More toilet tribulations

“Would you like a bit of egg?” asked mum, proffering some chocolate.

I was down chez mes parents, sharing some post-prandial conversation. My sister Alison and the wean Maggie were there too. We suggested that, it being July, it was the wrong season for chocolate eggs and was it not actually a Terry’s Chocolate Orange anyway. Dad, or The Lord Cecil, as we like to call him – after a Hackney pub defunct since the day a double decker bus drove into it – whose chocolate orange it was, was graciously unperturbed at it being shared around. Tell the truth, he seemed a little put out that there was no ice-cream to go with it.

Met Wiseman for dinner in PizzaExpress tonight. After some slightly disappointing exploratory main courses (exploratory in that we both deviated from the reassuring familiarity of our customary pizza choices), learning the lesson along the way that spiced beef and mushrooms are not a number ONE topping combination, the thoughts turned inevitably to dessert. Here we often differ. Wiseman regularly goes for the Chocolate Glory. I find the tiramisu keeps me more regular. Tiramisu, indeed, is an old and faithful friend. A bit like a dog. A dog is slightly better, in that tiramisu is sometimes off the menu – this fate befell me, distressingly, on two consecutive visits to PizzaExpress. A long time ago, but it has lodged in the memory. Dogs, on the other hand, are never off the menu, at least not in Hong Kong. They are sometimes asleep, but you can wake them up and they’re not even grumpy about it. How do they do that?

Chocolate Glory is more like a girlfriend. It’s great to start off with, but you soon start to feel sick.

Speaking of regularity, some seagulls appear to have no problems in the waste pipe department, as my car can testify. They have managed to deliver several consignments onto the driver’s door, one of them right on the edge of the window, nearest to the handle. So every time I get out of the car I push the door shut and… yep. If you meet me in the street avoid shaking my hand.

And while we’re on such matters, I believe Broon has recently had to purchase a new toilet seat for her house to replace a broken one… it would appear that the phantom toilet-seat destroyer has struck again. The Admin Supremo has been recently spotted in the North Fettes area carrying his own toilet seat around with him. It’s all very curious. Perhaps we could make it into a TV mini-series. (Q. Do they still have mini-series on TV or is it all mind-numbing “reality” stuff nowadays?)

Room 65 kicks off this week, which must mean that I’ve been numbing your minds, those of you that are still reading, for over a year now, since I remember mentioning it in the blog last time around. Am guesting on piano again, which means more ill-timed glissandi and misleading introductions. But I’m sure we’ll all muddle through. Feel free to drop in to the café at 65 High Street if you’re bored of an evening.

And with that I’ll bid you goodnight.

I hate cricket

The problem with cricket is you wait 3 or 4 weeks for the rain to stop, then you finally play a game in a muddy field, and are brutally reminded that you’re actually not very good at it when you get out for a very low score.

Indoor bowls is becoming a more and more attractive option. Apart from being immune to the vagaries of the British summer, there’s sartorial considerations to be taken into account.

I discussed this with my sister on the phone the other day, and we gradually built up a picture of me in a pair of grey slacks with elasticated waistband, flat shoes, and a diamond-patterned jumper.

“In lemon. With socks to match.”

It’s a seductive image.

Wiseman might find such a makeover beneficial himself, given that his blog character page has not been receiving many hits recently. I have caught him murmuring idly about appearing on Celebrity Big Brother in an attempt to restore his public profile. I trust it won’t come to that.

Meanwhile, at work, a state of emergency has been declared after we arrived this morning to discover a small loch in one of our consulting rooms and a waterfall coming through the ceiling. It transpired that the boiler in one of the flats above us had no overflow pipe as such, apart from the interior of the building.

Dish, perhaps unable to work in such conditions, or possibly in French-style solidarity with the Edinburgh postal workers who have just gone on strike, tossed her head petulantly and stalked out. But we coaxed her back in with some biscuits.

No cricket this weekend, due to music commitments at church, and so no chance to improve on my dismal average.

I don’t really hate cricket. It only takes one or two days after a catastrophic batting performance before you’ve forgotten all about it and are itching to get playing again. That elusive half-century is only a few scratchy boundaries away, after all…