Think of the bloody children.

Mine that is.

Having just spent the weekend at my son’s place wherefore I was subjected in my  mind, to a horror akin to waterboarding, ie gardening. I now find myself involved in helping my daughter, her husband and child move into a new house. So I’ll be hanging pictures, putting up shelves, decorating, plumbing, electrickery, and MORE BLOODY GARDENING!

Bah.

Do I dare?

Yes.

Aaaaaaaagh

WARNING: Do not read this and drink at the same time.

This is a review for Veet For Men (which I must say I didn't know existed) 3 July 2012 By A. Chappell which can be found on Amazon. If you don't cry you will wet yourself.

After having been told my danglies looked like an elderly Rastafarian I decided to take the plunge and buy some of this as previous shaving attempts had only been mildly successful and I nearly put my back out trying to reach the more difficult bits. Being a bit of a romantic I thought I would do the deed on the missus's birthday as a bit of a treat.

I ordered it well in advance and working in the North sea I considered myself a bit above some of the characters writing the previous reviews and wrote them off as soft office types...oh my fellow sufferers how wrong I was. I waited until the other half was tucked up in bed and after giving some vague hints about a special surprise I went down to the bathroom. Initially all went well and I applied the gel and stood waiting for something to happen.

I didn't have long to wait.

At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head. Religion hadn't featured much in my life until that night but I suddenly became willing to convert to any religion to stop the violent burning around the turd tunnel and what seemed like the destruction of the meat and two veg.

Struggling to not bite through my bottom lip I tried to wash the gel of in the sink and only succeeded in blocking the plughole with a mat of hair. Through the haze of tears I struggled out of the bathroom across the hall into the kitchen by this time walking was not really possible and I crawled the final yard to the fridge in the hope of some form of cold relief. I yanked the freezer drawer out and found a tub of ice cream, tore the lid of and positioned it under me. The relief was fantastic but only temporary as it melted fairly quickly and the fiery stabbing soon returned .

Due to the shape of the ice cream tub I hadn't managed to give the starfish any treatment and I groped around in the draw for something else as I was sure my vision was going to fail fairly soon.I grabbed a bag of what I later found out was frozen sprouts and tore it open trying to be quiet as I did so.I took a handful of them and tried in vain to clench some between the cheeks of my arse. This was not doing the trick as some of the gel had found it's way up the chutney channel and it felt like the space shuttle was running it's engines behind me.

This was probably and hopefully the only time in my life I was going to wish there was a gay snowman in the kitchen which should give you some idea of the depths I was willing to sink to in order to ease the pain. The only solution my pain crazed mind could come up with was to gently ease one of the sprouts where no veg had gone before.

Unfortunately, alerted by the strange grunts coming from the kitchen the other half chose that moment to come and investigate and was greeted by the sight of me, arse in the air, strawberry ice cream dripping from my bell end pushing a sprout up my arse while muttering..." Ooooh that feels good ". Understandably this was a shock to her and she let out a scream and as I hadn't heard her come in it caused an involuntary spasm of shock in myself which resulted in the sprout being ejected at quite some speed in her direction.

I can understand that having a sprout farted against your leg at 11 at night in the kitchen probably wasn't the special surprise she was expecting and having to explain to the kids the next day what the strange hollow in the ice cream was didn't improve my status...So to sum it up Veet removes hair, dignity and self respect...:)

Do read some of the other reviews

I’m back

Though I doubt that the majority of the world have missed me.

We managed the journey back from “Oop North” in three and a half hours. All in all, a pretty good time. However your blogger in chief here, hates having to drive on a Sunday. I used to drive every Monday and Friday around the M25 and down the M4 in the rush hour, and was amazed by the professionalism of the drivers of both lorries and car drivers who did this every day. Very rarely did you have to take any serious evasive action, most drivers anticipated the various manoeuvres  of other vehicles.

Not on a Sunday.

Now I drive a powerful car, and like to use it to get from A to B as quickly as possible. One of the things that annoy me most, is when the Sunday driver has no idea that I’m bearing down on him and his insistence of “I’ll stick to 60 so as not to break the law” syndrome. Even when the limit is 70 Mph. I was taught that for every five seconds looking forward, you should spend one second looking in your rear view mirror. This is to gain spatial awareness of the traffic around you. In future do look in your mirror. If you do you’ll realise I don’t appear behind you as if transported down by teleporter.

Another little fact that differentiates a regular motorway user from a Sunday driver is the use of brakes. I very rarely use them. If you’re  using your spatial awareness, you look ahead and watch the brake lights of the vehicles some way ahead of you. All you do is take your foot off the throttle and increase the safe distance between you and the vehicle in front.

Then there's the old man in a hat driving his Rover 25 in the left hand lane that drives at a lower speed than an articulated lorry. Thus causing the Artics to have to pull into the middle lane to pass him. Thus adding to the congestion.

And as for the coloured (Am I allowed to use that term these days?) gentleman driving a taxi in the outside lane at that fore mentioned 60 MPH. Look around you before pulling over into the middle lane. If I hadn’t hooted you, you would have side swiped that car that was minding it’s own business. Incidentally I’ve made a mental note to never hire you.

Lastly. I haven’t had an accident (Tempting fate now) for 30 years. Mind you I’ve probably caused 100’s of Rover 25 to hurtle off the roads.

Just as a foot note. I hired a car to get me from Weymouth to Kent and what did they give me? A Rover 75! I was so ashamed that I parked it a car park rather that have it sit on my drive overnight.

The Kiss of death

Some Bikers were riding west on I-74 when they saw a girl about to jump off a Peoria bridge, so they stopped.

The leader, George, a big burly man of 53, gets off his bike, walks through the gawkers, past the State Trooper, and says, "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to commit suicide," she says.

While he didn't want to appear "sensitive," he didn't want to miss a be-a-legend opportunity either, so he asked ... "Well, before you jump, why don't you give me a kiss?"

So, with no hesitation at all, she leaned back over the railing and did just that... and it was a long, deep, lingering kiss followed immediately by another one.

After she's finished, George gets approval from his group, the onlookers, and even the State Trooper, then says, "Wow!  That was the best kiss I have ever had, Honey!  That's a real talent you are wasting, Sugar Shorts.  You could be famous if you rode with me.  Why are you committing suicide?"

"My parents don't like me dressing up like a girl."

The onlookers are still unclear whether she jumped or was pushed!

Skool

edukasion att itts fynist.

maikes yu wundar whot kidz r tort thess dais.

Away

I’ve headed up north to spend the weekend with my son. Worryingly I’ve been asked to bring my tools. I just hope it doesn’t involve plumbing.

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence but it seems to me that since they installed average speed cameras at the Dartford crossing on the M25, there seems to be permanent tailbacks on both sides for miles.

UPDATE

It took six bloody hours to get there. Normally it takes three and a half. I expect they’ll start installing parking meters on the A1 next.

Plumbing new depths

Well in the back of a cupboard, that is.

This a tale of skill, strength, despair at times, tenacity, and finally success.

My central heating has servo operated shut of valves for heating of hot water and house heating. I’d noticed over the last two weeks that occasionally the radiators were heating up when hot water was demanded. The obvious culprit would seem to be a leaky servo valve for the radiator network. Rather than replace the entire unit (£60) I hunted around on the interweb and found a supplier that could supply me with internal spares for the valve at £15. (By the way, if you’re looking for similar central heating spares I would direct you to WWW.Bes.co.uk I ordered the parts at 7 PM. They were with me before 8 the following morning).

Now the background has been explained, now the fun begins.

A simple job I thought. Just a case of removing the servo motor from the valve, removing the old parts and replacing with new, replacing the servo motor and job done. Simples. Only tool required, a screwdriver.

Not. The silly fool that had positioned the valve unit (Me), had never thought that he would ever need to overhaul it in situ. I couldn’t get at the fixing screws. Bugger.

Only thing for it was to remove the servo valve in it’s entirety from the pipework. The only problem was that this pipework is 22mm diameter and has work hardened with age. The two connection nuts put up a bit of a struggle but nothing compared to removing the valve from the pipework. Even after slackening every connection in sight it took the combined efforts of a three foot crowbar supplemented by three foot of scaffold pole to enable the valve to be withdrawn. The actual refurbishment of the valve took a matter of minutes and I was thinking that I was on a romp for the home straight.

Wrong.

To get the valve back in place took even more brute force and I was starting to sweat like a rapist before finally the valve popped back in position between the two pipes. Nearly at the last furlong. Just simply screw the connection nuts and tighten. Top nut OK, but when I thought that the bottom nut was seated correctly on the threads and started to tighten, horrifyingly I spied a little sliver of brass sidling it’s way from the nut. Stop stop, you’re cross threading, my brain threw at me. Now your FE, when he does plumbing uses as few compression fittings as possible, and solders everything in sight where possible. The thought of  having to cut and make new soldered connections was a dreadful thought worthy of suicide on the authors part due to the confines.

However casting a glinty eye at the connection I had a feeling that it was slightly out of line and after a little correction tried the connection again. Lo and behold the nut firmly screwed up the thread (No sniggering at the back please), and with a slight squeak was firmly tightened.

And guess what? Everything works as it should, with no leaks.

Morals of the story:

1. I’ll never be a design engineer.

2, Weigh up the task correctly before you begin.

3. Never give up.

4. Employ a plumber and let him bugger it up while you snigger in the background?

5. Expect the worst. And plan for it.

Where’s my Nobel prize then?

A simple analogy to show how climate change  works.

Stefan Boltzmann was seriously injured in the writing of this post.

Should I, shouldn’t I?

I’m sorely tempted to send the link below to The parliamentary committee on Plain packaging of cigarettes, The dreadful Arnott of ASH, CRUK, and sundry other vile groups that are supporting this ridiculous idea.

Cuddly children and fluffy kittens for all.
Only click on the link if you are a member of any of the above organisations.

*You have been warned*

Update: HERE

From Sadbutmadlad