So after some years of arguing, me saying “Are you having a laugh? etc” & her saying “Wah, the kids need pets. sob, moan” the wife, without permission, goes out and buys 2 rrrabbits. (+ cage+food+toys+fencing+ so-on & on) $$$$$$$$.

Sigh, why do I bother?

My objection has always been about keeping these things locked down all day every day when they should be out in the fields digging or eating or that other thing they do.

Unfortunately the good lady sales rep convinces the easily convinced wife that these critters can be house trained & need almost no looking after at all- so home she comes with 2 bunnies.

They were 11 weeks old, palm sized & one was male the other female. – I’ll get to that rather obvious mistake in a moment but first I have to say, despite my reservations these 2 rrrabbits were using the litter tray in the corner of the front room by lunchtime on the 2nd day.

Impressive, no?

So its not a lie that these animals can be house trained. Hmmmm…

Ive been house trained myself. It took me a while longer than day 2 but I got there in the end. Once I’d been declared fully house trained though there were certain other things that I didn’t do relating to acceptable behaviour  inside a house.

For example:

At no point did I run from my mother to the back of the computor or the television & deliberately & maliciously chew all the plugs off the wires I found back there.

Thus far one of those rrrabbits has destroyed the cables to:

• 2 Wii chargers
• 1 Telephone cable
• 1 Computor mouse
• 1 Laptop mouse
• 2 DS chargers
• 2 Headphone sets
• 1 Amplifier
• 1 Set of Speakers
• 1 Router
• 1 Telephone extension

It has also chewed the edges of 2 settees.

For those crimes I would have been back in nappies & declared “Not House Trained”  in double quick time Im sure.

So I kicked the offending rrrabbit out. Get out. Straight back to the garden. Where he chewed his way through 4 gazeebo tethers, 1 herb garden, 2 tubs of tulips, 1 inflatable dinghy, a lilo & popped 1 football before escaping over the fence & into the pub beer garden at the back – Breaking the hearts of my 2 children who’s new bunny was lost forever.

Sadly it wasn’t lost for ever. My steaming mad wife, blaming me for everything obviously, threatened me into finding the hungry little muncher & bringing him back. – What a joke.

As a result of the sales girl enlightening my wife that male & female rrrabbits co-habited better than any other gender combination we now have a potential baby machine on our hands.

No problem at 11 weeks old I wouldn’t have thought, & the vet confirmed we have until “about 20 weeks” to sort the job.

These things have doubled in size every day since we got them so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when we noticed they had matured further a little earlier than 20 weeks.

Now, the wife has spoken to the vet & she nonchalantly claims “Yeah, no problem. You’re better off getting the female done. We can get her in, whip her uterus out & she’ll be friendlier & much more manageable as a result”

Wow. Sounds idyllic.

So Im currently looking for a quote to get the wife done if anybody knows anyone..?

The vet continues.. “Yeah, we can fit her in a week next Tuesday”

A week next when !?##? – I could’ve drowned 2 litters by then!!!!

As this disaster has thrown itself off another cliff we now have to separate the bunnies.

Lady bunny (who is the epitome of foul moods) has been re-located to an indoor hutch ($$$$$$$), the size of which you could hold your own mini world cup in(+$$$$$$$$)

Readers, Ive mislead you. the female rrrabbit has an indoor hutch & it is very large but she is not in it. She has instead squatted the front room & since no-one can catch her it is unlikely she’ll be keeping her appointment at the vets.

Also the wife is keeping the cost involved very close to her chest. How devious these females can be.

Now, if you will excuse me I have a trap to set..

And not a single stew line was there.

Possibly there’ll be a part 2 to this. Possibly there wont.

NEXT WEEK:

Marriage & The Art of War

“He will win who knows when to fight & when not to fight” – Sun Tzu on tactical dispositions

Can I count it off..?

Enjoy!

COMING SOON……

Bunnies can be house trained – an expensive lie

The league runs for 11 months of the year, we play about 40 games.  There are usually between 5 & 8 runners, points are awarded for 1st & 2nd only and your average over the year determines your place in the league.

It’s supposed to be a friendly knock about & back in the day it was. Not so much these days though…..

In recent times the league has been dogged by controversy. Etiquette is more or less gone from the table, angle shooting is rife & petty arguments regarding all of the above now dominate the evening.

But its the only game in town so we just have to wade through the bile that passes for strategic discussion & get on with winning teh mobnies.

The latest round coincided with City’s last Saturday home game of the season so half the league were double booked for the day & still falling about the town when the cards were first in the air. No matter, we’ll make it back for the 2nd game – which we did.

About instantly was much hatred (thinly disguised as banter) directed at the incoming blue half of the league (the rest all being reds). Accusations of this, insinuations of that, allegations of the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah whatever chaps. Just deal the cards.

I’ll change the names as I don’t actually have permission to publish this stuff. Hero (Blue), who was not as drunk as he seemed was playing his usual aggressive game which irritated J-bot(red) who was sitting 2 seats to his left & losing Big Blind after Big Blind to Hero’s aggression. Between the 2 of them sat Newred (red) who claims he isn’t a red but chooses to go to the games anyway (wat). Beyond J-bot sat Not-out (Blue), out of the game before this match report got going and beyond him was Barlord (red), so-called because he is one. The final seat at the table was occupied by non other than PC H-loud (Blue); Good to have an officer of the law around. Shame he isn’t one.

A couple of late cry offs meant we were missing Check-Call Guy (Blue) & Dayoff (Blue).

Dayoff was actually out on the town with us but got himself spectacularly drunk & lost his wallet so could only manage to get himself home & not to the card game. Shame on you, Sir.

So, I already mentioned J-bots dismay at his awful seat draw & Not-out donking himself out well ahead of time. What of the rest of the nights play?

Well, the first argument quickly morphed into the second which, as it always is, was about breaks. Standard is to break after the 2nd blind raise but it never approaches, arrives or passes peacefully & this time was no exception.

Hero needs coffee. Hardly a big deal. Nowhere else in the world is it a big deal; Unless J-bot is host at some other venue in the world then it’s probably a big deal there too.

For reasons known only to himself our host has taken to hiding all the decent cups leaving out only the stupid blue ones he knows Hero cannot use. How tiresome.

And time-consuming since Hero now has to hunt down a suitable vessel from which to drink coffee, yawn.

A paper McDonald’s cup was rescued from the… well nevermind where it was rescued from, it was still usable so we went with that, ok? ….and was about to be filled with reasonably ok instant coffee granules when Host lunges forward and wrestles said jar of reasonably ok coffee from Heroes hands, replacing it with some horrific version of instant coffee the like of which no self-respecting supermarket would ever stock.

Much nonsense ensues culminating in some sharp diversionary tactics employed by our hero giving him just enough time to hustle some of the more drinkable granules into the washed out paper cup.

No small amount of time has passed during this melee and tempers are about to fray further since nobody has had their smoke break yet.

Eventually, amidst much sniping & muttering, hostilities are resumed.

Some hands pass with nothing of note occurring then: 2 folds, a limp, Barlord completes in the small blind, action to PC H-loud……………….

H-loud tank-checks his option in the Big Blind.

Nothing flop. Check, check, action to H-loud……………

H-loud makes for some chips, stalls, tanks again then finally checks.

Turn is a brick and its checked to Barlord who knows a good opportunity when he sees one so he throws out a small bet. Action to H-loud………..

…..

This is the driest board you ever saw but PC H-loud looks like he thinks he can get action. So we wait again, with bated breath. Anxious to see what this mind game maestro could possibly be about to conjour…..

Nope. He’s actually fallen asleep. Mid hand. We’re all sat around waiting for a guy who fell asleep to play his cards.

Is it any wonder we always get such poor turnouts for these events?

I think the rest of us were only moments from sleep too by the time J-bot & Newred had finished discussing what should happen to H-louds remaining chips. Bet your bottom dollar it was some obscure ruling they came up with. It usually is.

So 2 down, 4 left in.

Our Poker games would not be complete without one of us falling foul of one of Heroes short stacked open shoves. lol .

This time he had T7 off suit & into it walks the hapless Barlord. Nobody remembers what Barlord had. Something respectable vs Heroes range here probably. No matter, the hand played out as expected & Hero takes it down leaving Barlord only to seethe over the monstrous injustice of it all.

3 left

A regular feature of these games is the prohibitive blind increases. If there’s only 3 left in it’s not unusual for the chip leader to be nursing around 5 big blinds. So it was this night.

A pushbot free for all speeds us to a disappointing climax once again. Hero gets tripped in the box and goes down swearing leaving J-bot & New red to the agony of the penalty shoot out.

J-bot fluffed it England style and New red stormed to the top of the charts on a hand nobody could care less about. Bloody Germans/Argies/Portuguese. Who’s gonna be next?

I’d post the current league table but its been doctored to within an inch of its miserable life so whats the point?

NEXT WEEK

Friends I used to have who’s wives no longer let them out

In this post I attempt to answer none of your pension questions. Infact its nothing more than a rant about the evils of pension plans. Thankyou in advance for listening.

“WHEN Otto von Bismarck* introduced the first pension for workers over 70 in 1889, the life expectancy of a Prussian was 45. (lol) In 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50. (again, lol) By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65—three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American. (wat) State-sponsored retirement was designed to be a brief sunset to life, for a few hardy souls.”

Read more: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?STORY_ID=13900145

You can’t really knock these early attempts at State pension provision but it is funny that most people would be dead before they qualified.

100+ years later things are a little better. Most people would expect to live long enough to pick up a State pension I suppose. Things are about to change though. Not enough money for us all to have a state pension anymore.

Doesn’t matter, Government has it covered. They’re about to introduce something called NEST. I’m sure you’ve heard. Compulsory pension contributions with an opt out button on it. Whatever. Not interesting enough to link here.

I’ve always been pretty skeptical about pensions. When I was in school the career advisor told me that by the time I was approaching pensionable age it would most likely have risen to 70 & that it was unlikely there’d be enough money left in the pot for me to get paid a state pension. Fair enough, I don’t care. Im 16.

He also said I should be putting about £80 a week away if I wanted a decent standard of living when I retire.

LOLWAT

I can’t afford that now let alone when Im 16 years old.

There have been some pretty high profile pension collapses down the years. Would-be pensioners on those schemes have lost everything they dreamt about their entire working lives. Some other schemes have simply been plundered by the low life scum that ran them.

Now we find ourselves harassed constantly by our Governments to save for our old age.

Well, Ive done some research (not much admittedly).

Life expectancy in the UK if you were born in 1971 (which i was) is 72.27 years.

(source: http://datafinder.worldbank.org/)

So If I manage to dodge all future pension plan collapses & shady scammers ripping schemes off  I will have kept myself just above the breadline my entire adult life  for 2 & a bit years worth of retirement. Hardly worth the bother?

Well, there’s always arguments for & against isn’t there? But it looks to me like pension funds are a gift of money to the banks & fraudsters of this world which they line their pockets with whilst you toil & then they give you back nothing like its actual worth just before you die.

Yeah, include me out thanks.

Although, I could go with that I suppose on the off chance I make it to say, 80.

I mean, Its not a given that I’ll be too infirm to look after myself or that I’ll be stuffed into an overcrowded care home that eats my money whilst neglecting me to within an inch of my miserable life.

Naaaah.

More fun would be to blatt all my money having fun with my kids now whilst Im still fit enough to play with them & take them places. When they’ve left home I can drink & smoke myself to death before I hit 72.27 years old.

This way I save myself the hassle & anguish of barely having enough to live on whilst worrying constantly about whether Ive saved enough for a retirement I may never see.

Hmmmmmm

Thanks Government but no thanks. Ive sorted it myself. Go nanny someone who respects you.

-Anyway, looks like I’ll be ok:

Thee Ende

(Blogging could easily make that list right now)

Much like on Twitter (where nothing has happened either) I have been presented with a blank page and no instruction.

I asked someone I knew what the deal was and they rambled on for some considerable time without explaining anything but the next day I did  receive some friend requests. Some of the people I knew, some I’d never heard of. Obviously I accepted them all. Everyone wants to look popular, right?

So now I have 8 friends. One in particular (who I don’t actually know) is VERY active. I get a blow by blow account of her entire day from start to finish. My wife does this to me when I get home, I don’t need it from some friend I don’t even know. How do I turn it off!!!?

So the last time I looked this friend of mine had asked: “What does your last text message say?”

I knew what mine said without looking; It said: “you already woke me up now quit banging around & don’t text back” and it was from my lovely wife at 11.30pm on Sunday night.

I’d got in from one of those hastily arranged work related meetings in the pub early & sober & she needed to kick me in the ass about it.

As it was all so typically standard I decided not to reply to the unknown friend who had posted >40 messages in the time it took me to blink and was now recounting a conversation she’d had with her cat earlier that evening anyway so probably wasn’t interested in my latest text message anymore.

I may try again with facebook this week but im a bit worried that it could actually be too advanced for me. Which is a shame.