Never run (or wobble) with scissors!

Not So Grim After All - Banksy, originally uploaded by daddyw.

Richard is struggling to surf on the sofa and keep the cat off his lap as she is a walking fleabag at the moment. She seems most resentful at becoming Kitty-non-gratis. Richard’s attempts at pest control end because the cat suddenly darts off as, wobbling like a drunken Weeble, Daddy Shortlegs makes his way to my desk like the Julie Walters waitress from Victoria Wood’s “Two Soups” sketch. I carry on typing and wait for the wobbling to subside and for him to catch his breath.

He is clutching a Christmas card – a nasty cheap Christmas card and so probably from his family – friends often spend more on people they like as opposed to cheap obligatory greetings from distant cousins.

'Can you make this out?' He is pointing to the postcode scrawled on the inside cover where a hopeful sender has put their address which pathetically begs you to send them a card - quid pro quo. We look at where the moving finger points and notice the said digit is still covered in a Band-Aid from when he cut himself yesterday while attempting to trim his claw-like nails.

Why do old people get such long talons that it makes them appear feral? I am now thinking of Queenie being told not to have ideas in case her foot drops off in Blackadder II. “My uncle had a clever idea to cut his toenails with a scythe, and his foot dropped off”, she reasons.

Could he bleed into the bathroom sink – of course not – he chose to make a palaver in the kitchen sink while Richard is stressing out catering for the Tennis club quiz night. That paints a rosy picture of the suburban hell which I live through, does it not!! Although the leftovers from Delia Smith’s curried pasta salad and Nigella Lawson’s ham-in-coke have much the same effect as Seroxat or Valium – they don’t cure the problem but they make you relax and feel life is good.

Richard squints at the scrawl on the card and tell him the postcode.

‘Yes, but is it two distinct sets?’ asks Daddy.
‘What?’
‘The numbers – is there a space.’
‘Yes, always. EX1 for Exeter (the card is from Devon – who the hell do we know from Devon?) and then the other three.'
‘That’s what I want to know. Are they separate?’
‘Yes, they always are in three and three or in three and four.'
‘Okay. That’s what I want to know.’
'It’ll get there even if you don’t add a postcode.'
'But are they separate?'

This saga moment could run and run, and so I tune out and return my gaze to Sherlock Holmes but Daddy Shortsight has noticed my movement towards the TV and as if to question my indifference to his plight asks “Is that MacGyver?”

I have never been so insulted – how very dare you?! MacGyver! He knows how to wound even without nail scissors.

G.I. Jonny

Elephant Parade Rotterdam, originally uploaded by Photolivier.

Later this week we will be taking part in a Terrence Higgins Trust and BBC partnership event called G.I. Jonny at Cardiff University Students’ Union.

Alex, my former student is joining Paul, our current* administrator and fundraiser, and myself to dispense dogtags, condoms and common sense to inebriated youth – sounds like a riot. One problem: what to wear? It’s hard to camouflage yourself when you are the size of an elephant although the old joke would belie that…

Why do elephants paint their toenails red?... So they can hide in cherry trees

Google kindly tells me that the Boy Scouts webpage has a whole range of elephant jokes but dare I look and have the url captured by the authorities. A gay man, a scout’s webpage: it’s a ticking time bomb for the tabloids, ain’t it!! Anyway, back to the main story… camouflage.

“Cargo pants?” suggest Alex helpfully. Yeah love, if you want my arse to look like a super tanker!

Paul supportively suggests I wear “desert storm colours and go as the Gobi Desert”.

I fancy medals and epaulettes but so do all megalomaniacs who don’t deserve them. (The origin of the word comes from “Megal, megal megal” as Mutley would have said to Dick Dastardly)**

“Khaki?” said Alex – nope I just look like Anglesey if I wear green - or if I move, “Birnam wood come to Dunsinane”. (I had to look up that quote so for me it's time to brush up your Shakespeare!)

I finally give up and have a moment’s wallow in self pity about fat people and lack of nice clothes. I don’t want to look like Don Estelle in “It ain’t half hot, mum”. Then on the train of thought that takes me towards the Ryvita and skimmed milk, I have a brainwave.

The hunchbacked celebrity Dr Gillian McKeith, dressed as a fairy godmother and holding the shitty end of her wand, pops up and says “you shall go to the ball… as G.I. Diet!!”

*(Note from Addison DeWitt here: Paul, when I say “current” I mean as opposed to the admin worker colleague mentioned in my last post – it’s not a threat Paul, I don’t mean current as in there is a future one in the wings understudying your typing role like a conniving Eve Harrington! (for plot device see All About Eve 1950)- no don’t look it up, I mean go see it!!!

**Not!

Fags are dangerous!

Cigarette packet health warning, originally uploaded by Chapmanmania.

I go to lots of meetings (lots!) and thankfully I have a twisted sense of humour that keeps me from trying to choke myself on an agenda or batter my head repeatedly on the desk... well in those meetings for which I choose to stay awake!

A madly-departed colleague once sharpened a pencil and stuck it in her thigh through her jeans during a lesson on the Sage Accounting program as she couldn't see the double-entendre possibilities inherent in double entry systems. I have been known not to go to the toilet prior to a meeting so the pressing urge to not wet myself makes me look keen and fidgety rather than falling asleep in relieved bliss.

I particularly liked this week when, in a conference room next to an indoor bowling green, we heard the local AM trip on the phrase homophobic bowling instead of homophobic bullying – a new sport is launched, will it make the Olympics. With footballers outgaying us with their metrosexuality perhaps traditionalists have a refuge in Crown Green bowling amid the pleated skirts and acrylic jumpers.

By the way, when I say conference room, I actually mean a breeze block cupboard at the back end of a sports centre in Bridgend that took two Sherpas and a sat nav to find from the main reception desk. That walk was a work out in itself!

My stepmother (who was a stereotype from a fairytale – mad, bad and dangerously dull to know!) loved to watch bowls on TV, along with One Man and his pigging Dog (well sheeping dog actually, but you get the drift!). When I came out as gay at 17, she explained it to my dad so caringly “It’s a disease Ron, he needs help!” My dad ever more dull and practical suggested that I “...fuck off to London where they all live!”

According to some in our Welsh Institutions this may be true still – I was recently asked to speak at a conference in the leafy heart of rural Powys. The topic, Long Term Conditions and Self Management, was pretty dull for us (remember we have seen courses called the 'Arse Class'!)

The organiser assured me that she had telephoned ahead to the Christian Conference Centre and Trailer Park (I kid you not missus - only in Powys eh!) to let them know I would be speaking and warn them about me… not sure what she warned them about – gay, sex, AIDS? The whole kit and caboodle. They were lovely and explained to her that with HIV in the world as it is, it was good to know someone was doing something (Aw bless!). But it’s gratifying to know I make a mark and now come with a government health warning “THIS FAG IS DANGEROUS”

On the day itself, there were numerous presentations and obesity was one of the topics often associated with other long term health conditions. There it was, writ large on the PowerPoint screen for cancer, and diabetes and well everything really - but with me in the front row everyone hastily skipped through their bullet points and managed to avoid saying it out loud …

...imagine dear reader, I have become “The Elephant in the Room”.

Buttery Bollocks!

crumpet, originally uploaded by niznoz.

It’s been a big day Daddywise! I heard him up and bumbling about blunt and early.

'Richard! Richard! Richard, hurrumph, whatthefugishe, Richard!!'

New readers to the blog may be thinking of Marlon Brandon in Streetcar, tight white wife-beater vest shouting “Stella”… think again… balding dwarf, in loose white(ish) underpants and flesh coloured easy-top socks.

'Richard! Oh forgodsakeinfug-wuh-fu! Richaaard!'

I lie in bed wondering if he’ll ever shut up. It must be obvious that Richard is out. Up the stairs, one unsteady step at a time, comes the Balding Balrog. I hear him empty every drawer in the landing cupboard – open, rummage, expletive deleted, close, next drawer... I feel like we are being turned over by the world’s slowest jail warder – more Bad Girls or Cell Block H than OZ. No steamy shower scenes but a lot of shaky walls accompanied by shaky hands and heads as he short-sightedly rummages like a truffle pig with Parkinson’s.

He wanders into my bedroom – there is no privacy here. I could have been having a wank, or a toffee crisp or worse, sitting up in bed reading the sort of novel that I wouldn’t allow in the house (Maeve Binchy, and John Grisham spring to mind). 'He’s out!!' I annunciate clearly and loudly just to make the line sound less like a Lynda La Plant mini series. 'He’s gone to the vet' (thinking what a shame he hadn’t take the grumbling old git for the jabs mentioned in previous posts!)

'Well, yesterday, when I got back from Tesco (he lives in buggering Tesco!) I couldn’t get my, um, you know, whadoyoucallit, you know, to work. It wouldn’t go in. I was ten minutes fiddling on the doorstep. (Don’t make up your own jokes!) I’d bought a pound of butter in Tesco so I took that out and greased it and then it went in and I was able to turn it. So I was wondering where the spare, um, thing, was…. Key!'

Oh he's searching for a key - I have no idea where the spare ones are but I doubt they are in the drawer with pillowcases and blankets on the landing.

He proceeds to make his way back down the stairs and I get out of bed and catch him up on the landing below. He has moved on to looking for old video tapes (he has an entire cupboard filled with rugby league and David Attenborough documentaries among five to six copies of each episode of Stargate!

'Where are my tapes?'
'In the cupboard.'
'Here?' he says patting the top of the desk and picking up two audio cassettes.
'No not the desk – the cupboard.'
'Here?' He is now grasping the book case. Shall I just say Hot or Cold until he finds them?
'They're in the corner cupboard,' ...where they have been for six years. The cupboard is the size of a wardrobe. I point directly to it.
'Oh I’ll leave it,' he can’t bear the thought he might be wrong and he gives in frustrated yet again.

By the time I shower, dress and get ready to go, he is back truffling for keys in the hallstand. I slip out the front door and into the sanity of a waiting taxi.

Daddy has his card declined!

Turkey, originally uploaded by Matthew Harris.

Christmas came early and we almost received our first card today - not a Christmas card though! I'm not sure if Daddy Dearest hasn’t gone all “Yankee” on us.

He proffered his bank card – brandished would be more accurate, wobbling it about in a wild arc between me and Richard like a decrepit Jedi with an invisible light sabre. A few minutes later he realises from our puzzled look that this charade is not being guessed by either of us, and without Una Stubbs and Lionel Blair to help us guess, he moves on to verbal clues…

'Christmas.'
'Yes?'
'Have you bought things. Food. Take my card.'
'There’s a month before Christmas,' we suggest unreasonably.
It’s tomorrow,… isn’t it?
'No, it’s a month away yet.' (Does he mean Thanksgiving?”)
'Are you sure?'

It is of course our fault that it isn’t the date he would wish. We have done a Cher and purposefully turned back time to thwart him. We have done the worst thing possible in refusing the offer of the card. He is hurt and feels unneeded. Charity begins at home and, when snubbed, muttering and fury also begin at home although it lessens as he wanders back to his room like a deafeated boxer withdrawing to his corner of the ring.

Although later it is ding ding, seconds out, round two, and he proffers it again with a new Charade…

'The lights next door.'
'The lights next door…what about them?' (Are we ever to have a simple complete sentence that explains itself!)
'Well people have moved in.'
'And...'
'Did I hear you say you were going to get a covering for the window?'
'The kitchen window, yes. We are having blinds.'
'Well use this then.'
'We need to get the floors and radiators all done before the fancy bits' (the kitchen still isn’t finished!). It is also eleven-fifteen at night but that escapes his notice.

Turns out he is worried about the new neighbours catching him mid-trot to the bogatory in a state of undress – if only I could have blinds fitted on my eyes or blinkers. Jeez I would be truly thankful for a blindfold and a hearty last meal before I ever see his pork chipolata and turkey-neck balls on show ever again.

The bank that likes to say "What?!"

Uncle Jack & grandmother, originally uploaded by Kelteek.

Daddy Bigbucks is annoyed that he missed the post office yesterday as he wanted to send some money off to his family in Cumbria (no it's not charity though God knows one would need it if you live in such a bleak place judging by the photographs) but Christmas presents. Thwarted at that attempt (do people really still send postal orders for Christmas!) he wandered around the bank today and, having returned home and divested himself of a whole Oxfam rack of jackets and coats, scarves and a cap, indignantly informed us that the bank no longer could supply him with pound notes.

“No dad, we haven’t had pound notes in years - not since 1984!” (that’s the year not the book/movie)

Although Room 101 holds no horrors to compare to the sight of Daddy in the kitchen with a J-cloth tucked in his knickers – we have no idea why – perhaps he is using it as an incontinence aid or perhaps he is going to whip it out and polish the table with a bullfighter’s flourish like a frustrated Spanish waiter – just to be on the safe side we dispose of any J-cloths we find hanging about.

I wouldn't be seen dead here!

Flu jabs, originally uploaded by hugovk.

Daddy Arsewipe needs a flu jab – it’s not the sort of injection I would like to give him but we don’t live in any of the Southern States of the USA that still go in for that – though bunging a fiver and a bottle of scotch to the local veterinarian practice may achieve the same goal. Perhaps I could even claim it back on pet insurance. I did wonder if he had blue tongue disease the other week but it transpired he’d been sucking on a biro while doing the Telegraph crossword. Where’s Christophy Timother when you need him to cull your rellies. (Or even a nice lone-handed GP with a need for cash!)

He hasn’t done the crossword in ages – he can’t really see very well now which frustrates him and makes our electric bill soar – I can’t tell you how many lamps he now has in his room but if you poke your head round his door you might get a tan! Stuff Blackpool - It’s like Vegas (but without the unwelcome addition of CSI standing over his body!). Richard took him to BUPA for someone to have a look at his eyesight (the outcome is that they can both see more than they can have!).

Perhaps BUPA could do some private work for me, after all Richard says that it was a lovely building - which counts - my aunt always says that if she becomes incapacitated she’d like to go the Geneva where they practice Euthanasia and just end it all but then she heard that someone who had been didn’t reckon the apartments were much cop. Who do you complain to: the tour rep? “I wouldn’t be seen dead here!”

If I am going to end it all I don’t want it to look like a shitty Butlins’ chalet! When I go I wanna go out in style – Sardanapulus styles mayhap – start slaughtering the elephants Richard! (I know you’d never get this from a quick trip to the crematorium followed by ham rolls and beer at the British Legion in Milford – but we can all dream!)