” He made Davros look like a choir boy”

The background to the story

I have left France for England for 4 to 6 weeks to sell car in UK and earn some cash from work agency while I am waiting for car to sell. So agency gave me an assignment which involves standing at taxi ranks in the middle of night, counting taxi’s and passengers so Local Authorities can decide if there are enough taxi’s for the population in the town of Leeds. Standing with drunks and boisterous lads and lasses with my clipboard,

 that would be me then

and this is an account of just one night in Leeds West Yorkshire England.

 Standing amongst the drunks tonight two women were talking about me,
either its the booze or the disco music that desensitizes their own
hearing or they think the old git will not be able to hear them I
don’t know but they spoke loudly.

One says to the other whilst looking at me holding my clipboard
” Whats he protesting about”
” don’t know ” her friend replies
” but whatever it is he doesn’t look fuckin happy about it”

I chuckled for an hour, until well about 1:30 am when

One of the most bizarre things happened. Before I begin let me just
say I have not been physically or mentally harmed in any way ( well
maybe a sore toe).

I was physically attacked and verbally abused by a drunk in an
electric wheelchair.
The meanest thickest old drunken bastard—on two wheels  that surely ever lived.

Yes I have seen the comedy were the mean wheelchair bound assailant is
given a punch in the face and the passersby only see that blow and
turn on the man who is only defending himself (Police Story type film).

So (remembering Dr Who and that Daleks can’t use steps )

all I could do was retreat to the top of the steps of a nearby building’s
foyer entrance. Every time I came down the steps he would chase after
me and try to run me down, or run over my toes or hit my ankle bone  with
his foot plate or grab me, it was a Benny Hill type sketch; which those
people waiting for taxis found very amusing .

All the while as he is chasing me he has what looks like a walkie -
talkie type device on his lapel that makes a clicking and shushing
noise and he is giving a running commentary to some one imagined I
suppose, using phrases like

 ” we  are heading north I repeat North  he is trying to get away OVER”.

 Anyway he would not go away and his companion could not stop his
electric chair and didn’t seem at all interested when I asked if she
would take the silly old bastard home.

I had no choice but to call the police and explain to them that he was
preventing me from doing my work. After an hour they arrived and on
seeing the police car he made a run for it or should I say he burnt
rubber and made tracks. They caught him round the corner and gave him
a warning.

I apologised to the police for what seemed a waste of their valuable
time , and they told me he was a local character well known to them.
The whole episode took an hour and a half  to resolve.
I will try explaining this missing hour and a half in my taxi records, on
Monday to the recruitment agency . I’m sure when I leave the office
they will say

‘thats the best excuse we ever heard for bunking of to the boozer for an
hour and a half . 

Anyway here’s a Youtube photo-fit description and a mention of a few other things he gets up to.

 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l_V-ymeseWo

Found it in the garden ?

 

any ideas anyone what it is?, it has an impression of a walking stick on the back with 3 lines through it.

If I had a hammer!

DIY in France can be bad for your health. Well maybe just mine. Yesterday I managed to hit my pinky so hard with the lump hammer it split open. Then banged my head on the steel girder in the cellar.Every time I started to sweat small insects descend from were ever they lurk to drink and perhaps snack on  some of my fast flowing blood. Which  serves me right as I will go round advertising the stuff.

The Gods of sanitation smiled upon my enterprise however and I now own sinks and a washing machine which empty into the fosse-septique without the intervention of bowls and buckets.

My boots fit me again,I stand astride my completed task ,hands on hips like a goliath of DIY and stride away for perhaps two paces before I see another DIY task,and my boots feel rather large again. A voice from the house fills the air. No not a deep one saying ‘Were’s me feckin boots’ but that other overseer enquiring  politely of her first husband what his plans are for the rest of the day, and she will keep asking till I get it right.

Tasha 1993-2007

Mobile phones for you ‘No not you Grandad’

Yes I chose the title deliberately to get the attention of mobile phone companies everywhere. Some call it a rant I prefer winge it sounds more like a mechanical part that is wound up until it is releases with a screeching sound.

This is my winge.

 Many of the top blogs are about mobile phones. It’s not even the case that they represent the entire community of bloggers. Granted the young-uns are probably better at promoting their blogs and products that interest them than we are, but it’s not as if the  marketing by the companies that make them is that inclusive.

 I’ll give you an example. to try and illustrate what I mean.

 I bought a mobile phone for my wife called a Lobster (that’s the phone not the wife) and  the young salesman seemed surprised at the reason I bought it. You see it has built in TV, the salesman started to demonstrate the TV side of things. I said “I am not interested in mobile phone TV”, he said “well how about this phone over here”, and I said “no I want this one”, “yes but you will get more functionality with this other phone”. Fair enough he is doing his job and better than most, but say’s  I “this phone has been designed with a big screen for TV”;” I thought you did not want TV “came his reasonable response. “I don’t ” say’s me” I want to be able to read what it says on the screen and that is what the big screen gives me, big letters and a big phone not small and slippery like a kitten turd , I can pick this phone up and keep hold of  it”. After all what good is a phone with an erectile dis-function, that opens out to a large size only if you can hold it properly in the first place. 

He was surprised and looked at me with a mixture of revelation and that kind of fear that young-uns have of old people, like being old is contagious and they have to be on their guard or risk being teleported into a world where aching joints and colostomy bags are mandatory.

 This episode got me thinking about the marketing of phones and how companies are happy for the internet blogging communities to promote their products for them with the gee-wiz factor ‘look what this phone can do’. Everything is next generation this and that, but what it really means is, marketed by the next generation for the next generation. The ‘let the kiddies do the marketing for us’ approach of these companies should give them the financial grace to show the rest of us crinklies the products that we would find useful.

 In conclusion I would now like a big wad of cash for telling everyone something good about the Lobster on behalf of the manufacturer. Me and the young-uns have something in common after all!  

One’s spoon may be too long.

I have got into the habit of sharing my problems with the blogging community, milking your collective wisdom to figure out my life’s little problems. Well no longer, I Arnold the methodical have changed. You will now be thought of as the great un-washed, underlings if you prefer as it looks like my circumstances have changed. I will of course share problems only for showing off purposes, such as ‘ I’m at a loss how to stash cash under my bed without creasing the ten pound notes and will the print come of onto the sheets’.

And for those of you with a scientific bent I have the following problem for which I use my own scientific terms at a whim, marked *.

 If my wife and I will be sipping turtle soup with gold spoons instead of hunkering over our potatoes mud wrestling the Colorado beetle for a morsel, how long should the spoon be?.

I know there are two principal factors to consider. 

1) length of gold spoon for display purposes which we call * glittery refractive showy index  ,which must be taken into account because of peasants, baker street irregular’s ,street urchins and poor people watching us through our window. 

2) ergonomics; if one sticks out the elbow level with ones shoulder and bends the arm back to present spoon to mouth the length of spoon can be measured from opposing thumb to lips but if you hold your arm straight out and hold the spoon back up the length of your arm a much longer spoon with increased *glittery refractive showy index is achieved. 

However soup splashing down chin detracts from envy of * glittery refractive showy index, and this may well be a consequence of too long a spoon.

Now we really should rush of to the jewellers and get measured up for our gold spoons but as you see we need to know how much turtle soup dribbling is acceptable when you have earned 250 euros in just one month.If there is any factor we have not considered please leave your comments at the servant’s entrance, toodle –pip.  

Warning you may not be French

It is a strange feeling indeed to see your familiar food stuffs in the ethnic aisle of the supermarket, but it’s the sort of thing you have to expect when you move to a foreign land. We don’t eat most of it and if the truth be told we pick more produce from the Mexican section than any other. Food in France however is generally good quality and even with tin stuff they tend to have good flavours and ingredients. The strange thing though is that you find the main differences in tastes in the ethnic food stuff we eat back in blighty; i.e. pizza curries. If you think that you have a love of pizza in common with the French ‘O’ boy! Are you in for a shock? They make one here with a topping called Chorrito it looks like pepperoni, its taste can only be described as the smell you get from your dustbin on a hot summers day transmogrified into food.

 

 I have not pushed food out of my mouth with my tongue and let it dribble down my front since junior school, when I got roasted parsnips thinking they were roast potatoes. But I did it only the other week making; yes you guessed it the child like gagging noises. I’m still in shock from the French who have treated me so well with good cuisine, how could they set me up like that; to thinking I was one of the lads?

 

I should pen a letter to that Sarkozy chap about food labelling and recommend it be labelled with some kind of warning.

 

WARNING you may not be French, this pizza is!

Try licking a dustbin first, if you like it proceed to the checkout.

Where your CAMRA membership card will be cut up and Delia will give you a slap

 

Just to show that I am hopelessly biased on the subject of food and nationalities, I have to say that no one makes pizza as well as the Americans and only Asians living in Leeds or Yorkshire can make curry. So there!

“Kill them all”

It’s too wet here in Limousin France and it’s a real downer as I hoped for a flaming June to start providing sweet fruits etc from the garden. Slugs are mustering. I think they have detected the aroma of naive gardeners coming from our plot and every time we throw them over the hedge into the woods they come back days later bigger and stronger looking; like there’s a Worlds Gym down there selling body bulk drinks for slugs. I started out believing that the red slugs eat other slugs so I didn’t see the need to murder them in some way. Then one day I caught one of the blighter’s scoffing my seedlings. Of course it’s too late by then he’s on the mobile ringing his mates. My neighbour has a veg plot next door with no grass areas or planks between beds at all and when we moved in we thought it looked barren and in-hospitable. Now we know however that there is nowhere for the slugs to hide in their garden, and we have created an all you can eat slug buffet. In conclusion I have decided to turn Catholic in my garden; if it’s good enough for Tony Blair its good enough for me. I shall henceforth follow the advice from a Catholic Bishop during the Albigensian Crusades. When he was told by his commanders that they could not distinguish between Catholic’s and heretics He is reported to have said “Kill them all God will Know his own”. So there will be no wishy washy treatment of slugs, no Camp Deltas or interrogations to discover whether they eat other slugs or plants they are enemy combatants with no legal status whatsoever and without trail or fair hearing will be sentenced to drown in beer. Thats that sorted then, now I’m on a downer about America ,and how I love the fruit and hate the tree, aaaaah well such is the melancholy of rainy day’s.

Life in Darkest France or (I’m not alone in these trousers)

The good thing about the Internet is; if you don’t like the weather forecast you can find another forecast that appeals.
Failing that look up the weather in Jamaica it’s usually nice there. Now all this is fine if you are desk-bound but when you’re waiting for vegetables to grow in the garden, optimism is a poor stimulator of growth.

But boy! what a collection of bugs that like warm damp weather and my trousers. On the outside I wouldn’t mind so much, on the inside is quite the nuisance. Why the anteaters and bugs that eat other bugs don’t wear trousers,I don’t know They would be in bug munching heaven.

Or maybe it’s that old sock business raising its head again, something about changing them, I don’t quite recall.You see I have never been quite worthy of all the western trappings like bathing water or luxury goods like loads a socks.

While I mention it my larger dog called Sissy likes to greet people at the door carrying one of my socks. They think its a gift but I have to explain that the dog will not let go of the sock, as it is not a gift. The dog actually believes it looks better carrying the sock. Sissy although a dog is more capatilist and consumerist than I am. She is greeting people at the door not as a dog but a dog with portfoilio , inc ; shares in clothing textiles etc a budding dog tycoon. ‘Yes its me” she is saying “‘and we have got stuff’”.

Now my other dog  Tasha is worse, every time someone knocks at the door she rushes outside hoping it’s the van from House of Fraser loaded with soft furnishings. I am exaggerating? No! This is a dog who walks around mud and puddles, who goes back to bed for a lie in UNDER the duvet and who presented with cushions has to lie on the top OF THEM ALL.

I explained to the new cat she would have to sleep with the dogs ‘I think she took it rather well’