Tits Up
Copyright by Dave Lassut 2011
Published by Wonky Books at Smashwords
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Important note: Don’t forget to laugh.
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-908796-12-7
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-908796-13-4
This work is dedicated to Sarah Golding, who said I should write it down.
TECHNURD
The cover pictures don’t look up to the standard of a photographer, which I kind of ‘am’. That’s because no matter what system or programme, there was no way a way could be found of transporting a picture from a DVD digital movie camera to the computer, without a fat wallet that is. The best we got was a transfer to the computer file which refused to be anything but green. That makes me a technurd, and how I haven’t managed to smash my computer up through frustration is beyond me.
But, I’m supposed to be creative, and so, I thought that I could maybe take a photograph from the little foldy out led screen on the DVD camera. That’s probably cleverer than actually transferring a picture through the electronic gadgetry and PC shop ‘extras’ needed for such a seemingly simple job.
A Tiny Intro
Sitting in a nice garden can calm the mind, which is easy to work out; you’re a part of nature. One can sit there, smell the flowers, watch the little birds nibbling your nuts, listen to the bees buzzing, and just let the mind go quiet in its core, as you contemplate doing nothing; realising that a ‘contented’ good feeling mind cannot produce stress; only ‘nice’ things.
The only question you may ponder to cause a pleasant good feeling thought, may be: ‘will the garden need a water feature to finish it off? Hmmmm?’ That would be a nice visualisation. And, if ‘I’ get one and I fall asleep after 2 bottles of wine, will the trickling water cause me to piss my pants?
Luckily. The garden has a railway line just 50 meters away.
Lucky you say?
Yes.
Consider this.
Just a thought, in case you’re looking to purchase a house.
It’s nice living next to a railway line. During the early hours, let’s say, 3am, you would think it would disturb REM sleep patterns, but no; it is a comfort. ‘A comfort?’ you ask. Why yes, it is always comforting to know there is another human being or more in the vicinity, it makes one feel safe. Imagine waking at 3am, and finding an evil axe murderer standing over you, axe raised above their head. That can be quite scary; but, if a train goes past, the feeling of security is so refreshing for the terrified one, yet scary for the axe murderer, because you could compound the nearness of these travelling humans, with a few words maybe? Say “Ah! 3a.m. my cleaner will be here in 25 seconds; she’s an insomniac. While they shake in fear over the presence of nearby humans and look in the direction of the door for the cleaner (witness), you can pull them over by grabbing their legs, grabbing the axe, and then giving them a good seeing to (hopefully the blade will be sharp, which will reduce the amount of effort needed; especially if you’re a woman with thin arms, or a pacifist with thin arms? Or a pacifist with one arm? A pacifist with no arms would be silly).
It isn’t recommended putting the limbs and head into the recycle bin. Instead, put limbs and head in one bin bag, and the torso in another, then stick them both in the wheelie ... I learnt that off “Fred West, Appropriate Adult”. Surprising what you can learn off the TV.
It is a well known fact that 99% of dead axe murderers are found in wheelie bins from houses within 100 metres of railway tracks.
I suppose the same thing would go for a house at the end of a runway?
***
Part 1. The chill out garden dream.
Tits Up. Part 1. This story is dedicated to Sarah Golding who laughed when I told her this on the phone, which encouraged me to write it down.
For the last 106 years (for that’s what it feels like) I’ve lived in a particular shared house in the Radford area of Coventry. When you live in shared houses, as I have done for 20 years (consciously unintentional), crazy things happen ... due to the magnetic quality shared houses have for loonies/ the disturbed; I can tell you, it is shocking what society can do to some people.
Where I live at the mo, where this true story is set, we have one who has several personalities who argue. He is drunk a lot of the time, leaves the gas on, and is always trying to contact aliens; he actually has a brilliant handset he’s constructed in his electronics lab of a room, in order to actually make verbal contact; which is a close encounter of the second kind?
He’s been playing round with it for ages, and can’t work out why they don’t call him back, as it must work as it is perfectly perfect to plan. He racks his mind over this which causes most of his problems ... but, he is missing the point. I’ve said this before in another wonderful work, and I’ll say it again. I have no proof, but I just know; do YOU know what I mean?
His spaceship is nearby, but when he came here he fell and knocked his head, and when he woke up he’d forgotten he was an alien. He signs on, and eventually gets a room here. He then had some strange urge to join SETI, and try and make contact. So here we are, he plays with his special two way radio all the time and it sends him mad modifying what is perfect, because, every time he calls the aliens, the radio on his spaceship dashboard speaks these words ... “Hello. Can anyone hear me?”. His ship is live, and merely waiting for his return. Like all alien ships it is clever, and gets its power from a tree; he attached the line with a special fitting.
Another, who was ‘parented’ to the brink of insanity, is convinced he is the partner of a famous woman, and wears a piece of meat around his neck so the dog will play with him (that habit is his mother’s fault). This particular journey began with a nice idea/request from the landlord (who is clinically insane ... don’t ask):
‘Could you do the garden? Be the gardener? Be the keeper of the garden?’
He asked this because he was in the middle of ejecting a particular person from the house who was giving hassle, who just happened to be the one who was actually cutting the grass; much to the relief to everyone else. This made him a hero, and the women in the house, at night (and on hot weekends), fanned him and fed him grapes.
You see. Shared houses tend not to have a domestic rota, and instead work on the principal of ‘I’m not doing it if they won’t’, while some simply act oblivious. It isn’t just men either.
A Little Landlord-ology:
Landlords therefore have to either go out with, or marry, their mother ... who then doubles as a maid. The more properties he has, the more knackered she looks. She also tends his crazed kids. I would suppose that, if in her CV, she has, ‘Was in charge of the ant farm when at school’, because that’s what it’s like; an ant farm in panic mode.
Landlords are also notorious for being tighter than camels arses (or fannies) in sandstorms. They tell people that they use part of the rental monies to maintain and upkeep the house, and when they say this, a halo appears around their head, choirs of angels sing (practicing for Christmas no doubt), and the Dragons ring them incessantly asking for an opportunity to invest. Well, no they don’t, and house upkeep is provided by car boot sales, and dodgy workmen who come cheaper than cheap who are usually found doing some dodgy dealing at car boot sales. If they bother to turn up, that same choir of angels get to do some more practice.
PS: Dodgy dealers at car boot sales are those who have watched Dickinson’s Real Deal a couple of times “You can have it for six quid mate, worth one hundred and forty you know. Yeah, it’s Lall Leek glass, and this pottery was made by that Cliff bird; not Richards, erm … erm Clarice, but not her out of Silence of the Lambs. Yep, ok, a fiver mate. Do you want a bag?”
I could ramble on about landlords (or car boot dealers) all day, but this little offering is about something completely different.
So, this guy who was to be ejected, would cut the grass. And when finished, sweat a little, and say, “I do this for ‘me’, not HIM. And when I win the lottery, I’m going to throw everyone out and have the house how ‘I’ want it.”, that always made me feel so secure when he said it.
So, back to Landlord: “Will you do the garden? And then I can tell HIM I don’t need him to do the garden and more.”
That sounded like Achilles mate Agamemnon looking for a war, and trying to involve me, Idkillies for a pint. But the enemy was too close. People say, ‘keep your friends close, but your enemies closer’, but they obviously have never been in a situation where the enemy lives in the next room and they’re a self admitted ‘head case’; not forgetting the fact that they also have fearful, unbalanced allies living in the other rooms.
What’s the difference between a shared house and a nuthouse? The way ‘shared’ and ‘nut’ are spelt; the common spelling is ‘asylum’.
I had a think about it. If he left, the harem may follow? Then the house would be fairly ‘normal’ and quieter? Maybe I could turn the garden into my own little paradise? with some shady areas? Sit under the tree at the top of the garden, stick in a couple or more bushes; make it into a glade hideaway? Attract some colourful birds with feeders. It could be a gorgeous chill out garden, somewhere to relax and ponder nice things, and go double vision with wine.
Hmmmmm?
***
The Landlord’s Bible
I once had a bike. I took it to the shop to have a speedo, which was a specialist model which could cope with someone pedalling in top gear with their legs a blur without blowing a fuse; such is my power. A friend’s daughter said to the friend, ‘He’s lazy; I would have done that myself’. I totally agree, but, I think that it’s sometimes nice to have the nice surprise of someone doing it for you. On sixty minute makeover, for instance, they don’t give the person receiving the gift the stuff, and then say ‘Get on with it then, you have sixty minutes’. I’m the same with gardens, except that I kind of like trees, and bushes, and copses and glades; I like hiding from the world, and especially people. You can watch from the cool. In my youth, up the North West, the neighbour had lots of raspberry ‘thorny’ bushes which filled the garden. I’m not sure the neighbours liked it, but I had made a passageway through the bushes and when inside them, no one knew where I was; it was great. The same goes for meditation (chilling). You can go inside yourself, in the quiet, where the world is under your control, and you don’t have to be mentally unbalanced enough to be a dictator where it takes too much stress to make the world do things that please you; there are enough inadequate mothers in the world to add yet another. I would have to do it myself, because no one else had my garden picture in their mind, and as these houses are usually full of, well, you already know. So there would be no point asking anyway. You think I’m joking, don’t you.
I do the garden; I get some money off my rent!
You say that to a Landlord and they refer to the Landlord’s Bible, which was found in the Ark of the Covenant, on top of some stone slabs. When they do refer to it, that choir starts up again.
The Book of Reasons
Refer to the one million plus excuses to not part with money.
It was actually adapted from the women’s Bible, from the section ... how to manipulate and pass blame to the man.
I was to be a posh, British, ‘half Polish’, ‘Coolie’! And I should do things for the house, to show I cared.
Here’s a good one for you from the Landlord’s Bible.
“Ok. So business is hard, and you’re going to be a few quid short on your rent each week for the time being”.
“Yes”.
“Ok then. No problem. You can then do ‘one’, that’s ONE hour work for ME each week. That’s all”.
“Ok”.
Fifty hours later, after a phone call each five minute, one doth protest.
“You’ve done fifty hours work for me this week?”
“Yes. You said ‘one’.”
“Ah but. It says here in Section four sub section seven paragraph one of the Landlord’s Bible (choir!), ‘and the Landlord with the Messiah complex looked at the poor beggar, who was bleeding through working for him for many, many days non stop ... “Ah! But you can’t do enough work for a good gaffer!
Now, if you wouldn’t mind waiting in tomorrow until four, the workman MIGHT be coming. He may turn up at any time, and I need you to be here ...”
Refuse as you’re going out, and then the inner problems that he goes to anger management courses for (or should do), surfaces ... and the Complex Messiah was wrathful on the poor coolie who mistakenly thought that he had a life of his own.
****
THE GARDEN.
It was a nice garden and had great possibilities.
The first problem, as ‘normal’ people see it, was the grass. It was fairly long. This isn’t of course in fitting with society, as garden grass must be cut, and linear, and, well ... ‘boring’. I’m a natural sort of person, and I like areas of long grass, as they then become meadows. I’m also a photographer, and the garden was a little paradise for me as far as photographing such things as, little beautiful, yet hated things ... you know, weeds. It beats me how anybody can not like buttercups, or daisies, or dandelions. Mind you, it beats me how anyone can walk home from the city, and just drop the polystyrene fast food container on the floor. What’s that excuse “It keeps someone in a job cleaning it up”. The areas I see, it just piles up and stays there; and all the local rats are fat.
The grass though, when I eventually got a grass cutter (don’t ask), was too long for a grass cutter to cut, and so, labour from another house the landlord owned was brought in. The guy, who kinda owes the Landlord money and sort of resentfully works it off through hard labour ... (you can’t do too much for a good gaffer). You’ll not believe this, but, to recoup his money and punish the bloke at the same time, the Landlord had had a big hole dug in the back field. He then had it filled with salt, and this guy was made to mine salt from it. It’s surprising when you have a single guy working in a salt mine, how many bottled water reps turn up. There was even a sunglasses rep turned up to try and sell the guard and the worker some shades for when the Sun shone on the mined salt, and snow blindness ensued.
But anyway, this guy turned up, which was a miracle, because the last time he turned up when it suited him, it was the day before Charlton Heston found the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes. Yes, this guy, who shall be named D, turns up with a strimmer. It isn’t a pissy mass market electric one from the gay garden implements section of B&Q, this one’s a powerful ‘petrol strimmer’! This one has been on Top Gear and Stig got down on his knees and mimed “I am not worthy”.
This one is literally a weapon of war. This one is Optimus Prime working on the side. Other garden implements who are actually alive (of course, as Transformers is true) call this one Meadow Fucker. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre immediately comes to my mind. This strimmer has ‘bitch power’, and I wonder what the film would have been like actually using ‘it’ instead? The Texas Strimmer Massacre! Would the murderer, Leatherface, have to occasionally stop to pull more nylon string out?
The landlord actually took the spinning bit off this strimmer at the request of a Spitfire Vet (a Veteran, not an actual Vet), and it was placed on the front of a serviceable Spitfire, in place of the propeller. The Spitfire took off effortlessly, after giving the runway grass a nice trim. Just think, that if in World War 2, the Spitfires had been fitted with these! They could have simply flown behind the German planes and chopped the tails off. Mind you, disaster would have resulted, as Coventry Cathedral would maybe have been saved, dread the thought. Everyone would then moan that there were no tourists ‘now’, and that Hitler could have at least done the job properly and boosted the local Coventry economy. The fucking Nazi bastard! How dare he screw Coventry’s economy! But. He was stopped in his evil tracks, by none other than a fat backbencher with a good sense of humour he/most mistook for genius; only it was too late for Coventry; depending on your perspective of course.
Tip: Take the perspective that offers the most cash.
“We (YOU) will fight them on the beaches! We (YOU) shall fight on the landing grounds and in the streets! We (YOU) will fight them in the air, with Spitfires, all of which have had their propellers removed and ‘bitch power Optimus Prime’ petrol strimmers fitted. Oh yes, when we fight them, we will chop off their tails, just as the farmer’s wife did with the three blind mice ...
Well, what do you think of my speech everyone?”
“Erm, Winston ... have erm, you been drinking cheap Commons’ sherry again?”
However, D cut the grass, together with several rare plants from the border, and wrecked several arms from my Ikea Octopus odd sock dryer, which had fallen off the washing line. He reminded me of my mother cleaning up.
“What’s this on the floor?!”
“My bed mummy!”
“Well, pick it up and put it away, or it’s going out! And what about that?!”
“That’s my wardrobe mummy.”
“Same with that. Put it away, or it’s going out! And what’s this hiding in the airing cupboard?!”
“That’s dad mum. He’s scared to death of you”
I told you she had compulsive obsessive.
I then cut the grass with the grass cutter. I did it like D. I used a technique called ‘I can’t be arsed with this’, and did it as quickly as possible in order to get to the next exciting part of my life, which is the bit that goes ‘I’m bored!’ And I nervously fidget at the same time.
That’s a problem isn’t it? You have something to do, but you consider it work, so you don’t want to do it. You then do it quickly to get it over with, and then mope around wishing you were doing something which would be the equivalent fun of a fairground or an amusement arcade. If you get there, it either becomes a void where the satisfaction is quickly over, or is over very quickly and it’s back to work. Something like that. Enjoy yourself, time whizzes inconsiderably by.
Gardening? Bloody hard work, and boring. Life’s a drag.
***
It’s quite a size, as you can see.
The top bit with my beloved cherry tree was a kind of a junk heap, and had been for years I was told, by people who didn’t want to know. I made a painful conscious decision to tackle it big-time, and started out full of steam; it was after all my future chill out location. There was age old junk everywhere. I even found a wall with a street-name on it: 100 Water-Covered Lane, Lost Borough of Atlantis. Plus, I have to mention this; a body. I think they’re standard in Coventry, i.e. if there isn’t a dead body involved; it lets the good name of the city down. The thing was, this one got up and toddled off after saying, “Thanks for that, I was totally lost”, Tony Robinson, none the less.
I made two mistakes. The first one was obvious. Being a photographer, I forgot to take some ‘before’ pictures. The second was my bending my back too much when raking the soil covering (after removing all the monster nettles). I had been beaten up by a bunch of chavs some months before, and they had stamped on my sciatic nerve, and that went on me; I could hardly walk for three weeks. Messages of sympathy please.
The nettles were the same height as me, and I reckon that they are the nearest things to Triffids we will ever have. It doesn’t matter how much protective gear is worn, I always get stung several times. They would seem easy to chop and clear, but, every time I cut through a stem, the thing always falls (throws itself) towards me; then somehow I get stung with its armour piercing stingers. Fancy though crossing a hemp plant with a Triffid. What would be the result? Walking happiness with a load of people following it? I got rid of all the nettles and the roots, and four days later, up they began to come again. It took a while to slow down all the plants growing from the seeds that nature had sown. I then decided to dig the patch over, and immediately became an (insect) coolie for the second time in a short period; to the local robin; Trevor.
Eventually, after much digging, sweating, and a bad sciatic back, I completed the top of the garden. I knew, from an attempt a couple of years back, that nettles and weeds would come back, so I decided to wait for them and pick them out, rather than tip poisons into the soil ... how’s that for environmentally conscious? In other words, it would take an age to complete the top of the garden. I should have hired the local travellers. They would have tarmacked it in fifteen mins, and then everyone could have watched the sheer brute force of nature as nettles and things broke through the two inch tarmac covering. Mind you, what about poison? I’ve often wondered what Cillit Bang does to nettles, and the worms underneath? And the ceiling of the extensive military base underneath that? Not to mention the environment? I also wonder if the military base shakes every time a train goes by? And do they get their coffee from the corner shop? And, do they know about the spaceship that is almost on their roof?
Maybe if the stuff is vicious enough, they will one day do a film called the Cillit Bang Syndrome, where it burns its way through to China and saves Tibet? Much to the annoyance of the Nuclear Plant management who get some really bad press for destroying world Buddhism. And as the Lama and his men return to their monasteries when all the Chinese are left as melted goo on the floor, by Cillit Bang (it should have a vomit inducing theme tune like Go Compare). There again, when you now live like a king, would you return to a cold monastery for a life with no prospects? I think not. Could it be used as alien blood in the next alien film, The Bitch is Back, Again. And THIS time she’s taking NO shit.
Good old Cillit Bang! Tibet is saved! And not a trace of fat, grease, lime scale, or plates, or housewives fingers, or housewives nasal passages anywhere. All gone!
What to do with the/my land though? It’s bare soil.
I know! I’ll landscape it! Well, landscaping can’t be that difficult.
Turf? Grass seed? Astro Turf?
Astro turf was out of the question, as I didn’t fancy breaking into the Ricoh Arena to acquire it, as my timing’s really bad, and I don’t want footballers, desperate to stay in whatever division they’re hanging onto for dear life, falling over me as I chop away with my Stanley Knife.