pull the other/any unsightly noise

pull the other

surely it's not news that democracy

is alive & kicking in modern Greece

or that the UK PM's phone was hacked

by a posh coke fiend on a butt of sack

not that a brat of the Bollinger pack

would call for a rag when his nose was blocked

or that Greeks would vote for early release

from a long bygone public spending spree

that German bankers still want their own back

though the roads to their summer homes aren't cracked

nor that Tories have been taking the wee

ever since they re-took the right to fleece

this just in guess what if the same old crock

of dealers ain't pulled again it's smile please

Chair Fart?

Available at all no-good chemists

Elis, the younger of our boys, asked if I had included chair-fart in any of these blogs. Chair-farts, or indeed, their overgrown cousin the ignominious table fart, I replied, being odorless, colourless and tasteless, are neither here nor there. But if he insisted, I should take a stab at writing one or two of them up.

To the average sock puppet, then, the exigencies of metamorphosing anima have deep significance. Just as a smell of feet – whether good or bad – permeates the interview room and lends it a special authenticity; so the creaking chair or table fart that punctuates any kitchen convo between husband, wife or lover speaks of taste in furniture, choice of habitat or quality of floor polish that has sauced or soured their relationship. Though sonic booms, for the present, are a thing of past concords and echoes from the future, something will have to be done about them if they are to have any prospects at all. Therefore, ignore chair fart at your peril!

Now I'm not one to snigger mischievously above six or seventeen times a day, so for me to snort into scorn the common-or-garden fart of kitchen chair leg on parquet flooring is not an artifice devoid of meaning. However my fellow men, women & children do agree, I tend to laugh rather often when nothing appears to be funny, and to employ underlined verbs precisely.

A fart, any given fart, is in any case a form of malapropism. Rather like the infamous actor dismissed from his repertory company for uncontrolled bouts of sneezing during performances – though he and his outbursts were beloved of audiences - the bogus (ie the raspberry tainted) fart which accompanies an academic dispute over the ending of Mozart's Requiem or a knife fight breaking out during the vivisection of genetically engineered mice is both impertinent and ridiculous. But people tend to turn dumb, deaf & blind; and though their noses may twitch, there is often a perfectly innocent excuse for opening a window or turning on the Xpelair.

In certain parts of suburbia, we have noted, a subconscious reaching for the floral spray can follows the merest hint of under-the-table indiscretion. Fart cushions aside, what was the last purchase you made in your local joke shop, Mrs Bucket?

Never Apologise!