The beauty of machines long gone,...... and the bikes we first loved.

I was browsing and came across this lot on YouTube..... Marble and Ball Bearing Machines. I love these things.... real clever stuff.

This guy makes them very well........ look at his YouTube 'channel' list of vids (on the right side)

http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/7/K5MVNnVbWa8

Brilliant!!! balls land right in the exact spot every time. Shows a different return mechanism halfway through. Amazing stuff!!! {:o)
http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/29/6FLB-FcX0CY

Soooooo neatly made.....
http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/49/p6R7R33dE84

Real neat elastic band gun..... shows how it's mechanism works, about halfway through.
http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/26/nkqesLSXe4Q

Those of you who like to fix and 'make' things will especially be able to see the craftsmanship, difficulty and cleverness in making these things. Must be sooooo many prototypes made and much experimentation to get it just right. I'd love to know how he bends the wire so beautifully. No scrapes, no burrs, no kinks.

When I've got my shit together, (should I ever do so), I'm gonna make pointless things like this......just to sit there and watch and listen to it all working away.

Machinery of any kind working away is a pleasure to watch, or rather, these days, machinery that you CAN watch working...... everything now is hidden away from sight, and what machines there are available with a few visibly working parts are pretty ugly.

No brass, copper, and polished steel and alloy gleaming away any more. No oil and fuel minutely weeping from compression joints and housings and flanges. No hot metals gently marinating in the machine's juices seeping out here and there, spread with an oily rag as a watching mechanic wipes it away like a mother tending a child in need of her tender care.

No characteristic smells of those old machines. I cut my teeth, like all us Old Greasers, on old British bikes, and they were all pretty much the same. By the time yoofs like me got our deadly-keen hands on them, they had been through many hands before us, grading ever downwards from experienced hands when they were proud and shiny-new bikes, through those less able, to finally find themselves at the mercy of us youngsters. Keen as mustard, but knowing Sweet Bugger-All.

When we had our first bike, we yoofs of sixteen and younger, were not yet learned in the battle-hardened skills of Old Greasers, so essential to keep these bikes reliable and running as they should. Those poor bikes; the likes of the 175cc BSA Bantams, 250cc BSA C15's, 200cc Tiger Cubs and the like, they gave themselves up to us as cheap and worn out shadows of their new selves. Like old whores long since bereft of any traces of pride, they stood before us tired and jaded, having no choice but to turn tricks for us as we eagerly clutched at them and made clumsy love to them all.

Mine..... she was a 250cc Ariel Golden Arrow Sports, but with a shameful past. She had killed her previous lover.

He was riding it around a field, with no helmet as we all did back then, especially in fields and the like. His father heard the bike go quiet and after a while when it didn't restart he walked over to the field to find to find his son dead. He'd come off it and hit a tree and was lying beside the bike. The bike was undamaged and stayed there leaned against the hedge in shame to die itself, until one day my father took it away for me.

I was fifteen when I first had my eager hands on her and I loved that bike the way you love the first girl you adore. Every bit as much. My every waking moment was filled with thoughts and pure lust for her. I'd wanted her for years. I worked on her and made all my mistakes on her, both in working on her and riding her flat-out everywhere I went.

She taught me well, did that bike, like an older woman would nurture a youth in his clumsy loving of her. She kept me alive no matter how I abused both her and my luck. I rode absolutely flat-out on her everywhere until we both suddenly found ourselves with our luck clean run out one sunny morning. In a split second my life was changed forever. Riding back alone from Damar Bay to Wadebridge, in Cornwall where I lived, we suddenly found ourselves at the wrong place at the wrong time ......... and her second young lover was very nearly killed.

I was hit head-on by a green Mini Van which was overtaking on a blind corner. We were both doing around 60 to 70mph, and so it was a closing speed and an impact of around 120 to 140mph. I never even saw the colour of the car. I was smashed to bits, and made it to the hospital, so the surgeon told my poor Mother, with less than fifteen minutes to spare, and that it was a job to keep me alive.

My beloved Ariel Arrow died that day. Twisted and broken, no one ever rode her again. Never.

It wasn't her fault. Neither was it her fault when her other lover died. He made the mistake, not her. I didn't make a mistake, it was just fate choosing us to hang on the scales of chance with Death in the other pan.

Bikes, they never make the mistakes, they just struggle to keep us all alive and get us home again, despite our wildness and mistakes. So many since that old Ariel Arrow have looked after me and kept me safe, and I've loved every single one of them in return. Hoover most of them all.

God, ............that lot was upsetting to write. Always is. Some things never leave you, do they? God, I was so young. But for nothing, not the slimmest measurable thing, was I nearly dead at sixteen.

Then I did it all again at eighteen. Never once did I not want to ride again as soon as I could get a half-healed leg over a bike. Bikes and women...... you can't keep me from climbing back on before even the dust has settled. What else is there in life? Nothing. Good luck to you if you think there is.

Where was I, before I rolled along that old overgrown and rarely visited track?

Yes, ...... the beauty of machines and the way those old first bikes let us practise on them so we could learn to take care of later loves better. Ride them way better too. We learnt real fast. We were all so young and wild back in those days, and there was no choice but to learn the lessons quickly, those of us lucky enough to survive out on the roads to ride again the next day. Yup, that's pretty much no exaggeration, not for the wildest of us anyway. There was a saying, not unique to us I guess, but very apt nonetheless......

"There are only two kinds of Greaser; .......the Quick and the Dead".

I was Quick. (And, yes, a good bit lucky too)

K.xxx {:o)

Oh dear, ......he's gardening {:oI

Hi y'all,

I can’t believe the last pathetic attempt to gee myself up into action and start writing on here regularly was so bleddy long ago.

Or that I failed so immediately either.

I am sooooo weak.

I’ve just done a Tweet Thing on the Tweeting Twitter Thing website…… I signed up and did a couple Tweet Things ages ago. Not really sure about the point of it really, but there we are. An Old Greaser has to at least attempt to keep abreast of these exciting times we live in. Anyway, if you’re desperately bored senseless, and want to stimulate a couple of brain cells, go you ahead and visit my Tweeting Twitter Thing.

It really will change your life………….

http://twitter.com/#!/slurryoffagrape

So………. What exciting news, here on the Fortress Wheelrest front?

Biggest thing…… lost my job……. Well, not as in ‘sacked’ or made redundant, but I finally just threw in the towel. It had got unbearable to carry on. Thirty-eight years caring for people, and poof……… it ends with a whimper.

So be it.

Fare thee well, fellow carers…… I’m gone. End of.

Unemployed whilst depressed is the new deal.

Hopefully it will, eventually, be just ‘unemployed’. Then maybe, eventually, I’ll find some way of making some dosh again…….. Everything is kinda ‘eventually’ in my life right now. I’m faintly having some very faint illusions of being faintly self-employed, although just how or doing what is even fainter in it’s clarity, but, hey ho, who knows what’s around the corner.

Who gives a shit…….. that’s what’s getting me through right now. Who gives a shit.

Ok, ………on a positive note….. a habit I’m trying to muster into my day to day way of being……… Positiveness……… On a positive note….. I’m trying to get a vegetable garden going.

A WHAT!!!!!?????
Yup, a vegetable garden. My New Thing….. An idea stimulated ‘cos Unemployment whilst depressed Plan ‘A’ entails living off savings in a minimal way for as long as possible in the hope that Something Will Come Along…….. I’m kinda thinking like the Calvary always did for good old John Wayne. What’s good enough for good old John Wayne, is good enough for me. Bound to happen. Always does on the films.

It doesn’t come easy to an Old Greaser, though. A vegetable garden is second only, and a very close second, to that of caravanning. I wish to be shot if I ever even get close to doing something other than using a caravan as another shed. The only thing I can think of as a honourable use for one besides that of living in one as a simple way of life. That’s ok too. The holiday towing-them-around-for-fun thing is quite something else……… still, everyone to their own perversions, so don’t get upset if it’s your thing. I just wish y’all didn’t bugger up the ‘flow’ for me and Hoover as we ‘press on’ in blissful harmony along our beloved blacktop.

Where was I? Yes the vegetable patch. There are two now…. Veg patch No.1 and, yes, you’ve guessed it…. Veg patch No.2


Veg Patch No.1 .....early on in the digging struggle.
Helluva job digging them over, and I’ve recently planted a few bits into the mud. Well, it wasn’t mud, but dry earth, until I thought it a good idea to water it before planting…… THEN it was proper mud. Like all my schemes that seem a good idea at the time, it suddenly wasn’t a good idea.

Never mind.

Life is a never-ending learning curve. (Sigh)

Some plant things I'd bought already growing in pot things from a garden centre. Not cheap either. A pot thing with four raspberry stick things in it..... over nine bleddy quit they were!!! Jeeees!!!!


Veg Patch No.1 ..... finished and with some evidence of plants attempting to grow.

What made it worse was the fact that I felt real odd in the garden centre. It wasn't natural for an Old Greaser.

Everyone knew it too. They were all staring, I’m sure-certain. I thought my dick was hanging out for a minute, but you can usually tell...... kinda cold and tingly on the end. I felt like saying “You lookin’ at my Bird?”, ......from habit, as you do, ..........but I was on my own. Right now I still haven’t got a Bird…… (that’s a Bird, as in a Chick). These are desperate times I'm living through, let me tall you. Even if I did have a Chick, somehow it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway,…. the "You lookin' at my Bird" thing...... Aggression in a garden centre just doesn’t work really, does it? Pretty much for the same reasons as it doesn’t in a Church ……… just not done, is it? So I didn’t get all iffy about it...…. just kinda pretended I was dreaming and wasn’t really there, all nonchalant and cool, but in fact was wandering around looking like a lost soul trying to figure out what was what.

I tell you, there’s a helluva lot to it y’know. God only knows how the planet ever got started, ‘cos you gotta do it just right, or the bleddy stuff won’t grow y’know. It’ll just keel over and die. I've read all about it I have. I tell you, it's way easier to do the timing on Hailwood's racing 250 Honda Six. In the dark too ………..with just an old pair of pliers and a bit of fag paper. Way easier. If you don’t know anything about it, that Honda had six cylinders, and believe me, it would be a right soduvajob to get the timing right with just an old pair of pliers and a bit of fag paper.

No, I’m not going to explain. Ask an Old Greaser …..if you can find one amongst the newbie fairies riding around in disguise these days.

So,........ 'Unemployed and Growing Vegetables'.

I’ve even…… and I sure would appreciate your discretion in this matter……… I’ve even purchased several gardening magazines. Just, y’know, to get the gist of it, and maybe gee-up something akin to enthusiasm for growing stuff. Got twelve six-pint milk bottle bottoms with various seeds growing way past the point where they should be ‘Pricked Out’........ ‘Pricked Out’ I believe it’s the correct term, so I hope you’ll excuse my using it, ………and please stop sniggering at the back there, Peterson…. It’s not smart and it’s not clever.

I fished out some lettuce seedlings from their overcrowded crowded milk tub yesterday(‘seedlings’…..see, I’m getting into it), and shoved them in the mud. Seemed like a waste of time…… they looked like they’d died as soon as I dragged them out of the cosy bit of compost they were huddled up in, and if they last a bleddy week, let alone actually grow, no one will be more amazed than me.

Ok, that’s it for now……. I rilly rilly WILL try and write to this blog more often. I won’t make any more promises to you, dear gentle reader, having been broken more than the once before, I won’t swear to every day, but maybe at least once a week wouldn’t bend a push-rod, eh?

Have to see………

Take care out there, y’all,
K.xxx {:o)

On Nothing....... and it's effects on life.

Ok, here I am again…… as promised yesterday, but I have to say, only by the skin of my teeth.

Right, start writing………..

Um…… what exactly?

Just start writing about whatever comes to mind.

OK…………

Nothing.

Still Nothing.

Bugger.

What about ‘Nothing’?

Ok. (You’re talking to yourself again y’know)

Has Nothing got any power at all…….. most would say ‘No’……. BUT……

Doing Nothing is still doing Something, because if you’re doing Nothing instead of Something, it still changes your life. It STILL has an effect.

Everything changes your life

Every thought, every conversation, every action…….. and every non-action.

All life changing.

There is no doubt though that action, however small brings about the biggest changes, but in a way so does non-action too. It means you didn’t do Something that changed things at that moment, that day, or whenever. That means the effect of the action you will eventually take in the future will be different as a result, because of the non-action in the present.

What is Nothing anyway? I guess I mean Nothing as in No Action, rather than the Nothing we perceive in the vacuum of Space, the Universe…. Up and Out There. Even that isn’t Nothing. There is stuff everywhere.

There is no such thing as Nothing really. Nothing is always Something.

Nothing, in its purest form of inaction, must mean just lying, sitting or standing still, not thinking and with your eyes shut. How many can do that? Is it possible, unless in a comatose state? I doubt it, but maybe someone knows better.

If your eyes are open and seeing something, even a blank white wall, then that will promote some Thinking. If they’re shut, that will promote some Thinking too. Thinking is not doing Nothing……. and Thinking is vastly underrated as far as being regarded as action goes, in my opinion anyway.

Mind you, I would say that, being an enthusiastic follower of The Thinking as I am.

It’s a source of constant fascination to me, the effects of actions and non-actions on each of us and others too. You’re reading this and as a result, directly or indirectly, it might well have some effect on your life and perhaps in a way you will never consider or be aware of.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of Nothing, when I’m very aware I should be doing Something because I’m sat on the tracks in life right now and there’s a train coming my way. It’s not going to stop and I really should be taking some action, preferably actions, to at least get out of its way. The most I can muster to do is to try and keep my mind from sinking ever deeper into the mire that numbs it right now, which I know isn’t enough, but at least it’s some form of action, however small.

You do what you can do; you can’t do a whole lot more than that at any given time in life.

But I digress.

Ok, I’m trying to make myself feel better about doing Nothing, but in fact it’s real hard to actually achieve the state of really doing absolutely Nothing. Something is always happening in the background, even if It’s only The Thinking…….. and eventually The Thinking leads to doing Something. It pretty much has to.

I actually subscribe to the philosophy that it’s better to do Something, even if it’s the Wrong Thing.

That’s all very well and good, BUT sometimes it can put you in an even worse position than you were in before; maybe one that is murder-hard to put right, or even just to get back to where you were before doing the Wrong Thing in the first place. That’s where doing Nothing can sometimes actually be the best thing.

Right now doing Nothing is giving me the space to not have to handle the inevitable consequences of doing Something, and if you know you can’t handle the consequences, and have the slack to hold back until you can, well doing Nothing can be the best thing to do

Doing Nothing will still, therefore, change your life.

It’s changing mine right now.

Please, God, for the better.

Kx {:o)

The lies we're told..........

Ok, gonna try and write to this every day, but quite how to write anything worth the while, let alone reading, is quite another thing.

Mad Eddie from the States says I’ve gotta write something in a journal every day, so it might as well be on here as anywhere.

Ummmmm………….

Thinking……………..

Still thinking………… {:o*

Pete called in, and we’ve, yet again, been wondering how I can survive once I’ve plucked up the courage to tell ‘Them’ to stuff the job…… that’s the job that’s been driving me nuts for the last fifteen years.

Fifteen years.

Think about that.

Ok, never mind……. I will.

That’s at least how long this job has been having a serious effect on my mental state, and so my life here at home. Someone asked me recently why I didn’t leave years ago when I first knew it was screwing me up?

Well, the answer is, I didn’t know at any given moment in time that it was…….. not to the extent that it has. Each and every day was just a drip into the can that was tipping the scales against me. It was my job….. the only one I knew how to earn a living at, and it paid out every month for the privilege of doing exactly what it wanted to do to me. Each month I took that money, and allowed those in authority over me to do it all again for the next month, and the next, and the next………

It’s like a hypnosis, a paralysing hypnosis, where you believe, as I still do now, that you can do nothing against the hold it has on you. You have your bills to pay. You have the things that you like to do, and they all have to be paid for too. The Man wants your taxes to pay for the mechanisms to keep you in line…….. so you keep going.

You were brought up to believe that if you work hard, behave decently and are honest, you will be rewarded.

You will be regarded with integrity, and your efforts will be honoured above those who fall short of those standards.

The hypnosis that started as a child has you prisoner, as do the financial constrictions you willingly pull around you as you gather more and more of the moss of possessions all around you like a cloak.

Then you finally realise it was all a big lie.

You see bastards succeeding with deceit and betrayals, and you realise most of them are above you laughing all the way to the bank; comfortably doing less than you are to hold them up there above you. Telling their lies every day to comfortably pad their nests out even more.

You stand and tell the truths about whom they are and what they’re doing, and no one above you listens, even though they know you speak the truth, and you feel the injustice of it all.

You look around…… and they’re all at it, in every walk of life…….. those at the top, doing it to those under them, and it’s happening everywhere.

You despair.

You wish you’d seen this years ago when you were young and could’ve fought back.

You try and throw in the towel……… but it’s hard.

They keep paying you at the end of the month to carry on……. month after month after month, and the fear of not making it through a month without that financial carrot to chew on holds you like a quicksand.

How many lives….. good lives, have been sacrificed for the bad to succeed?

Nanowrimo starts today............

Hi y'all,
well Nanowrimo starts today, and I'm doing all the writing avoidance things to not get going........... getting this damn laptop updated and working again after not using it all summer, being the main one.

Sun's out, and I should be Out There........... got the guttering to clear for Gill today sometime, ........ she's my mate Restless Richard's Chick, and I'm sure it would be a Good Idea if I got my finger out and had a practice run up at the job by clearing my guttering, and fixing up all the bleddy leaks in it, the biggest being the missing end cap.

Can I be bothered though...... somehow it's always easier to do other peoples stuff........... you ever noticed that? Maybe that's because it's somehow more satisfying to help someone else. I dunno.

Life is but a mystery, and I really should give up trying to figure it all out, don't you think? :o)

Anyhow, anything with Richard is a right bleddy laugh, and in the event it will be more fun than I think clearing guttering can ever be.

None of this is getting words out for my Nanowrimo though is it. Going to do a ghost story, methinks........ just for the fun of it........ like Lovely Bones, that film 'Ghost', and another book I read a while ago, the name of which escapes me.

Right, I'm off to at least open Word, and save a document with the working book title at least. :o)

On Trailer Matters............

Hi there, my neglected blog-reader………

Mind you, I doubt there is one who checks it out these days, since bugger-all gets loaded up on here from me lately. There is hope, though…….. Nanowrimo time is looming up on the horizon again, starting as it does every year on the first of November, and I’m going to try at least to write more often to this Blog by way of getting back into the writing groove again. I damn nearly said ‘every day’, but knowing how my best of intentions pretty much fall by the wayside these days, saved face by using the looser term, ‘more often’. Since once a month would technically fall under that umbrella of commitment, so that kinda guarantees some chance of fulfilling an evident promise of intent, yes?

Sat in the garden today, having failed miserably to do what any man of strength would do, and follow last night’s resolve to get Out There and carry on with The Trailer. “The Trailer?”, I hear you ask yourself in awe of what this can mean. What wondrous flurry of activity has been missed during this spell of non-communication with my fellow man (and woman) out there in Blogland?

Yup, as you suspected, I’m doing Great Works in the workshop, even though at a snail’s pace of a few hours here and there. I’ve had an old trailer of four foot wide by six foot long stuck away for something like sixteen years, and finally got around to getting it ‘done up’ to sell on ebay. It needed mudguards, tailboard with lights, number plate etc, tow-hitch, new tyres, and painting to make it sellable but, in The Thinking About It, I somehow decided to lengthen it, keep it and sell my old faithful trailer which I made about twenty-five years ago.

The old one was a bit narrow at three-foot three inches, and could do with being longer than it’s seven-foot too (that’s too as in ‘too’, not ‘two’, ok?). So, with much enthusiasm…….. ok, SOME enthusiasm, …….. I set about this old trailer I was going to just tart up and sell, cut the tail section off and welded in a metre to extend it to its present length of nine foot-three inches. (I know I don’t need to tell you girls (who may still be reading this) how much difference three inches can make.) You can see that I struggle to go completely Metric, and so mix the old Imperial and new Metric measurements, which, believe me, can lead to some bleddy Great Mistakes in making things in the workshop. It was going to be just a fraction over eight foot, but I thought “What the hell, an extra foot could come in real handy.”, and so there it is; nine foot-three inches.

As with most things in life, things aren’t as simple as you might think, and so it’s taking a while to get finished. For a start, the axle needs to be moved, or the thing will be tail-heavy, I want it to be easily as useful as the excellent smaller trailer so I’m strengthening it, welding on hooks all around the bottom, altering the tail-gate to be more user-friendly, adding a ladder-rack at the front, and am going to make provision to secure a big bike inside it, should the need arise.

Photo labeled before the bottom rail was replaced (See photo below)

Ok, that’s enough boring stuff for one day…….. I’ll bore you with some more another day, real soon(ish), and will get back to my book….. Duncan Bannatyne’s ‘Anyone Can Do It’. (I wish!) Lovely warm, sunny underpants-only day, and I’m using the justification for being sat on my ass in the sun, of it being the last warm day we’re likely to see now Autumn is pretty much here.

Wherever you are…… hope it’s all going ok. If it isn’t, chin up…… tomorrow’s another day. :o)

Something, instead of Nothing........... :o)

Not much going on right now……. Hasn’t been for a while.

Just thought I’d say Something rather than Nothing, but I guess there’s not a lot of difference between the two which means I might as well not bother, but I am, so that’s Something I guess.

So here’s to Something.

Wrote to my buddy mad Eddie in the States today……… well, last night too actually. Today was in response to him answering right away. He’s been on a downer lately and the once long,-deep-and-regular emails have dropped off for a while now. Mainly my fault I guess; plodding and struggling through life’s thick mud as I’ve been doing for a while now kinda leads me to ‘not bothering’ with a load of things I really should be bothering with.

‘Not bothering’ is kinda misleading though……… it smacks of those things ‘not bothered’ with being unimportant to me. Couldn’t be further from the truth really. Depression kills your life. Kills everything within shouting distance of it too. Kills friendships. Kills passions. Kills your job. Even kills your doctor’s patience too, if you refuse the mind-and-dick-debilitating medication which fails to cheer-up seventy percent of those who swallow it.

Kills the fucking lot really.

Mine’s from my job, and it’s not bad enough to have me curled up in a ball, but it’s bad enough that I can’t be bothered, unless I have to on someone else’s behalf. Work mostly. Which keeps me topped up nicely, thanks.

It’s the bullshit that's increasing in a way that would’ve been unimaginable a few years ago. Actually, it’s still bleddy unimaginable. These son’bitch weenies, all sat in their cosy offices are pissing on us all down here. As if we didn’t have enough of it to clear up as it is. I am often overwhelmed with their ingenuity, and ability to treat the ridiculous as entirely reasonable and practicable.

Anyway……… enough. I’m on a day off, and if I don’t watch it I’ll spend it walking around here having a bleddy good row with the buggers.

So, there’s Something, instead of Nothing.

Now, I’m off to do Nothing.

Y’all have a good day doing Something.

Or Nothing.

Either way, don't feel bad doing it, ok? :o)

Kxxx :o)

Sadly neglected.............

It’s the only way to describe my poor old blog.

Sorry Blog, but I’ve been distracted of late, and would make with a stinging nettles and the flogging, but there is a dearth of them, being in the midst of winter such as we are. Be assured, though, that I will rectify the matter with the oncoming of Spring, and meanwhile will make every attempt to write to you far more often.

Trouble is……. writing long emails as lately has taken some steam from the boiler.

I was hoping the muse would kick min if Io started some mindless rambling, but so far not much is going on………. Half watching a film doesn’t help a whole lot I guess. It’s “Becoming Jane”……… about Jane Austen before she was a successful writer……. I turned over to it at random from a crappy cooking contest program…….. one of the plethora that cascades from the telly these days by way of national entertainment.

Anyway……. it’s a good film, and it sure highlights the lot of women back in those days. Having an opinion about anything was considered such a wrong. Even to an Old Chauvinist Greaser like me it defies belief. I’m frequently in despair of what this country is turning into, but when you really think of the reality that we’ve left behind from the ‘good old days’, well, there was a lot wrong, for sure-certain. You either had, or you had not……… boy do we ever have it easy these days.

What is a real pity is why the things that were good had to be sacrificed and squandered so completely to make way for the things that were so wrong to be put right…….. if you see what I mean.

Why is that?

Maybe it’s the momentum of a ‘pendulum’ in all things, in that it has to swing to and fro and only settles on the middle when the energy to push it ceases to be.

The nature of a pendulum being what it is, though……….. sitting in a rested middle means it ceases to be a pendulum, and just becomes a useless weight.

I guess it just has to swing, at whatever price.

Nite,K.x :o)

Women make it complicated......... (but it's kinda ok.) :o)

I wrote this a while ago………. Took it out of an email I was writing at the time, and made it stand up on it’s own. Go on……… tell me I’m wrong. :o)

Women make it complicated

That's the one thing that worries me about getting the love of my life.......... women have a gift for making things real complicated......... for example, you fancy something to eat, and they start insisting you heat your beans in a saucepan, transfer them to a clean plate, add lettuce, cabbage, cucumber and stuff like that, and lord knows what else. Most of it has to be bloody opened / peeled / washed/ cracked / prised / sliced / diced / grated / mashed / tossed / whipped / stirred / folded / buttered / oiled/ fried/ boiled/ blanched/ grilled and heated in many other weird ways, and in several other saucepans, casserole dishes, you-name-it, too.

Then you gotta make up some gravy / sauces / dressings and things called ‘garnishes’; I ask you, what’s a bleddy garnish? All this makes a helluva mess, and so then you’ve gotta wipe up all the clutter, clean the damn chopping board(s) (just the one will never do!), and all the stuff you used to mutilate, sorry ‘prepare’ the food.

Even though you’ve been up to your elbows in soap and water for half the day, you have to wash your hands for the tenth time, get out knives / forks / spoons / chopsticks and other things you never knew existed before you met her, and lay the damn table, using a nice white Irish linen cloth. That’s the one that has to be washed every time you as much as look at it, and not to mention ironed as well afterwards.

I mean…… IRONING a table cloth??? Jees!

Then, because it’s now fast becoming a ‘romantic’ meal, when you thought it was just ‘fancy something to eat’ you gotta turn the telly off, find the candles, fix them in the holder, and light the soddin' things. Bugger, burnt your fingers. Now you gotta run your hand under the cold tap, and suffer the indignity of being told you're “such a baby” into the bargain, and not to make a fuss 'cos it can't hurt THAT much, (It bleddy well DID!) as she holds your hand under the tap with all the grip of a hairy-assed Sumo wrestler. Strength mysteriously absent when she didn't have the strength to carry the four-tons of shopping she made you bloody buy yesterday, and on your day off too.

Then you gotta dry your hand in a clean towel, get told off for getting garage grease and stuff under your nails, then get a real bollicking for being vulgar, when you nuzzle up close to her scented long neck and suggest to her that dipping them in some fresh, warm, Pussy Juice would get it off it real easy. Her sensitivity is pretty rich considering she spent half of last night with her legs over your shoulders, shouting “FUCK ME!! FUCK ME!!” to the neighbours.

There were you, thinking that it was what you were doing all along, surprised and dismayed that she hadn't noticed you were doing your bloody best! She shouted “DON’T STOP, DON’T STOP!”, so you’d tried to get a few more revs up, without falling out and missing a stroke, despite the cramp in your left calf and splitting a couple of toenails scrabbling for some grip with the other leg on the damn slippery black silk sheets. The ones she suggestively mentioned would be soooo sexy. The ones you knew bloody well were going to be trouble the second you looked at the price tag, as you coolly flourished the plastic to impress her with your New Man Spares No Expense style.

Anyway, by the time she's got the Burneeze cream out, and struggled with the plasters that won't stick because of the overzealous application of the cream plastered on your fingers, everything has gone all to pot, quite literally. The gravy's gone all weird, the stuff you opened / peeled / washed/ cracked / prised / sliced / diced / grated / mashed / tossed / whipped / stirred / folded / buttered / oiled/ fried/ boiled/ blanched/ grilled and heated in many other weird ways, and in several other saucepans/ casserole dishes/ you-name-it, has gone all to hell too, and the candles have dripped wax all over the bloody Irish linen white thing you'd been forced to spread on the table.

She’s started to knock up something else, to replace the burnt stuff, and for sure-certain you can feel a good few more laps of kitchen-based domesticity coming up. You resign yourself, and start to scrape the burnt pans, after being told not to "just-stand-there-looking-at-it-if-you-hadn't-made-all-that-fuss-and-been-more-careful-in-the-first-place-it-wouldn't-have-burnt". Your helpful suggestion that maybe if you could “sort-of-just-stir-it-all-together-and-see-what-it-tastes-like, babe”, meets with a disgusted “Don’t be stupid; you can’t do that!”.

“Actually you can”, you think to yourself, but know full well that such thoughts won’t overwhelm her powerful Girl-Logic software systems, and so you strategically keep the thought secreted well away from the Brain-to-Mouth short circuit, that has dropped you right in it so often before.
At long last, after a repeat of the whole performance, you finally sit down to eat. You find yourself thinking “What a bleddy price to pay for a regular shag”, and just in time shut the thought down in blind panic, only too aware of her sensitive telepathic and intuitive skills. The ones have seen right into your thoughts so many times in the past. HOW does she do that?
Then there’s trying to see what you're doing in the soft, dimpsy candlelight, whilst attempting to look into her eyes romantically, and not spoil it by being a wuss, and wincing at the pain of the damn fork pressing into your burnt fingers. When you see how she is looking back at you, you realise, with the fixed grin that you desperately try to warm up, that lovemaking that night is going to call on every ounce of proficiency you have at your disposal.

Too late, she’s triggered your simple and hair-triggered Primary Man Circuits. The Member for Bathpool is stirring, albeit pretty half heartedly like mortally wounded old soldier making one last effort to rise up and salute the distant call of the Bugle; loyal to a fault, and willing to fling himself into the breech one last time for Honour and Valour. You find yourself wishing, not for the first time, that you’d avoided introducing the Ferret again that morning, close thing though it was, after climbing aboard twice last night. Doesn’t she realise the damn Well isn’t bottomless? “Not really” is the obvious answer, by that look of “You’re going to be a Lucky Boy tonight!” in her Make-Sure-He-Notices furtive glances at you.

Then she goes and reaches up and does that thing with her hair. The thing she does without knowing how it leaves you helpless, and at her mercy every single time. With an inward sigh of contented resignation you smile at her, knowing she’s always going to have her way without even trying.

Still, you remembered dreaming of one day meeting a gorgeous nymphomaniac just like her, but sometimes realise it’s resulted in life being much more complicated, and an awfully long way off the simple life you once enjoyed. For instance; Getting up out of the armchair when the adverts start, opening a tin of beans, shoving a spoon into the tin, and back to sit down again before the film kicks in again.

Food.

Done in a jiffy,………..and if you lick the spoon clean, absolutely no washing up.

Simple.

Quick.

No Wucking Forries! :-)

© Kevin Udy.

Have just received my new Microsoft keyboard from Amazon, a bargain at £11.95 inc vat and p&p, and bought to help with the Nanowrimo thing. The laptop and the board it sits on (to keep cooling vents free and unblocked) weighs a bit heavy on the old knees after a few hours, so just having the keyboard alone on my lap helps a lot. It’s a wired USB keyboard…… maybe I should’ve got a wireless one. Maybe I will, and use this one on the computer upstairs. Maybe. :o)

Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000B9OIIU/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

This is an ergonomic keyboard, in as much as the keys are curved at something like six degrees upwards each side, and although I only type with two fingers…….. despite my intentions to learn to touch-type……… it’s surprising how you find yourself hitting the wrong keys when they’re arranged and spaced even only a little differently. The slightly more comfortable position for the hands to sit over the ‘home keys’ night make the touch-typing a bit easier I guess, so I should persevere with the practice lessons I guess.

Not a whole lot happening here at Fortress Wheelrest. I’ve been practising on the model plane flight training software, and am a lot better than I was to start with. I can take off and land ok now, turn, level out, swap left for right when the plane is coming back towards me again, which is the big thing that’s hard to grasp without too much ‘thinking’ whilst the plane goes straight into the ground. I can loop fly upside down ok(ish), throw it about, doing some aerobatics, and recover straight and level afterwards, but the intuitive and instinctive stick movements are a looooong way off as good as they need to be. It still goes into the ‘virtual’ ground fairly regularly. This flying training software has already paid for itself in saved crashed to get me as good as I am so far.

Ok, that’s it for today……… not worth the reading really, but since no-one's reading it, (unless the visitor counter's faulty), ………who cares? :o)
K.x :o)