Thursday, March 30, 2006

Shiny Asses

'Shine my botty away.'

I've stared at this strange line for twenty minutes. It made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I had to do a little search of my own. And voila! It's a quote from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's alter egos, Derek and Clive from their 'Sir' sketch off their "Ad Nauseam" comedy album.

Rather strangely the sketch featured at the top of the search finds which makes me wonder why there was a need for the searcher to scrutinise the thread any further.

I remember being introduced to D and C after a school chum brought Derek and Clive's "Come Again" to our youth club and the feelings of weirdness in hearing the words "You Stupid Cunt" being said by adults. I had thought until then that sweary words were the preserve of rapscallion little oiks like us.

Anyway, back to the botty shine thing:

Extract from 'Sir' by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

CLIVE:
..... and he said, "Oh, look," he said, "erm, all the Brasso has come out and got onto your, onto your botty," he said, "and I'm going to have to take some-, take a-, take a cloth and wipe your botty clean because it's got all this white Brasso on it."

DEREK:
Di-, di-, di- .....

CLIVE:
And then Sir took this handkerchief out, 'cause he didn't have a cloth, and wiped my botty all the time, he was wiping and wiping and wiping it.

DEREK:
He was probably trying to shine it.

CLIVE:
Yes, he was .....

DEREK:
Di-, b-, bu- .....

CLIVE:
..... trying to get my botty very shiny, that's what he said afterwards.

DEREK:
Did it look like this?

CLIVE:
No, it didn't look quite as shiny as that, but at the end after about ten minutes .....

DEREK:
No, but the sticky stuff.

CLIVE:
The sticky stuff looked just like that, yes, he said it was Brasso. And he shined my botty away and then he said, "Don't ever do that again."

Full script here


Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The Surgers

Somebody, somewhere, thinks I may be an authority on 'knickers serge type.' That is, knickers, serge. Or, serge knickers. Sadly I'm no expert in this little sartorial homage to practicality over appearance, but I'm game to give it a go should he or she stray into these parts again.

And it's in games that I find some answers. Or more properly, PE, Physical Education for children. Children, circa 1964, including yours truly. The boys turning out in voluminous shorts, before they became fashionable by way of the kind of shorts-minimalism that made Glen Hoddle look, on reflection, like he was playing football in his jockeys, and the girls, stripped down into heavy duty, industrial strength, boy-stiffy preventative, navy blue serge knickers.

What was the deal? Why were they made to do it? Even the slim girls looked horrid - though I suppose this was intended - boys get weird palpitations and uncomfortable stirrings from an alarmingly young age and I guess the old serges were the best defence against any of that twitching in the 'Y' fronts and embarrassing bulges nonsense. But all the same, I would have thought the outlining of these female backsides in the company of dozens of mini priapics an unnecessary distraction and unhelpful to the cause of good health through innocent physical jerkery and honest endeavour.

Putting myself back into the arena through the power of memory and imagination, I do recall that one 'serge wearer' during these regular outings was slightly larger than the rest. So large in fact that I can only guess that she would have been a serge wearer because she was permanently excused all physical activities and instead sat out most of these bracing sessions, fatly, on the sidelines.

Extremely fat and even more unpopular. And, if God hadn't been cruel enough already, ensured that her eyesight was such that she would permanently need the assistance of National Health Specs to see, and that her vast body would be impervious to the cleansing and scenting properties of soap and water.

There was a time also, when I was less than popular. At just about this time as it happens. One of those short periods that probably lasted a few months but felt like a lifetime. I wasn't quite ready to engage in any side by side empathy out on the fringes of school child society, out in the frozen wastes of the benches with fat . . 'Olive' (close enough), but, as I too was stricken with less-than-perfect-eyesight, was also forced to wear National Health little round speccies, and therefore considered an anyone-different type oddity. Bit like Olive, but without the buzzing lies and usually hidden, serge knickers. And I suppose it was this that brought us, momentarily, together. On one school games day.

The usual ramshackle of events - lots of hopping and things involving buckets. But sandwiched between the egg and spoon and the sack race was the wheel barrow race. The Wheel Barrow Race. Girls pushing boys. Girls choosing boys to push. Boys legs tucked under girls arms and pushed along, wheelbarrow like. Prizes for winners.

I guess the rationale behind the gender chosen roles was that boys had stronger arms to propel themselves along, and boys legs scrawny bits at the best of times aren't that heavy and well within the strength zone of the average girl. And my legs were going to be held, I was going to be involved in the wheel barrow race.

Once the pairing off was well on the way feelings of dejection came over me in waves as pretty soon only one girl and two boys remained. The slightly more confident, slightly more popular girl made her move selecting the none specs wearer. There was to be no wheelbarrow race for me. No more pushers left. The pushers had left the building.

But wait. There was a rousing of a commotion. A swirling of school marms, all flouncy dresses and good natured chivying; pulling, patting and fussing over what appeared to be at first glance, a baby calf being dragged, reluctantly, into the open. This turned out to be Olive, sprung from the safety and anonymity of the spectators seating and ordered (this was the 1960s) to strip down to her mighty serge knickers and plug the gap. I was going to be a barrowed after all - but I was going to be wheeled by a mini homunculus.

On the sound of the starting whistle the surge of the serges and their hand crawlers began. Boy's legs were being dropped by weedy, ringletted and ribboned girly whirlies. Tears and tantrums quickly followed. I was being pushed by a pile driver, my bony legs clamped tight by ham-like arms and the pent up emotions of a friendless soul making a desperate pitch for a win and instant popularity.

My twiggy arms and hands were a blur of desperate skittering. They had to be. If I hadn't kept them going I would have fell, painfully onto my face - an accidental wreck of bloody nose, grass-stained teeth and comically twisted specs. My chest - what there was of one - heaved, fear of worse pain drove me on. And on. And on. This great lump, this fat nightmare in serge knickers was pushing too hard, too hard. I'm bound to fall, I will fall.

But not before the winning line was crossed.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

The Taint Of Paint

Time's short. I have more search requests from which tease out meanings, and tease generally.

"i wont to no all about body wock on cars"

So grammatically incorrect, hordes of expired English Language teachers should rise from their graves - Thriller style - and converge like pantomime ghouls towards a ghastly old school teacher's convention and chant a lamentation for the passing of correct, or even half decent, usage.

Around about the time some of these teachers were alive, I worked on the 'body wock' of cars as a paint sprayer. Thankfully at the time, I had an intuitive understanding - based on being a natural fuss-pot, of the poisoning properties of cellulose paint. Nobody else working there seemed to care, getting the job done was all that mattered. If the extractor fans were clogged and refused to fulfill their role in life - extraction - it was a minor inconvenience. It was bit harder to see, your cough might be a little more hack-violent when you clambered out of the painty hell-hole after carrying out a respray, but hey!

All this was prior to anything recognisable today as health and safety and duty of care legislation. Your good or bad health was based on how you dealt with the risks present and was pretty much a matter of personal choice. The only form of breathing mask to provide some form of protection from the deadly fug you worked in was a thin sponge and charcoal grit affair stuck on the end of a stinking rubber nose extension that when worn sucked your face in so tightly it boggled your eyes into Marty Feldman's during his Igor period, turned your ears as red as the Chinese flag and pinched your mouth against your teeth with such venom the inside of your bottom lip played host to a clutch of marble sized mouth ulcers for weeks.

There was only one of these masks and four of us working, but there was no fight for its use. No dispute, no turn-taking routine. No-one was ever occupied in searching out that rubber face reshaping clinker. It became mine. Only I used it. Only I would stop my lungs from ending up with a multi-coloured scrounge coating.

Curiously, the others were quite happy drinking in great breathy draughts of poisonous air, swirls of coloured mist - the colours and flavours of the day; the tasteful ermine whites of the Simcas, the gaudy harvest golds of Hillmans, Ford Capri and Granada tawny metallics and that awful Vauxhall wedgewood blue. I wasn't

They had me down as a strange one.

The masked one.

The Mask.

The masked survivor.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Unlocking The Inside

What to write about when you're blocked? Anything, I suppose would be one answer. Anything that unblocks you would be a more sensible one.

A very wise person once said:" If you can't think of anything to write about, give up." A wiser person counteracted with: "or you could write about the searches on your blog." And already this is sounding like a lie, and it is. But I have a theory that I'm prepared to put to the test.

Writing about searches and searchers is the blog hack's equivalent of a plumber's blocked drain buster fluid: "Carefully pour 300 ml of HG liquid drain unblocker in the blocked trap. Wait about 30 minutes for the substance to work and rinse thoroughly with cold water." Could easily be adapted to: Carefully pour over about 30 recent search words found in your stats box. Wait about 30 seconds for the substance to work and then rinse through them with some thoroughly wordy nonsense.

"A picture of a man falling on his arse."

Although providing a small lexical clue as to its searcher's provenance: "arse" being the Brit's preferred quick and simple slang term for the rear end, as opposed to "ass" and "butt" the more likely choice of 'clumsy gentlemen unable to maintain their footing' Internet searchers from the USA, it's a bit of a mystery. We can however disregard the Australians as, although they favour arse over ass, as opposed to the difficult to understand and therefore probably apocryphal 'date' as in " git off your fat dite," doesn't seem to invest enough casual strine wit as in the likes of: " it stands out like a shag on a rock," or "it's as dry as a nun's nasty;" and in case, any decent Aussie would have typed: " A picture of a pommy bastard falling on his arse."

"Crapping Dog Background."

You know I lie awake and wonder about some of these. Who in the name of all that is holy could wish to see a picture of a defecating dog. I remember some years ago, on one of the hottest days of the summer, walking along the beautifully manicured lawns of Bancroft Gardens on the banks of the river in Stratford Upon Avon, marvelling at the multi-coloured barges gliding silently through the water whilst giving due deference to graceful swans and bobbing ducks looking like miniature tugs pulling giant green liners. And people, self-consciously picnicking from wicker boxes whilst sat on tartan blankets just in front of the Royal ShakespeareTheatre which was displaying dramatic billboards of the evening's productions. When suddenly a cretinous youth appeared with a rotweiler the size of deer, galloping ahead of its owner causing awkward anguish amongst the little circles of people trying to enjoy their alfresco lunches.
Lots of unwanted snufflings and 'get aways! could be heard as hampers were hurriedly closed and small children were drawn into the bodies of their adult protectors - this was no doggy-woggy, this was a slavering killer which might just not settle for a cucumber sarnie since there were so many small children on offer.

Perhaps we should all have been grateful that the worst that happened was that in between causing mild panic and alarm - this was all before the dangerous dogs acts and muzzles and fines and things - the beast took one of those heart dropping straight front leg, arch back crouches and produced a lustrous, gnarled and triple brown shaded - all the way from liver through mahogany tipped with ochre - nearly foot long turd, which sat malevolently, standing out against its crew-cut grassy background, 'like a shag on a rock.' It ruined just about everyone's day. The smell wafted in unseen ripples around the lawns as picnics were gathered as if storms were approaching. People swooned from their barges into the canal, the swans and ducks took flight and the doors and windows of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre were angrily slammed shut by rehearsing actors wearing Elizabethan dress.

So there you are. 'Crapping Dog Background!' You ask, I provide.

Friday, March 03, 2006

The Searchers

As I try to drag myself back to writing this blog, a few 'crapping' stories are resurfacing from the shamed recesses of my memory to bail me out. Stories that might even justify the title of this blog.

As it is, it's a pretty disgusting blog name which was supposed to be a wise-arse play on 'one hand clapping' and as such it has played host to the searchings of hundreds of crude crud compulsives, floods of fanatical fans of feculence, scores of ordure obsessives, all looking for a shit-hit of the execrable excretory and scandlously scatological.

I can't complain, those shits give me counter hits. And there's all kinds of kinks out there on the look out for muck. Mucky muck. And I have tempted those through my unimaginative title to seek out the scuzzy and the fudgy and the sludgy, right here. Even if their searches end in disappointment.

Searches have included: women crapping, pensioners crapping, people with limps, gimps and friends who are pimps crapping. Bishops crapping, boat-side crapping, birds with radar precision head target crapping. Celebrities crapping, celestials crapping; kings and queens and dreams about crapping.

Okay, one or two - literally, one or two, have been embroidered a little for rhythmic effect - but at the time of writing, the word 'crapping' has been used in 5 percent of the keyword searches leading to this site, well ahead of its nearest rival, the less than colourful 'the,' which only makes 3 percent.

Poo stories are pretty easy deals. I must don my thinking-cap and extricate those clinking-crap stories, not to satisfy the weirds, just to help a mind that's feeling right now like a blocked toilet.

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