No entry. It's your own fault.

What is it with my family and keys?

Years ago, when me and my sister were just kids, we all went on a day out and had ourselves a wonderful time - right up to the point our parents locked BOTH sets of car and house keys in the boot. Or trunk, for non-Brits. Cue an expensive journey home, including three trains, a bus and a taxi. Not necessarily in that order. And then we had to break into our own house. Oddly enough, it was soon after that that us kids got our own house keys. I wonder why...

Some years later, I was working night shift at the Cadbury factory in Birmingham, when my shift leader came to me with a message that my parents were at the security gatehouse and needed to see me. I started panicking - after all, when you get an unexpected visit from your folks, it's not often good news. Besides which, you will have got the gist already. Yes, they had gone out for the evening and locked themselves out. I had a little rant about communication.

Fast forward some more. Not long after I had moved south to live with Julie, the two of us went to the beach. I'm not great with the idea of leaving my belongings unattended on the beach while we go for a swim, and there was a small pocket on the inside of my shorts. Unfortunately, when I went for a dip, the keys fell out. Fortunately, I found them rolling in the surf on the water line. Fortunate indeed. Never before or since has Julie been so angry with me.

And now yesterday.
I was talking to my Mum by means of the old telephonic device, and she was telling me of her 'little bit of fun' the day before. Apparently, my mother had had a hospital appointment. Parking there is abysmal, so she booked a taxi, removed a lot of crap from her bag in order to make moving about on crutches a bit easier, and then shut the doo...oh shit.

No sooner had the door clicked shut than she realised she hadn't put the house keys back in her handbag. Crap. The taxi and appointment still need to happen, so off she went. When she got back, my mum found that while house keys were absent, she did have the car key. Deciding to use a cafe as an impromptu office, Mum tried to think of how to get a locksmith - not having one on speed dial, you see.

Having failed to come up with a solution, Mum then went to a garage to fill the car with fuel, and noticed a police car there. Collaring a copper, she asked him if he knew of any locksmiths in the area. Confused, he asked why, and got the whole story.

Well, there's handy.

Interestingly, I have come across a couple of good ideas for trying to make sure you have a house key with you at all times.

Found on Tuvie, this one looks funky, but I can see you would have to have a key specially made. Far better is this idea from Pocketbands.com - it's a silicon rubber bracelet with a pouch for you to put a key or an emergency tenner inside.

Naturally, the bands you would wear would not be transparent - it sort of defeats the idea of hiding something. I'm seriously liking this product, actually. Ideal for kids, clubbers, people on the beach (ahem), I am actually thinking about finding out if there is anywhere over here that flogs them.

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...

Love over Scrabble.

As a family, we have always liked word games, Scrabble in particular. Of course, there have always been personal foibles, and I don't expect that will change. Dad, in particular, used to make random guesses at word spellings; in case you couldn't tell, he was more of a numbers man. Many times, he would play a word and there would be a chorus of  "what the hell's that?", only for us to find out he was going for some semi-phonetic version of a common word. In fact, it got to the point when "Bagsy* coming last!" became his opening gambit.

He wasn't that bad a player though. As he always liked to put it, he was often runner-up. Pity there was usually only two of them playing.

On one occasion, a family game, it was my sister who was failing and trailing. In fact, by the end of the game, she had only managed 98 points. To put that into perspective, anything below 150 in a four-player game is, for us, a bad result. Ever the dutiful father, Dad decided to console his stricken daughter.

*'Dibs' for those more used to USA English

A lickle trouble

Viewers of programmes like Eastenders, and those who have seen films with Jason Statham in them will know of a certain vocal characteristic of those who live in the London area. Essentially, letters and wholes syllables are swallowed up in a glottal space, resulting in an almost total absence of the letter 't'. In fact, the very word 'letter' ends up being pronounced as "le'ah."

Dad had a similar, yet different, approach to pronouncing whole words. It was - and still is - a family in-joke that Dad could never really pronounce the 't' in the middle of a word. Instead, the hard sound of the consonant was transformed into a 'k' sound. Since my father was fond of Derbyshire, and a lot of his and Mum's spare time revolved around trips there, this invariable meant going through Matlock. Or, as Dad would call it, 'Macklock'.*

You can see how this is going, can't you?

Now, since Dad was rather fond of a tipple, especially single malt whiskies, the family joke has always been about 'lickle bockles'. My father always took it with good grace, and even enjoyed joining in with the banter. Brilliantly, this Gem has someone else falling foul of the whole scenario...

Hmm. If this was Twitter, this would probably be given "#guessyouhadtobethere".

Interestingly enough, when I was having an idle google, I found a site that would seem to have been named by my father...

I'm not making this up - ickle bockles is a site that provides you with all those horribly small toiletry containers that airports demand these days. Visit THEIR SITE to find out more.


*either way, Matlock is a lovely place to visit, but it is a right bugger to drive through as it's at the bottom of a long, narrow valley.

Feeling the family love

We've just got back from a long weekend visiting my mum up in the West Midlands. I say 'my' mum, but she insists that Julie also calls her that, because she doesn't believe in the tag of 'in-law'. We had a nice time, despite our various ailments, and even managed to get out for the day as a family, with my sister and Toby (the Jack Russell) completing the group.

Another thing we managed was a game of Scrabble. As usual, there were mock-cries of 'cheat!' - along with very real aspersions cast upon the character of various people who dared to make their play in someone else's ideal place. In the meantime, there was plenty of chit-chat; after all, there was no rush, so we took our time taking our turns.

Mum had recently bought the new album by Rod Stewart, "Time". It's actually really rather good, especially as it's his first album of original material for a couple of decades...

The opening track, 'She makes me happy' is one
of the most joyous songs I've heard in ages.

The thing is though, there is the matter of earworms. The human mind is usually open to subtle suggestions, with the result that some item or event (normally an almost insignificantly minor one) will trigger some memory. In the case of earworms, what will happen is that you then have a tune stuck in your head, playing on loop for hours.

Having listened to the latest Rod Stewart album a few times, Mum was most definitely liable to have a Rod-themed earworm start up. During a quiet moment, as we all contemplated the letters on our racks, Mum suddenly began to quietly sing a Rod Stewart classic. One which elicited a particularly apposite response from Julie...

Cue much hilarity.

Mind you, considering how Rod Stewart looked at the time of this famous song, d'ya think he's sexy?

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.

I say thee neigh!

A Thelwell pony, looking alarmed. Why? Read on.

On a recent visit to my mum, she, myself and Julie were sat around the table, enjoying a game of Scrabble. Julie noticed that I hadn't got my notepad with me and was quite pleased when I remarked in a jocular manner that I was giving her the night off.

Silly me.

Honestly, it must have been the most Gem-packed time I have ever known.

One of the hallmarks of our family Scrabble games is a penchent for - accidentally - going in a place that blocks the next player on. Mum is particularly vocal when it happens to her, and this occasion was no exception. I have no idea what I put down, but I was immediately labelled as a 'ratbag' and it was commented, with a very loud 'tut', that you "just can't choose your family, can you?"

Hot on the heels of this well-worn saying, Julie piped up, mixing metaphors and the gods know what else...

Well, you probably could, but that's not to say that you should.

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In case you weren't aware of his work, the equine at the top was sketched by a very well-known English cartoonist by the name of Thelwell. He was most famous for his cartoons of rotund ponies and little girls, which, when I say it like that, sounds like he should have been arrested...

Instead, I invite you to go look at the website and perhaps to google him.

Going potty through thick and thin

Having just given the patio and path a much-needed overhaul, Mum decided that now was the perfect time to invest in some patio plants. We already had plenty of pots of varying sizes, so that was something we didn't need to think about.

These aren't the real pots, but they do give you a good idea of the size we're talking about. They're nice pots, good to look at and hold a decent amount of plants. Unfortunately, some of them don't have any drainage holes, which is a problem in England.

On one of my recent trips, I tried to amend this situation. I managed to get a couple of holes in the base of one pot, but another was proving to be something of a problem. Even with a masonry bit in the drill, I was only just making a shallow dent in the bottom of one pot. I mean, look at the picture above - you can see they're fairly robust. Not only that, but this one pot was resisting everything I could throw at it with our resources.

In the end, I had to give up.

A couple of weeks later, I was visiting once more and my mum was telling me that she had also had a go at making a hole in the pot - and failed. I went out to have a look, but couldn't find any sign of further hole-making attempts. Moving the pot off the table, I turned it right side up and noticed a small mark on the bottom, inside the pot.

Odd. Why there? I mean, it was awkward to get at and if you did managed to break through, then the table would also be sporting a new hole. I asked Mum about it - this was our conversation...

Yes, Mum.

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.

The crabs are [getting] fresh.

Some time ago, on one of our visits up to visit family in Birmingham, it was decided that we would go to a Chinese restaurant. Now, I'm not a connoisseur or anything, but I and many others know that if you go to a Chinese restaurant and the place is full of Chinese people, then you know the food is going to be pretty good and at least somewhat authentic.

Set in the Nechellls part of Birmingham, there is in fact a whole Chinese shopping centre, which includes the said restaurant, a supermarket with all the ingredients needed for Chinese food (and more), plus several other apt businesses for the community. Surrounded by railings and gated, the shopping centre is even built to resemble a sort of stereotyped view of Chinese buildings - think pagodas and apply that to every unit in the retail centre.

Long story short, Wing Wah is a great place to eat, if you're ever in the area, and you can stock up on massive amounts of root ginger too in the Wing Yip supermarket.
Inside, the decor continues along the Oriental theme. However, since it is a restaurant, there are also a lot of items scattered around the place based on the general idea of 'food'.

One area was devoted to seafood, so there were various images of fish on the walls, along with a few fake or preserved crustaceans, starfish and the like.
However, Julie seemed to be distracted by one particular specimen...

Well, really! I knew it was a friendly atmosphere, but that's going too far!

Image courtesy of Piotr Motyka who doodled daily
up until 2012. Here's his blog, now moribund.

A flowery fate.

Recently, Julie and me finally had a week off together, so we decided to go and visit my mum up in Birmingham.
As it happened, this coincided with the end of Julie's job at the CAB, a place she had worked at for quite some time. Obviously, not every place of employment works like this, but when the news broke that Julie was leaving the Bureau, there was a genuine disappointment (and relief for Julie, who had been trying to leave the bloody place for years). There was also a not insubstantial whip-round. In addition to this, a number of other staff members felt compelled to shower my wife with gifts directly and in addition to what may have been planned.

So it was that I received a phone call, asking me to collect her from the Bureau. When I drove up to the office, what appeared to be a triffid walked out. It was only when Julie's faced peeked out from behind the foliage that I undid the car's automatic locks...
Yes, she was a popular person. Even the boss chipped in, by buying some fake medals and awarding them to her, claiming that they were for long service, toleration of a certain colleague, and success in the face of labyrinthine and constantly changing procedures and protocols.

One such gift was a bowl of flowering plants - absolutely lovely, but there was an immediate problem. Since we were going to be visiting my mother in two days' time, leaving them in our front room without care may have been problematic.

PS
In case you're wondering, the flowers are still alive and flourishing nicely.

World Book Night 2013 - update

Hi folks, you may recall that for the last couple of years, we have been involved with World Book Night, which encourages people to read by the wonderful process of giving away brilliant books for free.

Well, we're at it again. This year, out of the twenty titles available, I chose to give away copies of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.
However, in keeping with our previous efforts, we will also be giving away other goodies too. Over the next few weeks, I will be introducing them. Here's the first; Skallagrigg by William Horwood.

This is my all-time favourite book. It's not a fantasy novel, but it has an invented mythology within it. It challenges you to face up to facts of life that are extremely uncomfortable. What would you do if you suddenly found you were the father of a cerebral palsied baby and that the child's severe handicap was due to the car accident that also killed your wife?

The threads in this book are woven together with such care and skill that you not only find you are able to follow Esther Marquand's life in various care homes and schools, but that you also want to. You want to help her along, cheer her on and doff a cap to her when she achieves something amazing.
I love Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. When Frodo leaves Middle Earth at the end of the book, I will cry rivers for him. Esther Marquand is different. My emotions for her are nowhere near as primal. However, for a middle-aged man with no severe handicap to find himself identifying with a frustrated, heavily cerebral palsied young girl (and later, young lady), that indicates writing of the highest calibre.
Don't just take my word for it, though - here's a great blog about it.

Skallagrigg is going to be one of the prizes for one lucky person in our free draw. Since it's been out of print for a long time, the copy on offer is not of the highest quality, but it's readable and won't fall apart on you.

That's it for this time - next week, I shall reveal one of the other prizes that will be up for grabs.

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...

Bonus post - "Seriously, Siri?" on The Devil's Panties

It's webcomic time, again, folks!
Today, I'm introducing you to The Devil's Panties, a comic which is a lot less demonic and some way less naughty than the name implies. Jennie Breeden, the writer and artist, presents us with a slice of her life every weekday and most Saturdays. It's not strictly true-to-life, as not many people do really have miniature good/evil/princess versions of themselves bickering between themselves over her shoulder.
Apart from that, the comic follows Jennie and her fiancée (he recently proposed to her at a kilt-blowing convention, which should tell you a lot about both them and the webcomic) as they try and make a living from making the webcomic...
...er.. can anyone else hear Edith Piaf singing "Je ne regrette rien" very slowly?*

In case that puts you off, let me also tell you that Jennie has some very idiosyncratic friends and relatives, which is hardly surprising, considering that she herself is into, yes, kilt-blowing and fantasy LARPing (that is, Live Action Role Play), in which Jennie roleplays as an orc called Dammit. She even has a secondary webcomic called 'Geebas on Parade' in which she draws about her experiences as a LARPer. In many ways, that comic is almost funnier than TDP, however, it is back to the satanic underwear for today's bonus Gem.

Recently, there was a big family event in the Breeden household, which meant that a lot of the family were around. and it appears that Jennie's family are just as funny - intentionally or otherwise - as the lady herself. Take, for example, the efforts of one Uncle Sidney to record something on his iPhone. Actually, the recording probably went well enough. It was trying to use the speech recognition software known as Siri to label the file that caused him a spot of bother...

(copyright Jennie Breeden)

Poor Uncle. I wonder if they've let him forget it yet...
If that wasn't enough, there is a semi-regular feature in TDP known as 'What not to say in the bedroom' (usually featured on Saturdays). Take a look at this example...

(copyright Jennie Breeden)

So there you have it, another webcomic. Hope you liked the introduction - now go and read The Devil's Panties.

*If you haven't seen the film 'Inception', you won't have a chance of getting that joke. Sorry.

A ding-dong at the drugstore

Those of you who know me, know that I have a life-long problem with severe headaches and migraines. I have tried loads of things. Various preventatives, pain-killers, homoeopathic remedies (yes, I have been that desperate) and even a bizarre experience with a Chinese herbalist.*
Currently, I'm on pregabalin, which is technically an anti-convulsant and generally used in the treatment of epilepsy.

The thing is, pregabalin works by affecting the brain's electrical impulses and thereby has the serendipitous side-effect of helping to prevent and ease head-related pain.
Which is a good thing.
Of course, nothing I take is ever 100% effective, but it has dramatically reduced the amount of incidents I have had, and their severity.
Which is also a good thing. Especially since the HR department at work were taking a rather dim view of things.
A few days ago, me and Julie were walking into town, passing a small chemist (drugstore). It's not part of a large chain company, so it's sometimes limited in what it does and does not have in stock. Bearing that in mind, Julie thought to question me on the subject. Considering she was about to mention an unfamiliar medical term, it was with very unfortunate timing that Julie suddenly had an attack of The Rambles...

Count yourselves lucky - she could have said "Pregaba-labba-doo!"

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*Quite some years ago, before I met Julie, there was a family get-together in Southend-On-Sea. Everyone and his dog were invited. At the time, there was a core group of four of us that did most things together; me, my sister, my best mate and his friend, who was dating my sister. As I was unattached and my mate would have been left out, I asked if it would be OK if he came as my "+1".
Oh boy. The gossip and misunderstandings from that simple choice took years to die down.
That's beside the point though.
The family, over the years, has spread over a large part of England. Me, I was living in a small town called Thame, which is a little less than 90 miles away from Southend. The plan was that our little group would make our separate ways to Southend and then get together for a wander around.
We were in a shopping centre when we saw a Chinese herbalist. At that point, I was willing to try anything to kill the headaches up to, and possibly including, trepanning. We went inside and this woman started to take my details. When it got to my address, she suddenly became rather excited.


     "Thame? You know Thame?
     "Er... yes - I live there. Wh..?"
     "You know Piece of Cake?"
     "...yes...?"


It turns out that this Chinese herbalist in Southend visits, every now and then, a small town in the middle of nowhere, with the sole intention of giving talks on how to decorate cakes. And then yours truly wanders into her shop looking for a headache cure.
Don't you just LOVE coincidence?

Your mother was a hamster and your father...

...may smell of elderberries, but that's besides the point, you English dog.

Yes, thank-you, I'll take it from here, if you don't mind.
On a recent journey up to Scotland in the company van, I had managed to sneak Julie in under the radar and since the hotel room was double and paid for by the company, all we had to do was pay for breakfast. Sweet.
Even better was one of our stops along the way.
Eastbourne to Edinburgh is only a short distance if you're looking in the index of an atlas of the British Isles. Driving it is a rather different matter. To make things easier, we planned to break the journey into two days, stopping over at my parents' house for a night each time (so that's why there have been so many family Scrabble games, eh? Interesting...). While we were there for the Northbound night, my father, who is - to put it mildly - rather interested in Scotland, especially the northern parts and Isles. He's made many journeys there, thanks to an old friend who lives in Wick. Naturally, since he has had experience, he was happy to pass on a few hints, one of which was to stop over at the Westmorland services on the M6 motorway. It's greatly different to the normal, horrible, bland motorway service station, he told me.

Oh look, an 'exciting' addition to a bland service station.
Forton Services on the M6

On the other hand, there's this.

Isn't this much better?

If you travel along the M6, one of Britain's longest roads, then you could do yourself a big favour and stop at the Westmorland services at Tebay. For a start, you can see from the pictures above that they're far prettier than the normal crap. Not only that, but once you get inside, then you'll find that the ridiculous chain cafes, shops and restaurants are absent. Instead there are farm shops with local produce and a restaurant offering dishes that really are made freshly, with fresh ingredients.
Damn, I'm hungry now, and I'm not going to help myself with this next bit...

As I said, my father is rather hot for the Scot, especially Robert Burns, his poetry, and THE event of the Scottish year, Burns' Night. The main thing here is that Dad does like a bit of haggis. I'm partial to it as well, but Dad's just that bit happier for eating one. With that in mind, I had resolved to buy him one as we were going to be dropping in to Scotland for a flying visit.
As it turned out, buying a decent one-man haggis was a problem in Scotland, but not at the aforementioned services, so we browsed the shops and bought a few gifts. I'd already headed towards the chilled food section, and Julie was following. I announced my intention to her;

Not a lot I could say to that.

No pros, but plenty of cons

Back to my family and yet another game of Scrabble. Two games, actually. You'd think we have nothing better to do, wouldn't you? With five people around the table, one person had to sit on the sidelines, and I volunteered with alacrity. Also with appropriate alacrity, I dashed off for my notebook and pen.
Oh come on - you don't think I was giving up a four-way Scrabble game out of the goodness of my heart, do you? Especially considering when two of the four are Julie and my father. OK, so my (currently) reticent mother and my sister were there too, but we all know where the fun lies, don't we?
Actually, in this case, no. Dad and Julie were bucking the trends and setting standards by winning a game each, an unusual event in itself, as they are usually proud of their ability, if that's the right word, to come last in a game. So much so that Dad appears to have himself a catchphrase, which he gleefully calls out as we're setting up the game.

"Bagsy coming last!"*

In one sense, I suppose, it's almost a mantra, to ward off any bad luck (ok, sour grapes, possibly) in case he does lose. Admittedly, if it's just him vs Mum, then the odds are that he'll lose.
Like I said though, He shared wins with Julie over a pair of games, something Mum took badly, sulking over a spectacularly awful set of letters. My sister, on the other hand - despite a couple of brief snits here and there - took their wins with a certain awkward grace...

We all looked at Dad at that point. It was so much like something he would have said it was uncanny. It was almost as if he'd scripted that line. Only the fact he was creasing up proved it was the first time he'd heard that line. Oh, well. At least I got one final Gem out of the game...

...or did I...?

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*In the USA and other countries, this equates to calling 'dibs'.

Keeping it in the family: You're doing it right - and legally!

Julie and me, like any other couple, have our differences in taste. While I'll read lots of stuff, across the board, including hard science, fantasy, travel writing etc, etc... Julie, on the other hand, will tend to stick to chick-lit, with the occasional celebrity bio thrown in for good measure. She listens to good ol' pop music, cheap, cheesy and cheerful and thinks that stuff like Radiohead is dreary, morose nonsense... er... actually, I pretty much agree with her about that last bit, but you get the idea.

Despite our views on each other's likes, there exists a certain amount of middle ground. Of course there is. There has to be for any relationship to survive, just as you also need the differences for that middle ground to exist. We both like musicals, Mock The Week, games of Scrabble and watching The Muppet Show. Whether or not you like them, you know the Muppets - if nothing else, the amount of publicity the recent film has been given means the only people unaware of it currently reside in the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. And even then, I'm not sure.

Returning to the point, we were sat together watching a classic episode (1976! And it still feels somewhat progressive!), one which had quite a few high spots. However, with the way Muppet humour goes, I found myself, on more than one occasion, turning my head to give my wife a steady look. It does have to be said that much of what they were coming out with could so very easily have been uttered by my darling, off-beat wife.
Things carried on in this vein for a while, until I was in danger of giving myself repetitive strain injury. The final straw came in the form of a Muppet musical number, courtesy of the stereotypical hillbilly Gogolala Jubilee Jugband.

Now, I hope this is internationally viewable, or this post is going to fall flatter than a pancake under an elephant's arse...

It's actually good for me to watch this again, as I spent most of the first time giving Julie The Look.
Tell you what, just in case you weren't able to watch The Muppets' version, here's Ray Stevens with his own version of the song - complete with an in-video graph that is either very helpful or just makes things worse.

Hopefully, you could watch one of those two clips. Now, you see why I had Julie in mind when this came on? Even she agrees that "I'm my own grandpa" is hilariously baffling.
One final stab at making sense of this, OK? Here's a nice, clear chart depicting all the relationships and familial ties referred to in the song.

...nope. I'm still baffled.
Mind you, it doesn't help that I spent much of the song thinking to myself, "why does this remind me of Bill Wyman?" Maybe, you pillock, it's because the ex-Rolling Stone did almost exactly this. You see, the dirty old man married an 18 year-old girl, but then his son married her mother... I did wonder whether it had been written with him in mind, but it turns out that the song was originally released in 1947. I know Bill's knocking on a bit, but I doubt he's that old...

A family feudin' over features

There's nothing like a family for being able to push all the right - or wrong - buttons, is there? They have known each other for long enough to know what pleases or annoys them. Technically, that should make it all that much easier to buy them a gift at the appropriate times, but it never turns out that way, does it? In the end, out of desperation, it's a trip to a shop and handing over some of your cash in exchange for a gift voucher. On the other hand, we all know what familiarity is apt to breed, don't we?
As we saw last time, my sister responded a little harshly to my father making a rather triumphant move in a board game (although, in fairness, he HAD just stuffed up her own potentially game blagging turn.) It was during the same game that I decided to try and take a sneaky photograph of my sister. The thing is, she's rather like our mother when it comes to this. If they catch you trying to take a photo, and it's not during a special occasion, then you had better hope your life insurance details are up to date. Fortunately for me, my sister was, this time, on the other side of a large oak table and the cutlery had long since been cleared away.

*FLASHclick*

After the cursing had died down, we looked at the picture I had taken. I reckoned it wasn't all that bad - it certainly could have been a lot worse. My sister, on the other hand, demurred, which only gave our Dad a chance to take a quick dig;

There was so much flaming going on, I contemplated looking for a fire extinguisher...

Definitely NOT a (blank) expression on her face.

We're a Scrabble-playing family. We're also fairly competitive, although I will qualify that comment; It's not so much we're playing against each other, but more that we're simply trying to do the best we can with our particular set of letters and however the board is looking at any one time. Quite often, though, especially when we have managed to wrangle our racks into a Bingo (a word using all seven letters), we will turn out to harbour a certain animosity towards our opponents. Especially if our Bingo can only be placed in one spot on the board, AND SOME BASTARD HAS JUST GONE IN MY PLACE... AAARRRRGGGHHHH!
I'm serious. We've all done it. Julie has done it. I've done it. My mother groans and huffs like a big bad wolf when it happens to her.*

My sister, however, is a little more demonstrative. Which is a little unfair on this occasion, as my Dad had excelled himself with a grade-A Bingo, leading over a double word spot and onto a triple letter square. (sorry about that - inherited detail-obsessive behaviour). Laying the letters down, he placed a blank tile onto one square and tapped it, commenting, "that's a 'D', that is." As I implied, my sister was entirely unappreciative, and not a little blunt about it...

Cue much biting of lips as we tried not to laugh. It HAD been a bit much, but - boy, it WAS funny...

By the way, in case you hadn't guessed the origin of this Gem's title, here you go. Something a bit Special.

* Yes, all of us, Mum. You may deny it all you want, but how many times have you called someone a 'ratbag' for going in your spot? Sure, you'll applaud them for having made a good play, if that is indeed the case. On the other hand, if someone has just blocked you with an insultingly low-scoring word, then I can personally attest that you will be having a major case of The Grumps.