The remainder of Nadia

I turned up this morning to find this:



which amused me, slightly.

Nadia + Laurence Dallaglio = Sturdy Girl.

This is Laurence Dallaglio, we escorted him from the premises of the pub (John Gandy's). We hope we can go back.



We think he is too Manley and so we have taken a model from a high street retailer who we call Nadia (because we have 'no-idea' what her real name is) and cut her head off. This hurt quite a lot. Not her, me. Donna, I am sorry, but your weak girly scissors were not suited to the job of hacking through cardboard. After all, this was not just any cardboard, this was hard, laminated High Street Retailer cardboard.



Because it hurt so much, David Tapp took over cutting duties. He likes it really and made a particular fuss of her hair.



This is the finished product. It looks a little like Sturdy Girl, b3ta's favourite celebrity:



She is fine! We like a girl whose neck doesn't quite fit her shoulders. And there ends the blog.

Locked in.

Today I became locked in the lavatory with no paper.

This would be less irritating if it were not for two aggravating factors:

I would have had enough paper had I not blown my nose several times whilst on the job.

I had to call David Tapp to come and rescue me.

The toilet roll dispenser takes two rolls, each huge to the point of ridicule, so that when one is empty a slide allows access to the second. Sadly the second was not there today. I have yet to kill the cleaner.

David, bless him, came to my rescue by bringing a life-size cardboard cut-out of Lawrence Dallaglio into the toilets and assaulting the cubicle.

Thankfully he assaulted the cubicle next to me and I was able to get some paper and return to a full ovation in the office.

Bah!

Have I died of Swine Flu yet?

No.

Ginness

Today is a lovely day for a Ginness.

Ingredients:

• 4 ice cubes
• 2 oz Hendricks gin
• 4 oz Fever Tree Indian Tonic Water
• 10 oz Guinness Original Stout
• Lime wedge for garnish

Preparation method

1. Gently pour Guinness into a straight pint glass.
2. Place the ice cubes in a tall, narrow glass.
3. Add the Hendricks and the tonic water onto the ice cubes.
4. Stir gin mixture well with a long spoon.
5. Upend gin into the pint glass with the Guinness.
6. Garnish with lime wedge and serve immediately.
7. Rinse and repeat.

* Calories 298.4
* Protein 2.0g
* Sugars 29.6g
* Total Fat 0.3g
* Salt 8.8mg

Blind as a bat.

Having travelled up to That London for the last couple of days of last week, I am feeling positively cosmopolitan.

I had a lovely dinner, although their idea of a commentworthily huge meal in That London equates to a goodly sized bit of beef and too few chips in Exeter, but what can one do? I met some ex-Future people who were pretty much universally nice and it was excellent to see Melvin again after so long.

Perhaps I had better return to ground with which you, my gentle reader, will be familiar. Me.

Not a huge update, I went to the optician. I have been having a few headaches and so I toddled along for a check. The optician is nice enough, but she has terrible breath and a very hairy top lip, which is disconcerting when she leans in to within a mere 27 beard seconds of my face to peer at my retina.

After the normal puffs of air to the face and the watching the balloon test, I have some smashing news: "You have the best long distance vision I have ever measured . . .".

Woo! Yay! Hooplah! Maybe even a punani, except, wait. There was an ellipsis in there, wasn't there? There is a 'but' coming. Oh dear. I know that to many of you this will seem like a petty thing, I am a middle aged man with receding hair, a proceeding stomach and a hopefully infertile scrotum, so how unexpected can it be that my eyesight might be failing? Well, let me tell you this, it is utterly arse!

". . . but you will need a prescription for VDU use".

Bitch.

The overtly camp technician leads me back to the front desk to discuss my glasses, and hands me over to a woman cut from the receptionist mould.

There is something about Doctor and Dentist receptionists which can only be bred there. I sincerely believe that all medical receptionists and school secretaries are from the same original stock. If ever there was an argument for creation and short-Earth theories then it must surely be the guileless, embittered women who inhabit the desks and counters of our nations monopolies.

They know that you have nowhere else to go, you see. They sense that you absolutely need to have the tooth drilled, or to let the headmaster know that little George will be out of class for the next few days with a vomiting bug, so they can be as obnoxious as they like and there is nothing you can do about it.

As long as they smile and remain officious whilst they drain every last drop of joy from your situation, they know that any retaliation on your part will merely mark you down as 'one of them'. You know it too, you have seen them, the ones who are either genuinely unpleasant to begin with or, in the face of constant whittling bile from the haggard spinster behind the Formica worktop, finally snap and storm off in a cloud of expletives. There is no benefit in that, the receptionist merely retains the high moral ground and has another example to prove that the customer is always wrong. You know this and she knows this and, worst of all, she knows that you know it.

There can be no benefit to the human species for these abominations to have arisen naturally. There is nothing in the phenotype which could be classed as a positive variance. Indeed, the receptionist only truly serves to hinder mankind's progress. The only possible explanation remaining is that the receptionists are created by a deity, the alternative, that these acrimonious termagants actually engage in sexual relationships, is too absurd to contemplate.

So, we return to the shrew at hand. Now I only want to wear these glasses when I am in front of a VDU - I do not need them even for reading paper-based print, so appearance is of no real consequence. I mention this and she releases the smallest of sneers. Do not get me wrong, I have long ago learned to face The Receptionists with equanimity, I am not becoming even mildly riled by this crone, indeed I would be far more shocked were she polite or even human, I am merely relaying the situation. To cut a long story short, my lenses are to cost me £225, plus frames. "Shall we start at the cheapest and work up?" she asks with the belittling tone which suggests that a pauper like myself needs assistance.

This is another trait of The Receptionists, they always look down on mere mortal men. Be they manning an NHS drop in desk, behind a Post Office counter or idling away, processing the return of faulty goods at Marks & Spencer, they know you need them and somehow translate this into a superiority which must prove that they are a separate breed. Were these really the poorly paid jobs which The Receptionists pretend, propagating the myth through the advertising of false vacancies in the local press, then their universal confidence that the wealth of the customer does not match up to their own high standards could not be maintained. I digress.

"No, let's not".
"Sorry Mr Manley?"
"Let us not 'start at the cheapest and work up'" I should stress here that I am calm and not angry, just conversational, "Let's just leave it for now, eh?"
"I am sorry Mr Manley, but the optician does say that you need glasses for VDU work."
"Well, I have managed long enough and I rather think that 85 pints of Spitfire might well go further towards relieving the stress than a brace of glass discs. Good day ma'am."

I feel elated as I leave the shop. It is not that I have saved £300, but that I have shown one of The Receptionists that I do not need her. I can operate alone. I am a free man. I still need glasses. Bugger.

I slink, yes 'slink', I am not sure that my chin was actually clear of the floor tiles, into another optician, clutching my prescription and avoiding those with thicker spectacles in the hope that my newly discovered ocular deformity will not become exasperated by their condition. The Receptionists await me.

There are three of them, they ignore me. We have all been ignored by The Receptionists, they type at their terminal or hold a telephone to their ear for precisely 5 seconds longer than one can bear before raising their eyes to you. This is different. The Receptionists are not doing anything. Nothing at all. They are merely standing still ignoring My Lordship. The word has been passed.

The fear hits me and I can feel the sweat trickling down the nape of my neck for a full 2 minutes. I attempt conversation, "Hello". Nothing. A direct assault "Hello? Could any of you help me at all, please?". Nothing. Eventually I resort to a fully flanking attritional attack, using a passing little girl, "When you grow up, you make sure that you are not as rude as these ladies". Nothing.

A pretty girl comes over and says pointedly 'They will be with you in just a second' and suddenly all three of The Receptionists clamour to assist. Have I discovered the hedgemon? I leave the three to cackle a-whiles and approach the spectacular hive queen, who manages to sell me a pair of bins, with lenses, for a modest £25 and am away into the night.

16 weeks; the final outing.

Well, I am something of an old hand at this now, having dropped off my first semen specimen almost 4 weeks ago.

I am riding Matthewparker's Lemond Reno, so I am being exceptionally careful today. There is nothing like having a pot of his own ejaculate in his pocket to make a man cycle with care.

This is the point at which everything comes together. based on this deposit Jim could stop using contraceptives and we can safely go on with our lives, OR the pain could have all been for nothing.

It is not really exciting, more worrying. still hurt too much to risk and serious cycling.


Whilst the pot is enormous, it is not as large as a fat cat. Bun is not actually sniffing the bag, it is a clever trick of perspective. Woo!

Anyway, the pot of goo was delivered without a hitch and I stopped in at the bike shop on my way to work and saw my bike, resplendent with its new, larger, 351 frame.

Not a bad day at all.

If it comes back fertile I am not doing this again.

Domestic snowboarding

Okay, everyone knows that it is snowing in Devon. The M5 was closed. Dug had to abandon his car and walk the two and a half hours home, where his water, heat and general life support had all failed. Crashed happened everywhere. Many people could not get necessary food and warmth and Manley went snowboarding overnight.


I know it's a fuzzy image, but they all were, it was dark and I fell on every single run - image provided courtesy of the ever lovely Tinium.

The back out of the Land Rover was fun, as was three up on a board. I fell over lots and should apologise to Mel for smashing her trays, but if it is any consolation I have two nasty puncture wounds, on in my thigh.

Cheers in particular to Dagnal, Ads and the giddy-bobbards for a smashing evening and at least I was not the one who broke a snowboard.

And there goes the car.

So, on Friday I broke the frame on my Dawes Milk Race, which I have had since passing my Common Entrance in 1988.

Today, upon leaving Sainsbury's car park, the prop shaft fell off the Delica. Buying the guitar is looking more and more like a mistake.

One interesting thing about this is the diverse nature of human behaviour. In the scenario of a supermarket car park everyone is very busy and selfish. Around a dozen cars manoeuvred around me, sounding their horns, whilst I stood in the road and picked up my prop shaft; none offered to help. Of these, all but one then pulled back into the right lane and queued behind my stricken Delica, sitting with her hazard warning lights on and without a driver, and proceeded to toot their horns in rage at the commander-less car.

Given that I was actually standing in the road, holding a prop shaft in my arms, one would imagine that they could have considered the situation and avoided delaying themselves further.

In stark contrast, once I was out on the open road (the great joy of a four wheel drive truck is that, on the occasion of breaking a half shaft, prop shaft, or even the diff, one can slip into 4WD and trundle on, to all intents and purposes a normal front wheel drive vehicle - that and being able to go jumping in the woods) several individuals were intent on warning me of my oil leak (I lost a chunk of gearbox in the process of the prop's suicide) in a friendly manner.

Given that the first group of people were merely forced to change lanes momentarily (if you are a Usonion then you probably need to look that word up - the way you use it is entirely wrong) and the latter chaps were actually having gearbox oil sprayed all over their cars, I would suggest that we, as a species, cope more easily with problems as they become more severe.

Either way, my Delica is undoubtedly beyond economic repair (the prop managed to take a goodly chunk out if a fuel tank and the water and oil pumps look likely to die, quite aside from the broken gearbox) so I am sans voiture, as the French almost certainly would never say.

I shall take a picture but, in the mean time, I shall settle for swearing mildly about it on the internet:

Bugger.

Late for a wank?

It turns out that my 12 week specimen was due on the 8th. I had completely forgotten and we have all been somewhat under the weather, so this morning I had an early start and then cycled off to the RD&E with a pot of rapidly cooling semen in my pocket.

Now, as you almost all will know, when one has, for whatever reason, the need to drop off a urine sample at the physician's office there are special containers provided for the purpose. These come in a variety of guises, some with salts or chemicals in the bottom, some with labels and some in bags, but they all have feature thing in common. They are almost, but not quite, exactly the opposite of 'large enough for the task'. As a man this is less of a problem. Your average gent has a combination of penis length and waist measurement which afford a reasonable view of the proceedings and, whilst slightly piss-ridden hands are an oft-unavoidable result, getting the sample into the pot is relatively achievable. For those amongst us with orifices which number into double figures the procedure is somewhat more convoluted and I doubt that there are many in your number, dearest readers, who have not at some point thought to themselves 'why do they not make the bloody things in a bigger size?'.

Well they do.

So I am sitting in my bed contemplating an entirely cold-blooded activity which, by its very nature, requires an element of enthusiasm. It is hard enough to muster this with the need to get from the finishing post to the hospital in good time, not to mention getting to work on time and a house full of other people preparing for their day. Adding a collection container which seems better suited to housing an entire shoal of barracuda does nothing for the confidence.

Seriously, the average human male produces between 2ml and 5ml of ejaculate. Where in the name of Hades's least desirable convenience is the need for what is essentially a half pint beer glass with a plastic lid?

So it comes to pass that, with a basically empty pot stretching my jacket pocket to bursting, I cycle off into the cold January wind.

Some men can be somewhat embarrassed about this sort of thing, so the hospital is discrete. There are no large signs at the hospital bearing the legend 'Jizz samples, this a-way!' nor does the depositor have any requirement for human interaction. There is, instead, a small letter box on a building which spectacularly fails to claim it's pathology credentials (I know, I know, but they have all the equipment for the study of liquids, so it's a cinch really).



So, after a minor issue with a car trying to run me over whilst I transport my precious load of hopefully infertile semen, I arrive at the hospital and spend 15 minutes asking a variety of people for directions which, obviously, is far, far less embarrassing than an actual sign saying where to go would have been. Praise the Lord Zeus for the consideration of the powers that be for providing haven from potential ridicule.

In a way it was somewhat anti-climatic. I dropped my pot into the flap and then I was done, so off I rode into the morning mist. To be honest it was probably the least exciting part of the process to date. I simply pedalled off up the hill where, as happens, my bicycle frame snapped cleanly through at the head-tube as I was overtaking a bus.



I have been riding this bike for 21 years now, so it was very upsetting for me as I am sure, gentle readers, you can appreciate. To cheer myself up I bought a Vintage AMG1 Bell Brass Resonator on impulse, so now I have a broken bike and no money to pay for a new frame.

These things are sent to try us.

For those who have asked about the pain, it is still with me, but I intend now to wait until I have the all clear (or, Heaven forbid, the news that I am still fertile) before bothering the Quack again. Poor old bicycle.