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!