Please help me! I’m trapped in an episode of Masterpiece Theater
What are these, you say? I’m glad you asked. They’re CHESTNUTS. ROASTING ON AN OPEN bloody FIRE!
Yes. Yes, they were very nice. That’s not the point.
January 3, 2008 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 36
Three old coots and a big hole
About three months ago, the old coot on the left, whose family owned Badger House once upon a time, met up with the old coot on the right, who lived in it during the war. You know, The War. They fell to talking, as coots are wont, and Coot #2 asked who was living up at the old Badger place and whether anybody had “found the machine gun.”
!
Seems Coot the Second, who was a teenager during the war, watched an American Dakota bomber go down in the field behind the house, then crept out and nicked one of its machine guns. He balanced the barrel against our back fence and popped a few rounds across the field, to make sure it was in good working order, then wrapped the whole business in an oilcloth bag and buried it beside the hedge.
I shit you not.
Given the heartbreak of Tulsarama, I wasn’t hopeful there would be anything left, but I’m damned if I’ll wantonly crush the dreams of old coots. So we invited them both ’round for tea and hole digging.
No, we didn’t find it. Not yet, anyway. My nice new metal detector was no use at all; the whole yard lights up like a Christmas tree when I ask it to find iron. That’s what four centuries of tossing stuff out the back will do. An experienced bloke with a bigger metal detector and awesome hole-digging skills is coming out next.
Still, we had merry tales of the old days. At the turn of the (Nineteenth to the Twentieth) Century, Badger House was so derelict the shepherds refused to stay in it. It was nearly knocked down, but somebody driving by spotted it and offered Coot #1’s dad £200 for it. By WWII, the house still had no electricity or indoor plumbing (the tall roof is to maximize collection of rainwater). It sounds as though it has stood empty and overgrown much of the time. We’ll have a lot of tightening up to do.
Coot #3 is, of course, Uncle B…who stands just off camera, shamed by the hole-digging prowess of Coot #2. And you would be, too, if an 81 year old coot KICKED YOUR ASS.
EDIT: Uncle B says the Dakota was a transport plane. The bomber that went down in the lower forty was a Boston. Also, he adds that he is wounded in the arm, so there!
January 2, 2008 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 72
Balls!
Here, Uncle Badger holds out the traditional New Year’s Day Balls of…oh, screw it, I forgot to post something, didn’t I? Hope y’all had a splendid first day of 2008. We spent ours as we mean to go on: sleeping, eating and a-drinking of alcoholic beverages.
We slunk down to the Adolph and Eva Memorial Recycling Center with our empties after dark tonight, and it took both of us to lift the box. Hooray for the noble mustelids!
And tomorrow afternoon, if all goes according to plan, several elderly persons of the district are coming to help us exhume a fifty year old veteran from the back garden.
Sweet dreams!
January 1, 2008 — 7:05 pm
Comments: 23
Loot. Swag. Plunder. Booty. STUFF!
Do you know why Christmas is so all-consuming crazy-making to your typical seven year old? Because a seven year old might — just might — find the thing he wants most in all the world tucked under the tree on Christmas morning.
Imagine for a moment you could have come down stairs this morning to find Santa Claus had paid off your mortgage, or left you a villa in the South of France, or fixed your teeth or made you a rock star or…you know, brought about world peace or some junk. Yeah, you bet you’d’ve been up at the crack of dawn today, pissing yourself with excitement.
You didn’t outgrow the magic; your wish-list simply got unreasonable.
This holiday time of year, when our society is battered from the right and the left (respectively) for its irreligion and shallow commercialism, please join me in remembering what Christmas is really all about: it’s about the STUFF, man! It’s about the swag, the booty, the sweet treats under the tree. It’s about giving each other useless toys and silly gadgets and some very nice things we can’t really afford, too. It’s about eating things that are costly and bad for us and having a dram or five of the good stuff from the back of the liquor cabinet. It’s about self-indulgence.
You know I’m right.
We’re in a happy, astonishing time and place, the first of our kind to be free of the constant grubby preoccupation with mere survival. We are scouts, explorers in this new world of post-evolutionary luxury, and this is the one day a year we give ourselves over to it utterly. Don’t feel ashamed. Don’t — on this day of all days — feel guilt.
Stand with Uncle Badger and me and say “fuck it — it’s Christmas!”
And have one more slice of something roasted in lard.
December 25, 2007 — 5:59 pm
Comments: 26
Melly Clismouse
Oh, sure, it looks cute.
When the weather turned this Fall, a plague of cold mice descended on Badger House. Uncle B found them in the trap, roughly one rodent per day. Dead, if he was lucky. Otherwise, he had an unpleasant deal of mouse-dispatchin’ to do.
The Maternal B — his mum — bought him this festive holiday rodent to commemorate all his festive holiday rodent skull-smashing.
That’s not the good part. This is the good part. It’s the song he sings when you press his belly.
I’ll bet you a shiny new penny that’s We Wish You a Merry Christmas sung by a Chinese woman who doesn’t speak a word of English.
Melly Clistmas, minions!
December 24, 2007 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 16
Math with Stoaty!
Hiho, minions! Let’s play the Merry Christmas Exchangemathemohoogical drinking game!
One kilogram = 2.20462262 pounds
One gallon = 3.7853118 liters
Today’s exchange rate is $1.98440 to £1
Calculators ready? That turkey up there weighs 18.2432521805 pounds. It costs $8.09197722blahblahblah per pound. So the price tag on that bad boy is $147.619516.
Merry Christmas! Take a swig!
Okay! Petrol (isn’t that a charming word?) is £1.03 a liter (I’ll give ’em the .9 for free). That’s $2.04932 per liter. Which works out to $7.7371243blahblahjesuschristouchthat hurts per gallon.
Merry Christmas! Take a swig!
People wonder why Britons drink. I haven’t even made it to the parsnips and I’m pissed as a newt.
I wouldn’t dream of living here if I could do math in my head.
December 21, 2007 — 8:09 pm
Comments: 34
If I just woke up, it’s breakfast
The trip was uneventful, but so very, very long. I carried on bravely and as long as I could, like the courageous weasel that I am, but finally crashed out and slept the happy, dreamless sleep of the rabid and feral. Uncle B just woke me up with a bottle of champagne.
It isn’t the best champagne, but very drinkable and plenty good enough to get me out of bed and into some serious drinking.
Huzzah! Christmas is here!
December 20, 2007 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 13
C’mon-a my house
Have you ever had a break so lucky, you were actually afraid to brag about it for fear God would smite you? No, me neither. And it’s scaring the hell out of me. I’m sure the Acme safe is going to fall on my head any minute now.
Uncle B and I have been house hunting for a decade. We knew pretty much what we wanted, and where. We’ve pored through the listings nightly and looked at dozens of houses. We became known to the local real estate community as “Oh, them.”
We’ve looked at so many houses that were…almost right. But this one had no garden, and that one was in a crap neighborhood, and another one needed a hundred thousand pounds spent on it before you could flush the toilet. We put in a bid a couple of times, but I can’t say with much enthusiasm.
Incidentally, Britain is a fantastic place to be rich. If you have a million or more, you can still buy something that looks like it escaped from an Avenger’s episode. It’s a pretty good place to be poor, too, on account of all the socialism. It’s the mokes in the middle like us what get squeezed like…ummm…gonads in a pair of Levi’s.
Anyhow — long story short — Uncle B found this place that is Goldilocks all over. Set back from the road, decent garden. Walking distance from the town we wanted to live in, but surrounded by sheep fields. Decent size, recently done up (but tastefully, not by speculators). Checked over by a local architect ‘sympathetic to old buildings’ — as the saying goes. JUST inside our price range. Oh, hey, did I mention it’s a SIXTEENTH CENTURY FARMHOUSE?!?
If there’s really such a thing as feng shui, this house is soaking in it. I’ve never been in a warmer, more organic place. It chuckles to itself. It moans in the sun. It gurgles with plumbing. We keep plucking stranded newts off the living room floor. It’s alive with sheep and crows and spiders and little dickie birds.
To avoid distracting this blog from important subjects like penis enlargement spams and booger haiku, I have set up a separate Flickr site for Badger House. I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought, but I was Rather Busy.
Hey, check it out! I’m not colorblind!
November 5, 2007 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 27