There’s no two ways about it.  It’s a bloody box, a very basic bloody box, no more than 12 x 8.  There’s no bath, no electric or mains gas, or even a toilet.  So how the fuck can someone validate charging over 25 grand for one?  Moreover, what prat would shell out that amount of cash for a nesting box for an ostrich!  

A hundred and fifty years ago they were called bathing machines and were on wheels.  Well the overly rich had them, the riff raff just had to look on from a safe distance, usually the next resort!  When a doctor came up with the idea of a freezing cold dip in saltwater, as a ‘cure-all’ remedy for everything, even amputation, the Royal family started to get interested in this newest of inventions. 

No one had used the beaches on the coasts of Britain, accept sailors and smugglers, that was until George the III gave his approval in 1789.  There are no records to prove whose idea it was for the bathers to take a dip fully clothed.  In  the 1790’s the stiff upper-lipped were keen to have mixed bathing, dirty devils!  As usual the upper crust rich Brits were lagging behind Europe and America in this department, as they had been doing it for years, dirty, dirty devils!  Then it was deemed that the English could have such rights, the ladies would bathe on Mondays and the gents on the Wednesday, but on the same beach!    

Scarborough was the first resort were the promenade was decked with rabbit hutches.  And Queen Victoria had her own personal bathing machine in Osborne, on the Isle of Wight.  A horse would pull the machine down to the sea were  she could splash about to her hearts content.  The only problem with this arrangement was, that most of the horses drowned as a result of being shackled to the front of the contraption.  Breathing apparatus for horses sadly never caught on.

It was in the 50’s that the humble beach hut really took off.  The wheels were removed and you could buy or hire your very own badly painted wooden box.  Now, the cost of rental or purchase all depends on where your hut is sited.   And it is still very much a class divide issue.  Take Frinton for example, the retirement capital of England.  It shuts at 6:30pm, there are no pubs or night clubs, but there are plethora of hotels, if two constitutes a plethora!  And bloody and, let’s not forget the only wine bar for miles. (also shuts at 6:30pm)

Anyway, let’s have a shufty at the comparison in prices between two resorts.  In Frinton you can pay anything between 15 and30 thousand for a sand box.  Peak hiring cost: £350 per week.  Off peak: £349.53 per week.  Entertainment:  watching the grass grow, chasing a pickle around your plate, and saying, “Oh bollocks, my colostomy bag is full.”  Toilets, 250 metres away. 

Now let’s take a look at a cheaper model in Shiteminster-on-the-bog.  The materials are just the same and so is the size.  Peaking hiring cost: four bob.  Off peak: a tanner.  Entertainment: nicking the lead off the posh huts, Tasering the kids, and saying, “Jesus, I could do with shit.”  Toilets next resort along, near the minefield.

Press release from Frinton hire and buy agent: Forget cocktails in the Caribbean, and sailing in the south of France, it’s difficult to beat Frinton for a traditional seaside holiday!  Have you ever heard such a crock of horseshit!

Press release from Filthmuck-on-sea agent: Forget having a slash in the lift at home, or shooting-up in a stairwell,  come to Filthmuck-on-sea and do it in the sea!  Well at least it’s an honest approach!  

Right I’m off, my toilet duck has drowned and I’m thinking of dreding my pubes… BB

Well I’ve seen some old toot in my time, but if you want to see a whole bunch of it, all at once, take a look  through  Picasso’s back catalogue.  It is possibly, the biggest waste of canvass, oil and paint, plywood and paper, I have ever seen.  As an art critic of some eight or nine minutes now, I can safely say, I’m not totally sure who the biggest idiots are, the artist who thinks he’s knocking out another winner or the prats that buy his daubs. 

Seventy mill. was the amount paid by one such fool for Picasso’s daub called, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, and my God, what a mess.  It looks as if someone has plied a five year old with  Jack Daniels, and let them loose with the poster paints!  I think by this stage of his career he’d adopted the, ‘well I’ve run out of brushes, so I’ll use me old chap’, method of painting.  And don’t get me started on his cubist period!  I looked for several dull and boring seconds, at his complete works, and couldn’t find one solitary square!!! 

In 1895 ‘Pab’ knocked out his first piece titled, The Barefoot Girl, and for a 14 year old it wasn’t to shabby.  There were a string family paintings undertaken, but really when all said and done, he would’ve been better off with using a Kodak Prat-o-Matic.  He dabbled in still life for a while, and then slipped into the ‘ugly porn’ years I’m afraid, which is a awful way to see your Aunt Nelly.  Terrible mess really.  In 1907 money was tight, so he commissioned himself to paint a self portrait, and to be honest it was a shame, because it looked more like Fred Flintstone than anyone.

Judging by the colours and shapes in, Clarinet and Violin and, Still Life and Guitar I can only assume that he was beginning to lose the plot altogether, because I’m sure he did a series of potato prints!  And by the time he painted, Bather Opening a Cabin I’m fairly sure he was  in regression therapy.  I kid you not, it looks like a horse with a key!  A stroke victim with a blindfold could have done a better job. 

In 1927 Pab baby was really cooking on gas when he did a painting called, Nude on a Beach.  Well I’m sorry, but a bigger load of old tat you’ve never seen before.  Imagine, if you can, a new Mr Men character called, Mr Clubfooty-squarebottom, with a tiny round head, enclosed in a rude hut.  And he carried on in this style with his next piece, which he called, Young Girl Throwing a Rock, painted in 1931.  Oh dear oh dear oh dear!  If, at one time, it was a girl lobbing a small boulder, I can only assume that the artist thought, “Fuck it, I know what I’ll do, I’ll cut it up with a pair of garden shears and slap the bits on another canvass.”  So he did.  I still find it hard to believe Picasso was never sued under the trades descriptions act! 

There were a series of paintings where, I’m sure, Picasso must have been experimenting with ‘happy mushrooms’.  I mean, if you can’t put the eyes, the nose, the mouth and ears in the right place, it’s time to get a proper job isn’t it?  His old toot is still on sale would you believe!  And somewhere, someone, is sitting in a darkened room right now  salivating over their collection of Picasso’s lino prints.  While somebody, somewhere else is dying because they haven’t got enough water to drink…  Nuff said.

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This week I’d like to take a look at the subject of trust, because it’s an important quality that people look for in a relationship, and in a business partnership.  The very stinking rich have trust funds, where all of their most valuable trust is kept, in case their day-to-day supply runs out.  If you’re a work pleb you will have adopted the, ‘Shrapnel fund’  a tradition which has been handed down by the poor through the generations since the 1940’s, and this can usually be located under a mattress or a shoebox.  The most plebbliest underlings in society just have a truss fund, so count yourself lucky!

Over the years you learn to spot certain traits in people, so it’s not a total surprise when they open their gobs and what comes out is nothing more than complete twaddle.  It could be the way they walk or simply something in their body language that gives them away.  But you just know, if you’re not careful, you could be entering a situation where a lot of vauluable oxygen will be wasted just by engaging in their opening gambit.  In brief, what you’ve developed is a bullshit alarm, which staves off most human waffle and hot air.    

Everyone looks for trust within a marriage, and with out it well, what’s the point?  I got married twice, and was let down both times.  “To have and to hold from this day forward,” was the first line I fell for.  Followed by, “In sickness and in health,” and all because I trusted the words that come out of my then  partners mouths.  If there was an, ‘I’ve changed my mind’ or a, ‘Jesus, you’re too ill’, clause I wouldn’t have bloody bothered. 

As you know, if you believe all of the claims that are made about a product in a TV advert, you’re either under five years old or very, very mental.  If you can’t understand why something that you spent a tenner on, breaks the minute you take it out of the box, even though it has a lifetime guarantee, you shouldn’t be allowed in shops on your own or given money until you’re 47 and a half!    

Here are a few pointers to look for when you’re trying to avoid being caught in a quandary over whether to trust a person or a situation.  Eyes are a dead give away obviously, especially if they are to close together.  Also, never trust a person without earlobes!  A certain percentage of people are born with ears that join their faces, from top to bottom, and this birth defect, known as the ‘Stuck on effect’  leaves the victim totally lobe-less.  Over time, this condition goes onto affect their mental state, and in the end, they try using a marker pen or Biro to give their ears some definition.  When this fails, they begin lying to everyone they know, and eventually become estate agents. 

Mechanics and builders are also keen trust breakers, some even have a PhD in the subject.  A universal phrase to listen out for is, “I’ll be ‘onest wiv ya.”  If you hear this repeated more than three times in a verbal exchange, dismiss them immediately, and ask a close friend to recommend someone they have used in the past.  “Should be ready on Tuesday,” is another key statement to be wary of.  People with unusually small moustaches should also be avoided, look at the very, very, naughty Hitler for example.  He told the German nation that  they would win the Second World War, ladies and gentlemen, he was talking out of his poo-shoot! 

On the other hand, our fine upstanding and more importantly, honest, Winston Churchill said, “Never have so many, done so much, with so little, by so few, to people so far away.”  And he was right!  The country trusted him to come up with the solutions to end the war with the Bosch, and when it was all over they kicked him out of No. 10!  So you see, even politicians can get it wrong sometimes. 

Always, always avoid people with no necks, with the exception of Clive Anderson of course, mainly because of his rapier like wit.  Every time I’ve had dealings with the ‘no neck’ society I’ve been let down.  The leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin – no neck.  I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could vomit. 

Almost all of the Argentinian nation are a bit short in the neck department, look at that footballer, Teves who plays for Man. City!  Very little neck, but you’ll notice that he does have a seemingly endless supply of extra teeth to compensate.  If you see an Argentinian in the street, don’t wait for them to open their mouth,  just shout out, “Watch out, watch out, there’s a Arggy about,” and runaway.   Never enter a lift with a Argentinian in it.  Not only with you be lied to in a foreign language, you’ll die through lack of oxygen, as all foreigners speak much, much, much, much faster than us proud, educated and non bigoted Britons!

Name check: CNN News correspondent.  Diane Swonk. 

Right I’m off, but remember this…  

Marriage – it is just one simple word.  However, it could so easily become a lengthy sentence.

And as far as I know it had been working for the last 12 months.  So why did my boiler wait for an out-of-season cold snap to stop working?  Well I’ll tell you, it’s the curse of the Walton’s, of course! 

I wouldn’t have minded so much, but shortly after I moved into my new address, the boiler was serviced, and it made the grade, and was deemed as safe.  Now, you might assume it would continue working for the next 12 months – ooooh no, no, not if you’re a Walton.  True to form, it packed up the very next day.  However, the repair procedure was straightforward enough.  I made a call to the housing association, they phoned a service company and they called me to make an appointment to view my dying boiler.  At the very worst I reckoned it would take two weeks to put right, assuming the service parts were available.

An engineer was booked, but failed to arrive.  Okay.  Maybe he got caught up with a job that took longer than he thought, or maybe he didn’t get the message to come to my address?  On the Wednesday of week one, I received a call from the service company apologising for the absence of their man, as he’d phoned in sick.  Fair enough, there wasn’t a lot anyone could have done about that.  They promised that another engineer would call to assess the boiler on the following Monday between 1 and 5pm.  He turned up, and the problem was put down to a computer circuit board failure.  The guy ordered one on the spot and then left.

Ripper, we were moving forward at last.  I was still no nearer to a hot bath and warm radiators but I thought hey, what’s another week, the part will arrive and someone will come and fit it.  What a prat, that’s what you get for being British I guess, ever hopeful!  The circuit board arrived on the Wednesday of the third week and it was attached to a different Mr. Fix it, I relayed my explanation of the events leading up to the no hot water situation and he broke out his tools.  He made his check of the boiler and said, “Naaa it’s not the circuit board, it’s the fan and the motor that’s packed up, my guess is the last bloke that came out saw what the problem was and couldn’t be bothered with it as they’re a pig to fit.”  Grrrreat!  Man two ordered part two and left leaving me with part one. 

At the start of week five the new combination part arrived at my flat ahead of man three and, when he turned up, I recited the whole sorrowful saga of what had and hadn’t happened to my boiler.  And then I pointed to the ever growing collection of new parts, four more pieces and I reckon I could have assembled a new boiler myself!  After 35 days without hot H2O I was hoping to hear this guy say, “There you go mate all done,” but I didn’t.  Instead I heard, “Ooh that looks nasty.”  Closely followed by, “It’s not your fan it’s your plug, it’s become depolarised, I can’t touch that I’m not an electrician.”

Well slap my thighs and call me Brenda, wouldn’t you just bloody know it!  I mean, how the hell does that happen?  I could understand it if I’d been fiddling about with it but I hadn’t been anywhere near it since the day I moved in.  Then I remembered my E.C.T. sessions, of course it was my fault.  Naturally I asked what type of side-effects I could expect after being plugged into the National Grid for 10 minutes but there was no mention that the experience would leave me with the power to fuck up a plug socket just by walking past it – even if I was bipolar!

Is it dangerous, was my first question?  What a bloody stupid thing to ask, of course it was dangerous, it was in my flat!  I moved the questioning up a notch, “Okay, how dangerous is it,” I asked as the guy ran down the hallway?  “Just don’t touch it,” he shouted as he slammed the front door.  Being British I grasped the situation by the throat, I took a close look at the potential fire hazard and then ignored it and made a pot of tea.  But I must admit, I did wonder how the placing of a box of cat food in front of the dodgy socket would protect me from electrocution – obviously this was the most up to date safety measure for the householder and their pets!  Week six proved to be the most productive by far.  The fourth member of the boiler squad turned up in the shape of a sparks, and he repaired the socket in 10 minutes flat.  With this complete I immediately asked him for his hand in marriage!

Right, I’m off.  But before I go I’d like to leave you with a quote.  It’s something that my great Aunt Gorden use to say to me, and something that I’ve passed on to my children and my nephews.  “Neil,” she would say, “no matter where you are, and no matter what you’re doing – always keep it damp.”  And you know what, she was right…

Have you ever started a job in the marital home, chaps, believing that what you’re about to do will please your partner but, as it turned out, you’d have been better off leaving things as they were?  Well here’s a story that I got tied up with a few weeks after being discharged from hospital, but this isn’t an isolated situation.  This stuff has followed me around years before my diagnosis…

I was dazed, and largely confused, but I knew I was on the up, because I’d risen to the dizzy heights of making a cup of tea all by myself.  I’d had a bad reaction to a cocktail of anti-psychotic medication on the ‘whoopie ward,’ and the situation had left me with swollen fingers and thumbs, and not for the first time.  As I was feeling a little less than useless I wanted to try and do more around the house, as my then wife was doing everything and working a full time job, but overall I was sick of people having to run around after me because of the condition I was in.

I could press buttons and manhandle certain things, by pushing them around, but I had next to no grip in my hands.  So, in a drug-withdrawn stupor, I decided to clean the hall rug, thinking this would be a useful thing to do.  Sadly, thinking clearly when you still have the hospital’s medication in your system isn’t something you should try and do.  In fact, it’s a waste of time, but I decided to carry on regardless because that’s what you do when you’re on drugs like that.  Yip, they”re are great at getting you going, but they’re rubbish when it comes to stopping you make a prat of yourself.

From what I could remember, which wasn’t much at the time, the rug in question had never been cleaned thoroughly.  We’d had it about two years, and at one time or another, our pets had either thrown up on it or used it as a makeshift litter tray, so what I was about to undertake would be a good thing to do.  Not only that, my little piranha could see I was making an effort in my recovery, and I would pick up a serious amount of brownie points into the bargain.

The original plan was to aim the rug over the washing line, beat it to death with a stick and then give it a good soaking using a watering can.  Oh my social worker would’ve have been so proud of me, but I was running before I could amble.  I hadn’t got the grip to hold a stick, much less thrash it about, and, having filled the watering can up, I found I couldn’t lift it out of the sink, let alone hold it up to the height of the clothes line, so I had to think of a plan B.

After rolling the rug up, I put a crease in it with my elbow and pushed it into the washing machine, and during a rational moment, I thought I’d better check how much weight  the machine could take before I pressed the go button.  Unfortunately, the clarity of this process faded away when I opened the instruction manual and tried to read it.  In a minuscule type-face it mentioned something about not loading up the drum with more than six kilos of dry washing; so what’s that in English then, about four ounces?  After taking the rug out, I put it back in the machine again and uttered the blokey-bloke mantra, “Aaaaah it’ll be all right.”  No, it wouldn’t.

Of course, what I’d failed to take into consideration was just how much an eight by two foot rug might weigh if it was saturated in wet stuff but, driven by the simple act to please; I switched on the washing box and retired to the front room.  I checked it from time to time, and it seemed fine, well, fine right up until it reached the first spin cycle that was.  And I think it was at this stage that I noticed it was making a whole bunch of new noises, and they were definitely not as pleasant and homely as the old ones.  I shuffled back into the kitchen, fag in hand and tea in the other, to witness the machine lurching, to one side initially, and this was followed by a constant strained heaving sound coming from the motor – whoops!  

A steady flow of unnatural sounds continued emanating from the Persil eater and, on a scale of one to ten, I’d say we were heading towards the, ‘shit I think it’s going to explode’ mark.  This became more evident when it began griding its loins in a bid to reach its maximum speed of 1400 revolutions per minute.  The only way I recreate the sound today would be if I could force a 400lb silver back gorilla inside it and induce his first epileptic fit with the use of an E.C.T machine. (electro convulsive therapy)  It was the type of sound you’d hear, even if you were in the shower.  Well, maybe not the gurgling and the odd draining noises, but certainly the unusual gyrating and grinding cycle which I couldn’t find anywhere in the manual.  But, credit where credit was due, for a machine that was seven years old it put up a hell of a fight!

The next piece of the machine’s interior that came into view was the concrete counter balance that used to sit on top of the drum, but I didn’t think there was much to worry about as it it only weighed about two stone!  Imagine my joy when I discovered the motor still had a huge amount of life left in it, and it was still attached to the drive belt!  My, how it thrashed about in the last throws of its life.  I tried to turn it off, but the socket was behind the machine and as I didn’t want to lose an arm or part of my face in the process, I left it.  The noise was horrendous, and it was banging and  crashing around so much by now, it had begun to ‘walk’ around the kitchen.

At the peak of its rotations the noise was deafening, so I made my move and jumped on the bugger; this dampened noise a tad and halted its escape route into the garden via the back door but, at the first sign of electrical burning, I jumped off the near dead box, gave it its last rites and turned off the mains.  In the final stages I heard the loose parts of the machine slump forward, and watched as they gently pushed open the door.  There was one last sloshing sound, as the rug fell from the top of the drum to the bottom, and calm returned to the kitchen once more.   

After a brief post mortem it came to light that I’d killed a perfectly working household appliance, and my keen and positive intentions had left me with a goodly amount of grey water, which spanned most of the kitchen floor.  What use to be a finely-honed piece of spinning equipment was now just a box filled with loose metal, concrete and a semi-clean rug.  My little spitting cobra wasn’t impressed!   

 

Lest we forget…

Marriage.  It is just one simple word.  However,

it could so easily become a legthy sentence.        (Keats minor)

Now you may have noticed that global warming has dropped off the ‘important list’ in the news, so what’s replaced it?  Eruptions and earth quakes, that’s what!  Why?  Well that’s what happens when you start messing with the smokers of the world!  Some have even been driven to smoking under water!  Well how else do you explain the smoke stacks under the sea?  Oh yeah, it’s an underground movement now you know, and someones gonna pay

 As a direct result of a biased ban on choking yourself to death or a long-term suicide bid, as it has been called, smokers have been forced to take action.  And look what’s happened, you can’t get a flight in Europe for love nor money!  The Smoke Police were fuming when it all kicked off, but once the toxicology unit steamed in and dowsed them down they felt much better.  So much so, that they surrounded the volcano in Iceland, and arrested it. 

As I’ve said before ‘Puff Patrols’ are on the look out for all smoke related incidences to knock up their arresting figures.  The music industry is just one of sectors that has been affected recently, and David Bowie isn’t happy with the outcome.   – – -es to – – -es, is what is says on the front cover of one of his greatest hits, just because the title contains the word ‘ash’.  It is a ridiculous state of affairs I’m sure you will agree. 

Religion has been affected too.  What was, Ash Wednesday is now just, Plain ‘ld Wednesday, and there is now a blanket ban on Smokey Bacon flavoured crisps in schools.   But hey, on the upside, the Noise Abatement Society and their members have never had it so good.  People living under the direct flight path to all main airports can actually hear themselves think for once.   

For the travellers stuck at the airports it is a pain I’m sure.  I’ve heard them complaining on the various news channels, “I was hoping to see my relatives,” one passenger said.  And another couple remarked, “This was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime.”  Well it’s a trip all right, but at least you’ll still be ALIVE at the end of it!  Then they started moaning about how much money they had spent!  YES… BUT AT LEAST YOU ARE STILL ALIVE!!!  

Wind is what everyone is hoping for it seems.  So I have a plan to sort that out.  Tonight, if you could all stand on your roofs, at about midnight, and blow like fuck in the direction of Iceland, that should clear things up by the morning!  The airports have their own contingency plan (singular) EVERYONE WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL THE BASTARD STOPS ERUPTING, THANK YOU.  Passengers may get some comfort in knowing that the Red Bull Air Race is still going ahead, and I hear that hot air balloons are doing a roaring trade!  And pumice sales have never been better.  

All flights are cancelled until 1pm (UK time) tomorrow/today, depending on when you read this.  That’s what I like to see, hope if the face of total adversity!  Have you ever heard such a crock of horseshit?  That puppy has been belching out smoke, ash and lave for the past three days, and it’s more active now than when it first started erupting!    The last time it went off, it carried on for nearly a year, so don’t give me any of that 1 o’clock rubbish.  Where’s Red Adair when you need him?

Just a thought… Would the Psoriasis Society ever consider promoting a scratch card?

So here’s one for you.  What doesn’t emit or absorb light, thereby making it invisible to the naked eye?  Well pull up a planet and I’ ll tell you.  It’s dark matter, apparently, and there’s a  great big bunch of the stuff out there in our solar system somewhere.

Now if you and I were searching for such an item, and said it out loud, say in our doctor’s surgery or standing on a bridge over a train line, I don’t think it would be long before we were sectioned  But, bloody but, if you’re a scientist it seems you’ll get away with it.  So, you’ve got it into your bonce to search for an invisible mass, and now you need to secure a financial package to fund your notion.  With that in mind, we book an appointment with our bank manager, and ask for a loan.

“Come on in son,” he/she says.  “Park your butt, how much would you like to borrow and, what would the loan be for or five?  We reply, “Well, we would like approximately 6.6 billion of your finest notes please, as we are rather keen on looking for something that is possibly transparent, but on the whole is invisible.  We call it the ‘God particle’ you know.”  Now, what do you think he/she would say to that request?  The words, ‘sex’  and  ‘travel’ come to mind almost immediately.  However, if you’re a scientist, the bank starts loading up a lorry there and then.

To cover his arse, scientist A asks for a further 26 million to be added to the loan, just in case his new toy blows a fuse. Matey boy with the cash puts a call through to the Mint, and asks them to knock out a few more more bob for the weekend!  We make a similar request, and the manager calls the security guards to ‘help’ us out of the building.

A few months down the line the manager has an urge to check up on his financial outlay, and asks the scientist how things are panning out in the hunt for the Holy Grail of space.  “Aaaah,” said the boffin.  “Bit of a prob there old boy, we’ve had a bit of a blow out in our Collider, you couldn’t slap that 26 mill our way could you?”  “Sure,” says the manager. “Fuck it, I’ll bring it over myself.  What else are you hoping to find with this Collider of Hadron?”  “Well,” said the man with more money than he’s ever seen, “We’re also hoping to discover what antimatter is made of.”  “Ooooooh that’s interesting,” the bank manager retorts.  (please note: antimatter is a hypothetical form of matter) (please also note: there are people in the world that don’t have enough water to drink).  I’m just saying!

So what do you get for your money with your first Hadron electric waster, apart from a carbon footprint the size of your asre?  Well, on first inspection, it looks like a bunch of wires and piping which is buried underground, and on a second glance it’s much the same thing!  Accept you’ll notice a childish comparison with a set of ‘Stargates’!  Call me old fashioned, but I can look for invisible stuff in my loft!!!

What’s the game plan, what are you attempting to achieve?”  The manager asks the man in charge of accelerators, and all things that whizz about at high speed.  “Awwww, you’re gonna love this,” replies the egg-head.  “You’ve gotta think,  ‘It’s a knockout’ meets nine undiagnosed bipolar patients, who are all in a high phase of their disorder.”  “Go on,” says the manager.  “Well, what we are atttempting to do is line up a couple of proton beams.  Now, in a normal size lab that’s a piece of cake.  The challenge we have with this project is, it’s a bit like firing shed load needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide at the half way mark.”  “Really!  That is fascinating,” replies the folding-money provider.  But what if your plan goes breasts uppermost?”  “Well, Geneva gets a brand new underground system pal!”  I say again.  Water, people, drought conditions…

Being bipolar – it isn’t a gay bear issue!

Well now it’s just getting plain silly.  What used to sound like, neee-narrr, neee-narrr will now sound like, pufff-cofff pufff-cofff, and you’ll find your house has been surrounded by the Smoke Police!  

I received a letter from my landlord some months back, which informed me that I could no longer smoke in my communal entrance and stairwell but, I could still smoke in my flat.  Oh grow up!  If you take it too its literal meaning, I can be fined for lighting up in the stairwell, but not if I’m standing at my front door blowing smoke out into the communal space!  And don’t get me started on the bus stop malarkey!

Oh yes, wait until we’re all hooked on the stuff, and then start moving the goalposts, very smug right around election time.  Even though I smoke, like a smoker who has just been informed that last years tobacco crop has failed, I do take into consideration where I am and who is near me when I smoke.  I agreed when the top deck of a bus was a made a  smoke free zone.  I was also glad when my addiction was banned on the tubes, although it wasn’t banned for personal health reasons, it was banned because of the fire risk (quite handy though wasn’t it).  However, when the ban reached the pub circuit I had to stick my oar in, because I had a vivid picture of what was to come.  

Have we all sat around the table, and by we, I mean the smokers and non smokers, the NHS and the tobacco companies, to deal with this situation?  If we have, I don’t remember the lengthy debate or being invited.  Go on, ban smoking entirely, I dare you, and let’s see how much you’ve got left in the Government coffers at the end of the first year!  And while you’re at it, let’s ban alcohol too!  I agree smoking is bad for your health, but there must be a fairer way of resolving this.  Perhaps the tobacco companies would like to make a donation to the NHS, on a regular basis, to aid finding a cure for lung cancer!  After all, it’s their product that is mostly blamed for this disease.

Did I signed up for the bonus chemicals when I started smoking?  No!  Was I informed about them on the packet?  No,  not until about a decade ago.  Is the packet large enough to print the entire contents of tobacco on?  Doubt it!   All I want is the nicotine.  We’ve gone from a second hand smoke tactic, to a third hand smoke scare tactic, and at that point I was waiting for a news flash telling me that I couldn’t smoke in front of my cats!   The next plan is to ban smoking in your vehicle, the one you paid for!  And this will come with the message that it’s just one more place where your kiddy-winks can inhale your smoke.  Now hang about, what about all that bonus carbon monoxide that’s floating about when the kids walk to school or are out playing?   And what about the toxic fumes caused by industry?  You wait, the next thing the smoker will be blamed for is global warming, I’d put money on it.  Now, obviously I’ve thought long and hard about what’s coming next!  So here it comes…   

If the Smoke Police are given more power, things are going to look like this in the future: all crematoria will be closed down.  Well, that’s a ninety-a-day habit right there.  All working chimneys will be detained under the, ‘I can’t believe it’s gone far act’, of 2012.   And you can forget all about burning mad cows – from now on they will have to be boiled.  Naughty volcanoes will be arrested on site if they so much as cough, and, bloody and now then, Fireman will only be able to attend a blaze if smoke is present. 

Moving swiftly on, you won’t be able to buy smoked ham, trout and sausages, herring or salmon either.  And you can forget all about smokey bacon crisps too!  All of Mr. Robinson’s record covers will have to be reprinted.  Deep Purple’s hit will just be called, On the Water, from now on, and you won’t be able to get a copy of Smoke gets in your Eyes, for love nor money!  And what about the cost to industry?  Smoke detectors will have nothing to detect and will be made redundant.  Bespoke tailors will have to remove certain items in their range, leaving the customer with no choice but to buy just, a jacket!  So there you go…

Right I’m off, I got two free tickets to see Lock, Stock and Two Barrels