Survival of the Fattest

Question:

Two men (or women, but I feel safer saying it's men because I'm not stupid) are lost in the wilderness. There is plenty of water but no food.

Both are six feet tall, same build, but one is 12 stone and the other is 30 stone.

How much longer would the fat man take to starve to death?

That's assuming he doesn't eat the thin man.

I know the thin man could kill the fat man in his sleep by smothering him with branches from a tree and stuffing clumps of earth in his mouth and live for much longer by eating the fat man and then drying out strips of his flesh and hanging them off his belt for later, like Bear Grylls no doubt would. But let's assume they don't eat each other. Would the thin man starve much sooner than the fat man?

Subsidiary question, if they didn't eat each other, walking out of the wilderness, would the thin man get further because he had less weight to carry and could keep going longer, or would the fat man get further because he had all that lard to feed off to keep him going?

I think the fat man would, for sure. And that's why, if I was in that situation as the thin man, I would definitely kill the fat man and eat him. If I could get a fire going. Barbecue mainly.

Or just eat him raw, the fat bastard.

Basically, thin man, fat man, who survives?

Unless they stumbled across a woman with enormous tits, then maybe they would both survive.

There are always variables.

I need a rethink of this question. It's difficult being a scientist like me.

Anyway, I need more drink. Laters...

Shit Christmas (My words set to music and sung by Chaz Crane to the tune of Blue Christmas)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-v32wVp_PY

Lungs Suck

Lungs suck. And they blow. And sometimes, if you don’t remain vigilant, they fill up with water and kill you when you least expect it. Apple bobbing has claimed more unwary victims than people realise. Particularly when the class bully holds your head under while the teacher is outside having a crafty smoke.

 

Lungs don’t even taste good, not unless some sneaky manufacturer hides them inside their pasties, sausages or burgers, disguising their noisome flavour with minced chicken neck and savoury cow’s anus. That’s another Jamie Oliver recipe I won’t be trying again any time soon. The sprinkling of star anise and pinch of saffron didn’t make a bit of difference. As for the squirt of squid ink, bloody waste of time and money that was.

 

Did you know one human lung spread out flat would cover an entire tennis court? I dare say it would make it a bit slippy, though. Don’t see Wimbledon changing over from grass to lung courts in the near future. Not ‘traditional’ enough for those snobs. I mean, they’ve never budged an inch over the all white kit thing, not even for the girl players when they’ve got the painters in.

 

“How much! For six effin’ strawberries and a teaspoon of cream? I don't know about Wombles of Wimbledon, highway robbers is what you are."

Sponsored Walk

I was thinking about doing a charity walk to Brighton and back. Then it occurred to me that it might be a bit too ambitious. I’m not the fittest person around, what with all the laying about in bed and constant boozing. Not to mention the chips, cakes, kebabs, marijuana, fizzy pop by the bucketful and my intravenous coffee intake. A little too much self abuse leaves the old legs a bit wobbly, too. That doesn't help when you're clinically obese and have twenty stone of lard to cart about. 

 

Anyway, I decided a walk across all the Thames’ bridges in London might be a bit more manageable. Decision made, I had another beer, put a couple of pasties and a tray of chips in the oven, smoked a fat joint and set about planning the route. Cross over bridge, walk along, cross back, walk along, cross over next bridge ... I’d almost plotted very nearly five bridges in my A to Z - three actually - when I got to thinking about how tiring it would be. Not only that, but there was the wear and tear on my shoes to consider and being London, there would always be the chance of a light drizzle, or of it being just a bit too warm.

 

My bridge walk was starting to look like a bridge too far, especially considering the bad name I would end up with for taking a cut from the sponsorship proceeds to cover necessary expenditure on lager, burgers and sweets; plus the shoe wear and tear thing, of course. It’s not as though I can afford to sue anyone for defamation of character, so they could call me all the thieving lowlife scumbags under the sun and get away with it.

 

I suppose I could have done the walk and just kept all the money raised. Selflessly walking over all those bridges would be damned hard work, after all (particularly if it did turn out to be just a bit too warm) and surely deserved some kind of reward? It’s not as if I actually know any skint cripples who need the dosh. They all get more benefits than I do anyway and they don’t even pay rent in those homes.

 

If I did go down the route of trousering the cash, I realise I would have to keep quiet about pocketing it, but figure I could avoid possible prosecution by saying that had been the plan all along in really tiny small print at the bottom of the sponsorship form. You know, a bit like the sort insurance companies use to get out of ever honouring any claims. It’s OK for them to take the piss out of their customers, but if I helped myself to a few measly pounds meant for less fortunate bib-dribblers, suddenly I’d be the bad guy! Not sure if keeping the cash could be described as an act of God, though. That might be pushing my luck a bit.

 

I haven’t even got many friends, so probably couldn’t raise more than about thirty quid and that wouldn’t exactly give sight to the blind, or tongues to those talking-difficulties types who grunt and wave their hands about a lot. Might be just as well to give the idea up as a bad job. My shoes have already got holes in them anyway and all that walking would only make them worse.

 

There's that possible light drizzle to take into account as well. If that didn’t hold off, I bet I would even be condemned for buying an umbrella, or for sitting in the pub all day drinking the sponsorship money away until it stopped spitting outside. These charity donors are always tight like that. Don’t see them doing a bridge walk when it’s drizzling, or a bit too warm. Oh no, all too happy to leave that to genuinely concerned people like me. Hypocrites. 

 

Sod it. I think I’ll smoke another joint and eat some toffee instead. Don’t suppose any of you fancy sponsoring a bacon-sandwich-athon? No?

 

Sleepathon?

 

 

 

 

Icy Wasteland

I was watching the news the other night about some awful disaster, when I became transfixed by the image of a young, half-starved boy. He was trudging through a huge snow drift, whipped by howling arctic winds, every step obviously costing him a great effort. Wrapped in a threadbare blanket and little else, his feet were protected against the freezing temperatures by only a skimpy pair of socks and thin, open-toed sandals, more appropriate for a desert than an icy wasteland.

 

I was absolutely horrified. I’d never seen anything so terrible, or quite so pathetic. I ask you, socks with sandals! Didn’t his parents ever teach him any fashion sense?

Fear of Flying

I have a mate who is absolutely terrified of flying. He’s never been abroad for a vacation unless he could get where he was going using boats, trains and coaches and eventually, sick of wasting half of his leave days travelling to and from his holiday destination, he decided to do something about it and booked himself onto one of those fear of flying courses.

 

He went last weekend. It crashed. No survivors.

 

I suppose I should have said “had a mate”

 

A fear of static caravans may have been a safer option.

 

Or milk floats.

Jolly Wheeze

A good practical joke to pull on a friend while walking in the countryside, if visiting an exotic continent where he isn’t familiar with the local fauna, at least, is to tie a six-foot length of string to a large twig and secretly attach it to his belt. Once that’s done, you should tap him on the shoulder and warn him he is being stalked by a “deadly branch snake”, one of the three most venomous and aggressive reptiles in the world. Keep a straight face while telling him this and try to look as worried and fearful as possible so that he is fully convinced.

 

Naturally, as your buddy begins to move away from the area, the twig will follow right behind him, wriggling “menacingly” through the grass and with any luck, he will panic and break into a run.

 

To frighten him even more, by this time you should be screaming for help and waving your arms frantically above your head, while warning him, in a loud, shrill voice, that the snake is almost upon him and that no anti-venom for this particular viper exists. Make it very clear that a single bite and he will be as dead as the proverbial doornail in ten agonising minutes, shortly after his face has turned black and his tongue has swollen to the size of a half-inflated rugby ball. Which fate, no amount of desperate poison-sucking-out, or tourniquets will save him from.

 

Driven to a dribbling frenzy, your mucker will take to his heels and run and run, crying, pooping his pants and gabbling madly, until you finally lose sight of him completely. Of course, with no possible way he can outdistance the branch snake, short of ripping off his strides and hurling them into a bush, he will eventually drop to the floor exhausted, freeze in the foetal position from sheer terror and very likely black out entirely.

 

At this point, when you stumble across his unconscious body, you can wake him up by urinating on his face and then explain that the whole thing had simply been a jolly wheeze on your part. He is likely to be a bit peeved at first, but then will see the funny side and congratulate you on your convincing gag. That’s if some big hairy thing with fangs hasn’t got to him first and killed and eaten him.

 

Should that be the case, you will likely only discover an odd tuft of your pal’s scalp, a few scattered teeth and one or two gnawed bones. This will mean that your amusing scam has backfired somewhat and that it might be best if you kept quiet about the whole affair.

 

Alternatively, if your easily fooled friend has been badly mauled, but is still breathing, finish him off with the put-them-out-of-their-misery attachment on your Swiss army knife. Be sure to keep the wounds irregular and in keeping with him having been savaged by one or more large critters. Don't want some interfering jungle Miss Marple catching you out, after all. Then you can fly home and driven insane by guilt and remorse, hack your family into bloody kebabs with a garden hoe, or other sharp-edged tool, before being shot dead through your kitchen window by a trigger-happy police marksman.

 

Dear oh dear, and all because your gullible chum was stupid enough to run away from a harmless bit of stick in the first place. Let’s face it, daft sod deserved to die.

 

And your nagging wife and her parasite children.

 

I also know a practical joke about a fatal untreatable disease, but that involves drugging them first so you can put the required green and yellow marks all over their bodies with felt tip pens. Trouble with that one is, sometimes you are a tad too heavy-handed with the drugging part of the exercise and they never wake up. Where’s the fun in that? I found it a complete waste of effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solemn Vow

Me and drink had some fun times
Like when I fell over, hit my head, broke a rib
Got up to mischief, stayed out too late
But with never a lie, only ever a fib

Fourteen cold lagers on a Friday night
Thirty-seven more up until Monday
In bed till gone two, missed a day’s work
Still drunk, I thought it was Sunday

Drink’s been a stout friend
Supported me through all the troubles of life
Through funerals, weddings, Wednesday night telly
And the problems I had with the wife

I’ve quaffed my share of cider and wine
Drunk sherry and binged on the hard stuff
But when it comes to the old amber nectar
I never could get quite enough

With the juice in my veins I’ve laughed a whole lot
But then probably wept even more
I understand highs and I understand lows
With even keels I’m just not so sure

My constitution not the force it once was
I’m older now, but much wiser too
I know that drink is my enemy
And also exactly what I must do

I’ll give the booze up, I’ll abandon it
Cut it out of my life like a cancer
I will abstain and jump on the wagon
That is the only real answer

No more for me the devil’s brew
No more turning into that bad Mr Hide
No more antics and no more sorrys
A wave of sobriety henceforth I will ride

No more guilt and no more shame
No more agony and no more pain
I will be good and I’ll be nice
I’ll be white bread, I’ll be white rice

I will stay sober for all my tomorrows
And that is my honest vow
As for tonight, I can just catch the offy
But only if I leave you right now…




 

Practical Jokery

I haven’t done a whole lot of practical jokery in my life, but when I decided to, they were doozies, as you are about to hear.

 

My first victim was my older sister, Shirley. My Dad summed up my relationship with Shirley as, “you two are always fighting like cat and dog.” This was true, but I was the innocent in all of it because Shirley was both a bully and a snitch.

 

In fact, Shirley bullied me when I was too small to fight back, but when I grew big enough to get her in a headlock and rub dirty socks in her face, she switched to the tactic of getting me into trouble with my mum at every possible opportunity – which wasn’t difficult with mum delighting in slagging me off and nagging me senseless every moment I was in her company. That’s what being raised a Catholic did for her.

 

I remember, when I was around seven and she was thirteen, my dear sister folding a thin mattress in half like a sandwich, turning me into the filling, and then jumping up and down on it. She was a lump, my sister, and soon developed into a young woman with a forty-two inch bust, with a barrel body to match. Five feet two and at least fourteen stone if she was an ounce, meant her using me as a trampoline was no joke.

 

Then there was the time she knelt on me and repeatedly rubbed her knuckles spitefully on my wishbone, not even desisting after she had managed to make me cry. Or the time she pinned me down and roughly tickled me until I was screaming for mercy. There was nothing playful about it, just tickling way too hard and with nothing but malice. Bullying cow that she was.

 

Anyway, a few years on, I took my revenge on her in a most creative way. At the time, we lived in an old Victorian house that had provided a few creepy and inexplicable events already, which made my prank all the more effective (and terrifying).

 

The family were all sitting watching TV one Sunday night and luckily for me, the first to need a toilet break was Shirley. As she headed off into the hall and down the stairs to the bathroom on the landing below, I could barely contain my glee.

 

You see, what I had figured out was that the toilet chain to the overhead cistern just about reached the door jamb. Thus, I had pulled the toilet chain and then backed from the room, pinning the chain handle in place with the door. Shirley duly arrived outside the loo – in a hallway lit only by the light filtering down from the kitchen – pushed open the door to the unlit bathroom and then let out a blood-curdling shriek as the toilet mysteriously flushed itself and the chain swung violently back and forth clanging against the cistern pipe.

 

She was a big lass was our Shirley, but she proved she could move at some speed when necessary, and she came hurtling back up the stairs, screaming all the way, bursting back into the living room howling and crying, face gone so red it was almost purple. A gibbering wreck, she managed to explain what had just frightened the living crap out of her, only to have my dad dismiss the whole thing as nonsense. A toilet didn’t just flush itself, so she must have imagined the whole thing.

 

How I kept a straight face through all this and not give away my own involvement in this “supernatural” event, I will never know. Thereafter, for several weeks, Shirley refused to go to the toilet at night unless someone accompanied her and I never did own up, leaving her convinced a toilet flushing ghost resided in our bathroom.

 

After a good bit of time had passed, Shirley finally calmed down and began braving toilet visits on her own once more. Well, that is, until I did it to her again!

 

Bruhahaha and other evil noises. Teach her to mess with me.

 

My next victims were two of my friends. At the time, I was living with a mate and his family, my loving mother having kicked me out at age sixteen. Again, this was a somewhat spooky old house, which lent itself very well to the prank I had lined up.

 

I was the only one at home at the time, but expecting my mate and his younger brother to turn up at any moment. In preparation, I dressed myself up, switched all the lights off and lay in wait. On my head I had a fright wig, in my mouth a set of plastic fangs. I then put a black crombie overcoat on back to front and slipped a torch into the neckline so it would shine its light up across my face, casting all sorts of eerie shadows.

 

I didn’t have long to wait and a few minutes later, I heard a key go into the front door and peering through the banisters at the top of the stairs, watched as the two lads came into the front hall. They were no sooner in than I made my scary appearance at the top of the stairs, torch shining across my face and glinting off my fake fangs, arms outstretched in front of me zombie-like.

 

As soon as they spotted me, I began to shamble down the stairs, emitting a low growling from my throat. For a long moment, they froze where they were, eyes wide, mouths dropping open, then the pair of them took off at a lick even a scalded hare couldn’t have competed with. Getting the door open only delayed them for half a second and then they were off down the path and through the garden gate, with me in hot pursuit in a loping side-to-side run that would have made Igor proud.

Passers by looked on at all this with expressions of either bewilderment or amusement depending on whether they realised they were witnessing some silly youthful shenanigans and not anything more sinister. We hadn’t gone more than a few yards before my two mates regained their senses and realised it was me chasing them and not the horrific apparition they’d first thought me to be, but by then they were so spooked, they kept right on running.

 

Truth be told, my hair was standing on end as well, so though I knew it was me under that fright wig, I had somehow managed to even frighten myself. Finally, the three of us came to a breathless halt, me gasping for air and laughing, them gasping for air, calling me rude names and vowing they would pay me back. They did try, bless them, but they never did get me as good as I got them that night.

 

Then comes victim number three. I was in my mid twenties by now and working as a tube driver on the Bakerloo line. One day, one of my colleagues was riding up front with me on his way to pick up his own train further up the line. Peter, his name was.

Peter was slim, blond and quite a handsome chap. That aside, he was also a dirty sod. He collected porn films and I mean seriously collected, to the point where he would travel to Holland armed with a list of titles he couldn’t buy in Britain and smuggle them back home. Had a whole wardrobe full of them, apparently. This was at a time before the porn explosion went off in the UK and aside from girlie mags, there was little else on offer for the smut aficionado and not even any internet filth to drool over.

 

Now, in the old 1938 rolling stock, the driver’s door invariably had a small hole where some screw had fallen out over the years and when bored (which was all of the time) the drivers would have a peer through the hole at the passengers, generally in the hope of spotting some good looking woman or other.

 

Well, a cunning plan struck me. Pure devilment. While Peter chatted away to me, I leaned down and began peeping through the hole in the door and after a moment or two, I said “wow” followed by a low whistle. Breaking off in mid sentence, Peter looked down at me. “What?” he said. “There’s this bird sitting just outside,” I said, “and I can see right up her skirt.”

 

“Let’s have a look,” he said, interest instantly peeked.

 

“Hang on a second,” I said. “Blimey, she’s got suspenders on and everything. Cor!”

 

“Come on. Let me have a look,” Peter repeated, tugging at my shoulder.

 

Pretending to be reluctant, I sat up and made way for him, whereupon he dropped to one knee and with his hands either side of his face to steady himself against the door, put his eye to the hole. The second he was in this position, I reached up, turned the handle and swung the door open.

 

What a tableau! Peter on his knees peering through a hole in a door that was no longer in front of him and a packed carriage full of passengers all swivelling their heads to stare in his direction, wondering what on earth he was doing. For a painfully embarrassing second, Peter remained kneeling in front of his confused audience, but when the penny dropped, he leapt up and backwards to dodge from sight.

 

Um, that’s when my joke went a bit wrong, because Peter jumped back with such force, he crunched his head against a piece of overhead equipment and blood started to pour down the side of his face. Actually, it went more than just a bit wrong, because Pete had to book off duty and go to the hospital for stitches.

 

Peter was not best pleased with me, to say the least. I lost count of the times I offered up grovelling apologies, but all to no avail. He never forgave me, rarely spoke to me again, even after years had passed, and on the odd occasion that he did, it was in a clipped staccato that let me know offering me even the smallest communication was painful to him.

 

I couldn’t have foreseen what was going to happen, of course, and it was so damned funny, I didn’t feel as badly about it as I perhaps should. All my other mates on the job thought it was bloody hilarious when I told them what I’d done and knowing them, I dare say they ribbed him about it mercilessly. Might be that was what stopped him from forgiving and forgetting, in fact, rather than the initial incident.

 

Obviously I’m sorry he cut his scalp open, but I wouldn’t have missed seeing him kneeling there, hands pushing against an invisible door, one eye shut and the other peering through a small hole that had suddenly turned into an open doorway. If only there had been camera phones at the time…

 

If Carlsberg played practical jokes, they’d be the best practical jokes in the world.

 

 

 

 

Death and Taxes

Sing while you're winning, that's what the fellow said.

Might as well sing while you're losing too, cause you will soon be dead.

 

Smile and be happy, that's what you ought to do.

You know you really might as well, cause you'll be dead soon too.

 

Being dead is easy, so no need to be sad.

You're alive right at this moment. so you may as well be glad.

 

Fourteen billion years this universe has been spinning.

You've been dead for most of that, so sing out while you're winning.

 

Reasons to be cheerful, that's what the geezer said.

I liked that bloke, he was a real card, but look! The bugger's dead!

 

Sing while you're winning, that's what the fellow said.

We might as well sing while we still have breath, for soon we'll all be dead.

 

Life places on your face such a maudlin frown,

But considering you're still breathing, why not turn it upside down?

Death and taxes can't be dodged, we all take that as read.

But at least the twat who swipes your cash will wind up just as dead.

 

Smile is what they told me, it could be a lot worse.
Then I realised just how right they were, as I watched a passing hearse.

 

The same fate awaits us all, dying our final act.

All new people in one hundred years and that's a simple fact.

 

So sing while you're winning, just as the fellow said.
Unless heaven truly waits for us, you can't sing once you're dead.

 

 

Penny for Them

Lyrically
Empirically
I get the answers right
I think people should pay for them
But I’m afraid they’re all too tight

Ruminate
Cogitate
I do it by the hour
Yet still nobody pays the tab
What a flaming shower

Versify
Verify
My thoughts like diamonds shine
Still not a penny comes my way
Stingy flipping swine

Pontificate
Calculate
Facts turned into thought
My ideas they should be priceless
But not a one gets bought


 

Daily Mail 1837

Daily Mail 1837

 

Not satisfied with the mill owner’s generous concession of a ninety-six hour working week, worker’s representatives – rabble rousers to a man – are now demanding two full days off a year and this in addition to Christmas day and Easter Sunday, upon which holy days they already stand idle and unproductive.

 

Sir Barty Ringbit, speaking from his eighty acre mansion in the Cotswolds, told us he is appalled by this latest imposition. “It was barely two years ago,” he said, “that we gave in to their clamour for a farthing a month pay rise. On top of an agreement that those dying of consumption or tuberculosis should no longer be held responsible for training their replacements, this latest outrage is nothing short of blackmail”.

 

Another mill owner, Lord Vileness of Bilgewater, told the Mail that since the abolition of slavery in 1833 and the concomitant increases in cotton prices from the colonies, he has been forced to sell one of his three stately homes and can now only visit his winter abode in Saint Moritz for a bare two months of the year.

 

“At this rate,” he continued, “members of my own family could soon be forced to take some small hand in the business, carrying out what can only be described as acts of common labour such as overseeing floggings and the like. This is an intolerable state of affairs and must not be countenanced at any cost.”

 

Taking a break from his sojourn in the spa town of Cambridge, Lord Vileness told us he would be raising this issue in the House of Lords the moment it returned from its summer recess in seven weeks time.

 

“If we continue to cave in to these scurrilous demands,” he said, “the next thing we shall hear is that children should be in school rather than being usefully employed manning the looms from dawn to dusk, or cleaning the chimneys of the gentry. It seems these Bolsheviks believe their snot nosed progeny should be given their bread and water as a right and not have to earn it with a little honest toil, which has clearly been shown to be beneficial in building moral fibre and in my opinion, has never harmed anyone. Not amongst the lower orders, at any rate, who clearly need a purpose in life forced upon them if they are not to turn out as cutpurses, highwaymen and vagabonds.”

 

The Duke of Sainsbree, delaying his philanthropic visit to Newgate prison where he annually distributes rotting meat and weevil-infested bread – that is yet to reach its not lethal until date – to the grubby inmates, responded to this question of worker’s rights, telling this reporter:

 

“I am a charitable man and work tirelessly for three days of the year to alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate. However, if we continually give in to unreasonable and costly demands, such as miners being allowed topside once a day to see the sun, or their bints being allowed several hours leave of absence for the purpose of whelping their cross-eyed bastards, then I can see a time when, emboldened by our inaction, the under classes will be fighting for old age pensions and the right to cease their labours before death has taken them.”

 

"As for claims that we should be employing those with missing limbs as a sop to the unfortunates of the world, this is clearly ludicrous. God visited these torments upon them - no doubt with good reason - and whether such appendages were lost in factory machinery or in tavern brawls, is neither here nor there.”

 

The Duke’s protégé, Baron Tesko of Littlehelpington, added, “Unless our troops are brought in to crush such rebellions by these villainous and ungrateful serfs, those of higher breeding and status may struggle to maintain their elite places in society and perhaps even face a challenge to their rightful ownership of 95% of the nation’s wealth and be forced to exile themselves in countries such as Switzerland where Sir Phillip of Collins and Saint Bono Du Taxdodge have already taken refuge.

 

 

2014

 

Everything changes but everything remains the same. Read above article again and see the similarities between the nineteenth century and the tweny-first. Welcome to the beginning of the new Victorian age – soup kitchens and workhouses not just on their way, already here, but renamed “Workfare” and “Foodbank”.

 

Exaggerating? Am I?

Come Dine at Christmas

Is it possible to get the complete giggles whilst sitting alone on Boxing day watching TV? Well I did this year, so yes, it most certainly is. If you happen to be watching “Come Dine With Me.” at any rate.

 

This show is class anyway, though where they keep finding groups of people who are so thick, or arrogant, or rude, or stupid, or useless at cooking whilst thinking they’re Gordon Ramsay, or bloody irritating, or just plain nuts, is beyond me. When you watch this programme, you hate half the contestants, feel sorry for some of them, and then decide one of them isn’t really so bad and then hope and pray they win, whilst also praying the most annoying wally comes last and is therefore humiliated. Fortunately, it often works out that way.

 

The episode in question which set me off guffawing actually had five people in it who weren’t as aggravating as usual, but oh boy! There was a girl so thick and wooden two short planks doesn’t even begin to describe it. Anyway, it wasn’t even that which gave me the giggles…

 

A super posh guy – Tim nice but dim – decided to have a wartime austerity Christmas dinner. He’s a history buff and used that as his theme for his dinner party. He’s the sort of bloke whose eyes roll back up in his head when he’s trying to think of what to say, with a mouth full of white tombstones in place of teeth. Very nice, but dumb as they come.

 

So, the guy makes an austerity Christmas cake, which he said he was sweetening with carrot because during the war they couldn’t get any sugar. Just after saying that, however, he says, and I’ll just add a few drops of vanilla essence. Um, 1939, no sugar in sight, but they’ve got vanilla essence. Yeah right. Very authentic.

 

Then he makes what he calls ‘Murkey’. I’ve heard of this before, it’s mock turkey and consists of sausage meat mixed with apple and onion, shaped into a bird shape and finished with rashers of bacon. He burnt it black. But wait…

 

One of the diners asked why it’s called ‘Murkey’ and the host explained, “it’s mock turkey and there is also ‘mock duck’“, which if he’d had a vegetarian present, he said he would have made for them, whereupon the thick bird (bless her) asked with a completely straight face and in all seriousness “and is that called ‘muck?’”

 

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha. Brilliant. Cheered me up no end. I was laughing so hard I thought I’d cracked a rib.

Why they call it mock duck anyway, I have no clue. Apparently it's some wheat-gluten-based vegetarian concoction, with sugar, oil and soy sauce, so why duck? I mean, I wouldn't roast a pork knuckle and call it "mock carrot". Makes no sense at all. Mind you, these half-hearted veggies have a penchant for disguising their grub as various types of meat and I bet it tastes every bit as terrible as that other pointless rubbish, Quorn*. That's not mock anything, it's just plain muck.  

 

Then, just to round it all off, the next host insists her dinner party has a Christmas panto theme, so they all arrive in fancy dress. Two of the men turn up dressed as Christmas puddings, which is a great source of merriment to the other guests. Thing is, one of the men, a posh Scottish guy with the moustache and bearing of a wing commander, turns up dressed as a pudding, but also has the tightest red shorts on you have ever seen and either he has stuffed them with something or he has the biggest testicles in all creation and you can see all the other guests squirming and desperately trying not to look at his crotch.

 

Fantastic. One more dinner party to go as I write this, which I’m off to watch now, but surely it can’t get any more surreal. Can it?

 

Oh, and if you are wondering why I’m only posting this now in February, I got very drunk on Boxing night and forgot I’d written it. Just found it in my documents and I think there could be a few more forgotten pieces lurking in there as well. Watch this space.

* See, "Quorn - what's that all about." Elsewhere on this blog.

 

I Can't Stand Noise

I must be cracking on, I must be getting old

I can’t stand noise and I really hate the cold

 

Time ain’t nice and time ain’t kind

It screws with your body, screws with your mind

 

Every bloody day, another painful twinge

Makes you have a moan, makes you have a whinge

 

The years roll by with their wear and tear

The loss of youth’s none too easy to bear

 

Eyes start to fail and joints begin to grind

And don’t try to kid me that you don't mind

 

I had get up and go once, but it got up and went

Soon I will be ancient and craggy-faced and bent

 

It doesn’t feel fair and it doesn’t feel right

Getting up to have a pee four times every night

 

Can’t run for a bus, can’t run up the stairs

Hair once dark now awash with silver hairs

 

I used to have hot passions and lots of fire and drive

Now I need to check my pulse to see if I’m alive

 

I must be cracking on, I must be getting old

I can’t stand noise and I hate the blasted cold

 

 

 

Sweet Paranoia

Shall I tell you when I first became aware that the New World Order had singled out the British as a target for annihilation? When I first noticed that our culture and way of life were being undermined and our brains got at? No? Well I’m going to tell you anyway. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, smelly bottom.

 

It first began in 1963 with a fizzy drink called Tizer. Without warning, they withdrew Tizer from sale because it contained traces of cocaine … or so they claimed! It returned to the shelves several years later, minus the cocaine, but laden with artificial colours and sweeteners. Now, I grew up drinking Tizer, by the time I was eight going through a large bottle a day and back then I was always full of energy and enthusiasm. Now, a year away from being sixty, no matter how much Tizer I drink, I have no energy or enthusiasm at all and I don’t think that’s any coincidence. Do you?

 

The next target for their unholy plan was chocolate coated peanuts. Yes, you heard me right, peanuts in chocolate. For many years this particular confection came in a brown wrapper that reminded you of chocolate and indeed, you were not disappointed, each individual peanut being covered in chocolate and coated in a chocolate-coloured candy shell. For all those years they were called Peanut Treats. A treat – something you got for behaving right, or for doing well at something. A reward, if not for being the best, but for doing your best. A treat, a small encouragement to strive and attain and a reward for having striven and attained, traits that have always made the British top of the leader board for always being the best at everything.

 

Then suddenly, they were no longer treats, but M&Ms. Now you may work hard to gain a treat for being the best (or British), but who’s going to bother their backsides for an M&M? What does M&M stand for anyway? Manipulation and mind control, that’s what. Once uniformly chocolate brown, they became an array of eye-twisting colours, bright blues, yellows, reds and greens, leading to feelings of confusion. Pop something into your mouth that’s electric blue, but get hit with the taste of chocolate and that can’t be right. One doesn’t marry up with the other and this disorientation is only exacerbated by all the chemical dyes and E-numbers you have ingested.

 

They then moved on to Opal Fruits, an image that conjures up purity and freshness. Indeed, fruits as pure as opal. Starburst, that’s what they changed them too and what does a Starburst do? That’s right, both blinds you to danger and irradiates you, further lowering your resistance to their evil blandishments. How can you keep being British and the best at everything at the forefront of your mind under such a constant radiation bombardment?

 

What came next should have been totally obvious, as they rubbed our noses in their manipulations, but while many were annoyed by the change, most failed to see the true significance of it. Marathon, a chocolate bar – coincidentally also heavily laden with peanuts – became Snickers. Snickers is something associated with horses (note: horses are beasts of burden) and can also be used as a synonym for sniggers. Yes, they were blatantly telling us that they consider us to be no more than beasts of burden at whom they are sniggering.

 

A marathon, on the other hand, is a gruelling challenge that takes perseverance, strength, courage and heaps of determination to see through to the end. A task so daunting that, once completed, you would previously have been given a Treat for doing so. Now all you get is a daft Jim’ll Fix It style medal (which no one in their right minds would want now anyway), a bag of M&Ms and a chocolate bar that, far from being a reward for a job well done, is actually laughing at your endeavours. Snickers/sniggers at you, in fact.

 

I know they eventually caved in to pressure and returned the name Snickers to Marathon, but they’d already had their laughs at our expense by then and likely thought it would be no bad thing to throw us all off the scent, anyway. Make no mistake, however, every time you go into the local newsagent and buy a marathon, or train for months on end (picking up various unnecessary joint injuries along the way) and then run a marathon, they will still be snickering at you.

 

But, you say, all these are nothing more than childish sweeties and you would be right. However, have you never heard the phrases “get them early” and “ show me the boy of seven and I’ll show you the man”? A lot of us olden’s were already too steeped in Britishness and being the best at everything for their mind games and subtle poisons to take full effect and that’s why they aimed their assault at the children.

 

If you don’t believe me, take a look around. Children are now taking part in non-competitive sport where everyone is a winner no matter how useless they are. Got two left feet and can’t kick a football to save your life? Never mind, here’s a winners’ medal anyway for the taking part, part. Can’t jump over that bar? Not to worry, here’s your trophy for giving it a very poor try. Oh, that plaque on my wall? I won that for coming last in the 100metres sprint. And does anyone really think the English cricket team have any clue as to what it means to be British and the best at everything? Come on now, don’t kid a kidder.

 

Of course, they have done similar things with more adult foods and beverages. Take Mackeson stout. Once you were told it looks good, tastes good and by golly it does you good. Two world wars were fought and won on Mackeson, the greatest empire the world has ever seen was fuelled by Mackeson, so it clearly wasn’t doing us a lot of harm. But, oh no, all of a sudden they weren’t allowed to tell you that Mackeson did you good anymore and where is it now? Gone, defunct, consigned to the dustbin of history – just as they want the British to be.

 

Fish and chips, good solid British fare. Food to fill and nourish, giving you the strength to maintain the aforementioned empire, but disappearing fast; a metaphor for what is happening to our people and our culture. What is fish and chips being replaced by? Chinese food, full of monosodium glutamate and other scientifically produced crap, which leaves you hungry an hour after eating it. Indian food, also laced with chemicals, that gives you flatulence and a sore arse. Have you ever tried riding a horse into battle with flatulence and a sore arse? No, of course you haven’t. The British didn’t become the best at everything by farting the national anthem and rubbing Vaseline onto their burning bums. No sir.

 

I can see you all nodding your heads as the penny finally drops and you realise just how nefarious these people really are. And can the British be saved? Possibly not, but we can make a start by putting our own cocaine back in the Tizer; by giving ourselves and our kids a Treat for a job well done - while telling them to shove their M&Ms up their own brown packets; by leaving the Starbursts to irradiate the sweet shop shelves; by wrapping up our fish and chips in week-old newspaper once again (whether the health Nazis bleedin' like it or not) and by drinking copious amounts of Guinness and pretending it’s Mackeson and therefore doing you good - despite the upset stomach and banging headache next morning.

 

Come on people! Take back your Britishness and be proud. Be the best once again, as we always were and should be again!

 

And God save Elizabeth Sachsen-Coburg Und Gotha (their name until 1917 when they changed it to Windsor to keep us subjects sweet), our beloved German Queen!

 

 

 

Time for Rhyme

I think a poem is not a poem unless it’s done in rhyme,
Though many may say that shows me up as a shocking philistine!

 

And how I made my point above, I know you will see clearly,
A comment on rhyme made with a rhyme, or very, very nearly.

 

The stuff they scribble without a rhyme is merely flowery prose.
I wonder why such poets bother? Lack of talent, I suppose…

Dumb Award

Question: what is the most stupid thing characters in movies say? My nomination for dumb award varies in actual dialogue, but always comes to pretty much the same thing. The words used are usually along the lines of “let’s split up”, or, “you search upstairs, I’ll take the basement”, or, “I think I heard something in the barn, let’s check it out”.

And the same thing it always come to is a grisly death for at least one of the parties concerned, usually the only sensible one who was actually pleading with the others to run far, far away. Let’s not split up. Let’s search the house together. And sod the barn, I’m locking the front door and calling the police. That’s what non morons would actually do, but no…

Close cousins to let’s split up syndrome are “stay there” – and they don’t – moments later being decapitated with a machete. Or the non verbal pushing through a fire door onto a flight of stairs and deciding it’s a good idea to run up towards the roof from where there is no escape, rather than down towards the exit. Do they think they are going to sprout wings along the way, or what? If they’re lucky, there’s a swimming pool ten stories below for them to jump into (in real life you'd die trying that anyhow), if not, the man with the gun, the brain eating zombie, the chainsaw maniac, the crazy mother-in-law, has them cornered and bang to rights.

As for hunting Dracula, he’s asleep all day from dawn to dusk, so why do they always reach his castle just as the sun is going down, instead of arriving with the milkman at first light? Are vampire hunters the kind of people who can’t get up or do anything useful before 4pm, like teenagers and students?

When having to hunt down a serial killer in an old creepy graveyard, great idea turning up at midnight instead of at lunchtime, I don’t think. Same applies for mummies and zombies and if you suspect there is a werewolf on the loose, avoid the woods until the night of the full moon and then decide to go for a stroll. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, you have a single silver bullet in a one shot flintlock, so safe as houses, clearly.

On the Enterprise wearing a yellow shirt, why not volunteer to beam down to the planet below with Kirk and Spock. You’ve seen any number of your colleagues do the same thing, only to get killed and never come back, but boldly go anyway you dumb schmuck. Honestly, if these people weren’t all fictional, they’d really get on my nerves.

I only posed the original question because these are the sort of things that occur to me when, bored rigid by the TV and the fifty-seventh showing of Fantastic Four, my eyes have gone glassy and my brain has zoned out to make up its own entertainment. That said, if you can think of more deserving cases to receive the dumb award, do please share them.

Wait a minute! I thought I heard a menacing growl coming from the unlit cellar. Just going to check it out. Armed with a vase and a faulty torch…

Unnec-a-celery

I was just eating some celery and I remembered that old thing about it taking more calories to eat celery than are actually in it. Then I thought, imagine how many more calories it must take to pick the bloody stuff than are in it! You could eat it non stop while harvesting it and still die of starvation. That’s not right. Especially when getting the stringy bits out of your dentures uses up even more meagre energy resources.

 

Well, in these days, when energy is in such short supply and so expensive, I thought it’s high time to ban celery and only grow chocolate gateaux instead and maybe the odd field of custard doughnuts. Make good use of the available land, I say. Maybe we could also grow some lard in window boxes and have toffee plants instead of those useless rubber ones that don’t even bounce or erase anything. And if you’re waiting for a condom harvest from those things, don’t hold your breath. I had one for over a decade and not a single profylactic. Flipping waste of BabyBio that was…

 

I don’t mind helping out in the chocolate gateaux and doughnut fields. I’ll even do it for free for the good of the nation and if any of you volunteer lady pickers fancy a quick roll in the butter cream, I’m your man.

 

So I say, down with celery, the cause of all our energy problems!

 

Who’s with me?!?!

Parson's Nose

Cooked chicken, missing bits and big shops.

I went to a big shop tonight to buy food. I went because I knew I had no food in my dungeon of misery and pain (otherwise known as my home) and I was hungry.

The shop was one of those really big shops that’s so big it controls half the planet and many of our leaders as well. I bought a cooked chicken there because I had neither the time, nor the inclination to cook a chicken for myself from scratch – and I repeat, I was hungry.

With the high cost of gas these days, a cooked chicken works out cheaper in the long run anyway and leaves no greasy pan to wash up. Increased energy costs are also avoided not heating water for said plate and pan washing and less washing-up and sink cleaning chemicals are flushed away to poison our oceans and give already ugly fish two heads. Which is all good.

The cooked chicken tends to be better quality compared to the cheap uncooked chicken, because “they” don’t want “their” name associated with crappy cooked chicken. A raw one that you bought cheap that turns out as dry as dust, with lots of ligaments but no meat, now that one’s your own damn fault for cooking it wrong and you know it. And the fault of the half pint of water they pumped into it after death, of course, but we don’t mention that.

None of this is my point, however. I’m just coming to that. Despite all the obvious benefits I’ve outlined above for buying a pre-cooked chicken from a really big shop – you know, a shop so big they control your spending patterns and what you want to buy, before you knew you wanted to buy the thing they told you to buy and before you knew that thing existed and was buy-able in the first place – I still have a small complaint.

When I bought my “whole cooked chicken”, I assumed that it would indeed, be a whole chicken. They boast of their honest advertising, after all, these big shops I speak of. Those huge, monstrous, monoliths (if I had said: massive, monstrous, monoliths, that would have been great alliteration, but I missed my chance), but NO! The cooked chicken from the big shop was not whole. The parson’s nose was missing. Not damaged and hard to recognise. NO. Gone completely like it had never existed!

…What’s the big deal, I hear you ask? Well, as you insist on asking, when I was a child I was a total carnivore. Vegetables made me gag and cry and feel I was being tortured for no good reason. A boiled pig’s trotter to gnaw on, generously tossed in my direction, however, made me happy, content and occupied for quite some time getting into all the crevices between its toes where meat might still be hiding. Damn those stubbly hairs!

Well, according to mum and “all that is holy”, the parson’s nose of a chicken is unfit for human consumption and only fit for the cat. I thought then and still believe now, that the parson’s nose is frowned upon only because that’s what’s left behind when you cut out the poor bird’s botty-crevice with a sharp knife.

But I liked hot, dripping chicken fat, crunchy skin and chewable bones – near the a-hole or not. I envied that feckin' cat. I lusted after that oily triangle of flesh, imagining it bursting in my mouth like a succulent, savoury, chicken-arse strawberry. If you can eat a pig’s foot with the toenails still on it, what’s the problem with a juicy bottom nose?

Well, when I became an adult, I decided no more parson’s nose shame! I would eat the pointy, fatty bit myself, no longer the juicy province of the cat alone. So I have taken that part for myself ever since, but until now still never sharing my odd addiction to dripping greasy chicken bum-part for fear of ridicule and possibly having to split the luscious nose with some other creature who doesn’t care about the whole bum thing.

And then I buy this cooked chicken from a big shop, not thinking to watch them as they stuffed the incomplete corpse into the opaque stay-warm bag and, THANK YOU, no parson’s nose! The very bit I most look forward to. The bit of the chicken that affirms my self-determination and ability to think for myself and there it was … gone! Yes, gone!

And come to think of it, though not the main consideration, obviously I should have got some money back for having a bit of my cooked chicken missing. Shouldn’t I? Though similar in size, they’re not sold by individual weight, but only as “whole”, so the missing parson’s nose means I’ve been overcharged as well. Does their duplicity know no bounds? No parson’s nose (which is good eating, so bugger the cat) and short-changed as well.

They’re clever, though. Let’s face it, you will have eaten some of the chicken by the time you’ve noticed, so how do you prove that bits were missing? You must have swallowed the parson’s nose because it was there when we sold it to you. That’s what they would say if I took it back. I mean, I could keep all the bones and put little tags on them to show where they all went, but they would just claim I threw the parson’s nose bones away to get compensation and an extra roast parson’s nose out of them.

Without witnesses, how could I prove I didn’t scoff it and was just after a free fix? With my now well known love of parson’s noses, I would look guilty as hell. Once they know our weaknesses what can any of us do? They know this and so they get away with ripping us off for bits of our cooked chicken and we say nothing because we feel no one cares, or because we’re too ashamed of lusting after the bum part of the bird to stand up for our rights.

I should sue the swines for mental torment. That’s what I should do.

None of this would have ever happened years ago in a small shop. They didn’t lose you’re parson’s nose back then and accuse you of lying when you took your mutilated, half-eaten Sunday lunch back for a refund. Not in my day. Never sir. They had manners and wouldn’t have dreamed of laughing at you in front of everybody for taking your cooked chicken back because the parson’s nose was missing. It would have been taken seriously then. People would have acted like it mattered in the days of proper shopping lists, the local dairy and half crowns and thru’penny bits.

Which would have been alright, if the silly, can’t-eat-it-cause-it’s-from-near-the-bum brain-deads of the time hadn’t kept giving the succulent nose to that self-satisfied, smug-faced cat. It knew. That’s why the little git made so much noise chewing it up and grinning at me, while I was being beaten with sticks to force me to eat a pound of one-hour-boiled spinach, which looked and tasted like a steaming heap of some cactus eating lizard’s plop.

Mum couldn’t cook to save her life. She’d put a leg of lamb in the oven and a pan of carrots on the hob at the same time, letting them bubble away for two hours until they retained all the goodness of a damp draft through a rotten window frame. Us kids would have grown up healthier if we’d thrown all the vegetables out of said window and drank the cooking water like nutritious soup. Then the one tasty thing that came from the stove all week, the mouth watering parsons nose, gave it to bloody Ginger, while I got a plate of tasteless stew with no stock in it and whole onions simmered into giant tasteless sacks of warm water. The only time she ever made gravy we had to cut it up with a bread knife and her dumplings could have been used in a slingshot to bring down game.

Next time I go to the big shop for a whole chicken, I’m going to watch them like a hawk and make bloody sure my parson’s nose isn’t pilfered for re-sale on the black market. I can’t take the disappointment anymore and it brings back too many unhappy childhood culinary memories. Those sprouts. Dear God, those bloody sprouts!

Trees of the World

Trees of the World

 

The new magazine for tree enthusiasts everywhere!
 

Week by week you will learn about leaves, bark, roots, trunks, bowers, boles, bits of stick to stir paint with, where matches come from, why cats get stuck up them and many other fascinating arboreal facts from the mysterious world of trees.
 

You will learn why twigs are too small to use as decent weapons. How much damage a tree would do if it fell over unexpectedly and smashed a big hole in the roof while you were sleeping with your wife’s sister. How our ancestors used trees as primitive gallows (complete with 3D wall chart). Why you should never tie a yellow ribbon around an old oak tree. Why your dog likes to piss up them and why a usually friendly tree attacked Marc Bolan’s mini causing the fading gay pop star’s untimely death.
 

All this and more in Trees of the World!
 

How old they get, why they’re usually green and brown, except in winter when they’re just plain brown (apart from the ones that stay green and brown all year round for some reason) why birds choose to live, eat, raise their young and shit in them, how to cut one down and burn it, why trees have lots of rings when we only have one – this comprehensive collection covers all aspects of trees from the mighty John Wayne redwood to the weedy emo willow, from the tall elegant poplar to those other ones that are a bit more nondescript that look more or less the same as each other, it’s all in:
 

Trees of The World!

 

YES, for the very first time, this complete A to Z of trees is brought to life for you to own and treasure. In one fabulous collection, Trees of the World covers: Ash, Bonsai, Oak, Infant, Christmas, Dogwood, Elm, Family, Grape, Thingy, Lemon and Lime, Mug, Birch (and why Birch was favoured for beating thugs), Rubber, Maple, Conker, Cup, Elm, Yew, Shoe, Tea, Banana, Stinging Nettles – if it’s a tree it’s either covered in-depth or has been hacked down and turned into pulp to produce this mag.
 

If you love trees then Trees of the World will become your best bud! Don’t delay, leaf through a copy today!

 

Issue one (with free grow your own tree pitted olive and sachet of water) comes to you at the special introductory price of just 99p. Following issues build week by week into a beautifully illustrated library of tree info that will, after many months, eventually turn a book on trees that you could have bought from W H Smiths for £16.99 into a £300 scam of monumental proportions!
 

…That’s if you haven’t wised up, stopped buying them by issue four and left the binder to collect dust in that high cupboard, along with the yellowing recipe cards and the needlecraft mags that had seemed such a good idea when you were drunk and bored six Christmases ago and the TV advert caught you at a low ebb while you were trying to blank out your childish in laws arguing heatedly over a game of scrabble like they do every bloody year.
 

Trees of the World available now from all good branches!
 

You know your head’s made of wood - Trees of the World – buy it you plank!
 

*Issue two a bargain at just £7.99 including free ring binder worth nearly 37 pence!