The Frumplingtons

It was a moment of sheer stupidity, I came downstairs yesterday carrying not one, but two glasses. Our stairs are not carpeted and I’m always very careful making my way down, especially as there is a nasty turn at the bottom where the stair narrows.

Obviously I wasn’t careful enough…just a few steps short of arriving safely in the hallway I slipped. One glass went flying, I held onto the other, and landed with a crash on to the base of my spine. My left leg calf muscle twisted and I just sat there screaming in pain.

Chris was a total sweetie, he cleared all the glass up, then once everywhere was clear, helped me to my feet, well foot, I couldn’t put my left leg down. Now I’m a stubborn old sod and I wasn’t about to spend the day limping around, so very gingerly I worked my leg until it eased up a bit.

But my back is another matter. It was already damaged from a horse riding accident when I was a kid, now I am in excrutiating pain, I can’t sit down and relax, so I have to perch. And when I stand up again, the pain shoots up my spine.

And I don’t care if this is nothing more than moaning, I have a right to moan, in fact I have a right to scream…so block your ears…AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!

That’s better

We got an award this week. That old sweetie, Big John (vide sidebar for live link), decided we were worthy of something called the ‘Brillante Weblog’ award. If you’ve got one of those modern graphical browsers you might see it at the top of this entry. If I were you, though, I’d cover it up with a post-it note or something, ‘cos it sure ain’t pretty, is it? We don’t go in for lots of sidebar ‘bling’ on this blog, so it won’t be appearing on our menu any time soon. But we have had a bit of fun with it, as I shall explain.

SilverTiger — another of our Dwellers on the Sidebar — discovered the source of the Brillante Weblog award-meme. Presumably, a quick Google search was all that was required.

I, however, took a more arduous route. My journey took me down into the Hades of blogging, where otherwise mild-mannered people consider it ‘cool’ to display garish page backgrounds, memory-sapping widgets, and blogrolls with even more names on them than the London telephone directory (unexpurgated edition). I took several alternative routes, one of which took me to twenty blogs. Each time, though, the award-meme eventually resulted in a return to a blog I had already seen.

I felt like a man lost in a desert, who goes in search of help, only to find himself back at his starting point, not realising he has been walking in circles. There was one consolation, though: at the end of my journey, at least I hadn’t run out of water. At the end of my journey, though, most people would need something a bit stronger than water. Here’s just one version of my Journey Through the Brillante Meme.

Gosh, look what’s just come out from behind the plastic plants! This is what the Cottingley fairies could’ve been like if Action Man had been around at the time.

Shana made Action Fairy…er, I mean Action Man’s wings by painstakingly crocheting around fine grade jewellery wire. She also made the tutu and the stockings and all the rest of his outfit. Now that’s what I call talent!

No, no, hang on, you’ve got the wrong idea! It’s Shana’s skill that I call talent. Action Man himself isn’t ‘talent’…

He’s just a basque-t case!

Five minutes ago, Shana was busy pulling off a dog’s head. Fortunately, it was not a real dog. It was an Action Man accessory, part of Action Man’s arctic expedition kit, which also includes a huge sled for the dog to tow. Plus, of course, the usual array of weapons — the phrase ‘peace talks’ is most definitely not in Action Man’s vocabulary.

The dog’s head is back on now. You have to remove it to gain access to the battery compartment. Two button cell batteries later and the Action Husky is all powered up. Press his neck and he lets out a blood-curdling howl. (Well, wouldn’t you?)

We are now a four-Action Man household, owing to Shana’s legendary bargain hunting skills. The latest three (and their mutt!) arrived this morning, ready to do battle. Sadly, at no point during their journey by Royal Mail from Devon had they been able to fight their way out of their cardboard box. Doesn’t say much for the nutritional value of army rations, does it?

In fact, the intrepid trio had only enough energy left to pose for this charming little tableau.

Meanwhile, our original Action Man goes from strength to strength. Shana has now made him so many clothes (including this brilliant Wonder Woman outfit) that it won’t be long before he needs his own walk-in wardrobe.

We were right about that kid in the ‘Candy Corner’ jigsaw puzzle. He was a hooligan. You may remember that we thought he was the lookout man for a gang of sweetie thieves (if not, then have a quick read of the original Candy Corner post).

Well, when we finished the puzzle earlier today we noticed there was a piece missing. Just one piece down near the bottom left hand corner. Clearly, the boy in the picture stole it. But take a closer look at the picture below and see if you can grasp the strategic significance of where he has taken the puzzle piece from. It’s in the middle of the road, isn’t it. And you know what that means?

There’s a bloody great hole in the road!

So it seems that not only are the boy and his accomplices planning to make off with most of the shopkeeper’s stock, but they have also set a trap for the delivery driver in case he decides to pursue them in his big red van. As soon as his wheels hit the hole in the road, his van will pitch sideways and roll over onto its side, thus buying the pint-sized tearaways extra time to escape detection.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the van driver’s in on the plan. Perhaps it’s an inside job. Or is the shop just a front for a massive Cosa Nostra sweet cigarette smuggling operation? (Anyone else remember sweet cigarettes from back in the 70s?)

If you have any information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of any of those involved in the raid on Candy Corner, call the Gobstoppers…er…Crimestoppers hotline now.

I have just discovered that there is a town called Haslet, and we would like to move there, because both Shana and I are keen haslet fans.

Unfortunately, Haslet is in Texas. (Yeah, that Texas!) Oh, well, never mind. It would have been the perfect address for us, though. Guess we’d better get the local map out instead and look closer to home; I wonder if there’s such as place as Corned Beef, Lincolnshire?

Yes, yes, I know the original song (first by the Kinks in 1966, and covered on a few rare — and valuable — copies of that classic of 1990s lounge music, Metallica’s Black Album) was called ‘Dedicated follower of fashion’, but seriously (no, but seriously, guys!), with a cardigan like that, it kind of doesn’t ring true, does it?

Do you suppose the model whittled all those wooden figurines himself? Or do his talents lie in, ah…other areas? And, since you’re wondering, is his favourite kind of tobacco shag or ready-rubbed? Hit ‘comments: leave answers.

Anyhow, you crazy people, here’s our first knitting pattern for nearly two months. Savour!

Look carefully and you’ll see we’ve written no jigsaw puzzle posts for almost two weeks. What’s going on?

Well, thing is, we got burned (in a manner of speaking). A tasteful 1500-piece Louise Rayner picture of Chester became our jigsaw nemesis. We never even finished the border; the sky — a uniform dingy white — was particularly difficult (we’ve already said how much we dislike big skies in jigsaw puzzles).

We also suspected there was a piece missing. Of course, if there’s one piece missing, who knows how many others might also be missing? That’s my logic anyway, and it was a good excuse for abandoning a puzzle that looked like a potential nightmare, with its pastel shades, many of which were simply minor variations on brown.

We are now doing a 1000-piece puzzle with much more clearly defined colours. ‘Candy Corner’, by Malcolm Root, shows a small boy with his nose pressed up against the window of an old-fashioned sweetshop. A delivery van has just arrived and the driver is approaching the shop door. I believe, though, that this is really a scene from the Great Humbug Heist of ‘48, the biggest gobstopper snatch in the history of confectionery retailing. The boy is not shopping but acting as lookout for the rest of the gang, who are already inside the shop and have tied up the shopkeeper with twenty-five yards of licorice bootlaces.

When we finish the puzzle, we’ll peer at the part of the puzzle near where the lookout lad is standing and see if we can identify any of the other gang members through the window. If we can, you can be sure we shall be informing the local constabulary forthwith, unless any of the descendants of the original gang want to pay us off in contraband Opal Fruits — in which case, we’ll forget we ever saw a thing.

You’ve heard of slide guitar: now here’s slice guitar. It’s like normal guitar music (plucking, strumming and posing) but played on an egg slicer instead of a Stratocaster.

Egg slicer guitar sounds best if, as illustrated below, you use an authentic eggshell plectrum.

If enough of us got together with homemade instruments, we could probably revive skiffle. By the way, I also play ‘kitchen percussion’ (i.e., improvised kit of lo-fat spread tubs, butter knife, saucepan lids etc), so in a way I’m a bit like the Phil Collins of neo-skiffle: sometimes up front, sometimes at the back.

I’ve even started writing songs for the egg slicer, starting with a new version of an old Beatles classic:

Eggshell ma belle
These are words that go together well,
My eggshell

What I’m wondering, though, is whether to bother with all the acoustic stuff. Why not go electric right from the start? Now, all I have to do is hotwire the slicer into our hi-fi speakers, attach a wah-wah pedal and…

BOOM!!!!

(Oops. If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me round here, ok?)

But it has, thanks to Shana’s latest project over at Shana’s Crafty Corner. “I’ll just make some clothes for Action Man,” she said. (Shana found her AM figurine a few weeks ago in a bric-à-brac shop.)

“Fine, you go right ahead,” I said, thinking nothing more of it. Now look: we’ve got the military version of Tootsie. Sheesh!