» Filth!

I am the scud fairy.
My Mum's an Occupational Therapist.
Simply put, she goes into disabled peoples' houses and reccomends adaptations that will make it possible for them to lead relatively normal lives.

Now, this job puts her into regular contact with some utter scroungers: people whose only disability is morbid obesity, and who view social services as a kind of get-your-bathroom-done-up-for-free fund. For these people, she has very little time. But of course, there are also people who genuinely need the help and for them, she'll always go the extra mile.

In this case, there was a mentally disabled man who was utterly dependent on his mother to live a normal life. Sadly, his mother had passed away some months before, and since then, he'd been fending for himself. It was only when he showed up at the doctor's with some third-world ailment that someone thought to ask how he was doing, and when they sent my mum in she was appalled.

The place was a hellhole: There were microwave ready-meal packets mouldering in every corner (The only kind of food this bloke knew how to cook for himself), and towers of empty baked-bean tins as tall as a man. The toilet looked like someone had tried shitting through a tea-strainer at high pressure, and the mattresses had...stuff...growing on them that I don't want to think about.

Now when my mum saw this, she knew that she could call in a clean-up team and they'd sort the place out in two-to-three months, once their backlog was cleared.
Or, she reasoned, she could put her two feckless vacationing student sons to work, and get it sorted out that weekend.

I'd say she bribed, threatened and cajoled us into doing it, but she didn't:
she just threatened. She doesn't believe in wasting good money.

So along we went. We knew we were in for some horror when my mum passed round some dust masks and goggles.
We spent an entire Saturday cleaning out that house, while the man in question was staying with some people from my mum's church and getting himself cleaned up. The carpets had to be pulled up. For some of the stains and accumulated goop, we had to use a paint-scraper. And I had the unenviable task of taking out his green furry mattress to the skip, from whence it would hopefully be taken somewhere to be humanely euthanised.

And underneath the mattress, I found his porn stash.

It was a sad, sorry little collection; a couple of ripped out pages that the damp had got to; rendering the hot MILFs therein not so hot at all.

Now I'm not on my mum's level of saintliness, not by a longshot, but I suddenly found myself moved by this man's plight. He lived in this shitty maisonette surrounded by filth, his only refuge form a world that didn't give a shit whether he lived or died, eating nothing but ready meals and beans. And to top it all, his only entertainment was a tiny black-and-white television and this feeble pile of scud.

What, I asked myself, Would Jesus Do?

That was the morning. In the afternoon, we had to put in the new mattresses and prepare the new carpet for the fitters. But at lunchtime, I took a quick walk to the local newsagent's.

I took responsibility for the bloke's room, putting in the new mattress and laying the bed. And under the mattress, in plastic bags to cheat the damp, as many hot MILF jazz-mags as I could afford.

Was it What Jesus would have Done? Probably not. But I hope it brought him pleasure.
(Thu 2nd Feb 2012, 17:11, More)

» Racist grandparents

My Grandad's not racist.
He's just from a different era. A very, very racist era.
In all seriousness, I doubt he hates any member of another race. He's just got the habit of putting his foot in his mouth whenever he speaks to someone who's not white. Or, as he's got older, just anyone in general.

Imagine the family horror, therefore, when we realised Grandad was going to be in town whilst we met his favourite granddaughter Louise's new Chinese-Australian fiance, Hobart Xiao.*
We make small talk in the pub, while we wait for Grandad's inevitable arrival. Hobart's there with Louise, and he's getting on with everyone well enough.

But...everyone knows what's going to happen when Grandad arrives.
This means there's a little current of terror in the air, and nobody's really at their ease apart from the blissfully oblivious groom-to-be.

Cometh the hour of doom, and in saunters my Grandfather. He clocks Hobart. Hobart smiles back.
You can see Grandad's cogs turning. Grand-daughter? Check. Asian Fiance? Check. Ashen-faced family? Check. All present and correct. Initiating small-talk mode.

"So, you're Hobart, are you?"
"Yes, I am."
"You're Australian then?"
"Yes."
"Do you eat a lot of Chinese food at home?"

Oh God, here we go...

"Only every bloody day, mate, only every bloody day."

And they clicked! Perfectly! They bonded over cricket! Fuck me, they actually had spirited banter about cricket! If Grandad had given the bloke more of his blessing, he'd have married him himself!
But to cap it all, I overheard this conversation while they were both at the bar:
Hobart: "I like you Wilf. You're not uneasy around Asian people. Not like the rest of these bastards."

*Not his real name. His real name's even more ridiculous. And I'm not talking about the Xiao part.
(Thu 27th Oct 2011, 13:47, More)

» Why will you burn in hell?

The Demon Organist of Location Withheld
I was called in to play the organ in a church.
I'd never played an organ before, so I found myself in an empty church in a quaint country village, just me and a massive organ. (I always feel uneasy when confronted with a massive organ, for some reason).

I ran through the hymns, trying to get a feel for it. The hymns were easy enough, but organ keyboards are not like piano keyboards, and I really needed to get in some proper practice before the big day.

So I bashed out the hymns again, and moved on to some stuff I knew a little better, seeing what of my repertoire worked at approximately a jillion decibels.

Edith Piaf? Yup.

Chucho Valdes? Nope.

System of a Down?

System of a Down?...
Yup. Emphatically Yup. Definitely Yup.

Metal on an Organ? Why not? Why, indeed, the hell not?

And so it was that a party of elderly ladies came in for their midday pray to find their stand-in organist bashing through Symphony of Destruction, Amon Amarth and Toxicity, dressed entirely in black and laughing like a man possessed. And I'm not talking about a little, weak-kneed titter here. I'm talking about a full-throated baritone cackle: 'Ah ha. Ah ha ha. BWAH HA HA HA HA HA!'.

And lo, as the painted eyes of long-dead saints looked down upon my blasphemous head, did one old lady came up unto me. And she spake thusly:
"Do you know any Motörhead?"

For the crime of being out-rocked by an old lady, I am going to go to hell.
(Wed 18th Jul 2012, 16:29, More)

» Broken Promises

Promises, Promises
I promised my ex-flatmate not to laugh at his terrible, world-shattering news.

Now about my ex-flatmate, let's call him Tom.
Tom is a nice enough guy: home educated until GCSEs, did well, then went to a proper sixth form, where he discovered girls, booze, drugs and the sexually lubricating effects of playing the guitar well.
So needless to say he did pathetically in his A-Levels, dropped out, became a musician and developed the sexual morals of an unspayed alleycat.

Some years later, we got back in touch. We both lived in Sheffield and were both paying too much for our respective tiny rooms, so we pooled our resources and got a nice house together and the good times rolled.
Tom was a great bloke to go out on the piss with, a constant source of high-quality herbiage and a purveyor of women so loose they only wore panties to keep their ankles warm. Happy times.

Tom's downfall came in the form a particularly loose, and particularly stupid woman named, ooh, let's say Amanda.
Amanda was extraordinarily slutty, deeply in love with Tom, and so stupid that the only knife in the draw less sharp was actually a spatula.

Example: Amanda is in our front room and is cold. We're all pretty sloshed, so I point to the thermostat control and say: The Thermostat's there, turn it up if you want to.
Amanda: ...
Me: Just there, see?
Amanda: ...
Me: Is there a problem?
Amanda:...What's a thermostat?

Fast forward several months. Tom and Amanda have broken it off. Tom has a new girlfriend. He gets a call from Amanda.
She's pregnant.
It's his.

He tells me and is obviously distraught. I'm supportive, for a while, but I have the devil in me. A week or so later, Tom is wondering around the house like a lost soul, and decides to turn the heating up.

I creep up behind him as he approaches the control, crouch down and say, in a high, childish voice:

"What's a thermostat, daddy?"

I'm going to hell, for that, if nothing else.
(Tue 7th Dec 2010, 12:37, More)

» House Guests

The terrible night of the Strip Jenga.
I was a guest in a friend's Uni house. He'd been dumped a couple of months before by his girlfriend and was just beginning to surface from the horrible funk this event had created. So I did what any responsible mate would do: I got him dead drunk and we went out on the pull. Got to get back on the horse sometime. Or the buffalo, as it turned out.

We met up with a couple of friends: A girl with whom I was deeply besotted (Let's call her Jenny) and another girl who was deeply besotted with me and who was, charitably, a trifle overweight.

Now, I'm no Arnie myself, people, and in fact I'm partial to a slightly larger lady, but this was the kind of overweight that made the thought of her being on top an exercise in cringing terror. Images of powdered hip bones, broken bedsteads etc swim into view, even now.
We shall call her Eleanor.

So my mate and I go out to a club with Jenny and Eleanor, buy them drinks and we all roll back to my pal's place, drunk out of our skulls.
Now we're all feeling a little naughty so I suggest we play strip something. But they have no cards in the house, not even Uno.
So we play strip Jenga.
I'm pretty good at Jenga usually, and I'm even better drunk. But when each round involves losing an article of clothing, Jenga takes hours. And, curse my luck, Jenny can hold her booze. So my mate and Eleanor are naked and out of the game in reasonably short order whilst Jenny and I are mostly clothed, fighting a grim duel until about seven in the morning.
While this was happening, Eleanor and my mate toddle off to his room, starkers, hand-in-hand looking like a stick insect had made friends with a beachball.
At around 6:55, we're playing double-or-quits, just to finish the game. Jenny and I are staring each other down. Whoever loses this round will lose every article of clothing, the tower is looking mighty unstable, and it's my go.
Out slides the little block, carefully, carefully. I'm going to win! I'm going to win!
And then, from my friend's room, there is a loud scream and a creak of tortured bedsprings. My hand jumped and down went the tower, and Jenny lets out a cackle of malevolent glee. I quickly strip, but don't give Jenny time to enjoy her victory - I dash out to see what the scream was about.
Stark naked, vision blurred, head pounding I open the door to my friend's rooms. Eleanor is lying, still naked, on her back on his bed, a view that does no-one any favours. My pal is in his en-suite, chucking up violently into his basin whilst shitting violently in the toilet.
I help him clean up, give him some water and then make a quick exit.
Jenny: So, uh, what now?
Me: We never speak of this. I don't think either of them's going to remember what happened tonight. I don't think either of them should.
Jenny: Agreed. Good game, by the way.
Me: Cheers.
Jenny: You were trying to shag me weren't you?
Me: Yup.
Jenny: You know I'm queer, right?
Me: No. No, I did not know that.
Jenny: Ah. Welp, well played.
Me: You too.
And off I slunk, into the night. I'm not sure if my pal remembers what happened, but he certainly pretends he doesn't. He was walking funny for a while though.

Names changed to protect the innocent, facts changed to make me look mildly less like a horny, drunken twat.
(Mon 10th Jan 2011, 10:35, More)