Away with ye!

Two years ago we holidayed in a caravan in Devon.

We came home a day early because the incessant rain was driving us madder than a sock full of sparrows. The children were getting cabin fever, staring at the walls and having grown wearisome of the few feeble indoor toys we'd brought along, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And the children were upset as well.  All three barbecues we managed to have were hasty, opportunistic races against incoming squalls before they efficiently doused the flames, forcing us inside to light the tiny oven if we didn't fancy playing listeria or salmonella roulette. In a futile attempt to defy nature, we went to the beach to build sandcastles, but they dissolved like my willpower before a cold beer making us retreat, shivering and gritty, back to the thin-shelled shelter of our temporary home. There, we quickly grew tired of using our fingers to draw shiny suns in the condensation on the windows and made the decision for a tactical withdrawal.

I grumpily packed up our gear and we drove the three and a half hours home, vowing that the following year we would go abroad.

Which we did.

Unfortunately, the return plane trip involved over two hours of our youngest screaming at the absolute top of her lungs, which made us very popular with the other passengers. We decided then that we wouldn't travel by magical air machine until she was older and less voluble.

This year, after finding out just how expensive a blinking trip to France is just to stay in a caravan for a family of four, we thought we'd risk another holiday in the UK, only this time we would hire a posh cottage so, if we did end up having to shelter from a torrential English summer, we would do so in relative luxury and not go too mentalist on one another.

Things looked promising, weather wise. The temperature rose enough before we went for us to repeatedly have to peel Bonobo from the freezer where she'd been licking the icy drawers in an attempt to cool down:

"Ooh, Bosche flavour, yum."

This boded well for our hols.

Not believing the weather, though, is a typical Englishman's prerogative and so I packed jumpers, wellies and DVDs for the inevitable downpours I knew we would get. Waterproof clothing took up about eighty per cent of the car boot, but I was be-damned if we were going to get caught out again.

And we were off. 

As it turned out we had the sunniest week of the summer, with only one day of rain. I even got sunburn. Luxury!

Anyway, the traffic all the way there ensured we got to appreciate the scenery, parking up on the motorway for long periods before mooching along at a speed that meant we could just about keep ahead of plate tectonics. It did allow me to think about possible diversions we might avail ourselves of whilst on holiday, such as visits to the Eden Project or the Lost Gardens of Heligan, various boat trips and towns, crab fishing and beach days. Helpfully, we passed a truck towing a tableau advertising the delights of Wookey Hole, which sounds like a pornographic version of Star Wars but is actually a popular cave system in Somerset:

Show me your hole, Wookey.

A wooden cage with a dinosaur, pirate and witch in it being towed at 40 mph would make anyone think seriously about stopping off for a visit, especially with the added advertised activities of a fairy garden, cave museum and hand made paper! In the end, I was concerned my heart might not be able to take too much hand made paper so we carried on to our destination, reaching it within an estimated journey time of one hundred years.

The cottage was posh, no doubt about it, and one of a set that were more commonly used by hoitier and indeed toitier sorts than what we am. The private car park had plants in it!  I parked the stained Parentmobile next to a brand new Jaguar and across from a four wheel drive Lexus so large you could hold religious services in it, opening the doors so all could hear the glorious tones of Burl Ives singing Big Rock Candy Mountain because, if I'd had to listen to it eleven times on the way down, then shouldn't everybody else?

Yes they should.

As soon as we entered, we knew we were somewhere special, that we had paid that bit extra for the VIP treatment, because when we opened the fridge the company had left us not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, but eight, count 'em eight!, cartons of almost-milk and nearly-cream for our tea:

Behold! No need to go to the shops!

Arranged just so in order to accentuate their generosity.

We unpacked and proceeded to have a bloody good week, mind.

In Which, Not Having Posted For A While, Our Hero Grabs Whatever Odd Crap He Can Off Of His Phone And Adds Some Words In The Vague Hope That Something Profound Or At Least Moderately Entertaining Will Emerge, As Will The Inspiration For A Pithy And Succinct Title To Encapsulate it.

My 2 year-old daughter, Bonobo, enjoys colouring in.

Well, I say colouring in, but really it's scrawling random marks across any flat surface with anything that might feasibly make a mark. Crayon, ink, paint, snot, poo, blood, you name it, she seems to be able to incorporate it into her art, and will brook no criticisms, constructive or otherwise, about whether it is "good" or "insightful" or "talented" or "naughty".  Just this morning, I found her outside making a delightful print on the patio with the juice from a disgruntled snail.

Dear Jebus let that be chocolate spread.

She's like Gilbert & George only, you know, she occasionally does stuff I like.

Obviously, I want to encourage the artistic aspects of her character, but preferably whilst discouraging the accompanying random acts of vandalism to the sofa or fridge door. This involves the purchase of vast reams of paper and imperial gallons of colouring books for her to waste utilise.

I don't normally bother looking at them, other than giving the occasional finished piece a quick glance, saying "well done Sweetheart, I shall treasure it forever" before placing it carefully out of view in the recycling box, but I did flick through this cheap one she got as a gift in a party bag:

This will end in tears.

It's pretty standard fare, really. A selection of motifs and tableaux of no particular ilk or order, ready for children to completely not keep within the lines on. It got me wondering how much thought and endeavour go into the creation of such tomes.

They're basically doodles, which are then printed out in book form and sold. A starving artist whacks out a toad underneath a toadstool whilst some sort of large insect, possibly of the order Odonata wearing a bowler hat, sits on top trying to remember where it lost it's other pair of legs:

Smuggest toad in Amphibiville.

Opposite, a fairy shows an old sock to a deer with oddly long front legs, perhaps hoping the fawn will be able to track the owner, lost in the woods these past forty-eight hours and causing concern as temperatures are dropping, what with the sun playing hide and seek behind the cloud there.

Sticking with the toadstool theme, the next page had turned the whole concept on it's head by having the toad on top of the fungus, literally as a stool for the toad. Madness. It appears to be being addressed by a bizarre anthropomorphic rodent which sends chills through my spine in a way that Mickey never did:

"Go on, let me lick you."

The chameleon on the opposing page was relatively lifelike, if one discounts the expression on it's face which suggests it has narrowly missed being caught doing something both immoral and illegal. Presumably with it's tongue.

After expending vast amounts of efforts on the previous mouse, not only giving it a face but a set of clothes as well, the artist then runs out of time and, almost certainly, inclination for the next mouse-based piece. Here, they are sadly two-dimensional and lacking even a rudimentary mandible, sailing forlornly in some sort of leaf-boat 'neath a bright, croissant-lit sky:

In the kingdom of the deaf, the one-eared mice are kings.

As if realising the obvious lack of talent demonstrated by the boat-mice, the artist ups his or her game and does a reasonable job on the flowers and butterfly opposite.

On a roll now, the artist illustrates a good facsimile of a gnu, looking as if it is about to charge any child considering colouring it in pink. Other than that, though, things take a downward turn. The artist has now run out of animals to draw, and is reduced to portraying some sort of wallaby/teddy/dog hybrid about to be grabbed by a six-fingered, thumbless hand, presumably for the crime of simply existing.

"What am I? WHAT AM I?"

Towards the end of the book, impetus seems to be dwindling, and rather than draw another toad or existing creature, the artists wazzes off another example of whatever the hell that thing is, only this time the freak is attempting to hide it's shame behind an oversize flower. Good thing too:

Don't look at me, I beg of you. Look at the whale.

The finale of the book, which in my opinion you might expect to be one of the better pieces of work to leave the audience with, is of a stunted whale, gaping mouth half full of vomit, spurting juice out of it's head-hole like some sort of cetacean money-shot.

Sadly, I do not foresee see many worthwhile accolades coming to this artist. Tracey Emin could have done it.

From today's reading, many lessons emerge. I have learnt that I know two more animals than the artist responsible for this colouring book (camel and dog. I'm not showing off, just saying).

I have learnt that  it doesn't really matter what you put on a page as long as children get to destroy it in the name of creativity.

Most importantly of all I have learnt that a snail can indeed look disgruntled.

Sometimes, the level of profundity I achieve through writing this blog staggers even me.

Ooh, snail!

That's three.

Cradle Snatcher to Grave

I was in our local town a couple of days ago, eating a sausage roll in the graveyard (not a euphemism) and noticed an interesting gravestone.

Actually, re-reading that, it sounds a bit wrong. I should say that I was actually eating a sausage roll in a graveyard.

Nope, can't get away from it. I was just eating a sausage roll in a graveyard. There's no way of making that look like anything other than what it was. I had a sausage roll, and I was in a graveyard. Eating it.

The point is that while there I was idly perusing the data inscribed upon the stones because my 3G signal was low, when I saw the following grave:

Stop pushing, there's room for everyone.

It's the final resting place of a chap called Samuel Aldridge, who shuffled off his mortal bucket in 1800 aged 81, and his wife Sarah who died 28 years later, aged 48.

Now, apart from their being something potentially disrespectful and possibly unholy about eating a Gregg's pork cylinder on a grave (Dancing? Yes. Frolicking? Fine. Turning widdershins whilst chanting excerpts from the Necronomicon? Not a problem. Eating a Greggs? Ooh, you've crossed a line there, pervert), there was something about those dates that intrigued me.

If Sam died in 1800 aged 81, that means he was born in 1719. His wife, dying in 1828 aged 48 was therefore born in 1780. That's a sixty-one year age gap.

Now, I am a modern liberal and in no way judgemental about the choices of life partner another person makes, as long as they are happy and both get something out of it. In this case, however, considering it was before the advent of many medications used to treat the afflictions of old age (and indeed Viagra), one thought did occur to me.

Way to go Sammy boy!

I’m just surprised he lasted till 1800.

I had other things to do in town apart from desecrate crypts with take-away snacks and so, after brushing my crumbs off on a cherub (also not a euphemism), I continued my sojourn, making a mental note to post that picture on the Gravel Farm for your perusal, for it brings to mind questions of mortality, history, spirituality, love and boffing the elderly to death.

I needed some rabbit treats for our elderly but still voracious bunny, Bert, who might be blind in one eye and unable to clean his nether regions but he can still get it on with your foot if you're wearing fluffy socks. For this reason I made my way into our local pet shop.

The regular reader might recall that this is the shop where I was once very excited to be offered the chance to purchase a squeaky rubber winking lady with a cat's head dressed in bondage gear.* In the end I declined to buy it because I'm not really that into bondage. Or bestiality. Or dog chew toys.

Although the winking lady with a cat's head dressed in bondage gear did apparently sell, the shop owner started to think she'd been catering to too specific a target market and was probably getting fed up with men in stained brown trench coats turning up at night asking if she'd got any new stock in. Upon my visit this time, she'd moved on to providing more mainstream figurines which will appeal to everyone.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you . . . Chicktoria Peckham:

"Does my parson's nose look big in this?"

I still didn't buy her though. I prefer a bit of meat on my birds.

After spending twenty minutes trying to come up with a pun involving the word "plucking", I had Chicktoria prized from my hands and was asked to leave.

Making my way to a budget shop which provides a select range of anything, I encountered the absolute pièce de résistance when it comes to today's theme of death and target markets.

          "I'll cook your heart!"

Leaving aside the fact that the model is actually rather pasty and looks like he'd be happy to serve you a sausage roll to eat on a gravestone, the wording makes it quite clear that this wig is intended only for a very select few.

I thought about buying it, but I don't know any sinister black children.


*Now there's a link that's hard to resist.

Called to the Bar

We've all thought it; taking photographs of day-to-day life for a blog is very much like quantum physics.

You know, where the observer effects the observed, and your quarry suddenly declines to act in the manner that made them blogworthy in the first place.

It's a problem for the diligent blogger, who simply wants to parade people's foibles on the internet for the innocent entertainment of others, and there's very little help on taking clandestine photos out there. You'd think there'd be evening classes or something. Maybe a government leaflet.

To avoid intrusion one must, like the most patient of natural history film makers, try and be as discreet as possible, blending into the background and taking your victim subject by surprise, preferably leaving them none the wiser for their participation.

Whilst a traditional hide would be perfect, it is quite hard to set up without arousing suspicion, so the wily blogger must resort to using the instinctive cunning for which they are renowned.

I have almost perfected the art of amateur blog photography, and it essentially involves holding a camera phone up to your ear and frowning thoughtfully, as though listening to an important message on the answer service, maybe from your doctor about that blood test you took last week, or perhaps it's your architect who's discovered the patio doesn't conform to local planning laws and you may need to find a different place to hide the bodies. Whatever, make your own imaginary recorded message up, just so long as you look like you believe it, because then so will they.

So will they.

Simultaneously, and at the same time, you must surreptitiously go through the overly-complex methodology the average phone utilises just to take a photo.

If you're actually using a camera, rather than a phone with a camera stapled to it, you should omit the holding up to your ear bit, as it looks mad. In this case, just ostentatiously take a photo and then wink at the subject. They like that.

Happily, I haven't got one of those phones that shouts "CLICK!" when you take a pic, which was apparently installed on many handsets due to an epidemic of upskirt photos being taken on Tokyo tube trains by sexually repressed Nipponese geeks. This is great for the blogger, as it means voyeuristic photos can be taken at will, although it also helps if you're not a great big pervert.

I'm not sure what the point of trying to take photos of ladies undercrackers is, as surely it would be better to befriend a lady, get to know her, start a romantic relationship and see if she'll show you her grollies voluntarily.

Takes a bit of time and effort, and you might have to reciprocate, but you get a result with only a minimal risk of being arrested. And there might be sex involved. With another person. Imagine that.

No, the subjects of my photographical expertise tend to be more esoteric. As Mrs The Jules said when she saw a photo of a load of spilled coffee-oid granules on my phone the other day; "You don't half take pictures of some strange stuff."

Yes, but they make sense to me at the time, and are often taken because they make a point, amuse me, pose a question or answer one.

For instance, whilst entering my local public house, The Woolpack, a place I confess to having visited before, I held the door to let a regular (well, more regular than me) punter in behind as he was struggling to get through. The cause of his strugglage was two-fold. First, he had reduced mobility, possibly due to a medical condition, but more likely because he's fried his nervous system from half a century on a strict high alcohol and nicotine regime. Secondly, he was carrying an empty bottle crate.

After letting him in, he stood for a moment, clutching his crate under his good arm (the one that gives to charity and doesn't fondle unasked. His bad arm does that) and surveyed the room, giving me chance to ponder the possible reasons for his bringing a dirty plastic box into the pub.

I wasn't going to ponder too hard, because the regulars in The Woolpack have been known to bring in stranger things, such as fox tails, shrimp nets and, occasionally, fleas. Besides, I reasoned, I would find out soon enough.

I recalled that his favourite seat is one of those high bar stools, and the seat of this stool is angled slightly forward as a result of years of heavy customers slumping. When he takes his place there, he often has to put up with a graceful sliding motion that most folk automatically adjust for during the course of the night. Unfortunately, his reduced mobility means that he's constantly slipping off it, necessitating an awkward clamber back on about eighteen times a night.

This spectacle stuck in my mind because it made me realise that the social aspect of being at the bar obviously outweighed his difficulty in staying on the stool, and sitting in one of the comfier, lower chairs would feel isolating to him. Instead, he would get on, slide off, grumble and get back on, he and The Stool like two adversaries in a war of attrition, or maybe a modern day version of the punishment of Prometheus, the only difference being Prometheus's liver was probably in better condition, even post-eagle.

I felt a little sorry for him as, between slides, he engaged anyone who approached the bar in muttered but enthusiastic conversation, and I wondered if all he needed was a friend, a confidante, an empathic and sympathetic other to whom he could turn so that he wouldn't have to rely on visiting the pub for that tiny spark of human interaction he so desperately craved.

Obviously, I wondered this from the other end of the bar whilst avoiding eye contact. He was pissed as a fart and talking about immigrants, so I wasn't going to humour the old soak.

Tonight though, as he swayed there, he sized up his old nememesisis, The Stool, with an air of quiet confidence. A watery glint in his eye proclaimed that he had both a battle plan and conjunctivitis. He strode, well, weaved his way to the bar and, with a flourish, implemented his (possibly patented) bar stool anti-slide system, by placing the crate on the floor so he could put his feet on it:


Thus was he successfully braced against the conspiracy between seat and gravity.

This time, when he slid off the stool, it was solely due to good old alcohol.

The Blog Identity

These days, I consider myself to be one of this strange new mutation of human critter, the common blogger.

It's not a rare sub-species, and is often hard to tell apart from the rest of humanity, other than wider pupils, jerky movements and extended periods of unintentional nudity. And the enormous blogger's cape we tend to wear.

*swish*

Recently I saw a great T-shirt with the slogan "More people have read this shirt than your blog" on it, and it got me thinking. Hmm, more people have read that T-shirt than my blog. I tend to think in italics. I wondered if I should try and put myself out there a bit, like a blog-whore advertising my wares. Hello sir, hello madam, take a peek under my skirts. Like what you see? There's more of that in here. No obvious rash either, and they're not warts, they're beauty spots. Big, crusty, slightly oozing beauty spots, oh yeah . . .

So,in which metaphorical corner of the internet super-cul-de-sac should I ply my trade then?

The Gravel Farm isn't very technically advanced. It hasn't got flashy links and gifs, and the avatar/logo/identifying image is a picture of some gravel, which I took myself. It's not what you'd refer to as a sophisticated blog set up, so I can't rely on flashy visuals to tempt in the curious. I'll have to rely on content. It would be nice to have someone make a much more fancy blog for me, popping in every now and then to empty the bins and pick the soiled underwear up before making me a nice cup of tea, but until I get an IT savvy assistant who's willing to be paid in compliments and whatever I can find in my garden, I'll have to manage on my own. Still, it doesn't hurt to advertise, does it. Unless you're a burglar.

I sent off a query into the bowels of the web, and the search imps skittered back with a few suggestions for registering your blog and thus increasing your punterage. One of them was Technorati, which I subsequently logged onto.

Initially, I thought I'd let them off for the unsavoury use of the word "claim" rather than "register", as if The Gravel Farm doesn't have an owner unless they say it does. A bit like those people who have certificates telling them they own a bit of the moon (I think you'll find folks, that the Clangers have got Lunar real estate sewn up pretty tightly thank you very much, and you don't want to cross those buggers; they've got a dragon). In the past, it has been seen as an influential site in generating blog traffic, so I set up an account and put myself down as a member of the blogerazzi.

I then spent the best part of five days (on and off, not constantly, because that would be silly) battling with the ethereal mysteries of Technorati.com and it's less-than-crystal-clear instructions for "claiming" my own blog , all to no avail. Apparently, the URL is invalid (that's right, the one at the top of your screen there, the one that your computer is using right now to let you read this. Utterly invalid that is), and any queries via email are met with an automatic reply informing you that they probably won't be able to reply. Thanks for the help there.

The instructive instructions instructed me to post a single piece of code so they could recognise my blog, which I duly did (and got eleven quality comments!), but still no luck. Utter refusal to acknowledge this blog.

My mind switched back to italics, and I thought sod it.

The daft single word post was deleted (apologies for the comments lost) as I'm not far off the lovely hundredth post, and I don't want my tally to be sullied by such lack of verbosity.

Following this very unproductive episode, I now feel the need to post something more constructive.

So, onto my post.

As some light relief, I was quite taken with a recent blogging exercise I read about where you post the sixth picture from a file on your computer and blog about it. Sounds reasonable I thought, with the mental addendum that anything that would get me flagged with an Adult Content Warning sign would be deleted.

Unfortunately Luckily, I don't have that many rude pictures on my computer, so I thought I would go with the sixth image I found on my Desktop, which was this:


I didn't actually take this. My ladder isn't long enough. It's from the Hubble space telescope and it's an amazing image of the Shuttle Atlantis crossing in front of the sun. I've actually got this as my current desktop wallpaper.

That wouldn't do though. I think the spirit of the exercise lies in using a photo that you have taken yourself. The space shuttle isn't really blogworthy for me as I've been up in it less than half a dozen times.*

I'll try again. This time, I uploaded the sixth picture from the first file under the cryptically entitled document 'pictures' which, beguilingly, contains quite a large number of pictures, most of which I've taken myself. The exciting result was this:

Hmm. A picture of a set of (artfully laid out on my sofa) magazines from the 1930s and 40s entitled 'Illustrated Carpenter and Builder', which I have been asked to sell on a popular auction site on behalf of a friend who eyes the internet with the suspicion usually afforded a very still snake. Possibly wisely.

Well, that won't do either. A bunch of elderly magazines, and not a single Sudoku in any of them. Hardly riveting blog material.

Another go. Go down to the sixth folder under 'Pictures', choose the sixth photo and, verwallah:

An action shot of me, suitably ensconced at the front of a stage at a local beer festival a few months ago, playing a gig with our ukulele club. I remember it well because it was a gorgeous, sunny day liberally enlivened with a few decent pints of lovely beers and ciders, combined with a spot of hardcore uke fun. The gig went well, although a lot of the audience were so well-lubricated that they would've probably been happy with a monkey banging a couple of bin-lids together whilst refraining from throwing it's poo.

Actually, that sounds quite cool. I'm going to think about that.

Monkey. Bin-lids. No poo. Cooool . . .

So there you go. A quick exercise with moderate amounts of cheating, perfect for inducing the flow of the old bloggy juices.

And to get traffic to my blog?

Well, I'll just continue my witterings as per usual, and be grateful to any and all of you who deign to spend some of your valuable time here.

I don't often say it, but thank you.


*Six less than half a dozen, in fact.