My Happy Place #2

Do You Want Flies With That?

Come lunchtime, I often sit down in the local caff with a nice cappuccino and a filled roll of some description, get out my little mowbli and browse my fave blogs while I munch. If you're doing the same right now, I recommend that you move along. This story is not for the squeamish.

Ok, that's got rid of those of a nervous disposition.

This story came to me, as it were, from the horse's mouth. Or, considering its origin, the springbok's mouth. Anyone who's been following this blog for more than a couple of weeks needs to get a life will know of my love for the Wild Coast of South Africa. And that, my friends, is where The Horror happened.

There's a little hotel, really small and unobtrusive, tucked away in a cove known as Morgan Bay. With great restraint, or perhaps just a lack of imagination, the owners named it, er, Morgan Bay Hotel. Back in the days before the local authorities found out about this jewel sitting on their doorstep and bulldozed a fuckoff great highway to replace the 100km of dirt track which once protected it from the riff-raff, it was a cosy wee place to get away from the hurly, and indeed the burly of urban living.

Except in August, that is. What with it being on the upside-down side of the planet, the sun goes the wrong way across the sky (Apos, this will confuse your subconscious Aussie mind when you come up to the top side - be warned) and the seasons are all A/T. When it's the height of summer in the civilised world, it's bitterly cold midwinter¹ in Darkest Africa and all points south. So that's when they used to shut up shop and give the staff a month off for their own holidays.

Now this one year, the manager came back early. Perhaps it was a premonition, perhaps she just loved the place so much she couldn't bear to stay away. Like me. Any road up, the moment she arrived, she realised something was not quite as it should have been. Then it dawned on her that there was the faintest smell of something rotten.

A quick check confirmed her worst fears. There had been one of the many power cuts for which the country is famous, a circuit breaker had jumped in the hotel's junction box and when the power had come back on, well, it hadn't. And the fridge freezer² had thawed.

Even in as small a hotel as this one, you'd be surprised at how large the walk-in fridge freezer² is. They cater not only for the hotel's own guests, but for some of the locals and of course, the many hikers who frequent the well-trodden path above the shoreline to Kei Mouth in one direction and Double Mouth in the other. That's a lot of mouths to feed, so it's a fecking big fridge freezer². Well-stocked, too. The fish may be fresh-caught by the chef, who is also a keen angler; the oysters are "pick-your-own" at low tide, but the beef, lamb, chicken and that are bought in bulk and frozen. Oh, dear.

So, taking a firm grip of her nose in one hand and the door handle in the other, she gave an almighty heave. And then gave an almighty heave.

The butter had melted first, forming a large, shallow puddle across the width of the floor before turning rancid. The vegetables were not so much green as mostly black. With white fur. And the meat was crawling with maggots. Need I go on? Let's just say it could have walked out under its own power. Oh, and did I mention the smell? And the flies, and - ok, I think you get the picture.

Now, do you think that's bad? It gets worse. Oh, yes. Much worse.

Once she'd got her stomach under control and called in some staff to help clear up the mess, hosed out the fridge freezer², sprayed the place liberally with disinfectant and re-ordered the entire stock for the new season, she contacted the environment agency to see how best to dispose of the, um, leftovers. There was far too much to simply burn it, as the smoke would present a health hazard and the neighbours would, to coin a phrase, kick up a stink. Tossing it in the sea never even occurred to her - this is a beauty spot FFS. Which left burial.

As luck would have it, the hotel owns its own digger, so off they went to the local dump, dug a trench six feet deep as per environment agency standards and gave the sorry mess its last rites. Dumped the lot, covered it up with topsoil, ran the digger over it a few times to compact the dirt and went back to the hotel to prepare for boarders. And that was the end of that. Or so they thought.

A couple of weeks later, one of the staff went up to the dump with the rubbish. The sight that met his eyes...I wish I had a photo to show you. Then again, maybe not.

The less discerning members of the local community had observed the entire episode above and, not to put too fine a point on it, decided "waste not, want not". They'd exhumed the corpus delicti, (possibly) cleaned it, cooked it and scoffed the lot. I don't know what their stomachs are lined with, but it must be stronger than cast iron. Not so much as an upset tummy.

And I've just thought of a suitable title for this post³.

¹ In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. --Mark Twain

² I am a numpty. It's a walk-in freezer, not a fridge. I've seen it. Definitely a freezer. They keep ice-cream in there. For the Dom Pedros.

³ This post was originally titled "Do You Want Fries With That?", but I had a flash of inspiration and changed it. I'm allowed, it's my blog.

Underground Skiing

A BBC News Report describes a Norwegian chap who went skiing on the London Underground. As you do. Perhaps he was practising for when global warming melts all the snow in Norway.

I should point out at this juncture that:

• Skiing on the London Underground is dangerous. You might be mistaken for a Brazilian and shot by police marksmen.


• Skiing on a real ski slope is also dangerous. A French twat barged into me last time I was pissed on the piste and broke my thumb. Thanks, Pierre!
  

Three In A Bed

Tagged by Kissme. I've never been kissed tagged before, so I'm quite nervous. Not. I saw one tag last week that ran to 150 items, feck that. But this is quite short. Except that I'm making it unnecessarily longer by yammering on about it.

Three Things That Scare Me:

1. Ghosts.
2. George W Bush.
3. Bungee Jumping.

Three People Who Make Me Laugh:

1. Phil Kay.
2. George W Bush.
3. Non-Working Monkey.

Three Things I Love:

1. Farting.
2. Mrs Farty.
3. Choclit.

Three Things I Hate:

1. Them green things, wossname? Vegetables.
2. George W Bush.
3. ICBMs.

Three Things I Don't Understand:

1. The Inflationary Theory Of Cosmology.
2. QED.
3. Women.

Three Things On My Desk:

1. Cuppa tea.
2. Shortbread crumbs.
3. Speakers.

Three Things I'm Doing Right Now:

1. Writing this fecking post.
2. Listening to The Beautiful Corrs.
3. Farting.

Three Things I Want To Do Before I Die:

1. Swim with dolphins. I've watched them surf. Wow!
2. Dance on George W Bush's grave. Or Margaret Thatcher's.
3. Discover the secret of immortality.

Three Things I Can Do:

1. Can you guess?
2. Play Go. Badly.
3. Make people laugh. Knickers!

Three Things I Can't Do:

1. Stop farting.
2. Learn To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb.
3. Put up with intolerance.

Three Things I Think You Should Listen To:

1. Music. Any music except rap.
2. Your heart.
3. Me farting. Ahhhh!

Three Things I'd Like To Learn:

1. To fart The Flight Of The Bumblebee.
2. SCUBA diving. See dolphins above.
3. HTML, so I can pimp my blog. Getting there.

Three Favourite Foods:

1. Banoffee Pie.
2. Choclit.
3. Pasta.

Three Shows I Watched As A Kid:

1. Captain Pugwash. Arrrggghh!
2. Dr Who. William Hartnell was my favourite right up until David Tennant arrived.
3. That one with the two numpties with the idiotic expressions, the jerky, drunkard's walk and the unintelligible flob-a-dob speech, flanking the pretty-but-shy one in the middle. No, this one.

Three Things You Should Never Listen To:

1. Rap music.
2. George W Bush.
3. People who tell you it can't be done.

Three Wonderful People To Inflict My Meme On:

1. Non-Working Monkey.
2. Apos-itivepessimist.
3. Cheerful One.

Aye Thang Yew.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

It be only six months until International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so I be thinkin' I'd better be startin' to getting ready^*. So here be somethin' to educate yez, with the three four five R's.

It all be startin' with the Flying Spaghetti Monstaaarr!


His chosen people be pirates. Arrr!

Mrs Farty and I always be takin' it in turns to walk the plank. Ah-harr!

Then there be the lovely wench Tasha Yarrrrr...


And A Vast Behind were just a bonus. Aaaarrrrrgggghhh!

Now keel-haul the mainsail, belay the demon rum and buckle that swash^**!

^*If the Christians can start preparing for X-mas in August, for FSM's sake, why shouldn't we start early too?

^**Erm, anyone know where I can get a decent swash?

Serious Post

Where do I start? At the beginning, I suppose...

Forty years ago, I remember my closest brother sticking pins in my mum's cigarettes to make it harder for her to poison herself. She must have got through twenty a day, easily. 'Cancerettes', he called them. And 'coffin nails'. This was in the days when the killers were still blithely claiming that fags were good for you, but everyone with half a brain knew the truth. Still, she claimed, she'd rather lose five years off her life than spend those years missing the joy of fags.

Fair enough, Mum, I thought, it's your choice and your funeral. And yes, it was her choice. Of course, had I known about passive smoking in those days, I might have made more of an effort to persuade her to give up. Or at least open a window. We had to paint our living room ceiling twice as often as the kids' bedroom, to hide the smoke stains.

Well, Mum's funeral was five years ago. But there's a parallel going on on a much larger scale right now.

Thirty years ago, during the "energy shortage" of the mid-70s, James Burke had a tv show where he asked members of the public to try to predict the future. One prediction, generally agreed upon, was that the private car would be a thing of the past by 1982, an unaffordable luxury. Even then, it was recognised that cars cost a lot to make, a lot to run and a lot to maintain. And they contribute to atmospheric pollution.

Twenty years ago, climate scientists announced that they were a bit worried about global warming and perhaps we should, you know, do something about it? So the oil companies trotted out their own scientists who said that there was no such thing as global warming. There may not have been as many naysayers as doom-mongers, but they were far better financed and people like a positive message.

Ten years ago, it really looked serious. All the major players got together in a city called Kyoto and signed an agreement to cut their carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2008. Except that the US and Australian governments refused - and still refuse - to ratify the treaty. Their own published reports showed that although global warming does indeed exist, it's mostly due to circumstances beyond our control and there's nothing we can do about it.

Now, it turns out that Dubya has been in the pocket of the big oil companies all along. Who would have thought it? A major government forging official reports to make it appear that all was well? Shock and indeed, horror.

Of course, it's what comes next that worries me. Climatologists are saying that we're rapidly approaching a tipping point, beyond which no power on Earth will be able to prevent the tundra from thawing, the polar ice caps from melting and the oceanic conveyor belt from shutting down, plunging Europe into a new ice age while Atlanta becomes the new Atlantis; small islands will disappear forever; Waterworld, blah blah blah.

Any bets on how long it takes Big Oil to come to the conclusion that: "We've already passed the tipping point, so we might as well eat, drink, drive, fly and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die"?

There is still one hope, if we act now. It has been proven that there is a link between global warming and the number of pirates on the seven seas. As pirate numbers have fallen, so average global temperatures have risen. Bobby Henderson is trying to negotiate the purchase of a ship which his Pastafarians can use as official missionary transportation to spread the word and boost pirate numbers. Please lend your wholehearted support to this worthy cause.

I love messing about in boats, me.

Return of the King

Yes, Steve has returned triumphant after conquering Mount Kilimanjaro. A little short of breath, but he made it all the way to the summit. Hurrah! The final push began at midnight, so he arrived at the top of the world in the wee small hours. For some inscrutable reason, he didn't wait around for dawn but headed straight back down, picked up Damion (who had only made it part-way up on account of a mild case of pulmonary embolism and fluid in the lungs) and hit the sweltering jungle a few hours later. Where else can you get frostbite in the morning and malaria in the afternoon?

Well done, chaps!