Saucepan Lids and The Smoke

A Friday night out in the Smoke with Christine, Chris and, all too briefly, Dogs is always an attractive prospect and certainly the prospect greeting Christine in the curry house towards the end of the night as both her husband and her MC demonstrated the verbal skills to be expected of men who decided four shots of Turkish Delight flavoured vodka in 5 minutes was a treat for her.

Sadly our subject managed not to fall asleep on the train back to the Mother's and so not very bright and certainly not very breezy on Saturday morning he was in a fine state to visit the horde of nippers that is his sister's place.

Taking them swimming did not really assist the raging headache if one was honest.

Barely, i.e. not at all, recovered Gay George (Not Actually Gay) picked him up in his shiny new car (a White 911 - not at all chavvy, oh no) so the two of them could plan their next but one skiing trip before a night out at a comedy club in Balham. Some truely horrid news, far too serious and sad to grace the pages of this publication, rather took the edge off the night and despite the best efforts of the comedians a relatively early night was had.

Which considering the prospect from his bedroom the next morning was probably a wise move as no doubt the entire country ground to a halt under millimetre thin blanket of snow.

Another day with the horde of saucepan lids with the usual assortment of piggy-back rides, tears from being thrown upside down and utter pandemonium in a toystore cheered him up no end though. To be fair however he didn't manage to get a good laugh in until his sister managed to upset all her crockery and it all fee, smashed, to the floor.

Clearly inspired by this scene of domestic disaster his Mother decided to allow Phoebe (currently in her most truculent phase) drink her coffee ...the horrors of a wild child full of caffeine are too horrible to trouble our gentle readers with.

Big Red Taxi

In light of the car problems (passim) he arranged to have it deposited at car hospital for the long period of repairs it so clearly needs and very kindly one of his colleagues Danny (real name Tony but he looks like Danny de Vito) agreed to pick him up from said car hospital on his way into work.

Imagine our subject's delight at the call from Danny, as he stood in the rain, "ahh, I'm supposed to pick you up aren't I? hmm I'm already in the office, get a taxi."

Now far be it from us to criticise anyone kind enough to offer a lift but really...

Anyway it being raining there was no sign of the usual black taxis but he spotted a queue of somewhat longer than usual and most extraordinarily double-decker red taxis nearby and so decided to try out one of these amazing creatures. It being over 19 years since last he caught a big red taxi this was an exercise in bumbling idiocy, "er do you go to the city centre?"; "yes"; "how much?"; "£1.50...no sir I don't give change you need the right money...no sir you don't give the money to me you just put it in that machine...yes sir you take that bit of paper out of the slot, it is called 'a ticket'"; "err could you tell me when to get off"; (wearily) "yes sir."

Not the most auspicious start to his adventure. The end was splendid though, Danny felt so guilty that he had been out for bacon sarnies (not one but two in fact) and a bottle of champers. He can forget to pick up our subject again.

MGF -v- Mini-Moke

Our readers will recall our litany of criticism levelled at the Mini-Moke hired in Australia and its decided lack of quality. As it turns out it suffered from rather fewer MOT failures than his own car.

He stopped making notes after the mechanic had been listing the failures for 5 minutes but the highlights certainly were the technical failure of the front brakes, the total actual failure of the rear brakes and the bald tyres. The need to replace the entire electrical loom rather passed him by.

All in all somewhat more expensive than replacing the engine (passim) and certainly more tedious.

Will they never learn

The last time he was asked to give a reading at a friend's wedding (the Pofydd's) he impressed everybody with his ability to actually forget to bring the reading with him much to Polly's dismay.

Clearly his female friends have still not learnt their lesson and the lovely Helen who is shortly to wed the splendid John has asked him to give a reading at their wedding. Oh dear.

What a lemon

The car is broken again. This time the windscreen wipers broke on the M5, in a storm. Certainly an interesting way to drive.

As a result a weekend with the saucepen lids had to be cancelled and replaced with a very dull weekend at home. Fortunately the car is booked in to be repaired on Monday so he should be mobile again for next weekend when a night out on the tiles with Gay George (Not Actually Gay) is on the cards.

Back to form

As Professor Farmsworth might say, "good news everybody" he appears to be back to his best form and we can only hope that this last week is a taste of things to come.

Monday was a day of much-needed R&R before the fun could begin again on Tuesday.

As the world's economy slips ever more rapidly into recession his firm is reducing headcount and on Tuesday announced a redundancy consultation which whilst he is safe from obviously is poor for morale generally. To improve matters he headed to Totos (in essence the firm bar) and discovered virtually everyone who is at risk in there drowning their sorrows. Being the chief morale maintenance officer is a heavy cross to bear at these times and he set about his task with his usual wit and tact, "you know your best chance of safety is getting pregnant, roll up roll up I'll help you out there" accompanied by a cheeky (shurely shleezy? - ed) wink.

Not, if we were being honest, quite the message they wanted to hear.

His work done he called it a night.

After such exertions Wednesday was scheduled as a one on one morale maintenance mission and he and the lovely Janina went to Aqua for, "just one quick drink." This statement could be said to be true but only if one defines "one quick drink" as half a galloon of beer, two bottles of wine plus a half of pudding wine. The driving rain for the work home sobered him up sadly.

Another day and another curry was the recipe for Thursday with Danny, Sedgers, Slasher and Brian and a special guest appearance by a galloon of beer.

Friday was always scheduled to be a quiet one to recover but somehow turned into a night out in Utopia followed by Hotel du Vin for some more of that red tea. Oh well he can recover at the weekend.