Chocolate Chip

When Gabby poked me with the end of a broom this morning, I knew it was time for my triumphant return to the world of blogging. There were too many things that needed to be said.

'Chip, you get out of bed right now!' she scolded as she pressed the handle into my right buttock. 'You dirty dirty man! Dirty!'

I could see the reasons for Romanian disgust. I'd gone to sleep a little too quickly last night and the thick chocolate mousse that covered a good deal of my torso had hardened in the night; and I hadn't had chance to explain any of this to my darling partner.

The 'why' had been my first successful booking since I went dormant a few months ago and began to pile on the pounds. Last night, I performed at the Green Dragon Tavern with the world première of my Oompa-Loompa strip in which I begin dressed in white overalls and with an orange face, and end up rolling around in a inflatable pool filled with chocolate. It's less Dahl and more Dalí with a touch of the Béatrice Dalle once I get my underwear off.

How the women of Bangor loved it and loved me. Such had been my success that two hours at the bar had left me totally drunk and with only the wits to get back to the flat. When I got home, around three o'clock this morning, I crawled into bed and fell into a deep and blissful sleep.

Now everything is explained and I'm washed, I can say it's good to be back and such a relief to be taking off my clothes again for a living. A full pouch last night has paid off months of debt as well as doing so much for my self-esteem. For a few weeks in January, I even had trouble finding thongs to fit me but I can assure you that everything is now normal down there. Ship shape and Bristol fashion, as they say, except, of course, there's nothing down there that's shaped like a ship.

Just a large stealthy submarine with a full compliment of hip thrusts that are fully armed and aimed in your direction.

As for this blog, I hope to be writing more often. I'm starting work on a most interesting project that I might just share with you...

The Chip Dale Guide To Handling Birds

Gabby informed me that we’re not having Christmas this year.

‘You want Christmas, you go have fun with blogging friends. You go with Dick Middlely, The Dirty Referendum, or The Fractional Popstar. Gabby not doing Christmas. We all out of turkey.’

This was news in the shade of the unexpected and with distinct highlights matching my shock and surprise. I picked the remote control from my lap and muted the lunchtime news. ‘Out of turkey?’ I repeated. ‘But what’s happened to Henrietta?’

‘Henrietta’s gone,’ said Gabby. ‘Escaped.’

‘Escaped? You’ve been rearing that turkey for the last six months just for our Christmas meal. She couldn’t have just fled!. Not when we’re so close.’

‘She gone. She jump fence and run away.’

‘Jumped the fence?’ I protested. ‘But she could barely walk. I’ve not seen breasts that big since I visited Richard Madeley’s website and realised that he’s started to post porn.’

‘Henrietta gone and Gabby not know what to do. I grow turkey. Biggest turkey I ever grow. And I looking to cutting off head. Now, what am I to do? Gabby very, very disappointed.’

I sat back on my chair. In the last few weeks, it had slowly begun to shape itself to my immobile torso as my malaise rarely shifted me before the TV. Moping might be a more accurate term for it. Only this was different. This was perhaps the news I’d been waiting for. This could put mustard back in the Chipster’s thong.

‘Well, I’m not going to accept it,’ I said as I slapped my thighs and stood up. ‘I’m going to find Henrietta and I’m going to rescue her.’

‘You find turkey?’ laughed Gabby. She threw herself down on the sofa and propped a cushion under her head before she picked up the latest edition of ‘Choke Holds’ magazine that had arrived in the morning’s post. ‘You go find turkey, then I sit here and read.’

‘And when I do rescue her, I’ll bring her safely back here so you can chop off her head.’

Gabby waved away my promise. ‘Turkey gone. It eaten. A fox get it.’

I nipped to the bedroom where I put on an insulated thong and my waterproof vest. As soon as I reached the door, Gabby came running.

‘You really do this for Gabby?’ she asked, suddenly full of eagerness.

‘I’m doing it for my Christmas lunch,’ I said.

She patted me on my chest and ran back into the living room. When she returned, she had a gift for me. ‘Be careful,’ she said as she pushed a large knife into my hands. ‘If you find Henrietta, you not let her peck you. Chop off head before you get hurt.’

I took the knife and was about to slip it under the narrow band at the side of my thong. Then I had second thoughts. ‘I not going to get arrested for carrying a weapon,’ I told her as I concealed the knife down the spacious pouch of my winter thong, ‘but there might well be charges of gross indecency before the night’s out.’

The obvious place to start a turkey hunt was at the last place the bird had been seen. The allotments were unusually quiet when I arrived there around three. It was a brazenly cold afternoon, with a stiff breeze cutting across the open patch of land. My nipples were hard and tingling, like two sensors set to white meat as I began my search around the turkey enclosure. It was there that I noticed some heel prints in the soft mud that ran to a small gate that led to the series of small cottages that sit to the rear of the allotments. It seemed a bit too obvious a lead but I thought I’d check them out first.

The garden of the first cottage overlooks Gabby’s allotment and belongs to an old doctor who retired from the profession some years ago, about the same time as he was struck off the medical register. As far as I knew, he still lived there with his sister. It took me no time to get around to the front of the house and ring the door bell. Moments passed before it opened to a dark crack.

‘Yes?’ asked a soft voice from within.

‘Oh, hello,’ I said as a pair of wizened eyes came peering out to greet me. ‘I’m looking for a bird…’

‘A bird?’ said the voice. The door opened a little more and a little old lady wandered forward and began to peer at my groin. ‘What on earth are you wearing, young man?’

‘It’s a thong,’ I said.

‘A thong? It doesn’t look very warm.’

‘Oh, it’s very warm,’ I assured her. ‘Very spacious too. Can you believe there’s a weapon packed in there?’

‘A weapon?’

‘For the turkey,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’ve come for. My girlfriend owns the allotment at the bottom of your garden and our Christmas turkey seems to have gone missing. I was wondering if it might have escaped over your fence.’

She gave me one of the oddest looks I think I’ve ever received. ‘And when you find this turkey, you’re going to kill a turkey with you weapon?’ she asked and pointed to my thong.

I shrugged. ‘That’s the general idea,’ I replied.

She waved me after her. ‘The turkey is out back. Let me go and get my glasses. I want to see this!’

Sure enough, Henrietta was sitting in the rear garden, trapped by four sides of trellis fashioned into a makeshift pen.

‘It was my brother,’ whispered the little old lady as she emerged from the house. She’d wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and a pair of glasses now rode the smooth incline of her nose. ‘He’s been watching that turkey grow all year,’ she continued to explain. ‘He’s rather naughty, I’m afraid. I told him he shouldn’t steal it but he said you wouldn’t notice.’ A she smiled, yellowing false teeth moving uneasily on thin gums. ‘Now, I believe you promised to show me how you’re going to kill a turkey with that “weapon” of yours.’

‘I was planning of cutting it’s head off,’ I said, though now I had found Henrietta, I didn’t think I had it in me to do the wicked deed.

‘Chop off its head?’ asked the old woman. ‘I thought you were going to bash it unconscious. I was quite looking forward to watching you giving it a good bludgeon. Mind you,’ she laughed, ‘it’s so many years. I can’t remember what a good “weapon” really looks like…’

To be honest, I think she was a little senile. She wasn’t making a word of sense. I pulled out the knife and held it up to the light.

‘Just a standard carving knife,’ I said. ‘The handle’s a bit fancy but nothing too modern. Surely you have knives like this?’

The woman looked confused. ‘Oh,’ she said, and touched a hand nervously to her throat. ‘I… well…’ I thought a blush illuminated her thin makeup from beneath. ‘Perhaps you should just take back your turkey,’ she said, her manner changing from enthusiasm to casual indifference, as though she didn’t want me around any more. ‘I’ll make sure my brother doesn’t steal it again.’

‘You can tell him from me that he needn’t go stealing it,’ I replied, not liking this change of mood. ‘I’ll make sure we save him a breast. After all, it is Christmas and there’s more than enough turkey for all.’

As I led Henrietta past the front door, the little old lady reappeared again.

‘Oh, young man,’ she said. ‘You never told me your name.’

‘Chip Dale,’ I replied. ‘And the turkey is called Henrietta.’

She waved me over to the doorstep. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing like stuffing at Christmas, so when you do cook your turkey, you must use this.’ In her hands she held out a small box of Paxo. ‘It goes wonderful with meat.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ I began to say but before I could finish, she grabbed the front of my thong and shoved the box of Paxo down the pouch.

‘Very spacious,’ she cooed. ‘And like I said, there’s nothing that can beat a little stuffing at Christmas.’

Why I Didn't Blog Yesterday

I tried to get to a computer yesterday but the fates conspired against me. Sometimes blogging has to come second when life becomes too complicated. First there was the problem with the train which had got stuck on the way back from Manchester. I’d gone there for another modelling session with my favourite catalogue. This time it was for next year’s Spring/Summer underwear collection, which made for a day light in thongs but heavy in the fleece-lined Y-fronts for men with bladder control issues. It made me realise, yet again, that I’m really modelling for the wrong people.

I finally got home around nine o’clock to find a scene reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof outside the flat. A horse and cart was parked in the road and the cart was piled high with my belongings. I barely recognised the woman in the shawl and headscarf coming out from the flats with a bundle of my clothes in her arms.

‘That’s the lot,’ said Gabby, filling the last remaining space on the cart with a fistful of my best thongs. ‘Chip ready?’

‘Ready for what?’ I asked. ‘Do you want me to sing about being a rich man?’

She didn’t understand my allusion. ‘We must move. It here soon.’

‘What’s here?’

‘The flood!’

She leapt up on the cart and took the reigns in her hand and a whip in the other. Without a pause, she cracked the latter and dragged the former and the cart turned a neat one hundred and eighty degrees in the middle of the road before it started to head towards the main road and higher ground.

I could only jog behind.

‘Gabby, I think you’ve got a little confused,’ I suggested as the night air cracked to the sound of the whip.

‘Sky News,’ she shouted. ‘Jeremy Thompson say we be all under water.’

‘Did he?’ I asked, having not seen or heard a word of news all day. You might wonder about my not asking for more information but I will always believe what Jeremy Thompson has to say.

‘Tidal surge,’ was the last thing I heard Gabby shout as she got an extra bit of speed from the horse. I could only grab onto the back of the cart and pull myself up next to the washing machine.

We travelled for nearly three hours before Gabby gave the horse a rest. By then, we were on the border to England, a good few hundred feet above sea level, and I was frozen to the tumble dryer.

‘How much further do you think we need to go?’ I asked, as Gabby appeared at the back of the cart.

‘We wait here, tonight,’ she said, taking a bearing from the stars.

‘I’m freezing,’ I chattered.

‘Better than being in water,’ she replied, uncaring.

Somewhere around three o’clock in the morning, a police car arrived and asked Gabby why she’d chopped down the ‘Welcome to Wales’ sign and was now burning it on the hard shoulder.

‘Chip cold. We build fire,’ she explained. She turned and smiled at the policeman. ‘You want hot dog?’ she asked, holding out a stick with something hot and sizzling on the end. The meat was tough. I hadn’t dare ask her where she’d got it.

‘No thank you, ma’am. But do you think you could explain what you’re doing here?’

‘We avoid flood.’

‘Flood?’ asked the officer.

‘The tidal surge,’ I explained, sitting at the side of the road and wrapped in the dressing gown I’d recovered from the pile of my belongings.

‘You mean the tidal surge that is currently moving down the east coast?’

I didn’t think I could have got colder but I did.

‘That’s the one,’ said Gabby, brazen in her ignorance. ‘We got to move. Get to high ground.’

I got home this morning at five o’clock, frozen and demoralised. Gabby doesn’t know chagrin, though she’s now more fully cognisant on the difference between ‘east’ and ‘west’ . She marched up the flat with a defiant swagger. ‘This good practice for next time,’ was all she would say. This afternoon will be interesting. There’s a cart to unload and a horse that needs returning to whoever she took it from.

All of which is why I didn’t blog yesterday. I hope you understand…

The Iranian Tourist Board

Gabby informed me last night that she’d liked to see more of the world.

‘I grow tired of UK,’ she said, clearly remaining at heart as much the roving vagabond as the day I found her sleeping in the doorway to Timothy Whites all those years ago. ‘Gabby wants adventure, to see old ruins, drive through mystical landscapes, be attacked by local bandits and return fire from back of Land Rover.’

‘So why not have a weekend in Pembroke?’ I suggested. It wasn't that I'm against these exotic holidays but I do fear for the size of carbon footprint Gabby’s wanderings would leave on the planet.

‘I want to go abroad,’ she said with a thick pout.

‘England?’

‘Abroad abroad.’ Now she stamped her foot and a bayonet slipped out of her trouser leg.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘you want a holiday. Where would like to go?’

A sheepish look developed over in her quarter of the room. I could see that things were not wholly unplanned. There have been plenty of midnight phone calls between the Cheeky sisters and I thought I could detect the influence of the slightly more hair-brained Monica in this unexpected turn of events.

‘I been in contact with the Iranian Tourist Board,’ said Gabby. ‘They tell me Iran is exciting country full of fun activities.’

You can imagine my surprise.

‘Fun activities?’ I asked. ‘Such as what?’

‘They tell me I would be very welcome. They like athletic young women who enjoy rough and tumble, likes to throw stones, climb cranes.’

I cradled my head in my hands, my hands on my elbows, and, most reassuring of all, elbows on my thong. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘do you really think Iran is a country for you?’ I thought about that for a moment and decided to start again. ‘Of all the places in the world, don’t you think Iran is a bit dangerous, even for commandos who’ve had the best that Romania has to offer in combat training?’

She jumped up from the sofa and picked up her laptop, which she dumped before me. The screen was already loaded and I was looking at the website for the Iranian Tourist Board, complete with personal welcome from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

‘You know,’ I said after a few moments of careful consideration. ‘I’m not sure this website is entirely legitimate.’

‘It real,’ screamed Gabby. ‘It say so. It say Iranian Tourist Board.’

I waved down her complaint. ‘It’s not that I would every doubt the words of a man like Ahmadinejad but don’t you think it odd that the Iranian Tourist Board would have a website with the tag, “There’s More to Iran Than Missiles”? If you ask me, this isn’t entirely official.’

She snatched the laptop away from me. ‘But Gabby want to play stoning game with people.’

‘The stoning game is not a game,’ I said. ‘And that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. We’re not going to Iran. Don’t you get enough kicks torturing the innocent in your duties as a traffic warden?’

‘No,’ she said, simply. ‘No I do not.’

Half an hour later she comes crawling back, tapping on the door to my den.

‘Chippy,’ she said, her voice trailing sincerity like a slug trails slime.

‘Yes, Gabby,’ I sighed. ‘What is it now? Can’t you see that I’m busy curing these thongs with my mallet?’

‘I don’t want to go to Iran for holiday.’

‘I’m glad you see sense. Horrible place.’

‘We stay in UK instead.’

‘Fine idea.’

‘We got for week in Newcastle.’

The mallet hit my finger and I cursed a foul word. ‘Newcastle?’ I pushed the pile of new thongs aside and grabbed my own laptop. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘perhaps Iran isn’t that bad an idea. What did you say the address of the Iranian Tourist Board is again?’

The Crate

On behalf of myself and my Romanian friend, I’d like to apologise to the passengers of the 8.32 express from London Euston to Bangor for the non-arrival of their train. Not that any of this is my fault, you understand. All I did was open the front door when the bell rang. The rest was merely the result of my being caught up in the maelstrom of history.

‘Delivery for Dale,’ said the thick set man from DHL. ‘You Dale?’

‘Big Chip Dale,’ I confirmed. ‘Thonglateer Extraordinaire, aka The Chipster.’

I only told him this because I’ve been expecting a large crate marked ‘THONGS’ to arrive from the manufacturer and I was already excited, anticipating an afternoon spent curing them. After a six hour soak in warm pineapple oil, each thong would have to be carefully beaten with a mallet until it became soft and pliable. Only then would I hang them up, still damp with oil, ready for the next performance. This, I think you’ll agree, is a detail of the stripper’s life that it’s rare to see portrayed in the media.

The delivery man’s eyes narrowed. Peas pressed beneath an iron heel came to mind. ‘This is for Gabriel Dale,’ he said.

‘There’s nobody here by that name,’ I replied, loudly enough to wake the sleeping Romanian, recently back from a night time commando training exercise in suburban England.

‘Wait, wait,’ came the excited squeal from the bedroom. The room shook and a door opened. ‘I Gabby,’ she said, racing to the door.

The delivery man looked down at her naked body and whistled.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘Shark attack. Well it wasn’t. Those are the scars if battle and unless you want to add to them, you’d better hand over the package and stop keeping her waiting.’

He stuck his pencil behind his ear and turned back to the landing. He returned a minute later wheeling a large crate. By then, I’d persuaded Gabby to get dressed and I was alone to help the delivery man get the crate into the apartment. It was a huge box, with straw sticking out between the wooden lats. Across it were written words in Romanian that I could not interpret except they seemed to have some relevance to the big red skulls painted on each side. I tipped the guy fifty pence and he smiled the smile of a man who didn’t realise how close he had come to mortal danger.

‘Well?’ I asked Gabby as she arrived from the bedroom and began to circle the crate. ‘What is it? Please tell me that you’ve not ordered another goat.’

‘Gabby get samples from Romania,’ she said. ‘She so excited!’

‘Samples of what?’

She whipped the knife from the sheath she keeps strapped to her back and began to work the lid of the box open. Then she stuck her hand into the straw and retrieved something the size and shape of a thigh and tapered at one end.

‘Fireworks!’ she screamed and began to skip around the flat, cradling the explosive to her chest. ‘Gabby decide we have firework party so I email my friend. She have key to bunker.’

Has there ever been such an ominous word uttered by a Romanian dancing with a firework?

‘Bunker?’ I repeated. ‘What sort of bunker?’

‘It not matter. Fireworks here.’ She stopped skipping and her eyes went wide. ‘We try out now?’

‘Not here, you’re not,’ I said, leaping after her as she went to the drawer where we keep our box of matches.

‘Oh, but Gabby want to see if they work.’

‘Go out somewhere,’ I said as I tried to pull the matches from her fingers.

‘The park?’

‘It’s as good a place as any,’ I said, just happy to see her away from the flat.

‘And Chip come with me.’ She released the matched and grabbed my neck in a inverted-shoulder twist hug with added thigh grip. ‘Gabby and Chip go fireworking!’ she screamed as she let me go and began to start skipping with something I was sure was meant to be handled carefully.

Bangor’s park was cold, empty, and green. Gabby had found a place well away from the small play area set aside for toddlers and a row of trees separated us from the concrete bowl used by skateboarders. Not that either places were being used on a day when a man in thermal thong was still feeling the cold. My nipples were harder than pennies.

‘This is exciting,’ said Gabby as she worked a hole in the frozen grass. The rocket was to be supported by a thin piece of wood which Gabby was now pushing into the ground. ‘Gabby think this good fun.’

‘Are you sure that’s strong enough?’ I asked but Gabby wasn’t listening. She’d got the rocket pointing vertically, give or take then slight lean where the stick was bending under the weight of the big Romanian munition.

‘I think we should have a gantry for something that big,’ I said. But it was too late. Gabby was busy trying to light a match. ‘Look, Gabs, I don’t think…’

The match flared.

‘Ready!’ squealed Gabby as she applied the match to the fuse which immediately began to spit flames as it trailed across the ground. Gabby came running back to where I was hiding behind a tree. And not just a small tree. I think I’d chosen the biggest oak tree in Wales.

‘Gabby love fireworks,’ she said, her breath clouding in the cold air. For a moment, I was sure the condensation was in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

The rocket ignited with a magnificent rush of flames that immediately incinerated the feeble stick holding it upright. This accounted for it’s first movement, which was from the vertical and to the horizontal. Fortunately, it fell away from us and more towards the toddler’s swing area, towards which it immediately began to fly.

‘No!’ I mouthed as took a turn towards the shed used by the pensioners for their crown green bowling equipment. Only some change in the rocket’s altitude took it above the shed and it span around and began to sail harmlessly away from the park.

‘Wow,’ said Gabby.

I had no time for wows. I had just seen the rocket change direction yet again and it was now heading towards the rail tracks.

At any other time of the day, it would have sailed harmlessly over the embankment, clearing it by a good twelve feet. Unfortunately, with the 8.32 London Euston to Bangor Express sitting there, waiting for the signals to change, the rocket impacted at the mid point of the lead engine. The noise was like a dull thump. When the smoke cleared, I could see daylight through the mid section of the engine and beyond it, the trail of the rocket still climbing into the far distance.

‘It’s gone clean through it,’ I said.

Gabby clapped. ‘Armour tipped,’ she said with evident pride at the quality of Romanian fireworks.

We got home in time to hear the news of the explosion at the Army’s weapons dump outside Rhyl. No injuries have been reported at this time and the cause has yet to be determined. As for the hole in the 8.32 London Euston to Bangor Express, a migrating heron is thought to have been behind the mysterious hole. We all know quite different, of course, but for the sake of Welsh-Romanian relations, I’d think it best if we leave it there.

Gabby got home and ran straight to the crate to see if they’d sent another rocket. When it was evident they hadn’t, I sank into my armchair.

‘Let that be a lesson,’ I began.

‘Lesson? You mean bigger stick next time?’ asked Gabby standing up. In her arms was something three feet long with tail fins.

‘My God, what the hell is that?’

She hugged it to her breast. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is Romanian Strategic Cruise Roman Candle but I’m saving this for November fifth.’

Results Romanian Style

What a morning! While I began to fight the Prunic War, Gabby nipped off to college. She came back at eleven, flushed with success. She's got twelve ‘A’ grades in her A level results. She claims that she came in the top 5% of the students in Chemistry, Biology, Art History, English, Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Physics, Home Economics, Chicken Farming, Psychology, Accounting, Gestalt Therapy, and Games.

I felt a little overwhelmed by her grades. I didn’t even sit the exam for my English Lit. class. In fact, you might have noticed that I haven’t mentioned by FE course in a while. I stopped attending when Mrs. Rust forced us to read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I couldn’t handle five hundred pages of young women repressing their emotions. It was having an impact on my dancing career. I knew I had to quit reading it when one night a woman screamed as I whipped off my thong and I told her it was no way for a young lady to behave. I even suggested that she retire to the parlour and read Bible verses.

I suppose it's only natural that Gabby’s delighted but the fact that A level results have gone up for the 25th year in a row is very troubling. It’s so bad that the government are soon to introduce A* results, so that next year’s A grades will be like a grade C from ten years ago and an A* will be like an A from this year, which is equivalent to a grade B from five years ago. There should really be a chart otherwise we'll be like the indecisive limbo dancer who has moved the bar so often that he doesn’t know if he’s being at the hips or the knees.

For the moment, I don’t want to spoil Gabby's celebrations. She’s already rang BBC News to see if they’re interested in an interview. Turns out that they’re looking to interview somebody who hasn’t got 12 A grades this year. So far they haven’t found one.

I knew I should have sat that exam!

Breathe Right

I bought Gabby some of those Breathe Right Nasal Strips yesterday after seeing the ad on TV. I thought it might help improve the asthma she’s been suffering since she has started to spend more time hanging around with her chickens. I don’t know what they did for my little Romanian wheezer, but I had a terrible night’s sleep. I dreamt I was a double jointed and kept kicking myself between the legs. At some point my imagined pain became too much and I woke up. That’s when I discovered that Gabby had pulled off the strip during the night and it had somehow managed to bind my genitals to my right thigh. I can’t begin to describe the pain involved in pulling it off. Nor can I say my breathing improved. If anything, it made me gasp just a bit.