Category: Absolutely superb

Avatar Loudermilk

Loudermilk. Loudermilk. Is it a request? “This milk is a little quiet for my liking; could I have some Loudermilk please?”

Is it a company? A Finnish crime drama?

It’s none of these things. Loudermilk is a surname. I recently caught the beginning of an episode of what seems like an endless stream of Power Rangers series’. The newest is called something like Mega Team Force Pencil Schnapps Eyebrows. One of the actors is the brilliantly named John Mark Loudermilk.

Then, just to seal the deal in a wigwam, if you type it into Google something else completely different comes up.

‘Loudermilk’ is an American TV comedy series about a recovering alcohol and substance abuse councillor with a bad attitude.

This morning I was not even aware of the word and now I know two very differing kinds of Loudermilk. Could there be more? As I once told Eamonn Holmes, “there’s only one way to find out!”

Unfortunately the library is closed today so we will all have to wait.

This just continues the theory that everything that should be invented has already been invented. Had I been in charge, however, I would have preferred the name ‘Shoutymilk’, and Brian Blessed would have had top billing.

Avatar Book news

Are you ready?

OK then, here it is.

The Book is finished.

I have finally, FINALLY, written the final page of the Book and the story is complete. I’m going to scan it in so you can read it to your children and share it with your friends, and you’ll have to wait until then to get hold of the thrilling finale. What will happen to Eric Bins? Will Dr. Rombobulous Combobulation succeed? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, I’ve typed it up so that we don’t have to read handwriting in the online version, and I can present you with some statistics.

The finished book is 34 pages long, which means we all did eleven pages and I did one extra at the end.

  • Ian wrote 2,563 words
  • Kev write 2,505 words
  • I wrote 3,220 words and am therefore the winner

The first page of the book was written on 10 January 2009, and I finished writing the last one on Thursday, so it has taken us 3,226 days to write it, or exactly eight years and ten months. We have averaged one page every 94 days – less than four a year – or, if you prefer, two and a half words a day. I think we can all be proud of that.

Avatar The slide

What’s the biggest slide you’ve ever been down? I am asking because I have definitely been down a bigger slide than you and I am planning to smugly win this.

I have been down THIS slide.

It’s part of the weird red metal lumpy thing that was built for the Limpety Pinpicks in 2012. It takes 40 seconds to go down it and I spent a fair amount of that time saying things like WHEEEEE and AAAAAARGH and WOOHOOOOO.

It drops a total height of over 100m, which is the equivalent of a slide going down to the ground from the 30th floor. It is bigger than the biggest slide you have ever been down. I win. Ha.

Avatar The Joy of Corners

Do you like corners? Do you need more corners in your life? Do you find it hard making very simple decisions?

What you need is Cornercopia!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, I’m Conrad Bundleg and I own Cornercopia, the North-West’s largest supplier of corners in the UK.

We’ve been selling corners for the last twenty years so if you require corners you need to come to us.

We’ve got paper corners, cardboard corners, metal corners, futon corners. We’ve got black corners, yellow corners, blue corners, multi-coloured corners. We’ve got corners for your house, corners for your work, even corners… for your corners!

Someone else may have invented the corner but here at Cornercopia we’ve mastered it.

Cornercopia, on the Bluecoat roundabout just south of Blackpool. You can’t miss us!

Avatar Licenced

What do you do when life makes you weary? How do you lift your spirits from a state of malaise? Well, I don’t know what you do, but I get myself down to the Lego Store with my VIP card on double points day.

On Monday I bought this.

bus

I haven’t actually built it yet because I’m, you know, preparing to move house and everything, but it’s sitting there in its box just waiting for me. The anticipation alone is enjoyable. Anyway, this particular set is only available from the five Lego Stores in London at the moment – nowhere else and not online – and if you took the trouble to go down there and get one, and you flash them your VIP card like I did, you get handsomely rewarded with extra qualifications. My new set came with this.

Yes, you saw right. I am now the proud holder of documentation that proves I am qualified to build and drive this bus. (The cards are individually numbered so I think I’m only the 209th person to get it as well.)

So in future, if you want to build some Lego, that’s fine, but you won’t be getting anywhere near this one unless you’re the holder of a driving licence like I am.

Avatar It Had To Happen

Self-fulfilling prophecies; funny, aren’t they? They are the “I told you so” for the individual. For me they do not happen very often but on occasion they creep up to bite me here, there and everywhere. Sometimes all you will do is play through a scenario in your head and think, “that COULD happen, but it WON’T happen.” Why won’t it happen? Because I am a smart, intelligent human being who is capable of great things.

Yes, great things but also deeply, deeply stupid things.

Let me set the scene for everyone; Friday morning, pretty early. I’m awake but not fully awake so I shower and get dressed for work as per usual. Our bathroom has the very helpful location of not being anywhere near natural sunlight so if you need to see things you have to turn the light on. I don’t like this, using any light during the day seems silly, so I do try to avoid using it as much as possible. I stumble into the bathroom to brush my teeth and carry out the rest of my daily routine: brushing hair, applying cologne and finally ending on some sweet, sweet roll-on action.

Yes, Kevin, it is still the 1990’s.

As I finish I put everything away and turn to leave only there is something amiss, something different that shouldn’t be happening. There is a warm sensation tingling under my armpits that wasn’t there before. “Hmmm,” I think, “that’s a bit unusual.” I leave the bathroom and enter the bedroom, the feeling is a bit more potent now, in fact it’s getting hotter and hotter. “What on earth…” and then it hits me. The thing that could happen but won’t happen. The instance that no self-respecting person would ever find themselves in.

When my ankle wasn’t so great I was using some deep heat to help ease the pain. I was lucky enough, rather than a tube, to get one which is similar to a roll-on where you can apply the deep heat quick and easy. This is located next to my usual roll-on; I had decided not to keep them separate, like a smart person, but ensure that they remain very close by.

In the darkness of the bathroom, without the help of someone with a brain, I had applied deep heat to my armpits. I toyed with the idea of just ignoring it however the sheer speed at which it worked forced me to return to the bathroom (lights on this time) and wash it off as much as I could. It took approximately three hours after this for the burning to reach an acceptable level.

Needless to say, this shining example of COULD/WON’T hopefully will inspire others to either avoid this remarkable pitfall or to come forth with their own stories of embarrassment.

Avatar This Way Up: Episode 6

Yes! You have been waiting, no doubt, a very long time for this and you have been waiting impatiently. Your foot has been tapping. You have looked at your watch so frequently that the numbers have been worn off its face. You have sighed pointledly to no avail. Well, wait no more, because it’s here: the season finale of This Way Up has just landed right in front of your ears. If you ask me it’s the best one of the whole series.

 

 

Six episodes of this magnificent folly are now at an end, but there will be outtakes to follow for the fans to collect and put in a sticker book.