Cook you a steak and do what job?

You know what really grinds my gears? Well, initially it's people who use the phrase "You know what really grinds my gears?" and don't expect me to think of them as Peter Griffin from that moment on. But let's leave that to one side for the time being...

Man-Babies are one things that grind my gears - Now this would be such an easy thing to do the day after International Women's Day... And obviously, that's why I'm doing it. (Did you know, IWD was started back in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America - One wonders if it would be as big a global celebration if it was started by the National Socialist Party of Germany in the late 1930s - But I digress)

Wait, where were we?

Ah yes, Man-Babies.  You know what a man-baby is don't you? It's a man, who acts, out of his own volition, like a whining opinionated baby - Which is pretty much all men (Am I Rite Ladies? High-five! - Wooo! - Don't leave me hanging... OK [Looks at palm of my hand][sees unusually crusty peeling stain][understands completely]) 

Now I don't mean the men who employ the paid services of professional ladies who look after them whilst they toddle around wearing nappies and rattling their... Um... 'rattles' in people's faces and wearing comfortable bootees and happily having their nappies changed and suchlike.  Each to their own I say where sexual perversion's concerned - Especially in society's upper echelons, what-what?

And I don't mean card-carrying misogynists - They're a whole different breed entirely and we've talked about them before.

I mean the ones who genuinely believe that the only important things are things that apply directly to them and other men, who they claim some kind of shaky brotherhood with - like the urgent, Gods-given need for Government-sponsored erectile dysfunction medicine and free at the point of delivery hair replacement therapy, I mean the lightbulb shaped headed ones wearing last season's football shirts who bleated all over social media yesterday "When's International Men's Day?" - The same ones who went oddly quiet when I (and several other people - I'm not claiming any singular Godhood here) replied, "It's the 19th November you massive Twonk, the day before Universal Children's Day. If you're going to cry like a bitch about some perceived slight against your gender, at least have the common decency to get your facts straight."

And don't think I'm some kind of white-knight feminist defender myself either. I'm really not... If you're female and wearing a low-cut top (for whatever reason) I will look at your cleavage and/or boobs - You can check with Mrs Dandy - we can't go anywhere without her tutting, shaking her head and having to repeat herself at least a dozen times. I won't stand in front of you with my coat open shielding you from the ogling stares of other neanderthal men. I'm a firm believer that boobs are great, and if you want to have a proportion of yours on show - You should feel completely free to do so - But you're gonna get looks from the weak willed.

But what really gets me, specifically, every bloody year hasn't really even started yet.  Next week, Facebook & Twitter will be full of it.  On Monday it'll be wall-to-wall schoolboy sniggering for the preamble. On Tuesday it'll be "when I get home tonight from a hard day at the coalface/office/clinic, guess what I'm getting?!?!!?'

You've worked it out right?

March 14th? a month after Valentines Day?

Well, it's another one of those gender specific made-up strictly for profit holidays. Whereas Valentine's Day is a holiday for women, with non-generic petrol station flowers, high cocoa content chocolates, and things wrapped in red and pink reflective paper. Steak and a Blowjob Day (for it is that of which I am speaking) is for men... because men like red meat and getting their dicks wet whilst their eyes roll back into their heads (and if that doesn't happen, someone's doing something wrong).

I don't get why you need to announce it to your 63 Facebook friends (half of which are probably friends with your significant other too who will laugh when she post "Not bloody likely Sunshine, you can spend 30 seconds on Pornhub once the kids have gone to bed like you do every Saturday night instead of playing FIFA.") 

And it's so boringly contrived and binary - I mean, I love chocolate - And Mrs Dandy gets excited by the thought of a decent mouthful of steak (well, she did before she decide to go pescatarian - feel free to insert your own jokes there.) 

But men... (Lower-case used intentionally) Just like there's no specific date for you to tell your partner that you love them or to buy them flowers, as long as you're prepared for every one of her female friends to ask her what you've done. And there's no date when it's more or less right to buy decent chocolate for your partner or even yourself. There's no specific day when you can't buy and cook a nice, thick steak, or go to a nice restaurant and order steak if you you don't 'do' washing up, because you're too manly. And, believe it or not if you have a decent cleanliness routine, it's not out of the realms of possibility that a lady that you personally quite like will, without any kind of struggle or Gaffer Tape being involved, put your love-python in where her shouting at you usually comes out of.

Providing you're both equally up for it that is... And that you've eaten quite a lot of pineapple beforehand.  Enjoy.

Options most heinous!

Heinous, great word that is – Love it; It’s the sort of word that a lot of people have probably only heard in a Bill & Ted film… Let’s take a moment to look at its varied meanings…

Ohhh… Execrable – Doesn’t that word just make you shudder? Abhorrent! Not enough people use that in polite conversation in my opinion. Abhorrent, abhorrent, abhorrent... Lovely.   I might call my next pet something like that. Well, either that or ‘Unpardonable’ – I can imagine it now, I’ve attracted a new victim, sorry, *cough* willing visitor who would easily pass any drugs test you'd care to administer Your Honour, to Dandy Towers. Perhaps during one of Heckmondswyke’s, sadly under-attended fortnightly tofu and Cuprinol appreciation evenings? I can only assume that the conversation would go something like this:

[Visitor] Oh, look! Isn’t your Guinea Pig adorable? What’s his name?

[Moi] Unpardonable…

[Visitor, only slightly louder] I said… what’s… his… name..?

[Moi, putting the hatchet back] No… I…. Never mind, it’s Tim

Anyway, back to the heinousity (Which is a real word and you can’t prove otherwise) that you were originally promised in the title.

I’ve been approached by a selection of both attractive and mentally stable young ladies over the past month, who have actually stopped me in the street to tell me how much they enjoyed reading my books. Well, not in the street as such – I mean, I don’t frequent streets where ladies tend to congregate… Not since the cuckoo-clock incident in Leipzig.  Some of the descriptive phrases they used, included:

‘Now can't carry on reading “Mumblings” because I'm laughing so much I'm crying’, ‘Pissed my pants, I did!’, ‘Seriously, there are parts that I fell to pieces laughing!’, ‘the author's a bit of a knob-end’, ‘ I sounded like my nan, Alice. I was whooping so much’, ‘I can't stop laughing! It's like reading the inside of my brain!’, ‘Love this book so much! Thank you for enabling its existence!’, ‘I've gone all purple and sweaty’

Actually, at least one of those might have been me… But the rest are 100% Gen-you-wine things that real people have said.

You were still looking for the heinous bit weren’t you? I’ve dragged you here, by the scruff of the neck, like a lonely three-nosed halibut purely by the medium of clickbait and you’re worried that I won’t deliver – Well, I can tell you that I am about to deliver, just like I tell Mrs. Dandy on those very few occasions when she’d much rather be watching something interesting on the shopping channel than submitting herself to my fumbling ministrations. So, here goes.

This weekend, from Friday the 2nd. of September until Monday the 5th. of September I have decided, purely because of the warm, glittery feeling that I have in the bodily area where that snake bit me once and I had to have the poison sucked out by a native bearer in the rear entrance to the food hall of Fortnum & Masons in Magaluf, to offer the Kindle version of my ‘Pangolin’ books for the once in a lifetime price of…

Free and no money… between those dates they will be delivered to your choice of Kindle-enabled devices from those wonderful full tax-paying people at Amazon, gratis!

The three titles available in this offer include:

Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin – Volume 1 - Seventy-Five stories representing nearly a year of irreverent writing, on such various themes as Polar Bears, Motorcycling, Lego, Physical Injuries to Myself, and The Paranormal (woOoOOOooOo)

The Pangolin Yodels – Volume 2 - Still a number of frankly idiotic stories, including the one where he sets an angry goose on a famous sporting personality. But on the whole, it's all a little more considered.

The Collected Children’s Pangolin Primer – a collection of the previous two books but with a lot of the more ‘unclean’ references removed – I think there is still one usage of the word ‘bugger’, but used as an expletive, not a verb.

‘Buy’ them (for free), have them delivered to you almost instantly via the aether (also free), laugh yourself into some kind of debilitating aneurysm or embarrassing moistness episode, then leave a glowing review on Amazon that will make you feel like some kind of Warren Buffettesque philanthropist.

Total cost = Not a farthing – Enjoy them please, tell your family… Addict your friends… You never know, there might even be another Pangolin book in the offing!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?