Da Weed

Me: (Trying to get out of front gate and into my car) Mum?

Mum: (Emerging from home in her dressing gown) Yes darling?

Me: You appear to be growing cannabis? Around the front gate.

Mum: Oh, that'll be the birds.

Me: What the birds have started up their very own skunk factory? I never knew they had it in them.

Mum: No, it'll be from their seed. I put their seeds on the gate and they get knocked off and grow. We get all sorts!

Me: You feed the birds dope?

Mum: No but I expect it's in the mix.

Me: (thinking it's too early in the day for this kind of conversation) Commercial bird seed contains cannabis?

(I can see The Sun headline now 'Blue Tits Off Their Tits on Seedy Seed').

Mum: Well maybe. It was from Asda. Or it maybe blew in from somewhere?

Me: (glancing round at the surrounding vista of desolate, cannabis free, fields) Riiiiiiiggggghhhht. All the same, is it wise to leave it growing by the gate hear. I mean a lot of people come through here. The postie, the man who brings the oil, the, erm, vicar......

Mum: I'll get my glasses.....

Mum (again - this time sounding slightly thrilled): Ohhhhhh, you know what, it IS cannabis isn't it!

This was on Monday.

It's still there, reaching for the sky amidst the Autumn sunshine and showers.

Quite a harvest.

I'm keeping out of this but if you see a gentle looking lady in Breton stripes and M&S jeans on the local news for running a miniature cannabis farm, you know the situation has deteriorated.

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Somerset Ink

I'm a firm believer in laughter really being a bloody good medicine - thus this blog - and today was a case in point.

Yesterday was hideous - truly hideous - and I got up this morning (after very little sleep and waking up soaked in sweat) feeling even more hideous, utterly convinced that today would be even worse.

But then I met up with two old school friends for a cup of tea (or 15) and we laughed so long and so hard we reached a point of sort of mutual hysteria. It you could package the physical and spiritual effects of that kind of laughing into a 'therapy' and offer it, then people would queue at the doors. There really is nothing like it. As I sat there rocking with laughter with tears spilling down my cheeks I thought 'life is short and if you get the chance to laugh then you really need to grab it and go with it because you really don't know what's round the corner.

And for that reason I shall be eternally grateful for 'Bob' and his 'skills' at a tattooist.

See, the great thing about old school friends is that you get to catch up with what became of some of the people you went to school with (the ones that don't even make it onto Facebook) and boy did we go to school with some oddballs. Take for example the boy who, for no apparent reason, came to school one day naked but for a British Airways towel (on the bus no less).

Anyway, whilst catching up on what happened to one girl (lets, for reasons of anonymity and my own safety call her Jane) a rather alarming tale came to light.

Jane it appears is now married. She's married to man who I shall refer to as Bob.

Now Bob, by all accounts, is a rather odd man (who sits in a corner mumbling to himself) but one of his claims to fame was that he once worked in a Tattoo Parlour. From what follows I presume he was making the tea or sweeping up blood or something, but nonetheless, he worked there (allegedly).

Now someone (and who this person is I do not know but they are, now, clearly identifiable if going topless so you may well spot them) on the estate where Jane and Bob live heard about this and decided to kit Bob out with a full set of tattoo gear and ask him, just like that, to tattoo the image of Leonardo Di Vinci's 'Vitruvian Man' across his entire back.

As you do (if you've got the IQ of a frozen pea).

If you are unsure what the Vitruvian Man looks like (and he clearly was) then here we are:




See his proud noble head.

See his perfectly proportioned, well muscled body.

See his manly organ, the penis (because if you are drawing a man's anatomy it's kind of essential).

See his symmetrical strength and sense of power.



And then feast your eyes on this:



Sorry but WHAT. THE. F***?

See his crazed face and dodgy perm (more '14 year old boy's take on Iron Maiden Album Cover' than 'work of a genius' but hey, we all make mistakes....we just don't generally ink them onto someone's body for all eternity).



See his hands. His hands!!!! How many fingers DID the perfectly geometrical man have? As for his muscles - I think the 'artist' needed another Stella to steady himself by that stage.


See his feet! Well actually you can't miss the one of the right because it appears to extend for about a meter.



While you're looking at his feet you may also want to look at the 'colouring in'. The original piece of art did not look like it had been coloured in by a 4 year old with a brown felt tip but hey, it can be good to add your own twist to things. Then again, it can also be crap.

You may also note that his penis is missing. Interesting piece of censorship there. I guess the conversation went something like this:

Deranged victim: Oh by the way Bob, leave the cock off, I ain't have no man's dick on me back.

Bob: No worries mate (secretly thinking 'phew, one less thing to totally f*** up, I've never inked a penis before, or in fact anything but I'm gonna get away with this....), what do you want me to do in it's place?'.

Deranged victim: Dunno mate, I'll leave it up to you (probably hoping for something uniquely artistic and relevant. A metaphor for a penis if you like).

Bob: Alright mate (thinking, I'll just do some squiggles and colour him in brown, no one will notice he's missing his dick).

According to Wikipedia

This image exemplifies the blend of art and science during the Renaissance and provides the perfect example of Leonardo's keen interest in proportion

and

The drawing itself is often used as an implied symbol of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension, of the universe as a whole.

According to me:

This image actually exemplifies the blend of stupidity with lack of talent and provides the perfect example of Bob and his victim's keen interest in high-strength lager, home grown cannibis and not a lot else.

and

The drawing itself could often be used to symbolise to kids just what can go wrong with the human body if you let an untrained idiot loose on you with a tattoo gun and don't even ask for a reference. This example can, by extension, relate to a lot of what goes on in our universe and why we're in such a bloody mess.

My friend summed up the situation up more succinctly by howling:

'That's not the Vetruvian Man - it's f***ing Chewbacca!'.




She's got a point.

The reason I have a copy of the image is because this guy is emailing it out as an ADVERTISEMENT FOR HIS SERVICES. If you want his number, just drop me a line.....

Apparently if you can't pay in cash he accepts Viagra.

I'm just hoping that after writing this he doesn't track me down and exact revenge by tattooing the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel across my arse.

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Pump it Up

OK this is a post about my balls as I got them out again this weekend but, before I go on ,I need to make it VERY clear that when I talk about my balls they are large, inflatable, gym balls that are used to help pregnant women find good positions to labour in.

With this fact in mind, would all the people who are finding this blog via googling ‘balls getting sucked’ or ‘naked balls getting sucked’ (naked as opposed to what? Balls wearing tuxedo’s and a bow tie?) please move on. My balls might be somewhat troublesome but they are not particularly erotic.

Anyway once gain my balls have been problematic.

This time I had difficulty even locating them. After moving house they were flattened in a box somewhere and it took quite a bit of rummaging until they were back in my hands.

Having finally dragged them out into the harsh light of day, I then transported them to their destination (200 miles away) un-inflated (you don’t want balls banging off your gear stick all the way down the M4) with the intention of pumping them up when I got there.

Unpacked them, got my pump out….. 3 thrusts later – CRACK. The pump snapped clean in two.

Oh. Marvelous.

I wasn’t expecting that.

At a loss at to what to do next (I was being assessed by an examiner and she would be keen to see me facilitating use of my balls) I went down to (once again) bother the young man on reception. He is German and struggles a bit with some English words but is possibly the keenest and most helpful receptionist I have ever come across so I felt if there was ever a man who could help inflate my balls, it would be him.

‘I’m really sorry but I was trying to pump up my big ball and I’ve snapped the pump, I don’t suppose you have a bicycle pump or something do you?’.

‘Ahhh no I have no pump. Zis ball – it iz alwayz giving you trouble – is this the same ball that we had liberated from zee sub-station?’.

‘Erm, yes ‘(good god – he’s remembered!? Slight panic he might read my blog and also be able to recall the facts that I have piles, a bladder problem and once stole a Christmas Tree from a church hall).

‘Ahhh we ALL remember that one! Crazy times huh!'.

'Errr yeah, crazzzeeee times indeed' (said with huge fake smile).

'I have no pump but I have glue!’.

‘Riiiiighhhht’ (bicycle pump/tube of glue - easily confused I often find.....).

‘I will glue your pump!’.

‘Okkkaaaaaay’.

(He liberally applies glue to my pump).

‘Okay, now we just wait for glue to do setting. We need it to go hard’.

‘Erm, does it say on the packet how long that will take? The hardness?’

(he reads packet carefully and then raises his head in triumph to utter…..)

‘6 HOURS!’.

‘We don’t have 6 hours’.

‘Okay, we will we do our best!’.

(At this point he blows enthusiastically onto the glue clad joint. Clearly he thinks his breath is like that of Superman or similar and able to prompt chemical change within milliseconds.....his breath fails. The two parts hang limply together, vaguely joined but in no way cemented).

Shrugging, he got me to hold the two broken ends together while he used the pump. The problem was, what with the limp joint between the two parts, he couldn’t push very hard or very far – thus he had to do about 40,000 ‘mini’ pumps to get the ball inflated.

And that, my friend, is how I ended up spending my Saturday morning crouched beneath a young German receptionist as he pumped away and got rather breathless, whilst repeatedly muttering 'is it firm enough yet or do you want it harder?' (I seriously wish I was making this up - I'm not).

Even I was blushing.

I’d like to tell you that at this point the examiner (who would be marking me on how well I met the needs of men) walked in….but she never showed up so I can’t (that’s a WHOLE different story).

When he finished I thanked him profusely and apologised for ‘the odd things that he has to do for me’.

‘Oh this! This is not odd!’ he shrugged.

Intrigued I raised an eyebrow.

‘No – the odd people – they are the ones who come here to cry’.

‘To cry?’.

‘Yes, there are people at the end of the corridor. They have mattresses they lie on. They lie together and hug. Then they roll around and cry. That is why they come. I find this odd’.

‘Erm, yeah, so do I (at this point I wonder about glue fumes and how much he's inhaled). What is this group called?’.

‘The Crying Mattress People’ he shrugged, ‘well that is what I call them’.

I nodded (I didn't actually know what to say).

‘They bother me some because I have to drag all the mattresses out for them and the mattresses are very heavy and must come a long way. I wish they would bring their own’.

With that he went back to arranging the crisp packets in the little basket on his desk.

Intrigued, but slightly sure that something had been lost in translation, I ventured down to the room at the end of the corridor and, sure enough, the floor was covered in mattresses.

I’ve never felt so sane.

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Christmas: the report

A few individuals have inquired how my Christmas went - clearly fearful that my father may have spontaneously combusted when the gravy was late to the table or had a seizure over the use of the wrong type of parsnip.

Well the marvelous news is that he was on best behavior. The whole day passed with no over the top shouting, no threatening to strangle anybody because they put a log on the fire using the wrong lifting method, no tirades over cutlery. Nothing - nadda. Just a whole lotta love in the air and a very good meal indeed.

Wow.

I almost thought he'd turned over a new leaf but then it was Boxing Day.....

We were all invited to a drinks party at some friends of theirs and so off we trotted. Well me and mine walked - he went in the car.

The drinks party passed reasonably well (at one point he dragged my husband backwards by the neck of his jumper for 'standing in the wrong place' which had the potential to turn 'interesting' but luckily my husband is a mellow man.....). There were various other slightly disturbing scenes including a cocker spaniel on the table licking a game pie as someone carved it and a man below the age of 35 in mustard coloured cords and braces - but all in all it was 'fine' and the kids were suprisingly well behaved ( although I do confess to feeding them both trifle which I hadn't tasted - I LOATHE trifle, any food involving soaked foam should be banned - anyway it turned out the trifle contained something like 3 bottles of sherry and a slug of port so maybe that the secret?).

The afternoon wore on and my dad got to the point where he suddenly wanted to go home (he feels safest at home - he has complete control of the cutlery for a start) and, like a Roman Emperor moving his army, everyone had to pack up and go NOW.

I pointed out that I was just starting on a cup of tea (yeah - how rock and roll am I?) and as we were walking we would follow on in 20 minutes or so.

Ohhhh that set him off. Red rag to a bull.

He has a 'thing' about people walking once dusk nears. He is convinced they will (even if totally sober, very alert and very sensible) stray into the path of a passing boy racer and that will be that.

'IT WILL BE DARK IN HALF AN HOUR' he bellowed'.

'HALF AN HOUR!!! YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES TO FINISH THAT CUP OF TEA AND LEAVE! UNDERSTAND!?'.

Yeah - I understand. If we don't leave within 10 minutes you will come back and find us with a fistful of Asda bags and make us wear them home.

I kid you not.

One of the most excruciating moments of my adolescence was when a group of friends came to stay at my house so that we could attend a local beer festival.

Just as we were about to leave my dad appeared in the driveway informing us that if we set foot outside the gate without some kind of Hi-Vis gear on we would all be roadkill. He now owns a fine set of reflective clothing that wouldn't look out of place landing planes at Stanstead but this was in the era before that arrived so - having scared us all half to death - he went back into the house and emerged with.....


....a selection of Asda bags.

He then informed a gaggle of teenage girls, all done up to the nines and wearing their finest frocks (a Beer Festival was about as exotic as it got in our local vicinity) that they would make a hole in the bottom of the bags and wear them like tabards over their heads because the white plastic would 'save our lives - and ensure drivers had several seconds less thinking time before they braked'.

I''m not sure if that's totally true - I would think that seeing a selection of teenage girls dressed in supermarket plastic bags and high heels may well slow the braking of some drivers but hey, I doubt anyone's run trials.

I need not say anymore. I never lived it down. Social suicide in one easy fix.

God knows what he'd do now in the days of 'Bags for Life' - I don't think a hessian weave number with ladybirds on from Tesco has quite the same reflective powers.

Anyway (I'll get back to Boxing Day now) his agitation at the imminence of dusk was a sign that his mood was on the turn and as we arrived home, sure enough, he was throwing a tantrum because he'd asked for a cup of tea 10 minutes earlier and it hadn't arrived proving his theory that he's the least important person in the house and now EVERYTHING WAS RUINED AND IT WAS TOO LATE.

At this point we left. Fast. And thus preserved our memories of a very lovely Christmas.

I hope you all had a good one - nice and chilled out and nobody was forced to go out wearing an Asda bag......

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Please don't let this be a prophecy....

My OH came home from work the other day and told me that one of his colleagues, a young good hearted woman, had taken him aside and said some very kind things about how the company was there to support him and really understood his needs blah blah blah.

Wow.

I was really truly touched.

It's not often people in the corporate world take time to say things like that and seem to really mean it. It gave me a warm happy glow and re-newed my hope in the world.

And then?

Erm, well today his boss took him aside and informed him that there appeared to be some kind of strange, rather mis-informed rumour going round the company and certain people were under the belief that......



(brace yourself)





I was about to die.


Gulp.


Excuse my language but WHAT. THE. F'CK.



So the woman that beckoned him into the office and said the nice things was actually talking about my imminent demise.

There now (apparently) needs to be some 'very delicate handling' of the situation the rumour is unpicked and people are gently corrected.

My life often takes a rather surreal turn (as you may well have noticed) but NEVER before has anything this, erm, 'odd' occured.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this but one thing is for certain, I won't be popping into the office for lunch next week.....

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My balls got sucked down the side of the disabled lift

Yup, they really did.

Oh my god.

One of my balls got sucked down the side of the disabled lift.

Seriously.

You know how I was saying I was teaching last night? You know how I have (repeatedly) in the past had trouble with my (birth) balls? Well this incident really did take the biscuit (or should I say the ball) and surpassed all previous ball-centered insanity.

Ok here is my ball:




Here is what the disabled lift looks like (well roughly - I haven't actually photographed it - that WOULD be insane):



I crammed myself and all of my equipment into the lift and then pressed the button to go 'up'. It's one of those ones where you have to hold the button down in order to keep moving.

As we started to rise I heard a very strange creak and then a noise not unlike rubber being sucked into a mechanism...... HOLY F*CK - rubber WAS being sucked into the mechanism!!

My ball was squashed up against the wall of the building and as the lift rose it was being dragged down, down, down into the workings of the lift.

About the same time as my brain clocked what was happening, the lift stopped of its own volition.

The lift was stuck.

The ball was stuck.

I was stuck.

OK - logic was telling me to get the lift to go down slightly thus freeing the part of my ball that was being sucked so I pushed the 'down' button.

Nothing happened.

The lower part of the (glass) lift was still visible in the foyer and this clearly piqued the curiosity of the receptionist.

She came over and started a conversation with my feet.

'Are you Ok up there?'.

(Yeah - I'm having a flamin' BALL love - boom boom....).

'Erm the lift is stuck'.

'Stuck! Oh crikey! That's never happened before!'.

'No, no, it's my big ball, it's got sucked down the side of the lift'.

'You what?!'.

Now at this point I just started to laugh.

It was like I was looking down on myself and saying 'you really have become a parody of your own blog haven't you'. The sheer absurdness of the situation pushed me over into hysteria and I just couldn't stop laughing.

Around this time circa 70 German school children arrived in the foyer looking for dinner.

Everyone assembled and stared at my feet.

Everyone offered helpful advice (much of which was in German - German is not my strong point. I did get a GCSE in it but I must confess now to some minor cheating).

I'm sure many a postcard will be sent back to Deutscheland 'Ya, the hostel is lovely! The food is great! The weather is crazy! Mind you so is the lady living in the disabled lift with a large rubber ball, photographs of semi-naked women and a box of cakes.... These English! CRAZY!'.

I just laughed. I mean if you are going to spend part of your evening trapped in a disabled lift with a large ball you may as well laugh.

Eventually with some deft finger work (i.e. making the lift judder 'up/down/up/down/up/down - DOWN) I managed to pull my ball clear of the seam down which it had sunk and reach my destination.

Which is lucky really as I guess the next stop would have been the Fire Brigade? Now THAT I would have demanded photos of.....

Surely that has to be the last of it!?

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Dippy Days

I was going to try and write a great long post about last night's excitement (no not that type of excitement - although it does involve nudity and a large hose) but I will have to save it until tomorrow because I'm just all over the shop today.

I'm not drunk (sadly), I'm not excessively tired, I'm not excessively hormonal, I'm not in the first lusts of new love, I haven't been smoking pot or sniffing the WD40 (which, I will confess to doing during the final weeks of my last pregnancy. The WD40 sniffing that is - not the pot. I used to get these cravings where I HAD to put my head under the kitchen sink and inhale the heady aroma of WD40 mixing with shoe polish and Windowlene. Well it's better than sticking your head in the oven, surely?) but I am just totally out of it today.

Sort of floating around in a ethereal bubble of vagueness.

I keep doing ridiculously random idiotic things.

Like bringing all the dirty washing downstairs, in order to wash it, and then spending several minutes methodically stuffing it into the kitchen bin.

Or picking up my mobile phone and nonchalantly chucking it into the freezer (I was thinking about fish fingers at the time but all the same, that is quite random).

The creme de la creme has just occurred while I was cooking a curry.

I put all the ingredients in the pot and then, on turning round, saw a collection of snipped up spring onions on the work top so threw them into the pot.

Not, for even one milli-second, did I stop to consider the bare cold fact that:

a) I have not purchased any spring onions for some weeks.
b) I hadn't been cutting spring onions up and there is no one else in the house who can safely use a pair of scissors.
c) they were not spring onions.

No they were in fact the snipped off ends of a bunch of tulips.

So there we are: beef, butternut squash and toxic tulip stalk curry.

Delicious.

I've fished all the bloody things out now and binned them before my brain decided it would be a good idea to weave them into a cardigan or put them in a sandwich.

Hopefully by the time my husband reads this he will have already eaten the curry, non the wiser about it's botanical infusion.

I hope you are having a significantly saner day than me.

p.s. I am just double checking that I've loaded this onto my blog and not sent it to the Inland Revenue as a tax return or submitted it The Times letters page.

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While I Was Away....

I'm back.

I am in one piece - if a little damp (it rained, solidly, for 6 whole days and nights), my children are asleep and I am sure will take away happy memories of the whole affair (most notably, apparently, spotting lorries on the M1 - well the M1 is a thrill a minute to some people) and I have been missed (well at least one person missed me - and one is enough in my book). In a moment I shall be posting about my 'jolly japes' while I was away.

In the meantime I ask you to refer back to the post I made prior to going away. The one about how people find this blog and scary Google searches that end up here.

On my return I have done a quick check and how did the last person to look at this blog get here?

By Googling the following statement:

"peeing when needing to wee again causes"

What!?

Sorry but WHAT!?!?!?

So lets get this right - you need to wee and then you, erm, pee.

And you want to know the 'cause' of this manifestation?

I am guessing that the cause is (brace yourself) YOU NEED A WEE AND THEN YOU DO ONE.

No wonder you ended up at this blog. You are indeed Slightly South of Sanity as I very much doubt anybody has published a research paper on the topic of 'peeing when needing to wee again causes of'.

My advice to you, in this most complex of cases, is: go to the toilet if you need a wee.

Great -is this blog actually going to become world renowned as a place about pee? I should hope not. I have far greater matters to speak about. Like my balls and dead pets.

And on that note I shall go and write a post about my holiday (during which no balls died and all pets were very well restrained).

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Wiggy Woes

I had an accident yesterday. An accident which ranks as 'highly bizarre' even by my standards.

It happened when I went to collect my son from school.

Now I am always late for school - this means that I have to sort of power march the whole way there in order to ensure my son isn't the last kid sitting on the carpet sobbing 'but I thought mummies came back?'.

The sun was out, the pram was moving like a salmon through a glacial stream, my iPOD was on and I was STRIDING. Striding very very fast.

I had just passed the HQ of one of Britain's leading employers and was outside the muscle man gym (name changed for legal reasons and pending court cases). The muscle men were outside - taking the sun, catching the rays, stretching their limbs, dealing drugs (allegedly), sharing tips on how to best annihilate the enemy (allegedly). Life was good. I was in the 'zone'.

And then it happened.

Without any prior warning the pram stopped.

It went from moving extremely fast to standing totally still in about 0.09 seconds.

Obviously there was a delay in my reactions. Whilst the pram crashed, my body continued to move forward very fast and I found myself continuing my journey, up over the handlebar and onto the pavement. The pram pitched onto it's side. The baby dropped his muffin and looked annoyed.

Some of the muscle men came over to help me. I wasn't hurt - just shocked and rather embarrassed.

What had happened? It had felt as if a wheel had just sheered off (this did actually happen with a previous pram - I ended up having to push 2 children 2 miles with an entire wheel missing - the pram was up on it's back wheels doing a sort of extended wheelie for the duration of the journey. It must have looked an utter dick - for a change).

As I brushed the dust off my hands and checked for cuts I glanced down at the offending wheel of the pram.

What on earth?

It looked as if a large, bright ginger, Persian cat was caught up in the wheel.

What?

How could I have hit a cat and not even noticed? NOW WHAT!? Was it dead? Did we need a vet. Oh god - I've killed something! With a PRAM!

Then I realised that it really couldn't be a cat - cats don't, generally, have ringlets.

One of the muscle men bent down 'there's something round your wheel love' (observant these men of steel).

'Yes, I can see' I said as the grim reality dawned.

It was not a cat. It was my wig.

The situation was thus: some time ago I attended a fancy dress party as 'Ginger Spice'. For this event I wore a waist length curly ginger wig. I was recently having a big clear out and took loads of stuff to the charity shop. The wig fell out of the bag and got left behind so I chucked it into the basket under the pram so I could drop it off next time I passed. At some point during my journey some hairs from the wig must have got caught round the moving part of the pram wheel. As I walked, faster and faster, the hairs spun tighter and tighter until KABOOM - the entire wig was catapulted out of the pram basket and embedded itself, like an angry ginger octopus, around the pram wheel causing it to instantly stop.

So I was now stuck - I was already late for school and I needed to get moving NOW but the wig was really very very tangled round the wheel. Of course ALL the muscle men wanted to help.

'What is it love?'

'It's a wig'.

Silence. I don't think they felt up to commenting. Or maybe they had already used their word quota up for the day.

Thus ensued a 5 minute farce where various men capable of lifting 100lb barbells with a single hand grunted and struggled to release Ginger Spice's barnet from my pram wheel.

As the time ticked by my anxiety grew. I was now running really late. Did I need to call the school? 'Yes, sorry I will late to pick my son up. I'm currently outside the gym experiencing technical difficulties. Synthetic hair in my gears - you know how it is! Don't worry - I have a lot of men trying to get them out'.

No, I would not call the school.

At that point one of the muscle men rose up clutching the wig in triumph.

'Got it love!'.

'Thanks so much!' I gushed, shoving the scarlet tendrils into my handbag and leaving the scene at even greater speed than I arrived.

So there we are but that's the thing about life - strange things rise out of the past and stop you in your tracks when you least expect it. Especially wigs.....

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Well...

I have just seen someone hoovering their driveway.

And we have just had a hail storm.

Proof, if ever I needed it, that it is the rest of the world and not I, who are in insane.

I just pray it was one of those 'wet and dry' type vacuums.

I will walk back past later and see if there is a patch of scorched earth where once stood a vacuum cleaner.

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Bodies of Evidence

Reflecting on the demise of poor Satchmo (see previous post 'Dead Pets' Cemetery) has brought to mind the passing of other pets.

There have been a few. Not, I hasten to add, because I'm some irresponsible pet killer - but because, over the years I've had a lot of small mammals and, sooner or later, they go to the great big hutch in the sky.

Of course, when they die it leaves the problem of disposal.

With the guinea pigs we try to bury them in the garden but we (hell, what do I mean 'we' - I claim hysterical grief and refuse to go outside, thus ensuring my OH spend 30 minutes shoveling soil) have to dig a very deep hole or foxes just dig them up again - which is, erm, 'unpleasant'.

However, larger mammals are a problem. Particularly if you have a small garden with very little spare soil that isn't already a grave.

Thus ensued the farce which was 'The Disposal of Dukey'.

Dukey (or 'Marmaduke' to give him his full title) was a largish rabbit.

He wasn't originally my rabbit - he belonged to someones neighbour and she no longer wanted him or his guinea pig pal so they ended up living in my garden.

He also wasn't originally called Marmaduke. He was called Hedges. And his pal was called 'Benson'. Oh dear, oh dear. I had to change their names - I mean where would a theme like that end? Lambert & Butler? Malboro & Embassy? or god forbid, Rothmans & Superking Extra?

Anyway, Dukey got quite old and then one winter he got the 'snuffles'. I kid you not - the 'snuffles' is actually a real rabbit illness. It sounds harmless but it can be pretty damn fatal. Especially in the case of Dukey.

So Dukey passed.

The weather was freezing - everything was frozen solid - so we wrapped him in the old orange bath towel we used to use to bath him and put him on the patio.

And there he stayed, frozen in time, for some time while we tried to work out what to do with him.

There was no way we could dig a whole to bury him - you would need a JCB and that seemed a trifle excessive.

Putting him in the bin or similar just seemed hugely disrespectful and totally wrong.

Taking him to the vets for cremation at the cost of about £90 seemed, to be frank, absolutely cuckoo (plus I used to work in the vets and have to empty the 'dead pets' freezer and deal with the cremation people and I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl - but I won't).

So I decided, in my own unique way, to 'let his soul run free with his wild brothers and return his spirit to nature'.

A.K.A 'take his towel wrapped body over the railway and into the nature reserve and leave it somewhere wild, which actually meant chucking it down a small ravine'.

So one cold and frosty morning I stashed his cold little body underneath the pram (not your typical changing bag contents I will admit) and off we went - for the final goodbye.

I wandered up and down the railway embankment for a while amidst the wild rabbit warrens, trying to find the 'right' place but soon realised I would have to actually chuck my orange parcel quite high in the air to get it down 'where the wild things are' (please note: Dukey and his towel were fully biodegradable so I do not consider what I did as litter dropping - something I utterly hate). Funnily enough this was not something I wanted to be witnessed doing and every time I went to launch him, a dog walker would appear and I'd have to suddenly act all normal and give them a smiley 'morning'.

Anyway, eventually the deed was done, I memorised the spot, wished him well on his journey to the afterlife, and went home and got on with my life.

Until about a week later when I came home to find the police helicopter hovering over the railway embankment, squad cars everywhere and the whole area cordoned off.

The area was a hive of activity with the words on everybody's lips 'what IS going on!?'.

The word was there was a suspicious package and something to do with a body.

OH HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF THE LORD, I thought, someone's dog has clearly 'retrieved' Dukey and a small body wrapped in a towel has sparked the biggest police operation the area has ever seen.

My heart was racing. I mean I've been involved in some farces but this really topped it. Would they be able to trace me? Would my DNA be on the towel? What could I be charged with? Would people misunderstand my story and label me somekind of pet killing psycho? Had their been witnesses? I toyed with going to the police and holding my hands and saying 'Look OK, it was me, it's a rabbit, the towel is his shroud' but I was worried they might section me.

I could seriously barely sleep that night. Every time I heard someone say 'they've found a body!' my heart would lurch.

As it turned out it wasn't Dukey. It was actually some poor other soul but I think it's safe to say that I won't be returning any other dead pets to the wild.

Next time I think I'll go the viking route - you know, blazing longboat down the canal.....

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If you think I'm mad, you should see the neighbours...(a.k.a Rose's Revenge)

No not Mr Squirrel, we've already talked about him. The people on the end - now they really do put the odd into oddball.

At the moment they have a large heap of hardback books outside their house (and half way across the pavement) with a sign saying 'Books! Take what you want!'. How very generous - if you are looking for a Haynes Car Manual for an Austin Allegra or want to read about 'Unsolved Crimes of the 70's' with half the pages missing and two weeks worth of rain on it.

Anyway - while trying to push the pram through the book mountain earlier I reflected on a exceedingly strange event that took place at their house last summer - an event which I am still none the wiser as to discovering what happened. I wrote about the incident at the time and here is a copy of what I said:

Ok I am sure that there will be people out there who believe that I am living in a fantasy land or on my way back to the loonybin (or in fact perhaps both) but this really did happen this afternoon - and my husband (and the rest of our street) can vouch for it. Even I am left stunned at what I've just witnessed.

I live in the middle of a row of terraced houses. The house at the end is very rundown and an elderly lady lives there with her adult son. They are lovely people but she's an alcoholic (she has had a tragic life) and her son has learning difficulties. They are both very kind and often bring me sweets and things. As far as we I know (we've lived here 7 years and I chat to them regularly) nobody else lives in the house - although you often hear a very fierce bad dog barking (but never see it) and lots of people come and go.

ANYWAY this afternoon at about 3pm I came back from the shops with my eldest son. I jumped out of the car and wondered why there is a large group of blokes, with pints in hands, standing outside the pub opposite staring across the road.

As I start getting my son out I heard smashing glass and one of the blokes outside the pub shouts 'RUN, get out of here' and I look up to see........

...a man, naked from the waist up (and he was a BIG man) smashing his way out of the living room window of the house at the end. He looks totally wild and is screaming 'GET ME OUT OF THESE F'CKING CHAINS' and is wrapped up in what looks like the chains you use to hang hanging baskets up with.

I seriously thought someone might be toting a gun so I picked up my son and bolted to my front door (I thought 'World's Wildest Police Videos' was taking place outside my house at this point).

There was more smashing glass and a big old rumpus and people shouting 'get out of here, HE'S COMING OUT THE WINDOW' and then this bloke emerged - cut to ribbons and (and this is where it gets REALLY odd) holding a large rose bush/tree still embedded in a very large plastic flower pot.

He collapsed in the road and a (very brave/mad) woman ran to his aid. He shook her off and then bolted (complete with his rose bush) into the pub opposite. Must have been an interesting moment for all the old geezers enjoying a Sunday afternoon pint....

People ran over to the house and were trying to break the front door down but the dog inside was going mad. Someone was shouting there was a little girl in there (there wasn't) and it all got very chaotic.

Shortly afterwards 5 squad cars, a riot van and 2 ambulances showed up. Various things happened and they all slowly left (together with Rose Bush Man) and everyone went back to standing around outside the pub having their pints and saying things like 'bleedin' eck that was diamond!'.

Sorry but WHAT!?!?! I had never seen this guy before and the people who live in the house weren't in.

He was pretty porky so he's obviously not been kept chained up in there for years or anything (unless they fed him well).

Answers on a postcard!?

Ok so that was last year and the developments since are:

1. The dog had died. Well I guess it was the dog? A shallow grave appeared on the front lawn and I've not heard it barking since.

2. NOTHING ELSE! I still have no idea what happened. Just after that we went on holiday and by the time we got back it was too late to start being really nosy and saying 'erm, you know the other week when that man in the chains burst through the window? Yeah, that's right, the one with the rosebush! Well, erm, WHAT was all that about?'.

Everyone else seemed to be so calm, like they were 'in' on the situation.

I have so many questions. Who was the guy? Where is he now? Is he back living in there? Has he been there all along? Why did he come out through the window? Why the rose bush? Why the chains?

Perhaps it was just a case of botanical repotting (whilst having some kind of paranoid delusion...) that went horribly wrong?

I guess we will never know.

But if, by some remote chance, you DO know then please, please, please let me know...

Thank you!

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