The One With The Poo (ED! #05)

As I sit in front of this computer, tissues to left of me, vapo-rub to right of me, I note with some horror that my very own page has laid neglected for exactly 21 days!

A grevious error, and one which I must immediately put right. But first I must apply this stinky greasy stuff to my body, so please look away for a moment...

Ah, that's better. Now I know how Odo felt in DS9 tonight. Did you see it? Nah, doesn't matter.

The thing with vaporub is that you never know just how much to apply. Having just rubbed myself silly with a liberal quantity of the mixture I'm currently getting a kind of "one sinex up each nostril" kind of scent, which I'm sure is what is required here.

This will certainly make me popular in the office tomorrow. I wonder if anyone will ask me out. Hm, on an unrelated note, I assume the fumes this stuff gives off aren't a fire hazard? Naah, they wouldn't sell this stuff if it wasn't safe.

Well, anyway, having spent the best part of 3 and a half days in bed, I find myself well stocked with thoughts and musings for this page. Why, this could keep me going up to Christmas!

One thing happened this morning which hit me in the face and made me say YES, this is what I'll be writing about today.

It was a schools programme on BBC2. Starring a woman and that famous acting doggie, Pippin.

It was a very odd show - I only happened to crash into it after having surfed through the best part of 34 cable channels and tried the terrestrials.

I should have known what I was in for when the screen filled with a picture of a pristine porcelain toilet, and the word 'sewage' was spelled out in those learn-to-read big curvy back-to-school type letters. It was a programme all about sewage, yes.

Now forgive me if I throw a CJ here, but when I went to school, we weren't told about sewage, and we certainly didn't have schools programmes telling us what was what!

Anyway, the makers of this bizarre schools programme decided that the best way to illustrate exactly how sewage works was for the amazing acting dog Pippin to .. erm.. do his doggie doo in the garden. Then we'd follow its progress through the sewage system.

How does doggy doo become sewage? Well, sit back and be as informed as I became this morning.

Pippin's business was discovered by his bouncy lady minder (I didn't catch her name) who squealed "Oh Pippin! You've done a poo!" upon sighting the doggy's contribution to the education process in the garden.

Now I'm 24 and I thought that line was hilarious. Had I been between 6 and 12 and watching this in school I would lay money that I would still be laughing at it, even now!

Anyway, Mrs Bouncy ran indoors, came back out decked out in full yellow marigolds and with a little plastic bag, in which she carefully picked up the doggy doo and ran indoors with it.

For the briefest flash of a second it crossed my mind that it looked as if she was collecting these items, but no.

Into the bathroom we go, and Mrs B unwraps the doo from the plastic bag, and flushes it.

You'll note that she didn't do what everyone else would have done and flushed the bag as well. (Presumably the water board would have been most upset, had she done so.)

Anyway, this exercise in doggy hygiene set the premise for us tracking exactly where sewage goes once it has left the toilet.

And it was fascinating stuff. I can tell you're interested. Oh go on, admit it!

Mrs B then went a-walking Pippin in the park where she came across two gentlemen tending to a manhole.

"Can I have a look down your sewer?" she says. "Well you're not allowed down there but I suppose if you really want to we can let you have a look around", says Mr Drainage.

I swear I'm not making this up.

So down the sewer she goes (leaving Pippin above ground), and more education was delivered..

And very nice the sewers were too. But the learning didn't stop there, because there was still the sewage processing plant to visit! This was all done above ground, and Mrs B took Pippin with her.

He probably wasn't very interested, but Pippin's a professional dog and this was a job, which is more than most doggies his age have.

Anyway, this led to the second classic line of the morning: "Can you see your poo yet, Pippin?"

Pippin, naturally, shook his head.

If dogs could talk, (and I understand from watching 'Wishbone' that there are more advanced models of dog which do this) he would probably have said something like "Don't be so silly you daft old woman. And why are you so interested in my poo anyway?"

I just cannot imagine what the reaction to lines like this would have been in a real life classroom, where this programme was meant for!

Please accept my apologies if I've just put you off your kebabs or other evening meal, by the way. It's occured to me that this isn't the most savoury subject in the world.

Had I brought this up at the dinner table in front of my mother I don't think she'd have been at all impressed. But that's the younger generation for you.

So, that's how I spent my morning in bed. Bet you're glad you asked now!

Burgers For Less (ED! #04)

Wow, has it really been a week since I last wrote this? Amazing how time flies.. It's clearly a memory thing. I've been at the beef again, you see.

Actually it was last Thursday, an event I would ordinarily have forgotten, but I know this to be so because I took my own advice as featured in last week's Ed and started carrying around a notebook with me. And I made notes of the event, so interesting it was.

It's kind of like the famous Monopoly Community Chest card Bank Makes Error In Your Favour.

In this case, Burger shop makes error in your favour. Or to be precise, two errors.

Picture the scene: A man walks into a burger shop, asks for a BigBurger meal. There is method to his beef-induced madness, for the BigBurger is on special this week, a saving of about 65p.

However, the burger emporium has a problem - it cannot vend the requisite soft drink with the BigBurger meal as "the machine is bust".

Hence, customer is offered non-soft drink of his choice from the menu, and in this instance he selects a milkshake.

Another saving! Everyone knows that milkshakes are more expensive because they're not almost 99.99% water. This therefore costs extra.

Having secured two savings in one purchase, the customer is happy, but he is in for a surprise when he actually comes to eat his BigBurger, because he's actually been given a BigBigBurger by mistake.

Considering that the regular BigBurger is on special but its larger brother is not, this constitutes a very large saving - almost £1.30, before you even think about the difference between a soft drink and a hard drink. (i.e. a milkshake)

Ben Elton was absolutely right when he said that you need an industrial vacuum pump to actually get burger milkshakes (not literally) up the straw..

Still, last Thursday I was most definitely in the money, having paid about £3.15 for something worth at least 50% more.

And I was so excited that I wrote it down.. Is that sad? No, what's sad is that I feel the need to tell you all about this!

I really must stop eating burgers quite so much, though. Even if there is no risk of catching Mad MooCow Disease, it can't be good for you.

Luckily my local burger emporium is actually helping me to stay away - because every time I go in they're playing Olivia Newton John songs. They obviously only have one tape.

It's funny though, I never really even considered touching burgers while I was a kid.. it all changed one Christmas.

One lunchtime, after a particularly heavy session of playing Santa to lots of small children (Did I ever mention I'd done that?) I took the easy way out and tentatively bought my first cheeseburger as lunch.

Well, I had just turned 16, so I felt duty bound to start not eating properly.

And it was all downhill from there. I suppose in a few years time I'll be sampling these "kebabs" that everyone goes on about.. I wonder what animal that meat IS?

Ed, Forgetful Member Of The Press (ED! #03)

An interesting thing happened to me on the bus the other morning..

A lady got on, sat down, spotted her friend and started chatting. It wasn't exactly chatting, it was more shouting, really. A fascinating discussion about a new job this lady had got in some bakery, and how unhygenic the working practices were.

"Don't tell anyone I said this," she boomed to her friend (and everyone else on the bus), "or I'll get in trouble."

Admittedly I did miss some of the finer points of the conversation, but I managed to catch most of it, even over the Simon Mayo show which I was trying to listen to at the time on my walkman.

Being the suspicious type that I am, for some reason I just thought that the whole thing wasn't on the level. If it was really that secret why were they both shouting at each other about it? Perhaps a plan to smear the local bakery in the minds of the bus-riding public?

I see conspiracies wherever I go, I'm just too cynical.

It did actually cross my mind that it would have been rather stylish to whip a reporter's notebook out of my pocket and approach the parties pretending to be a journalist from the daily megaphone, or something.

Saying "Hello, I'm from Paramount Text" would be even more cool, but I suspect would usually result in a response like "Eh? What?"

I always thought it'd be rather cool to keep a trilby hat and a card with the word "PRESS" in big letters on it about my person for such occasions, but sadly it wouldn't fit in my pocket..

I do need to carry a notebook or something around with me though - I keep telling myself I must put one in my pocket. I think of so many things on the bus and while out and about, and just forget them again. The number of times I've thought "Must write about that in Ed!"..

I do seriously wonder if I'm losing my mind sometimes, though.. The amount of things that I just completely forget is incredible.

Perhaps it's the fast-moving high-flying media type lifestyle which I lead.. No, it won't be that. Chance would be a fine thing.

Thinking of things I've forgotten reminds me of an amusing thing which happened to me a few years ago. Perhaps I'll recite it in a future edition.. If I don't forget!