“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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

If you have a query about any subject on earth, that you will find the answer on the Interweb.

Not so.

I mentioned before how our dog has developed a rather unsavoury habit of plunging her head down between her hind legs and then making a loud series of gulping sloshing noises.  To say it is a tad nauseating is to put it politely, particularly as she loves doing it at mealtimes.

Last night I thought I would try to find a solution to this little problem so I did a little search on Google.

I used the words “dog licking”.

All I got was a massive list of sites telling me all I wanted to know about dogs licking their paws.

Not much use.

I decided to be a little more specific. 

I tried “dog licking fanny”.

For some reason, presumably only known to Google, it assumed I wanted “dog licking pussy”.

……

……

FUCK!!!!

That is fucking DISGUSTING!

I didn’t know that kind of thing was allowed on the Interweb.

I really feel quite ill.

I suppose I’ll just have to bring her to the vet instead.

Last night I found a document on the Interweb that I wanted to print off.  No problem, you say.  Fucking wrong, I say.

The Other Fella reinstalled this Linux thing the other day, and the twat forgot to connect to the printer.  I have picked up a couple of tips over the years so I decided to connect to the printer myself.

Fucking laptop couldn’t find the fucking printer.

I went to the room where the printer is and checked it.  It was switched on all right but the settings were all wrong.  I pulled up a chair and typed in the settings.  Of course, being modern technology they make that as difficult as possible.  It has a sort of mobile phone keyboard so typing any text means endless tapping of keys.  And of course as I cycled through the letters, it always went too fast and I would miss the letter I wanted and would have to start again.

I could not get the fucking thing to work.  After a couple of hours I gave up.

This morning I gritted my teeth and asked the Other Fella for a drop of help.  The wanker got the fucking printer connected in one minute flat.  I hate that!  He checked and the laptop can see the printer and its status is fine.

He fucked off to the shops, and I settled into printing my document.

The fucking yoke still doesn’t work.

It can tell me all I want to know about the printer, even down to the levels of ink in it.  But will it print my document?  Hah!

I’ll just have to wait ‘til Yer Man gets back.  Doubtless he’ll press one button and everything will work properly.

There are times when technology really pisses me off.

The electrical fella arrived at nine this morning.  Why the fuck he started at such an ungodly hour is anyone’s guess.  I mean, who the hell is up at that hour?

Luckily I managed to boil a kettle before he plunged the Manor into a state of powerlessness.

I sat there all morning, contemplating my navel, sipping an ever colder mug of tea and wondering what the hell I had done to deserve this.

Then I had my little ‘light bulb over the head’ moment.

Or rather, I didn’t as there was no power for the light bulb.

Let’s just say I had one of my great and famous inspirations.

I remembered that the neighbours are away.

I nipped into their boiler house and sure enough, it is fully wired.  They had even left me a spare socket, so out came the extension reel and the job is oxo.  I am now sitting pretty with full Interweb access and the kettle is merrily boiling away.

I’m not sure when the neighbours are due back so just in case, I’ll do a better job of concealing the cables tonight and also tap neatly into the circuit so they won’t accidentally remove my power.  I know they would hate to see me discommoded.

I’m just kicking myself that I didn’t think of this earlier.

I can sack the electrical bloke now.  My fuse problem is sorted.

I hope the neighbour’s fuses are OK though.

I mentioned before how we had been having a little problem with fuses blowing all over the shop, so I thought it was time to let someone else have a look at the wiring.

When I first helped wire this house back in the 60s, life was relatively simple.  All you needed beside a bed was a single socket for a bedside lamp, as alarm clocks were all clockwork.  Now you need a fucking power station beside each bed to power the bedside lamp, the alarm clock, the vibrator mobile phone charger and fifty other fucking annoying things.  And that is a simple example.  My little office needs about five hundred sockets for all the shit that goes on in there such as printers, broadband, phone, ‘puter, radio and a moxy load of other yokes.

You get the drift?

Over the years I have had to adapt the house wiring slightly.

The bloke yesterday had a look at the wiring and immediately told us to move out of the house.  He claimed that The Manor is in imminent danger of bursting into flames.  Personally I think he has just been following the  Priory Hall story a bit too closely.  Fucking drama queen!

Anyhows, I asked him what the panic was and he pointed at one of my extensions and screamed something about bell-wire not being suitable for power.  I pointed out that it provided a nice bit of background heat whenever something was plugged in.  He wasn’t impressed.  I don’t know why as surely wall heating is better than under-floor heating as the cables don’t get walked on?

He carried on around the house muttering to himself about amateurs, which was a bit fucking rude.  I pointed out to him that I had probably forgotten more about electricity than he had ever learned.  He replied that that was probably part of the problem.  Cheeky fucker.

He reckons there is a lot of work to be done, and this means that I will probably have no electrification for the next while.  Bang goes my broadband and my cuppa tea.

Personally I think it would be a lot simpler just to bypass the fuse board.

It one of those wall hanging clocks that I believe is called a short case clock, or a granddaughter clock.

I bought it for three reasons -I liked the look of it, I needed a clock for the sitting room and I was pissed at the time.

One of the unusual things about the clock is that it is driven by clockwork.  Ne’er a battery or chip to be seen anywhere.  All it requires is the occasional wind and off it goes.

All these years it has been hanging on the sitting room wall, gently tick-tocking away and telling the time with a remarkable degree of accuracy.  Of course it stops occasionally as I sometimes forget to wind it, but that is all part of its charm.

When we came back from the wee trip to France last month, I noticed that it had stopped.  That was no problem – I wound it up, gave the pendulum a belt and left it.  Some hours later I discovered it had stopped again.

Bugger!

When I was a nipper there were loads of shops that could fix a clock or a watch.  Virtually every jeweller had a bloke employed purely to fix anything clockwork.  In fact I have strong memories of a clock shop in Johnston’s Court off Grafton street.  It was a haven for horologists, with wall lined with clocks all ticking quietly away and chiming in unison.  I loved visiting that shop, preferably just before ten or eleven in the morning or at midday.

Nowadays of course everything is driven by batteries, and the art of fixing a clockwork mechanism is virtually dead.  If I lugged our clock into the local jeweller they would laugh at me and tell me to buy a new one.  No fucking way!

Yesterday I brought the clock to the kitchen table and dismantled it.  In no time the table top was covered in clock parts, screws too small for the naked eye, springs and dozens of little brass cogs.  It was a beauteous sight to behold!

I cleaned and oiled everything and set about reassembling it.  I actually achieved that without a single screw left over which is a miracle in itself.

The clock still wouldn’t work.

I dismantled it again and delved even further into its guts.

In the end, I got tired of it, so I reassembled it again and hung it on the kitchen wall, with every intention of working at it again today.

No need.

Since I hung it, it has been telling perfect time and chiming merrily on the hour and half hour.

I did notice there was one problem though.

The last time I assembled it, there wasn’t a single extra screw.  Every piece had been put back in place.  But somehow I had lost a vital piece of the clock.  I have searched everywhere for it but it is definitely missing.  Maybe the dog ate it?  Maybe herself chucked it in the bin?  I don’t know, but I can’t find it anywhere.

Somehow, I have managed to lose its gentle tick-tock sound.