"Roadkill Top Trumps Part 1" or "Roadkill My Dead Animal Is Better Than Yours Part 1 (to avoid copyright issues)"

Welcome to Roadkill Top Trumps My Dead Animal Is Better Than Yours, a new series especially for you. I’m not really classing these as posts as such but just a little bit of something to fill in between the main posts, I really am giving you the gift that keeps on giving. This will be a cut out and keep collection of cards (or whatever you choose to print them on) for you to play with your friends. It’s kind of like one of those magazines where you buy one each month and each issue comes crammed with useless information and a part so you can eventually build a scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge. They’re usually in about 1 million parts and your crappy little model ends up costing more than the actual bridge cost to build. When I was little I collected a series like this and built a glow in the dark tarantula, I was halfway through a scorpion when I got bored of it. 

The beauty of this little treat is that it’s completely free. Unless you click on the little advert below the post in which case I might get a little bit of money but it doesn’t actually cost you any money. It’s like you’re buying them with someone else’s money. A bit like when your mum used to buy you Panini stickers, but with dead animals and not footballers. I once stole a bunch of stickers, including a Diego Maradona sticker, from someone in my class when I was at junior school, I’m such a bad man. The other boy was quite upset but to help relieve the guilt I just imagined that I’d found them growing on a tree. 

I saw the inspiration for this on my way back from the dentist. I’ve got a tiny dentist and she always tips the seat that far back your legs are above your head. When she’s finished your feet have gone numb and your head is purple. As I drove back I was stuck behind some old bloke doing 30mph on a 50mph stretch of road. I couldn’t overtake either and was just contemplating inventing a car that could jump when I spotted the badger lying at the side of the road. He was just lying there, slightly bigger than I imagined. He looked like he was asleep. Apart from the tyre marks and intestines hanging from his side.

Anyway, here's the card.

"Early Memories Part 4" or "Don't Stare At The Stump and Aqua Bikes"

These memories are two things that I have always remembered and that I wanted to write about but they were a bit short to make up one post so I’ve combined them into a double headed double header of double headedness. 

Don't stare at the stump

When I was very, very young, probably only about 4 my grandma had one of her fingers amputated. It was because she had a disease called Reynard’s. I sometimes worry about getting this myself, when I lay on my arm and it goes numb (you know, when you lift your arm up and drop it and punch yourself in the head), or when I de-ice the car and my finger goes numb I think it may be that nasty, finger losing disease. It's got to the point where I've considered what I'd actually do if they chopped my finger off. I've come to the conclusion that I'd either; 1) Get it frozen, insert a tiny remote camera into it and sneak it into a box of fish fingers in Tesco. I'd attach some kind of tracking device and stream the footage live once someone had bought the fish fingers. 2) Take it to a taxidermist and get it preserved to use as either a nose picker or arse scratcher. I'd also ensure that I had a prosthetic device fitted that had a number of attachments that would enable me to write, electrocute people, staple things and touch Armadillos in such a way that they would be instantly hypnotised and I could ride them like armoured donkeys. 

 

Anyway, I digress, as I mentioned my grandma was unfortunate enough to have her finger amputated and the next time I went to visit her my mum told me the following: "Your Grandma has had to have an operation, it's not very nice and she's now got a finger missing. Don't say anything about it and whatever you do don't stare at the stump, it might make Grandma feel bad." When we got there and we were getting out of the car my mum repeated "Remember, don't stare at the stump." That advice has stayed with me forever, although I'm not sure about you but if someone tells me not to look at something, looking at it is generally the first thing that I do (apart from the sun and lasers). However, I do think that it is generally pretty good advice for life. Pretty much anything can replace the word “stump” and it’s still very valid advice, for example “cheesecake”, “big black dog”, “man with long fingers” etc etc. but whatever you do, don't stare at the stump!

Aqua Bikes

When I was younger my good friend and myself used to go on holiday with my mum and gran (the one with a full set of fingers) to a little seaside town called Filey. Filey isn't the greatest place in the world. Imagine if a group of old peoples home owners formed a consortium and bought a whole town. They then moved all the old people from the homes into the town to create a town where people go to play dominoes, bingo and die. Essentially it's a boring town of bungalows. If I'd bought it, I'd have at least played up to the seaside part of it and made the pensioners work for their bungalows in circuses and Victorian style freak shows. You'd be able to see, amongst other things, the world’s oldest elephant man, with his face like a fatigued ballbag, an elderly woman with the head of a lady and the body of an Antelope and an elderly cyclops dwarf with a monkey tail. 

Anyway, once more I digress, when we came to Filey we stayed in a bungalow that came with some bikes. The bikes were slightly more modern than a Penny Farthing but they did work and they provided us with something to do. Near the bungalow there was a really long, really steep road that ran straight onto the beach. One day my mate and I decided we'd ride the bikes as fast as possible down the slope and just keep going in a straight line across the beach and out to sea just to see what would happen. I'm not quite sure what we thought would happen but I think I maybe hoped my bike might have magical properties and transform into some kind of hovercraft. Sadly as the water got to about 2 feet, pedalling became quite difficult and my chain fell off, resulting in me having to get off and wade back to shore pushing the bike. At this point the decision to do it fully clothed proved to be a bad one. In my minds eye I thought that we’d probably look like some kind of heroic mavericks pissing in the withered, solid-ground cycling face of convention as we triumphantly rode our bikes in the sea. In reality we probably just looked like a couple of nutcases that had escaped from the care in the community bike ride and tried to get to France. However, I learnt two things from this; 1) Bikes don't work in the sea; 2) Shoes and socks take ages to dry if you just rest them on the windowledge on kitchen roll.

PS. Please accept my apologies for the lack of a picture of the aqua cycling. Whenever I drew a bike it looked like I was sat on something made from Meccano by a one armed blind man with Parkinsons. As way of an apology please find a picture of John Virgo topless with his nipples covered by dogs heads and gently holding his favourite snooker cue.

"My Neighbour's a Mentalist" or "Taxi Kicking, Water Throwing and How I Felt a Little Bit Let Down By He-Man"

My next door neighbour is a mentalist. There were early signs of his nutterness when I first cast eyes upon him with his crazy dishevelled perm and terribly short shorts. He resembled a cross between an insane Roger Daltry and Doc Brown from “Back To The Future”. However at this point he smiled nicely and said "hello" leading us to believe that his appearance was misleading and he was actually a normal bloke.

  

 His first official display of being a fully subscribed resident of the Land of Nutterdom was in fact the evening I was celebrating my 30th birthday. I was having a party at our humble abode and at around 7:30 a friend arrived in a taxi. The taxi driver happened to pull onto Mad Neighbours drive, maybe he was confused about which house he was going to, maybe he just wanted to turn around quickly, whatever his reasons, he was just dropping someone off and he'd be gone in sixty seconds (literally, not speeding round the streets in big souped up cars with Vin Diesel). 

As soon as the taxi appeared on his drive Mad Neighbour shot out of his house shouting "Do you live here?" (Which seems a strange question to me, surely if my friend did live there Mad Neighbour would probably have spotted him coming out of the bathroom at some point). My friend replied "No, I'm getting dropped off" at which point Mad Neighbour launched into a repeated hollering of "fuck off" which he followed up with a few well aimed kicks to the front of the taxi. It was quite a display of kicking, I'd say Bruce Lee and maybe even Splinter, the esteemed Sensai of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be impressed. 

 

At this point Taxi Man understandably got out to protect his beloved taxi. This resulted in a bit of pushing and shoving, some rolling around on the bonnet of the car and eventually some rolling around on the floor. At this point, obviously sick of all the rolling about, Taxi Man decided to remove his shoe and proceeded to hit Mad Neighbour with it. For the duration of this I was stood watching, rather confused at what was unfolding. I'd never seen anyone hit someone with a shoe before and it was a new experience. Nothing can prepare you for the surprise of a man hitting another man with a shoe, it’s a little bit confusing, kind of like when you first accidentally see a picture of a shemale. The confusion of seeing a human being with both breasts and a willy is very similar to how I felt as I watched the shoe pounding down upon Mad Neighbours head.

After this rather bizarre shoe whacking another neighbour appeared and not knowing what had happened he territorially took the side of Mad Neighbour and asked Taxi Man to go. Taxi Man got back in his taxi at which point Mad Neighbour kicked it a bit more. This resulted in Taxi Man reversing a little bit and then driving forward and nearly running Mad Neighbour over. He then reversed away shouting "You don't know who you're messing with. I've got powerful friends!"

I can only assume he’s friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barack Obama and He-Man, I’ve been looking forward to these coming round to sort Mad Neighbour out but they haven’t come yet. I understand that they’re busy what with Al-Qaeda and Skeletor but I’m beginning to think Taxi Man might have been lying. I’m actually quite disappointed by this as I’ve always admired He-Man. As I was keeping an eye out for Arnie, Barack and He-Man I noticed that Mad Neighbour did an incredible amount of washing, hanging things (mainly tight shorts) out to dry almost every day, often leaving them out overnight in the rain. He also spent a lot of time standing at the bottom of his drive looking at the pebbles. 

Aside from the little things like the pebble staring his next major act of mentalism came a few months later when he randomly decided to start hurling water around. A friend was on our balcony having a smoke when suddenly there was a huge splash of water. Mad Neighbour had decided to throw a bucket of water from his bedroom window. Luckily Mad Neighbour is a terrible shot and the water merely soaked the balcony. My friend shouted up to ask him what he was doing and there was no reply. A reply came a few seconds later in the form of another bucket of water. At this point my friend came inside. For the next twenty minutes or so we’d poke our heads out of the doors every so often and as soon as we did a bucket of water came gushing down. This voided the theory that he maybe just thought our balcony needed a wash. He must have been running back to the bathroom and filling the buckets and then going back to the window and watching out for us. It initially crossed my mind that it might be wee, but we counted around nine buckets so unless he possesses superpowers which mean he pees like a horse then I’m pretty sure it was just water.

He didn’t attempt to make any kind of communication with us, he just hurled water. I’ve tried to think of possible reasons for this strange behaviour, the two most likely are; 

1) He had a small herd of miniature horses trapped in his wardrobe and they were weeing on his collection of obscenely tight shorts. To avoid the destruction of his shorts he caught the wee in buckets and just threw it out of the nearest window. 

2) In his bedroom he had a life sized ice sculpture of Kriss Akabusi with its own self-contained coolant system. Sadly the coolant system broke and Kriss was rapidly melting resulting in Mad Neighbours frantic attempts to stop his bedroom from being flooded. 

As likely as these two scenarios are I actually think he did it simply because he’s a complete nutter.

Please note that all names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved, however the pictures are accurate so should you see Mad Neighbour in the street cross over or something.