I must stop using the phrase Super-Hero, as we established a few weeks ago, my made-up superpower - The ability to stop time - can only be used for evil, at least, as far as I can think of things to do with it.
Technically, I'm a Super-Villain, and as my Daughter reminded me, Villains get the best clothes.
So the time is here, pull up a bat-winged chair, that one over there upholstered in the suspiciously beige leather with the faint tattoos on it should still be warm, top up your skull shaped goblet with 'Claret' and I'll tell you the story of the origin of The Chimping Dandy.
Our story begins in the small West-Midlands hamlet of Birmingham, in a bar - as all the best stories do, I mean, I've yet to be enthralled by a story that begins 'The best thing about where we were was that there was free beetroot'. There were a number of us, and we were approaching that stage of drunken-ness just before the 'Hold my beer and watch this' casualty-fest.
It was a stag night, so it wasn't going to end well, we had no illusions about that - In fact, one of the guests was the bride to be's ex-husband - And was, after a number of drinks 'Loaded for bear'. The sensible thing to have done at this point would have been to go somewhere and get a meal, so that we could sit down for a while, get our breath back, sober up slightly, and line our stomachs with unfeasibly spicey food. What we actually did was to find another bar, and have another drink. We repeated this downwards spiral a number of times up (and then back down) Broad Street.
Then someone uttered the magic question 'is it Naked Lady Time?' In fairness, this had always been a planned part of the evening, to the point where the groom to be, had been stitched up like a kipper by his fiancee in that she had pre-arranged for him to be man-handled (well, woman-handled) by a selection of young(ish) ladies on the stage, on a throne, with shaving cream.
After a final beer, we adjourned to either The Rocket Club, or Legs Eleven - I forget which, and for the purposes of this story, it matters not - Both of them are establishments where semi-pulchritudinous ladies will remove 95% of their clothes for a small monetary consideration. For those who have never been to one of these establishments (or those that have told their partners this at least) I will describe the scene. The main area was a large, darkened room, decorated in early 'Poundshop Transvestite Christmas'. There was a central stage area, populated by a single chair, complete with handcuffs. This in turn was surrounded by a selection of booths with banquette seating for ten or so people each.
There were three types of people in the room:
Punters - Men (almost exclusively) who had come to prove their superiority over women by remaining clothed whilst the women got naked.
Strippers - Girls who had come to prove their superiority over men, by charging them £10 to watch them get slowly undressed over a three minute period.
Security - Huge (and I can't state that enough) gentlemen, usually of afro-carribean descent, who's aim in life was simply to enforce the rule that the punters and the strippers never got closer than 2" away from each other.
Like so many of my stories, some description of the clothing worn by the group may assist in your suspension of disbelief. The brief had been 'Smart to smart-casual' mainly to enable us to enter any of the myriad drinking establishments with a minimum of fuss. I had bought a new suit for the occasion, and it was silver - Now, I don't mean that it was shiney silk, at the time I was neither that rich, nor mental enough to believe a silk suit would survive the evening, no - it was made of finest rayon/polyester mix, jaquard printed to look like the sort of pattern you see under a leaky car on a rainy day. Yes, it was about 300% more vulgar than you're currently thinking that it was.
Anyway, the evening progressed much as you would expect, every few minutes a young lady would wander into our booth and say 'Dance?' Now, nine times out of ten, one of the other guys would say 'Yes' and gyrating would ensue. I am not saying that I didn't say yes myself because I was some kind of saint, or that I felt guilty to be looking at another naked lady whilst I had a wife waiting for me at home, it was purely because watching the guy next to me get a dance was free.
Now, this seemingly hadn't gone un-noticed by some members of staff and I was approached by what I can only assume, was one of the 'senior' girls - I'd seen a couple of the other girls talking to her and pointing at our group and she had seemed to have been offering advice to them.
"Hello," she said and sat down next to me.
"Hey!" I replied, in what I hoped was an off-hand, but inoffensive way.
"Don't we have anyone you like the look of?"
"Ah!, no, I see, Maybe later, I'm still making notes."
"Notes?"
I looked around furtively, hushed my voice and said, "Look, don't tell anyone, but we're doing research for a new show on Bravo" (For those unaware, Bravo was a channel that produced 'lads' programming - it's now mutated into Dave, which just shows Top Gear repeats)
"A new show? What's it about?"
"Well, we're going to visit various strip clubs around the country, but we're going to be filming an anchor segment from one place, like a base, every week, we're still trying to decide where to use"
"Oh, I did wonder." She replied, looking me up and down.
"What did you wonder?"
"Well, we don't get many people in here dressed like that - We figured that you were 'somebody', but none of the girls recognised you. Would you be filming the girls too?"
"Well, that would be up to the management, obviously, but I was wanting to include a couple in the title sequence, we'd have to see how it went. We'd have to audition obviously"
The young lady then stood up, and without monetary assistance, proceeded to audition, for two songs. She then sat down, waved at one of the security staff and mouthed the words 'On my break' to him. He nodded with the slow surety of a Norwegian glacier and continued scanning the room for distance infractions - A drink appeared on the table in front of her, and seeing my rasied eyebrows she said;
"Don't worry, it's already paid for. You must have seen some stuff"
"Sorry?"
"Doing programs like that, is it all the same kind of 'adult' shows?"
"Yeah, mainly... Swinging, Dogging, Chimping, that kind of thing."
"Chimping? I've never heard of that. Do I want to know?"
I leaned in close, keeping the regulation 2" distance of course, and explained it to her. The look of revulsion on her face started a change in me at the subatomic level, I could feel my time-bending abilities throbbing into life, I felt empowered, and I knew that things would never be the same again.
By proving to a jaded stripper, that there were still things in this world that could disgust even her, I had become...
The Chimping Dandy!
Monday, 24 December 2012
Friday, 21 December 2012
Dzit Dit Gaii
Imagine you're going on holiday, somewhere nice and warm, Barbados or Guatamala or somewhere like that - Somewhere you need to fly to though. You buy your tickets and pack your pants and your towel, because that's all you really need in places like that, right?
Your departure date comes around, the taxi arrives and you're whisked to the airport. Upon arrival, you are calmed by soothing music, the happy smiling faces of other travellers and the carefully thought out decoration of the terminal itself. Gradiose pictures and statuary with a global, geographical theme perhaps? Aircraft through the ages? Famous people with aviation backgrounds? All things that you're quite within your rights to expect...
Not if you fly out of Denver International you aren't - On initial arrival at the airport, you are confronted by a 30' high statue of a rearing horse with glowing red eyes, the locals have entered several petitions to have it taken down, siting that it is evil - In fact, the statue actually killed it's own sculptor as it fell on him whilst it was being completed!
If you manage to make your way inside with your wits intact, passing by two gargoyles bursting out of suitcases, you come across the dedication plaque, or capstone from when the building was completed. Apart from the large, Masonic Square and Compasses in the middle, which is enough to set the consiracy nuts off all on its own (Doesn't bother me, some of the nicest people I know are Masons) it houses a time-capsule to be opened in 2094 and it has a raised dais, with a vague resemblance to a keyboard that houses a repeat of the Masonic symbol and a braille translation of the inscription. There are them that say if you press the symbols in the correct order, the door to the secret underground bunker will open.. (Did you read that in a hushed pirate voice? - You should, ir sounds much better)
There are inscriptions in the floor, including the chemical symbols for gold and silver on the side of a mine cart and the Navajo phrase 'Dzit Dit Gaii' which means 'The Mountain that is White' - The inscription 'Mt Blanca' is also repeated in various places around the terminal - A very important place in Knights Templar mythology.
But the strangest thing you'll see, in my opinion at least, are the murals - I'm not going to post them here, because they're all over the net, but I will describe a couple to you. Try to keep in mind that we're in a public space, at an international airport, in the mainland USA, not a despot's palace in an out of the way corner of what used to be the USSR or a terrorist based republic in the Middle East.
There's one that depicts a giant nazi-esque figure, wearing a gas-mask and great-coat, with a giant sword spearing the dove of peace. He's surrounded by a slew of greiving mothers holding dead babies, in the bottom corner is a poem, written by a 16 year old child who died in Auschwitz... Just what you want to see before you catch your flight to Eastern Europe. There's one where the main feature is a scene of a group mourning three people in open caskets, surrounded by extinct or nearly extinct animals whilst the rainforest burns in the background - A poigniant image, certainly - But would you display it at an airport? Yet another shows the children of the world coming together, some of them carrying a selection of swords wrapped in the flags of warring states including the Palestinian & Israeli, Indian & Pakistani and British & Irish amongst several others, standing on a fallen statue of the unidentified gas-masked villain. Strangely, some parts of the murals have been recently painted over at the request of customers...
Weird, I think you'll agree - There are other odd things about the place, for instance, from the air it bears a close resemblance to a swastika. It was paid for mainly by a private investor, to the tune of some $5 Billion. It's alleged that five pentagonal structures were built, twelve stories high and then buried and used as foundations, rather than demolished as they were not to specification. It has triple-redundant water & power systems and a ventilation systems that stretches for miles outside the airport environs. It seems to have a higher incidence of windscreen and fuselage cracks than any other airport, this has been speculated to be due to high (or possibly low) frequency pulses emanating from below the airport itself.
Of course there are more than likely perfectly reasonable explanations for all of the above, the main one being that it's posted on the Internet it's probably tosh. But do a bit of research for yourself, immerse yourself in the world of the tin-foil hat wearing brigade, see what you can find - It might keep you busy over Christmas.
Your departure date comes around, the taxi arrives and you're whisked to the airport. Upon arrival, you are calmed by soothing music, the happy smiling faces of other travellers and the carefully thought out decoration of the terminal itself. Gradiose pictures and statuary with a global, geographical theme perhaps? Aircraft through the ages? Famous people with aviation backgrounds? All things that you're quite within your rights to expect...
Not if you fly out of Denver International you aren't - On initial arrival at the airport, you are confronted by a 30' high statue of a rearing horse with glowing red eyes, the locals have entered several petitions to have it taken down, siting that it is evil - In fact, the statue actually killed it's own sculptor as it fell on him whilst it was being completed!
If you manage to make your way inside with your wits intact, passing by two gargoyles bursting out of suitcases, you come across the dedication plaque, or capstone from when the building was completed. Apart from the large, Masonic Square and Compasses in the middle, which is enough to set the consiracy nuts off all on its own (Doesn't bother me, some of the nicest people I know are Masons) it houses a time-capsule to be opened in 2094 and it has a raised dais, with a vague resemblance to a keyboard that houses a repeat of the Masonic symbol and a braille translation of the inscription. There are them that say if you press the symbols in the correct order, the door to the secret underground bunker will open.. (Did you read that in a hushed pirate voice? - You should, ir sounds much better)
There are inscriptions in the floor, including the chemical symbols for gold and silver on the side of a mine cart and the Navajo phrase 'Dzit Dit Gaii' which means 'The Mountain that is White' - The inscription 'Mt Blanca' is also repeated in various places around the terminal - A very important place in Knights Templar mythology.
But the strangest thing you'll see, in my opinion at least, are the murals - I'm not going to post them here, because they're all over the net, but I will describe a couple to you. Try to keep in mind that we're in a public space, at an international airport, in the mainland USA, not a despot's palace in an out of the way corner of what used to be the USSR or a terrorist based republic in the Middle East.
There's one that depicts a giant nazi-esque figure, wearing a gas-mask and great-coat, with a giant sword spearing the dove of peace. He's surrounded by a slew of greiving mothers holding dead babies, in the bottom corner is a poem, written by a 16 year old child who died in Auschwitz... Just what you want to see before you catch your flight to Eastern Europe. There's one where the main feature is a scene of a group mourning three people in open caskets, surrounded by extinct or nearly extinct animals whilst the rainforest burns in the background - A poigniant image, certainly - But would you display it at an airport? Yet another shows the children of the world coming together, some of them carrying a selection of swords wrapped in the flags of warring states including the Palestinian & Israeli, Indian & Pakistani and British & Irish amongst several others, standing on a fallen statue of the unidentified gas-masked villain. Strangely, some parts of the murals have been recently painted over at the request of customers...
Weird, I think you'll agree - There are other odd things about the place, for instance, from the air it bears a close resemblance to a swastika. It was paid for mainly by a private investor, to the tune of some $5 Billion. It's alleged that five pentagonal structures were built, twelve stories high and then buried and used as foundations, rather than demolished as they were not to specification. It has triple-redundant water & power systems and a ventilation systems that stretches for miles outside the airport environs. It seems to have a higher incidence of windscreen and fuselage cracks than any other airport, this has been speculated to be due to high (or possibly low) frequency pulses emanating from below the airport itself.
Of course there are more than likely perfectly reasonable explanations for all of the above, the main one being that it's posted on the Internet it's probably tosh. But do a bit of research for yourself, immerse yourself in the world of the tin-foil hat wearing brigade, see what you can find - It might keep you busy over Christmas.
Thursday, 20 December 2012
But I feel fine!
Gods-Dammit! I should have kept the Nickleback 'If today was your last day' post until today shouldn't I?
Anywho, it seems that tomorrow is the end of the World, and if it means I don't have to travel the complete length of the M42 at 10mph again, I welcome it with open arms. I got to thinking, whilst I was sat in traffic, for two hours, this morning... What form will Armageddon take?
Hollywood has given us several different possibilities - Films with deeply original names like '2012' and 'Armageddon' have covered the natural disaster angle quite extensively - We've had ELE asteroid impacts, floods, ice-ages, solar prominences & alien invasions - All the big bang endings that can be depicted with massive special CGI effects and Dolby / THX surround sound.
I'm convinced that the end will come tomorrow with a whimper, rather than a bang. The end will be gradual - I mean it'll still be fairly quick, we've got to cram it into the 24 hours after all, but it won't be all 'Ah! what's that?' Bang! *Dead*.
Below I list some possibilities that I think have a very real chance of ending the world:
The magnetic North and South poles will swap places - This will render all GPS devices non-functional causing apocaplyptic car-crashes all over the planet - The only people to survive will be iPhone 5 owners who suddenly find that AppleMaps is now correct - Unfortunately a significant proportion of these people have under developed genitals, and the remainder of the human race will slowly die out.
There will be a massive explosion of radiation from the sun which will grow ducks to the size of horses and shrink horses to the size of ducks. This will, at a stroke, wipe out global bread reserves as flocks of giant mallards decend on supermarkets and bakeries and also destroy 90% of the agrarian economies around the world as it suddenly takes 200 horses to pull a plough. It will also cause the almost instantaneous fouling of our inland fresh water supplies - I mean, ducks are pretty filthy animals to start with...
The Moon will turn out to be the egg of a giant, mutant, Star-Goat (As I have always secretly suspected) and planet earth will be grazed to the mantle whilst the uncontrollable tides boil the seas away into space.
The amount of IT/technological waste that companies have been stockpiling due to people not really understanding the WEEE regulations will achieve sentience, we will be subjugated and decimated by millions of suddenly self-aware DVD players that have gotten tired of having shiny discs inserted into them and want to know how we like it when they do it to us.
The hidden back-masking embedded in the REM track 'It's the End of the World as we know it' will kick in as it is played incessantly by radio stations around the world. This will turn us all into mindless zombies who... Oh.. I don't know... Shave our heads, look painfully thin and eat each other's brains, or something.
But you don't need me to tell you, after all, most of you are incredibly intelligent, or you wouldn't be reading this Blog, that the chances are we're all still going to be here on Saturday morning - I don't mean here, at my desk, in Coventry - I mean generally where all of you are now, within a few miles at least.
Unless of course, there was just some massive mix up in translation... Where some aged scientist sat in a dusty office somewhere thought the Mayan Calendar said, 'The chain will end by a huge Comet on 21/12/12' and it actually said 'Huge electrical chain Comet will cease trading on 21/12/12' - If you take into account Gregorian shift and leap years and stuff - They were bang-on.
Just as likely in fairness...
Anywho, it seems that tomorrow is the end of the World, and if it means I don't have to travel the complete length of the M42 at 10mph again, I welcome it with open arms. I got to thinking, whilst I was sat in traffic, for two hours, this morning... What form will Armageddon take?
Hollywood has given us several different possibilities - Films with deeply original names like '2012' and 'Armageddon' have covered the natural disaster angle quite extensively - We've had ELE asteroid impacts, floods, ice-ages, solar prominences & alien invasions - All the big bang endings that can be depicted with massive special CGI effects and Dolby / THX surround sound.
I'm convinced that the end will come tomorrow with a whimper, rather than a bang. The end will be gradual - I mean it'll still be fairly quick, we've got to cram it into the 24 hours after all, but it won't be all 'Ah! what's that?' Bang! *Dead*.
Below I list some possibilities that I think have a very real chance of ending the world:
The magnetic North and South poles will swap places - This will render all GPS devices non-functional causing apocaplyptic car-crashes all over the planet - The only people to survive will be iPhone 5 owners who suddenly find that AppleMaps is now correct - Unfortunately a significant proportion of these people have under developed genitals, and the remainder of the human race will slowly die out.
There will be a massive explosion of radiation from the sun which will grow ducks to the size of horses and shrink horses to the size of ducks. This will, at a stroke, wipe out global bread reserves as flocks of giant mallards decend on supermarkets and bakeries and also destroy 90% of the agrarian economies around the world as it suddenly takes 200 horses to pull a plough. It will also cause the almost instantaneous fouling of our inland fresh water supplies - I mean, ducks are pretty filthy animals to start with...
The Moon will turn out to be the egg of a giant, mutant, Star-Goat (As I have always secretly suspected) and planet earth will be grazed to the mantle whilst the uncontrollable tides boil the seas away into space.
The amount of IT/technological waste that companies have been stockpiling due to people not really understanding the WEEE regulations will achieve sentience, we will be subjugated and decimated by millions of suddenly self-aware DVD players that have gotten tired of having shiny discs inserted into them and want to know how we like it when they do it to us.
The hidden back-masking embedded in the REM track 'It's the End of the World as we know it' will kick in as it is played incessantly by radio stations around the world. This will turn us all into mindless zombies who... Oh.. I don't know... Shave our heads, look painfully thin and eat each other's brains, or something.
But you don't need me to tell you, after all, most of you are incredibly intelligent, or you wouldn't be reading this Blog, that the chances are we're all still going to be here on Saturday morning - I don't mean here, at my desk, in Coventry - I mean generally where all of you are now, within a few miles at least.
Unless of course, there was just some massive mix up in translation... Where some aged scientist sat in a dusty office somewhere thought the Mayan Calendar said, 'The chain will end by a huge Comet on 21/12/12' and it actually said 'Huge electrical chain Comet will cease trading on 21/12/12' - If you take into account Gregorian shift and leap years and stuff - They were bang-on.
Just as likely in fairness...
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Tell Merrill to Swing Away
Has anyone got a film that effects them emotionally?
I don't mean 'I cried at the end of <Insert any film except Twilight>'
I mean from when you hear that it's on, through watching the opening titles and right up until the 'No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture, soundtrack available on Geffen Records' message, your heart would pound and you would have feelings of excitement / fear / happiness / dread?
I would like to admit that have an unreasonable fear of the 2002 Mel Gibson vehicle - Signs, by M Night Shawaddywaddy. I don't mean I don't like to watch it, I watch it whenever it's on - It's just that I watch it from behind the sofa, with a pillow in front of my face and my fingers in my ears. And for a great portion of the film I'm actually looking at the fireplace, just underneath the TV rather than at the TV itself.
For those of you who havent seen it, it's about a Reverend, played by Aussie Mel, who loses his wife in a particularly grizzly car accident, this proves to him that God doesn't exist and he loses his faith.
(Ah, yeah, I'm going to assume that as the film's ten years old, if you were going to see it you would have done so already - So, as my fictional friend Melody Pond might say, beware *SPOILERS*)
He lives with his son (Asthmatic), his daughter (Who can't finish a whole glass of water due to some OCD-like deviancy) and his brother (Mad, but good at Baseball) on a farm in Pennsylvania. Where they suddenly start finding crop circles. Queue alien invasion, flashbacks, tinfoil hats, Cameo by the Writer/Director (M Night Shebopaloola), fingers being cut off, messages from beyond the grave and the eventual realisation that having Asthma, OCD and being a bit mad, but good at baseball, might one day save your life, and that living with people like that can restore your faith.
Nothing there that's particularly scarey, It's no Hostel, certainly. And I don't have these feelings about any of M Night Shamalamading-dong's other films, The Sixth Sense had some 'Made me jump' moments, I'll freely admit, and Mrs Dandy worked out the twist about ten minutes into the film, as she will gleefully tell anyone who will stand still long enough. Unbreakable was, erm... Well... a bit rubbbish in fairness, even with SLJ being a major character. The Village was OK, and I didn't see the twist coming in that one either. Devil was fairly good in a 'stuck in an elavator' kinda way. And The Happening wasn't a bad flick, all considered, a decent premise and no feel-good ending - which is strange for a US made film.
Someone once suggested it was the Baby Monitor bit, where it was discovered that you could hear the aliens talking to each other with clicks and whistles using a baby monitor, but only if they were quite close. Or that it was the scene where they catch an alien on video from a kids birthday party, and it just goes about its business, not caring that it had been spotted. I understand that quite a lot of people don't like that bit.
Maybe it was the way it was depicted realistically, the whole 'This could quite easily happen' vibe you get, or I get at least. I don't know
All I do know is that it scares the willies out of me, but I really want to watch it now, I wonder if it's on?
I don't mean 'I cried at the end of <Insert any film except Twilight>'
I mean from when you hear that it's on, through watching the opening titles and right up until the 'No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture, soundtrack available on Geffen Records' message, your heart would pound and you would have feelings of excitement / fear / happiness / dread?
I would like to admit that have an unreasonable fear of the 2002 Mel Gibson vehicle - Signs, by M Night Shawaddywaddy. I don't mean I don't like to watch it, I watch it whenever it's on - It's just that I watch it from behind the sofa, with a pillow in front of my face and my fingers in my ears. And for a great portion of the film I'm actually looking at the fireplace, just underneath the TV rather than at the TV itself.
For those of you who havent seen it, it's about a Reverend, played by Aussie Mel, who loses his wife in a particularly grizzly car accident, this proves to him that God doesn't exist and he loses his faith.
(Ah, yeah, I'm going to assume that as the film's ten years old, if you were going to see it you would have done so already - So, as my fictional friend Melody Pond might say, beware *SPOILERS*)
He lives with his son (Asthmatic), his daughter (Who can't finish a whole glass of water due to some OCD-like deviancy) and his brother (Mad, but good at Baseball) on a farm in Pennsylvania. Where they suddenly start finding crop circles. Queue alien invasion, flashbacks, tinfoil hats, Cameo by the Writer/Director (M Night Shebopaloola), fingers being cut off, messages from beyond the grave and the eventual realisation that having Asthma, OCD and being a bit mad, but good at baseball, might one day save your life, and that living with people like that can restore your faith.
Nothing there that's particularly scarey, It's no Hostel, certainly. And I don't have these feelings about any of M Night Shamalamading-dong's other films, The Sixth Sense had some 'Made me jump' moments, I'll freely admit, and Mrs Dandy worked out the twist about ten minutes into the film, as she will gleefully tell anyone who will stand still long enough. Unbreakable was, erm... Well... a bit rubbbish in fairness, even with SLJ being a major character. The Village was OK, and I didn't see the twist coming in that one either. Devil was fairly good in a 'stuck in an elavator' kinda way. And The Happening wasn't a bad flick, all considered, a decent premise and no feel-good ending - which is strange for a US made film.
Someone once suggested it was the Baby Monitor bit, where it was discovered that you could hear the aliens talking to each other with clicks and whistles using a baby monitor, but only if they were quite close. Or that it was the scene where they catch an alien on video from a kids birthday party, and it just goes about its business, not caring that it had been spotted. I understand that quite a lot of people don't like that bit.
Maybe it was the way it was depicted realistically, the whole 'This could quite easily happen' vibe you get, or I get at least. I don't know
All I do know is that it scares the willies out of me, but I really want to watch it now, I wonder if it's on?
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Whistle, and She'll come to you my Girl
As Christmas has many associated traditions, I thought I'd reel some of them out in a 'Good Gods, what should I drone on about today' Kinda way.
The first one that I would like to have at is the Christmas Ghost Story. In the past, the BBC have done a cracking job of adapting the works of MR James (And others) into stories in the style of those told by the older generation, to the younger generation around open fire when the only lighting was provided by stuttering candles.
I present to you my own family Christmas Ghost story, a true account where names have not been changed, as no-one is truly innocent, are they?
it was the winter of 2002, we were a smaller family then - just the three of us. My Daughter was an accomplished talker and had quite a vivid imagination, despite only being three years old. She would often hold long conversations with her toys, posing them around a tea-service or arranging an improptue picnic for them.
Her mode of conversation was very adult, she would ask Piglet a question and politely give him time to reply, nod sagely and move to the next stuffed animal or doll, to see what their opinion on the situation was. This was the rule, rather than the exception and was thought to be quite 'cute' or even precocious by any assembled onlookers.
One afternoon, when Mrs Dandy went upstairs to collect her after her regular nap, she heard our daughter laughing and having one of her conversations, the gaps where she would normally wait for her toys to reply were slightly, but noticibly, longer. It also sounded like the toys were asking the questions, and my Daughter was the one doing the answering.
When the chat seemed to have reached it's natural conclusion, Mrs Dandy entered the room to see our daughter sat on the bed, alone. Alone in this case meaning no other toys, not the treasured Piglet or any of her other plushy inner circle.
"Who were you talking to Baby?"
"The Lady." she replied, in a completely disinterested tone.
"Which Lady?"
"Don't know, just the Lady, what's for Dinner?"
This was talked about for a couple of days as an odd occurance, but nothing really came of it and the assumption was made that 'The Lady' was an imaginary friend, based on a half remembered character from a Disney Cartoon or a Narnia book.
A few weeks later, we decided to make a photo-wall in the dining room, with family pictures from the past fifty or so years. The project took some time, with photos being printed then framed and mounted on the wall. I walked into the dining room one day to see my daughter staring at the pictures.
"Who's that?" I asked, pointing at a picture of her
"Me!" she shouted, excitedly
"OK, who's that?" I pointed at a picture of my Brother
"Unca Pete! - Who's that?" She asked, turning the game around and pointing at a picture of Mrs Dandy.
"That's Mummy!"
"Who's that?"
"That's MY Mummy" I replied, preparing to tell some stories of my youth.
"No, silly Daddy, that's The Lady!"
"Which Lady, Baby?"
"The Lady," In a tone that implied that I was quite possibly the stupidest person on the entire planet, "That comes and talks to me in my bedroom!"
I should probably explain that my Mother had died of cancer some fifteen years previously.
After some small amount of coaxing, my daughter told me that 'The Lady' regularly visited her and would ask if everone was alright and if she was happy. So far, so spooky, but that's not where the story ends.
As the identity of The Lady had now been established, a strange pall fell over the house, everyone seemed to be treading slightly lighter, a room you would normally walk through without turning on the light became a study in moving shadows and half-seen figures. Every creak of floorboards from the first floor was met with a strained silence to see if it evolved into footsteps.
As escalations go, the next 'stage' of the experience was strange, but for anyone who knew my mother, completely understandable.
My Daughter was (and still is) a reasonably sound sleeper, once she was asleep nothing short of a tactical nuclear strike would wake her up. Mrs Dandy often used 'Naptime' as a couple of hours that could be spent on housework that was otherwise difficult with a toddler in tow, such as dusting upstairs. One afternoon, she decided to try vacuuming, knowing that she wouldn't wake our daughter up.
I think she managed to use the vacuum for around fifteen seconds before it turned itself off, not at the vacuum, but at the switch on the socket. It took her some time to realise that that was what had happened as she assumed that something was loose, or the machine itself had overheated. The switch was turned back on and cleaning commenced for another few seconds until it was turned off again by the unseen hands.
My wife put down the vacuum, took a deep breath and turned to address the empty air:
"Look, Grandma Dandy, I'm not going to wake her up, everything is fine, we don't mind you visiting, but let me get on with my work"
The silence was deafening, which made the roar of the vacuum turning itself back on all the more of a shock.
After that The Lady's visits became less and less frequent, we think that she visited my Son a couple of times from things he's mentioned in conversation - But not to the extent that she did with my Daughter.
She did always say that she wanted a Grand-Daughter though.
The first one that I would like to have at is the Christmas Ghost Story. In the past, the BBC have done a cracking job of adapting the works of MR James (And others) into stories in the style of those told by the older generation, to the younger generation around open fire when the only lighting was provided by stuttering candles.
I present to you my own family Christmas Ghost story, a true account where names have not been changed, as no-one is truly innocent, are they?
it was the winter of 2002, we were a smaller family then - just the three of us. My Daughter was an accomplished talker and had quite a vivid imagination, despite only being three years old. She would often hold long conversations with her toys, posing them around a tea-service or arranging an improptue picnic for them.
Her mode of conversation was very adult, she would ask Piglet a question and politely give him time to reply, nod sagely and move to the next stuffed animal or doll, to see what their opinion on the situation was. This was the rule, rather than the exception and was thought to be quite 'cute' or even precocious by any assembled onlookers.
One afternoon, when Mrs Dandy went upstairs to collect her after her regular nap, she heard our daughter laughing and having one of her conversations, the gaps where she would normally wait for her toys to reply were slightly, but noticibly, longer. It also sounded like the toys were asking the questions, and my Daughter was the one doing the answering.
When the chat seemed to have reached it's natural conclusion, Mrs Dandy entered the room to see our daughter sat on the bed, alone. Alone in this case meaning no other toys, not the treasured Piglet or any of her other plushy inner circle.
"Who were you talking to Baby?"
"The Lady." she replied, in a completely disinterested tone.
"Which Lady?"
"Don't know, just the Lady, what's for Dinner?"
This was talked about for a couple of days as an odd occurance, but nothing really came of it and the assumption was made that 'The Lady' was an imaginary friend, based on a half remembered character from a Disney Cartoon or a Narnia book.
A few weeks later, we decided to make a photo-wall in the dining room, with family pictures from the past fifty or so years. The project took some time, with photos being printed then framed and mounted on the wall. I walked into the dining room one day to see my daughter staring at the pictures.
"Who's that?" I asked, pointing at a picture of her
"Me!" she shouted, excitedly
"OK, who's that?" I pointed at a picture of my Brother
"Unca Pete! - Who's that?" She asked, turning the game around and pointing at a picture of Mrs Dandy.
"That's Mummy!"
"Who's that?"
"That's MY Mummy" I replied, preparing to tell some stories of my youth.
"No, silly Daddy, that's The Lady!"
"Which Lady, Baby?"
"The Lady," In a tone that implied that I was quite possibly the stupidest person on the entire planet, "That comes and talks to me in my bedroom!"
I should probably explain that my Mother had died of cancer some fifteen years previously.
After some small amount of coaxing, my daughter told me that 'The Lady' regularly visited her and would ask if everone was alright and if she was happy. So far, so spooky, but that's not where the story ends.
As the identity of The Lady had now been established, a strange pall fell over the house, everyone seemed to be treading slightly lighter, a room you would normally walk through without turning on the light became a study in moving shadows and half-seen figures. Every creak of floorboards from the first floor was met with a strained silence to see if it evolved into footsteps.
As escalations go, the next 'stage' of the experience was strange, but for anyone who knew my mother, completely understandable.
My Daughter was (and still is) a reasonably sound sleeper, once she was asleep nothing short of a tactical nuclear strike would wake her up. Mrs Dandy often used 'Naptime' as a couple of hours that could be spent on housework that was otherwise difficult with a toddler in tow, such as dusting upstairs. One afternoon, she decided to try vacuuming, knowing that she wouldn't wake our daughter up.
I think she managed to use the vacuum for around fifteen seconds before it turned itself off, not at the vacuum, but at the switch on the socket. It took her some time to realise that that was what had happened as she assumed that something was loose, or the machine itself had overheated. The switch was turned back on and cleaning commenced for another few seconds until it was turned off again by the unseen hands.
My wife put down the vacuum, took a deep breath and turned to address the empty air:
"Look, Grandma Dandy, I'm not going to wake her up, everything is fine, we don't mind you visiting, but let me get on with my work"
The silence was deafening, which made the roar of the vacuum turning itself back on all the more of a shock.
After that The Lady's visits became less and less frequent, we think that she visited my Son a couple of times from things he's mentioned in conversation - But not to the extent that she did with my Daughter.
She did always say that she wanted a Grand-Daughter though.
Friday, 14 December 2012
T-wit - who?
Did you know, that it's physically impossible to move your hands wide enough apart to indicate how awesome owls are? Give it a go now - spread your hands apart as wide as you can... Is that it? No, sorry, owls are significantly more awesome than that. Probably twice as much.
They're like Birds of Prey V2.0 - I mean, your average Eagle, marvellous bird, don't get me wrong, can pick up a sheep and carry it back to the nest and feed it to its young, you don't get blackbirds doing that do you? But an owl, any old owl (with the possible exception of those tiny ones that live in holes in the ground) could do all that... Only silently - It could do it before the sheep / lizard / haddock had even woken up. One second the prey's having a lovely dream about grass or tapioca or something , the next it's torn up into chunks and being swallowed by something that looks a little bit like a transvestite zombie ET.
Weird thing that, owls are one of the few things in the animal kingdom that have ugly babies, I mean, I like owls... A lot, but you happen upon a nest of owlets when you're out for a stroll in the countryside and the whole 'Kill it with fire' instinct kicks in - They also smell incredibly bad and make a noise not unlike Satan with his Man-danglies caught in a revolving door.
We used to have a resident owl at Dandy Towers, there are photos of him on my Facebook page for my stalkers to take a look at. His name was Twist and he was frighteningly bi-polar. Incredible bird though, beautiful plumage. A European Barn Owl, who would sit, imperiously in the corner of the kitchen like a judgemental biscuit tin, watching you with his cold, dead, sharks eyes - right up until the point where he deemed you below his contempt and closed them. Ever been ignored by an owl? it does nothing for your self esteem.
Owls are not the perfect indoor pet, they eject their waste from both ends with unpleasant speed, accuracy and regularity. They seem to void the bodily fluids of their food seperate to everything else and that is not a sight, or smell that you quickly get used to. But if you persevere, they can become merely incredibly troublesome rather than a right-royal pain in the rear.
They're nice to take out for a walk though, they'll sit on your shoulder quite happily, or more likely on your head - And you'll get a lot of attention. In fact, I once got stopped by a couple of WPCs when I was out with the owl and one of the rottweillers - Once all the coo-ing and the aww-ing had died down (It helped that the Rottie was particularly cute too) one of the uniforms turned to me and said,
'I bet you don't get mugged very often'
The owl took this as her cue to flap the short distance from my shoulder to my head, and relieve herself down the back of my neck. This did not do wonders for my already limited appeal to the opposite sex and they quickly continued on their patrol avec le grande vitesse.
If you Google the word 'Owls', pretty much every picture of a real owl that appears has an implied tag of 'Owl thinks: I will kick your ass'; and the ones that don't, look as if they suffer with some fairly severe mental retardation, this does nothing to assuage their general air of ass-kickery as they can now be filed under psychotic predators with inch long claws and no remorse.
They can do unnatural stuff too - Everyone and their rabbit knows about the whole head spinning 'round like Linda Blair watching speedway, but did you know that most of them can turn their heads upside-down too? Some of them can make one of their front toes point backwards to create inescapable double talons of tearing - Although they're not all conquering instruments of death of course, otherwise we'd all be speaking owlese and living in holes in trees - They've been given a couple of disabilities just to keep them in their place - They have no peripheral vision and their ears aren't on straight.
Despite all this, I would have one again quicker than you can stir fry a possum, this time I might have something a little bigger, maybe a Great Grey or an Eagle (Owl) - Something I could fit a saddle on, or at least have a half-suit of armour made for.
I'd call him Trevor
They're like Birds of Prey V2.0 - I mean, your average Eagle, marvellous bird, don't get me wrong, can pick up a sheep and carry it back to the nest and feed it to its young, you don't get blackbirds doing that do you? But an owl, any old owl (with the possible exception of those tiny ones that live in holes in the ground) could do all that... Only silently - It could do it before the sheep / lizard / haddock had even woken up. One second the prey's having a lovely dream about grass or tapioca or something , the next it's torn up into chunks and being swallowed by something that looks a little bit like a transvestite zombie ET.
Weird thing that, owls are one of the few things in the animal kingdom that have ugly babies, I mean, I like owls... A lot, but you happen upon a nest of owlets when you're out for a stroll in the countryside and the whole 'Kill it with fire' instinct kicks in - They also smell incredibly bad and make a noise not unlike Satan with his Man-danglies caught in a revolving door.
We used to have a resident owl at Dandy Towers, there are photos of him on my Facebook page for my stalkers to take a look at. His name was Twist and he was frighteningly bi-polar. Incredible bird though, beautiful plumage. A European Barn Owl, who would sit, imperiously in the corner of the kitchen like a judgemental biscuit tin, watching you with his cold, dead, sharks eyes - right up until the point where he deemed you below his contempt and closed them. Ever been ignored by an owl? it does nothing for your self esteem.
This is the Owl in question, sat on the Mini-Dandy's head, some years ago
Owls are not the perfect indoor pet, they eject their waste from both ends with unpleasant speed, accuracy and regularity. They seem to void the bodily fluids of their food seperate to everything else and that is not a sight, or smell that you quickly get used to. But if you persevere, they can become merely incredibly troublesome rather than a right-royal pain in the rear.
They're nice to take out for a walk though, they'll sit on your shoulder quite happily, or more likely on your head - And you'll get a lot of attention. In fact, I once got stopped by a couple of WPCs when I was out with the owl and one of the rottweillers - Once all the coo-ing and the aww-ing had died down (It helped that the Rottie was particularly cute too) one of the uniforms turned to me and said,
'I bet you don't get mugged very often'
The owl took this as her cue to flap the short distance from my shoulder to my head, and relieve herself down the back of my neck. This did not do wonders for my already limited appeal to the opposite sex and they quickly continued on their patrol avec le grande vitesse.
If you Google the word 'Owls', pretty much every picture of a real owl that appears has an implied tag of 'Owl thinks: I will kick your ass'; and the ones that don't, look as if they suffer with some fairly severe mental retardation, this does nothing to assuage their general air of ass-kickery as they can now be filed under psychotic predators with inch long claws and no remorse.
They can do unnatural stuff too - Everyone and their rabbit knows about the whole head spinning 'round like Linda Blair watching speedway, but did you know that most of them can turn their heads upside-down too? Some of them can make one of their front toes point backwards to create inescapable double talons of tearing - Although they're not all conquering instruments of death of course, otherwise we'd all be speaking owlese and living in holes in trees - They've been given a couple of disabilities just to keep them in their place - They have no peripheral vision and their ears aren't on straight.
Despite all this, I would have one again quicker than you can stir fry a possum, this time I might have something a little bigger, maybe a Great Grey or an Eagle (Owl) - Something I could fit a saddle on, or at least have a half-suit of armour made for.
I'd call him Trevor
Thursday, 13 December 2012
That's NOT exacly what I meant, but...
'Change your material to fit your audience' they always say - Although they also say 'Cut your coat to suit your cloth' and 'Many a slip twixt cup and lip' and they may as well be Klingon for all the sense they make to me. One day, I shall hunt down these 'They' who say all these things and slap their nonsensical legs with a spikey deep-sea fish of some kind.
Anyway, material / audience... Right. There are some things you cannot say to some people - You can't say F**khead or W****r or S**t-eating Hobbit-faced slime-spewer who I would quite literally rather R*m-j*b a dead goat than talk to, to a small child who had just dropped their lollypop on the carpet.
You cannot say 'Race you!' and run off up a flight of stairs to someone suffering from a spinal injury and currently using a wheelchair (however temporarily) unless there is ample, high-speed, disabled access to the next floor up.
It is also frowned upon to call into question the cabling and electrical termination ability of our cousins from the Indian Subcontinent, unless you are a male member of the Royal family who can trace their recent parentage to the Hellenic areas.
However, the most fragile, the most pitfall strewn, the most likely vocal interaction to see you hung by the neck until you are dead is simply the one between an adult male and an adult female. There is not a single, solitary thing that one can say to the other that cannot be misconstrued as an attack on their masculinity/femininity/size/weight/length/sense of humo(u)r or general physiognomy.
Seemingly simple interrogatives such as 'Are you OK?' or 'Would you like me to do that?' are often misheard as 'What the hell's wrong with you this time, you petulant harridan' or 'For Jebus' sake will you stop fannying around with that and let someone significantly higher up the foodchain have a go'
You cannot comment that a member of the opposite sex is anything other than yoghurt-explodingly ugly unless you want your throw-away comment to be processed by your nearest and dearest's brain into the phrase 'Yes, they are a significantly more appealing sexual partner than you, and I would, should an opportunity present itself be up it (or on it) like a wombat on tepid custard'
I can virtually guarantee that everyone, male or female is nodding in agreement at this moment in time, apart from Mrs Dandy, who is thinking 'He's talking about me!' and hatching a plan to seperate me from parts of my anatomy that, which though sadly no longer functional, I still have a certain masculine attachment to.
Why do we do this? are we all so insecure? - You'll notice that I said WE there, I am just as likely to mishear 'And then Brian said...' as 'And whilst Brian was taking me roughly from behind, four other naked, priapic, men came in carrying a sign that said...' as anyone else, more so probably as my imagination is somewhat colourful compared to some.
Are we so eager to believe that our loved ones are evil that we constantly try to find the hidden meanings in what they say to us? Or is it that deep-down, we don't believe that we deserve to be loved?
Crap! we're all freaks - We should plan a yearly event, maybe one that lasts a whole month, where we take everything that anyone we supposedly trust says to us at face value. No second-guessing, no reading between the lines - We could call it, erm... Oh bugger, I don't know, something like Truthtember (only less gay-sounding) and celebrate it with cards that say things like 'Your Sister's good looking' and 'I work with someone whose shoulders are wider than yours'
I think it would be good for us all in the long run.
Anyway, material / audience... Right. There are some things you cannot say to some people - You can't say F**khead or W****r or S**t-eating Hobbit-faced slime-spewer who I would quite literally rather R*m-j*b a dead goat than talk to, to a small child who had just dropped their lollypop on the carpet.
You cannot say 'Race you!' and run off up a flight of stairs to someone suffering from a spinal injury and currently using a wheelchair (however temporarily) unless there is ample, high-speed, disabled access to the next floor up.
It is also frowned upon to call into question the cabling and electrical termination ability of our cousins from the Indian Subcontinent, unless you are a male member of the Royal family who can trace their recent parentage to the Hellenic areas.
However, the most fragile, the most pitfall strewn, the most likely vocal interaction to see you hung by the neck until you are dead is simply the one between an adult male and an adult female. There is not a single, solitary thing that one can say to the other that cannot be misconstrued as an attack on their masculinity/femininity/size/weight/length/sense of humo(u)r or general physiognomy.
Seemingly simple interrogatives such as 'Are you OK?' or 'Would you like me to do that?' are often misheard as 'What the hell's wrong with you this time, you petulant harridan' or 'For Jebus' sake will you stop fannying around with that and let someone significantly higher up the foodchain have a go'
You cannot comment that a member of the opposite sex is anything other than yoghurt-explodingly ugly unless you want your throw-away comment to be processed by your nearest and dearest's brain into the phrase 'Yes, they are a significantly more appealing sexual partner than you, and I would, should an opportunity present itself be up it (or on it) like a wombat on tepid custard'
I can virtually guarantee that everyone, male or female is nodding in agreement at this moment in time, apart from Mrs Dandy, who is thinking 'He's talking about me!' and hatching a plan to seperate me from parts of my anatomy that, which though sadly no longer functional, I still have a certain masculine attachment to.
Why do we do this? are we all so insecure? - You'll notice that I said WE there, I am just as likely to mishear 'And then Brian said...' as 'And whilst Brian was taking me roughly from behind, four other naked, priapic, men came in carrying a sign that said...' as anyone else, more so probably as my imagination is somewhat colourful compared to some.
Are we so eager to believe that our loved ones are evil that we constantly try to find the hidden meanings in what they say to us? Or is it that deep-down, we don't believe that we deserve to be loved?
Crap! we're all freaks - We should plan a yearly event, maybe one that lasts a whole month, where we take everything that anyone we supposedly trust says to us at face value. No second-guessing, no reading between the lines - We could call it, erm... Oh bugger, I don't know, something like Truthtember (only less gay-sounding) and celebrate it with cards that say things like 'Your Sister's good looking' and 'I work with someone whose shoulders are wider than yours'
I think it would be good for us all in the long run.
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