David Hadley's Blog, page 85

How To Do The Sex When You Are Old And Knackered

At least, we had the custard ready. Even so, she was somewhat reluctant to disrobe fully before the apple crumble was in the dish. Still, once we had the hang of the instructions it all went as well as we expected. Perhaps next time will be even better, especially if we remember to warm the spoons first.

Still, in our product review on the website, we will be giving the full five stars to this instructional DVD. Personally, I have to say How To Do The Sex When You Are Old And Knackered is one of the best – if not the best – aids we have… er… come across in our attempt to bring a little of the magic – and a great deal more custard – back into our sex life.

Such that it was before this enlightening DVD entered our lives.

Up until the release of this brand new sex instruction DVD by the renowned Austria sexologist couple, Her Doctor Hans Alloverher, and his wife, Labia Moistgusset, our tin of custard powder was rapidly approaching its Best Before date. Furthermore, it has been a long time since we had the spoons out for anything other than ordinary desserts and puddings .

As for apple crumble, we had long since stopped exploring the erotic possibilities of it and similar desert for many years albeit, not through design, more by accident.

After all, there comes a time in man a couple’s life together when the sexual attraction of the garden shed and the erotic possibilities of knitting loom larger in the respective lives of that couple.

Up until we sat and watched this DVD together, it was a very long time indeed since I last showed my wife my dibber and even longer since she had measured me for a woolly jumper.

Although, to be fair, a quiet Saturday night in with a curry, a DVD and a glass or two of wine had sometimes led to us cuddling up on the sofa. Often with the lights down low and the Ikea catalogue open on our laps. Even that had become more infrequent of late. Both of us see that though as something more of a last resort when there was nothing good on the telly – which as it was a Saturday night – was more often than not.

It had reached such a crisis point, however, that both of us were – unbeknown to the other – seriously contemplating flannel nightwear. I for the first time in my adult life was now regarding pyjamas not as something ridiculous but as possibly being quite comfy in bed. Even worse, the wife had been searching websites for a nice warm nightie, when she happened on an advert for this DVD. On a romantic whim, she ordered it and our lives have not been the same since. Tomorrow we shall try its recipe for lemon meringue sixty-nine; I just hope we are both up to it.

 

This Was My World

There was a time when I knew the words to use. I knew too how to make the gestures that took hold of the fabric of this world and twisted it into new shapes. I knew the secrets that underlie this world and I knew how to use them and turn them to bring about my desires.

Now though, I have forgotten so much.

I cannot remember the words and my hands can no longer shape the air. The secrets under the world we call reality are lost to me. I no longer even know where to find them, not any more.

There was a time – it seems long ago now – when this world was full of possibilities to me. I could use my power to turn it all and shape it all. It was true too, that the more I used those powers the more they grew.

Until I held this world in the palm of my hand.

Kings cowered before me. Emperors offered me everything from gold to land to their own daughters, just for a favourable glance from me. By shaping reality, I shaped their worlds, created and destroyed kingdoms and empires wherever I willed.

This was my world.

Until I found the price for keeping it.

Not only did those kings and emperors shower me with gift and titles, fame and glory. Not only did those rulers send their daughters, wives, sisters, and noblewomen to me as gifts for me to use and discard at a whim. Not only did they offer me portions of a world I could already make my own with a word and gesture. They did far more than that.

They sent assassins and killers, armies and murderers against me. They tried to kill me in every way a man can die. Some even sent their daughters to me, with them either knowingly or unknowingly, carrying the means of my death from concealed daggers to poisoned bodies.

They, the rulers of this sorry world, needed me alive, but wanted me dead.

There came a time when I could trust no-one. A time when I spent the nights unable to sleep, listening for the assassins that hid inside every shadow around me. I was always listening for the sound of marching armies carried on every breeze that ruffled my curtains. I lay awake at night sniffing for the poisoned air that my latest princess breathed out as she lay sleeping on my bed. Tensed against the concealed dagger she held waiting for me to close my ever-watchful eyes.

There came a time when it was all too much and I could no longer have the energy to scheme, fight and conqueror.

So, I died.

At least, they all thought I did.

 

Nothing In My Hand

I took this nothingness in my hand, feeling the absence of it. There was potential there, I thought. Nothing has the possibility of becoming, of taking shape, of becoming the opposite of itself, of becoming something.

The palm can contain anything when the closed hand opens. Anything from a threat to a gift, from a poison dart to a lover’s rose. The hand can offer peace or start a war.

My hand could carry on holding on to this nothing, or I could turn that nothing into something. Then start a completely new world turning, there in the open palm of my hand.

I remembered then when my hand would bring gifts for her. Opening up under her widening eyes to bring her a world of her own and everything it could contain.

It was never enough for her though. I was a god to her and could bring her everything she ever wanted, including – in the end – her freedom from me. All gods know one day their creations will no longer need them and have to walk away.

She too, eventually walked away, not looking back. She left, leaving this world and all its gifts and wonders behind. She went looking for a world of her own. One for which she would need to thank no god for.

Little did she know, though, that like all such creatures she had, long before, took her own handful of nothing. Then from that, she’d created me.

 

Something for the Weekend – Free Kindle Humour: Choosing Headgear for Penguins

Choosing Headgear for Penguins

 Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

No doubt, you have been wondering over the years about what is the most suitable hat for the various breeds of penguin: such as a deerstalker for the King penguins, or whether emperor penguins should wear a top hat.

Perhaps you have also wondered if Napoleon wore a basque under his uniform at the battle of Waterloo and the role that lingerie played in history.

Maybe you have long puzzled over the role of the Stilton cavalry in the English Cheese war.

Possibly, you may have pondered who was The Greatest Prime Minister Great Britain Never Had, or who was The Fastest Jelly Baby Diversity Co-Ordinator In The West.

You could have even puzzled over The Fabled Lost Source of the Pork Scratching.

Choosing Headgear for Penguins is the book that answers all of these and many other questions you’ve never thought of asking. As well as much, much more about such diverse topics as: Celebrity Extreme Gardening, Eroticism and the Intellectuals, People Staring At Walls, Raiders Of The Lost Car Park, The Latest Celebrity Sex Scandal, The UK’s Leading Adult Film Male Superstar and Weasel Defusing.

Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

Some comments on David Hadley’s humour pieces:

“Bloody Hilarious!”

“The hamsters of doom. Dammit, that’s poetry. Well done”

“oh my god….I just about died laughing reading this…it’s genius! Pure genius! Especially the bit about the fluffy particle…too funny.”

“This made me laugh so much, tears came into my eyes….”

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 Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

A God’s Life

Some jobs are easier than others. Although sometimes, even those easy jobs do not go as well as those doing them would have hoped. Savoree did think that, on the whole, he did have quite a comfortable life and the job itself wasn’t that strenuous… normally. After all, as God of Cheese Biscuits he didn’t have much to do. Except, of course, the great Chocolate Finger and Gorgonzola heresy of the period the mortal historians now called the Cheese Dark Ages.

Mortals, Savoree insisted when the gods got together for their weekly meetings, were always the problem. However, as Shineething, the God of Alloy Wheels pointed out, without the mortals they would not be gods. Which for many of those around the table was something worth remembering. Especially when it came to submitting their expenses claims. After all, the God of Stapling Machines pointed out, even the rich countries couldn’t always provide the sacrifices their religion – whichever one it was – demanded of them.

Some gods, of course, much to Savoree’s annoyance spend a lot of time banging on about rationalising all the world’s religions into one. It would mean redundancies, but mainly among the gods of the smaller religions. Those small gods, though, had their defenders. Such as the Great Sky Lord Ickithing, whose twelve followers in one of the planet’s most inaccessible jungles worshipped him as the God of Unpleasant-Tasting Lizards. A role, he insisted, that was vital to retain the cultural diversity of the planet’s religions. This also, as it happens, led to him once having more bananas and virgins that the rest of the gods put together. The excess of virgins in the past was – Savoree believed – one of the main reasons why the Great Sky Lord now only had the twelve followers. Those sacrificed virgins, usually, being the slowest runners or those with a poor sense of direction who tried to flee as soon as they realised just what their virginity would entail. The remaining twelve followers, of course, were the descendants of those who’d discovered the best cure for virginity and went about taking care of it in that way, rendering themselves ineligible for sacrifice.

However, what really annoyed Savoree the most was that every time the god’s council broke for refreshment, it was always tea or coffee and sweet biscuits. At no time did they ever consider cheese biscuits, perhaps with a selection of fine wines.

He was considering a holy war… again.

And this time he would deploy the Stilton and water biscuits… whatever the consequences.

 

The Physics Of Clothing Space

Plebiscite Umlaut is probably the world’s leading theoretical physicist in the rather specialised field of Theoretical Clothing Space.

As we all know, matter is not as straightforward as ordinary everyday experience suggests. This is especially so when it comes to clothes. Heisenberg’s breakthrough with uncertainty theory showed it was either possible to know a particle’s position in space or its momentum, but not both. Umlaut was able to show that there is a similar effect with clothing. It is possible to either find clothes that fit or look reasonable (possibly even good) but never both.

As with the Uncertainty Principle, the Clothing Principle (as it became known) there are other incompatibilities between other variables in the clothing equations. For example, an item of clothing can either look good or be cheap, but not both, except in that special region of retail space known as the Sale. This region of retail space shares many of the properties of black holes. In particular, it is a region where all the normal rules of physics break down. Consequently, in Sale Space, the intense power of a Sale completely distorts the relationship between price and value. Of course, as we know, there are regions of space known as A Closing Down Sale where all clothing matter eventually disappears. In time, some other very short-lived retail experience replaces the shop that was once there, or it becomes a charity shop.

Umlaut also did much of the last century’s innovative work into some of the other great mysteries of clothing space. In particular, those times when something that looks good in the shop will look terrible when you get it home. He discovered that the retail region causes subtle variations in the gravitational waves in its locality. These distortions make clothes look good. Especially in the way the retail mirrors can bend and distort light, even – in some places – slowing it down, so that the clothes always look better there that they do outside retail space.

This retail light distortion effect, first postulated by Umlaut, also goes some way towards explaining why people will often buy clothes unsuited to them, perhaps by age, build or some other variable. Because the light travels at different speeds within the retail environment, and because of the distortion by the gravitational waves, people will often believe that some item of clothing ‘suits’ them. But this effect is completely nullified when they step out of the special retail field and into the rest of the universe where the normal rules of suitability apply.

As people now know, everything changes once the clothes are in the home. However, despite some tentative exploration of the field, Umlaut never really made any great discoveries about the nature of wardrobe space. He once claimed ‘God doesn’t know where that blue shirt is.’ However, since Umlaut’s time there have been many new and potentially exciting discoveries about the nature of wardrobe space, which we will explore here at a future date.

 

The Dangers Of Pickle Defusing

Budgerigar Happenstance is probably the UK’s leading exponent of the almost lost art of pickle defusing. After all, today’s mostly harmless range of mass-manufactured pickles are – usually – quite safe to approach. There is none of the danger, or the excitement, associated with approaching, say a pickled onion, as there was back when pickles were mainly homemade.

For, as recently as the late 1950s, it was necessary to evacuate Rotherham, for example, when a home-pickled onion went critical on a cold buffet plate at a Christmas Eve party.

It was then necessary to call out the country’s most famous pickle defuser, Budgerigar Happenstance to the scene to make the onion safe. It was also necessary for him safely dispose of a piece of pork pie that had become contaminated by its proximity to the pickled onion on the plate.

Of course, commercial pickling did not mean that there was no longer any need or demand for the pickle defusers. After all, there was a famous incident out on the newly built Wolverhampton ring road in the late 1960s. There, a commercial pickle lorry overturned when the lights turning green surprised the driver. This was an unusual occurrence on the Wolverhampton Ring Road then as it is now. The accident spread a piccalilli slick across all the lanes of the ring road, bringing traffic to even more of a halt than usual.

It was Budgerigar Happenstance’s job to make sure that the piccalilli didn’t – as it threatened to – overwhelm the town’s nascent anti-pickle defences. The town council built these anti-pickle defences after a particularly dangerous pickle-related incident during the earlier building of the Wulfrun Centre. There, construction workers on the site discovered an unopened jar of WWII-era pickled beetroot. As a precaution, they evacuated the whole town – for a five-mile radius – around the volatile jar.

It took three years to declare the area finally completely pickle free, during which time the building work was postponed and the police imposed a night-time curfew in the danger zone. The West Midlands police Anti-pickle squad was on full alert during the emergency.

However, despite a gherkin warning that turned out to be a false alarm, they discovered no more wartime pickles. Despite this, the local council made a promise to erect the UK’s first anti-pickle urban defences. They were – consequently – re-elected on a landslide poll with an almost unbelievable 27 people turning out to vote in a local election in one Wolverhampton ward. Despite – or because of – Wolves having a home match that night.

Budgerigar Happenstance retired from pickle defusing in the late 1980s. The Queen knighted him, on behalf of a grateful nation, for all he had done – often against overwhelming odds – to make this country safe from the dangers of over-volatile pickles. For that, we should always remember Budgerigar Happenstance and be grateful to him for making this country as relatively pickle-safe as it is today.

 

Ruling The World

Well, at the time she was somewhat quieter than normal, which was ominous, possibly even more ominous than when she is more voluble than normal.

Especially as normal is already quite dangerous enough.

However, such is the life of a secret superhero, or – indeed – super-villain. They do tend to have rather more stresses and strains in their lives, largely because of their secret identity. So it is only fair we allow them a certain amount of leeway, or – in her case – plenty of room.

After all, taking over the world does tend to take up a fairly large amount of the average super-villain’s time, especially all the paperwork. After all, every one of those minions does need to have their contract details sorted out.

Admittedly, a pension plan isn’t, usually, necessary for every single one of the horde of minions, is it? Especially not when the superheroes turn up and start making all those sudden – and often rather violent – compulsory redundancies. If only – as so many super-villains have bewailed – they spent more time on the minion training courses, teaching them to shoot straighter.

But, as always, you can’t get the staff.

Anyway, as she already had the world’s governments held to ransom, you would think she would consider taking it easy for a while. Perhaps even consider a weekend break, perhaps even a week’s holiday. But, as with the minion contracts, it is the lot of the super-villain to be controlling and unwilling to delegate. After all, they don’t scheme and plan for decades just so someone else can get a go at ruling the world while they take a fortnight’s well-deserved holiday in some luxury Caribbean hotel. After all, it is the ruling that is the point of it.

At least that is what she says.

Which is, of course, why she can be a bit… touchy at times, especially when things are not going her way. I suppose, should explanations be needed, that is why so many of those suave dinner-jacketed and wise-quipping secret agents, all with a licence to kill, have ended up in the piranha tank.

She really doesn’t like people interfering with her plans, especially not right at the last minute.

Still, as she often says, she does wonder why she bothers. After all, none of the governments of the world ever seems grateful for all the trouble she takes off their hands. What is more, she is quite good at getting things organised, getting things done. Although, sometimes with a bit more abrupt bloodshed than is usually the case at world political summits. But, then, who really notices if the odd politician or two gets eaten by piranhas? It is not as if we ever miss any of them, is it?

So, all in all then, it is best we just leave her to it and let her get on with it. After all, as most of us would say, if she does want to rule the world, then why not let her have a go? She can’t do much worse than the lot we have now, after all. So maybe we should let her get on with it. Only occasionally, if she looks as though she is in a good mood, offering to make her a nice cup of tea.

After all, she wouldn’t throw you to the piranhas just for that, would she?

On The Beat With The Grammar Police

But even if you do start a sentence with ‘but’, it is not the end of the world. After all, if you have a secure enough hideout the grammar police will not find you. Unless they hunt you down with the helicopters and sniffer dogs, of course. However, if you do something really beyond the pale like missing a vital apostrophe or using their instead of there, then there will be no place of safety for you.

After all, the grammar police do have quite a lot on their plates these days. Both figuratively as well as literary, being as it is such hungry work, especially with the counter-terrorist work against the Grocers Apostrophe Collective’s (GA’CS). The GA’CS increasing reign of terror is causing such chaos and terror throughout the civilised world. The Grammar Police have concerns about how the GA’CS spread their influence through their cunning use of the Internet and social media to amplify their attacks on the English Language. In particular, what the GA’CS calls its ‘dictatorial hegemonic control of language in all it’s usage’s’.

Not only that, there are increasing reports of apostrophes stolen from everyday possessives going about their normal day-to-day business. There is talk of them put up for sale on the black market abroad, but also talk that the various Grocers Collective’s Cadres are stockpiling apostrophes for an offensive offensive later in the year.

However, since the broadening of the EU there has been a flood of foreign words entering the country. Consequently, the grammar police claim to be at full stretch dealing with these foreign words, some of which seem to have no vowels at all. It has reached such a crisis point that they have had to call in specially trained officers from the Welsh force to help them cope.

Many forces do now say though that the spate of text-speak that once plagued the nation does seem to be dying out. Some credit this to the drop in alcohol consumption throughout the country, thus making it easier for people to manage to type whole words. However, others cite the growing prevalence of auto-correct options. Some in the Grammar Police that the increased use of social media, where social pressure does tend to steer impressionable youngsters away from that first step on the road to language crime that is text speak.

The grammar police however do warn the general public always to be vigilant and to keep a close eye on their possessives. Especially out in buy High Streets and other such places where the Grocers Collective’s operate. Any member of the public with any doubts or concerns should always call the Grammar Police. In particular, if they do spot anything that could be an offence against proper grammatical usage.

Mind how you go.

 

Taking The Blame

Possibly, it was too late, but then – in the end – who really knows? After all, as she said at the time… er….

Well, I’m sure she said something… possibly at great length. After all, it would be most unlike her not to have an opinion on such matters. Especially – as is usually the case – she can see both an unbroken evidence chain and a clear causal relationship between all the events. Evidence which clearly shows – to her at least – that it was all, indubitably, my fault… as usual.

After all, it does seem that she will eventually find a direct link – at least in her mind – between what has gone wrong and some error or omission on my part. After all, that does seem to be what I’m here for. She has – at the time of writing – yet to find a direct causal link between something I’ve done – or, more likely, not done – and the latest crisis in the Middle East. Or, between me and global warming, but it is surely only a matter of time.

Still, it was obvious to her that it was me forgetting to put the bins out in that particular week which led to the England team’s early exit from the last World Cup.

She is convinced it was my refusal to comment favourably and fulsomely on her latest clothing acquisitions at the time that led directly to the episode of devastating floods that have hit Britain in recent years. Although, the meteorological experts are yet to agree with her.

Furthermore, my complete lack of interest in the doings of her from up the road and the strange activities of him in number 22 obviously led to the banking crash and the world financial crisis. Although, to be fair she has yet to accuse me of being in any way responsible for Gordon Brown, but I feel that is only a matter of time. In particular, she has not as yet had time to continue her research into recent political history as there is something seriously afoot in one of the many TV programmes she is watching. But I do feel it is only a matter of time before damning evidence is found linking me to that disaster.

Nevertheless, she is positive that Tony Blair was almost entirely my fault. In addition, she feels I must bear the lion’s share of responsibility for Nick Clegg. I’ve also noticed her eyeing me suspiciously whenever Nigel Farage appears on the TV news, despite my protestations of innocence.

After all, in her eyes I still haven’t apologised enough for the extinction of the dodo. But it will be her birthday soon and I will then have a chance to make amends.

Possibly.