My hols

Are just around the corner......

She-tox

Verb: to remove one's self from the civilising influence of a woman, normally when she is away for a short period. EG: Leaving your gentleman's literature out, or eating of curry out of the carton whilst wearing only your pants.

The Antipodean is reconnecting with what roots one can have with a country younger than my local post box.

Do I press on and complete matters and write her sweet emails everyday and dream wistfully? Or do I wait till Donna-da-Lodga's mates come round and get ripped to the tits on their GHB and weed whilst imbibing on unreleased quantities of Burgundy and trying to watch hypnotically grotesque erotica involving ice cream sundae glasses and some curious special effects.

That's a hard call.....

One of those days

This happy-chappy is presently faced with returning to the slopes for more terror and muscle-twanning delight.
I am eschewing solo 'lone fox' operations in Austria mit Walter unt his Schloss Adler. Oh No.
this time I am travelling to France. I will be assured of a decent meal (if a little over-rich) with long queues and petulant service - such as we have become accustomed to a society benighted by socialism.

Still, the Snow is good, I have my fans with me to cheer me on and bask in my chaply munificence as I hold court nightly: champers in one hand, foie-gras nibble in the other - chest deep in an outdoor jacuzzi whilst i wonder if I will ever escape from such a hellish place.

It was seized with a bit of post holiday vim that i sought out my insurance documents. Should I break a nail, chip a tooth or worse - sprain something - I would want to be immediately airlifted by Chinook to a decent private hospital for convalescence and cunnilingus in a discrete private clinic nestling in the Chilterns.
Not for me spending 97 hours on a filth encrusted gurney in some garlic soaked sweat-pit of a breaks clinic - designed to cater for those of a more foetid continental persuasion.

However, I could not find my policy.

I regularly purge my life of many things and paperwork is one of them. It would seem that a recent iteration of removing scraps of prior life from current existence I had burned the policy document. It was no where to be seen. (Saying that - there is a good chance that Donna Da Lodga moved it in either a fit of pique or tidiness).

I recalled the underwriters and attempted to reach them. Some odd sounding address in town with an 'Axe' in it.
The girl was most helpful - but did ask some odd questions.

Particularly one which was to be the theme of the day:

'Good afternoon - I have lost all my policy information and paperwork, but I recall you may have set it up - can you help?'

'Have you got a policy in front of you?' Uh-oh...one of those calls.......

'No, I have lost all my paperwork and have no references.'

'Oh, have you got a policy number?'

'No, I have lost all my paperwork and have no references.'

'OK, have you got a broker or brokers cover note?'

'No, I have lost all my paperwork and have no references.' (Think it is going to sink in?)

'Ah, so you haven't got any reference information? What's your postcode - I could try a search'.

Ye gods.

Search produced nothing in my name - and she game me their Internet broker details to renew afresh. (I have particular insurance requirements as I tend to command vessels in international waters, things your £4.99 Tesco policy would seriously exclude)

'Can I not renew direct.?

'No sir, please use our broker...'

I braced myself for more fun on the phone.

'Good afternoon, ------ can I help you?' Uh oh. Sing song estuary English.

Repeat facts regarding paperwork. Grip desk in anticipation of more witless dialogue while I explaining I really don't have any details.

'Not a problem sir, post code and your name is all I need.......(clicky-typing noises) here you are sir - would you like me to email you a copy?'

My flabber was gasted.
It was like the re-worked parrot sketch at one of the secret policeman's balls - where Palin wrong foots the audience and Cleese by just giving him his money back and a gift voucher for the mrs..........

Still. Email is yet to get here. I may yet be looking forward to the joys of European Health care.



UPDATE: French healthcare is substantially better than ours. Go figure.

Nice shooting

Good old Guido. This one is all over the blogsphere.

How Guido got Hain.....

This is the democratising beauty of the Internet. The Left sees it as a controlling mechanism or something that needs to be managed so they can control the truth they think we need. In reality we can all use it to campaign to expose the lying thieving gits who trough up our taxes.

Well done Guido. There are journalists and other so called importants wishing they could scalp like you.

Now......Who's for Red Ken?

Great Toy

As the paucity of the concept of Socialism slowly reveals itself to a generation too young to remember the last time this country experimented with it, we find that the cries of the Left for 'more socialism!' grow louder - like a wounded beast.
The Right has recaptured the zeitgeist.
Gordo's so called economic miracle collapses like Keynesian economics did when the credit ran out in '73 and the fools who thought we could afford a Socialist state and have an international capitalist economy see their pension plundered to make way for who ever the Left's latest client group is today.

And so people realise that medicine is needed and as ever us Tories have to administer it to sick Britain.

Remember the last time this lot held the reigns, when our economy ended up as powerful as Albania in 1979?

So - in preparation for The Natural Party Of Government to return - I give you a toy I discovered on Iain Dale.

Election-Map

Cheers Iain. I have wasted an hour on a telco playing with this.

Chap approves.

Flying hat cheerfully waved at Mr Dale.

Reasons to be cheerful.

It seems like so very long ago since I last wrote for my one and only personal reader.
However, I am back.
The Antipodean has been taking up a lot of my run time. Fragrant youth that she is, she is also in possession of the legendary thirst for which her countryfolk are admired. This is one of the reasons why I have not been moved to write much. The fumes of a red-wine hangover, combined with lateness at the hamster wheel (for it is there where I does write) have meant I have neither had time nor inclination to scribble things down.

But needs must. My public, as ever, have missed me.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to bring my own slant to the domestic and the ordinary - for a Chap sees things through a different spectrum. An insight to humour or thoughts gained either because one either knows better - or through the kaleidoscope eyes of bucket loads of high powered mind altering drugs - mean that I can even find my drains amusing. (And often have)

Such a rich vein of domesticity has reared it's foul bonce of late.

My Freezer has broken down.

It is for this reason alone I have been dining on roasted guinea fowl, monkfish and bacon paella and griddled scallops.
Naturally such repast cannot go unwined and it would have been criminal not to wash down Peri-Peri green lipped Mussels without a decent bottle of Pouilly Fume or Sancerre.

It is under such terrible conditions that I am forced to toil.

God alone knows how I cope.

2008 and all that

Hello dear reader and before you go on I know I have been laying low.
Christmas is a grisly time of year. Dedicated to the duty of 'family' and in the seeing of people you choose not to do over the whole year one finds the horror is magnified in the fact that not only is one supposed to be nice to them, but nice to others.

It is in the clear blue water of the New Year that one can make the observations such as this without the unoriginal amongst the world branding one with unoriginal titles like 'Grinch' or 'Scrooge'.

My advice to those who spent this year going 'bah humbug' to me when I expounded the virtues of a minimalist Christmas is twofold.
One: go and learn another cliché with which to hassle right-thinking individuals. You sound like a nine year old.
Two: Look about your parlour. Is it now not stuffed to the gunwhales with unusable tat you never wanted? Books you will never read? A pile of clothes destined for the returns queue at Messrs Marks and Sparkies?
Do you not feel nauseous following the chronic overeating? Do your arteries not feel cloggéd following the cheese and roast tatties?

I tend to avoid the cliché that is Christmas such as I tend to avoid all clichés like the plague. (Thank you CJ).

However, a sequence of well lubricated drinking opportunities presented themselves and the good fortune of being able to upgrade an acquaintance to the status of associate with the minimum of dinners out and sufficient alcohol to allow her to succumb to my more dubious charms yet retaining wit and wisdom so as not to awake the next day wracked with guilt - ensured that even now the distension of my liver is felt still and a feeling that something must be done.
After all I am skiing soon and Johnny Foreigner won't show himself, will he.

Now, dear reader, you will recall I have always maintained that the Body Beautiful is bought in sweat or abstemiousness and one must endure the former lest you face the latter.

I have thrown this to the wind and actually given up the juice of the grape and the malt of the grain for January at least.

Cynics among you will insist that I feared (as this is my fortieth year) that this is due to concern for the lead in my pencil least not the liver in my guts, but that that I declare fie! Stuff!

For starters I am skiing with a bunch of chaps who take their PE rather too seriously for comfort. I have been pounding away at the torture machines at the S+M club (gym) for a while, but the less blubber I carry, the better I shall be at defending my position plus out-skiing them in the necessary dogfighting and challenges to my authority which shall come from the pups.
If I can stay off the ale for a month (exceptions to follow) then I shall be like a greyhound of the slopes (steely gaze to match).

Exceptions being the boat show - where once I have schmoozed my way through the champagne troughs of the boat brokers and charter chaps I shall be found propping up the Guinness tent. Exception two being the 'impromptu' champagne breakfast for associate. Hailing as she does from the Antipodes she does have hollow legs for diverse booze - but champagne in bed in the morning, combined with a caviar niblet and smidge of the smoked trout ever fails to loosen the knicker elastic I find. Personally I see such hardships as an occupational hazard.

Nevertheless. She is suitably impressed by my abstemiousness and for that matter my buffing waistline. (Told you my charms were dubious)

If all else fails, there is always the Norovirus. Shit yourself thin.