Posted on by JonnyB

My baby is late!!!

A clearly slothful and indolent infant. We sit in the lounge at Big A’s, discussing the situation. The whole thing is a bit inconvenient – I haven’t really been able to go to the Village Pub recently, and the LTLP is having difficulty doing simple things like the washing up, which is causing her terrible backache. It will be five or so months before we can get a dishwasher in order that she can have some help.

Narcoleptic Dave pipes up from the comfy chair. “Have you tried pineapple? That’s meant to work.”

I baulk at this. Pineapples are huge and have very sharp pointy leaves, and I am really not sure whether I could get one up there without causing injury. I take the small sip of wine that I am allowed and ask for more sensible suggestions.

All sorts of old wives tales are discussed, before the conversation comes round to the benefits of having it off. I am not particularly comfortable about discussing the topic with the neighbours, particularly as there are ladies present, so I change the subject.

Also it is very difficult to feel sexually attracted to somebody who has basically let their figure go to pot and who weighs about 183743 stone more than they used to.

That is what the LTLP claims anyway, and she is the boss.

I sigh and have another minuscule siplet of wine. The subject is changed. We decide to play ‘Risk’, but Narcoleptic Dave keeps falling asleep during key battles for Africa, so we scoot off early back to the cottage and the braindeadary of ‘Gems TV’.

Posted on by JonnyB

There is a tap on the window!!!

I am sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting for the LTLP to return. Outside, a blur of Christmas shoppers swarm round the town square car park. A face peers through at me from the cold. I am not expecting a window-bound tap followed by a face peering at me in the privacy of my own car, and it catches me a little by surprise.

It is a good job that I am not masturbating.

An old lady stands there, slightly dishevelled, mouthing words at me through the glass. I try to catch her drift, but my lip reading skills are not up to it. She tries again. I scrabble for the keys and switch the ignition on, in order to lower the window.

Kids these days do not realise how impressive that would have once been. It is a shame.

“De ya wanna boi sam o’moi lucky eather?” she asks (note that is in an Irish accent, not me spelling things wrong).

I am a bit thrown by this and ask her to repeat herself, which she does, adding the phrase “genuine Romany it is”.

I decline the lucky heather.

“Will ya hev yer fortune red then?”

I decline a fortune reading.

The old lady scowls at me and mutters something as she takes her leave. She approaches no more cars. I shake my head in some bewilderment. My plan earlier had been to get up, buy some vegetables and perhaps a hotdog, and go home for a lazy day.

Instead I have had a curse put on me, which was not an expected thing to happen in Fakenham town centre.

Posted on by JonnyB

We shop for baby clothes.

I realise that this opening sentence is likely to enthuse the punters about as much as a BBC announcer’s “and now, starring Ross Kemp…” but I’m afraid non about-to-have-a-baby people will just have to get used to it.

I also realise that I have used that Ross Kemp analogy before, in relation to pram shopping. You see? It’s not just the TV shows that he is involved with that are all merely the same idea just reworked over and over again. It is even the sentences.

“How about this one?” asks the LTLP, indicating a rabbit outfit.

I give it a look of the utmost disapproval. Whilst the all-in-one sleep costume things are clearly practical and snug and warm and all that, I just cannot get my head round the idea that they have to have extra ‘cute’ built in.

“I am not,” I inform her, “dressing my child as a rabbit.”

I am determined that the poor thing will go through life with some gravitas and dignity, i.e. follow in the footsteps of its father. We pass some that have been created like a Father Christmas outfit. These are heavily reduced, having had an original RRP, according to the lying discount outlet, of nine grillion pounds. Quite apart from the once-again unnecessary and nauseating cutesy-cuteness, having a Santa outfit is clearly last month’s fashion, which is something kids immediately pick up on. I do not want it to be bullied in the delivery suite.

In fact there seems nothing that does not have some form of yeukky pictorial thing on it. Pooh Bear is the worst offender. He gets everywhere. As regular readers will have worked out, Pooh Bear has been a great influence on me over the years. But this is not Real Pooh Bear. It is the twisted, honey-coated Disney travesty version. Insurgent Pooh Bear. His image graces everything from clothes to bibs to baths to nappies. I wish to poke him in the eye and then vivesect him.

Meanwhile, Real Pooh Bear lives without any major marketing deal, probably eking out an existence back in the Hundred Acre Wood with Continuity Piglet and the breakaway paramilitary wing of Rabbit’s Friends and Relations.

We leave the baby clothes shop. I buy myself a shirt.

Posted on by JonnyB

I buy a turkey.

Not a particularly unusual action for the late-December period, but this is on December 28th. I stare at the frozen bird, alone in the Tesco freezer, eight-and-a-half kilograms for a fiver.

This provides me with a dilemma. Having dined in the Village Pub on Christmas Day, I am in the odd and unprecedented position of not having the ingredients for a nice turkey sandwich over the New Year. A fiver is a ridiculous ridiculous price to pay for what could be dinner for the next few days. I wrestle with my conscience.

I don’t like factory farming, and the factory farming of turkey is particularly evil. Nevertheless, it is only a fiver. This will save me money, which I could give to a turkey charity if I wanted to. So really I would be performing a moral act by purchasing the bird.

This is almost moral relativism, which is a proper philosophy featuring in books. I take the turkey to the checkout, confident that Jean-Paul Sartre would have done the same. If I have a subsequent crisis of conscience I can always just defrost it then release it back into the wild.

Plus it is a Bernard Matthews bird, and I like to support local producers.

Back at the cottage, I check the packaging. There is an ‘ingredients’ list on the back. I had kind of hoped that the ‘ingredients’ list would read something like ‘ingredients: a turkey’, but there are several other useful and tasty things in there as well, and at least the ‘turkey’ part of the ingredients comes first, and is followed by a reassuring 95% number. This means that all the other soya oil, flavouring etc. weighs only about 425 grammes (which is less than a pound, for American readers) (and Tesco is a big supermarket). This seems reasonable.

I am pleased with my purchase. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a home-cooked bird to munch on – it is as traditional as disappointing crackers and wondering why one bothered to purchase a newspaper on Boxing Day. Some home-made bread and piccalilli completes the picture. 2006 approaches, the snow falls in a picturesque fashion and James Blunt is not on the radio. A happy and wonderful New Year to you all.