Tag Archives: Humour

Time flies

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Clock pictureTime, mysterious and intangible, is always flying. It might have started at a gentle stroll, but as as you get older it’s taking the Bullet Train and the scenery is starting to look blurry. Or maybe I just need to change my glasses prescription.

It seems like only last week I was getting rid of the stabilisers on the bike, whizzing joyfully round the garden as everyone cheered and waved. Actually it was only last week, and perhaps they weren’t so much cheering and waving as shouting ‘Get the f**k out of our garden you arsehole!’ while shaking their fists. My neighbours have no sense of humour, but I gave their kid his bike back and left them to it. Bloody spoilsports. Continue reading →

Captured by a Viking

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Viking shipThey say in life we all have to make sacrifices. As a kid I may have taken this advice a little too literally, when I whacked my brother Damon over the head with a hammer. I don’t remember exactly, but I might have been attempting to offer him up as a sacrifice to the Norse god Thor, a character I knew well from his exciting Marvel comic adventures.

Of course it’s equally plausible I was mimicking my Dad, a man of almost legendary carpentry skills, and simply trying to reshape my brother’s head into a more aesthetically pleasing form. Needless to say he was not impressed by my unsanctioned DIY efforts and many tears were shed. Fortunately there were few lasting ill-effects, although during thunderstorms he does develop a lisp and a terrible craving for walnuts.

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The underwhelming adventures of Procrastination Man

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Computer user in dark roomIt is close to midnight and the only sound to be heard in the secret HQ of the mysterious figure known as Procrastination Man, is the steady clatter of fingers on a computer keyboard.

His secret Fortress of Ineptitude, as one wag had christened it, is actually a grubby one-bedroom apartment near the sewage treatment plant.

Sitting in near darkness, as most of the old light bulbs need replacing, he is lit only by the soft glow of an ancient and battered PC monitor. Once again he finds himself locked in a tense battle of wits with his nemesis, a notorious internet troll. The troll’s risible claims of a faked moon landing, Mars missions and various other ‘Illuminati conspiracies’ have set the Facebook group’s membership spinning into a maelstrom of argument, put-downs and amusing memes.

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Perfectly imperfect

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Hard-to-Handle-CupWe all know sleep is important, but I’ve always been a bit of a ‘night owl’, never one for following the early to bed, early to rise mantra. But all those hours spent sitting in a tree in the forest can take their toll.. (I complained to my doctor about my nocturnal struggles, but he didn’t give two hoots). Like all neurotics I worry about my health and the long-term effects of all the lost sleep, but in the immortal words of Popeye, ‘I yam what I yam’, and accept that not all brains are wired the same way.

Many notable figures from history burned the midnight oil, while others swore by an early start, rising with the larks and achieving greatness while the world still drooled on its collective pillow. It’s a question of balance I suspect, finding what works without causing chaos and disaster for yourself and those around you. If you’re an airline pilot or a surgeon, starting your working day groggy, sleep-deprived and ‘out of sorts’ can have some major repercussions. Whereas if you are tasked with guarding the Mesopotamian spoon collection at the national museum for ancient cutlery, maybe not so much.

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Mutant mushrooms and the end of days

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Mutant mushrooms and the end of daysSo I found a pair of conjoined twin mushrooms, sitting among their more regular siblings in a box we purchased recently. Its twin stalks almost reminds one of the horns of Beelzebub and of course it also has disturbing connotations of mushroom clouds..  I wondered idly if this might be taken as a sign of a forthcoming apocalypse, the ‘end of days’ regularly mis-predicted by religious ‘prophets’. Of course if they make the claim often enough, they might get it right eventually.

On its own, fused fungi siblings may seem quite trivial, just a random mutation resulting in a curious single entity. But no, this is the latest in a series of portents that simply cannot be ignored. There was the single red glove, floating ominously in a small pond close to my home, that seemed to be pointing up to the sky. Then there was the tennis ball that mysteriously found its way into our little garden some months ago. The clincher, the thing that seemed to put it all beyond any reasonable doubt, must be the sighting of a strange cloud formation that appeared to be a terrifying dragon about to consume the world, as foretold in the book of Rolf.* Continue reading →