Avatar Conspiracy Bales

Quick guys, I only have about five minutes before they catch me and I need to get this down and out (down and out?) down and out on the internet before they do.

Professor Reuben and I have come across an astounding scientific secret that has remained, well, a secret up until now. It concerns the best of our bovine friends, the common cow.

Where do all those cows come from? How do they get here? Was there was a time when there wasn’t cows or have they been here all this time? People have wondered this for years and with good reason; cows appear and disappear regularly with no explanation. You just don’t know. One day a field is empty and the next it’s swarming with cows like sweetcorn on a pizza.

Cows aren’t born through other cows. All that nonsense is only there to confuse you. I scoff at your notion of animals birthing animals. Cows come through a dimensional gate accessed only through bales of hay. They appear when nobody is looking, as white as my legs during the summer, with none of those black or brown splodges to speak of. It is only once they’re through into our world do they assume an identity and get splatted with paint to try and fit in with the others.

A portal hiding in plain sight

Normally I would be thrilled with such a boon. This is the kind of boon that the word ‘boon’ was made for. I’d be booning it large with a pint in one hand and maybe a couple of boons in the other. The cows, however, didn’t take too kindly to our interference with their practises.

Now that we’ve discovered this they’re after us. I haven’t slept for three days. Whenever I feel myself dropping off I can hear a sweet and low, “moo” drifting on the wind and we’re off again into the night.

If they get us and we don’t come back know only this, I regret nothing (except most of what I said and wrote in 2007).

Avatar What the deuce?

We all know how juvenile my sense of humour can be. I am the lowest of the low and the dirtiest of the dirty. A filth hound in every sense of the word.

Every time I’m browsing in Argos I come across this video game and I can’t get past the name of it. Part of me doesn’t believe it’s a real product. Take a gander:

I have watched the trailer so it is a genuine thing and not made up. You can buy this thing, you can play this thing and it’s a thing of yours. Why then does it have such a debaucherously filthy name?

It’s a game where you play a thief who has to steal stuff. You are Robbie Swifthand and you’re out to steal the Orb of Mysterious. If you separated the two they could equally be the title. Put together they sound like a bad joke from the internet.

It’s an allegory for wanking and fondling balls. I’m sorry but it is. Everything about it stinks of mischievousness as though the developers knew exactly what they were doing and were excited to put something out on modern consoles that would make Frankie Howerd titter.

I know that what is going to happen next is that the two of you, or Chris as it may be, will say that I’m out of my mind and that nobody else would come to the same conclusion. So go on then, I have left myself open to berating and await it gladly.

Avatar Pig news

I know you’ve been waiting for it, so here is the latest news from this month’s Bordon and Whitehill Parish Council Newsletter.

‘The Bordon Pig’, who is called Holly, escaped from Hollybrook Mobile Farm on 3 January 2021. 100s of hours have been spent by a small dedicated team from the community, led by Cllr. Tina Strickland and William Dadley, to ensure her safe return to her family and friends. After 52 days being at large she is now home safe and sound. Thank you to all those who assisted in returning her home.

Unfortunately we still don’t know how a “mobile farm” can possibly exist, but we’ll bring you more news on that when we have it.

Avatar The trouble with tyres

What you sometimes forget about your car is that, as well as a whole universe of complicated machinery and electronics, one of the things it needs in order to work properly is air. Your tyres are designed to imprison the right amount of air in exactly the place it’s required. I advise you to do your best to keep it there, and I will tell you why.

Read More: The trouble with tyres »

Avatar Storytime

Gather round children for I have a story to tell you.

The ratio of men to women is currently around 1:10 in my office. We used to have two gents toilets but it was decided to turn the smaller one into a ladies, for obvious reasons. The remaining gents toilet is umm quaint but not perfect: the light takes around 10 seconds to turn on (not ideal when you’re busting for a whizz wazz wongle), the hot water tap doesn’t work so they had to get an extra one with a heated unit and the dryer is so poor that it’d be quicker to blow on your hands yourself.

Due to the hand dryer being as effective as a car made of wet cheese, I started putting paper towels in the gents so that we had options. There was a small bundle stacked on top of the dryer and a spare lot in the (broken) cupboard above the urinal. I had started doing this before the Bovona virus took hold and every so often the same thing would happen; the paper towels would vanish completely. There one day and gone the next. I thought it was the cleaners moving them or something else. Baffled but thoroughly British, I said nothing and merely replaced the towels. This happened at least half a dozen times over a period of about twelve months.

When I came back from furlough, mainly working from the office, I did the same for what few men remained in the building. To my astonishment the same thing kept happening; a few weeks would pass and the half-used stack of paper towels would be gone with no explanation. I finally decided to do something about this so I mentioned it to the office manager, who was just as puzzled as I was. There was absolutely no reason for anyone to remove the towels. She said that she would mention it to the cleaners and get back to me.

The next day I entered the gents to put my contact lenses and smiled as there was a newly opened pack of paper towels waiting to dry my moistened paws. After putting the lenses in I walked over to the office manager’s office and thanked her for sorting it out. She looked confused, “sorted what out?” I mentioned the towels. “I haven’t spoken to the cleaners about it yet though.”

I asked if she was winding me up, an elaborate prank which I had completely fallen for. Given how grim the world is right now anything light-hearted is very welcome, even at my expense. She swore that she knew nothing about it. There was nobody else in the room when I asked her about it the day before. The towels re-appeared out of nowhere.

There is talk of a ghost who haunts the office at night. Colleagues working late have mentioned hearing noises and bumps after dark. The building is over a hundred years old so it has gone the rounds, so to speak. Do I think that a ghost is playing a trick on me? Do I think that this spectre is yanking my chain by throwing away paper towels?

I don’t have a foggy froggy fog fog fogey Phileas Fogg the foggiest idea.

Avatar Down

There’s a button labelled “down”, but it’s not a lift. In fact the button appears to be attached to some sort of horn or flange.

Pressing the button must, therefore, do something down related using the flangehorn.

I concluded that a push of the button would result in large amounts of feathery duck down being sprayed out of the hornhole into my face.

I declined to push the button.

Avatar English Wine

What do dogs know that we don’t?

Spend any time with a dog, as I sometimes am privileged to do, and it’s immediately clear that there is some deeper mystery behind their eyes. There’s something else going on that you just can’t quite name.

Kev used to say the same, I’m sure: after a long day grooming one poodle after another, looking into those glassy eyes at the ever-present enigma of the dog conspiracy would wear him down, piece by piece, paw manicure by paw manicure, and he’d return home a shadow of himself to drink himself to sleep.

I think I’ve found a clue. A few days ago I met Digby while I was heading to the shops. Digby is a small dog. Digby was friendly enough, and he was also wearing a striking fluorescent waistcoat that said “follow me for English Wine”.

I feel like Digby’s indiscreet attire might give us all a clue about what exactly dogs are up to.

Are they operating vineyards? Do they press grapes when nobody is looking? Are they all perhaps members of elite wine clubs, secretly laughing at the unbelievable tastelessness of their owners who they see pairing a Beaujolais with fish? Or perhaps they are ruthless sales hounds, hustling for money here and there, tirelessly shifting units to make a secret doggy living?

Digby went in to a sort of shed, and I didn’t want any English Wine, so I didn’t follow him. I suppose that means we’ll never know.

Avatar No radio

Yesterday at work, we were having a quiet afternoon, so I went off to find something useful to do. I ended up at the workbench in one of our upstairs rooms, where I made myself a coffee and spent a few hours fixing up some old PCs that were sitting around awaiting repair.

My plan had been to listen to the radio while I did this. The workbench has a little audio monitoring panel, with green LEDs bouncing up and down like on your dad’s 80s hi-fi, so I turned up the volume and found it playing Radio 1. There were no other controls.

With some difficulty I traced the cables out of the back and found they disappeared, unlabelled, into a hole in the floor. I went to the audio router at the other end of the room and tried switching stations on anything I could find tuned to Radio 1, but none of them were right.

No problem, I thought. It’s the 21st century. I’ll use my phone. So I opened my TuneIn radio app and selected 6music.

The app informed me that this station wasn’t available in my territory due to geographical restrictions. I looked around to confirm my surroundings, and yes, I was indeed sitting in Broadcasting House where 6music is assembled and broadcast, and my phone was connected to the building wi-fi. It was, therefore, legal to listen to that station in my present geographical territory.

Nothing I did would persuade TuneIn radio of that, though, and my coffee was going cold, and the PCs weren’t getting fixed. Sometimes, even when it’s your job to make the radio work, you can’t make the radio work. So I listened to Absolute 80s instead.