Fingers of a troll

The last time the two of us went to visit my family in Birmingham, it was for the Christmas break. Since then, I have been up there a few times, but Julie has had to stay behind. Partly due to work constraints, and partly because we couldn't take Roxy with us.

It's a long-standing joke, both between me and Julie and for my family as a whole, that no matter what pains any of us may take to remember everything we want to take on a journey, there will always be something forgotten. Normally, it's a minor thing, but I have been known to turn around to get my wallet...

On our Christmas visit, it was a decent enough journey. Even the infamous M25 was behaving itself.
The only problem with that, though, is that there is no traffic to moan about, and I have to concentrate that bit more.

I am very much a defensive driver; I assume that every other driver on the road is a idiot or a complete arsehole. After a fair amount of time driving since passing my own test, it seems to me that I have a pretty strong theory going, and as a result, I am forever looking around me and trying to second-guess cars that are two lanes away from me.

During these times of concentration, Julie's normal habit is to drift off to sleep. This time, however, was different.

It took a while, but I gradually became aware that Julie seemed to be repeatedly counting something off on both hands...

For miles afterwards, all I could think of was this scene from Bruce Almighty:

Drawing a blank

You may have noticed that Julie can go through something of a spate of Gems. And then there will be times when she is almost silent. This is not to say that Julie says nothing on these occasions, just that anything she utters is utterly unremarkable and fairly sensible.

We're not interested in that, though, are we?

At the other end of the scale, many Gems are wasted simply because of the rate they stumble from Julie's mouth. I will be frantically scribbling in some kind of spastic shorthand, usually trying to shelter the notepad from wind and/or rain. Julie, in the meantime, will be stood to one side, trying to rein herself in and to explain herself. Obviously, the two activities are at odds with each other, and the conflict inevitably results in yet more Gems.
All while I am still trying to jot down the previous ones.

You know what the sad thing is? Usually, the stuff that Julie comes up with is solid gold and miles better than the scrawl meandering across the notepaper. Unfortunately, by the time I finish with the first Gem, my brain has let me down and I can't remember the slightest detail about The Golden One.

Just occasionally, though, the situation is reversed; I will be busy scribbling, but on top of things. And Julie will be the one with the memory problems. Sort of. Except she tries to blame it on me.

The illegible type

So we had our friend around to visit, which was lovely. Pierre, however, had never experienced Julie in full-on Gem mode in person. Also, he found out first-hand just why there are bits of paper scattered around the place - because you just never know when a Gem will occur.
Naturally enough, since there is no way you can suppress a talent like Julie's for very long, our German friend did find himself wondering if it was a problem with his understanding of English, or if logic had indeed done a bunk and left the conversation.

Me? I was scrabbling for one of those handy bits of paper, and reassuring Pierre that his commendable grasp of our language hadn't slipped, I hastily scribbled down what Julie had said.
As I have said before, there are often occasions when I will be writing a Gem down, but Julie will use that little gap in the conversation to come up with yet another Gem. Sometimes, it gets so that I'm struggling to keep up.
Fortunately, it wasn't that bad this time - only one more Gem was produced. But, boy, was it a belter...

"Yesterday, upon the stair...

I met a man who wasn't there..."

You may recognise the above quote as the opening lines of the poem "Antigonish" by Hughes Mearns; I was reminded of it quite strongly by today's Gem. Read on and see if you agree.

I had not long returned from work and we were sat having a nice cup of tea and a chat. Apropos of nothing,* Julie commented on her leg, which was had been revealed by the riding up of her trouser leg.

"I've got hairs on my legs!"

I explained, in my picky, slightly anally-retentive manner, that humans have hair all over, apart from the soles of our feet and the palms of our hands. After a brief bout of denial, brought on by the fact my wife couldn't - and wouldn't - believe me when I said that she even had hair on her chest, Julie asked if we had hair on our fingers. I replied that we did, but only on the tops, "treat the underside of your fingers like they were extensions of your palms."

Oh dear...
At least Julie had the self -awareness to burst out laughing when she realised what she had just said.

*Let's face it - this is Julie's modus operandi, isn't it?

Julie and the demon drink

It's a subject that has been raised in the past. Mostly in conjunction with the game Trivial Pursuit, it has to be said, but last night was something of an exception. Last night, I was on the computer, trying to do some real work for a change. After a while, and feeling frustrated with a lack of progress, I decided to check into Facebook and see what was going on.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Julie was busy becoming acquainted with a half-bottle of red wine, although the first I knew of this was when the exchanges on a particular comment thread suddenly took a turn for the tipply. What followed was 150 comments of varying sobriety and increasing incredulity and admiration.

No, I'm not going to reproduce any of it here.
Sorry.
How about this instead?

Long-time followers will of course spot the similarity between this and this very early classic - also produced via the magic of alcohol.
The thing is, I know there will be a few people out there who will feel cheated by the above post. After all, anyone could come out with something like that when they were three sheets to the wind, couldn't they? Well, maybe they could and maybe they couldn't. The 'fingers' comments, however, were produced with no prompting, apropos of nothing, in a rather dreamy fashion.
How about this one, then?

Now, THAT'S more like it.
Nope. I haven't got a clue either.

Fingertips part 1. And part 2, too.

OK, so you've been reading for a while now and you've got the hang of how things can be a little different on Planet Julie. In the normal run of things, she'll come up with a gem anyway. With a game of Trivial Pursuit, it's wise to keep a pad handy for anything she may say.

So, what do you think the addition of alcohol is going to achieve? Well, something quite like the following gem, to be perfectly honest. Out of nowhere, in the middle of a natural silence and in something of a dreamy of tone of voice, Julie says....

This is partway through her ONLY glass of wine, folks. As if that wasn't good enough, we were discussing the above comment a few days later. After having a laugh about it, Julie turned to me and, in all seriousness, said;

"That's nice de... wait, what? BENEATH your feet? Are you from feudal China or something?"