Drains, Panes and Autovents
The few days of sunshine we have had of late have at very least given me a chance to take a few photos that at least give the impression that Spring is here, and the clock change is a pretty good landmark. I remain unconvinced about daylight saving and its costs/benefits. Part of me really just wishes we could stick to one time and stop all this temporal confusion. We (the Brits) created GMT, it runs through our country and from it every other time on the planet is measured, yet for half the year we don’t even use it ourselves!
Oh well, the plants and wildlife isn’t bothered by such man-made contrivances, although our cats just see it as an opportunity to moan on for twice as much food (in which ever direction the clocks jump).
One thing I haven’t lacked over recent days is company. Usually it is a somewhat hermitic existence that I endure, and beyond David my only mortal contact seems to be with the Postman (who is the stuff of 70s sit-coms meets Hammer House of Horror) and the two cats. But the last week or so has been a veritable overflowing of visitors and a maelstrom of activity. I am reminded of an episode of “To The Manner Born” where Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton is feeling more than a tad lonely but sates her need for human contact by employing an endless stream of tradesmen (you could call them tradesmen then, none of this tradesperson malarkey)
to provide her with quotes, measurements, estimates and designs for work she had no intention of ever commissioning. In the course of the last month we have had so much work done on and around the house that at times I have felt like we were living in the middle of an episode of Property Ladder, minus Sarah Beeny’s latest baby bump and billowing boobs, of course.
The boiler (I refer here to our heating system, NOT Ms Beeny, in case you were wondering at the somewhat inelegant conceptual juxtaposition), as recently reported, was the first to receive attention, has now been upgraded to a combi and is wonderful. But that lead on to us buying a new bathroom suite, thanks to some extra money that landed in David’s lap. Sales prices, pre-VAT increase benefits, extensive ‘shopping around on t’interweb’ and a good deal of bartering landed us a pretty good deal and we ended up with bog, bath and basin residing in the back bedroom for a few weeks. Brian, the plumber, was off sunning himself in Tenerife (presumably on the proceeds of our boiler installation) and seemed strangely reluctant to curtail his holiday to spend a few days in our ‘smallest room’. Some people have
no sense of urgency! This however did give us time to fill the remaining floor space in the spare room with tonnes of tiles and gallons of grout and eventually Brian succumbed to the allure of a semi in Salford and commenced demolition. Brian comes complete with his sidekick somewhat inevitably called Charlie. They are both local people. Obviously the bathroomectomy meant long periods with no water but I remembered my boy scout training and has sufficient bottles filled in advance to still be able to provide endless brews (builder’s strength with a mountain of sugar) throughout the day. I have to say my water storage abilities were second only to a camel although with much less spitting and far fewer Arabs.
We had a few challenging moments with no loo, but having spent a couple of months in hospital I am no stranger to pissing in a plastic container (although did take care to ensure that the ‘in’ bottles were never mixed with the ‘out’ bottles – or at least I think I did). Thankfully we were flush-enabled before any greater urgency required for more creative waste disposal solutions.
Why do people associated with the building trades always think that they can drop plaster, nails, bolts, screws, grout and polyfiller down the loo and expect it to flush away? All you ever get is some sort of modern art sculpture in cement and metal stuck solid to the bottom of the pan which requires scooping out or plunging to the brink of extinction? At least that isn’t such a bad job with a new toilet; maybe it is their way of paying you back for whatever they found in the U-bend of the old one. Those dentures were NOT mine!
A bathroom stripped of all its ceramics is a sorry site (sic) and it just shows how shoddily modern buildings are thrown together. Slowly though the new suite migrated from the bedroom to its new home to a fanfare of blow torches, clanging wrenches and clattering in the loft as the wiring for the shower was moved. Apparently the loo fittings are ‘a bugger’ and the bath outlet is ‘uncommonly low’ resulting in more holes being bashed through the walls and I had to shift all our patio furniture, bins and garden paraphernalia to allow external access. I don’t DO furniture removals! Do I look like a Bernard Cribbins song character?
Right said Brian, outlet is a bugger, couldn’t be much snugger, little room you know
Tried to budge it, couldn’t even nudge it, he was getting nowhere and so
He had a cup of teaRight said Brian, gave a shout to Charlie, up comes Charlie from the floor below
After straining, heaving and complaining, we was getting nowhere and so
They had a cup of teaCharlie had a think and he thought they ought, to
Take apart the cistern
And the thing that’s like a piston,
But it did no good,
Well I never thought it wouldRight said Brian, have to make a new hole, right behind the new bowl, wouldn’t take a mo
Took his hammer, hit it with a clamour, should got ‘em somewhere but no
So Charlie said lets have another cup of tea and I said right-oRight said Brian, have to get my ladder, sod your straining bladder, you’ll have to wait to go
I was cursing, insides nearly bursting but it got us nowhere and so
They had a cup of teaRight said Charlie, that’s the waste disposal that I just suppose’ll really have to go
Into the soil pipe, but the fitting is the wrong type and so
They had a cup of teaRight said Brian, climbing up a ladder, with his crowbar gave a mighty whack
Was he in trouble, half a ton of rubble, landed with a thwack
So Charlie and me had another cup of tea on the patio out backI’ll said to Brian, thanks a lot for trying, but I really have to poo
He said he ought’a reconnect the water and that’s the thing that he would do
If it wasn’t for the leakage, the risk of major seepage and so
I had to hold my peeRight said Bri, gotta sort your ball-cock, think it’s got an airlock that’s blocked your overflow
But when he started flushing, the water started gushing
So with much relief to me I got to have a pee and then they went home
Now nepotism rules on the Avenue and Brian had organised for his son-in-law to do the tiling for us. Just to explain the intricate family relationships involved here, Charlie is Brian’s son and he lives on the estate. Brian’s daughter, Ruth, lives diagonally opposite from us, about 20 yards away, and she is married to Rob the tiler. Rob couldn’t come round to tile our bathroom for a week, so we were left with naked walls, no shower and old grout in all our crevices.
But this was not a week of rest by any means. Having shifted the patio furniture for Brian to access my soil pipe (Matron!), then moved it all back again when he had finished, we found that it all had to be moved yet again! A while ago we were approached by a man in a fluorescent jacket and gruff tones with an offer to fill our cavities as part of a council scheme. Never ones to turn down such an offer we agreed (who would turn down a man with a big hose offering to pump you full at no cost at all?). It’s amazing what the council will subsidise these days. I wasn’t aware that my cavity was in need of such attention, but he drilled a test hole and announced that I was in need of a good lagging, so who am I to argue? He left, promising to return with a team of burley workmen (again, a bargain) and we have been waiting to hear his gang bang at my front door. They chose this week to arrive, and so we had
to shift all the patio stuff yet again, to give them the access they needed. When you have a gang of men coming up your back passage waving their hoses, you really want to ease their entry as much as possible. Now, the noise of several men going flat out with hammer drills and a huge foam-spewing nozzle is enough to give anyone a headache. Add to this the fact that the integrity of my cavity had been compromised by Brian bashing through an extra hole and we ended up with foam ‘snow’ drifting into the bathroom and it has been quite a fun time. Still, they promise that we should be 30% more efficient (or I assume that equates to a 30% increase in green credentials – if we go much greener we’ll be positively vegetative).
And on the subject of all things green we have now also welcomed a new greenhouse to the back garden. My seedlings and propagators were taking up all available window space in the house (we had even cobbled together a second tier on the kitchen window), so that looking out was much like peering through a
jungle. B&Q had a sale. Say no more. To be fair we bought a greenhouse frame, base, glass, all the doings to make the foundations, weed barrier and slate chippings for less than the frame itself was supposed to cost. And they supplied a better model than the one we reserved.
So, at one point we had boxes of frame, base and glazing also piled in the back garden, along with bags of sand, cement and slate, all of which were included in the items that had to be constantly moved around to allow Brian et al to position their ladders.
Now, neither David nor I naturally gravitate towards DIY tasks (hence the need for plumbers, tillers and very odd job men). Our relationship with DIY is much like our ability to fly – we don’t have the right tackle, if we tried to fly unaided we would hurt ourselves and anyone around us and we are better off paying a man with a machine to do the flying for us. God chose to give us the gay gene, not the DIY gene. (Only
lesbians get both). But just occasionally we get overwhelmed with a sudden feeling of ‘how difficult can it be?’ which more often than not ends in disaster. We don’t do tiling because once a hammer decided to miss the tile targeted for removal and appeared again in the next room. We don’t do plumbing because indoor fountains are only cool when you plan them. But a greenhouse foundation – that’s just some holes in the ground, right?
Well, yes, and no. Remember too that I am very limited in energy, stamina, flexibility and strength. Picture a somewhat gnomic figure sitting on a stool, hunched over and picking away at the lawn with a trowel, stopping every ten minutes for a rest and wazzed up to the eyes on pain killers and you’ll not be far from the truth. Two years ago the work of levelling the plot and digging a few holes for concrete foundations would have taken me an afternoon. Now though, picking away with a trowel and having to stop whenever anything needed lifting, shifting or manoeuvring was a somewhat herculean task.David has the muscle that I lack, but has no idea of how to go about things; I have the planning skill but not the execution. In true Mr and
Mrs Jack Spratt style we ended up with the required number of holes in the right places, dug to the appropriate depth. I invoked all the Gods of trigonometry, geometry, calculus and advanced quantum physics to ensure that the base was both square and level. I was only one step short of sacrificing a virgin to appease the heavens but they are only available in Salford by mail order (– or is that male order?). The foundations, unlike the virgin, were duly laid. We were committed (probably should have been years ago). Once that concrete set there was no turning back. Even a slight wonk at this stage would mean that the frame would be twisted and the glass would not fit. You want excitement in your life, you want pressure? Build a greenhouse!
A weed barrier membrane and slate chippings were added, as per the best gardening advice websites I could find. No way were we up to laying a concrete floor and I don’t think my nerves would have stood for slabs. I have read so many websites on the subject that my eyes are crossing and the only conclusion I have reached is that no two gardeners seem to agree on a single method of doing anything. At all. Ever. The slate will be fine and looks quite good, at least for now. How well it will stand the test of time remains to be seen.
Now, as a kid I was much more in the Lego camp than Meccano; an opinion which the frame construction has only served to strengthen. I turn cold at the thought of anything that needs a spanner and somehow scaling up Meccano to full greenhouse size did nothing to make the job any less fiddly or frustrating. But slowly and surely a structure began to form and I can say that for a moment I felt the same sense of pride that Isambard Kingdom Brunel must have felt when he tightened the last nut on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I just wonder if he too shared that awful sinking sensation when he realised that Strut F2-4 was suppose to be fitted with the recessed flange pointing towards the apex (on Model £4552D only) or that he had forgotten to insert bolt E12-6 into slot G (Fig 2)?
With the skeletal frame balanced tentatively on the base our next task was to glaze the beast. A few ‘challenges’ awaited, not least of which was that the boxes containing the glass had been left outside at B&Q so were sodden. Place two identical panes of glass together with a film of water between and try parting them. Go on, I dare you! They were laid out on the lawn to dry off but even after a good few hours it took extreme persuasion to force them apart. None of these panes were labelled at all, or if they had been the wet had obliterated all trace. It would have been ok, but some of the panes differed in size by just 2mm – that is 2mm that meant they were either fractionally too big or too small for all but one specific place. This fact was buried very deep in the minutia of the installation diagrams and I can’t believe we were the first people to have practically dismantled the frame thinking we had somehow got that wrong, when in fact the ‘square by all but 2mm’ glass was the wrong piece. Four panels were cracked, but not so much as we couldn’t fit them temporarily but we’ll have to get them replaced at the weekend.
Fitting the automatic opener for the ‘window’ required a degree in advanced mechanics. I say ‘window’ because the term is somewhat redundant in an already fully glazed building – the whole thing is one big window, which is why the term ‘ventilator’ is often used. Of course I can’t test that the vent will open at a suitable temperature until the greenhouse reaches such a tropical clime, and with snow forecast I guess that won’t be for a while. Typical though, isn’t it? I was getting all excited about sowing out some veg directly into the garden in soil that has been fed, manured, nurtured and generally had more products thrown at it than a queen getting ready to go out on a Friday night, and still I dare not actually plant anything for fear of frost!
The base was, if I say so myself, perfect. The frame fitted without so much as a wobble or a twist – I don’t think an experienced foundation-digger could have made a better job. I shall be writing myself a letter of appreciation. You see, all those lessons in geometry at school were not in vain after all. Although I confess that at 43 years old I have still found no sensible use for the Quadratic formula!
I take more credit than I should for managing this wondrous erection. I certainly could not have done it myself and believe me, where the instructions say ‘best with two people’ they are not kidding! We managed with one and a half! David has had to do all the lifting, carrying, reaching and clipping, and I have been reduced to the position of navvy, handing tools and trying to fathom the instructions.
His patience has been unparalleled and for all the trials and tribulations we never once mentioned divorce, murder or even creative insertion of a screwdriver. I have to say that David has been brilliant throughout – he’s magnetically repulsed by DIY so how he has kept his temper and good humour I shall never know.
We dismantled the old plastic greenhouse thing and, in a stroke of eco-recycle-brilliance with a few well placed hacksaw cuts it now forms staging and has saved us about £80 if we had bought new. It is certainly as good as anything we can buy custom made for the job, and we’d only have thrown it away.
Over the last day or so I have been transferring plants and seedlings from various window ledges to the new greenhouse, amid the comings and goings of Rob-the-tile. You may remember I said he lives over the road, about 20 yards away? He turned up yesterday morning having DRIVEN HIS VAN here! It isn’t like he had much equipment to bring – a spirit level, trowel and chisel – everything else was waiting for him here. He did the same thing today; it will have taken him longer to get in the vehicle, belt up, drive here, unbelt, disembark and lock the van than it would to walk over the road. He did walk home for lunch – I was tempted to offer him a lift!
It is looking good so far – when he finishes today there will just be the grouting to do in the morning and hopefully we can get the shower back up and running. I hate having baths; I really don’t see what people like about them. The water is always the wrong temperature, they hurt my bad foot like crazy and you lie there wallowing in your own filth. But by the weekend all that will remain is the addition of a shower screen, decorating the bits that are not tiled, laying a new carpet and buying a new cabinet. Oh God, when I say it like that it sounds like we may never be sorted again. Oh, sod it, at least now I can go hide in the greenhouse and pretend I really am a garden gnome!
Posted: March 30th, 2010 by OberonUK | No Comments | Filed under Life's misadventures






We’ve been tackling a few outdoorsy jobs over the last few weeks, tidying and making plans for next year. We have had some of the lawn dug up to give us a bit more viable growing land for veg. It needs to be left now over the winter to allow the frosts and rain to break down the soil a bit more, although I am fighting the temptation to put in a few things now – Garlic can be planted to over-winter – but I shall listen to advice and leave the plot alone for now.
I hate having to rely on other people to help with jobs I used to take in my stride, but David is a good lifter, shifter and general pack mule. Of course, any such job just throws up a list of other chores that need to be tackled and this one certainly delivered on that promise. So, in true “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” style I can now report that following the discovery of a noticeable dribble, we eventually got felt up on the shed roof! Well, not strictly roofing felt, rather a rubber membrane to keep out the rain, but that doesn’t sound as rude. Or maybe it does? We grappled with some rubber to protect our tools? We took protection to keep our dibbers dry?
I have to report that sadly Chinese-Woman-Over-The-Road has left, taking her unmentionables with her. You may find her Chinese Crackers coming to a bedroom window near you. The Avenue seems a somewhat duller (and essentially less ethnic) place without her daily display of dazzling dainties but I’m sure some neighbourhood will learn to love her laundry as much as I didn’t. I have seen evidence of Extremely-Old-Chinese-Man-Who-Is-Probably-The-Landlord popping in to check post, absence of squatters and continued structural integrity. There have been occasional Curious-Visitors-With-Clip-Boards poking around. I’ve not taken to the look of any of them. I believe I should at least have some say in the contents of the knickers to be displayed in the window opposite our lounge; squat, fat, Chinese and female falls a long way from my preference. It is possible to take the concept of a chink in the curtains a bit too literally!
I mention this, not only because Guy Fawkes Night is but a moon away, but also to note that Allen bypassed ‘the gentler tortours’ and went straight for the full barrage of agonizing instrumentation at his disposal. Now, you will have to remember, I was lying half naked on a bench with my face through a hole (breathing being the only luxury allowed), so could only rely on the sense of sound and touch to build up my picture of the events, and the fog of pain may have clouded my memory a little. I think there may have been a rack involved, although I seem no taller (bugger!). If there were thumbscrews, manacles or an iron maiden then I was passed out at that point and have no recollection, but I do remember several beatings and poundings over the weekend as my back was bashed, broddled, banged, battered and bruised with the intention of shifting my snaking spine from the graceful ‘S’ shape it has adopted back into the more conventional straight-line model favoured by most pain-free persons. He used a special machine which helps free the joints in the vertebrae through increasing pressure and vibration. According to the website (
I do Allen a disservice; he took great care of me and actually the treatment wasn’t half as bad as I had expected, although sitting on steel benches at the airport while our return flight was delayed for three hours was not the ideal after-care regime and I shall never tenderise a steak again!
Maybe my damning demeanour is a product of a disappointing and disastrous dalliance with fireworks in my tender years. Before I progress I must say, for legislative reasons, that no animals were harmed in the making of this anecdote although several children were emotionally scarred for life in scenes that some viewers may find upsetting.
I’ve had a somewhat musical few days one way or another although at times deteriorating into discord and approaching cacophonous, but I shall start with something altogether more melodious. Let me confess a guilty sin: as I was growing up I was a huge fan of ABBA and listened to their music pretty much constantly. Don’t hate me – I was young, impressionable and had a crush on Bjorn! Coming out as an ABBA fan was a somewhat brave thing to do, when considered in the context of my peer group and the bullying I endured at school. I could have made my life easier by liking Adam and his Ants or Dire Straits, Duran Duran, Genesis or OMD, but oh no, I had to go for the group with the least possible street cred and the worst stage costumes ever designed. I was a bully’s wet dream, pre-packaged and offering all the ammunition they could ever need. Even I will admit that I was a misfit, speaking with a non-indigenous accent, short, unsporty, academically engaged (or a ’swat’ if you prefer) and struggling with my sexuality; I was bound to be a target and the slings and arrows of outrageous children found their mark. What do you do when all the kids are calling you a puff and you think they are probably right? So I escaped into art and music; headphones cut out the taunts and I took my comfort there. Don’t pity the child though as those experiences have made the man. Music gave me the escape I needed; I remember the euphoria of hearing that a new album or single was due for release and the excitement of getting the train from the village where we lived into Middlesbrough on a Saturday morning with my saved-up £5 note and a ritualistic trawl around Woolworths, WHSmiths and Our Price to see which shop sold the album at the best price. Then the decision – cassette or LP? Record departments had their own unique smell, vinyl and cardboard, which you just don’t get these days. I remember when “The Visitors” was released (Nov 30, 1981) my parents told me that they would buy me it for Christmas, but that was a month away! It was one of the first albums in the world to be recorded entirely digitally (ABBA pioneered quite a few musical advancements) and I had to have it! I managed to buy the cassette version without anyone knowing, and listen to it in secret. Then on Christmas day I acted all surprised and delighted. Sorry Mum, but a boy has needs!
Last week, by complete chance, I spotted that our cinema was showing a recording of Chess, filmed in the Royal Albert Hall last year to mark the 25th anniversary of its release. So I had a wonderful few hours in an almost deserted cinema in the middle of the afternoon belting out show tunes and reliving some of the guilty pleasures of my youth. Thank God that nobody was there to see me and that the sound system drowned out my caterwauling. I’m such a hypocrite – as I’ll demonstrate later.
I hadn’t listened to Chess for years but was still word-perfect in all but the parts where they had changed the lyrics. (Note: THEY changed the lyrics, I didn’t get them wrong!) Word-perfect doesn’t mean pitch perfect though and I’m sure the melodic accuracy I heard in my head would have sounded less tuneful had anyone been sitting close enough to hear! I don’t care; I haven’t had as much fun for years!
I missed the tribute concert broadcast because David and I went out for the day for a drive up the Pennines and over Saddleworth Moor to take some photos. It was most refreshing to get out into the wilderness, although Myra Hindley country has an unnerving quality at the best of times. We came back through some of the Yorkshire mill towns, with their huge, imposing factories and warehouses, blocking the light and blackened with an age of grime, the colour of their industrial past. William Blake was spot on when he wrote about our ‘dark, satanic mills’ in the poem that we now recognise as the hymn “Jerusalem”. I like a bit of Blake, both the William and the “…’s Seven” varieties. The Jerusalem connection takes me neatly into the last night of the proms…
Ironically, for a song about sailing, it doesn’t travel well, and the translation into Chinese had all the elegance of an epileptic sperm whale, mid fit. I was reminded of the Morecambe and Wise sketch with Andrew Preview/Andre Previn where Eric plays the piano and Previn accuses him of playing all the wrong notes. Eric’s reply is, “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”. Well, Chinese-man-next-door went one step further and managed to sing all the wrong notes all in the wrong order, plus I think he invented a few new ones along the way too. So, you would think that the wailing and straining couldn’t get much worse? Think again. He then started to vocalise the instrumental break, “Ahhh, Ahhhhh, Ahhh, Ahhhhhh” etc (sort of like the sound you might make whilst trying to sing at the same time as having one of your teeth filled) but now accompanied by bloody bagpipes – the most un-musical instrument ever inflicted upon human kind, with the only possible exception being the School Recorder!
iddlesbrough (so named as it was originally a farming hamlet [with about 25 people in 1801] at the half-way point on the Monk’s trail between Whitby and Lindisfarne) has always owed its existence to industry. Before the town as we know it today came into being coal was brought from the Northern coal-fields and collieries in Teesdale and shipped around the world from Stockton, Yarm and Darlington. The deeper waters downstream around Middlesberg or Mydilsburgh meant that larger ships could be loaded and so a spar was added to the Stockton-Darlington railway line allowing the coal to be transported to these huge cargo carriers. Dalliances with Salt mining and then the discovery of iron ore in the Cleveland Hills saw the growth of the iron and steel industry and at one point Teesside set the world prices for these commodities. With the biggest blast furnace in Europe situated at the mouth of the Tees, and miles of rolling mills to turn the ore into sheet metal, Teesside ship-building became a mainstay of the local industry, but also the area became famous for bridge manufacture. The Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, Aukland Bridge and Sydney Harbour Bridge were all fabricated and manufactured in Middlesbrough. The Transporter Bridge stands iconic of an industry long gone; spanning the river like a dinosaur, a relic of a once glorious past.
One of my favourite places in the world is South Gare, at the mouth of the Tees. On one side, miles of totally unspoilt sandy beaches, behind, the massive, bellowing beast of the blast furnace, spewing sulphurous steam as white-hot iron pours into ‘torpedo’ containers destined for the rolling mills, the river (once the busiest port in the country) and the North Sea, sometimes still and calm, sometimes raging with fury. It is a place of contrast, nature against industry, but I see beauty in both landscapes.
So back to the trial by sport: tennis one night, cricket the next afternoon and football that night. But you have to know the true nature of this – we are talking simultaneous broadcasts of each on TV and radio – telly in the living room and radio in the conservatory. The radio allows for other activities, such as reading a book during the boring bits, and then when a goal is scored it is a dash into the other room to see the replay on Sky. Both have to be ‘on’ all the time, and at a volume that probably breaks sound pollution legislation, but everyone else in the village is probably deaf now already so they are not going to complain.




My sister Jo, brother-in-law Gavin and two nieces, Sam and Shannon came to stay with us for a long weekend and I hope they had a good time although to be perfectly honest I was way out of my depth and for all I can tell they may have had a vile vacation. You see, if there is one subset of the population that gay men really never encounter, have no experience of dealing with and are scared to death of having to interact with, it is that of pubescent she-children. To us they are completely alien, and not even in a ‘Nannoo Nannoo Shazbat’ Mork and Mindy integrated-with-humankind sort of way. They speak a different language, they require different routines, and they behave in unpredictable ways. They are neither adults nor kids. Their emotions are about as stable as nitro-glycerine on a damp day in December, and just as explosive. They go from adorable to abhorrent and back again at warp factor eight and with far less provocation than Gizmo in Gremlins!
They have to be entertained for 26 hours a day and a good book does not count, nor a DVD or any TV programme aimed at anyone aged over about 5 years old. There were more hormones flying around than in an over-staffed brothel which is a shock when you consider that our house is usually an oestrogen-free zone. Is it contagious? Can you catch female hormones? Are there detectors to tell you when you have had too much exposure (and I’m not used to exposing myself to women, honest!) I’m scared. And as a gay man, am I more susceptible? Is there a vaccination? You know how they say that three women living together will eventually synchronise their periods, well, can over-exposure to oestrogen, make-up, hairbrushes, leggings and highlights start to rub off on you? Can one start to develop an unhealthy fascination for handbags? Because I saw this very nice Louis Vuitton clutch purse…
On the Sunday we all went to Alton Towers. Last year, when I had just come out of hospital, I promised the girls that we would take them to Alton Towers as soon as I was well enough to do so. It was their choice of destination and one I regarded as something of a challenge especially since six months ago I was still using a wheelchair but I have to say that we managed remarkably well. The park is very well organised for people with disabilities and we were allowed to queue-jump the rides which was fantastic and actually made the day a possibility. I don’t like being disabled. I don’t like the fact that I am in constant pain. I don’t like not being able to walk far but I do like joining the rides at the exit and not having to queue! There have been few advantages to what I have suffered this last year, but by jiminy that was one! I would never have managed to stand in queues for an hour per ride and as I was allowed to take two ‘carers’ with me each time it meant we all pretty much got on the rides we wanted. (Or in my sister’s case, got on the ride she really didn’t want to go on – she ‘endured’ Air, suspended, shaking, and eyes firmly shut.) We even managed a couple of rides as a family, with Jo getting soaked on the river rapids and me managing to stay bone dry with barely a drip on me!
We did all enjoy the new aquarium where you can have the dead skin plucked from your fingers by cleaner shrimps, something that David avoided as he has an extreme terror of shrimps, living or dead and has to leave restaurants if anyone in his field of vision is de-shelling prawns. It’s the eyes. He likes scampi; or rather he did until I told him they were prawns too – Dublin Bay Prawns to be exact.I can be a real bastard sometimes! But they are only tiny things, and no reason for abject terror. I guess that is what comes of being too young to have been raised on a ration of Finger Bobs. Speaking of children’s TV programmes, I don’t think enough is done to recognise Andy Pandy for being the quintessential gay icon that he was. Even in Black and White he made Quentin Crisp look butch! Hartley Hare in Pipkins was a screamer. Mr Benn’s shopkeeper was a peeping tom, only interested in watching his male cliental undress and Hamble from Play School was such a dyke she was known, when off-camera, to have a power-tool fetish and to try to do the dirty with Jemima behind the arched window. We’re talking a serious Seventies Scissor Sisters situation here! I shall say no more about Bungle, Zippy and George in Rainbow, or Tony Hart, bless him, with his pink cravat and obscure relationship with a lump of plasticine called morph (who grew up to be Wallis and Gromit). Is it really any wonder I turned out to be gay?
David deserted for the next two days, making some feeble excuse about “having to go to work” so the male/female ratio in the house dropped further and I was in great trepidation that someone would suggest a make-over. When you have a shaved head, hair straighteners are a thing of mystery, as are brushes, bobbles, scrunchies and for that matter all the bathroom parafanalia associated with hair styling. My pubes don’t need conditioner, curlers or a towel wrapping round for an hour until they dry. You’ll notice it is Head and Shoulders, not Head and Crab Ladder – and I’ve never heard of a case of testicular dandruff in all of my 42 years! So I decided that public places would be safer than staying home, besides which, there is a limit to the entertainment value I can offer, even with my Wii fully exposed and available for gratuitous use. I try to be a cool Uncle. Maybe that’s the thing though. Maybe the really cool Uncles are the ones who don’t need to try.
of the familial visit we went to MOSI, the Museum of Science and Industry because they have an excellent hands-on section there where you get to play with experiments, solve puzzles and generally learn without knowing you are doing so. And for free too. Well, by ‘free’ I mean subsidised by the exorbitant prices charged in the canteen and the gift shop’ (which again provided a good few hours of purchasing potential amid a torrent of total tat). I never knew I needed a wooden snap-together ant, a glass made out of recycled glasses (presumably the same ones as on sale, but returned broken because they looked about as ergonomic to drink out of as a buffalo) or some ‘MOSI environmentally sustainable food crops’ – yes, more carrots but this time in a green paper envelope.
ggled that anyone should get THREE birthday’s a year! I mean, birthday-polygamy is supposed to be reserved for the royals and David and I are the Queens in this house!!





