Boss Radio

Somewhere before our time in this little abode, a previous occupant performed an act which probably seemed like a giant leap into the next century to him. He moved the Crapper from the end of the garden to the back of the house.

Now when it was raining you only had to run out of the side door, along the side of the house a little way and around the corner about two yards and through the door into the dryness where you could perform a wettie all in your own sweet time. The time was yours, the paper's free, enjoy yourself, there was no fee.

A little further into the future, probably following a major deluge (Of the meteorological kind...) someone (Else?) thought to themselves 'Stuff this for a game of cricket. If it means I remain dry I'm quite prepared to have to run through the house to the stairs, up the stairs, turn left, run through the bedroom, down the steps into the spare room, and through the spare room to get to the dungie' and proceded to install another of Mr. Crapper's inventions in the room overlooking the present clungie.

Being a dual-bog household proved a very satisfactory arrangement during the time when there were 5 of us living in the one house, particularly after I discovered the acoustic properties of the upstairs pooproom and started practicing the guitar in there.

Probably in order to get me out of there, dad decided to convert the outside brickhouse into open space, and not long after that mum decided it would be a good place to build a 'lean to' to store the bicycles in. The guy who did the job decided it would be a good idea to make it out of brick, wood, mortar and glass and did a splendid - if expensive - job of it considering it was just a store room, and when we bought a new freezer we moved the old one into the leanto (As we now referred to it) where it could be used as an overflow for the days when someone (Mentioning no names) got a little carried away with the instant meal element of the shopping.

As time went by we moved more and more stuff into the leanto, and once I'd discovered internet shopping it started to creak at the seams. My latest purchase was a bargain bagful of food for the cat. It was all nicely tinned with plenty of use-by time to go, so I pulled a few tins out and left the rest in the outhouse from where, about once a week, I would remove another batch of food.

This evening I realised that the cat food was once again running low and I groped my way in the gathering gloom to the leanto. As soon as I opened the door the smell hit me, it was just as though it had reverted to its previous incarnation after someone had eaten a particularly bad curry. The closer I got to the cat food the worse the smell got, and it was with some trepidation that I picked up a couple of six-packs. Sure enough, they were dripping with a foul smelling blackish substance. I carried them at arm's length out into the night and fetched a torch.

Typically the plastic holding the tins together was more reluctant then usual to open and I finally had to use scissors, at which point tins fell everywhere, and there it was... Two tins had burst their pull-tops and a mixture of mess and maggots was running out. I laid some paper out just inside the side door and put all the tins down on it so I could see how big the problem was.

Stupid move.

As soon as they saw the light the maggots were on their way. Thousands of them wriggling off in every direction. I grabbed the four corners of the paper and threw it into the waste bin outside, then I ran back in and started scooping up all the ones who'd escaped. I finally decided that I'd got them all and set to checking out the other tins. Several of them had maggots or mounds of baby maggots residing on them so I put them all back outside and washed them all down.

When I came back in the carpet appeared to be moving. I obviously hadn't caught all the maggots yet, some of them must have fallen off the underside of the tins when I picked them up.

I'm now fairly certain I've got every single maggot up, out, and into the bin, although I did toy with the idea of not putting any slug deterent down tonight, just let them in and hunt down any maggs I may have missed, but in the end I sprayed it anyway, and then, at last, washed my hands.

Suddenly I realised what Shakespear was getting at. Out! Out, damned pong! Who'd have thought the six pack could carry so much magg-mess? My hands stank worse than a Chinese wrestler's jockstrap cooked in chicken fat on a sultry day in a whore-house in Rangoon, in fact they smelt like a Chinese wrestler's maggot infested jockstrap cooked in maggot infested chicken fat on a sultry day in a maggot infested whore-house in Rangoon. On a maggot infested day. Even my special odour eliminating handwash was powerless. As I sit here typing I can still smell the stuff on my hands. Go on, take a deep breath, you'll probably smell it too. It's so powerful it could actually be transmitted electronically across the globe, defying all the laws of physics as we know them.

Go on. Take a sniff.

See?

Of all the creatures that might inherit the world after we've made it uninhabitable for us, it sends shivers down my spine to think that maggots will be amongst them.

I tell you. We have to do something about climate change!!