One small para-diddle for a man…

OK, so a thing happened. I was entrapped in a chain of events that would probably have rendered a lesser man allergic to freeze-dried food for the rest of his natural life.  But it was good – I’m probably over-reacting… I mean I interact with famous people quite regularly on Twitter and sometimes on Facebook, and even less often face to face, what with the various restraining orders and suchlike… But this was something different… Anyway – It happened like this, and you’ll have to pay attention.

I listen to BBC Radio 2 almost every morning on my drive to work… I’m sat in the car for about 90 minutes between 07:15 and 08:45, listening to Chris Evans and his team bang on about stuff… I mean I turn over whenever the sports reports come on obviously, because sports are totally not my bag – But for the most part, you could certainly class me as a listener.

Yesterday (Here’s where is starts get all self-referential and cyclic, so ecoutez-la attentivement.) They played a song from back in the days of my youth, ‘Senses working Overtime’ by the band XTC – Now, this was originally released back in 1982, when I was fourteen. (OK, I’ll give you a hint here, use that information to work out my year of birth… I was 14 in 1982) and it’s great, you should give it a listen, it’s full of angst and 12-string guitars, you’ll love it... I know what kind of stuff you like – Trust me.

So, I got into work and searched for the track on YouTube (Other streaming sites are available) so that I may listen to it whilst reading my emails.  I found the song pretty easily, but also found a cover-version by one of my favourite bands of the time… Marillion.  Now, Marillion had provided the soundtrack of my own personal 80s journey… And I’d never really heard them play a cover before (Unless you count 1983’s Margaret, which is sort of a cover of the traditional “The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond” but with a modern twist) – Anywho, in the late 80’s the lead singer, Derek ‘Fish’ Dick left due to stress and management pressure.  In my opinion at the time, as a petulant teenager, and still today, as a petulant adult, that signalled the band’s demise. A lot of people deny this, but then a lot of people voted for Trump. (As it turned out… I may have been wrong)

The cover of ‘Senses working Overtime’ was by post-Fish Marillion, when the band was fronted by Steve Hogarth… whom I’d never heard of, and I still think looks a bit like a cross between Barry Humphries and Michael Hutchence – If I’m being honest I thought it was quite good, and went in search of other covers by the band.  I found several and posted them on Facebook one after the other.  Some were better than others, as you would expect – But the defining part of all the covers, and of Marillion in total, was the guitaring of Steve Rothery, who had been one of the founding members of the band, and he’s not too bad as hairy plank-spankers go.

Now, I’ve got a mate called Nathan, who I’ve mentioned on several occasions before… And amongst all of his other odd hobbies, is his seeming need to collect drummers as friends on Facebook – So it wasn’t long before he said to me, “Hey Dandy, let me introduce you to my mate Leon Parr, the sometimes drummer with Marillion and The Steve Rothery Band – Late of Mosque and he knows the Verve.”  Well, on any normal day, this would have exploded my kittens, but I played it cool – We had a nice chat and he said that he might be touring next year, and they’d probably end up playing some of the ‘Fish’ era Marillion stuff, so I should probably try and get hold of some tickets for that.

Now, great story right? – Famous people – Professional musicians… Talking to a member of a band whose lyrics I can remember word-for-word despite it being thirty years ago that I last bought an album (it was on vinyl too)

But no, that’s not where it ends… A new person started to comment on my post, a friend of Leon the drummer… He was hugely knowledgeable about Marillion and was seemingly at a lot, if not all, of the venues when these covers were being performed.  I didn’t know the gentleman in question but a very quick google search showed that he was a massive Marillion fan and the sometime live guitarist with ‘Edison’s Children’ the band that Marillion’s bassist, Pete Trewavas formed in 2011.

His name was Eric ‘Rick’ Armstrong who oddly knows another Facebook friend of mine, Simon Kregar Jr. - Who lives in the US and paints space-related paintings. He strikes me as a pretty nice guy who’s used to people being starstruck around him. His Dad’s name was Neil, and when I was a mere 1 year old – Neil Armstrong did a pretty cool thing that I really shouldn’t have to explain to you (Unless you didn’t work out that I was born in 1968)

Rick Armstrong talked to me on Facebook… Would any of you like to touch me? There will, of course, be a small charge - Which I may give to some charity or other.

No, it's... Oh forget it!

I had a day off yesterday, trying to use up my outstanding leave before the end of the year and all that.  Being the kind and altruistic person that I am, I offered to take my dear old Father into town so that he could start 'sorting out his affairs'

The particular affair in question yesterday was a bank account, in his name, that was money that he's been putting aside for the Mini-Dandy.  He wanted it transferred into myself and Mrs. Dandy's names, so that we could administer it when he was no longer around.  So we had to go to the bank with him and sign some forms.

Upon entering the bank, he spied the (not particularly lengthy) queue and obviously thought 'Bugger that for a lark, that woman over there at that desk, surrounded by stacks of paperwork doesn't look like she's doing anything.  I'll bet she can help.'  So he wandered over and asked the poor lady whether she was free?  She looked at him, the piles of paperwork and sighed, 'Yeah, sure, why not...' And indicated that he should take a seat.

He explained the situation to her and then looked at her expectantly.

Bank Lady: 'Erm, no,  I'm afraid we can't do that.  you'd have to close the account and re-open it in joint names.'
My Dad: 'But I was told that I could just fill in some forms and...'
BL: 'Yes, it will just mean filling in...'
MD: 'But you said I had to close the account.'
BL: 'Technically, you would, but we wouldn't actually give you the money and then you'd have to give it back to us, it'd all happen in here.' She tapped the monitor.
MD: 'I don't want to close my account, why do I need to close the account?'
BL: 'You're only allowed two names on each account sir.'
MD: 'Well, that doesn't seem right...' It was at this point that he reached across the desk, grabbed the monitor, turned it towards himself and started to say thinks like, 'I'm sure it should be in one of these menus somewhere.'

Now, I'm not sure about your local branch, but it seems that this one doesn't take kindly to their customers trying to access their banking systems, so the atmosphere went decidedly frosty from then on.

BL: 'If you would like us just to put an additional name on the account, we could do that without closing it, if that would be easier.'
MD: 'Would it be?'
BL: 'Would it be what?'
MD: 'Easier?'
BL: 'Well it's just a case of filling in this form.'
MD: 'But you said closing the account and re-opening it was just filling in a form, so I fail to see how this is easier exactly?'

A vein in the side of her head started to twitch, so I stepped in and said, 'Why not just add Mrs Dandy to the account, that'll make things easier won't it? Also, try to keep your fingers away from the nice lady's computer, I don't want to spend the rest of the week in a jail cell.'

He looked at me, then looked at the nice bank lady, resplendent in the early stages of a nervous breakdown and asked 'Can we do that? It would make things a lot easier I think.'

If you've never seen anyone trying to take their own life with a stapler, drop me a line, I'll send you the video.

We decided after that, that we should probably get some food.  Now, like food-courts all over the world, there were many different kinds of food on display.  Although i tend to go for either the curry or the chinese food.  I asked my dear, dear Father what he wanted, he had a look around the different vendors and replied, 'I don't know, what have they got?'
Me: 'There's Subway, fish and chips, pasta, baked potato, KFC, Greek, Burger King, curry, chinese food or a noodle bar.'
MD: 'What's a noodle bar?'
Me: 'It's a bar... where they sell noodles...'
MD: 'So, foreign muck then?'
Me: 'I suppose so, yes.'

I should probably explain, despite my Father flying all over the world with the RAF, he still maintains that there are only two types of food:  Things that he eats every day, and foreign muck, if you were to draw a Venn Diagram of his dietary habits, it would be two circles, about a foot apart.

MD: 'So, what are you having?'
Me: 'I'm having the Chicken Saag.' And I pointed towards the curry stall
MD: 'Is that stuff spicy?'
Me: 'Are you asking me if the curry spicy?'
MD: 'Yes, is the curry spicy?'
Me: 'Yes, traditionally, curry is spicy... You wouldn't like it.'
MD: 'Do they do anything that's not spicy?'
Me: 'Not really, no... They do rice I suppose, that's not hugely spicy.'
MD: 'No, I'll just go and get myself a burger.'

So, I got curry with the wife (and her Mother, who paid, so it was, like, all gravy and shizzle.) and then went and sat down.  My Father was there, eating fish and chips.

Me: 'I thought you wanted a burger.'
MD: 'I felt like a quarter-pounder with cheese and bacon.'
Me: 'And?'
MD: 'It's a Burger King.'

I thought, for like, a microsecond about doing the whole Vincent Vega 'Royale with cheese' shtick, but I decided against it.

Me: 'Oh, right... They just call them Bacon Double Cheeseburgers there I think.'

He looked dejectedly at his fish and chips.

MD: 'Really? Oh...'
Me: 'Still, that fish looks nice!'
MD: 'It's OK.'

We sat and ate our meals in silence for a while, then he piped up again and pointed at my curry.

MD: 'So, that's spicy then?'
Me: 'My curry? Yeah, fairly spicy.'
MD: 'Why is it green?'
Me: 'It's a Chicken Saag, Saag is the name for a curry made with leaves... This is spinach.'

He made that 'Rather you than me' eyebrow raising thing and drank his coffee, then lifted up the box that his fish and chips came in.

MD: You can take this for your dog, I'm full.'
Me: 'OK, thanks.' - I had no intention af carrying fish scraps around for the rest of the day.
MD: 'You get a side-salad with your curry then?' and pointed at a small polystyrene tray of wilted lettuce.
Me: 'I guess, can't say that I've ever eaten it though.'
MD: 'It'd make a good sandwich.'
Me: 'What?'
MD: 'The salad, it'd make a good sandwich, with some ham or something.'
Me: 'Did you want my salad to take home?'
MD: 'Well, a sandwich is another meal, and you got the salad for free. You don't want to waste it.'  He turned to Mrs Dandy. 'Do you have anything I could put it in to take home?'
My Wife: 'Erm, no, not really.'
MD: 'Oh... Such a waste.' And he actually tutted.

So, a morning's shopping was completely re-arranged in its bags, a small paper bag was found and the side-salad was dumped reverentially into it.

We finished the food and I went to clear the table.  When I picked up the box of fish leftovers, it seemed very heavy - I opened it up and found that it was full of chips, and there was a single bite out of the fish.

Yeah... Leaving a tray of wilted lettuce is a real waste Dad... There are starving kids in Biafra dude!

Ask The Dandy (Fish)

Right, we're having a bit of a format change today, let me know what you think.

We've had a letter at Dandy Towers... Well, I say letter, it wasn't a letter, obviously, this is the twenty-first century.  I mean, no-one sends letters any more... It was a bunch of electrons, sent over the aether via the medium of social networking.  And it read thusly:

Nicki who lives in an Oak Tree somewhere in Greater Manchestershire asks...

Dear Mr Dandy,

Please can you cast your mind onto fish... Sole look depressed, Angler Fish, what are they all about?? It's been buzzing round my head now and I think it's a subject that needs addressing.
Thank you

Yours sincerely

Nicki
(Aged forty mumble)

-oOo-

Well, what a great question... What are fish all about?

First of all, let's define fish.  A fish is a thing, measuring anywhere from less than an inch up to about seventy feet long or something.  They exclusively breathe the oxygen that is dissolved in water through gills - which are a sort of inside-out lung affairs inside the fish's head, where any right-minded animal would keep its ears.  Through sheer laziness they have allowed their webbed hands and feet to devolve into fins, which although, by some happy accident allows them to 'swim' in the 'water', makes them completely rubbish at climbing stairs.

There are of course exceptions to the gill thing, it seems that there are many kinds of fish that have the audacity to have lungs.  These are called lung-fish, which just goes to show that on the evolutionary ladder, 'growing lungs' comes a long way before 'being able to think of an interesting name for yourself'  Many types of lung-fish also have rudimentary legs, presumably to make up for the stair climbing inadequacies of their less evolved brethren.  But nobody really knows the answer to that if they're being honest.

Another thing that characterises fish is that they all have scales, except the ones that don't.  Blennies (or to give them their Latin name, Blennioidei - I'm not going to give you every fish I mention's Latin name, I just thought that one was great...) Have skin, covered in slime instead - A bit like Eels and Hagfish.

Ooh-ooh.. Hagfish, they're great too, not only do they have slime-producing skin, but they've also only gone and lost their backbones... Their skeleton is pretty much the top half of the skull and some bits of cartilage... They have no discernible brain and three hearts - Their teeth are on their tongues, not in their jaws... BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE JAWS!

And don't get me started on sharks, their skin is made of teeth... No, seriously, it is, they're called Dermal Denticles - Which, to me, sounds like a crappy alien in a badly written sci-fi story.  They're just an extension of the, like, bajillion rows of teeth that a shark has. Can you imagine the design meeting for that one?

-oOo-

Shark God (SG): So, I thought i's go with covering this Mo-Fo in a layer of tiny teeth, innit?

Fish Project Manager (FPM): Teeth?  Like... Teeth? Not scales, or skin, or snot?  Teeth?

SG: Yeah Man, scales has been done to death, we need somefink new, yah get me?

FPM: But wouldn't they sort of, fall out?  Teeth do that don't they? Wouldn't it leave a hole?

SG:  Nah mate, the next one in line would take it's place.  Move up into dah breach an' t'ing.

FPM: Just that one? Not the whole row surely, how would that work?

SG: [Thinks] Now that you come to mention it Brah, I's not entirely sure, I'll get that guy what did da Wombat to take a look... Safe!

FPM: Wombat God? You know that he made their poop cubic right?  You're going to him for design hints?

SG:  Ha! Yeah Bruv, square poop is da shiznit! They makes some wikkid sounds when you get a few together, all da howlin' an' da strainin' and such [Makes flicking noises by moving his hand up and down quite briskly]

FPM: Ok, give it a go and let us know how it goes.  Has to be better than those slimy things with the teeth on their tongues.  Hey! Wasn't that your idea too?

SG: [Grins and gives a thumbs-up] Aiii!

-oOo-

But, our askee had a couple of specific points.  Number one was 'Sole look depressed'.  Well, I guess they would.  The whole flatfish thing is a bit peculiar, imagine you're a baby sole, just hatched and full of the joys of the ocean. At this point, you're not a flatfish, you're a normal uppey-downey fish with fins on the top and a tail that points uppey and downey, not leftey and rightey like those nasty Dolphins.  They you look at your Mum.

She's lying there, on her side, panting.  OK, so maybe the stress of being a new mother has taken it out of her a bit, so you swim over and hold out your lucky fin to tell her that everything's going to be OK, and she should just have a bit of a rest whilst.... Oh My Neptune! both of her eyes are on the same side of her head! - She must have been so tired after the spawning that she became unconscious and hit the seabed so hard that it knocked her left eye onto the right side of her head... You instantly brand yourself a bad child until you start to mature... And your left eye starts to move... Slowly... onto the right hand side of your head and you start to favour your left-hand side, which goes white.  You realise that it wasn't your fault - You're finally free from guilt... Huzzah!  Then you happen to catch your reflection in a submarine porthole, and see that you're ugly...

So terribly ugly.

And tasty, deliciously tasty

Yes, I'd say that that would make me depressed.  I'll give you that one.

-oOo-

And Angler Fish... They're pretty odd too.  Let's see what the average man in the street knows about them.

• They're dog-ugly
• They live in the dark
• Some of them light up
• They have a fishing rod jammed into their forehead
• The males are tiny compared to the females

Well, yeah, that sounds about right but there are some even stranger things about them.  The fishing rod type lure thing is actually part of their dorsal fin which has done a bit of lone migrating to the top of their heads, leaving the rest of its dorsal finny buddies on the fish's back as is normal.

And you know how, if you're needy, you might say to someone 'I literally can't live without you'?  Well, in the case of certain male Angler Fish this is true.  Many of them are born without a fully formed gut, or even jaws, so they can only be fed by the female, who may be up to hundreds of times bigger than they are.

But she doesn't do that wonderful chewing and spitting out thing that lots of other animals do... Anglers are the hipsters of the seabed, and that would be too mainstream.  For the male Angler Fish, there is only one choice - To bond with the female by clamping onto her soft underbelly and waiting for her skin to absorb him whilst drinking her bodily fluids.

Yeah... Ewww right?

Well, that's not the end of it, over time, he almost completely disappears... Except for his testicles which stay firmly attached to the little bump that remains and fully functional.  So every time Mrs Angler Fish decides to pop out some tiddlers,  she can fertilize them herself... Kinda.

Oh, and another thing?  Ever had Monkfish Tails in a posh restaurant?  That's Angler Fish butt you're eating right there...

-oOo-

To recap:

Fish are small or huge, breathe air or water, covered in scales, skin, slime or teeth, have fins or legs, lay eggs or give birth to live young, eat other fish, plants, microscopic creatures or people and generally float about in the sea without a care in the world like a fat bloke from Halifax on Wakes Week...

Except when they're flying, or walking, or making a little mud igloo for themselves to survive an arid winter, or swimming up a stream of urine to lodge themselves in the end of your penis with their spiky fins.

Best thing to do, in my opinion, is to steer well clear.  A lot of them are bitey, even more are poisonous, those that aren't are slimy or will try to kill you even after you've eaten them by lodging their tiny bones in you epiglottis.