The strange case

This is a strange case. I have a dear friend who emigrated to Australia, lots of people emigrate to Australia and I am really not sure why. Clearly the Neighbours effect has a lot to do with it, such babes as Jane, Annalise, Beth and Felicity (as well as the obvious Kylie) being big factors for the boys whilst the girls are attracted to this bleak red desert by stud muffins such as Mike and Henry.

Beth....

Jane.....

Annalise...

And of course Felicity.....And for the ladies, Henry...

And Mike...As I am sure you will agree, the Neighbours effect results in significantly more men than women volunteering to pop to the other side of the world (many, having seen the pictures above would crawl there using only their tongues as propulsion given half a chance). To me of more significance is the amount of deadly wildlife species that lurk over there, if the crocs, jellyfish and sharks don't get you then the funnel webs (at least 40 species of) and snakes (over a hundred known venomous snakes) surely will.....even the famous and apparently harmless and comedic Duckbilled platypus has a hideous dark side...

The Pus.............

Platypus can defend themselves using a hollow claw like spur attached to their back feet which they use to inject platypus poison,( yes I know! Platypus poison!). The effect of this poison on humans has been documented a only few times in history (it should be noted that rumours exist that Dwarfs have a similar spur, although it is not thought that they produce poison).

The Spur...

There are at least 25 elements in platypus venom. When the poison enters a victim, one protein in it causes blood to flow to the area of the sting, acid in the venom causes a burning sensation, another protein lowers blood pressure, causing shock and fainting, and certain components dissolve tissues and blood vessels, allowing poison to spread more rapidly. The strongest element of the poison works directly on the receptors to nerves that register pain (basically makes all the pain receptors sing like pavarotti), for this reason, Morphine has almost no effect. In one case of a man being stung on the hand, the Doctor involved was forced to purposely damage the main nerve running through the arm using a large needle in the elbow to ease the pain!

For a really good dit on the threat posed by nature in Oz pop along to here

Anyway, my mate (lets call him G) went to Oz. Now, I am convinced, or was until this weekend that the following thing happened to him, however, he completely denies it ever happening, so this could be a strange case of me imagining a episode in somebody else's life which never actually happened..

Driving along a desert road in his 4x4 (work issue - rugged and dusty), G noticed that the evening was developing a stunning sunset.

Now my mate G loves a sunset more than most, following him once in a car on the M4 I was amazed to see his vehicle suddenly start to drift slowly across the three lanes of traffic, this worried me, had he died? I then noticed stage left a really pretty sunset and realised G was watching this rather than the road....this was confirmed when G suddenly 'came to' and took control of his car averting possible disaster.

So G, being a romantic soul at heart and having a bit of time, decided to stop and enjoy the spectacle. Pulling over to the side of the road, he clambered (after checking for death dealing wildlife) on top of his vehicle and lay there to watch the show.

Now, Australians are known to be a reasonable practical down to earth lot (I suspect a fair few of the original bunch of criminals hailed from Yorkshire) and are not given to flights of fancy like my mate G. Pretty soon another vehicle came along the road, the driver saw the vehicle pulled up alongside and as is the protocol in the outback in Oz assumed a 'breakdown situation' had occurred (which can be fatal in the outback, dehydration and Kangaroo attacj the main causes of death), and pulled up to offer assistance. A short exchange followed between G and the good Samaritan during which G explained what he was doing, at the end of the exchange the Good Samaritan (clearly feeling duped) roared away from the scene with the words "you stupid Pommie bastard"

And apparently this never happened! I have 'spun' this dit many times over the past few years and it has always been well received. I have three choices in this strange case, let the dit die, change the name of the hero and continue to tell it as an urban legend, or I can decide that the sort of flake who pulls off the road in a heavily Platypus invested country to watch the sun go down is probably lucky if he can remember what he had for breakfast in the morning let alone details from several years ago and carry on spinning the dit as before....

The Wastes of Yorkshire

I do not know too much about the north, its cold and full of pragmatic types who still wear caps and race pigeons. For this reason when faced today with a trip across two northern counties (The peoples rebublik of south Yorkshire and north Yorkshire I think) I decided to arm myself with a print out form Google maps, what I did not account for was the google map program being written by a monkey.

The monkey I think was responsible for my extended trip......
(yes he is quite cute, but he has no business advising me road travel)




I am attending a course at a swanky government college, unaware of the credit crunch or indeed off cuts in spending, this place is cheerfully situated in a 'finchley park' esque old manor house to the north of York, complete with landscaped gardens, cosy wood panelled rooms and unnecessary but well appreciated expense and luxury..the sort of place you imagine we British have everywhere...stern receptionist and a union flag flying above an ornamental flowerbed, these places are an endangered species as anyone (stand fast the MET) will tell you. To imagine it better imagine the polar opposite of the DVLA center in Newport...


Anyway, I flew into Leeds-Bradford airport (make a bloody choice) from Plymouth airport (note, not Plymouth -Exeter or Plymouth-Saltash), this I confess could be seen as an extravagance and perhaps on reflection I should have toiled up the country on a train but seeing as I have only had 17 flights this year, bike to work and planted four tomato plants in the summer (all died - no sun) I think I am pretty far ahead when it comes to carbon capture......

So, now up north in my nifty performing rental ford fiesta off I set...google.....google....it is pointless listing a roads name on the directions when the road in question does not have any bloody signs on it...multi map give you towns to head to, not google, a 38 mile journey took me over 2 hours..I was threaders...suddenly I was in the midst of the desolate (although quite charming) Yorkshire countryside on unnamed roads..lost. I had to ask a Yorkshire man..sadly he reacted to my southern accent as I imagined his Dad would have reacted to me if I had shouted 'Gott in Himmel!" at him whilst I packed away my parachute having just arrived from Saxony in invasion force 5 during the last war by last war I mean Vs the Germans - a proper foe)...

With a Yorkshire flea in my ear for being unprepared I had to back track all the way back to the last major road mentioned by the google monkey and go the long way round using major arterial roads rather than the pokey lanes suggested by monkey boy.

Still, they have a bar here and a roaring fire......

Feeling Jaded

Today I have evolved a jaded feeling, well, in truth I made an enemy of my own future yesterday when I cheerfully decided that the best thing to do with my Friday afternoon was to sink eight pints of top notch English ale....well not all of it was top notch in truth, most of it was sub-standard but agreeably cheap and served cold.

The good stuff I had was Abbot Ale..this stuff is not only isotonic but also 'gets you there' with a cheeky 5%abv and tastes like all the best bits of a Hovis advert.

So now I have in my head an ache...it is one of those head aches where its like having a huge ball bearing in your skull, I am fine if I remain still, but if I move at all (god forbid I bend over) the ball bearing canons around my tortured swede and makes me fell quite dizzy.

The best way of dealing with this sort of headache is to lie quite still in a darkened room and listen to the cricket..I however am involved in the headache unfriendly activity of taking 8 (yes, two fat ladies) eight year old kids to the cinema...

this may kill me I will let you know....

Feet

Most people have a good relationship with feet, they are by and large useful buggers, carrying you around, providing good sturdy nails to pick at when you have a moment and if you are really lucky, providing an assortment of rich dry skin pickings to scratch away at in that blissful period post bathing when you are too wet to dress, and too lazy to dry...(in some cultures, this skin is much prized as a form of medicine and eaten with relish - incidentally I am talking about relish both in terms of enjoyment and as a condiment)

Folk even derive whole livelihoods from feet...as well as the obvious shoemakers and assorted elven helpers there are the shoes sellers, the reflexologists and and of course the chiropodists. When I first heard about chiropody I thought 'Wow', that sounds brilliant, imagine getting paid to whittle away at Cindy Crawford's silken feet! What a brilliant wheeze, a supermodel paying you to fiddle with her feet..

This here is what I am talking about, you can't quite see her feet, but you can imagine the beauties?

Of course, as anyone who has been near an inner city McDonald's will tell you, there are feet out which defy the laws of nature..feet so bad that even the angel feet of Ms Crawford could not compensate for the horrors of having to go skin-on-skin with a pair of fat cheesy scum ridden scabbers......

These pictures have proved so traumatic that I have lost my train of thought...be careful what you search for people, there are things out there on the interweb which should be encased in concrete and buried in the North sea.....I now really feel sick..any chiropodists or whatever they are called should be knighted (for those from overseas this is the British equivalent of getting your 5th McDonalds gold star...

Who am I?

As the readership of The Hog Evolves has grown beyond those which already know me, I have began to realise that I have said very little about my initial state. To fully appreciate any evolutions through which I may pass you should really should be aware of the start state. A butterfly is a wonderful thing but it is truly a marvel when compered to the multi legged worm from whence it came.

I should be clear at this point that my evolutions will not be nearly as dramatic/traumatic as that of the butterfly and that I am not nearly as wonderful, a bad example, think more of an old car being renovated and then used for racing rather than commuting.....maybe

Anyway, for my sins I could be considered a military man having spent most of my life within Her Majesties Armed Forces (for you Johnny foreigners, yes, they are still known as 'Her Majesties - jealous much? Or do you prefer the 'Peoples' or El Presidentes'?).

I evolved during this time from a creature who digs under the soil - a soldier, to one who digs being under the sea..a submariner. This, it will come as no shock is not a natural evolution but one that caused great pain and not a small amount of confusion, for a simple example of the sort of thing I had to go through, I refer you to Manimal.

I think I have revealed enough for now...I shall delight readers at some future point with more intimate details....maybe...

Recently Scared of Dark Dartmoor

I am a cyclist, or more accurately I commute to work mostly by bike, I never bike for pleasure, although pleasure can be had balanced above a pair of gyrating wheels I am told. Recently the mornings have been very dark and cold and unexpectedly, I have found myself evolving a fear of them...

For those of you have not experienced the long trek into the depths of winter whilst living on Dartmoor, let me explain...its a bit shit

Even on the dry days its wet and this coupled with sub-zero morning temperatures creates a very real and scary hazard...black ice. Last year I was cheerfully navigating my way around a bend when all at once I wasn't. Both my wheels flipped (as if propelled) out from under me and appeared as if by magic between me and the sky, shortly after noticing this phenomenon my shoulder (right...my traditional absorber of pain) braced my body against the road providing a useful fulcrum, around which I was able to bring the rest of my body and bike crashing down into the glassy tarmac with more than 3.7 times the force of gravity ...this sort of event has a haunting quality on a mans cycling I have found..

The other fear I have on these cold and windy mornings, is fuelled less by physical reality and more by probability.

Normally as I cycle to work across the moor, I consider it not at all probable that evil beasts roam the vast wastes of the moor..however, on these lonely morning when the only light is cast by my solitary lamp, the existence of things from the outer reaches of imagination seem to become highly probable..

This is the sort of over evolved thing that waits in the dark

If you have ever cycled, walked, or even driven in complete foggy darkness you will know that you are presented with a misty tunnel of light ahead of you surrounded on all sides by a fearsome inky blackness, now on Dartmoor, living things regularly step out of the dark and into your tunnel, sheep, ponies and cows being the prime culprits. Could there be other things, there in the dark, hungry and lustful, who hate cyclists?

There is the fabled beast of Dartmoor for one thing, a giant cat like creature which tears apart sheep and allows farmers to make unreasonable claims for vast amounts in accordance with the EUs' farcical Common Agricultural Policy......and recently there has been a spate of wild boar sightings, as anyone who knows anything about wild boor will tell you - a fully grown male 'tusker' would make quick work of a hapless cyclist, especially if the attack is a surprise right angle smash charge, bowl over thing...

Recently taken on the moor, a boar? Or (more likely) a mutated simian of some sort, capable of over 60 mph endowed with the preternatural cunning of the occult?

I blame American Werewolf in London for some of these fears and the Brothers Grimm for the rest. Although my rational brain is quite useful in setting me straight and I have so far emerged unscathed.... it can't all be rumour mongering can it?

Its Christmas - sort of...

As you get older things which you never understood become clear and things which were once second nature slowly but surely become unfathomable.

Nobody tells you this...I am now, clearly, but normally its kept hushed up for some reason.

Example; The Video / DVD recorder, when I were a lad, I was constantly used as an 'on call' recording engineer by my parents, there I would be faffing around with some marbles and barbie dolls, when I would be summoned to the front room (or lounge / drawing room if you please) to deliver technical 'know-how' to my otherwise competent parents. How do we record? Where is the recording? It just flashes? etc etc...I had, it must be stressed no formal training in the wonders of modern Japanese hi-techery. Somehow my growing mind seemed to understand the thought process used by Mr Toshiba as he came up with ever more complex programming systems.

To be honest, I thought this was a 'life skill', it remained with me throughout my twenties and then suddenly, BOOM! I have not a clue...I have to agonise for hours with instructions and remotes, trawl the Internet forums searching in vain for a similar problem that some youth has glibly resolved..sadly for me as well, my kids are not yet in the zone of technical whizzery so the DVD recorder sits idly under the telly mocking my middle aged incompetence.

I have I should say, discovered an antidote to this particular electronic challenge, and that it the Personal Video Recorder - the PVR (I have a TOPFIELD and its called the black panther!). Folks, if you do not have one of these gadgets - get one, it makes recording shows no more difficult than putting on shoes....and this is important, because once you get to the age when putting on shoes is a problem you will of course struggle with the PVR (as my Nan God bless her, would testify on this blog if computers did not scare the living bejesus out of her).

So a good example of knowledge deserting us as we get older, but we gain stuff too!

As a young child the thought, the very idea that it was even remotely possible for Christmas to start too early was beyond joke. How can Christmas, come to early? Its clearly the best time of the year -why wait. Older folk were constantly moaning on and on about decorations being up too early and carols on the radio being inappropriate -Losers! Get a life! Enjoy it you fools for tomorrow it will be just a memory, like smoke!

Those thoughts have gone!

Is it me, but has Christmas come too early this year? If you start before December and finish after January then that's a whole 1/12th of the year in Christmas mode! Surely it loses some of its meaning and grace when you have to listen to Slade for a full 840hours! Just how much good cheer can you have?

Hang on....I like young Hogs view best, it seems gloriously untainted by cynicism and bad whiskey...

Bugger it all, I'm going to get a tree!