Shooting the shit

There comes that moment, eventually, in every relationship where you just know you've reached "that" level.  For some couples it's the first kiss, for others, the day they move in together, the day they get engaged or married, or the day they have their first child.

For us, that special day came last Tuesday.

"Come look at my poo!" said, TheBloke (TM).

Now, before I go on, I ought to give you some context on this.  On our first ever holiday together to New York, apparently TheBloke (TM) had done the biggest poo in the world ever.  He maintains to this day that a) not forcing me to look at it and b) not waddling into the hotel bedroom to get the camera to take a photo of it remains the most romantic thing he's ever done.  Because we weren't "there" yet.

However, he talks about this poo often, almost as if it were something he gave birth to which he had to give away.  A wistful glint appears in his eyes.

On Monday last week, TheBloke (TM) said to me, "Come and look at my massive poo!"  I refused.  And perhaps it was tiredness, perhaps it was jetlag, possibly even my own imagination, but I think he sulked for the rest of the evening.

So when he tried again on Tuesday, I didn't feel I could deny him.

"Come look at my poo!" he said.  "It's even bigger than the one I did yesterday!"

I tried to turn him down, but the sad little puppy-dog look was too much to bear.  Into the bathroom I went.  "You might want to hold your nose," he said.  I did.

I was immediately nearly sick.  Twice.

I have to hand it to him though.  It was a massive, massive poo.  About the size of your average newborn.

With that in mind, if we ever decide to have children, I'm going to leave the childbirth to him.  He clearly has an opening very much bigger than me.  I will no longer let him sit on barstools in case he slips right over one.

At night when I shut my eyes, all I could see was his massive turd.

Ladies and gentlemen, TheBloke (TM) and I have now reached "that" level.  I'll be honest, the level before was better.

Nuggets of wisdom

My favourite American TV advert so far:


Several children, aged approximately 4-6 years old talk to the camera individually. They are clearly being asked the type of foods they don’t enjoy.

Cute Asian girl: Broccoli!

Cute blonde boy: Gween beans!

Adorable twin girls: Cabbage is icky!

Cute blonde girl with two front teeth missing: Thpinach!

Cut to voiceover: Sometimes it’s hard to get your children to eat what’s good for them...

So far, so predictable. Cue a commercial for sweetcorn, yoghurt, or some other product designed to get picky children to eat a bit more healthily. But no. This is America.

Voiceover continues:... Give them chicken nuggets! Chicken nuggets. Because kids don’t like vegetables and you definitely shouldn’t try and encourage them to eat them!

OK, that last sentence might be a bit made up, but the rest is pretty much word for word. Jamie Oliver has a lot to do in the States. Having said that, I went to his most recently-opened restaurant in St Paul’s in London a couple of weeks back, and most things on the menu were items such as “fried crispy pigs’ cheeks” and “smoky ribs”, so perhaps the inspiration is coming the other way.

It’s only a matter of time before Jamie is crusading trying to get the kids of Rotherham to eat chicken nuggets. Watch this space.

Supersize me

Ploggers, we are officially on holiday! After a week at work that can be best described as “challenging”, tube journeys which can be politely described as “fucking shit”, a car drop-off at the airport which I would euphemistically describe as “wank”, a two-hour delay at Gatwick, a flight where our row was sandwiched between two screaming babies I would nicely describe as “cunts” and two hours standing in a line at Customs at Orlando which was staffed by someone whose ability would be better suited to cleaning the toilets at McDonalds, we finally, finally made it to the car rental place.

Because TheBloke (TM) and I are super-organised, we had already booked our car, and just needed to go to Alamo Car Rentals to pick up our compact car, as ordered.

After another 20 minute queue at Alamo (I guess the Floridians are just getting us ready for Disney by testing our ability to edge forward in sheep pens), we finally made it to the front of the line.

“Evening!” said an employee, who – like all Americans was called Brad, Chip, Brett or something of the kind.

We handed over our paperwork. “Oh,” said Brad-Chip-Brett disappointedly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. My normally dangerously-low blood pressure was already at near boiling point from the debacle at Customs.

“Oh, nothin’,” said Brad-Chip-Brett. “It’s just you’ve booked a compact and they’re SO small. You’ll get like a Fiat Panda or something. It won’t even have a trunk. And I see you have two large cases.”

“Oh, it’ll be fine,” I said. “The back seats will fold forward. We got them here in a Mini."

“Yeah,” said Brad-Chip-Brett, “but the Panda won’t have cruise control like you’ll be used to.” I didn’t dare tell him that my Mini doesn’t actually have anything more advanced than electric windows.

“Listen,” continued the Alamo man, “I can do you a deal. Normally for $11 more per day I could upgrade you to a Toyota Yaris, but what I’ll actually do is for $11 per day, upgrade you to a Toyota Corolla. How does that sound?”

I looked at TheBloke (TM). He said, “I think we’ll be fine with the compact. Really, it’s not a problem.” At this stage we had been awake for about 20 hours and still had a drive (on the wrong side of the road) ahead of us. We wanted a bed, more than we wanted anything else. Well, apart from me. I still wanted to punch the twat at Customs.

“OK, OK,” said Brad-Chip-Brett. “Hmm. OK. I probably shouldn’t do this, but I can get you an amazing deal. For just the $11 per day, I’ll upgrade you to an SUV.”

TheBloke (TM)’s little South African face lit up. Which is why, dear readers, our Fiat Panda looks a bit like this:

“Oh, one more thing,” said Brad-Chip-Brett. “Your contract specifies that you need to pay for a full tank of fuel with the car. So that’s an extra $100. So that’ll be a total of just $211.”

A tank of fuel (at rental car places) is quite a lot more expensive in an SUV than it would have been in a Fiat Panda.

I am beginning to see why Americans make great sales people.

Tunnel vision

I'll come clean with you, Ploggers, it's all been a bit too much recently.  Nothing awful - in fact, quite the opposite, but plumber stress combined with work stress, combined with the usual day-to-day hurdles meant that - quite literally - the high point of my day on Tuesday was when the cat was sick under the bed at 7 a.m. and I had to crawl under the bed with the Vanish Carpet Stain Remover and scrub.  Things went downhill from that point.

So, it's hardly surprising that in the last few days, my temper has been fraying.  Now, I'm not really a shouter.  Mrs Nunn is a good shouter.  My brother, also, has his shouty moments.  I seem to have inherited Mr Nunn's skill for bottling it all up... and in my case at the very least, taking it out on public transport.

It has been alleged that on Monday this week at 8.14 a.m., on the London Underground at Stratford Station, I stampeded a man out of the way.  I concede I was trying to get off the tube.  He wasn't moving.  Just standing in front of the doors.  To be fair, there wasn't much space for him to move to.  So I had to barge past so I could get off at my stop.  TheBloke (TM), who was sitting next to me, tells me that after I stampeded the man out of the way, he too got off the train.  And everyone else tutted at the rude woman who'd shoved her way past.

Oh dear.  Well, these isolated incidents happen in the capital I guess.

Except on Tuesday at 8.32 a.m. I was on the Jubilee Line and had just reached my destination at Canary Wharf.  Again, I needed to get off the train.  I did so, but as I alighted, I felt something plastic make contact with my hand and I heard a clatter.  I looked back in case I had dropped something.  I turned round just in time to see the train doors closing and an angry-looking woman whose coffee Thermos had just been knocked on the floor.  By me.  The train had gone before I could apologise.  Also, I didn't really want to.  She was in my way.

So it's interesting to note that currently the artist Michael Landy is running a project to gather the random acts of kindness that happen on the tube.  You can see more information here.  I think it's a good job Michael isn't asking me to contribute my thoughts. This week my greatest act of kindness would be:

I spent a total of seven hours on public transport this week and I did not stab anyone, not even the irritating Essex girl with massive hoop earrings on the phone OR the fat woman who oozed onto my seat.


Please send awards and accolades to the usual address.

Going for a song

One of my favourite activities as a child was Brownies.  I loved Brownies.  I loved the uniform (who could blame me, it was a stunning piece of couture?), I loved working for badges, I loved - frankly - having more badges than anyone else (apart from Swotty Susan, who literally had about 70 badges.  It's a good job she was a bit chubby or they wouldn't have all fitted on her uniform).  Most of all, I loved it when I finally became Sixer of the Pixies.  This meant I was nominally in charge of five other girls.  What this meant in practice was I was supposed to tick their names in a register and collect their subs each week.  The novelty wore off after about two weeks and I used to let the others take it in turns.  That's the kind of firm but fair leader I was.

One of the other things I loved about Brownies was when we would all go on a Pack Holiday.  This was exactly like a family holiday: it would generally involve at least six arguments, substandard accommodation and at least one visit to a church you didn't want to go to.  It did have the added advantage though of planning midnight feasts (which would never happen as everyone would fall asleep first) and pretending you had a sore throat at night to get a throat sweet from Brown Owl (whom I suspect was sneakily swigging neat vodka from the sheer awfulness of being responsible for 20-odd seven to ten year olds).

Pack Holidays were always held no more than about fifteen minutes from home, which took the glamour out of the location a bit.  But we did get to sing songs.  There was one song which was massively politically incorrect about being Red Indians ("All of us are red men, feathers in our head men, down among the dead men, pow wow, we're the men of the golden cow" were the lyrics I can remember.).  There was also one about yodelling on a mountaintop, and one more about a kookaburra living in an old oak tree.  This seemed unlikely in the East Midlands, but I was eight; who was I to question it?

I do remember one particularly disturbing song we learned one Pack Holiday (to the tune of John Brown's Body):

I wear my pink pyjamas in the summer when it's hot
I wear my flannel nightie in the winter when it's not.
And sometimes in the springtime and sometimes in the fall
I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all.


That's the time you ought to see me!
That's the time you ought to see me!
That's the time you ought to see me!
When I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all.

There are several reasons why I find this song so disturbing.  Most obviously that a group of eight year-old girls are encouraging people to watch them whilst they're naked in bed.  But more infuriatingly - why on earth would you wear pink pyjamas to stay cool in the summer and wear nothing at all in autumn or spring, when presumably it's cooler?

It's just insane.  I mean, the pink pyjamas would have to be made of some sort of thermal cooling material to make them cooler than the naked body, or at the very least to have some sort of battery-operated inbuilt cooling system.  And yet there is no reference to this at all in the song.

It's very wrong to teach eight year olds such terrible logic.  The Girl Guides Association ought to be ashamed.