This week, my school friend texted me to say she’d had a successful cancer op. There’s none left and she will do radio therapy.
‘Woot! Fantastic news!’ I started to type.
‘Woot! Bacteria!’ wrote my phone.
Fuckinell what is it on? I stopped and tried again. Nope. I have to laboriously type it in, one letter at a time, very slowly in order for it to understand because nothing will persuade it that someone writing in english is more likely to write Woot! Fantastic news! then Woot! Bacteria. Seriously, what the fuck has Google’s machine learning been smoking?
Welcome to my world. It’s been a bit like that this last couple of weeks. OK then. Onwards and upwards.
Where to?
I know! Let’s start by talking about pigeons.
Recent events got me wondering how much of the average pidgeon is bowel? Seriously, if there are any nature experts out there reading this I’d really like to know. It might be that birds, generally, have a very high large intestine too … um … rest of them ratio. After all Canada geese poo every 90 seconds (my poor bottom is wilting at the thought of going through life doing that. Sudocreme anyone? Five tonnes over here please, that might stretch to three days … etc).
Also, I remember how, once, I inadvertently sat in a seagull shit on a day out in Southwold. Bloody hell! Never again. It was the size of a labrador turd. Likewise … this last week, although not this LAST week as I come to finish this post, but the one before, it was half term. McOther went to check up on his folks and Mc(NotSo)Mini and I went to see my bother in Shrewsbury. As well as being a target-rich environment for eyebombing, Shrewsbury is a lovely market town. Much like Bury St Edmunds only rather inconveniently far away.
Cousin of Mc(not so)Mini/nephew-of-me had a minor op, poor lad, so we didn’t do much, which, as you know, I always regard as an absolute bonus. What I love to do, when I see friends or family, is talk. OK so I tend to talk the hind legs of any donkeys within several hundred miles but I enjoy myself. I’m not quite so certain they do but they’re all very tactful about it anyway.
We had a fantastic time, or at least I did, just sitting about drinking rather too much alcohol or sitting in the sun while the youngsters binge watched the Harry Potter films. We threw in a couple of forays out to meet up with family friends whom I haven’t seen in ages.
But I digress. Extensively. (Quelle suprise.) I was on about pigeon shit, wasn’t I?
So my bother and his Mrs live in her mother’s house, now. They also have a large and really rather lovely static caravan in the garden which Bro’s mum in-law and husband are using as a granny annex. Having sold their original house, Bro and wife have put the proceeds into a buy-to-let property for the time being. They’d owned it for about two days by the time I got there so Sis-in-law needed to measure up the kitchen with a view to giving it a bit of a refresh. I suggested I tagged along as it’s so much quicker and easier with someone else there to hold the other end of the tape measure. It’s a really nice house, no garden but that’s perfect for a rental and it has a terrace so the people can still sit out.
You’re wondering how the pigeon bowels come in by now, aren’t you? I know, but stay with me, I’m getting there, which, by the way, is kind of how it happened.
Sis-in-law works for a homeless centre. If you see anything about Shrewsbury Arc in the media you can pretty much guarantee she’ll be the spokesperson. They have a rented storage property which they’re giving up and some of the furniture there has been deemed too knackered to move or too complicated for many folks to fit so they are leaving it. This includes a couple of counter tops so Sis-in-law reckoned it might be worth going to have a look to see if any of it would could be recycled into the kitchen of the new house to give it a bit of a refresh. Otherwise it was going to be skipped.
Kitchen measured, off we went to the storage property. On the way, we had to drive under a railway bridge. There were traffic lights before hand, red, naturally, but as they went green Sis-in-law blanched and explained that there were more traffic lights under the bridge, that they would probably be red and that there were pigeons. We got the giggles about the odds of being shat on; about 100:1 for normal people but, since we had the lid off, I reckoned the odds of us actually escaping a shite dousing were the remote ones and the chances of being comprehensively crapped on from a great height pretty much odds on.
Sure enough the light went red and as we stopped, third in the queue and right under some convenient girders, I could hear the pigeons above. One, in particular, sounded as if it was heaving and straining, as if to lay an egg, or give birth … or possibly even scream for an epidural. Having commuted regularly on a line that involved changing trains at Earl’s Court I know what that means. It was about to lay a gargantuan cable.
‘Yikes!’ I said. ‘One of them’s got us in its sights. I can hear it gearing up.’ At which point there was a sound like a loud hand clap.
‘Bollocks! Was that the sound of shit landing on us?’ I asked her.
‘Yes. Although mostly on me,’ was Sis-in-law’s approximate reply as the lights went green. I looked over and her window was covered in what looked like the contents of a newborn’s nappy; yellow, quite runny and a bit granular, like mustard.
Except that to call it the contents of A newborn’s nappy was doing the pigeon an injustice. The roto-virus-yellow excrement on the windows was there in the kind of abundance that was more befitting a sizeable ruminant like … I dunno … a cow, a water buffalo, or possibly a large elephant. Definitely something bigger than a pigeon. Seriously, I’ve done smaller poos than that and I’m chuffing enormous next to a pigeon.
Luckily the homeless centre at which Sis-in-law works was about 100 yards away, so we pulled over and parked there to clean the car. When she stood up and climbed out I could see that she hadn’t been so much shat on as hosed down. Seriously there was a LOT of poo. She ran in and got a bucket of water and a sponge for me to clean the shite off the seat, floorpan, sill, seatbelt and window. I think I may have mentioned that there was a lot of shit but trust me, because I really cannot stress this enough, there was.
Sis-in-law went back inside to change into some clean clothes from the stash they keep there for folks who only have one set, so they can use the shower and the washing machine without doing their own impression of that 1980s Levi jeans advert.
So. Much. Shit. There was double that inside the car and on Sis-in-law
While Sis-in-law was absent I surveyed the damage. I found myself marvelling at how one pigeon could do that much excrement. Seriously, there were gallons of it. OK so I know that when they’re spread out liquids look more voluminous but even so. There was an absolute fucking crap tonne of … well … you know … crap. We must be talking a 33cl coffee cup, minimum, of shite down the window, inside and on the floor and seat of my car … not to mention the extensive splatterage down Sis-in-law. I found myself marvelling at the wonders of nature present in the amount of liquid that came out of a living vessel that really shouldn’t have been large enough to contain it.
And what did the pigeon look like afterwards? You know … minus what appeared to be most of it’s bodymass? What happened to it? Did the sudden release of that much fluid kill it? Was it lying on the ground, little more than a flaccid skin with nothing inside it, you know like one of those plastic chickens? Would it shrivel to nothing, when touched, like an ancient balloon that’s lost its air? How could a living creature contain so much … liquid … without being double the size it actually is. I mean seriously just … how? It seems that the humble pigeon is nature’s TARDIS; soooo much bigger on the inside.
If anyone can tell me what the maximum capacity of a pigeon is, I’d be most interested to know. Both of us were giggling about what had happened despite the horrific stench but at the same time, I am genuinely agog to find the answer to this question.
As I washed the copious amounts of stinking guano off the car I noticed that the back tyre was looking a bit low profile. Less low profile, to be frank, and more flat.
Bollocks.
Sis-in-law returned, having had a quick wash and brush up, resplendent in a strangely baggy pair of grey tracksuit bottoms and carrying her reeking shorts in a sealed plastic bag. I briefly outlined the a new chapter that had arisen in our Series of Unfortunate Events and showed her the tyre.
OK first things first, or do I mean second things second by this time? God knows. Anyway. Step one in this phase. We needed to fill the tyre with air becasue otherwise I’d break it by driving on it. Needless to say, it’s a Lotus tyre and it is therefore a tyre that tends to have to be ordered in and take a day or two to arrive. Mc(not so)Mini had a gig coming up so that was two days we didn’t have, so if I buggered it up it was tow truck time when we came to go home. Step two, we then needed to see if the air leaked out very quickly or if it just went down slowly. If it didn’t leak fast we could drive to a garage to get it fixed the following morning and all would be fine. But it was now 7.00pm and the KwikFits of this world were closed for the day. On the upside, it was a Thursday night so they’d be awake the following morning.
But air was the first stop anyway.
Off we went to the nearest source—Morrison’s petrol station—to pump up the tyre. Then, since we were there and I was going home the following day, I decided to use the five minutes we were going to wait to see if it started to go down to fill up with petrol. I had a debit card in my phone case with over £100 on it but no other money with me, so we headed on over to pay at the pump. I swiped it and it was refused.
Ah yes, of course. I realised it was refused because the pump tried to take £100 off it and there was only £90 there because 48 hours previously I filled up with petrol at Tesco and paid at the pump with that card. No worries, if I stuck £10 on it the funds would go over the magic £100 level with a bit to spare, and all would be well.
Except no, it wasn’t. Even though I had £100 in there, and I’d only spent £20 on petrol at Tesco’s. No worries. I used my banking app to transfer another twenty quid to the account. It still didn’t work. I tried another tenner. Still no. Then I looked at the banking app for the account that was linked to this particular card. Well that explained it. The bank in question believed that I’d spent £100 on petrol at Tesco’s and that my coffers were empty. Thinking about it, I realised that Tesco’s hadn’t worked out how much I’d actually spent on petrol yet, so they’d just taken £100 off me for now, and were sitting on it while their accounting computers worked out how much I’d actually spent at which point they put the rest back. This had taken it 24 hours so far.
Fucking what? I knew you had to have £100 in there to buy petrol but I hadn’t realised the bastards actually hang onto it. Presumably, in a couple of day’s time … when Tesco’s accounting software had got its finger out of it’s arse, they were going to give me the other £80 back.
It was the end of the month, but luckily I did have another £90 I could put in, just, to convince the Morrisons pump that I had enough money to buy £45 worth of petrol.
Luckily, by the end of the day, Tesco’s had ‘realised’ that I only did a £20 splash and dash the previous day and Morrisons had already changed the £100 to the correct amount. Suddenly I now had £150 in my slush account and absolutely jack shit in the account all the direct debits were about to come out from. Cue some hurried transferring back.
I wonder how much interest Tesco’s makes from sitting on £100 of people’s cash for a day or two each time they buy petrol at the pump. Lots, I should imagine. Every little helps themselves eh? Bastards. No wonder every man jack of those gits buying petrol alonside me at Tesco’s clogs up the pumps for ten minutes a pop while they queue for fucking ever to pay in the guichet. Note to self, only use the Lloyds mothership account for this, not the Chase spending account, because with Lloyds mothership Tesco do not hang onto £100 of my money for 48 fucking hours!
Tyre pumped up, we decided the warehouse was probably a bridge too far and went home. Upon examination I found a nail in the tyre. It’s weird how these things come in patches as I haven’t had a puncture for ages but had a nail through my front tyre a couple of weeks ago.
Then of course, the next morning, I had to find someone to mend the tyre. That was alright, although it took a bit of doing and it wasn’t ready until 12.45. That was fine but not what I was expecting. We got away by 1.00 and even though the traffic was a bit shit we got home by 5.00. Poor McOther coming home from Scotland had it far worse, his five hour jouney was seven, whereas our two and a half hour journey was three, which doesn’t feel so bad. And we had each other to talk to. McMini is still as amusing as ever, except now he’s just incredibly sarcastic. We have in jokes about neck rolls, people with square jaws and apparently any bald person with very short or no hair is referred to as a ‘thumb’ these days which I find unaccountably hilarious. It probably makes me a four star bitch.
Other news, briefly: on the Mum front, the application for continuing healthcare continues on. I have been required to gather together an absolute fucktonne of documents, have them certified by a solicitor (but not my husband) and then send them off to the people who are going to attempt to apply. Continuing care is a bit like farming subsidies, applying is so complicated and fraught with difficulties that a whole industry has sprung up around applying for it. I am quite nervous because it’ll cost us £5k to do the application, another £2.5 if we want an advocate to speak for us and then, if we have to appeal, it’s the same again. I’m definitely nervous, but doing this could be the difference between her being able to stay where she is and having to move her early next year.
As you can see it’s all go, hence my doing fewer blog posts.
Writing news.
On writing, big news this week, I have now finished the insides of the eyebombing book … I think. I may have to redo all the images to CMYK but that isn’t so bad, it was choosing them that took the time. There’s just the cover to do … and it appears it has to have a dust jacket so it looks like I’ll have to do one of those as well but that’s just, kind of, the cover twice, with a little bit of blurb on the flaps on the inside. Although I might make it a poster or something. So that’s grand.
If you are interested and would like to know when the eyebombing book drops you are welcome to sign up for my all things eyebombing newsletter. To do that click the link just here:
https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl
I am appearing at the Bury Cathedral Summer Fair with some other author friends on 8th July. Which reminds me, they don’t know about that, and I should probably tell them. I am hoping I can have the Eyebombing, Therefore I Am book finished, ordered in and ready to sell for then. It’ll be touch and go I’m going to try and pull out the stops to get it done. I am so, so close. It might be possible, if I pay extra for a quick turnaround. Hope springs eternal!
For years people have been asking me to do a photo book.
You didn’t think you’d escape without me giving the new book a plug did you? Ha! No chance. It may not be on sale yet, but when has that ever stopped me!
M T McGuire Authorholic 