The Official Nonsense Thread

[Minty]

Steeling myself up to check out the garden. We appear to have so many slugs it's like some slug horror movie. Last night it was ten that got dumped in the gardening bin, previous night seven.

I thought blackbirds were meant to love those things, their version of jelly snakes. But no, the lazy sods would sooner raid next doors bird table than bother going through the flowerbeds & help themselves to all the slugs they can eat.

bar stewards.

Yesterday, someone outside one of the neighbours was having trouble fitting a large extending ladder on top of his van, so gave him a hand getting the bugger lifted & tied onto the rack. The ladder had been loaned to his mate (one of the neighbours) for the day having been borrowed from his bosses house without his knowledge: he looked after the maintenance side while his boss & their family were away on holiday (which meant nothing more than checking once a day around the place).

The neighbour he'd loaned it to was nowhere to be seen, only his wife watching from the window like someone's mutt looking for cars to bark at. I'd a feeling the neighbour in question may have done himself a mischief during his attempts at DIY, but I was too polite to ask, so I asked the guy if he was going to need help with replacing the ladder back up at "the big hoose" as he called it.

The place proved to be a big old manor house up in the hills, part of what looked like a series of properties that were part of an agricultural manor house complex now divided into three individual large plots surrounded by a large greystone wall. The motorised gates were locked over & the neighbour's mate had forgotten to bring the auto keys to open them with, but he said we could nick in the entrance driveway of one of the other houses & scramble over the small wall (only knee length). I was frightened to touch said wall as it looked ready to topple over at any time.

But first we need to get the ladder over the long wall directly into the boss's house, which was going smoothly enough until it toppled over the other side with enough racket to wake the dead.

Going round through the neighbour's driveway next, I decided to leap over the stone wall I didn't trust rather than risk putting any weight on it, & discovered the hard way it was a bigger drop on the other side. I only just managed to get away with not twisting an ankle.

It turned out the "housekeeper" (who does nothing more than come over to dust & hoover the place once a day but acted like she was the estate factor) was there with some of her family & friends - including three teenage daughters with enough warpaint on them to recoat a house & what I think were sons trying to be daughters. Gok Wan has a lot to answer for in my book.

They'd decided to use the bosses front lawn to have themselves a little garden party, with a buffet and "champers" (probably only supermarket fizzy wine!) & one of the sons or boyfriends or whatever they were pratting about with a camcorder than looked more like the sort BBC cameraman used to film some civil war.

Needless to say, she was a bit put out when the "handyman" & "his trainee" (me) turned up. We got the full Hyacinth Bucket routine off the old cow as we retrieved the ladder & replaced it onto its catches, much to the amusement of her Hooray Henry family.

Once finished, the guy told me this wasn't the first time she'd done this in all probability, but was the first time she'd been caught out. None of the bosses neighbours had much to do with each other as he was so often away (should he really have been telling this to a complete stranger that for all he knew could have been the local burglar?), so when the cat's away the mice would play.

He told me to head back to the van as he needed to check something in the house first. Whatever. I'd no choice this time but to clamber over the wee wall of the neighbour to get back out (which as I was wearing shorts has left my legs scraped to buggery), & was about to leave the drive when a pompous voice behind me said, "What are you doing on MY property?".

I turned around to find this fat Penfold lookalike, one hand on his hip like some middle aged rent-boy touting for trade. I explained to him we'd been locked out of accessing the main property as we'd items to deliver. He now started demanding to know what I & "those other people" (meaning the housekeeper & her team) were up to.
When it's so hot your brain is melting, you tend not to think things through, & as this guy was getting up my nose

The conversation went something like this.

"They're shooting a porno."

"WHAT?"

"A porno. Must be a couple of them they're doing coz we'd extra memory cards to deliver & a few other bits. Why d'you think they've all they young 'uns with them?"

"I'M GOING TO CALL THE POLICE!"

"Aye, good luck tae you chief. They're on private property in the middle of nowhere. Sort of place you'd expect a scuddy to get shot."

Now swallowing the bait, he started looking for me to say I was only kidding.

"Is is all some sort of a joke? Mrs McFee [not her real name!] is involved in this kind of - of - ."

"Takes all sorts." I shrugged, "Suppose that's how she can afford that big car on only a cleaning job. Nothing tae do with me, pal. I'm just helping dump stuff off. You may as well left the dafties get on with it. Sooner they're finished, sooner they're away."

"We'll soon see about THAT!" he said, blundered over the wall & waddled off stroppily in the direction of the bosses lawn; passing my now returning neighbour's mate, who asked me what was up & I said "nothing, he was just being nosy". I told him the truth when we were half way back to town. He almost crashed the van.

I told him if the bitchy housekeeper tried getting him into bother with his boss over the ladders, he could now land her in it over the party as the neighbour was now witness to her & all her brood using his property without permission.

"I had YOU as my witness!"

"Aye, someone your boss doesnae know from Adam & wouldn't believe. But he'll believe his next door neighbour confirm she had a whole squad up there on his front lawn having a party & he'd had a set to with them because he thought they were shooting a scuddy!"

"You're ****ing dangerous to know, d'ya know that?!"
Can you believe after all that he never even thanked me for helping him with the ladder when he dropped me off? Some people!