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.

What The Luck?

Currently under a rainy deluge of biblical proportions, the UK has shown amazing reserves of contrariness by maintaining a hosepipe ban. Presumably this is not, as the media and water authorities are telling us, in order to conserve a diminished resource, but really because they’re worried about people going all prune-like and wrinkly from sheer exposure, leading to national shortages of towels, anti-wrinkle cream and Keith Richards headbands which would bring the economy to even more of a stop than the stop it’s presently at.

Never one to let such a small thing as the weather get in the way of a trip to the seaside (also a typically British attitude, it would seem), I dragged my children to the car, bundled them into their respective constraints and drove the drive to welsh Wales.

Happily, the enthusiastically named Welsh god Illtyd (which apparently translates as “Lord of Everything”) was so pleased we were making the effort to visit that he smiled beneficently on us, providing not only a free car parking space next to the pier in Penarth, but also a good few hours of rainlessness and some flavoured frozen dairy products in a carbohydrate-based cone for the reasonable price of about a quid and an ice-cream headache.

It was nice enough for me to take an impromptu picture without worrying that my phone would instantly dissolve under the sheer weight of precipitation.  This proves that, at one point, somewhere in the United Kingdom, it wasn’t raining:

Buoys day out.

So, after lunch in a Tafarn where I had a decent pint of cwrw, we refuelled our car at the gwasanaethau and then went home via the traffordd.

Tidy.

As if on cue, after our day was done, the heavens opened and some water rained down like a shower of combined hydrogen and oxygen. The traffic slowed and we sloshed our way home, appreciating that timing was on our side and feeling particularly lucky we had had a good day and missed the really bad weather. I was glad of the day out because, I thought, we deserved a break.

This got me thinking about the appearance of luck in our lives and our reaction to it.

Being the rationalist that I am, I don’t really believe in luck. I feel it is nothing more than a subjective interpretation of events in contextual relationship with other events that might be construed as being either “better” or “worse”. If you’re in a bad car smash, you are unlucky. But if you only break your leg you are lucky. If the ambulance crew saws your hand off trying to get you out of the car, then you’re unlucky again. If the hand was subsequently found to have life threatening gangrene that would have killed you within hours had it not been sawn off, you’re back to lucky. If the car was your pride and joy, then you’ll feel unlucky to have lost it. If it was a Citroen, then happy days, your driving torment is finally over.

It’s pointless trying to stack the odds in favour of being fortunate. No one deserves the things that happen to them.  Good or bad, they just happen. But we can fool ourselves that this isn’t the case. In fact, what goes around really does come around. If you’re a good person, then good things will happen to you. But also bad things. If you’re a bad person, bad things will definitely happen to you, as well as good things. If you’re an indifferent, morally ambiguous person, then get ready for a selection of good and bad things happening to you throughout your life.

Brace yourselves for the bad times. And the good ones.

Mind you, when I got home, I took out some ham to make the children a butty and received a vision that challenged my certainty, that threw my reductionist musings into the cold, confusing ambiguity of spiritual discombobulation.

It was a sign. A sign that, perhaps there IS an ebb and flow to the universe when it comes to positive and negative, that there IS a demarcation between good and evil, and it is not just a personal spectrum, and that people WILL receive their rewards or comeuppances according to their character and their actions.

You might be amazed that I, of all people, would resort to the supernatural for explanations of such things, but you weren’t there man! You didn’t see what I saw. You were not witness to the compelling evidence that is . . .  Yin and Yang Ham:

Hogging the picture

Seeing that could change the views of the most analytically secular of atheists. All hail the Taoist pig meat of fortune!

Anyway, unluckily for the pig,  it tasted divine.

Ducking it out

At our local Water Bird Sanctuary As Long As They're Not Seagulls Centre, I made a startling discovery.

I found a Higgs boson under a rock!

Ha. No I didn't. I was messin' with ya. That would be silly. Bosons are found on merchant ships, obviously. I don't know why Higgs needs his own though. I didn't even know he was a merchant seaman.

No, the discovery I made was of a filmographic nature, involving a piece of British cinematic history.

I discovered that the terrorifying electromagnetic pulse weapon thingy in Bond James Bond's Goldeneye was named after a duck!

It's true, look:

It's a duck. With a goldeneye, golden, goldeneye,
with a goldeneye, goldeneye.

Now it turns out, you don't need much of an imagination to think up names for your weapons of imaginative destruction and your evil villains. You just need to visit a duck zoo. See:

Signs; good or bad? I'm on the fence.

 
"Mr Bond, I've been expecting you! I am General Smew, and this is my henchmutant. Get him Canvasback!"

There's tonnes of others.

"Widgeon, bring our guest a martini."
"Activate the groin laser, Pintail!"
"Hit him with a spade, Shoveler!"

 This post was brought to you by a man having photos on his phone and needing to do something with them.

Public Domain

I like pubs.

Mostly.

That’s not a hard club to get into really, pubs I like.

My favourite type is probably the older, more individual establishment rather than one owned by a large chain, but I’m not overly fussed if I’m forced to frequent a wine and ponce bar instead.  It’s like voting for your favourite Jolie boob or which is better, sausages with brown sauce or sausages with red onion marmalade.

So although I prefer something a bit old-fashioned, a little personal, with heavy black oak beams, straw carpets and ceilings you can concuss yourself on should alcohol not be doing the trick, the real appeal is . . .

Actually, that’s harder to pinpoint than I first thought.

The booze?

Well yes, because I, and I can’t stress this enough, like it.

A lot.

But I enjoy going to the pub even if I’m driving and thus forced to drink Orange Henrys and something I think is called Cloaca Cola, a brown fizzy concoction that doesn’t cause much cancer anymore after they took out the stuff that makes it taste nice. Tobacco, or benzene maybe.

So it’s not just the alcohol.

The atmosphere?

Also, part of the charm, but I’ve been known to have a good time in a plastic shell with lino on the floor, Chris Tarrant's voice asking questions from quiz machines and 60 inch flat screen TVs blaring out Formula 1 noises and Beyonce noises just metres from my aural canals.

The people?

You can’t beat meeting up with friends or colleagues for a relaxing bitch about people who haven’t turned up, but there’s something enjoyable about having a pint on your own with nothing to do except  peruse  the paper, read a book or throw some birds at green pigs on your phone.

The food?

Very few pubs can survive without offering food as standard these days, but for generations my ancestors have been perfectly happy with a bag of pork scratchings and a pickled egg.

Mmm, pork scratchings. Like pig toenails deep fried by a fat, greasy angel . . .

That's it my pretty, scratch away.

 Excuse me, just went into a little reverie there.

So, none of the above really. Or, more accurately, all of the above, in different  permutations depending on mood and opportunity. Sort of like social synergism.

On reflection, the biggest attraction for me is something personal, although probably common to many people in my position, and it’s the rarity of occurrence.

A visit to a pub, any sort of pub, is so bloody unusual these days that, for me, even the crappest establishment has the advantage of novelty.

And seeing as, when I went to the pub for a rare treat just eight weeks ago (and I can’t believe the last time I went to a pub was two months ago), I was surprised to find I hadn’t got enough cash on me  for more than a couple of pints, so it seems the pub visit will become, like a dodgy French burger, even rarer.

In addition, the government is considering establishing a minimum price per unit of alcohol in the UK, which they assure us will instantly reduce binge drinking and encourage a sense of responsibility around alcohol through enforced temperance, and absolutely definitely completely will not result in low socio-economic status alcoholics committing crimes to fund their suddenly expensive habit.

For my part, as an utterly sensible and extremely productive member of society, I’m starting to think seriously about a still.

Still. Drunk.

 Mine’s a pint of Old Blinder please, Shedkeep.

Life Irritating Art

Recently, I decided to have a spot of body modification done. Just a bit of work, not a lot. A nip here, maybe a tuck there, a stitch to hold things together. It's all the rage apparently, and lots of men have it done. Less women, for some reason.

I've had a vasectomy.

When I was in my twenties, I had a friend who was so adamant he didn't and never would want kids that he decided to get an 'ecotmy under his belt. He was a bit miffed that he had to undergo a few months of therapy and counselling to be certain he was one hundred percent sure, until the medical authorities responsible reluctantly agreed and allowed him the procedure.

This led to many years of hedonistic sex with a variety of interesting people, of which we as his peers were understandably envious. Ultimately, his newly acquired freedom resulted in a rather nasty dose of an STD that finally turned him into quite the advocate for condom use.

I wonder if the irony was a painful as the pustules.

So, as I approached my GP with my request, I had my arguments and rationale all sorted out in my head, rehearsed and prepared. The subsequent conversation went like this.

Me: "I'd like a vasectomy please."
GP: "Okay." Gets paper out of drawer. "Sign that consent form and I'll book you in."

Apparently, being forty with two kids does not elicit the concern warranted to younger testicles with more breeding potential.

So, last Friday, newly shaved and proud as a naked mole rat with a particularly good bean bag, I visited the surgery to be met by Nigel, a doctor I have spoken to at work on many occasions, who shook my hand and then fondled my nuts.

And this was just in the waiting room! Aha!

I went into the little side room where a nurse asked me to strip from the waist down, which I duly did. I also took off my socks, although I'm not sure why. Then Dr Nigel came in, talked me through everything and off we went.

And that was it. The initial injection smarted a bit, but after that it was simply a bit of tugging (not in the good way) and the very odd feeling of being able to watch bits of my own innards being exposed, cut and cauterised whilst I propped myself up on my elbows for a good view. It was all less traumatic than I thought it would be.

Nigel pointed out that I would be battered and bruised for a week or two, and to do absolutely nothing for the next couple of days. The nurse was very, very strict about this, lamenting the time she went to Tesco's after work and found a man who had had a vasectomy not two hours before doing his weekly shop.

Apparently, his whole lower body from the nipples down withered and died as a result, leaving him but a sad husk of a man, disconsolately wheeling his torso around on a skateboard muttering the word "plums" over and over again and being unable to satisfy his wife.

I suspect exaggeration, but I wasn't going to take any chances, setting myself up with baby sitters for a couple of days who were invaluable, allowing me do little else except watch films, look at Twitter and read blogs and words on my Kindle, which are a bit like books only made of electric.

I had also planned to do some blogging myself, but the combination of pain-killers and lethargy just isn't conducive to any sort of creative thinking or artistic endeavour, hence the dearth of posts over the last three weeks or so.

Four days later, and I took the single stitch out, realised the wound hadn't completely closed yet and glued it shut again. I've now got a bit of an ache and am still walking like I've lost my horse, but in general things seem okay, especially with the copious ingestion of over the counter analgesics.

So far, so good and, although the bruising is a bit disconcerting, I'm glad I've had it done. Seems only right that a chap take charge of his fertility after years of relying on prophylactics, female responsibility and brewer's droop to prevent babies. 

What's that? You want to know about the bruising?

Of course you do. Everyone does.

Well, I like to think of myself as a subtle writer, delicately weaving gentle strands of description, using misty metaphor and ephemeral prose to entice the reader into using their own imagination to get my message across. I feel this is a skill I can transfer to the pictorial realm, and I shall bring such an abstract photograph to you now to describe the results of my procedure:

Do not worry if you don't "get" it at first. Dali had similar problems, but if you mull it over a few times, maybe discuss it with an educated friend or intellectual colleague you will, in time, understand my allusion, and your appreciation of it will be all the greater for having had to work at it.

In conclusion, ball ache is such a ball ache.

Moaning Glory

Once again I find myself trying to dredge up a spare crumb of time to blog amongst the chaotic and relentless responsibilities that comprise modern living. This is a pity because blogging is one of the two things in life I find pleasurable.*

Sorry, I don't mean to moan.

Or do I?

I  appear to have reached that age when it becomes almost enjoyable to complain. I don't know if this is a phenomenon that occurs to everyone at a certain time in their life but it's happening to me. Half the time I'm not even after an apology. There's just something very satisfying about having the moral high ground for a while, even if you've been inconvenienced, be it by dodgy service, an undeserved rebuke or, as happened to me recently, a parking ticket for somewhere in Enfield, London, for a car I don't own in a place I've never been.

Ooh I enjoyed that phone call. It was marred only by the efficient and polite retraction and follow up apology letter by their annoyingly helpful staff.

Recently my sense of exasperation has become more sensitive and, like an allergic reaction to repeated bee stings, I get all flushed and raspy with just the slightest exposure. Stuff that once I would not even have registered grabs my attention and makes me tut with barely contained fury.

Tut like an animal!

For instance:

Fillums. Now free on the internet!

A two film collection?

Tut.

Since when have two things been a collection? You wouldn't get many visitors to the Natural History Museum if you only had two fossils in it. The Louvre would be less the major attraction were it to contain just a pair of pickchaz (although the tour would be nice and quick allowing you to rapidly tick off 'culture' on the compulsory Parisian itinerary and move on to spitting off of the Eiffel Tower).

No, two things do not a collection make. If they did, everyone could have collections. Look at my collection of eyeballs. I keep them in my face. Do you like that kidney? It's part of a collection. This penis? Well, have I got a surprise for you.

Here's a collection of slippers I bought during the same trip to our local supermarket:

Ooh, you so big when you slip inside.

That's right, slippers.

I've never had slippers before. It seemed the sort of thing a forty year old man should have, so I bought some.

Despite suddenly having warm feet first thing in the morning, I'm still undecided on the whole slipper issue. There are aspects of slipper etiquette I am ignorant of. Am I supposed to wear socks with them? Do I have to take them off before I put my feet up on the sofa. If you put the bins out and keep your slippers on, do they immediately become outdoor wear and thus unusable in the house? How hard are you meant to spank someone with them before it is construed as assault?

Mysteries as deep as the meaning of life itself.

The particularly sharp reader may have noticed, despite the seamlessly smooth transition of  subject using the literary trick of writing down words, that I have moved away from complaining and on to slippers. This is not a non sequitur because they are linked by an underlying thematic scaffold of age.

Another thing that isn't now a non sequitur is this drawing I saw in one of my children's books:

Oofed right in the grunt.

Those of you who have delved into the murky depths of the Gravel Farm will know I have an interest . . . no, a passion, for out of context pictures, especially published ones that demonstrate questionable appropriateness for their readership, be it the bloody groin of a sheep or the  tail ramming shenanigans of Little Bo Peep.

At least this one doesn't involve sheep.

The fun is trying to guess what the underlying story, if any, could possibly be, or perhaps making up your own. It's better than Sudoku for keeping the cerebral hinges from seizing up.

I recently discovered that out of context hilarity is not just limited to modern times. In our local village hall is a replica of a section of the Bayeux Tapestry, where French seamstresses celebrated a spat between a couple of royal ponces called Bill and Harry:

Paws for thought

Rather than discuss the unfairness of how the undeserving upper echelons of society dragged (and still drag) the lower classes into their sordid little affairs, which would probably take at least two paragraphs to fully investigate, I would like to point out that the central, trouserless figure has a dogs paw on his genitals.

Heh.

I think we can all agree on that at least.

Let's see; complaining, slippers, cartoon dragon assault and medieval animal abuse.

Yes, I think that's covered everything I set out to at the beginning of this meticulously planned post.



* Everything else is a chore. Everything.



.

Testies

After taking pity on me for being behind the times the powers that operate the universe have finally relented and granted me the gift of a smart phone. All they ask in return is my eternal devotion, a monthly tax and a blood sacrifice at every full moon.

Obviously I'm just kidding about the eternal devotion and sacrifices.

It's not an iPhone.

So here I am fully Androided up and supporting various edible-sounding softwares like . . . Gingersnap and . . . Icecreamy cake or something, all designed to sound fun sound easy to use, hinting that setting it all up is as easy as eating a snack.

Two weeks later and I think I've finally managed to attach my magic phone to an invisible internet tube with a blogging valve, so this is a test post to test out a post. Then after I've posted I'll check the test post, post-test.

This keyboard is touch sensitive, but if it doesn't recognise one of my key strokes then I still find I jab the screen really hard, as if I'm blogging on a 19th century typewriter made all of brass and moustaches.

In conclusion, I think we can all agree that technology has come a long way since moustaches, and I now need to discover if I can edit, preview and up- (or possibly down) load a photo.

The world needs to see the spider my 4 year old son drew on his magnetic sketcher.

I bet you're glad you stopped by now.