Circa 2005
I’ve always been a great believer in the dictum “Quad arisces domitorium”, which of course means “Ask not what your hamster ca –
– No I haven’t. That’s ridiculous. I can’t do this anymore.
This constant stream of lies, for no other reason than to fill a screen with nonsensical ramblings about cats and turnips and other such entities which deserve to be treated much more seriously than this.
For the past twenty months I have abused you, dear reader, by fobbing you off with absolute carp. And as a result you are left to pick up the pieces and go about your daily life armed with false information and made-up anecdotes that not only waste your time, they may even lead you into danger. I am truly sorry.
Let me try to make some small gesture towards rectifying the situation by telling you something, for a change, that is true and that will help you, rather than hinder you, in your attempt to get through your miserable existence.
Where I work, in a large office building in the centre of Dublin city, Ireland, there is a window behind me which faces onto the back of a well known, upmarket hotel.
And the hotel is undergoing major renovations that are expected to last a year or two, hence being closed for business at the moment. As a result tourists, unable to find any suitably high standard accommodation nearby, have taken to sleeping in the little alcoves that frame our office’s windows, all of which by the way are kept clean by the office cat, who licks each pane of glass thoroughly over a continuous two week cy –
– Never mind. Anyway, the building work at the hotel gets pretty noisy, and it’s hard to hear yourself think sometimes. Just yesterday I was thinking about the fact that there are seahorses, sea lions and sea fishes, but no sea cats, and I came up with a brilliant solution but I can’t for the life of me tell you what it is, because just as I was thinking it, my idea was drowned out by another blast of drilling from next door.
Where is this going? You may well ask. Frankly, I make this up as I go along and have no idea. On top of that I’m a little short of ideas at the moment, so don’t be surprised if the rest of this is just filler. Monkey one, monkey two, monkey three, peanut time. Full stop. Dot. Dot. Tod. Todd. That’s how you come up with a boy’s name. Now, for girls, it’s a little different. Trill, tril, lirt, flirt, skirt, brown, Hazel.
As if writer’s block isn’t enough (and frankly it isn’t, if I’m only going to be able to get six words out of discussing it), I also have an obscure Tom Petty song going round in my head, and I’m humming along with it, and that’s not helping my sore ear. Not that I would expect it to.
In case you’re wondering, it’s the one from the Full Moon Fever album that goes “but I’ll probably feel a little bit better when you’re gone”. Have you noticed that the young people nowadays always spell “you’re” as “your”? Me neither. But apparently the part of my brain that types, has.
What else? I’ve been eating a lot of spinach lately, as part of a calorie controlled diet of course, and oddly enough it goes beautifully with that dried pasta that comes in a bag with the sauces already in it. I’m also consuming copious quantities of fruit. So much of it in fact that –
Sorry, had to go out for a minute. Anyway, pasta is of course an anagram of “pasat”, which I believe is a misspelling of a model of car produced by Nissan. Now, oddly enough Nissan used to be called Datsun, and if you re-arrange the letters of the company’s old name, you get “A sun”, but you have a couple of letter left over if you do that. And if there’s one thing the motor industry can’t be doing with, it’s wastage.
That’s why they avoided pursuing “A sun” as a possible fuel source for modern vehicles, steering well away from the idea of solar cars. Thee had realised, using nothing but a clever analysis of the English language, that solar power always leaves waste. After all, do we really want to be here in twenty years time trying to figure out what to do with the copious amounts of unused sunlight that is being dumped at the sides of Oasises in the Sahara Desert, and other such places?
Okay I’m done. Sorry.