The BlackLOG historical has gone into retirement, please use the BlackLOG for the ongoing adventures.
(Aside 1)
An aging lothario, who, despite his great age, still owns all his original teeth, which he safely stores in a locked cabinet under his bed and brings out on important occasions.
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(Aside 2)
Sophie also brought along Lex Luther, a mad professor from the planet Roche. I think Lex was carrying a small quantity of Kryptonite about her person, which would account for my bike's poor performance.
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(Aside 3)
Mrs B's bike faired little better then mine, her left gear shift coming out in sympathy with my bike and refusing to work for the last couple of miles.
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(Aside 4)
knowing our local councils inability to invest in the town and Paul's knowledge of gardening, it may well have been weeds.
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.
Tuesday 9 June 2009
Monday 23 March 2009
Midlife crisis alert - The perfect jacket
I saw a Paul Smith jacket in the Style section of the Times magazine, (what can I say, I accidentally opened the wrong bit of the paper, while searching for the cartoon section. An easy mistake to make with the 100+ sections in the average weekend papers these days) it looked perfect for someone attempting to track down a midlife crises, so I decided my mission was to add it to my wardrobe. This proved more difficult then I had hoped, despite advertising the jacket, it was apparently more rare then a Liverpool domestic away win. None of the Paul Smith shops admitted to stocking it, nor any of the concessions in the large department stores. Eventually one was found, in a locked basement room in head office, behind a filing cabinet. I got very excited when I discovered it was in a Large size, marvellous, so off I went to collect my bounty. The jacket was perfect in every way except for the colour (dark green in the magazine, luminous green in reality, useful for working on the underground but not much else) price (well it is one of a kind, apparently) and size (I doubt this would have been considered large in Japan) needless to say I returned home, sad and dejected. I had to console myself with an inappropriate Ipod speaker purchase(1) instead.
(1)An inappropriate purchase is the type of purchase that while essential from my point of view is somewhat frowned upon by Mrs B. Another example of inappropriate purchasing was the second Gazebo(2), which I definitely felt was essential, while Mrs B's eyes glaze over and the look appear on her face that means change the subject, so moving on....
(2) Before any one starts to call me Niel "Two Gazebo's" Black I must point out that I have found a good home for the first Gazebo
The more observant of you will notice that this is not actually a green jacket nor is it me (Mrs B thinks I am getting that way but I put it down to my winter coat, which admittedly I fail to shed every spring...Hmmm moving swiftly on). It is in fact the only photo I could find that demonstrates a badly fitting garment. I would like to think that I would have looked better in the tight fitting green Jacket, even though I was having difficulty moving yet alone breathing. If you see any cat walk pictures, comfort in garments is the last thing that any self respecting clothes designer has in mind......
McG - Climbing the walls
McG had a bit of a turn on Friday night and went off like a small sticky child(3) on a sugar rush, jumping up on the kitchen side boards (4), attacking the bins and licking the kitchen floor(5), much to Mrs B and my embarrassment, as we had a guest. He was rebuked umpteen times before being banished from the kitchen. I felt a bit guilty when I discovered Saturday morning that neither of us had got around to feeding him, but he did get his revenge by making off with one of the croissants we were going to have for breakfast.
(3) all be it one that had spent the day rolling around on the floor of a hairdressing salon for Ginger customers.
(4) Normally he waits until we are out of the room before attempting food raids, sadly for him the small earth tremor is a bit of a give away as he jumps down.
(5) who needs a swiffer when you have a McG
Poor McG with hardly enough energy to move. He was upto 99.9% sleep levels after his energetic demonstartion over the lack of food
Pink Friday
Why is it that the majority of women in the office failed to find any pink in their wardrobe, while most of the blokes, myself included, found pink a plenty for Breast awareness day. A fairly strange concept this one, half the population have them while the other half don't, I would however hazard a guess that most people are aware of them (6) especially those with out.
(6) Mrs B feels Kearer Knightly should definitely be made aware of them, but I feel that is just out of spite.
Kaiser Chiefs
Yet another gig, this week as I dragged Mrs B along to see the Kaiser Chiefs at the Brixton Academy, most enjoyable and as an added bonus we got back to the car to find we still had 4 wheels and an intact roof . It was while watching the bouncers grab hold of the little rat scullions who were bodysurfing their way towards the stage (I was sad that no one was attempting to bodysurf the balcony) and an early exit from the venue, that got me thinking about the argument currently doing the rounds about the employment of scale challenged members of society. Lets face it there is not much call for undersized bouncers, where would Hackney Marshes be with out lardy men with fag in mouth wheezing their way up and down muddy football pitches on Sunday afternoons and as a final argument, is the world ready for never ending Opera's, I don't think so....... and as the woman in the size 40 dress is now wobbling her way to the centre of the stage to herald the end of another BlackLOG - historical – if you have enjoyed it please pass it on to anyone you know who might also enjoy it. You can also tune into the up-to-date version BlackLOG.
(1)An inappropriate purchase is the type of purchase that while essential from my point of view is somewhat frowned upon by Mrs B. Another example of inappropriate purchasing was the second Gazebo(2), which I definitely felt was essential, while Mrs B's eyes glaze over and the look appear on her face that means change the subject, so moving on....
(2) Before any one starts to call me Niel "Two Gazebo's" Black I must point out that I have found a good home for the first Gazebo
McG - Climbing the walls
McG had a bit of a turn on Friday night and went off like a small sticky child(3) on a sugar rush, jumping up on the kitchen side boards (4), attacking the bins and licking the kitchen floor(5), much to Mrs B and my embarrassment, as we had a guest. He was rebuked umpteen times before being banished from the kitchen. I felt a bit guilty when I discovered Saturday morning that neither of us had got around to feeding him, but he did get his revenge by making off with one of the croissants we were going to have for breakfast.
(3) all be it one that had spent the day rolling around on the floor of a hairdressing salon for Ginger customers.
(4) Normally he waits until we are out of the room before attempting food raids, sadly for him the small earth tremor is a bit of a give away as he jumps down.
(5) who needs a swiffer when you have a McG
Pink Friday
Why is it that the majority of women in the office failed to find any pink in their wardrobe, while most of the blokes, myself included, found pink a plenty for Breast awareness day. A fairly strange concept this one, half the population have them while the other half don't, I would however hazard a guess that most people are aware of them (6) especially those with out.
(6) Mrs B feels Kearer Knightly should definitely be made aware of them, but I feel that is just out of spite.
Kaiser Chiefs
Yet another gig, this week as I dragged Mrs B along to see the Kaiser Chiefs at the Brixton Academy, most enjoyable and as an added bonus we got back to the car to find we still had 4 wheels and an intact roof . It was while watching the bouncers grab hold of the little rat scullions who were bodysurfing their way towards the stage (I was sad that no one was attempting to bodysurf the balcony) and an early exit from the venue, that got me thinking about the argument currently doing the rounds about the employment of scale challenged members of society. Lets face it there is not much call for undersized bouncers, where would Hackney Marshes be with out lardy men with fag in mouth wheezing their way up and down muddy football pitches on Sunday afternoons and as a final argument, is the world ready for never ending Opera's, I don't think so....... and as the woman in the size 40 dress is now wobbling her way to the centre of the stage to herald the end of another BlackLOG - historical – if you have enjoyed it please pass it on to anyone you know who might also enjoy it. You can also tune into the up-to-date version BlackLOG.
Friday 13 March 2009
The Jack the Ripper tour
Apologies for anyone who received an early, half-completed version of the BlackLOG this week, the finger responsible for hitting the send button, rather than the delete, has been severely reprimanded and sent away to a correctional facility for troublesome digits. This Blog proved particularly hard to put together, as so much happened on the night that it has taken all my skill and inability to remove all the interesting parts and to distill the blog to the meaningless drivel that you see before you. I just hope you don’t appreciate it….. Please note the content this week may not be suitable for younger children, pets and anyone with an IQ above 10. You may however require the assistance of your children to translate some of my more imaginative spellings and interesting punctuation placement.
The Jack the Ripper tour – Featuring the mystery of the suitcase on wheels
After weeks of attempting to organise a ghost walk, it was kind of inevitable that it would end up being a “Jack the Ripper tour” instead. I ask you, what is the world coming to when you can’t find a ghost prepared to work on a Monday evening in London? Jack managed to entice 40 or so brave souls (before you get totally impressed with my gathering skills, I was only responsible for six)
- Myself and the long suffering Mrs B
- Mitch, You may have seen pictures of his wedding in the BlackLOG
- Ediane my Brazilian friend from work (Aside 1). She was less than impressed as it was meant to be a Ghost walk which got changed at the last moment. She had brought along her Italian Husband, Costa, for protection (what a multicultural experience this was turning into), unfortunately he was only certified for ghost protection work and was only part way through his Ripper protection course.
- PP or "Picture Pimp", who used to supply us Govinda Pictures (hense the nickname), before she moved out of art and into the exciting world of promotion (Aside 3).
The rest of group, rather impressively managed to make their own way to the event. It all got a bit fraught before we even got started, with Mrs B doing her inevitable fashionably late entrance and was stuck on the DLR. I was making emergency plans to borrow one of PP’s sandwiches (the girl sure can eat, I just don’t know where it all goes) and leave a trail of crumbs for Mrs B to follow, but unfortunately PP had still not forgiven me for her boss incident and had wolfed down the lot. This left me with the prospect of having to talk Mrs B through the dark alley, using just a mobile phone and a hazy idea of the area. Not a great prospect considering Mrs B has difficulties finding our en-suite some mornings, and that is with the lights on. Fortunately the DLR had had enough and released Mrs B and she just made it in time.
Our tour guide for the evening was an interesting individual; he appeared knowledgeable, spoke with authority and had even written a book on the subject. He did however display some slightly worrying traits :-
- The first was an apparent fear of Taxi’s; he would get all stuttery and repeated entire sentences, every time a taxi came close to him.
- The second was a particular glint in his eye, every time he uttered his favourite description of the Ripper victims’ deaths, each one being “Slashed from vagina to breast plate” Alarmingly he seemed to get more excited each time he said it, thankfully there were only Five victims.
- The third trait was a dislike of having more than a couple of pictures taken of him at each stop of the tour. He got quite irate with one of the party. To be fair they were doing a David Bailey impression and constantly taking pictures of him (Aside 4).
- The final trait was most worrying of all. He was accompanied everywhere by a suitcase on wheels. Various rumours about its contents were going around the group from, “it contained the body of one of the victims or at least some of the more gruesome body parts” to “a complete prostitute get up, high heels, fishnets and all” I personally had my fingers crossed praying for a ripper costume complete with a rubber knife.
Our Tour guide refused to speculate on who he thought the identity of Jack the Ripper might have been, although he was more than happy to drop into the conversation that he had taken Johnny Depp on this very tour, in preparation for his role in the Film “From Hell”. He spoke highly of Johnny (I guess Johnny did not take many pictures) but was less than impressed with the actual film, probably because he was not asked to be an advisor on it. (Aside 5) One of the highlights of the tour was the prostitutes’ church (mainly because it still existed, while most of the places that the murders had taken place had changed beyond recognition with buildings and alleyways long since demolished and built over) where the ladies of the night would circle looking for custom, apparently as long as they kept moving they could not be arrested. This effectively turned the building into a kind of roundabout or possibly a type of sordid musical chairs, without chairs, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more. PP got most upset about this, feeling it was a slur on the house of God. I found this a bit strange, as the closest that I am aware that PP has got to God recently, was accusing me of being religious. The cheek of it, I’ve had nothing to do with him since he stopped answering my prayers for Christmas presents. I mean how can you mistake a request for a 100” flat screen HD TV for a toothbrush and a bag of half rotten potatoes? At least the large fat one in the red dress makes an effort and wraps the damn things (before any one gets the wrong Idea, Mrs B is neither large nor taken to wearing red dresses).
Before he left us, our guide warned us of the ladies of the night that still prowled the streets in this very area (I thought he was touting for business so gave him my number, he never did ring me), before finally revealing what was in the suitcase. The group visibly took a step back and gave a little gasp of apprehension, as he sprung the locks on the case…………..….. revealing
…………………not bodies…………
..…..not a Ripper costume ……….
.… not even a pair of High heels and fishnet stockings ………….
.…but ………….
rather disappointingly books. Loads and loads of books. Signed copies of his book, to be precise, or in other words just another retail opportunity. The last anyone saw of our guide, he was trundling off down a particularly dark alley with his suitcase full of unsold books.
To wrap up the evening we went to a Thai restaurant around the back of Liverpool street, which was OK except typically I ordered the worse dish on a rather confusing menu. I wanted Dish 124 but the waiter refused to serve me this and made me have a number 60 – it was never made clear why I had to have a 60 rather then a 124, but since the difference appeared to be only mathematical I decided not to push the point. At least I did not demand a 69 from the waiter, unlike Mrs B, who only cottoned on to her faux pas when her rather immature husband came close to falling off his chair. Mrs Bs response was a rather cute “oops!” and an almost blushing of the cheeks, mine not hers, as I teetered on the edge of a rather deserved slapping.
Mitch almost quite literally put the evening to bed, when he got abandoned outside the restaurant. (Aside 6) Within two minutes of being left to his own devices he found himself being propositioned by a lady of negotiable virtue in broad nightdark (Aside 7), Mitch claimed he could tell she was not girlfriend material because of the white thigh length boots, Fishnet stockings, Amy Winehouse shrink to fit skirt, white leather jacket and as final proof her opening line “your place or this brick wall, lovey!” He said he was so overcome with shock, all he could manage was a slight giggle, before fleeing into the night. I still believe it was the tour guide who had hidden the costume under his unsold books and waited patiently to find one of the tour group alone and vulnerable.
Enough of all this gruesome murder and mayhem business, next week I am planning a trip to Ipswich, for some nice walks around some of the local villages. I am particularly looking forward to hearing about a much more gentle and safe way of life. (For those of you who don't get this reference this Blog dates back to when Ipswich was suffering a spate of killings. Interestingly enough the Ipswich murders stopped since Mitch fled to Canada.........That and they caught the killer......or did they......)
Mitch the Ripper attempts to make Mrs B his sixth victim
Is that Picture Pimp owning up to being PP the Ripper
The notorious ripper twins Edian and Costa, never arrested but remain high on the list of suspects
How could I be a ripper suspect with such a great hat.....
The end, stray any further and you will run into the asides but I'm you don't need to see them again as I'm sure you will have already clicked on the links, thus reading them in the correct order as the author intended....... For anyone interested there is a "so to speak" live BlackLOG available, which gives a more current picture of events in the Black household.....
(Aside 1) I was quite frankly shocked that Edian joined us for the walk, having already had to suffer my company for Lunch. I had prepared myself for the phone call from her saying that she had to drop out due to “Niely Overexposure”. Mrs B has to have annual injections in order to be able to tolerate me on such a regular basis. One of the side affects of this is injection is falling asleep during films. The fact that she recently stayed awake for the entire “Mission impossible III” movie and the majority of “Sunset Boulevard”(Aside 2) leads me to believe she is due for her annual boost.
(Return to text)
(Aside 2) rather impressively Mrs B actually managed to fall asleep while “standing” over the ironing board. I though at first it was the steam iron that was making the gentle breathing sound. This must be worth an entry in the “Guinness book of records” or failing that an entire chapter in “10 strange and ever so slightly dangerous places to sleep”
(Aside 3) I almost disastrously made it seven, when I inadvertently invited PP’s Boss. I was just attempting to make polite conversation, as Mitch the Shed Slave and I dropped by the Gallery to pick up PP, and accidentally mentioned the tour. I thought I was going to turn to stone on the spot, under PP’s fearsome stare, when her boss said, “It looks like I’ve been stood up, so why not?” Apparently they had not had the most harmonious of days together and PP had been counting down the hours until she could get away. Fortunately for me we managed to give her boss the slip, while she was locking up. PP assured me that she would have forgotten all about by the morning and would be moaning about something else instead. This just serves as a reminder that I am much better off sticking to being my normal rude and ignorant self.
(Return to text)
(Aside 4) At one point our tour guide looked like he was going to retaliate and go all Tarantino on David (all that blood and guts would have been quite appropriate for the evening), but David seemed to get the message and slunk off before any actual hacking and swearing could take place.
(Return to text)
(Aside 5) I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, which will no doubt, in true Hollywood style, have an imaginative title like “From Hell2 – the tour guide hacker” in which Johnny Depp plays a deranged tour guide, driven mad by continuous exposure to photographers; he develops a fear of passing Taxi’s, which manifests itself in him repeating entire sentences. The final scene where he hacks to death a tour party who refuse to purchase any of his books is particularly poignant and just goes to show what a lucky escape we had.
(Return to text)
(Aside 6) It was his own fault, he had driven only part way into London and parked his car in Beckton, where he works. I had dropped subtle hints (forgetting that us men don’t really do hints, subtle or otherwise) by sending him maps of where to park and how to avoid the congestion charge. I had guessed that given the choice of trailing off in the wrong direction, to the middle of nowhere, to get a lift home or hopping on a train 2 minutes walk away, Mrs B and PP were always going to choose the latter.
(Return to text
(Aside 7) I feel the English language is all the poorer for not including Nightdark in any dictionary yet published – surely it can only be a matter of time before it gets proper recognition.
Nightdark – A low quality light leading poor unsuspecting ladies of the night to mistake Mitch for a high class punter....(Mitch please note, high class punters don’t giggle)
Other words that are sadly missing from the dictionary:
Iriphotate – To upset someone by the excessive taking of photos
Wrongplacetoparkuburk – To leave your car in the wrong place, often resulting in the feeling of abandonment and getting home later then everyone else. This is particularly true when maps and details of congestion charges have been provided in advance.
Inaproprigobusage – To inadvertently invite an inappropriate person to join an activity
Sixtynineatrocias – Accidentally propositioning a Thai waiter in front of your immature husband
(Return to text)
The Jack the Ripper tour – Featuring the mystery of the suitcase on wheels
After weeks of attempting to organise a ghost walk, it was kind of inevitable that it would end up being a “Jack the Ripper tour” instead. I ask you, what is the world coming to when you can’t find a ghost prepared to work on a Monday evening in London? Jack managed to entice 40 or so brave souls (before you get totally impressed with my gathering skills, I was only responsible for six)
- Myself and the long suffering Mrs B
- Mitch, You may have seen pictures of his wedding in the BlackLOG
- Ediane my Brazilian friend from work (Aside 1). She was less than impressed as it was meant to be a Ghost walk which got changed at the last moment. She had brought along her Italian Husband, Costa, for protection (what a multicultural experience this was turning into), unfortunately he was only certified for ghost protection work and was only part way through his Ripper protection course.
- PP or "Picture Pimp", who used to supply us Govinda Pictures (hense the nickname), before she moved out of art and into the exciting world of promotion (Aside 3).
The rest of group, rather impressively managed to make their own way to the event. It all got a bit fraught before we even got started, with Mrs B doing her inevitable fashionably late entrance and was stuck on the DLR. I was making emergency plans to borrow one of PP’s sandwiches (the girl sure can eat, I just don’t know where it all goes) and leave a trail of crumbs for Mrs B to follow, but unfortunately PP had still not forgiven me for her boss incident and had wolfed down the lot. This left me with the prospect of having to talk Mrs B through the dark alley, using just a mobile phone and a hazy idea of the area. Not a great prospect considering Mrs B has difficulties finding our en-suite some mornings, and that is with the lights on. Fortunately the DLR had had enough and released Mrs B and she just made it in time.
Our tour guide for the evening was an interesting individual; he appeared knowledgeable, spoke with authority and had even written a book on the subject. He did however display some slightly worrying traits :-
- The first was an apparent fear of Taxi’s; he would get all stuttery and repeated entire sentences, every time a taxi came close to him.
- The second was a particular glint in his eye, every time he uttered his favourite description of the Ripper victims’ deaths, each one being “Slashed from vagina to breast plate” Alarmingly he seemed to get more excited each time he said it, thankfully there were only Five victims.
- The third trait was a dislike of having more than a couple of pictures taken of him at each stop of the tour. He got quite irate with one of the party. To be fair they were doing a David Bailey impression and constantly taking pictures of him (Aside 4).
- The final trait was most worrying of all. He was accompanied everywhere by a suitcase on wheels. Various rumours about its contents were going around the group from, “it contained the body of one of the victims or at least some of the more gruesome body parts” to “a complete prostitute get up, high heels, fishnets and all” I personally had my fingers crossed praying for a ripper costume complete with a rubber knife.
Our Tour guide refused to speculate on who he thought the identity of Jack the Ripper might have been, although he was more than happy to drop into the conversation that he had taken Johnny Depp on this very tour, in preparation for his role in the Film “From Hell”. He spoke highly of Johnny (I guess Johnny did not take many pictures) but was less than impressed with the actual film, probably because he was not asked to be an advisor on it. (Aside 5) One of the highlights of the tour was the prostitutes’ church (mainly because it still existed, while most of the places that the murders had taken place had changed beyond recognition with buildings and alleyways long since demolished and built over) where the ladies of the night would circle looking for custom, apparently as long as they kept moving they could not be arrested. This effectively turned the building into a kind of roundabout or possibly a type of sordid musical chairs, without chairs, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more. PP got most upset about this, feeling it was a slur on the house of God. I found this a bit strange, as the closest that I am aware that PP has got to God recently, was accusing me of being religious. The cheek of it, I’ve had nothing to do with him since he stopped answering my prayers for Christmas presents. I mean how can you mistake a request for a 100” flat screen HD TV for a toothbrush and a bag of half rotten potatoes? At least the large fat one in the red dress makes an effort and wraps the damn things (before any one gets the wrong Idea, Mrs B is neither large nor taken to wearing red dresses).
Before he left us, our guide warned us of the ladies of the night that still prowled the streets in this very area (I thought he was touting for business so gave him my number, he never did ring me), before finally revealing what was in the suitcase. The group visibly took a step back and gave a little gasp of apprehension, as he sprung the locks on the case…………..….. revealing
…………………not bodies…………
..…..not a Ripper costume ……….
.… not even a pair of High heels and fishnet stockings ………….
.…but ………….
rather disappointingly books. Loads and loads of books. Signed copies of his book, to be precise, or in other words just another retail opportunity. The last anyone saw of our guide, he was trundling off down a particularly dark alley with his suitcase full of unsold books.
To wrap up the evening we went to a Thai restaurant around the back of Liverpool street, which was OK except typically I ordered the worse dish on a rather confusing menu. I wanted Dish 124 but the waiter refused to serve me this and made me have a number 60 – it was never made clear why I had to have a 60 rather then a 124, but since the difference appeared to be only mathematical I decided not to push the point. At least I did not demand a 69 from the waiter, unlike Mrs B, who only cottoned on to her faux pas when her rather immature husband came close to falling off his chair. Mrs Bs response was a rather cute “oops!” and an almost blushing of the cheeks, mine not hers, as I teetered on the edge of a rather deserved slapping.
Mitch almost quite literally put the evening to bed, when he got abandoned outside the restaurant. (Aside 6) Within two minutes of being left to his own devices he found himself being propositioned by a lady of negotiable virtue in broad nightdark (Aside 7), Mitch claimed he could tell she was not girlfriend material because of the white thigh length boots, Fishnet stockings, Amy Winehouse shrink to fit skirt, white leather jacket and as final proof her opening line “your place or this brick wall, lovey!” He said he was so overcome with shock, all he could manage was a slight giggle, before fleeing into the night. I still believe it was the tour guide who had hidden the costume under his unsold books and waited patiently to find one of the tour group alone and vulnerable.
Enough of all this gruesome murder and mayhem business, next week I am planning a trip to Ipswich, for some nice walks around some of the local villages. I am particularly looking forward to hearing about a much more gentle and safe way of life. (For those of you who don't get this reference this Blog dates back to when Ipswich was suffering a spate of killings. Interestingly enough the Ipswich murders stopped since Mitch fled to Canada.........That and they caught the killer......or did they......)
The end, stray any further and you will run into the asides but I'm you don't need to see them again as I'm sure you will have already clicked on the links, thus reading them in the correct order as the author intended....... For anyone interested there is a "so to speak" live BlackLOG available, which gives a more current picture of events in the Black household.....
(Aside 1) I was quite frankly shocked that Edian joined us for the walk, having already had to suffer my company for Lunch. I had prepared myself for the phone call from her saying that she had to drop out due to “Niely Overexposure”. Mrs B has to have annual injections in order to be able to tolerate me on such a regular basis. One of the side affects of this is injection is falling asleep during films. The fact that she recently stayed awake for the entire “Mission impossible III” movie and the majority of “Sunset Boulevard”(Aside 2) leads me to believe she is due for her annual boost.
(Aside 2) rather impressively Mrs B actually managed to fall asleep while “standing” over the ironing board. I though at first it was the steam iron that was making the gentle breathing sound. This must be worth an entry in the “Guinness book of records” or failing that an entire chapter in “10 strange and ever so slightly dangerous places to sleep”
(Aside 3) I almost disastrously made it seven, when I inadvertently invited PP’s Boss. I was just attempting to make polite conversation, as Mitch the Shed Slave and I dropped by the Gallery to pick up PP, and accidentally mentioned the tour. I thought I was going to turn to stone on the spot, under PP’s fearsome stare, when her boss said, “It looks like I’ve been stood up, so why not?” Apparently they had not had the most harmonious of days together and PP had been counting down the hours until she could get away. Fortunately for me we managed to give her boss the slip, while she was locking up. PP assured me that she would have forgotten all about by the morning and would be moaning about something else instead. This just serves as a reminder that I am much better off sticking to being my normal rude and ignorant self.
(Aside 4) At one point our tour guide looked like he was going to retaliate and go all Tarantino on David (all that blood and guts would have been quite appropriate for the evening), but David seemed to get the message and slunk off before any actual hacking and swearing could take place.
(Aside 5) I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, which will no doubt, in true Hollywood style, have an imaginative title like “From Hell2 – the tour guide hacker” in which Johnny Depp plays a deranged tour guide, driven mad by continuous exposure to photographers; he develops a fear of passing Taxi’s, which manifests itself in him repeating entire sentences. The final scene where he hacks to death a tour party who refuse to purchase any of his books is particularly poignant and just goes to show what a lucky escape we had.
(Aside 6) It was his own fault, he had driven only part way into London and parked his car in Beckton, where he works. I had dropped subtle hints (forgetting that us men don’t really do hints, subtle or otherwise) by sending him maps of where to park and how to avoid the congestion charge. I had guessed that given the choice of trailing off in the wrong direction, to the middle of nowhere, to get a lift home or hopping on a train 2 minutes walk away, Mrs B and PP were always going to choose the latter.
(Aside 7) I feel the English language is all the poorer for not including Nightdark in any dictionary yet published – surely it can only be a matter of time before it gets proper recognition.
Nightdark – A low quality light leading poor unsuspecting ladies of the night to mistake Mitch for a high class punter....(Mitch please note, high class punters don’t giggle)
Other words that are sadly missing from the dictionary:
Iriphotate – To upset someone by the excessive taking of photos
Wrongplacetoparkuburk – To leave your car in the wrong place, often resulting in the feeling of abandonment and getting home later then everyone else. This is particularly true when maps and details of congestion charges have been provided in advance.
Inaproprigobusage – To inadvertently invite an inappropriate person to join an activity
Sixtynineatrocias – Accidentally propositioning a Thai waiter in front of your immature husband
Friday 2 January 2009
Featuring car wasing, or not and a new film rating system
To wash or not to wash, that is the question
I'm a bit concerned about the recent rain that we've had, much more of it and it will ruin my water shortage excuse for not washing the cars. I'll have to fall back on the, "If you leave them long enough, eventually they start to clean themselves" excuse. I've tried driving quickly through local fords and clean looking puddles but that’s just not working. My last hope is smothering the cars with cat food and letting McG at them. If it works, I could start him on two cars a day, one at morning feed and one in the evening. It could become a lucrative little earner for him and as far as I know the first ever "Tongue cleaned car service in the UK"**. If only the program Nationwide was still being broadcast, I'm sure we could have got him a mention. I guess the Shopping Channel could probably get a good 3 hour session out of it. That however is unlikely to yield sales, since I don't know anyone who has not been paralytic before purchasing anything through the Shopping Channel, which would of course leave them in no fit state to drive the car over.
* This doomed to failure, rather like the iCat 2000 Dishwasher. McG had no problem licking the plates clean; getting him to eat the dishwasher tablets beforehand was always a bit problematic.
iCat 2000 Dishwasher developed a number of early problems including, sleeping on the job and a tendency to leave lots of ginger hair on the dishes and plates. Attempts to sell this as a special "Fuzzy Finish" feature failed to impress the buying public and they demanded their money back
Film reviews, a new rating system
We finally got around to seeing "The Da Vinci Code", Mrs B gave it 3 mins before zzzzing out, leaving me to suffer alone. This must be some sort of a record. Normally Mrs B makes it to about half way, even for the worst of films. The advantage of the “Mrs B Snore rating system" (patent pending), is it lets me know if I've made a good film choice, apparently this time I didn't. I guess we won't be going to see the follow up "Da Vinci Code II : I know what you did last supper".
Looks like a three snore rating.......
Garage clear out, a bit like a historical dig, without Tony Robinson
Once you get to the point when the footprints of the cars is the only space available in the garage, it's time to either get a smaller cars (I'm not sure I could face swapping the Mini for a Smart Car) or clear out the garage. Rummaging through stuff that is around 8 years old is quite an eye opener. You could probably get an entire quiz worth out of :-
"what is this for?"
"why did we keep this?"
"Animal, Mineral or Vegetable"
I've now decided to localise the problem and have put lots of little, "looks like they might be useful items" into a tin. This leaves me with the dilemma, do I take the tin straight down to the dump** or bury it in the garden, like a time capsule. Sods law dictates that whenever any of the items contained in the tin would be of use, the tin will be unavailable, only appearing again once, the requirement had gone away – a bit like Hogwarts – Room of Requirments, only in reverse. A final discovery was that McG had been doing some excavations of his own and had evidently hit the jackpot, the large hole in the side of one of the cat feed bags being testament to his success.
** Going to the dump is an interesting experience and could almost become a spectator sport. It has now got so complicated as to which bin your items should go into that the government are thinking of introducing an Open University course in identifying where items should go. There is no point approaching the mini Hitler's in charge of the dump as their sole existence is to prevent anyone from adding an item to the particular bin they are responsible for "No sorry chum, that can can't go in the wood bin, it's only 99% wood try in the 1% unidentified section". When you sit down and think about it, it's nice to know that you are also joining the world of recycling, even if it is unintentional. Half of the stuff you chuck away will be appearing at a car boot sale in the near future, only to be returned to the dump shortly afterwards, when the chump who purchased it, realises it is actually rubbish after all. If this process builds up ahead of steam, within a few generations the UK will have stumbled on the mother of all energy sources, perpetual motion between Home, the dump, Car Boot Sale, new home, the dump, Car Boot Sale ad infinitum. We could also include it in the UK’s Annual Recycling Returns, rocketing us to the top of the World Recycling League......
That’s it for another BlackLOG - historical – if you have enjoyed it please pass it on to anyone you know who might also enjoy it or to anyone you don't particularly like and would like to see suffer. You can also tune into the up to date version BlackLOG.
I'm a bit concerned about the recent rain that we've had, much more of it and it will ruin my water shortage excuse for not washing the cars. I'll have to fall back on the, "If you leave them long enough, eventually they start to clean themselves" excuse. I've tried driving quickly through local fords and clean looking puddles but that’s just not working. My last hope is smothering the cars with cat food and letting McG at them. If it works, I could start him on two cars a day, one at morning feed and one in the evening. It could become a lucrative little earner for him and as far as I know the first ever "Tongue cleaned car service in the UK"**. If only the program Nationwide was still being broadcast, I'm sure we could have got him a mention. I guess the Shopping Channel could probably get a good 3 hour session out of it. That however is unlikely to yield sales, since I don't know anyone who has not been paralytic before purchasing anything through the Shopping Channel, which would of course leave them in no fit state to drive the car over.
* This doomed to failure, rather like the iCat 2000 Dishwasher. McG had no problem licking the plates clean; getting him to eat the dishwasher tablets beforehand was always a bit problematic.
Film reviews, a new rating system
We finally got around to seeing "The Da Vinci Code", Mrs B gave it 3 mins before zzzzing out, leaving me to suffer alone. This must be some sort of a record. Normally Mrs B makes it to about half way, even for the worst of films. The advantage of the “Mrs B Snore rating system" (patent pending), is it lets me know if I've made a good film choice, apparently this time I didn't. I guess we won't be going to see the follow up "Da Vinci Code II : I know what you did last supper".
Garage clear out, a bit like a historical dig, without Tony Robinson
Once you get to the point when the footprints of the cars is the only space available in the garage, it's time to either get a smaller cars (I'm not sure I could face swapping the Mini for a Smart Car) or clear out the garage. Rummaging through stuff that is around 8 years old is quite an eye opener. You could probably get an entire quiz worth out of :-
"what is this for?"
"why did we keep this?"
"Animal, Mineral or Vegetable"
I've now decided to localise the problem and have put lots of little, "looks like they might be useful items" into a tin. This leaves me with the dilemma, do I take the tin straight down to the dump** or bury it in the garden, like a time capsule. Sods law dictates that whenever any of the items contained in the tin would be of use, the tin will be unavailable, only appearing again once, the requirement had gone away – a bit like Hogwarts – Room of Requirments, only in reverse. A final discovery was that McG had been doing some excavations of his own and had evidently hit the jackpot, the large hole in the side of one of the cat feed bags being testament to his success.
** Going to the dump is an interesting experience and could almost become a spectator sport. It has now got so complicated as to which bin your items should go into that the government are thinking of introducing an Open University course in identifying where items should go. There is no point approaching the mini Hitler's in charge of the dump as their sole existence is to prevent anyone from adding an item to the particular bin they are responsible for "No sorry chum, that can can't go in the wood bin, it's only 99% wood try in the 1% unidentified section". When you sit down and think about it, it's nice to know that you are also joining the world of recycling, even if it is unintentional. Half of the stuff you chuck away will be appearing at a car boot sale in the near future, only to be returned to the dump shortly afterwards, when the chump who purchased it, realises it is actually rubbish after all. If this process builds up ahead of steam, within a few generations the UK will have stumbled on the mother of all energy sources, perpetual motion between Home, the dump, Car Boot Sale, new home, the dump, Car Boot Sale ad infinitum. We could also include it in the UK’s Annual Recycling Returns, rocketing us to the top of the World Recycling League......
That’s it for another BlackLOG - historical – if you have enjoyed it please pass it on to anyone you know who might also enjoy it or to anyone you don't particularly like and would like to see suffer. You can also tune into the up to date version BlackLOG.
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