"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.