Fair Or Foul?

I got excited at work last week.

This singularly rare occurrence was caused by Kirstie Allsopp.

It seems that my employers were taking part in the new Keep Britain Tidy campaign that was about to be fired up and were asking for volunteers to take part in a special lunch time litter pick. How was Kirstie involved? Well, this new national campaign was being figure-headed by the particularly luscious Kirstie who I mistakenly thought was going to be personally throwing her lust-inducing weight behind the endeavour.

I was all prepared to wear rubber gloves and rubber boots (in fact rubber everything), give up my lunch break and get stuck in to the man made mountains of mess that regularly besmirch my home town of Leamington Spa. Not only was I prepared to invest in my own litter picker (which I’d be quite prepared to let Kirstie handle) but I was actually plotting to shovel extra detritus around the district’s footpaths and byways just so I could present my bulging sacks to Kirstie at the end of the event to show her what a tip-top litter picker-upper I really am.

I just know she’d have been impressed and would have whisked me off for a mochaccino somewhere to say a private thank you.

I had it all planned.

Sadly, once I tore my eyes from her picture and actually read the article on my work’s intranet properly it transpired that Kirstie would not be present at the actual Leamington Spa event. Instead she’d be at the official launch in London. What? Get your bleeding priorities right, Kirstie!

It seems all we’d get in L Spa was my big boss in his marigolds.

Not exactly a crowd puller. Needless to say I spurned the litter pick and moodily ate my sandwiches in the park and begrudgingly threw my crisp packet into the bin afterwards.

This is the story of my life. To not exactly brush fame as to see it smeared across someone else about 100 miles away.

Not that we don’t get to meet famous people through special events organized by my employers...

Only last month I could have taken part in an anti dog fouling campaign and met (not necessarily shaken hands with) Ricky Tomlinson who was taking a personal interest in the campaign and actually come down to Leamington Spa to throw his lust-repelling weight behind the launch.

Now I’m not knocking this campaign at all. Speaking as someone whose shoe soles seem to be permanent turd magnets I wholeheartedly approve of any endeavour to remove dog logs from our streets.

But Ricky Tomlinson? Posing next to a dog turd bin? It didn’t exactly get the juices of my enthusiasm flowing.

Kirstie, you’ve broken my heart.

P.S. Would anyone like to purchase a second hand litter picker? Unused. Clean. Grip handle squeezed only once. Going cheap.

Some People And Me

Three items on the bugbear list this morning.

First off – a flagrant disregard for child safety.

I took the boys into school / nursery this morning as Karen is in Birmingham on an accountancy training course. On the way we passed one of Tom’s nursery mates being walked to school by her dad. Well, I’m assuming it was her dad and not her uncle. Whoever he was he obviously wished he was doing something else. There were frequent exhortations to “come on” and “hurry up”.

Bear in mind his ward is a wide-eyed 2 year old.

Now Tom loves walking. He finds it a great delight and no doubt feels very grown up doing it. Unfortunately, at just under 2 he just does not understand how important it is to hold mummy or daddy’s hand when busy roads are nearby. So he gets strapped into the pushchair. He’s fine with this thankfully. It’s still fun to be out and about even without the ability to perambulate freely. But even if he complained I’m afraid he’d still be stuck in the pushchair regardless.

I’d rather have him crying and safe than laughing one minute and forever silent the next.

So it was with horror that I watched this poor girl almost run out into the road when a car was coming and then get hollered back onto the pavement at the last minute.

For God sake man keep a grip of your child!

This would be bad enough in isolation but my wife witnessed a similar incident with the same family a few afternoons ago when she picked Tom up from nursery. Again the kid ran out into the road and was only hauled in at the last moment. The poor motorist who was almost involved looked ashen as they drove away.

It’s an accident just waiting to happen.

What is wrong with some people?

Secondly – cleanliness.

Due to blocked drains I’ve been flush testing all the toilets in the building this morning. As I was doing this someone came into the toilets after me. Now, I don’t know why, but I instinctively stood still and kept quiet and out of sight in the cubicle. I instinctively became furtive. Bizarre when I wasn’t even doing anything that involved the lesser-loved bodily functions. But there you go. Maybe I was a pervert in another life? Please keep your responses to this to yourself.

Now I know for a fact that, due to the location of these toilets, they are mostly used by the catering staff.

So imagine my disgust when I heard the urinal being used and then the “urinee” head straight back out without even a cursory swill under the taps.

This is someone who literally has his fingers in every pie going. Not to mention casseroles and stews. And a whole menagerie of sandwiches. On a daily basis.

How can you do that? How can you “point Percy at porcelain” and then not even wave your dannies under a bit of running water?

Folks, there’s a lot to be said for preparing your own packed lunch every day.

Lastly – my own self deprecation.

The other night I assisted some work colleagues who were having difficulty alarming their department at the end of the working day.

When such difficulties arise and seem to be insurmountable I always recommend that staff ring the local CCTV guys and ask them to keep an especial eye on the building. It’s a little extra security measure that probably acts as nothing more than a mental placebo.

I was asked if I had the number to hand.

I did. It was in my head instantly.

My head is full of useful numbers and codes and passwords. I make no effort to memorize them. They’re just there. They stick. It’s a natural facility. When I used to work at British Telecom I found I could give out a lot of the numbers to people without referring to the computer records at all. I had them off by heart. Only the frequently asked for ones I hasten to add. I’m not one of these people that make a living (or a living death) out of memorizing phone books.

But instead of just giving out the number I made a pretence of thinking hard about it. Pretending to strain as I fired up the old memory engine. Why did I do that?

It’s like I was embarrassed to have the necessary knowledge so ready to hand. Was I afraid of appearing sad and nerdy as opposed to just damned efficient?

Why hide my light under a bushel?

Some people, eh?

Cleansing

Karen and I are off for the week enjoying another money saving Staycation holiday. Rather than just laze about (which, let’s face it, is what any normal person would do) we’ve elected to give the house something of a cleaning blitz.

Shampoo the carpets. De-web and de-mould the windowsills. That kind of thing.

It’s a big job and trying to do it with 2 very active children makes it harder still. After all a 2 year old does not appreciate the dictat of not walking on a freshly shampood carpet for a couple of hours until it is dry. And the 8 year old doesn’t give a damn; making a rendezvous with his PlayStation is of a much higher priority.

It is stressful, all this “deep pore” cleaning. And I can now appreciate why my mother used to get so irrate with me and my two sisters on “hoover days” during the summer holidays.

My mother would, without fail, hoover the house twice a week. Mondays would be a “light” day – sitting room and hall only. But Fridays would be the big “all over” day. Upstairs and downstairs. The whole Shebang.

There is something about adults performing cleaning chores that, I swear, just makes kids behaviourally uncooperative. We’d inevitably play up and earn the short, quick arm of my mother’s temper. If we were particularly bad a phone call to my Nan would be in order and she’d speak to us on the phone. Never to tell us off. I don’t think I ever saw or heard my Nan angry but the shame of knowing my Nan felt the slightest disappointment in us was usually enough to bring us all back into line.

God, but I wish she was still alive and on the other end of the phone today.

With the carpets shampood yesterday we all elected to go outside for the afternoon. For the little one this is actually a bonus. He loves being outside in the garden. Rain or snow he loves it. The 8 year old, however, has more of an ambivalent attitude. The garden is great in theory but he’d much rather be inside plugged into his PlayStation or his Nintendo DS.

Except he managed to break the latter in a horrendous fit of temper on Sunday evening.

Every Sunday he has but one chore to perform:

Clean his room.

And, my God, is it a performance. A 2 hour job (at the most) usually ends up taking over the whole day and the whole house. Karen and I have to put more energy into getting him to do it than the job itself would actually take if we were to do it ourselves. But there is a principal at stake here so we persist.

There will be tantrums. There will be wailing. There will be gnashing of teeth. There will be shouting. There will be playing with his toys rather than just tidying them away. There will be miniscule attempts at cleaning and then a million “tea breaks” to recover. And then there will be naggings to get on with the job and get it finished and then the whole cycle will start all over again.

Usually the threat of “no gaming” until the room is tidy ensures the job is eventually completed. With the absence of my Nan on the end of the phone it is the only and best alternative.

This Sunday, however, was different. This Sunday he was told he’d be banned from the DS unless he tidied his room. He said he’d done it and promptly started playing. When we checked we found that the sneaky little so-and-so had merely covered the mess up with his duvet. So gaming was duly banned.

This was when the temper kicked in. And I mean Temper. We’re talking Zeus hurling flaming thunderbolts. We’re talking The Incredible Hulk throwing Chieftain tanks into massive military fuel dumps. Two large tubs of Lego got overturned – 1000+ pieces all over the floor. And then the DS got thrown across the room. £120 quid’s worth of kit broken in a fit of pique.

Karen and I were not impressed. My Nan would have been speechless.

We cannot afford to replace such equipment willy-nilly. So the boy is now Nintendo-less.

The boy of course was distraught. And showed it by having an even bigger tantrum. And then realizing he’d be spending the next 24 hours picking up ALL the Lego from his room before he’d be allowed the ameliorative powers of the PlayStation had another even bigger tantrum.

This was Sunday. And Monday. And part of Tuesday.

The Lego wasn’t completely tidied away until yesterday afternoon after 2 days of sheer hell. Tantrums, complaints, shouts and more attempts at merely concealing the mess rather than actually cleaning it properly.

Karen and I are both exhausted.

Apparently the 8 year old is only possibly on the “borderline of the Aspergers spectrum” according to our local GP.

Christ. I pity those parents with kids who have the full blown version.

The carpet of my mind now needs a deep clean. My mind needs a shampoo.

A good scrub all over please someone.

The Mechanics Of Profanity

I perform a daily external patrol around my place of work pretty much as soon as I arrive on site each morning, armed not with a telescopic baton, pepper spray or a taser but with a bin bag and the keys to the bin store,

You see, I’m not on the lookout for armed blaggers or tooled up psychopaths but for litter louts and damned defacers. Or rather, I’m on the lookout for their multifarious droppings.

This is just one of the many uplifting and status elevating jobs that I perform regularly for my employers.

On a good morning my rounds will net nothing more than a couple of empty cans of Special Brew and an empty cigarette packet (usually Marlboro). Though on occasion these items are augmented inextricably by the presence of a pair of ladies shoes, the cellophane wrapping from an Asda T-shirt (which will be missing – presumably on the purchaser’s / shoplifter’s back) and an odd collection of serviettes still folded up into neat little squares.

Plainly the drunks and tramps around the Leamington Spa area have standards. Not necessarily high standards but standards none the less.

On a bad morning I will encounter what is known in the trade as “a man turd”.

Now, this is not to be confused with a dog turd.

A dog turd is bad enough. I don’t need to describe one to you because you’ve all seen one / walked through one. They’re disgusting and unwelcome in the extreme but have one small positive; one saving grace. The odour of a dog turd (unless stepped into and thus reactivated) is relatively short-lived. A quick slide action with a shovel and they can quite successfully be scraped up off the ground and catapulted into nearby undergrowth without too much post-contact shovel cleaning required. If you’re really lucky the turd will already have turned quite crusty and will barely have left a mark on your spade of choice. Job done (no pun intended, etc).

None of this is ever true of a man turd.

Now, you can tell a man turd by the size and smell.

They smell bad.

And they smell bad forever.

So bad in fact that even a passing hyena would gag.

And they take a hell of a long time to go crusty. In fact they retain a Christmas cake moistness of such magnitude that they may one day be identified as reliable sources of H2O in a post atomic holocaust world.

If you’re lucky the “bricklayer” will possess a healthy digestive system and will deposit a single neat sausage that can be scraped up quite cleanly and lobbed somewhere out of sight and out of mind. If you’re unlucky, however, the owner will have the digestive system of a cat on high strength worming tablets and will leave matter that can be variously described as “a broken muffin”, “a Spanish omelette” or, worst of all, “a walnut whip”.

And such matter will defy any and every attempt at efficient shovelling. In fact using a shovel is just a big no-no. You’ll just get the offending matter spread over a wider surface area and the shovel itself will be transformed into a chemical weapon so effective it would make a muck-spreader vomit.

What is needed is an industrial strength hose and a bio-suit.

I was faced with one of these this morning.

Now, I’ve become something of a stoic when confronted with these still-warm examples of ethno-botany but a couple of niggling questions always buzz around the back of my head (like the flies) every time I encounter one.

The mechanics of producing such an offering... I mean, how exactly does someone go about it?

The pulling down (or up) of clothing and the squatting down I can just about envision (though try not to)... but... cleaning yourself up afterwards...? What happens there, eh?

Do these people come pre-prepared with toilet paper or freshly bought copies of The Big Issue? If they do this suggests something premeditated about their whole activity and therefore a sickness of the mind.

Or are such droppings evidence of people genuinely caught short... a case of the poo-train is coming and the brakes they ain’t a-working?

What happens then? Surely you don’t just pull up your kecks and walk daintily home, ignoring the uncomfortable localized heat and the feeling of greasy skid marks working themselves deeper into the gusset of your Y-fronts?

You must surely make some attempt to clean yourself up, to scrape off the worst?

But with what or on what?

Nearby foliage? The wall of a building? The pavement itself?

A sleeping tramp?

My mind boggles.

Answers on a piece of toilet paper to the usual address please...

Too Cute For Words (But I’m Gonna Try)

+++ WARNING +++ PARENTING POST +++ WARNING +++

Tom was sick the other morning. Not a sign of illness of bad food, thank God, just a cough that dug a little too deep. A cough with follow through, if you like.

This occasioned not only a change of bed sheets and jim-jams but also necessitated a ride in the washing machine for “Teddy” and “Snow Bear”, Tom’s utterly devoted sleeping companions.

Now, Tom already loves the washing machine and likes nothing better than to help me load it up ready for a wash. However, given that Tom’s bed mates were going to be subjected to the wash and spin cycle we decided it might be a little traumatic for Tom to condemn his friends to such an ordeal and so snuck the toys in while he was preoccupied with CBeebies.

There was no fooling Tom. As soon as the washing machine kicked into life Tom rushed over to it and stared into its portal window with a look of consternation. There, deep within its foamy innards, Teddy and Snow Bear could be seen sloshing about barely (sorry!) keeping their heads above the torrential suds.

Tom’s hand went to his mouth. His other hand pointed to the washing machine and a loud, sympathetic “aaah” could be heard.

Tom checked on their progress regularly throughout the morning. As soon as the washing machine reached its conclusion and became silent and still Tom was canny enough to wait for the door to unlock itself before he burst into action. Quick as a Flash (sorry again!) he opened up the door and fished his bedraggled friends out.

They were each given a big hug and a kiss and were then carried lovingly to the sofa where they were lain down side by side on the cushions. Tom put his fingers to his lips and told them “shhh”; a clear indication that he felt that a little sleep was all they needed to put their soapy ordeal well behind them.

Altogether now: aah!

I would now like to start a campaign to change the current Oxford Dictionary definition of “cute” to the post above. All Blogger support appreciated.

Robotic Bin Men

According to a News24 news item this morning boffins in Italy have developed a robotic rubbish collector.

Customers can send a text message to the robot when they leave out their bin bags and then he/she/it will happily trundle along, scoop up their bin bags and take them to the appropriate trash sorting centre. It sounds great. Bin men on demand. No more rubbish lying around rotting for days on end while we wait for the bin men to finally get round to performing their weekly pick up. One text and you get instant service.

Presumably as many times a day as you need it.

Of course for it to work in the UK there are certain modifications that would have to be made and certain social problems that would have to be overcome.

You just know that the poor little robot would end up mercilessly tagged with graffiti as it went about its business or, worst case scenario, hoofed into the nearest river or dropped off a railway bridge to be neatly (trash) compacted by the 9.25 to Birmingham Moor Street.

So security for the Brit version would have to be beefed up. Armour of some kind. Anti tamper mechanisms. Anti graffiti paint. Smoke canisters and rubber bullets fired out of its electronic anus. A direct line to the ASBO department of the local constabulary. Possibly a random selection of Gene Hunt quotes broadcast through an on-board amplifier to deter potential attackers.

“You’re making as much progress as a spastic in a magnet factory...”

"You look as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot...”

"You so much as belch out of line and I'll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate..."

That sort of thing.

As for modifying its behaviour to fit in with British bin man culture, this should be easy enough to do.

It would need to be reprogrammed to be as untidy as possible – to spill litter everywhere and not bother to return your bin properly. Instead it could dump your bin in another street entirely so you can play “hunt the bin” for a couple of hours to get it back.

It would have to sing as loudly as possible in a voice so atonal it makes Piers Morgan sound like Frank Sinatra. Something by Brittany Spears. Only with alternative lyrics – rhymes that would make a rugby player blush. And all songs must be sung between 8.30 and 9.00 in the morning so every school kid in the land can receive a true education in uncouthness and vulgarity.

Finally of course the bin bot must be programmed to sift through your rubbish in search of old porno mags and rogue copies of The Sunday Sport that it can wave about in the street and call to its robotic colleagues about.

“Blimey, look at the trash compactor on ‘er...”

“Cor, I wouldn’t mind land-filling that one...”

Etc. Etc.

Yeah. Then it would fit right in. Perfect integration. Nobody would even notice any difference.

See, I should have been a scientist, me.

The Lynx Effect

I’d like to invite you all into my shower with me, if I may?

Picture the scene. I’m there half blinded by hot water. I reach for the bottle of shower gel. Although it’s my usual brand – Lynx – it’s not my usual flavour. Not one I would have normally bought.

Because Karen and I do our weekly shop online we occasionally get what is known as “substitutions”. When the products we have selected are unavailable in the store our personal packer will substitute it for a close (living) relative or a slightly different product of a similar type.

Such was the case with my shower gel. Tesco had run out of Africa (now there’s a great newspaper headline) and had supplied me instead with Fever.

OK. I’m soaking wet by now (steady ladies) and basically fully committed to the full-on shower experience.

I open up Fever and begin to apply it liberally.

I halt mid application.

It’s got bits in it. Bits of grit.

This is not enjoyable. My shower experience is compromised.

Now I know some kind of abrasive effect is scientifically proven to get a body cleaner. I know that sugar water is supposed to be great at removing tough ground-in stains from human skin. I know there are products you can buy with the equivalent of broken bits of glass in them to help you remove stubborn oil stains from the palms of your hands.

This is great for mechanics, miners and oil rig workers. They need a hard man ablution experience. I wouldn’t argue with that at all.

But I’m just a regular guy taking a regular shower.

And like most regular guys taking a regular shower the shower experience for me is purely functional. Privates and underarm areas are a priority and then I cover as much of the rest of me as I can with soap and rinse it off. Straight in straight out. No messing.

I really don’t want or need a shower gel that exfoliates as it washes. I don’t want or need to remove dead skin from my legs to make them look silky smooth (especially when I have the Forest of Dean growing on them). I don’t want or need to have the skin on my chest glowing with that freshly scraped and grazed feeling.

What metrosexual idiot came up with shower gel for men with bits in it?

What man on this planet enjoys having his pubes and pits infested with bits of soapy grit?

Answer anyone?

Er... reading back over this post... did I supply way too much information?