Category: Uncategorized

This morning the ambassador handed Rudi a final note stating that unless we heard from him by eleven a.m. that he was prepared at once to stop his micturations and defecations a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently we are at war with Rudi.

 

Our cat, Rudi, has been a bit grumpy and out of sorts recently. A heart-stoppingly expensive trip to the vet’s has revealed the cause to be a rectal abcess (sorry if I have just ruined your meal). We asked the vet please to cure him. The vet indicated that it would be much more fun for all concerned (i.e. for him) if we were to try our hands at animal doctoring instead. So, he clipped a magnificent plastic collar round Rudi’s neck and gave us instructions to hold the cat down twice a day and flush disinfectant through the abcess with a syringe.

Rudi, the ungrateful little bastard, saw only pain and indignity in all this. He failed to acknowledge the bank haemorraghe that his treatment had caused and the good intentions which motivated our twice daily wrestling sessions. He took careful note that when he got his new plastic ruff stuck in the catflap or in the door to his litter box we laughed at him insensitively. He sat glaring at us and plotting his revenge. Each session with the syringe stiffened his feline resolve.

He waited until we had made up the guest bedroom for the visit of my brother-in-law and nephew. Once the freshly aired duvet and clean sheets were on the bed he trotted purposively into the room, jumped onto the bed and urinated copiously. We were alerted by his little catty snicker and the sound of our guests’ despair. It took a while to put things right and, in the end, we had to tie the door shut to prevent a repeat performance.

Surely, Rudi apparently thought, we had learned our lesson. Yet, at 6 pm, there he was being pinned to the floor by the fat one with the loud voice whilst the small one who serves him food was spraying water up his rear. As soon as we had finished, he bolted up to our room and showered our marriage bed with ammonia.

This was war. We raged and howled and boots were swung close to his pustular rear. He realised that he could not win a symmetrical conflict and his best bet lay in insurgency. He retreated into the shadows and developed a strategy. As we retired to bed and our said our goodnights, I heard the sound of my beloved sniffing the air.

P: “Can you smell cat shit?”

M: “Er … yes”

P: “Oh God … where is it?”

I turned on the light expecting to find a horse’s head of cat dung beneath the duvet. But I could find nothing. It appeared to be coming from the cupboard but we emptied it and found nothing. Rudi has stumped us. He has filled our room with a persistent odour of shit but we cannot find any. Has he sown it into the curtain lining? Has he shoved it into the mattress? Has he filled a shoe? He is saying nothing but he is abundantly smug.

He has won this round and the world shall hear from him again.

An article on the BBC website has created a stir and has already been dealt with entertainingly elsewhere but, having read the article I now have some important news for you.

It would seem that unless bloggers agree to voluntarily to self-regulate the legislature may have to step in and take control of us. This is because those who are “angered” at what we write have no right of “redress”.

I have to say that it had never previously struck me as a problem that people I make angry can’t sue me but now it has been raised as an issue I suppose it is outrageous that I appear to be free to say whatever I like. It is exceptionally uncivilised.

Anyhoo, this is obviously only going to work with a measure of co-ordination. In a selfless determination to do what is right for the blogosphere and avoid any unnecessary governmental meddling I have decided to take control of all blogs with effect from midnight GMT. Henceforward my voice will be your voice and, more importantly, your voice will be my voice. I will rule you all till the heavens fall and the sea coughs up its dead.

All your blogs are belong to ME.

That is all (for now).

Last week, whilst I was off drinking wheat beer and eating sausage in sunny Bremen, someone bought £1, 400 worth of laptop computer. Considerately, he used my credit card account to do so. It so happens that the computer company employs an administrator with gimlet eye and a suspicious nature. She hunted me down via the internet and left me a message informing me of the transaction. I wasn’t there to receive the message as at that precise moment I was stood in front of an equally suspicious Bremen hotelier who was holding my card in her hand and wanting to know why it had been declined.

I assumed that paying for three cheap hotel rooms in a German port had tripped some fraud detection algorithim so when my clerks phoned to say that I had had a message from someone about credit card fraud I assumed I knew what had happened. Once the truth was known it was the weekend and I had to wait until yesterday to contact Miss Marple at the computer company.

Miss M was in top form. She promised me an immediate refund and then, barely able to contain her glee, indicated that the fraudster had been dim enough to give them his name, address, email address and two mobile contact numbers. Now even assuming that some of that information was false, the delivery address was obviously a good lead. I agreed with her that it wasn’t going to take Sherlock Holmes (or even Officer Dibble) to get onto the trail of this genius.

I contacted the credit card company who confirmed the card was cancelled and provided me with a special number for police inquiries so that the officer assigned to what I was already envisaging as “Case of the Century” need not spend 40 minutes in a phone queue listening to “Una Paloma Blanca” played on the pan pipes by a man with a tracheotomy.

Being a good citizen I did not complain when the Police informed me that their telephone service was under-resourced and that I should ankle down to the station and report the crime in person. In fact, to ease their task I wrote all of the information they could need out in a short typed document. Just in case that was not clear enough (or I was not persuading you all that I am sufficienly anal) I made sure that the key information was in bold type.

I handed my document over to the desk officer with a flourish and within seconds we were riding in the back of a panda car, lights flashing, sirens blaring, on our way to the East London lair of our fraudster. Actually that is a lie. He took a look at one side of the paper and handed it straight back to me.

Heroic Police Officer: “I need a statement”

Me: “What kind of statement?”

HPO: “A bank statement to show the money left your account”

Me: “This only happened three days ago and the account is now closed”

HPO: “But I need a statement”

Me: “I do not want to appear rude but may I inquire as to why?”

HPO: “Because you could just be coming in here and saying you had your credit card used. How are we to know?”

Me: “I could see that my reporting a crime might require you to perform some kind of investigation. Isn’t that usual?”

HPO: “Without a statement how are we to know?”

Me: “Wouldn’t the Credit Card Fraud Department phone number be some help? You could call them and they will confirm.”

He looked at me resentfully and clicked at his biro. He then stared at the phone number as if he thought it might ring. Then he looked at me again and said:

“We need a statement”.

So off I went crime unreported. Just between you and me I think now might be an opportune time to get into credit card fraud were you considering it as a career option.