Month: June 2006

June 11^th 2006

What is the point of those Baby On Board stickers that clutter up the back windows of so many cars. Does the owner of the car expect you to stop them and ask for a look at their darling little pride and joy?

“Why have you stopped me?“

“Well I’d like a look at your baby of course.”

“ Look at my baby? Why?”

“Well why else would you be advertising the fact that that you’re carrying your baby in your car?”

Maybe it isn’t that. Maybe the stickers are designed to influence the judgement of the driver in the car behind as to whether or not he should crash into the car in front?

buy viagra canada

“Oh look Ethel, I see there’s a Baby on Board sticker on the car in front, I was about to plough into the back of it but now I’ve been warned there’s a baby on board I’m going to take avoiding action.”

A noble thought perhaps, but a realistic proposition? I don’t think so; for surely anyone about to plough into the back of a car would already have taken all the avoiding action they can, whether the car is in front is sporting a Baby on Board sticker on the rear window or not. So that isn’t the point of them then.

When I first saw a Baby on Board sticker I thought it had perhaps been put there to warn the driver of the car behind not to get too close, as in addition to any other people who might be on board there was also a baby, so be ultra careful. But I soon dismissed that theory, common sense telling me that if you are near enough to a car to read the Baby on Board sticker you are already nearer to it than safe braking distance will allow, even at only thirty miles-an-hour.

Women being the way they are, one might consider a Baby on Board sticker to be more likely to cause an accident than to prevent one, for what woman does not like to look at a baby? And that being so what then are the chances of a woman driver, on observing that the car in front is displaying a Baby on Board sticker, and in her eagerness to see the baby, getting too close to it and crashing into the back of it? I don’t think BetFred would give you very generous odds against it happening.

“You’re driving too close to that car in front, Ethel.”

“But I want to see the baby.”

CRASH!!

 “I think that’s it there, the one with the busted head and the rattle.”

After much thought I’ve reached the conclusion that it must be some sort of announcement – the proud mother proclaiming to the world that she has had a baby; but at this moment she isn’t out with it proudly showing it to her friends, pushing it around in its trendy three-wheeler pram or slung to her front like some tiny mountaineer trying to scale the twin peaks of Mount Tits , but hidden away in a car where her new pride and joy can’t be seen and admired by anybody. So she has to tell everyone. BABY ON BOARD!

I once saw a sticker in a back window, obviously put there by a mother-to-be who couldn’t wait any longer to tell the world about her good news, that read Foetus On Board. Perhaps it was a joke. But perhaps Baby on Board stickers are a joke too, because they certainly don’t make any sense. Now Stupid Pillock on Board….... 

June 9^th 2006

“Can I take your dog for a walk?”

Liz Pollitt looked me up and down. “What you say?”

“I’d like to take You Twat….your dog for a walk, if that’s possible?”

“Are you fuckin’ mental or somefink?”

“Look I really would like to take your dog out for a walk.”

“An’ I’d like to be Liz ‘urley, so fuck off.”

I gritted my teeth. This was proving to be harder than I’d expected. “Please? Please let me take your dog for a walk.”

“Why?”

“In the hope that it will stop barking.”

“It’s not barkin’.”

“Not at the moment, no, but when you and your family are out of the house it does nothing else. Except for when it’s howling. I think if it’s taken for a regular walk it won’t bark and howl so much.”

“The twat can bark an ‘owl all it wants for all I care. S’ free country innit.”

I was getting nowhere fast. An incentive was called for. “I’m willing to pay of course.”

“Pay?”

“A fiver.”

She looked me up and down, as suspicious as a milk bill. “Why would a geezah pay somebody to take their dog for a walk?”

I feigned surprise. “Well for the sheer pleasure of it of course. Surely you’ve heard of a dog walking service? Whereby people pay dog owners to take their dog for a walk?

Her brow creased as her underemployed brain wrestled with this concept. “I fought it was like the dog owners what paid to ‘ave their dogs walked?”

“No, it’s the other way round.”

She didn’t need any more persuading. “Five pahnds you said?”

I took out my wallet. “You’d better introduce us.”

You Twat started barking as soon as he saw me but I’m not bad with dogs and I soon made friends with him; or perhaps he quietened down because he was fearful I’d slip him another spiked meatball.

“Right, I’ll take him out tomorrow morning when you’re all out. Where’s his lead?”

“It hasn’t got one.” She thought for a moment. “I can problee find a lengf of rope somewhere.”

You Twat on the end of a lengf of rope might prove to be too tempting and we might never make it out of the back garden, so I declined. “No problem,” I said. “I’ll buy him one.”

June 8^th 2006

Mentioning Atkins Down The Road’s arsenal of weapons the other day reminded me that my friend is a dab hand at shooting rabbits, his skill with the twelve bore shotgun having provided dinner for The Trouble and I on numerous occasions, and that he spends quite a good deal of his leisure hours engaged in making the local population of rabbits a bit less abundant in the heather and gorse–strewn countryside that surrounds the little town in which we live.

Unfortunately some of the surrounding countryside, as well as the heather and gorse and rabbits, also contains farms, and it was at one of these farms that Atkins once, in addition to bagging a rabbit, also bagged a large pig that happened to be careless enough to be directly behind the rabbit when he let rip with his shotgun. It was a complete accident of course, but conscious of the fact that the farmer might not take too kindly to the premature slaying of one of his porkers Atkins hopped it from the scene of the crime without further ado.That might have been the end of the matter but apparently someone had seen the dastardly deed and reported it to the farmer. Subsequently the farmer, seeking compensation for his loss, had challenged Atkins about it. Naturally Atkins had denied all knowledge of the matter, telling the farmer that at the time of the alleged incident he was with me, some ten miles away, on a fishing trip. He knew that the farmer would waste no time in calling on me to confirm his alibi, so once the farmer had departed Atkins called me, told me of the escapade, and asked me to support his story. I agreed of course.
 
I am not a great fan of farmers, I don’t much care for the way they are always pleading poverty whilst availing themselves of the very latest in 4 X 4 off road gas guzzlers – as Atkins himself succinctly once put it, ‘You don’t see many farmers riding around on a bike’ – so there was never any question that I wouldn’t back up his deceit, and in doing so get him off the hook.Until the time the farmer came knocking on my door, at about ten-o-clock in the morning a couple of days later later, I had scarcely stopped thinking about poor old Atkins shooting the pig. I just couldn’t get it out of my head and had several times burst out laughing at the image it conjured up. When I tried to read my book the words just disappeared to be replaced by a picture of Atkins shooting the pig. I even tried watching a play on TV, Martin Clunes in some nonsense or other, but even then I kept getting this vision of a pig on the screen every few minutes, a situation not helped by Martin Clunes I might add, an actor who has taken on an increasingly porcine-like appearance of late. That morning at breakfast I was still chuckling about it. The Trouble asked me what it was I found so funny and when I told her she couldn’t stop chuckling about it either, and set me off chuckling again. Consequently when the farmer called, in an 06 plate Range Rover of course, I could barely keep my face straight. The farmer’s face was very straight, but then he’d just lost a pig. He came straight to the point. “Do you know a Richard Atkins?”“Ah,” I replied immediately, “You mean Atkins the pig shooter.”Why I said it I will never know. I certainly didn’t want to get Atkins into any more trouble than he was in already. The only thing I can put it down to is that over the last couple of days I’d thought so much about Atkins shooting the pig that when his name was mentioned I immediately associated it with his pig shooting exploits. Anyway the upshot of it was that I had to tell Atkins that I’d accidentally shopped him. He was quite livid as could be well understood. However after I offered to go halves with him on the compensation demanded by the farmer he came round a little, but our friendship remained a bit fragile for some time after that and I had to work hard to get it back to its former solidity. There are times – such as when I have to ride around in a car accompanied by an inflatable rubber woman – when I’m not at all sure I should have bothered .