just when you thought it was safe to come out of the cupboard...

while all the world's financial institutions are tumbling, and water is pouring through the house, herself has one other little problem. someone has decided to steal her identity. why on earth anyone would want to steal her identity is beyond me. the last couple of days, and indeed many in the recent past, would have most people running in the other direction. but it seems that someone has pretended to be herself and applied for various credit cards in her name. some of the banks have spotted a rather glaring error in the applications in that herself is not a man, but one of the larger banks has allowed the charmer who pulled this stunt to withdraw several thousand pounds. fortunately this did not happen to herself's own bank account or we might have been in bother.

so herself has spent most of the morning on the phone to various financial institutions, trying to save the stock market from total collapse, and to the police, who were very nice about it all. she is feeling a little under siege...

plumbing - a postscript

dear readers, in the middle of all the excitement i forgot to tell you about another classic blogworthy incident from yesterday. himself is the clerk to the school governors where he works and now and again this involves him attending meetings in the evening. yesterday was such an evening.

herself bundled me and dave into the car (for the pedantic among my readers - mrs captain, you know i am talking to you - i think you will find that, whilst this looks to be rather shoddy grammar it is in fact correct. although my explanation of that has to be one of the most clumsily constructed sentences i have seen in a long while). after dropping himself off at his meeting we went for a walk on the beach, then off to lidl.

we returned home to the house in darkness, giving the game away as far as my boy is concerned that he had spent the evening on the computer and not hoovering the house. having located my boy in front of his computer herself was just pulling the bedroom door closed to prevent young dave from eating the large pile of shoes that have been displaced from the bottom of the airing cupboard, when the door appeared to faint. in fact what had happened was that it had fallen off its hinges in a classic piece of attention-seeking behaviour. when they had stopped laughing herself and my boy propped the door up against the wall behind the pile of shoes and went down to unpack the shopping.

when himself came home from his meeting herself was halfway up the stairs on the way to remove the contents of the airing cupboard from the bed so the peeps stood some chance of having a good nights kip. ( the end himself did not avail himself of the newly emptied bed as he was itching from head to foot from his kidneys, so he slept on the sofa.)

"hello lovey!" she said. "nothing!" this latter is a fairly normal utterance around here. 'what question is she answering?' i hear you ask. both herself and my boy have perfected the art of looking innocent in the face of damning evidence to the contrary. himself followed her up the stairs and looked at the door in disbelief.

"i can't leave you alone for 5 minutes!" he exclaimed, somewhat unfairly. herself had to rope in my boy to corroborate her account of the collapsing door and it was only after extensive cross-examination that himself appeared to believe them.

so this morning dawned with the prospect of herself getting hold of de-humidifiers, fixing the door and trying to keep out of the way of errant jets of water. i just hope she finds time to take us for a walk...

plumbing - an update

dear readers, 4am finds me unable to sleep, having been woken up by a cafuffle.

my boy's bedroom is flooded. he had the sense to wake herself rather than himself (who is snoring on the sofa) and she has stemmed the flow and put a baking tray under the leak in an optimistic gesture that brings to mind horses and stable doors. (that is an oblique reference to a saying, for those readers of a literal leaning). my boy put the kettle on and made tea while herself twiddled with pliers behind his radiator, making things considerably worse for a while by removing the drain plug altogether, thus creating a rather pleasing fountain. young dave decided to sample the water pouring out and had to be forcibly removed due to the likelihood of it being contaminated with chemicals.

but all is now calm and tranquility. i have to say the existance of my blog makes such moments in life much less stressful than they might be. even my boy now says, in the middle of it all, "this will be good blog-fodder"...

all fingers and thumbs

here you can see young dave and i carefully arranged in a tasteful manner ready for herself to take a photo. i thought this was a particularly inspired pose, what with the light and the sofas and the general greyness of it all. i feel that it is a comment on modern life. quite what it says about modern life i don't know but since herself popped into the national gallery at the weekend she has been all arty farty with her pictures. young dave, in contrast, is simply farty.

all was calmness and relaxation. a man is in the process of fitting a boiler for the peeps so herself was laptopping in the living-room in order to keep young dave out of the man's tool box. the new boiler is being paid for by way of a grant because of himself's dodgy kidneys. just as well as the old boiler hasn't worked since we moved into this house and himself will need to be kept warm after his op. luckily the shower is electric or the peeps would be getting a bit high even for me.

anyway, the man was busy cutting pipes and chatting to herself about the joys of macs as against pcs, a subject upon which herself could bore for britain. suddenly he went quiet.

"could you turn off the water at the stopcock?" he asked in a rather strained voice, "only these pipes shouldn't have water in them after i drained the system but they have." the peeps bought the house from some blokes who fancied themselves as plumbers. but they had missed out on various crucial bits of the 'how to plumb up your house' course. the old boiler met its end because they had put the wrong pipes into the wrong end which caused it to overheat every time it fired up.

anyway, herself disappeared into the cupboard under the stairs to try to turn off the water. but the stopcock was jammed.

"you come and put your thumbs over these pipes and i'll turn it off!" said the man. the boiler is situated in a smallish cupboard which normally houses the camping gear. herself squeezed past the man, who was already inside the cupboard, and took up her position ready to slide her thumbs over the pipes. young dave decided to pick this moment to see what fun was going on in the cupboard. the man climbed over dave and rushed out to his van to get the thing for turning off the water under the pavement. what he hadn't bargained for was that herself has smaller thumbs than your average heating engineer. so while his thumbs were perfectly adequate to do the job, hers were not. water came squirting out with some force. due to the positioning of the thumbs it was diverted into herself's face. within seconds she was soaked to the skin. eventually the man came back and instructed herself to slowly remove her thumbs. a further bucketful of water came out, more slowly this time, and then the flow stopped. herself climbed out of the cupboard and squelched upstairs. the man started to show her the pipes in the airing cupboard and tried to explain where they should go as against where they actually go.

"er, can i just get changed first?" she whimpered.

as she climbed out of the shapeless t-shirt that says "my other t-shirt is clever" and into the shapeless t-shirt that says "geek" i thanked the plumbing gods for this wonderful piece of blog-fodder...

fun and games

dear readers, young dave and i have invented a new game. its called 'bet you can't get me off the bed!' regular readers will recall a variant of this played by myself and young rokit, called 'bet you can't get me on the floor'. the aim of 'bet you can't get me off the bed' is for me to show young dave who is in charge. he will sit grinning in my bed in a rather over-confident way that gives me no option but to take measures to wipe the smile off his face. my bed, as my readers will know, has a rather fine grey blanket on it. dave makes a point of sitting smack in the middle of the blanket, which is his downfall. i take hold of a corner of it and slowly but surely pull the blanket, and with it young dave, off the bed and onto the floor. any puppy with half a grain of sense would admit defeat at this point. but young dave likes a challenge and sits grinning on the blanket on the floor. i then have to pull the blanket out from under him. it did not dawn on me until i saw the photograph taken by herself that dave rather likes this bit. he stands on the blanket while i drag him all the way to the other end of the living-room. then we have a tug-of-war with the blanket. all very good for the teeth.

in an effort to accommodate young dave's desire to sleep in my bed alongside me, herself had a bright idea. she has recently tidied my boy's room, a job which requires mental preparation for many weeks beforehand. part of the thinning out process liberated an old futon which had been gathering dust in a corner. this has now been turned into a large and rather glorious dog-bed. the theory was that there would be room for myself and dave side by side. however, due to living alongside an artistic boy for so long i have caught some of his beefburger tendencies. i do not like change. so i am making a point of sleeping in my old bed. young dave insists on climbing in on top of me. after playing 'bet you can't get me off the bed' i have to lie on the blanket to make a point to young dave. he of course lies on top of me. so there are 3 dog-beds, one of which is large and wonderful, all empty, and two lurchers crowded onto an old and increasingly tattered blanket.

this morning herself took matters in hand and propped both the other dog-beds up against the wall. it will be interesting to see if young dave is able to sit on a vertical bed...

The Pasta of the Undead

The Pasta of the Undead, originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

this is what necromancers eat, dear readers.

top gun

relax, dear readers, my boy is not on the rampage. this is a picture of him shooting (or more accurately trying to shoot) clay pigeons. don't ask me what a clay pigeon is. the whole concept is beyond me. how would anything made of clay be able to fly? i know the pigeon is not the most elegant of our feathered friends but they do manage a certain degree of altitude. perhaps the clay ones don't get out much. come to think of it i have seen china ducks on people's walls...

anyway, there i go again drifting off the point. as regular readers will know, my boy is mad on guns. he draws them, collects model ones and turns any object you like to mention into one (pogo sticks, scooters, lego, you name it, he has made a gun out of it). so when herself saw a kind offer by one of her cyberfriends to come for a mornings clay pigeon shooting she was there like a, well, shot.

young dave and i were not invited. while dave is clearly a fellow of tender years and might be startled by the gunshots, i rather hankered after my poaching days and tried to wheedle her into secreting me into her bag so i could tag along. however, when she explained that there would be no deer or even rabbits to fetch and that no animal would be harmed all morning, i turned over and went back to sleep.

when they returned my boy was brimming over with excitement. he had a pile of cartridges in a variety of colours as well as a small orange disc made of bitumen, which he told me was a clay pigeon. i have to say it bore no resemblance to any pigeon i had ever seen. no wonder they aren't breeding much.

my boy is over the moon at having discovered a way of learning to shoot which does not involve neighbour nuisance and an asbo nor killing furry animals. they plan to go again in a month. and my boy is desperate to earn money to pay for it. which suits herself down to the ground as she has a gravel moving job for him...

the dark arts

here is a picture of dave and i chilling out. we are exhausted. not only am i having to walk miles on the lead to show young dave how its done, but i am being kept up till all hours by my boy. he has taken up necromancy. necromancy involves sitting around with his dressing gown over his clothes writing endless screeds in funny writing, then covering them with tea to make them look old and rolling them up. it also involves pacing round the house wielding a broom handle and saying he is a mage. i think this may be short for magician but i am not sure as the whole point of necromancy seems to be to maintain an air of mystery.

my boy has re-arranged all the ornaments and candles and lines up various jars containing liquids which he says are potions. i have had to lean hard on herself to break the habit of a lifetime and use capital letters as all the things to do with necromancy have names in capitals. there is The Key of Anarchy, The Weight of Justice (actually a brass fob from a hotel doorkey given to us by a doctor friend), The Elixir of Truth, The Stone of Destiny and The Staff of Wisdom. my boy lights a great many candles and sits by the fire mumbling spells. it is really difficult to get to sleep with him pacing around with The Staff of Wisdom, hence the bags under my eyes.

herself has been slightly more enthusiastic about the new hobby than i am. it keeps my boy off the computer and gets him writing things, albeit in unintelligible runes. or perhaps Runes. and she says it will be a slightly more socially acceptable career than that of an assassin. she will be able to boast about "my son the brilliant necromancer" at coffee mornings...

dark matter

this morning young dave and i ventured further afield for our walk. herself cadged a lift with himself and my boy on their way to meet the taxi. the plan was we would walk back home along the river, thus introducing dave to more grass. dave has taken to the beach like a duck to shingle as our garden has a lot of stones underfoot. but the lawn, as regular readers will recall, was paved over in one of herself's landscaping projects. so dave tends to look a little perplexed when faced with grass, hence the river idea.

as we disembarked from the car my boy gave herself a hug and in a rather gloomy manner said,

"see you after school, so long as the world doesn't end."

there had been a certain amount of discussion about the world ending last night. it seems that in assembly at school one of the science teachers had been explaining how a very important experiment was due to take place today. this experiment involved a couple of very large magnets in a tunnel. it seemed that the experiment would involve a number of bisons and other creatures buzzing round in circles at high speed. the mind boggles at what bisons would look like running in circles. lurchers of course do this sort of thing with no trouble at all but your average bison is a much bulkier beast. the whole point of the bisons running in circles was to produce dark matter. i really would not recommend anyone getting downstream of a bison that has been running in circles for any length of time. a dizzy bison would almost certainly produce quite a stream of dark (and no doubt very smelly) matter.

anyway, the reason they wanted to make the bisons produce dark matter is because they can then see what the beginning of the world looked like. it is well known that all living things came out of a very big swamp. what i had not realised was that the swamp was the result of dizzy bisons. which means there must have been bisons before the swamp. so where did they come from? this sort of thing makes my head hurt. it is almost as bad as the chicken and the egg thing. i suppose that is why i am a lurcher and not a particle physicist.

the trouble with dark matter, it seems, is that it acts like a sort of hoover, sucking things into it. my boy seems to have interpreted this as meaning that the experiment would lead to the whole world getting sucked into the bison poo and not being able to get out. this is because bison poo is apparently full of things called glue-ons, which do exactly what it says on the tin.

my boy was most perturbed about the whole business and spent most of yesterday evening looking things up on the internet, interspersed with coming down and worrying the peeps about it all. in the end himself got a bit exasperated.

"what kind of idiot, in a school where a third of the kids are autistic, announces in assembly that the world might end?" he bellowed. this had me ducking for cover as i recollected the business of the cookery teacher's demands for impossible ingredients, and how my boy never fails to tell the relevant teacher just how complimentary himself has been.

i left writing this post until lunchtime in case my boy had been right. no point in writing something that no-one will be around to read...

puppy love

well, dear readers, i have to say young dave is growing on me. i have had to pull him up a couple of times for putting his head in my bowl, which causes a whole lot of fussing and screeching, but on the whole we are settling down into a nice routine.

his interest in gardening is causing some consternation but, as herself says on a regular basis, there is no point sweating the small stuff. or indeed the medium sized, evergreen stuff. as you will see, our carpet is pale. this was not the choice of the peeps who would always go for something the colour of mud that you clean with a mop. but the pale carpet is not really enhanced by lumps of soil and moss.

and there is a little matter of bladder weakness. i am the last one to point the paw at someone for this sort of thing. regular readers will recall the little problem i had with the prostate. so i will confine myself to supportive remarks when he does the right thing.

but on the whole he is a cool little bloke. he likes to give my old ears a lick and even tries to wrest the chocolate bone off me once in a while.

one other thing, for those loyal readers who have got this far, himself's kidney transplant is 15 october. so pray, or whatever you do, for him. and for the rest of us.