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100 Weevil Facts

I have wrung out my brain and can tell you that I

1. Can do the Rubik's cube (record time under 2 minutes)
2. Find it easier to reverse into parking spaces than go in forwards
3. Have very messy handwriting but can do excellent calligraphy
4. Won a prize for "scholarly work" in the sixth form at school
5. Had my son 6 days after my birthday. Tallboy's son was born six days after his
6. Once bunked off school to go to the seaside for the day
7. Can't sing for toffee
8. Used to enjoy going to Teignmouth on holiday and waving at trains
9. Used to be a solicitor - but I'm all right now
10. Am a polyglot
11. Cannot walk past a misted up mirror or window without drawing a pair of Y fronts with my finger
12. Am a vegetarian but am prepared to accept the sacrifice of the creature that went into my bike leathers
13. Am really bad at remembering faces
14. Find toilet humour hysterical
15. Love the smell of two-stroke in the morning
16. Used to be scared of the dark
17. Owned a T reg green VW Golf as my first car
18. Enjoy going to classical concerts
19. Like being a mum and stepmum
20. Don't give in to whining
21. Have never failed an exam
22. Haven't kept in touch with a single person from school
23. Have never been able to belch on demand
24. Can knit fiendishly difficult designs and patterns
25. Can't sleep if there is any noise
26. Love to eat baby broad beans straight out of the pod
27. Cannot abide marmalade
28. Specified in my will that "Sitting on the Dock of a Bay" by Otis Redding is to be played at my funeral
29. Can't stand spelling mistakes
30. Love books by Terry Pratchett
31. Have had pets called: Sapphire, Mushroom, Blitzen, Dollop, and Smith
32. Favourite colour is purple
33. Favourite vegetable is aubergine
34. Am an excellent cook
35. Took a motorbike apart to see how it worked
36. Couldn't stop laughing all the way through "Things my Girlfriend and I Argue About"
37. Based my decision to go to Oxford Uni on, amongst other things, the fact that the city looks pretty in the sun
38. Nearly hit a cat one of the first times I rode my motorbike
39. Feel at home in police stations
40. Do not sneeze in bright sunlight. Unlike the rest of the freaks at Weevil Mansions
41. Learned from a 5 year old that ... is called an ellipsis
42. Can remember my NI number by heart
43. Wish I had learned to play the piano
44. Can touch type very quickly
45. Was often mistaken for a boy when young
46. Got first job on the book department of WHSmith
47. Had my bottom pinched in the street in Biarritz
48. Cannot stand having my feet touched
49. Love playing board games
50. Learned to play backgammon on the internet
51. Can't stand misplaced or missing apostrophes
52. Am a herpetophile
53. Love etymology
54. Have killed every houseplant I have ever owned
55. Once made fudge in the microwave when a student
56. Have had a crush on Clint Eastwood for decades
57. Was the captain of the women's cricket team at college
58. Have had mumps, chicken pox and glandular fever
59. Love Dr Zoidberg from Futurama
60. Never know how old I am (I have to subtract my birth year from today's date)
61. Once twisted my ankle by tripping over a leaf
62. Love the Broken Sword computer games
63. Learned how to say "I have a tummy ache" in Ugandan from my grandmother
64. Don't suit hats
65. Talk to cats in the street
66. Don't believe in astrology
67. Am the swingball champion
68. Once saw a badger in my back garden
69. Can't undertstand why people want to go on Trisha
70. Had two nicknames at school - "Spock" and "Frog"
71. Compose a mean limerick
72. Don't see the point to horses
73. Fractured my radius in a motorbike accident
74. Have a soft spot for the Youth Hostel at Wantage
75. Wish gelatine wasn't used to make so many sweets
76. Am NEVER wrong
77. Laughed so hard at video of Bottom Live when pregnant that my waters broke
78. Would have liked to have had a sister
79. Know the Silver Zafiras are out to get me
80. Don't like football
81. Think "Paranoid" would have been much better if Ozzy had sung in a Brummie accent
82. First computer I ever used was a Commodore Pet
83. Think it's funny when Tallboy gets wound up about Michael Schumacher every time the Grand Prix is on
84. Can't find a way to turn off the alarm on the digital watch on my bike keyring
85. Twigged the Father Christmas thing at an early age
86. Earliest memory is falling down the stairs aged 2 and a half
87. Have been forbidden to reveal anything naughty in this list by Tallboy
88. Will marry Tallboy if he can ever learn to wink with his left eye (he did it and we did get married...)
89. Love thunder and lightning
90. Make sound effects when watching fireworks
91. Learned British Sign Language and particularly liked the swearing lesson
92. First record I ever bought was "Baggy Trousers" by Madness
93. Would rather be cold than hot
94. Love getting parcels and real letters
95. Always say thank you if someone holds open a door
96. Talked incessantly during childhood and now suffering the same from the Sun
97. Greek and French were my best subjects at school
98. Used to be able to do the Lotus position
99. Used to be able to recite the whole of "The Jumblies" off by heart
100. Am really scraping the bottom of the barrel now

 

I'm sorry, this one's rather basic...

I had my hair cut yesterday. I treat a visit to the hairdresser's with the same kind of dread many people reserve for the dentist. Ithink this is attributable to bad experiences as a child, when I had to remove my glasses in order for the hairdresser to do her work. Due to my appallingly bad eyesight, I would then have no idea what was being done, and the putting-glasses-back-on moment would inevitably be one of deep horror at what they had done while I couldn't see them.

This time, however, there was some light relief while I was having my hair washed by the young trainee, who wittered on about this that and the other before suddenly thrusting the shower head at one of the stylists with the words "You finish off, I'm going to wet myself!" before running off behind the scenes. As the loo door slammed shut with almost tangible relief, the stylist took over without missing a beat, telling me about her exercise class last week when, faced with squat thrusts, she ran cross-legged from the room. What is it with these hairdressers? I blame the constant sound of running water, myself.

Some observations on weeing

1.) My god, men really do have huge bladders, don't they? I once stayed in a hotel in London which had a (locked) connecting door through to the next room which let sounds travel really rather well, as I found out at some unmentionable hour of the morning as the occupant of the next room, with his bathroom door open, engaged in the most tremendous session of micturation it has been my misfortune to overhear.

2.) If you need to go while you are out, the desire to wee is inversely proportional to the distance you are from home and W.C. The closer you get, the more desperate you become. I have many times burst in through the door, dumped bags of shopping on the mat and raced thunderously up the stairs, just making it.

3.) Women wake up in the morning and think "I need a wee" and go to the loo. Men wake up in the morning and think "I need a wee, but it doesn't hurt enough yet so I'm not getting out of bed."

4.) If you know someone really needs a wee (maybe they are on their way to the loo), this is a great time to tell them a really funny joke. I have thus far failed to push StepS over the edge, but it's been very close several times. I see it as my evil duty as stepmother.

5.) Camping is a lot easier if you are a bloke. You probably won't need a wee in the night, and if you feel like one, it probably won't hurt enough yet. Girls on the other hand are much more likely to want to go - Weevil's top tip here is to acquire a "wee pot" (you can say it in a Scottish accent to avoid embarrassment if you want) which is really an empty rectangular plastic container such as the kind that had frozen raspberries in. You will then have access to a non-tippable receptacle of generous volume that can be utilised in-tent and emptied discreetly.

6.) All but the most pressing desire to go when there are no conveniences nearby can be alleviated by thinking hard about cotton wool balls. On no account admit to your partner that you are practising this technique, as they will then find themselves unable to converse about any subjects other than dripping taps, fountains and Niagara Falls.

 

The Great Spaghetti Incident

As the elder sibling, I often got it in the neck for the Cartographer's misdemeanours. Like the time when he kicked a ball at my head, so I ducked. It was my fault the window broke. Sometimes, however, it worked out the other way round...

In the mid-eighties, when I was a teenager, we moved into a house that boasted a small kitchen which contained the biggest fan I had ever seen. It was a huge electrically-powered Vent-Axia job which vented out through the wall. Standing next to it in motion was not unlike inspecting a jet engine.

It occurred to me one evening as I was cooking spag bol that given the speedy rotation and the thick plastic blades, one might obtain an amusing effect by inserting dry spaghetti through the grille into the innards of the fan. Dink dink dink dinkdinkdinkdink. Oh yes! Thus it became my habit to feed the fan with spaghetti. At some point I let the Cartographer in on it, and he became as enthusiastic a spaghetti inserter as his big sis.

Now, I never once considered where the bits of spaghetti went. If I had thought about it, I would have realised that there was no pile of truncated spaghetti on the drive outside. But I didn't, I went away to University and forgot all about it. The Cartographer, however, continued with his fan feeding duties. Until the fan broke. Fan repair man (aka Dad) to the rescue. He opened the patient up and found that its demise was due in no small way to the massive amount of very short lengths of dry spaghetti gumming up its internals.

At a loss to explain this circumstance, he blamed the Cartographer. Who instantly snitched on me. However, as I was normally the sensible one, and the Cartographer tended to be the one that did the moronic things, Dad found this difficult to believe. I did have to face close questioning on my return home from Uni, and found myself in a George Washington kind of situation. "I cannot tell a lie, it was I who first inserted dry pasta in the extractor fan." Were it not for my complete inability to lie myself out of a tricky situation, I would have got away with it...

Dad even now struggles to believe this story, and tends to relate it when tiddly. He even referred to it during his speech at my wedding.

As for me, I wish I still had access to a fan like that...