Guest Blogger's Blog
The Shawshank Reception
29/3/2010 @ 14:04
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From the mind of Graham Talbot:
"My neighbours Geoff and Linda, who are in their fifties, regularly have an elderly visitor who stays with them. I have never met the old lady, I just assume she is the mother of either Geoff or Linda and I only ever see her in their back garden from my upstairs window while I iron a shirt in the morning.
This morning, I was sat in my back garden eating my breakfast (bowl of porridge with banana and honey - yum yum) enjoying the brief moment of freedom I have before I drive to work, and I suddenly realised that the old lady was spying on me through a crack in the fence. I nearly fell of my chair! I thought I was alone - I had been practising my Morgan Freeman impression ("I like to think that the last thing to go through the Wardens brain - other than that bullet...") - I looked at her and smiled and she just stared back at me. How long had she been there? Why had she not gone away after realising she had been caught? I have a crazy old lady for a neighbour don't I! I am going to find her eating berries from my garden and smearing her own p*o on my kitchen window aren't I? The only other explanation for her creepy behaviour is she was transfixed by my Morgan Freeman impression and she wondered how the voice of an African American man in his sixties could come from a skinny white bloke ('of athletic build) in his thirties. I have to say I am doubtful - the impression is not quite perfected yet... but it is good.. very good."
Tell me more, tell me more...
19/3/2010 @ 15:25
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Last night I was in the changing rooms of Saffron Walden sports centre when a mobile phone ring tone started playing from one of the lockers. It was the song from the musical "Grease": “You’re the one that I want ooh ooh ooh.”
At that precise moment a young kid in a white judo outfit walked in to the changing rooms and some older kids immediately began to pick on him saying things like:
“Is that your ring-tone Olivia Newton Kung Fu!”
And:
“Go on Grease Lightning, give us a dance!”
The little kid protested that it wasn’t his phone but the older kids didn’t believe him, continuing with their taunts:
“Oi! Bruce Lee! Where’s your pink lady’s jacket?”
The ring tone blatantly didn’t belong to the kid but this didn’t seem to matter to the bullies so I did the honourable thing and I said “Guys, it’s my ring tone, the phone belongs to me!”
The older kids just mumbled something about me being 'a bandit' of some sort and then skulked out of the changing rooms.
I waited for the young Judo apprentice to thank me but instead he looked at me with disdain and said in a tiny squeaky voice “you bid saddo!” before running out of the door.
No more Good Samaritan me thinks.
I SAID! GRANDMA! WE F***IN' LOVE YOU!
16/3/2010 @ 15:16
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Graham Talbot on grandmas...I mean, he talks about them...he isn't actually ON grandmas, straddling them or something like that.....
"I had to drive my Grandmother to the station this morning - she is going to visit her brother in Norwich. She told me that they are having lunch in the Morrison’s Café near Norwich Castle.
The moment I heard those words leave my Grandmother's 82 year old lips my heart sank. All I could see was a grey cloud of swine flu floating above the regular shopping mall crowd of ‘daytime people’ who stop at the ‘caff’ for ‘a cuppa’ after spending their hard earned disability benefits on a ‘The Men of Hollyoaks’ calendar from Clinton Cards and a plastic model of a ‘Jousting Knight’ (dressed in Canary Yellow) from the Norwich Castle gift shop.
I asked if she had any other options and she said "Yes, there is also a Wetherspoons."
She does this. She goes for the wrong option every time. I can just imagine her going to a Wetherspoon’s and agreeing to the 'pint and a burger for £5' deal because it’s the only thing she can see on the chalk board, asking if she can leave the pint, and then paying an extra pound for the test tube of pink Aftershock beverage displayed on the counter next to the till.
I will actually be disappointed to hear if any part of my conjecture fails to come to fruition.
I guess my Grandmother isn’t in my good books at the moment. Nicky wanted a sewing machine and my Grandmother agreed to look out for one in the charity shop in which she works. Yesterday, she telephoned me to say that one had turned up. I drove straight down to the shop with Nicky who gave it the once over and she agreed to take it and also to meet the asking price of £15.00.
Everybody was happy, especially my Grandmother who likes to think that charity shops make the world go around. When Nicky got home she plugged in the sewing machine and it blew the fuse box. I think that maybe ‘a really nice person’ must have given the sewing machine away for a very goodreason – I also like to think that when the nice benefactor (whose gift has both blessed and short-fused my house) goes to heaven, St. Peter will abandon his game of swing-ball and rush over to greet my nemesis with a flying kung-fu kick to the throat.
So, this morning I told my Grandmother that the sewing machine wasn’t going to work out and that I was going to bring it back to the shop for a refund. To which she replied “we don’t do refunds, you will have to have a credit note.”
I don’t think I have ever been so excited! I was going to be the lucky recipient of a credit note from Thaxted’s very own Aladdin’s Cave. Just what was I going to buy? Some dead man’s pants maybe? Or, an Art Deco tin lunchbox that has been home to a toe-nail collection for over 80 years now. There must be whole mug-tree of half chewed plastic cups can buy, and still have money left over for a sh*t stained blouse. Better still, I think I’ll save the voucher until Christmas and then I can buy second hand gifts for my family, the sort of which they will have never seen before, or possibly have even imagined.
