A-One, A-Poo, A-One-Poo-Wee

This is not the band you are looking for…but last night’s band did play this wonderful piece of music

Last night I went to a brass band concert with my friend Alison.  Brass bands are as vital to celebrating Christmas as chocolates and migraine so I was glad to go.

Alison has been renovating her house, so we called early, for a tour and a brew. She lives some distance from us so the Hub drove me there, and afterwards dropped us off at the hall where the concert was taking place.

Alison dotes on our dogs and asked us to bring them along.  As it had been raining all day we carried them in, to avoid their muddy paws marking her brand new and expensive carpets.  Although the paws weren’t muddy, of course, because the dogs refuse to walk in the rain and had been indoors all day.

The dogs adore Alison, in the purest form of cupboard love there is, because she brings them sausages (cooked especially) and treats whenever she visits.  As soon as they realised the car was heading her way, they whined and cried in slavering excitement.

We had the usual mad-circle run around and hysterical barking (not all of it from the dogs: I told you, she dotes on them) and it was all too much for Molly, who wet herself in joy, right there on the new carpet.  Fortunately, Alison is tolerant of their misdemeanours and assured me that the carpet could take bleach if necessary, and a little excited piddle wouldn’t harm it.  Her husband Pete smiled benignly, as he always does, being the easiest-going man I’ve ever known.

The Hub apologised, ‘It’s our fault; they haven’t been out all day because of the rai…TOBY!  NO!’  All heads whipped around to a perfect view of Toby’s backside, also known as crouching terrier, impending poo.  The Hub grabbed the dog and ran with him for the door, and the rest of us watched the plop-plop-plop of the unstoppable excrement as it carpet bombed the, well, the new carpet (and the couch: the angle at which Toby was snatched up allowing for a sideways trajectory).

Mortified, apologetic but laughing, I cleaned up the mess while the Hub and Toby stood out in the rain in disgrace.  The carpet was easily cleaned and looked none the worse for wear.  The miscreants were allowed back in.

Drama over, we all sat down to relax and drink our tea.  I felt suddenly warm and thought, but I haven’t touched mine yet, when I realised the warmth was not a hot flush if it was emanating from my lap.  I looked down to see Molly, squatting on my knees, doing the longest wee I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit under.

We think she must have seen Toby’s flight and thought she’d be better off with Mum than on the carpet.

If you thought a brass band was loud, you should have heard my scream of horror.  I jumped up, sending Molly flying across the room without the benefit of a Hub hold, and there was complete uproar – most of it from four people laughing uncontrollably, me the loudest.  I had lost it by this point and if I wet my knickers in hysteria, at least no one would know.

Alison gave me a cloth to disinfect my pants; I had a wash; and then sat on her bedroom floor in my sweater, socks and underwear, using her hairdryer on the crotch-soaked jeans because we didn’t have time for me to go home and change before the concert.

I sat in the hall, steaming quietly and stinking of disinfectant-combined-with-Brut (to disguise any unpleasant odour), and got quietly sozzled on a bottle of wine.  

It’s okay; I knew where the toilets were.

 

 

Poo Picks

 

Time to vote:

pick a title

If you have arrived here from Six Word Saturday, here’s a quick catch-up: I intend to publish a book of poems about poo and I need a good title.

Thank you to everyone who left wonderful and funny and wonderfully funny suggestions.  I had intended to include them all in the poll, but I was showered with names and the poll would have been too long, like those cold calls you get that swear it will only take five minutes and by the time you get off the phone your children have grown up and left home.

I had to make an arbitrary selection and this judge’s decision is absolutely final. Unless you want to take a look at the original post, see what I’ve left out, and make a formal request to have your favourite included.

 

 

On Poo

Cow Pat (Photo credit: b3ardman)

I wouldn’t say the tone is particularly high around here, but I’m going to lower it to about as low as I can go without swearing, nudity or hairy armpits.

You know I am currently editing my South Africa poetry collection and I intend to publish it as an ebook.  The editing is going well and I will soon have to start thinking about the technical aspect of the operation.

No, that’s not where the poo comes in, but I am sweating at the thought of it.

Actually, that is where the poo comes in: as I am a complete novice at epublishing and will have to learn from the bottom up, I thought it might be a good idea to have a trial run with a small collection of poems that I wrote for fun and don’t mind giving away for free because I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind would pay for them.

I may have mentioned that I have written a collection of poems about poo (you see, dear readers: a literature degree is never wasted); the collection is small and manageable, unlike the South Africa poems, and I think people might enjoy the lighter side of excrement.

I have the following titles in mind:

• On Poo
• Feces Theses
• NO.2 Cycle
• The Lighter Side of Excrement (that one came to me when I typed the previous paragraph)
• Turd Words
• On Poo Corner
• Crap Poems
• The Allure of Ordure
• Poop Poems
• Manure Musings

I would like – with some trepidation, I must confess – to invite you to suggest further titles: vulgarity is acceptable; levity is encouraged; rudeness is not.

Please leave your suggestions in the comment box.  Once I have a few, I will put a poll in the field (watch where you step…).

An interesting aside:

While researching the correct spelling of faeces (the English, naturally; but I went with the American for the visual rhyme), I came across a fascinating site which tells you how things should look; and why they look like they look if they don’t look good: http://www.faeces.org.uk/

Wrinkle your nose all you want – like death and gaining weight, we all think about it.

Or is that just me?

The Little House On The Prairie Will Never Be The Same Again

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re not a fan of poo, look away now.

I’m watching series 3 of The Little House On The Prairie.  So is the Hub, but I’m only allowed to tell you that if I don’t mention that he loves it.

The Ingalls have a dog called Jack.  An amazing dog, who just helped save Carrie from certain death (death not being a great plot strand in a series aimed at children and soppy Hubs).  Jack is mostly amazing, however, because he never poops.  We never see a squat, a sniff and mooch for the right spot, or a scratch at the door to be let out, quick! before I do it on the pristine floor Ma keeps.   We see the human characters use the outhouse, yet no dog toilet.

I begin to suspect Laura Ingalls never really had a dog – despite the way he warned of the tornado that ruined Pa’s crop – and Michael Landon added him just to keep the Hub watching.

Real dog owners know that real dogs’ lives revolve around poop: when they’re not doing it, they’re filling up to do it later and when they’re not filling up to do it later they’re smelling other dogs’ bottoms to see where it comes from, and other dogs’ poo that irresponsible owners have left on the park for me to stand in.

Not that I needed to go to the park to stand in it this morning: poor Molly seems to have the excremental blues.  She did something that frightened her, and I hope you other dog owners might have an explanation as to why it happened, because I am baffled.

I put the dogs out after their breakfast but, unknown to me, Molly sneaked back in.  Looking out the back door, there were poo blobs (as opposed to proper, steaming piles) dotted all over the garden, which is unusual.  I looked around to find one plop on my rug, and Molly squatting up against the Little House dvd case, obscuring Laura Ingalls.  Talk about defecation of character.

Don’t worry, I didn’t hit her, or even scold her.  It’s not as if she’s my husband.  I’m kissing and cuddling her right now.  It’s not as if she’s my husband.

(

(

Don’t Read This If You Think I’m Nice

Today, I’m going to talk to you about poo.    Not that sort of poo, I’m afraid.  I am a working class girl with the occasional delicate sensibility: I can’t use the f-word that ends in ‘art’ and I won’t let my children use it (in front of me).  I really hate the word.  It is a little ridiculous of me, as my sister-in-law once pointed out: I have no problem doing it in a room full of revolted family members.  My Dad used to ask, ‘Where’s that motorbike?’ whenever I let rip as a child (which was often).  Strangely, I don’t belch.  No, for me it’s just bottom burps. 

I have wandered from the point a little.  I’ve had the trots the last couple of days, hence the brevity of my posts; but I’m all better now, and happy to have gotten a short poem from the experience:

 

Excremental Blues 

 

There is nowhere

so lonely for a

suffering backside

as a November

bathroom at midnight.

 

It is going into my Number 2 Cycle of poems; I have already posted one, but here’s another:  

 

Onomatopooa 

 

Drip

drip

plop

drip

drip

plop

(it’s amazing what passes for art these days)

 

Sadly, I have quite a few more.  It seems you can take the girl out of the toilet but you can’t take the toilet out of the girl.

Dear Reader, I hope I haven’t left you feeling soiled.