Posted on by JonnyB

Many thanks to Salvadore for taking over once more.

It seemed only right that he should have finished the series of posts planned before he was so rudely interrupted. With myself having been called into London for a couple of days at short notice, it was an ideal arrangement.

I was a bit loath to leave the thousands of small white maggoty things that had invaded my larder, and all the food therein, during my week away. However this was pushed to the back of my mind when I found that a project that is my largest single source of income is clearly going, as we say in the Important World of Creativity ‘tits up’, with me set to fulfil the traditional role of ‘the one a long way away who can be blamed because that won’t require everybody else to face up to their own institutional incapableness’.

Obviously I would have been in better form for my meeting had a problem with a hotel not forced me to spend the night sleeping on a floor. I can’t grumble however, as many people sleep on floors all the time, and the onset of what would prove to be lengthy bouts of firstly sinusitis and then food poisoning put it all into perspective anyway.

I returned to Norfolk on Friday, presenting my suit at the village shop (dry cleaning division) and instructing them to remove the spatters of blood obtained during my – possibly unwise – intervention in a particularly cheery post-pub mugging the previous night. I should reassure that the blood was the other chap’s, perhaps the most rubbish mugger in the entire history of that activity, who took one look at me, started an exchange of pleasantries then fell off the kerb, injuring himself badly in the process. But it was a nice suit and one of which I was fond.

Back home, a message from the LTLP explained that she’d spent the evening in A&E herself, having accidentally nailed her hand to the garden wall.

By Saturday the food poisoning was reaching its climax, but, it being too late to decently drop out of the cricket team, I packed several mountains of toilet roll and turned up for the game. Fortunately the fresh air seemed to settle things down, although I had to call a halt when my calf muscle pinged again and I found myself unable to walk.

So as you see, I have been getting back to normality here. I have a bit of a backlog to clear, then I will be returning to my usual role as the Venerable Bede of North West Norfolk.

Until then, please talk amongst yourselves.

Posted on by JonnyB

Hello, Salvadore Vincent here again – back just for the day this time…

All three of us were quite excited to be going to see “Madagascar”. My girlfriend was excited as it would be the first time she had taken her 5-year old godson Simon out without his parents. I was excited from a mainly professional point of view to see if Dreamworks’ animated features were catching up with Pixar’s, but also quite excited about the film itself. And Simon was excited because all day people had been asking him if he was excited.

Our friends dropped us off and we arranged what time they would pick us up. We bought our tickets, bought our ice creams and waved goodbye to Mummy. Though neither of us said it, as we stepped away from the box office, just the three of us, I am sure that both my girlfriend and I were thinking that this is what it would be like to have a family. That the success or failure of this trip would indicate something important…

We’d all been out to a WWII Victory event earlier that day and Simon had been scared by a small and frankly quite crap dragon made out of cloth on a stick. We shall call this Ignored Warning Sign #1. Then, as we ascended the final escalator in the cinema complex, his little voice said, “It’s dark up there.” We shall call this Ignored Warning Sign #2.

Before we went into the cinema itself I asked Simon if he wanted to go to the toilet (as I didn’t want to miss any vital plot developments half way through – I really was quite excited at this point). He did, so I decided that I would take him whilst my girlfriend held the ice creams. I had imagined us standing side by side at the urinals – not father and son, not technically godfather and godson, but I thought that maybe I could teach him some kind of helpful “using a urinal” tip that would make him feel like a man like I am.

Of course, the urinals were all too high so we headed for a cubicle. Then he started stripping off and said “I want a poo”. This must have been what it felt like on Apollo 13 when, hundreds of thousands of miles from earth, they heard a big bang. I was alone, I was in charge, and I didn’t know what to do. Did he want me in the cubicle? Should I wait outside? I settled for hanging around in the doorway. I’ll spare you most of the next ten minutes, but I did receive some quite graphic descriptions of what was happening.

He also told me that he was worried about the lion in the film. I was trying to explain that it was a funny lion who was more scared than scary, but then he decided that there was going to be a dragon in the film as well. No, there are no dragons, I confidently promised, praying that there wouldn’t be a surprise guest appearance in the third act. Then he decided that he felt poorly and didn’t want to see the film. I’d like to say that my first thought was for his wellbeing, but I’m fairly sure it was “Thank goodness he’s already sitting on the toilet and we’ve got plenty of toilet paper.” Then he said:

“I think I’ve got a tummyache because I’m allergic to the suncream.”

This was about as convincing as him telling me that he couldn’t go swimming because he’d got his period, but I sympathised with him. I used to try a similar (though slightly more plausible) trick and it was good to know that he wasn’t actually ill. Perhaps we could get him in there after all. I reassured him that he’d be sitting between us and could hold our hands and that it wasn’t real. I asked him about his only previous cinema visit and found out that he’d really enjoyed it, but had been scared beforehand as well.

Then he dropped his second bombshell: “Will you wipe my bottom?”

Sometimes what seem like inconsequential decisions have unforeseen ramifications. In much the same way that JFK probably thought “Why did we take the convertible?” my first reaction was “Why didn’t I just tell my girlfriend that I’d hold the ice creams?”

But even though he wasn’t my godson, I couldn’t fail the kid at this point. So, despite the fact that I’d never done this before, I rolled my sleeves up and went in. We’d just about got sorted – perhaps we’d only missed the trailers by now – when he decided that he wanted to do another poo.

It was at this point that I heard my girlfriend shouting, “Are you all right in there?”

So, there were then three of us in the cubicle (with the added bonus of my girlfriend getting to see the inside of a gents’ toilet) which I decided was far too overcrowded so I stepped outside and, holding three dripping ice creams, planned how to get him into the cinema. I was sure that once he was inside and used to it he’d be fine. Parenting Tip #1 – share information and present a united front. I’d taken my eye off the ball, and when he came out with my girlfriend they’d decided they’d like to go home.

I wasn’t going to give up so easily though and tried a couple more things. First we went back downstairs to the promotional cardboard cut-outs for the film. The lion didn’t look that scary, and the other animals all looked very funny, so we decided we’d have a peek inside the cinema, and could always get a taxi if we didn’t like the look of it.

I’d love to be able to report that I won the kid round. That he went into that cinema a frightened child and came out a man (not literally – the film isn’t that long), held aloft on my shoulders as part of a cheering crowd (and that some of this cheering was for me for getting him into the cinema in the first place). And that maybe he would grow up into a famous movie director and revitalise the British film industry, and that when he accepted his first Oscar he would say, “I’d like to dedicate this to Salvadore Vincent – for getting me into that cinema when I was five, and starting a life-long love affair with movies. Sal – this one’s for you, big guy.” (He probably wouldn’t mention that I’d wiped his bottom before we went in.)

Unfortunately, the film had already started, so instead of being able to go into the cinema with the lights on and get used to that first, we were presented with a huge, dark room with really loud things going on inside. I crouched down next to him by the door to see how he was, and from his POV I could see that it was actually quite scary. Even I wasn’t too sure about the lion at that point.

We turned it around at the end by saying that we’d had an exciting trip out anyway – we’d had ice cream and we’d been in a taxi! And I explained that perhaps Mummy and Daddy could buy the film on video, then if the lion scared him he could just turn the television off to make him go away. (I thought it would be churlish to mention that perhaps Mummy and Daddy could lend us the video afterwards as the trip had cost us about a pound per second of film actually seen. i.e. 30)

Posted on by JonnyB

JonnyB’s Holiday Snaps – #3 in a series of 3.

The plants have been thriving!!!

We return home to find them healthy and strong. Having asked Short Tony if he would water them every day – despite the fact that he is a man of the most unreliable and irresponsible character – we are extremely pleased at this.

However, as I had just assumed that they’d be all dried up and dead, this puts me in a difficult position – viz, I have not purchased a small packet of ‘A Present From Northumbria’ fudge that is standard payment for things like this. Fortunately he is out, so I have time to think of a plan.

I decide to mow his lawn.

It’s looking a bit overgrown, and is a nice neighbourly act I can perform.

The thing is, Short Tony has quite a big lawn. I hadn’t realised quite how big. I usually look at it from the vantage point of my own scraggy piece of grass, and perspective makes it seem quite small. But no. I lug my big throbbing great fuck-off petrol mower over there and start on the stripes, but ten minutes and one bag of grass cuttings later I don’t seem to have dented it at all.

After what seems to be an age, I finish lawn #1 and start on lawn #2. I bag up some more grass cuttings. I work out how many pots we have that required watering, I consider whether it would be reasonable to sort of half-mow this lawn and leave the rest as a sort of nature haven for rare birds etc.

More grass cuttings get bagged up. The mower runs out of petrol. I refill the mower. I bag some more grass. The landscape is dotted with bags. By the time I have finished lawn #2 the first one has grown back, but I have had enough. There is a limit. I am stinking hot and covered in sweat, flies and grass cuttings.

But I am happy with a job well done.

These simple acts of neighbourliness are what I like most about living in the village. I wrestle the mower back into the shed and retreat into the cottage for a shower.

Posted on by JonnyB

JonnyB’s Holiday Snaps – #2 in a series of 3.

Hexham promised to be a pleasant enough place. We parked Daisy the Car and set off up the hill to the town.

Halfway up, a man started playing some bagpipes.

I hurried the LTLP along, concerned about the safety of my unborn child. I did look for a policeman but there were none in the immediate vicinity, so I had to let it lie.

Ironically enough, when we reached the town centre, Hexham seemed to be full of police. Not in a threatening, swarming way like a G8 conference or Italy, but just sort of wandering around in pairs, chatting to shoppers and shopkeepers and generally being There and Reassuring.

It was nice. Earlier on, I’d witnessed scores of vans full to the brim with tense-looking Metropolitan Police officers haring up the A1 away from the Capital towards Scotland. Who tipped them the warning??? If we could find this out then we would be closer to catching the bombers.

Anyway. I was going to stop a policeman and report a walk-by bagpiping, but I imagine it would have involved lots of filling in of forms and stuff, so I didn’t bother.

Did I do the right thing? I don’t know. They might get bagpipe-related incident all the time. It is the Northern equivalent of happy slapping. (I guess using Northumbrian pipes rather than Scottish ones is the equivalent plea to ‘diminished responsibility’).

I didn’t want to get involved, the curse of twenty-first century society.