Pearoast: Fans will remember my dad is a bit of an eccentric - an original mad scientist.
He lives on his own, and is thoroughly enjoying his third batchelorhood.

His flat reflects his personality and lifestyle perfickly - it's a one-bedroomed place in a beautiful Georgian circus, with very high ceilings, and the bookcases he's had put in right up to said ceilings are filled with literature. There are books everywhere, and the place is full of Important Pieces of Paper. It is the very definition of organised chaos - he knows how it all works perfectly, but to an outsider it's some sort of bizarre intellectual's maze.

Everything in his flat nearly works, and being a warchild, he hates to throw anything away or replace it, but would rather make do and mend. The shower door, for example, does not quite meet the bath side, and as such, he has a magic paperclip, which is bent in such a way that, if you hold the door so, and then slide it in, then hook that bit over there and put that part in there, it will hold.

A friend asked him, "So ... is this paperclip unique, or do you have a box of them?" and verily I saw a light go on in his head.

He has a culture of rare, tiny snails that he's studying at the moment on his window sill.

One will find champagne corks in strange places - he likes to leave them where they fall, as each one tells a story of that bottle: who it was drunk with and what was discussed that evening. As such he's rather proud of the amount of dents in the ceiling.

Recycling is very important to him personally, and also to the town - they're really big on it there, so tea bags go in here, plastic bags in here, plastic boxes in there, fruit and vegetable waste in here, meat in there, cans there and bottles in there.

And do not, ever, put the top of your next bottle of beer back onto the empty bottle you've just drained.

He's a man who very much knows his own systems and household mechanisms, but as a guest ... it's like visiting a Heath Robinson contraption built by a graphophile.

He and his scientist mates have - ever since they learned about Helen Of Troy at school - rated women in milihelens, and in a 'phone call yesterday evening told me how he went skinny-dipping a couple of nights ago with one of his five girlfriends.

He's 75. If he had wanted a Honda Accord, he would have got one.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 14:40, 4 replies)

Your dad sounds cool
!
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 14:47, closed)

He sounds most interesting
Whereas my dad does bugger all now except tell non-anecdotes of being a lorry driver during the 60s, being on barges along the Trent to Newark with my grandad and how cold the winter was in Korea.

That and rant about stuff he's read in The Sun and the occasional UKIP leaflet that gets pushed through the door. Thank god he doesn't read the Daily Fail or Express otherwise he'd be insufferable.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 14:49, closed)

Are they big on recycling in Bath?
Can't say I noticed when I lived there. Nobody on my street recycled except us.
( M3rx likes the Asian ladies, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 14:53, closed)

they are now

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 14:53, closed)