Judging by the smirk, I think he’s doing it on purpose.

Honestly, if only everyone would do what I say, what a wonderful world it would be.

But no one does which why the world is a disaster and will probably come to an end, as we know it, in a decade or so.

Recycling is a good thing. I can’t bear waste and was brought up to eat all my dinner. Having said that I also know that recycling is a bit of a con.

My council are incapable of recycling cardboard, envelopes (perhaps because of the plastic windows) and plastic. Most of my rubbish is empty 3 litre bottles that once contained sparkling, fresh water obtained locally (from the River Wey to save on food-miles) and I expect that they wind up being dumped in the North Sea or bulldozed into a hole in China or India.

But they DO recycle glass and metal and paper. It always used to annoy me that people wasted petrol going to a bottlebank and sorting out the clear, brown, green etc. and then seeing it all dumped into the same hopper - if you ask me, it all gets ground into powder and mixed with tarmac and spread on all the useless roads that we have forced upon us.

Anyway, in the sink estate that surrounds Thirst Hall there are some of those little bins for recycling. Because I have OCD this was a something that I thought I should sort out. So off I went with my collection and looked at the four little bins. Three were empty and one was full of crap. First step, put my glass into one empty bin. There we are; a glass bin and,no, it wasn’t full of wine bottles, there was some sauce bottles (not THAT kind of sauce, Omally, I heard you say that) and jars. Into the next one went the tins. I stamped on them all so their was lots of room left. See that? It’s the metal bin, stoopid. In the next one I put quite a lot of old newspapers (did you know that they won’t recycle shredded paper? It’s too small apparently. What do they make out of all this paper then? Hats? Boats? I would have thought they mushed it all up and made bogroll out of it but what do I know? The thought of someone wiping their bottom on my gas bill seems appropriate. I shred everything that has my name and address on it).

I left four old eggs for the foxes or the magpies.

Today I went to dump some more of these freebie newspapers and see if my martial law had been adhered to. The eggs had all gone so I guess a fox had had them, but there was bloody plastic in with the glass and someone had had the brainwave that a china plate could be recycled. So I started to sort everything out. Again.

Remember the fourth little bin? I threw all the crap that I could find into the rubbish skips. There were a lot of empty 1 litre vodka bottles underneath the carrier bags full of newspaper (no, they won’t touch them because of the plaggy bags) and I know EXACTLY who had put them there. It wasn’t me and if someone who admires my paintings chooses to drink litres of vodka who am I to moan? He’s got five or six of my masterpieces and is spreading them over Europe so I put the empties in the glass box. But wait!

What’s this? Seems full…

Ah, but it might be full of buider’s weewee. Let’s examine the seal…

It hadn’t even been opened.

So that’s Trouty’s Christmas present sorted.

On the way back from Pestco I was stopped by a gentleman. He needed directions to the Red Nose (sorry, Red ROSE) restaurant in Byfleet. He’s got a new job. We were both bearded men and maybe that’s why he trusted me.

He said “I’m from London…. and from Bangladesh” and I had nice chat with him about how most employees of ‘Indian’ restaurants were, indeed, from Bangladesh. He was a bit lost so I gave him the correct directions and shook him warmly by the hand and wished him the very best in his new job.

I’ve already blogged today but today is a special day. Today is one of those 1% of days when you feel happy all day.

HENRY’S CREDIT-CRUNCHING TIP OF THE DAY:

Collect all the aluminium cans that you can drink, err, I mean FIND and stamp them flat. Keep them in a bin in your back gaarden. When it’s full phone the scrappy up and get him to collect them. Aluminium is worth a lot of money, it keeps the place looking tidy, you get a few bob. Why give the council even more money when you could make a few bob yourself?

This is the Pixie House this morning.

It took me a week to make and I was surprised that it has lasted more than it took to make. I had imagined a trainer-clad toe trying to boot it in. Behind that door is solid tree, right behind it, and the thought of a scummer with a broken toe does fill me with a certain delight.

It does look a bit battered but it’s still there.

But! What’s this? The brass doorknob is missing. At first I thought that it might have been kicked off but then I preferred to think that some tiny, sticky fingers might have tried to open the door to see who lives inside. Maybe, somewhere, in a child’s bedroom is the real door-handle from a real pixie’s house. Brass paper-fasteners, you don’t see them that often - I expect the pixies have used them all up to make doorknobs out of.

The photo isn’t that good because the camera focussed (focused?) on the tree rather than the door but you get the picture (G-SWIDT?).

In other news, I was talking to a person who is unfortunate enough to be employed by my local railway company. No names, no pack-drill.

Remember when I got swizzed out of ten shillings when I asked for my money back on a half-used return ticket? The person that I talked to told me that they would have given me a taxi voucher or refunded the whole cost of the ticket.

So, it just goes to show that not every employee of my local railway is not a short, bald, bespectacled, lazy, rude, red braces wearing, moronic [not written on grounds of politeness] who has about as much of an idea of ‘customer service’ as a pig has of not eating windfall apples.

We had a nice little walk up to the lock and saw a boat going up. It was a Sea Otter which I don’t like much on the grounds of being a boat snob. I asked where they were going and they said to Pyrford (oh, the times I have heard that pronounced Pireford or Pryford, d’oh) and I asked if they were going to the marina. When the captain said he was I congratulated him on winning the lottery. He raised his eyebrows and said that they were desperate for a mooring that cost a little less (yeah, a little less than about a million pounds a day[disclaimer - moorings at said marina may well cost less than a million pounds a day]) but there were none to be had.

On the way home I stole an apple by reaching over a garden wall and gave it to Trouty. If the owner of said apple would like to do me for scrumping and Trouty for receiving stolen goods (no, Omally, not receiving swollen goods - I heard that and it wasn’t funny) then I look forward to seeing them in court. I shall, of course, defend myself. I haven’t been watching Kavanagh QC for nothing you know.

So, not a bad day so far and it isn’t even two of the clock yet.

Hope you, gentle reader, have a good day too.

My email infromed me that my Online Bank blah blah lah.

The spam filter is good and I check it about once a week to see if it’s trapped any proper ones by mistake but that’s only happened a couple of times.

Anyway, my brilliant idea is that if you send an e-mail to more than one person at a time you have to pay. If you are circulating all ten members of the University Chess Club, then you will have to copy and paste and spend a bit of time doing it.

That should kick spam up the arse and send it on it’s way.

Needs working on, but copyright myself.

Love and kisses….
H.

Not everybody knows about the Anon Trap. After a particularly vicious comment it was commissioned by myself from Mr. Simon G.

The basic theory is that anyone who signs themselves ‘Anon’ will find that they have signed themselves something else entirely. The original version had the ‘C’ word in it so it got tempered a little (not BAD-tempered). I don’t really mind what people write in my comments. I did edit one once that was from someone who was rather refreshed but that was to protect them.

It’s been a lang, lang loonely tame since someone fell into the trap.

You can find it under the blog where I whinge that I can’t have half a return ticket back. If the journey back is only worth 70p I shall ask for two 70ps instead of the standard return.

Anyway, this prick, who probably ‘works’ for South West Trains had a right pop at me.

Firstly he called me an idiot. An idiot is a person of subnormal intelligence. I, however, have an IQ of between 130 and 140 and am therefore am not an idiot. ‘Anon’ is obviously one of those people who think that ‘ignorant’ means ‘rude’ and lives in a street that is visited by ice-cream vans.

Then he (or she) suggests that I ‘get a life’. But, Anon. I already have one. I have a life that is better than yours. One of the many things that I have done with MY life is to wind YOUR’S up like a clock. Otherwise I like to read, complete the Times crossword, oil painting, botany, boatmanship… ahh, it’s such a long list.

I’m glad that I’m not a coward. I will stick to anything that I believe in. No White Feather for me.

But what of you, dear Anon? Yellow as piss-custard?

Come and meet me. Meet me in the woods and tell me what grieves you so.

See, the difference between you and I, Anon, is that I would enjoy the thought of you shivering in a woodland waiting for me to turn up. And I never would.

The construction of a joke is more important than anything else in the world.

Goodbye.

Every Thursday I have to go to the doctor’s. I have to go because I am ill. I am a ‘complicated ‘ diabetic as well as all the other stuff; the rheumatism, the osteo-arthritis, the alcoholism and the depression. There are other things I could add but I don’t want to bore you.

My appointment is always for 10:45 so I try to catch the 10:00 train. If I miss it I can catch the 10:30. The journey takes about three minutes - it’s only one stop.

I buy a return ticket for this journey and it costs me £2.40. Can you believe it? £2.40 to spend a few minutes on an empty train (with no lavatory).

Anyway, I saw the doctor, went to the chemist, got my prescription filled and looked at my watch. If I hurried (which hurt my hips) I might make the :37.

I did not make it. The train didn’t make it. The signs went from ‘delayed’ to ‘cancelled’ without a word of explanation.

I wandered about and on the ticket machine outside there was a notice which said ‘Fatality at Woking, Do not use this machine or the ticket office’.

But the stopping train that leaves from Woking leaves from platform 3 which is about half a mile from the ticket office. You couldn’t fatalise yourself on platfrom 3 if you tried. The train is only travelling at about 2mph before it hits the buffers. Whoever had been splattered must have gone under a High-speed train on a different platform entirely.

South West Trains preferred to leave people stranded, appointments missed, all the usual.

After a while I went to the ticket office. The queue was enormous and one of the two service windows had a blind down. A notice said that they had staff shortages. Well, there are quite a few unemployed people in this country so maybe they should get themselves staffed.

When it came to my turn I asked for my money back. I was asked where I had bought the tickets. Actually this information is written on the ticket. Where did he think I’d bought them from? Aberdeen? So I knew I was dealing with an illiterate moron.

He gave me 70p.

I explained that 70p is half of £1.40 and not £2.40. He said it was and I said it wasn’t. He took his 70p back and told me to fill in a form. I took my camera out of my bag and took a photograph of him. I would publish it here but I don’t think I should just yet.

He went demented.

I went and waited for a bus and then walked home for half a mile.

Now apparently he deducted a single fare from what I had paid (£1.70) which means my journey home should only have cost 70p. But I hadn’t bought single fares. I had bought a return ticket and used half its value, therefore I should have the remaining 50% returned to me. Imagine if you bought a cake and there was a dead mouse in it. Would you be happy with an 80% refund because you had eaten all the rest?

Oh yes, while I was hanging about a weird train came through heading south. I think they must have a special ’scrapey-up-bodies’ train that blasts all the blood and guts off the ballast and rails.

Tomorrow I will be speaking with Jane Lee who is head of Public Affairs.

I was listening to the news on the radio this morning and one of the features was this:

“BRIXTON PRISON IS INFESTED WITH VERMIN”

It’s taken them quite a while to work that one out.

There was a thing on the radio the other day about female circumcision. General opinion was that it was ‘not a good thing’.
I quite agree, especially if it it is performed with the lid off a tin.

But.

What about male circumcision?

If I phoned up the Social Services and said that I had a new baby boy and I was going to cut the end off his knob with a Stanley knife, I expect I might wind up in prison. And quite rightly so.

If whatever god made man in his own image them surely he would have had the forethought to remove foreskins, wisdom teeth, appendices etc.

Seeing as you aren’t allowed to have a tattoo until you are 18 I can’t see why it’s fair to have your genitals mutilated until you really want to.

Hacking the end off a baby’s cock, when it can’t really complain, seems a little unfair to me.

As you can probably tell, I am still as I was made. Chopping about with the genitalia of children seems, at best, mental behaviour and, at worst, outright criminal.

If, when you reach the age of majority, you want to have your body mutilated or disfigured then so be it. But children should not be subjected to this kind of treatment.

If I caught someone, outside my house, with a Stanley knife, trying to mutilate childrens’ genitalia I’d say “Oi! You!’ - You belong in prison, you nonce".

See what I did there? It’s a play on words and, boy, do I love ‘em.

Today to West Byfleet. Both stations a bit smashed up and no bins to put my rubbish in so I just carried it around until I got home.

I had a flu-jab (being diabetical) and got my usual scrip. While I was in the chemist’s I noticed something and a thought came to my tainted mind. Christmas presents.

Say you had a relative and you thought you might get a few bob out of them. Well, you can go to Smith’s and get a will form and that doesn’t cost very much. Why not increase the value of your gift with one of these? They are on spesh and are less than ten quids:

I noticed something else too. Vicar-greed:

Now then, you would have thought that ten Hail Marys or a candle or something would be enough but, oh no, this vicar wants cold, hard cash.

Surely, what he should do, is firmly lock the gates except for an hour or two of a Sunday morning. But he doesn’t. He tempts drivers into his luxurious park and then canes them for daring to park there. Gates wide open - no forgiveness.

And what ‘authority’ is there? Would Jesus himself write out a parking ticket or fix a clamp to your car?

Shouldn’t think so. What that vicar should do is paint lines on his car-park so that the devout (and especially the disabled devout) should be guaranteed a space.

Maybe it puts his blood-pressure up when he sees shoppers parking in his holy car-park (which is about the size of a football pitch) and not going into his church.

He wants to pop over to Lloyds the chemist and buy himself one of them pressure-checkers (available cheap until Jesus’ birthday) and sort himself out.

The credit-crunch must have hit the church.

Meantime, the battle of the comments on Ringo’s rant has hit epic proportions.

What a world we live in.

I checked the price of the aforementioned ‘Diarrhoea-Mobile’ Honda today and the stickers inside the window said 3395 quids.

Now either I read it wrong the first time or they have banged 600 off the asking price.

This time next week I expect that the figures will be followed by a ‘p’ instead of being preceded by an ‘£’.

Anyway, laugh of the week is to be found on BoobToob. Just type in ‘RINGO RANT’ in the search field.

My brother and I have been adding comments to the variants and hilarious spoofters of Ringo’s original rant. Mysteriously, they seem to disappear overnight so there must be a team of Ringo Munchkins slaving away over red-hot keyboards trying to keep the heckling noise down.

Just the original is a bloody good laugh but the hassle he’s been getting….

If you fancy weeing your pantaloons in merriment I can’t recommend a gander at this more highly.

Sorry, Richard Starkey, but you’ve blown it bigtime now. Fancy a nice litre of vodka, mate? Might cheer you up!

Be sure to read all the spoof ones too and all the comments that are left. Oh dear, my sides are hurting.

Following on from my rather brilliant blog, ‘ADVERTS’, from a few days ago I have a top tip for you (although you probably won’t like it).

SELL YOUR CAR.

As the crunch crunches, many people will be driven (see what I did there etc?) to reducing their vehicular flotillas. As a result, the price of cars will fall through the floor.

In 1991 (I think), I gave my car away. I lived in Brighton and there was a fellow who lived nearby who had to sleep on a workshop floor for five days a week because he couldn’t travel there and back. I couldn’t sell my car. It wasn’t taxed (thanks for the fine, you bastards) and I couldn’t afford to insure it. It had been rear-ended twice and I couldn’t afford to repair it. These were recessionary times. I gave him my car.

As a result I haven’t owned a car for seventeen years and I haven’t actually driven one since, I think, 1997.

In Brighton I walked unless it was raining and I caught a bus. I’m still walking now although the old arthritis means, maybe, a bus or a train journey. It means limiting your social round, that’s for sure, but once you get used to it you realise that if it isn’t worth walking it probably isn’t worth going.

People are going to start needing money very soon; Crimbo coming up and all that. Speed-Cams, parking fines, these new things that will track you for thirty miles and present you with an average speed ticket. Tax and insurance going through the roof.

A two-mile journey should take you something like half an hour to walk but you won’t have to find anywhere to park either at your destination or when you get back home. You might have to go shopping every day instead of twice a week but that’s what people did in the olden days. It’s not difficult. Walking keeps you slim and you get to talk to people and you start noticing things instead of having the world go by in a blur, getting to work and not being able to remember driving there, all that CAR stuff.

The arse is about to fall out of the car market so buy a bicycle if you really need one and get a job near where you live. Buy an umbrella. Have stuff delivered. Use a mini-cab.

Just don’t wind up with a car that you can’t sell because everyone else in the country is selling theirs. We might just end up with a public transport service that is both reliable and affordable although the chances of that are rather fat.

But you won’t be.

15:15 Henry Ex: here’s one for you….

15:17 Henry Ex: someone is getting served a dish in a scottish restaurant. it’s like a pie with a tartan crust. caption: ‘heres your tart ‘n’ custard’

15:18 Henry Ex: bang! that’s the one!

15:20 Henry Ex: copyright reserved

15:20 SimonG: I don’t think you need to worry too much about that

15:22 Henry Ex: don’t be mean

15:23 Henry Ex: alistair, you be the judge on this one

15:25 Alistair: it was rather clever henners

15:25 Henry Ex: he’s taking his time….

15:26 Henry Ex: he must be going to have a wee because it was so funny

15:29 SimonG: It was a fantastic joke. If you mention it at your interview at the Christmas cracker factory, I reckon the job’s yours

15:30 Henry Ex: d’oh

15:31 Henry Ex: it would be a bestseller

15:33 Henry Ex: the trick would be the look on the (male) customer’s face. just draw it and submit it it. if they don’t like it then they can poke it up their kilt

Just reserving my interests - that’s all.

As many readers may know, I’m a bit of a foamer when it comes to the radio station, LBC 97.3.

It’s a commercial station, which is a bit of a yawn, although I listen to it for the vast majority of the day and my brain can filter out most of the adverts and live-reads twaddle that they peddle.

But some things get through and what I find interesting is that the adverts are a, well, what might you call it? A social barometer?

A few weeks or maybe months ago, the adverts used to be concerned with buying crap. There would be adverts offering the chance to buy (what I understand to be ‘off-plan’) flats that some developer was going to chuck up with Thames views (if you are a giraffe) and probably enough room to keep two saucepans and sleep on a Lilo.

You would be offered the opportunity to buy property in Turkey, Cape Verde, Viva Espagne and all that rubbish. But now they have stopped.

Now we have adverts for if you are about to be evicted you can sell your house for tuppence and have the chance to rent it instead. You can sell your pension-style contributions on, instead of waiting for them to mature, and you will get a bit more than you will get if you surrender it straight away.

I’m one of the few people who live around here who owes no money. Last time I saw Doc Holiday I asked him if he was seeing people who were grands in debt (and had driven to see the Doc in a 4X4 on H.P.) and were depressed about seeing their lives disappearing up their jacksies. Apparently there are LOADS of them.

So now, instead of a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get in on the booming property market, you get the chance to flog your house for nothing without telling the wife.

As I know everything (remember, I started writing to that big Bliar in 1999 and wrote to that hopeless copper, Bliar, probabably about two years ago) I could have told anyone that this mess was about to start.

Do you remember when smuggers were saying things like, “Haha, my house is earning more than I do"? Well, this money doesn’t come from nowhere. If you buy a car (unless it’s a vintage Bentley) it gets to be worth less and less. A house is the same. Cracks appear, the avocado bathroom suite is out of date, it starts to subside because you put them stupid bricks all over the front garden and the rainwater can’t get through.

Houses should be worth less and less and I could have told you this YEARS ago.

It’s like a chain-letter where you have to send a tenner to the person at the top of the list and then you put your name at the bottom and pass it on. But, eventually, everyone daft in the world will be on the list and all of a sudden the money runs out.

A house that cost 10k years ago is now worth 1000000k. Except it’s not. It’s like stealing money from your grandchildren.

So now the adverts say things like, ‘Consolidate your loans’, ‘Act now (bayleaf FX) before you lose your home’ and all the rest.

Up the road from me they sell cars - or, should I say, they have cars for sale. There is a particularly unlovely Honda which is in the charming colour of what I would call ‘metallic diarrohea’ that was advertised at quite a few quid. It’s now 3995 quids.

Now that’s an ad. that I WILL be keeping an eye on.

The electric man came round today. It’s a bit of a yarn so draw your chair nearer the fireplace and light your pipe. Pour yourself a something and listen, or, better, read this…

On the radio I heard that people who pay for their electric with a key pay MORE than people who just pay by direct debit or quarterly or whatever.

This struck me as being unfair, particularly as I have (or rather, HAD) a meter key. I inherited it when I moved in. Fair enough. I used to have to walk a mile or so to get a packet of electricity and then all the way back again. Then I wondered why my packets of electricity weren’t lasting very long. It turned out that I was paying for the electrical debt run up by the previous tenants and that’s why I was still paying five pounds an ounce for leccy instead of normo-price. So I had it rectified.

Or so I thought.

Then I learned that people on meters, generally poor people, pay more for the power than the rich do and that’s when high-voltage sparks started to come out of my ears.

So I had my meter changed.

When the man came round (most punctually) I asked him whether the credit crunch had caused loads of the ‘cutting off’ and he told me that there were thousands of them. He also told me that whereas, in the past, they would have put in a key-meter they had had a change of policy. Now you just get cut off. And to get cut back on again costs 750 quids.

He also told me something most interesting. The places where you buy packets of electric can set their machines to whatever rate they want so, for example, if you went to Mr. Jones at the grocery and bought 10 quidsworth it might last a week but if you went to McSkinflint’s garage and bought a tenner’s worth there it might only last you five days.

Now that was something I never knew. I thought leccy was like stamps and that was how much it cost and blah, blah, blah. Not so.

But now I have a new meter and shall pay by direct debit, or something, and be like all the millionaires who live round here.

Now I won’t have to worry about the power going off like it did when I was in hospital and came home to find a pond in my kitchen and had to throw away all the food in my defrosted freezer.

I’ll make sure I pay my bills though; 750 quids is a lot of money.

“Input, output - electricity”

Thanks to Joni Mitchell for the tune.

I no longer go course fishing. I used to, as a boy, but it’s something that I now regard as rather cruel. If you are going to eat what you catch then that’s different but to hoy something out of the water for no reason is something I can no longer do.

Sure, I’d eat a salmon or a trout but that’s different.

These days I ‘fish’ with one of my magnets. But wait! Someone’s been fishing in my pond.

It’s been months since I felt the clack of the magnet on a windlass. Once you have felt your first clack it’s YOU who are hooked. Generally they come out of locks, not all the time, but a lock is a good bet.

Here is the trawl of the day:

Piss poor.

Nothing out of Pyrford, which is usually so full of windlasses it’s hard to get a boat in on top of them. Not a thing.

On the way home I tried where it is sandy and the pins get pulled. I got one old pin, one nearly new pin and the head off a ball-pein hammer.

A ball-pein hammer is an engineer’s hammer and doesn’t really belong on the Navigation.

There are few sounds more satisfying than hearing ‘WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, pause, SPLOSH’

Well, that’s what happens when you use the wrong tool for the job.

I also found three new pennies seeing as they are magnetic. The Mint can’t afford to make them out of copper anymore. Then I took my finds to a chandlery. The dead pin went into the ferrous bin and I repaid three cigarettes with the one that still looked decent.

The hammerhead was about to go into the ferrous bin when an old boy grabbed it and said that during the war you had to make do. He started hacking at it with gardening knife, you know, like a penknife but with a hooked blade.

He said, “By the time I’ve finished with this, you won’t recognise it".

Wittily, I replied, “Which, the hammerhead or the knife?”

All he needs now is a nice piece of hickory.

I know what you’re thinking - ‘Oh dear, he’s bumped into some old dear at the Post Office’.

Not so.

Just look at this:

The fault, I suppose, is all mine. I purchased a roll of bin-liners that were not from the Harrod’s bin-liner hall. Yeah, yeah, yeah; they were cheap (but so am I).

The roll was so substantial that you could keep it under the bed for fighting burglars with. It was weighty, no doubt about that. You could have used it for a bit of weightlifting or teeing off at the golf course or correcting a 45 degree list on a boat or just about anything.

Except for one thing…

Tear one of these bags off. Go on. There, that wasn’t too difficult now, was it?

Then what you have is a sheet of plastic that you could strap onto a lorry as a tarp or maybe attempt the Cresta Run on.

But you try opening it.

Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Silly me, I must be trying to open the bottom end (I heard that, Omally, and it wasn’t funny) so I shall use my brainiacal power and try the other end.

Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle. Oh dear - THIS must be the bottom end after all.

Licks fingers and tries again.

Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle.

They must have made a mistake and that’s why they were cheap. I’ll try the other end again. Turn, turn, turn. Right then…

Hang on! This stupid old bag is made out of one piece of plastic!

Next step: Take tranquilisers and phone the Samaritans.

Step 24: Do a bit more wrestling and the wretched thing opens out into a bigger piece of plastic. But, surely, it has split down the side?

Fetch magnifying glass and approach bag from all angles. Ahah! What’s this? There appears to be a separation of about half a micron here! I feel like Howard Carter! The cursed bag may be about to give up its secret, hidden from man for all this time!

The fact that Trouty can open one of these awful things in about two seconds makes me even more depressed.

Step 49: Flap stupid bag about and waft it until it fills with the foetid kitchen stench until it is the size of a Zeppelin.

Having considered renting it out as a Bouncy Castle I serve it right by putting a banana peel and and egg-box in it. Why the council haven’t the capabilities of recycling cardboard or envelopes I don’t know.

So that’s the tidying-up done. No wonder Thirst Hall is such a pongy slum. In future I shall just throw things out of the window.

There is a big, old tree on the towpath that’s not too far from where I live.

For YEARS I’ve wanted to do something to it. Here’s a picture of the bit that interested me as I poked about amongst the hedgerows:

Well, the time seemed right. You might well guess what my ever-boiling mind was considering when I show you a picture of something under construction:

I have a terrible sense of mischief but puttting this all together took a bit of getting together; especially on a Saturday. Trouty provided a couple of vital bits so here’s thanks to you, my dear. First I had to make a paper template (which was a bit wrong, but had to be made in a hurry) and then cut out the actual from corrugated cardboard. Then I painted it in oils and varnished it and revarnished it to keep the rain out and make the effect better. When Trouty’s additions had been applied (the ‘7′ and the brass paper-clippy doorhandle thing, it got varnished again.

Then to the towpath but there were muggles and canoeists and cyclists about so we had to walk about a bit. I bumped into a canal man who was walking his pooch. The dog would have smelled out the varnish so it’s a good job that we met well past the vital tree.

At last the coast was clear and I attempted to fit the door to the tree. Luckily I had brought my razor-bladed knife with me as some trimmings had to be made. Honestly, some people can’t make templates these days and that’s why the door is a smidge short. Trouty kept watch and I bent it in half, vertically, praying that it wouldn’t crack. Then I pushed it into place.

It’s signed on the back - I might be the new Banksy:

Here’s a picture of the artist to give some idea of scale.

Sorry that the photos aren’t great but neither was the weather and we were trying to be covert:

“So", said Gross Loydman. “Who lives in a house like this? - David, it’s over to you.”

Every Thursday I have to visit Doc Holiday. Today was no exception and the ticket bloke asked a favour of me. Of course, me being resonable and all that, I agreed. He asked me to deliver two rolls of SWT posters (I didn’t bother to read them) so I agreed.

At West Byfleet I knocked on the door. Answer came there none. As I didn’t want to be late for my appointment I tried to stuff them through the where you put your hard-earned through and got, for in way of thanks, a rude remark.

Oh dear.

Then I went to see Doc Holiday but I was still so cross that I forgot to go straight to the chemist and hand in my script.

I went to buy two canvases and then wandered back across the road to see how much Waitrose have the nerve to charge for things. Now then, the road that leads to Waitrose has to be followed because their carpark is fenced off. It’s a short road. The pedestrian access is next to the car access. To get a car in you have to open your window and take a ticket and wait for the barrier to lift. A bit like waiting for a lock.

I was walking down this little road when I got beeped at. Someone was in such a hurry that they must have wanted me to dive into the scrubby shrubbery. I got out of the way as soon as I could without injuring myself and the car swept past and attempted the entrance to the carpark.

Oh dear.

Locking on a canal is all well and good. You can say what you want and call people names and make a right twonker of yourself. But then you come to a lock.

Car-man had come to a lock. He couldn’t raise the barrier without opening his window to take the ticket. I imagine that a feeling of regret must have come over him seeing as I was about three feet behind him. Through his opened window I advised him about use of the horn on motor vehicles. In doing so, starting off by going ‘BEEP BEEP BEEP’, I used words that began with the letters ‘F’ and ‘B’.

I hope he enjoyed his shopping trip and will take my advice when using his gas-guzzler in the future.

I bought some bacon.

Then I went back, via the chemist’s shop, to the station. I only had about four minutes to wait for the train. I took advantage of this time to point at the man who had been rude to me earlier on. He didn’t like being pointed at. Fortunately for me the glass between us seemed to be bullet-proof.

Then I took a picture of the toilet door. Here it is:

Please notice the sign and the padlock.

Perhaps SWT would like me to go into the booking office and announce in front of whoever may be there (by the way, one window was blocked with ‘posisition closed’ screen while the man I pointed at was enjoying a cup of tea and attempting the Beano crossword) that I would like to do a poo poo and would they mind handing over the key.

Bearing in mind that I have been lied to in the past about where this mysterious key might be, I didn’t bother asking. I just pointed.

You see, the station was manned. If it was not fully manned then it should have been. I suspect that they lock the toilets and tell lies about the key because they can’t be bothered to clean them.

When I got home I phoned the SWT press office (again) on 0207 620 5229 and made my feelings clear.

Guess what. Everyone is either on holiday or in a meeting. These meetings might go on until 7pm! I said that I didn’t mind and that the manager, Mr Rye, could phone me after his important meeting had finished.

He has yet to phone.

I was assured that the toilets were locked due to vandalism (at 11am on a Thursday morning?) and that there was a nightly cleaning team who did their best. I wish they would do their best at Byfleet and New Haw station where the ammoniacal stench of urine makes it impossible to shelter from the rain.

There are no lavatories on the trains.