The Bluetit

The grey skies have constantly reminded me that I’m no longer in America but it was the dead bluetit I found neck down in my bottle of milk this morning that probably soured my mood. It certainly put me off my cornflakes.

It’s only natural that I should feel a bit down after my adventure in Washington but I never expected the down to be so ‘down’. I don’t have any work for a few days so I have time to mope around the house and consider my future. Does anybody have any advice for a man with the odd qualification? At the moment, I feel quite like the bluetit. I’ve supped life’s cream and I’m not looking forward to a semi-skimmed future.

The way I see it, wherever you look in this world, somebody is out to treat us all like the dumbest rubes at the fairground. It’s ironic that stripping is probably one of the more honest ways of earning an honest buck these days. At least people know what to expect when they pay me to perform. Armies complain if they’re asked to fight, hospitals give you more terrible diseases than you went in with, and our children spend years in school in order to avoid learning anything useful. At least you know where you stand with a man in thong.

Gabby gave me a gift today. She wanted to cheer me up and, thinking I should find a hobby, she bought me the first instalment in the weekly magazine which lets you build a scale model of the Bismarck. Bless here heart naive Romanian heart. It cost her fifty pence and she thinks I’ll now happily spend £4.99 on each additional instalment. There are only another 139 issues which means in a just over two years time I’ll have built a scale model of the Bismarck for £700. I quickly persuaded her to scuttle the idea before I jump overboard. That's when she told me that the window cleaners have also put up their fares again. Did I mention that they drive Audi TTs and often take the afternoon off to go and play golf?

At lunchtime, I turned on the TV to catch the news and saw a new ad for mops. That’s right: mops. Three glamorous models dressed in futuristic white tight leather waving mops around. Only they weren’t just mops. There were mops with geometrically shaped ends. Mops with multi-coloured strands. Mops that have been designed by a computer. In the end, of course, they’re just mops.

It makes me wonder about the bluetit. Did it fall into that bottle or did it jump?