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.’

Take The Jeremy Clarkson Test

Go!

That’s for any of you who have already read this and having decided to test out my theory are reading it for a second time. But trying what out, do I hear you cry? Well, it’s my Jeremy Clarkson test, which I’m hoping to get approved by the great man as soon as I work out how to contact him.

I formed this theory when I noticed that Clarkson's books are hard avoid. They are in every shop, given away free with every bottle of Old Spice you buy from Boots, and you can’t have your breakfast without one falling out of a packet of ‘Oats Are A Bit Simple’. He is the nation’s most popular writer of non-fiction, unless you include Bill Bryson. But we don’t need to include Bill Bryson because we know that, all things being equal, it would come down to a fist fight and Clarkson wouldn’t play fair. Bryson would barely have time to strip off his comfortably warm woolly jumper before Clarkson would shoot him with an RPG he’s smuggled in from Afghanistan. Bryson would go the way of a Soviet helicopter high in the Hindu Kush.

It would leave Clarkson the winner and I could get on with explaining why I think he’s so popular. And it’s this:

Jeremy Clarkson is popular because it takes the same length of time to read one of his columns as it does to have a good bowel movement.

This is true. I encourage you to try is for yourself. This piece you're reading now is the perfect Clarkson length. The next time you feel yourself sliding towards a little relief, take this or any one of Clarkson’s witty rants about the French with you. You’ll find that from beginning to end, the column takes the same length of time to internalise as it does for you to, well, externalise.

Clarkson has mastered the lavatory read. He’s also adapted well to the unique requirements of this much misunderstood form of literature. Alfred Lord Tennyson was once the preferred choice of reading, with his long and slow moving poems the perfect thing for those low-fibre Victorians with fifty seven layers of britches and drawers. Have you not wondered why the nation has grown less intelligent as our dietary habits have improved? It is because we don’t spend as much time reading on the toilet. As everybody knows: it’s not what we learn in the classroom that improves us but what we read while we would otherwise be contemplating our knees.

Clarkson is the writer of the age. Humour is a proven relaxant, so his book, full of hair-brained schemes and slightly jingoistic looks at foreigners, are perfect for getting your insides moving. It’s certainly better than bouncing up and down for five minutes on the seat. He should really be prescribed on the national health instead of prunes, which as everybody knows, really are bad for you.

Okay. Now, I believe my time is up and those of you who have tried my little experiment will be wanting to pull up your trousers or skirts and be getting back to what you were doing. Those of you who haven’t finished, I really don’t know what to say. You’ve had all the time you needed…

Have you thought about eating more prunes?

I'm Back...

After a cold night and sombre morning spent at the local YMCA (it’s not a place you’d like to loiter wearing only a thong) the Chipster arrived home to find a contrite Romanian to greet him on the doorstep. It would appear that the embassy had sent staff to help her type up a forty two thousand word post about this year’s yeast harvest. Faced with such a grim demonstration of what blogging is really about, Gabby has decided to forgive me. As a sign of the new peace, I’ve promised her that whenever a new Rambo film comes out, I’ll allow her to blog about it in her new role as Military Advisor to Chip Dale’s Diary.

I will take me a few hours to get the house back in order. There’s a terrible smell of burnt chicken. I also have to fix the logo that Gabby has so foolishly defaced at the top of my blog. I don’t think I have a copy of the original so I can see I’ll have to nip to the photo booth in the local Post Office and pose for another picture of my buttocks.

Give me time and I’ll be back. I can’t say how good it is to be home, how much I’ve missed you all, and to thank you for the loyalty you showed during my absence. I also think that a certain gentleman with a liking for orange shirts came very close to committing to something he would have quickly regretted. What was he thinking? Doesn't he know that Gabby is the more well-balanced of the sisters?

Hiya!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

‘I claim this blog on behalf of the people of the Republic of Romania.’

Gabby told by embassy people to type that. Now it mine and protected by laws of Romania and European Union. If Chip think he coming to post on here again he have Italian army on his ass.

Do you know what he tried to do tonight? He climbed ladder up to window. I leave window open on account of fire. It only little fire. Not worth mention. Then it caught curtain when chicken fly around room. Gabby put all fire out but room smells bad of burning feathers. Then Chippy tries to get in window. I tell him he’s sneaky and I hit his fingers with bucket. He goes like he hurt. I didn’t believe him. He always acting like he’s hurt. Even when he fell off ladder I knew there nothing wrong with him. I close window.

He now ring me to say he got to sleep in YCMA. I don’t know what YCMA is and I don’t care. Why he can’t sleep in park like Gabby and sister do when we first came here I do not know.

You might say Gabby being hard on Chip but what is beautiful sexy lady to do? I already have people saying how much they like me. Mrs. Baroque say she write me poem. Background Artist says he billionaire and he wants me and will hire hitman to sort out Chippy. But Gabby will say no. Gabby do own contracts than you very much.

I don’t know what to do with Chip. He such a handsome man and Gabby felt sorry for him when I watch him go limping into night. I hope YCMA are nice to man wearing only thong and cowboy boots. I hope they tuck him in and kiss him goodnight. Now Gabby feel lonely. Especial when Gabby’s sister very excited by man in orange but he play hard to get like Rambo in Rambo 3. But if he keep being cold sausage I ask Brucie Forsyth if he want to meet Gabby’s sister. And if Brucie say no, then I ask Elberry who likes tanks and keeps knifes in his bedroom.

Now Gabby crying and people at embassy say I must not cry. They say this is now biggest blog in Romania but Gabby troubled. I never wanted to be biggest blogger in Romania. They say I have to post story tomorrow about yeast harvest. I don’t care about yeast harvest.

I hope Chip having good sleep at YCMA. I hope he making new friends. I miss him like time I lost stone for sharpening knifes.

Gabby Likes Tanks

Chip angry. He goes out this morning and says he is not coming back. Well, I say we see if that is true. He gets so angry because I changed the password to his blog and I tell him that it is my blog now. I already get two comments. Two. On a Sunday! Whoo! Mrs. Baroque says she's my friend so I make a friend too which I say only proves that people want more Gabby and less Chippy always talking about his thongs and his wobbly bits.

I tell this to Chip and I never see Chip look so red. Then he turned white. I don’t like Chip when he gets angry and it makes me angry too. So what if I change password to this blog? Has he a right to get angry because I give it new exciting name? You like 'Gabby's Arms Dump'? I think it good title because it says that I dump all my thoughts and ideas here. I’m not letting him back until he promises to be nice to Gabriel.

Now this is my blog you can all look forward to more excellent posts by yours truly, Gabby. You can call be Gab, Gabs, or Sergeant Gabriel, is what I called back home in Romania where I trained recruits in rifles and explosives. I also did knife training but they stop me when I accidentally cut head off soldier.

You can see picture? It is a T55 battle tank used by Soviet Army. It is my favourite tank although I never get to try American tanks.

Today's question. What is your favourite tank?

Gabby Here...

Helo people. Gabby here. Chip gone bed. He asleep now and I just got in with good news. You can see vid? You as happy as me? I think so. Chip not know but I get tickets to film from friend who makes knifes. You all welcome to watch vid [Chip: I've removed the video because I'm sick of hearing the bloody Irish music every time I load the site. If you must, click the picture if you want to see knife porn]. If you want to come see film with Gabby, you tell me. I will be seeing it lots. Have plenty of room for Chippy's friends. I know who you all are and I want send presents to all. I won't say what presents is but it will make you strong and healthy if you cook and eat before it start to go off. And don't throw away feathers. I say no more. Spoil surprise.

I'm very glad I get chance to do nice thing for you all. Chip makes me sound like I'm very bad, which is very wrong of him. I'm lovely lady, kind, with good teets. I clean my teets with brush and Mcleans every morning for mints white. And when people annoy me, I don't hit them or get knife out. I usually talk to them and then get knife out. But not always to hurt them. A knife is good for many many uses... Many uses... Many many many uses... Okay, it usually to hurt people but not because I want to. But because Gabby is pushed. A bit like Rambo. He pushed. He not want go to war. He tell people 'I not fight for you'. But they push him like Gabby gets pushed. And then he runs around with big knife and big guns and makes bloody good films. A bit like Gabby only I make bloody good records like hokey cokey.

So people. Rambo is back and Gabby says you see it.

Love.

G

xxx

Awoken: A Ghost Story

Yesterday is simply too complicated for me to go into great detail and I don’t think any of you really want to hear what happens when a stripper manages to offend the whole of Bangor’s unwed mothers with a silly little remark about the cooking times of buns in ovens. It took me some time and a free demonstration of my skills as Wales’ top stripper to bring them back on my side and by the time 2 o’clock came around, all was well with the world. The ladies loved me again.

I got home late and in a strangely relaxed mood. I sat down for an hour and penned the following little short story which I’m considering putting up on the Telegraph blog. I’m not a man to go in for these literary competitions, though I often take great delight in completing the entries. It’s not that I hate the idea of losing, but I do worry about winning. Not, I’ve ever won a thing for anything I’ve written, but for the highly esteemed Blogpower Most Literature Wordsmith award, which has since become enshrined in the form of a tattoo. Not that I have a tattoo, you understand, but Gabby volunteered to have it for me. I don't know why I'm telling you any of this given that I'm sure you've all heard the story of how James Higham’s portrait was recorded for immortality on the left cheek of the cheekier of the Cheeky Girls.

I’m off to soak in the bath while you enjoy or endure my weak attempt at supernatural fiction for Halloween.

-------------

Awoken

I awoke to ghoulish laughter.

My mind strained against the lock of my eyelids, my neck against the numb hold of sweat that had soaked my hair into the pillow. My spirit was listless but my body awake, angry, confused, and when my eyes opened, they did so with an almost audible gasp that equated to vision.

The boy was standing at the bottom of the bed, his face contorted by laughter until he saw me wake and then it reformed itself into a look of calm bemusement. Ten years old, perhaps a little older, the boy was pale, fraught, nightmarish. I could hardly look on his face, marked as it was by sunken eyes like twin tender beds where dead bodies lay buried.

He was dressed for theatrics, wrapped inside a black cape and chewing on a set of plastic fangs, a grim totem of childish games and the role he had chosen to play. My attention seemed to change him and the teeth trailed saliva behind them as he spat them into his hand.

‘You’re awake,’ he said.

Just like that; bold and uncomplicated, as though a strange man waking up in his bed was nothing out of the ordinary.

I tried to speak but found nothing where I had last left my voice. Panic, fear, a sense of betrayal: they were coarse fibres, tangible like a noose around my throat.

‘I’m dreaming,’ I must have finally muttered.

‘You’re not afraid?’ he asked, looking down at the grin he held in his hand. ‘I guess you’re not. It’s not as though they’re like real teeth.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ I said. ‘But you need to tell me where I am.’

‘Lost,’ he said.

Lost? The question had to have been little more than a look in my eye but he seemed to know it by that alone.

‘This isn’t your place but I didn’t mind you resting a while,’ he answered. ‘You look sick. Mother always used to say that we help people who are sick or have lost their way.’

I could not bring myself to ask the easy questions. Where. How. Why. They sounded too direct when they formed in my mind. I feared that there might be an answer to each.

‘What is this place?’ I mouthed, feeling no better about the words I’d chosen.

‘This is where the undead make their home,’ he said in an assumed voice like that of a revenant spirit. Then he laughed and held up the teeth. ‘And you don’t belong here.’ He looked towards the door. ‘They’ll be here soon, so you’ll have to go back. They can’t see you. They can never see you.’

‘Go?’ I asked, raising myself. The movement sparked sensation in my body. I recognised it. Warm, languid, perhaps a touch of the opiate. For the first time, a thing made sense. There had been a time, a short time, when my problems had taken me by unawares. I had succumbed to temptation of the easy fix, the ten minute solution of the spoon and lighter. But that had been so long ago and a habit that I had formed and then unformed, even if I couldn’t remember how.

For the first time, I looked beyond the boy and at my surroundings. The room was familiar. I remembered that it had once been my bedroom. A toy aeroplane hung from the ceiling and twisted in an endless tailspin. The wallpaper, yellowed, had bubbled in places. Cold moisture saturated the corner of the room where I recognised the window, the recess where a seat overlooked what I knew was a garden, an apple tree, a place where a stream broke in a crooked line towards the house. In the recess sat a large pumpkin with a cruel razor slash of a mouth. Each, in a way, were the form if not the detail of something I remembered as my own childhood.

I wanted to ask if he thought he belonged to my world but he anticipated my question.

‘I’ll see you again,’ he said and before I could stop him he ran out of the room.

I struggled to my feet, more rolling out of bed than standing, but I found myself balanced on legs weaker than straws. I was in no condition to go after him, no condition to go chasing a ghost around a house it had taken for its own. Yet that was what I did… in a fashion.

The bedroom door fell towards me then the world rolled around to a small landing, stuck with the pall of gloom, bad wallpaper, cheap carpet, the familiar taste of dog in the air.

The boy had paused at the stairs.

If he was a fiend, he was a minor fiend with a touch of the amateur dramatics. He held his arm across his face, speaking from behind elbow and cape.

‘You’ll never catch me,’ he said before he took flight down the steps two at a time.

An imbalance of wall, banister, vertigo followed and I was at the top of the staircase.

‘Wait,’ I whispered to the figure below me, ‘you must tell me. Do I know you?’

But he did not stop. One. Two. Three. Three steps took him across the hall and he was at the front door.

He waited as I slowly navigated my way into normality. After the semi coma of a sleep, I was beginning to find myself again. I recognised the hall, though not the modern hat stand dressed in a pair of black stilettos, a pink umbrella, and a navy blue overcoat with a folded copy of the Daily Telegraph standing proud in its pocket. I didn’t wait as I lumbered past that prop body. I wanted to reach the boy who had stepped to the threshold of the house. I don’t know how but I knew that if he escaped, I would never catch him.

‘You have to wait,’ I pleaded. ‘Your name. You have to tell me your name. Prove to me who you are. What are you doing here? What did you want?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll see you again,’ he promised and returned the teeth to his mouth.

With a stroke of an arm, the cape caught the air and the vampire flew, the light exposing the thinness of the fabric that made up his cape and then the sun blazed as it touched him. Light evaporated his body as I too reached the door, swinging shut behind him.

I thought him gone until I then saw him running down the garden path, his cape flailing behind him as he played. But then I saw no more. The door closed despite my feeble attempts to stop it as wood and handle passed straight through my long dead immaterial hands.

Be Back Soon...

First thing in the morning, I’m off to give my talk to Bangor’s young unmarried mothers. I’ll be in the Civic Hall discussing blogging from nine thirty, so feel free to drop by if you’re that way inclined. It means, of course, that I haven’t got time this evening to finish what I’ve been written for you. It will have to wait until I get home around lunchtime. It might be later if the young unmarried mothers keep me for long, and longer still if it involves my having to provide urine samples. Rest assured, The Chipster will not be fathering any little Chipsters in Bangor’s Civic Hall and anything you might hear on that subject will be unproven allegations by lonely young women.

You might ask yourself why I’m going to put myself through this ordeal. ‘Chip,’ you might even now be saying, ‘a man of your healthy loins should not be putting himself in a compromising situation involving mothers breast feeding their nippers before your unguarded thong.’

And I would normally agree with you. I have indeed been warned to wear something that’s easily wiped down as the air will be thick with the breast milk from heavily lactating mothers . Yet that will be he least of my concerns when there are so many new babies in the room. I don’t even expect my voice to be heard above the crying, the puking, and the mother’s baby talk, which if you ask me if much worse than any noise an infant can produce.

The reason I'm determined to see it through is that I’m beginning to enjoy my role as doyen to unwed mothers, new bloggers, and the rest. Only yesterday, I emailed my support to one of the more junior members of our society, to encourage him to keep blogging despite his woeful readership.

I’m talking, of course, about Richard Madeley, over at The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society. Little did I expect my email to provoke so much activity.

If you feel anything for me at all, you’ll head over there now and see what happens when The Chipster provides a man with inspiration. If you care not a jot about Big CD, but you’re in the mood for a story about massage parlors and North Koreans, then you should still head over there.

It will at least keep you entertained until the thong is back in the building.

Search Terms

I think it's time for the top 10 search terms that brought people here in the last week:

10. Chip n Dale ferrets
9. Chipendale in Halifax
8. do Chip n Dale squirrels have penises

(To which I would have answered: no, that's why they squeak so much.)

7. Chip Dale ticklish testicles
6. Chinese chip n dale dancers
5. Cheap thongs wedding presents
4. Fixing broken chipendale chair (+fat woman)
3. i love men dancing in chip fat
2. big chipendales how much

But my favourite happened just a few hours ago and came from Turkey:

1. ‘Bigger underwear for attractive men’.

Need I say more?

ZZZzzzzzz.....

For those of you who need a fix of Coleen McLoughlin (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?), I’ve just posted a piece Coleen McLoughlin: From Goddess To Thinker on My Telegraph. If you notice any signs of my being a bit jaded (or perhaps evening having lost my mind), I ask you to forgive me. I’ve not been sleeping well. Despite Gabby's warning, the neighbour continues to do his DIY from 8AM to 10AM, and then go silent all day. Since I normally write until about three in the morning, it means I’m surviving on about five hours sleep when I’m more used to nine.

I’m now going to sit down and, if this addled old brain can cope, copy out the remaining part of chapter one of my autobiography. I made the foolish mistake of making the first chapter too long, but, once this piece is posted, I hope to be giving you more regular selections from what is sure to be the vanity publishing sensation of 2008: Thonglateer Extraordinaire!

Sleep. I just need a little more...

Zzzzzzz... dribble... munchkins with bicycle pumps...