Indigestible

The screen was blank, apart from just four words. They had been there for over a week now, waiting for the accompanying paragraphs that would justify their existence.

The four words were “I Am John’s Knee”.

David had been writing this section for the Readers Digest for five years now. During that time he had been John’s heart, spleen, kidney, lungs and scrotum (he might as well have written just the one article called “I am John‘s sausage”). He hadn’t yet been John’s dandruff, his Betty Boop tattoo or his third little piggy (the one that got roast beef), but those days would surely come soon, John was running out of body parts.

Sometimes David got to be part of Jane, when the Digest wanted to explore areas of the anatomy that John simply didn’t have. You might think that this would put David in touch with his feminine side, but you’d be wrong. After the article where he informed the world that he was Jane’s ovaries he just felt embarrassed for the whole day.

And it’s wasn’t as if he was making a fortune from this. Indeed, readers with names like Mrs J. Spalding, Sussex, were making £250 for merry snippets about their grandchildren for the “Life’s Like That” section. This worked out usually at about two pounds a word, or about five times what David, a supposedly professional writer, was being paid.

The screen in front of him remained blank. It should by now have been filled with information about the patella, the cruciate ligament and even about the fact that de knee-bone connect to de shin-bone, but David just couldn’t be arsed. Couldn’t be John’s arsed, in fact.

The words remained a forlorn foursome on the screen. David went to the kitchen and got himself a bottle of scotch. He then sat on his sofa in front of an episode of Castle and, as he had done every evening that week, poured himself a very large glass.

Oh, I am David’s liver, by the way. I’m screwed.

Back Again

I had to get up at 4.45 this morning, but I didn’t feel tired.

I left the house at 5.30, when there was hick frost on the roof of the car, but I didn’t feel cold.

A little more than 3 hours later our house was full of smiles, full of hugs, full of love.

Our house feels full again.

Tinson1 is back home.

Rules Are Rules

The prompts at our Inksplinters Writers Group this week were all palindromes. One was “some men interpret nine memos”…
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“How many?” asked Aaron.

“Nine,” said Moses.

“Nine rules?” said Aaron. “That’s an awful lot. We didn’t have that many when we were slaves in Egypt.”

“Yeah,” said Joshua. “Basically there were just two – if you found yourself thrown to the lions try to keep away from the toothy end, and if the Red Sea suddenly parts, run like hell, it’s not going to stay that way forever.”

“Well, there’s nine here,” said Moses. Joshua muttered something under his breath that sounded like “calls this a promised land”.

“Lets hear them, then,” said Aaron.

“First, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me,” said Moses.

“Are they all written like that?” asked Joshua.

“Of course,” said Moses. “This is God talking.”

“Well, just give us the gist of the rest of them,” said Joshua. “What’s next?”

It was around this time that Moses began to regret not carrying the tablets down the mountain with him. But they’d been made of stone and he felt weak, since he’d eaten nothing but manna (a kind of meringue) for three weeks, so he’d just read quickly through the list, confident that he’d remember them. On the way down he realised that he’d forgotten one already, which was why he had presented the others with the notion of nine commandments. Now, as the others blathered on, he found himself struggling even with them.

“Keep Sunday free,” he said suddenly.

“Why, said Aaron, “what’s happening?”

“No, that was one of them,” said Moses. “Then there was do not kill, or steal. Look after your mum and dad. Don’t lie. And, um,” (he thought frantically) “oh yes, don’t covet your neighbour’s wife’s ass.”

“Not even Isaiah’s wife?” said Aaron.

They all thought for a few seconds about Isaiah’s wife, the Pippa Middleton of the desert, and her incredible bum.

“No, apparently not even her,” said Moses, wistfully.

“Jesus Christ,” said Joshua.

“Oh, thanks, I’d forgotten that one,” said Moses. “You can’t say ’Jesus Christ’ like that.”

“Fuck me,” said Joshua.

“Whereas oddly, that seems to be OK,” said Moses. “Now, how many is that?”

There was silence. None of them wanted to admit that they couldn’t count higher than four.

“Er, nine,” said Aaron eventually.

“There you are then,” said Moses. “The nine memos from God.”

All Dressed Up

Sidey’s Weekend Theme is “variations on a theme”…

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The huge front door creaked eerily as it opened.

There was nothing they could do about it, the doors of large castles are made to creak, and no amount of oiling will stop that.

Apart from that, though, everything was perfect at Morticia Addams’ Halloween party.

There were games. There was musical chairs, in which you fought each other for the privilege of sitting on a chair, and if you lost you made made to go and sit down, on a chair.   There was bobbing-for-apples, a strange game in which you inhaled water while attempting to pick up a piece of fruit you didn’t want. In another game a similar piece of fruit, now covered in toffee, swung on a piece of string and struck you violently in the face.

The room was brightly-lit and free of spider-webs. There was Beach Boys music playing. Everything was totally unspooky, and that was the whole point.

Morticia Addams throwing a themed-party for her fellow monsters. They had all had to come as humans.

She’d been too busy preparing the party to really pick an outfit, so she’d simply put on a pair of round glasses and was now Ozzy Osbourne.

Her husband Gomez played Clark Gable, which she felt was cheating since he looked like him anyway. She had pointed this out and he had said “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”. In reply she had turned him briefly into a handbag, because women always win arguments.

The other guests had made more of an effort, though some of them had been limited by their own appearance. The Mummy had come as Mr Bump, and in fairness there was little else he could have done. And the many, many ghosts had merely been able to tie-dye their sheets but had shown great inventiveness. One now represented the garish colours that humans wore playing golf, another the national flag of Burundi, another the Shroud of Turin.

Among the rest Count Dracula, by combing his hair forward and clutching his cloak around him, made an excellent Professor Snape. Doctor Frankenstein had gelled his hair into wild shapes and come as Alfred Einstein, while a grey-bun wig and a walking stick had transformed his assistant Igor into Grandma Walton. And everyone admired his Monster’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, though the Monster hadn’t in fact known that the party was fancy-dress.

The Headless Horseman had jammed his head onto his shoulders, jammed a stetson onto his head, and come as John Wayne. The Bride of Dracula, in the revealing white night-dress in which she’d been involuntarily wed, had come as Marilyn Monroe standing over the air-vent.

The Invisible Man had come as Cardinal Richelieu, although obviously you had to take his word for that.

Macbeth’s three witches, thanks to tight-fitting mini-skirts and some spells to rid themselves of their warts, did an astonishing impression of the Supremes.

Christopher Lee had come as Peter Cushing. Lee was not, of course, a monster, but had appeared in so many horror films that they had invited him as a special guest.

The only awkward moment was provided by Thing, the Addams Family pet hand. He had clenched himself into a fist, stuck out his middle finger, and put a tiny mortar-board on it. For this he had been sent to bed.

No-one likes a Clever-Dick.

A Copy of Reality

The SOPA and PIPA laws have been defeated, but Sidey’s Weekend Theme is “an alternate reality“, and somewhere there’s a reality where they’ve actually been passed…

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It was another cloudless, scorching day in Greystones, proof already that we are in an alternate reality. Above the whirr of the air-con, as it struggled to lower the temperature in our house castle (sure why not) I heard our doorbell ring. I went to the door to find two men dressed in suits as black as their sunglasses. One of them flashed a badge briefly (very briefly, it could have been a Tesco Club-card for all I saw of it), then looked down at an official-looking  piece of paper.

“Mr Real-name-inserted?” he asked.

“Pardon?” I said. He looked momentarily sheepish. “Sorry,” he said, “we only know you as Tinman. We don’t know your real name.”

“Then how do you know where I live?”

“GPS in your pacemaker,” said the other one.

“Look, who are you? ”I asked.

“You can call me Mr Sopa,” said the first one, “and this here is Mr Pipa. We’re with the US Government.”

“And what are you doing here?” I asked.

“We’re here in Yerp to stamp out Foreign Intellectual Property Piracy,” said Mr Sopa.

“And you think I’m a foreign intellectual?” I asked (slightly proudly, I must admit).

“That’s the kind of thing we’re here to stop,” said Mr Pipa. “That joke’s already been used in a comment on Janie Jones’s blog.”

“I know,” I said. “It was my comment.”

“Nevertheless, it’s on a US website now,” said Mr Sopa, “so it’s under copyright in the US. You could be fined up to fifty thousand dollars.”

I was stunned. “I don’t have that kind of money,” I said.

“We don’t like hearing that,” said Mr Pipa.

“I didn’t like saying it,” I replied.

“And that’s only the beginning of your troubles,” said Mr Pipa. “You’ve stolen the three words ‘worth’, ‘doing’ and ‘badly’ from a Mr Gil Chesterton.”

“You can’t steal a word,” I said.

“Ever heard the expression “can I have a word”? Well, if someone can have a word then someone else can steal it.”

While I was trying to construct a smart retort built around the phrase “have a crap” he continued. “Worst of all,” he said, “you’ve stolen the name ‘Tinman’ from, well, the Tin Man.”

“He’s not actually a real person,” I pointed out.

“Yes,” said Mr Pipa, “but he’s an American not-a-real-person.”

I looked pleadingly at Mr Sopa. “Can you talk some sense into this guy?” I asked.

“Sorry,” said Mr Sopa, “he’s on a higher pay-grade. I have to answer to him.”

I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. “You mean you’re Pipa’s bum?” I said (and I know I shouldn’t show this -> photo either, but let’s face it, I’m in enough trouble already).

“That’s insulting a Federal Officer,” snapped Mr Pipa. “You’re under arrest. Sopa, read him his rights.”

Mr Sopa began to read from a book. “You have the right to remain silent -”

“Hang on,” I said, “did you write that?”

“Er, no,” said Mr Sopa.

“Then you’re breaching the copyright of whoever did,” I said. “You could be fined up to -”

“Yes, yes, we know,” snapped Mr Pipa.

“Keep reading me my rights,” I said calmly, “if you can afford it.”

Mr Pipa stared at me for a long time. “You really are a foreign intellectual,” he said (this is, remember, an alternate reality). “Come on, Sopa, we know when we’re beaten.”

The two of them turned and got into a long black clichéd limousine. I watched it drive away and kept watching until it was out of sight.

“Hasta la Vista, baby,” I said.

Uncle Don

I didn’t post anything yesterday because I was at a wake, that peculiarly Irish tradition where a person is laid out in his own home the night before his funeral.

Once you’ve spent part of your evening sitting in the same room as a deceased person in an open coffin then any jokes you were planning to write seem a lot less funny.

He was Mrs Tin’s uncle and yet he wasn’t – he and his wife were close friends with her parents, and back when we were young such people were commonly referred to as Uncle This and Auntie That (there is a couple, now living in Canada, and if I met them tomorrow I would call then Uncle Bill and Auntie Julie, though their relationship to us consists entirely of the fact that for three years in the 1960s they lived in the flat above us in Tottenham).

Nowadays, of course, my real nieces and nephews, from the eldest (32) to the youngest (7) call me simply by my first name.

Uncle Don was a sweet man who never really got over the death of his wife Doris, a real fireball of chatting, laughing energy, just three years ago.

He leaves one daughter, Gillian, a girl who I first met when she was 24 and who is now 50 and has suddenly risen to be head of the family.

I couldn’t go to the funeral today because I’m back to work but I hope it all went well for her and her three children, who all had to give readings.

I was thinking about them this morning, and will be thinking about them in the days ahead.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Red

This week’s photo challenge is, simply, red. There is joke in there somewhere that I’m not going to make, even I have standards.

Mention the words “photo” and “red” to any male of a certain age and the famous Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster comes to mind, driving absolutely everything else out of it. Just showing the poster, however, is not entering into the spirit of the Weekly Photo Challenge, it has to be an actual picture that I took myself, so I’m showing the poster purely in case any of you don’t know which one I’m talking about (and for you, Grandad, as one of my few male readers).

I have thought a lot about what to use. I finally went to our local Tesco (where three or four of their customers now think I’m mental) and have finally settled on this.

Now I know what you are all thinking, you’re thinking “bloody hell, not only is he a crap photographer, he’s colour blind as well.” Well, yes, I do know that the liquid in the bottle is more brown than red, but not to us Irish.

In all other countries lemonade is a clear whitish liquid. We have that too, but we call it White Lemonade. There is no such drink in Ireland as vodka-and-lemonade, there is vodka-and-white.

Because ask for lemonade here and our default is to the stuff in this bottle, and believe me you don‘t want vodka-and-that.

It’s called Red Lemonade, sold only in our country. It is as uniquely Irish as leprechauns, Riverdance and the kind of whiny song that you can only sing with one hand cupped over one ear.

It’s an extraordinary drink, essentially e-numbers in liquid form. I can’t tell you what it tastes like, because it is so fizzy that with the glass (never a cup) to your mouth all you can taste is that fizz, while tiny bubbles burst gently on your face.

And we all grew up on it, every generation since it was first invented, possibly as something to pour off the parapets of castles onto invaders below. It’s what gives us the ginger in our hair, the freckles on our skin, the redness we call suntan.

It’s part of what we are.

The Future is Coming

Make a prediction about life in 2021, asks WordPress

• The word “ohmygod” will be officially recognised in the Oxford English Dictionary.
• A house will cost €4000, but no-one will be able to afford one.
• Films will be available in 4D. As the fourth dimension is time, this means that if ten years pass during the story you will come out of the cinema ten years older.
• Do not watch Demolition Man in 4D.
• Ryan Giggs, then aged 47, will sign a further one-year contract with Manchester United.
• Twitter will have a shorter version, Twit, with a maximum of 20 characters, 10 of which will be !!!!!!!!!!
• In the event of an emergency Ryanair will have a €50 charge for sliding down that rubber chute (I’d pay it, too, it looks like fun).
• Gillette’s new razor will have 11 blades.
• Walkers Crisps will bring out a range of retro flavours such as cheese-and-onion and salt-and-vinegar.
• There will only be three people left on the planet who have never been contestants on the X-Factor, and they are the three judges.
• After four-door cars and five-door cars, there will be six-door cars. The sixth door will be in the floor, so that you can stick your feet out and drive a la Fred Flintstone, because
• Petrol will be €400 a litre, because
• People will still not have financed my invention of a car that runs on baby-sick, a never-ending resource.
• Boyzone, now all in their 40s, will be forced to change their name under the Trade Descriptions Act.
• Their latest song will be one of those featured on Now That’s What I Call Music 492.
• When pacemakers came out first they were the size of hockey pucks. My current one is the size of a cigarette lighter. My next one, due in about eight years, will be the size of a button, but will run on a nuclear battery powerful enough to reduce County Wicklow to dust if I burp.
• Fizzy drinks will be banned in County Wicklow.
• As all the seas are toxic and fish are poisonous it will be permissible to eat meat on Fridays, according to Pope Laura.
• A hideously-aged portrait of Cliff Richard will be discovered in his attic.
• The investigation into fraud at Anglo Irish Bank will be ongoing.
• Having got smaller and smaller through the 80s and 90s and then bigger and bigger as more functions were added, the mobile phone will now be the size it was in 1984.
• At a press conference it will be announced that Karaoke, Wii Fit and Super Mario Brothers will all be recognised sports in the 2024 Olympics.
• The TV programmes on Dave will have reached 2002
• Bloggers will be venerated, and will be invited to give blog readings, for being able to write articles of more than 500 words.
• Lady Gaga, having been decorated by the Queen (yes, the same one, her mum lived to be 102 after all) for services to music, will now be know as Lady Lady Gaga.
• Kylie will be 49, and will still have a great bum.

Seedy Story

Many of my post ideas start with lunchtime discussions. This one stems from a remark that one of the girls made to the effect that if you eat too many poppy seeds you can fail a drugs test. She says that a doctor friend of hers told her this.

Since virtually all bread, burger buns, etc are covered in Sesame seeds these days, it should be possible to open doors without actually touching them.

Try this with the doors of your local supermarket. It really works.

All in Good Taste

A blogpost in its early stages is like a toddler, gleefully waddling towards a particular destination before becoming distracted and suddenly veering off in a totally different direction.

Yesterday’s was one such post, a tale of lunchtime in the office that suddenly decided to poke fun at Irish food, poke a stick at porridge and end with a example of mischievous parenting from the last decade.

Anyway, as I started, we were in the kitchen trying to explain crubeens to two of the girls from overseas. One of them, a French girl, said that pigs’ ears were considered quite a delicacy on the continent. My face must have said “yuck” because the other girl said “no, they’re lovely, my sister’s dog loves to eat them.”

I opened my mouth to speak, closed it again and just sat obviously trying to hold in a laugh. They asked what was funny, and I refused to tell them. I refused to tell them that I had been about to say “yes, but your sister’s dog also loves to lick his own balls.”

I’m taking it as a sign that the derealisation is getting better. Six months ago I’d have said that out loud.