Weevilstepmother

As the elder sibling, I often got it in the neck for the Cartographer's misdemeanours. Like the time when he kicked a ball at my head, so I ducked. It was my fault the window broke. Sometimes, however, it worked out the other way round...

In the mid-eighties, when I was a teenager, we moved into a house that boasted a small kitchen which contained the biggest fan I had ever seen. It was a huge electrically-powered Vent-Axia job which vented out through the wall. Standing next to it in motion was not unlike inspecting a jet engine.

It occurred to me one evening as I was cooking spag bol that given the speedy rotation and the thick plastic blades, one might obtain an amusing effect by inserting dry spaghetti through the grille into the innards of the fan. Dink dink dink dinkdinkdinkdink. Oh yes! Thus it became my habit to feed the fan with spaghetti. At some point I let the Cartographer in on it, and he became as enthusiastic a spaghetti inserter as his big sis.

Now, I never once considered where the bits of spaghetti went. If I had thought about it, I would have realised that there was no pile of truncated spaghetti on the drive outside. But I didn't, I went away to University and forgot all about it. The Cartographer, however, continued with his fan feeding duties. Until the fan broke. Fan repair man (aka Dad) to the rescue. He opened the patient up and found that its demise was due in no small way to the massive amount of very short lengths of dry spaghetti gumming up its internals.

At a loss to explain this circumstance, he blamed the Cartographer. Who instantly snitched on me. However, as I was normally the sensible one, and the Cartographer tended to be the one that did the moronic things, Dad found this difficult to believe. I did have to face close questioning on my return home from Uni, and found myself in a George Washington kind of situation. "I cannot tell a lie, it was I who first inserted dry pasta in the extractor fan." Were it not for my complete inability to lie myself out of a tricky situation, I would have got away with it...

Dad even now struggles to believe this story, and tends to relate it when tiddly. He even referred to it during his speech at my wedding.

As for me, I wish I still had access to a fan like that...

Tallboy has had an eventful day today. First on the menu was a paddy from StepD. That over, he chilled as we drove to Oxford, relaxing with his favourite pastime of counting Vauxhall Zafiras (the number is always expressed in the form xx/yy where xx is the total number of Zafiras spotted and yy is the number of silver ones - always at least two thirds of xx.)

At his mum's he got himself outside a substantial Sunday dinner (another favourite activity). After lunch, the Sun and I went to a little park close by to fossick about on the swings and the slide. Concerned by our lengthy absence, Tallboy came to find us. In a fit of bravado he climbed up onto the seat one of the swings and stood there like a great gibbon. Something possessed him to grasp the chains just under where they were attached to the bar, causing him to "Ewwww" and dismount rapidly, displaying mitts that looked like stricken seabirds after the Exxon Valdez shed its load.

When he had scrubbed clean, we trotted off on local visits and once we had arrived at our port of call he had the pleasure of comforting me while I spoke to my friend Ralph on the large porcelain telephone (dodgy cauli cheese possibly?). He tucked me up under a blanket for a lie-down and left me to doze, reappearing some time later with a pale face and a racing heart. He had been persuaded to go for a ride in our host's new car, a 240 bhp mean machine, and had suffered major G force and near heart failure as it zoomed down the dual carriageway at 110 mph.

It was my turn to count Zafiras on the way home but I wasn't feeling very well so I may have slacked slightly. I can however inform you that the Zafira count on the way back from picking up the Steps on Friday was 25/17 - an impressive total I think you will agree, especially for a 15 mile journey. That's 1.66666 Zafiras per mile, and a scary 1.13 silver Zafiras per mile. They're all after me I tell you.

For reasons of taxonomy, I am often to be found at the top of friends' and relatives' mobile phonebooks. Not that that's anything to be smug about. Quite the opposite really. With quite astounding regularity I receive voiceless calls from people I know. Not silent calls, as in perv/psycho stalker or computer dialled marketing (grrr), but calls they have made without intending to. They have left their keypad unlocked, and with a knock here in the handbag and a rummage in the pocket for a quid for the meter, the first number on their list gets dialled. Mine.

I have now listened in to friends having a conversation in a cafe (nothing juicy, sadly), to muffled driving noises, and the most popular - a rustling kind of noise with background highlights of footsteps and possibly the odd bit of indecipherable conversation, suggesting someone walking along.

The annoying thing is that they don't know they've done it, and even if (once you realise what's going on) you simply put the phone down your end, it won't kill the connection and every time you pick the phone up for the next 10 minutes or so, you get the rustle walk walk chat rustle thing.

The Cartographer did this to me once. Taking the call, I heard the rustle suggestive of a phone in a trouser pocket, and wanted to let him know that he had called me so he could end the call (goodness only knows how much all this Weevil-dialling is costing people). So I sat down on the bottom stair and mustered my lungs. I figured that if I yelled hard enough into my end of the phone, there was just a chance that he might hear it. So I yelled until I was hoarse.

Cut now to the other end of the connection. The Cartographer is at Mum's house, a little cottage in rural Worcestershire, and finding no one home, has decided to climb the scaffolding on the garage so that he can have a better view over the fields surrounding the house (as one does). Somehow his exertions have caused his phone to dial me, but ignorant of this fact he strikes a manly pose, scanning the horizon and allowing the wind to ruffle his hair. He becomes dimly aware of someone calling his name. His scanning of the horizon intensifies, sure that Mum is out there somewhere with the dogs and has spotted him on the scaffolding.

This proves that:
if you shout hard enough into your phone, my brother might just hear your voice issuing from his trouser pocket
it is likely that in the process, you will end up sounding like a distant middle-aged female dog walker

I went round to see Moocher today, first time for a loooong time. There is one story about her which I sometimes think about and which never fails to make me giggle.

Poor Moocher has suffered from a dodgy shoulder for ages. Overcoming her strong (and warranted) suspicions of the medical profession, she agreed to go for a scan. Now, this is a woman who won't go into a lift, let alone into a tiny metal tube in a hospital. She explained this to the doctor who was arranging the scan, who helpfully gave her a couple of pills which would relax her enough to undergo the ordeal.

Never one to trust to chance, she decided to test the pills. She took one as instructed and waited for the required length of time for it to take effect. Now she had to go into a confined space to see if she was chilled enough to bear it. But where...? She and Dill, her landlord, had decided that nearest match to an MRI scanner was the boot of his car. Of course.

So out they troop to the street, he opens it up and helps her in. Thumbs up - so he slams the boot, remaining on hand to open up in the case of frenzied knocking and/or sounds of asphyxiation. After a pre-arranged time, he opens the boot and helps her out. She is shaken but got through it OK and now all she needs is a quiet sit down.

They turn to go into the house and realise that a neighbour down the road has been watching horror-struck as Dill removed her from the boot. How on earth could you explain to him without him running screaming from you as you approached? Dill adopted the only course open to him. "There," he said in a loud voice, "let that be a lesson to you. And if I catch you doing it again, you'll be in there till teatime!"

Tallboy and I just went shopping at our favourite low budget German store. I chanced upon a pair of "men's mules" (leatherette flip flops as far as I could see) that would fit his size 11 and a halfs and waved them under his nose. Instead of (as I imagined) "You won't catch me in those" he said "Oooh let's try them on then". He did, and they fitted fine. One thing though - as marginally the more fashion-conscious out of the pair of us, I felt it incumbent on me to remind him that he couldn't wear them with socks on. As he looked at me quizzically I struggled to explain why not. "Because socks look ...." *pause for thought* "Pants?" he supplied. Oh yes, the mot juste. Socks look pants.

So, the Ex comes round to pick up the Sun the other day. The sun's shining, I've made a coffee, and he is looking shaggy. "Hair cut?". I have a set of clippers and randomly de-hair the odd head as it passes. Sometimes a bit too much.

Anyway, these clippers are cordless, so you can cut hair in the garden. This has many benefits, including not getting bits of hair all over the kitchen floor, enjoying the sunshine, and providing entertainment for the neighbours. At certain times of year it also provides our feathered friends with plenty of nesting material.

When I met him, nearly twenty years ago, the Ex had black hair, with one or two little white ones somewhere in there. Now the whites way outnumber the blacks and when it gets longer it just looks more and more... ummm... distinguished. So anyway, let the shearing commence. I'm clipping away, asking him about his holidays and how the kids are getting on at school (no, not really, that one wore thin about the second time I did it)and seeing the pile of clipped hair on the grass get bigger and bigger. When I had finished and stepped away from it, it looked for all the world as if some mad animal mutilator had been shaving a badger on my lawn...

I have a garage full of crap which appears to have a half-life of ten thousand years. I have ruthlessly culled my bookshelves, weeded my videos, boxed up unwanted stuff. I am trying to de-clutter. But it just won't go. I have had a couple of minor successes - the Brazil Nut bought some furniture from me, and we went to a car boot sale yesterday to try and unload some more stuff.

Now, on the telly, you have this fab scenario where some incredibly camp bloke comes and pokes round your house with his posh chum Montmorency and they discover that although you think it's crap, it's actually treasure. Then they take you to a car boot sale and the hordes are magnetically attracted to your stall and hoover it all up in a frenzy, leaving you too dazed to count the wads of tenners which have suddenly sprouted from all available pockets.

I got up at six yesterday. (Were I conversant with HTML I would give that statement the emphasis that it deserves.)I packed the car full of boxes. Tallboy and I, with high hopes, pootled off down the road to Castle Combe, venue of the South West's largest car boot extravaganza (apparently). On the plus side, I did get to drive round half the track but given the amount of breakable crap in the back of the car, I couldn't let the Jeremy Clarkson in me rear his head too far. On the minus side, we appeared to pack the car as full with crap on the return journey. Don't get me wrong, we didn't buy anything else, and we did sell about sixty quid's worth of stuff in the end. But we still have a garage full of crap. And I got sunstroke.

I have three options:

A trip to the tip - cathartic and fun (apart from the smell) but allied with nagging doubts that someone somewhere might have wanted my crap and therefore I have been wasteful and ungreen

Give it to charidee - there are plenty of Charity Shops around here. However taking the stuff there would involve quite a major moving operation and I'm not sure that the rather frail-looking ladies who work there would be able to help unload. Also, according to Phil Gardner's excellent blog there are restrictions on what they can sell on. I suppose I could take everything except the videos to the charity shops, and post the videos to Phil...

A fete worse than death - I've a feeling there may be one due at school soon. This could be the answer to my prayers, although I would have to suffer the indignity of seeing my crap not being bought. However, that would be Somebody Else's Problem, and I'm with Douglas Adams on that one.

Pesky got a bird yesterday, much to all our surprise. Well she is getting on a bit and we didn't know she had it in her. The little corpse was left on the lawn, minus its head and, strangely, one leg. Maybe she used it as a toothpick...

In fact over the years Pesky and her (now deceased) sister have brought back many trophies to me:

The usual assortment of small birds and mammals
A pigeon (how they got it through the cat flap is beyond me)
Frogs (whole, torso or just the legs)
A slow-worm (half eaten, soon to be fully regurgitated)

And once, quite amazingly, I saw Pesky strutting proudly up the garden path bearing her prey, looking for all the world like some mad feline Fu Manchu. As she laid it adoringly at my feet, I could see that it was a blackened banana skin fearlessly stalked and captured within the compost heap. I wonder if it was one of Tallboy's...?

Tallboy and I differ hugely about bananas. Although we both like them, I prefer them young pert and slightly green, whereas he will devour an entirely blackened fermenting object with great gusto. There is of course the bonus that we never fight over the last banana in the bowl. StepS once reported to me that he had witnessed his father chop the end off one and consume the contents, squeezing them out like toothpaste from a tube. He may have been exaggerating slightly but I would put nothing past a man who enjoys mashed potato sandwiches.

All of which reminds me of a favourite aside from Terry Pratchett. Nanny Ogg is very taken by Banananana Dakrys, at which TP feels obliged to point out that she knew how to start spelling banananana, she just didn't know how you stopped.

Asides aside, I have just noticed that Blogger's spellchecker suggests replacing "Tallboy" with "dollop". Is there something I'm missing here?

What a way to go! Suspended from an RAF helicopter in the hands of a chaplain a foot from the sea off the north coast of Cornwall.

My Grandad was a pilot during the war and an all-round good egg. He had expressed a wish that his ashes, when the time came, should be scattered from an aeroplane. Well, he died earlier this year and had a lovely and very moving funeral in Plymouth. A request was made to the RAF about scattering his ashes and they said no, not from a plane, but they could rustle up a helicopter.

Thus Mum found herself standing on a point near St Mawgan waving to a helicopter crew that had come in close to check that this group of people were actually the ones that had come for the ceremony. Satisfied that they were going to be performing for the right audience, they zoomed off out to sea and winched down the chaplain and then progressed slowly along as he scattered Grandad's ashes. When the chaplain had finished, they dunked him in the water (apparently he had only ever once done the winch thing before, as a practice, and the ducking on the first proper outing is traditional). I do hope they chose a clear spot of water for the poor man...

I went out on the bike for the first time in ages yesterday, it was great to be back in the saddle but at the end of a hundred mile round trip I levered myself off the bike and John Wayned for a couple of hours. We went to the lovely village of Ramsbury, just half a dozen of us or so. Tallboy managed to make a spectacularly wrong turn five miles from our destination, I just shook my head and sailed on by.

Funnily enough, there was little evidence of stalking on this trip. A fifteen minute walk to the shops usually entails at least four or five of them, but in the whole trip yesterday I saw two. This means that either a) there are no Silver Zafiras in Wiltshire or b) they don't recognise me when I'm wearing a full face helmet.

The Brazil Nut does the bum-sniffing dance

Taking a break from study, I sat at the window in the office for some fresh air and diversion. Now, this window is an escape Velux so it opens up wide and is sited low down for reasons of, well, escape. This means you can open it up, stick a chair underneath it and sit with your torso emerging, chick-like, from the roof. You get a pretty good view of things from up there, and it's pretty anonymous too because no-one ever looks up at the roofs.

So, I'm watching the kids play ball in the street and a couple walk their dog when I hear the Brazil Nut's dulcet tones and see her crossing the street to see the dog and its owners, her own dog Islay pulling at the lead in her enthusiasm. Both dogs are a little over a year old, very bouncy and happy, and both female. The first thing they want to do is sniff each other's bottom. But they also want to avoid having their own bottom sniffed until they have sniffed the other. So they engage in the bum-sniffing dance, where they move their nose towards the non-sniffing end of the other dog, while they simultaneously move their own non-sniffing end away from the enquiring nose of the other. Since both dogs are on leads, this causes a rather pretty DNA-like structure to form between them, until one of the dogs tries to be smart and dodge behind the Nut to surprise the other thus incorporating her into the tangle. It could only happen to her...

Are you a stroker?

I definitely am - I cannot pass a kitty on the pavement without bending down and putting out my hand. And talking to it. And giving it a little love.

It transpires the Brazil Nut is the same. The other day she was walking to work and met a cat which clearly wanted attention, so she stroked it and talked to it. Ostensibly, this was a lesser standard of attention than that desired, and Kitty decided to climb the Brazil Nut, the easier to discuss this with her. With claws extended, it mounted the trousered leg, then the coat, of a bemused and pained Nut, concluding its progress at the lapel, where it clung on and talked, face to face, to her. Nut managed to persuade Kitty to leave her person, and continued on her way regretting having stopped for this one.

I gave blood this afternoon. I like the way they have changed things so that you can make an appointment and not spend three years of your life sat on squeaky chairs waiting for your turn. Shame I forgot about it. I got there quarter of an hour late, pink and panting, so they took pity on me and let me jump the queue. Bless them.

I was all strapped on the bed with the cuff up to max ("Tell me when you get pins and needles, dear") and a succession of hopeful nurses came to find my vein. According to them, it wasn't there. I'm pretty sure blood was getting to my fingers somehow, but they gave up and turned everything round so they could have a go at the nice juicy vein on my left arm.

It's all changed now you know. They used to have to tell by looking at the scales when they had enough blood, and they had to give the pack a little shake now and then to mix in the anticoagulant. Not any more, now they have a Machine. It was quite cool actually - it had a series of green LEDs in a vertical arrangement, which showed you the progress of the donation if you were able to contort your head far enough. It looked for all the world like a download status bar. The Machine also jiggles the bag and seals everything off when you have given enough, so they can hook you up, start it off and leave you to it.

When my download had finished, it was off for tea and cake. I noticed a chap being tended to on the sunlounger/recovery bed. Poor thing, he was clasping his forehead and did not look good - he had clearly come over a bit woozy when he stood up. It wasn't until I had my tea and was sipping it quietly whilst earwigging other donors' conversations that I realised that lying-down man was a colleague of two of them. They kept shouting out and generally mocking him, and I now understood why he was so clearly wishing he was anywhere except there.

I am being stalked. Whenever I leave the house, on foot or in the car, there is one of them waiting round a corner. Seriously. Check it out next time you are on the road. You will see a silver Zafira somewhere. Or maybe you won't, come to think of it. They will probably be out stalking me. I was followed by two of them yesterday. Everywhere I look there is one.

Taking refuge from the silver Zafiras in my bedroom yesterday, I heard a strange noise on the landing. A sustained hissing, as if of someone attempting to pass flatus as silently as possible. This was followed by a loud and violent popping noise. Well, I am generally of a jumpy disposition - Tallboy has become used to me squealing and diving for cover if he just wanders quietly into the kitchen behind me and casually starts a conversation - so once I had scraped myself off the ceiling, I dashed out onto the landing to see what had happened. Tallboy was hastily stowing something green in the waste bin and confessed, on interrogation, that he had been seeing to the two balloons left on the landing after the party. Puzzled, I peered round for an implement that might have occasioned the pop that I had heard. Seeing nothing, I asked what he had been using. In a voice that dared to me to suggest this was anything but normal, he told me: "My teeth".

For Christmas, Mum gave us a cheque and a leaflet as a suggestion of what we might spend it on. Now Slimbridge is a fab place and does great work but it didn't really tickle our fancy. However, in my idle surfing, I have discovered the perfect organisation for this newt-crazy family to join - behold the British Herpetological Society. The cheque is in the post as we speak.

Pond Update:
The girl newts are looking fat and full of eggs, and are ravenously hungry. The boys are chasing after them saying "Ello dahling, look at my crest," and fanning their tails in a most fetching manner. The damsel flies have been hatching out in droves over the last few days, leaving their larval cases empty and oddly spooky, still clinging to the reeds on which they dragged themselves out of the water. Some of the slower larvae made tasty newt snacks. Many of last year's batch of newt babies seem to have overwintered in the pond and are showing no signs of wanting to lose their gills, which make them look like mad miniature underwater amphibious deer.

Moonfish update (final):
I'm afraid that he has gone to the big aquarium in the sky. StepD agreed that he was on the way out and that if he was still alive after we had dropped her back to Poppy's we could finish him off quickly. I chickened but Tallboy was brave and did the decent thing. Now there are just three fish left in the tank. I wonder what they think about Moonfish's absence?

Moonfish update:
It's not looking good, his eyes have turned completely black and we are sure that the end cannot be far off. StepD is very sad, he has been there for nearly five years. I suggested to her a couple of days ago that if we were sure he was on his way out, it might be kinder to take him out of the tank and send him on his way as quickly and painlessly as possible. She recoiled at the idea. Tallboy suggested it again this morning. Maybe if he (Moonfish, that is, not Tallboy) is still with us tonight when there are no children around, we could euthanase then but tell her he went naturally. I hate the thought of him suffering.

I think a few introductions might be in order...

Weevil - Bristolian, divorced, law graduate, aspires to purple hair, studying networking (trying to cram in knowledge only to have it leak slowly through the ears). Stalking - Stuff - Spaghetti - Basic - Referral - PP2 - PP3 - Facts - Food - Train - Hedge - Cocoa - Howzat - Pratchett - Language - Sweaty - Toilet - Lecture - Balloons - Sofa - Joke - Catchoo! - Pardon? - Kitchen
Tallboy - Oxonian, divorced, technician, artist, all-round nice guy, met Weevil through mutual love of Eastern Bloc motorbikes. Bananas - Pants - Busy - Wink - Petrol - Hubcaps - Bickering - - Pants2 - Dunno - Rule - Ceiling - Bland - Click

The Ex - split 4 years ago, still friends, lives a mile down the road. Badger - Stoat - Milk - Sofa - Burger

Sun - Weevil's and The Ex's son, 9 years old. Loves school, computer games, swimming and Toad in the Hole. Wink - Pigeon - Camp - Joke - Report - Cake - Jurassic - Sports- Off - Dyb - SMERSH

Poppy - Tallboy's ex wife, mother of four, always on the go. Fairy

StepS aka Methane Boy - Tallboy and Poppy's eldest, 16 years old and just taken GCSE's. Very helpful, great with kids, bright lad, builds robots n stuff. Dying - Jurassic - Toad
- Rascal

StepD - Tallboy and Poppy's daughter, 13 years old, very individual, sings, draws, writes, makes movies, loves charity shops. Owner of fishtank with rapidly declining population. RIP Moonfish

Pesky - flatulent black cat, 12 years old, likes curling up on keyboard and turning her nose up at current contents of food bowl. Piercing yowl. Murder

Network Guy - Poppy's husband, father of Beyblade Boy and Thomas Fiend.

Mum - Weevil's mum, lives in the Midlands, very supportive, owner of two light brown dogs. Once exlaimed "What a wanker!" during Sunday dinner as a man with strange boots on walked past outside. Cake - Grandad - Balloons Married to:

Brummie Stepdad - lovely man, loves walking and wine. Recently spotted doing 60 year old Eminem impression with new petrol strimmer and mesh mask.

Dad - Weevil's dad, lives in Bristol but rarely seen or spoken to. Considering moving to France having rejected Cyprus and Florida. Married to:

Wicked Stepmother - little, killer sense of humour. Two cats - one diabetic, one with half a tail missing. Large smelly dog resembling hearthrug.

Cartographer - Weevil's brother and former arch-nemisis. Mobile - Spaghetti - Cake Married to:

The Planner - lovely sister-in-law. Takes no prisoners, has yet to forgive Weevil for buying Alan Patridge DVD's for Cartographer for Christmas.

Dr Prod - good chum, fond of fish and tablet. Weasel

The Brazil Nut - crazy Brazilian neighbour Climber - Dance - OK? - Trolley - Swimming - Sheep - Mower