Friday = Chipsday

Yes indeed. That’s chips as in British chips (French-fries, pomme-frites etc.) Battons of fried potato bathed in salt and vinegar for me please, mother…

So, when I awoke this morning, wifey was fully occupying one half of the bed. This is no comment on her size, even being pregnant. This is the fact that she likes to sleep with not only a duvet, but a zillion layers of blanket and coverings. The weight pressing down on her while she sleeps should leave her the shape of a pancake. So with her 2.5 tons of bedclothes, wifey takes up at least half of the bed. That doesn’t bother me, as I can quite happily and easily get by with what’s left and have room to move.

Until morning. When Murphy (the lurcher/dog/monkey/muppet) decides it’s time to climb onto the bed and get some morning cuddles. He’s not subtle. And he’s not small. He weighs three stone, can stretch out to almost five feet long, and appears to be essentially a short-haired bag of coathangers. And when he climbs on for morning cuddles, he lands between wifey and myself like a small elephant. Wifey and her mound of heavy coverings aren’t likely to shift, but the sudden addition of 3 stone of dog on top of the duvet means that said duvet sinks down between us beneath idiot dog and disappears from above me.

And of course, the wedge being driven between us propels me steadily toward the edge of the bed. So within a minute of Murphy deciding it’s time for cuddles, I am lying on a strip of bed four inches wide, with hardly any duvey and my pasty white buttocks hanging precariously out over the side of the bed. Until I either give up and get up, or I fall out of bed and land next to Seth, the other lurcher who is happy to stay in his own bed.

And that’s my morning routine at the moment!

And my current irritation is the fact that I am trying to arrange purchase and delivery of a christmas present to another country. Amazon sell it and do gift packaging. However, when you add international delivery in time for christmas and the packaging, the result is a little over SIX TIMES the cost of the actual product. Now tell me that’s not ridiculous. I’ve had a look at online companies in the country I want it delivered to, and they can do it in time, cheaply and gift-wrapped, but they don’t actually stock the bloody thing and couldn’t get it in time to send for Christmas. So in the end I’ve plumped for a company I trust that will do the job cheaply, but don’t do gift wrap.

Ah well.

And now the time for fried potato pieces.

Yay.

Have a goon ‘un, y’all!

Ciao

Prue Batten

Today’s post is advertising and press-release, pure and simple. I’ve been trying to promote and sell my books wherever I can and it’s been quite arduous at times. But during that time I made a friend who has been going through the same, trying to promote her work. And it should really be self-promoting, it’s that good. So, without further ado, I give you the works of Prue Batten:

I read the Stumpwork Robe a while ago and this is the review I posted of it:

The premise of the Stumpwork Robe is original, fascinating and clever. The very idea of telling a story through the medium of hidden messages is enough to hook me, let alone the complexity with which the whole thing is handled. You will not find a more original idea in a month of searching.

Prue Batten has built a world within her tale that is deep, fascinating and myterious, and yet familiar as it draws on facets of our own geography, history and mythology. The mix of central Asian culture with Medieval British and Celtic Faerie myth is heady and intricate and gives the whole world of TSR a freshness when compared to other fantasy I have read.

And do not be mistaken. This is not Hans Christian Andersen. I picked the book up, to be honest, expecting a slight twee-ness due to the faerie aspect of the story. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a faerie tale for adults, with a deep understanding of the nature of the mythical faerie.

Finally, what can I say about the writing? Smooth and descriptive, beautiful, langorous and intricate, the Stumpwork Robe is like reading silk. You can almost smell the smells and hear the sounds. As a writer of fantasy myself, my own writing feels like ‘See Spot Run’ by comparison.

In short, I cannot recommend this tale highly enough, and I shall be purchasing the sequel immediately.

So, Prue has now released the second book in the series:

While I own a copy, I have thus far been too busy to start it. Having read the Stumpwork Robe, I realise that I can devote nothing less that all of my attention to the Last Stitch. Picking it up a couple of hours a week is not going to cut the mustard. When I’ve read it, I shall post a review.

In the meantime, I will once again urge you all to go buy a copy of the Stumpwork Robe and read it to see for yourself. And get to it before books three and four are out, or you’ll be playing catch-up.

Prue lives in Tasmania and is a fabulous lady, kind and intelligent, funny and insightful and I count it a privilege to have got to know her this year. And just so you’ll go and be amazed, here’s a list of links for you to clicketty-click like mad:

Buy The Stumpwork Robe here.

Buy The Last Stitch here.

Visit Prue’s Website here.

Read Prue’s Blog here.

Visit the Chronicles of Eirie FaceBook page here.

Tomorrow: comedy. Enjoy your day, folks…

I love Trondheim in the Spring time….

I wonder how many excited travellers to Norway will come across this page just because of the title. And quite truthfully there is nothing in this post about Trondheim. I guess there is as I’ve just mentioned it, but that’s it! Might as well stop now, you Norsk fjord-lovers. No more Viking references here, Bjorn…

So… ducks. A comment by WittyKitty on one of my posts led me to thinking about rabbits. Which in turn led me to thinking about animals in general. So, Trondheim notwithstanding, this entry is on the subject of all creatures, great and small, starting with ducks. Have a listen to this:

Sinister Ducks

Alan Moore, writer of such influential graphic novels as Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell, under the nom de plume Translucia Baboon, formed the Sinister Ducks “to warn people”. This is among my all time favourite humourous songs. And now you know. You have learned about their evil ways.

Moving on, let’s talk sheep. Anyone over there in the USA heard of the Streets? They’re a tremendously popular band in England. Never been able to figure out why, myself, since I’d rather listen to my own digestive system playing up, but each to their own.

They’re classed (according to Wikipedia – how can anything contributed to by people called things like Turnip, Penisulagal and Wiggly! be wrong?) as “UK Garage” or “British Hip Hop”. Just so you know what we’re talking about here, this is the streets:

Familiarise yourself with the ’style’ and the beat and so on. Then listen to this:

Yes, Chris Moyles on the radio as one of his many song parodies created the Bleats. Just too good, really. So… sheep bleat. And on we go to Rabbits.

Or more specifically, wabbits. I heard this track years ago and was led to believe that it was Metallica. It’s actually not, but it does sound like them, and to continue our animal music theme, it seems appropriate. Laugh your socks, pants, and retainers off to this:

Have you had enough yet? Really? Not yet? Then let’s move on…

Here’s a simple one for you. I can’t believe anyone out there has not seen badgers? But if not, this flash movie ate about three weeks of my life back when I worked with the shiny one at Soulless Corporation (TM)

There were many follow ups, but none had the sheer style of the original. I will now spend the rest of the day occasionally shouting “mushroom, mushroom.”

Well that’s me set for the rest of the day. How’s y’all?

Badger, badger, badger…

Afternoon update: As an extension of my regular use of the word “Smoo”, I have occasionally expanded to saying “Smoot”. And just now I finally looked up Smoot to see if it exists. And I am so blown away with the result, I had to pass on the word. Smoot lives and I shall be using it all the more.

Check out Smoot here.

Word

Lordy we is busy today. And so I give you my one line post. 4 sentences, 26 words but only one Word Of The Day: Debacle

Humourous Travels

The word for today is Ergophobia, with good reason.

So, today I give you:

Three funny things that have happened in other countries:

Spain: Back in the nineties, on the road across the Baix Emporda area of Catalunya we (my parents, granfather and myself) killed a car. We had a hire car; a dark green Seat Cordoba. It may not have been new, but it was of good quality. And we went for a day out round the villages up to Toroella de Montgri and Empuries. Now, to get back from that area down to the coast around Lloret, one can take a main road to join a larger main road and travel with all the rush-hour traffic. Or one can (yours truly as navigator discovered this) take a road that goes pretty much straight across. Ok, I’ll grant you that this isn’t a ‘red road’ on the map. This wasn’t even a ‘yellow road’. It struggled to achieve ‘white road’ even… It was more like ‘dotted line indicating where a road might be found one day’. My father driving, me battling with a large, fold-out Michelin map in the passenger seat and periodically cursing, and mother and grandfather in the back, we turned onto said road. After a mile the nice surface disappeared and left a more gravel-look road. But we kept going past villages with cars parked, so the road must still be navigable, eh? Ooh, barely. We dropped the speed from 50mph to 40 due to the slightly uneven surface. And then the uneven surface disappeared. It gave way to one lane of gravel with grass growing down the centre. We slowed to 30mph. And then large rocks started appearing, littering the road. I remember my father saying “well it’s not worth turning round now… there can’t be far to go.” I remember looking at the map, realising we’d only come a third of the way along it and burying my face in the map while I laughed hysterically. It took hours and hours to go a mere 28 miles. In the end we were hardly moving. I could have got out and overtaken the car on foot. We finally reached Lloret and took the car back, leaving it in the hir place car park. It was now grey rather than green. One of the windows now rattled and would not wind fully closed. When my dad slammed his door, the front right wing popped up and the headlight fell out. I laughed almost until I was sick. All the way back to the hotel all I could see in my mind was dad, holding the headlight in while sitting on the wing to pop it back together.

Tunisia: Again with a hire car. This time, wifey and I. Again, she driving and I navigating. We were making our way from Hammamet where we were staying, to the ancient Roman city of Dougga. The signs for the site send you off the main road and into a small provincial town called Teboursouk. In Teboursouk, it was market day. I could probably have bought a sheep, a sword or a tree if I’d wanted there. Everything was for sale. And everything was on the street. And everyone. It was chaos. There was so little room on the road that even bicycles were having to stop and wait for a break in the general melee, let alone a reasonably sized car. So we drove through, looking for signs until we rached the other end of town and found the sign pointing back the way we came to the ruins. So, with a deep breath, we turned and headed back through the chaos. Still no signs. Needless to say, we did another trip each way. Four times through that! And finally with a bit of working out, we figured where the road must actually go from the town to the site. So back in again and we looked for the road. And it was behind all the market stalls. They had completely blocked the road off. Now this is Dougga. It’s the most famous and visited historical site in Tunisia. It’s like the Tower of London in England, or maybe the Statue of Liberty in the USA. And they’ve blocked off access for a market?!?! So we decide to be adventurous and try a different turning that we hope we can get back to that other road from. And we get a little lost. The first person we ask sends us up a road, round a bend, down a road and brings us down to a dead end where we can see the road we want but, guess what? There’s a market in the way! And we try another road out and ask a small wizened creature like a brown Yoda if this is the way to Dougga. He stares at me like I have a rhodedendron bush growing out of my ear. So we left town again and pootled along the main road and found… lo and behold… the back entrance to Dougga. Thank God. With excitement I clambered out of the car and grabbed my camera. And then it began to rain on me! On the way back from Dougga, leaving the small town of El Krib and heading for El Fahs – a roadworks sign. The road surface has been ripped up for works. Well, one reasons, we’ll shortly get past that and there’s no traffic jam or anything… Nope! 42 miles of barren, red, rocky, surfaceless road. The dust cloud kicking up behind us looked like a small sandstorm. Add to this that the road is only really wide enough for one vehicle and you’re on to a winning time. 30mph for 40 miles of red rock. And we switched on the radio to pass the time. Now I have nothing against the ‘Call to Prayer’. In fact, I rather like it. It’s quite evocative and exotic to a Yorkshireman. But an hour of it while faced with the same view of red road was a little too much. Wifey and I found ourselves laughing hysterically and alternately singing Chris Rea’s ‘Road to Hell’ and A-Ha’s ‘Road to Nowhere’.

And thirdly: France, caravanning back in the 1980s. I vividly remember how I woke up each morning. My parents slept at one end of the caravan. The other end was a single bed with a canvas pull-out bunk above it. My grandad slept on the bottom and I on the top. So every other morning I would be woken by my grandad sitting upright to get out of bed. His head would then thump me in the small of the back through the thin canvas. The other half of the time I would be woken by the rhythmic thump of my father kicking the caravan tyres (presumably to check that some goblin had not let them down in the night.) But the funny thing I remember by far from those days was the arrival at the campsite of Le Puy en Velay. I would be around 14 years old I think. While my dad levelled the legs of the caravan and my mum monitored a saucer of water to check it, I would get water. My grandad, bless him forever, went round the caravan, it being stiflingly hot, opening the four windows. He opened the one by the door, then the front, then the other side and then the back, finishing by walking round to where he started and, as he rounded the corner, he walked straight into the first window he’d opened and almost scooped off the top of his head. Knocked himself silly and cut his forehead. Of course we’d have worried, but he immediately started roaring with laughter, so we knew he was alright. It’s been over twenty years and I remember that so clearly. Wonderful.

And that made me miss my grandfather all over again.

Ah well. On with the business of Monday.

Ciao folks.

Peter Rabbit

Sadly, today, I do not have time to write a post. Just tooooo busy. So, I will quickly present you with the word for today: Calumny. What a good word.

And so on with a space filler. Today, courtesy of my folder of old funny emails, here’s a great one my friend Rich sent me a long while ago. Enjoy…

Peter Rabbit Tank Killer

Once upon a time, there were four rabbits, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. They lived with their mother, Old Mrs. Rabbit, in a warren which looked -to the unaccustomed eye- rather like the lice infested trenches of World War I.

One day Peter’s mother said “I am going to market to sell my mittens. You may play in the woods if you wish but, Peter, you and your naughty cousin Benjamin Bunny are not to antagonize Mr. McGregor nor blow up any Panzer tanks today”, and with that, she left in a swish-swash-swish of rustling skirts.

But oh! That Peter was a naughty rabbit! No sooner had his mother left than he had dressed for combat and hopped down to the end of the lane to rendezvous with his cousin Benjamin. As the two young rabbits exchanged their fulsome greetings, they suddenly became aware of a mighty a-clinking and a-clanking coming up the road! Their little hearts a-flutter, they peered judiciously around the corner.

Why it was Mr. McGregor in a MkII Tiger tank with a transversable 88mm howitzer and two forward mounted 7.62mm machine guns!

“Be quick and fetch the Panzerfaust anti-tank gun from Tom Kitten!” whispered Benjamin. So Peter went lipperty-lipperty all the way to Tom Kitten’s house.

“Quick!” Peter implored him. “Lend me your Panzerfaust, for Mr. McGregor has a Tiger tank and will surely blast us all into bloody shards of flesh, bone and sinewy pulp if we are not careful, if we are not most circumspect!”

Tom Kitten gave Peter his anti-tank gun willingly for Mr. McGregor had scolded him once. But by the time Peter had returned to his cousin, Mr. McGregor had driven up the road and opened fire on Jemima Puddleduck, killing her instantly.

“Thank goodness you were not the least tardy!” cried Benjamin, as the turret of Mr. McGregor’s tank slowly turned towards the humble abode of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

“Waste the fucker!”

Benjamin called out with the sensation of enjoyment. So Peter steadied the Bazooka on his shoulder and squinted one beady little rabbit eye down the sights.

Now, rabbits eat lots of carrots and every child knows that carrots do your eyesight a power of good, so of course Peter did not miss.

Whooomph! Ka-Woooommmbbbb! The AP shell from the Panzerfaust slammed square into the cowling of the Tiger’s twin back Mayback HL 700hp engines, sending fuel cascading everywhere!

“Take that for putting my father in a pie, you four-eyed Scottish bastard!” exalted Peter and gave a little rabbity hop for joy.

But oh dear! Mr. McGregor was trapped in the hatch of his burning Panzer tank and he was a-hollering and a-screaming fit to burst!

“Kill me, please!” he requested of the rabbits. “For I am trapped and sorely afraid that I shall slowly burn to death from the legs upwards!”

Benjamin Bunny raised his Scmeisser and pumped a full magazine into the distressed Mr. McGregor’s head, thereby solving the pretty little pickle they had found themselves in!

All of a sudden, another hatch opened who should fly out but Mr. McGregor’s cat! Now Benjamin’s father had no opinion whatsoever of cats, but Benjamin was shit-scared of them and would have most surely voided himself in his attire had not the cat been one huge ball of flame and surely demising.

When Mr. McGregor’s cat rattled and lay still, the two little rabbits exchanged salutes and promised to meet again next Thursday and then hurried back to their respective domiciles.

Oh dear! Old Mrs. Rabbit was distraught in the extreme when she learned what her naughty son had been about.

“How many times have I told you about blowing up tanks!” she chided. “You are a naughty, wicked rabbit!”

Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail who had not assaulted any armored vehicles were rewarded with fresh lettuce and carrots and radishes, but Peter was sent to bed without any supper.

But then, who wants to eat that rabbit food shit anyway?

The End

wefherfghhnwepppiilkop

Interesting. I have a spam comment from, with the subject, and saying “http://wefherfghhnwepppiilkop.com.” I just don’t even know how to react to that. Even more so than the search terms used to find this blog in the last couple of days (‘renaissance being crushed’ and ‘inflated cow bladder’!)

I note also that Microsoft Orifice 2010 Beta is now out. If anyone who reads this has attempted Orifice 2007, they will probably stare at that sentence with the same kind of horror that I did when I saw it! 2007 took what was a nice, user-friendly, fairly efficient package and removed everything that was useful or pleasant about it, leaving something that looked nice, but was less useful as an office package than a pile of fetid donkey poop. I can only shudder in anticipatory terror at what they might have done with 2010. I’m pretty sure it won’t have put back the nice bits from 2003!

I’m also instituting my Word For The Day today. And today’s word is Flunky. And my challenge, and yours if you wish to accept my thrown gauntlet, is to try and get that word into as many conversations as possible without having to force it unnaturally. I’ve just noticed that with my usage of text colours today, it’s beginning to look like the flag of some kind of central African country.

Oh, and I have an e-poltergeist. In the last 24 hours I have had the following happen:

• A category on a menu on a website I run switch itself off and become invisible
• An upload system for the same site change completely with no software update
• 2 emails move from one folder to another without my help
• And best of all…  One of my email accounts is set to forward new mail to the other. Last night my other account picked up email forwarding to the first somehow. So during the night (GMT) Poolie sent me an email. It arrived and then forwarded to my other account. Which then forwarded back. And so on. And so on. This morning my mailboxes were full. I discovered the problem and switched the forwarding off, deleting about a zillion emails in the process.

Just how did I get targetted by an e-poltergeist? I wait with bated breath to see what today will bring!

Well, just a short post today to keep you in the loop. Now I have to go and eat cheese. Ciao bella…

Wednesday Weirdness

Ok, I’ve been away a few days due to slight not-wellness. But now… Guess who’s back… back again…  SJ’s back… tell a friend. Actually one day I shall have my own TV show. And the first episode is going to open with this scene:

Thirty or so folk sat around in chains with their legs crossed dressed as Eminem. Then one reluctantly stands up and says “I’m Slim Shady”. Then another and another until the screen is filled with clamouring Eminems saying ”I’m Slim Shady”.

A good opening scene, I feel.

And we have news on the baby front. We know what the baby’s sex is now. All I’m saying is I don’t have to learn which Disney Princess is which, but I will have to get a miniature baseball set! Actually I was wondering whether you can get Jacksonville Jaguars or Carolina Panthers shirts in baby/small child size? Perhaps anyone reading this can tell me? I forget how it started, but last night someone referred to imminent mini-me as ‘unisex’. I should damn well hope so. More than one sex is never good for a baby!

* * *

So on to the subject of dinner. When I was at University I developed a very specific basic pasta dish that I pretty much survived on. It’s never going to win culinary awards. In fact, culinary awards would move along the shelf and edge away from it with looks of fear and disdain. It looks like a fat pasta demon got harpooned and exploded in a pan. It contains bacon, egg, cheese, onion, mushroom, garlic, garlic, garlic, garlic and tomato. Vampires run in fear from my pasta. It’s basic. It’s not pretty. But it tastes good and it fills you like a concrete enema. Good for students.

And at times in my life since then, when I have lived alone, I revert to making said pasta dish. Let’s call it… not Pasta a la Mode… no… I think:

Pasta a la Commode!

And still, when wifey is late home or out for the evening, my meals are always one of two things: Pasta a la Commode, or tinned Chilli Con Carne. <Side story time>… Wifey won’t eat tinned chilli. She calls it dog food (and having examined a tin the other day when making it, there is a certain disturbing similarity.) But I like it. She used to make Chilli herself, but she always tests it and decides it’s too mild, and subsequently adds bottom-damaging, Earth-shattering quantities of chilli, resulting in something I have to eat in stages over the night, interspersed with pints of milk or water. <End of side story> Ooh, I’m even coding my stories with xml standards now. 

And my mother has always really enjoyed Pasta a la Commode. We were talking about food a couple of weeks ago in the village pub and she told people about my pasta. And next thing I know I have a date to cook Pasta a la Commode for six. For SIX! Does anyone have a cement mixer I can borrow for tomorrow night?

* * *

Went to physio again last night and they noted just the tiniest improvement. What interested me there is that the particular physiotherapist who I am seeing was running behind schedule and had a cue of three people. She managed to sort two quickly but the third? Well the third was behind a curtain in a separate room. And he came out doing up his trousers and thanking her, saying he would book another appointment. She, on the other hand, came out carrying a bowl with a cloth over it and holding it at arm’s length as though it were a stinky weasel that might prolapse in her arms. My mind still boggles when I try to work out what kind of physio treatment that is. <Shudder>

It was also interesting waiting outside afterwards. Wifey went to a midwife appointment at the same time. Oh, and I am trying to squeeze the work midwifery into all conversations at the moment, due to the pronunciation ‘mid-whiffery’. Fantastic. Anyway, I had fifteen minutes to wait outside the physio department while wifey had her appointment. And the women that passed me going to the midwife astounded me in their wide variety. Large women, petite women, old women, barely-women, women with a gaggle of children around them, women with a scared-looking guy hanging on their arm, classy women, classless women. Amazing. It was like watching evolution in progress but some times hitting ’slow rewind’. 

Oh and it was quite strange being at Ripon hospital. These days it is basically an accident and emergency outpatient’s centre, a midwife’s clinic and a physio department. That’s it. When I was a kid it was a thriving hospital. It was one of the more renowned maternity hospitals. In fact… I was born there. In fact the hospital car park oppposite the hospital used to be the out-patients’ dept before it was levelled.

* * *

So, I think that about covers Wednesday. Shady’s back…. tell a friend…

P.S. I just had to update with this link. Everyone needs to go read this, or I will send diseased monkeys after you with lasers!

Toilet Humour

So. The British have a reputation for being fans of ‘Toilet humour’ and one can see why when watching Blackadder or Bottom, or any number of British comedies. Yes we do like toilet humour. But it goes deeper than that. I think we in general and I in particular, have a fascination with toilets. Let’s explore my fascination.

Perhaps it comes from my love of classical history; the Romans and their communal latrines and sponges on a stick. Eight men sharing a single sponge on a stick for cleansing? It would teach you to wash your stick thoroughly, wouldn’t it. I wonder how they decided which member of the 8-man contubernium would carry the poop-stick?

Perhaps it comes from the ‘long drop’ in medieval castles. When I was a kid we went on a school trip to Skipton castle. Yes, Skipton was the castle I showed you a photo of the other day. While we were there as kids, the loudmouth braggart asshole kid who had to be the centre of attention decided for a laugh to put his put in the ‘long drop’ and mime falling the 60 feet into the river below. While larking and pretending, his shoe came off and … yup.. fell 60 feet into the river below. He had to spend the remaining 5 hours of school trip, traipsing around on cold stone and in mud with one show and one sock. It’s always satisfying to see loudmouths get silenced with embarrassment.

Perhaps it comes from the amazing variety of toilets I experience travelling around Europe as a kid. There were wonderful Belgian urinals that were basically a trough surrounded by a not-quite-enclosed arc of corrugated steel, so that privacy for the toiletter was maintained, unless the passer by happened to glance through the open gap at you. There were the French ’squat’ toilets. There was one wonderful German convenience I remember where the ladies, to reach their restroom, had to pass through the middle of the gents’.

In more recent years, in Rome, wifey and I stopped in the pouring rain at a confectionary store that was also a cafe. Wifey went to use the convenience and came back out smiling, telling me to have a go. Curiously I venture inside. It was the most clean, sparkling, hygienic toilet I have ever been in. And once I used it and flushed, I found out why. Upon flushing, the entire seat array swivelled round, disappearing into the wall and was replaced with a freshly washed one. Amazing!

So now a couple of relevant photos. The first is a towel holder in the gents’ convenience of the pub at the small village of Lastingham. I was so taken with the towel holder, I had to photograph it:

What can I say? Fabulous. The second photo has slightly more story:

Worrying, eh? This was at Aysgarth Falls visitor centre in the Yorkshire Dales, 15-20 miles from our village. If you remember the ever-so-accurate Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (chokes on own words) the fight on the waterfall between Robin and Little John was filmed there. And in the visitor centre, they have Eco Toilets. Here, children can fall down the shaft because they’re so wide. They’d only fall 15 feet, and they’d have a soft landing, but I’m not sure they’d be pleased about that after all. If I fell down there, I think I’d rather be dead on impact! And wifey discovered the downside of the Eco Toilet. You see, the way they work is this: Deep shaft over wide pit. Pit full of bacteria and other gunk that breaks down the waste in an environmentally friendly way. Slowly. Over time. The upshot of this means that the tank is almost always half full. And if there are several toilets, they all connect to one tank at the bottom. This means (as wifey found out) that on a windy day, a waft can blow down a vacant chute and up another one, carrying all the whiff with it. Wifey was green when she came out. And to continue the week’s somewhat farty theme, my own observation was this: If there are four cubicles and two of them are occupied, when one person farts, the tremendous cavity below ground amplifies and echoes. I was nearly thrown clean across the cubicle by a fart from a person in a different cubicle.

So you see, toilets are fascinating things.

Hope I haven’t put you all off your breakfast/lunch/dinner? Back to less revolting things next time. In the meantime, I must go use the loo…

Random News

So. I’ve got a toilet humour post lined up for Friday, inspired largely by both Poolie’s post the other day and also by the most hilarious comments that followed. But that requires me to have sorted just a few photos, which I haven’t yet done. So in the interest of filling space with the polystyrene filling bubbles of my thoughts, here is some random crap. Or you could skip ahead and ignore that I wrote it.

1. I have lots of exercises to do for physio. Almost all of them are done lying either on my back or face, rather than sitting or standing. On the upside this means that in the morning they can be done in bed, rather than having to get up to do them. On the downside it has become a game with our two large dogs to play ’sit on dad while he does his exercises’. Bastards. Better still is the game ‘Dad’s still asleep so lets leap on him from a standing start and see how loud we can make him scream.’ That’s a particularly good one, particularly when they use two legs to balance, one to press down hard on the pressure point, right thigh, and the other to stand on the crotch with their full weight. Always a joy to wake up to.

2. In the words of Douglas Adams: “Today must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”

3. Wifey has booked us tickets to go to the recording of “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue” in Scarborough in December. If you’ve never heard this radio show (and I’m assuming all Americans fall into this category), check out this clip (and any others you can find, as they’re all worth it.)

And of course, we’ll be in Scarborough at the seaside for the day. Regardless of the fact that it will be deepest winter a day out is always welcome. And Scarborough means the castle, the Roman signal station, Arcades of video games, beer in pubs, and last but far form least: Terror Tower. Can’t wait.

4. Christmas movies. I am one of those people who loathes the fact that the Christmas season now appears to begin in September. And while being a non-denominational semi-believer most commonly worshipping Fozzy Bear myself, I’m damned if I’m going to call Christmas ‘the Holiday’ just coz of Political correctness. For Jews, it’s Hanukkah. Then there’s Kwanza. But we refer to these by their own names. I don’t try and make Muslims call Ramadan ‘the Hungry’. It’s Ramadan. Ooh. Almost started to rant there. But still, I celebrate Christmas, not because I’m a true believer sadly, but because I was brought up to. I consider it a time for family, fun, tolerance and understanding. And therefore in the spirit of Christmas, wifey and I are going to watch one Christmas film each night for 9 days leading up to the day itself. All the greats. Here’s the list.

• Scrooged
• A Christmas Carol
• It’s A Wonderful Life
• The Holiday
• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
• Die Hard
• Muppets’ Christmas Carol
• Trapped in Paradise

Good choices, huh?

Well, I’ll be back tomorrow with humourous toilet photos and gags. Until then, don’t let Thursday get you down. We’re nearly at the weekend again.