Public Service Announcement

I probably shouldn't do this, as it runs the risk of sending my hit counter plummeting, and my little (OK, medium-sized) ego plummeting right along with it, but draw close and I'll share a secret with you...

If you click on "Follow" for this Plog, every time I write a new nugget of gold (or a wad of shit), it'll be emailed directly to your inbox, so you don't have to bother checking to see what's new.

Shhh... don't tell anyone.

Mind games

My friend Abi, clearly not satisfied with this character assassination a few years ago, has foolishly requested that she becomes the topic of another Plog.

Well, far be it from me to disappoint my readership.  In fact, if you would like a Plog about you in the near future, let me know.  Not that I'm suffering from writers' block or anything.  Oh no.  Of course, if I don't know you, it might make it trickier, but I'm willing to give it a go.

So, Abi and I have been friends since birth.  Well, since my birth; she's a few months older than me.  Despite the history of domestic violence that has dogged our friendship (see link above), we've remained friends for the last thirty-odd years.

When Abi and I were little, we'd often spend the night at each other's houses.  As a child, I thought this was tremendous fun.  As an adult, I realise it was probably because my parents couldn't stand me any longer.  We would do all manner of exciting things.  Well, it was generally limited to five exciting things, if I'm honest:

1. Swimming at Beaumont Leys leisure centre.  They had a water slide AND a wave machine.  It was practically Wet 'N' Wild.  But with more chlorine and kiddy piss.  They also had fake palm trees, planted in some sort of wood chip, which would inevitably find its way into the pool, and look like floating turds.  At least, that's what I liked to tell myself.
2. Off to Bosworth Battlefield.  Again.  I can trace my hatred of the War of the Roses through enforced visits to this local attraction what seemed like weekly.  For anyone thinking of going, it's basically a field.  There is a gift shop though, and if you're good, you might be allowed to get some Tic-Tacs.
3. Off to Beacon Hill.  A hill.  With a beacon.  Honestly, it's not as good as it sounds.
4. Midnight feasts.  This usually involved a Sherbet Dib-Dab eaten at about 8.30 p.m. before brushing our teeth and lights out.
5. Playing the Medallion Game.

Now, the medallion game was a game we kind of made up ourselves, and had the sort of mad narrative only eight year-olds can invent.  Basically it paid homage (some would say plagiarised) to Narnia, and a long (deservedly) forgotten Spanish cartoon called The Mysterious Cities of Gold.

The basic idea was that Abi and I were twins (or something) who'd managed to find each other, and both Abi and I had half a medallion.  We had to put both halves of the medallion together into a magic wardrobe and we'd go through the wardrobe to a magic land, which we may have got to by helter-skelter (please see Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree).  I have no idea what was in this magic land.  I'm not sure we ever got that far.  Most of it revolved around putting the (imaginary) medallions together into the (imaginary) wardrobe and going down the (imaginary) helter-skelter.

And this stunning imaginative example, dear readers, is why I have never written a novel: my ideas are generally derivative, plotless, characterless and without resolution.

Still, makes a Plog, eh?  Anyone want to buy a second-hand imaginary half-medallion?

Pet-ty

Some people believe their cats are psychic.  For example, if their cat gets shut in a shed, they believe that the cat projects mental images, telling their owners where they are.

I am not sure about this.  As an atheist / general sceptic about anything that science can't prove, I'm generally unwilling to abandon my logical decision-making process for the sake of telepathic felines.

However.  And I resent this "however".  Monty Cat knows something.  I'm not sure how, but he knows.

I am currently trying to clear out the wardrobe in our guest bedroom.  This is for several reasons:

• Ostensibly I want a digital piano.  The piano needs to go where the wardrobe currently is
• The wardrobe is hideous.  Hideous, hideous, hideous.  TheBloke (TM) bought it when he first moved into my flat in Bethnal Green, and it was too early in our relationship for me to say, "Yeah, that thing you just had delivered... from Argos?  Get rid of it."  Four years down the line, I think it's time to own up.  I hate it and it doesn't even shut properly.  Hate hate hate.

So, in order to get rid of the wardrobe, we have to get rid of all the crap in it.  I say "we", but if I'm honest, 89.6% of said crap is all mine.

This includes:

• Unwanted Christmas presents
• Pretty shoes that hurt my feet and so are never worn
• Cosmetics I either bought on sale or never used, or unwanted Christmas presents (see point 1)
• Ball dresses - I cannot remember the last time I went to a ball - or when I'm likely to go to a ball in the future
• Size 6 clothes that haven't fitted me for a very long while, and never, ever will again.  This is OK (the size thing), but the clothes are still pretty.

So it's up to me to declutter.  And much of it is saleable, so I decided to eBay it.  I carefully laid out all of my items, which are obviously advertised as from a smoke-free, pet-free home.  I figure 50% correct is fine, and it's not as if Monty Cat pisses all over my clothes.  Well, not every day.

As I went up to our guest room to get the next item for its photo shoot, I noticed a big, fat, ginger Monty Cat carefully stretched out along the full length of my Calvin Klein suit.  I swear he did a wiggly roll as I tried to scoop him out of the way.  HE KNEW.  He KNEW that was the next item I was photographing.  Until I got the camera out, he was peacefully curled up, fast asleep underneath the dressing table, out of harm's way.

I'm not sure I can advertise these as pet free.  Perhaps, "entirely made from natural (cat-based) fibres" would be more accurate.

Wired

"A couple of days of annual leave, sandwiching the weekend will be just the very thing," I thought.  "It will be splendid.  I shall have lie-ins a-plenty, I shall finally crack on with all that admin I've been ignoring, and I might even manage to pay a visit to Mr and Mrs Nunn."

And lo, it was so.  Up the M1 I toddled (to be fair, I'm not sure "toddled" is the right verb, but Mrs Nunn might be reading, so let's pretend I was driving at 64 mph all the way up the motorway).

And of course, Plogs pretty much wrote themselves whilst I was there.

"I was right," proclaimed Mrs Nunn.

"Sorry?"

"I was right," she asserted.  "Wi-fi does cure blindness."

This threw me.  I had been unaware that she was either a) an eye-surgeon or b) blind, let alone the more baffling questions of... actually I can barely articulate the tens of different questions that were buzzing round my head.

I thought I'd start with the obvious.  "How does wi-fi cure blindness?" I asked.

"I don't know, I'm not a doctor!" she replied, thus answering my point a) above.  But she continued, "The important thing is that scientists agree with me and wi-fi has been proven to improve people with eye conditions.  Do you remember at Christmas.."

She then launched into an anecdote about how my 88 year-old grandma beat us all at table tennis on the XBox Kinect several times over, despite having eye problems.  I was still unsure of the connection - unless doctors were now claiming that the very fact she'd visited my parents' house, with its fancy wi-fi had produced some miracle cure.

"She was saying her vision was better when she got home.  I knew it was the wi-fi."

Interesting.  I had to do some Sherlocking here.

"Mum," I asked, "do you definitely mean wi-fi?"

"Yes," she said.  "That table tennis game."

"You don't mean that Nintendo Wii has been proved to help hand-eye co-ordination, do you?"

"Yes!"

"OK.  We brought up an X-Box, not a Wii, but both of those things are different to wi-fi."

"Wii, wi-fi... what's the difference?"

I then teased her for a good five minutes, imagining all the wi-fi internets jumping into my eyes to cure them.

I'm not welcome back just yet.

Cat nap

Crikey, I have been an absent Plogger.  Must try harder.

So what's been keeping me so busy?  Well, if I'm totally, utterly honest, mostly afternoon naps.  You see, the temperature hasn't risen above freezing for about two weeks, and essentially, when this happens, my body goes into survival mode.  Here are the necessary ingredients for survival mode:

• Central heating turned up to the maximum setting
• Compulsory Slanket to be worn at all times
• Stash of chocolate to be no further than 6 inches from my face
• TV remote in graspy little hand
• Kindle at arm's reach
• Ideally, a purry Monty Cat to use as a pillow / hot water bottle.

Of course, I've had to drag myself away from the sofa FIVE horrid times this week, in order to go to work.  At work, the maximum temperature setting is 23 degrees, which kind of sounds OK (in Celcius), but when you're sitting on your arse all day, it gets pretty nippy pretty quickly.  And unfortunately for me, the financial sector is still very much "suited and booted" and less (more's the pity) Slanket attire.  And according to my most recent written warning, they're not a fan of the afternoon nap either.  Meanies.  One day, when I'm in charge, things will change.

I've always been very much a "get up and go" kind of person.  Not since I was a teenager have I enjoyed a long lie in at weekends, and I'm usually up and about by 8.30 a.m. on a Sunday.  Well, that I can cheerfully report is very much still the case.  What has changed however, is the fact that I'm now fast asleep by 9.30 p.m. on the Saturday night.  And by 2 p.m. I'm due an afternoon nap.  Or two.

Usually by February the weather is getting better and you're seeing the first cherry blossom buds, or tentative snowdrops peeking their little heads above the damp soil.  This year we've got a couple of inches of snow that JUST WON'T FUCK OFF.  And so I am boycotting the world until it's gone.

Wake me up when it's spring.