Got this in my in-box this morning. Give it a whirl.

1)Grab the nearest book.

2)Open the book to page 123.

3)Find the fifth sentence.

4)Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

5)Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

Mine is slightly bizarre. The book next to my computer is “How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher” by Simon Barnes, but you wouldn’t think it from the text.

Page 123, Sentances 5-7 “That is what birdwatchers call jizz. Jizz: savour the word. Jizz is a very good word indeed.”

I’m not kidding, folks, I’m just writing it down.

We have been temporarily displaced.

For those who have never been on a boat, marine toilets are a whole new ballgame. A lot of boat owners opt for cassette toilets that you can simply empty down an open sewer. Call me crazy, but that felt a little 14th century to us, so we chose a boat with an honest-to-god tank for our excremental convienience. However, over the years, this tank has caused us to have to evacuate the boat on more occasions than we care to remember. (I don’t even want to THINK about the overflowing incident a few years back. And neither do you.)

Now, our marina has a charming device for emptying these tanks that we affectionately call “the chuckle pump.” It’s a horrible, long black hose that really looks like it’s enjoying its repulsive job when actively employed. Not only that, but the person in charge of the hose must be of steady hand. This is due to the fact that if the mouth of the hose should become unattached from the boat tank outlet, there will be what can only be described as “an enormous fountain of unmentionable sludge”. The canal is full of any number of things that can make you seriously ill, but my f.i.l has said he’s seen grown men dive right in rather than get hit by a shit fountain. Of course, I cannot blame them.

This pump is also attached to a tank. At the moment, this tank is completely full and we must await the arrival of the chuckle WAGON to come before we may return to our home and answer nature whenever it calls.

But until then, we shall stay with The Rock Star’s parents and enjoy the luxury of being able to flush without fear.

The Whiz- Oh, but before I entirely leave this subject, I must trumpet a purchase I made over the summer to all you girls out there who are tired of not being able to write your name in the snow. They introduced this thing at the big music festivals last year to cut down on queues for the ladies room. The Whiz is amazing. You too can beat the system and wee standing up. I have to admit that I’ve not actually TRIED it yet, but am looking forward to on a long car trip in the near future. If I stay close enough to the shoulder of the road, I might even be lucky enough to cause a rubber-necking accident. Seriously, ladies, check it out.

I saw this picture in the rather comedy local paper this morning and it tickled me enough to choke on my Shreddies.

I mean, wow, they must have been pretty fearsome to BEGIN with, but NOW…They certainly scare the shit out of ME. All 12 of them.

Today is Tuesday and that is very sad for me indeed, for it means that tomorrow I must return to Purgatory.

Purgatory (not it’s real name, although it WOULD be an excellent name if we expanded our range a little to include bits of jewelry to wear in places you wouldn’t show your mother) is a small shop specialising in silver jewelry in a small, well-to-do town about 10 minutes away from where we live. I’ve been doing time there for well over a year now and it’s become apparent to me that it’s high time to be off elsewhere.

I won’t bore you with the details of the ineffectual business skills of my boss or her complete lack of people skills. Those who WANT to lead are often those who should be restrained from leading at all costs. Great leaders and heroes come from the reluctant who rise to the occasion, not the wieners at the front of the class who are dying to be hall monitors. The crux of my problem at the moment is The Infiltrator.

My boss has never been able to keep managers long. There have been 5 since I’ve been employed. I’m lead to believe this is a pretty high turnover per-year rate, even for retail. This is because of her aforementioned completely lack of people skills. She is so lacking that 2 of the 5 managers did not even see out a month before they realized that they had made an enormous career error. 1 of them didn’t see out 3 days. Why have I lasted so long, you ask? Well, for one, she pays me LOADS. But also because every time she has demonstrated her lack of people skills on me, I deliver the smackdown and she runs, whimpering to the corner. I have worked with infinitely worse and more dysfunctional people than her and am very uninterested in being chastised by someone who won’t fix a broken toilet seat for ¾ of a year, but will happily pay 50 pounds a month in terrorism insurance. (I’m totally dead serious. I guess we’re pretty high risk, being in fashion accessories.)

The Infiltrator was brought in to replace the latest absconder. From the first moment she opened her mouth to speak to me, I knew that I had to flee.

The Infiltrator’s main character flaw (and there are legion) is her desperate attempt to socially penetrate me in an uncomfortable place. (“What, like the back of a Volkswagen?”) I made the fatal mistake of telling her something about my social life on the first day we were thrown together and ever since, I have had to lie like a flatfish in order to avoid her company after hours. My m.i.l calls this “poo on the shoe” behavior and I feel this is an apt analogy.

Aside from this, she seems to exist in an unusually high state of fuck-up-edness that, even in the Sword of Damocles situations that The Rock Star and I labor under, makes me want to deep kiss the Fates in gratitude for not giving me her life. It is deeply depressing, entirely of her own making and the only subject she can be persuaded to converse on for hours on end.

What exactly can you say to: “I cheated on my husband with my boyfriend and he kicked me out and then my boyfriend dumped me and now i fancy my husband again but he has a girlfriend and i’ve got no money for a night out and i want half the house and…”

You say nothing, nod politely and start methodically trying to chew your own arm off just to get away. This is why I have decided to leave before becoming mad and armless.

But I do not get to leave tomorrow and that is a Sad Thing.

The Rock Star likes to ask me questions right as I’m drifting off to sleep, always beginning with “Right….?” so I’ll go out on a limb and risk looking like melly-no-mates by posing one of these little conundrums to the blogging populus who may or may not be reading this:

If you had to wee on someone, who would it be and why?

The Rock Star likes to keep me on my toes, even inches from REM.

Duck-on-the-roof season is rapidly approaching again. I know this because they were outside when I opened the curtains yesterday, watching. Waiting.

If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would be spending my 30th birthday living on a traditional English narrowboat, I probably would have dropped a few dollars in their Styrofoam cup and hurried off before they started telling me about the alien anal probe. Yet, somehow, ten years later I find myself forgetting what it was like to have a house in which you can’t stand at the front door and stare straight through the living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom and right out the back door.

Springtime brings the ducks back to the marina. Since we moved onto Galileo 5 years ago, ducks have rapidly become one of my all-time favorite animals. I mean, for comedy value, you just can’t beat ducks. Last year, while cruising the Grand Union, I watched a duck dive underwater and moments later, surface right underneath another duck. Anyone who says that a duck’s face can’t register shock and embarrassment is grossly mislead.

The thing is, they like our boat. A lot. I don’t know if it’s because it’s warm in the mornings on the roof near the outlet for our boiler or that Galileo has particularly tasty fungus growing on it at the waterline, but we seem to be the belle of the Grand Union duck socialite circle.

 Lying in bed on mornings when the weather is beginning to get warmer, The Rock Star and I are usually privy to one, if not both of these sounds. First there is the splat splat splat splat splat from above our heads. This is the sound that duck feet make when out for a morning constitutional on a steel roof. Then there is the taka taka taka taka taka taka from just under the window. This is sound that a duck’s bill makes when removing the algae du jour from the hull of our floating abode. There is also a third sound that we get as the weather warms up and that is SHRLUUUUP SHOOP SHLLLLLLUP SCHLUP. This was a rather disturbing noise that it took us some time to identify once we moved onto the boat. Our first, most obvious thought was, “Shit! Monsters!” but we finally discovered that the algae on the hull was not only a delicacy to ducks, but much admired by the resident carp, who use their giant, horrible fishy lips to hoover up just about anything that gets in their way. (bread, tennis balls, kayaks, etc) I can not, by the way, understate the amazing bigness of these fish. They could eat your cat. Even Clive’s cat. No joke.

Incidentally, I was VERY disappointed to discover that http://www.duck.com/ is the website of The Duck Corporation who develops software-based video compression technology. Not only do they have nothing to do with ducks, but they’ve changed their name to “On2 Technologies” and have neglected to give up their domain name so that someone might be able to use it in a more worthy, duck related way. Shameful.

The Rock Star had a gig last night in Ealing at an Irish pub called The Spinning Wheel. I try to go to gigs whenever I can, despite the smoky nature of English Pubs in general. (This is my hugest pet peeve ever. Don’t get me started. Just support The Ban.) I worried when he first joined that I might look like a rather sad groupie, clinging desperately to the vestiges of my 20’s, following around a semi-pro covers band for my own desperate and perverse reasons. But it’s actually Quality Time with The Rock Star as well as a good laugh with the rest of the guys (no offence to The Girl, of course) so anyone who thinks the former of me can spin on it. I know he likes to see me out there in the crowd, bopping around to the music he’s making, so, continue to bop I shall.

Everyone has their own sort of magnetism. People can instinctively sense things about you just by looking; that you’re in love with yourself, that you have hang ups, that you’re looking for a fight, etc. In my personal experience, what people tend to sense from me is that, no matter how obnoxious, drunk, insipid or socially inept they are, if they feel inclined to start a conversation with me, I will politely nod and smile and feign an interest in whatever conversational vomit they chose to spew into my lap, because my parents taught me that it’s easier to be kind than unkind. I’m beginning to believe that that might not necessarily be true, but I know that I will adhere regardless, because I am, at heart, a huge dork.

My favorite analogy for this condition is that, if you put one piece of paper in the middle of a football field and released a cat onto the pitch, the cat would instinctively go directly to, and sit on that crunchy piece of paper. I AM that Crunchy Piece of Paper for all manner of drunks, divvies and dickheads. This is, I swear, an honest- to- god conversation that I had in an extreme Crunchy Piece of Paper Moment last night. The scene: The Spinning Wheel. Myself and The Child (The Hairy One’s significant other who is WAY younger than me) were literally the ONLY people sitting at tables in the whole establishment. A whole room full of empty chairs beckoned to the inebriated 40-something gentleman who’d just weaved his way over from the bar. Which chair do you think he parked in?

The Prat: Hi.

Me:Hi.

The Prat: (pointing at the Band, who are setting up. There are amps, guitars, a drum kit and a keyboard on the stage.) So what’s going on here then?

Me: They’re a band. They’re going to play music.

The Prat: (winking unpleasantly) You’re not…

Paula Abdul: (loudly, from the speakers above my head) “STRAIGHT UP NOW TELL ME TO YOU REALLY WANNA LOVE ME FOREVER. ( oh oh oh )…”

Me: I’m sorry?

The Prat: You’re not English.

Me: No.

The Prat: Where’re you from then? (This is one of the classic Crunchy Piece of Paper Questions. I am different and exotic to CPOP people.)

Me: America. Maryland, on the east coast, near Washington DC. (Most CPOP people are impaired by either ignorance or alcohol, so it’s good to say where Maryland is before they ask you if it’s anywhere near California.)

The Prat: (pointing at The Child) She sounds American too.

The Child: I haven’t said anything.

The Prat: My brother’s moving to Florida.

Me: (trying to draw fire from The Child. I think she’s a Crunchy Piece of Paper too.) It’s nice there.

The Prat: Do you think…

Paula Abdul: “…NOW TELL ME IS IT GONNA BE YOU AND ME FOREVER ( oh oh oh )”…

Me: I’m sorry?

The Prat: Do you think he’ll do well there? I mean, better than he does here?

Me: Um…what does he do?

The Prat: He runs a restaurant.

Me: Well, people in Florida eat too, so I suppose so.

The Prat: He lives in Plymouth, so he’ll be leaving just like the Pilgrim Fathers.

Me: I think they landed in Massachusetts.

The Prat: (completely changing the subject and pointing at the band) What kind of music do they play?

Me: Rock covers from the 60’s onward.

The Prat: Do they play any…

Paula Abdul: “I’VE BEEN A FOOL BEFORE WOULDN’T LIKE TO GET MY LOVE CAUGHT IN THE SLAMMIN DOOR HOW ABOUT SOME INFORMATION PLEASE…STRAIGHT UP NOW TELL ME DO YOU REALLY WANNA LOVE ME FOREVER (oh oh oh) OR AM I CAUGHT IN A…”

The Prat: …Clinton?

Me: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch most of that. You mean George Clinton? The funk guy with the dreadlocks? I don’t think they know any of his stuff.

The Prat: No, Bill Clinton.

Me: The president? Did he write songs too?

The Prat: No, what do you think of him?

Me: Sorry, I was silly enough to think that we were still talking about music. He’s okay, I guess.

The Prat: What do you think of the guy that’s in now?

Me: (There are two things that my parents taught me never to bring up with a stranger unless I was spoiling for a fight: Religion and Politics. Likewise any stranger who does this to me earns an immediate conversational Red Card.) Um…I’m not really a fan, no.

 The Prat: How about the Kennedys?

Me: What about them?

The Prat: What do you think of them?

Me: Well, they’re all dead.

The Prat: Unlucky.

Me: Yeah, all being dead is pretty unlucky.

The Prat: (raising his Guinness) Let’s have a toast to Jackie Kennedy. (He rams his pint into my stationary water glass, spilling it on my trousers.) To Jackie.

Me: Indeed.

The Prat then rises from his chair and leaves as abruptly as he came. This is a classic Crunchy Piece of Paper exchange for me. I am convinced, however, that I am not alone. I’m sure there are some of you out there who read this, nodding your heads in grim solidarity. Embrace your Crunchy Piece of Paperdom, my brothers and sisters, for we shall be rewarded for our patiently borne out martyrdom, in this life or the next.