Fat

31st January 2007

I read an article in the newspaper the other day which made the amazing claim that men secretly lust after fat women in preference to women with nice figures. Apparently top of the lust list of these strange people is daytime TV presenter Fern Britton. Fern Britton? I think I’d rather put my dick in a giant pink blancmange. Come to think of shagging Fern Britton would probably be like putting your dick in a giant pink blancmange. Especially if she started wobbling; which she would no doubt do once the shagging commenced.
Personally I don’t believe a word of the claim. It’s probably something that’s been dreamt up by the Fern Britton Fan Club or Friends of Dawn French or the Junk Food Marketing Board or something.
And in an effort to prove my belief, I conducted a poll in the pub last night. Ten men were polled, all men of the world, including such experts in shagging as Atkins Down The Road and the landlord, the latter of whom has been married four times and was once charged with statutory rape, although he was found not guilty on appeal.
The question I put to them was this: ‘Who would you rather shag, Fern Britton or Kristin Scott Thomas?’ Nine men voted for Kristin Scott Thomas, and one man voted for Fern Britton. However on questioning the man who voted for Fern Britton it was revealed that he had never heard of Kristin Scott Thomas and had only plumped (his expression) for Fern Britton in case Kristin Scott Thomas was worse. All nine of us in the Kristin camp quickly put him right on the subject of the delectable Miss Scott Thomas and he changed his vote immediately.
When you add to this overwhelming evidence the fact that although I have frequently heard men in my company say ‘Cor, look at the arse on that’ and ’Cor, look at the tits on that’ I have yet to hear anyone say ‘Cor, look a the fat on that’, 

the case that your average man doesn’t lust after fat women is pretty conclusive.
.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Idiotproof

30th January 2007

Today Atkins Down The Road and I played a new game suggested by fellow blogger Scaryduck.
The game is for either Atkins or me to pretend we are someone who is mentally ill and has been released into the community, while the other of us acts the part of his carer. Ever since Scaryduck suggested the game I have been on the lookout for the chance to try it out and such an opportunity presented itself this morning when I passed a shop that sold cameras and telescopes. There was a large SALE sign in the window that drew my attention and I had stopped to see what they had in their window as I’m on the lookout for a some zoom lens binoculars. There weren’t any binoculars in the sale but there was something far more desirable. Gold. In the form of a small camera, on offer at £10.99, which was claimed, according to the sale sticker on it, to be idiotproof.
Before anyone else could buy it I immediately called in on Atkins, and thirty minutes later we were in the camera shop asking to see the idiotproof camera. The sales assistant got the camera out of the window and placed it on the counter for our consideration. “There you go.”
“It is idiotproof, is it?” I said, looking at it doubtfully.
“Oh absolutely.”
Atkins looked at the camera in big-eyed awe then turned to the assistant and said, like a little boy in a pet shop asking if he could hold a puppy, “Can I hold it please?” 
“Jimmy is on day release from the mental hospital,” I explained to the assistant, in hushed tones.
“Ah,” the assistant nodded knowingly. He didn’t know anything, poor bugger. “Of course you can pick it up, Jimmy,” he said to Atkins, with a condescending smile.
Atkins picked up the camera, examined it as though it could just as well have been a piece of moon rock as much as a camera, as far as he knew, then smashed it down viciously on the counter top. The first time he did this it probably rendered the camera beyond repair but just in case it hadn’t Atkins repeated the treatment two more times then dropped it on the counter. It sat there looking like something that had just emerged from a car crusher.
Atkins looked at me. “It broke, Arthur,” he said. “Camera broke.”
“Yes Jimmy,” I said. I turned to the assistant and said: “I thought you said it was idiotproof?”
The assistant was in shock. He just stood with his mouth open, looking at Atkins.
“I thought you said the camera was idiotproof,” I repeated, this time a little testily.
“But…but he smashed it,” the assistant said, still not quite able to believe what he had witnessed. “He smashed it to bits.”
“Well of course he did,” I said. “He’s an idiot. That’s what idiots do.”
Atkins picked up a piece of the camera and examined it. “Camera no good now Arthur,” he pronounced, wisely.
“Not much good in the first place if you ask me, Jimmy,” I said, with a meaningful look at the assistant. “And certainly not idiotproof. Come along, we’ll try Boots, I believe they do a good throw away camera.”
“Can Jimmy throw it away?” said Atkins. “Jimmy like throwing things.”
We left the shop without looking back. Five yards down the road I thought I heard a shout of ‘Hey, come back here!’ from the shop but I probably imagined it.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Man Management

29th January 2007

I was reading the other day about the famed man management skills of football managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourhino. It reminded me that when I was a supervisor with Ferodo Brake Lining a long time ago that on at least one occasion my own man management skills weren’t all that bad.

George was the night shift sweeper-up on my shift, employed to keep the passageways of my section and other sections in our block clean and dust and debris free. He was without any doubt the most lazy idle sweeper-up in the world. He should have been shown the door long since but this was pre-Thatcher when trade unions were very strong and the only offence that warranted the sack was murder, and even then the offender might have got off with a written warning. So how to get rid of George?
On company headed notepaper I wrote to him pointing out that the company had just taken on, as his opposite number on the day shift, a man with only one leg. I went on to say that as that it was clearly unfair that a man with two legs should be paid the same wages as a man with only one leg the options now open to George were –
(a) Carry on with the company, but on half the wage he was on previously. Or –
(b) Have a leg off.
I signed the letter with a fictitious name and added under the name Manager and Chief Executive. I put the letter in an official Ferodo envelope and handed it to him at the start of the next shift. Five minutes later he was in my office.
“Have you seen this?” he said in a shocked tone, brandishing the letter, and all of a shake.
I took the letter off him and read it. “Hmm,” I said. “Actually I do know about this, George. The Manager and Chief Executive left this for you.”
I handed him two pieces of paper. One was a leaving notice, made out in his name. The other was an appointment with Cavendish Hospital, Buxton, to have a leg amputated. He looked at them in turn.
“You’re to sign one of those and let me have it at the end of the shift,” I said.
He thought about it for about ten seconds or so then said: “Tha can have me answer now. Because I’m not having a leg of, t’job’s not worth it.”
With that he signed the leaving notice and handed it to me. Man managers? I’ve shit ‘em.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft,

19 Ventura Court

,

Ollersett Avenue

, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy 

Garden

26th January 2007

In the front garden of the house was the complete back axle assembly of a large lorry, a car wing, a supermarket trolley with the wheels missing, a pram with the wheels missing, two bike frames, a bath, half a WC, a roll of carpet, two live hens and sundry other bric-a-brac including paper and polythene packaging and leaves. All, except for the two hens, were partially submerged in what was once a lawn but now resembled elephant grass. The front door bore traces of the last three colours it had been painted and had ‘Piss Off’ in large letters written on it in spray paint. Atkins Down The Road and I approached the door. Atkins knocked on it. It was answered by a man who hadn’t troubled himself to put on a shirt that day, relying on just his filthy vest to impress any callers.
“Congratulations,” said Atkins. “You have won the ‘Shit Garden of the Year’ trophy.”
“For the second year running,” I added, holding up the trophy, an old tyre that Atkins and I had sprayed metallic Gold.
“Oh it’s you two twats again, is it,” said the proud winner. “Why don’t you fuck off and mind your own business.”
“Cluck cluck,” said one of the hens, as if in agreement with its master’s sentiments.
“It is our business when your garden brings down the whole tone of the neighbourhood and wipes God knows how much value off the properties in the immediate vicinity,” I said.
“One of which is mine,” said Atkins, meaningfully.
“There’s no law says I have to keep my garden tidy,” said the man. “This isn’t a council house.”
“I realize that, you’d have been turfed out years ago if it was,” I said.
“Fuck off,” the man said, and slammed the door in our faces.
I threw the trophy on the pile of junk already in the garden. It increased it in volume by about one per cent.
“Looks like it will have to be Plan B,” said Atkins, as we departed.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.You can write to me at –Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

 Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy   

 

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