The Frumplingtons

We were supposed to having double glazing put in today. Didn’t get any, though. This, despite our thorough preparations, as follows:

1. Got up really early: 7.30 a.m.
2. Removed all nets and curtains from windows.
3. Noticed look of mingled astonishment and horror from folks across the road.
4. Replaced all curtains.
5. Put on clothes.
6. Removed curtains again.
7. Made lots of space so glazers could work without falling over all our stuff.
8. Had breakfast.
9. Sat on sofa for a while in freezing cold living room (it’s surprising how much colder a room is without curtains) expecting glazers to start any time around 9 a.m.
10. Detected first signs of hypothermia around 11 a.m.
11. Had Scotch egg to keep spirits up.
12. Had had enough by 12.03 p.m. Said ’sod this for game of soldiers, let’s phone up and find out where team from Yorkshire Windows have got to, they should be here by now shouldn’t they, god I’m so cold all my punctuation’s gone to pot teeth chatter teeth chatter chatter etc’.
13. Phoned boss of glazing team from Yorkshire Windows, only to be told they couldn’t make it today and could they come tomorrow.
14. Said no, we have things arranged for the rest of the week, so you’ll have to come Monday and by the way my punctuation’s still shot…
15. …and my nose has just turned blue.
16. Moaned a bit more.
17. Had lunch.
18. Replaced curtains.

What a waste of a day. Could’ve had an extra six hours’ kip.

Update: 1st October — The two-man team from Yorkshire Windows turned up and installed all the windows today, as promised. A good quality job with the minimum of mess and disruption. Y’know, this place ain’t the same now all the draughts have gone. Better leave a few of those fancy new windows open a bit, just to air the place. I hear there’s a force-8 due any time soon. Mmm, gotta say, I’m looking forward to it, yes indeedy.

We’d only just entered Wilko’s this morning when I spotted something out of the corner of mine eye. I tugged at Shana’s coat tails. “Look what it says on those boxes near the door,” I said. “They’re all stainless steel bread bins.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Shana absently. I could tell she had only one thing on her mind, and that was lawn feed and bedding plants. As usual, however, I persisted:

“Who’d want a stainless steel bread bin anyway? Nobody eats stainless steel bread, do they? You’d break your teeth on it if you tried.”

Shana pressed on purposefully toward Wilko’s gardening section. For some reason, whenever I start asking thought-provoking questions, Shana tends to want to hurry me in and out of the shops and get us back home without too much delay. Perhaps one of our regular readers can shed some light on why this might be.

We’re having double glazing installed next week, thanks to our local council. Don’t tell anyone just yet but we’ve decided to opt for something a bit different.

We’re having stained glass instead.

Hallelujah!

Pictured below is my biggest Scrabble error to date. There may be others in the future, but this one will take some beating.

The words FIX and WILT were put on the board after my little faux pas, as indeed was the S of VIMS. My original gaffe was to put the V and the I down to make VIM. I was thinking that if Shana had a P or an S then she might be able to make a big score off one of the treble word squares nearby. My intention was, naturally enough, to stop her from getting too far ahead. I had, however, forgotten that the top end of the board was already choked up with the other V and a Q close by.

In our picture, my rack is on the left, and Shana’s is on the right.

For the record, I was behind at the time I made the fatal error, despite having scored a 95-point bingo with ROUGHENS (the E being the blank); Shana had also had a bingo with YEASTED down at the bottom left.

Under the circumstances, I graciously conceded the match. However, if you think you can solve the stalemate, we might just be able to continue later this evening. Suggestions may be left, in the usual way, via the comments.

Update: I’ve just noticed, from the photo, that Shana had another bingo — NEARING — sitting on her rack. So that explains why she was less than chuffed at what happened.

Phew! Just made it in time.

It is still Wednesday, isn’t it?

Wednesday 19th September?

Oh, thank goodness for that. I thought I’d missed it for a moment. Right then, here goes:

This is your your Captain speaking: Captain Frumps. (Feel free to pause awhile and admire my gold epaulettes…

…OK, that’s enough.)

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome you all on board flight FRUMPY-102. I hope you all have a pleasant journey.

Refreshments, in the form of humorous stories of local life, will be served on a regular basis during the journey. And, if you should happen to find Frumplingtons Airways not quite to your liking, just make the appropriate barfing noises and a Frumplingtons-branded sick bag will drop down in front of you.

The in-flight movie on this occasion will be “The Langoliers”.

Please note, some turbulence may be expected along the way. However, this is more than likely merely the result of my having eaten too many beans prior to departure.

And now, would you all please fasten your seat belts as we prepare to take off. Thank you for flying Frumplingtons Airways.

There, that went all right, didn’t it?

Eh?

Oh, Shana, I thought you said it was International Talk Like A Pilot day!

Dang! I didn’t realise you’d said ‘pirate‘.

Oh well, there’s still time to make amends isn’t there? Sorry, in too much of a hurry to edit. Anyone reading this, just ignore all that stuff at the top. Here’s what I should have said:

Arrrr!!

Right, that’ll do. Let’s just publish this and get outta here…

Looked out of the window just after breakfast and spotted none other than the Red Arrows having a bit of a practice over south Lincoln. I suppose all that aerobatic stuff is like any other skill really, though: you have to keep your hand in, otherwise you get a bit rusty, don’t you?

I was becoming a bit concerned after we’d been watching them for a few minutes:

“Do you think we should give Scampton a quick tinkle?” I said; Scampton being the Red Arrows’ HQ, where our local flying heroes hang out playing pool and shove ha’penny when they’re not thrilling air show punters as far afield as the three corners of the globe.

“Why’d you want to ring them up?” Shana asked.

“Well, I just thought one or two of the Arrows had smoky exhausts. Just look at the sky and you’ll see for yourself.”

“That’s not exhaust smoke,” said Shana. “Those are contrails. When they’re at proper air shows they use coloured smoke instead. Red, white and blue.”

“Oh,” I said, realisation slowly dawning. No need to phone the local fast fit centre either then, I thought. They won’t be needing their special big vehicle inspection ramps today.”

Only one game of Scrabble today, but what a game it was. Three seven-letter words, although one of them was really an eight: U-N-T-r-E-A-D-S. The lower-case ‘r’ means that letter was already on the board and the seven letters were placed around it. However, it still counted as using all the letters on the rack, so Shana, who put it down (as the last word of the game, no less) bagged 68 points and won by a comfortable margin.

Earlier, Shana had also scored a bingo with E-A-S-T-E-[R]-N. Here, the ‘R’ in brackets indicates a blank tile that Shana designated it as an ‘R’.

My own (and only) seven-letter word today came early in the game and was G-I-B-L-E-T-S.

One thing we sometimes do to wind down from the hour-long adrenalin rush of one of our Scrabble sessions, is to make up humorous sentences using various words on the board. Today, we both agreed that “EASTERN GIBLETS” would make an excellent name for a food processing company in what is often referred to in the pages of Ptomaine Monthly, as ‘the meat sector’.

Hmm, I wonder if Eastern Giblets have any vacancies…

It’s Shana’s birthday today and so, for one day only, I shall allow her to have cake. Only one cake. Well, one packet of cake(s), anyway. We’ve already bought them. Carrot and orange fancies, they are. We’ve had them before, and quite yummy they were too. Plus, being carrot and orange flavour (trust me, it’s a whole helluva lot better than it sounds, really), these little cakes presumably also count towards our five-a-day fruit and veg requirement, as recommended by HM Govt’s Health tzars. (Like we care!)

A little later today, we shall be having our customary mid-afternoon Scrabble session. Let’s hope it’s a somewhat more civilised affair than yesterday’s game, during which we both collapsed in a fit of the giggles when I, hampered by a lousy selection of letters, was forced, reluctantly, to put down the word A-R-S-E on a treble-word-score square.

Earlier on, as I revealed after the game, I had also been faced with the following letters lined up on my rack: F-A-R-T-G-A-S. And no, on that occasion I resisted putting down the obvious choice of letters. Scrabble is a serious game, you know; it’s not all about toilet humour.

It’s a problem familiar to ex-Prime Ministers the world over, the most recent example being Britain’s former PM, Tony Blair:

What the hell do you do after you leave a job like that?

You can hardly go back to life as it might have been before. Librarian, newsagent, garage mechanic, deep-sea trawler fisherman, train driver: none of these ‘ordinary’ jobs is an option, however much you might want to disappear from public life.

That leaves just two choices:

• Roving ambassador, trying to solve the world’s big problems (usually the Middle East). Or,
• Write a book about your time in office.

But it’s not just top politicians who are faced with such dilemmas. One ‘celebrity’ a bit closer to home who is wondering ‘what to do next’ is little fluffy pipsqueak, Mint Sauce. Remember him? He used to be up there as the header image on this very blog.

Until we decided it was time for him to retire.

Well, he was holding us back. Attracting the wrong kind of readers. He was far too kitsch and sweet for the tough Frumplingtons image.

Don’t get the wrong idea though: jealousy never came into it. I mean, what? Us, jealous of Mint Sauce? (Excuse me while I take five for a hearty guffaw, if you don’t mind.)

Anyhow, whatever happens, we can’t have Mint Sauce (‘Call me Minty’ indeed!) writing a bleat-and-tell memoir. Why? Simple: he knows too much. No, Minty will be handed over as raw materials to the local knitting collective before he will be permitted to ‘tell all’. So don’t bother saving up for his book, ‘cos it’ll never happen.

Whaddya think we should do with Minty now, eh? Methinks we should raffle him off. Anyone want to buy a book of tickets?

The cosy Frumplingtons HQ (which shall hereafter and in all subsequent documents from this day forth be known as ‘The Frumpy House’) has now acquired its very own…

…lava lamp!

Yep, we’ve finally gone retro.