Gardening

Red

Many of you have been holding your breath waiting for my detailed report following Operation Fence Spray. After one week’s delay the news is not good.

What a complete waste of bloody time.

Picture if you will the television advert with the laughing fat bloke. There he is spraying his fence quickly and with consumate ease whilst his nerd-like neighbour flounders about with the traditional “brush”. Well, I may have started off as laughing fat bloke but I ended the job rather happily with my trusty brush.

Points to ponder, re: The Sprayer.

• I stupidly bought one that runs on batteries. Shouldn’t be a problem I thought, after all its only a little pump and they are 4 big batteries. Wrong. Batteries lasted almost 2 fence panels (I have 18).
• You are advised by the enclosed pamphlett that you hold the nozzle (ooerr) about 25cm from the fence and move it from left to right in a continuous smooth motion. If you do this, the slightest whisper of wind blows the fine red mist up in the air, left, right or even worse back in your own bloody face. The 2 fence panels I managed to took almost 2 days to dry and are now covered in an uneven, gloopy mess.
• It goes bloody everywhere. The grass around the bottom of the fence has a nice red moustache, as has the top of my neighbours hedges and the back of his shed. Luckily, he can’t see the back of his shed unless he stands in my garden.

So I gave up and used a brush. Yes it took 4 hours and my back hurt like hell after, as did my arm the next day but it looks so much better.

The Sleeping Car

Part of the reason for my lack of blogging in the last week of so is a serious case of insomiability. Oh come on. You never saw that coming did you? A new and original excuse if ever there was one.

Let me explain.

The car is not well. It all started about 6 months ago. Over-revving when pulling away from traffic lights, lack of power going up hills forcing me into 2nd and, last Saturday, 1st gear in front of huge queue of rapidly-angering drivers.

I also did a bit of a freelance jobby last week and I could not solve one of their problems. This bothered the hell out of me and for some reason combined with the car nonsense to prevent me from having a decent kip for a few days.

I am not overly stressed about it but when you find yourself lying in bed wide awake at 8am on a Sunday morning listening to a church service on Radio 4, its quite unsettling.

It all seems ok again now though.

Work is fine. I am managing a team this week and there is not too much stress. I had to break some bad news to somebody which always lightens the day. Once again, I had a desperate need to keep talking and fill the gaping hole in the conversation whilst the news sank in. I really need to sort that out.

Excitement

Spiderman 3, Fantastic Four 2 and Die Hard 4 all coming soon. How excited am I? Like a 12 year old child. I have been to Quicktime and looked at the trailers for all 3. Bruce’s 4th outing looks particularly proposturous and over the top.

These Made Me Laugh

There is great truth in the statement by someone whose name I can’t remember that it would be a really good idea to write down every joke you ever hear the minute you hear it. I would have a huge and very valuable tome already after my 38 summers but as we all know, theory is one thing and practice is another.

It is also true that although TV and Radio comedy is probably as good as its ever been, I still laugh the most at things I hear at work or read on the forum. I have lost count the number of times I have laughed almost to the point of collapse at work and said to myself “I must put that on the blog”. Sadly, after a few hours more work and a drive home, it either seems not quite so funny or I forget.

So here I am trying to write this wrong. Here is a concise list of things that made me laugh over the last week.

• The news story that an airline pilot is currently suspended after an April Fool’s gag he played on the passengers of his 737. Shortly after take off he switched on the cabin radio and addressed the happy band of bleachy white folk headed for Malaga..”Hello, this is you luggage handler. I don’t know what I pressed but we appear to have taken off…”
• The mighty, underated and too quickly dismissed Danny Baker. The man is a genius. I first started listening to him in 1994 when he took over the DLT slot on Radio One. Since then he has been all over the place, GLR and BBC London. In the last few years I have been reduced to listening to him on the BBC Website. This is not exactly perfect, so imagine my surprise when his new podcast popped up on Itunes. If you have the capability, download it and listen. He seems to think that podcasting is where he is going to be now as he seems a little jaded with radio.Also, listening to comedy at work on your Ipod is dangerous at the best of times but this is deadly. Don’t miss the “man with a lisp sings the Pink Panther cartoon theme” or the regular “shoot me I am a session musician”. Anyway, enough eulogising. Just listen to it.
• In the category of “only makes Neil Laugh probably”, we are getting new “daylight” lighting at work. Great news for us. Bad news for the Night Shift who will probably be sent to sleep. Think about it. I know I did.
• Punchline of the week…”I thought I was putting my arm in a butcher’s dustbin.”

Ta Ta

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