Posted on by JonnyB

Never Mind the Bollocks…

Hello, I’m Salvadore Vincent, and I’ll be looking after Jonny’s blog for the week. Hopefully you shouldn’t notice too much of a difference – whenever I mention Kathy Sykes, just think “Kirstie Allsopp” and it will be business as usual. If there are any problems, the emergency exits are located here and here.

To refresh my blog-writing skills I looked back at the last time I blog-sat and realised that Jonny must go away at the same time each year. This means that you always get me in a slightly melancholy mood the week after my birthday. Sorry. It was a big one this year as well – half the three score years and ten. Inevitably, my thoughts have been turning to my own mortality and the absolute certainty that any new lump or bump in my body must be terminal cancer.

This is how I came to be sitting in a hospital waiting room wearing nothing but my shoes and a not-quite-opaque-enough gown, praying that having a man touching my testicles with an ultrasound scanner wouldn’t give me an erection.

My name was called. I went in, lay back and tried not to think of Kathy Sykes (the aesthetically aware man’s Carol Vorderman). From his computer screen, the man selected the settings for his hand-held scanner from a menu. It must be that you need different amplitudes and/or frequencies of ultrasound to penetrate to different parts of the body I reasoned scientifically as he scrolled through the long list – “Head”, “Leg”, “Foetus – 3 months”, “Foetus – 6 months”, “Foetus – 9 months”…

Then, finally, he selected the last option: “Small parts”.

HE HADN’T EVEN BLOODY LOOKED YET!

I shall spare you the details of the lubricated testicle touching itself except to say that it’s more expensive in Soho, but you get what you pay for. I have, however, now seen the inside of my scrotum, and very few people outside the field of zip testing can say that. It was actually so fascinating that I was going to ask for a printout of the scan so that I could compete with my sister and her photos of my unborn niece.

“Look everybody – twins.”

But instead I made my excuses and left.

Thankfully, the outcome of the scan was good news – I didn’t get an erection. Oh, and I also don’t have cancer. Roll on 36.

Posted on by JonnyB

I go on holiday!!!

Er – so I won’t be here for a week.

However, writing here for the next week will be my old friend, occasional writing partner and genuine TV, radio and comedy writer Salvadore Vincent.

I put that in red. Because it’s more showbiz.

Please make him welcome.

Posted on by JonnyB

“It is just for one pint,” I insisted.

She stared at me in suspicion, like an old lady who’d wandered into a Bjork concert.

“Promise,” I promised.

I disappeared off down the drive. Moments later, I poked my head back through the open window. “Short Tony’s going as well,” I revealed. “Is it still OK to go?”

She acquiesced with a grudging nod, and continued making conversation with my visiting in-laws.

Some time later, I returned from the pub, having provisionally agreed to buy a third share in an Aberdeen Angus cow from a friend of a man who was sitting at the bar.

Why do I do it??? Why??? Why???

At least I agreed to negotiate in pounds sterling rather than my precious secret magic beans that are hidden away for a rainy day.

I do not need a cow. In fact, the only thing I can think of that I need less than a cow is a third of a cow.

I think the idea was to develop it into steaks, joints, beefburgers etc later in the year. I have half a drawer available in the freezer. I will need to eat a lot before there is enough room for even a third of a small cow, and even then I will not be able to enjoy it with frozen peas, ice cream etc.

I know where it grazes. I will visit it at some point and say hello. Although I did not sign anything and I do not have a cow license.

I could yet get out of this.

Posted on by JonnyB

Thunder and lightning!!!

Lighting up the bedroom in an apocalyptic fashion!!!

I open one eye, take in what’s happening and leap over to the window faster than Jimmy Carr’s agent en route to the ‘Countdown’ offices.

On the other side of the road, the trees around the church light up. Not momentarily, as is normally the case with our pathetic English weather, but for seconds at a time in a constant barrage of electricity. It’s less like a real storm than something out of the Dr Who special effects department.

No rubber monsters appear, which is reassuring, but I keep an eye out, just in case. An alien invasion would be exciting, but with my luck I’d get McCoy and Langford rather than Baker and Jameson.

More lightning, right overhead, swamping the road in brilliant blue-white light. As happens so often, I thank the Lord that I am not making my way to a fancy dress party where the dress code is tall metal hats.

There’s something particularly cosy about being inside whilst a storm is raging. The walls here are around eighteen inches thick, which I know doesn’t make a lot of scientific difference to thunder and lightning, but it feels safe and warm.

I always think about how terrified the ancient primitive men must have been in a situation like this. With no knowledge of the meteorological basis of the phenomenon, they must have thought the world was going to end. And nobody was around not to warn them not to wear tall metal hats.

Then the storm would pass, and they would go back to their primitive lives, chasing rabbits and impregnating their womenfolk.

We are more sophisticated now, of course, and the only thing that really scares me is Comments (0) and the thought that people watch ‘Top Gear’.

The weather shows no sign of abating, and it’s round the back now as well, across the fields of the estate. Water pours from the guttering and drum, drum, drums on the sills.

I belatedly close the window in the spare bedroom and make for the safety of the duvet.