Archive for the 'Around the house' Category

The elephant in the room

February 2nd, 2012

There is an expression that has been grossly overused for the last while.

“The elephant in the room.”

Now I don’t know who coined this irritating cliché, but he [or she] should be shot, preferably with an elephant gun.

But why do I mention it now, you ask?  Well, probably you don’t but I like to think I give rise to intelligent debate and discourse.  Leastwise, I do have a reason.

Sir Fartzalott arrives here occasionally.  For those of you who maybe haven’t bothered reading this in recent times, Sir Fartzalott is the youngest of the grandkids.

He is a lovely kid with a solemn face and a strange sense of humour.  He has a couple of activities that he indulges in when he comes here.  One is to press every button and switch every switch he can lay his hands on which leads to some interesting surprises, such as music suddenly blaring out at around a hundred watts.

His other activity is picking things up and transporting them.  He loves playing with my old collection of Dinky and Matchbox toys which are all well over fifty years old. I have grown used to seeing little cars in the strangest of places  I would find an old Ford truck on the toilet cistern or a Massy Fergusson tractor in the coal scuttle and know exactly how they got there.

He was here a couple of days ago, and found our elephants.  They are two little hand carved and highly polished African elephants and I have had them for donkey’s years [or elephant’s years?].  One of them ended up on the table in the kitchen, but the other is nowhere to be seen.  For once, Sir Fartzalott has me baffled.

So if you do happen to find an elephant in the room, could you let me know?

I miss him.

Putting out the welcome mat

January 15th, 2012

I am not a great admirer of our legal system.

There are times when it seems to work against the common good for the benefit of the few.  There are too many petty laws and restrictions, and frequently laws are introduced where existing laws are perfectly adequate.

On Friday however a new law came into effect that does meet with my approval.

Householders are now legally allowed to use any reasonable force to protect themselves and their property.

There are two things I like about this law.  The first is that the householder only has to perceive a threat.  Now I am a very insecure and paranoid person [for the purposes of this act] and I frequently perceive that a raised eyebrow or nod of the head is an implied deadly threat.  The second is that “reasonable force” covers the full range up to and including dispatching the intruder off to his [or her] maker. 

I had a busy day yesterday.  I have now secreted pitchforks, bill-hooks, pistols and grenades at various points around my property, ready for that intruder. 

I am now waiting for the first knock on the door.

Indeed, it is a good law.

Sleeping Beauty

December 29th, 2011

For various reasons I have been getting up at the crack of dawn for the last week or so.

A couple of times I even had to get up at the ungodly hour of ten.  Can you imagine?  Ten o’clock in the morning?  There should be a law against that.

Last night I went to bed early, with no alarms set and relishing a good decent night’s sleep with the full intention of getting up at a respectable hour.  Like two.  Or three?

By ten, I was in the middle of a really good dream where myself and Sharon were doing things that frankly shocked even me, when I was woken up.

Sandy wanted a piss.

I told her to go into the kitchen and have one there, and I rolled over and tried to get back to Sharon.

Sandy was having none of it.  She wanted to go out, and that was final.  I told her to fuck off and let herself out if things were that urgent.  She pointed out that the back door was locked.

Fuck!

I said my fond farewells to Sharon, dragged myself out of bed and let Sandy out.  She managed to make it to the grass.  Just.

I wouldn’t mind too much but it is a fucking miserable day.  There is a storm trying its best to demolish all my trees and it’s cold.  It’s also pissing rain.  In short, it is the kind of day that should be spent under the blankets.

I would have gone back to bed, but there would have been no point.  I was awake and awake I was going to stay.  Of course Sandy is now fast asleep on the couch without a glimmer of remorse.  Bitch!

An afternoon nap is out of the question too as I have to brave the elements and go out later.

There are times when life really boils my piss.

Aftermath

December 26th, 2011

So that’s another one over.

I confess that memories of yesterday are a bit vague.

I know there were about fifty children in the house setting my head spinning.  OK.  Maybe there were only a couple but Puppychild and Sir Fartzalott can make it seem like fifty.

Then there was TAT who spent most of the day snoring on the couch.  That fella could snore for Ireland.  Each snort induced a sympathy vibration in just about everything so the effect was weirdly cacophonous.  I was going to record a blast of it to stick up here but I didn’t want to damage my microphones.

Our K8 spent most of the day in the kitchen [which is only right and proper] doing the cooking and getting drunk, while Herself vanished quite early in the day.  I haven’t a clue where the fuck she went but we must all be grateful for small mercies?

Judging by the mess, we all had a good time.

I have just spent an hour or so collecting empty [and some not so empty] beer cans, bottles and various assorted vessels and the recycle bin is just about full, which means a trip to the landfill later.  I can also report that I haven’t a trace of a hangover which just goes to show that all those months of training paid off?

There is only one thing though that has me baffled.

How the fuck did the Christmas tree end up in the pond?

Wireless wireless

December 20th, 2011

There was a bloke selling radios down in the pub the other night.

They were dirt cheap as apparently they were from a fire-damage sale.  I pointed out that they were in perfect condition and the bloke said that that was because it was actually a pre-fire sale.  Fair enough.  There are a lot of those sales these days.  I bought one.

Herself likes to listen to the radio so I thought it would make a great Christmas present for her.

On Sunday I thought I would try it out.

The first thing I discovered was that it isn’t a normal radio.  It’s one of those interweb thingies that gets its signal from the little box in the back room.  I also discovered that it needed batteries.  I mentioned that last bit in my scribble and some of you seem to gave misunderstood what I wanted the batteries for?

Leastwise I got it going eventually.

Once it was lit up and rearing to go, I discovered that there is a bewildering selection of stations to choose from.  I tried a station in Auckland first.  The quality of the signal was perfect but they kept on about the temperature being twenty something degrees and how I should get my barbie supplies in before Christmas.  Fuck that!

The next station that I picked at random was in Vermont in the states.  Some bloke there was playing some really ancient stuff, and it brought back great memories of the sixties and seventies.  When the DJ started raving on about the Monkees that I realised that he wasn’t playing a “golden oldies” but was into Vermont’s top twenty.  They seem to be a little behind the times there?

This morning Herself was out somewhere so I thought I would try it out in the shed.

The fucking thing won’t work there as my interweb doesn’t stretch that far.

Bollox!

Now I have to try to work out how to get the signal down there.

Life can be bloody complicated sometimes.

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