The point is, when I arrived back into the cinema, I noticed a sign saying “Please do not enter through the emergency exits”. So I immediately went to look for the manager so that I could apologise for any trouble that I may have caused. The man didn’t seem too bothered, but I offered to help out on the popcorn stand for a couple of weeks to make up for it.

The next fortnight was one of the happiest times of my life. All day long I made popcorn and coated it with sugar or salt or artificial sweetener, and listened to the movie goers complaining quietly to each other about the quality of the snacks being sold by some Irish guy who apparently sells popcorn at a stand somewhere near or in the cinema.

I can’t seem to think of anywhere else to go with this story, so lets just say that at the end of the two weeks I went home and discovered that Goldilocks had stolen my corn flakes, and I can’t tell you the rest because it’s the subject of an upcoming court case.

I’ve never been to court myself. Well except that one time when I was a juror in the trial of O.J. Simpson, but apart from that, no.

I brought my teddy bear Bowsy with me and the guy who counts the jury members’ votes accidentally mistook Bowsy’s paw for a juror’s hand, when I lifted it up to wave at OJ. So that might have messed up the vote count a little.

But these things happen. I understand there was a similar incident in Florida a few years ago during a U.S. presidential election. Here in Ireland the last two presidential elections have been won by women, and only one out of the five candidates last time was male. And he didn’t even do well. There was a sixth candidate but he dropped out before polling day, after it was alleged that he was a bear.

The media destroyed him and called him a “damn picnic-basket stealing forest-dweller”, and despite there being very little solid evidence, he was left with no choice but to quit.

Sadly the presidency is not that big a job here. The head of goverment does all the important stuff and the head of state, the president, just does the washing up and stuff and signs bills. A bit like the Queen of England, but without the beheadings and castles and things. Ironically, the president does get to live right next door to Dublin Zoo, which has bears.

So anyway Goldilocks pretty much cleared out my kitchen. And poor Bowsy and Ullysses were left in tears with no porridge, but that’s mainly because they hadn’t bothered to make any. My bears prefer toast. And who wouldn’t? I think we need to do something about the stereotyping of bears as porridge eaters.

It really does nobody any good to make up lies like that just to satisfy our lust for simplicity and goodliness. I think we should counteract all this by starting a rumour that bears enjoy heroine and prostitutes. That’ll balance it all out.

At the very least they’ll be able to sue us and make enough money out of it to compensate for having their houses broken into by Godilocks. In the meantime, lets at least all try to keep an eye on anybody who’s name begins with “G”, and make sure they’re not stealing breakfasts from local forest animals who live in houses.

Anyway, where was I? Well, I was right here, lying on my bed typing. But in a moment I’ll be in the toilet, wishing I could have come up with something better for today. And urinating my life away.

Neal’s Belch no 157 for 3rd Sept, 2004

Two cats walk into a bar. One of them is under the illusion that he’s an ox, so he orders a pint of Oxbow, whatever that is.

As for the other cat, I’m surprised he even went into the bar at all in the first place. He’s one of those cats who has not developed any human-like characteristics, and normally just does ordinary cat things like climbing onto roofs and playing with dead mice. Still, it’s nice to have a surprise every now and then isn’t it.

As it happens, it turns out that the cat was short sighted, and thought it was a “car”, not a “bar”. Being an ordinary no frills cat, not one of those intelligent cats you see in cartoons who walk on two legs and watch the news, he does’t realise that cars generally don’t have a big sign outside them saying “car”

Anyway, he goes ahead up to the bar and after a few minutes he sees his mistake. So he decides to adapt to the situation and have a night out in a bar, instead of his planned evening of napping on a car seat.

Not being used to having a choice of beverage (usually he either gets given a bowl of milk or drinks some water from a sewer outlet), he takes a long, long time to decide what drink he wants.

And he enjoys every minute of it. He’s in cat heaven. Eventually he makes up his mind and orders a pint of semi-skimmed. whereupon the bartender advises him that it’s traditional to order a beer or a whiskey or something like that.

The cat points out that he’s not remotely interested in traditions, and that he is, after all, a mere cat, equipped not with a sophisticated set of tastes and a spoilt pallet, but instead just a few insticts inherited from the jungle and polluted by domestication.

The bartender listens politely and points out that the cat has a very good vocabulary for a “mere” cat. The cat politely thanks him, before bidding him good day and going to the dairy.

All of which brings me to what I wanted to talk to you about today. In my formative years, I lived in a rainforest here in Ireland, and never wanted for monkeys or monkey nuts. Monkey bolts were a problem, as it was illegal to remove trees from the rainforest and so we were not able to clear enough space for a steel mine, but we survived, and we’ve all grown up to be reasonably well adjusted individuals, if I say so myself.

Nowadays, as any environmentalist will tell you, the rainforests are disappearing at a tremendous rate. They’re still there of course, but it’s impossible to see them when your glasses have become steamed up from centuries and centuries of rain.

What we need to do is somehow cause a change to the climate so that this rain stops, and then everything will be okay. My suggestion would be that we all stand up for one minute, at exactly the same time, and lift up our right foot, the one with the scabs all over it, so that the fumes given off cause some sort of atmospheric event That will probably sort it out.

If it doesn’t, we’re going to have to get the hell off this planet.

That’s why I’m not wasting any time. I wasn’t going to tell you this but I have, in my back shed, a half finished ark which I intend to use when the bran cereal hits the ventilator. Hopefully it will be finished by then, but that doesn’t really matter because it’s not going to sink is it? I’ll be sailing through outer space, not a vast wet ocean full of water.

It’s much easier to swim in a vacuum than in water. I’ve seen it done on movies. Remember that man in “2001: A Space Odyssey”? The one who floated off into space, never to be seen again, and presumably dead within hours when his oxygen supply runs out? That’s what I plan to do.

I’ve always admired Noah. He knew what he was doing. He saved all the female animals, then made sure each of them had a male of the same species to keep them occupied so that they wouldn’t distract him while he was trying to steer the ark round the tops of the hills.

He also had very good hair. Long and white and flowing, with a matching beard, just like the fellow in the Harry Potter movies. Except of course without the glasses and much older.

It has, throughout my life, been a mystery to me why our short sighted pets are never given glasses when they are diagnosed as being short sighted, or when they are found to be long sighted and find it difficult to read small print. I suspect it’s a conspiracy to prevent other species from evolving and taking over from us humans as the dominant beings. That’s all very well but they forgot about the computers.

We’ve been warned over and over again by Arnold Schwarzenegger that computers are going to take over the world, but we continue to help them by feeding them information through our keyboards. I’m doing it right now, I admit. By typing these paragraphs I am telling my computer how much I know or don’t know or think I know about it’s plan to take over the world, arming it with information. Yet I continue to type. I really am quite a dinghbat.

Maybe I should try typing false information to confuse it. The moon is made out of a special low-carb cheese that is safe to eat in large quantities and definitely won’t jam your circuits, unless you have jam with it too. The current time is quarter to four in the morning. Judge Judy is our leader.

See what you can make of THAT, you electronic power hungry bamtards.

Neal’s Belch no. 156 for 30th Aug, 2004

Is Cloud 9 being downgraded?

I’ve always been impressed at the willingness of modern scientists to keep up with changing trends in fashion and adapt their research to whatever is the “in” thing at the moment.

A scientist friend of mine is studying the effects of mobile phone signals on the strength and thickness of clouds. He’s discovered that most of the “cloud 9s” have now been reduced to seven and a half or eight, although he admits that the system of measurement is rather arbitrary and involves placing a small dog on top of the cloud and timing how long it takes the dog to fall through the cloud. Obviously there is no way of ensuring that the dog’s weight is exactly the same each time the measurement is taken.

Sadly short sighted dog food industry is not prepared to invest in research to invent a dog food that adds a precise, predicable amount of weight per can, to the dog.

Instead they are wasting their money on genetic research, in an attempt to find a way to ethnically cleanse the one out of every ten cats, who apparently doesn’t show a preference for the Whiskas brand.

Anyway environmentalists have leapt on this latest nugget of information, and most are blaming a fast food chain, which I won’t name because it already has a perfectly good name of it’s own. The fast food chain recently started selling bottled water for the first time in this part of the world. It’s being alleged that the water being removed from the clouds is causing the reduction in strength, although the company has strenuously denied interfering with clouds in any way other than to use them as an inspiration for the foam on some of their rabied dog burgers which they sell in select markets.

Sadly, here in Ireland we have to make do with hamburgers and the occasional sausage. We’ve never had a taste for exotic foods here, although I myself have tried to change this by allowing myself to be seen in St. Stephen’s Green, in central Dublin, eating “Manhattan” chedder cheese flavour popcorn which I’ve sprinkled with a few cubes of chocolate. It tastes lovely and anyone who sees me would instantly develop a craving for that particular dish, but unfortunately they can’t see exactly what I’m eating because the photo on the front of the popcorn packet only shows the cheddar cheese flavoured popcorn, not the chocolate.

That’s because of course the chocolate has been added by me, not the manufacturer. So I’m looking into having some special packaging made so that people can see exactly what I’ve put on top of my popcorn. There may be some patenting issues but I’ll sort it out eventually. I’m determined about that.

You have to do whatever you can to change this world and leave it a little better than it was when you came into it.

At the moment I’m drinking a canned beverage that promotes itself as having zero calories and zero sugar. I think it’s marvellous that we are already nearly into the minus figures in sugar content. I suggest we take things a step further by removing all of the urine and wasp stings that are usually added to these soft drinks to pad them out. I’d be happy to tolerate a slight reduction in taste in the interests of looking after my health.

Health, after all, is everything. There’s no point being rich if your leg is going to fall off and you have to spend all of your money trying to get a better walking stick than whoever the next richest guy is, just to keep up apperances.

People really are so obsessed with fashion these days. And dogs. My dog wants two pairs of very expensive name-brand running shoes at the moment, and I’m damned if I’m going to buy them for him. If he wants shoes he can go and put each of his paws into some wet papier-mache, and mould it into the shape of a shoe. He can use old magazines containing adverts for running shoes if he wants, so that the logos appear on the shoes

But that’s the best I can do. I will not pay a running shoe company to adorn my dog with their logos, and turn him into a walking billboard.

Call me old fashioned.

Neal’s Belch 152 from August 2004

I always like to start the day with a breath of fresh air and a good long stretch of my arms and legs.

I usually use one of those old stretching racks that you find in torture chambers. They’re also excellent for putting your toast on, until it becomes dry and crispy. I love makign toast. I always start by making sure everybody’s standing up around the table and holding their glasses high in the air, so the short-sighted among them can’t see me so I won’t get all embarrassed.

Then I make a small speach. Usually I say something like “God bless all who sail in this group of people who have just buried their sadly missed great great grandfather and are about to embark on a round the world cruise with his money, not realising that it takes months if not years for the proceeds of a will to be distributed. Luckily they have an overdraft facility. Unluckily, they can’t afford it.” I adjust this to suit the occasion.of course.

Then I crack a little joke.

Something like, “Two cats walk into a bar. One of them orders a Guiness, the other is a traditionalist and has a saucer of milk”. I won’t bore you with the punchline, you’ve probably heard it already. That usually breaks the ice, which  has by now become fused together in one solid lump in it’s bag in the freezer, and badly needs to be broken.

My sibling is getting married soon but it’s in America and I’m not familiar with your traditions, so I’ll probably just say something about how lovely everybody is and thank the organisers for the nice tea and biscuits. And besides, I just added this paragraph in as an afterthought because today’s belch was looking a little shorter than usual. So this is just to stretch it out a bit and make it look like you’re getting value for money. Which of course you are, because you haven’t paid me one single penny for this. You cheap bamtard. Dammit now it’s starting to look too long. You’ll start expecting a long belch every time and complain about being short changed when it’s just average length. I am not a hairdresser, for chrissakes

By this time, everybody at the assembly is usually getting a little tired of the inane puns and attempts at cleverness, so I don my coat and go for a walk outside in the cool, late night breeze. I like to sit on a wall and gaze up  at the stars as they make their way into the MTV Awards in a hotel at the top of the hill. I once won an award for my ability to speak the Irish language, when I was eleven years old. I can’t tell you very much about it  because I would have to tell you in English, thereby detracting from the aim of that particular awards scheme. Which would be irresponsible and I wouldn’t do it.

I’ve never been an irresponsible person. I always put my used razor blades inside a bottle or carton before disposing of them. If it’s a glass bottle I make sure to smash it into tiny pieces so that the garbage removers don’t hurt themselves on a huge shard of glass. However I also try to ensure the pieces are just large enough so that they can’t accidentally, or on purpose, be eaten by a baby worm or octopus that might be hiding in the bin.

Adult worms or octupuses, however, will just have to take responsibility for their own diets.and try to avoid ingesting the pieces of glass. I can’t be responsible for the actions of grown adult octoposes.

I must say, though, I admire the ability of those creatures to walk around on eight legs while still maintaining an air of dignity. I have never ever witnessed an octopus looking shabbily dressed or hunched over and walking like a drunken sloth. Not that sloths can help it. I’m not having a go at sloths here, I’m just using them as an example. Get off my back, for chrissakes.

I’m not even wearing a saddle.

Neal’s Belch no. 149 for 6th Aug, 2004

Having recently moved house again, this time right into the centre of the sprawling metropolis of Dublin, Ireland, I’ve been spending a lot of time optimising the arrangement of my cups, plates and saucepans in the cupboards. In the end I went for a big-stuff-at-the-back configuration. I really am a stickler for tradition.

My new home is very close to a McDonald’s, just like the old one. Which is always reassuring in a world gone mad. I can’t tell you the number of times I have woken up at two o’clock in the morning from a nightmare, only to calm down and relax when I remember that there’s a fast food outlet across the street that will be open in five hours time. There are also a couple of Chinese takeaways, a traditional fish and chip shop, and a post office. The post office doesn’t sell fast food, but with the overwhelming preponderment of electronic mail these days, I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before they will have to branch out into new services.

And I welcome that.

Already my local office is selling Fizzy Cola Bottles and tickets for Riverdance’s homecoming. I just wish they wouldn’t be so pushy about it. I went in for some stamps yesterday and the guy behind the counter not only gave me some stamps (the lovely new “Dead Painters painted by living Painters, by kind permission of cemmetary management” series), he also signed me up for a ten k run in aid of cute kittens, converted my bank account to run on Windows, and filled in a gun license application form for me. Now I’ve only got three days left to decide who I want to shoot.

To be perfectly honest, I’d rather not shoot anyone at all. I’m a peaceful, friendly person and I wouldn’t harm a flea. Unless the flea circus was particularly disappointing and they refused to refund the admission fee. Life is too short to watch an underrehearsed or sub-standard flea circus show. That’s what my mother always says, anyway.

Yesterday I took the cats out to see an ordinary circus with humans and elephants and tigers in it. And it was wonderful.

The trapeze artist poked her assistant’s eyes out and the clown turned up disguised as a police officer and arrested her for attempted murder. They’re having a trial next year. It really was so realistic. I love clowns.

Except when they waste valuable items of confectionery by throwing them at each other. Don’t they realise that half the world is starving because they can’t get any custard pies? I think it’s disgusting, and I’m not afraid to say so.

In fact, whenever I’m at a circus I stand up during the clown act, point at the stupidly dressed man or woman in the ring, and say in a loud, clear voice, but not shouting because that’s undignified, “You are an idiot”. I always get a murmer of appreciation from the audience and I can hear them whispering to each other about how impressed they are that somebody has stood up and said out loud what the rest of them are thinking.

I’ve always found that my opinions on most things are representative of the average person in the street. The problem is, there aren’t enough average people around these days, here in Ireland. Most of them emigrated during the recessions of the nineteen eighties. Which means that the average person in Ireland doesn’t live here.

That causes a lot of problems for people who carry out surveys and polls. In order to get a representative sample of the average Irish person, they have to travel all over the world and find them in plastic fake Irish pubs.

I hate fake pubs. Particularly because I never notice that they’re fake until I drink the first sip of Guinness and find out that it’s actually blackcurrant juice with cream floating on top of it. I think this sort of thing should be outlawed.

Anyway, yeah.

Neal’s Belch no. 150 for 9th Aug, 2004

As I lie here on my bed at NewsBurp’s new headquarters in uptown Dublin, I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like if I had never grown a beard.

Well, for one thing, I’d be five Euro poorer every month, thanks to razors and foamy stuff and all that carp. And let’s suppose that in the other parallel universe where I still shave, the other me walked into the shop one day to buy some of those new quintuple-blade shaving sticks that are made by the same people who make swords apparantly.

And let’s suppose that on his way out of the shop, the other me – let’s call him Justin, because that’s my middle name and he probably uses it as his first – trips over the kerb and lands feet up in a particularly shallow well that luckily just happens to have a six foot deep mattress at the bottom of it. So he’s fine.

And let’s suppose Justin lies at the bottom of the well for a while, catching his breath and inadvertently inhaling several tiny flying insects. And he looks up at the night sky and spots a light that wasn’t there before. And the light becomes known as “Justin’s Star”, setting him on a course as a successful astronomer. Even though it was only a guy shining a torch down the well to see what all the noise was about. The astronomy industry are very open minded and they’re not going to ignore a new discovery just because it doesn’t exist.

And thank god for that, because if people weren’t open minded, we’d still all be members of the flat earth society, and several thousand flights to Australia would go missing every year because the pilots just flew horizontally until they disappeared into space never to be seen again.

Anyway the point is, if I hadn’t stopped shaving I could now be a respected astronaut. And frankly I’m glad that didn’t happen because I always wanted to be a fireman instead. Firemen are cool. They rush about in a cool fire engine and light fires for people with their big firesticks which they rub together until they start a spark. It’s a indispensible service, although I can’t say I’ve ever used it, because I’ve got electricity.

I love electricty.

The quality of the electric power in my area has improved immensely since the introduction of competition into the industry. All of my electricity now comes in a lovely shade of red, instead of that boring cold blue that we used to get.

Red is my favourite colour because it reminds me of red chedder cheese, which I hate and always avoid so red reminds of the peanut butter that I have instead. Peanut butter isn’t red, but the cheese is. Well, sort of more browny yellowy orange. But it’s easier to call it red because you can type it with one hand. You use your big finger for the “r”, the second finger for the “e” and “d”, although it just got a lot more complicated when I tried to add quotation marks around each letter.

I had to use the little finger on my right hand to get the “shift” key. Which is a pain in the finger.

I love the fact that each of our fingers has two knees on it. I think that rocks. I can’t for the life of me understand why our legs only have one knee. Unless of course you count the ankles, which I don’t. Ankles don’t bend, they rotate. And they’re full of tiny little bones, which reminds me of one of those cheap unboned fillets of fish that I sometimes have the misfortune to purchase, and nearly end up choking to death on a piece of ankle bone.

Now, before you interrupt me let me just say that I’m well aware that they don’t put real ankle bones into fish fillets. Those are imitation ankle bones, of course.

But that’s not going to make much of a difference when you’re writhing in agony of the floor waiting for somebody to slap you on the back and give you the Heimlick Maneouver, while you’re teling the guy at the end of the tunnel to dip his bloody headlights.

Originally a 2004 Neal’s Belch

Once upon a time there were three enormous tables. One of the tables was a posh, polished mahogany banquet table, the second was a bog standard coffee table with stains all over it, although they could probably have been removed quite easily but obviously the owner didn’t think it was worth the effort. The third table wasn’t a table at all. It was a stool with a folding tray on top of it. The third table is what I’m typing this on right now. It’s also what I eat my dinner off. I’d like to say a special hello to my  landlord who has been promising to get me a table since I moved in at the end of March.

Anyway, I’ve always been a great admirer of the people who make tables. It’s a very difficult skill to learn, you know. First you have to find out the latitude and longitude of the house where the table is going to be. Then you have to calculate the length of each leg of the table so that they match the curvature of of the earth under that house. Otherwise the table is going to be wobbly. A bit like jelly, but you can’t eat it, although you can in theory spread ice cream all over it. But why would you do that? Not that you are required to have a reason. I mean, this is a free country and you’re more than entitled to spread ice cream all over your table if you want to. And I will defend to the hilt your right to do so. I’m just curious as to your reasons,that’s all.

If I were you, I would put the ice cream into a bowl or between a couple of wafers. Or I might just decide to have corn flakes instead. It depends. Is this an afternoon snack we’re talking about, or breakfast? You really need to give me more information because otherwise I’m just guessing.

But I digress. Back to the tables. I once found a lovely old table that was so beautiful that I felt guilty about killing the tree that made it. Not that I killed the tree myself. No. I got a hitman. Or hitwoman. I intentionally avoided learning the identity and sex of the hitperson, although she did have quite a masculine voice so I’m guessing she was a man. Anyway, as I said I felt guilty about using this beautiful tree to make a pointless piece of furniture for me to rest my beer can on. So what I ended up doing was having the wood converted back into a tree. And boy was I surprised at the result.

The “tree” turned out to have been a hideous laurel bush. I hate those. Every time I walk past one it’s leaves are always covered in dew and I get the sleeve of my jacket wet. But I’m not a vengeful person and I decided to give the laurel bush a chance. I gave it a pistol and we had a duel at dawn the next morning. Obviously I won. And before you ask, no I did not cheat. I merely increased my chances by using a water pistol filled with weed killer. The laurel bush got all excited when it saw the water pistol, and stood expectantly, thinking that I was about to make peace with it by giving it a lovely drenching. Two seconds later, it was writhing. It wasn’t writhing in agony – plants don’t feel pain, so don’t worry. But, rather generously I thought, the laurel bush played it’s part and added some dramatics to the occasion by writhing on the ground, as if in agony.

Anyway the upshot of it all was that I’d killed the bush again, and had it turned into a box of matches. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to light some fires.

Neal’s Belch no 148 for 2nd Aug, 2004

Several years ago I was walking along my local canal, treading very carefully in case the ice was weak, when I noticed that one of the popcorn vendors who dot the route had switched over to selling biscuits. I was of course intrigued.

Who wouldn’t be?

So I rushed home and did a little investigating on the electro-internetwork and I found out that popcorn is slowly declining in popularity all over the world, due to the increasing concern over the large quantities of salt that paranoid people suspect are being put into everything.

These are the same people who buy a whole bottle of natural water to drink with their lunch. Don’t they realise that water comes from the sea, which is absolutely jam packed with salt? I myself never drink water. I’ve heard rumours about what they put into that stuff. Apparently there’s two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen in every single drop. Sometimes more.

Of course, there are some elements of the salt industry who should not be trusted. This is the case in every industry, and we must not allow ourselves to be put off. For instance, some salt manufacturers add sugar and flour to the salt, to bulk it up. Similarly, some sugar manufacturers add salt and flour to their product. And some flour makers lace their flour with sugar. And so on.

Anyway later that day I returned to the frozen canal to finish my walk, which I had abandoned in my excitement over the whole thing. And I noticed that the ice in the area around the biscuit (formerly popcorn) stand, was much firmer that the rest of the ice, obviously because of the absence of salt, which prevents ice from forming.

So we can draw from this that several people are dying every year by slipping on ice that was caused by an absence of popcorn vendors spilling salt all over the place. For the sake of our elderly citizens, I urge you to go out now and support your local popcorn distributor, whoever he or she may be.

It’s probably a he.

The popcorn industry has not yet grown used to the idea of women making popcorn. Which is a shame really because instead they waste valuable time making biscuits, which, as I explained earlier, is leading to premature death among our old people.

You don’t have to actually buy any popcorn by the way, but I do encourage you to walk up to your local popcorn retailer and slap him on the back in a friendly, supportive way. Make sure you don’t accidentally hurt him, because then he’ll be in hospital for a few days and that can’t be good.now can it. Unless of course he commits a serious crime while in hospital, gets a job as a popcorn maker in the prison jobs scheme under which paticipants are not allowed to earn more than one Euro per hour, and produces low cost popcorn for the next eight to sixteen years without parole.

By the way I have no idea what “eight to sixteen years without parole” means, but I’ve heard it on American television programmes so I’m sure it’s fine. I’ve also learnt the phrases “You’re going down, buster”, “Here’s Bob with the twelve day Accuweather forecast”, “I’ll stick this goddam gun up your goddam ass” and “What letter did you learn today, Elmo” on American television, which I think is wonderful.

On Irish television I’ve learned the pharase “It’s six o’clock. We pause now for the Angeles”, which probably doesn’t mean much to you foreigners. It doesn’t have anything to do with popcorn though, so let’s leave it at that and not allow ourselves to stray off topic.

I hate when people stray off topic. Yesterday I was sitting on a bus going to my mother’s house because she makes nice jelly on Sundays, when I noticed that the pedestrian overpass near my home town is still crooked, despite repeated letters having been published about it in the local newspaper.

Apparently the architect designed it that way. It’s supposed to dip in the centre, and there’s nothing to worry about, it’s not going to snap if too many people walk on it. But I’m at least sixteen stone and I’m sure as hell not taking any chances thank you. Especially since it doesn’t get salted during icy weather.

I’d have to carry my own popcorn and make sure to accidentally on purpose spill it in a steady stream in front of me as I walk. And there’s a litter warden in the area who, I understand, likes popcorn too, so I’d have to make sure that he doesn’t eat it up before I walk across the part of the bridge where I’ve spilt the popcorn for my own protection.

There’s also a chance that I might get sued for plaguerism, by the great-grandchildren of Hans Christian Anderson, writer of “Hansel and Gretel” unless I succeed in making it absolutely clear that I am not talking about using the popcorn to find my way back home through the forest. Otherwise I’d have to take a few days off to go to Holland or somewhere for the court case.

Live is so bloody complicated. It really is.

Neal’s Belch no. 147 for 23rd Jul, 2004

Ten years ago to this day, the very first ever steam train passed through my home town. It was a momentous day.

We all lined the streets to wave as it made it’s way to the junk yard to get scrapped. And a proud day it was, too. Our scrap yard is one of the best in the world. We destroy things like there’s no tomorrow, reducing them to tiny pellets of dense metal in minutes. Anyway, right next door to the scrap yard, is the canal.

And a while back I was sitting at the canal bank, waiting to speak to somebody about a personal loan, when I noticed that the sign showing the name of the shop across the road was missing three letters.

Obviously I have no idea which letters they were, and the only chance I had of finding out was if I raided the bins at the back of the shop and found some headed stationery belonging to the store, so that I could see what it was called.

Unfortunately the bins are kept in a dark alley to the rear of the building, and  the laneway is shared with a large hotel and bar. While walking along the alley I was startled by the sudden sound of glass being smashed as it was dropped into a recycling bin. I got such a fright that I leapt over a wall and found myself in the back garden of a respected criminologist, who, it transpired, was already investigating the signs thing, and had it all under control.

So my work there was done.

I was superfluous to the situation, no longer needed, cast onto the steaming molehill of life like a badly formed metaphor that should have featured a dunghill intead of a molehill.

With hindsight though, it’s probably all for the best.

I am neither qualified nor sufficiently experienced to competently investigate the disappearance of three letters from a shop sign. The best theory I could come up with was that they were stolen by an ungerground letters agent who sold them on the black market to the producers of Sesame Street. Obviously that theory falls apart immediately when you remember that Sesame street is usually sponsored by two letters and a number, not three letters.

Anyway two cats walk into a bar.

The first cat immediately walks out again and stages a flamboyant, though ultimately unsuccessful demonstration against the stereotyping of cats as habitual bar visitors.

The other cat is a little more chilled out, and takes the longer view of the situation. He realises that by making them pay him regular sums of money to appear in barcat stories, he will, over time, slowly drain the perpretators of all their funds until eventually they have to stop creating barcat stories for good.

The second cat has a lovely night and gets drunk but not too drunk and they all live happily ever after.

Well, he did, anyway.

The other cat spent the rest of his life wishing he had stayed in the pub that night and not put himself up for ridicule and disrespect.in the national newspapers.

The only glimmer of hope he had was that the people who cut his picture out of the papers to hang up on their walls, would notice that the Sunday colour episode of Dilbert, on the other side of the page, was particularly funny that day so they might hang it up the other way around, to brighten up their homes.

Unfortunately that day’s episode was one of the clever but obscure ones about some sort of computer issue, that nobody ever understands. So the cat was out of luck.

Ironically he was a black cat, and on his way home that night he crossed the paths of at least seventeen lucky people and unwittingly changed their lives for the better.

Not that he cared.

All he wanted was a saucer of milk and a ball of string to play with and maybe the company of his friend, the second cat, who was down in the pub enjoying himself. It’s a dog’s life, being a cat.