Happy Little Elves

So a couple of years ago I decided to rekindle an old flame. Miniature painting. It all started because my daughter wanted an extra domicile for one of her sylvanian families (the otter family I think). Housing prices had hit rental properties hard in Sylvania and both the otter and rabbit families had lost their tenancy and couldn't afford to buy. So I took to some old foam board with a ruler and a stanley knife and knocked up a single story cottage with tiled roof, commanding excellent views of our loft space and the adjacent Christmas decorations. 

And that was it. Before I knew what was happening, the madness was upon me and I purchased a miniature paining started set from 'The Army Painter'. I hadn't painted anything since I was about seventeen (and there was no internet tutorials at the time so my painting had sucked). But with the help of a few video's and the joy of slapchop (don't ask), I started churning out some actually decent looking results. 

Unfortunately, Games Workshop still hold sway as the 'de facto' ruler in all things miniature gaming. And let me tell you, their prices are not in any way pocket friendly. Sometimes, just for a laugh, I go and look at the prices of Games Workshop miniatures. Forty quid for a single leader model! And you still have to assemble it, glue it, paint it and base it. Games workshop are total geniuses. They have come up with a business model where they get paid but you do all the work.  Without selling a lung or entering into a second mortgage agreement without my wife's knowledge, there was no way that I would be able to afford any miniatures to paint.

And so began my foray into 'non GW miniatures'. Feeling like a lifelong Catholic who finds himself in a modern 'happy clappy' church, I started nosing around forums, looking for information on other model manufacturers. And you know what I found? Outside of the 'true faith' of GW, there are dozens, hundreds of companies that produce miniatures at a fraction of the price that GW demands. And often they are as good quality. I started buying broken up sprues on Ebay for £5 a pop. Feeling like 'smack addict'. 'Come on man...just a five pound bag. Just hook me up with some dwarves or a few orks. I got the shakes real bad. You gotta help me man...you know Im good for it'. 

And so behold, my happy little elves, nestling in their polystyrene world. I have to say that they bring me a lot of pleasure. Now I just need to bribe someone to play with me!

 

Little by Little

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. 

Well, in my case this was very literally true. It all started when I purchased a new lawnmower. You know that you have truly arrived as a fully fledged adult man when you purchase your second lawnmower. Our first one was the cheapest model that I could find in the Argos catalog and I think had markedly less power than my wife's hair dryer. It was fine for the postage stamp sized area of lawn in our first house but the massive garden we now have caused it to choke and die within a matter of weeks. 

The new mower was more powerful and even had a throttle & variable cut height (I know!). As it turned out; this was the cause of my undoing. 

You see, I am a somewhat lazy & procrastinating person where garden maintenance is concerned. I know that many of you are keen horticulturalists who like nothing more than to be knee deep in Begonias but I really cannot be bothered with it all. On arriving at our current house, I pretty much pulled out any plant which required any degree of care and just went with 'plain lawn'. But it still requires cutting in the warmer months & so I came up with a brilliant strategy to prevent my needing to cut it too often. 

By adjusting the cut height to the lowest possible setting ( maybe 2cm), I could 'buzz cut' the whole lawn & it would then take weeks for it to grow back to the point that any further manicuring was required. Perfect! I congratulated myself for 'winning at life' & went back to more interesting pursuits. Secure in the knowledge that nothing could ever mess up the perfect system that I had created. 

And then it got hot. I mean, really really hot for weeks & weeks. The best summer that I can remember for a long time. Fantastic. & this was pre COVID so we could all go out & enjoy ourselves. There was only one minor drawback. My lawn was cut so short that the hard sunlight completely blasted anything green to death in a matter of weeks. No matter how I tried to water it, the suns relentless hammer pounded it dry. Rather than being a green & verdant carpet, my lawn began to resemble a barren and featureless wasteland broken up only by the occasional cat turd.

I could write a whole other blog concerning the enormous cat population in our neighborhood. In the event of terrible brexit meaning that foodstuffs cannot be delivered to supermarkets; I could probably feed my family for some weeks just by hunting the local feline population & they all seem to use our garden as their litter box of choice.

In any case, the shame of my 'Fallout 76' styled lawn prevented me from inviting visitors for barbecues that summer and to add insult to injury, my neighbors lawn was a verdant and lush paradise. This due to the fact that he had paid greenthumb to come and execute a campaign of chemical warfare against his weeds. The worms in my neighbors garden were hench and roided up and the local cats clearly felt afraid of them & were more comfortable crapping in my arid dust bowl of a garden.  About the only thing that was growing apart from weeds was brambles. Enormous, alien like tentacles were probing out from every brambly corner of the garden. The children's bikes had long ago been snared and assimilated into the  impenetrable 'borg' of the blackberry bushes as they pursued their remorseless agenda of total domination over the garden. 

I felt completely at a loss as to how to turn this situation around. I couldn't afford green thumb and I had neither the time nor the energy to spend days and days meticulously re turfing the lawn and hiring a vicious dog to guard the perimeter against cats. In the end, I was praying about it (having failed to have the faith required to command the desert to bring forth plants and bud...believe me I tried).

Holy Spirit encouraged me to stop being discouraged by what I was unable to do & to just do what little  I could. So I made a start. A pathetically small start. Pulling out two or three weeds a week and planting new grass seed in their place. The new seed would eventually sprout and grow, like patchy follicle replacement on a man having a midlife crisis. I also started to cut three tiny bits of bramble off of the borg every morning and sacrifice them in the flames of my burner. HA! 'I'm coming for you next bramble' I would say as I tore my pajamas & dressing gown free of it's thorny clutches.

The results were underwhelming. Particularly because; when I looked out at my neighbors garden it looked amazing. But over the weeks & months there was a gradual but perceptible improvement. The bramble borg eventually relinquished control of the children's' bikes and the local cats responded to my loudly hurled insults and placed my address firmly on their 'avoid' list. 

Finally the lawn began to come back to green life and I could tentatively begin to mow it once more. This time with the cut adjustment set as high as it would possibly go so as not to terrify the new grass too much. I trained my son to mow the lawn and (once he had severed the power cable by mowing over it a couple of times), he became quite proficient & was able to earn some money into the bargain.

It took a long time. A lot of very small steps but one day my wife was looking out of the window and commented that our garden now looks as good as my neighbors( & I haven't had to spend a lot of money for the privilege). 

Holy Spirit started to use this to speak to me about my life & my walk with him. 

Sometimes the idea of what God wants us to achieve or accomplish appears completely overwhelming. ''You want me to invade what impossible land?'', '' You want me to engage THOSE giants over there''? But God never intended us to do everything all at once. He even said to Israel that he would give the land to them a little at a time so that they did not get overwhelmed by wild animals in the process (Exodus 23:29). He gives is a few talents to invest (proportional to our faith) & lets us get on with it. Not expecting us to work a ten talent gift with five talent faith.

Sometimes our journey with God is not about those big decisions,those big 'alter call' moments or the blinding flash of light on the road that causes us to fall off our donkey and turn our life in a completely new direction. 

More often (& less excitingly), our walk with Jesus is about  lots & lots of very small decisions. Hundreds of  tiny 'yes's to Gods whispered question that no one apart from you and God really notice. If this carries on for long enough; this  lifestyle of saying yes over and over again becomes habit forming until the word 'no' drops out of our vocabulary altogether.  For small things anyway.

This is how you end up in deep water with Jesus. One tiny yes at a time consistently over years & years. You may not feel that you can go up the huge mountain but God never asks you to do that all at once. Eventually you will 'tiny yes' your way quite a long way up without even realizing it.

And when you look out over the landscape of your life, you will see that it has become lush and verdant. The cat poo has gone and the bramble borg has been cut back to fruitfulness.  

God works on the 'little by little' principle. 

So choose to give him your tiny 'yes' today in whatever he prompts you. If you can't think of anything then go back to the last thing He asked and do that. He's not going to give you  faith for tomorrow until you have used what's in your hand for today.

Plant seed, dig out the weeds, cut back the things that entangle you, water & feed the things that are good in your life. 

Oh, & don't set the variable height too low on your spiritual mower!

DADDY PIG: Arise and Save your Bacon!

Poor daddy pig, he goes out every day and works his trotters off to provide for his family. He is clearly highly intelligent & cares about those around him a great deal. And yet; when daddy pig returns to the warm bosom of his family they seem to  treat him with barely masked contempt and regularly refer to him as ‘silly daddy pig’. This is tantamount to emotional abuse in my book & I think that it is high time that Daddy pig manned up and ‘took charge’ of his household.

I think that we all know where the rot started in the pig household. Yes, I am of course talking about Peppa Pig, The most entitled and narcissistic little porker since the emperor Nero was a first turned up at ‘baby gladiators’ Roman toddler group. Peppa basically does whatever she wants all the time with no real consequences. In almost every episode she is told not to do things that she then almost immediately does.

Mummy Pig: you mustn’t touch the computer whilst I am working Peppa and George.

Peppa [touches computer, immediately crashing the programme that mummy pig is working on] Yes, don’t touch the computer like this George!

Mummy Pig: Oh Dear, Daddy pig.. come and help please!

This episode then has daddy pig fixing the computer and letting Peppa and George play on the  game that they wanted (rather than passing it back to poor mummy pig so that she could finish her quarterly sales projections or whatever it was she was working on). What on earth is going on here?

I thought when mummy pig called daddy in (from preparing lunch for everyone by the way…’silly daddy pig’), it was so that he could administer swift and merciless justice on the naughty piglets. But no. There must never be any consequences for Peppa pig. She will just dance through life, jumping in everyone’s muddy puddles and never having to do the laundry. Taking the piss out of her dad if he ever has difficulty navigating in the car or struggles with DIY eats too much.

So, daddy pig has a comfort eating problem. Well big woop Peppa! I am surprised that your awful behaviour has not driven him to rampant alcoholism or glue sniffing by now. This madness must end. I recommend a new episode called ‘Lets Talk about Peppa’ where daddy and mummy pig have a long talk about how they are going to manage Peppa’s out of control behaviour. Then the next episode will be entitled ‘Peppa Pig is sent away to Military boarding school until she learns the error of her ways’ or something like that.

Also the shows creators should introduce predation to the Peppa pig world. I suggest an episode titled ‘ Peppa pig loses a friend’. One day Rebecca Rabbit does not turn up for the class field trip and it turns out that she has been killed and eaten by Danny dog.

Madame Gazelle: What’s all zat muck around your mouth Danny? You really should make sure you are nice and clean before coming into ze class you know.

Danny Dog: Sorry Madame Gazelle, it’s Rebecca Rabbit, I was a bit hungry this morning after playtime so I scoffed her down. I’ve still got a bit of her leg in my school bag if you want me to share it with the class?

Madame Gazelle: Oh Mon Dieu! This is orrible, ow could you do such a thing Danny!?

Danny Dog: ‘Circle of life’ miss. [belches loudly]

 

POSTMAN PAT: Creating unrealistic expectations of the workplace

Hi Pat, welcome to your annual appraisal interview. Do come in and have a seat. Now, I’m sure that it will come as no surprise to you that the post office is seriously concerned about your conduct. Come come Pat, don’t look so shocked. Please sit back down. Don’t worry we can clear up that smashed cup of tea in a moment.
Now, let’s have a look at some of your behaviour over the past year shall we. First of all, there’s the matter of your cat Jess. …Yes she is delightful. What’s that you say, Jess is actually a boy? Hmmm, well I apologise for the misunderstanding. But you have to admit that she…I mean..he does sound like a lady cat. And with a name like Jess…well, there was a lot of room for misunderstanding.
But yes, adorable as Jess is; you really cannot be bringing your pet cat into work with you every day. No it’s not essential to your duties for you to have a cat Pat. This is not the nineteen thirties. Rats and mice are not running rampant amongst the mail room parcels, necessitating the role of the ‘post office cat’ to control the local vermin. Or are you claiming that Jess is some manner of disability companion animal?
No?...are you sure Pat. We were wondering whether Jess might be your ‘thinking brain cat’ after looking at some of your recent deliveries.
What do I mean by that? Well, lets take the delivery to Alf last week just as an example. Alf was building a rocket for some sort of race around Greendale and you delivered some of the parts that he would require. No problems there. But then you proceeded to chat with Alf for almost an hour. This would have been bad enough but then; whilst his attention was elsewhere, you entered the rocket, became locked inside and ended up flying it around Greendale for most of the afternoon. Pat, this is not what you are employed by the post office to do. You are a parcel delivery operative. No, it doesn’t matter that you won the race. It was a complete waste of post office time and resources, not to mention the fact that you aren’t insured to pilot such a contraption. What if there had been an accident?
Which brings me to our next concern. What do you think the running costs of an average rural postal service are Pat? Not sure? Well allow me to help you out. They are certainly not in the ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ bracket. A first class stamp still retails for under a pound and one can send a parcel across the country for less than the cost of a packet of fags. How therefore do you possibly imagine we could countenance the use of your own ‘post office helicopter’ to deliver occasional items of mail?
What do you mean ‘special delivery service’. It certainly is special Pat. It breaks every known rule of consumer economics. You cannot use a helicopter costing thousands of pounds an hour to deliver a parcel that we were paid under twenty pounds to deliver. What do you mean ‘HS2 would do it’? Your department of the post office on its own is responsible for 43 percent of the total UK spend Pat. At the last count you were running two ‘bright red’ vans, a motorcycle with sidecar, a helicopter and a further ‘bigger van’ for special delivery jobs. It wouldn’t be so bad but you take three or four times as long as any other known postman to deliver even simple letters. What do you mean Mrs Goggins lost them one time? Mrs Goggins is about 1000 years old man! You are constantly opening other people’s parcels, or loosing them in fields or walking off of your postal route in order to support local school plays or to help out the local ‘one man’ police service!
I’m afraid that you no longer fit with the modern twenty first century postal service and we will have to let you go. What do you mean ‘the people of Greendale won’t stand for this’? Don’t you realise that we are trying to compete with Amazon and Ebay Pat. There is no room in the lean future for a postman who’se idea of a great summer party is to drop five hundred and thirty eight cubic tonnes of sand in the city centre and proclaim that it is a beach party without the beach. Also you are spending far too much post office time helping out with your friend’s railway project.
Enough is enough. Go and join Fireman Sam at the Employment Office and hand in your keys to the chopper on the way out. We are going to sell it to fund a post office staff party celebrating your departure.

Bing Bunny: The Reason Britain Has Lost It's Way

For any of you who are not held hostage by your children and forced to become over familiar with children’s television; the gruesome twosome pictured above are Bing Bunny and his carer Flop.

I say carer. To be honest, the exact nature of Flops relationship to the dark rabbit is a little uncertain. Is he Bings father? his childminder? some sort of teacher? A beanbag that Bing has imagined as having a gentle voice and happy personality ?

 

Actually the last suggestion might make perfect sense given the observable fact that Flop is (not to put too fine a point on it), one of the most ineffective and useless parents ever to have been given custody of a child.

The little terrorist Bing is pretty much allowed to get away with any bad behaviour with no comeuppance at all. This despite having always been warned by Flop that it is an inadvisable course of action.

 

On any given episode the formula is generally the same. Bing and flop are happily doing something. Bing proposes an utterly stupid or reckless course of action. Flop gently cautions Bing against this madness. Bing then does it anyway and then comes to flop in tears when something bad happens as a result. Flop then gently comforts Bing and makes it all better.

I am going to write to Cbeebies (or whoever the stupid company is) with the following (in my opinion much better) script for an episode.

 

[camera in…establishing shot…the zoo exterior daytime]

Narration: ‘it’s Saturday afternoon and Bing & Flop are visiting the zoo’

Flop: ‘Look Bing, the wolves enclosure’

Bing: ‘Oh wow Flop, wolves are so furry, look…that one is having a wee’

Flop: ‘[chuckles] yes, so he is. Do you need a wee Bing’

Bing: ‘No. I want to go & pet the wolves flop, please can I?’

Flop: ‘No Bing, wolves can be quite dangerous you know. They aren’t like dogs’

[we see Flop being distracted for a moment as he helps a passing old lady to pick up her dropped bag. Bing uses this distraction to clamber over the barrier and into the wolf enclosure]

 

Flop: ‘Oh Bing no….Come back!’

[Bing ignores Flop, he runs recklessly after one of the wolves in an attempt to stroke it. The wolf turns around and bites Bing’s hand]

Bing: [Bursting Into tears as he rushes back to Flop] ‘Oh Flop…Flop, the wolf was nasty and it bit me on the hand…look, there’s blood coming out Flop’

Flop: [giving Bing a smack around the ears] ‘I told you not to go in there you stupid bastard. You could very well have been killed. Let’s hope you haven’t contracted rabies from that bite. Now stop blubbing and let me have a look’

[the rest of the episode concerns Flop taking Bing to the emergency room whilst lecturing him on the importance of respecting and obeying your betters].

 

If Bing is not stopped, his sense of narcissistic entitlement will doom any future lady bunnies to a miserable relationship with him.

 I imagine him in his thirties, frittering away payday loans on yet more online casino spins from a dirty two seater sofa surrounded by empty plastic microwavable curry packaging. His signature adorable dungarees are shabby and stained . Straining in a vain attempt to cover the massive expanse of his beer belly. The stench of skunk lies heavy across the fetid bedsit.

 

Bing: [on phone] ‘Hi is that Flop? Hi buddy …. Sorry to be a pain but could you lend me some more money mate?’

Viking Funeral For My Pants

As has previously been discussed here; I find it hard to let go of things. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of my wardrobe. Some of the clothing items there have been with me for over a decade. This is not because of any environmentally conscious mind-set  on my part. But rather due to the fact that, at some unconscious level, I expect  all of my clothing to last forever and cannot really appreciate that some vestments need to be consigned to the dustbin. I often refer to certain shirts as ‘my new shirt’ despite the fact that I actually purchased it three of four years hence.

As a psychotically organised individual; I have a strict method to clothing storage. Trousers on one side, then shirts then warm clothing. As I am the only one in the household who every puts laundry away, this system has been rigidly observed for some years. I have two rails of clothing (one atop the other). The top rail for smart work wear and the bottom for the shambolic crap that I dress in at home.

When a new item of clothing arrives it heralds the  beginning of an arduous, decade long process of being digested by the Salak of my wardrobe system. For two or three years it will remain  on the ‘best work wear’ rack. But then the inevitable happens and I must sadly admit that it is looking frayed and old. At which point it is demoted to the lower ‘casual wear’ rack.

From this point on it is a slow decline for another four years or so until it has too many holes or stains in to be safe to wear outside the house.  The last three years are a shameful time for it as I refuse to throw it out but wear it when relaxing at home . Then finally I have to get rid of it.

My last pair of jeans reached this Nadir a few months back and I just couldn’t bring myself to chuck them out. They had holes in which I had repeatedly repaired but even I had to admit that jeans with a massive rip across the groinal area were a fashion ‘faux pa’s even for me. It had gotten to the point that I couldn’t sit across from anyone without the risk of seriously indecent exposure.

In the end I have landed upon the perfect solution. Like the Vikings of old, I now send the ‘honoured dead’ to their fabric afterlife upon a flame filled chariot (which is to say that I chuck my old clothing in the stolid fuel burner in the winter mornings in order to keep warm).

Watching  as my clothing gradually surrenders to the fierce glory of the flames  feels epic and allows me some form of primal closure. I feel as if I am some ancient warrior  shooting a fiery shaft  into a longboat  and standing in solemn silence to watch it burn  as it drifts away.

‘ A pair of great trousers comes to meet their fellows in Valhalla this day. Trousers that have rode out many storms in this life. Though vicious stains were visited upon them and farts beyond number ravaged the brave fabric of their gusset they stood true. But now they come home. To the great Levi 501’s store of the skies. There they will be born aloft on the legs of worthy hero’s and never again kicked under my bed and forgotten about for weeks on end’

And then I set a match to them and watch them burn. But only after cutting off some of the material to make Barbie doll dresses for my daughter. I mean for goodness sakes, I have to have SOMETHING to remember them by!

 

New and better blogsite coming later this year!

Belly Ache

Well it has come to that time of year where one has to spend several minutes upon arrival anywhere, divesting oneself of gloves, coats scarves and hats only to have the whole process repeated in reverse before exiting the building again.

Working as I do across quite a number of different sites I find myself having to repeat this little performance multiple times a day in front of various staff teams.

Many of our NHS offices are massively in need of modern heating and the ancient boilers and pipes that we are stuck with heat the offices  up to near blast furnace levels of warmth. This necessitates my having to also remove my jumper more often than not which leads me to a quandary .

Very often my shirt will ‘ride up’ as I remove said jumper, revealing a few inches of pale untoned midriff to all and sundry. I am afterwards forced to swiftly tuck my shirt back into my trousers in what I mentally refer to as ‘the Gasson manoeuvre’.  Sometimes it is possible to untuck the shirt and sit hard upon it prior to removal of the jumper but this is still very uncomfortable.

Now I am quite embarrassed about showing my tummy to work colleagues & so I have taken to a new practice of always changing out of my jumper in the gentleman’s toilet where I can take the precaution of locking the door before I wrestle myself away from the clutches of my jumper. This also affords me the opportunity to quickly check (what remains of) my hair to ensure that the static generated by the removal of the garment has not caused the hair to balloon out like some crazy Einstein.

Although the toilet visit does minimise the embarrassment from crazy hair and belly flashing, it brings with it another problem which is that I become paranoid that people will wonder why I am going to the bathroom and returning with no jumper on. Do people understand my concerns or do that draw the conclusion that I am locking myself in there in order to experiment with different clothing choices like some kind of cut price Mr Benn. Do they visualise me parading up and down in front of the washbasin mirror in different variations of dress and undress. Trousers on my head, shirt fully unbuttoned or whatever outlandish style takes my fancy.

Probably not, but it does mean that I usually try and time my divestment toilet visits to coincide with my frequency of urination in order to allay suspicion.

Roll on the spring.

Frying Pan Funeral

I need to procure a new frying pan. The non stick has finally given up the ghost on our most current one and now begin weeks of sniffing around the kitchenware sections of various shops in an attempt to find a new one which promises to neither stick nor warp with use.


So many years, so many broken promises. I always start the relationship with a new Frying pan in the giddy excitement of a new romance. After many days or weeks of searching I have finally discovered a pan which promises to last for ages & which will not warp or prove unworthy of my commitment.
I marvel at how awesome the non stick is as I return to cooking all the meals that I hitherto was forced to avoid in the old pan.


But then, over the weeks and months that follow, my affection slowly cools and the excitement of a new relationship is replaced by the mundane grind of normal life. The pan; rather than being the focus of exciting new recipes, becomes taken for granted and has to churn out endless omelettes, fry-ups and scotch pancakes.


After the twelve to eighteen month mark I start to notice visible signs of aging and deterioration which I immediately go into denial about. 'no no, it's a great pan. I took ages choosing it. It will surely go on and on'. But in my heart of hearts I know that this is the beginning of the end and I am already starting to cast furtive glances at other frying pans when we are out in town. Embarrassingly having to slam my laptop shut when my wife comes into the room for fear that she will see my internet history and realise that I have once again been looking at pictures of younger frying pans.


Eventually the pan is incapable of managing even the most rudimentary meals shredding & destroying rashers of bacon entrusted to it's care. After the second or third meal is transformed into a shoddy, shapeless mess; I come to my senses and declare that the relationship isn't working and that I need to start looking around for another frying pan that can meet my needs. And the adventure begins again.


This would all be well and good were it not for the fact that I appear to have great difficulty in actually throwing the old frying pans away. Perhaps it is due to all of the emotional investment that I have put into finding it. Or to the memory of all those great meals that it faithfully produced over the years. But when push comes to shove, and I am left holding it over the dark open depths of the wheelie bin; I find that (like Frodo Baggins) I just cannot bring myself to let go.


So it goes into the shed with my other dead frying pans and I tell myself that I will be able to find some use for it in the future (perhaps on a camping trip where I will be cooking over an open fire or as part of  a hastily constructed suit of armour in the event of zombie apocalypse).
This cycle has been repeating every 12 to 20 months so that I now have a not inconsiderable, stack of frying pans. All of which I feel some level of emotional attachment to. This must be how hoarders feel about all of their crap. Perhaps this is how it starts? Too much of an emotional relationship with cold unfeeling objects. Just not feeling able to let go. I have previously written of my tendency to hang onto dreadlocks, teeth and even beard clippings. This is a personality bent that I need to stamp out hard before I become a full time hoarder of bent screws or something!


On the other hand, I do quite like my pile of frying pans. My wife discovered it the other day (on an unauthorised trip into my shed. How dare she!). She demanded that I throw some away which I duely did. She does not have any difficulty in parting with old crap. There is clearly no emotional component there for her, whether it is getting rid of an old and faithful car or a previously loved sweater, she turns her back and moves on without ever giving it a second thought.


What I would really like to do if I am honest, is to continue to collect frying pans (I have given up on ever finding one that lives up to it's claims of a lifetime of stick free cooking). I would like to collect a big pile of them which could then be disseminated to the mourners at my funeral.
'Hello sir. Attending the Gasson ceremony today are we? Please take this Sainsbury's finest range 20 inch deep pan non warp model. Hello madam. You too? Please take this Tefal 18 inch red spot non stick deluxe'.
 Then people could throw them onto my coffin whilst they bid me farewell at the graveside. It would be a bit like the ancient pharaohs who got buried with all of their old crap. Maybe pyramids were just the afterlife equivalent of 'the big yellow storage box company' when all is said and done. Imagine the clatter and clang at the grave side as the accumulated lifetimes worth of frying pans are reverentially chucked on top of the coffin together before being covered in earth. Or maybe I could get them all melted together 'game of thrones' style into a custom made, non stick coffin. A Teflon coated Bier in which to travel to the afterlife.


In any case, the hunt is on for an exciting new frying pan and there is a place in my kitchenware mausoleum for the current incumbent. Hopefully my wife will stay out of the shed in from now on following my dire warnings about using the 'wrong sort of paint'.

Free Luxury Shampoo

I love an 'Air B&B'. Don't get me wrong, I've had my fair share of slightly dodgy ones over the years. We had one in Brazil which boasted and exposed electrical ring main and hot water that had been plumbed in the wrong way so that our first few showers were and exercise in ice cold and boiling hot torture. But I love the feeling that I'm schtupping the hotel system and most of all I love the free stuff that other people leave. There's usually the normal boring things in the kitchen. A half bag of granulated sugar, some questionable looking dried pasta and a cooking sauce that looks about ready to grow legs and dance out of the door. But root a little deeper and you can find some real gems. On our last holiday we had a truly stupendous air B& B at the top of a big tenement overlooking the city sprawl. There was this electronic door key which you had to put the correct code in to turn (which made me feel like James Bond). There was an extra bedroom just for the kids with toys in situ for them to play with. There was a massive TV with incomprehensible remote controls & free wifi.
But best of all there was a bath. A huge gleaming tub surrounded by modern pristine tiles with piping hot water and a lockable door.
This was heaven. Our family have managed without a bath for the past five years in our house as the previous occupant decided to rip it out and replace it with a modern shower cubicle which they never correctly plumbed in (not even back to front). So the shower had no hot water connected and when we did get it going in the end, we discovered that the shower tray had not been sealed so that water pissed down the kitchen walls and short circuited the boiler every time anyone spend more than three minutes washing themselves.
 Three shower units and a lot of swearing later we have sorted the problem but I haven't enjoyed soaking my bones in a bath for literally years.
Back when I first moved out of mum and dads house, up to Nottingham, I didn't own a washing machine. In order to economise and save effort, I used to bath with my dirty laundry. It made perfect sense to me as a 19 year old hippy. Stick a load of fabric detergent in the tub. If it will clean clothes then it will clean me right?
Then just tip the contents of your laundry bin into the swirling waters and step in to join it.
It was quite a nice sensation. I would stir the clothing and socks around as the water slowly grew browner and occasionally I would be able to identify specific items as they rose gently through the murk to greet me like old friends.
Then finally I gave in and purchased a second hand washing machine. We didn't have a TV at the time and I vividly remember sitting enthralled and watching the whole of the first wash from start to finish on my kitchen floor. Magical.


Anyway, I haven't been able to enjoy a good soak in many a long year so I couldn't wait to get into the holiday bath. Unfortunately I had no bubble bath but a quick search around the Air B&B turned up a blue white and gold plastic bottle bearing the legend 'Luxury Shampoo'. I stood on tiptoe to retrieve it from the high shelf in the utility closet and pumped a generous amount into the hot steaming water gushing into the bath. It was a sort of gloopy brown gold colour and had a smell which (though I couldn't directly identify it) spoke of glossy hair and healthy exercise.
A huge mound of frothy bubbles obediently formed and I slipped in to enjoy my first bath experience in the holiday flat. Bliss.
I so enjoyed the bath that I started completely eschewing showers in order to have more time in the tub. By the end of the week I had almost completely used up the Luxury Shampoo but like a good husband I offered it to my wife so that she too could experience Luxury (I like to say 'luxury' as if I am a tipsy Noel Coward...really stretch the word out 'Luck sure ey').
My wife looked at me with an expression of concerned amusement. 'You've been using this in your bath?', 'Yes darling it's lovely. Really bubbly and look; It says it's a Luxury shampoo. You can't get better than that and it didn't even cost us a penny. Someone left it here in the flat after their holiday'.


My wife refused to use the shampoo in her bath. 'Look closer at the label Ian' she insisted. 'It's luxury dog shampoo'. I immediately subjected the label to more careful scrutiny (having previously just glanced at it). To my embarrassment she was indeed correct. It said LUXURY dog SHAMPOO and there was even a little light grey pictogram of a dog on the front (which in my defence was very hard to see on the top shelf of the utility cupboard).
This at least explained the odd aroma and the fact that it had left me with very good hair.


I decided not to inform the children that they had been bathing in a doggy bath all week. It will serve them right for flooding the floor every night. Next time I will definitely purchase my own bubble bath from a reputable dealer (or return to using laundry detergent!).

Caffeine Survivalist

I need coffee. In fact our whole family runs better when coffee is introduced to the mix. My wife and I are so paranoid about the apocalyptic results of the coffee running out that we always have piles of the stuff in the pantry as well as a jar of what we refer to as ‘the emergency coffee’ made up of  run off from the previous bags.  The alternative is too hideous to consider.

Now let me make my position clear. I am not talking about the disgusting freeze dried swill that the peasant classes claim as coffee. I am talking about delicious ground beans run through a caffitierre or coffee machine and poured gently into a beautiful cup which steams tantalisingly as it fills the room with an aroma of brown affluence and calm . I only usually drink two cups a day as my kidneys threatened to explode a few years back and consultants informed me that coffee was instrumental in the formation of kidney stones & best avoided.  

Personally, I am not willing to live in a world where coffee is denied to me and so I have compromised and have just two cups a day. One around 6am and one around 5pm. But the coffee has to be GOOD. I will not tolerate substandard rubbish and so will always refuse offers of coffee when at someone elses house. I favour Taylors ‘Rich Italian’ for preference and have a little song that I sing to myself when I am preparing it (to the tune of ‘she’s an easy lover’ by Phill Collins)

‘He’s a Rich Italian, he makes his coffee strong believe me,

Like a wild stallion, he’ll grind a coffee that will suit your needs…’

‘You know that he’s Italian, He’s a rich Italian, He wears a gold medallion, everyday. ..’  etc

 

Imagine the scene therefore. We are on a family holiday in Poland and our Air B& B (lovely as it is), has no caffitierre or coffee machine. None of the local shops appear to stock them either.  Suffice it to say that, after a couple of days without my morning caffeine fix I was clucking like a heroin addict who’s dealer has just been arrested.

‘I must have coffee’… the local shops were happy to sell any amount of ground beans but nowhere seemed to vend the means to transform them into the warm brown heavenly goodness that I required. In the end I became desperate enough to take matters into my own inept hands & decided to manufacture a ‘home made’ cafitierre out of one of my wife’s stockings, some rubber bands and a big jar that I discovered in one of the cupboards. I cut a hole in the lid of the jar using a knife and we were in business.

I am the Bear Grylls of coffee survival! The resulting brew machine totally destroyed my wife’s stocking and turned most of the kitchen into a damp, coffee grit ridden wasteland but it was worth it. Coffee, glorious coffee flowed from the DIY spout like the nectar of the gods.  Now this holiday can really get started and the kids can come out of hiding. The only draw back is that my wife is now left with one odd stocking. Perhaps I should plan a robbery so that I can make use of it. Waste not want not.

 

Signs & Portents: Who is Mincing Your Meat?

Who is Mincing Your Meat?
What the hell is that supposed to mean? I drive past this sign several times a week and every time I see it I am more and more confused as to what the company are trying to infer.
Obviously they are purveyors of quality meat derivatives to the discerning customer. I understand that much.
But 'Who is mincing your meat'... why did they decide to have that emblazoned across a sign by the roadside at (what I assume must have been) some reasonable expense to themselves.

It seems quite innocent at first glance...but think about it they haven't said, 'is your meat being minced by people who adhere to industry standard hand hygiene regulations'. They said 'who is' not 'How is'. Are they inferring that a certain type of people are preferable as meat handlers. Which type of people are they talking about. Are they a bit racist?? Do they mean that my meat is guaranteed to have been minced only by stout hearted remain voters. Or only by conservative party members who can recount their ancestry back five generations, or only by good Catholics?

This question has been puzzling me for a while during my morning commute to work. I found myself humming a little tune about it which I have transcribed below for your amusement:-

[to the tune of something rousing and patriotic, to a marching band with snare drums and lot of brass]

Who is Mincing Your Meat?
Whose making it GOOD?
Are they the hands of an honest tommy
or the filthy paws of some foreign johnny.
Is your meat being manhandled by a card carrying commie oh
Who is Mincing Your Meat?

Anyway, I don't know who is mincing my meat. It come from Aldi so it's probably being minced by a huge machine where cows go in one end and then a 'mercy button' is depressed and mince comes out in shiny  packages at the other end. Who is pressing the button? Probably some nameless corporate drone working for minimum wage. Maybe I should email Foxholes farm and Shop and apologetically explain that I (like most people) am not on first name terms with the person who is operating the mincing machine.
Suggestions in the comments please.

Trying to Drive in Poland

Polish Drivers are fast. My family went to Poland on holiday this year. Great place, great people, great beaches. As usual I opted to do the majority of the driving as I felt that my blood pressure has had it too easy of late and needed a good run.

I had used a left hand drive hire car before but on that holiday we were fortunate enough to have an air B&B next to the most incontinent birds in the whole of Portugal. These birds had eaten bad fruit or something and we were parked directly below their favourite toilet tree. This resulted by the end of the week in a car which was so totally caked in crap that any slight blemishes to the bodywork were undetectable even to microscopic examination.

On this years holiday we had no such luck and the cost of additional insurance was so astronomically high that I decided to forgo it and trust to prayer and blind terror. This was before I knew about the normal custom and practice of Poland’s drivers.

There was huge tourist  banner at Gdansk airport showing a grinning Polish soldier atop a wartime tank. The headline (in English) read ‘Poland: First to War’. Having now experienced Polish drivers I can well believe this. Probably the polish allied tanks were screaming up behind all of the other drivers and sitting at 80 miles per hour never more than three millimetres away from their back bumpers until they pulled into the slower lane in fear of their lives & watched the Poles swish by.

Now we do have this behaviour in England but it is largely limited to Audi Drivers (which is understandable. Anyone who purchases a car whose very symbol is four conjoined butt holes is giving you a pretty clear indication of their road habits). Usually it only happens a couple of times a journey & I usually start gently pulling over as soon as I see an Audi in the rear-view mirror in order to maintain my calm.

But in Poland this behaviour is not just limited to Audi drivers but appears to be normal custom and practice for everyone. As the motorways are all just dual carriageways, it has become the normal method of overtaking.

After a week or so of this I had somehow managed to bring our shiny hire care through unscathed but then disaster struck and we ended up stuck in airport hire car purgatory. The barrier letting us into the airport drop off car park dutifully dispensed a ticket when we rolled up for our departing flight around 5am. Sadly the parking machine then ate said ticket leaving us stuck between to impassable barriers with my family growing ever more frantic as the time of our planes departure drew nigh.

In the end (after risking death by driving the wrong way down one way systems a couple of times), my wife made a tearful and impassioned plea to the airport staff for help. The sincerity of her message was undermined by it’s having to be relayed through the crappy barrier intercom and furthermore by the fact that there were no staff available at that ungodly hour of the morning.  In the end I took drastic action & dumped the car in a likely looking layby near the airport. We then route marched the children to the departure gate.  From the gate we could view it through the glass; rocking gently on its suspension as Polish drivers whipped past it at speeds approaching mach 2.

When I returned home I wrote a sickeningly nice email to the hire company who (hungry as they must have been for compliment letters to feature in their annual report) waived any punitive charges. My memories of Poland are very positive however. We attended a Polish wedding whilst there which was totally insane. I am used to partying with Brazilians and thought that they were hardcore but they have nothing on the Polish. The wedding band at our venue was hired to play from 5pm to 5am. Even my wife (who is an unstoppable dance floor machine) had to politely retire to our hotel room around 2am in order to prevent her legs falling off. I think at that point they were serving course 125 of the wedding feast. Phew….what an experience. I would recommend it to everyone (but maybe get the extra car insurance deal if you are planning on driving there)!

Failing at the National Anthem

Today I attended my wife’s ‘Naturalisation Ceremony’ (sounds a little sinister doesn’t it). A very proud moment for our family. This magically turns her from an unnatural foreign devil into a nice natural English lady. All that she needed to do to affect this transformation was to swear allegiance to the monarch and then sing verses one and three of the national anthem.

I personally was not aware that the national anthem had a third verse and was at something of a disadvantage to everyone else there as I did not have a printed copy of the words. I was therefore forced to ‘busk it’ and come up with some legitimate sounding lyrics on the fly. This was the result:-

(to the tune of God Save Our Gracious Queen)

She has a lot of dogs

She cleans up after them

She’s good like that

She’s got a pile of dosh But she keeps her old socks

She likes collecting clocks

God Save the Queen!

 

I mumbled my way through this with a look of patriotic devotion fixed on my features and I don’t think that anyone noticed. One dude had his hand clasped over his heart and there was a military guy there who insisted on saluting through the whole thing which was different.

There were some speeches from dignitaries about british history and what it means to be English and then my wife was presented with a colour printed certificate and three baby jars of English jam and other preserves. This concludes the naturalisation and we were left to take some selfies in the nobby council chambers and then go home and eat our jam.

 

It does make me feel proud of our nation. I hope that my wife does not now stop wearing clothing that matches or have retroactive dentistry to make her teeth snaggley and weird. I have suggested that she now needs to viciously defend her position on brext (it doesn’t matter which position she takes. The important thing is to then have no empathy at all for anyone who takes the opposing view no matter how near you were to voting that way yourself before you opted to vote as you did).

 

How to Get Nothing at All Out of Your Bible Study!

How to Get Nothing at All out of your Bible Study:

Have you given your life to Jesus? Are you now concerned that your times of bible study will result in life changing revelations which could interrupt your appreciation of Love Island or Strictly?

Well have no fear. With our guide to ‘getting nothing at all out of your bible study’ you will be able to read the bible every day for many hours without it having any perceivable effect on you. Your friends and relatives will marvel at the complete lack of change in your attitude and lifestyle as you put these simple steps into action.

1)      Just don’t even bother to Open it.

Lets face it, the bible is full of life transforming amazing information hidden away like an Easter egg hunt with just enough poking out to spark your interest. If you are new to bible study then Holy Spirit will be falling over himself to unlock passages for you even if you show only the most shallow and cursory amount of discipline & devotion initially.

Because of this, perhaps the best overall strategy is just to leave the bible alone. Don’t open it, don’t put it anywhere that you will have to see it. Remind yourself that it is an old and heavy book that is very hard to understand.  Tell yourself that you are reading the bible even though this is not the case the case. You  are exposed to bible verses right? You saw someone mention a bible passage on facebook  today (over a picture of a sunset beach). That is surely enough bible study for one day. No need to open your actual bible at all. After all doesn’t the bible itself say that 'too much study wearies the body'.?I don’t know. I never open mine.

2)      Never ask for Help from the Holy Spirit

If you absolutely can’t avoid opening your bible then for heaven’s sake make sure that you don’t  ask Holy Spirit to read along with you. This is a terrible mistake as even the most basic verse can become dangerously relevant if you have taken a moment to pray. 
 ‘ Holy Spirit, this book can be really hard going but I know that you are all across it. Please right now come and give me something to eat from it. Something that will be from Your heart that speaks into my life. I’m just gonna start reading right now and trust that You are gonna start talking to me. Amen’

 No no no no no! This sort of  prayer is poison if you want your life to just remain basically the same but to go to heaven at the  end of it (what I like to think of as ‘fire insurance Christianity’). When you open the bible, you should have absolutely no expectation of it enabling you to hear messages from God. Try to think of it as a religious callisthenic. Just something that God requires you to go though in order to keep Him happy (like prayer). Remember that many very intelligent people have had to spend years of study to understand this stuff & even they can’t agree with each other on what it all means. You shouldn’t expect to be impacted or to understand anything that you read.

Ready…Feeling disappointed, inadequate and under pressure to measure up?
Good…now you are in a great frame of mind to read the bible and get nothing at all out of it.  And remember ‘Keep on not praying’!

3)Expect Instant Progress & Results: Every area of life shows us that there is a wait period between action and results. Whether it’s taking a pill consistently for a period of time before experiencing therapeutic effect or having to water a seed every day for a week before the first green shoots appear.
Despite knowing this, you should approach bible study as if it somehow does not conform to this rule that governs literally every other aspect of your life. Expect instant results. Flop the bible open and stick your finger in at random. If the verse you find does not immediately speak into your situation, become discouraged and tell yourself that bible study is not for you. Certainly don’t invest in easily available study aids or free resources like ‘The Bible Project’ on You Tube to help you. If God wanted to speak to you through the bible then he would have been able to do it in the first six seconds of you reading right?

4)      Don’t Ask for Help and Advice: If you are in a church (and I strongly advise you to not be…it will only strengthen your faith & make you a gentler more rounded person); definitely do not approach anyone for help.

Your church will be full of believers who have been on their own journey into reading the bible for many years. They will be delighted to offer you support and advice on how to get started. They will probably offer to study along with you through the week on messenger or whatever. So avoid that pit trap & don’t tell anyone about your struggles. Tell yourself that they will think badly of you for being so stupid and finding it hard to even open the bible in the first place. Remember that your goal here is a completely apathetic and ineffective Christian witness where you are no different at all from your unsaved neighbours. 

 

5)      Make everything metaphorical: The bible excels at practical life changing advice, but you’re not interested in that. Also, if you are confronted by verses saying that you will do even greater things than Jesus if you believe in Him then it might drive you into the prayer closet as you wrestle with how to become a vessel for the outpouring of His Kingdom. But that sounds like a lot of hard work doesn't it?

In order to not be affected in any way by these very clear ‘calls to action’, make everything you read metaphorical. Jesus didn’t really mean these things to be taken literally, that’s ridiculous. He is just speaking metaphorically. He probably didn’t literally make the earth in six days only. That’s just a helpful myth…and so on.

In this way you can more or less side step any challenge to your personal life or faith and water down the intention of the gospel and the whole word of God. Say things like 'God moves in mysterious ways' when talking about the bible. (This is not true...God has clearly gone out of his way to be very frank and straightforward with us but it sounds vaguely spiritual).

For extra impotence, try taking verses that are very clearly meant to be figurative and insisting on a literal interpretation; ‘I just can’t take the bible seriously. It talks about the trees of the field clapping their hands but trees don’t have hands. Maybe there used to be trees with hands though. Who knows right?’

 

6)      Insist on reading the bible from start to finish: Refuse to accept that the bible is a library of 66 different books,  and just start at the beginning and plough straight through. This will maximise your boredom and discouragement whilst hopefully minimising your understanding and empowerment (remember never to read in a prayerful or open minded way).  Don’t take time to pause and reflect prayerfully on any passages that particularly challenge or speak to you. Just tell yourself that you need to plough remorselessly on and get to the end of whichever boring bit you are on. In this way you can read the bible for ages (thus feeling superior to lesser believers) but actually never run into the word of God at all.

I hope that this guide has been helpful in enabling you to get as little as possible out of your bible study times. I have personally been applying these principles for many decades and am happy to report that I have barely grown at all.  Look out for my future guides on 'How to Ensure that you Never receive healing' and 'How to ensure that none of your prayers are answered'.

Horsing Around

I have a lot of colleagues at work who are horsy people. They love riding horses, cleaning up after horses, falling off of horses & anything else remotely involved with horses.

I was chatting with one such equinaphilliac the other day and raised the issue of horse manure on public pavements. ‘Why is it,’ I asked, ‘that it is socially unacceptable for a dog to foul on the pavement & we issues fines to those found doing so. But the same logic does is not extended to the owners of horses’?

A horse can discharge a huge pile of steaming crap on the pavement and the rider will just continue on unconcerned. Why do we not demand that horsy people conform to our rules for canine fouling with equal vigour? Why are riders not expected to carry a supply of bin bags with them at all times in case their charges suddenly foul the public byway?

My colleague laughed at the suggestion and implied that horse manure is incredibly clean and a good fertiliser and that people should be glad that her horse has blessed the ground with it’s smelly bounty.  My solution therefore is that all horse riders carry a small supply of flags on cocktail sticks with them when they ride.

If their animal should foul the footpath, they need not be expected to pick it up and carry it to the next bin. Rather, they can simply place a flag on it indicating that this is valuable free manure which anyone can claim as long as they have a sturdy enough container (and strong enough constitution). There. Problem solved. Horsy people don’t have to clean up after their animals and I am no longer boiling with barely repressed rage at the inequality between canine and equine rights.

My friend took issue with this plan however. She explained that most riders need to use a ‘mounting block’ in order to get onto their horse in the first place. If they had to dismount in order to place tiny flags on the piles of manure created by their beasts then they would be stranded on the ground like a common Johnny.  I suggested that they could solve this by hailing a passing ‘horseless’ pedestrian and commanding them to kneel by their horse so that they could use them as a mounting block. ‘I will bless you peasant by making muddy boot prints on the back of your cheap tee shirt. Come, kneel before me and count your lucky stars that I do not invoke the right of ‘prima nocte’ into the bargain’.

This brings me to my other point . I suspect that people on horseback spark a deep cultural memory in for us in England. For hundreds of years, if you saw someone on horseback you would assume that they were one of your betters. If the horse crapped all over your small holding then fine. At least the rider had not dismounted and beaten you with the flat of their blade for offending them with your course peasant face. You were lucky to be breathing the same air as them and probably their horse was worth more than everything you owned put together. When seeing someone on horseback, the correct (and safest) response was to tug your forelock (or whatever the equivalent was), get out of the way and cower respectfully until they had gone away to whatever important business people on horseback got up to.  Make no eye contact and hopefully they will pass by without ‘making sport’ of you to alleviate their boredom.

I suspect that there is still a little of this peasant memory in most of us which is why we blindly accept that horse riders should never be challenged about filling the highways and byways of merry England with tons of crap.

I saw a sign next to the road the other day it read ‘Horse Manure: last chance before the motorway’. Brilliant!

 

Prats With Scooters

I was in my car on the way to the office the other morning when I espied a  be-suited chap in his late twenties (or early thirties) whizzing along the crowded pavement opposite on what appeared to be a scooter.

Not a moped you understand but an adult sized ‘child’s push along scooter’ which apparently had been adapted so that it ran on some electric or kinetic motor. This total prat was zooming past everyone else with a look of blissful indifference on his smug face.

‘I am better than all of you,’ it seemed to say ‘I look so cool on this expensive toy that the normal expectations of considerate behaviour on a crowded street do not apply to me’.

Needless to say this display of arrogant hipster rudeness filled me with a seething maelstrom of petty rage. I will admit that part of it was likely my own envy that he was clearly having a lot more fun than me but it was more the smug disregard for other walkers that really raised my blood pressure.

I have a five year old daughter who enjoys zooming along on her scooter. ‘Can I bring my scooter’ she will often ask as we are heading out somewhere. Often my reply is ‘no sweetheart, it will be too busy in town and you might upset people or crash into them’.

My five year old daughter appears to understand the wisdom of this. Although not happy with the situation, she can grasp the concept that it is preferable to curtail personal freedom in order to preserve the delicate balance of politeness and respect that are the bedrock upon which modern society is predicated (this is what she said to me word for word).

This prat zooming along the pavement in flagrant disregard for the safety and comfort of all around him is apparently incapable of grasping the same concept however.

I am not against the use of ludicrously overpriced hipster toys. I am not against using them for your morning commute. But they go incredibly fast and are more or less completely silent. The place for them is either on the road or (failing that) in a cycle lane. Not on the pavement. I understand that you want to use your new toy as much as possible in order to feel better about blowing all that money on what is clearly a child’s plaything. But this is the pavement. It is for walking (or at the most running). If it is a busy morning and everyone is going to school or work then you need to get off of your toy and wait until later when you can use it safely on less crowded streets. Failing that, take it to a park where you can whiz around to your hearts content.

Anyway, I need to find out where I can purchase one of these things so if you have any ideas then please let me know.

Wood Pervert

Hello,

My name is Ian Gasson & I have a confession to make to you all.

For many years now I have been a wood Pervert.

It started when I used to live on a boat & needed a solid fuel burner for heating.

Pretty soon I found myself hanging around skips on building sites, hoping for just a chance to root through and find some scrap wood to burn when the builders weren’t looking.

When I moved into a house like a normal human being I thought that the condition would lapse. But quicklyI slipped back into bad habits and purchased a burner for my garden room.

Stupidly I told myself that I could handle it & that I would only burn a little bit of purchased wood from time to time.

 

But I was kidding myself and pretty soon the old excitement took hold & I found myself in all sorts of crazy situations as I chased the massive rush of  obtaining ‘free wood’.

Wood perversion is a terrible affliction to bear. I might be driving along one day on my way to a work appointment when, out of the corner of my eye I spot a pile of scrap wood in someone's drive. Instantly my pulse quickens and I start to shake & perspire with excitement and anticipation. I try to ignore it but the niggling gnawing knowledge that there is free wood somewhere; just lying around waiting to be claimed, eventually overwhelms me and I crack.

 

First comes the embarrassing and awkward discussion with the home or skip owner.

'erm excuse me, this might sound weird but I wondered if you would let me take some of your scrap wood there for my burner? I promise to then stop hanging around at the bottom of your drive, drooling and making furtive glances at your lumber'.

Then the frantic excitement as I pull up my car and shovel loads of lovely free lumber into the back as fast as possible so that passers by don’t mistake me for a criminal.

At other times I might be walking in the country, innocently enjoying the wonders of nature, my mind a serene pool of calm contemplation. Then I spot a fallen tree that has been left cut up and my palms begin to itch.

The last time this happened I got home and (without informing my family as to my whereabouts) immediately pulled the car out, drove to Wickes and purchased the biggest axe they could supply. Then; like a nutter, I rushed back to the tree as fast as I was able ( in case another wood pervert beat me to the prize) & proceeded to spend about an hour madly chopping. Unfortunately I had not bargained on how heavy the resulting hardwood would be and so I was faced with the impossibility of transporting my earwig filled treasure back to the car.

In the end; 7.30am found me breaking my back  dragging a massive sack full of lumber down the footpath (to the confusion and alarm of the occasional dog walker or jogger that I passed by).

But even that excitement cannot compete with the blessed joy of getting the liberated wood back home and stacking it in a massive pile in my shed. Mmmm Sooo Goooooood!

Sometimes I let myself into the shed when my wife isn't looking just so that I can look at the pile and inhale the lovely smell created by hornbeam, pine and ash gently drying. Sometimes I will pick up a piece that I have chopped up and admire the grain and texture. I have not yet got to the point of gently whispering comforting platitudes to it but…it’s probably not far off.

The perversion really sets in however, when I am so enamoured of my massive pile that I feel bad about diminishing it. I am then faced with the daily torture of wanting to have a fire in the cold mornings but having to say goodbye to some of my hard obtained lumber thus reducing the height of the pile incrementally.

If you have a similar perversion, perhaps we could meet up & form some manner of support group (Dendoholics anonymous?). We can meet in my garden room in front of....a, in front of a, ...a..a  ROARING FIRE!

Bwaaah Ha Ha Ha Ha.

 

I AM THE WOOD LORD! ALL MUST BOW BEFORE THE AWSOME PILE OF MY MAGNIFICENCE!!

I WILL FIND ALL OF THE WOOD AND GET IT ALL FOR FREE AND PILE IT UP AND LOVE IT FOREVER!

ALL SHALL SEE IT AND DESPAIR!!