Welcome portraitI travel by train a lot these days, so you’d think that – like Smidge Manly – I’d be an expect in the ’istries and mistries of the railway – but sometimes I still stumble on something that baffles me.
Yesterday I boarded a train and found this. I cannot explain it.
ClennelEvery day I drive to work.
Shocking I know, right? When I’m driving I use my eyes to see things like a lot of other drivers. I tend to use my regular eyes instead of all the other pairs that I have lying around. They only have a finite lifespan after all and who am I to liberally chunter off an expensive set of peepers for my own benefit?
There is always one thing that sticks out when I drive to work and that is this:
Everything else looks and behaves fine. If there’s a zebra crossing it behaves like a zebra crossing. The roundabouts are standard, the kind that you would see anywhere else. See that junction over there? It’s functions as a junction. It’s a functional junctional. The clennel though, I’m not buying it.
Firstly it’s not a word. I’ve tried looking it up and there’s nothing there. It’s definitely not a name or a surname. It’s as though someone misspelt the word ‘kennel’ and nobody bothered to correct it. I’m pretty sure it’s not a breed of dog or a type of salmon or the spoon on the table when you go out for a fancy meal that you never use. It’s not an illness; you can’t be off work with a spot of clennel. It’s not a film by Federico Fellini. It’s not a perfume or aftershave by Jean Paul Gautier.
What were they thinking? Does anyone else know about this and can they see it? It’s a clear indication that something isn’t right and I am convinced that there’s something or someone hiding down Clennel Avenue, a hidden thing that might be sinister and otherworldly like a sock that can tell the time or a bee that hums French fancies. I want to know the secrets hiding in plain sight and yet I know that some things man was not supposed to know. It eats away at me, day after day, the chewing on my elbows is unbearable. Don’t listen to your gut. Don’t go down the Clennel. Leave it alone and you’ll be fine. Wipe the sweat from your brow and go back to thinking about whistle pops and candy whistles.
There it stands as a monument to things that do exist but probably shouldn’t. I hope to God that I never find out the truth.
The sloshy doorWhat’s going on here?
Play that funky music (Kevin)Reuben recently revealed to me that whenever he hears the song ‘Play that funky music’ by the mostly never heard of band Wild Cherry he imagines Kevin as the lead singer.
Does this mean that the singer sounds like Kevin when he sings or does Kevin have a striking resemblance to Wild Cherry singer Rob Parissi?
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.
Sugar LumpsIt started with a casual remark in a conversation and, as always, it leads to stuff you didn’t know you wanted arriving in the post.
I’m talking of course about sugar cubes. Who knew they were still a thing?
I for one thought that they had been relegated to the winds of time by things like good hygiene practices and little paper packets, but how wrong I was. Imagine my ‘delight’ as two whole boxes of the things arrived at my door, accompanied by the now customary ring of the doorbell by the postman too lazy to actually push things through the previously acceptable flap.
I believe Chris’ package arrived first, in what can only be described as ‘inadequate’ packaging, (a plastic postage bag) looking mostly like a box of sugar, with some cubes left in it. Ian’s exotic brown sugar came next wrapped nicely in bubble wrap and in a box. (I’m assuming it was Ian as it was addressed to Kevin ‘Sweet San Hose’ Hill).
When I explained the arrival of these to Sarah, she declared that Ian was the winner as she used to sneak eat the brown sugar cubes at ‘Auntie’ Betty’s house when she was little.
following on from this, anyone who ‘pops round for a cuppa’ should now expect to find tea served on an overly flowery tray, with a little bowl of mixed sugar cubes ready and waiting.
Not that anyone puts sugar in tea these days.
Episode 23: Hiding ThingsA Breath of Fresh Beans returns for season 4: The Skype Year(s).
In this glorious return the three of us discuss:
Water faffWhere is your water meter?
In this post, likely to be the first of many where I talk about things to do with my new house, because that’s what my life is like these days, we’re going on a journey of discovery to find the water meter.
The electricity meter is easy. That has a special meter hutch in the hallway, so you can see it as soon as you walk in the door.
The gas meter is also not too difficult. Look under the stairs, where the boiler lives, and there’s the gas meter, sheltering underneath it. Excellent.
The water meter? Last time I had to find one it lived on the outside of the building, mounted quite low on the wall. Must be around here somewhere. The water company tell me it’s electronic so it can be read by a water meter detecting robot passing within fifty metres or some such futuristic nonsense.
One place it definitely can’t be is underground, because I’ve checked all the manhole covers and other gratings and none of them are either watery or metery. One is a big inspection hatch for the drains. Another is a smaller inspection chamber where a drain turns a corner. Some are gratings into the drains. And the other is labelled SEW, presumably short for SEWER, and I’m damned if I’m going in there. It sounds gross. So that stuff is all drains.
Lucky for me, after making further inquiries it turns out SEW doesn’t stand for sewer, even though that is completely logical. No, SEW stands for South East Water. Underneath the SEW manhole cover is a foam block covered in mud, and under the foam block is four inches of freezing cold stagnant water, and under the four inches of freezing cold stagnant water is my electronic bluetooth enabled water meter.
Let’s hope it’s waterproof.
