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.’

The Yorkshire Moors

It came to an end, as most adventures of this kind end, at a remote farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors. It had been Trixy’s idea to head north, thinking that Gabby’s natural inclination to veer towards Romanian airspace would steer her in a south-easterly direction. We were wrong. Trixy was busy arranging her shoes in the hay loft that she’d conveniently turned into a walk-in cupboard, when the noise of an engine fired up from somewhere outside the cottage.

‘It’s her,’ I said, not knowing what I was saying as much as just instinctively reaching for the obvious conclusion.

Trixy quickly gathered up her shoes and made a jump for it as a tractor ploughed through the wall of the cottage and something snarling leapt from the driver’s seat.

‘Ayiiiiiiiiii!’ went the same war cry that made the Mongol hordes stop at the Romanian border.

‘Gabby, won’t you listen to me?’ I cried as I felt steel-like fingers grip me by my neck.

‘Divorce her now, Chip Dale, or you lose windpipe.’

I waved my hand in the air, a sign of a thonglateer’s truce. Meanwhile, Trixy had disappeared and only when I sat up did I spot her running for the main road at an unbelievable rate of knots for somebody so given to cravings for nicotine. Not that I had long to consider this fact. Gabby leapt up to the tractor and pulled a large canvas bag from the back of the seat. She unzipped it and shook it out.

The figure was that of a man, tied up and with tape around his mouth. It was only when Gabby made a slit in the tape that I recognised the wheezing noise of Mr. Meradith, my solicitor.

‘Say it,’ threatened Gabby as Mr. Meradith gasped for air.

‘You are not legally married,’ he said. ‘Facebook can’t hold you to it and if you can’t technically be married given the documents that Ms. Gabby has shown me.’

‘Documents?’ I asked. ‘What documents.’

‘It would see that you’re already registered as the private property of Ms. Gabby under Romanian law. Technically, it might be argued that you’re a free man but given the EU’s relationship with Romania, I wouldn’t bet on that. You couldn’t marry anybody with Ms. Gabby’s permission.’

I didn’t know how to feel, even as Gabby pulled a length of rope from a hook hanging in the cabin and began to bind my wrists to my ankles.

‘I’m so sorry about this,’ I said to Mr. Meradith. ‘You must think something awful about us…’

He managed to get a smile out before Gabby resealed his mouth with more tape.

And that, as they say, is that. The marriage was short lived and I think you’ll agree a welcome diversion from the usual round of dull events here at Chip Dale’s Diary. The solicitor was released unharmed back in Bangor and I was dragged up to the flat where I was finally set from of my rope bonds once Gabby had inserted numerous GPS trackers under my skin. Some of you might feel it goes against the Libertarian grain but I do like a clever use of technology. Especially when it gives rise to a new feature, which you should be able to see in my sidebar. It’s a live track of my position, fixed via Romanian GPS satellites and updated every five minutes. It’s innovations like that which you begin to miss as a married man.

Blogging From The Bathroom

For the sake of my health and my dignity, I’ve locked myself in the bathroom. Gabby is waiting for me outside and she’s armed herself with a pair of lacy knickers. Some might look on this scene of domestic disharmony and think it an example of why relationships don’t last in these troubled times. I merely say it’s good that people can express their honest feelings so we can work them out.

The argument began over a set of keys that Gabby had given to a homeless guy she met while doing her round as a traffic warden this morning.

I had slept late, as usual, only to wake up and smell bacon cooking. I emerged from the bedroom to find a stranger standing in the kitchen wearing Gabby’s nightgown and frying himself eggs, sausage, and the aforementioned rashers. He must have stood six feet three, with a large mass of hairy stomach pushing its way through the gown like some demonic pregnancy. His nose had been flattened by the impact of a small asteroid.

‘Morning,’ he said, stabbing a banger with a fork.

I reached for the nearest blunt instrument which I proceeded to wave in his direction. Only later did I realise it was a plastic pepper mill.

‘Who are you?’ I shouted, looking towards his large distended stomach. ‘And what have you done with my girlfriend?’

‘Done. I ain’t done nothing,’ he replied, slowly. ‘She gave me these keys and told me to make myself at home.’

You could argue that Gabby has a big heart but I knew that it was more complicated than that. She was getting her own back after reading some of the comments you’d all left to the photographs I’d posted of her last week.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘you can finish your breakfast but you can’t stay here.’

‘Not your business to say,’ said the man, stabbing another sausage in a somewhat threatening manner.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘You might think that but I’m the owner of this flat. I get to decide who lives here.’

He turned and picked up a sausage from the pan. ‘You want me out,’ he said, waving the sausage with a malicious intent, ‘then you’ll have to throw me out.’

I had a better plan. I waited until the greasy breakfast had slipped its way into the large stomach and our guest stretched himself out on my bed to sleep off his breakfast. I found Gabby ticketing wheelchairs outside the hospital.

‘You’ve made your point,’ I said, ‘now could you get rid of him?’

‘Gabby not want to see any more bad comments about her on Chippy’s blog,’ she said, fixing a ticket to a paraplegic’s electric scooter.

‘No more comments,’ I promised.

She nodded and tucked her pen away. Ten minutes later we were back at the flat. Two more minutes and there was a lump of a man sitting unconscious in the seat of an electric mobility scooter that wheeled him down the road.

‘Now Gabby has one more request,’ she said, once we had returned to the flat. ‘Chip wear my knickers and I take picture to put on his blog.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Chip enjoy laughing at Gabby so now Gabby say people laugh at Chip. You wear my knickers and you put picture on your blog so people can laugh at transvestite Chip.’

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ I told her, backing slowly to the bathroom. Luckily I had the foresight to pick up my laptop as I did the backing.

‘Chip wear knickers…’

‘Never!’

‘Chip better wear knickers or…’

I turned, ran, and only stopped running when I felt lino beneath my feet and I had a solid door behind me. And that’s where I sit now, typing this while sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. At some point I might have to emerge and I might have to don something black and see through. I hope I can spare you the photographs but I can’t make any promises. Perhaps those of your with sensitive dispositions should just avoid my diary for a day or two. Just until this knicker business blows over…

November 6th

The crackle of small arms fire came from the direction of the allotment shed. I ducked. Gabby winced.

The trouble began when Gabby had uttered a few words of complaint about the quality of the cheap Chinese rockets she’d picked up in town. Compared to the Romanian fireworks that had arrived last week, the Red Star Dragon Super Burst Astro Rocket had been a rather tame addition to the night’s display. She’d decided to remedy the problem by tying four of the rockets together. The result had been as unpredictable as I’d predicted.

The bundle of rockets had begun to bounce around the garden, first taking out the chicken coop and eventually punching a hole through the side of the shed and igniting Gabby’s cache of .44 ammo.

The shed burned through the night, with the sound of the occasional bullet still making us hit the ground. At one point, a fire engine arrived but we managed to get them to leave us alone by claiming the shed was actually a bonfire, to which, by that time, it bore a great resemblance.

Not that any of this put Gabby off the job at hand. The Romanian fireworks were still set off with spectacular results, and the Romanian Strategic Cruise Roman Candle was fired towards Birmingham. It blazed into the sky, narrowly missing a jumbo, which must have been at 30,000 feet. I’m waiting to hear reports of it landing.

This morning’s clean-up hasn’t even begun. Gabby is still in bed, disappointed that November the 5th has passed for another year and I’m trying to find reasons to write. You might sense that I’m rather low today. Perhaps it’s the weather that shrinks a man’s spirit. My thong hangs limply, and my fingers have barely the energy to jump from one key to the other. However, I will see what I can do. I now have only 15 pages left to proofread...

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.’

The Romanian Gambit

Gabby had some interesting news for me yesterday afternoon.

‘Chip?’ she said, ‘I want to become a man.’

I dropped my lunch into my lap. ‘I beg your pardon?’

She put her hands on her hips, tears in her eyes. ‘Gabby wants operation to become man.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s what I thought you’d said,’ I replied when I came around in the ambulance twenty minutes later.

On the drive home from the hospital, the situation became more clear to me.

‘I read in paper that men have more chance to become rich and successful,’ she explained. ‘I thought, if I become man, I might become rich and successful.’

‘Rubbish,’ I scoffed. ‘This has more to do with your dream of getting into the SAS!’

She blushed and I knew I was closer to the truth. There have been recruitment brochures for the Parachute Regiment falling through the letterbox for days. It had got to the point that I’d been laying out smoke markers for them so they would know where to land.

‘So what if it is?’ she asked. ‘Can’t a girl have her dreams?’

‘But Gabs,’ I said, cradling her in my arms. ‘Do you really want to have your things altered just so you can be dropped deep behind enemy lines in Afghanistan with a kit full of knifes, guns, and booby traps? Is that what you want?’

‘But Chip, I want to fulfill my potential.’

The poor girl had me there. What’s the point in being trained to the highest level of combat readiness without having chance to try it out for real? All the years she’s spend learning karate and judo, the knife fighting lessons, the years she spend in the Romanian commando school become proficient in light arms. It is all to be wasted?

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. ‘You are clearly cut out to inflict the severest punishment on our enemies. But you wouldn’t be happy just to record another Cheeky Girls album?’

She shrugged. ‘Will you still love me if I become a man?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, now, you see… Of course, you know, live and let live. That’s my motto. I’m liberal, you know, and I believe that we should all have the right… you know, to… to you know… Ah…’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘well, now, you see… The thing is Gabby, much as I love you for yourself…’

‘Chip wouldn’t love me?’

‘Look,’ I said, trying to get my words out before the very unmanly tears began. I wasn't so sure they wouldn't be my own. ‘I’m certain there’s a way around this. There has to be a way to make you happy without the need for such drastic changes.’

It took the rest of the day, dozens of phone calls, and a last minute dash into town for an interview, but, before the sun set on a rather relieved Bangor, Gabby declared that she was happy to remain a woman.

‘This is wonderful,’ she said, coming to the breakfast bar this morning. ‘Do you like?’ she asked as she gave me a spin in her new uniform.

‘Without a doubt, you are the sexist traffic warden in Bangor,’ I said before I pushed a contented spoonful of Alpen into my mouth.

‘That’s good,’ she smiled. ‘I give you ticket for car parked on single yellow. You have twenty eight days or I come after you and I know where you live.’

Walrus and Fox

Give me an hour or so and those of you who’ve asked to see what’s inside Walrus Clogs will get invites for the new blog.

I’m only sorry it’s taken me so long to get it up and running. I’ve not had much chance to do much of anything this weekend. Gabby insisted that I help her clean out her allotment shed and I spent my whole Sunday up to my ears in bags of fertilizer and cans of chicken lubricant. We did see a fox, though, which appeared from the thicket that runs along the end of the allotments. It was amazing to see so rare a creature up close. Its pelt was so red and glistened with rainwater brushed from the low hanging leaves. The appearance of the fox made me realise how lucky I am to live so near to the countryside. Then it made for the chickens and Gabby managed to stun it with her spade before finishing it off with her Rambo knife. For my part, I was shocked to see how casually she dispatched the poor animal, but I didn’t say a word when she began to skin it. That’s just Gabby. She’s a woman who doesn’t understand compassion and has a personal vendetta against the RSPCA.

The Last Piece of Paper On The Roll

Of all the poor girl’s faults, Gabby’s greatest failings are possibly her bathroom habits. Many is the time I visit the smallest room and find a single sheet of paper clutching precariously onto the roll.

‘You really have to stop this, Gabby!’ I told her this morning when I found a single layer of double-ply about to drift to the floor.

‘Pffft,’ she said and waved me away with the Driving section of The Sunday Times.

‘I won’t pffft,’ I said. ‘Is this what it’s like in Romania? Does everybody wipe their rum ends with a single sheet of Andrex? Or is it just part of your devious plan to avoid travelling all the way over to the other side of the bathroom, to get a new roll from the cupboard?’

‘You know where paper is,’ she replied. ‘So… it not problem.’

But it is a problem. And it’s a problem with this world of ours. Nobody cares a fig about who follows them into the bathroom or onto the planet. And nobody cares about a man with a thong around his ankles.

Take Live Earth. It was supposed to be the seminal moment when we all woke up to the damage we’ve been doing to Mother Earth. Not that the event was really about the planet, science, evidence, solutions, or even common sense. It was more Gayner than Gaia; more about wiggling our hips, having a good time and remembering to buy Madonna’s back catalogue. In my case, it was also about grinning and bearing it because Gabby loved every minute.

Her delight astonished me. Whichever way you swing in the environment debate, I would have thought that any reasonable person would have detested Al Gore’s latest attempt to prove he’s really the ‘People’s President’. Winning via the fawning media what he failed to win at the ballot box, Gore had assembled the Democratic Party’s celebrity militia to invade our homes for another crass evening of hang-wringing, tub-thumbing, and heartfelt excess.

A few years ago, Red was the colour when the stars came together and solved the problem of Aids. Before that, white was the colour when the stars came together and solved the problem of famine in Africa. This year’s colour is green. Somehow it seems sickly appropriate.

The only people who might have woken up to the green issue would have been the world’s morons, though even this is to be doubted judging from some of the comments from the crowd.

‘Gotta save the planet, man!’

‘This is the only Earth we got so we should look after it…’

You’d be excused for believing that stating the bleeding obvious was the message of the day.

Watching the faces of the massed numbskulls who attend these events is an entertainment in itself. Monied imbeciles nearly every one, they were the well muscled young men with sun glasses angled on the top of their shaved domes full of nothing but incredulous banality. Then there was the unending supply of enthusiastic Notting Hill debs waving their hands to James Blunt’s strangled warblings. Few knew much about anything except this was the next ‘big event’ and they just had to be there.

Only the presence of Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean did anything to save this from being the usual line up of in-crowd regulars. Tap were Tap and I was just glad to see the midgets dancing around the mini-Stonehenge. Beyond that, the show was relentlessly bad. My distain for Ricky Gervais grows every time his parks his substantial cheeks on a TV sofa. His self-parody no longer distracts me long enough to forget that the man has become a walking rash that has infected everything that once had class. He’s left a scar on The Simpsons, got his infected face into the usual ensemble cast in ‘For Your Consideration’, and last night, had to be the one to introduce Spinal Tap. I wait nervously for the moment that John Cleese relents and allows the BBC’s CGI department to work on ‘Fawlty Towers’ and replace Polly with darling their Ricky.

The Earth is at a tipping point, or so Terence Stamp told me last night. It’s time for us to wake up and act. Then they doused the non-essential lights at Wembley to make a point.

I wish they’d doused the whole non-event.

If Only Larry David Wore A Thong

I’ve just finished watching the fourth series of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I began with five episodes on Friday and finished them off last night. It was meant to cheer me up after days of writing the novel. It left me in awe of Larry David’s genius compared with The Chipster's meagre thong skills.

Larry, as I like to call him, is a man after my own heart. He’s too honest for his own good and doesn’t play by the rules as laid down by the great unwashed. He’s the sort of person who would, for example, question the sense in attending a virtual meeting of bloggers on a muggy afternoon in July but he would go and be a fantastic success if by success we judge him by his ability to insult every person in the room. His will be a hard act to follow but I’ll give it a try this afternoon when I drop into the Blogpower awards in Second Life dressed only in my thong. I’m sure it’s something Larry would appreciate.

‘He a prig,’ said Gabby as I turned off the TV tonight and told her my plans to emulate my hero. She’d come in halfway through the final hour-long episode in which Larry gets to star in The Producers on Broadway. It didn’t take me long to realise that the whole thing was beyond the Romanian sensibility.

‘If he back home and complain like that,’ she said and then drew a finger across her throat. ‘Men like that… Complain, complain, complain… Not good. Somebody take them into barn and…’ Again, she was with the throat gesture.

‘Can you stop doing that?’ I said. ‘It’s very disconcerting.’

‘You mean this?’ she asked and stroked herself in another mortal gesture.

‘You see where we differ?’ I replied. ‘The man has an eye to foibles. He understands human nature like no other comedian before him. I could learn a few things by watching him.’

‘Pah,’ said Gabby and grabbed the remote control from my hands. She sat herself on the sofa and began to flick through the channels but only after wiping the control on the leg of her trousers.

‘What you do that for?’ I asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Why did you wipe the remote control?’

‘Did I?’

‘You did. I saw you. You wiped the remote control on your trousers before you used it.’

She shrugged and paused a moment in her flicking to watch an alligator grab a bison by its throat.

‘You paused, wiped, then used. You think I have some kind of allergy or something? You afraid a bit of my sweat might get on your fingers?’

‘I wipe control? So what? You do odd things and I never say.’

‘Such as what? You name me one thing I do like that?’

‘You scratch yourself.’

‘I what?’

‘Scratch, scratch, scratch. Chippy never stops scratching himself down there.’

‘It’s razor burn,’ I replied. ‘It’s not like I can put aftershave on.’

‘But you still scratch.’

‘Yes, well, it’s not like wiping the remote. That’s an insult to another person. My scratching is something else entirely.’

‘It more like hobby,’ she said with a cruel smile. ‘A spectator sport but not one for families.’

Is there anything worse than being out-mocked by somebody whose second language is English? It’s like having two insults in one.

‘You still didn’t answer my question,’ I said. ‘Did you wipe the remote control because I’ve been using it?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, Chippy, I did. I wipe remote because you been using it.’

‘Right. Well at least you’re being honest about it,’ I told her but couldn’t let it rest there. ‘And why did you wipe it?’

‘I not say.’

That answer, I couldn’t accept. I was in the mood for the truth.

‘Come on, Gabby. Tell me the reason. I want to know what you clearly find so abhorrent about me. Spare me no shame. Give me the full explanation. Why did you wipe the remote control?’

‘Well,’ she sighed. ‘If you really must know. I think it horrible how you keep the remote control down your thong. It’s not clean. It not healthy. And remote gets covered in oil and hairs.’

‘But at least I know where it is…’ I replied but I knew the poor girl had a point. Which is precisely the kind of weakness that separates me from my hero, Larry.

Whither My Withered Buttocks

I'm as over-worked as Clare's memory stick. In fact, there was a moment during the early hours of Sunday morning when I thought I’d taken a break. Only, I was mistaken. I was not sitting on a tropical beach being sang to by the Sheila's Wheels nude choir. I’d fallen asleep in the armchair for a few minutes. Disgusted with myself, I rubbed some vinegar into my eyes and got back to work. I managed another forty pages before my body gave out and I fell into a thin restless sleep.

Before Ms. Baroque starts to worry that I was working on my masterpiece for her blog, that little gem was polished off earlier in the day. Instead, I was up late, going through the draft of my manuscript which Gabby finally returned to me, yesterday, full of her edits.

It took me seven hours to remove all her jokes. It was hard work, harder than the time I worked a room of female lumberjacks during the winter break in the Canadian log sawing season. I was picking pine needles from my underwear for months afterwards.

I don’t know what led me to lose faith in myself the other day, but asking Gabby to rewrite my novel with her own brand of humour wasn’t a bright move. When I reached page 50 of the redraft, I had begun realised that a Romanian sense of humour is a dangerous thing. Not only did most of it involve gloriously over-the-top mutilations of farmyard animals but most of the routines were stolen from Norman Wisdom comedies. Not that Norman ever went at a sheep with a machete, but you get the idea when I explain that the hero, in Gabby’s redraft of my novel, could barely stay on his feet for more than five minutes before tripping over and skewering a goat with a pitchfork. Oh, it was funny at first. But, by page 200 and the body count entering into triple figures, I was feeling pretty unwell. I'd happily never read another account of a sheepdog going tail first into a corn thresher.

So, today is a fresh gore-free day and I continue to work. I still worry about my buttocks (above) being to big. I wonder too if my comments will drop off as my visitors feel ashamed of visiting. I’m also concerned about those quiet visitors, who I value as much as any, who come here every day but never introduce themselves. How have they received my buttocks? I’d love to know.

Wednesday

Gabby and Monica arrived home late last night having spent the day in Birmingham. I thought my seclusion had come to an end but early this morning, may the saints of thongdom be praised, they announced that their singing career will be advanced if they could spend the next couple of days hounding the music press in London. They want them to take more notice of their new single, 'Cheekytime', due out next week.

You might have noticed that I don’t help promote the poor girls’ careers on this blog and you might have wondered why. Or perhaps you know why. The matter is very clear and most obvious: I’m a humanitarian. Let me not be he who casts the first stone. Or, in this case, a CD single with a booklet of printed lyrics that include the lines:

Love is the fire
Love is desire
Love is the sun
And love is the oven.
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna…
Warm you crumpets.

This little masterpiece Gabby penned herself during her poetry period. She claims to have been inspired by Plath but I say she was inspired by the bottle. There are twelve other verses along the same theme. I don’t suggest you rush out and buy it.

The upshot of all this, however, is that I have yet another quiet day to get on with the novel. It’s roaring along, thanks for asking, and I’ve taken on board all your suggestions. Unfortunately, Steve’s suggestion that I should end the novel like a bad episode of Dallas didn’t inspire me half as much as Andrew’s idea of my ending things with a huge explosion. For one thing, I look nothing like Patrick Duffy and, for a second, the idea of putting TNT under the orphanage was something I'd never considered. I suppose it will make readers shed a tear if I manage it right. All the other suggestions will appear in one guise or another but in a context involving high-explosive and burning carcasses of soft toys.

The other news I have to tell you is that I’ve decided to go for a new look, here at Chipster Central. I had an email from a company offering to do me a new Blogger theme for a reasonable price. So, if it all works out, I’ll be revealing a new look at some point, less derivative than the current one, and more fitting for a man moving away from thongs and into a world where he can keep his clothes on. I’ll be nipping out later this afternoon to have my picture taken in a black roll necked jumper and a corduroy jacket.

The Chipster is changing and black is the new pink.

Birdy Flu Strikes North Wales

You’ll have to forgive me if I skip the pleasantries today. I had a morning that’s not to be envied unless you’re the sort of person who dreams of making animal sacrifices to the gods Fad and Fickle.

As you might know, it’s been confirmed that North Wales has been struck by avian flu. It was news that was sure to set the cat among the pigeons, or at least, one Romanian among the chickens.

The Chipster was doing a few stretching exercises in the front room and had touched his nose to his knees, fingers to his toes, when a sudden scream shattered the peace and quiet of an otherwise quite restful Bangor. I turned around, ready to make my apologies to Monica, who I had assumed had walked in on my exercising. It’s a simple fact of the world that not every appreciates the sight of two exposed, though perfectly formed, buttocks first thing in the morning.

I was wrong. It was Gabby holding the newspaper.

‘Birdy flu!’ she said. ‘Birdy flu in Wales.’

‘Are you sure?’ I asked her, taking the paper from her quivering fingers. It wouldn’t be the first time her poor grasp of English had caused her to worry unduly and before things got out of control I thought it best to check the facts.

Only, just then, the door to the spare room opened and Monica appeared. She was already dressed for the day in her black combat trousers and denim jacket but was in the process of adding a final touch by buckling a commando knife to a concealed pocket on the inside of her thigh.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Birdy flu!’ screeched Gabby.

‘Birdy flu?’ screeched Monica.

‘Yes, Birdy flu!’

Monica turned to me. ‘Did you hear, Chippy darling? It’s the birdy flu!’

I shrugged my naked shoulders. I mean: what else is a man meant to do when it’s birdy flu? And there it was in the paper. ‘Bird Flu in North Wales.’

Gabby snatched the paper off me and examined the page one more time, this time chewing her bottom lip in worry.

‘Well, that’s that,’ she declared, threw the paper down and looked to her sister. ‘Gabby think this job The Cheeky Girls…’

‘Oooooookaaaaaayyyyyy!’ squealed Monica as Gabby dashed off to the kitchen. She came back with my best set of kitchen knives in one hand, a rubber tube, and an empty litre-sized milk carton.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Birdy flu not catch Gabby unprepared.’

Well, I barely had time to throw on something sensible, but with my best green thong and a pair of sandals I followed the twins out the flat, down the back staircase, and to the garage where we all piled into the car. Ten minutes later, Gabby hit the brakes at the allotment and told us to hurry.

‘I think you’re overreacting,’ I suggested as Monica passed Gabby the knifes from the back seat.

Only the Cheeky Girls weren’t for waiting. They were soon running off down the small lane leading to the allotments, and then quickly over the fence that encloses the chicken coop.

‘I hold them and you do the cheeeeeeeck,’ shouted Gabby as she raised the door the coop. The noise she had made in the sound of her mouth and I have no idea how you’d spell it.

‘Righty!’ said Monica who had selected a large cleaver from the knife set. ‘Unless Chippy want to do the cheeeeeeeck…’ She too made the noise in the side of her mouth.

‘What exactly do you mean, cheeeeeeeeck?’ I asked.

Monica slipped the knife from her thigh and waved it in her hand. ‘You know. Cheeeeeeck,’ she said and passed the blade less than an inch from my windpipe.

I leapt a step back, which isn’t an easy thing to do when only wearing a thong and flip-flops.

‘I’m not murdering chickens,’ I said.

‘We not murder,’ said Gabby as she manhandled the first bird. ‘We save from fate.’

‘Hacking at chickens because there’s a very slight chance they’ll catch the birdy flu doesn’t seem like saving them from their fate,’ I observed.

She turned to me. ‘So, you don’t do cutting. You go and take pipe. Suck petrol from tank. Put in bottle.’

‘What do you want petrol for?’

‘Silly,’ she grinned. ‘We need to burn chickens. Stop birdy flu.’

I rubbed a hand over my face. ‘Do you know how dangerous this sounds? I’m not standing near a naked flame. I’m covered in oil. I could ignite at the drop of a thong.’

Monica turned to me, a darkly impatient look on her face. ‘Monica think Chippy coward.’

‘Chippy is a coward,’ I said. ‘In fact, he’s proud of the fact. I’m not slaughtering chickens. It’s not how we do things in this country.’

Gabby stood up, chicken in her arms. ‘What you mean?’ she asked. ‘I saw TV. I saw turkeys in trucks. Bernie Matthews and his turkey twizzlers.’

‘Well that’s where you’re wrong,’ I said. ‘In a case like this, the government sorts out the mess and then the EU come along and pay us lots of money for having lost our chickens. Bernie Matthews made a nice bit of money despite all of his troubles.’

The girls fell silent.

‘How we get money from EU?’ asked Gabby finally.

‘You just have to be a member.’

‘And is Romania in EU?’

‘From January the first,’ I replied.

She looked at the chicken. ‘So, government kill chickens? We get lots of money?’

‘That’s the way it works.’.

The sisters looked at each other and then Gabby dropped the bird.

‘The Cheeky Girls!’ they both screeched and then they began to do the hokey cokey, surrounded by some of the luckiest chickens in North Wales and a man in a thong and flip flops who, for some reason, couldn't consider himself even half as blessed.

Music To Drive Dogs Crazy

It has been a beautiful few days here in North Wales. Few places on Earth look as good when the weather is just right. When the sun catches the crests and curls of the sea and a breeze comes in off water with an invigorating aroma able to bring fresh resolve to lowest spirits, I'm happy that I made Bangor my home.

Yet it is common knowledge by now that The Chipster had a bad Monday. I think we’re all on friendly enough terms to admit that I can be a bit moody. You have probably come to expect these occasional lulls as I go to my corner and sulk about all that’s wrong with the world. You also know that they pass, eventually, and I spring back into the common herd, my thong sparkling like a beacon of goodness.

And this is when I’m usually at my weakest.

‘Chippy,’ said Gabby as I sat down at the breakfast table. She ran a finger over my neck and under my chin which totally distracted me from the Times crossword. She knows, you see, that I’m quite ticklish, and I felt weak and foolish when I gave an involuntary giggle as she touched that point of my neck where I’m most vulnerable.

‘What is it my love, my world, the reason my heart occasionally murmurs?’

‘You promise you won’t shout?’

‘And what reason would I have to shout on such a beautiful day as this?’ I asked before I spooned some Alpen into my mouth.

‘Well, you usually get annoyed when I ask you if my sister can come and stay with us for a few days…’

A raisin ricocheted off the toast rack and went flying out the window.

‘Gabby? You don’t mean…’ I gasped.

She went to tickle my chin again but this wasn’t the time for it. I parried her finger back with my spoon.

‘She’s coming up today and I said she could have the spare room.’

‘But Gabby?’ I began…

But there was nothing I could say. Looking at that face, with the old scars from the many razor fights of her youth, I couldn’t say no to my dear Gabby. Just as I couldn’t say no to you, my dear thonglateers, should you decide to come to visit North Wales’ top stripper. I could only hope, however, that if you ever did invite yourselves, you’d be good enough to leave your twin at home. Especially if your happens to be called Monica.

‘Gabby!’ she screamed as they looked at each other across the concourse of Bangor station.

‘Monica!’ screamed Gabby.

I’d slipped behind a telephone kiosk, where I’d hoped to be safe from the effects of these lethal sonic weapons fired in an enclosed space. But these were the advanced models. They seemed to transmit the coordinates of their targets by telepathy. No sooner had Monica finished kissing Gabby sister than she turned to me.

‘Chippeeeeeee!’ she screamed and came rushing at the kiosk which I swear jumped out of the way leaving me in the open.

My legs buckled as one half of a Romanian’ supergroup threw herself at me. Before I even hit the floor, my face was wet with kisses.

I could only take it in good humour and try to break free from her hold.

Back on our feet, I didn't feel like I'd just taken part in the Romanian version of WWF Raw.

‘It so good to see you!’ Monica squealed.

‘It so good to see you!’ squealed Gabby back at her.

‘I have much to tell you,’ squealed Monica.

‘I have much to tell you too,’ squealed Gabby.

'You look lovely!' squealed Monica.

'You look lovely too!' squealed Gabby.

'And doesn't Chippeeee look good!'

'Chippeeee look very good!'

That’s when I knew that no matter how much the sun might shine, this is going to be a long long week.

At Knifepoint With Cultural Amnesia

Sorry for the slightly late in the day update, Chipettes. I’ve had to take a day’s rest and force myself to watch a pretty dull FA Cup final. Not that I’m complaining about their being a lack of excitement in the Chipster household. I had enough of that yesterday, which started with me trying to make a five pounds saving and ended at the point of a paperknife.

We’d gone over to Birmingham to see Gabby’s management team who are still working hard to come up with a hit as big as the hokey cokey. We spent the lunch hour browsing the local Borders, which is where I’d intended to buy Clive James’s new book of essays, Cultural Amnesia. I’d had a quick browse through the book, read the opening paragraphs on James’ piece of W.C. Fields, which I thought made it worth the cover price alone, and I was making my way to the counter when Gabby leapt out from the bargain books brandishing a novelty paperknife in the shape of Count Duckula.

‘What that?’ she growled.

‘What what?’ I asked, having quickly hid six hundred pages or more behind my back.

‘What you buy, Chippy?’

‘I buy nothing I said, truthfully, as I tried to slip into the aisle of murder mysteries before I was involved in one myself.

But it was too late. The great Romanian sleuth ran a finger over her waxed moustache, grabbed my wrist, and dragged the book out into the open where everybody could see my profligacy.

‘How much?’ she asked, knife waving around my loins.

‘Twenty pounds… a five pound saving off he cover price,’ my loins replied.

‘You not pay twenty pounds for this,’ she said. ‘You put it back right now.’

I might have reminded her about the copy of my English Auden which she and her cabal of free versifiers has munched their way though yesterday.

‘I won’t put it back you heathen,’ I hissed. ‘I’m buying it. He’s making an excellent case for not being so intellectually dry as to ignore every form of culture.’

‘Culture?’ she spat. ‘We save for holiday to Romania!’

‘Save away,’ I said. ‘I’m buying the Clive James.’

She raised Count Duckula menacingly.

‘Step back,’ she warned. ‘Gabby not allow Chippy to waste our money.’

‘It’s thong money,’ I said.

She stabbed at the book with the opener. ‘How much on Amazon?’

‘That’s not the point…’

‘How much on Amazon?’

‘Twelve pounds,’ I admitted.

‘Then you buy from Amazon or Gabby stick you with paper knife in shape of duck.’

And there she had me. It was a duck. And Clive James’ latest book is indeed twelve pounds on Amazon. But, then, there’s also something in buying a book and walking out with it. It’s never the same when the postman arrives with the Amazon crate.

Yet in favour of Amazon: have they ever tried to slice off your manhood with something made for envelopes? Precisely. And that’s exactly how I imagine a certain cultural critic would have responded to these most trying of times…

Club Gabby

I had an odd dream last night. I was on my way to see Clive James, who for some inexplicable reason, was living the life of a mysterious recluse in a Kowloon shanty town. I had to go through some strange Daliesque doorways to reach him, which led me to a glass elevator that began to rise diagonally over a landscape of 1930s New York, sepia tinted and wholly photographic. When I reached Clive, I found him to be extremely pleasant and a very gracious host, despite living in squalor with an Argentinean housekeeper and a large Afghan hound with long blond tresses which kept attacking me whenever I clenched my fists.

That’s when I began to hear the sound of clicking.

Try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking that it was coming from my hips. Clive thought so too. A lifetime spent doing high kicks and hip thrusts can wear a stripper’s hips away in half the time of your average Premiership footballer. It’s why so many of us have so much titanium inside us by the time we’re thirty that we're less human than a Terminator. Clive told me that it was an omen of what’s to come and a reminder to keep myself well oiled and my joints lubricated.

Only then did I wake up and realise that there was nothing wrong with my hips, which were running as silky smooth as ever. Clive had also disappeared, which was the biggest disappointment because I had so many things to ask him.

Then I heard the clicking again and realised that not all my dreams were insubstantial. Some mysterious clicking force had descended on the apartment while Clive James had been explaining the mysteries of literary punditry to me.

I looked at the clock. It was horribly late for a weekday morning, nearly half-past eleven, but then I remembered that last night I’d over indulged myself with the alcohol and a sad French film involving the innocent murder of young rabbits. Pulling on a fresh thong, I walked through the apartment, following the sound which I could now clearly tell was coming from the living room.

‘Whow!’ said a voice as I turned the corner past the bathroom. ‘Check out those buns! Rock solids at twelve o’clock!’

I turned around and found myself face to face with a young woman wearing a long black leather overcoat and a beret perched on the top of her head.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, oblivious to the fact that she was looking at my thong as though she was having a religious experience. It happens to me all the time.

When she straightened herself up she resembled a rather lascivious stick of liquorice.

‘I’m Jonjo,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

I thought her question defied reason so I chose not to answer it. ‘And what are you doing in my apartment?’ I asked.

‘Hey! Stay cool!,’ she replied, guiltily waving her arms around like Eve juggling invisible apples. ‘Don’t get your thong in a… in a…’

‘Twist?’ I suggested.

‘Hey! Cool. Twist, yes, twist. Don’t get it in a twist.’

‘And I asked what you’re doing in my apartment? And what the hell is that clicking?’

‘We’re here to celebrate words!' she said. 'You know? How great they are… How much we enjoy using them to… you know… to express… you know... stuff…’

‘We?’

She waved her hands ambiguously. ‘Don’t get plural on me. I is we.’

That ‘I is we’ bit was enough for me. I turned my back on Jonjo and walked into the main room.

Sitting on the floor, around the sofa, across the chairs and some sitting on the window seat, were an assortment of the oddest people you’re ever likely to find gathered in a stripper’s apartment on a Thursday morning. They were completely oblivious to my presence as they were too busy clicking their fingers as they gazed at the figure standing at the middle of the room.

It was Gabby, holding my copy of the English Auden in one hand and a large crocus in the other.

‘The crowing of the cock’, she said – or more precisely read – ‘though it may scare the dead, call on the fire to strike, sever the yawning cloud, shall also summon up the pointed crocus top, which smelling of the mould, breathes of the underworld…’

At which point the crowd began another chorus of clicking and Gabby danced around in a circle waving the crocus over their heads as though it were a magic wand.

‘Ahem,’ said the only cock in the room qualified to crow.

Gabby turned to me and smiling hugely waved the crocus at me.

‘Morning Chippy!’ she squealed.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ I asked, in no mood to be won over by a high pitched Romanian with a crocus. My injured foot was beginning to throb and I could still feel the teeth of an imaginary Afghan hound in my arm. Even the memory of Clive’s reassuring words to his dog (‘it’s only rubber, Mildred’) could do nothing to calm my agitation.

‘Hey, is it time to get down to our undies?’ asked a woman sitting on the end of the sofa. ‘That would be so cool. So cool and Frank O'Hara...’

‘Well I’m not joining in,’ replied a gaunt man in black sitting beside her. He was giving me one of those looks as if to suggest he was in awe of the Chipster’s perfectly honed body. ‘There’s always somebody who wants to bring muscle to a gathering of minds…’

‘Who are these people?’ I asked Gabby.

‘My poetry club,’ she said and anointed them all with a wave of her crocus.

‘What?’

‘Oh, you’ll get to know all the names,’ she said. ‘They’re here to read poetry. Aren’t we, everybody?’

The room filled with more of that insufferable clicking.

‘Will you all stop that?’ I snapped. ‘And what’s that you’re reading?’

She held up the book. ‘Oh, I took it from your poetry shelf,’ she replied. ‘We play poem game.’

‘A poem game?’

‘Like drinking game but it involves poems.’ She looked at my face and must have recognised the look of mild curiosity. ‘We take turns,’ she began to explain.’ We each pick a poem at random and then we read it. Then we rip it out and eat it.’

‘You do what?’

‘It’s poetry, Chippy! You wouldn’t understand.’

‘You know,’ said a voice from the crowd. ‘We internalise the mystery… It's ruminatio of the word...’

‘You’ve been eating my English Auden?’ I sobbed, snatching the book from her crocus scented fingers. ‘Do you know how much this cost? It’s a Faber & Faber…’

‘And very tasty it was too,’ said a man sitting on the window seat. He was picking his teeth with his little finger. ‘I’ve just eaten the Night Mail and it went down lovely,’ he said. ‘That passage between Beattock and Glasgow went really smooth.’

‘It was all downhill,’ said some wit from the sofa. I glared at the gaunt man before I flipped through the torn edges of my ruined volume. All the shorter verse were gone and some sections of the longer poems had teeth marks where somebody had nibbled away the page, sometimes almost up to the spine.

‘You’re all heathens,’ I cried as I threw the book to the floor. And then, without another word, I turned my thong on the crowd.

‘Cool cheeks, man!’ said a voice to my rear but I gone past the point where a sane man cares anymore. Soon, my head was buried beneath the cold cotton fabric of my pillow. I was back in bed again, oblivious to the sound of the clicking fingers, which now marked the digesting of another classic of the English canon.

I consoled myself by trying to imagine what Clive James might say about the terrible age we live in.

Save Me From Boredom, Blogdom!

The wound in my foot was healing fine until Gabby insisted on swabbing it down with potato gin. Forget gauze pads and sterile environments. My little Romanian miracle worker dragged my leg up onto the coffee table, swigged back a mouthful of her latest brew, and spat it all over my foot. She promised it would kill bacteria. I only know that I can’t feel my toes and the carpet has started to turn white. It’s all worrying but Gabby tells me that’s only natural and swears she can’t remember the last time she had any feeling in her tongue.

This is how you find me, today, Wednesday, my Thonglateers. I’m Bangor’s sexist invalid, hobbling naked around my flat and trying to find something productive to do. I’m not even thinking about how much it is going to cost me to get Romania’s answer to Pam Ayres into print.

As I type this, Gabby is out haggling with Bangor’s stationers; bulk-buying notebooks ahead of her next assault on the north face of Mount Parnassus. This morning, she left me this bit of doggerel to post in her absence. I’ve only agreed to do so knowing that it’s sure to gain me your pity…

My Fun Tuesday

Gabby shot sparrow; Gabby shot a thrush,
Chippy picked gun up and shot himself in foot.
His blood was real messy and such a sight to see,
Before we all went off to Accident and Emergency.
Chippy now is crippled, like bus run over dog,
And makes groany noises like half squished frog.
I could put him out of misery, since he’s lost all sense of fun,
But Gabby must suffer because Chippy’s hidden her gun.

© Gabby, 2007.

In all honesty, can any one of you out there blame me for trying to escaping from reality?

In desperation, I picked up ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys, which is part of the reading list for my FE class. After only half an hour and ten pages, I felt like shooting myself in my other foot just to end the tedium. It was an act of restraint just throwing the book out the window. I have since spent the rest of my time browsing the day’s blogs, which is where I found some slight relief by considering the problems of blog publishing.

Clare, at the Girl Friday blog, distracted me from the pain with a link to a piece in The Guardian by ‘The Girl With A One Track Mind’ about turning blogs to books. Naturally, it attracted my attention. I’m a man with more than one unpublished novel to my name, so I know more than most what it’s like to be at the bottom of the world’s slush piles. Yet it also makes it hard to be objective about The Girl’s conclusions. She thinks that blogging is a wonderful thing, given that ‘the very act of writing online allows for quality material and this is down to one main factor - the readers' comments.’ Perhaps The Wife in the North would share the same sentiments, but I’m sure that I don’t.

For me, the fallacy of blogging is the notion that we can be discovered in a more fair or practical way than the old methods of going about such things. To take Gabby as an example: is there any coincidence in the fact that her genius is only coming to light because others see something in her poetry that I can’t? Her inarticulate nonsense is perfect for a medium which doesn’t suite any kind of thought-out writing. Writers who write literary novels can never hope to be discovered through a blog because their skill takes take time to get just right through rewriting. The same is true of thrillers, comedy novels, and whodunits. Somebody recently asked me to help them write a detective novel online, which, to my way of thinking, just couldn’t work, or at least, not as a blog containing the work in progress.

Blogs are an effective for writers who just want to put work out there, without having to worry about being accepted. Rarely is it about quality. Those that find the most success seem to find it through those same qualities that make other things successful on the web. They tend to be victories for the values of the obscene freak-show. For all its popularity and success, ‘The Girl With A One Track Mind’ represents a height of sub-literary prurience; a single joke that has probably run well beyond itself in terms of originality, but retaining readership because, given the size of the web, there are always people to whom it is new, dangerous, or (mildly) erotic. I don't know how much mileage is left in my thongs but I hope there's more to me than the contents of my posing pouch.

What can I say?

I’m in pain and it’s raining outside. My foot is beginning to ache and I’m only thankful that I can feel my toes again.

And now I can hear a key in the door. I better post this before my Romanian bard comes in and demands that I include the dozen or so poems she’s sure to have written in the space of the last hour.

The Trouble With Edwina Currie

I discovered Gabby in a black mood this morning. She was sitting at the kitchen window with her air pistol, shooting at sparrows in the garden below. I made my way slowly around to the fridge, having discovered on many previous occasions that it’s dangerous to disturb a trigger-happy Romanian with a handgun.

‘So,’ I said, as I began to squeeze my morning orange, ‘are the sparrows biting today?’

Crack. The distant squawk of wildlife, though I can’t dismiss the possibility that it was the postman.

‘Edwina Currie thinks I have talent,’ said my death-dealing buttercup as simple as an accusation gets before noon.

‘And so do I,’ I replied, but inwardly steeling myself for an argument I knew I simply would have to win.

‘So why won’t you lend me money?’

‘I haven’t got a penny to spare,’ I said. ‘My financial thong is empty. And if it wasn’t, we can do better things than pay somebody to publish your poetry. Vanity publishing is just that. Vanity. When they see your genius, somebody will offer you good money to publish it.’

She frowned, fired, and a starling suffered a mortal flesh wound.

‘Edwina said…’

‘I don’t give a damn what Edwina said,’ I cried. ‘You have to still to learn some things about the British. We’re a nation who like to see people make fools of themselves.’

‘So why did she say I was good poet?’

I hadn’t the spirit to explain the rest of what the needlessly profane one-time Junior Minister for Health had to say on the matter of poetry. I merely regretted that the bad language she’d been recently displaying on my blog hadn’t been put to more use a decade ago when she should have been more vehement in explaining the dangers of under-cooked poultry. I might never have suffered the food poisoning that led to my dismal A level results, eventual rejection from university, and led me to my current low paying work as a male stripper.

These were the distracted thoughts that went through my head as I snatched the pistol from Gabby’s hand and managed to shoot myself in the foot.

‘Damn that Edwina Currie!’ I cursed, falling on the floor as blood made an early appearance over the Chipster’s slippers. Even then, I was proud of myself for not resorting to profanity, even as I felt the blood begin to seep between my toes.

‘Chippy? You okay?’ asked Gabby, rushing to my side. ‘It okay if we don’t publish poems,’ she added, cradling my head. ‘I’m not good at rhyming yet…’

‘Shot… foot,’ I gasped, feeling suddenly faint with the pain.

‘No, no, that not good rhyme,’ said Gabby, apparently oblivious to the serious nature of my injury. ‘Cut rhymes with foot. Soot rhymes with foot…’ She went silent and I believe I passed out for a few minutes. The next thing I remember was Gabby slapping my face and forcing a piece of paper into my hand.

Gabby shot a sparrow, then a thrush,
Then poor Chippy shot himself in foot.

‘Does this rhyme?’ she asked.

I was beyond caring. My foot was a congealed bloody mess the likes of which have slapped many a certificate 18 on a film. Tears ran down my cheeks and pooled on my lips. ‘Help me,’ I pleaded. ‘My foot…’

‘Pah,’ said my Romanian humanitarian looking at my yellow slippers, now completely covered with Chip Dale’s finest O positive. ‘Gabby uncle once shot foot off with shotgun. He did not stop work until he pick up every potato on field.’

‘Please…’ I begged.

‘Finish washing up,’ said Gabby, dropping my head onto the tiled floor. ‘I want to finish this poem before we go.’

An hour later, I was in Bangor’s emergency room waiting for a nurse to bandage my foot. A doctor has just pulling a lump of pellet from it, which Gabby had taken as a souvenir. ‘I think I make into earring,’ she said, holding the bloody mess up to a lobe.

‘It suits you,’ I replied over lips parched dry with suffering.

‘So, do you think Edwina Currie would read my collected poems?’ asked Gabby. Now having turned her attention to a box of scalpels she’d found in a drawer, she began to juggle three.

As I watched the razor sharp blades arc through the air, I thought of the nine hundred pages of tightly typed manuscript sitting at home, waiting to be discovered like an extra forty cantos by a Romanian Ezra Pound.

‘I’m sure she would,’ I said with a grimace or a smile. ‘I’m sure she would…’

Gabby’s Poem To The Dalai Lama

I had a busy Sunday. After I’d finished watching the football and signing an online petition to jail Paris Hilton, I wrote a long deeply spiritual letter to his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. I barely had time to finish it and post it before I had to head off to the Green Dragon Tavern where I did my randy traffic warden routine, which has become something of a crowd favourite every Sunday night.

The letter had been Gabby’s idea. Personally, I’d resent it if the Dalai Lama turned up in Bangor and tried to teach me my job. There’s little that a man in a toga can tell a man born to the thong, but even should he be enlightened in some mystical ways of the hidden pouch, I’d still question his interference. Which is why I hesitated before writing to tell him how to do his job.

There are times, however, when even the reincarnations of Avalokiteśvara needs a bit of advice from North Wales’ top stripper and, in this case, I’ve put him straight about this business of his retirement.

If you’ve slept through the weekend, you might not have noticed that the Dalai Lama has decided to quit public life. The news brought Gabby no end of disappointment, given all the charity work she does on behalf of Nepal. I try not to involve myself in her causes as she won’t help me with the charity work I do on behalf of nipples. However, Gabby thought I might be able to talk some sense in the Lama. She’d already written a letter of her own and, bless her rhymeless little heart, included a self-penned poem in it.

In your humble Chipster’s opinion, the following bit of 'poetry' is more likely to make a spiritual leader lock himself away in a monastery, but I ask that you don’t laugh. I’ve promised to post it here, though I’m sure the sceptical ones among you will think it lacks a certain poetic quality. All I can do is reprint exactly what Gabby scribbled on the flyleaf of my first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land…

To The Dalai Lama On The Occasion of His Announcing His Retirement

Wise old man who’s more Dalai than lhama,
Do not retire while still in your prime-a.
Wiser than Attenborough, purer than Snow,
(Both David and Dickie, Peter and Jono),
You’re balder than Richard (the Cliff and the knight),
And like Felicity Kendal, don’t enjoy a knife fight,
But when it comes down to your spiritual healing,
You’re better than Cilla, or even Jan Leeming.
You’re also eternal, like Match of the Day,
Though your next repeat is a lifetime away.
So don’t go and choose that Buddhist retreat,
When we could have two weeks together (timeshare) in Crete,
Because dressed in a toga, you’re my super hero,
With love, from Gabby, Chip, and Richard Gere-o.

© Gabby, 2007

Well, I’ve done my bit by reprinting it and I think you’ll agree that it doesn’t make much sense, especially that bit about Cliff Richard.

Everybody knows he is actually the twelfth reincarnation of the original Cliff Richard…

It's Only Us Chickens

And into the unpublished pile goes the page I’ve just written about why I’m not feeling funny today… You see, somebody sent me a pretty abusive email this morning and it made me begin to wonder why I bother blogging at all. But at least it made me angry. Angry enough to tell you that I carry on because a Romanian girlfriend who thinks she’s a pop star based on a number seven hit with the ‘Hokey Cokey’ is about as funny as life gets. Surely her’s is a tale that needs telling, especially when she comes home with a cockerel she bought from a man she met at her pilates class.

Gabby is mixing with the more unusual side of Bangor society these days and her cockerel is pecking around my ankles as I type. It’s not a totally disagreeable sensation, though having a cock at my ankles is perhaps symbolic of how far my spirits have drooped this week.

‘You like Chippy?’ she had asked the bird as she nuzzled it over my breakfast table. The bird had said nothing but fixed me with its bead of an eye. Fowl are not known for their appreciation of the finer things in life and certainly have little or no regard for a Welshman in a thong at ten thirty in the morning.

‘And where do you intend to keep our guest?’ I asked as I spooned another load of Alpen into my mouth.

‘Guest?’ laughed Gabby. ‘What guest? Only you, me, and bird. Bird is no guest. Bird is family now.’

‘Well Bird must be on your side of the family,’ I told her. ‘No Dale I know of has only three toes.’

‘There’s your uncle Jimmy,’ she reminded me.

‘Industrial accidents are hardly genetic,’ I replied. ‘Or at least they’re not unless you’re from Liverpool…’

‘You’re trying to be funny,’ she said as the cockerel made a noise in its throat. ‘See! Only Bird laughs. I don’t.’

And with that, I accepted Bird as part of the family. I knew, that way, at least one member of the household would find me a little bit amusing in the morning.

Gabby’s reasons for buying the cockerel are actually quite good. She’s going to set up a small business breeding chickens. She claims that she used to do this back in the old country and has been encouraged to start again after reading about Bernard Matthews who started out with only a couple of turkeys. She has ambitions of owning old aircraft hangers, full to the struts with chickens. The enterprise is to begin at the allotments, which is where she’s been fermenting her potato gin these last few months. She has sheds down there and has become something of a pin up for the gardening fraternity. The chickens will have a free run of the ground where she’s been growing potatoes.

At eleven, the doorbell rang. Gabby was in the bath with her cockerel so I answered it.

‘Ah, I wonder if I might have a word with the lady of the house?’ asked a man in blue overalls. He was in his fifties, grey hair had ebbed to leave behind a pale pink tidemark of skin. He also had that style of thin moustache that went out in the fifties. ‘You are Mr. Dale?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ I replied, gesturing down to my personalised thong which reads ‘Chip Dale’ in a hardly discreet font.

‘Of course you are,’ smiled the man, his eyes flicking briefly southwards. ‘May I have a word with your wife, Mr. Dale?’

‘I’m not married,’ I said and again gestured to my thong as though it’s the answer to everything. Which, of course, it is.

‘Oh, but I was told Mrs Gabby Dale lives here…’

I shook my head. It’s not the first time that Gabby has been using my surname. She claims it gives her a cloak of anonymity in her business deals but I think she gets tired of trying to spell her surname.

‘She’s in the bath,’ I explained. ‘But she’s not my wife. She’s my Romanian girlfriend.’

‘In which case,’ said the man. ‘I’ll wait.’ And with no more ado, he brushed me aside and entered the flat.

No sooner had the man seated himself on the sofa than Gabby came out of the bathroom, walked straight through the flat, heading to the bedroom. The bird followed her, as did the man’s eyes. He’d clearly never seen a naked Romanian followed by a cockerel before.

‘With you in moment, birdman,’ said Gabby. ‘Chip make you drink. Chip make drink for birdman.’

‘Whisky if you’ve got any,’ said the man, looking a little flushed.

‘Can’t say I don’t blame you,’ I replied, going to fill two glasses.

‘I’m here about the hens,’ explained the man. ‘My name is Green. Graham Green.’

‘Ah, like the writer,’ I said, ready to tell him about my FE classes in English Literature.

‘Without the terminating e,’ he explained and then added. ‘I’m not a writer. I’m in the poultry business. The young lady is interested in buying hens to compliment her cockerel.’

‘A cockerel like that probably needs a lot of complimenting,’ I pointed out.

‘Oh, aren’t all men the same, Mr. Dale?’

I again gestured to my thong. He nodded his head in agreement.

After that, business was concluded quite quickly. Gabby returned and agreed to buy twenty three hens, to be delivered to the allotments that afternoon. I kept pretty quiet until the end when we were showing Mr. Green out.

‘One thing,’ he said, pausing in the doorway. ‘I suggest you don’t leave these hens alone for a night or two.’

‘Surely we shouldn’t bother them on their wedding night,’ I observed. Gabby elbowed my in my ribs but I felt the pain in my thong.

‘You should be around until you’ve tested your defences,’ explained Green. ‘A fox could kill them all in an evening.’

And that’s where Gabby is now: arranging to have a double wire fence put around the allotment and buried to a foot below ground to stop any foxes from tunneling under. The hens are to be delivered this afternoon and I’m to expect a phone call anytime now to tell me to take the cockerel to its new lodgings.

The most significant thing about the whole episode is that it turns out that Gabby has to travel to Glasgow this evening, and since the birds can’t be left alone, I’ll be guarding them for the next couple of days. I’ve got myself a sleeping bag, a camp bed, a torch, and more potato gin than is totally sensible to give a man when he’s feeling a bit down.

So, tonight, as you sit blogging by the fire, spare a thought for me and the chickens.

The Lovely Gabby

If you heard tortured screams of dread anguish during the night, I don’t want you to worry. It was only me.

A Romanian uprising took place late last night and the flames of have only recently died down. It all began when Gabby decided that she wanted to start posting things on my blog.

I was sitting watching ‘Oh Lucky Man’ on Sky Cinema, when an arm suddenly appeared under my nose. As you can probably imagine, my upper lip is not usually the place to find arms, so to say I was a little taken aback is something of an understatement. However, I was less surprised to find a hand attached to the arm and that’s when I recognised the half dozen rings decorating the fingers. It was Gabby’s hand and it was holding a piece of paper that looked suspiciously like the flyleaf from my new copy of Auden’s poems.

I swallowed the large sob that had somehow developed in my throat.

‘Chippy, read,’ she said, or, more accurately, demanded. ‘Chippy: read!’ is more like it, I suppose. The colon is so very Romanian.

So, I read aloud from the piece of paper with the emblem of Faber & Faber still visible at the bottom of the page.

‘Hiya lovelinks! My name’s Gabby and I’m Romanian songbird and I sing songs in a band with my gorgeous sister and we make gorgeous pop music for the people in London who sell our records until we get to number seven in the pop charts doing the hokey cokey for the lovely ladies and gentlemen of the UK of England…’

There was some more about recording contracts, double decker buses, animal mutilations, but I think you get the picture. The point is: I knew at once that I had to save you. I had to take a bullet for each person who comes by this blog and expects to read undiluted Welshman. Which I did without hesitation.

I suggested that she get her own blog. I told her that she should get her own website, where she could put audio clips of her singing. I told her that she could sell tshirts with her picture on. And then I told her that people come here for thong news and they might not even like the hokey cokey. That really wasn’t the wisest thing to say. My lips kissed ring but it certainly wasn’t papal. There was then a row, then tears, and then some brooding stand-off near the knife draw.

Eventually, around one o’clock, I thought the danger had passed so I went to bed, nursing my thick lip, and leaving Gabby sitting under the kitchen table and knocking back her potato moonshine.

The sound of snipping woke me around four in the morning.

It was Gabby sitting in the bedroom cupboard and cutting up my thongs with a large pair of paper shears. Naturally, I screamed. That’s probably the noise you heard if you live anywhere on the 53rd parallel. Gabby screamed back and threw the shears at me. Luckily, I ducked and they passed straight through the plasterboard wall.

She then threw a thong at me but I had already got to her before she could do any real damage. A dozen pairs of summer thongs were ruined but that’s really nothing to a man who owns thousands. I was more concerned with what she could have done and I’ve vowed to keep my collection under lock and key from now on.

This morning she was as bright as marmalade, fully of apologies, and blamed a bad brew of
spud shine. She also announced that she didn’t think she needed a website as her career’s already better than mine.

‘Keep your bloody blog, Chippy,’ she said with one of those wide honest warm hearted Romanian smiles. ‘You keep your bloody blog and I keep BBC Top of the Pops.’

I hadn’t the heart to tell her that they cancelled Top of the Pops six months ago and that it was widely rumoured that she was one of the reasons.

Everything was neatly wrapped up when the neighbour came around a delivered a pair of paper shears he said he’d found sticking in his kitchen door this morning. He’d noticed my name on them and wondered if they belonged to me. I explained the whole thing and I should imagine the smile he had as he walked away was not a little feeling of being blessed.

Which is also how I hope you feel on this fine March morning.

Thong on.