Month: January 2007

Already A Shithouse

9th January 2007

I have informed The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road of my intention to be a shithouse from now on and the reason why. Atkins said that it sounds like a good idea and that he may very well become a shithouse himself. The Trouble said I should have no trouble whatsoever becoming a shithouse if my behaviour yesterday is anything to go by. I assume she means the business with her trousers.

Like the rest of us The Trouble tends to put on a few pounds over Christmas and also like the rest of us she has ambitions to get rid of the surplus poundage as soon into the New Year as is reasonably possible. She happened to mention to me that this year she would have to do without the use of scales in her quest as unfortunately she had forgotten to weigh herself prior to the start of the holiday festivities. No matter, she said, she would know when her weight was back to normal as the week before Christmas she had bought a new pair of trousers which fitted her perfectly.
Her plan then was to diet until the trousers fitted her as perfectly again. Foolproof. Not so. A sound method on the face of it, but open to abuse.
I have a sister who along with a sewing machine and the seamstress skills to go with it shares my sense of humour, so, just for a laugh, I had her take in the waist of the trousers by a couple of inches. Yesterday The Trouble declared that she felt she had lost enough excess poundage to get into the trousers again and disappeared upstairs to our bedroom. I have never heard the howl of a banshee, but if it is half as terrifying as the noise that came out of our bedroom two minutes later then if banshees ever hit town I don’t want to be around when they do. I ran upstairs. The Trouble is not a fat woman, on the contrary she has a nice figure for her age, but even a nice figure can not get away with an attempt to force it into a pair of trousers deficient in the waist measurement by two inches. Consequently the small amount of fat she normally carries round her waist had become a roll of fat, spilling out of the top of the trousers, which, if not of lifebelt proportions, certainly looked like something which might be an aid to buoyancy had she been drowning.
Naturally I started to laugh. Not for very long though because clearly she was upset, a fact that became clear to me when she threw a pot of oil of olay at me. I apologised, then in an effort to restore the good humour she had been in before she tried on the trousers I let her in on my little joke, adding as a bonus that she had probably reached her target weight after all. For some unknown reason she failed to find it funny and she has hardly spoken to me since.
If this is all you have to do to be considered a shithouse it’s going to be easy.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy 

Shithouse

8th January 2007Whenever someone loses their life in tragic circumstances they are always described thus: “Oh he was a smashing bloke. Really genuine. And so generous. He would do anything for anybody.’
Or ‘She was a wonderful woman. A Saint. Everybody liked her. I never heard anybody say a bad thing against her.
Or ‘She was a lovely girl. So bubbly. Always had a smile on her face and a kind word.’ 
No one is ever a shithouse. No one ever says; ‘He was a right arsehole. A real tight-fisted vindictive twat who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire or give you the dirt from under his fingernails.’
This maxim isn’t confined to victims of murderers or those unfortunates who have been visited by incurable diseases. It seems to apply to anyone who has died. I have been to quite a few funerals over the years and I have yet to hear a eulogy in which the speaker describes the deceased in anything but the most glowing terms. And most certainly not as a shithouse.
The conclusion to be drawn from this state of affairs is that only the good die, shithouses never. So, in an effort to live as long as possible, I am going to become a shithouse. Starting today.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000Football Crazy

Blind Men

6th January 2007 Today Atkins Down The Road and I played Blind Men, which is one of our daft games. We often play daft games, much as children do. We like to think it keeps us young. In fact I remember playing Blind Men as a child; however the adult version of the game is a bit more refined, as are Atkins and I.
We usually travel to Stockport in order to play it as we’re too well known in our own little town and probably wouldn’t get away with it.
It went off as usual. Armed with white sticks we stood at opposite sides of a busy street, facing the traffic, as if waiting for someone to help us across the road. And as usual someone soon did. Quite often someone will stop to help me before someone stops to help Atkins, or vice versa, and when this happens we take delaying action by engaging them in conversation, such as “You’re sure there’s nothing coming are you because I wouldn’t like to be knocked over.” or “Can you hold on a minute I’m going to sneeze.” That sort of thing.
However today we got a willing helper at the same time. We each set off on our journey across the road, tapping our white sticks on the road the while, then, when we met in the centre of the road we shrugged off the guiding hands of our helpers, brandished our white sticks high in the air as though they were swords, and took up fencing stances.
“On guard, you French scum,” I demanded of Atkins.
“Sacre bleu, you weel soon feel the cold steel of my sword you Eenglish pigdog!” retorted Atkins.
Then we started fencing. It stopped the traffic of course and a sizeable crowd soon gathered as usual. < BR>Actually we’re getting quite good at it now; not to the standard of Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Errol Flynn maybe but certainly as good as Kevin Costner when he was Robin Hood, so we put on quite a decent show. Then after a couple of minutes or so we packed it in and just walked off before we got into trouble with Plod.
Atkins once suggested that after a minute or so’s fencing we should go round with the hat but I managed to talk him out of it; I’m not hard up enough yet to resort to begging.  

 

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.My address is –

Terry Ravenscroft
19 Ventura Court
Ollersett Avenue
New Mills
High Peak
SK22 4LL

The Aristocracy

4th January 2007

BBC Radio Five Live spent an hour yesterday morning discussing the proposition ‘Is the British aristocracy any use?’ I could have saved them the trouble. To put it as politely as I can members of the aristocracy are about are as much use as a chocolate teapot. To put it as impolitely as I can they are fucking parasitical freeloading sponging bastards.
However, thinking about it  today, I concede that they are of some use. Because if it wasn’t for the aristocracy there would be no such thing as chinless wonders. Which would mean that there was one less thing for we commoners to laugh at.
Then there’s the adverse affect it would cause on the silver spoon industry. For if there were no aristocrats they wouldn’t need silver spoons, one of which their children would be born with in their mouths.
And what about braying? We need people who bray otherwise we wouldn’t be able to take the piss out of them, so who would do the braying if there were no aristocrats?  We can’t expect Stephen Fry to do it all.
Finally we have the effect it would have on public schools if there was no longer an annual supply of the offspring of the aristocracy. I can just see the headlines. ‘Eton and Harrow to close down due to shortage of toffee-nosed gits’.
No, on reflection the aristocracy are of tremendous use. Long may they live. The twats.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy