phew!! hog’s breath

“Hogs Breath is really shit!”

My ears pricked up but the aroma of a hogs breath infused my senses.

“Really shit?” A vision of a penned hog standing fecaly, whilst her free range mate waded fetlock deep in shit gave a sort of piquancy to its “really shit.”

“The potato jacket was like leather,couldn’t hardly cut it, the guts of the potato had been taken out and mashed and the squashed back in to the skin with sour cream.”

An elegant description of a commercial way to present mash.

“And the veggies, well they might as well been served raw!”

“The Poor Little Tyke [PLT] could hardly eat ’em.”

And so commenced a litany of familial and generational MS, Parkinson’s etc to which I tuned out.

PLT was apparently a screech when he got his first electric wheelchair, haring out of the physio area when he had been told to slow down. He couldn’t wait to get back to the 40 square house his parents had provided when he got his payout.

“What payout? I wondered

“They are spending his money like it’s going outta fashion. Trips here and there, the house but it’s really his money,” I heard.

Clunk, my head hurt. What on earth have we done I thought. Give money to kids to look after kids. I could sense my blood starting to boil and that this guardianship of another’s money pot leads to all sorts of compromises.Sure as I heard there were minuscule reasons for the trips associated with PLT’s condition, a quack diagnosis here another one there. I particularly liked the way there were little fund raisers held when there was already funds available.

Ah well we sympathise with the parents, well don’t we ? Anyway when the money’s gone and PLT is old there’ll be a pension, won’t there?

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Duck’s Nuts

“She’s like my city mum'”

A city mum?

“Don’t get me wrong, I love my mum, but this eccentric old lady has been the brawn of our outfit, got my house to the state its in now, ”

Her friend, her city mum had revealed that her terminal cancer would not be resisted by chemo therapy, that doctor-vain attempt to create cancer heroes for family and loved ones. We seem to expect this. She had decided to live life to its full, and let nature take its course. This bold decision had rocked my friend.

We expect cancerous people to fight for their life with chemo etc., for us, to give us the sense that they are ‘battling’ and gaining days, weeks or even years during which we can rally round the ‘victim’. All the time though we are glad it’s not us. Maybe we do the faulty odds calculation, that if they are the one in whatever chance then based on the odds we must be one in two times whatever better off. It’s the same subconscious miscalculation that we might for example win at the poker machines or win the lotto.

Luck or bad luck comes in many forms. For example take her painter.

The painter had plunged 4 meters from his scaffold while painting her house yesterday and luckily a guy repairing his roof on the low house behind hers, raced to his aid and untangled the painter from his collapsed ladder. The painter was bruised but otherwise unharmed, ready to paint the next day.

“Damn, my house is just a day short of being paint finished and today it’s raining. Would have been the duck’s nuts to have it completed for my two year anniversary of being here. It’s not the place I bought back then!”

The duck’s nuts? It had been a long time since I’d heard that expression.  ” The duck’s nuts”, curious I interrogated the web and came on all manner of wanna be definitions, certainly way beyond what I thought.

Got me to wondering etymologically though. There isn’t really a standard now, a definition which stands the test of time. Time seems to have shrunk. The test of time referred to could be as long as the time between washes of a sloganeering tee shirt. Or even shorter.

I read through the definitions of the duck’s nuts, taking for her meaning that which I first inter-netted, rather than other more dubious urban definitions found.

Anyway, i’m sure the painting will be swell when the painter can once again mount his scaffold.

In fact it might even be , “the duck’s nuts”

Blocked !

I’m blocked.

A refusal of service.

What have I done wrong. in this techno age we still feel the rejection of being blocked. Whilst the rational mind says “There’s an explanation for this” my mammalian brain says threat.

“Blocked”, why should I be? Its an insult to me, my integrity.

Try as I might the credit card won’t take a transaction. I only bought the dash thing to book airfares on and get some points. Bugger.

Eventually I ring the department responsible, preferring to speak to a person, not a machine. Though the conversation is scripted its pleasant enough. I’ve been refused because of a $28.69 transaction in Canada, two months ago. Golly, blocked?

I cant find the receipt and ring off. Surely the rigmarole off getting a new card is to be avoided. It all takes time, and I need to book now.

Then i realize that my emails might be of use here. That never deleted delete box.

I ring off. The box gets a bashing and there it is, a transaction for the amount on the days in question.

I ring back and within moments am restored as a card user.

Why do I somehow feel validated? 

I am grateful that some algorithm has observed that which an army of folk would have little chance of picking.

I am blocked but grateful.