Day 110: I Poison The Atmosphere

I once got caught on the M25 going in the wrong direction for three hours. That was three weeks after I'd torn the right wing of my car off for the second time, and a month before I had to have the clutch replaced. Nevertheless, I fancy myself as generally an OK driver, which allows me to treat middle-lane hoggers with disdain (my word! A positive cavalcade of them out today, all going at 60mph in the middle lane, until they moved into the fast lane and went at 65mph), call random pedestrians twats, and flash my lights imperiously when the need arises.

Anyway, my small, reliable, slightly boring car gives me great pleasure. It allows me to travel about the place chirpily, drive with one finger unless I am transporting a member of my family (in which case I concentrate jolly hard and read the Highway Code the night before), and listen to the music very loudly on the really awfully good steer-eee-Oh that comes fitted as standard (along with a "keyless entry system", "see-home lights", air conditioning, strangely-shaped storage spaces in unusual places, and a mirror where you wouldn't expect it).

But it has been smelling less than fresh recently. There was the incident involving the salmon I left in the shop (but in fact left in the boot for a week), the cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy ferried briefly across town on Friday, the cup of coffee that went mainly on me but slightly on the floor on Monday, and something to do with lemons that I do not remember buying. All of these added up to a strange and unsavoury fug.

They had those tree things on speshul offer in Tesco yesterday. I grasped at the packet wildly and wondered if it could solve my problem. There was a green one, a yellow one, and a blue one. I chose the blue one, put it on the car and drove up the M1, shouting all the way. It was awful, and made me gag a bit. But I was late, and there were hoggers to shout at, and when I got to my destination I forgot to remove the stinky tree.

I got in the car at three this afternoon. Something smelt bad. Worse than sick, worse than the worst smell you can imagine. But the car wouldn't start. It did, and then it stalled. It did this thing twelve times, and then I realised I was in third gear. I started again and drove off without further incident. Such was my relief that I forgot about the smell for a bit; then it hit me round the face with its stinky evil. I stopped, ripped the blue tree off my rear-view mirror and hurled it into a roadside bin many feet from the car. My hands smelt of it. I scratched my nose. My nose smelt of it. I drove for a bit, and ruffled my hair; my hair smelt of it. I drove from Junction 18 of the M1 all the way back to Brixton with the windows open on both sides, leaving a plume of vile-smelling air behind me. But still the car stinks. I stink. Everything stinks of Magic Tree Bouquet.

If there is a Magic at work with Magic Trees, it is a Dark Magic. But I blame myself: I know for a fact that the only people who use Magic Trees are chainsmoking minicab drivers and geriatrics who shouldn't really be allowed on the road. But what else can I do? Clean the car?

Day 109: I Survey The Wreckage Of My Garden

Thanks to a conversation about Manfred Mann, work on my once-pretty garden was cut brutally short on Friday. Noel drifted off beatifically smiling at the sky, claiming he could get all the Remnants of his slash and burn policy in the back of his Peugeot Estate. (There is no room in the Peugeot Estate. It is full of Tools and bits of string.)

Anyway here, for your amusement, are some photographs of the garden taken mere minutes ago. If you are ever feeling anxious about your own garden, I suggest you bookmark this post and look at these photographs a bit.


Photograph 1: An exciting vista from just outside the French windows.

Includes view of shed (contains three broken lawnmowers, slugs and compost), and A Chair. You may also see - if you look carefully - an enormous pile of dead stuff obscuring the lawn. To the left you will see next door's fence, currently held upright with a piece of blue baler twine. In the left foreground is a piece of trellis, hanging on by a single thread of green baler twine.


















Picture 2: The other corner, where I will apparently be kissing under a Bower of Bliss.

The Bower is, as you can see, currently rather sparse. Again, A Chair insists on being in shot. In the foreground are the remnants of a brutally-pruned bush that was once green but is, to my horror, becoming variegated (but yellow and green, not white and green. Ghastly.)

Noel suggests I buy a 'funky old chair' and put it in the corner, and look in the attic I do not have for old plastic toys, which I should hang from branches. This apparently will create a Conversation Piece (e.g., "NWM, what the fuck is a three-legged Barbie horse doing in that tree? And what's Action Man doing in the rosemary? Do his Eagle Eyes still work?"), that will have my friends and family rolling in the aisles, a.k.a. the (now non-existent) flowerbeds.


Picture 3: A thrilling view from By The Shed.

This elegant view takes in the French windows, the brutally pruned rose and the ghastly variegated bush. A Chair features. The pots, once full of lavender and rosemary, are now Empty.


















The window you see is my bathroom window. TwatBoy lives upstairs. I am to drink a glass of the wine and walk around my estate and "tune in to the vibe". The only vibe I can tune into is not one I would wish to experience much longer, and it will take more than a glass to get me to venture outside again today.

The fact is that it looks better now than it did before he came. I only wish I were joking.

Day 108: I Go In Search Of A Guidebook And Cheese

Stanford's in Covent Garden is a splendid shop selling travel books and that. I went rigid with delight when I went in and forgot why I was there for a second, so distracted was I by wrapping paper, Moleskine notebooks, globes of all sizes and small haversacks. Anyway, I then remembered why I was there, and approached a man in a Stanford's T-shirt.

Me: Hello. Where is Canada?
Man: Just north of America.
Me (Shrieking with glee): How many times have you made that joke?
Man: Fifty times a day. It's good though isn't it.
Me: Oh yes. Very.

Anyway, I got my guide book(s) and wandered down the road to buy cheese. I can't eat much cheese, what with being a lardy larder, so if I have it I have a tiny bit, and it MUST be delicious. So I went to Neal's Yard Dairy, which sells cheese, some more cheese, and a bit of cheese, a couple of of oatcakes, two loaves of bread, and 3m types of cheese.

Peeping out from behind a wheel of Stilton the size of the Moon was a tiny, very beautiful, Asian-American man in a blue hat.

Me: Hello.
Man: Hello to you too. Do you need some help?
Me (Eyes like saucers, dribbling a bit): Oh yes PLEASE.
Man: If it's cheese you're after, you're outta luck.

I love him a bit.

Day 108: I Have A Heart Attack

Heavens to Murgatroyd! (Who was Murgatroyd? Looking it up on Wikipedia doesn't count.) As I was pressing the "Publish Post" button on the "The Most Boring Post In The World" for today, Friday 27 October 2006, I heard an ENORMOUS explosion and a shout.

It sounded as if my French windows had exploded. I rushed to the garden and what did I see? A plume of smoke wafting over the wall from a neighbour's garden (the garden in which grows without check the Malevolent Cat-Killing Apple Tree), and a smouldering firework on the pile of debris currently obscuring my own extensive acreage.

Eek! Whatever next? I hardly dare move. That Guy Fawkes* fella has A LOT to answer for.

(Hot 5th November News: In Lewes they burn Guy Fawkes, The Pope, and another political figure. Last year it was the Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP. Fingers crossed it's Oliver Letwyn this year. The man has the smuggest face I have ever seen in my life.)



*For Foreign Readers: Guy Fawkes (aka Guido Fawkes, b. York, April 13, 1570), took it upon himself to try and blow up King James 1 (who was extremely flatulent, dribbled a lot and had a very ugly wife), and both Houses of Parliament on 5th November 1605. (Fawkes was a Catholic. Henry VIII made England Protestant so he could get divorced a couple of times and clock up the wives. Then Edward VI made us Definitely Protestant. He died and Bloody Mary, who was a fucking lunatic, took over. She was Catholic and burnt a lot of people on stakes. Then she pegged it and Elizabeth I took over, made us Protestant again, and walked on Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak a bit whilst eating potatoes and smoking a small clay pipe containing the tobacco he introduced to Britain. Anyway, the upshot of all this hoo-ha is that the Catholics were a bit pissed off - which is fair enough, all things considered.)

In memory of this splendid attempt (known as The Gunpowder Plot), every year we have fireworks and that and burn an effigy of Fawkes, or some other political figure. Pesky kids take their rubbish Guy (usually made out of their mother's enormous knickers, a balloon and carrot), and sit on street corners going "Penny for the Guy?". If you do not give them at least five pounds, they steal your mobile phone. The irony is that Fawkes was Detected before the gunpowder actually went off, so why we actually blow up gunpowder and that on 5th November I will never know.

NB: I remembered all of this out of my head. For this I have to thank Mrs Stanier my history teacher who - if I remember rightly - had a crush on Conrad Russell and drove a Renault 4.

Day 108: I Would Love To Post, But I Cannot

Such japes this morning! I have Photographs and Everything, but it appears that Blogger is broken, and it will not let me put up the photographs and that. Is it just me?

I have just awarded myself the coveted "Most Boring Post In The World" award for today, Friday 27 October 2006. Well done me!