:24:00.003Z

According to the press this morning, there is much disgruntlement amongst the followers of Newcastle United Football Club over the renaming of their home ground to 'Sportsdirect.com @ St James' Park'.

Can't say I blame them, to be honest, but it got me thinking about other potentially inappropriate sponsorship deals. How about these for a start... (the links, if you need them, are safe. Ish)

Larry Flint eye hospital @ Moorfields (it'll turn you blind, you know)
The Richard Dawkins Discovery Institute
Bram Stoker's National Blood Service
The Melton Mowbray Mossad
Kwik Fit up @ the Old Bailey

Feel free to add more suggestions as comments. On the other hand, if this cheesy little article has robbed you of the will to live, may I commend to you another suggested link up - that of Nike and The Samaritans...

Open Letter To Alan Johnson

2009-10-31T20:28:00.005Z

I was almost irritated enough by this story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8335189.stm) to write a letter to my MP, but he's probably tied up naked in a wardrobe (bought on expenses) somewhere with an orange stuck in his mouth.

So I'll bung it in here instead, because it'll fill some space if nothing else.

Dear Mr. Johnson

Please excuse any poor typing in this letter - my keyboard has been partially disabled by a small blob of Lebanese Hashish that fell from a Camberwell Carrot I was constructing last week. Obviously I tried to suck it out (waste not want not), but I just ended up with a choking mouthful of pocket-fluff, which is weird, because this keyboard doesn’t fit in my pocket.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on your sacking of Professor Nutt, the science expert dude you appointed to advise the government (God rot its socks) on the subject of recreational pharmaceuticals. That’s Druuuuugs to you sir. On the face of things, it would appear that Nutt is failing to live up to his name, while you, Johnson, are definitely living up to yours.

The thing is, Al; may I call you Al? Does it help if I let you call me Betty? Even if I’d rather not be your long lost Pal? (Apologies to Paul Simon). The thing is, what you have in the shape of old Nutter, is an expert. That’s someone who knows more about something than you do (I suspect there’s a lot of people who fit that bill). Now, old Nutt, he says - if I may paraphrase - that Bob Hope’s less dangerous than fags and booze. He’s probably got a point, ‘cos that’s his job, you see. (Personally, I’d rather take Bob Hope on a road trip than Phillip Morris and Johnnie Walker.) And what you wrote to him is “I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy”. There, my old fruit, we agree. But that may be as far as it goes.

Lemme ask you a question, Al. Has it occurred to you that the reason there’s a mismatch between policy and scientific advice, is because the policy’s a bit Pete Tong? Eh?

The rumour we are seeing round these parts (these parts being anywhere outside the House of Commons) is that Golden - I’m sorry, I mean Gordon, Brown is neither a Smoker nor a Midnight Toker, but may well be a Joker. Let’s face it, an unelected prime minister’s gotta be having a bit of a chortle, hasn’t he?

Isn’t it about time you lot stopped pandering to popular opinion, or enforcing your own toffee-nosed holier-than-thou views on the general public just because you can? Is that just wishful thinking on my part? You can’t keep banning shit just because you, personally, don’t like it. Handguns, Fox Hunting; relatively harmless dope… Where’s it going to end? You keep messing with people’s lives on the flimsiest of pretexts for the odd vote here or there (which you clearly don’t need, see Golden Brown’s unelected status) or just because it feels good. I might not like these things either (nobody asked me), but chat with the experts and you’ll get a majority opinion that many of your banning measures (a) are based on false pretexts and (b) wont address the problems in any event.

Besides which, can’t we please have some ‘government lite’ for a while? Minimal interference in our daily lives? That might even buy you some votes! Have a read of my old pal Niccolo Machiavelli’s masterwork. He asks the question whether a prince (and I do you more service than you deserve by comparing you lot to a prince) does better by being loved or feared. The government’s recent actions mean that’ its neither loved nor feared; just laughed at, distrusted and despised.

Credit the populace with some intelligence, and treat us with some respect. We don’t expect you to always tell us the truth, you’re politicians so that would go against the grain. But when everyone can see you’re taking the piss, that’s irritating. Listen to your experts. And remember, if you’ve bought a dog, then stop trying to chase the postman yourself (when they aren’t on strike because you’ve screwed up the Post Office that is).

Anyway, my ride to the pub’s due any minute, and I’m off for a pint to wash that bloody fluff down. While it’s still legal.

Rhymes with Brindle

2009-10-28T21:30:00.000Z

Last week was a momentous one for the avaricious consumer within me - I got hold of a 'toy' I've been lusting after for ages, yet have been denied on the unfortunate ground of geographical disadvantage.

I finally got my mitts on an Amazon Kindle which, until last Monday's release of the 'international' version, was only available to folks living in the US. For the uninitiated (heavens, where have you been?) the Kindle is an e-reader - a dedicated device that stores and displays digital, downloadable versions of regular books. Its pencil-thin 14x21cm frame can hold the equivalent of up to 1500 books - enough to keep the most voracious reader occupied for a little while.

Despite the fact that I am a compulsive gadget buyer and will surely die should I not continue to amass an ever growing collection of technically advanced yet potentially useless gewgaws, I always make some attempt to justify my purchases. Sometimes that can be quite a tortuous process resulting in a complex excuse, I mean justification, which would be quite a challenge for even the most credulous of us to accept as realistic.

This time, though, justification was an absolute doddle: the only thing I buy more of than gadgets and gizmos is books. Be they paperbacks, hardbacks, fact, fiction or fantasy I must have a ready supply of things to read around me. Work colleagues will attest to the regular deliveries from Amazon, and Mrs Grumbler will confirm that, in extremis, I will resort to reading the nutritional information panels on breakfast cereal packets if there's really nothing else to hand.

And don't ask me to part with a book once Ive bought it - dear me no. I'd rather give away the children (there is no truth in the rumour that I'd actually like to do that). So, there are, as a result, books all over Grumbler Towers - a situation which drives the good lady wife to distraction and threatens to cause friction in our otherwise happy existance. Now there's finally a gadget (and a very pretty one at that) which stores books! How fantastic is that? Even 'er indoors likes it despite the fact that I'll probably never let it out of my sight!

So what's this particular marital aid like, and will I go blind if I use it too much? Here it is, on the left. I've already quoted the size, in case you think that size is an important characteristic. It weighs about the same as, well, a book really. And the screen's a particularly nice 'electric-paper' thingy that shouldn't be (and hasn't so far been) a cause of any eye strain. In regular operation you can hold it in either hand, which is a relief if you get a tired wrist. And there's a handy text-to-speech format which is almost like someone else doing it for you. I've got to say that I absolutely love it and I just can't get enough! (Am I stretching the marital aid joke too far?)

Now, if you want one of these - and you should want one - there may be a couple of things with knowing.

At present, you have to buy it via the Amazon US website where it's advertised at $259 (it was twenty bucks more than that, but the price was reduced days after release and - get this - Amazon sent us early adopters a refund!) But then you need to add shipping - which is in the order of $20, and excise duty - another $45 for the customs men, damn their eyes! Of course, if you happen to be in the US for a visit, you can save quite a bit of this.

Now, once you have the device, it needs to be registered. If you've bought it for yourself, this will already have been done for you. This associates it with your Amazon account (where else would you get the books to put on it) and also sets the 'country' for the device. Since my 'main' Amazon account address is based in the UK, so was my country set. This is important!

Amazon's goal is to have every book it sells available on the Kindle. In practice, there are about 350,000 on the US Kindle bookstore, and 290,000 on the UK one. This really shouldn't present a problem - or so I thought at the time. After all, they're gonna put the popular ones on there first, arent they? As long as you aren't after the Siberian edition of the 1968 Toenail-clipping Collector's Almanac youre gonna be golden, right? Wrong, actually.

Now, my reading tastes might be eclectic - the first book I searched for was 'The Fourth Bear' by Jasper Fforde, having just been lent (and hugely enjoyed) its prequel 'The Big Over-Easy' in paperback. No luck. OK, so I'll try the greatest living author - lets look for anything by Sir Terry Pratchett. Nope, nothing, nada. There was a book about the great man, but nothing by him. OK, lets aim for a classic then - how about Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation', my own dead tree copy having sadly shed its pages, lost its cover, and been regretfully consigned to the recycling bin some months ago. No. That's not there either. I tried a few more, my heart sinking with each fruitless search. Had I finally got my hands on the kindle, only to have nothing to read? Oh cruel, cruel irony.

Still, I'm nothing if not resourceful - I'd had the Kindle delivered to the US, I was in the US at the time, so I set the beast up to think of itself as belonging to the land of the free. Nothing wrong with that, is there? It's pretty easy to do this, by the way. Just use a US 'delivery address'. If you wanna try that on iTunes you'll find it a lot harder, because that system uses your credit card address - whatever you try. Now, let's go book buying again, shall we? This time, everything I searched for is on the store. My guess is that the UK store will catch up with the US one soon, and when that happens I can go 'legit' again.

There are other implications of letting the Kindle think its US based. For one, now that I'm back home in Blighty, buying a book and having it delivered 'wirelessly' (the Kindle makes use of the 3G mobile phone networks) incurs a roaming charge of $1.99 on top of the book price. Of course, you can avoid that by downloading to a computer then USB transferring, but where's the fun in that, eh?

The other twist involves our old friends the pirates, I mean customs and excise, again. Dead tree books are exempt from Value Added Tax - I assume because they are 'food for the brain'. Not so digital books - is that not silly? Anyway, the upshot is that technically, I'm rooking the VAT-man for about a quid every time I buy a book while sitting at home. I don't *think* they'll hunt me down like a dog, but if they do, Ive got the two quid I owe them here in a jar.

I will doubtless discover more oddities, and I might note them down here. I've had to resort to a little trickery to get the Kindle to play nice, but I'm still rating it nine out of ten for now...

Oh yeah. Brindle... refers to the colouring of a horse. Or cow. Or dog. Not Kindles though - they can be any colour you like, as long as its white...

The Long Way Found

2009-10-10T21:51:00.003+01:00

Last month, my pal Bob the B'stard and I toured the UK on motorbikes, taking in John O'Groats and Land's End on the way. It took us just over a week, and was rather good fun.

If you'd like to read about our adventures then you're in luck, the Grumbler has spilled the beans, told the secrets, and gossiped the gossip in mini-book form! You can download this short pictorial account here in PDF form.

(For those who don't want a 16Meg download, there's a web version - but it really doesn't match up to the loving care put into the PDF!)

Byte Night, Thames Valley Park, 2nd Oct 2009

2009-10-03T20:33:00.006+01:00

Last night I had the honour of sleeping outside the offices of my illustrious employer in Reading. I'll spare the usual jokes and sarcasm, because this was all about Byte Night.

For the uninitiated, Byte Night is a yearly occurrence where a bunch of IT professionals basically give up the comforts of home and bed for a night in order to raise money for and better understand the plight of homeless children. The monies raised go to a charity called Action for Children, and the understanding gained, well, that's right here. Hopefully I can convey a little of it to you...

Those of us taking part (about 150 in Thames Valley Park this year) have been raising sponsorship money over the past few weeks and last night we all gathered in one of the Oracle buildings for the evening. The format was pretty simple - registration for the event, some speeches, some food, a fundraising raffle and an auction before heading outside to bed down under the clouds. Since I've not done this before, many of the things we were told were news to me, and Ive still got a bit of a lump in my throat.

What sort of kids end up in care, or on the streets? Troublemakers, misfits and junkies, right? No - dead wrong. Example stories we were told of cases typical of those in which Action for Children find themselves involved:

1) A teenage boy, sleeping rough on the streets. His parent were seperated, and living at his Mum's house had become impossible for him, since there were only two bedrooms and he has a younger brother and sister. He'd tried staying with his Dad, but his Dad's hooked on smack, so its not the nicest of places, with junkies in and out all day. He'd stayed with one of his Dad's 'straighter' pals for a while, but that hadn't worked out, and he was on the street. Without Action for Children's intervention he'd probably still be there, but they managed to help him find somewhere to live, set him up, and start him out with a job. A chance of a normal life.

2) A teenage girl, also sleeping rough. Every Friday, her Dad and Uncle went drinking. When they came home, her uncle would sexually abuse her. This had been going on for years (it started when she was 13) by the time she decided that living rough on the streets was better that what she had to suffer at home. Her Mum had known the abuse was going on - she was certain, because "when I cried, Mum would turn the TV up so she couldn't hear me"...

3) Sometimes the charity can get involved before a Kid hits the streets - perhaps communication has broken down at home, there are arguments, maybe more. Action for Children can often mediate, counsel, generally get things back on track before they get as bad as they can get...

33% of the kids who've been driven to live rough on the streets will attempt suicide. One kid in every three.

So its pretty desperate, isn't it? But, there are always some sad and desperate cases, aren't there? Surely there cant be that many of them? What's the scale of the problem?Well, according to a survey in the UK conducted two years ago, there were 75,000 kids living rough on the streets, and every single one of them will have had a story like those Ive just told you.

I wouldn't say I'd been particularly complacent about the whole issue - I'd read a little of the background before I signed up, and I'd spoken to a few people, but its weird how last night kind of concentrated the mind and helped me to understand why I was really doing this...

At about eleven, we were all shepherded outside. I'd had a vague picture in my mind of being left to find somewhere to huddle on the path round the building, but were were all to sleep on a grassy patch at that back which, in sunnier days, serves as a BBQ area. And let me be clear that the organisers weren't taking any chances with us - we were supplied with groundsheets, bivvy bags, fashionable(!) and warm hats and there would be a constant supply of hot drinks available all night (many decide they'd prefer wine and beer which they'd thoughtfully brought along in their packs). And, if any of us were to feel 'poorly' there were volunteer medical staff on duty. Clearly, none of this is on hand to the kids we're trying to help here but, even so, I still felt a certain amount of trepidation and I wasn't the only one!

Yes, I did get some sleep - about four hours. I woke at about six, gritty eyed and disoriented to discover that breakfast in the form of hot tea and bacon rolls was laid on. Another thing you don't get after a night in a box under Waterloo bridge.

And then, of course, I could drive home, have a hot bath, and get another couple of hours shut-eye in my own bed, if I had a mind to. So what has all this acheived, then?

Well, I've certainly got a new found appreciation of what it must mean to have to sleep rough, rather than to choose to experience a watered down version (paradoxically it would have been more realistic if we had been watered down, but the rain stayed away). But most important of all is not what I did, but what everyone who sponsored me to go through with it has done. Together, we have raised GBP 1700 as I write this. If you want to see what Action for Children do with the money they raise, then look here, but I can tell you that 1700 quid could pay to help that young lad I wrote about set up home for the first time, keep the doors of an emergency drop-in centre open for a week so the poor girl in the story, and many others like her can get a little respite and still leave enough left over for help for that final kid we wrote about to prevent him from being taken into care or hitting the streets himself. And with that one in three attempting suicide, between us we might actually have saved a life here, but of course we'll never know.

So I'm hugely grateful to everyone who has sponsored me, and fit to burst with pride at having such a fantastic, generous and caring bunch of friends and family. And if there's anyone reading this who hasn't sponsored a byte night sleeper this year, then the donations page will be open right through December.

Quite simply, I want to thank you, you're all fantastic.

Byte Night Update - 13 August

2009-08-14T22:14:00.004+01:00

Well, a week into fundraising and we are nearly halfway to the total... what a generous lot! Of course, as I get nearer the target, I'll move the goalposts. Main reasons for that:

I'll probably have to move them anyway - If I've got Rowley with me he's likely to wee on them
Without casting any aspersions on what my illustrious employer asks me to do on a regular basis, I've got no chance of hitting the target if its not moving

Click on the inexpertly doctored picture to the left if you feel a burning desire to visit the donation page...

Preparing for my retirement?

2009-08-06T20:40:00.003+01:00

You know, you've gotta love the IT industry.

No, I mean it quite literally, if you don't love the folks I work for, they send the boys round to "do" you...

Actually, its not so bad, they're a pretty good bunch, and they train us for all manner of life's little wrinkles. Management training, presentation skills, data privacy, you name it, there's a course for it.

This new one's a humdinger though! Mindful of the credit crunch and the likely effect on our pension schemes, they're giving us the opportunity to sleep rough outside the office so we know what's waiting for us when "gold watch" day comes!

If you don't beleive me, then check this out... Oh, but before you do go over there, have a listen to my pal Dudley Saunders, and have a think about 'unslapping' a child - that'll get you in the mood I need you in when you get to my site... ... and thanks, in advance...

Now what?

2009-06-20T18:07:00.002+01:00

Yes, it's been a while and no, I havent given up blogging - or podcasting for that matter, but I am on a bit of a go slow. Comes of being a busy lad at work, and having - if I may be frank - too many hobbies.

On which subject... I'm planning a bit of a motorbike tour later in the year (with luck), so I thought that might be a worthy subject for a blog all of its own...

Interested? Take a look at The Grumbly B'stard Tour...

Taking the fear out of project plans

2009-03-25T20:00:00.001Z

I've recently had quite a lot more involvement in project planning exercises than I have in the past, and I've been struck by the fear that a deadline inspires in people. Frankly, being afraid doesn't help much, so Ive been seeking ways of reducing this irrational, date inspired terror.

Whether I'm considering things that people are chasing me for, or I'm talking to people who owe me something on a given date, one thing is becoming quite clear... The amount of work outstanding is almost irrelevant - what scares people is knowing that the due date is rapidly and inexorably approaching.

I think I have the ultimate solution... Its as simple as renaming the months - probably on a regular basis. That way, its gonna be much less obvious that your boss needs that great big project all wrapped up on his or her desk in a mere five weeks, and thus, the fear goes away.

With some fanfare, then, here is my list of suggested month names:

Plimsoll, Bungalow, Trumpton, Horseapple, Hobbit, Spam, Wimbledon, Carrot, Nutter, Tweak, Frotter and Minge.

As an aide-memoire, here's the updated version of several old and well loved rhymes...

Thirty days hath Nutter,
Horseapple, Spam, and Frotter;
Of twenty-eight there is but one,
And all the rest have thirty-one.

Remember, remember the fifth of Frott.
Gunpowder, treason and plot...

And finally...

'The Best Month to Marry'
(Traditional Rhyme UK)

'Married in Plimsoll's hoar and rime,
Sweaty and smelly before your time.
Married in Bungalow's sleepy weather,
No stairs to tread in time together.
Married when Trumpton winds shrill and roar,
Your home will be on a puppet shore.
Married beneath Horseapple's changing skies,
A chequered path before you lies.
Married when bees over Hobbit blossom flit,
Strangers around your board will sit.
Married in the month of roses-Spam,
You're Up the Duff, go buy a pram.
Married in Wimbledon with flowers ablaze,
Tennis on TV for days and days.
Married in Carrot's heat and drowse,
You'll see in the dark your chosen spouse.
Married in Nutter's golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.
Married when leaves in Tweak do thin,
You'll wish you'd stayed living in blissful sin.
Married in veils of Frotter mist,
Fortune your wedding ring has kissed.
Married in days of cheery Minge,
What an excuse for a big beery binge.'

Anti-Aging Excuses, #34

2009-03-10T13:10:00.002Z

I'm not old and these arent wrinkles.

My face is ribbed, for extra pleasure...

The Winalot Diet

2009-02-06T15:46:00.002Z

OK, this isnt 'mine', but it was sent to me by my good freind Louis, and it needs a wider audience! Though I do have 2 dogs, and I wish I had said it!!!

A real story by a Man who was standing in a queue in Tescos.........

I have 2 dogs & I was buying a large bag of Winalot in Tesco and was standing in the queue at the till.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Winalot Diet again, although I probably shouldn't becauseI'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care wardwith tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and the way that it works is to load your trouser pockets with Winalot nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the queue was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned.

I told her no, it was because I'd been sitting in the road licking my nuts and a car hit me...

Helping with Homework

2009-01-25T20:40:00.007Z

The Grumblettes are currently both at college, working on an introductory course. They've recently been given an assignment to write "a report". The assignment guidelines are quite detailed, laying out exactly what's expected of them. As usual, though, there's quite a gap between the the abstract explanations of the college tutor, and what he or she is actually trying to convey.

Mrs Grumbler requested that I help, so I knocked up a quick example which, she says, I should publish. Since I know when to do as I'm told... Here it is. If anyone else has observed similar behaviour, or resorted to the same approach, I'd love to learn about it... (That means, leave comments please)...

Update: 28 January. Clearly hacked off with being reviled by the 'junior workers' the dishwasher itself has gone on strike, claiming to have triggered its 'leak prevention system'. This has precipitated a call to 'appliance repair man', who will arrive in his souped up Transit Van on Friday. Its also raised the question, why doesnt the UK Government have a leak prevention system?

Dishwasher Behaviour Report

Introduction

Figure 1: AEG Dishwasher

This report describes a number of behaviour patterns displayed by the junior workforce at “Grumbler Towers” and observed by the Senior Management after the workforce has been requested to Empty and Refill the Dishwasher. One specific behaviour will be analysed in detail, and the implications of a second behaviour will be discussed, prior to making a conclusion based on the effects of all of the behaviours.

Observed behaviours

OK
This is a desirable but rare behaviour. When exhibited, the junior worker will complete the task properly, promptly and without complaint.

I Hate the Stupid Dishwasher
This particular behaviour is an expression of dissent. Often, it merely takes the form of a grumble, but it may also be followed by a second behaviour and will then usually result in non-cooperation.

It’s Not My Turn (AKA I Did It Last Time)
The junior workforce consists of two individuals. Both are keen to ensure that one does no more work than the other. Sometimes the statement may be based on truth, and at other times it may simply be a preface to non cooperation.

They Aren’t My Dishes
This statement of the blindingly obvious is presumably an attempt to justify non-cooperation. As with all of the other behaviours, it is utterly irrelevant, and futile.

I’ll Do It Tomorrow
On the face of it, this may actually be a genuine attempt to put an unpalatable task off until a later date. However, if the request to defer the activity is granted, it often results in no-cooperation in the morning, especially if no reminder is issued. If the worker is questioned as to the reasons for failure to execute the task as agreed, it will often respond with “Forgot”.

Detailed Analysis of: It’s Not My Turn
The objective of this behaviour is to avoid the task by having it assigned to an alternate resource. This is usually a junior worker, but on occasion a management resource will be called upon to perform this individual contributor task.

As discussed above, the behaviour may indeed be based on fact – sometimes a worker is requested to perform the task on successive occasions. More often, however, this is an unsophisticated attempt to avoid work.

Management has attempted, with various degrees of success, to discourage this behaviour by assigning set days to perform the task, or by posting a written rota. Neither solution has ever worked satisfactorily for any extended period of time.

Implications of: They Aren’t My Dishes
Recent over-use of this excuse led to an alternative strategy by a member of the management team. Rather than attempt to refute a substantively correct, but nonetheless irrelevant statement, the workers were invited to clean their own dishes, immediately following any meal, and by hand (reference, telephone conversation during January between management team, one of whom was at the Headquarters location, and the other travelling on business in the USA).

This approach was highly effective, since it brought home that there are indeed less enjoyable ways of treating dishes than the requested dishwasher related activity.

Conclusion
Each of the behaviours listed, with the exception of “OK”, is exhibited with the sole aim of avoiding the dishwasher related task – at the expense of another party. All are irrelevant, since the task needs to be done, and all are counterproductive since they use more time and energy than actually completing the task without complaint. The fact that the junior workers are fully aware of this simply serves to make the behaviours utterly bewildering to the management team.

Reference List
Figure 1: AEG 60780 Dishwasher – Amazon.co.uk.
Telephone Conversation between Management team, January, 2009.

Offensiveness, philosophical musings...

2009-01-11T13:06:00.004Z

Preface: This article contains some words. It is not my intention to cause offense to anyone having actually used 'words', but I found it very difficult to express myself without doing so. Er, sorry.

Note (16-Feb): Quite a few comments on this one.. not entirely a surprise, to be honest. Some, I have rejected, so in case anyone is wondering where their comment is, here's the guidelines I've been sticking to:
1) Some comments have been racist. That not what I was trying to do, so they wont get published.
2) Some comments were offensive towards an individual. Oddly, not to me, but to other people who have commented.
3) Common to both of the above, some comments have been anonymous. If a commenter wishes to take a pop at me, or one of the other folks that have commented here, they can damned well identify themselves to me. Contentious is OK, Anonymous is ok, but its either or, not both. My blog. My rules. OK?

Further oddness. Someone (anonymous) picked up on my Enid Blyton comments - shortly before Carol Thatcher got herself into hot water... Note the BBC's reasoning for her removal froma TV show - not because of what she said, but becuase they didnt like her apology. I'm not sure if this actually proves anything, other that I was right, this whole business is a minefield. (NB, no offence to mines is intended in this statement).

Good ole Prince Hal is up to his protuberant lug-oles in hot water again (must be a slow news day) for having (quite inadvisedly) referred to one of his colleagues (a gentleman from Pakistan) as a "Paki". Actually, that wasn't all he said, but its this particular word which is relevant to the thought which popped into my head while watching the item on the news this morning.

Now, the thought is this - If it is indeed offensive to refer to a Pakistani as a Paki, to the extent that the BBC feels it necessary to have a representative of said nationality on breakfast TV to debate the issue, can we assume that the next time someone calls me (note, I was born in the United Kingdom and am therefore British) a Brit, then I get to dress up as John Bull and get all pouty on TV?

The third in line to the throne (this is something Harry and I have in common - I often have to queue for the bathroom too) maintains that he had not intended to cause offense. Language, however, remains a minefield, with words that are considered perfectly innocent one day turning taboo overnight. If you don't believe me, go and dig up Enid Blyton and see what she has to say.

Finally, because I like to leave you with a disturbing mental image whenever I can, I mus pose this question. If Harry had called his mate a "Wanker", would the BBC have interviewed a short sighted gentleman carrying a copy of "Reader's Wives" magazine and a box of tissues?

TTFN,
Grumbler...

Is Bad Poetry Hereditary?

2008-12-10T18:00:00.000Z

I have a guilty secret. Well, to be honest, I have quite a lot of guilty secrets, but only one I'm going to ramble about here - there is, after all, a limit to how much of my dirty laundry I want to wash in public.

I have begun to write bad poetry.

Strictly speaking, this isn't an intention to write bad poetry, just poetry. But bad is the result.

For some time, Ive made an occasional habit of answering the long-suffering Mrs Grumbler in rhyme. The first time was an accident, but I discovered that it annoyed her and, well... There's a challenge in being able to respond to a question like "Do you want a cup of tea" with an instantaneous sonnet, and the little 'frisson' of excitement while waiting to find out whether I have misjudged the current lie of the land and am about to wear said cuppa, rather than consume it. So far Ive been lucky, and have not had any need to retire, liberally moistened with steaming Darjeeling, for a change of apparel.

Things took an interesting turn in recent days when I composed a ditty, in Iambic Pentameter, offering to fetch some Christmas beer from a local brewery for my Friends and colleagues in the office. The resulting verse is truly, shockingly appalling - so much so that I shan't reproduce it here. This missive isn't meant to be an opportunity for me to ape the great William McGonagall, but rather the cause and effects behind this current dalliance.

The fact is that the offending ode plumbs depths which would make even Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz wince which has led me to speculate on whether there is in fact some extra-terrestrial makeup in my DNA. After reading the vicious verse to my pal Andy (who sits close to my office and therefore plays, unwittingly and uncompensated, the part of my resident, on-call shrink) I told him about my theory that I was, perhaps, part Alien.

Frankly, Andy pooh-pooh'ed the idea, telling me not to be so silly. How, he reasoned, could I be part alien when (a) I am not green and (b) I have never knowingly consumed a live rat. We've both watched a lot of TV, so we know that these two things are inherent characteristics of any martian or other non-earthperson. That's one of the things I really appreciate about Andy - while I might harbour quite ridiculous concepts, he always has a much better grasp of reality. Closer to the ground, if you like.

So, I'm back to the drawing board, in a manner of speaking. Carrying around a stump of pencil and a small notepad in my back pocket in case I'm struck by a stray piece of inspiration. The next bad poem might not be a result of my ancestry. But it's certainly in my jeans.

Fat.

2008-12-03T20:34:00.004Z

Sylph-like is an adjective rarely applied (other than with heavy irony, or while I have been temporarily located in Florida, USA) to your Grumbler. Even so, it's become apparent that my manly physique has, in recent times, begun to exhibit characteristics more traditionally associated with the better fed strata of our society.

You may appreciate that I greet this realisation with the same dismay previously reserved for the discovery that one of the cats has seen fit to gift me with half a dead mouse in my left-foot carpet slipper. (One of our dogs has eaten the right-foot slipper - either as a form of dietary protest, or some utterly misdirected expression of adoration. Personally, I have never found the consumption of garments belonging to an objet d'amour to be a reliable declaration of infatuation. My advice, once you've ripped your chosen article of clothing off the wearer using nothing but your teeth, stop while you're ahead.)

The rib-cage of a field mouse, incidentally, is a very good fit on the second toe of my left foot. A useful fact that I shall file away should I ever take up the business of producing costume jewelery for the S&M/Goth/Foot-fetishist community.

My burgeoning rotundity is as welcome as a trouser cough in an Extra-Vehicular-Activity suit, and has crept up on me in much the same contemptibly surreptitious fashion that I imagine a a low-earth-orbit fart would employ.

It's quite evidently been a gradual process, and subject to a good deal of self-delusion. I've been more than comfortable assuming that our new tumble dryer bears sole responsibility for the fact that my heavyweight cotton T-shirts now stretch so thin across my abdomen that they take on a disturbing transparency more commonly associated with expensive fashion garments targeted at the well-to-do metrosexual.

I've been able to rationalise the tightness of my belt as 'leather shrinkage' - a direct result of the fact that I was recently rained upon, a common occurrence in these geographical parts. As for the bathroom scales, don't they all over-read when the battery gets low?

I've even been capable of believing that when someone shouts "Oi Fatty!" in my general direction when there is no-one else to be seen is attributable to my failing eyesight. (Odd, isn't it - more comfortable with incipient myopia than obesity?).

I suppose that the final straw came the other day whilst I was crossing the road. (I wouldn't usually do that, but I suffer from a rare condition known as Alcoholic Constipation. Basically, I have extreme difficulty in passing a pub.) An elderly lady driving a Mitsubastard Dungbeetle or somesuch equally execrable far-eastern economy-microcar shot out of a previously un-noticed side road and bore down upon me at speeds that must have been approaching twelve miles an hour.

I don't mind admitting that for quite a long while I thought I was a goner - proof if it were needed that a low speed traffic incident is a lot more frightening than a fast one. But then she stopped, looked right, and proceeded to drive round me, 180 degrees, and back the way she came. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the silly moo thought I was a mini-roundabout.

Oooh, the ignominy of it.

Its not that I have anything against street-furniture of this type. Some of my best friends are traffic islands. But lets face it, this isn't the time of year for that kind of career change. Its cold enough to freeze one's bollards off out there.

There's nothing for it, I'm going to have to go on a diet. Otherwise the next time you see me the town council will have stuck a Christmas tree on my head, and I'll be surrounded by boy-scouts singing "Away in a Manger", and I've always hated that one.

"U" Gotta be kidding

2008-10-17T18:21:00.005+01:00

At the very core the Grumbler is, of course, little more than a loose collection of generalisations, prejudices and bizarre compulsions wrapped up in a loose bag of skin with just enough spare room for the occasional beer and curry to be added. Same as any bloke I suppose.

This doesn't automatically make for a bad fellow (my Mum told me that, so it must be true) but it does need some work to ensure a positive result. Happily, most of these attributes can be disguised as the kind of eccentricities for which 'the English' are justly famous. Of course, great care must be taken to ensure that one remains at the correct end of a scale of 'unusualness' which stretches from Peter Sellers to Peter Sutcliffe, although maintaining the tantalising promise of being prepared to operate at either extreme can give one an incredible advantage in negotiations.

In today's character defect under the microscope session, we will concentrate on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as manifested in the form of extreme grammatical pedantry. For example, my reaction to the greengrocers' apostrophe. This particular crime against humanity involve's the placement of an apostrophe where none is necessary. (Did you catch that one?) It takes its name from the fact that it's commonly seen on signs outside greengrocers' shops - such as "Potato's, twelvepence per bushel". To the disgust of the ladies in the Grumbler household who believe that there are more important things in life, I am rarely able to let one of these things pass without comment.

Of course, my high moral standing is fatally weakened by the fact that I am a little careless and thus, occasionally, I do tend to 'drop one' myself. I like to think of this as the literary equivalent of accidentally farting in church - a bit embarrassing if anyone notices. (Of course, being noticed farting in church on purpose, rather than embarrassing the offender, tends to lead to the sin of pride.) Anyway, I digress.

Now, I've never actually been one to stalk the streets with a bottle of correction fluid and a selection of marker pens, with the intention of altering apostophical atrocities. But an obsession with a related subject has recently been threatening to 'push me over the edge'...

...It's well known that English spelling differs, depending on whether one is resident in its birthplace, or the other side of the Atlantic. I've never really thought much about it before, but recently I have begun to suffer a series of agonising temptations to return the letter 'u' to its customary place in so many words in 'American English' from which it has been removed. For example, our cousins in the US have cruelly emasculated words like colour, flavour and labour in favour of alternatives that I can't bring myself to type.

This weird compulsion first manifested itself when replying to emails, but its become more frequent and harder to resist. Recently, in a bookshop in California, I was sitting skimming through an American edition of "Rogue Herries" by Hugh Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peculiar. I felt my hand creep, as if under the malevolent control of some invisible puppeteer, towards a (arguably) mis-spelled word with the clear intention of re-inserting the missing letter. Terrified, I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth, and infiltrated a place of medical practitionery to seek a diagnosis of my plight.

It turns out, much to my relief, that my malady is actually a reaction to too much 'processed' text. Apparently, if I start reading quite a bit more stuff that hasn't been messed about with - you know, words with the dirt left on, organic text, that kind of thing, it'll clear up quite nicely. Apparently, what I have is called "Irritable Vowel Syndrome" and it should clear up once I get enough literary roughage. "Why don't you try a little extra punctuation?" the doctor asked me. That, of course, was just seconds before I smacked him with one of the "Organic Cucumber's" I'd been forced to buy while arguing about grammar with the illiterate shopkeeper next-door and fled, screaming, into the night...

Credit crunch (again)

2008-10-09T09:00:00.003+01:00

Now, I don't usually just republish things on this blog, but I was just sent something by my good friend 'Chicken Jon' which was so good that 'I want to share it with you'.

(I learned, to my intense displeasure, while captive in an airport bus in Los Angeles, that the phrase "I have something I want to share with you" is often the preamble to a sales pitch delivered, on behalf of some crappy pyramid selling organisation, by someone with terminal halitosis and no personality. I suppose its better than being informed by a one night stand that you now have 'crabs', but not much. Anyway, this one, you will like... I promise).

A modern Aesop’s Fable.

Once upon a time...
in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.
The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.
The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.
While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once more there were monkeys everywhere.
Perhaps now you have a better understanding of how banking and the stock markets work!

Relativity as an excuse for tardiness

2008-10-03T21:09:00.005+01:00

How many times have you waited in all day - sometimes for several days in a row, for something to be delivered, only to feel that perhaps you could actually grow old and die before it actually arrives?

Or maybe you work in some computer related industry, and find yourself eagerly anticipating a particular piece of hardware or software which, the supplier tells you, will, with absolute certainty, be ready on schedule and within budget. It never is, is it?

Now, never mind the inconvenience of not actually having whatever it was you were waiting for in your eager hands (metaphorically speaking, obviously, if the item in question is a fridge) - no, what really 'does my head in' is how the cheeky bugger at the other end of the telephone line can so absolutely confidently trot out and assurance that 'it will be there on Wednesday' when he or she has demonstrably never once managed to hit a predicted time or date. Oh, and why are these people almost always called Keith?

You know they've no more chance of making it this time than you have of getting a decent bacon sandwich in a synagogue. And yet you could wire these people up to a full-on lie detector setup, you could attach elestricles to their tectrodes, kidnap their children and threaten to return them over a period of time in a series of minute parcels and you wouldn't get a blip. Their confidence is unshakable. How on earth can this be?

Well, the answer is obvious really. As Arthur Conan Doyle was overfond of declaiming "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? ".

They aren't lying to you. That's right, they're telling the truth.

And yet, the eagerly awaited gizmo, doodad, widget, gimmick or ethereal piece of intellectual copyright still fails to manifest itself. Paradoxical? No - let me explain.

Its all down to Einstein's theory of relativity, and something called the Twin Paradox (look it up in Wikipedia if you don't believe me). Put simply, if you take identical twins, stuff one of them into a rocket, and send it off quite a long way at speeds approaching that of light, then bring it back, the traveling twin will be younger than the one that stayed behind. Or to put it another way, the twin who's moving might have spent a week in the rocket, while the one that stayed behind has waited a year to be reunited with his sibling.

This has been proven, by the way, in a complicated experiment involving flying clocks. There's another proof to look for as well. When you accelerate an object close to the speed of light, you can pump immense amounts of energy into it with out it going any faster. In fact, the energy is turned into mass.

So what's happening is that the delivery man, or purveyor of technology is actually moving so fast to be sure of not disappointing you that they nearly reach light speed. In the process, they get quite a bit heavier than they were when they started.

When, eventually, a hugely fat individual turns up with what you've been waiting for, relativity has kicked in, they think they are on time, and you know they aren't. This also explains their child-like look of bewilderment and unjust hurt when you berate them for their tardiness.

So next time this happens to you, please don't give the guy a hard time. Tell him how much you appreciate his efforts, and give him a cup of tea.

OK, I have to go now, I have to take a mug of Lapsang souchong to 'Colossal Keith' in the office.

This has been a public service announcement issued by the Royal Association of Fat Lazy Buggers.

Dog training...

2008-09-25T13:19:00.001+01:00

So, tomorrow, at the grand old age of twentysomething (where something is a number larger than twenty) the Grumbler goes back to school. This has come as a surprise to a number of people, including the Grumbler himself.

You see, what’s really happening is that I’m taking Rowley (our four month old Golden Retriever) on a course of puppy training classes. This proves necessary as he has singularly failed to take on board the information in the book I bought him. I know that he’s digested the contents because I had to clean the results up from the kitchen floor the other day.

In my relatively simple world, taking the pup on a course equates to taking him to be trained. However, in reading up a little beforehand, all of the indications are that it’s the owners that are the target of the educators… This is just weird, for at least three reasons, namely:

1) It’s been a very long time since I last ran away with the single minded intention of impregnating every female I could get my paws on. (note, Im not saying I never tried this, just that I don’t any more)
2) I don’t make a habit of crapping in the kitchen. (I’d say I have never done this, but its conceivable that ‘mother Grumbler’, who has an outstandingly long memory for childhood misdemeanours, might disagree.)
3) Last time I was taken on a course, it was me that was trained, not the taxi driver who took me.

Still, I intend to keep my mind as open as Rowley keeps his bowels and so I shall embark on this course in an optimistic and resolute frame of mind. By the time Rowley and I are finished; one of us will walk to heel, sit, lie down and come on command. Mrs Grumbler thinks this is very funny.

Apart from refusing to walk under ladders; steering clear of black cats; obsessively counting magpies; throwing spilt salt over my left shoulder and touching something wooden just about every time I use the phrase “it should all be ok” in conversation, I am not a superstitious man. Ask anyone and, fingers crossed, they’ll confirm this. However, I can’t help wondering if the fact that I have just discovered, that the course location is one “Prat Hall”, is portentous.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Wiping a smile off someone's face.

2008-08-10T13:04:00.000+01:00

It's a funny thing, how we deal with stress at work.

Some people rant and rave, while others go quiet.
Some give up on their tasks, and others just get more determined.
Some will seek counseling, and others have more 'individual' approaches to coping...

I know quite a few people who vent their cube-rage on innocent fitness training equipment, clocking up countless miles in the air conditioned splendour of a building virtually next door to the office that causes the angst in the first place. (Hint, buy a bike, fellas, and get away from the damned place)...

One gentleman of my acquaintance who shall remain nameless (we shall, for convenience, refer to him as 'C' - this isnt a give away clue, my having referred to him as a 'gentleman' will already have put many people off the scent...) has a positively bizarre practice of rapidly clapping his hands together or against his crossed forearms. The rhythmic, fleshy slapping noises which result have caused many a raised eyebrow as unenlightened folk walk past his closed office door. Now, I don't know what it does for him, but watching the expressions on peoples' faces as they wonder what on earth he's up to makes the rest of us laugh and thus, this is actually a very effective stress reduction technique.

And then there's a lady I know who's office wall bears scars gouged by ricocheting staplers, paperweights and computer peripherals. Once again, there's an unintended positive side to this behaviour. If you want to know which track-ball pointing device can best survive instant deceleration from 70mph to 0, she can tell you. Show you, in fact. If you're going to wind her up, though, remember the rues of the golf range (and firearms range) - the safest place to be is behind her...

As you'd expect, I've got my own idiosyncratic approach to work related stress management. I like to imagine creative ways of freeing myself from the job which is causing the problem in the first place. Some are constructive, others less so, but all have remained (to date) mere exercises in thought, and therefore nothing to get me in to trouble (and come on, do you really want me to believe that you've never considered drowning your boss in a vat of Malmsey?)

Recent flights of imagination had me stocking the rest-rooms of our headquarters building (well, just the boys' ones, I'm not allowed in the girls' ones) with rolls of lavatory paper - every sheet of which bore the image of some individual (or indeed manager) who has caused me angst in recent times. Of course, this isn't a completely original idea... it was (maybe still is?) possible in the late '90s to obtain 'bog roll' with the face of Maggie Thatcher on every sheet. Utter genius.

Clearly this idea was too good to keep to myself, so I excitedly took myself off to chat to one of my good friends in the office. Conscious of the fact that this particular lady is no fan of the current president of the USA, I asked her to imagine this product with the grinning chimp-like fizzog of G-dubya proudly stamped between the perforations. To my surprise and disappointment, she frowned, and told me it was a terrible idea.

"Are you nuts?" she said in what I (correctly) took to be a rhetorical question "Shrubbie makes any mess he's involved in a lot worse than it was in the first place, and you want to put him on toilet paper?"

She was right, as it happens. and when I think about some of he other faces I'd imagined having printed up, well, nothing sticks to them either...

Back to the drawing board - I'm sure there'll be another daft happening to inspire me soon!

Experience which cannot be bought

2008-07-02T19:47:00.003+01:00

An acquaintance of mine is, at present, in the happy position of being able to recruit into his little team at work. Of course in these days of political correctness and rules on what you can and cannot put in a job advert he is a little restricted in what he can say.

For example, a lawyerly friend of mine was recently successfully prosecuted for discriminatory behaviour by a Vampire on the basis that, having read what he was not allowed to ask for, he simply stated "Individual required for busy law practice. Must have pulse."[1]

Anyway, there's always a silver lining, and in this case, the restrictions on what can be said prevent the employer from detailing the full horrors awaiting the successful applicant for this position. So the little white card with the job description was taped inside the global news-agent's window of the internet and, being rather vague, it has elicited several diverse resumes (or Curriculum Vitae as we like to call them in the old country).

One such CV from a fellow who we shall call Fred proudly announces that, in his current position, he has experience of bugger 3.2.

Version 3.2??? One can only imagine the press releases:

Bugger version 2.0 - sixteen new levels of difficulty!

Bugger version 3.0 - internet enabled - choose to play with the computer, your friends, or yourself!

Bugger version 3.2 - multi-player is here!

The problem here, of course, for all the (admittedly puerile) amusement this causes, the context of the resume clearly indicates that this is a software package of some sort. Now, I don't know about you, but when someone refers to a software package I've not heard of before, I look it up.

I wonder what will happen if I type 'bugger 3.2' into Google...

[1] This is not strictly true. If one was to bar entry to the legal profession on the basis that the applicant is 'undead' there wouldn't be any lawyers. But as an illustration, I'm sure you get my point.

An untrue history of King Henry VIII

2008-06-12T22:28:00.002+01:00

A bloke in the pub told me that you cant libel a dead person. This should test that theory.

King Henry the Eighth built the Tower of London in the fifteenth century as a residence for his wives. Now, hundreds of years later, the Tower is more of a museum than a residence and is where one can see the quite spectacular display of the ‘Crown Jewels’.

Modern day visitors to the Tower of London may see a suit of Armor said to have belonged to Henry, complete with an impressively large codpiece (designed, of course, to protect the ‘family jewels’ rather than the crown ones). Whilst it undoubtedly suited Henry to nurture a belief amongst the peasantry that he was blessed with a fearsomely proportioned todger, the rather more prosaic truth of the matter is that closer inspection of said codpiece (Later used as a model for the Dome of St Paul’s Cathedral by Leonardo DaVinci) reveals that it actually contains three packets of king-sized cigarette papers and a rolling machine.

What would the king be doing with such unusual smoking requisites? Well, by way of an interesting historical footnote it’s worth pointing out that Henry had earned his numerical adjunct not by virtue of having succeeded seven other likely lads of that name to the Kingship of England, but rather because of his habit of never buying more than an eighth-ounce of ‘Moroccan Black’ hashish from his longtime drugs supplier “Marrakesh” Pedro.

Drugs were not the only habit Henry acquired from Pedro – who was in fact the first polygamist of his acquaintance. Having asked Pedro why he had several wives Henry, who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, misinterpreted Pedro’s mumbled explanation regarding Moorish customs – as in “these potato crisps are moreish, you cant just have one can you?” The rest, obviously, is history (that is, after all, what we are talking about here). It’s well known that the king had six wives, but not quite as widely appreciated that the purpose of such a complicated matrimonial arrangement was so that he could have one wife for each day of the week. (While, as a deeply religious man, continuing to respect the Sabbath, of course.)

Contrary to popularly held belief (which espouses a theory based on the general disapproval of divorce by the church), it was this polygamy that was ultimately the cause of Henry’s excommunication from the Church of Rome by pope Clement (The successor to Julius, who had held the post for hundreds of years since escaping an assassination attempt whilst acting as Caesar in ancient Rome). Clement was in fact wildly jealous that Henry had so many wives, whilst he was forced by the constraints of his position to sit in the Vatican stationary cupboard with a borrowed copy of “Swiss Guards’ Naked Wives” and dream of what might have been or, if he was really lucky, to cuddle one of the nuns behind the bike-sheds in St Peter’s square when no-one was looking. Failing, quite spectacularly, to live up to his name (which means ‘merciful’) Clement simply cut Henry off.

Meanwhile, back in the Tower, as Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon might have been expected to be assigned to the first day of the week. However, her seniority allowed her to choose her day for warming the king’s bed and she settled on Wednesday since there was no EastEnders on the TV, and Saturday was her bingo night. This freed up Monday for Anne Boleyn, who was the second spouse, chronologically speaking. The remaining wives followed on successive days of the week as might be expected – with Jane Seymour staking Tuesday, Ann of Cleves claiming Thursday, Kathryn Howard holding Friday and Katherine Parr settling for Saturday.

There was a great deal of serendipity with this final appointment. Henry was a documented lover of sports and, as he grew older, like so many men before and since, he took up golf. Saturday was his golfing day, and he enjoyed nothing better on a Saturday than finishing a few holes on par. (Or if he was particularly lucky, under par.)

One might have expected Kathryn to have been Henry’s most favoured wife. However, this honour actually goes to Jane Seymour, since she produced an heir to the throne (later to be known as King Edward VI due to his uncanny resemblance to a potato). Unfortunately, it was customary for royal males of the time to be born in full suits of armor, and Jane was, understandably, never quite the same afterwards.

When considering Henry, we should not neglect his musical skills. He would sit for hours by an open window, idly stroking a lute (a small, but spiteful, animal related to the polecat) and is credited with having written the well-known song ‘Greensleeves’. Greensleeves earned its name because it was written during the summer, the king was a hay-fever sufferer, and the handkerchief was not a popular accessory until a hundred or so years later.

Several rather stodgy historical references suggest that it may have been a love song for Anne Boleyn, but in actual fact, it was composed under contract to a company manufacturing cheap telephone answering machines as a piece of generic hold music. Henry’s business acumen was as awful as his musical taste. The song itself is recognizably awful and the company which commissioned it went, quite deservedly, bankrupt. This was mainly due to the fact that the telephone itself was not invented for a further four hundred years and thus the market for answering machines was somewhat lacking at the time.

Henry died, from the ground upwards, in January 1547. He’d suffered a leg injury during a jousting match after which he’d become a bit of a bloater and had to be moved about by crane. The leg had turned gangrenous and ultimately carried him off at the age of 55, in the palace of Whitehall. Inexplicably, his last words are reported to have been “Monks! Monks! Monks!”

Approximately 100 years later, medical professionals were still arguing as to whether he had also suffered from Syphilis or Diabetes. This was entirely academic, there being no treatment for either at the time, and the rudimentary diagnosis being along the lines of “Starve ye the patient twixt the crowing of the cock and the setting of the sun. If he still be awake, ensure that ye shagge him notte, lest ye too suffer the pox”.

Word of the Week - Anemic

2008-05-12T15:05:00.003+01:00

Anemic: A 21st century, internet enabled Irishman.

Usage:
"Hello Paddy, Oi've not seen you digging the roads recently, to be sure!"
"That's right Seamus, Oi had to get an office job because the Dr told me Oi'm anemic."

To forestall complaints from my countrymen, I'd like to point out that I know how to spell Anaemic as well but the Us version is so much easier...

Shakespeare on a plane.

2008-04-21T04:06:00.003+01:00

Sitting on the third floor of my bungalow, which overlooks a magnificent natural harbour on the spectacular Buckinghamshire coastline, I am struck by the delightful realisation, while reading a Chinese biography of William Shakespeare (the celebrated Welsh pole-vaulter, and inventor of the first commercially successful flushing television), that it's not entirely necessary to be 'correct' in order to be considered amongst the greatest proponents of one's chosen field.

Mr Wm Shaksp himself, for example, has been known to sign his name in up-to eleven different ways (there is some conjecture as to whether all of the known signatures are genuine) proving, or at the very least suggesting, that he either couldn't spell consistently, or frankly didn't care to. Consensus has it that he was also an indifferent typist (a trait which he and I share).

The biography to which I have referred is written by the most excellent Bill Bryson[1], of whom I have been a dedicated fan for absolutely ages - some several years, in fact, before I'd ever heard of him.

Having read approximately three quarters of this book I am much gruntled by the fact that Shaky (as his friends almost certainly didn't refer to him) steadfastly refused to allow such trivial issues as geographical inaccuracy to bother him. Bryson points out that, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Bard of Avon has Prospero and Valentine set sail from Milan and Verona, even though both cities were a good few hours train journey from salt water in the 1600s.

Anachronisms probably didn't bother him either - given how easy it would have been for him to look things up on the internet to establish their temporal veracity. (For example, he seemed particularly unfazed by the presence of a 1960's police telephone box in his room during a recent episode of the BBC's Dr Who.)

And he positively revelled in neologism, an art in which he was clearly a master.

This is all most excellent news to me, and there's hope for me yet, it would seem. Why? Well...

I've a tendency to tell porkies - sometimes under artistic licence, but more often simply because I'm fundamentally dishonest. This is not a laudable trait and its particularly annoying to me that, while obdurate in their refusal to follow any good example I try and set them, my kids have picked up on the art of lying pointlessly with what is evidently some gusto.

I'm also a lazy fellow. For example, despite having only a sketchy appreciation of European Geography, I have taken Mr Bryson's assertions as to the landlocked nature of those two (Italian?) cities on faith. Mind you, it's not easy for me to check the facts because I am currently on an aeroplane (I lied about being upstairs in a bungalow - see the earlier reference to dishonesty) and the stewardess I just asked doesn't know either.

Finally, I have (as recorded elsewhere in this blog) been an accidental neologist myself for some time - and a very enjoyable practice it is, too. Pausing for a moment of introspection, I must now abandon my dislike of the word 'updation' (coined, according to urban legend, in the burgeoning technical industries of India). If I don't, then I'll be guilty of hypocrisy in the extreme by using words like 'confustion', and indeed going on to invent more new ones. Like this, for example: Fallacio: The unfortunately mistaken act of orally stimulating the wrong gentleman's wedding tackle.

Right, well, I appear to have been rabbiting on for a considerable time, and I want to get back to the book now‚ there's only a couple of hours until we land, and I wanna find out how it ends before we get to San Fransisco.

Time and weather permitting, I shall commit further offences against the written word whilst on my Californian odyssey. I'll bet you just can't wait, can you?

[1] Bill Bryson: Shakespeare. Wonder how long it took him to think THAT title up?

Scrobulous!

2008-04-15T17:45:00.008+01:00

I love words. Primarily in English, although other languages are fun too.

I like to write as well - although typing, it really has to be said, isn't my forte. Actually, what I originally typed there was that 'typing isn't my frote' which has an entirely different, although not entirely incorrect, meaning. This sort of proves my point.

Sometimes, my poor typing, when compounded by a lack of spell-checker, can get me into serious trouble. Imagine, if you will, the repercussions of missing the final 'o' from the sentence: I tried to talk to her but she was out for the count. Actually, even the linguistic airbag and seatbelt combo of the spell checker failed to save me on that one.

Happily, however, the results of my mistyping are frequently creative and sometimes informative. The best typos are those which look like they should mean something, but really aren't 'genuine' words. For example, it was in this way that I 'invented'[1] the word 'confustion' a good few years ago. At the time it didn't show up on any web searches but, more recently, it has appeared in the urban dictionary. Happily, the first definition attributed to it is pretty much exactly what I thought it should mean: a cross between confusion and frustration. (In which respect it adequately describes my day job.)

Some time later, a similar happy accident resulted in the apparent birth of the word 'scrobble'. Obviously, before 'laying claim' to it and giving it a meaning I had to Google it to see if it was already in use, but I thought it sounded like a friendly sort of word. The name of a over sized but amicable ginger cat, for example. Or maybe it should be a verb - some kind of well meaning, bumbling searching activity. As in, "She scrobbled in the depths of her handbag and managed to extract a mint humbug - miraculously still protected from the pocket-fluff that lived there by its rustling cellophane wrapper." You can imagine, then, my disappointed horror when the Google search threw this up:

Urban Dictionary: Scrobble
To scrobble is the action of shaving ones testicles with a rusty blade.

My nice friendly word has been hijacked to describe a bizarrely unpleasant activity. What would the neighbours have thought If I'd stood on the back doorstep of an evening calling in the cat... 'Scrobble! Scrobble! Din-dins!' Doesn't bear thinking about. I didn't bother to search any further, and certainly didn't click on the link.

Fast forward a couple of years to the point where the Grumbler is now a podcaster as well as a blogger and interested in all things to do with music. A friend recommended to me that I should check out last.fm as a source of legitimate music and inspiration. And indeed it is, but I nearly had heart failure when it advised me to download a piece of code which, it said, would scrobble my music collection! It brought to mind quite horrific images which I have spent weeks trying to forget, and frankly I don't think many of the artists would have reacted well to the prospect. Its doubtful that Ian Dury, for one, would have reacted positively to the idea that he attempt to deforest his family jewels with the aid of a tetanus encrusted pen-knife, and I really don't think its something Melissa Etheridge would take lying down. I'm not prepared to guess how Iggy Pop would view it, but there's always one dum-dum boy.

There are two possible morals to this story.

Either Last.fm should have been more careful with the naming of this practice,
or it really doesn't matter what someone else thinks a word means, as long as you know what you mean when you use it.

I strongly suspect that latter approach is how a lot of the people in the company I work for treat language - they will clumsily raid the craftsman's toolbox of language, and happily use an expensive chisel to undo a two cent screw. Bloody Philistines.

Still, if you cant beat 'em, join 'em. So you can hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't![2] Know what I mean?

[1] No, of course I didn't invent it. But I hadn't seen it before, and I couldn't find any use of it on Google at the time.
[2] With apologies to the great Douglas Adams who, being dead, probably doesn't give a toss.

ATM - A Telling Moment

2008-04-11T17:40:00.003+01:00

I recently had an unpleasant experience with an ATM. Not an awful experience, you understand, but neither pleasant nor, indeed, fruitful.

I'd stopped off on my way to work to collect some cash, stuck the card in, pressed all the right buttons and requested a few purple pictures of our dear Queen when, right out of the blue (or in this case, green) the machine displayed this message:

Your bank has not authorised this transaction

before going on to vigorously spit my card out with the sort of disgust that one might normally associate with, say, finding a short, course, curly, ginger hair in an otherwise inoffensive cream eclair.

Once I'd retrieved the card - which had been propelled past my ear at a phenomenal speed (I swear it was accompanied by a very small "sonic boom") I resolved to call my bank manager, almost immediately.

Fortunately, by scrambling under the seats of the car and sorting through the two years of debris that have collected there I had been able to salvage enough loose change to buy my breakfast (although I admit one of the coins was a funny green colour). Actually, I found half a Big Mac too, but it was cold. So, soon, I had settled down in the office with the regulatory pint of coffee and bacon buttie, and was on the phone to my bank manager.

Bank managers, eh? They're invariably portly, balding, bespectacled little men, with names like "Mainwaring", or "Grimsdale", trying to overcompensate for their lack of stature by nagging you ceaselessly about your overdraft; or they're pale grey shades who look half dead, exhibit no personality whatsoever, and smell of mothballs. Right?

Wrong actually. My bank manager is a very pleasant lady whom, for the sake of anonymity, we shall call Heather. Well, I say pleasant, but what I really mean, in the nicest possible way, is that she's a bit of a nutter. I'm sorry, Heather, if you're reading this, but it's true.

Allowing for a certain amount (quite a lot actually) of artistic license, the conversation went a bit like this.

...
"Look, its kind of embarrassing, I mean, I think I did everything right, but, well, nothing happened."
"That's OK, don't worry, let me have a look... There shouldn't be any problem, everything looks quite healthy really. Perhaps you should just try again?"

"I did. I waited a couple of minutes to calm down, because, well, I was upset. You see this hasn't ever happened to me before. Honestly. And then I tried again, and I was really careful in case I'd done it wrong somehow the first time, but, well, nothing happened. Again!"
"Hmmm, was there anything odd about the situation? There weren't any odd attachments?"

"Attachments?!? No..."

"Anyone watching you?"

"Oh come on! No! There's no way I'd do it when someone was watching!"
"Well, it was probably just a glitch, you know, one of those things... It happens to lots of guys. Try again and everything should be fine."

"Yes, but its never happened to me before, and what it it happens again?"
"Well, try not to worry about it, that wont help at all."

"That's easy for you to say. You're not the one it didn't happen to!"
"Well, maybe next time you could try a different one?"

"Isn't that a bit, well, promiscuous?"
"Nonsense! Thats what they're there for! Relax, have a glass of wine, try again. Even if you try two or three different ones, we'll still respect you in the morning."

"OK, I'll give it a go, and, if it happens again I suppose I'll just have to go into the branch and do it the old fashioned way..."
"That's the spirit! If all else fails you can always write a cheque!"
...

Well, if thats how much fun a conversation can be after a cash machine refuses me a hundred pounds, I cant wait 'till I'm turned down for a mortgage!

Coffin resale values?

2008-03-26T19:41:00.002Z

For reasons I won't go deeply into - beyond commenting that there seems to be a great deal of it about at the moment, I was having a Chat with Mrs Grumbler, her mother and her sister about death the other day.

It's odd, isn't it, that when the bony bloke with the scythe is expected to pay a call on someone you care about, you can still find things that are funny.

Where are you intending to spend eternity? Obviously, somewhere quiet is ideal, but where? Likely resting places for the ashes of our nearest and dearest included the sea (too much chance of being dragged up in a Spanish Trawlerman's net), outer space (already too crowded) and a jar on the mantle-piece from which you could forever imagine the nagging voice of an elderly relative complaining "It's bloody hot in here!" (ruled out by the still-living). Personally, for a guaranteed undisturbed eternity, I favour an urn placed behind a row of bottles of Alcohol-Free lager in any supermarket in the North East of England.

Then, we moved on to discussing appropriate music for a funeral service. The Lord's My Shepherd is very popular, I'm given to understand, but I have always rather fancied the idea of my mortal remains (some considerable time in the future) rolling away to the Stranglers' "No More Heroes". Pretentious, Moi? Apparently, the song which deceased persons request more than any other (presumably before the moment of their passing) is "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Nice.

Then we got on to coffins. Great big wooden boxes, lined with padded silk, polished to perfection, and adorned with more gleaming brasswork that the collected front doors of the Royal Crescent in Bath. All for the purpose of conveying the recently departed into the fiery maw of the crematorium furnace. What (as Ian Dury sang, but in an entirely different context) A Waste.

Clearly, eco-friendliness suggests, no, demands, that such squandering of resources be stopped. But how to replace it? No-one wants to go to their eternal rest in a plastic bag and, in any case, these will soon join the list of objects banned in the UK along with Handguns, Cigarettes, Recreational Pharmaceuticals and Parmesan Cheese[1] and thus it will be illegal to possess, consume or traffic in them. On the grounds of taste, we wont discuss the disadvantages of paper bags.

But why shouldn't coffins be re-used? Tip out the contents and deal with as appropriate, then bung an ad in the local free paper. Give as much information as possible, as some folk are going to be (unaccountably) particular about this.

"Coffin for sale. Three previous owners (occupants?) - all old ladies. Only ever used for visits to Church. Supporting documentation available"

Proving, ultimately, that it doesn't matter whether you're flogging a box, or a Bentley - its vitally important to maintain a Service History if you want to minimise depreciation.

[1] Wishful thinking on my part, unfortunately. Detestable stuff.

Help, I'm being stalked!

2008-03-03T19:05:00.003Z

I suppose it was inevitable that I'd irritate someone at some point, but I never expected it to be so soon in my career as a miserable-git-blogger!

I am, it seems, being stalked by a TXT messager... Her name's Siobhan and, if I had to guess (never having seen her), I'd say she's probably about 13 years old.

This all started on a Saturday a few weeks back when, while having a lunchtime pint with my father down at the pub, I received a message on my phone: "Heya howz u then". Now, quite apart from the atrocious spelling, I feel that this message is missing, at the least, a comma and a question mark. It also came from a number I didn't recognize, so I ignored it - for a while.

Once I had completed my filial socializing activities, I took myself off in my little red hairdresser's car, topless (I refer to the car's top, obviously, I have no intention of scaring anyone by exposing my own impressive set of moobs and besides which it was February and my raspberries would have frozen off). Remembering the message while driving home, I carefully located a place where it was safe to pull over, switch off engine and apply handbrake before getting the dog out of my sky and inquiring thusly in a suitable TXT idiom:

"I regret to inform that your number seems not to be in my directory. Pray tell, who are you?"

The reply came almost instantaneously:

"Who dis x".

Having blatantly ignored the question I put, and retorted instead with one of their own (also somewhat punctuationally deficient) I began to wonder if, perhaps, my mysterious correspondent was an American. However, I'm not at all sure that I have ever had a message adorned with a trailing kiss from any of my transatlantic friends.

"I am the person to whom you have just sent a text message." I retorted - staying remarkably cool in the face of provocation, I thought.

By return I received "How did u get my number". Things were becoming less opaque by the moment - I was clearly dealing with a Lack-wit. (In the same way that many Americans are unable to tell the difference, based on speech patterns, between the English and Australians, so a small but significant section of the English are often hard pressed to tell the difference - based solely on speech patterns - between an American and a Lack-wit. Should the penultimately identified individual be wearing a baseball cap backwards, there is actually no difference.)

"I have your number as an inevitable consequence of you initiating this exchange by virtue of having sent me a message."

"Dis is siobhan who r u x"

Evidently, if I was to get home before freezing to death by the side of the road, another tactic was required. So, I dialed the number and spoke to the confused individual at the end of the line - explaining the sequence of events, and advising her that she had, in fact, been sending messages to an incorrect number. Happy to have resolved the conundrum, I continued home, safe in the knowledge that I'd get no more incomprehensible messages. Mistake.

The messages have continued, and have been rather entertaining. Over a week or so they have included

"Howz u hun love ya xxxx bm4l xxx cya soon xxxxxxx".
"Nite x tb x"
"Hey wat u at tmb"
"Hi bbe how r u tmb x

I've actually had to find a 'teenage txt speak translator to even understand one or two. As a public service, here it is - type a confusing abbreviation in the box, and it'll do its best to enlighten you:

I do feel rather sad for the object of Siobhan's affection who clearly isn't getting all of his (or her) messages - so I have left her anther message to let her know...

Touch wood, all has been quiet since... though next time I get a message I'll send her this URL...

The VISTA Acroynm - Audience Participation

2008-03-03T17:04:00.003Z

OK, I'm not, in a million years, gonna 'dis' a large organization which has more lawyers than I've had hot dinners, but I did recently buy a new personal computer. Ive spent a little time (when I wasn't trying to get the godforsaken piece of cr*p to install and run a simple program) wondering how much more pleasurable my experience would have been if the unnamed organization diverted some of its lawyer-spend into obtaining a few top class Quality Assurance Engineers (or maybe even a couple of half-wits testing for an afternoon might make a difference).

You may feel that I'm, perhaps, a little upset by or that this posting is in some way inspired by the preceding admission on my part. I couldn't possibly confirm or deny such an assertion, should you make it...

Anyway, if we were to assume that the word VISTA is in fact an 'extended-extended-TLA'[1], what, in fact, could it be an acronym for? I shall start the ball rolling here, but plead for my readers to contribute by adding comments - the best of which I shall move into the main body of the post. Don't be shy, stick your name in the comment so I can 'attribute' correctly.

Verifiably Infuriating, System Trashed Absolutely
Violence Inducing Systematically Toxic Appliance (thanks PC!)
Venerially Infectious Sexually Transmitted Abhorrence
Vicar, I've Shagged The Altar-Boy
Very Important Software To Avoid
Vacuous, Inadequate, Substandard, Trashy Abomination
Viciously, I've Strangled The Authors
Victory! I've Switched To Apple!

Right, Over to you lot. Bring 'em on!

[1] extended-extended-Three-Letter-Acronym

Eurovision faux-pas

2008-02-26T10:08:00.003Z

In the wake of Ireland selecting Dustin the Turkey to represent them in this year's Eurovision Song Contest, several other countries are rumoured to be considering jumping on the bandwagon.

The UK are said to be looking to Gordon the Gopher

Norway are apparently relying on Noggin the Nog

Sources in Brussels, however, claim that there is no truth to the rumour that, due to a terrible misunderstanding, Belgium are planning on Choking the Chicken.

Revisited: Discarded Identity Management Strategy

2008-02-15T15:28:00.002Z

Too good to leave this out, really:

ISBN: International Standard Buttock Number.

ttfn.

Discarded Identity Management Strategy

2008-02-11T20:18:00.000Z

OK, I'm going to do it twice in one night, and for a man of my age I hope you appreciate that I'm putting myself out for you.

Still, I've had a bit of a rest so I should be all charged up for a bit more social intercourse[1] again now; and after all, I was only Bashing the Bishop earlier so that doesn't really count. Posting - I'm talking about posting here, I know how my reader's mind works (and yes, Rod, I deliberately put the apostrophe before the "s").

At lunchtime the lads and I had a parley which came close to the good old days of the curry-conversation - which was a regular occurrence during which a bunch of fellows would sit round a table and talk bollocks for an hour. Of course, it could only be close, because that tradition was mortally wounded when Podcaster joined the dark side of the business park.

Unfortunately, the inspiration for those rambling chats was directly proportional to the quality of food served up in the staff restaurant. When the comestibles started to taste like the afforementioned bollocks, the wit and wisdom just died a death. Today, we had a good meal.

Sparked by recent cases of identity theft, hospital baby swap horror stories and password management we discussed ways and means of people proving their bona fides - which might look like Polari, but is actually Latin for 'not bent'.

So, what you want is a simple, clean way for a person to prove who they are - so that we could do away with passports, passwords, credit cards and all manner of other inconvenient things which the thoroughly cosmopolitan dude needs to cart about with them these days - but it still needs to be "on one's person".

Ever been through US immigration? well, for a while you've had to give two fingerprints when entering the country, and just recently it's progressed on to having all eight fingers and two thumbs printed. Presumably this is to prevent any members of the Yakuza getting in - many of them dont have eight fingers - see Yubitsume. Anyway, it's tiresome, because the machines are a bit finniky - a faster and more reliable method is required.

Well, there's the Gattaca approach - great film, great idea, but a touch invasive at times and easily circumnavigated (provided you arent too fastidious) by simply carrying around a small sample of somone else's piddle -though it does rely on having a bloke at home who's prepared to hide in the microwave if the rozzers turn up.

What's the solution? Well, obviously it's tattoing a unique number in the form of a barcode onto the arse of every newborn. With the simple expedient of installing a laser scanner in every airport, supermarket checkout, PC keyboard etc it will be a simple case of dropping the strides (or lifting the skirt - another plus point for thongs there, easy identification) for a quick moon, and Bob's your uncle! How foolproof is that? Lets face it, there are precedents for using the backside as an ID card in the animal world too, have you ever seen a pair of dogs introduce themselves?

Trouble is, it didnt really take that long to shoot the idea down. There were two main complaints:

1) Babies are not born obese. However, in the UK and US these days, scientists have determined that by the year 2010, fourteen out of ten thirteen year olds will weigh more than a twelve month old elephant. Apart from the fact that the inherent 'barge-arse' effect on fatties would cause the lines on the barcode to get further apart, there's te danger that one of these hefty folk might sit on the scanner and squash it, and also a chance that stretch marks might actually corrupt the digital signature. Thus, by waving his 'arris' at a convenient scanner, Harry Poter's corpulent cousin Dudley could empty the bank account of a poor innocent spinster in Cheam. Less than ideal.

2) This is the clincher really. There's a movie - cant remember which one (audience participation required here - please comment if you know the answer) in which someone escapes from a prison by gouging out the governor's eye and using it to fool a retina scanner on an automatic gate. This raised the horrific possibility of a mugger slicing off a victim's bum-cheek in order to get a free week's shopping at Tesco's.

You have to appreciate, really, that we *like* sitting around and talking bollocks. That's just not going to be at all comfortable with only half an arse. So, a great idea, but unfortunately a non-starter at the end of the day.

[1] Perhaps it would be more fun if that did mean having sex with more than one person at a time.

Episode V - the arsebishop strikes back

2008-02-11T16:39:00.000Z

Garfield, the beleagured Archbishop of Canterbury has 'come out fighting' to defend himself against the recent storm of upset and disapproval.

Many religions have developed forms of 'marshal arts' as a defence when their practicioners are under attack. For example, the Jedi (a stunningly popular religion in the UK, according to the last census) have lightsabres, mind control and the Force. Similarly, when faced with violence, the Shaolin monks will terrify their adversaries by smashing concrete blocks with their bare hands or even attempt to become invisible by sticking ping-pong balls in their eye-sockets and walking across ricepaper without leaving sweaty footprints (note, its been some time since I watched 'Kung-Fu' on the TV, I might be slightly confused here...).

The hierarchy of the Anglican church have clearly evolved a terrifying method of defence based around whingeing that they have been misunderstood.

Over and above that, the unfortunate fellow with the mitre is quoted in the BBC today as saying "I believe quite strongly that it is not inappropriate for a pastor of the Church of England to address issues about the perceived concerns of other religious communities, and to try and bring them into better public focus."

This is indeed excellent news and to be roundly applauded. I look forward to the good fellow:

Attending rallies defending the rights of Pagans to dance naked round bonfires and indiscriminenetly fornicate with each other in joyous celebration of the earth mother.
Contributing to learned journals on the justifiable aspects of entirely hypothetical Neo-Mayans hurling children into bonfires from the tops of bloody great pyramids
And most importantly , defending the rights of the modern atheist who, while accepting that other persons' views are important and just as valid as their own lack of beleifs, would like the law of this supposedly secular democracy to be kept entirely free of constraints, rewards or punishments based on any religion whatsoever.

Silly Cant* - erbury

2008-02-08T13:41:00.000Z

Oh dear. Dr Rowan Williams, a man who enjoys considerable influence as the Archbishop of Canterbury, is currently in hot water over statements he has made suggesting that it is inevitable that Britain will have to adopt some aspects of Islamic Sharia law (See BBC article).

The unfortunate, but rather easily predicted, effect of his pronouncement has been a rash of statements along the lines of "people who come to Britain should abide by British laws". Whatever his intention in saying his peice, it doesnt seem likely to do much for the level of "tolerance" that the average citizen is likely to display - especially since Sharia Law is frequently described in the popular press as 'ultra conservative" and occasionally as involving "barbaric practices".

Perhaps, then, the best thing to do is to bear in mind the striking similarity between the good Dr and Garfield the cat. This will assist folk to afford the Archbishop a suitable level of credibility.

Of course, Britain is a country that is proud of its tradition of free speech - except of course in areas which might incite religious hatred, which are specifically outlawed these days (the Archbishops comments might seem dangerously close to that in effect, if not intention). Whether or not the grumbler agrees with the sentiments is irrelevant, he will still fight (well, grumble actually) in defence of Dr Williams right to say them. It just feels like it would have been more approprate had he done so while wearing a plastic bowler hat, comedy red-nose, stripey suit, and a pair of shoes fifteen sizes too big. Maybe a squirty-flower too, just for emphasis.

* Cant: Variously (but not exclusively) defined as

the private language of the underworld
phraseology peculiar to a religious class or sect
the insincere use of pious words

In this case, though, you might be forgiven for assuming I made an 'accidental' typographical error.

Pain and Podcasting

2008-02-03T12:16:00.000Z

Last week, while on a business trip to San Fransisco, I managed to somewhat painfully injure my knee. Its the sort of injury I should expect when, at my advanced age, attempting to perform stunts on a snowboard and so I shouldn't complain. Well, if I'd been on a snowboard, I wouldn't complain, but I seem to have done this during the comparitively simple and well practiced manouver of getting out of bed, so I do feel a bit put out. I suppose it does go to prove my suspicion that many a bad day could be avoided by, quite simply, refusing to get up in the first place. I must try that out one day...

A concerned friend spotted me hobbling around the office and offered me some pain killers. Under normal circumstances I'd have had some anyway but, when I was packing my bag for the trip I realised that I had accumulated a vast quantity of pills, creams and ointments over my travelling career - enough that I could have treated any number of ailments from head to toe. So, fearful of being labled a hypochondriac, I elected to leave them at home. There's another reason of course, some of them were so old that the labels had worn off which would only invite trouble. I suspect that attempting to clean teeth with athlete's foot cream is disgusting, and I dont have the kind of unusual sensual proclivities for which a hint of minty-freshness between the toes would be a prerequisite, for either party.

As usual, my warped sense of humour almost managed to get me into trouble... The kind fellow handed me a couple of pills - small, vaguely diamond shaped, blue pills. Being a cheapskate, I tend to buy generic painkillers in the UK and so I'm accustomed to pills being of the rather boring, small, round, white variety. Colours and shapes - they're what you get from the Doctor for special occasions. I've only ever heard of one pill that matches the earlier description, so I peered suspiciously at him and said "I already have a dodgy knee - I dont need anything else stiffening up, thank you...".

If you're reading, Lew, I honestly didnt mean to imply you've been, you know, "disappointing miss Daisy" or "less-than-magic Johnson"...

So, back in Blighty and one 'minor injuries clinic' visit later, I am in posession of a pair or crutches, a stern caution from a nurse to keep my leg 'elevated' and an alternative use for a bag of frozen peas. It seems likely that I have "housemaid's knee", a diagnosis which caused a rather unattractive snort of derision from the good Mrs Grumbler, who indicated that the infrequency of my active engagement in domestic cleaning activites must surely rule this out. Perhaps Patellar Bursitis sounds more manly, or even immediately life-threatening.

Thinking about it, Patellar Bursitis sounds more like a distant star, around which some strange kind of alien life might have evolved "the Telepathic Eagle-Wolves of Patellar Bursitis". Or maybe a good name for an awful band. Which brings me on to my first attempt at podcasting which is called 'Music and Mumblings' - you can find it here. The bands are actually rather good. Have a listen - if I have to suffer, I dont see why you shoudnt too...

Life imitates art

2008-01-30T23:28:00.000Z

Many people will know of Terry Pratchett, a man regarded as a minor deity by many readers of the Fantasy Genre for his Discworld series of books.

One of the characters who makes appearances in several of the books is Detritus the Troll, an upstanding member of the Ankh Morpork city watch. Trolls are made of stone and not generally noted for their quickness of wit... This isnt because Trolls are intrinsically stupid, rather, it's down to the speed of thought in a silicon based life form - which decreases as temperature increases. Thus a warm troll will be reeeaalllyyy stooopid. In Men at Arms, Detritus wears a clockwork hat which uses fans to cool his head down, thus keeping him relatively intelligent.

Given that Terry Pratchett himself is reported as having been diagnosed with an early onset form of Alzheimer's disease, it was breathtakingly ironic to read on the BBC website recently that an infra-red hat (known as a cognitive helmet) has been developed which may slow, if not reverse, some of the symptoms of that unpleasant affliction (which TP refers to with characteristic aplomb as an 'embuggarance'). The picture shows a hat with fans on it... One assumes that Mr Pratchett is aware of this odd example of life imitating art.

I personally have an awful memory. I cant afford a cognitive helmet, but you may, on occasion, see me with a pair of mini-maglights - one stuck up each nostril, in a desperate attempt to re-grow some brain cells.

Disabled Parking Public Information Film

2008-01-24T19:52:00.000Z

This morning, breakfast TV reported on a subject close to my heart - the misuse of disabled parking bays.

This is a real trigger for me, guaranteed to set me off on a rant. Every time I see an able bodied person 'steal' a disabled space and saunter into a shop without a care in the world my blood boils, just as it did with the obnoxious fat git on my screen this morning.

Still, it reminded me of a conversation I had with the fellows at work a while ago, when the BBC was running a competition to produce a 'public information film' in the style of the ones that the UK used to have in the 60's. These peculiarly British oddities were a short film, maybe a minute or two long, which advised the public on things they shouldn't do... Like play with matches while wearing clothes soaked in petrol, shut children in fridges, or cross the road with a bag on their head. Things that wouldn't otherwise strike you as odd, unless the kind government told you they were - d'you see what I mean?

My film idea was about the dangers of parking in a disabled bay, when you don't have a disability...

The scene, outside a supermarket, there's one disabled bay free, and it's clearly marked. A big shiny red car screeches in - probably a Beamer, and out jumps a salesman in a sharp suit. He's talking loudly and self importantly into a cellphone as he strides towards the supermarket entrance.

Suddenly, Off from the left, a wheelchair appears. Its moving at a tremendous speed, and there's a little old lady sitting in it, clutching a sawn-off shotgun. As it hurtles past the rep, she lets him have both barrels, one in each leg.

The guy falls to the ground, screaming, and the picture slowly fades to one of those 'crime scene' silhouettes that we are all familiar with from the TV.

I've got this really great idea, too, about a film to discourage attractive single young women from parking in mother-and-child spaces....

Sorry Russell...

2008-01-23T21:24:00.000Z

Today, Pete Cogle, the famous babbling pseudo-Tibetan Dave Gilmour look-nearly-alike podcasting nutcase was 200 years old. I'm sorry, I mean issued his 200th podcast (an easy mistake to make - Pete's almost Yoda-like presence makes him strangely difficult to age, though I have considered sawing off one of his legs and counting the rings, just to be sure).

As a part of the celebrations for this and other notable centenarian podiversaries (for messers Cool Clitheroe and Dark Cutler), we met in London last week as I have already noted. So why am I harping on about it again now? Well, the thing is, he recorded quite a bit of our conversation...

That's not a dead mouse you see him holding here, its a microphone. I have it on very good authority that the 'wind shield' (for such it is) that adorns the microphone is actually made from werewolf-fur which Pete's good lady wife was keeping in a box in the attic[1]. Its possible that something of the terror that the fur's previous lycanthropic owner could inspire still clings to this rather pathetic remnant. I have seen grown men and women turn pale, or flinch when Pete thrusts his rather scruffy and moth-eaten appendage towards them in search of a juicy quote (and the same goes for the microphone, ho ho!). Anyway, the dratted thing may no longer be attached to a man-eating monster, but its still bloody dangerous because it can still pick up an injudicious comment from twenty feet away.

After a few beers I have been known to talk a fair amount of bollocks (qv 'Testiculator'), but the thing is it doesn't usually come back to haunt me. Well, obviously sometimes it does, otherwise there is no earthly way I could explain my first marriage[2]. On this occasion, though, I had the chilling experience of hearing it all played back to me, and to make matters worse, there was some good music in the podcast, so I couldn't even turn it off.

To be fair, I have absolutely no-one but myself to blame for the awful 'Julian and Sandy' impersonations to be found at the beginning of Ourobouros Podcast #36. (Ooooh, Isnt he bold!) I'm not even too bothered about having claimed to live in a shed (after Mrs Grumbler reads this, there's likely to be more than a grain of truth in that assertion). Its almost impossible to hear what I said my favourite long word was, and even if you can make it out, I can weather that storm too.

However, just in case anyone gets the wrong idea (particularly any warped publicist who reckons it might make a good stunt) I need to take the opportunity in these pages of pointing out that I don't really have any intention of stuffing Russell Brand's Booky Wook where the sun shines not, in a manner of speaking. No. I don't want to be within six feet of either object, thank you very much.

[1] No, I don't think he knows why, either.

[2] This is a cheap shot and entirely unjustifiable - its only in for comic effect. And in any case, chronologically speaking, the first marriage involved a goat in a prehistoric Mongolian village (they made me their chief!) after I accidentally fell into a time warp in my local supermarket last Easter while reaching for a packet of Frozen peas, but I've been trying to hush that up.

A Wail of a Time!

2008-01-16T21:41:00.000Z

It’s a grim Tuesday morning, and I’m huddled in a crusty, rusty, freezing-cold and rattling old train – peering through the steamed-up windows I can see sheets of rain lashing mercilessly against the steel grey landscape. I’m heading towards London, and I’m assaulted by a wave of memories of a score or so years ago, when my younger and less curmudgeonly self dragged itself into the capital for work every day. I thank a veritable host of deities (including Jah, Shiva and Catweazle) that I don’t have to do that any more – the very idea makes the tarnished remnants of my soul shrivel inside me. I wonder if Beelzebub likes prunes?

There’s another difference in the journeys now and then… 20 years ago I was comfortably numbed by cassettes of Pink Floyd played on my trusty Walkman. Now, I’m being shocked awake by a bewildering assortment of fantastic new music via a series of Podcasts on my iPod.

This journey has an undeniably more palatable purpose than work. I’m going to meet with my old mate Pete ‘Codger’ Cogle, host of PC Podcast, and three other podcasters - Peter ‘the Kid’ Clitheroe from Suffolk ‘n Cool; Rowley Cutler from Dark Compass and Colin Gazely from Ourobouros.

I’ve not had the chance to meet these last three guys before, but I’ve been listening to them for long enough that they already seem familiar to me – an odd situation, because (even if they’ve been reading my blog) I’ll likely be an unknown quantity as far as they are concerned. By lunchtime, this is no longer a concern to me; we’re all sitting comfortably in the Sussex in Covent Garden, each with a pint of (hideously expensive) Spitfire ale, yapping away like we’ve all known each other for years. I venture to suggest that if a bunch of whales is called a ‘pod’, then the collective noun for podcasters ought to be a Wail - and this meets with general approval. Mind you, with the amount of cackling going on, an external observer might have chosen a ‘coven’.

I wont bore you with a transcript of our drunken ramblings, though I have to award quote of the day to Mr Clitheroe who, when I told him I had listened to his entire ‘back catalogue’, informed us that he’r rather go through the Codger’s back passage than through his back catalogue…

You can see us at the top of this post and, provided that the Codger managed to hit the record button at some point during the day, you can probably hear us on PC Podcast (Wednesday 23rd, I would imagine).

A little review of the podcasts themselves won’t go amiss here…

Dark Compass – despite Rowley’s site getting a vast number of hits from people searching for ‘Golden Compass’ and ‘Dark Materials’, his compass is more like Captain Jack Sparrow’s – it's useless if you want to find North, but it will point you at your heart’s desire (no, its not Pirate Radio). Try it, you’ll like it. Rowley’s been at this the longest of this wail, and he’s soon coming up for show number three hundred.

PC Podcast – an eclectic mix of music presented by a sixteen year-old music freak trapped in the body of a forty-something year old beermonster. Living proof of the restorative effects of Adnams Broadside (or was it vodka and creosote?), Pete’s been delighting his listener(!) with some great tunes, twice a week, for two years now. He’s dragged me kicking and screaming into to French-Canadian Punk gigs and calmed me down again with Cornish bagpipe dub reggae amongst other things, and was once silly enough to let me hijack his podcast (though he didnt actually tell me until afterwards - trust me, it was complicated, and I was drunk). I’m not sure if his listening figures have recovered yet…

Suffolk ‘n Cool (cultural note for American English speakers: say it fast, and remember that ‘Suffolk’ might be written phonetically as ‘Suffuk’) – a similar mix to PC Podcast, musically, with the occasional ‘curve ball’ as a result of Peter’s Puckish Podcasting Personality (sorry, can’t resist a bit of gratuitous alliteration). Peter C has been ‘at it’ almost exactly the same length of time as Pete C (oh bugger it - see why it’s the Codger and the Kid now?) the two having presented their first episodes within a day of each other. Now, heaven forbid that I should pshychoanalyse, but I wonder if the Kid’s compensating for Codger having gone live a day before him when he trumpets all those Suffolk ‘n Cool first plays? Peter’s autobiographical notes on his website tell us how he preogressed from ‘rodie’ to ‘knob twiddler’. Fittingly, he’s about to knock out his 100th emission. In a manner of speaking.

Colin’s Ouroborous Podcast is named after a legendary Greek serpent (no, NOT Phillip) which swallows its own tail – a symbol for infinity. Colin says (quite rightly) that there’s an infinite amount of good music ‘out there’ and has made it his mission to bring you some of it. His podcast is the youngest of the four, but it’s no less likely to deliver you some sounds that you’ll love – his own enthusiasm for that music certainly shows through.

You know, there are days when I’m quite happy having nothing to grumble about!

Just not that many ;-)

Hopping Mad

2008-01-07T14:47:00.001Z

In the Grumbler houshold, the inevitable result of Christmas, coupled with the January sales, is a mountain of refuse which may be recyclable (Cardboard, boxes, wrapping paper) or not (plastic bags and expanded poly-bloody-styrene).

All of this stuff needs to be carted to the local refuse centre - even if the bin-men could be bribed to take it away, you don't want to leave a pile of boxes outside your front door which advertise what presents you got. Imagine the neighbours trying to work out what exactly you're going to do with 25 gallons of custard in catering packs and a wetsuit?

So, I piled all the rubbish into the back of the car on not one, two or even three occasions. No less than four times was I forced to patronise the 'dump'. Our own facility has a height restriction set at about 3 feet six inches to prevent anyone coming in with a van because that would be 'trade refuse' and a bunch of yellow jacketed, power-crazed 'assistants' who are there to ensure that everything is put in the appropriate recycling area.

So, despite the minor feeling of triumph I'll have experienced after having Limboed in, avoided the rabid free-range council-sponsored eco-mentalists and manoeuvred myself to the 'devil-may-care, bung it all over this wall, I love landfill' section of the facility, at some point on one of these trips I have managed to scoop up and throw away with the rest of the crap one of my perfectly good, nicely broken-in hiking boots - kept in the back of the car for dog walking expeditions.

As I remember it, this was a £150 pair of boots, meaning that trip has cost me £75, dammit. Obviously, this is some kind of karmic retribution to my gleefully hubristic gloating over outsmarting 'Stig of the Dump' and his mates.

Oh well, there's nothing I can do other than make the best of the situation. Later this year I intend to take the family on a hopping holiday in the lake district. If anyone has any recommendations, lemme know?

Happy new year

2008-01-02T12:41:00.000Z

Tired of all those other snacks? Just cant get enough? They're everywhere, but they still don't satisfy?

Now available from the United States and all-new for 2008, its the 'Credit Crunch' bar!

A gorgeous melt-in-the mouth filling, so light you'll wonder if there's really any substance at all, shot through with bitter-sweet chunks of northern rock to give it that authentic adrenalin-packed crunch! A great collection of flavours all consolidated into one easy-to-swallow snack - the whole bar covered in chocolate thicker than a brace of sub-prime mortgage applicants.

Its the taste that folks have been queueing hours for, they literally cant get enough! Try it yourself, and see what the hype is all about.

* Remember, your future is at risk if you bite off more than you can chew.

The Queen's Christmas YouTube Message

2007-12-24T11:08:00.000Z

This year’s Queen’s Christmas message is not only to be televised, but also available as a podcast and on YouTube in an attempt to reach out to younger viewers. Apparently, the speech itself has been updated a little in order to ‘really connect’ with today’s youth. An exceedingly unreliable correspondent from the Royal Household has leaked what he allegedly says is a transcript of this year’s speech.

Yo Subjects,

My homie 'Bubbles' and me is sendin’ a bigged-up Merry Christmas and stuff and a Happy New Year and shit your way, isn’t it?

We’re well glad this year is nearly over, because it’s been a bit of a bummer, you know what I mean?

They are still ranting on about a certain young lady previously associated with one of my boys and this ‘n that and apparently she was having an affair with Dido. Big bucks for that video, isn’t it? Anyway, some shopkeeper is mouthing off that she was knocked up by his son. Says that we had them killed and stuff so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the wedding or something - what am I, James Bond? (Radical, Miss Moneypenny!) He wants me to go to court and everything, I mean, no way – he’s not my Dad!

Sons, and that, are like well tiresome, d’you know what I mean? I mean, mine keeps moping around all day and he’s like ‘Come on Mummy, let me have a go at being Queen?’ and I’m like ‘No way Bro, I haven’t finished yet, is it?’. He’s a bit crap if you ask me – Duke of bloody Cornwall and can’t even do a decent Jethro impression, tragic. Anyway, I’ve well stitched him and everything, got him a part time job at Christmas steering poor jam-stained little Chavs into Santa’s Grotto in Brent Cross.

Some of you have sent me word that your Christmas is gonna be well distressing, because the post office hasn’t turned up with the bling and shit you’ve ordered over the internet. That’s not on because these Jokers are calling themselves the ‘Royal Mail’ and everything and that’s disrespecting me because Im the Royal Queen and stuff and they're well-useless and I'm not. I’m not standing for that and I’m sending my grandsons over there to sort them out because they’re well-hard. They wanted to know what was in it for them, so I promised them half an hour each with a hand-maiden, d’you know what I mean? One of them is a bit odd though, said he’d rather have a foot-man, and he hasn’t even been in the Navy. Scary.

Well, that’s enough from me now because the Dinner’s ready and Chef, he’s an ex heroin-addict, gets well vexed and everything if it cools down. He says that there’s nothing worse than Cold Turkey. Ha ha, that’s my Christmas joke, get it? Anyway Eastenders is on now.

A Merry Christmas to all of you and your husbands, wives or civil partners if you is batting for the other side, isn't it, isn't it? Standard!

Condiments of the Season!

2007-12-16T22:31:00.000Z

Revision 3.

It’s often said that Christmas is only magical and exciting for children; this, in my opinion, is poppycock[1]. I think that the problem is that we grown-ups have simply forgotten many of the things which are fun about Christmas. Now, it’s fair to say that I speak as what Richard Dawkins might call a Cultural Christian . What I mean is that the celebration of Christmas is something I’m accustomed to, even though I’m far from being a regular church-goer (the folks down at the Nemeton would see it as a bit of a betrayal, I fear). There's something I enjoy, despite my curmudgeonly nature, about this excuse for a bit of indiscriminate and promiscuous bonhomie.

So, given that my attempt to get together a team of Ninja Morris Dancers has stalled due to the current weather being cold enough to freeze one’s bells off and, since it’s a traditional part of Christmas, I figured it would be a rather good idea to have a Nativity Play. In the Office.

Traditionally, the Nativity play performed in infants' (elementary) schools in the UK is a chance for parents to go and watch their offsprings' first tentative steps in the general direction of amateur dramatics. These days, though, its often an excuse for power crazed local councillors who've recently overdosed on political correctness to whine on about not offending other religions. Whoops - almost started on a rant there, not in the spirit of things at all. Ahem. So, yes, parents, first steps... well, in the office, there are one or two of us knocking on the door of forty, or perhaps even gazing wistfully back at it... Perhaps this is not so much a time to make Mum and Dad proud, but an opportunity, instead, to mortally embarrass our life-partners...

As I am a megalomaniac (though not yet a local councillor) I shall, of course, take it upon myself to arrange the casting. Lets start with the starring roles. (Note, with every major production, there is always a little re-casting. We shall be no different, and I may add players as I see fit.)

I'm prepared to bet that its generally easier to find a virgin in an Infants' school than at an office (even in the town in which I live, famous for its young mothers, there is a standard which at least lets the girls get to Junior school before procreation boosts their chances of a council flat). And, despite the classic example in Monty Python's Life of Brian, you cant exactly go round asking can you? So, we'll settle for Irony here and cast, in the role of Mary, a gentleman known in other blogs as 'the Lad'. He is the least likely of us to actively enjoy dressing up as a lady (sorry Rod) and, according to the stories with which he used to entertain us at lunchtime (when our local staff eaterie served food instead of the dried up 'poppycock' it currently pushes out), possibly the least virginal. So, the Lad gets to be Mary.

While on the subject of infants, we shall cast my good friend Andy as the Baby Jesus. This is because he (a) is good at making incoherent noises, (b) apparently sucks his thumb in times of stresss and (c) fits in the crib.

Joseph, in this context, is no more than a bit part. After all, his 'part' apparently didn't get to do its bit... This (as a sort of Homage to Andrew Lloyd Webber) will go to the person who can produce the most psychedelic anorak.

I seem to remember the involvement of a shepherd, and an angel in the story somewhere. The Angel clearly has to be the lady who makes the coffee without which we couldn't function in the morning, and the boss can be the shepherd (baaah baaah) for obvious reasons that if we don't all act like sheep, at least we can be servile curs...

Geography has never been my strong suit. In fact, during my O-Level exam, I wrote a good couple of pages to the examiner, apologising for wasting his time in forcing him to mark a paper for which I clearly should never have been entered. He must have appreciated the apology, I passed with a 'C'. Anyway, this means that the three wise men (or kings, the story varies) from the East will in fact hail from the valleys of Wales (some distance to the west of us here).

There's a reason for this, of course, in that the trio needs to be self evidently foreign, so the accent of the two genuine Welshmen in the office (Bus-boy and the tenth man) will do nicely. The quick amongst you will notice the mathematical discrepancy. Fear not, for I shall step into the breach. Ive always wanted to be regarded as a Wise Man and, despite my inability to stick to a single accent for more than ten words ,I do, bizarrely, enjoy pretending to be Welsh[2]. Well, due to the aforementioned linguistic drift, more of a sort of Pakistani from the Valleys.

The three wise men always bear gifts, and this occasion will be no let down on that score. The Welsh kings will bestow Goldie Lookin' Chains, Class-A Skunk and a four cans of Brains S.A. on the lucky infant.

Slightly off topic, but when was he ever on the same plane as the rest of us, we'd have to bring back - for one night only - the Podcaster - in the role of Christmas past...

Also not in the original score, as far as I know, are the bouncers. Saxman and Mr B can fill in here, because they are taller than everyone else. These are needed only for this particular play since I cant be bothered to think up any more clever castings, and have therefore consigned the rest of the staff to be sheep.

Someone's gonna have to keep the kings away from them...

Happy midwinter festival of your choice. Ho ho ho, have I got a surprise for you, small person[3]!

[1] An interesting word, actually a corruption of ‘Pappekak’ – which is Dutch for ‘soft dung’ rather than referring to, as I had suspected, the stamens of an opium-producing flower.

[2] If anyone can help cure me of this...

[3] If the punctuation zealot is tuned in here, I have to say in my defence that as the question is rhetorical, I felt I could get away with an exclamation mark.

Nonconformist collectives...

2007-12-11T11:10:00.000Z

Encouraged by having just received a sound, if second-hand, telling off for a deliberate grammatical faux-pas in an email, (the offended person feeling safer in sending her good husband to do the dirty deed) I have decided to form a new organisation for the sort of person who might read (and enjoy) "Eats shoots and Leaves".

However, being of a perverse nature, Ill have to give it an inappropriate name. Thus I commend to you:

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Apostrophe's.

My Malicious and cruel imagination can see English teachers exploding up and down the country even as I type.

Double Take

2007-11-29T21:22:00.000Z

In response to Monday's grumblings, one of my dear readers who remains "Anonymous" said...

I want to congratulate the Grumbler on his forthcoming TV comeback . It's been a long wait. So, are Dave and Freema as nice as they appear on TV?

So, this left me wondering - are they likening my Alchemistic-Ape-Altering device to the humanoid cloning experiment conducted by General Sontar resulting in the fearsome race of Sontarans, or is this a weak attempt by someone who knows me to liken my own handsome self to a "Doctor Who" monster, hmmm?

Well, I'll leave it to a 'Private Eye' style lookalike picture for you to judge for yourselves...

The right ape for the job?

2007-11-26T20:30:00.000Z

On occasion during my illustrious[1] career, I have been called upon to recruit personnel into some reasonably specialised positions. Of course, despite many promises to the contrary, this hasn't happened for quite a while at my current employers. That's a mixed blessing, as it happens, because on the one hand an ever increasing workload has to be handled by a tiny band of put-upon 'martyrs', but on the other we are saved the soul-destroying[2] task of looking for something which doesn't exist - namely the right man or woman for the job. Invariably, we have had to take on someone who has the potential to do what we need, without necessarily having the knowledge - then we mould (or crush, if need be) them to fit our inscrutable purpose.

In the UK at the moment are three obvious situations where we simply aren't going to find the right (wo)man.

Leader of the Liberal Democrat party. Currently a fight between a couple of guys, both keen for the job. In fact, its a pretty meaningless activity, since whichever of them actually gets in will lead a party which stands no chance of getting into government within the foreseeable future.

Manager of the England football team. OK, I don't know a lot about football, but understand that we set fire to the last guy for failing to get us into something called Euro 2008 (approximately $2,979 at today's rates, not much of a prize, is it?). Our football team seems to fail to get into a lot of things, and when it does get in, it certainly doesn't win. There's no reason to suppose that the individual (would be nice to see a lady in this role, make a change anyway) who can achieve success here exists either.

Owner of the Northern Rock Bank. This lot are in a bit of a state as a result of the recent 'credit crunch'. Bit of a shame since they weren't directly responsible for anyone moving out of a trailer-park, but that's life. Anyway, they owe the UK taxpayer about £24 billion pounds (a bit more than $2,979 at today's rates) in loans made to bail them out. It seems unlikely, even if a certain well known bearded billionaire manages to buy them (why does he need an international airline since he can clearly walk on water?), that the taxpayer will see this sum repaid in full.

Bleak Huh? Well, I have the solution. A fanfare, please, for Dr Grumbler's Patent Alchemistic-Ape-Altering device. Guaranteed[3] to convert any simian subject into a solid-gold 'right man for the job' (or woman, obviously, depending on the the subject ape - gender reassignment is not an option on this model). Simply follow the easy to read instructions (translated directly from the original Japanese, and then into Swedish for that authentic high-tech flat-pack feel) to program in the desired results, pull the big lever on the right, and then... [4]

[1] meaning: without lustre

[2] yes, Ive still got one. I keep it in the freezer in case I ever need it again

[3] guarantee underwritten by International Reckless Sub-prime Lenders incorporated

[4] monkey not included

An Infectious Beat

2007-11-22T20:16:00.000Z

I was chatting with my mate Pete the Podcaster the other day when he mentioned that one of our mutual friends had paid him a complement by describing his podcast as 'infectious'.

Now, he's a modest bloke, is our Pete, but the podcast is dear to his heart and he spent the day with a warm and comfortable glow about him, imagining our mate Richard tapping his feet, drumming his fingers on his desk, humming tunelessly and generally pissing off anyone within 50 feet of him in the office. "This," he doubtless thought to himself, "is what I do it for." So, as he admitted to me, it had rather wounded him when the chap in question informed him that he didn't mean he'd been indulging in a bit of "creative commons karaoke", he meant that the podcast had given him the flu.

Braver readers of this blog who, undaunted by its content, have taken a look at the recommended links to the right and treated their ears to either of the podcasts run by the Codger and the Kid will know that both of these individuals have had colds over the past few weeks.

I've been listening to both of them, and I've had an absolute bugger of a cold. So what if there's a grain of truth to this suggestion that you can catch something from a podcast? This is a little worrying.

So, partly because Ive had nothing better to do for the last half hour, partly because it was a fascinating quest, and partly (more about this later) to provide a spot of audience participation, Ive searched for some genuine podcasts, available for subscriptions through the itunes podcast directory which might possibly leave you with more than you bargained for. So, if you believe this kind of rubbish, and value your health, may I suggest that you think twice before listening to:

News Pox

Radio Rabies

Ebolaworld

Now the audience participation bit - There are painstakingly accurate drawings of the viruses responsible for the cold, rabies, ebola and pox on to days post. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify which is which...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to say, If you havent listened to either PCPodcast or Suffolk'n'Cool yet, why not give them a go. As far as Im aware, at time of writing you'll end up with nothing worse than a hangover or a mild case of athlete's foot. Good luck!

Kitchen Devils

2007-11-20T21:50:00.000Z

Every morning in our household, Mrs Grumbler and I play out what has come to be an essential ritual. It's called "who's going to make the tea?". Now it's an interesting fact about my good lady that, on waking up, her need for a cup of tea is almost exquisitely balanced by her desire to stay in bed for as long as possible. It happens that if I wait long enough, she'll usually get up and make it. However, in fairness, I aim to make the tea at least half the time and, in laziness, she aims to have me make it the other half as well.

Of course, in the balmy days of summer this isn't so much of a hardship. The kitchen is full of golden morning light, the birds are singing, and the dog is breaking his neck to be let out in order to piddle over the flowers. In the icy grey days of winter, though, it's a different story. It's still dark when we wake up and, however early I set the heating to come on, I always feel cold standing in my lace trimmed dressing gown and Winnie the Pooh slippers waiting ages for the kettle to boil. All this while the light of my life slumbers on in 15 TOG duck-down insulated bliss.

I thought, until recently, but this was a simple case of jealousy on my part that somebody else was getting an extra 10 minutes of snore-time (yes, she really does). Now, though, I know differently. It turns out that my reluctance to make the tea in the mornings is a perfectly natural consequence of the fact that our teapot has been infested by an evil demon from the lower reaches of hell.

Now, I know what you're thinking. How on earth can the average demon fit inside teapot? Well, let me tell you that in my experience, daemons come in all shapes and sizes and their physical size bears little resemblance, at the end of the day, to how malignant they turn out to be. And, in any case, it's a big teapot.

Obviously, I haven't actually seen the demon, because only lunatics and those who have sold their soul to the Devil can actually see demons. I am (contrary to popular belief) neither a paid-up Satanist nor am I a nutcase. No, I have been forced to conclude that there is a demon somewhere in the kitchen because of a number of bizarre and frankly disturbing occurrences centred around that very room.

Firstly, things have begun to disappear. Chocolate, biscuits, grapes, savoury treats from the fridge, chocolate, and especially chocolate have all mysteriously vanished. Nobody, especially not the children because I've asked them several times, has any idea where these things are going.

Secondly, the children themselves have begun to display an irrational, almost terrified, behaviour pattern whenever we ask them to make tea or to empty the dishwasher -- on which the teapot happens to stand. Basically, they will refuse point-blank to co-operate.

So the obvious conclusion is that the kids are terrified of the teapot, and I can't think of any reason that they would be terrified of it unless it was infested by a demon. Yes I know you'll tell me that all of this evidence is merely circumstantial; but there is a clincher. The dog has left me and note telling me that he has actually seen the demon, and he is nuts, so he ought to know.

How's yer plums?

2007-11-09T18:52:00.000Z

This weekend the family learned why our American cousins like to differentiate between a torch and a flashlight.

We went to a firework display in the local town of Wokingham (famed, amongst other things, for having a Vulcan in the shape or John Redwood represent them in the Houses of Parliament). We Brits do this every year in the first week of November and, on many occasions, an effigy of Guy Fawkes (a Catholic bent on regicide and the obliteration of a Protestant government) is burned.

The display was preceded by a torchlit procession from the market square to the 'fairground' where the display was to take place. Participants could, on parting with a mere five pounds, take possession of a flaming torch made out of a length of broomstick (note to self, check to see if the mother-in-law's runabout has been stolen) and some sacking soaked in wax.

Knowing that it was a racing certainty that at least one Family member would, as is often the case when walking around a field in the dark, stand in the leavings of one of the local canine populace I also stuck a battery-operated torch in my pocket so that we could check and discount this eventuality before getting back in the car.

Seeing me pocket the flashlight, the good lady wife was heard to enquire -"What's that for, Damsons in Distress?".

I shouldn't mock - she's given me some splendid ideas. Watch this space over the coming weeks for a play based upon the story of "Damson and Delilah"[1] and a fairy tale about a young fruit imprisoned in a tower by an evil sorceress which I'm intending to call Raplumzel.

[1] Actually, I can't really claim that one as my own idea. I must give credit to my good friend Rod, who likes to dress up as a lady in front of paying strangers.

TED is a part of United

2007-09-27T19:04:00.000+01:00

Airline delays are a favourite thing to moan about and, reassuringly, something that can be experienced anytime... Just book an internal US flight with the USA's 'TED' airline - a 'low cost' service operated by United.

Speaking from personal experience, I have found this particular bunch of jokers to be on-time only once, and on that miserable occasion I was firmly glued to my seat due to the carelessly discarded chewing-gum of a previous delightful passenger.

Still, on the bright side, the delay in Las Vegas's McCarran airport which I experienced (there were, apparently, no pilots available) gave me the change to use the 'free' wireless network. Well, they say its free, but they have you enter an email address when you log on - doubtless so they can spam it for evermore. So, I entered the email address of a guy who gave me a particularly hard time at a recent conference...

And I managed to look up "the Old Codger's pole" as recommended by Mr or Ms "anonymous" in a post-script to my last post (thanks for the feedback, btw). Of course, I did this while NOT logged in through my office system, since navigating to a website known as "codger's pole" might well be a slightly risky experience. Anyway, it turned out safe after all. Take a look, Pete, one of these guys looks uncannily like you after a couple of ales :) Do you think the Clitheroe Kid will be jealous that you've got a massive pole?

Once the plane actually turned up and was hastily cleaned and refuelled, we were herded onboard and taxi'd a short distance only to stop for another half hour because 'Airforce Two' was due to land. Now, I wouldn't want to cast aspersions as to the amount of room a passenger is allowed on these planes, nor the quality of the ventilation when on the ground, but the term 'flying veal-crate' comes to mind.

Of course, this kind of thing wouldn't happen in the UK. Our deputy head of state doesn't have his own plane. In fact, until recently, the deputy p.m. was known to travel about in two jaguars - presumably being bifurcated prior to his journey and reassembled at his destination for security purposes. Certainly it was never necessary to close a motorway just because he was on it - though it could be inadvisable to be on the street if he went for a walkabout in one of his more pugilistic frames of mind...

Finally, landing in San Fransisco a mere three hour late (not bad going for a one-hour flight) we had the delightful opportunity to wait for another hour for our luggage.

Anyway, back to this hopeless airline who's catch phrase is "TED is a part of United" might like to consider my alternative suggestion - "United is an anagram of UNTIED". They can certainly keep their "friendly skies"...

Street Life

2007-09-18T18:35:00.000+01:00

So, I was reminded today about the photograph you see to the left, of my good friend Matthew. This was taken when both of us happened to be in the fair city of San Fransisco. It was some years ago now, and we were much older then than we are now.

Since Matthew claims Welsh ancestry, I found the opportunity to take a picture under such an appropriate street sign irresistible.

Of course, Matthew was keen to return the favour but, would you believe, even in that most cosmopolitan of cities, there is no street called "Miserable Old Fat Bastard".

I see the makings of a series here. If anyone knows where they can find a genuine street called 'Codger' please let me know so I can drag my mate Pete off poste haste for a photo session...

2007-08-23T18:55:00.000+01:00

Today's scribblings arrive by courtesy of a speech recognition program. This, in itself, gives me much to grumble about but more of that later. There is, of course, a reason why I am using this rather unusual method of text input. I'm sitting here, yakking into a cheap and uncomfortable headset perched unsteadily atop my sparsely greying dome because my right arm is in a cheap and uncomfortable sling and I have been forbidden to use it by a stern yet well-meaning lady of the medical profession.

I am, in point of fact, suffering from an unfortunate repetitive strain injury of the wrist. Now, I know my readers (both of them) and so I know what you're thinking now. Stop it.

For a couple of reasons I have been out of the office for a little while and have had some time on my hands. There's only so much walking the dog and daytime television that a man can stand and so I've had to find some other things to occupy my time. I rather like to make things so I've tried to use that time constructively.

In fact my injuries have been caused by an overindulgence in my hobbies of drawing and woodcarving. As a result of much diligent application over the preceding three weeks I have, to show for my efforts, a wooden carving of a horse's head approximately 1 foot high; several pen and coloured pencil drawings of dragons; a sore arm and an irritated wife. This latter, rather unwelcome, situation is a result of my current inability to fully participate in the activities of housework or packing for and driving to our family holiday in the Lake District of England.

Speech recognition: oh dear, oh dear. Now everything started quite well because the program I'm using has in its name the word Dragon, and I like dragons. Trouble is, it starts to go downhill from here on. Firstly, having installed Internet Explorer seven I find that the programme does not automatically update itself with the latest patches on the manufacturers website. This has necessitated a phone call to technical support and the ensuing download of 1 GB patch file for which I am still patiently waiting.

In the meantime I decided to get on with "training" the package to recognize my dulcet tones. The promotional "blurb" which comes with this particular package sets great store by the accuracy and ease-of-use of this software. It is hardly necessary, we are told, to train it-it's that good straight out of the box. So I expected my clear and concise delivery of the Queen's English to present no problem. Unfortunately, of course, the (inevitably American) software is expecting the President's English rather than that of the Queen. My first attempts contained so much garbage inaccuracy and misspelling that they actually resemble a George W. Bush speech. And to borrow a word from said President I'm afraid I rather "missunderestimated" the magnitude of the task of training. It's taken most of the afternoon and been quite frustrating but I finally seem to be getting somewhere.

Health warning

2007-07-04T19:06:00.000+01:00

I would like to humbly apologise for my absence from these pages for some time, but that would be grossly out of character so I'm not going to do so. Instead, I shall provide a pathetic excuse; a work related sense of humour failure rendered me, for a while, no less full of vitriol but rather lacking in suitable wit with which to express it. Anyway, the situation is behind me now (also in front of me, to the left, right, above and below me) so, since there's evidently no escaping it, I shall get on with things...

This month, the act of smoking in public 'enclosed spaces', like pubs, has been outlawed in England, bringing us in to line with Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Now, I was actually in California a good few years ago when a similar thing happened at midnight on New Year's Eve. Great timing! Anyway, on that occasion I simply left the country for a smoke. Trouble is I happen to Live in the UK.

In preparation for this, and in order to reduce the exhorbitant rates charged by my life insurance company, I have become a lifetime non-smoker. The lifetime I'm referring to is the adult stage of the 'May Beetle', which is, in fact, about a month. Mrs Grumbler has also eschewed her incendiary pleasures for a similar length of time. We avoided killing each other during the 'gnarly phase' by the simple expedient of me flying to San Fransisco for the better part of three weeks, although many people were unable to detect any appreciable change in my own demeanour.

So, now that I am a non-smoker, I can set about those poor unfortunates who still partake with the zeal reserved specifically for those of us who used to, and are trying to convince ourselves not to start again.

To discourage people from smoking, we in the UK already have some quite prominent and no-nonsense health warnings printed on our cigarette packets. The stylish monochrome black or gold packets (or garishly coloured boxes favoured by the lower rent end of the market, not that I'm a snob or anything) are rather starkly invaded by "SMOKING KILLS" messages, and comments like "Protect children, dont make them breath smoke". (As a side note, my local member of parliament never replied to the email I sent to the effect that the latter sugestion should be changed to "Protect children, set fire to a paedophile". What do we pay these people for?)

These warnings, though, arent enough for the people in Westminster. Instead, they are to be replaced with pictures warning of the dire effects of tobacco... Given the wide variety of heath warnings available, Ive had some fun imagining what these might be like...

First, the shock value. "Hey puffer, what do your lungs look like?"

Now, lets appeal to the scientist. "Oi speccy, whats that smell?"

And, finally, the one that probably made me stop in the end. Have you met my little brother, by the way?

WOW, January 27th

2007-01-27T20:27:00.000Z

Testiculator: One who gesticulates, while talking bollocks .

Allegedly, this word has been invented to describe Adam Hart-Davis , possibly because of his attempts to portray HM Customs and Revenue as nice, helpful people, with the uk taxpayers' best interests at heart.

Credit to my amigo Pete of the PCpodcast for this new word.

Elevator 'facts'

2007-01-25T21:52:00.000Z

Some unsupportable 'facts' about elevators, or Lifts, as they are called in more civilised society.

1) The larger a person is, the more likely they are to be standing in front of you.

2) The larger a person is, the more likely they are to be leaving after your stop.

3) If you enter an empty lift in which someone has recently broken wind, you will be joined at its next stop by someone you have a burning need to impress.

4) If you want a lift to yourself, get in and face away from the doors. This unnerves people, and they will leave as soon as possible rather than risk sharing the space with a nutcase.

5) The majority of lifts in the town of Redding are manufactured by "Otis".

6) 15% of English people will snigger to thmselves when entering a lift manufactured by "Schindler" (think about it, it'll come to you)

Update: July 2007: We had some good comments added by people with their own Elevator Etiquette. My thanks to Tengrain, Ellroon and a couple of anonymous chums for these:

Tengrain said...
Axiomatic: when you enter an elevator, it is always going the direction you are not.
Etiquette tip: Always talk loudly on your cell phone while in the elevator. Bonus points for using the phrase, "The clinic says the rash will go away in three days. Now I have to call the others."

ellroon said...

The more you dislike the person you are riding with, the slower the elevator moves.
The more you are in a hurry, the higher the percentage is the elevator is broken.
If you are pushing a wheelchair, a trolley, a wheeled suitcase, it is guarranteed the elevator will not rise completely to be level with the floor.

Things to do in an elevator:

When you are in the elevator, stare at your watch, counting down under your breath. Then start hopping frantically while shouting 4..3...2...1...
Have your gloves talk to each other.
Take off one shoe and look carefully inside. Then call a pet's name.
Look at the Otis nameplate in the elevator and then start telling people long-winded detailed stories about your perverted Uncle Otis and his chickens. Never get to the point.
Cover your face with a napkin or handkerchief and sob loudly throughout the ride. No one will be able to talk.

Anonymous said...

Rule #1: Do not EVER get on an elevator with Amy when you have a banana in your hands! EVER!

WOW, January 19th

2007-01-20T00:39:00.000Z

Another word of the week...

Cosinecure : Position or job which requires temendous effort, while offering little or no reward. Opposite of sinecure.

Damned Passwords

2007-01-17T22:11:00.000Z

Look, I dont care what the 'security gurus' say, for the past few years I have been quite happily using the names of my immediate family as passwords. After all, I have to remember about a hundred passwords, whereas I have less than half that number of children, and I can remember all their names.

Last time I tried to change a password I was informed that:

1) Passwords must be a minimum of 8 characters in length
2) They must contain both upper and lower case letters
3) They must contain at least one digit, and one or more of the following special characters (-$#@%*)

So, I've given this some considerable thought, and I have a solution. When I get home from my current business trip to the moon, I am going to suggest to my wife that we change the kid's names to R2D2-kid1 and C3PO-kid2. Snappy, eh?

WOW, January 8th

2007-01-09T01:34:00.000Z

Yes, its 'Word Of the Week' time.

This week, the delightful wife of one of my acquaintances was heard to claim that she was going through the Mentalpause. I beleive I know how she feels. Looking on the bright side though, once the Mentalpause is over, theres no need to spend a fortune on sanity towels.

Reality TV

2007-01-01T17:39:00.000Z

Some friends and I, aided by a reasonable quantity of rather pleasing intoxicant, were recently discussing 'Reality TV' in the hope of hitting the right formula to make our millions, with the minimum of effort on our part, and leaving aside all question of taste and decency (since that's an important facet of this kind of show). We think we've cracked it! Any TV producers out there should contact the Grumbler for a discussion regarding production rights for...

Celebrity Victorian Nut-House

The 'action' takes place in a grimly run-down building, some 200 years of age. It is draughty, damp, dark, ill maintained and, frankly, dangerous. Any UK inner-city primary school should fit the bill nicely, and the rental for a period over the holidays might pay for some new chalk and slates for the students.

The cast includes a number of professionals fully trained in nineteenth century mental health care techniques. Exhaustive research on the part of the grumbler (by which I mean I scoured the web until I was tired, which didn't take long after last night's new-year revelry) suggests that this involves the ability to fling a bucket of water, push a small chunk of stale bread through a hatch in a steel door, and physically restrain a malnourished inmate with the aid of only four or five similarly minded ruffians.

Under the tender ministration of these carers we will have a number of 'celebrity lunatics'. Other 'celebrity reality' TV shows suggests that most of the individuals likely to agree to appear will be bordering on certifiabilty in any case. In keeping with similar programs, the 'celebrities' need not in fact be recognisable to the majority of the viewers at the start of the series. It is suggested that they include at least some of the following.

Someone who used to read the news twenty-five years ago on regional TV, before leaving to become a postman.
Any mildly-controversial back-bench politician, preferable without any 'party' associations.
A bishop.
A former Children's TV presenter whose career ended in a (preferably smutty) scandal.
Anyone who's been on one of these programs before.
One or more gay persons, famous only for being gay.
An ugly man.
A stunningly gorgeous woman.
An Australian or South-African sportsperson of yesteryear.
A west-highland terrier, or shopping channel presenter who believes they are a west-highland terrier.
A post-operative transsexual (preferably D.I.Y.)
The Emperor Napoleon

Cameras will be situated all over the 'nut-house' to capture every moment of action, with a daily show delivering 'highlights' to the viewers. Telephone/Text/Interactive TV voting systems will allow the viewers to 'vote out' one celebrity a day at a nominal cost of one pound per vote plus the usual network-charges. Each voted out celebrity will be given a handful of loose change (preferably foreign), a thin blanket impregnated with cat's pee and a cardboard box, and be dropped off under a motorway fly-over to provide some shelter from the elements as they begin to 'live rough' or, as its called these days, re-integrate into the community. (Note the possibility of spin-off programs here)

The eventual winner is, of course, the last person remaining after all others have been voted off. Their prize (unless the dog wins) will be a year's supply of fake tan, and an opportunity to rekindle their career presenting a daytime TV program dealing with the sale of antiques.

I don't watch a lot of this kind of show myself, of course, so I can only hope this one hasn't already been done....

Happy new year.

Taking the Fan Thing a Little Too Far

2006-12-15T20:17:00.000Z

This happened a while ago, but Ive only just stopped laughing enough to write it down.

The other day, two ladies of my acquaintance were out in the car. I suppose it does no harm to reveal that they are in fact my mother in-law and sister in-law (both absolutely delightful people). They drove past a house which was evidently undergoing a good deal of building work, and outside of which was situated a 'portaloo'.

"Oh" says Mum, "those people must really like Doctor Who! Look, they've got a Tardis in their garden!"

I do hope she never has occasion to use one of the few remaining police telephone boxes to be found in our green and pleasant land.

Political Correctness and the Oxtail English Dictionary

2006-12-13T20:50:00.000Z

I love languages; all of them. Even ones I have no hope in understanding. And let's face it a series of sentences directed at me in Cantonese might be the shopping list for my local take-away, or a declaration of undying love, I have no way of knowing (though probabilities would help me out), but it doesn't matter. Words just sound great.

Obviously, I have a particular affinity for the English language, whether it be the 'Ossome' Californian version, the 18th century 'authentic version' spoken in the Boston area, or my native (London-ish) vocabulary, well spiced and flavoured with Indian and French additives. (Moi perznal fayvrit be what spoken boi a Cornishmaan with ate pints o zoider in 'im.)

So it saddens me on my drive to work in the morning when I am verbally assaulted by a paragon of political correctness who wishes to remove a word from usage because it (allegedly) offends a section of society. This morning, it was the turn of a lady professor to complain about the fact that the extremely unfortunate victims of an apparent serial killer who is targeting prostitutes in Suffolk are being referred to as, well, prostitutes.

According to this person, all prostitutes are women first and foremost (which may badly surprise a small but significant number of rent-boys plying their trade in King's Cross, not to mention their clients) and there is no reason, therefore, to refer to them as prostitutes. This seems to fly in the face of common sense given that the Suffolk Strangler, as I have now heard the killer referred to in a shining example of alliterative inspiration, appears to be specifically targeting this particular working minority, and it's surely best to warn them of the fact.

When asked by a newspaper editor on the same interview as to what he should call these Working Girls, the lady responded with 'female workers in the sex service industry' - a slightly wider group of individuals, perhaps, but one which undoubtedly includes prostitutes. The man made a comment which I think was pointing out the unlikelihood of that phrase fitting into a headline, but I was narrowly avoiding being trashed by 38 tonnes of articulated Belgian at the time so I missed a bit.

Anyway, I shan't harp on, or indeed use the word again in what remains of this passage (or alleyway, or back of the car in a dark lane) except to say that I was wondering, as were the radio presenters, what the "Pretty Woman's" nearest equivalent to a trades union /civil rights group would have to say on the matter. Should anyone wish to ask them, they can be found under the name of "The English Collective of Prostitutes". I wish them the best of luck and the swift apprehension of the evildoer.

So, given that a valiant attempt has been made to remove a word from my dictionary, I shall have to counter by adding a new one, as revealed to me by my colleague Lew in the US. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to exasturbation, which is defined as the act of making a situation much worse than it was, all by one's self. An activity which regular readers will already know is one of my own particular talents.

What's it all about then?

2006-12-10T20:09:00.000Z

Hello.

I've been playing at blogging for a while, sort of in secret. Not in total secret, of course, as that would seem to kind of defeat the object of putting my blathering on an accessible server in the first place. But to an invited audience, shall we say.

They tell me that some of what I've written in the past is amusing, but please feel free to comment (really, I'd like the feedback), if you read any further and you find that it isn't.

There are some pictures on this site, but no noises. If noises are 'your thing' then I can heartily recommend that your point your browser (a new window, of course) at http://pcpodcast.blogsome.com/ or indeed at http://suffolkandcool.com/ . Both of these places will deliver some excellent sounds, and my old amigo at PCPodcast is almost as good at grumbling as I am. I don't know the Cool Man of Suffolk well enough (or indeed at all) to cast nasturtiums in his direction (although, between you and I, I bet he's pretty good at grumbling if he sets his mind to it).

In future, there may be posts from invited guests here, but in the meantime, everything from here down is my own grumbling.

No animals were hurt in the writing of this blog, although I did have to blow a spider off of the keyboard earlier this morning.

Don't Let Him in, I Can't Find the Harpic!

2006-12-10T19:59:00.002Z

I recently took the opportunity to drop in on a friend on my way to a 'food fair' some distance from where I live. As is customary on these occasions, while he and I had arranged this visit a good week in advance, he had neglected to tell his wife until I was a scant ten minutes away. On my arrival, I was slightly surprised that the good lady was, initially, no-where to be seen, but it emerged that she was frantically engaged in 'tidying up and cleaning'. This raises two points:

As a 'bloke' I am genetically incapable of recognizing mess, so whilst flattering, this activity is completely unnecessary.
This must be a bit how the Queen feels - apparently everywhere her Majesty goes is redecorated just before she gets there (in my case, its usually just after I've left), and therefore the queen believes that the entire world is spotless, and that fresh air actually smells like gloss paint.

Anyway, I digress... My colleague reports:

She did go on to say she was surprised you hadn't used the toilet (hence the frantic cleaning when you arrived). She went on to say that if it was I that had travelled for an hour in the car, then proceeded to have a cup of coffee, go round a food fair, have a sarnie, beer and more coffee, then there would be a very high probability that I would pay a lengthy visit to the bathroom, along with associated skid marks, drips and unpleasant smell.

My response to this, as an open letter:

I have to admit that once I got 3 miles down the road, I was disappointed thatI hadn't used the toilet. Still, not wetting myself gave me something to concentrate on on the way home.

I shall indeed warn my wife that we will need to line the Kharzi with anti-skid material, should you visit. Pondland [name changed for legal purposes] actually do something which is intended for lining the bottom of ovens which would probably do the job quite nicely. They often have reader's tips too, detailing unexpected uses for their products. I shall write to them:

Dear Pondland,

Thank you for your marvelous oven liner. Its great, and can be used in all sorts of places.

My wife recently obtained a rare phoenixx from a 'Harry Potter' convention, to replace our beloved parrot, Enoch, which recently passed away from a nasty case of 'rivers of blood'. We've called him 'Crazy Arthur Brown' and he's lovely, but he was getting through three cages a week. The poor lad's droppings simply burn through the bottom of his cage, and the traditional sandpaper just isn't up to the task.

Now I use sheets of your magic oven liner, and the droppings just slide off. I'm even making money as Ive been selling them to a nice man who used to work for the KGB, but I have no idea what he does with them.

Also, I am finally able to invite my good friend 'Skidmark Pete' round to my house for a coffee - my wife wouldn'tt allow it before, as cleaning the loo after his visits was such a chore. A little circle of oven liner with a target mapped out with 'tipp-ex' provides Pete with a smashing drop-zone and now we're all happy. Just thought your other customers might like to know of these alternate uses for your marvelous product!

Regards,
Major Q. Tipp (retired)

This Week's Recipe is Sliced, Deep Fried Polonium, with Stuffed Olives.

2006-12-10T19:54:00.000Z

This week I should have been at a secret location, watching a bunch of luminaries (or might that be loonies?) give a whole load of presentations about the particular slice of business in which we are all involved. While there is the occasional gem, all too often one can be subjected to death by powerpoint (reminds me of an old joke where a savage chief offers three captives a choice between 'death or bobo'). I wonder what the collective term is for 'presentations' - yawn, perhaps? Or maybe itch, fidget or slumber...

In fact, I should have been giving my own presentation "Knitting Hamsters for Beginners", but the fates have conspired to keep me safe and sound[1] at home instead of sending me off in a metal tube, 30,000 ft in the air, with three hundred other people and, if the UK gutter press is to be believed, a couple of microgrammes of Polonium 210. (Polonium[2] is a type of fermented sausage popular in Eastern Europe, and 210 refers to its length, in millimeters. It is one of the most poisonous substances known. Two microgrammes of this stuff is enough to kill the entire audience at a matinee performance of the Mousetrap, or would be, if they weren't already dead anyway.)

These days, a powerpoint presentation is probably the closest today's busy executive comes to sitting down and watching some good, old fashioned amateur (see last week's post) dramatics. That might be a shame, but for the fact that some of the worst ones are unintentionally funny. The correct way to show 'appreciation' of such a production in times past would have been to pelt the perpetrators (I beg your pardon, I meant, of course, performers) with a selection of rotten fruit and vegetables. That's no easy these days since most produce is genetically engineered, irradiated, vacuum packed or in some other way buggered about with so that it doesn't go rotten, even on a boat journey from Papua, New Guinea, to Guildford. (Watching a container ship try to dock at Guildford is a pleasantly futile way to spend an afternoon, by the way.)

Lets not forget that fruit and vegetables in their natural state are most certainly too 'earthy' for today's executive to soil his hands with, so the projectile of choice will have moved on. I offer, for your consideration, a selection of modern and upmarket projectiles and delivery systems suitable for livening up these very occasions.

Crystallised citrus fruit slices. Rock hard, and entirely cased in an abrasive sugar coating, these are the ninja stars of the confectionery world. The mental scars will outlast the physical grazing earned by unwary presenters who encounter a deftly flung slice of sugared lime.
Chocolate Brazil nuts. The shiny plastic-like coating of chocolate on these increasingly scarce nuts reduces their wind resistance to almost zero. It's a little reported fact that NASA is currently engaged in covering one of its space shuttles entirely in a mixture of Hershey's and carnauba wax in what I am sure will be a successful attempt to obsolete those pesky heat resistant tiles. The less well off executive may find that second hand (reload?) brazil nut ammunition may be cheaply obtained from old ladies, since the nuts tend to be too hard for the dentures, and the old dears spit them out after sucking off the chocolate. Fired from a slingshot, one of these babies will prematurely curtail the most tedious of presentations.
Finally, and most ominously, we have the blowpipe fired, hanabero stuffed olive. This is the hollowpoint bullet of the vegetable world. With sufficient velocity, the olive will, but virtue of its having been 'excavated', flatten on impact. Anyone who has previously consumed pieces of habanero chili will be well aware of the fact that there's a lot more damage done to the hole they come out of, than the one they went in through.

And yes, this is all sour grapes, and I am sore that I'm not there.

[1] As safe as it is possible to be when blessed with teenage daughters.
[2] Note for lawyers, this picture does not show a poisonous substance. Go sue someone else.

Religious Symbols

2006-12-10T19:48:00.000Z

During my morning commute to the office to have my soul sucked out, energy bled away and youthful enthusiasm and optimism brutally suppressed by a bleak despair, I like to lighten my mood by listening to the Today Program on Radio 4. That's when I'm in the UK of course. In San Fransisco I listen to KFOG which is in no way similar, unless John Humphrys is prone to listening to Pink Floyd in the bits where he's not on air.

Anyway, while I was driving in today, a Vicar was expressing his displeasure at British Airways' recent decision to prevent a member of staff, a committed Christian, from wearning a cross outside of her clothing. He asked for all Christians to boycott the airline in protest. There was, of course, an entirely predictable debate involving Turbans, Burkhas and all manner of other religious symbols or attire, and their acceptability or otherwise in the workplace. I, as (perhaps regrettably) a godless heathen began to feel a touch 'left out', while at the same time having a certain amount of sympathy with the chattering clergyman.

Should I wish to proclaim my lack of faith to the world at large, what 'symbol', I wondered, would I share with my infidel brethren? A cursury search of the web (after all, I dont actually want to FIND one, that would spoil the point) has revealled the happy fact that while there is much discussion on this issue, there is no commonly agreed upon symbol. So, I'm free to make up my own then. Yippee.

Most religions, I figured, seem to have their holiest sites or most revered figures firmly located in extremely hot places. After all, Christians, Jews and Muslims all appear to have quite an interest in arid climes. And what is it that all of these places have in common? Sandals. So my first thought was a circle, containing a stylised pair of sandals, with a line through them at 45 degrees. Now that would look 'wicked' on one of those fine silver plated chains from the cheap shop - the ones that manage to turn your neck green after a week's wear. Not to be, I'm afraid...

Meaningless speculation and drivel (two of the pillars of my own existence) are helped along, I find, by pleasant company and conversation. You can speculate on your own, behind closed doors, but my mum always told me it would make me go blind (I think she said speculation). So, a couple of minutes after arriving at work, when it was time for my cigarette break, I collared a colleague and dragged him out into the rain with me. He doesnt smoke, but he does enjoy the cigarette breaks.

He told me that the Greek gods live on the top of Mt Olympus, where it's likely to be chilly, and that nobody had enquired of the Norse gods as to whether central heating was an essential feature of the average dwelling on Asgard, or whether they required air-conditioning instead. So, that's the sandals image done away with then.

This fellow pointed out that, from his point of view, one of the good things about having a religion was that it can sustain, even nourish, a person through times of adversity. He also pointed out that despite my tendency to liken my life to a vast and featureless desert without end (and therefore without a centre), there are in fact a few things around which my life does appear, to the outside observer, to revolve.

The first of these, of course, is a solid comittment on my part to the practice of 'taking the mickey' indiscriminately out of almost anything that anyone holds dear, whether or not I personally have sympathetic leanings, purely for effect. [I'd like to point out that I make fun of myself as well, I dont want everyone else to have all the attention.] Well, I cant argue with him, but its a bit ethereal really. Cant easily make a symbol out of that.

Then he struck a vein of pure gold. Food. If there's one thing about which I can endlessly enthuse and evangelise, its food. As the recipient of several blunt comments regarding the 'quality' of any chicken which might be obtained from a supermarket at two for a pound in comparison with the kind of free-range feathered aristocrat to which I am drawn myself, he knows he's on to a winner there.

So, next time you set eyes on an oversized individual proudly sporting a Potato (possibly engraved with a pair of sandals, I dont give up on an idea that easily) on a chain, know that it's there as a gesture of solidarity with those who like to advertise their own faith. And, of course, to sustain and nourish him through times of adversity; at which task it may, I respectfully suggest from a purely materialistic point of view, be (at least temporarily) more effective than an item of headgear or jewellery.

Amateur Time

2006-12-10T18:56:00.000Z

As the festive season approaches at 160 Km/H (a hundred miles an hour in old money) we are faced with what an old friend of mine refers to as 'amateur time'. What on earth does he mean?

Well, its not the ticking off of passing seconds by someone who isnt paid to do so. Have no fear, Old father time is alve and well, and looking forward to the 31st December when he gets to go to parties and watch, as Big Ben strikes midnight, the assembled people search for the least physically unattractive person to kiss and shout 'happy new year' to, before turning into a newborn baby. Father Time, that is, not the kisser.

Nor is it the most dreadful Japanese import of modern times, Karaoke, where people who have deluded themselves into thinking they can sing stand up in front of their mates and murder songs like 'The Locomotion' (which should be murdered) and 'Wish You Were Here' (which should not be). Why is it that most people who do this cant carry a tune in a bucket?

Sliding down the scale of tastelessness for which I am so rightly known, the last thing it isnt. Its not those few pages to be found in 'gentlemens magazines' so often named after Ford cars (until they came out with the Mondeo which, if it were a magazine, sounds like it would be target at men who dont like girls). I'm referring to the pages where the 'mistress of the house' tries to live up to her title by allowing her hubby to send in a few pictures of her removing, piece by flimsy piece, her best dominatrix outfit in a seedy hotel bedroom in Walsall.

No, we were closest with Karaoke, its about pubs... At this time of year, folks who have stayed in all year watching soap operas and knitting their own hamsters decide to go out for a drink. Of course they deserve it, but these are the same people who have a bet on the horses only when the 'Grand National' is running. For my American readers, the Grand National is a bit like the Kentucky Derby, but without the fried chickens. Thus, the pubs dig out the bottles of sweet vermouth which havent seen the light of day since last year, and hang up a few sprigs of tired looking mistletoe. Conversations take place debating whether 'Cinzano' should be pronounced to rhyme with 'chin' or 'sin', and harrassed looking husbands in oversized, chunky-knit, olive green cardigans with big brown buttons find their senses overwhelmed by the beauty of the pneumatic young lady behind the bar and intoxicated by the merest sniff of her beer-splashed apron.

My curmudgeonly colleague claims that, as a seasoned and regular consumer of the fermented malt beverage, his enjoyment of the drinking establishment is adversely affected by these migratory visitors with their soundtrack of Slade, Wizzard, John Lennon and Yoko Ono and the Wombles. Personally, I think the miserable git should be forced to sit at the top of the christmas tree until his attitude improves.

Another Dubonnet and lemonade please, Sandra, and could I have another cherry please love, 'cos this one's gone a bit limp?

What I Didnt Expect to Miss...

2006-12-10T18:50:00.000Z

A friend told me a joke the other day about a bloke who has a very strange medical condition. Apparently, ever time this fellow breaks wind, his posterior clearly announces the name of a Japanese car and motorycycle manufacturer. Which reminds me that I kind of promised my wife I wouldn't write this in the blog. So here it is...

Commitments to the corporate behemoth which currently holds the deeds to what might possibly be referred to as my 'soul' had resulted in me bouncing back to the 'City by the Bay' for a few weeks before I had even had time to unpack my bag from the last trip.

'Dont you miss your family?' people ask me, and well, yes - I do. But I can always speak to them on the phone, though the dog's not quite so communicative and he has to go last, otherwise whoever has the phone after him ends up getting their ear glued to it with puppy-drool. (Note, this stuff really deserves scientific investigation. Once, when raiding the fridge in the early hours of the morning, I stubbed my toe on half a 'Winalot' which had been effectively welded to the ceramic tiles in the kitchen by this self-same puppy-drool. In the morning, after I had applied a large number of band-aids to the vicious wound that was left by this freak accident, I actually had to chip the errant dog-biscuit off the floor with a cold chisel. I'm telling you, a couple of dabs of dog dribble on that space shuttle foam, and it aint coming off to hit no wing, no way.)

Anyway, that's all the free advice NASA is getting from me today, and back to the point. Smack bang in the middle of an entirely lovey-dovey conversation with the beloved Mrs the other day, there came down the phonelines a clearly audible 'ThhhRRRRRRRp' as I assume that last night's baked beans must have finally caught up with the good lady. Immediately thereafter came a shrill 'peep peep peep' noise, which went on for a very long time.

Now the good lady swears that both sounds were the result of the tumble dryer announcing the completion of its allotted task, but I'm fairly certain that in reality she'd farted and set the smoke alarm off.

I cried with laughter. Honest. Oh yeah, the bloke with the complaint I started with had an abcess. Apparently, Abcess makes the fart go Honda.

Speechcless in San Francisco

2006-12-10T18:44:00.000Z

Set the scene: A chap who works for a large corporation enters a meeting room for a regular discussion with his peers, in which the very tricky business of bringing their company's product to market on time, and with exceedingly high quality is discussed.

He sits down, and places his notebook, mobile phone, and packet of cigarettes on the table.

Next to him is a gentleman of Eastern European stock, but well 'acclimated' to the Californian way of life he gave up smoking a long time ago. Overcome by desire, he reaches for the alluring packet of Rothmans King Size and says "Do you mind if I sniff your box?"

Happily, when all was delicately explained, he found it funnier than the rest of us.

Stimulating Mail

2006-12-10T17:56:00.000Z

An acquaintance recounted the following anecdote in a drinking establishment recently...

Being a broadminded fellow, this gentleman responded to an email just before last Christmas and purchased his partner a six-month subscription to a slightly racy ladies magazine ("delivered in plain packaging") as a little extra Christmas gift. What you might call a 'stocking filler' (possibly in the hope of encountering more stockings, who knows?).

It being the month of June, the subscription has expired, and he received a letter in the morning post (at half past three in the afternoon - this is the UK, you understand) inviting him to extend the subscription. All good and proper. While it shows a slight lack of etiquette, he could forgive, he says, the fact that the salutation greeting him on liberating the contents of the letter is 'Dear Scarlet Woman'.

However, what still has him convulsed with a combination of laughter and what we can only call 'chagrin' is the fact that renewing said subscription will result in a free gift being sent to his good lady. To whit: a device known, we understand, as a 'Rampant Rabbit'. A photograph of what we might refer to the 'business end' of which is clearly visible through the little clear 'address window' in the envelope.

He has kindly provided us with a scan of the offending envelope, cunningly altered to disguise his location. We wonder what the postman thought...

Biscuits and Gravy

2006-12-10T17:52:00.000Z

A note to a good Friend of mine, on 'the other side of the pond'.

You are, and will always be, a sincerely, deeply valued friend and greatly respected by me. However, there exists here some confusion which, for the sake of peace and harmony between our two great nations, must be resolved as quickly as possible...

There is no other kind of gravy than brown.

This is why most English people will spontaneously lose their breakfasts when they hear the phrase 'Biscuits and Gravy'.

This is a biscuit: http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/biscuits/previous.php3?item=9
and this: http://www.rhmfoodservice.co.uk/brands/bisto is how 'chavs' (q.v.) make gravy (mine usually involves a piece of dead animal and a bottle of wine as a minimum).

It is, I think, easy to understand why the concept of pouring one over the other is utterly repulsive.

Now, I was presented with 'Biscuits and Gravy' during a visit to a 'southern fried chicken' establishment in 'Knotts Berry Farm' - an LA theme park. The anticipation of this event inspired in me a horror I dare not, even years later, dwell upon. However, the actual experience was (though terrifying in its own right) not quite as bad. What was actually placed in front of me was a plate containing what appeared to be a form of savoury scone (recognised as a legitimate food item in British culinary circles, but nonetheless despised in mine own household) generously anointed in some kind of lumpy cream-like substance. Clearly a sauce, but in no stretch of the imagination a gravy.

The phrase 'biscuts and gravy' (and indeed, just 'gravy') is therefore in my prime English<->American translation dictionary along with Bum, Fag, Fanny, Boot, Bonnet and president[1].

[1] A type of cheese, from France.

Unusual Dog Breeds

2006-12-10T17:51:00.000Z

Today, while shopping, as I walked past a fairly young lad chatting to his friend, I heard the comment "We've got a new dog. Its a Perineum Mounting dog."

And I thought I had problems stopping my retriever from trying to make love to visitors legs!

AeroWHAT???

2006-12-10T17:48:00.000Z

I want you to know something about flying - although, if you are a seasoned traveler (like me) you may already know.

Its really boring.

Still, when you've missed the start of the movies for the 4th time, you do get time for 'musing'. This can be dangerous.

The airline I patronise (and I use the term deliberately) has in its first class cabin an in flight beauty therapist and masseuse. Of course, on this occasion I was in the cheap seats, so no luck for me, but I have availed myself of her services in the past and its very nice too...

I was on my way to Las Vegas where, apparently, anything goes. And, according to the slogan, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Applying this principle to the aforementioned in flight therapy, I was given to wonder whether there might, in these days of tarnished morality, be a business opening for, shall we say, a more 'full service' airline.

I reckon there would. But what might we call it?

Well, how about Aerofrot?

More musings from sin city soon, ttfn...

At least I'm not naked, eh?

2006-12-10T17:37:00.000Z

From the sublime: in a Las Vegas casino...

On returning to my room, having parted with a great deal of money for what actually amounts to a protracted lesson in basic addition at a green baize covered table, I get that sinking feeling that suggests I don't actually have the means of gaining entry to it. I perform the pathetic yet time honoured mime of finding the object of one's desire - a sort of Marcel Marceau homage to the gods of lost things. A subsequent search of the pockets reveals a driving licence, three hundred and sixteen dollars and forty-seven cents, and what appears to be a bus ticket.

This latter item is a mystery to me, since I do not willingly avail myself of this particular form of hoi-polloi transport - especially having sat, horrified and transfixed, through a collague's description of his morning journey amongst the likes of Cough-lady, Twitcher, Munter and Headphone-bloke. Perhaps someone else has been borrowing my trousers for illicit midnight charabanc shenanigans. Eurgh!

I haul my not inconsiderable ass (hotel food, y'know) unwillingly to reception and join a fetid queue of potential gamblers, moist with the anticipation of checking in to this temple of money-loss. Bleak depression settles on me - I must rise above this...

Finally, its my turn. I approach the besuited individual resplendent behind his crumbling Formica fronted counter, and announce in my best "English upper class twit" accent (a cross between Terry Thomas, John Cleese and Hugh Grant, if you simply must know) "Helleaux my good fellow. I find myself embarrassed to inform you that I appear to have denied myself access to my temporary abode by the simple expedient of leaving my Key-card within its confines prior to exiting. Do you think you might provide me with a replacement, or other means of entry therein?"

Randy, as his name badge proclaims him to be, regards me with a drooping visage that would not only be the envy of that paragon of enthusiasm Sir Clement Freud, but would probably stir feelings of jealousy in the breast of "Henry", the minced-morsel loving hound with whom he made several television advertisements. "Do you have any identification?" he asks me?

I ruthlessly suppress an overwhelming desire to prove myself "Saint Michael" by flashing Randy the name sewn into my underpants. Partially because I know there to be no person of that name checked into the Casino, and partially because we are on day three of the "chuddie stock rotation plan". Still, that does mean that the label is at the front, on the outside. Instead, I present my driving licence. Wordlessly, I am handed a replacement room key. Almost weeping with gratitude, still I can't resist: "Thank you, splendid fellow. I must profess myself both grateful and embarrassed, but at least I'm not naked, ha ha. What?".

The eyes swivel my way, creaking in their sockets, as Randy declares "Oh my. You would not believe how often THAT happens". It is more than likely that Douglas Adams met this man while dreaming up the character of Marvin the Paranoid Android.

To the ridiculous: in a San Francisco Airport Hotel

"Good morning Sir, how may I help you?" Tilly says to me through a smile framed by several thousand watts of pristine Californian dentistry.

"Ah, yes, good morning! My room card isn't letting me out of the parking garage, do you think that you could, um..."

"Yes, of course Sir!" Tilly throws away my card with a flourish, and runs a new one through the machine marked Parking, presenting it to me with another smile which threatens to burn my retinae.

"Er, thank you. And, that will get me in to my room too will it?" I ask rhetorically...

"Well no Sir, I didn't know you wanted room access too." ("Well, not simultaneously" I think to myself) "which room are you in?"

"Fifteen thirty-six, please" - knowing the drill here, I prepare the underwear for identification.
"Excellent." (swipe, swipe) "Thank you, your Royal Majesty Prince Bacon of Gerbrovia, you have a lovely day now." Yet another smile, and a proffered key-card.

"Oh, gosh, I'm terribly sorry. I meant fifteen sixty-three - I'm not actually Prince wossname, My name is Jockey-Thong XL (one of a three part set)".

(swipe, swipe, thrust) "Tsk. Here." The smile is replaced by a glare, though the candle power is, if anything, even higher.

Chastened, I have already snatched up the card and scuttled off to put out the flames in what remains of my hair after the scorching disdain has set fire to my precious golden locks before it occurs to me that security wise, Old Randy wasn't such a bad bloke...

What not to say in Las Vegas

2006-12-10T17:28:00.000Z

Recently, I had to visit Las Vegas for a conference, at which I was presenting. The conference lasted for three days, was entirely based in a Casino, and I had precicely 45 minutes to stand up in front of at least 5 people and say my piece. Sometimes, life is just too hard.

On arrival in Las Vegas my travelling companions and I checked into out hotel, and arranged to meet later in a bar to generally eat, drink and be merry.

At the appointed hour I ambled in to the chosen establishment and concluded (mistakenly, as it happens) after a quick peep around the rather dim interior, that I was the first one there. Naturally, I took a seat at the bar and ordered a beer.

Soon afterwards, I was joined by one of the ladies in our party (who we shall call Jane, to protect the innocent), who proceded to order 'a beer that isnt Budweiser'. No doubt feeling that we had somehow slighted one of America's national treasures, the girl behind the bar handed over a bottle of Chimay Trappist beer and bravely managed to look only slightly disappointed when my companion professed its strong dark-brown contents to be most enjoyable.

With much to discuss, including the work week ahead, the recent journey, and not least of all the speculation as to where the rest of our people might possibly have got to (turns out they were hiding at a table that cant be seen from the bar entrance) it was rather annoying to be persistantly tapped on the shoulder by the straglly bearded individual who had chosen to sit next to us.

Having assured him that we:

agreed with this gentleman's opinions on the bar we were in
had also been to Birmingham,but did not in fact know the fellow called Jim that he met in a pub there
sympathised with the plight of the natives of Northern Wisconsin (of which he is one) who are accused by their southern cousins of being Canadian

my legendary patience was wearing thin so, when he tapped me on the shoulder again and askes "So buddy, what do you do?" I regret that I answered "I'm a pimp.". "She's very nice," he said, "how much for the evening?"

Which is how it came to be, when our colleagues rescued us, that Jane complained that I had tried to sell her to a pseudo Canadian. I really didnt have the heart to point out that had it been a deliberate attempt on my part, the transaction would have been rental rather than sale.

Doggie Treats

2006-12-10T17:10:00.000Z

I have grave concerns regarding the moral wellbeing of my dog.

Generally speaking, he's a normal, happy, healthy five year-old golden retriever with a tendency to spend too much time noisily licking his own nether regions (because, of course, he can); evidently enjoying this distressingly inexcusable social faux-pas more than absolutely necessary. And before you ask, I'm not making a big deal out of it out of jealousy, or anything, OK? I know where he's been.

He's also a total coward, barking assertively at the postman from the safety of the hallway, only to scuttle upstairs like a rat up an aqueduct and shiver on the landing as the day's collection of bills and direct mailshots pushing the latest in amusingly named small Korean cars for our house's previous occupant tumble through the letterbox to the floor.

Neither of these habits give me pause to worry overmuch, although why the man we bought the house from would want to drive a Matsukihatsu Dungbeetle Supreme escapes me.

However, I noticed the other day that he (the dog, not the previous occupant) sometimes seems curiously attentive in front of the television here at the Acres. He's been eschewing his usual habits of sycophantically shadowing the cat for hours on end or, rather horrifyingly, licking the wife's feet (something else I don't envy him) with every outward sign of rapt contentment, to stare fixedly at the screen. Its taken some time to establish the kind of program that holds' his interest.

David Tennant's Dr Who doesn't seem to do it for him in the same way that the scary Northern bloke did. His ears prick up when Samantha Carter graces the screen in Stargate SG1 (but so do mine, so that's just learned behaviour). He seemed almost bereaved after the final episode of Star Trek Enterprise. But I finally cracked it. To my great consternation, it's the Animal Planet channel that's been ringing his bell.

He's got a thing for horses. Dolphins, monkeys, bats, earwigs and mice can all hold his gaze. But when the Andrex puppy toddles on and whimpers on about tuggable, huggable softness, his tongue actually hangs out. And the other day, he got so excited during a program about the mating habits of the Basenji that he was too tired to eat his Winalot at bedtime.

My dog has come to regard the Animal Planet tv channel as pornography.

I suggest that those of you with pets consider this: Animal Planet is available to the most basic of digital TV subscribers. There's no 'watershed' after which these programs are shown for you to make sure that Fido is all tucked up for the night and, crucially, there is no 'pet-owner control'. There's all manner of features available for parents to ensure that their children don't access unsuitable material, but absolutely nothing whatsoever to prevent your Shi Tzu ogling the girls down at the poodle parlour. And its not just dogs, either. There is 'specialist material' on here for lots of pets. Quite what Tibbles is going to make of 'Big Cat Diary' I really don't know.

You may scoff, but when you come home from the pub one evening having neglected to shut your dog out of the lounge, don't blame me if he's stretched out on the sofa with a cigarette, watching "K9 Boot Camp" with a satisfied expression on his face.

Post script: And keep him off the computer too, otherwise you'll find a subscription to "Reader's Bitches" on your credit card statement. Dont say you werent warned.

"Evil the Cat"

2006-12-09T19:58:00.000Z

An early attempt, on my part, to describe my dissatisfaction with an uninvited nocturnal feline guest.... Jazzed up just a little...

So there's this black cat right? Big. Black. Or a small panther, I'm not sure. Anyway, the neighbourhood witch (like a neighbourhood watch, but with more dancing naked in the woods) reports that its allegedly terrorising most of the local moggies. I have good reason to suspect that its been in my house, due to the occasional traumatised state of my own two little ones, and the black hairs round the cat flap. Not to mention the fact that I've seen the bugger.

Now, I don't object to an occasional social visit, but that's not what's on Evil's mind. Nope. He's there to eat two plates of Whiska's Kitten (Meaty Chunks) and possibly frighten, if not have sex with, my two little innocents. Next thing he'll be round with his mates, wrecking the hi-fi, emptying my drinks cabinet and phoning up for cat-pizza. Up with this, I will not put.

I discuss tactics with one who shall remain anonymous, but has experience of cats, bastard and otherwise. Over a few pints which are given no chance to warm up, he shares his decreasingly coherent views with me, pausing only to mock my recent failed attempts to play the stock market, and take the piss out of my car. He is my friend, as he will later prove by emailing me at 1am with a message to whit I am a Bastard for (a) getting him drunk, and (b) not making him a bacon sandwich. His advice, as I remember it, involves fixing the cat flap so things can come in, but not go out, and a bucket of water.

Now, its the end of an industrious weekend, my washing is done, the front garden looks like Alan Titchmarsh has been labouring on it for a week (with that girl with the big, erm, T-shirt, yes.), and I have successfully 'kegged' five gallons of home made ale, which I shall probably call "Scruttock's Old Dirigible" because I almost always do. There is only one black cloud lurking with intent on the horizon. Evil the cat. So, I fix the cat flap es reccomended by my Cider fuelld acquaintance, firmly close the utility room door, and retire to my pit safe in the knowledge that my kittens will remain unviolated, their food will not be stolen, and I will catch the perpetrator.

5am, Monday morning. I'm awake (relative term) earlier than normal. There's a noise like an express train full of paralytic, tone deaf violin players hurtling around my utility room. I begin to suspect that I may have trapped Evil, and wander downstairs in my night attire (Like Marilyn Monroe's, but without the Chanel Number 5). I'm awake enough to realise that blundering into a six by four enclosed space with an enraged tomcat whilst wearing a minimum of clothing would not be the brightest thing I've ever done.

Minutes pass, and I return to the door, now dressed more appropriately in a Two Piece, Kevlar armoured leather bike suit, and sporting a pair of reinforced gloves guaranteed not to shred in a 90MPH bike crash. These may afford a little protection.

So I'm in there. Evil hasn't taken kindly to this, and is doing a wall of death impersonation about five feet off the ground. My sluggish brain, which at this point is still going through the power-on-self-test comes up with the brilliant observation that Ill have to catch him. As I follow him round the room, and just before I keel over with dizziness, I spot a five gallon fermenting bucket. Perfect. One athletic lunge later I have him, trapped between a wall and the bucket.
Now he's seriously pissed. The noise from the bucket tells me that my troubles are only just starting. What the bloody hell am I going to do now.

The brain has finally finished its morning machinations and is now almost fully awake. Almost - I'm in that state where I can have ideas, but have no chance of discerning between a potential Nobel Prizewinner and a recommendation for the Darwin awards for stupidity.

By dint of superhuman timing, and an agility I never new I possessed, I get the lid on the bucket without letting the cat out. As I rest on the floor, weight firmly on the disk of brown plastic that separates me from a pair of fangs Dracula would be proud of and four sets of razor sharp claws, the rest of my cat-expert's advice comes back to me. Bucket Of Water. Well, I've got a bucket. There's the tap and, oh joy, the hose I use for home brewing is sill attached. A little manoeuvring, delicate fumbling with bucket, lid and hose, a quick blast of cold water and suddenly everything goes quiet.

So now I've got a five gallon bucket that contains one homicidally pissed off black cat, quietly biding his time and no doubt waiting for an opportunity to meet me on a dark night, and two pints of cold water. In the back of my mind, that little bit of music from Jaws that comes on just before people get eaten is playing over and over again. Carefully, I take the bucket outside, unsnap the lid all the way round the edge, and hide behind the back door. All this without ever removing my right hand from the lid.

Its the moment of truth, the phantom soundtrack builds to a crescendo and then silence. As quick as I can, I flip the lid off of the bucket, and tip it onto its side, snaking my arm back inside and safely slamming the back door. All academic of course, since that's the exact time I remember that the cat flap is still set to allow Evil back in, but not out again.......
Luckily for me, he decides he's had enough for now and shoots off over the side gate like his arse is on fire.

I wonder if he'll be back....