Neal’s Belch no. 161 for 13th Sep, 2004
Yesterday I was queueing up at my local bank, hoping to get my hands on some leaflets and lodgement forms because I collect them as a hobby, when all of a sudden there was a loud scream of “Help. Help. My Sandwich”.
Needless to say I pushed the onlookers out of the way and made my way to the centre of the crowd, letting everybody know that I was available to assist.
It turned out that the bank porter had solved an “across” clue on his crossword, but in doing so had unfortunately found that an interlinked “down” word was obviously incorrect, because it no longer fitted. Apparently the poor unfortunate man had gambled his luncheon sandwich (corned beef and cheese on dry white toast) on being able to solve the crossword, and the bank manager had now won it off him.
Corned beef is completely unsuitable for toast. You have to put it in a soft bap or a crusty french roll. Nothing else. People really need to be taught sandwich making in schools, maybe as part of a home economics class. We can’t have, in a civilised society, people assembling their sandwiches incorrectly.
Anyway, I’m fine with corned beef if it’s in the right context, but one thing I won’t tolerate at all is an uncarpeted basement stairs. These, as far as I’m concerned, are highly dangerous and should be banned and replaced with ladders. When you climb down a ladder there are no complicated steps in your way, just a few simple narrow rungs. So there is very little chance of you getting confused and forgetting where your feet go or losing sight of the handrail. And If the ladder falls over while you’re on it, you still reach your desired destination. Unless of course you’re on your way upstairs.
Don’t worry if you don’t understand this. I’ve just added a “two cats walk into a bar” story to the end of today’s Belch, which will explain my point in an easy to understand analogy about a cat walking down a stairs to a basement. But that’s all to come later.
As you may have noticed, most of today’s Belch is filler. I’m kind of short of material at the moment, but I’m determined nonetheless to fill up the height of a medium laptop screen and just beyond, as I usually do.
I like to give value for money. After all, you’ve paid a lot for your computer. But rest assured I’ve invested the proceeds wisely. Yesterday I bought a left handed artificial right hand. Those of us who are left handed have to keep up with the latest trends, and right hands that work in a left handed fashion are going to be the “in” thing this Autumn, I’m sure of it.
How are we doing for space? Another paragraph, I think. Two cats walk into a bar.
One of them immediately runs behind the bar counter, because he works there and he doesn’t want to keep the other cat waiting and damage his business After all, it’s taken him years to build up a reputation, and there’s no point throwing it all away just so he can continue talking to the other cat about Itchy and Scratchy.
The other cat asks him for a Guinness. The bar cat says the Guinness keg is empty and it might take a few minutes, to which the other cat replies that that’s fine, he’s not in a hurry anywhere and he’ll wait.
The bar cat then quietly curses under his breath because he doesn’t want to have to go all the way down to the basement, especially since the ladder has been replaced with a carpeted stairs, and he hates those. He finds them so confusing, with their vertical bits and horizontal bits. He never knows which to use. He wants to travel down in a gentle slope, not horizontally or vertically.
Besides, it’s dark down there, and he’s a black cat so nobody will see him if he crosses their path, which means a tonne of precious good luck will go to waste.
Okay, I think thats it.