Category: Gardening

Quick fix

I’m not a gourmet but I have been known to toy with a few grenouilles and more frequently a dish of escargots, suitably lashed with garlic butter of course. And Backside reckons that’s a case of matter over mind, given my aversion to garden slugs.

But I was surprised to see only today that if your delicate skin requires pampering you can invest a mere twenty quid for 50 ml of snail salve, the mucus of more than a dishful of the critters, collected allegedly from the glass over which they have slimed their merry way.

Not for you? No, I quite understand, preferring a rub down with an oily rag.

Overrated: Gardening

The gardening lobby are a dismissive lot. According to them everything else is as exciting as watching paint dry. Bog Sage, these are the people that watch grass grow!

A garden should consist of a flat lawn and that’s it. Nice and simple, nothing fancy but the world is full of would-be Percy Thrower’s. Who really wants the hassle of extra work and of doing it outdoors? Mowing, sowing, cutting, potting, digging, raking- boring. All those -ings are nothing more than a recipe for sleeping. Endlessly working, always renovating, this gardening charade is nothing more than being an eternal horticultural barber. Just give it a Kojak and be done with. Continue reading “Overrated: Gardening”

Of Beards and Men

It seems to be de rigueur for young men nowadays to sport beards and/or facial growth. One of my sons sometimes lets the bristles grow a bit before applying the clippers. This is usually before he visits his gran and I can understand why he reaches for the cutter.

When I were butter lad (© J-Man) I toyed with having a beard. My mother shot this idea down in flames. The woman don’t like facial hair, not even a Zapata tache passes mustard. She didn’t fancy Magnum one bit. Maybe it was the actor’s name, I don’t know. Anyway, she warned me if I grew one she would shave half of it off in the middle of the night. I figured she thought men with beards had “something of the night about them”.

Therefore, my father was always clean shaven. Sometimes I know he shaved twice in a day! Wilson’s Sword! I’m not jesting if I say he might have shaved three times just to break a record, as you do. His skin was like leather. I can still hear the rasping of the open razor as he filed away at his Adam’s apple. Not one cut on his face. I think the blade was more afraid. It screeched in agony.

Thankfully, and I blame the not so close electric razor for this, I can go through a few days without shaving. It is bliss to bask with a three day five o’ clock shadow on my boat race. The horror starts when mum pays a surprise visit.

The prime of life

Next month I’m due yet another birthday.

I’ve grown fond of 72, six dozen, two cubed times three cubed and the year when I was in the wild no man’s land of being 29.

But 73? Numerically boring, even repulsive. But, you say, I’ve clearly got too much time on my hands, if I even think about such trivia.

But anyway I’m planning to milk the max from my last 21 days (3 x 7) of 72. And happily it’s thawing too, so I can commune with nature again; with creatures who understand.

Flushed with success – eventually

No, seriously, it was a crisis! Suddenly our (cough) pipes of pan were blocked. In fact nothing would leave the bathroom at all. So I said to Mrs J, who was a girl guide before the Flood, ‘Doesn’t Arkela do it in the woods?’ If looks could kill.

Within a desperately long five hours (y’know how it is – when yer gotta go….), Monsewer Rasmussen drove up in his ‘normous tanker. In a trice he exposed our person-holes (very pc ‘ere, innit?), thrust his long black tube therein and sucked fit to bust, pointing out that we have a diameter problem; which was nothing we could fix without rebuilding the house. Apparently size is everything in his business. He could even smile, seeming happy with his lot.

So it all panned out well. I suppose we could have called the cops, but they’d have had nothing to go on.