Television
When I was a kid we didn’t have one. The kid next door did and although he was a right little prick, he was everybody’s friend when ‘Popeye’ and ‘The Road Runner’ were on.
One day, I came home from school and we had one sitting in a corner of the living room, it had a 14 inch screen and was black and white. We had a choice of two channels and it had a round knobby thing that you used to swap between them. I wasn’t allowed to touch it and decided there and then that I didn’t like the bastards anyway.
When I was at Uni, I don’t recall if we had one in the share house, if we did, I very rarely watched it. We did have one in the Students Union, it was in a smallish room, that was usually deserted, apart from a few sad sacks.
However, once a week it was heaving with bodies, crammed in watching ‘Top of the Pops’. With Flick Colby’s scantily clad dancers leaping around, to the weeks hits, when the artists weren’t around to lip-sync. It’s amazing that I can remember her name, forty years later, but I can scarcely remember my own. TotP was followed by Monty Python, need I say more?
When I was in South Africa 1971-1973, they were amazingly civilised and didn’t have TV, which was a blessing. Come to think of it, there were a lot of things they didn’t have, Playboy was banned, along with nudity in general. In case the Boer’s lust was inflamed by the sight of naked tits. They might have forgotten to go to the NGK and learned the Old Testament by heart, in the original Afrikaaner Tongue. Didn’t know that God was an Afrikaaner, I bet! Did you eh?
After that I went to Australia where they did have TV, it might even have been in colour and they certainly had nudity. Not that it induced me to watch it, I belong to the school of thought that ‘If you’ve seen one tit, you’ve seen ‘em both’ and what’s the point of looking at them anyway?
As a family, at the last count (yesterday), we had six of them, TV’s that is. (It could be more now, the suckers breed like cane toads). They all have different remote controls and what makes it worse they are con-joined with other things like VCR’s, CD players, surround-sound speakers, toasters, karaokes, souffle-makers, games players etc. and each of them has a remote control.
If you look at the back of a typical TV, you’ll see more cabling than Mission Control in Houston. So things have turned full circle, instead of my parents banning me from touching the damn things. As a parent I’ve banned myself from touching them, in case I blow the souffle-maker to smithereeens.
So that’s it as far as I’m concerned. There are some good shows on, but they are so riddled with adverts, or on the stations where ads are banned, promo’s for upcoming shite, repeated ad nauseam, that they become unwatchable.
Cheers,
SkyBlueSkull
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Moving Furniture
Moving Furniture
I am not talking here about furniture moving around of, or should that be on, it’s own volition a la supernatural, involving poltergeists and their ilk. No! what this ramble is about is far more prosaic, what I’m on about here is Furniture Removalists.
There are not too many people around who actually like uprooting themselves (which is a bit different from rooting themselves up, or up rooting other people, both of which can be highly enjoyable!) and moving from one location to another.
Some people try to do it themselves with varying degrees of success. Get the boys around and pile all the furniture into utes/trailers/boots etc. and make numerous trips across the City and back while the Missus packs all her valuables and breakables into a variety of cardboard boxes that she purloined from the local supermarket.
After a couple of trips, the boys get a bit thirsty and break open one of the slabs of beer, bought as payment for their endeavours and then things start getting interesting. The end result is usually a complete shambles and cries of “Never again”.
One of the other cheap alternatives is to hire a couple of blokes with a truck, they don’t actually call themselves ‘Dodgy Brothers’ but they really should. This happened to us last time we moved, we called in the Bros. and they turned up. One of them had his right arm in plaster, which should have set off the alarm bells.
As an ex-Removalist myself (which I will go into in some detail later) I had already packed everything away properly, in the recommended boxes and my wife had suitably marked them. It was just a question of loading the boxes and larger pieces of furniture into the van and taking off across town.
Easier said than done, after the guy with the broken arm had managed to scratch my Wife’s precious dining table on the way down the steps, (I forgot to mention that it was a flat on the first floor). The driver jumped into the cab of the truck and tried to start the engine. No go! the silly bastard had left his lights on and the battery was as flat as a cow pat.
Not only that, but he had parked between the flats and a a fence, so it was impossible to ‘jump-start’ the engine. Nice situation!!!. I ended up calling my office mates, luckily we were only a three minute drive away, so they came down in their coffee break.
The truck was, of course, parked in a big rut and half full, thus making it harder to push. Me, the guy with the broken arm, four office mates and even the missus, started pushing. The idiot whose fault it was, sat comfortably in the cab, giving commands.
This could have been a very silly thing to do, as at least two of my mates were on the verge of dragging him from his cab and beating seven colours of shit out of him. Luckily for him, just before this occurred, the truck finally lurched out of the rut. Once we had a bit of momentum, it was a piece of the proverbial to push it into the street.
After that it was fairly uneventful, we arrived at our destination, got the truck unloaded and everything stacked inside. The missus being a good hearted soul asked me if we should give them a tip for a job well done. I won’t give you my reply, I’ll leave it to your own imagination.
Cheers,
SkyBlueSkull
I am not talking here about furniture moving around of, or should that be on, it’s own volition a la supernatural, involving poltergeists and their ilk. No! what this ramble is about is far more prosaic, what I’m on about here is Furniture Removalists.
There are not too many people around who actually like uprooting themselves (which is a bit different from rooting themselves up, or up rooting other people, both of which can be highly enjoyable!) and moving from one location to another.
Some people try to do it themselves with varying degrees of success. Get the boys around and pile all the furniture into utes/trailers/boots etc. and make numerous trips across the City and back while the Missus packs all her valuables and breakables into a variety of cardboard boxes that she purloined from the local supermarket.
After a couple of trips, the boys get a bit thirsty and break open one of the slabs of beer, bought as payment for their endeavours and then things start getting interesting. The end result is usually a complete shambles and cries of “Never again”.
One of the other cheap alternatives is to hire a couple of blokes with a truck, they don’t actually call themselves ‘Dodgy Brothers’ but they really should. This happened to us last time we moved, we called in the Bros. and they turned up. One of them had his right arm in plaster, which should have set off the alarm bells.
As an ex-Removalist myself (which I will go into in some detail later) I had already packed everything away properly, in the recommended boxes and my wife had suitably marked them. It was just a question of loading the boxes and larger pieces of furniture into the van and taking off across town.
Easier said than done, after the guy with the broken arm had managed to scratch my Wife’s precious dining table on the way down the steps, (I forgot to mention that it was a flat on the first floor). The driver jumped into the cab of the truck and tried to start the engine. No go! the silly bastard had left his lights on and the battery was as flat as a cow pat.
Not only that, but he had parked between the flats and a a fence, so it was impossible to ‘jump-start’ the engine. Nice situation!!!. I ended up calling my office mates, luckily we were only a three minute drive away, so they came down in their coffee break.
The truck was, of course, parked in a big rut and half full, thus making it harder to push. Me, the guy with the broken arm, four office mates and even the missus, started pushing. The idiot whose fault it was, sat comfortably in the cab, giving commands.
This could have been a very silly thing to do, as at least two of my mates were on the verge of dragging him from his cab and beating seven colours of shit out of him. Luckily for him, just before this occurred, the truck finally lurched out of the rut. Once we had a bit of momentum, it was a piece of the proverbial to push it into the street.
After that it was fairly uneventful, we arrived at our destination, got the truck unloaded and everything stacked inside. The missus being a good hearted soul asked me if we should give them a tip for a job well done. I won’t give you my reply, I’ll leave it to your own imagination.
Cheers,
SkyBlueSkull
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