Posted on by JonnyB

Short Tony has sacked his milkman!!!

The LTLP and I sit there, aghast at this development. It seems wrong that the Short Tonies act like this and do not support local businesses. Plus they used to over-order a lot and we got lots of free surplus milk from the arrangement.

“What did you say to him?” I ask.

“Well it’s a bit difficult,” replied Short Tony. “You have to fill in a card to tell him why you don’t want to use him any more. And there wasn’t a tick box for ‘a bit creepy’.”

“Plus he’d been coming for several months,” added Mrs Short Tony. “And he still hadn’t worked out where the front door was.”

We agreed that this was a Key Skill for any milkman. But I sympathised. As the airport people will tell you, it is never nice having to make people redundant.

To be honest however, it would have been a more difficult decision had he been a sole local trader, jovially bringing milk from his nearby farm, fresh out of the udder. But he was actually just a small cog in the wheel of Dairy Crest, an Evil Corporation, who are sort of the Haliburton of cows.

“We should have plenty of spare milk in the new year,” I offered. There was a pregnant silence.

“Drink up your beer,” orders the LTLP.

Posted on by JonnyB

The room brilliantly illuminated once more.

A shaft of lightning, clearly visible through the meagre, home-made curtains, followed by a thunderbolt of clearly very local origin. Then again, and again in quick succession. I clocked the time – around 4am – visible on the green glow of the bedside radio, before a loud click signified the power going out, the time resetting to a flashing 00:00.

The LTLP was not there, working away that night. This was good, as she sometimes gets scared by things like this. I lay in the dark clutching Honey Bear.

Click – the power goes again. 00:00. Honestly, the local services round here are positively Dickensian. Although I do get my power through a lead that comes via Short Tony’s house, so he could just have been having a feeble joke at my expense.

Click. 00:00. Click. 00:00. I appeared to be travelling back in time. It is a lot easier than people suppose.

Downstairs, the phone and internet connection melted in a white-hot surge of naked elemental voltage.

Actually, they just stopped working. But that bit made it sound better. The rain poured out of the sparse guttering, drumming on one of the sills below.

I drifted off after a while. (To sleep, not out in to a flood, that would be in poor taste currently given events elsewhere).

When I awoke, the clock read 3:11. I had travelled back in time by almost an hour. However, in the other rooms, time had progressed as normal. This is one of the weird paradoxes of time/space travel, all to do with relativity, and is explained more fully in the song ’39’ by the band Queen.

But no internet connection still, and also no milk for my tea. I did think about looting the Village Shop and shooting at the Parish Council if they tried to stop me, but again that would have been in poor taste plus I have to go in there every day to get my newspaper.

So now I am virtually cut off from the world. I write this diary entry from a borrowed dial-up connection whilst waiting for the G.P.O. to investigate and repair my fault.

Many thankyous for the DVD advice last week. It has worked, and my plan is back on track.

Posted on by JonnyB

My DVD doesn’t work!!!

Eagerly, I settle down with the LTLP on the comfortable green sofa. As it is a special occasion I allow her to perform a hug on me, rather than insisting on our usual separate sofa arrangement.

But there is a sort of clunky noise followed by a ‘wrong region’ error message.

It seems outrageous that they allow DVDs to be sold that are programmed not to work in Norfolk. But that is the lot of us countryside folk – we are discriminated against and oppressed.

I send Clint the Movie Business Executive a sad email. He is very understanding, and tells me that I can keep the DVD anyway.

So my dabble in the commercial waters of reviewdom ends in disaster. I thought I’d be able to write something quite funny, then send you all off to buy it via my Amazon link, and become rich on the proceeds.

But it was not to be. I am depressed.

Posted on by JonnyB

I prepare my DVD.

As regular readers will know, Clint, the important US Movie Studio Executive, has been sending me DVDs to review (well, one DVD). I said I didn’t want to carry advertising but was quite happy to review funny things as a service to my readers (plus it would come in handy as filler if nothing particularly interesting had happened in the village that day) (Plus it would mean I got free stuff).

It is of the first series of US Comedy ‘Third Rock from the Sun’. This is exciting for me, as I have heard of this programme, although I do not watch much television these days and so have not seen it and can approach with a mind full of openness.

The DVD box is extremely sturdy and glossy. My immediate impression is that fans of sturdy, glossy boxes would be very impressed with this. It’s even reinforced with a brace, so that when you remove the interior sleeve, the box remains sturdy and glossy rather than becoming floppy and glossy. This is a nice touch, and packaging enthusiasts everywhere will be nodding their heads in appreciation already.

The interior sleeve is just awesome. It immediately hits you with a big picture of an actress called Sally Solomon, who is quite a fit bird although they have not airbrushed out her hairy arm.

Then it sort of concertinas out in a very satisfying and clunky fashion, a bit like a modern fold-up pram.

If I have a criticism, it is of the blurb on the back. Blurb on the back is always rubbish. What I don’t know is whether it’s rubbish because the American-type breathless language comes across as cretinous to English people. Or whether American people think it’s rubbish as well. If the latter, then they should press to raise the standard of blurb writing in Hollywood, as it is doing their nation a disservice.

Anyway, this blurb isn’t really that bad, but I am really not interested in how many Emmys the actors have won. Or – more gratingly – how many Emmy®s the actors have won. That R with a circle in it really does put me off. It seems to be there to emphasise quite how much the Emmy® thing is about commerce and quite how little about art and stuff. I refuse to get involved with this. Emmy emmy emmy emmy. So sue me.

(Note to lawyers working for the Emmy company, please email me if you feel really strongly about this and I will add in the ® thing asap)

So, to continue with the commerce theme, and to allow you to catch up with what I’m saying and perhaps watch along with my review:

Click here to view the details of and purchase the DVD (UK version)

Click here to view the details of and purchase the DVD (Region 1, US version, note will not work in anywhere in the world other than the US so do not get this if your DVD player will be incompatible)

Continued tomorrow. Although you can probably guess where this is going.