Cats on Drugs?: A Moustache Investigates.

Many moons ago, when myself, the World, and even Cilla Black were younger, I took a journey. It was a journey through space and time. No, I haven't been on the cane toads again, travelling through space and time is not as unusual as you would at first think. I mean, how many of you out there in my extensive readership have ever taken a journey that wasn't through space and time (unless you were on a Virgin train in rush hour). Have you ever gone on one which left you exactly where and when you started? Unlikely. That's just called 'being' Anybody can 'be' Where's the skill in that? Anybody of course except the dead. They just have a monopoly on 'were' They own the past tense in a way us living creatures just can't quite muster. Anyway, that's all just nonsense really, especially the bit about Cilla Black.

No, this journey was an errand. In fact it was a collection of errands. If I had been a spy or somesuch, I would have been offered a flat overlooking Red Square for this. I would have refused it. Not for any reasons involving altruism, it's just that I don't speak a word of Russian, I despise hanging around in queues, and I have a moral objection to wearing fur. The tasks I had set myself were simple enough. You may recall if you are Rexperienced, that I shared my life with cats once upon a time. There were quite a few of them. During a period of upheaval, also partly skimmed over, I relinquished my responsibility to a couple of them. I wasn't proud of the way I dealt with that situation, but I have always hoped that they went to good homes via the Cats Protection League and not ended life as a rather comfy pair of fur lined slippers. Two of the mogs were taken over by the ex-girlfriend who had shared them with me. Since we'd busted up, itself a longer than usual process, she had been on her own bizarre journey of self-enlightenment, self escapism and torment mixed together in a confusing cocktail which I was forced to imbibe on occasion, mainly though not entirely, through gritted teeth. She had eventually moved to Ireland during this period, leaving the cats in the care of a self-confessed sculptor and lunatic. Determined to make up some lost ground on Brownie points with Bastet, the Egyptian Cat Goddess, I accepted the charge of transporting the pussies over to The Emerald Isle.

My travels began in Bristol. I had a long day and night ahead, one which was going to be hindered by cats in baskets that didn't want to be in baskets. They yowl horribly when captive, so I took what I considered to be the kindest way for them, and filled them full of sedatives. What they lose in dignity and conciousness, they gain by not being scared, confused, vicious, multi-weaponed pains in the arse. I piled them into a taxi in order to get to the train station. Taxi drivers being licenced latter day highwaymen, there was a sudden claim of a surcharge for animals. Well, he did have a weed habit to support, so I surrendered the extra few quid. Once on the train, the cooing grannies and staring children asked all the relevant and obvious questions, to which were given the same simple and polite answers. 'Oh, about 18 months I think' 'Yes, ever since it was a kitten' 'Well fairly often, but the carpets quite old anyhow' How long was a sarcastic, facetious bastard like me going to be able to keep up this facade of truth and affable charm? Well, the train only takes 90 minutes to Swansea, so I didn't crack under the interrogation and remained urbane until it was time to alight.

Next, another taxi ride, no surcharge this time, proving as I at first had thought, the bullshit-o-meter did not need recalibrating. And so I hustled into Swansea dock on time to embark on an arduous 10 hour ferry journey to Cork. Now, I'd been this way before a number of times. Virtually every occasion upon which I'd walked past a certain Customs copper, he'd pulled me over for a little chat. Maybe it was the locks, (mine, not his, you lemon) or the rehearsed but never perfected look of fake innocence. Perhaps it was the 'Pigs die! Fuck pigs!' T shirt I'd bought cheap off a slaughterhouse necrophiliac (a less than wise move under any circumstances) . Who can be sure? Not me for a kick off, but two things were sure. Dolly Parton floats on her back, and this moustachioed butt-wipe jobsworth was gonna yank my collar yet again.
"Where are you going then?"
(Brain to Mouth, Brain to Mouth. DON'T BE SARCASTIC!!!)
"Erm... Ireland."
Sgt. Lipfuzz peers into cat carriers at comatose felines.
"What's in the baskets then?"
(Brain to Mouth, Brai... I KNOW, I KNOW)
"Well.. I reckon they're cats" (Ooohhh, bollox!!)
The Sarge, now smiling like a chess master about to pull his best ploy. "Passport? Right, wait there!"
He strode off in a sub-nasally hirsute sort of fashion and returned a minute later to announce the dreaded "Come with me!"
I went and sat in a near-featureless white room containing, amongst other furniture, the traditional two chairs each side of a desk. After the preliminary questions about name, reason for trip and all that shit, he began intimating his suspicions as to the hand carried livestock cargo, which he hadn't allowed me to take into the room. I reiterated that there were just cats in there and that they were probably best left undisturbed. His mustache twitched like an antennae picking up dodgy hippie vibes.
He could leave the mogs to the other cops out of view. I had visions of two sleepy cats being sat in white rooms whilst two big tabby hi-vis jacketed Customs grimalkins posed them a series of meows designed to trick them into a confession. They'd probably try to soften them up with the good mog/bad mog routine, nice bowls of warm milk, woolly jumper to knead, little stroke under the chin then just as you begin to purr.... GOTCHA!! You're coughing up secrets faster than furballs in molting season. I know the drill, diabolical psychological torture. It was gonna be tough for them not to break. I had every faith. Those years in the Marines (mascot, 1st class) were gonna stand them in good stead.

Back in the white room, Sgt. Bogeycatcher played his trump card.
"We're going to conduct a strip search" he announced matter-of-factly. "Remove all of your clothing one by one and hand them to the other officer."
"O.K." I said and proceeded to do so. Constable Other started feeling around my still warm discarded garments, including a very good up-side-down shake of my crusty para boots. Now this sort of behavior by rozzers is the part of the sequence of events which they feel is where embarrassed crooks wishing to hide their shortcomings may bottle out. They did not know at this or any stage of the game that I was an experienced life model. I'd been stark-bollock naked in front of whole rooms full of artists of both genders, all ages, and several sexual persuasions. In short, I didn't care a Tinker's Cuss for their assumed position of ascendancy. I began to care when a 'teenth of slate fell out of one of my socks and rolled conspicuously to a halt in the centre of the cheaply carpeted floor. Oh dear. Oh deary dear. Deafening pins could be heard dropping all around the three of us. Sgt. Soupsieve rose in his chair, looked at the blim now placed on the well lit table, and asked "So, what's this then?" I leaned forward to take a closer look, paused and replied "Looks like a piece of hashish to me"

The wheels were in motion. New and more numerous bits of paper came out from a nearby cabinet. I was asked to give up all my details which I did whilst explaining that I really did need to get on this boat and did he really want to be responsible for two cats when they woke up. Still he banged on about the baskets. He started the arrest process, blah blah intent to transport illegal contraband blah.. and then, perhaps in an epiphany, stopped speaking and left the room. The silence between me and Con. Other was leaden. Had I offended him in some way? Now seated, I scratched my divested scrotum, and patiently refolded my arms. When Sgt. Clittickler returned, he sat, cautioned me about the pot, and said that the ferry was just about to haul up the gangplank and if that I wanted to get on it I'd better be dressed and out of that room in 60 seconds. I managed it in around 53, grabbed the furry fiends, and scurried in quick, short steps aboard.

All I kept thinking as the large and protective doors slammed behind me, putting an end to the surreal close shave I had just encountered, was this. 'Thank feck they didn't search my boots properly. They might have found the acid!'

Nemesis Week. Angels in the Night

July 18/19, 1992. The band I was in got a gig at a mate's birthday party. This mucker was at the time hanging with those cheery cheeky chaps collectively known as Hell's Angels. Aren't they lovely, all great big cuddly bunnies with Santa Claus smiles. Permanently full of the joys of spring but with guns under the floorboards. However, on this auspicious occasion, we were the troubadours and they supplied the barrel of farmhouse cider. Armed with a Transit and musical instruments, we rattled off into the Mendip Hills. Upon arriving we discovered that, silly lads that we were, we had left the picnic hamper on the veranda at home. What a bally oversight! Sensing our chagrin, and to stop us from getting hungry, the Angels also gave us that trusted old relative Uncle William to look after. We looked after him well by immediately sheltering him up our noses. Keen but amateur mycologists that we were however, we had remembered to pack a few samples from the previous autumn which had been partly spent scouring the damp Somerset ground for pixie hats. If the cap fits, trip over it.

Picture the scene. Four guys in a band playing swirling psychedelia and mashing monstrous punk metal. The stage is a six berth canvas ridge tent, circa 1966, on a gentle slope. Scattered around this archaic edifice are scary, mind altered, hairy-arsed grizzled old bikers in the gloom, and that was just the women. Virtually none of them paid the slightest attention to the racket we were making but insisted that we shouldn't discontinue. And so, as music be the food of love, and discretion is the better part of valour, we played on until our fingers went numb. We drank heartily of the barrel, smoked ourselves hoarse and awaited the dawn.

Dawn broke the damp cold over the Eastern horizon. It provided the lighting for the next bizarre spectacle. Bonnet skiing. The bonnet is removed from a car and is then attached to the tow bar by a length of rope, say about 30 feet. The car is then driven at break-neck pace around the environs by an inebriate with scant regard for health and safety regulations. A 'skier' is sat on the upside-down bonnet. He remains on the 'ski' until death or gravity plays it's part. On this day, the 'skier' was chased closely by an Alsatian which was quite obviously being driven apoplectic by all the jolly old high jinks.

Being of a tidy disposition and wishing to play no part even as a spectator to this mayhem, I left the danger behind and began picking up the inevitable litter now strewn about the place. I had been doing so for a while, minding my own business, when the deranged dog appeared from behind a parked car. Ignoring the usual etiquette of a warning growl, it advanced with some speed toward me as I bent to pick up a beer can, and sunk it's teeth into my flesh. Motherfucka!

I sidled off to nurse the wound, cursing the cur, addled mind already envisaging some very nasty rabies shots to the gut. A short while later, as if to take my mind off the spreading infection, some guffawing hoodlums pulled into the field in 4x4's and silly green padded waistcoats and began blasting clay pigeons out of the skies with 12 bores. Would the surreality never cease? Since these strange beings from a different tax bracket had assaulted the senses with their graceless invasion, we bump started the trusty tranny and headed back for the city as soon as the drummer was arguably sober. I didn't live in the city, so I was dropped off first to my small rented cottage. No sign of human habitation, the four cats and I looked forward to a spot of breakfast. Since I'm not too partial to Whiskas, I put on the chip pan. After all, what better to follow a sleepless night of excess than a greasy pile of 'Pomme de Terre Anglais'. Stout nourishment, it's so rarely erroneous. Upstairs to wash for brekky, a little sit down on my comfy bed, and everything is just..zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I awoke to see a rather concerned looking feline at the foot of the bed, quite clearly visible considering all the smoke in the room. Smoke? SMOKE!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?!**!

I dashed downstairs, my feet dancing around sprinting cats, to witness the dying flames of a chip pan which had burnt away all of the fat in it. The chips, acting as a wick, were jet black and still smouldering, resembling some gruesome charred village scene after a visit from Ghenghis. The cottage was filling fast with thick choking greasy smoke. I rushed about ushering panicked cats into the garden. One, two, three. Kerist All-bleedin'-mighty! Where's the fourth one? I tried to remember all those public info films about what to do in the event of a housefire, but failed. Somehow my mind just kept re-routing to Fred Astaire in Towering Inferno. I spent the next ten minutes attempting to breathe through a wet towel crawling around on all fours under the billowing murk trying to find a grey cat in a house full of grey smoke. I wish I had been old Fred, maybe the cat would've been ginger. I found it cowering in a tiny gap under a wardrobe, grabbed it despite it's lacerating talons and chucked it out. I rescued a couple of sofa cushions and lay on them under a blue sky in the garden until I sweated gently into a calm sleep among oscillating flowers in the fresh air.

Nemesis Week. Sporting Excellence

This week is nemesis week. Not this actual week 2007, but just this week of the year, third one in July, has commonly been one which has produced a gentle ripple on the old mill pond of Rex, perhaps even a quake measuring 8.2 on the Rexter Scale on occasion.

In 2001 sporting injury reared it's homely countenance. July 22, in a league cricket match, I ignored all usual common sense and dived forward to attempt to catch a ball which was obviously going to reach me on the half-volley. Indeed it did, landing on the ground in front of my mid-air body and outstretched hand. It hit terra firma at the precise moment it hit the end of my right third finger, stopping the first two bones of said digit abruptly. As misfortune would have it, the other 150 lbs of my body carried on.

There was a flash of brilliant white light in my head. Intense pain began coursing through more nerve ..er... thingies than should be expected. Other cricketers, being of a caring and empathic disposition, began shouting calming words like "Get up, get the fuckin' ball" Not possible, I was 100% endorphin rush, a quivering wreck of my former self. After a short walk in heat to the pavilion, watched by my 4 year old son who still remembers his literally watery-eyed dad running a fast swelling finger under a cold tap, it was considered best to strap the finger to it's immediate neighbour and go to hospital. However, cricket is a game involving 11 vs 11, and so Einstein here decides to return to the pitch because there wasn't a twelfth man. I fielded one ball, saving two runs. When I threw it to the 'keeper, my hand throbbed almost visibly as if in a Tom and Jerry sketch. In a close game, we won by the two runs I had saved by just being in the way.

Amidst all the typical victory celebrations, (large doobies all round) the hospital visit was totally forgotten. Indeed I toughed it (like a twat!) out for 7 weeks before seeking professional medical attention. Needless to say, despite surgery, it was all a trifle late by then. Re-calcification is a fickle bodily function. My son and I call that digit "The Gonzo Nose" To know what it resembles, visualise the space muppet's shnoz sideways on.

I don't like how it looks. The nail doesn't grow properly if at all. It doesn't bend more than 25 degrees. It hurts in a mildly arthritic way. The bones and cartilage were so smashed in places that the ligament now does the job of the cartilage because the cartilage doesn't exist any more.

Would I change anything? Would I travel back in time and back out of the altruistic dive forward to help my team?

As my old Aunt Flossie would have said if she'd ever existed, "Fat boy, you bet your arse I would!"

That Shallot!

Having made an astonishingly speedy full recovery from my broken foot, I was back at "the office" today, and it was there that I struck upon a potentially new and arguably revolutionary method for chopping onions without tears. Mine is the sort of "office" where you will commonly find people chopping vegetables. I once walked in there to discover a 22 stone part time dvd salesperson cutting up whole dead ducks (mainly mallard, one or two teal) but that's another story. Usually this type of shenanigans would cause a rumpus, but as I have already said, that's another story.

My "office" is situated on the ground floor. One day, perhaps if I'm really good at what I do, when they've finished training the simian that has been lined up to replace me, I may receive some kind of promotion. I could move seamlessly into the next chapter of my chequered employment journal. Some folk have been moved upward in the past, never to be seen again. It's rumoured that they shape-shift into other-worldly beings and live out their hollow, dark existences wandering forever in ghostly mire and shadow on the first floor. But that's another storey!
"I've been on the R. & D. trail,
searching high and low for the Holy Grail"
I'm a poet, a fact of which
I'm fully aware".......(well, they don't have to rhyme you know. This isn't PlayAway, and though I may be called Brian, I'm not a total Cant )
The trail has left me and many like me in tears. But today's discovery has dried them up, raised the bar. Raised it high, so high that an aardvark can no longer walk into it, which destroys one time-honoured joke. It could have been a joke about a replete cow, too lazy to walk to the shed to be milked, but that's an udder story.

According to my extensive research, onions turn us into crybabies because they exude a juice which, upon evaporation into the air, turns into invisible tear gas of some kind. This I found very useful during my ill-fated single-handed assault on the North face of Michael Heseltine, but that's an utter Tory. The gas, or fumes perhaps would be a longer description, (only two letters longer) escape rather like I did, surreptitiously. However, their release into the air can be prevented to a large degree in the following way.

1: Arrange the chopping board ( correctly coloured to avoid cross contamination) squarely in front of you and secure it to the work surface.
4: Taking a freshly honed sturdy kitchen knife, remove both ends of each onion.
3: Before removing onion ends, place a suitably sized bowl next to your chopping board on the same side as your "cutting" hand.
2: Fill a bowl (correctly colour coordinated to avoid cross interior designers) with luke-warm water.
5: Drop each "top'n'tailed" onion into the bowl.
6: Boil a kettle of water.
8: Remove each onion individually from the bowl (of water) and cut into "halves" end to end. Place each half back into the bowl.
9: Re-remove each "half" onion individually from the bowl and peel the tough outer skin away. Return each skinned "half" onion to the bowl.
10: Re-re-remove each skinned "half" onion from the bowl, place on the chopping board, and finally, finely chop until fully finely chopped.(If your onions do not appear finally to be fully finely chopped, return
to point 7)
11: Place finally finely fully chopped onions in clean bowl.(colour optional)
12: Remove water from kettle and use it to make a nice cup of tea. After all, you deserve it since you've worked so hard learning a new skill today!

Et voila! That's ya lot.

More Old Hats To Throw Into The Ring.

Here I am again, a little confused as usual, and once more discussing the world of cyber diaries. That's diaries not dairies. Who ever heard of a cyber dairy? Well lactose addicted computers of course, but besides them? O.K. I concede, cybermilkmen - perhaps the most feared and utterly ill-conceived of The Doctor's arch enemies.
Digression, digression, digression. It's what politics is all about. Cunning those politicians. Why just this year, New Liar members (and a right bunch of members they are at that) have openly, and without much studio make-up, condemned the execution of Saddam as deplorable etc. Well they're possibly correct. Who am I to say or judge? I'll tell you who! One of the many people who sat and watched news reports of R.A.F. and U.S.A.F. bombing raids which deliberately targeted and failed only to hit Saddam because he was too bloody well hidden. So assassination's O.K. then? Almost not like killing anybody at all!
Gosh, that all got a bit serious for a while. Must quickly inhale some more of that NO2........ That's more like it. I'll have to mug another midwife before too long, after all, the bottle's bound to run out sooner or later even if it looks pretty big by the desk here and boy, was it focken hard to get up all those stairs. Maybe I should just visit a doctor. (not to be confused with 'The Doctor' mentioned previously) Wish I hadn't dropped it on my sodding foot now. And that's why I'm confined to the desk. Broken foot. I tell you it could have been loads worse. If I'd been in favour of the metric system it so easily could have resulted in a broken metre. Then where would I be? Not just waylaying babycatchers but hijacking B.O.C. 7tonners on the A.4. that's where.
Anyway, I maintain I've constructed enough of this utter bollox now. I mean to say, with Wednesday fast approaching, I'm in grave danger of losing sleep my body desperately needs at the moment. I'd be a little fatigued even with slimming aids. There's nowt wrong with the creative endeavours associated with sleep deprivation, but even wolves at full moon slumber on occasion, don't they?

Beyond Yesterday's News

I'm definitely getting there. However I maintain I am seriously confusing myself on a daily basis with all this blog nonsense. Even my partner, (A.K.A. B.F.G.) who claims to have (and apparently has) mastered all the ins and outs of the world of blogging in it's simplest form, couldn't figure out what the feck I'd done to all of the passwords and usernames and all that jazz. She is easily confused though. Her record at scrabble will tell the full story, or maybe she's been letting me win all this time? Perhaps I'm easily confused? After all, I never saw what was wrong with Betamax.
Anyway, I feel I must post this old tripe before the cyber world catches me succeeding at something and punishes me by some devilry. What this time I wonder? Maybe it'll make my P.C. just disappear overnight. Oh how innocent bystanders would laugh and laugh as I was hauled spitting and swearing from around the throat of some poor unsuspecting fool behind the paydesk at P.C.World.

And incidentally, why are bystanders always innocent? I mean, don't the guilty ever appear on the streets? I'm fairly certain somebody who is guilty of a genuine misdemeanour must have stood by me at some stage. And why are they always standing? I mean, isn't it just feasible that somebody who is wheelchair-bound may also be innocent (or guilty) and nearby when 'an incident' has taken place. One or two may have been on sun-loungers or even cycling past. The mind boggles at just how many types of 'being by' innocently (or even guiltily) there can be. Well my mind boggles anyway, but an adult lifetime involving myself in a love affair with alcohol, a love affair as yet undiminished by the passing of a couple of decades and counting, would go a long way towards explaining that. Other episodes of sideways recreational behavior take one all the way towards an explanation, but what the hey, that's for another time.
Read on, MacDuff, and at that other time I will promise you that you will be disappointed.

Positively Bored

Here is a thingy entitled 'Positively Bored' which I wrote, without the aid or assurance of a safety net in the spring of 2006.

Anyone who says that only boring people get bored, bores me.

Anyone who says that they never get bored is only occupied in their spare time by deluding themselves about their own lack of boredom.

Being bored is a natural, nay quintessential part of the human condition.

It is absolutely normal to become less interested in what you are doing than in the possibilities of what you could otherwise be doing.

It does not mean you are skittish.

It does not mean that you are de-focussed.

It merely makes obvious your status as a human being.

If humans did not become bored, they would not have invented or discovered many of the more fascinating extremes of the human experience of being alive on this planet.

Indeed, they may never have been off this planet.

Being bored is not necessarily dysfunctional.

It is merely a facet of existence.

IF NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION, THEN BOREDOM IS IT'S INSPIRATIONAL BIG SISTER.