Month: December 2002

Categories
Fiction

Return to the homestead

I opened the front door and the sea monkeys were yapping around my ankles, eagerly anticipating my return. The wife kisses me on the cheek and asks me how the weekend was, and I tell her that it was fine, and my parents are great, and how I transferred a hard disk from one of my father’s computers to another, and all sorts of other anecdotes about the curry that went from docile to underwear-threatening within the space of a ten minute walk et al.

And then she passes me this mornings newspaper, still unopened, and I put on my slippers and sit down in front of the roaring log fire and read how my stocks and shares are doing, and about Manchester United’s poor performance yesterday.

And the sea monkeys are curled up at my feet, snoozing in front of the fire, whilst my oil painting of my late great-great-uncle George looks down on me with pride from above the mantelpiece.

The smell of hot mince pies permeate my nostrils, mingling with the aroma of the beef and onion pie in the oven.

A little Beethoven would be appropriate, I think.

Categories
Photos

Sea Monkeys

The Sea Monkey experiment has begun. After allowing the water to purify for 24 hours, I have introduced the eggs to the tank.

I can’t help thinking that the desk isn’t the most stable place for these waterbound critters, but once they grow big and strong I am hoping they will be as therapeutic and as inspirational as a huge tank of tropical poisson.

At present, I appear to be looking at a jar of slightly cloudy water, with a fine precipitate on the surface and within a couple of millimetres of the surface.

There are, as of yet, no verifiable signs of life, though I swear that these particles on the surface are arranging themselves to spell out the word “HI”.

I wonder if they like tabasco sauce…

Categories
Uncategorized

I pay per kilobyte

A member of middle management was just bragging to me about how he has Messenger on his mobile phone now, and it is cheaper than text messaging.

“Cheaper?” I said. “So it’s not free then?”

“No,” he said “I pay per kilobyte.”

“Oh.” I said, as I walked off to plot his come-uppance.

Several hundred random keypresses later, and I think that my point has been made.

Categories
Photos

Tree-mendous

Click to see the angel

Categories
Meander

I need to learn to be more aggressive.

I need to learn to be more aggressive.

Case in point. Queueing to pay for some sandwiches.

It’s one of those shops where there is one long queue, and when you get to the front you get filtered off to an individual checkout, à la Post Offices.

Checkout 2 appears to be vacated. I walk over to checkout 2. As I get close, it becomes apparent that there are still some goods piled up there. Simultaneously, two things happen: the woman at the checkout says “I’m still serving someone”; I work out that she is still serving someone, who has evidently just popped off because they forgot to pick up their Preparation H or their furry nipple warmers.

So what do I do?

I apologise.

What the hell for, I hear you cry. I should have sniffed the air with a soupçon of disgust, or growled fearfully, or even expressed my displeasure using the words and constructions provided for me by the English language.

But no-o-o. I apologised. Profusely. Twice. With a little curtsey at the end.

I’m going to stop apologising for things. I’m going to accept that I am actually within my rights to blame other people for being gits, and act accordingly by sticking my neck out and being offensive in public, instead of skulking off back to this here website and hiding behind my anonymosity.

I’m low. I’m pondlife. But no more. As of today, I’m a gobby bastard.

Experimentally, of course.