today was a day of some success.
first of all there was a victory claimed in the tesco game…

sometimes i like a piece of cherry pie. or three. with cream.
i love cherry pie and especially the filling. you can buy the filling in tins for if you want to make your own pie but i am diabetic so i guess a whole tin of the delicious gloop would be a bit much. but a piece of pie with just a bit of the filling and some cream, surely that would be ok?

in tesco today there was such a pie. a family pie priced at 94 pennies. the ticket on the shelf said 86 pennies. into the trolley went the pie.

for the education of them that know not of the game the idea is this; get charged more for an item than the ticket on the shelf price. pay up and then report smartly to tesco customer services and get a full refund AND a free pie.

i’ve got away with this a few times. i like the thrill of the chase; will they charge the wrong amount? will i get lumbered with something i don’t really want?

anyway, today i am one pie up so hoorah for that.

later in the day i walked down to see the boat and check the level of rainwater in the bilges and of oil in the sump. and on my way i saw a wikkle teensy frog no bigger than the top bit of my thumb. he was trying to cross byfleet road. i picked him up and gave him a lift to the canal and popped him under a damp shrubbery. and then i felt really good about the day and in a minute i will reward myself with a slice of cherry pie. with cream on.

no fags
no swig
no cravings for either

goodnight.

my mobile rang this morning just as i was getting ready to keep my appointment with the boozologist/psychiatrist. it was my doctor on the line. he launched straight away into “your x-rays are perfectly normal” before i had a chance to start panicking.

i had a chat with the psychiatrist who said that he does not want to see me again (a sentiment he holds in common with several other people i can think of).

so now i have nothing to worry about but i expect i’ll find something. don’t you worry about that.

anyone heading for the anchor on thursday (or any other day, come to that) may find the co-ords on the cache notes for ‘weyside wander’. see you all there! everyone welcome! roll up, roll up! etc…..

swig stats: none
fag stats: none
lung stats: pub ceiling colour but hopefully veering towards pink and shiny

i really must get round to these jokes, i uncorked an absolute belter the other day, but for now i must zoom back to the boat and spend the rest of the day feeling well.

cheerio and thanks for all your kind wishes. byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

i wasn’t sure whether to blog this or not. but here goes:

the day before yesterday my watch stopped.

yesterday my doctor telephoned me. yes, HE phoned ME. “you know when you were in hospital you had a chest x-ray?"…
yes i did remember but i was as high as a kite and wondered if i had dreamed it all, that there was something wrong with it…
“well, they want you to go back and have another one and this letter was dated the 1st but it’s only just landed on my desk so they want you to have it about now, a month after the first one”

this is when my onboard jet sytem blasts off to planet panic.

apparently there are things called ‘attributes’ and mine had one. “oh yes” i said “i’ve been having some chest pains".
“lungs don’t have nerves", he said “don’t worry, take deep breaths".

LUNGS! who the fuck mentioned lungs?! he did, he mentioned them.

i have an ‘attribute’ behind my heart and it is most likely to be the way the first x-ray was taken. he says that about one in ten of them come out like this anyway. “it’s the angle of the dangle” he says.

but when did your doctor last phone YOU?

i shall now play ‘my grandfather’s clock’ by burl ives and wait to catch the bus which will carry me away to be irradiated “between 2 and 4, don’t forget to bring the form with you".

actually, i don’t fucking need this. not a single day goes past without me being ill, feeling ill, something going wrong, bills in the post, the engine on the boat going all wrong. oh, just bloody everything.

i could worry for england.

(sorry about the ‘jokes’ that i promised but they weren’t very good. perhaps another time)

cheerio.

hands up who liked ‘pan yan’ pickle. come on, hands up i say. now have a look at this…

http://www.websiteoftheday.info/2004/11/campaign_to_rev.html

anyway, the reason i’m all hot and tired and crotchety is because today we walked aaaaaaalllll the way to the boat and aaaaaaalllll the way back again and in between these two walkings i did something that i should have done long ago. something i had been putting off for aaaaaaages for fear of making a mistake. was i going to ruin everything?

that’s right, you guessed it, i put the new charlotte rose name thingies on the sides of the boat. these things are EXCEEDINGLY expensive and i didn’t want to mess it up. they are made to look as if a gnarled old signwriting type of a fellow had lovingly painted them on and not as if a gnarled old clumsy idiot type of a fellow like me had ripped the back off the fablon and stuck them on upside-down. that’s why they cost a million pounds and zat is why, ‘astings, it is the job most complicated and fiddly and why i ‘ad to use ze little grey cells most overheatingly.

it really was a cow of a job (i think they were stuck on with essence of swear) but it got done in the end and i’m pleased to say that they look bloody marvelous. if i was a clever type i would post some piccies but i’m not so i won’t.

and i’m too hot and bothered to explain all about this weather getting hotter after the longest day of the year rubbish. it stands to reason, if you get an oven and turn it up slowly until you get the longest flame (like the longest day) then that’s the hottest it can get and if you then turn it down it should get cooler and not hotter or you would have to phone the gas board.

and then, if you turn it down until you get the shortest flame which is ‘off’ (like the shortest day) it should get as cold as it can get and not carry on getting colder because that would mean it had turned into a fridge and you would have to phone the gas board again.

if you ask me, the weather and everything to do with it is rubbish.

i’m off to cook my tea so until we meet again………

next time: some ‘jokes’

…………goodnight!

as you know my mind has been even more imbalanced of late. it leads me into murky waters of thought, most of which are offensive to a degree, but as long as they keep me smiling and not swigging then so be it.

i’ll get the offensive bit out of the way first so that you may bask happily or sport friskily in the sparkling pools of items 2 and 3.

1. i promised you my theory about world malnutrition and here it is:
in this world there are a lot of people who are so thin that they drop down dead. most of them live in africa. there are also many people who are so incredibly fat that they drop down dead and most of them live in the west (and some in tonga).
i don’t think people should starve but i don’t mind people being big and fat because it is their choice. eat less and exercise more and you get thin and vice versa. that’s what i thought.
but some porkers blame their ‘glands’ for their condition. although they live on an ethiopian style diet of a spoonful of rice and half an apple a day they still weigh over thirty stone. perhaps there is something in this. therefore, i call for an immediate investigation into these mysterious glands which can, apparently, create matter and fly in the face of all that we know.
i shall set up a chain of clinics manned by teams of endocrinal vampires to suck the juices out of these glands in the west and have them injected into thin people in the third world.
problem solved. i’ll expect a nobel prize for this one.

2. i am probably the last to know; i always am. everyone will say ‘oh, we knew about that one aaaaaages ago’. but have you used your electrical typewriter/telly combo to access GOOGLE EARTH? i think it’s really great. i can almost see my house on it. i can see loads of things. i can make it go all 3d and zoom around the world and everything. for geocachers it might be a boon because you can see the co-ords in the bottom of the screen. it’s brilliant!
don’t forget, you heard it here last! (probably)

3. this is the best bit. i have been published nationwide! that’s right, i’m in print in a national magazine! if you don’t believe me have a look at that most cultured publication, VIZ. check out page 7 of issue 147 (august) and look in the top left corner.
ok, so i didn’t win a prize but i still have the nobel to look forward to.

all things considered it hasn’t been too bad a day today. so the boat’s gone aground and there’s no water left in the canal but at least i’ll have the smug self-satisfaction of having been proved right when i see people using boat poles as levers and snapping them in half and the trust’s dredger marooned on the cut’s equivalent of the goodwin sands.

la di dah. i’ll go and water the plants tomorrow. any excuse to poke my nose in where it’s not wanted.

next time: why is it warmer AFTER the longest day of the year and colder AFTER the shortest?

bye bye.

CLIFFHANGER! ( part one)

no, i don’t mean that i have drunk a rum ‘n’ coke; au contraire, i have swigged no swig of any sort at all. what i do mean is that, bearing in mind all the cockerney pearly kings, pearly queens and sparrers what go around using it, rum ‘n’ coke is rhyming slang for a stroke. and it feels like i’ve had one. my brain is still wonky.

i’ve a feeling that drinking in heroic amounts for a long time and then stopping leaves the brain a bit more confused than usual. i think that my brain might have to rewire itself in a brainial way and until then i shall continue to forget words, stack plates in the fridge instead of the cupboard, talk in spoonerisms, wonder where the times magazine is (it comes out on saturday, not today. see? i don’t even know what day it is.

anyway, last friday, a whole week ago i went to see the useless boozologist and then headed boatwards. last saturday we plucked two vagrants from the towpath and merman and omally swore pirate oaths as they became, once again, bloodthirsty pirate crew. as we chugged along i pointed out where a man with a lot of money but no soul has had earthmovers in to dig a massive lake in his garden. a mysterious channel had been dug to within a foot of the canal. an abstraction of water seemed imminent.

on sunday we dropped the two black-hearted rogues off at the anchor after a most splendid weekend. can’t remember what we did after that but we moored at byfleet.

on the monday i phoned the national trust to inform them that they were about to lose thousands of gallons of water from a canal that is near closure for the lack of it. i said i would turn round and go and photograph what had been done. but when i got there the job was complete. i reckon he kicked it through on sunday night. someone from the trust had tried to plug it but it was like a sandcastle washed away by the tide.

i can’t remember much specific but we went down to send for the night and then all the way back on wednesday which was too hot and the stupid boat made me fall in the canal.

somewhere along the line there i missed the animal rescue. there where three cygnets that had apparently been orphaned and a woman from some animal rescue thing turned up. she grabbed all three by the neck and stuffed two in a box and carried one under her arm. i carried the box for a while and it was very heavy. they were quite big although still fluffy. i wonder what they taste like?

READER’S VOICE: where’s this cliffhanger then?

MY VOICE: oh, very well.

CLIFFHANGER (part two)

while i was busy fighting crime and running the whole of the national trust all by myself on the monday, trouty slipped into tesco to do a bit of shoplifting. and who did she see in there, carrying his own basket? why, it was none other than the quintessential englishman sir clifford extremely-richard. and why is he such an englishman? because he was wearing brand new jeans rolled up to the calf, sandals and to complete the ensemble…

navy blue socks.

if i’d have been there i’d have asked him if he was looking for the turkey necks. or perhaps i wouldn’t because cliff was accompanied by a very big man. they were looking at the herbs.

anyway, apart from all that it (the weather)has gone up to one million degrees centigrade and so i haven’t done much else except spray myself with a 50:50 mix of surgical spirit and water for instant coolth.

i did have a minor victory when i was talking to british gas who supply my electric. trouty had been listening to etta james on the compluter so i turned it down and when i eventually got through to a human he wanted me to read loads of things off the meter which is not only downstairs but outside. so i turned it back up and played him some ‘hold music’. when i got back i asked him if he had enjoyed the experience and he said he liked the last one but he had only heard it being done by the black crowes. end result, a cheque for 70 quids which i used today to pay a small proportion of the water rates. success!

next time: my amazing solution to world malnutrition.

cheerio.

but not for the usual reason (a blazing black fire of anger).

is it really that long ago that i last blogged? it seems so. and i tell you what, you won’t get much of a one out of me tonight because it is simply too bloody hot.

perhaps tomorrow i might have sufficient strength to regale you with all my adventures including ‘crime fighting’, ‘animal rescue’ and, as a special feature, a CLIFFHANGER!

i am just exhausted by the heat and so i must leave you but here’s a thought that may bring a smile to your cute, rosebud lips…

at new haw lock we were both hot and sticky. very hot and very sticky indeed. trouty was fading fast so i decided to assist her with her lockular duties. i sprang nimbly from the stern much like a gazelle. then i cooled myself down and refreshed myself by dipping my entire left leg in the canal.

then i done a rude swear.

then i got changed and we took the boat home. she has behaved like a bit of a cow today so she deserves the kick she got for throwing me in the cut (must remember newtonian theory in future) and we both said that we hate her and never want to see her again and we said it while she could hear us. so that will learn her.

i wish it would rain.

goodnight.

stopping drinking makes your brain go all wonky; true fact.

the other day i said to trouty “here’s your pen” and promptly gave her MY mobile phone and then i couldn’t remember the word ’syllable’. anyway, here is my latest mad idea, plucked from the whirling cess-cloud of my addled mind and inspired by something that i saw on the towpath where the basingstoke meets the wey. something that brought a lump to the swig-dry throat of thirst.

MY MAD IDEA:
my mad idea is this; ‘SPEEDY O’THIRST’S ACADEMY OF FITNESS’.
here’s the spiel…
“feeling flabby, fatso? can’t get even a pair of clown trousers on? toes and genitalia but a distant memory? then why not join speedy o’ thirst’s academy of fitness???
in JUST ONE SESSION o’thirst’s can make you just like an olympic athelete, GUARANTEED!!! (see terms and conditions).
it’s cheap and it’s effective at speedy’s!
rates: daily membership £200, monthly £500, annual membership £650 - DON’T MISS THIS BARGAIN!!!”

my business plan involves some expenditure. i shall need a lock-up garage or shed, mains electric, j-cloths and an electrically powered treadmill / running machine thing. oh, and about two metres of razor wire.

my imaginary scenario:
enter punter…
PUNTER: “i’d like to join the fitness academy, it sounds just the thing, (casts eyes somewhat dubiously over my non-slim form) erm, are you mr speedy o’thirst?”
ME: “no, speedy’s out running in the fijian marathon.”
P: oh, what a shame to have missed him. never mind. i say, this annual membership looks like value for money!
M: “sir has an eye for a bargain, sign here please.”
P: *scribble scribble and hands over the cash*
M: “right, get changed in the corner there and we’ll try you on the running machine; we’ll have you looking like an olympic athelete in no time at all.”

(can you see where this is going yet? - i’ll shortcut to the punchline because i bet you can and i’m getting bored with all this typing)

punter gets on running machine and i attach the razor ’safety’ wire across behind him.

M: “ready?”
P: “oh yes. i wish speedy himself was here to give me a few hints”
M: “like i said, he’ll soon be in fiji, i mean he IS in fiji”

then i sit down, light a fag and, using the remote, turn the machine on full blast and cackle like sid james and count the money until the punter does a paula radcliffe. turn off machine and present punter with two j-cloths. another end to another busy day.

reader’s voice: THAT’S NOT VERY FUNNY.
no, and it’s not really meant to be. i went to the boozologist today and decided to walk along the towpath instead of going by train, keep fit and save a few quids and all that. when i was walking back i saw a boy running towards me. behind the boy a little black dog and behind the dog was mum. i got out of their way and they jogged, sort of, past. i carried on and back they came and they caught me up by the footbridge. the boy walked over the bridge puffing and blowing. he was the boy who gets called ‘fatty’ at school. he had his p.e. kit on and it was amply filled but he had a nice face, a kind face, a hurt face. i wondered why he wasn’t at school. perhaps he had been bullied. his gut was bigger, proportionately, than mine and you could see the dimple of his navel through his white tee-shirt. he was about 14 years old or so and obviously well brought up unlike most of the scum that hang about on the towpath spraypainting things. i wondered about him and the family conferences that must have led to this mid- schoolday session of athleticism. i wondered if his thighs were rubbing together like mine used to do.

when he got to the end of the footbridge he was still walking and he turned to face me as i was on top of the bridge and he was coming back underneath it. his mum called out “come on love, you can do it". you could see he was knackered, he was blown but he picked up his feet and started to run again and i saw his poor face, he was trying so hard, trying to stop the cruel jibes, the bullying, trying to please his mum.

and i felt every heartstring i possess go twang, twang, twang like someone having a go at a harp with a pair of wirecutters. and i felt ashamed of myself.

when i am king of everything and i get to hand out the gold medals with all diamonds on i shall have one minted especially in my memory of him and i shall erect a monument near that footbridge and on that monument i shall have inscribed ‘to the unknown runner’.

today, he is my hero and i wish him health and happiness and all the luck in the world.

he taught me a lesson and for that i thank him.

in view of the wicked tragedy of yesterday i thought i would do a sort of blog in the form of a comment on my last proper blog. if you see what i mean.
see you next week. i’ve got to see a boozologist this morning and then go to the boat. omally and merman are coming for the weekend. if we make too much noise just bang on the roof.

yesterday was a good day. a very good day as you will see if you read my blog below. but today, however, is a very, very, very BAD day indeed.

that bloody bastard bliar has gone and lumbered us with the greatest load of old rubbish in the whole world ever. the olympics.

even a fez-wearing, cigar-smoking monkey who waves a tin cup on behalf of the organ grinder could tell you that one.

so let’s whirl forward through time to the day when a wheezing para-olympian wheels his chair up the steps (they forgot to build a ramp) and uses the olympic torch that has travelled so many miles to ignite the camping gaz stove ring that has become such a symbol of our shabby incompetence.

at this glorious moment the half dozen village idiots who have turned up to watch will wave sparklers in the air (remember the ‘river of fire’?). then everyone can sing the first five words of our proud anthem ‘god save king big-ears’ and mumble along until the cub scout band grinds to a halt.

let’s whirl backwards in time to now, the blackest day ever. bliar removes his snout from the trough to cackle briefly before shoving it right back in again. he imagines himself as president of europe following his olypiadal triumph. he sees himself wearing a gold top hat with all diamonds on (like noddy holder’s out of slade but more expensive) and greeting the assembled millions who weep with love for him below the presidential palace balcony. the first lady of europe will be at his side while slaves, er, i mean servants, force family-size bars of caviar-flavoured belgian chocolate sideways into her attractive mouth.

talking of her, what was she doing in singapore anyway? “excuse me madam, can i see your ticket please?” always nice to see the bliar family enjoying themselves at everybody else’s expense, isn’t it?

but bliar has promised to get cracking within 48 hours of being given the olympics. i wonder if the rest of the world really wanted us to have it as a special treat for being so great (which we are not) or whether we were awarded it as a curse, like a princess doomed to dance for ever in red hot iron clogs, because of all our misdeeds.

trouble is, bliar must be running out of money. after that romantic evening when the plot was hatched (the bar-b-q sauce flavoured lubricant must have helped ward off discomfort) the war criminal probably thought that it would be a quick in and out (of a different kind this time), nick all the oil, everybody happy. but no. it has dragged on for years, thousands of innocent people have been murdered in his name, and still the coffers pour the money into a great big hole in the sand.

so he needs to get his hands on some more money. i wonder if you can guess where it will come from?

he says that in return for putting council tax up by 1 million percent we shall be left, post olympiad, with loads of great stuff like housing and roads and railways and sports facilities and, um, oh yeah, i remember now, all the revenue that will be generated in a fortnight following six years of dithering cock-ups at great, great, great, expense. but if we need these things why haven’t we got them now? why does he waste his time flying round the world poking his nose into things that don’t concern him? why does he do this when MY street where I live is filthy with litter and the bus service is useless? when yardies run a better and more professional drug provision service than the nhs? when those fortunate enough to have swindled enough riches live in gated communities with private security guards to ward off the gun-toting criminals and everyone else can go and sleep in a burnt out skip in shit street se5?

will WE, US, ever see a single penny of this ‘revenue’? well, no. unless you are a prostitute or own a chain of hotels in london or specialise in building wobbly bridges or useless domes you just won’t. all the ordinary lumpen proletariat will get is six years of inconvenience while their money is stolen from them to pay for miserable failures that will make us the laughing stock of the world.

come the day people all round the globe will be tuning in to see what’s gone wrong next. “oh ha ha ha, you won’t believe it! two minutes before the swimming started an official measured the pool and found it was 25 centimetres too short and now they have combined the diving off tower bridge with all the swimming and rowing up and down the thames while a load of condoms and suicides and dead cats float past. ha ha ha, what a load of rubbish!”

‘weight lifting’ will be more like ‘waiting for a lift’ because all the pie in the sky transport proposals will not work. they never have and they never will. none of this will work. and they say they are trying to re-energise some slums. well it’s not possible. if all this needed doing it should have been done years ago. or why not start now and have it all nice and ready for a bid for the 2016 games?

so don’t believe it, don’t believe it for a minute (although you will be brought into harsh contact with reality when the council tax bill comes through the door if the postman ever turns up).

it is all about the self-glorification of one man and all his lunatic hangers-on.

excuse me, i feel sick.

my idea is that if all this running round and round and jumping up high and throwing something a long way (actually, i don’t disagree with the olympics per se) is so great because of all the fantastic regeneration and improvements then what we should have had is an AFRICAN OLYMPICS, events in as many african countries as possible and all sponsored by the rest of the world. super new airports and hotels, roads and even little insignificant things like clean water and sanitation.

i must live in cloud cuckoo land to think it might happen. what we will be left with is a slum and a disused velodrome inhabited by crack-smoking graffiti artists.

bliar, you broke my country and i will never, ever forgive you.

is, of course, “did the charlotte rose pass her ‘boat safety certificate’ test today?”

did i ever tell you about the chunky jumper that i bought from the charity shop? yes, that’s the one, the one i was wearing when under the influence of diazepam and swig i fell over onto the towpath and thereby got the opportunity to take a great deal of puddle water, towpath and dog plop (probably) home with me.

i decided to wash that jumper in the bath. the jumper is kind of nordic trawlerman style in greyish and brownish and black. it’s probably the kind of pattern that vikings would have worn. it has the secret power to make my neck itch like no other garment has before. i’d had it a while before i realised that the previous occupant of said garment (E.J.A. TEMPLE 734 PN) had had his (or her) name label sewn into the front of the neck rather than the back and so i wore it back-to-front for a few days until i realised and now it fits me better but still itches.

throwing the soiled (literally) garment into the bath i went in search of some ‘wool and delicates’ washing syrup that i thought i had but i must have run out so i had to resort to plan b. i was inspired by my friend spaghetti paul who lives in some fair degree of squalor in brighton. he does his laundry in an old twin-tub and he uses a mixture of bleach and flash to achieve the desired effect because he can’t afford the proper stuff. so i followed his example and put in a load of washing-up liquid and a bit of tesco bath creme and filled the bath with tepid water and sloshed it all about a bit. then i emptied the bath and began excavating all the solid matter that i had managed to detatch. this process was repeated several times. the water never achieving the clean rinse that i was hoping for but at least all the particles of towpath had been forced down the plughole. i could have opened a gravel pit in that bath and given british aggregates who are just down the road from here a run for their money.

then i had to go and do something boaty so i left the jumper in a bath of tepid water with a smidge of washing-up liquid and a gloop of comfort fabric conditioner. when i returned a day or so later i was greeted by an horrific sight. the water had turned black. a sort of voodoo black. the kind of ‘black lagoon’ black that ‘creatures’ should emerge from. it seemed that the more i had washed it, the dirtier it had become.

i gave it a final rinse and hung it outside on the airer where it took about a fortnight to dry. it still made my neck itch when i wore it today but it keeps me warm and, after the gas bills i’ve been getting of late, that’s the main thing.

this morning my blood/sugar level was 5.1 which is pretty well bang on and just goes to show that i know more than the loony-bin that i was in about diabetic control. we set to work and prepared the boat for the most rigorous of inspections. the inspector was due to call at 10:00 but he snuck up early.

stuart at the chandlery said that if he was going to fail us on, say, ventilation, to run up the road and get him and he would drill a big hole in the door or whatever. we had made plans to swap fire extinguishers for the duration if need be and i was chewing my nails with fear like i was eating corn-on-the-cob. but it was early when ‘an inspector called’.

before i forget. i must thank terry from the steel fabricators who came along and mended a pump that i have and removed 3 litres of overfill oil from the sump and would only accept a fag in payment. now all i have to do is work out how to dispose, responsibly mind, of said manky oil when i don’t have a car to take it anywhere. i might paint it onto the gunwhales of H.M.S. Tomato Soup (head of my boating death list).

so. did she pass?

yes. to my amazement she did. it cost 80 quids and a cup of tea and was done and dusted in less than 40 minutes.

i hesitate to use the term ‘perfunctory’ but she has a certificate and won’t need another until 2009.

and i haven’t had an alcoholic drink since the night of the towpath incident and it didn’t start to really rain until we were almost home on our moorings.

all in all i classify today as…

GOOD.

when i think about the towpath i remember how painful and unpleasant the incident was. but at least i fell onto the towpath. if i had happened to have gone over the other side i would be dead. what an exciting life i lead. the dreaded inspector said that nearly all boating deaths and accidents he had been called to had been swig related. amazing to think that a towpath can actually knock something into my thick skull without actually breaking it.

hope you had a good day too.