Boss Radio

Yesterday I woke up laughing like a drain. 'What a perfect catchphrase that would make' I thought. In my head I had the fast fading picture of a black and white movie showing the back of a man wearing an officer's style WWI great-coat standing in front of a table. 'I must remember that' I thought.

I've forgotten. It's gorn. Departed like it was never there. One word.

The important word.

I can't even remember why it was so funny, only that it set my day off to the best possible start.

Which was just as well because when I got to the bathroom I heard something going drip-drip-drip. It was coming from the airing cupboard. Yup. Sure enough. Everything down the left hand side of the cupboard was drenched. Soaked to the cloth equivalent of bone.

First things first. I turned off the water, it only seems like days since the last time I turned it back on. Then I bagged up all the wet blankets, sheets, clothes, towels, odd socks, and various other sundries and quickly discovered just how much weight water adds to the proceedings, so I split the load between 4 bags and went downstairs where I began hanging them out on our little revolving drying frame. It quickly became obvious that not only had it only enough room for a tiny portion of the wet stuff, but that it would probably suffer lasting damage if I attempted it, so I made a quick call to my sister who told me to drive down to her place of work and she'd give me the keys to her place where I could go and use their high speed spin and their clothes drier.

The number of times she's told us to get a drier and I keep saying 'What? With all this global warming going on?'. I'm beginning to see her point.

Amazingly we managed to do nearly all the drying before she and her husband arrived home and by the time we left we only had half a bag of still wet stuff to dry out.

Today I was going to put everything back into the airing cupboard and set up a drying frame by the fire for the oddments left over, but there was a problem. It had been dripping again.

I clambered up and inspected where I figured the water was coming from, but it didn't even seem to be damp up there.

Mysteries. I hate mysteries. As I balanced there with one foot on the bathroom cabinet and one of the heater the thermostat clicked on again.

Within moments water was running out of the nut that connects the overflow pipe to the hot water tank. I gave it a twist, it was completely loose so I tightened it up as far as it would go, nearly burning my fingers off in the process, and all that happened was that the hot water now ran out of the back of the nut instead of the front of it.

So, off with the heater and off with the water again. Now I'm sitting here trying to think over all the probable causes for the leak, and all I can think of is "What the heck was that word in the punchline of my dream?"

So, as usual Oscar fever is upon us, awards are going to be handed out, people are going to cry in front of thousands of other people while millions more watch them on TV.

And I find myself with a question.

Since the ancestors of the present day citizens of the USA went to so much trouble to rid themselves of the yolk of British rule, why are they so danged fascinated by our royal family? They come over here and queue up to watch the changing of the guard, wait in line for a quick glimpse at the crown jewels, go and stand in front of Buckingham Palace, take the tour of Windsor, and then go home and give out awards to people who play British royalty in the movies.

Look, there's pretty much no one in England who can't do an impression of either the queen, the prince of Wales, or that gangly Greek guy that the queen's married to. The odds on Helen Mirren winning an Oscar for her portrayal of the queen have just got so rubbish that bookies are refusing to take any more bets on her. Why? She's playing the queen, it's not that difficult.

We've got a couple of guys over here who can do almost perfect renditions of Dubya, but we're not giving them awards for it.

Gosh, I'm just so surprised. The fashion industry has decided not to force it's members to drop size zero models, but instead to ask them to adhere to a non-binding agreement that they won't use girls who aren't naturally skinny. That'll work of course because businesses have a very good history of adhering to none binding agreements, and impressionable young ladies will look at these naturally stick like beings and think to themselves "Oh well, she's just born like that, no need for me to starve myself into a shunken old prune in a pointless effort to get myself down to that size".

Or not.

My sister has her own theory about these models that you can't see if they stand sideways. She says clothes designers are all gay and they're actually designing clothes for young boys. My mum, who used to work in the biz, or at least, on it's extemities, balks a little at that, although she accepts that some of them did seem a little gay now you come to mention it. Me, I wouldn't know. I'd like to say that I have several gay friends but alas I have no way of knowing, just as I don't know the religion of all my friends (I can just about tell the black ones from the white ones though, I'm not completely out of it).

What I do know is that I'm a bloke. According to the rules of nature I'm supposed to dress to impress girls, and they're supposed to do the same, this, apparently, is how we get to procreate. Just like the birds and the bees. I also know that I don't like girls who look like stick-insects. I like boobies. And legs. I like boobies and legs. Some guys it would seem like big butts. I have nothing against big butts (The occasional frottage aside...), but I tend to look elsewhere when surveying a future procreational partner. I look for the boobies, then maybe the legs. Alright, the legs as well. In return I hope the young lady in question is admiring my manly physique and general resemblance to Clint Eastwood (This only works when I wear my corrective shirt), also the hypnotically rhythmic way in which my legs thrash in time with the music when I take a guitar solo.

When sharing notes (No pun intended) with my fellow blokes it seems that we are remarkably in concurrence. The ideal body shape is the one possessed by Marilyn Monroe when she managed the female Holy grail of 36-24-36. Jayne Mansfield was OK, as was Jayne Russell, no one complains about getting too much of a good thing, but Monroe is still, after all these years, the ideal.

Meanwhile back in the real world, no one is 36-24-36 without having to misuse their body almost as badly as the dimwits who starve themselves down to size 0, so after sobering up (Well, not me ladies, I don't drink. Now you fancy me, don't you?) we agree that as long as a girl has legs and boobies (And in some cases a butt), then that's good enough. To be honest, most of us have no idea what we find attractive about the opposite sex. According to a BBC questionaire I'm exceedingly unusual in genuinely liking funny girls. It's not just a GSOH to me, I like girls that can make me laugh faster than I can make them laugh, and when you consider that all I have to do to achieve this Nirvana is to take my shirt off... Well I leave it to your imagination...

Of course, there's a problem, even there. It's my sense of humour. I just don't go for vicars telling knob jokes, so that's Dawn French-alikes out of the window, in fact I don't like sexual organ jokes in general, so that's Jennifer Saunders gone too. I'm not so wild about better musicians than me either, so I guess Victoria Wood is heading for the door. I'm turning into Simon Cowell here. There must be someone...

Rita Rudner. She's nice, got just the right sensahumour and rich into the bargain. I think I could settle down and live happily ever after with Rita Ruddner.

If only she had bigger boobs...

Not that that's much of a surprise, a lot of mountains have moose on them, but these mooses have one particular peculiar foible.

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