Happy Birthday Debs

It's my Sister-In-Law's Birthday today... And she knits... Happy Birthday Debs!

-oOo-

The day started much like the previous twelve thousand or so; the dog had been fed, the husband had been sent off to work with a package of tuna sandwiches and looking out of the kitchen window let her know that the overnight wind had done a top notch job of stripping the autumn leaves from the trees.

She pottered around, tidying a little here, dusting a little there, until the postman arrived with her cards.  There were a few more than there usually were, which brought a smile to her face and she sat lazily with a mug of tea, opening them one after another, carefully checking each one for money before arranging them on the few empty spaces she could find.

Turning on the TV, she was greeted by static, the same with the radio; the computer worked, but refused to connect to the Internet, she shook her head, sighed and picked up her knitting.  It was going to be one of 'those' days, she could tell.

The droning noise had been going on for several minutes before it broke through the repetetive 'Knit one-Purl one-Knit two together' mantra that both her lips and hands were moving to.  It sounded something like the noise that an old fashioned tin spinning top would make, a sort of mechanical whooshing noise, mixed with a low rumbling.  At first she wondered if her upstairs neighbour was re-starting his experiments to make a 'real girlfriend' from common household items, and he'd gotten around to practicing with the hoover hose, but she slowly realised that it was coming from outside.

She hadn't even managed to move the net curtains out of the way before she heard the first scream.  It was the woman from across the road and, whilst hearing her scream was nothing new, seeing her pointing up into the sky whilst she was doing it was certainly a twist.  She craned her neck and looked up into the cloudless autumn sky, but she could see nothing.

She assumed that the screaming woman had just finally snapped, it'd been coming for a while in her opinion, what with her feral kids and the estranged alchoholic husband.  and she was just about to sit back down and concentrate on a particularly difficult double-decrease when she saw the flash from the first explosion, followed a second or so later by its sound, then the badly fitted panes of glass in her front windows rattled alarmingly.

It was then that the shadow fell over her front garden, its harshly curved edge indicating that whatever was blocking out the sun was large, and round.  Pausing only to grab a handful of the Size 6 stiletto point needles from her knitting bag and to roll up a tea-towel and wrap it around her head in the style of a bandana, she ran to the front door, took a deep breath and flung it open.

Directly above her was a giant, floating disk, about a hundred yards across.  It was barely above the rooftops and she could see movement through the brightly lit, downwards facing windows.  As she stared, a bright, red beam of light shot from the disk and destroyed the nearby multiplex cinema, the rising column of smoke matching the one already streaming from the Rolls-Royce factory just down the road.

As she watched, the disk descended, its rapidly rotating edge grinding against one of the houses further down the street until it cleared itself a space wide enough to land in.  The sudden eerie silence echoed for a few moments along the row of houses, until a large ramp opened on the vehicle and a cloud of steam, or possibly smoke, billowed out.

Then the monstrocity appeared, he was at least eight feet tall in his stocking feet.  She thought it was odd that someone who was so obviously a seasoned galactic conqueror would be wearing stockings, but years of watching Star Trek had taught her that you shouldn't judge aliens by their appearances.  He roared at the top of his lungs, brandished a wickedly sharp axe and charged at her.

At the last moment, she ducked, and the alien launched itself, axe swinging, into the space where she had been.  She stabbed upwards with the knitting needle and caught him in the chest, immediately increasing the volume of his roar and spattering herself with warm green ichor.  He careened into the previously screaming neighbour, who was squashed against her gatepost like a bug by his studded shoulderpads.  Looking down at the wooden implement sticking out of his armour in disgust, he pulled it out with a wet, sucking sound and threw it on the ground.

She heard another echoing roar from behind her, and threw two more needles, one from each hand.  The doglike squeals told her that they had both been direct hits.  She snuck a peek and saw two slightly smaller specimens clutching desperately at their eyes.  Turning her attention back to her original target, she plunged two needles, crosswise into the knot of her teatowel, and beckoned the monster forward.

He roared and charged again, oblivious to any kind of tactics and raised his axe.  She flic-flac'd her way towards him, and planted both feet into his midriff.  He fell heavily back and she landed astride him, grabbed the needles from her hair and jammed them into his ears, slapping them home with the flat of her hands.  His roar turned into a gurgle, which in turn quietened to a hiss, and the sound died with him, as his red eyes rolled back into his head.

The spinning top hum started up behind her, and the saucer lifted itself unsteadily into the air, passed over her head and disappeared into the clouds.  She realised that she'd been holding her breath,  and let it out with a long, relaxed sigh.  Examining the side of the alien's head, she wondered momentarily about retrieving her needles, but seeing the green slime that was slowly dripping from them, she thought better of it.  There would probably be more on eBay, and thinking of eBay, she picked up his axe, and dragged it across the road, its edge sparking on the tarmac.

Once she had made herself another drink, she sat down at the computer.  The Internet was working perfectly now and she logged into eBay and started to type:

As New: Space Zombie Axe, One Previous Owner, No Reserve, Buyer Collects.  Please see my previous auctions for other Space Zombie weaponry and armour.  New items listed Every Monday.

She added a couple of photographs and listed it, then searched for more needles to replace the ones she'd lost.  Although there was a week until the next scheduled attack, the Post Office could be a bit hit and miss where deliveries were concerned.

To me, to you

I am so, so sorry...

I read a couple of my recent Blog posts over the weekend... Aren't they long-winded?

I wander about all over the place (figuratively that is... If I wandered very far, I wouldn't be able to reach the keyboard, and you'd be denied the new, improved, edited me.) don't I?

I'm going to break one of my own unwritten rules here.  I only usually Blog about things what have happened in the dim and distany past, well, at least the previous year, usually.

But I've had a bit of a funny weekend (Good funny, not bad funny) and thought you might like to hear about it.

I've got this mate, the same mate who I was discussing bucket lists with, who does the whole 'Dig for Victory' / Good Life, allotment thing.  And seeing as I live but a hop, skip and a jump away from his house, I occasionally get a phone call (or, more likely, his wife corners Mrs Dandy in a dark alley and threatens her with a haddock until she offers my services.) saying something like:

'Dandy! I've 'found' an unattended greenhouse in someone's garden, it looks a bit disused - I think they're on holiday, bring the van'

or

'Can carrots be poisonous? We've had a glut, so it's all we've eaten for the past month... And the baby might have gone a bit orange!'

But this particular event started with what was billed as a 'Shed moving party'.  There was to be beer, barbecue and buggering about with garden buildings.  Now, on the day, we arrived a little bit late and missed most of the 'clearing the shed out' phase, which was nice.  I commented on just how much stuff (Well, I may have used the word crap) you could fit in an 8' x 6' shed.  Looking inside however, I realised that there was still a bit of clearance that needed doing, but it was all of the 'Been sitting there for months, on bare soil, covered in snails and spiders' stuff - and his bike - Well, his bike minus the engine, which was in one of his other sheds.  So we ejected the rest of the contents via the medium of chucking them on a big pile whilst going 'Eww-ewww-ewww!' and wiping my slimy / cobwebby hands on my good jeans.

So, we had a strategy meeting, (can of lager) trying to decide the best way to progress the project... There were three of us, and the shed was held down by a mixture of gravity, mud and bloodymindedness - Of course, we decide to just pick it up and move it.

I don't know if you've ever tried to move one of these made of tin plate, bought off the Internet, home assembles with only an allen key and a toffee hammer, garden erections but they're characterised by a few interesting features:

1. Every single exposed metal edge is razor sharp - So sharp that if you hold your breath whilst you're inside one, you can hear a gentle buzz as oxygen molecules are sliced in half as they waft across them.
2. There is nothing to hold on to - not a single thing - except the exposed edges (See above)
3. The metal that it's made of has the tensile strength of a wet dog-fart, I actually put my hand through the wall at one stage (and it wasn't rusty, I just leaned on the wall, and suddenly my hand was outside)
4. If you try and fashion hand-holds from stout rope, wherever you tie the rope to will fold up like a four-hour, made to measure Taiwanese suit (See above)

I'd like to point out at this moment, the non-combatants - i.e. the women and children, were sat at the other end of the garden offering encouragement, and definitely not jeering... At all... Much.

Our first 'lift' took the shed a total of eighteen inches before it slipped out of our hands... So we had another strategy meeting, and decided that it was Mother Nature's fault that we were failing in our appointed task - In that she had caused an apple tree to grow in the one place where we desperately needed there not to be an apple tree.  Unfortunately we were warned by my good friend's wife that there would be consequences if said tree was to be damaged.

This required thought... So we thought... Then thought some more... And an idea came to us - We decided that if we couldn't pick it up, we should roll it end over end.
So we gave that a go, very, very, briefly - We then spent a few moments bending and pulling at the shed to make it look a little bit more shedlike and a little less like Dorothy's house after the tornado.

Then we had another strategy meeting... Which ended with us deciding to shout 'buggrit' pick the bloody thing up and throw it roughly in the right direction... which we sort of did, quickly followed by further few moments of straightening of walls and roof beams.

Then we spotted that the gap it was going into wasn't big enough for it, because there was one of those Pampas Grass boles in the way - So, we had another strategy meeting and decided that what we needed to do was find the sharpest things we could and hack about at the grass until the shed just 'fit'

This degenerated into a hatchet throwing competition... Which I lost, but the apple tree that has caused us the trouble earlier on won (Won in this case characterised by it remaining standing and relatively unscathed)

We manhandled the shed into the gap mostly by swearing at it, swore at it some more until the walls were all straight and then all looked at each other trying to remember what we'd done with the doors (that we'd taken off in an effort to make it lighter)

This wasn't assisted by the two hour strategy meeting we had to celebrate...

So, if you want anything moving around in your garden, give us a call - Just make sure to get a couple of cases of strategy in, just for emergencies like...

But will it fly SMick?

Firstly can I congratulate my Daughter on starting her own Blog - Gods bless it and all who sail in it. Hopefully it will give you a somewhat skewed teenagers eye view of the Dandy Universe.

Important word of caution, whilst I am usually a good natured, happy go lucky kinda guy with an infinite amount of patience and startlingly good cheekbones, any sniff of abuse or unwarranted* unkindness towards her and I will, most definately, reach down the perpetrator's epiglottis and show them things that would normally only be available via x-ray.

-oOo-

Right, onto the job in hand.

We've all heard stories about people who've found wonderful things in the most unlikely of places. Antiques Roadshow is full of people who have found original Picasso sketches in their Aunt Mabel's loft or there are those despicable people who find an original, fully working, 1920's Brough Superior in a neighbour's garage which they buy for a fiver as 'It was our Derek's and he never used it, even when he was still alive'.

So, imagine my excitement, when everyone's favourite Chilli cook and professional Scotsman, my good friend SMick, arrived at my front door with news of a 'vehicle' that he'd found out about, just lying in the mud in a farmer's field just around the corner. It was, quite literally, just around the corner, as in those days you could spit the distance from my house to the wonderful British countryside - You had to check no-one was in the way of course, things like that didn't go down well with the residents' association, but a well-hawked loogey would land on grass, or in a tree, or on a sheep.

So, dutifully, I clamboured into his Peugeot and drove the 100 yards to the farm. I walked around to the outbuildings, through knee deep mud, in my white Status Quo style white hi-tops (It was around this time that I changed my footwear of choice to second-hand army boots) and said to SMick.

'OK, where is it?'

'There,' pointed SMick, proudly

'Where, is it behind that scabby P.O.S. Mk1 Transit Luton?'

The slow grin that swept across SMick's face told me all I really needed to know.

'You've got to be.. erm... flipping joking, I'll be in the car...' I said, and started to squidge away as fast as I could.

He convinced me that it would be a good idea, a nice little project, something to do during the day when the pubs were shut. And if we couldn't get it going, then the box on the back was aluminium (Not Al-OO-min-um) and we could weigh it in and get some money out of it.

I honestly cannot remember how we got it out of the field, I think I blocked it from my memory the same way that victims of alien abduction do, I'm fairly sure it involved lots of sheets of wood, many, many bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and an almost Olympic quantity of swearing.

Eventually, it found itself on my drive. It didn't actually look all that bad with a large proportion of the mud washed off. It also turned out to have a V6 engine which was a bonus, which on it's own started a selection of trike/go-kart fantasies. After the battery was left on charge for about six weeks, the engine would succesfully turn over but not 'catch', dutifully we did what any men confronted with a failing engine would do, we stood staring at the engine and scratched our heads.

'I think the carb needs priming,' SMick suggested, sagely.

'Right you are, how do we do that?' I replied - I wasn't then the mechanical whiz that I'm still not now.

'Well, we just take the air filter off, put something flammable down the carbs and see if it will start then.'

'Flammable?' I asked, nervously, not quite liking where this was going, 'Like what?'

'Like... petrol!'

'Like petrol, or actually petrol?'

'Actually petrol, we've got petrol, and it's what you'd expect to find in the carb anyway, should be fine.'

I bowed to his greater knowledge and we poured, what turned out to be significantly too much, petrol into the top of the carburetor and turned the engine over.

Now, I've never seen a real giant lightsaber, but I can imagine it looking something like what came out of the top of the carb - a nine foot high column of flame and noise which existed just long enough to drive my eardrums into my rectum and blow my eyebrows over to the other side of the road - It's a good job, in hindsight that we'd taken the bonnet off else it would have bounced off it and cut a neat porthole in the garage door.

'I think we might scrap it,' Said Smick, batting at his still smouldering sweatshirt.

'What?' I shoulted as I was still mostly deaf and over the other side of the road looking for my left eyebrow.

Over the next few weeks we set about stripping down the van to its component parts. Many interesting and fun times were had during the project.

Do you remember when I talked about our friend 'Gullible' Steve? The gentleman who ate of the baby-carrot and rottweiler chilli? Well, a couple of incidents involved him:

1) He was stumbling about in the back of the van, seeing if there was anything of any worth amongst the rotting hay and mud. When there was a cry, a protracted coughing fit, a torrent of expletives directed at myself, SMick, life in general and birds in particular. I turned to SMick, who was sat next to me in a deck-chair and said,

'Didn't think to tell him about the nest full of rotten blackbird eggs we found yesterday then?'

'Nope,' replied SMick, taking another gulp of his beer. 'But I did put it right near the side door so we wouldnea forget to throw it in the bin.'

2) The roof of the Luton box was made of fibreglass, which is not as weigh-innable as aluminium sheet, so we asked Steve to have a go at taking it off. We assumed (Which taught me that you should never assume) that he would get a ladder, and maybe a saw and cut the roof off. But no, he clamboured up onto the roof with an axe and a hammer.

'Is that a good idea?' I asked SMick, knowing full well that it wasn't

'Idea? No... Opportunity to laugh? Yes.' He replied, reaching down into the crate for another beer.

It took him a good fifteen minutes to fall the eight feet or so into the back of the van as he smashed the roof our from under himself. Thinking about it now, we really should have thrown that blackbird nest in the bin.

I didn't remain completely unscathed through the project, I had countless fibreglass splinters pulled out of my arms with pliers, cuts, bruises and boo-boos of various kinds.

And I understand that SMick still bears the scar of his particular mishap. We had got to the stage of trying to flatten the aluminium enough to get it in the back of the car and take it to the scrapyard and SMick was belting away with a lump hammer at a piece of metal that he was stood on.

Well, he missed... And hit his shin... He went completely silent, looked at the group of grubby schoolchildren that were hanging around watching us, looked at me, said, very quietly,

'Excuse me.'

And went inside the house.

The flow of profanity lasted a good half an hour and featured words that I didn't think could be used in that particular context. It left seven local dogs paralysed down one side and a further three pregnant. He'll show you the scar now if you ask him nicely, it's quite impressive.

I'll never forget that summer - And neither will the person whose drive we dumped the burning remains of the van on.

Anywho, I've been informed that my Daughter has mentioned about the time I shot myself, maybe I'll tell you about that on Monday. Have a good weekend, and if you see me around, feel free to buy me a pint - I think I deserve it, I've had a hard life!


*There are times when my Daughter's Blog will warrant abuse, feel free to fill your boots in situations such as these.