Do You Believe In Four Horses?

All my ears are full of olive oil. I've been pouring it down them all week. It's not some new aural fetish - I have blocked ears and it's doctor orders. I've been having awful dreams all week too - nightmares on wax WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I decide my predicament lends itself perfectly to a morning of bird watching in the garden. Binoculars at hand, I spend half an hour gawping at tits before I become entranced by creatures of an altogether different nature - horses in the field behind. Four of them. Huddled together. Motionless. Serene.

I focus the binoculars and become entranced by the beauty of their stillness. It may occur odd to be scrutinising with binoculars animals we can normally get up close to but somehow, without their awareness of our presence, they seem different. Wild, in fact. Alien, moreover. God like, even. Could god actually be four still horses instead of a bearded man in a cloak? Is this an Equine Prophecy I am receiving? Is my doctor actually an angel who intentionally advised me to block my ears for this moment to occur? Come to think of it I recall seeing a harp in his room once and you never actually see his back.

God

Shopping With The Missus

Sounds like a working title screenplay for a WKD ad. The men, all shopping with their girlfriends/wives, text a plan to slip away and meet in a chrome-clad bar to fart and drink football. However, on this particular shopping excursion , myself and the missus are engaged in an interesting debate with the clothes shop assistant. While the missus was trying on a skimpy high-cut cardigan I noticed a dress made from the same material. The dress was double the price. "Why?" I asked the assistant.

"Well, it's double the material," she replied.

I then found an extra large version of the dress and compared it to the small one. "Look, almost double the material but it's the same price as the small dress. Why?"

"It doesn't work like that Sir."

"But why not? It's more material for the extra large dress just as it's more material for the small dress compared to the skimpy cardigan."

The missus then points out that it would be sizest to charge more of someone who is extra-large.

"Surely that would be an incentive for the extra-largers to lose weight," I counter.

I feel a letter to Cosmopolitan coming on.

If You're Happy And You Know It Raise Your Glass

Country pubs don't really go in for Happy Hours. I haven't read the stats but maybe country dwellers are happy enough and it's only City dwellers who need cheering up.

ROLL UP, ROLL UP - GET OUT OF THE SMOG AT FIVE O'CLOCK AND HAVE A PINT OF FOSTERS FOR £1.50. TWO PINTS FOR £3 OR THREE PINTS FOR A FIVER. GUARANTEED SMILES.  BY SIX IT'S BACK TO £3 A PINT, BUT YOU WON'T CARE SO MUCH COS YOU'LL BE WELL AND TRULY HAMMERED. 

The country pub is still a great place to be at 5 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. There's a buzz and people stand at the bar. Despite working hard all week, people have renewed energy and bring communal cheer. It's Happy Hour without the deals. Golden ales instead of Fosters. Vanilla shag instead of Malboro Lights. Tony cackling hysterically about his wife's cooking rather than 'piped through' Rihanna. A cheer when someone enters instead of an indifferent glance. And all followed by a short stroll home through leafy lanes instead of the hectic tube/bus/ferry ride.

I may be sounding a tad smug about country living here but it is Happy Hour so a-happy I shall be.

Get the oven on Joanna, I feel a home-baked cake coming on.

Bank Holiday Alert!

I have a friend. He’ll remain nameless. He doesn’t like his life being put up all over the internet. For the sake of the narrative though let’s call him Kieran. He’s an extremely talented artist (www.kieranstiles.com) and as such leads an unorthodox working routine. Despite this, I’ve always found it baffling that he never has a clue when Bank Holiday’s fall. I deride him for this. Surely, even if you operate outside the perimeters of the nine to five, one must still have some vague notion of when they are? Always two around Easter, first and last Monday of May, end of August. It’s textbook.

But today, for the first time in my life, it happened to me. I had become ‘Bank Holiday’ ignorant. Popping in to drop something off at a client, I mentioned I’d pop in again on Monday (I like to ‘pop in’). The client responded with, “Well, you can try but no one will be here. It’s a Bank Holiday you bloody idiot.”

So there you have it. The dragon has bitten the back of the donkey’s tale (or whatever the phrase is). Four years of freelancing and I’m losing my grip on the nation’s paltry pre-determined holiday allowance.

I don’t get paid for Bank Holidays anymore but I still enjoy the communal vibe and all the Tolberone it brings.

I had to ‘pop in’ to the Londis on that way home for Monster Munch. There, I announced to a fellow shopper I’d just found out it was a Bank Holiday weekend. “I’ve just found out too. You would think I should have known” he replied. “Why’s that then?” I enquired. “I work in a bank!” he chuckled.

You just couldn’t write it.