Posted on by JonnyB

We go on an outing!!!

The baby has been grizzling and whinging like a Digby Jones on tax return day, so we decide to pack up our things and head for the seaside. Hoora for the seaside!!! We abandon the car ‘on the front’ and walk out into the 100000mph Arctic gale chiz chiz.

Although ‘on the front’, it’s low tide so we’re only slightly closer to the sea than we would have been had we visited, say, the centre of Birmingham. It churns in a maelstrom of grey out there somewhere, towards Belgium. I immediately take refuge in the car once more whilst the LTLP totters off to buy some fish and chips.

Fish and chips!!! Is there anything better than fish and chips on a winter’s day? Or, more to the point, fish and chips on a winter’s day at the seaside. The only thing I can really think of would be fish and chips on a winter’s day at the seaside served on some women’s breasts, but I think this is unlikely to happen, as it is so cold.

By this point Baby Servalan is asleep, showing ingratitude for taking her on such an exciting outing. She is very blasé. I guess if you enjoy your dinner served on some women’s breasts on a daily basis, then you aren’t really bothered about the odd helping of fish and chips. (Note that this is because she is a baby, not because she is a lesbain) (although it would not be a problem at all if she did turn out to be a lesbain, as it is legal now).

We eat our fish and chips. I wrestle with the car seat, which transforms magically into a pram like on the popular children’s TV show ‘Transformers’. We wheel her up and down past a few shops, whilst she takes no interest whatsoever.

Posted on by JonnyB

“So are there any volunteers?” asks the Chairman.

The floor collapses under the weight of eyes hitting it.

“It would be great to have somebody else help out.”

I sink slightly lower in my chair. Beside me, Short Tony sinks slightly lower in his chair. On the other side, Big A is sinking lower in his chair. Realising that sinking low is a relative concept, I sink a bit more low, but this manoeuvre is anticipated by the others, who follow suit in the sinking stakes. It is a strategy of diminishing returns, especially since Short Tony has such a head start on us.

Volunteering for high office in a local club is a bit like having sex with Mary Archer – you have to be either a relentless social climber or very, very drunk to do it, and whilst your friends might be polite and congratulatory about the act to your face, deep down they will be clutching the side of their head and crying ‘WHY??? WHY???’. Not being the social climbing type of person unless you count watching BBC4 occasionally, I maintain my ‘gazing at the floor’ pose until I realise that several people are looking at me with aggressive intent.

I briefly consider setting myself on fire in spectacular fashion. However, whilst that sounds good in theory, much of the immediate impact is lost if you have to excuse yourself to drive down the road to the Q8 garage for petrol first, and then scrabble round the pub on your return in order to find somebody with a spare match.

Kev pipes up. “Maybe it needs a sub-committee. People who could liase really easily. If, say, they lived next door to each other.”

I sink slightly lower in my chair. Beside me (ect. ect.)

But it is to no avail. The three of us are now the official Bowls Club Social Events Subcommittee. I am not entirely sure what this will entail, or whether my idea of a social event will coincide with theirs. But I will be careful. Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts, a lot.

Posted on by JonnyB

“Shhhhh!!!” I hiss. “Look like we love you. And she might not take you away.”

Years ago, I did ‘work experience’ in a hospital. It was, by any criteria, not a happy arrangement for experiencer, institution or patients. On my first day, the lady in charge of me took me on a tour of the facilities. After several wards, laundries, administration sections and the morgue, we stepped into a room importantly marked ‘Staff Only’.

Before the door was opened I could smell the cigarettes, but I was unprepared for the jaundiced murk within. Smoke clung to the ceiling, to the yellowing walls, drifting around the battered and fading furniture in a creeping fashion that was purely Dickensian. (n.b. Charles). Though my eyes were streaming, I could make out the figure of the fattest woman in the world, slumped in a far corner, half-smoking, half chewing on a Benson & H.

We fought our way through the smoke molecules to reach her. Peering at me through thick spectacles, she swilled low into her chair, as if she’d been poured into it from a big vat of something quivery and shapeless. Surrounding her were ten or eleven plastic cups, some of which contained unwanted remnants of what seemed to be the treacliest of treacle-coffee.

“Jonny,” said my guide, brightly. “I’d like you to meet the Health Visitor.”

That was in the 1980’s, and they are different now, and look like they ought to be a friend of your mum’s called ‘Jean’. Plus we do not constantly take out endowment mortgages whilst listening to Kajagoogoo records.

I stand in front of the poo on the curtains so she does not think I am a bad housekeeper, and she converses with the LTLP, ignoring me studiously, as I am just a man. I like it that way, as it makes the LTLP feel important, and they can have a good heart-to-heart about women’s things like feeding and indigestion and all that.

I hold Baby Servalan in the background, making the occasional ‘goo’ noise. She is very good, and we are allowed to keep her.

Posted on by JonnyB

“Shhhhh!!!” I hiss. “Look like we love you. And she might not take you away.”

Years ago, I did ‘work experience’ in a hospital. It was, by any criteria, not a happy arrangement for experiencer, institution or patients. On my first day, the lady in charge of me took me on a tour of the facilities. After several wards, laundries, administration sections and the morgue, we stepped into a room importantly marked ‘Staff Only’.

Before the door was opened I could smell the cigarettes, but I was unprepared for the jaundiced murk within. Smoke clung to the ceiling, to the yellowing walls, drifting around the battered and fading furniture in a creeping fashion that was purely Dickensian. (n.b. Charles). Though my eyes were streaming, I could make out the figure of the fattest woman in the world, slumped in a far corner, half-smoking, half chewing on a Benson & H.

We fought our way through the smoke molecules to reach her. Peering at me through thick spectacles, she swilled low into her chair, as if she’d been poured into it from a big vat of something quivery and shapeless. Surrounding her were ten or eleven plastic cups, some of which contained unwanted remnants of what seemed to be the treacliest of treacle-coffee.

“Jonny,” said my guide, brightly. “I’d like you to meet the Health Visitor.”

That was in the 1980’s, and they are different now, and look like they ought to be a friend of your mum’s called ‘Jean’. Plus we do not constantly take out endowment mortgages whilst listening to Kajagoogoo records.

I stand in front of the poo on the curtains so she does not think I am a bad housekeeper, and she converses with the LTLP, ignoring me studiously, as I am just a man. I like it that way, as it makes the LTLP feel important, and they can have a good heart-to-heart about women’s things like feeding and indigestion and all that.

I hold Baby Servalan in the background, making the occasional ‘goo’ noise. She is very good, and we are allowed to keep her.