Attack of the vapours

Posted on by inkbiotic

Today’s ridiculous drama: I had just driven back to base and had gracefully leapt from the van barely stumbling at all, when Mike appeared from the shadows and said earnestly, ‘I’ve got vapers’ tongue!’

‘What?’ I asked politely, pressing all the wrong buttons on the key to lock the van.

‘It’s when you lose your sense of taste because you’ve been vaping too much. See?’ he went on proudly. ‘People thinking vaping is simple, like smoking, but actually there’s a lot to know.’

Finally I stopped faffing about and started listening. ‘Wait, you’ve lost your sense of taste? Isn’t that a sign of the virus?’

‘No, it’s vapers’ tongue,’ said Mike.

‘And you said you were coughing earlier. You’ve got the plague! Stay away from me infiltrated one!’ I tried to ward him off with the van key, holding my sleeve in front of my mouth.

‘It’s vapers’ tongue!’ said Mike insistently. ‘I’ll get my sense of taste back once I have some chewing gum. It’s all fine. My vape dealer explained it all, it’s vapers’ tongue. Have you got any chewing gum, I need mint!’

I watched him carefully for the rest of the afternoon. No more signs, but I’m ready with a net, a cross and a plastic bag. We’ve already made plans for how we can survive in the gardens if the plague takes over London, but if one of us get it, then we’re screwed.

Rat cahoots

Posted on by inkbiotic

I worked with Mateo today and got to hear another strange story.

You know how a rat steals an egg? Because rats like eggs, but they can’t carry it in their paws and still walk. But I’ve seen it, what they do is get another rat. And one holds onto the egg and the other pulls him by his tail.

The image of little Edgar rat (no reason why a rat shouldn’t be called Edgar in my view) with his paws wrapped around an egg, while Bertrude rat pulls his tail over her shoulder and drags him along, is just great.

Tales of Bees and Blood

Posted on by inkbiotic
Bee on a string
Image from https://richardlomax.bandcamp.com/track/bee-on-a-string

Mateo doesn’t talk much, but occasionally he just won’t stop. Today was one of those days and I got to hear some great stories of life in the Basque country.

DON’T EVER DO THIS! But…

…one of my favourites was about how when he was young, Mateo would get some extra thin fishing wire, tie it around a bumble bee, and the bee would fly along beside him on the end of the wire like a balloon or an upside down dog. Occasionally the bee would get tired and sit on his shoulder, but after a while he would flick it and it would fly up on the end of the wire again.

DON’T DO THIS EITHER

He also told us a story about his dad playing as a kid.

‘When my dad was eight, he and his friend didn’t have any toys. So his friend would swing around this thing.’ Mateo mimed something swinging round. ‘And my dad would jump over it.’

‘You mean a skipping rope?’ I suggested.

‘A stick? A pole?’ said Dan.

‘No you use it to cut corn,’ said Mateo. ‘And Death has one.’

‘A scythe? They’d jump over a scythe?’ asked Dan, slightly high-pitched, as we start to realise where this might be going.

‘Yes,’ said Mateo. ‘But then it went wrong and he didn’t jump at the right time. So the scythe went into his leg. And it was deep, you know. Like muscles and tendons cut, and blood everywhere. I saw the scar and it went half way round his leg. But this was during the Spanish civil war and there were no doctors around, so my dad went back to his dad. His dad got a load of vinegar and a load of salt and filled the hole in his leg and then sewed it up with a needle and thread.’

Me and Dan were wincing quite a lot by this point.

‘It was weird too, eh?’ went on Mateo. ‘Because if you get a cut that deep, and cut the tendons, it shouldn’t ever recover. Your leg is never ok again. But he was fine, all he had was the scar .’

But… but… how?

Posted on by inkbiotic

IMG_20200713_142230

Not a huge drama this one, but a mystery none-the-less. So Jessica took out a can of diet coke from her locker, then looked at it in confusion, then at us in confusion, then back at the can.

‘Ok, so mystery of the day,’ she said, ‘is how is this can empty?’ She put the unopened can on the table. I went and shook it, I could feel there was a dribble of coke left. There were no holes in the can. There was no sticky drink all over her locker, but the can was empty.

I feel like I’m leading you into one of those lateral thinking riddles, like how did the man hang himself with only the puddle of water or why didn’t the doctor use the elevator? But no, I genuinely have no clue.

My thoughts so far:

the can was always empty and Jessica somehow didn’t notice when she bought it

a thirsty poltergeist

a new side-effect of Covid (I mean, they’re all so weird anyway, why not this?)

Any ideas?

 

A blog of few words…

Posted on by inkbiotic

IMG_20190815_120556
From underneath a weeping willow

Sorry I’ve not been around for a few days, I’ll do some catching up on my blog reading in a minute. I hope you’ve all been keeping out of mischief; or in mischief, if that’s your thing. I spent the weekend finishing a draft of the book I’m writing, oh and watching the film Us it was great.

Today our robot mower was causing trouble, although that’s not so much Momo’s fault as Mike stirring up trouble because he thinks Momo is trying to take his job. Last week Mike set up the sprinkler in the bit of lawn being mowed to get Momo to explode (didn’t work), and then today he was trying to grass up (pun!) the mower to management. I over heard this conversation between a boss and Mike:

‘Look, Momo has done a terrible job,’ said Mike. ‘It’s killed that lawn. I’d be sent home if I did that.’

‘It’s fine, it looks fine,’ said the boss.

‘And it’s always sitting around, doing nothing for hours on end,’ said Mike.

‘It’s his lunchbreak, he’s allowed a break.’

‘And it keeps vaping on the job!’

Poor old Momo.

Clickbait alert: This picture is misleading…

Posted on by inkbiotic

momo

We spent lunch bickering over what to call Robomo. I suggested Lionel, while management liked Rob, but Dan clinched it by coming out with Momo.

In the afternoon, Jessica and I were working in a garden on a small side street. She was crossing the road to get to the van, when a Mercedes whizzed around the corner. She jumped out the way just in time. The driver stopped, wound down the window, and said cheerily,

‘Oh, don’t worry, I wouldn’t run you over, you do such a good job. The garden looks lovely!’

I feel sorry for all the people crossing the road who don’t do such a good job.

The rise of the robots

Posted on by inkbiotic

job 2

‘It’s the beginning of the end!’ wailed Mike. ‘You see, we’ll all be gone by Christmas. Unemployed!’

We all perked up at the thought.

Anyway, you’re wondering what’s happened to distress the usually calm and collected Mike. Our benevolent rulers have bought a robotic lawnmower. (Why the designers chose that name and not robomo, I can’t imagine.) Since Mike is our main mower, and as the oldest, gets a bit paranoid about losing his job (he has no need to, everyone loves him and our place of work would decay to a soulless husk within weeks without him) he sees the robomo as a direct threat.

‘Look at him, evil, lurking,’ said Mike as the happy little robot trundled along. The rest of us started making plans for googly eyes or deely boppers to decorate our new robot colleague, while Mike made plans for a terrible accident to occur. Our boss kindly informed Mike that this robot is not seen as a replacement, but as a way to free up our time for other gardening, but Mike isn’t convinced.

‘This is how it starts!’ he whispered to me.

Have any of you had to worry about automation taking your job?

When computers first started to get clever enough to do our jobs, they promised us a life filled with leisure instead of work. I don’t why that suddenly became Humans, you are obsolete! Keep out the way and starve quietly!

Hey la day la the mice are back

Posted on by inkbiotic

5y6LD37G6W

No pressure.

The mice are back, so Mike spent lunchbreak with his feet up on the bench shouting. But look at the little fella, isn’t he just adorbs! The other two were quite cute too, although Mike’s sinister claim that they’ll ‘Get bigger, they start out all small, but they’ll get bigger,’ may lead to issues over space.

mousey 2
Lurking mouse

mousey
Bold mouse

 

Wisdom, trolls and mud

Posted on by inkbiotic

A30 (2)

Now this is almost like a real inspirational poster, although I’d say exercise and doctors are also useful in the pursuit of health.

London today was soggy. It was ok, I have waterproofs, but the biggest problem was trying to not to destroy the squeaky cleanness of the messroom when I was coated in mud. And the toilets in the new block are too small, which means just getting past the concertina door meant I painted the wall with a layer of mud from my coat. Then I’d turn around to clean it up and decorate the other wall behind me. And everything I touched, from bog roll to door to sink taps became streaked with brown, I felt like a shitty Midas.

When we were getting ready to go home, Mike said to Dan, now you need to find an umbrella you can hold over me so I don’t get wet. I looked at him quizzically and he said,

‘You wouldn’t understand. It’s a man thing.’

Yes, he’s definitely trolling me.

Word of the day: limicolous – living in mud

It’s a man-thing

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

3Ee3kWk9e0

Today I was in the kitchen with Dan and Mike walked in and began to excitedly punch him on the shoulder, saying, ‘Good night then, was it? Eh?’

And Dan started laughing as if they shared some exciting secret.

I’m nosy as all fuck, so I started whining, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ (I have an older brother, growing up I spent a lot of time left out, I don’t like it).

‘You’re not allowed to know. Me and Dan talk about things, secret things,’ said Mike, with that expression kids get when they’ve found something, but it’s theirs and they don’t want you to see it.

‘What things? Why don’t you tell me?’ I asked, because I have no real dignity.

‘Man things,’ said Mike smugly.

We all went outside and sat in our new bench area, but Mike hadn’t finished gloating, he wanted to make sure Jessica (who was sitting out there, happily smoking a cigarette) understood too.

‘See, you think that the communication ends at four when we all go home, but me and Dan, we carry on, that’s just the beginning.’

‘Carry on what?’ said Jessica, politely feigning interest.

‘Man things,’ said Mike, again, proudly.

‘Uh huh,’ said Jessica (she’s so much cooler than me)

‘But what are man things?’ I asked.

‘You know, manly,’ said Mike.

‘Tell me!’ I wailed.

‘Well, for a start we talk on WhatsApp,’ said Mike.

‘WhatsApp?’ I said, this wasn’t quite the wrestling-pigs-and-smashing-cars manly thing I’d imagined. ‘What about?’

‘We send each other selfies!’ said Mike.

‘Selfies,’ I repeat.

‘Yeah, Dan will tell me he’s going out, and then he’ll send me a picture of the shirt he’s wearing and ask me if it looks good.’

‘So you WhatsApp each other pictures of your outfits?’ I ask. ‘That’s your manly thing?’

‘And Mike sends me back pictures of his clothes too,’ added Dan, who’d been chuckling quite a bit, ‘look!’ and held up his phone that showed Mike in a flower patterned shirt and an inept duck face.

‘See?’ said Mike. ‘Man things!’

I think he may be trolling me.

Word of the day: phallocrat – one who assumes the naturality of male dominance