The Boy Nik (Not The Boy Nick) Knocked And He’s Got Manky Teeth

The Boy Nik has lost the ‘c’ since the last time I saw him and he needs to lose the majority of his teeth as well, as he showed me. Not a pleasant sight, but that’s drug addiction for you. He had the number of an NHS emergency dentist but he wanted me to phone his Mum and give her the number so that she could make an appointment for him and then phone his mobile to tell him the details. He assured me that he wouldn’t be bothering me anymore because he was having a land line installed today and could he wash our car as a thank you? I declined his kind offer but I did appreciate it.

He puts me on the back foot because he always calls early, while I’m still in my dressing gown; and every time he apologises for getting me out of bed, which he never has, but I feel embarrassed just the same. I’m never sure if he is just going out or just coming in, but today he came between last night’s elderly neighbour, Mrs S, who called for her spare key because she had misplaced her own (again); and next door’s Mrs J who is really Mrs F but everyone in the family has a name beginning with J, plus the son-in-law and one grandchild. Only the husband escapes but his name begins with G so he’s almost one of them. Mrs J was looking for the Hub to fix her laptop, which took him ten minutes. She says we can never move because she needs him too much: she is always borrowing his tools and his expertise. She spends a lot of time on her own and she taps away at the walls at all hours of the day and night, doing we know not what. I think she might be building a secret extension into our living room.

It was Coronationside Square in Neighbourhood Central this morning because the phone rang as often as the door bell. At one point I looked like Taz the Tasmanian devil because I was just about to put the recycling in the bins outside the back door when the phone went; I had almost answered it when Nik knocked; and that was when I noticed the dog had upchucked and I wasn’t sure where to turn as I searched for somewhere to put down seven empty bottles, five tins and a partridge in a paper tree. However, rest assured, dear reader, that if there was a screaming baby I’d have seen to him first. Fortunately, the Hub was asleep.

Bits & Pieces

This is the first chance I’ve had to blog today, for reasons which will be revealed later in the week (I’m following the old showbiz adage Always leave them wanting more; it works for chocolate). Some snippets:

H.L. Mencken:

Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.

The Hub:

The bloke in the car behind me had his finger so far up his nose he scraped the dandruff off his scalp.

Jason Manford in The Sun last week (this won’t appeal to non-cat people):

Dear Cat,

If your idea of a gift is a dead mouse at the foot of my stairs then please leave me off your gift list or get me some HMV vouchers.

Your Human

Dear Human,

It’s not a gift, it’s a warning.

Regards,

Your cat

Sad Fact:

Dick Francis died today, aged 89. I love his books.

An Interesting Fact:

Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife was first made famous by Louis Armstrong but is from The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill, based on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. It was originally sung by Lotte Lenya, who was married to Weill and is mentioned in the lyrics – wonder how she felt about her husband naming her as one of the victims of a serial killer, and then making her sing it? Maybe that was why she divorced him; though they did remarry. Depending on which Wikipedia page you read, however, Louis Armstrong inserted the line, ‘Look out, Miss Lotte Lenya!’ when he recorded it.

When I told the Hub this fascinating fact he was distinctly underwhelmed; I was forced to threaten him with more fascinating facts if he didn’t at least pretend to be interested; he fell asleep before I’d finished sharing with him that Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan used to be called The Good Woman of Szechuan in ye olden days of the 1970s and is based on the tale of Solomon and the two women who claimed the same baby was theirs – no, no, I was thinking of The Caucasian Chalk Circle…

…Hello? Where did everybody go? Where did all those letter zeds come from?