*And the pencil was sharpen’d,
Sharp it was.
Like a spear
Piercing the snowy white paper.
It’s sharpness making mortals quake,
And grown men cry.
And badgers were overcome,
With terr’ble, terr’ble
Fear.*
Categories
Drawering To A Close
*WARNING: this post is quite long, having a goat-slayingly impressive 700 words. This equates to roughly 0.3 londonmarks.*
My desk at work has two drawers. The top one is quite shallow, and the bottom one is deep.
The bottom drawer is not of much use to me, as it is full of boxes that used to contain wireless network access points, PCMCIA network cards and suchlike. At some point I will throw all these out of the window, but in the meantime, I have to fit my stash of flapjacks into the top drawer.
This top drawer can get a little untidy, so today I decided that it was time to take everything out, and put it back in, observing a more refined packing algorithm in order to optimise the usage of the space available.
Gingerly I placed my mobile phone, the fascia for my car stereo, my flapjack stash etc into the drawer, all neat and perpendicular with 1cm padding between them all. And I was reminded, for the first time in years, of the magical mystical astronomical phenomenon that was my bedside cabinet at my parents’ house.
My old bedroom was converted to a study some time ago, but a lot of the furniture remains. The bedside cabinet and wardrobe are still there, albeit with significantly different contents. The desk unit, which formed the third part of the matching set, had been damaged somewhat ((this desk was very fragile, being supported by two hinges at the back and a couple of slender metal arms. I once attempted to detonate a whoopee cushion by placing it on the desk and sitting on it. Unsurprisingly, the whoopee cushion remained unexploded, and the desk bore the brunt of the force. The screws holding the slender metal arms remained securely in the wood, but the bit of the wood that they were connected to parted company with all the rest of the wood.)), so became the source of a wonderful bonding moment between my dad and I. We had realised that carrying it downstairs was going to be a lot of effort, and once we got it outside we were just going to demolish it anyway. So we demolished it there and then, on the upstairs landing, with hammers, screwdrivers and roundhouse kicks, showering the house with flakes of chipboard.
Where was I? Ah, yes, the bedside cabinet.
I used to keep all sorts of interesting things in that bedside cabinet. It held a deck of Top Trumps and a deck of adult playing cards. It held handkerchiefs and a piece of the Berlin Wall. It held a walkie talkie (my sister had the other one in her bedroom) and a filofax with pictures of rally cars pritt-stuck on. It held spare electric plugs and a calculator. It held all this and much, much more. It was the accumulation of items acquired between the ages of 5 and 18, none of them larger than a kitten.
The continual opening and closing of those drawers meant that the items would all slide and slip around, bouncing off of each other and generally causing a helluva mess. Especially before I was a teenager, when I still had boundless energy, and if a drawer wasn’t opened quickly and noisily, then justice hadn’t really been done to the whole global drawer-opening concern.
Every once in a while, I would slide those drawers all the way out, and invert them over my bedroom carpet. This was especially dangerous in the days before I started bringing girls home, as the junk tide mark around the edges of my small bedroom was much higher than in later years. Subsequently some small items would be liable to fall into the sea, and contribute to the gradual rising of the junk levels.
Then I would gently place all the items back into the drawers, maintaining orthogonality, and neat piles with small things on top of larger things, and so forth until Mr Hanoi himself would nod approvingly.
Then I’d put the drawers back in and slam them, in the only way that I knew how. Everything would slide to the back and form an amorphous mass.
Ah, memories.
Categories
Neighbour Confusion
As I got home just now, with the bag of chinese takeaway in my hand (which, I should add, is sat beside me, looking rather “dishy”… heheheheh…), my nextdoor neighbour, whom I have never met before, was just leaving his house.
Momentarily, I forgot that he probably had no idea who I was. I gave him the kind of “Hello”, avec smile, that one normally preserves for one’s nextdoor neighbour of eight years, or a coworker whom you don’t particularly like, when you bump into them in the town centre on Saturday.
Well, either he recognised me, or he’s not the Who the fuck are you? sort, because he responded in kind.
As I walked past his front gate and through my own, I looked back to see whether there was a visual epiphany. I have to credit him, none such was apparent.
My crispy shredded beef looks lovely.
Categories
Amazonian
I wish Amazon would stop suggesting Groove Armada albums to me.
Currently, it thinks that I like Groove Armada enough that I should own every CD that they have ever released.
There is a reason that it thinks this. I told it that I own Lovebox and Vertigo, and I like both of them. Which is true. But that’s enough. No more Groove Armada thanks. Let’s try something else.
So I tried clicking on “Not interested” for the recommendation that was at the top of the list.
Oh, said Amazon, Well, perhaps you’d be interested in THIS Groove Armada album instead?
(click) Not interested.
Oh, said Amazon, Well, perhaps you’d be interested in THIS Groove Armada album instead?
Clearly a new tack is called for.
So I went back and changed a few things. Told it that I didn’t own Lovebox or Vertigo. Removed all traces of the trail. That’ll sort it, surely.
Oh, said Amazon, I see you don’t own any Groove Armada albums. What kind of a person do you think you are? EVERYONE should own some Groove Armada albums. Amazon (that’s me) recommends their entire back catalogue.
le sigh.
We used to play the game endlessly in the coffee shops of New York.
I still remember the last time that we played, and I beat all of our previous records. It’s a memory that I know will stay in my mind forever, and it gets triggered at the strangest of times, and by the strangest of things.
It was her turn to measure, and my turn to smoke. We were sat at a metal table, huddled together for privacy.
Are you ready? she asked me.
I paused. Composed myself. Took a last deep breath, filling my lungs with the conditioned air and exhaling every last molecule.
Go! she whispered.
I performed the motion fluidly, just like we’d practised between us hundreds of times. The cigarette was out of the packet and in my mouth within about 0.3 seconds. A flame was licking from the spout of the lighter about 0.2 seconds later. By the time 1.1 seconds had elapsed, I was breathing in the deep, foamy smoke.
I dragged and dragged, the tip of the cigarette glowing like iron in the foundry. I breathed out through my nose as I breathed in through my mouth, my head shrouded in the clouds, my visibility reducing to nothing.
The seconds went by like hours. Everything became nothing, and nothing became even less. I didn’t falter for a second. This game wasn’t a cross-country race. It was a sprint. A long, hard sprint.
A voice was heard to say Excuse me – you can’t smoke in here.
…and stop
I stopped and removed the cigarette from my mouth. A ruler was produced.
She measured the length of ash hanging from the tip of the cigarette, and looked me in the eye with total adoration.
Very impressive, Pete. You win.
At last, now that limelight-hogging shark is out of the way, I can achieve the fame and notoriety that is deservedly mine!
I’ll show him! Bloody talentless hack… I’ve got more cooking savoir-faire in one of my whiskers than he has in his entire seabound body!
If only this had happened sooner! Perhaps my career could have been saved before my looks were savaged by old age!
Now quiver before me, mortals! I shall be your queen! Your beautiful, culinarily blessed queen!
My, who the blazing heck is this, in front of some kiwi juice and a bottle of tequila? It’s only that dude, Ewan The Shark! And he looks like he is about to speak…
Welcome one, welcome all, to Cocktails With Ewan “The Shark” Cruise. Or should that be Ewan “Cruise” The Shark. Probably more appropriate.
As you can see above, I have placed 4n ice cubes into the cocktail shaker, where n is a coefficient determining how icy you want your cocktail to be, which I see, has efficiently enhanced your determination to make a cocktail.
This is the hardest part to execute. Put some tequila into the cocktail shaker.
I really hope that you are managing to keep up with this.
Whereas the previous step was the hardest to execute, this step is the hardest to photograph. Whilst holding a fluffy shark in one hand, a carton of kiwi juice in the other hand, and a camera between your teeth, pour some kiwi juice into the cocktail shaker. How you hold the cocktail shaker is up to you.
Shake your cocktail. As anyone knows, there is only one proper way to shake a cocktail.
And it’s not inside a washing machine.
Pour the cocktail into one of those really groovy tumblers just like they used to have in the ’50s in America. It is essential that you use one of these tumblers, as this drink is useless without the kaleidoscope effect you get when you are draining the last drops of your drink and staring down the barrel of an empty glass.
Presto! Witness its majesty! Witness its charm! Witness its unsettling murky green colour!
Witness the flavour. Delicious.
*Ewan will return…*
Categories
She told me not to post this
Me: “I want to… uhm… put you in a box… with… uhm… lots of toothpaste in it.”
Her: “Mmmmm…”
Me: “And I want to… uhm… tie you to a banjo.”
Her: “Ahhhhhh…”
Me: “And… uhm… put you next to the radiator and throw foxes at you.”
Her: “Oooooh…”
What’s this in the drawer of my new coffee table? It’s a shark called Ewan, and he’s going to show me how to reinforce it!
These drawers just ain’t strong enough. The bottom bit slots into some grooves that are just a few millimetres deep, and once these drawers are laden with magazines, that base bit will buckle and fall through. We need reinforcements!
Here is the drawer that we are about to reinforce, alongside one I prepared earlier. Get ready for the ride of your life!
Measure twice, cut once. Or, in our case, measure once, draw a pencil line on the piece of wood once, take it through to the kitchen once… whoops, I’m getting ahead of myself…
…put some newspaper down once (pleases the sharkette no end). Sawing is definitely a job for someone with opposable thumbs, so Pete did this bit.
When you are finished sawing, put the saw on the work surface rather than leaving it on the kitchen floor. I learned this the hard way. Note also that when you pick the newspaper up, it will be covered with a dusty reside, created whilst sawing. This dusty residue, created whilst sawing, is not too dissimilar in colour and texture to sawdust.
After checking that your pieces of wood fit, apply a thin line of wood glue to the edge that will be your vertical…
…and a thin line of wood glue to the base. Assuming that gravity points downwards in your region, make sure that your drawer is upside down when you do this. There is no point reinforcing the top of the drawer. Also make sure that your thin line of wood glue is close enough to the edge of the base that it will make good contact with the piece of wood, when you put it in place.
Put the wood in position and press it firmly into place. For every hour that the glue says that it needs to dry, allow four seconds. This drawer is ready to put back into position in a rip-roaring one minute, thirty six seconds!!!!!!!
That’s “car” meets “saga”. Sorry, bit obscure.
It is commonly known amongst everyone in the whole wide world that my car key has a problem. The moulded plastic bit that should hold onto a keyring is worn and cracked, and so under extreme forces, the key can separate from the ring entirely.
Today, a co-worker gave me a lift to the bank, and since we were passing very close to the castle I stopped in to get my mobile phone, which I had forgotten to bring that morning.
FFwd to later on that afternoon. I remove my keys from my pocket (they were probably interfering with my karma or, more likely, my right testicle). Or, should I say, my key (that’s singular, there).
Like a finely honed analytical machine, my brain leaps into life and replays the last five hours of film. Maybe the key fell off somewhere in the office? Five minutes later, we can discount that possibility.
Maybe the key fell off when I parked the car in the car park this morning? Ten minutes of scrabbling in the dark later, we can discount that possibility.
Maybe the key fell off when I was sat in my colleague’s car? I borrow his key, and perform a quick hunt. No joy.
My colleague gave me a lift home tonight, to my warm house, and my spare car key. And who was waiting for me on the doorstep when I got home?
Kevin Spacey.