How to Paint an Horse

Do you ever wonder what life would be like if you could paint an amazing painting of an horse (silent ‘h’)? Me too! Sssh – Don’t tell anyone – we’ll surprise them…

…

Okay. I’m back. I’ve done lots of practice, so you can just follow my instructions and use the time you save to grow beans.

The first thing is to decide what sort of horse you want to paint, because this will inform the colour and flavour of the paint you need. I recommend painting a glittery horse that tastes of jam, so you’ll need glitter and jam. Go and get some – I’ll be here.

Now you need to have something to paint your horse on, or the glitterjam will just fall onto the floor and it takes ages to suck back out. Also, dogs don’t seem to enjoy being painted on, so maybe use a shoe or a coconut or paper. You know – something without teeth.

You’re ready to start painting. Yay. Take your jam and glitter and put it on your coconut or lampshade or whatever. Here’s the really important bit – only put it in the places where a picture of a horse (audible ‘h’) would be. This will be a job for your imagination because, unless you’ve actually seen a orse (invisible, yet audible ‘h’), it’s impossible to know how many legs and wings to give it. Three of each works well.

All done? I’m very proud of you. Add a sprinkling of bacon and serve at room temperature.

Okay. Bye.

Model behaviour

Have you ever thought of becoming a model? Yes, me too. I was recently approached by an agency who suggested I could be a perfect scale model of the London Eye. I almost went for the casting shoot, but it would have meant getting on two different buses so I stayed at home and had some crisps instead.

You, on the other hand, with your unapologetically well proportioned head and classically chiseled nostrils, you could be an actual model. With, like, clothes…

As someone with obvious experience in the field, I offer you this tidbit of wisdom (henceforth, a wisbit): in the absence of a vacuum cleaner, you can use one or more small animals to clear the crisp crumbs off your bejewelled ‘statement cape’ before mincing your way into the pages of Vogue.

Postmodern post

I’m terribly modern. Have been for ages. I hang around almost exclusively in the present. Not that present – this one… Now this one… You get the drift, you clever little thing you. Anyway, having totally nailed the whole modern thing, I thought I’d have a go at postmodernism (which is also premodernism, depending on which way you’re facing).

The first step, as you’ll know with all those lovely brains of yours, is to ‘think outside of the box’. This was easy enough, but once I was there – face all screwed up with the thinking – I realised everyone else was outside the box too It was quite crowded and some of them were wearing jeggings. Apparently ‘outside the box’ is now ‘in the box’. Probably a different, bigger box, with tape on it. Possibly made out of the laughter of unborn babies, but probably not, now I think about it. In any case, if modernism is thinking outside the box and postmodernism is thinking about the box, I’m going to be the first to try licking the box.

Like philosophy, without all the thinking

I can still remember a time before my gut had an underneath. Back then, I could have outrun the neighbourhood children who now use my abdominal overhang as an informal meeting place out of the rain. Of course, that would’ve before free wifi access was mysteriously installed in one of my folds, so they probably wouldn’t have bothered. It’s not that I mind them being there, but the graffiti is starting to itch.

Oh. Hang on. Sorry, I need to take this. Talk amongst yourselves for a minute… Hello? No, it’s okay, I’m just doing a blog. Yeah, it’s okay. Not one of my best, but it’s been a while. What? Why am I talking in italics? This is my telephone voice… you know that.
Anyway, why did you…? Oh, okay. No – try the Vaseline first, then the bolt cutters. But make sure you put a plastic sheet down, ‘kay. Yeah. No, that only works with goats. Okay bye.

So sorry… Where was I? Ah yes – When you’re at the shops and it’s time to pay and you walk up to the cash register and you need to get your money out, do you ever wonder whether life would be easier if you didn’t always wear boxing gloves? It certainly makes it easier to deal with the people in the queue when they start tutting, but how many unconscious pensioners does it take to make it worth losing all those coins? Probably three or four.

Do you sometimes get the feeling that nobody’s watching you? Me neither. I should probably close the curtains. Or start wearing clothes around the house. Or to church. Probably.

Have you ever eaten something that disagreed with you, only to realise afterwards that they hadn’t been disagreeing so much as offering a different but equally valid perspective? It’s explaining to their next of kin that I find awkward. Especially when you’re sat at their dinner table, covered in bits of Geoffrey and carrot. So embarrassing.

I Wish I Had a Tail

Um, hi.

You look like you’re wondering about penguins. I was wondering about penguins as well, until I started wondering about whether you were wondering about penguins. Do you think this means we’re related? Me too! We should definitely catch up on all the things we missed out on since being separated at birth. I’m not sure how I feel about taking baths together, so we should probably start with showers, or I can leave my water in the bath for you to use when I’m finished. I see that you have exactly the same number of nostrils that I do.  Can you play the trombone? Me neither! That reminds me – do we have a sofa? I would offer to bring my beanbag but I had to empty it out so that I could hide in it more easily, so now it’s just a bag. You can hide in it if you like.

Generic Cover Letter (with brownies)

My Dear Prospective Employers

It’s your lucky day! You’re so lucky I almost wish I was you, except that the only reason you’re so lucky is because I’m out here looking for a job. Shush now, don’t get so worked up or you’ll be sick.

I’ve forsaken the traditional covering letter because I am much better at lying in person, so I’ll save that for the interview. Instead, I’ve decided that you’ll be much better off with a recipe for oat brownies.

Step one: check that you want to eat oat brownies. People often overlook this step and are stuck with millions of oat brownies and nowhere to put them, even after they’ve got rid of all their furniture.

Acquire a box, bag or bladder of oats. Decant them into a bowl and dispose of the packaging as per local arrangements. Allow to stand.

Add a chocolate flavoured substance of your preference. If you do not have a chocolate flavoured substance, you can use chocolate.

Add milk in a sprightly fashion, as though you were once a billionaire jockey with a huge house and a trophy wife, but you abandoned it all to live in a cave and pour milk on oats, because that’s how much you like pouring milk on oats. You know – sprightly.

Pop to the loo if necessary. If unnecessary, don’t pop anywhere. Honestly, I really think you ought to be figuring these things out for yourself by now.

Step seven: Stir the mixture until it looks about right or until you need to stop because there’s penguins on the television.

This next bit’s important, so I’ll write slowly:

Plonk the stuff on a thing and whack it in the oven

Step D: Oven it, with all like fire and that

Bring it out of the oven wearing gloves or, if preferred, a hat

Remark on the fact that this really isn’t a brownie but more of a big glob of burnt shit

Chop it into bits with a chopper

Throw it away

Like on Facenook if you care about orphans with no legs

Repeat step twelve until someone calls the police

Okay?

I can start immediately but will be on leave until next week because this week I’m busy cleaning oats out of my ear. Please make sure my desk is in a shaded corner, out of direct sunlight and with adequate drainage.

Gym Buddies

Dear Lady on the Treadmill to the Left of Mine

Are you imagining yourself gambolling through a field of saucer-eyed bunnies while flying an improbably large kite emblazoned with an advertisement for corned beef? You certainly look like you are. Maybe it’s just indigestion.

Are you wondering whether you have the business acumen to run a successful gym that caters exclusively for people called Jim? I know I am. It’s a niche market. I would race you to the patent office, but I see that your treadmill is going faster than mine and your trainers seem to be more effective than my flippers. Also, this snorkel is making it hard to breathe and the towel is coming undone from around my waist, so I’m going to need to stop soon and have a cup of tea. I find it tricky, pouring tea into the top of a snorkel, don’t you? If you’re nearly finished, could you come and help me? It’ll save me having to take off the boxing gloves and you can show me photos of your enormous kite.

On the subject of forward motion

What’s wrong with people these days, eh? Pfft.

I don’t mean you, obviously. As a visitor and possible subscriber to this blog, you have elevated yourself into spheres quite unheard of by mere ‘people’. You, my dear, dear squidlet, who are more God than person, are exempt from such tawdry classifications. I mean everyone else.

Like that chap over there. Yes, you.
Why do you insist on marching along at twenty miles an hour, head down, brain sucked through the screen of your blackcurrant into the sanity vortex generated by a billion pointless emails, expecting me to not walk into you when I’m doing exactly the same thing in the opposite direction. Seriously. Watch where I’m going.

While I’m on the subject, I don’t know very much about cars. I know I wasn’t on the subject, but that’s only because I cut and pasted a paragraph about cars from above this one to down there somewhere, because it seemed to need a shady corner. Anyway, while I’m on the subject of cars… Being Man, I know that I ought to be turgidly aquiver in the presence of a roaring tin can full of horsepowers and valves and shit. I’m not though. Cars are divided into two categories: the one with which I’m trying not to murder anyone and all the others that have no interest in returning the favour. Bastards. Not you, obviously.

Sometimes I might notice one if it’s covered entirely in grass or being driven by an ostrich or something.

My idea of driving involves stomping on the pedals, twiddling the wheel and furiously waggling the gear-cruncher so as to arrive as near as reasonably practicable to point B with minimal fatalities. I may not be among the best ninty eight per cent of drivers, but I can steer with my knees for long enough to eat two happy meals and a mango.

Crimes against humanity

Dear The Law

I think it’s lovely that you’ve made up all those rules about not bludgeoning each other to death unless we’re absolutely sure no one’s looking, not taping songs off the radio and making sure we pay all the taxes unless we’re really, really rich. So, thanks for that.

Now you’ve sorted out the basics, I reckon it’s time for a look at the important stuff.

Like, these people who write blogs about blogging. They seem harmless, but it’s only a matter of time before they refer back to their post about writing a blog about blogging, therefore blogging about blogging about blogging about blogging. All physicists everywhere agree that the resulting wormhole will cause an influx of militant space gerbils to annihilate humanity. Is that what you want? Didn’t think so.
Also, I suspect many of these meta-bloggers actually are militant space gerbils. It’s obvious when you think about it – all those typo’s are inevitable when you have to run up and down the keyboard with a miniscule grenade launcher strapped to your back. Try it – you’ll see I’m right.

Also, fax machines.

Okay, thanks

Alex

Self diagnostics

Dear Online Medical Community

I’ve reviewed all of your contributions to the internets and have diagnosed myself with everything. I’ll have to type quickly because I expect the leprosy to spread to my fingers any minute. Please do try to keep up.

After reading medical websites for eighteen hours straight, I realised that my vision was starting to distort. The most plausible explanation is that spider eggs were hatching somewhere in my visual cortex and eating my brain. I’ve started drilling holes in my head and gluing flies round the edges to tempt the spiders out. After I’ve finished, should I use some sort of filler to block the holes or can I just use them for keeping marbles in?

Am I supposed to be able to touch my right ear with my left elbow? I can’t. Can you? Am I eligible for financial support to pay someone else to touch my right ear with their left elbow?

Also, does Ebola taste like watermelon? My mouth started to taste like watermelon and I got so worried it was Ebola that I almost couldn’t finish eating my watermelon.

Please respond by phone because I think my eyeballs will probably have dropped out by the time you get back to me. If I don’t answer, it’ll be because my ears have exploded.

Thanks

Alex