Light Entertainment

How many Mrs Pithers does it take to change a lightbulb? Truth be told, I don't know the precise answer. All I do know is it's certainly more than one.
My Soon-To-Be Ex-Wife stumbled through the front door 48 minutes ago after a night out at a gay club in Big City (she's not swapped her bus travel card but it is a long story). She promptly switched on the hall light and the bulb pinged - bye, bye light (second time in two days). Then, as I was coming downstairs to investigate the associated slurrings, she switched on the landing light and that too went.
I switched on the kitchen and lounge lights in an effort to assess the remnants of the confused Mrs P standing in the hall and, in doing so, cast her a sideways "you're-a-bleedin'-disaster-area-admit-it" glance. She responded by belching "I'll changesha bulubs, I'll changesha bulubs!" Bearing in mind she has never changed a lightbulb in her life, I sat back and watched the impromptu entertainment which began with her scouring......Ooh, hang on......there's just been a loud smash!!! I'll explain in a minute. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Mrs P's search for a new lightbulb began with her scouring the breakfast cereals' cupboard in the kitchen. "Noooooo!" I chuckled. "Cold, cold." She then went outside to the greenhouse (seriously!). "Much colder. Much, much colder." When she pulled open the kitchen cupboard door concealing the washing machine I couldn't take any more and so directed her to the confusingly named "lightbulbs cupboard".
There followed half an hour of "Ooh, dammits", "Flippin' things" and "Gerrin, sod yas" until she finally appeared around the lounge door to announce that she had changed both the bulbs. At that precise moment, as I was writing "......I sat back and watched the impromptu entertainment...." above, there was the sound of the shattering glass I mentioned. The landing bulb she claimed to have replaced had fallen out and come crashing down into the hall. "Theresh no more bulubs," she proclaimed, dustpan and brush in hand. "I'll go get shome." When I pointed out that the possibility of finding an all-night lighting shop were slim she turned dejectedly and headed off upstairs to bed, dustpan still in hand. Little girl, you've had a busy day.
Well, it's now 1am and, not for the first time following one of Mrs P's incident-packed returns from a night out, I am wide awake. Sadly, I have nothing for Grantham.

Pimms And The Post-Modern Woman

I've been to Wimbledon today. Not physically, you understand, just emotionally - courtesy of Mrs Pither.
By way of background, let me say that my Soon-To-Be Ex-Wife went to SW19 on Tuesday with some pals to watch it rain - it's different down there, you know? - and then
she went on to her mother's in Cumbria to watch the said "lady" play in some crunch rugby league match.
After my Soon-To-Be Ex-Mother-In-Law had enjoyed a few arm wrestling sessions with the lads down at the Duck and Gynaecologist after the game and then dubbined her boots she joined Mrs P in a bit of a Wimbledon-fest, watching three solid days of it on TV.
Now the current Mrs Pither is a pretty good tennis player and used to play for her county (I bet you wondered where you'd heard my name before!). Consequently, she LOVES tennis and Wimbledon is to her what Fiesta Readers' Wives is to me. However, being Catholics, she and her mother have to play "the lying game" all the time they are together. This involves Mrs P not drinking or smoking at any time, despite the excitement of the on-court action, so that her mother will think she is neither a drinker nor a smoker. For her part, her mother pretends to revel in her daughter's apparent rejection of the grape, the grain and the weed. The fact that her mother KNOWS she smokes and drinks and that Mrs P KNOWS she KNOWS and her mother, in turn, KNOWS she KNOWS she KNOWS is all part of growing up and being Catholic.
Anyway, the upshot of this temporary abstinence is that, when STB EW returns from a trip to Arthur Mullard's sister's place, I get the brunt of the, shall we say, "slight over-compensation" which follows. I greeted her as she charged through the front door at lunchtime today with a cheery "Hello dear, had a nice time?", only to be barged aside as she ran to the fridge muttering "I need a sodding drink!!"
I left her to top up her levels for a while and then, late this afternoon, having fixed the central heating, I decided to have a soak in the bath. Unbeknown to me, as I relaxed in the water, looking down on the unemployed, Mrs P cracked open a large bottle of her favourite Wimbledon-time tipple - Pimms. The advert jollily proclaims that, whatever the time is, it's Pimms O'clock. Well, to me, Pimms O'clock coincides exactly with the time that Hell freezes over and I cease to have a hole in my arse! I would rather drink my own gastric juices than have so much as a thimbleful of that muck. Still, STB EW seems to like it and so she got stuck in, watching the ladies singles final.
I was aware of a few whoops, oohs! and "good shots" drifting upstairs from the lounge but there was nothing to get alarmed about and so, when I gathered from all the applause that the final had finished, I nodded off in the bath. I was awoken a while later, however, by Mrs P in full, drunken voice, screaming things like "way to go!!!", and "woohoo!!" and "that's it, smack it!!" It turned out that the ladies singles final had not been the end of play after all. It was apparently followed by the post-op singles final and the hermaphrodites doubles or something.
The result of this extended play was that Mrs P managed to quaff buckets of Pimms and was somewhat loud, tired and emotional by the end. She came up to the bathroom to describe in achingly boring detail how Britain's deputy great white hope and some bloated man-woman creature from the Balkans had made it through to the genuinely mixed up doubles final.
I am now, once again, relaxing owing to the fact that, steamed as she was, STB EW has gone out for the evening. She has taken to fag hagging of late and has gone to the evening do of a civil ceremony for a gay guy we both used to work with. He is a lovely chap, don't get me wrong,
but the thought of standing in a Big City gay bar listening to I Will Survive until 3 in the morning while some bloke criticises the curtains and Mrs P crawls around on her hands and knees imitating a retarded sealion fills me with dread so I am having a quiet night in.
Ho hum. What to send? Well, Pimms can go to Grantham for a start and I might as well send the after effects of the tennis at Wimbledon there as well because I am fearing the worst when the wee small hours roll around.

The Aid Epidemic

I am abandoning my self-imposed no-swearing rule so readers of a nervious disposition should get their incontinence pads out now.
Live Earth????? Oh, dear God, give me strength! This is getting bloody ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong, old Bob Geldof had a wizard wheeze back in '85 when him and that other bloke organised Live Aid, or First Aid as it should be called in hindsight. It was novel and a good time was had by all - well, everyone except the people who were starving in Africa as they couldn't get a signal and were too busy dying anyway.
Popular music concerts at Wembley and some place in America on that summer's day raised oodles of cash which was used to pay for a string of famous types to go out to Africa and walk round villages looking depressed for a while before heading back to their luxury hotels to enjoy the rest of their holiday.
Sadly, what followed was an Aid epidemic. No, not an Aids epidemic - the Africans already had one of them. This one saw a string of other gigs and events staged under the Aid banner. There was Live Aid 2, Sport Aid, Laugh Aid, Drunk Aid, Eat Aid, Hearing Aid, Lucas Aid etc. I forget them all now, there have been so many.
So, what have we got now? Well, the Aid menace has just become a pandemic with Earth Aid, or Live Earth or Live-Negative-Earth-Always-Read-The-Label Aid or whatever it's called. The theory is that it will raise awareness of the fact that we're fucking up the planet. Quite how gathering together hordes of groupies so that they can get smacked off their tits while trying to stare up the dresses of the Spice Girls helps the earth hasn't really been explained.
The fact that each gig will require at least one deciduous forest to be vapourised in order to generate the 68 krillion mega amps of electricity required to power up the amps and guitars of The Snivelling Dead and all the other acts seems to have been lost on the organisers. Then there is the petrol, diesel and aircraft fuel used up by the dickheads who go to these concerts, not to mention the fucking noise pollution they will generate when they get there.
Here's an idea. If people really want to save the world then why don't they just cut down on the shite they produce and the goodies they consume instead of organising pop concerts in the hope that will help? Jesus Christ! Listen, if Status Quo are the answer then we're worrying about the wrong bleedin' question!
Are you seriously trying to tell me that all those morons who will stuff their faces at these concerts and then get ratted out of their tiny brains while listening to some self-obsessed twats suffer for their music are going to come away determined to put a plaster on the hole in the ozone layer as a result?
It's the holier than thou aspect of the whole load of bollocks which gets on my mammaries. No-one.....REPEAT NO-ONE......involved in this ferago gives a flying carbon atom about helping Mother Earth! They just want to rock. That's fair enough, but don't ponce about saying you're saving the fucking planet!
Sorry, and this counts for the anti-smoking zealots as well, the holier than thou brigade can go to Grantham.

Heavy, Man

Dear Gordon Brown,

I have just spent the last six months organising an awards scheme for which the honours are to be presented at a gala final in London by a TV star. This famous-for-just-one-show celebrity has featured heavily in the publicity I have put out for these awards and so imagine my disappointment when I learnt yesterday that he had been axed from the programme for which his name was known. His demotion to the ranks of the rest of us has, therefore, reduced my scheme and the associated promotional work to a heavyweight pile of donkey's doo-daahs.
I drove back from work last night with a heavy heart, in even heavier rain, and one of my windscreen wipers (driver's side) flew off as I waited in indescribably heavier traffic at Junction 6 of the M6.
I arrived home to find that my alsatian had defecated in my hallway and when I switched on the light so as to be able to see while clearing up the still steaming load there was a "ping!" and the bulb went.
In my kitchen I switched on the main light to put away the cleaning equipment and that bulb went as well.
I decided to have a long, hot bath to ease away the pain and depression of the day but unfortunately the pilot light blew out and could not be re-lit.
I am consequently sitting here in a freezing cold house, with no hot water, little light and a spastic car parked out on the drive. If I was in a marching band I would be playing the piano! I would shoot myself but, the way things are going, I would miss.
As I contemplate the imminent end of my career while watching my dingo-cross chew up one of my slippers, a thought is weighing heavy on my mind.........................what is the government going to do about all this?

Yours A Tad Dejected,

R. Pither.

I Know I'm Paranoid But - They Really Are Out To Get Me

I am going to suspend my self-imposed no-swearing-from-now-on rule for the following.
Fucking Hell!! This makes me so mad!!!
Ok, file the following under "H" for "Haven't They Got Anything Better To Do?"
The landlord of the pub just down the road from me told me that last night, at about 7pm, two little old ladies wandered into his hostelry. He said they were apparently in their 60s, blue-rinsed, with granny-style overcoats and clutching the sort of little handbags only grannies carry and they proceeded to mooch around the pub, searching out all the nooks and crannies. After about 15 minutes they headed for the front door, apparently intent on leaving, whereupon the landlord pounced on them in the hope of flogging them something, if only his dodgy chicken and chips.
They turned to him and said: "Oh, it's all right, deary. We're being paid by the council. We were just here to check that you didn't have any ashtrays out and no-one was smoking."
Can you fucking believe that!!!! The fucking council round here has recruited the fucking Snoop Sisters and various other bleedin' pensioners to crack down on the biggest single threat to face this country since Hitler dreamed up Operation Sealion.
First of all, it's nice to know where your fucking council tax is going. Secondly, have they got an army of coffin-dodgers out there checking that your dog never craps in public, no-one tosses a used burger box into the street or your catalytic converter is working properly and not poisoning us all to death? I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO!!!!

Don't get me wrong. I'm a 40-a-day man and I desperately want to quit - and I will. What gets me is the holier than thou attitude of these bastard health Nazis who are out of control now. They don't fucking care about what THEY are doing to pollute the world. If there was one rule for all across the board then it would be easier to swallow - but there isn't!!
As to recruiting Bible-crammers to catch out illicit smokers, what are they going to do if they find some 19-stone thug pulling on a tab? Do me a favour.
Fuck 'em, fuck 'em all. I've sent them before but the fucking "holier than thou" bastard health Nazis - who aren't bothered about the shite poured out of their cars' exhausts or the rubbish dropped by their brats, or the drain on the public purse which their spawn represent - can go to Grantham.

The Not So Good Life

Well, that's how I pictured it. As they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

I'm thinking of abandoning my plans to go self-sufficient.
I had carefully worked out the spread of produce needed for a balanced diet throughout the year, the required yields per hectare and the price per ton I could expect from my surplus.
I have to admit, I have fallen a little short of my calculations.
My cucumbers have been, it's fair to say, a slight disappointment.
I had booked a week off work to harvest them this August but I'm now thinking of going to Blackpool instead.
The aubergines have proved unco-operative as well.






I recall reading in that trusty tome "Aubergine Growing For Fuckwits" that I was to expect some purplish-coloured things to sprout among the greenery. Not only is there a distinct lack of anything purplish, the greenery is not so much green as grey.

Now the peppers and courgettes I can explain.
They WERE doing quite well......up until a week ago yesterday. Having discovered white fly on my strawberries (not a euphemism), I ditched my desire to be completely organic and sprayed them with a bug killer. Once in the Chemical Ali mood I was unable to stop. I spied some mildew eradicator and so sprayed the said vegetables to prevent them falling foul of the fungal infection which appeared to be rampant in the greenhouse (see "aubergines" above). Only after I had sprayed them did I take a closer look at the bottle. That's when I noticed the manufacturer's name - Jeys!! Oh dear.
So, it's now down to my tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, carrots, onions, leeks and beans to see me through the winter and spring.



Seeing as not a single tomato has yet seen fit to put in an appearance, there are only four strawberries, my lettuce is as limp as Lionel Blair's wrist and three buckets of assorted veg are not likely to go far, it looks like it's down to my less than impressive beans (this time last year they were seven feet tall!).
So, memo to self - must go out and buy a copy of "How To Survive For Nine Months On Nothing But 28 Bloody Runner Beans".
Sorry, self sufficiency can go to Grantham.

Hugh Johns

Hugh Richard Lewis Johns (September 6, 1923 - June 28, 2007)


(My thanks to BGT for this but, if you find yourself filling up after reading this, click HERE and your nostalgia breakdown will be complete.


First of all, thanks to Betty for tipping me off about this.
Secondly.........dammit to Hell!! Another big chunk of my childhood has become a memory - and nothing more.
Hugh Johns, the legendary football commentator, died on Friday at the age of 83. For me, Hugh Johns was as important a part of the Sundays of my youth as playing football in the park until lunchtime, racing home to listen to Round The Horn, tucking into roast beef and Yorkshire pud and then taping Pick of the Pops after tea.

Hugh and the fantastic ATV Star Soccer match came at 2pm, after lunch and before tea. God, I can't get that tune out of my head now......da-da, da-da-daa-daa-daa, da-da-da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, daaaaa, daaaaa, da-da-da daaaaa! Sorry, I'm losing it.
The games featured Midland clubs and, as my pal Arabella pointed out spookily not so long ago,
every third one had to feature Derby County "live" from the mudbath which was The Baseball Ground. All my footballing heroes featured at one time or another. The genius who was/is Frankie Worthington, Peter Shilton, Cloughie and even Gordon Banks, Henry Newton and Ian Storey-Moore in the early days. They were all there. It was great to be a Midland football fan then as both Derby and Aston Villa as well as, of course, my beloved Nottingham Forest all won the First Division title in those years.
Hugh always used to shout "One nil!!" the moment anyone hit the ball in sight of goal. The shot would invariably fly just past the corner flag but it didn't matter - once in a while he got it right and the effect of shouting that line before the ball had hit the net was tremendous.
Hugh was probably most famed for something he DIDN'T say, however. He didn't say "And here comes Hurst, there's...some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over....it is now! It's four!" That immortal line was spoken by Kenneth Wolstenholme, the BBC TV commentator during the 1966 World Cup Final when Geoff Hurst completed his hat-trick with a crashing shot into the top corner and England beat Germany to lift the coveted trophy for the first and only time to date. No, our Hugh had the misfortune to be commentating for ITV that day. In the face of Wolstenholme's fantastic and memorable commentary, there wasn't much one could say which would even come close. For those who are interested, while Wolstenhome was "it is now'ing" it over on the BBC, Hugh managed: "Here’s Hurst. He might make it three. He has! He has! And that’s it! That’s it!"
God, I LOVED Star Soccer and Hugh Johns was the voice of it. Without him it would have been like....well....like......roast beef without the Yorkshires!
The Doog, although not one of my heroes, died last week and he was part of my childhood. Now Hugh has gone. Jesus, I hope Tinger and Tucker are safe and well somewhere. God bless you Hugh.


Hugh Richard Lewis Johns (September 6, 1923 - June 28, 2007)

First of all, thanks to Betty for tipping me off about this.
Secondly.........dammit to Hell!! Another big chunk of my childhood has become a memory - and nothing more.
Hugh Johns, the legendary football commentator, died on Friday at the age of 83. For me, Hugh Johns was as important a part of the Sundays of my youth as playing football in the park until lunchtime, racing home to listen to Round The Horn, tucking into roast beef and Yorkshire pud and then taping Pick of the Pops after tea.

Hugh and the fantastic ATV Star Soccer match came at 2pm, after lunch and before tea. God, I can't get that tune out of my head now......da-da, da-da-daa-daa-daa, da-da-da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, daaaaa, daaaaa, da-da-da daaaaa! Sorry, I'm losing it.
The games featured Midland clubs and, as my pal Arabella pointed out spookily not so long ago,
every third one had to feature Derby County "live" from the mudbath which was The Baseball Ground. All my footballing heroes featured at one time or another. The genius who was/is Frankie Worthington, Peter Shilton, Cloughie and even Gordon Banks, Henry Newton and Ian Storey-Moore in the early days. They were all there. It was great to be a Midland football fan then as both Derby and Aston Villa as well as, of course, my beloved Nottingham Forest all won the First Division title in those years.
Hugh always used to shout "One nil!!" the moment anyone hit the ball in sight of goal. The shot would invariably fly just past the corner flag but it didn't matter - once in a while he got it right and the effect of shouting that line before the ball had hit the net was tremendous.
Hugh was probably most famed for something he DIDN'T say, however. He didn't say "And here comes Hurst, there's...some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over....it is now! It's four!" That immortal line was spoken by Kenneth Wolstenholme, the BBC TV commentator during the 1966 World Cup Final when Geoff Hurst completed his hat-trick with a crashing shot into the top corner and England beat Germany to lift the coveted trophy for the first and only time to date. No, our Hugh had the misfortune to be commentating for ITV that day. In the face of Wolstenholme's fantastic and memorable commentary, there wasn't much one could say which would even come close. For those who are interested, while Wolstenhome was "it is now'ing" it over on the BBC, Hugh managed: "Here’s Hurst. He might make it three. He has! He has! And that’s it! That’s it!"
God, I LOVED Star Soccer and Hugh Johns was the voice of it. Without him it would have been like....well....like......roast beef without the Yorkshires!
The Doog, although not one of my heroes, died last week and he was part of my childhood. Now Hugh has gone. Jesus, I hope Tinger and Tucker are safe and well somewhere. God bless you Hugh.