Prepared

How will you defend yourself in an emergency? It’s all well and good saying you can do hand-to-hand combat, or that you know how to hot-wire a car to make a getaway, but when hordes of neer-do-wells are charging towards your location, can you make yourself safe?

Preparation is the most important thing. Preparation will be the difference between survival and defeat.

This week, I took the opportunity to practice building makeshift barricades and defensive structures.

Here you can see a defensive wall that has been built from packs of kitchen roll. It allows you to hide from potential attackers and will repel missile barrages (providing missiles are relatively light and not thrown very hard).

By preparing myself in this way, I know that I can defend myself from any lethal attack in which the attacker is armed only with paper aeroplanes as long as I have about 50 packs of kitchen roll immediately to hand and a few minutes with which to build a wall out of them.

I am prepared and I will survive. Will you?

Remembering is Fun

I have recently been on a bit of a tidying binge in and around the flat. I took a lot of time out in January to buff to sheen all the jobs I had been procrastinating about during December. And there were tons. It also didn’t help that other people were actively handing me MORE things to do but hey, that’s just me. If I’m me, and I usually am, then I’m always helping.

In sorting out a particularly shifty box in the corner of my room, I re-discovered this interesting artefact from a certain Mr C Marshall:

I’m not very good with dates. I am very certain that this was when he, as in him, as in you, Chris, we’re at university learning how to push buttons for the BBC. Just think of where you would be now were it not for the booze and juice aisles.

My absolute favourite though is the ‘don’t know’ section which contained Lord only knows what kind of middling weirdness and frivolity.

Remembering is Fun.

Broken

In the last two weeks, the following things have broken.

My central heating boiler, which was broken for a week
My phone, which had to be sent off for a week and a half
My coffee pot, which still isn’t fixed
My watch, which still isn’t fixed
My iPod, which I had buy parts to fix myself

This has been dispiriting and distressing, and has severely tested my fortitude.

If you are thinking of breaking any of my possessions, or in any way modifying them so that they break in a seemingly accidental way, or if you become aware that one of my possessions may break or suffer a breakage-like incident, please inform me in writing at least two days beforehand so that I can prepare myself mentally and physically.

Thank you.

Things! Ep. 1 – Crumbulets

Pouring Beans Productions continues to be at the forefront of innovation in exciting televisual entertainment. This week, PBP is proud to launch its brand new series, Things!, which meets groundbreaking inventors and discovers how they’ll be changing our lives tomorrow.

In this first episode, Alan Rudge meets Clive, a man from Leeds who is revolutionising the world of food.

Knee windows

I’m definitely getting old. I mean, we all know this, it’s not news to any of us. But sometimes I still get surprised by my reaction to things.

The other day I was on a London Tubular Train. These are clever trains that have the corners sliced off so that they can run in the sewers. I was listening to a Radio 4 podcast (a sure sign of getting old – surely this should have been a stark reminder of my age) and minding my own business. The train stopped at a station and a young woman got on and sat opposite me.

It was at this moment that I realised that I am definitely getting on a bit.

Young Chris would have seen this young woman and thought well hello there. Young Chris would have been appreciative of her pretty face. Young Chris would have found his thoughts turning to the fact that she was wearing a grey tracksuit that dropped some hints about an attractive figure.

Young Chris isn’t here any more, though. No. Old Chris is at the wheel these days. Old Chris wants to know what on earth she thinks she’s doing out and about in January wearing a tracksuit with no coat to keep her warm. Old Chris starts his train of thought with the words bloody hell, isn’t she cold?

Old Chris has a Daily Mail style fit when the young woman sits down. He finds himself thinking well I never and considers folding his arms (but decides not to because he’s a bit arthritic, what with the cold and the damp lately). You see, lately, ripped knees have come back into fashion for those wearing jeans, and the rips have become ever sillier. It’s now fashionable to basically just have a huge hole where your knees can be seen. The young woman on the tube, though, was wearing a tracksuit. A tracksuit where the front of each trouser leg came in two parts, overlapping at the knee, with the result that when she sat down the fabric parted to show off her knees to the world.

She had knee windows.

Well, obviously I wrote a stern letter to the Telegraph at once, and blustered barely-intelligible words at anyone who would listen for the rest of the day about how ridiculous these young people’s clothes are. I mean, it’s just not on. I can’t stand idly by while people go around doing damn fool things like that.

Old Chris can’t be doing with knee windows. Old Chris doesn’t understand young people’s clothes any more. Old Chris isn’t fashionable.

Old Chris has decided to embrace old age. Old Chris is going to start wearing his flat cap more often.

Newsboost – Bonkers Book Burning Bonanza

Firefighters were called in to deal with a violent blaze in the North East of England this evening.

We have received a report that the Loinsford Memorial Publishing House, which opened only within the last couple of months, is on fire yet again after three previous blazes were started in November and December 2015. The raging inferno is currently being contained thanks to the efforts of the local fire brigade.

The culprits and how the fire started are still unknown at this present time and the owner of the building is yet to comment. The Loinsford Memorial Publishing House was responsible for the current bestseller ‘Running Away: The Me Within Me (Not You)’ by bewildering chowder head muffin brain Ian “Running out of Leg Jazz” McIver.

Three hundred thousand copies of that particular book were said to have been lost in the flames.

Dear Beans… My Late Lucid Literary Lamentation

Dear Beans,

For some reason, which clearly escapes me, everyone on this website absolutely, positively hates my books. With a passion. With more than a passion. With big arms and a scowl.

Having sold eight million copies of ‘Running Away: The Me Within Me (Not You)’, I was expecting a certain level of praise and a huge dollop of respect for having conquered the literary world and the New York Bestsellers List for approximately seventeen weeks. What met me, however, was the kind of despair and ridicule best reserved for X Factor contestants who couldn’t get through Boot Camp.

I don’t understand. My book received several 5 star reviews and a glowing report from both Richard and Judy and also, Chris’ favourite, Su Pollard. So where does the venom lie? Is everyone jealous of my success, my fame, my bingo trophy?

I can only hope that my new book ‘Two Pumps and a Squirt – The Kevin Hill Story’ will seek to rectify the problems everyone has with my expressive and hugely successful way of writing.

Yours faithfully

Mosaic: Four Word Reviews

Kev and Sarah’s considered and insightful reviews of the Papples’ latest album has inspired me to do something similar with one of the presents Ian gave me for Christmas – that being the 1986 album “Mosaic” by Wang Chung.

I was particularly excited when I opened the cellophane to discover that this seems to be an original pressing which has been waiting patiently in its box since 1986, and the booklet inside is starting to show its 30 years a bit. The music inside is as fresh as ever, though. The title comes, of course, from the lyrics of the final track, in which Wang Chung tell us that the world is a mosaic upon a golden floor.

Wang Chung Mosaic