Oh! The jiggery pokery!

Knees bent, arms stretched, rah-rah-rah.... ...sorry.

By now, you should have a fair idea that I am a great fan of wordplay, both intelligent and base. In case you aren't too sure what I mean by those terms, the difference comes when you have the reaction of either 'heh - clever' or 'hurr-hurr-hurr'. And just in case you still aren't sure, here's a handy visual guide.

"I see what you did there."                         "He said bottom... pfffff!"

However, I am erratic. Sometimes, it takes me far longer to 'get' a gag - but then there will be times when I am stuck in a manic free-associating mode, and almost everything is twistable. And yes, Julie usually tends toward the latter mode.

That's not to say that everything that comes off the cuff* is 'naughty'. Many people, mostly professional comedians, thrive on firing out barrages of clever little gags (Milton Jones comes to mind), or comebacks to snide comments/hecklers. A lot of what I say, when I want to twist the meaning of another person's sentence, will tend towards the less cerebral, shall we say. The thing is, by doing that, I am training everyone to believe that will be all I would come out with. The my fun really begins; firing off on bizarre tangents, people will start laughing at the joke they expected to hear and then go blank and say, "wait, what?"

If this is sounding familiar to you, I'm not surprised. You've been reading about Julie doing this to me and others for a few years now...

Now and then, though, I screw up. I will say something without really thinking about it and fall foul of my own methods (this recent slip comes to mind)...

Changing the scene a little, now.

Until recently, I was out of work. Now, I have a part-time job in a factory, dealing with soaps, bath lotions and tanning products. As such, we have large cubic tanks of the appropriate chemicals at the start of the line feeding into the bottles. On Monday night, we were dealing with a foaming handwash. While it's cleaner than, say, tanning mousse, it's still a bit of a bugger if it is spilled, because it is incredibly liquid, and moving the tanks around is a process carried out with great care.

When it came to hanging one tank for another, a colleague set to removing the empty tank, while I got the full one. Moving very slowly to avoid sloshing the handwash, it seems I was concentrating more on my work than my words...

Oops.
It was fortunate that my colleague had the empty tank, as he was laughing far too hard to be careful with it. Meanwhile, this was the look our team leader gave me...

-------------------------------------------------

* Hurr hurr hurr...

A lengthy problem

This one is old. And I mean 'before I met Julie' old.

I used to work in a warehouse that stocked and supplied electronic components. It was a pretty big warehouse, and at the time this took place, I was a shift team leader in the goods in department.

As anyone who has ordered multiple items at a single time knows, what you ordered isn't necessarily what you receive. One supplier even threatened to take us to court because we were refusing to pay for items we hadn't received - but they were adamant they had shipped. And then they found said items in a dark corner of their own warehouse. And two suppliers seemed to think it would be a jolly good wheeze to throw a load of components into a box with polystyrene chips (a fantastic idea, courtesy of static electricity), and then leave us to guess what each item may be.

It didn't help that the term MICROelectronics was often a very salient term to describe the parts. While some items had the device code printed on them somewhere, others were too small to fit the entire code, no matter how small the print.

As team leader, it fell to me to contact the sales department in question and ask them to iron out any problems. Cue this conversation (and yes, Mary was Irish)...

All around me, people were either laughing or demanding to know what the laughter was about. All I could think of was that I had just well and truly scuppered my chances of asking Mary out...

Not to be sniffed at

As I write this, I have not long returned from an evening of playing Magic: The Gathering. In what proved to be our group's largest meeting yet, we took over the pub completely, and had lots of fun in doing so. I'm especially pleased, as I actually won more than half of my games for a change.

I forget who my opponent was at the time of this Gem, but I do know that, just to my right, Josh was playing James. Earlier in the evening, me and Josh had been swapping a couple of off-colour gags (none of which I will be repeating here), which set us both up nicely for an night of feeling rather silly.

James was puffing away on his cigarette - his E-cigarette, I should say. A subtle blueberry flavour, which was also pleasing to the nose. It was the odour which prompted a little discussion on our table about the varying smells of tobacco and the electronic alternatives, and that in turn reminded me of how my father used to smoke a pipe.

Pipes are definitely an acquired taste - The lounge always wound up looking like a fire had broken out in a pile of soggy wood. However, to me, the fragrance of pipe tobacco being smoked was quite nice; earthy and comforting.

Considering my predilection for wordplay, you would have thought I should have chosen my words a lot more carefully when reminiscing about pipe smoke to this lot...

Yes. Yes, I did...

Right to roam - doggie edition

Sorry about the absence, folks. What with the festive period and other things, I didn't prepare enough Gems to last for this long.

One of the things that has occupied us is a new member of our family. We have fostered, from a rescue centre, a Staffordshire bull terrier/bulldog (or boxer, it's not been too clear) by the name of Roxie.

"OMG! WANTS!"

She's seven, but has spent three years at the rescue centre. When I first saw her, my heart nearly broke, because she was so depressed and wary of forming attachments that would be broken. She would lean against the fence of her pen for the slightest bit of contact, but would refuse to react to it. She has been with us since last Friday, and as that picture shows, Roxy is settling in nicely.

In our company, in our home, at least.

When it comes to leaving the house, she is resigned about needing to wear a muzzle (legacy of a poor past), and wary of almost everything. That said, Roxy is incredibly well-behaved, and it's only with one or two dogs that she feels threatened enough to take action. Apart from that, she is very happy stay close to us.

Today, our early-morning walk took us along the seafront - there and back again. One of the things about Roxy is that she decides when she has had enough and stops. Literally. We will be walking along, happy as anything, and I will be chatting with Julie. The next thing we know, an arm will be nearly wrenched from its socket because Roxy has had enough and stopped dead without us realising in time.

This morning, we managed to get quite far along the promenade before we reached Point Nope. Probably, Roxy wanted to investigate all the new smells. Certainly, she was fascinated by the pebbled beach and the smell of the sea.

As we strolled back, Julie noticed something interesting. Something which elicited a silly remark from yours truly...

AN APPEAL

If you have a pet you no longer want or can no longer keep for whatever reason, don't dump it. Take it to a rescue centre.
If you would like to have a pet, don't get one from a shop or pet farm. Get one from a rescue centre.

Rescue centres are charitable organisations, are registered as such, and have to provide documentation of everything they do and must adhere to basic guidelines. This means that any animal given to them will be treated, and treated well. It also means that you are essentially guaranteed of a healthy animal should you come to adopt or foster one.
As you can see from the picture of Roxy, she is a happy doggie indeed, despite her demeanor in the rescue centre. Proof, surely?

However, rescue centres, as I said, are charities. This means they are reliant on donations and the occasional Lottery grant. Last Chance Animal Rescue is the place Roxy came from. It's a tiny place with minimal resources, and the abnormal weather we have had in the south of Britain recently has caused a lot of trouble. The high winds and torrential rain certainly did the centre no favours, as they went without power and a phone line (and therefore no internet connection) for a while.

Just think.
That means all the animals rescued had no heat. Apart from personal mobile phones, absolutely no contact could be made with the outside world, unless you braved the flooded roads - the entrance to the centre is slap-bang at the bottom point where the road cuts across a valley.

If you are local to the centre, please think about using them as a resource for a pet. And even if you are or are not, please think very hard about donating to them. People often drop by with food and/or toys and bedding, but money is the one thing they desperately need.
Drop by their donation page to find out more.

Thank you.

Distinctly different

I'm sat here, typing this out and a neighbour - a few houses away, actually - is noodling on his guitar. I would say 'playing', but it's jazz. In other words, a random mess.

I don't like jazz. Can you tell?

This is not to say, however, that my neighbour is a poor guitarist. Far from it. We have heard some lovely music, usually blues-based, coming from his house. Normally,  it's just noodling though. Practice.

One day, some time ago, we were sat in our front room, reading quietly. After a while, I realised I could hear our neighbour playing his guitar. Only just, though. He must have had his windows closed - or the breeze was blowing the wrong way, carrying the majority of the sound with it. As I said, it was a very soft noise, far from intrusive. In fact, when I commented to Julie that our neighbour had begun his guitar practice, she was surprised. In fact, even when I drew her attention to it, it still wasn't registering.

Zing!
Well, I lost that one. Not only was I confusing, Julie also managed to fit in a truly apposite pun. In the meantime, perhaps Julie could use these to boost her hearing...

Spike goes all Statler on Skype

Throughout all the posts over the last few years, it may appear that I am slandering my poor wife and perhaps portraying myself as unfillable and perfect. However, while everything that I attribute to Julie is completely accurate, there is no way in hell I am free from an occasional faux-pas. If you look in the labels section (to the right), you will see one by the name of "Spike's Slips". Those are all mine, baby!

Today's Gem also features myself, but I have to confess to having an accomplice this time, via a conversation on Skype.

I've known Pierre a few years now, enough for us to realise we have a certain similarity of mindset. We'll object to the same things, laugh at the same things - and when we get together via one medium or another, we'll mine the same comedic vein of silliness - with an added dash or two of nerd and geek just to flavour the dish that bit more.

Most of the time, it will begin innocuously enough, usually with a throwaway remark or typo...

Actually, I'm quite liking that crossword idea... lol

I'm hoping everyone understand all the acronyms we used there. 'Wotnot', of course, is Julie's own little word of wonder (again, look in the labels on the right...).

As for me and Pierre, it has been said before, by many people - including us - that we are very much like this pair. All I'll say is that the one reminds me very much of one of my grandfathers. It must be the eyebrows...

ps - I'm hoping you realised the typo was blatantly intentional...

The bawdiest banisters

Well, it's a handrail, really.

My mother has trouble getting around now, and got a handyman in to fit a handrail on the wall side of her stairs to go with the banister and rail on the other side. Since I live half the country away, it's not that often that I get to visit, so my sister tends to do what she can - considering she has her own life to run too.

On one of the times both my sister and myself were visiting, I needed to go upstairs for something or other. On one step, I stumbled slightly and snatched at the new handrail for support.

Which moved.

Wait, what?

I took hold of the rail again and pushed lightly against it. I hadn't imagined it, the rail did move. I looked closely and realised that the bastard cowboy who had fitted it had only done the minimum possible. Certainly not enough for someone who relies on sturdy supports.

I went to my sister and showed her the problem. If you were shocked at my use of the term 'bastard cowboy' above, you definitely don't want to know what my sister spat out. Put it this way, it was more venomous than the nastiest of Australian creatures, and more virulent than the bubonic plague.

My little sister has such a genteel soul.

We discussed what needed to be done. Getting a proper professional in, for a start. I'd have done it, but I'm no use when it comes to DIY. I can put up a shelf, but you'd be unwise to load it up too much. For the moment, though, we couldn't do much, as it was the weekend, and I had to get home.

This was my suggestion:

Yeah. Sure, I gave her possibly the best feed line ever, but you know that comment of mine about my little sister being a delicate soul?
Forget it.

World Book Night - FAIL!

As we love you, we thought we would give you a treat. Specifically, an outtake from our feeble attempts to put together a clip to promote our free draw.

As you can see from the still above, I'm looking a tad pensive. Believe me, by the end of the clip I had good reason...

There you go then. Julie asserts her superiority once more.

Don't forget - you still have a week to go to enter the free draw. Email us at juliesgems@gmx.com or drop us a line at our Facebook page. You have until midnight GMT Tuesday May 7th 2013 to enter. No addresses needed until the winning names are drawn from the hat.

Cheers!

Say you, say me... say what?

Julie and me were talking the other day about her Gems. Now, the thing about situations like this is that even discussing the Gems tends to result in more Gems being produced. Obviously, this is not a problem - unless I find myself not being able to keep up, or I have left my notepad at home.
Sometimes, when Julie is in full flow, or has just come up with something especially mind-bending, I find myself clouding over, my brain having had some kind of 'blue screen of death'. It's at that point that my brain and Julie's seem to suddenly synch together.

This actually happened on this occasion; it seems that merely discussing Gems is enough to trigger a Gem-fugue in another person. Julie was concerned with making sure that she was given due credit for the things she had spoken, and I wanted to assure her that this was the case.

Did I say I wanted to emphasise it?
>cough<

The gall of the woman...

A few months ago, my mum visited one of her sisters, partly just to drop by, but also partly because of health issues. Last year wasn't a good one for our family when it came to health, what with one thing and another. Compared to a lot of the family, I am fairly distant, both physically and emotionally, so it was during a phone conversation with my mother a few days later that this came to light for me.

For British people in general and our family in particular (as a running joke), the weather is a strong topic for discussion. Therefore, most conversation openings between me and Mum will run along the lines of greeting, weather, health.

"Hi, Mum, what's the weather like up by you? How're you feeling today?"

Scintillating stuff, I know.

Now, I don't know about you, but I find that when you have chats with people you know very well and have done for a long time, you tend to develop a sort of conversational shorthand. You will also take verbal shortcuts which will baffle outsiders, yet will be patently clear to anyone in the know.
However, there is a subtle danger here.
If either or both of the people in the conversation are feeling a little tired or are being distracted by something or other, then even long-established cues may be missed and confusion will reign.
Take, for example, this snippet from my mother as she tells me of her visit to her sister.

Now, if you did the same as me, you read straight through that without blinking and then thought, "hang on a minute..."
Of course, my aunt wasn't suffering from a meteorological disorder, it was just that I had heard two separate elements of the conversation as one sentence. As it turned out, Jackie was only in for a check-up - she wasn't about to have a weather vane installed...

Just as bad as each other.

That's us, alright.
I know I have a habit of trying to set Julie up and occasionally baffle her with science and/or terminology - all in the interest of getting a Gem or two out of her. However, it does have to be said that Julie gives as good as she gets. I just tend to end up falling silent, the wires in my head having been crossed by a freshly-delivered Gem. Since I stutter on occasion, it's usually best if I try and think about what is going to come out of my mouth.

Usually.

The thing is, I have a sort of in-built verbal reflex that tends to come out with comments just when they're most prone to humour and/or being in danger of misinterpretation. Or, even worse, of being interpreted correctly by people who are likely as not to give me a good kicking if they catch onto the fact I'm making jokes at their expense.
Hi folks, my name is Spike Matthews, and I'm a smartarse.

Case in point: Julie and myself were out the other day, just for a stroll. I'd accidentally left my notepad at home, which lulled Julie into a false sense of security. For much of the walk, Julie seemed to be in 'chatter' mode, which was good, as she does have a lot of good things to say. After a while though, the gears in her head shifted subtly and the mouth began to overtake the brain. Unfortunately for my wife, this meant the mouth had to to take up the slack and produce things of its own invention.*
Even more unfortunately, Julie's chatter had somehow induced me to slip into 'smartarse' mode. Smartarse, with an apparent side-serving of 'snarky'.

As a result of these circumstances, we wound up with a few Gems. Gems I managed to capture thanks to a stray piece of paper in my back pocket. As I was scribbling furiously, I was barely concious of Julie, who was still chattering away to my left...

"I'm leaning on a lamp post on the wotnot of the street..."

Despite my concentration, I laughed and paused in my writing, long enough for Julie to ask me a question which earned a knee-jerk reply.

er - sorry, love.

*Of course, this is how most Gems are produced...

Spike slanders the British royal family

Yesterday, Thursday 10th of May saw an unusual event in a Scottish BBC TV studio. During the regular airing of the lunchtime news, the newsreader, Sally Magnusson did the usual handover to the weather report. What made this particular event so special was that Britain's crown prince, Prince Charles, had taken the place of the normal weatherman.

Granted, Charlie had been given a special script, one which was - oddly enough, hem hem - rather focussed on areas where there were royal residences, but I have to admit that, looking at the picture above, he seems to suit the job quite well. For a British BBC weatherman, that is. I'm not entirely sure if it was 100% scripted, but Chaz even managed to fit in a jokey reference to our beloved weather patterns and the apparent poor timing with regard to public holidays.

"...but a cold day everywhere, with temperatures eight degrees centigrade and a brisk northerly wind. Thank God it isn't a bank holiday."

It's not laugh-out-loud funny, I'll grant you, but it's typical British humour; a wry recognition of certain immutable facts of life.

You may have gathered from my rather over-familiar references to the queen's successor that I don't go overboard in my flag-waving Jingoism. Don't get me wrong though, I don't dislike the royal family completely. I'm not sure how politically potent they are these days. Queen Victoria was pretty much the last reigning monarch to be actively involved in the running of the country, although it may be that that could change if Charley gets the crown. He's been noted for - how shall I phrase this - trying to influence the opinions and practices of the British people and businesses. Some see him as a welcome positive influence and possible role model, others just think he's an interfering busybody without a clue. Me? I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he's done some good things, raising awareness of environmental issues being just one example.

So that's Charles. But what of the other members of the royal family? The Duke of Edinburgh is hilarious, albeit in a teeth-suckingly and completely cringeworthy embarrassing uncle way. Harry is an earnest young chap, although he's made some howlers himself in the past. I think he's going to grow up to be one of the best people though. And then there's Prince William, Charles' eldest son and therefore second in line to the throne. He's OK, I suppose, but his future role means that he has to watch what he says and does very carefully, with the net effect that he comes across as an amiable and serious-minded fellow - with about as much charisma as a soggy chip (or french fry, for our colonial cousins).

Of course, I can't ignore our current monarch. But... I can't really think of much to say. She appears to be nice, but all I really know of her is that she gets to go on holiday a lot and probably has to see a physiotherapist about RSI in her wrist from all that gracious waving. Having said that, I do recall a sketch on the satirical puppet show, Spitting Image, which had a puppet of the queen, singing 'One Will Survive', to the tune of the classic Gloria Gaynor song, 'I will survive'. In the sketch, Queenie sings about the possibility of abdicating so that Charles has a shot at the throne before he kicks the bucket himself. Well, more precisely, she sings about there being NO possibility of abdicating... As I recall, it was absolutely hilarious.
As you can see, blind obeisance isn't a huge part of my psyche.

Getting back to the point, my friend Wolf mentioned Prince Charles' stint as a weatherman and handily posted a link. I wasn't too worried about watching the clip myself, although I was interested in my friend's opinion; apparently, Charley handled it rather well, which led Wolf to believe there was an alternative future for him. I wasn't too sure myself, and responded in my usual, cynical and none-too-reverential manner...

It might not have been all that bad, except that I have something of a reputation for twisting the meaning of words and sentences, often to a salacious end. A reputation that came back to bite me right where it hurts...
Heh.. oh well.

--------------------------------------------

By the by, Wolf is the generous soul who sent me one of his copies of The Time-Traveler's Wife to offer as a bonus prize to one lucky person in our World Book Night draw. If you want a special edition of this book, then email us or comment below, just to say you want in. I'd hurry though, as we will be making the draw on Sunday evening (GMT).

Spike, the lazy lovefool

It was a bit quiet at work today. Well, I say that, but I was was boxing posters for more than half the day. Yeah, thrilling, or what? At one point (don't ask me when, the day was all a blur), I decided to send my wife to tell her those three little words - with a small twist of humour.

Julie, however, was definitely on the ball.

Yes ma'am!
So much for romance! To be fair to Julie, though, she did soften the blow with a final 'lol!'.

Spike has a temporal memory lapse

We were discussing books the other day. I had an ulterior motive as I was hoping to garner a few literary Gems to use on bookmarks I want to make. as it turned out, I managed to jot down a few Gems, but pretty much the only book-related Gem came courtesy of yours truly and doesn't work as a stand alone gag.
Yes, that's right, I Gem'd myself. In a public place, too.

You see, we were in a cafe and I had asked Julie about books she had read when she was younger. Once we had got the inevitable Janet & John (or equivalent - I was a Rainbow Reader) out of the way, Julie began to talk about Enid Blyton. As it happens, Julie isn't much of a book person, and those that she does read are either chick-lit, celebrity biographies or spiritualism (Ghost Hunters, Colin Fry and all that.. stuff). Me, I'll read most things, but chick-lit and spiritualism don't interest me at all and I really have to be in the mood to read a biography. However, our childhood reading matter is a different thing entirely. As it turns out, we were both massive fans of Blyton's Famous Five series. Apparently, Julie used to buy them in bulk, keep them under her bed and plough through them in one extended bout of frenzied reading. Julie then mention Blyton's other celebrated book series, The Secret Seven and it struck another chord in me. Or, as I put it...

...but I don't any more... eh? What? Doh!

Taking a position on height issues

 A new chocolate-themed cafe opened up in town last weekend, so we thought we would drop by and have a drink and maybe a bite to eat. (before anyone says anything, I had a mozzarella and tomato sandwich, no chocolate. OK, so Julie did have a crêpe covered with melted Belgian chocolate.)
Boy, was it busy. Mind you, it may have something to do with the fact they had an opening offer of 25% off all items for sale.
>sigh< OK, OK. I bought a bar of white chocolate with poppy seeds and lemon flavouring.
Anyway. We were sat down at a table, and I made the comment that my chair appeared to be a little taller than Julie's. My wife disagreed and said it was probably just me. As she explained;

As it happens, she's spot on. I am taller than her. However, what Julie meant to say was that while I may be taller overall, I'm taller in the body than she is, so I'd be taller than her when.. we're.. sat... down.
Er. 
I'm not helping, here, am I?

What's that about pride and falls again?

There's a telephone box (booth) next to a bowling green near where me and Julie live. On a glorious day, out for a gentle stroll, we happened to pass it. Or nearly. On this occasion, Julie stopped and glared at it for some reason. Then we had this exchange - Julie leading off with her forthright declaration.

(NB - the "><" indicates where I suddenly realised we were in danger of becoming stuck in a loop and stopped what I was saying.)


Obviously, what I had meant to say was that, in all the time since I had moved down here, there had always been one phone box.
Yeah, I know. Too little, too late.

By the way, Julie challenged me; "I bet you won't put that one on the website, will you?" However, I am nothing if not fair and even-handed. If I didn't post it, I would be all shades of hypocrite, and I refuse to be that.