OK We have moved hosts, and I am trying to work out if everything is working properly.
Please let me know if everything is not working properly. It might take a couple of days to fix. A couple of the most recent comments have gone into the ether… I apologise for this if one was yours.
I am still answering questions at www.formspring.me/jonnybee – it is quite fun if a little strange.
I purchase a child seat for the car.
There are about 1000000 seats in the shop. I ask for some help.
Child car safety seats are the things that most make me want to walk up to the gates of parliament and set myself on fire. (Apart from light bulbs). You are not allowed to put a child in a car without one of these, even if you are just going to the Village Shop, driving really slowly due to snow and ice etc.
Whereas when I was a little boy I was used to being happily driven down the motorway whilst standing up between the front seats, my head poking out of the sun roof. It is how I gained the knowledge of road conditions etc. that has served me so well as a driver. Plus, when I used to play football for the cubs, the manager would stuff the whole team into the back of his Hillman Imp estate. With the car seats law, there is only room for two children, meaning that 5.5 more car journeys are required; it thus logically follows that car seats actually cause 5.5 times more deaths on the road than before.
It is an example of our crazed lawmakers completely failing to think things through.
All the car seats seem very expensive. I ask the lady for advice.
“I am a bit unclear as to the law,” I say. “Is it the case that I could just sit her on some form of booster seat, or box, or whatever – or do I still have to buy one of the big padded things.”
She shakes her head sadly before her reply. “There has been some recent research that shows that children who do not sit in an expensive padded seat are 183475 times more likely to die or have a major disfiguring injury that will make you ashamed, should you have an accident. There are so-called ‘booster’ seats, but they are mainly made in Eastern Europe or by Toyota and they are likely to make the seat-belt garrotte the child. I believe that was the sort of seat used by dimwitted fake child-abductee mother Mrs Karen Matthews before her arrest,” she says. (I paraphrase).
“Oh,” I reply.
I study the features of the expensive chairs a bit more, before buying a black one, as it matches the paintwork. The Toddler seems happy with my choice. The lady seems happy with my choice. I drive home at excessive speed, because she is safe.
I win a frame of snooker.
The pink wobbles and falls into the pocket’s hungry clutch.
My opponent, who is very good and who plays off scratch, looks agape. Then his shoulders slump, as if he has just been passed a note revealing that his wife is having an affair with eccentric weather forecaster Rob McElwee.
“Look – you’re going to have to write about this now,” says John Twonil. “You can’t put it off any longer.”
I brush him aside temporarily, to modestly run round the table doing high fives with Mick, Big A and the Chipper Barman, and to accept the kind offer of a pint from my defeated opponent, which he wanders off to order before assembling his noose.
But John Twonil is right. I have been avoiding talking about my snooker success as I do not wish to jinx it and make it go away. We are proudly the worst snooker club in Norfolk – probably the whole country – and I am the worst player in it. I have the bare minimum of technique, I regularly miss the object ball completely, and I have to sort of squint to see where I am hitting things because my eyes don’t seem to work properly.
At the end of last season, the rankings for the league were distributed. The very bottom of the table went something like this:
- Twonil, J
- Tony, S
- A, B
- Barman, C
- Continuedonaseparatesheetof, P
It took me ages to work out that I was featured on an attached sheet, as an also-played. It was humiliating for one with my sense of dignity.
Yet here I am, having now won three singles games in a row. Undefeated in the league since December. The man the top players fear.
John Twonil and Mick win their frames also. We have won the match. The opposition tonight are an excellent team, and are known as a good bunch of people. I hope they do not give up snooker because of this. But it will certainly take them a while to recover from the humiliation.
We speed off from the Conservative Club in Mick’s car. “David Camm-eronn!” I shout. “Margaret Thatcher! Francis Pym!!! John Selwyn GUMMER!!! JOHHHN SELL-WYNNN GUMMMMERRRR!!!!!! Your boys took one hell of a beating!!!!”
“Right – I’m off home to fuck the wife,” I add.
“Do you want me to text her, to let her know you’re on your way?” asks Big A.
“Better not,” I reply.
I am punished for not being Santa.
It is my own fault.
“I am so sorry, it is such a shame, I was really looking forwards to it as well,” I say, amongst other platitudes to that effect. “I will bring the Santa suit back next week, as I didn’t get to use it.”
“I am gutted,” I add, looking gutted.
The Playgroup Lady stands, hands-on-hips. It crosses my mind that I perhaps do not look gutted enough. I stretch my face, so that I imagine it looks ‘extremely gutted.’ I resolve to practise gutted faces in the mirror when I get home, so that if this situation should arise again, I will have a natural and plausible gutted face to adopt. It will be second nature, which is how all the best actors work.
“Well…” says the Playgroup Lady.
I am ordered to bring my banjo to the school the following week, to entertain the children.
My face immediately adopts the expression of one who is naturally and plausibly gutted.
“I do not know what to play to them,” I complain to the LTLP, when she has finished laughing, again. “Children now want to play video games and watch television, sniff glue etc. rather than listen to banjo playing.”
I work out ‘Ring a Ring o Roses’ and ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ before launching into a smoking version of ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ (my own version, which is less difficult than the original, and contains gaps where you can work out what notes to play next).
I do not know how I get into these situations. But I wish I would stop it.