The Washing Machine Man arrives.

Posted on by Alex

I see his van backing into the drive; I scoot to the front door eagerly.

The Washing Machine Man has been having difficulty getting the part he requires. Since then, the washing has been mounting up. A huge pile rises up from the scullery floor: t-shirts, trousers, towels, jumpers and underwear. It dominates the room, making it nigh-impossible to get to the essential utilities. The bottom of the mound is solidifying; I have been concerned for some days that if I do not do something quickly to reduce the heap, the council will come round and list it.

I open the door, shifting awkwardly in my cricket jockstrap, which is the only thing I have left to wear under my jeans.

The Washing Machine Man spoke to me over the phone – his plan, in the absence of a new replacement part, is to install a reconditioned temporary part, which will at least allow me to get some washing done. I am grateful for this, as there does come a point when taking laundry to the neighbours’ houses ceases to become a one-off favour, and becomes an ongoing expectation. Big A, and Eddie, and the Chipper Barman are good friends, and have been very understanding and accommodating, but I have had to widen my net further to include people like mothers of the Toddler’s friends at nursery, and I suspect enough is enough.

It is a good plan, only marred by the fact that it transpires that I thought he meant that he would bring a temporary replacement part, whereas he was talking about a temporary replacement washing machine.

He pulls out my old washing machine and installs the new one, and promises to chase up the new part as soon as he can. I now have a scullery that is dominated both by a mountainous pile of soiled laundry and a broken spare washing machine.

I thank him for his clever plan and begin to chip away at clothing.

Administrative Things and Poetry Review.

Posted on by Alex

Apologies to everyone who had problems accessing Private Secret Diary this week.

This was due to a number of things, the main one being that I really haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m doing. Thank you if you tried to contact me or left a message on the Facebook group. All should be sorted now, although I have no idea how this ‘sorted’ happened, which only creates more disquiet in my mind. Anyway, the entire back-end disappeared for two days, so if anybody had a back-end landing on them in the middle of the week then I’m very sorry.

Now there is a new version of WordPress out, and it wants me to upgrade. My life is hell.

In the meantime, I did something a bit different, and interviewed Katy Evans-Bush. Katy’s been a reader here since about the year dot, and has a new collection of poetry out (‘Me and the Dead’), which is bloody exciting, as I don’t usually move in such circles. Private Secret Diary’s literary influences are fairly self-evident to the educated reader, and in a bid to widen the intellectual tone of things here, I asked her some searching and intense questions about her creative ouevre…

Continue reading “Administrative Things and Poetry Review.” →

The telephone rings.

Posted on by Alex

‘Brrringggg brrringggg!’

(NB that was the sound of the telephone ringing, as transcribed onto the page).

It is Big A. We chat inconsequentially for a couple of minutes, before he announces that he has a favour to ask me.

I am immediately on my guard. This means that he will want me to look after his chickens whilst he goes away. As the premier chicken expert in the Village, I am always being asked to look after people’s chickens. And whilst that is no hassle, it is a bit of a hassle, and I do not need the extra eggs.

Big A has three rescued battery chickens, including one that he calls ‘J Lo’ because it has an enormous sort of growth on its arse. They are good natured birds, and I do owe him a favour for the use of his washing machine. I take a deep breath and ask him what his favour is.

“Can you put my bins out for me?”

I am a bit stunned by this. “Don’t you want me to look after the chickens?” I ask, to which he replies that the people over the road are happy to do that.

Sacked!!! I am sacked as first-choice chicken-looker-after!!! I replace the receiver angrily. I am good enough to do the bins, but not good enough to do the chickens.

The next morning, I wander over to get his bins. An ex-battery chicken with an enormous arse protrusion gazes at me through the garden gate, giving me a slightly disdainful look. This chicken seems a bit above herself. I might be a mere binman, but she is just Jenny from the Flock.

The Washing Machine Man should be coming tomorrow, with the spare part.

Venn that Tune

Posted on by Alex

I’ve been an extremely bad friend and not yet written anything about Venn That Tune, by Andrew (who long-term readers will know as Salvadore, who guest-edited here for a while).

Andrew’s the reason why this journal started in an indirect sort of fashion, in that we both wrote comedy together for a while before he left the partnership to become successful. I went on to Village-based material, whereas he started exploring the potential of maths, and came up with the song graph idea that lots of people seem to think ‘just happened’ on the internet.

Anyway, the book’s very funny, especially the footnotes section. I’ve bought it for Christmas for my cousin who was in a pre-Genesis Phil Collins band, and if you have any relatives or friends with similar early prog-rock connections, I strongly advise you to do the same. Or just anyone who likes music.

Andrew’s done a bit of press, but was unfortunately hit by the Daily Telegraph, who inflicted a ‘hejoked’ on him – no doubt to maintain the balance between jealous and threatened so-called MSM media and a mere blogger who has written a book. A ‘hejoked’ is a common device that any comic or humorist dreads – it is a phrase frequently used by writers with no sense of humour whatsoever, and is often accompanied by an unwanted exclamation mark.

Essentially, the concept behind a ”hejoked’ is that you can report the funniest, wittiest, pithiest, cleverest, most killer comic line ever, and utterly destroy it by using the phrase ‘he joked’ as a suffix.

“I’ll have an empty arm,” he joked.

“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” he joked.

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me,” he joked.

I have never really seen a ‘hejoked’ in action before and it was terrible to behold. But despite that, the book’s doing well, and I do urge you to ‘check it out’, as they say on the Internet.

Pants situation: down to two pairs once more.