Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Anyway, it turns out that Zinfandel is a grape, not an elf from the First Age of Middle Earth. This is most distressing and next time I play D&D or anything remotely similar, it will be as an elf called by that name and with an alcohol problem.

Can elves be alcoholics?

I rather see him in sitting with a group of other unfortunates in a little sylvan dell with a name that sounds suitably Welsh: Cyn’hoel, or suchlike.

Zinfandel: My name is Zinfandel and I am an alcoholic.
Omnes: Hello, Zinfandel!
Zinfandel: It will be 2,853 years, 4 months, 6 days and 11 hours since my last drink, come midnight next Throckmorton’s Eve.
Omnes: *applause*
Matteus Rosé (a fat friar): Can elves actually become alcoholic?
Zinfandel: Indeed. I assure you that…
Matteus Rosé: In fact, I thought Zinfandel was a grape. What sort of name is that for anybody?
Zinfandel: It was in the last year of the war against the Dark Lord himself that I succumbed. Too many of my kin were slain in that final battle on the fields of…
Matteus Rosé: Are you sure you’re not a grape? Your nose is red enough.
Zinfandel: Now look here, Lardy…
Matteus Rosé: Ooh, lardy-dah. Listen to the pixie with his airs and graces.
Omnes: FIGHT!
Off stage: I'll have a large one!

And now I come to think of it, why is it called a “Chap Stick” if men and women can use it? Isn’t that a bit misleading?

I thought that I’d had a decent night’s sleep when I woke up, but now I’m not so sure.

I rarely drag myself out of my pit with a spring in my step and I am almost never bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the first hour or so, even on the best days. For all that it felt as though I’d slept well, though I am vaguely conscious of waking up briefly around dawn. It was the journey in that made me think otherwise.

As is my custom, I dozed on the Northern Line (This is usually a defence mechanism against rampant overcrowding, but this time of year with holidays and all, it’s just habit) between Totteridge & Whetstone and Camden Town. The next thing I knew I was waking again and the train was pulling into another station.

So I piled off in a panic.

Mornington Crescent. Bugger.

I’d forgotten I was on the Charing Cross branch and had assumed I was at Euston. Happily the next train was only a minute behind, but even so…

Coffee; it’s the only answer.

In other news, Sainsbury’s hole in the wall wouldn’t give me any cash, so I am going to have to find a Barclays at lunchtime. Drat. How did we cope before cash machines?

It really ought to be obvious.

In fact it is obvious, but then that's no reason for noticing when you are out at work all day.

My tip for the day, kids, is this: when it is the hottest day of the year so far, and likely to get hotter as the year progresses, MAKE SURE THE FEKKING RADIATORS ARE TURNED OFF!

They are now.

I shall now go and stand under a cool shower. Thank you and good night.

This has been a "Bloody Obvious" Information Release

Can we spell idiot, boys and girls?

I think we can, yes.

Having spelt¹ the word, I can now define it: an idiot is someone who goes into the shower room, showers, and then discovers that he has left the towel outside. Luckily, this idiot has a toweline dressing gown (not as suave as a silk smoking jacket, dahlink, but mightily practical in the circumstances. And not a whiff of decadence), and was able to don that for the dash upstairs.

This is not recommended behaviour. It's too chilly for one, and soggy bathrobes bind in the most surprising of places. If you know what I mean...


¹Yes folks, another hard verb - the second tonight. Spell checker be damned.

There was a time, up until somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, when I would, like many a youth, wear camouflage gear - in my case generally, or thinking about it, exclusively a British Army combat smock (1980 pattern, as modelled by the Paras and Marines in the Falklands). Government surplus is generally cheap, and despite the occasional disparaging report in the press, hard wearing and well made.

I still have the smock, though it has (ahem) unaccountably shrunken over the years and no longer fits. Whatever the limitations of the British Army in equipment, the actual troops are first class, and they do not tend therefore, to need uniforms for people whose shall we say, vertical hold has gone. Neither do we tend to breed seven foot giants in the UK, so there is a point beyond which the uniform sizes do not tend to go. The Germans on the other hand, do tend to bred bigger specimens, and up until quite recently, I could wear my Bundeswehr shirt quite comfortably. Alas, that too has now shrunk, though like my camouflage smock, I have yet to dispense with it in the vague hope that one day it will fit again.

It seems that the US Army and Marine Corps do however, recruit giants of mythic size. It's all those corn fed Good-Ole boys from the Mid-West farms, I guess. DT, who is even more generously proportioned than me (taller, also)has acquired a set of US Marine combats for when he is out airsofting. These items do indeed fit people of our body type, though I suspect that the bulges are in all the wrong places when we don them.

The point of all this rambling is to say that being new (and yet surplus!) items, the combat smock and trousers are in digital camouflage patterns, or Nintendoflage as we like to call it. Put these clothes on and you are a walking black, green and khaki pixelation. I read somewhere that digital camouflage is 40% more effective than standard camouflage patterns. How the hell do they measure that? Do they put a thousand squaddies in a big field and fail to count them?

"Sir, I count 40% fewer men in nintendoflage than I do in regular".
"Very good, Lieutenant. You may let the dogs loose".