Rubbing her up the right way

What with the hot, close weather, and a few other factors, the last few days have been quite draining. If you were to draw a diagram of my sleep pattern, it would probably resemble a Julia set.

Complex, almost chaotic - but pretty to look at.

As I write this, it is roughly 8:30, and I have been up and about since 4:30-ish. I have played cards, read some of a science book, done some writing, had a spot of breakfast, and completed a few puzzles in a magazine. About half an hour ago, Julie woke and switched her radio on to listen to the news. Roxy heard this from downstairs and came up to bid her 'good morning' and have a bit of attention.

I got dressed and came into my office to do the 'dailies' as I refer to my regular activities. However, no sooner had I sat down, than I heard Julie pipe up with something that absolutely demanded a reply.

For those of you that didn't know, Roxy is a bit of a tart, especially when it comes to having her belly rubbed. In fact, she will often go out of her way to make it easy for you and to indicate, in that ever-so-subtle manner of hers, that she wants a belly rub.

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...

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* Hurr hurr hurr...

The gag reflex

Say hello to Bongo

Bongo is a staffie/labrador crossbreed, and a rather handsome chap. One of many dogs at the Last Chance Animal Rescue centre, he is also a long-term resident (just as Roxy was). Indeed, every time that we visited the centre, we would make a point of dropping by Bongo's pen. A lively, happy chap, he always had two tennis balls in his mouth. If he happened to drop one, he would then chase after it, retrieve it, and get it back to its rightful place.

In fact, we would like to have taken Bongo on, but he's just too big and boisterous. I hope somebody does take pity on him.

I only mention Bongo because every time Roxy feels like playing with one of her tennis balls, both Julie and myself are immediately reminded of Bongo and the two-ball grin.

As my mother will know, normal tennis balls never last too long with a dog - they are chew toys when fetch time is over, after all. However, most pet shops stock a hardier breed of ball - just don't use them to play tennis, because they will hurt like hell if they hit you.

Mind you, even those balls will not last too long with a determined doggie. Roxy's current ball has developed a weakness, one which means that it sort of folds in on itself to a degree. Unfortunately, this means that a tennis ball which is only just on the right side of 'large enough' is now in danger of being a little too small for safety. Naturally, we are always aware of safety, and Julie happened to notice that Roxy was chomping on the ball a little too much.

That last bit was directed at a husband, whose mind was dallying in the gutter once more...

That said, I went looking for link or images of these tougher tennis balls. It looks like I'm not the only puerile person around...

A damp doggy?

Many apologies for missing yesterday's post. It was a tad busy, and I hadn't prepared anything for automatic release.

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This morning was a bit of a non-starter for me, thanks to a headache and a hay-fever-induced cold. Unfortunately, Roxy decided that she wasn't going to do anything either: Every time Julie tried to get Roxy to go for a walk, the dog refused to go any further than the front gate. She even refused to eat her breakfast.

It may have been that Roxy 'knows' that Saturdays are for us to go somewhere as a family, and wanted to wait until I was fine to walk with the ladies. Or it may be that Roxy was picking up on the fact I was a little under the weather and preferred to stay near me and keep an eye on me. Sweet, but annoying for Julie, who wanted to get on and do things and go places.

Eventually, I managed to break the cycle of doze-wake with a sore head-drop off again, and the three of us went for a walk. As soon as it was clear we were all going out, Roxy was as amenable as anything, and Julie had no trouble handling her.

Hmm. I may have phrased that poorly.

You see, when we got back home, I decided to chance some toast, and to have another go at having a cup of tea - I had made one at six in the morning, and then promptly dropped off back to sleep.

While I was in the kitchen, Julie sat on the sofa, gently stroking Roxy, who was sat on the floor. When they saw me come in the living room, Roxy moved to the sofa and looked at me, waiting. When I smiled, she took that as her cue to get up onto the sofa and sit, leaning against Julie,  but hoping that I would lean over the back of the sofa to give her a little fuss too.

Of course I did.

I didn't sit down right away - I had a cup of tea stewing in the kitchen. Since I like strong tea, I don't mind leaving it for a little while, but chewing it would be too much, so I went back to remove the tea bag and to add milk.

Back in the living room, Julie was making a fuss of Roxy and talking to her. Generally, I couldn't hear exactly what was being said. Mostly, all I could make out was, "mumblemumblemumbleRoxymumblemumblemumble." However, one phrase made its way through nice and clear.

As it turned out, Julie was rubbing Roxy's belly (something the dog absolutely adores), and confused 'damp' with 'slightly cooler than the rest of Roxy's body'. That said, I couldn't help but imagine Roxy's face when she heard that...

OK, not Roxy, but the expression
should say it all.

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...

Well, rheally!

This, my friends, is a rhea. A flightless bird, very similar in looks to the more well-known ostrich and emu. And with a likewise similar taste for anything it can get its beak on.

Julie and myself encountered some just before New Year as we were walking around Birmingham Nature Centre. Strangely delicate, they were charming and almost calming to watch. The rest of the centre is well worth visiting too, and it comes as something of a surprise, considering it isn't all that large, and is pretty much slap-bang in the middle of a large city.

Of course, there are plenty of things for children to get involved with, including an opportunity to have a silly photo; pretending to be an animal by poking their head through a hole, the child's head then takes the place of the animal painted on the front of the display. Since we're both kids at heart, I offered Julie the chance of having a little fun by being silly. She did, and didn't even wait for the camera to take that chance...

In the end, Julie did get the photograph. Of her face. As a rhea.

Sort of... We might be kids, but we're big kids...

A time for family get-togethers.

Last Saturday, we wanted to get out of the house, despite the poor weather. Going into town during the lead-up to Christmas was out, and the weather was bad enough that we didn't fancy going for a walk. In the end, we opted to visit a local garden centre, one we knew had a half decent cafe.

When we got there, we found that their soup of the day was a creamy tomato and red pepper. Yes please!

There was a large queue for the cafe, so I was sent to grab a table while Julie waited in line. On the next table along, there was a group of people in their fifties or sixties. One had obviously been waiting for the mobile technological revolution, as his ear was permanently glued to an iPhone. I wasn't paying much attention to him, but you couldn't help but hear the occasional phrase drift over. By and large, it was the usual "I'm alive and so are you, isn't the weather awful?", with a random mention of the festive season here and there.

And then one very worrying snippet made itself very clear.

This arrived in my ears just as Julie arrived with our food & tea. Judging by her reaction to my face though, I don't think she had managed to catch it herself. Ye gods...

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As you may or may not know, our format of Monday/Wednesday/Friday means that there is a slight clash in scheduling for the next Gem. However, you never know...

The Tea-Room Trilogy, part 3: Puppies!

There is a bit of a NSFW element to today's post, so be warned...


At the tea-rooms, we had both finished our drinks and cakes. And, as we saw last time, Julie had made use of the facilities. This time around, it was my turn to need the loo. Julie asked for the car keys and said she would wait in the car for me. Fair enough.

When I came out of the toilet, there were a couple of ladies at the table where we had been sat moments before. Each had a small, cute dog on a lead, both of which were very interested in everything going on around them - especially if there was food involved. In the absence of any food, though, I made a passable alternative. After a brief moment of mutual fussing, the ladies' food arrived, and the pups' attention span departed. I said my goodbyes, bid the staff a good break over the winter period, and went to the car.

I got in, and as I buckled myself in, Julie knew immediately why there had been a delay in me leaving the loo. She has said many times before,

"If I can't find my husband, all I have to do is look for the nearest dog, because he'll probably be making a fuss of it."

Guilty as charged, m'lud.
Still, the question needed to be asked, something that really should have been phrased better, knowing me as  well as she does.

As I post this, I'm really hoping that my international audience knows of the slang word 'puppies' meaning 'boobies'. And I'm not talking about the blue-footed avian...

The Tea Room Trilogy part 2: Dogged by innuendo.

So there we were in Duddleswell Tea Rooms, on their last day of opening for the year. Looking at the menu, I was reminded and again gratified to see a wide variety of teas - including my favourite, Lapsang Suchong. Unfortunately, they didn't have any soy milk, so I had to opt for either a green tea or a herbal infusion... Hm... gunpowder green tea, methinks...

Julie is a lot less fussy when it comes to tea; tea, milk & sugar, and that's it. Just tea. No fancy stuff. Especially no smelly ones.

Another thing the tea rooms are good for are their cakes. There was some massive meringue concoction in the chiller cabinet, which looked very inviting, but we decided to be sensible and go for a scone.
OK, Julie was sensible.
I had a slice of cherry, apricot & almond tart with a small jug of pouring cream. Very nice.

Unfortunately, tea has a side-effect; it's a diuretic - it makes you pee more. No sooner had the last sip been taken than Julie was off to the loo, leaving me to eye up the cakes - and the waitresses, of whom more on Friday.

When Julie returned, she sat down with a happy sigh and a little smile. I laughed, and asked her:

Yes, we were heading on to Last Chance Animal Rescue afterwards, but the schoolboy in me just went straight for the 'dogging' joke.

What a sausage!

It's been long known that much of the British sense of humour is based around the use of double-entendres. Many an innocent comment has been countered with, "...as the actress said to the bishop." My own take on this is the modern version, "...that's what she said."

It's truly amazing just how even the most banal and incontrovertible comment can be retroactively altered by one of those two phrases. Best of all, to my mind, is that you can utter the punchline with no real aim, but to prove to the world that you are still breathing. However, the magic then takes place in the mind of the first speaker. Suddenly, their mind is now working overtime, trying to work out what on earth was smutty about what they said. Often, that person somehow manages to take it even further than was intended by the joker. I have often been surprised at the turn of mind that people take - even when I'm barely aware that I actually replied to their original sentence...

Funny how peoples' minds work, ain't it?

Of course, I have now managed to reach some sort of plateau of meta-smuttiness, where I now no longer have to say anything. I may assume a certain expression, but normally, people who know me will find themselves either cringing at what they just said (expecting my input - even if I'm not there!), or slowly, haltingly picking their words with exaggerated care.

At this point, I will state in my defence that I'm not like this all the time, despite popular belief - and any evidence to the contrary. Yes, I do take great enjoyment in wordplay, from puns to well-crafted sentences. However, I'm also a bit of a daydreamer, so when I'm in company and someone has carelessly let free a sentence that couldn't be more open if it had major surgery, I don't always react. In fact, the first I will know of such a situation is the silence of people all looking at me, waiting for my input. And all I'd say would be, "...what?"

As you will have no doubt noticed, I'm not entirely alone in this mindset. Julie, in fact, surprises even me with comments, and even I am not immune to setting myself up...

So, back to last Saturday, that soggy day. It was the first Saturday we had really managed to get together for a while, and we were determined to make a day of it. We had intended to go to Brighton and browse the shops in the Lanes, but the severity of the rain meant that we would have wound up soaking wet, even with ducking in and out of places. Thus it was we wound up driving around Kent - again. It's a great place for a pootle, lots of little towns and villages to stop in and have a cup of tea.

Our ultimate destination was one we have visited many times before. It's a little distant (by British terms, as opposed to other countries, perhaps), but Macknade's Fine Foods is well worth it. It's an amazing food hall, with an emphasis on local foods and delicatessen foods. There is also a great little cafe which usually has soy milk. Furthermore, despite the overly hipster feel of the place, the food is tasty, comes in decent quantities and isn't overly pricey. We've never had more than a slice of cake there (gluten free too!), but it's normally been plenty to keep us going until our evening meal.

Just part of the food hall. The cafe would be behind the photographer.

In the car park, we were sat in the car with the doors open, enjoying a brief respite from the rain, and just watching the world go by. We began picking up on small details around us; this registration plate on a car, that toddler with her panda hat, complete with ears - and a man leaving the shop with a bag in his arms, out of which was poking a number of very long, very thing and very wrinkled ... sausages?

Well played, love. Well played.

For the curious, this is what kabanos look like, although these are relatively wrinkle-free.

Beware the muffin man

I have a nasty and possibly life-threatening habit.
Eavesdropping.

Even NP Harris does it...

Well, eavesdropping and then joining in the conversation, without the other person/people being aware.
Hopefully.

I have done this with pissed-up clubbers queuing for a kebab, old dears as they wait for their pension in a post office queue, chavs hanging around in gangs in shopping centres and various random people talking loudly on their mobile phones. Obviously, some of these situations are more dangerous than others - I leave it to you to decide which.

Julie is somewhat unsurprisingly disapproving of this habit of mine, possibly due to the potential for fist & face meetings. In my defence, I do have to call hypocrisy on this one, as Julie does engage in this on occasion. Of course, when I call her out on it, her reply is normally, "...that's different."
Joe Jackson had it right.

One time, we were in our local shopping centre, thinking about having a cuppa and perhaps a bun. Ahead of us in the queue were a couple of elderly women who were definitely in the market for some baked goods. I had already been feeling mischievous, and when one of the women asked her companion a poorly-phrased question, my reply was more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything that was thought through...

...here comes Muffin, Muffin, the mule....

Daylight rubbery

Time for a little geekery. I am a relatively recent convert to the card game known as Magic; The Gathering.

I won't go into details, just to say that you have to beat opponents using cards featuring fantasy creatures, spells and enchantments. It can be quite competitive, and there are usually a lot of events going on each month. Currently, the Magic community is gearing up for the release of a new set of cards (Theros), one based around the ideas of Greek mythology.

It's been pretty hectic, as there have been a couple of pre-release events over this weekend just gone. In these, we got to see the cards and play with them for the first time in a couple of organised tournaments.

On the Saturday, I played spectacularly badly and wound up last of about thirty people - but at least I had fun. Yesterday was a tad different. For one thing, we were playing in teams of two. For another, me and my teammate actually had the temerity to place second.

Sweet.

Back to the Saturday, though. One player, who was there for both days, was toting around a foot-tall statuette of some Greek-style chappie, all in the name of a little extra luck.* For one match, he was placed against a young lady. Sixteen years of age, looks a bit older and swears like a trooper. Oh, and you can hear her from the other side of a crowded room, which means that little snippets tend to intrude on your thoughts.

...I don't want to know....

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* A pity, then that his team was one of the ones we beat yesterday.... hehehehe...

Imagine that!

Hythe is a small town on the south coast of Kent in England. It's had quite a history, especially since it shares a proximity to mainland Europe with its more famous neighbour, Dover. However, for the purpose of our tale today, it is simply a nice place to visit, with a long seafront promenade. You can park next to the promenade and then just stroll along.

Just one thing needs to be noted, though. You see that low wall separating the road and the promenade? Well, there aren't all that many gaps to allow you through. Yes, there is a whacking great gap in the photo above, but believe me when I say that is a rarity.

When Julie and me arrived, I happened to park in a stretch that seemed to be slap-bang in the middle of a long walled section. Time to clamber over, then.

At this point, it should be noted that neither of us can be classed as 'tall'. I am 5'5", and Julie is a tad shorter. While the wall is fairly low, it also has a fair width on it, enough that you can't simply step over it. Well, we can't anyhow.

I've done a lot of clambering for one reason or another in my time, so I managed it easily enough - if not exactly gracefully. Just as I was straightening up, I heard a commotion and a muffled curse from behind me. I turned and found that my wife had gone for the 'straddle' option. Unfortunately, the wall was a little wider than she had allowed for and had proved to be a tad uncomfortable.

Or, as Julie put it...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Think pink!

We bade a fond farewell to our friend on Saturday. After a fun week packed with meeting people, going places - and far too much food - she sadly had to return to Greece.

After breakfast, we piled into the car and set off up to Heathrow airport. Remembering the pig's ear that was the previous week's journey, we made damn sure we left plenty of time to get there. Just as well, because the M25 once again slowed to a crawl; rather than being way too early, we were pretty much bang on time. But that's by the by.

On the way up, I was concentrating on driving - although we did have some music going, a rather eclectic mix disc of mp3s I had thrown together. Between the two, I missed the occasional detail - especially if they were in a blind spot on the other side of the car. So when Julie came out with this particular Gem, to say I was speechless is something of an understatement.

Wait, what?
Our friend was too busy laughing to be of much help, and Julie was pointing in the direction of one of those blind spots. Eventually, I managed to reason she had been referring to an ornament on the top of another car's radio antenna.

Cute, eh?
Except it's not pink. It took me a little searching, but I eventually worked out that the ornament in question was in the style of Piglet from the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh.

You have no idea how relieved I am to know what it was...

Parking in a flash.

A couple of days ago, our guest had a little surprise; I had arranged a meeting with some mutual friends. Under the pretense of visiting a garden centre, me and our guest drove across Kent, avoiding various nutters on the way. We arrived a little earlier than our friends, so I gently steered my companion around the garden centre, coincidentally managing to keep a discreet eye on the entrance.

When our friends arrived, I casually pointed to various plants that just happened to be located in a different direction than the entrance - so a little light sneaking could be achieved.

The eventual encounter was all I could hope for and more, although my companion was quiet for a moment before turning to me and simply saying, "you're a bad man." She was grinning as she said it, though.

We had a drink and a small bite to eat at the garden centre's cafe. Although they would rather it was called a 'bistro', which should tell you about the food - and the prices.

After a rest and a natter, we decided it was time to move on. When the question of a location was raised, there was a sudden flurry of smartphones as people tapped and swiped away furiously. After some discussion, it was agreed that we would go to Shorne Wood Country Park - our friends would lead and me and our guest would follow.

A great visitor centre!

Upon our arrival, we had a small search for a parking spot. My companion, who is not a native to this country, saw a number of signs referring to the parking facilities, all with a stern, clear instruction to 'Pay and display'.

Something about me must be catching, because my friend started laughing like a drain. When I managed to ask what she had found funny, she pointed to one of the signs and said;

I looked at the hordes of children running around and politely declined the offer.

Oh, BALLS.

These balls, specifically.

Tits and balls, oh my!
They're blue tits, but that doesn't help much, does it?
At least they aren't great tits...

In my mum's garden, there are plenty of places for the local birdlife to get their fill - as long as the bloody pigeons and squirrels don't hog it all/crap all over it. But one of the best things we've found are the seed-packed spheres of suet - more commonly known as fat balls.

Yeah. You can see where we're going with this, can't you...

Obviously, it's going to take a total innocent not to make any kind of mental connection with, and let's not beat around the bush here, testicles. Bollocks, gonads, love spuds, the two veg to the penis's meat. Whatever you want to call the male reproductive organs, if you name a product of ANY kind 'fat balls', all kinds of people are going to be sniggering. To be perfectly honest, the manufacturers don't help either...

Ok, settle down at the back there...

As it happens, I recently had a request for me to buy some fat balls for the feeders in my mum's garden. In fact, the poorly-worded  text message I received from my sister ran, "Oh btw, Mum needs fat balls."
My reply? "No comment."

Today, as chance would have it, me and Julie were in a garden centre (cooing over the pets and discovering they even had a couple of hedgehogs!*), so we took the opportunity to buy some spherical bird treats.
After looking at all the pets, gifts and gardening gear, we left with nothing else but avian snacks. I admit to feeling a little sulky that we couldn't afford a 'hog (£150 - before care etc). Julie tried to put a positive spin on things though.

Honestly, I'm not sure one was worse than the other...

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* A little note on purchasing hedgehogs. Only buy/keep African pigmy hedgehogs, as all the other breeds are not suitable for keeping as pets.

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.

Hayling Island Week; Pulling power

Hello and welcome back to a week full of Gems born on the south coast resort of Hayling Island.

After a cup of tea and a stroll through the empty fairground, Julie and myself popped into the tourist information office. The woman there was charmingly candid about the island's size and facilities (ie, there aren't many), but was cheerfully chatty and helpful about what there was around there.

Ten minutes later and armed with a map of the island, we headed west.

As you can see from the map, there is a nature reserve on the north side of the western branch of the island. However, since time was pressing on, we elected to pass that by for now and get a bite to eat at the pub next to the ferry, where I had the oddest lasagne I have ever eaten. For some reason, they were using a sort of gravy as the main sauce... Whatever. I'm just glad I didn't have the burger.

After eating, we went for a walk. However, we had forgotten about the nature reserve, having been distracted by a wonderful shingle beach and a lovely blue sea. That and all the dogs that people were walking.*

On a recent visit to my mother, we had gone for a drive around Derbyshire (absolutely beautiful countryside), and had each picked up a book about British wildlife, plants and animals both. I was now carrying around my copy, trying to identify various plants that I deemed to be interesting. This led to an accusation from Julie that I was turning into my father; I couldn't make up my mind whether to deny this or accept it.

One of the plants we looked at looked, from a distance, similar to gorse, which is a shrub I find to be very beautiful (although a bit of a bugger if the path you're walking on happens to be lined with plentiful and encroaching gorse bushes - complete with thorns. Ahh, nostalgia...). Closer up, I was very surprised to realise that the bushes were in fact lupins. Up to that point, I had always been under the impression that lupins formed single stems. Was I ever wrong...

Julie gets a close-up...

It's a glorious sight in bloom, isn't it? I love to have wild flowers in our garden (poppies, foxgloves and a few self-seeded others), and I really, really wanted to have some of this new find growing in one corner or another. However, I'm also fully aware that the law tends to frown on people ripping up parts of the landscape for their own selfish desires. I'm not saying I haven't gently eased a plant or two, or some seeds from their original setting. However, it's actually quite hard to be surreptitious about such an activity when the plant in question is rather larger than yourself and sited on a busy, public stretch of beach in the middle of the day.

Julie knew what I wanted and had a rather less subtle approach.

You know what? I had absolutely nothing to say to that...



*WANT DOGGIE!