Gods and Monsters

This week has been characterised by a Medieval-deal-breaking growth* on my back. I went to a walk-in clinic to find out what was wrong with me and started explaining the situation to the nurse and said it would be easier if he just looked, so pulled my shirt up and the nurse went' ooooh!' I retorted 'don't say that! You're supposed to make me feel better!' He even went and got a second opinion and when she saw it she also said 'ooooh!' I went there to get better, not to be treated like a circus freak. Anyway, it was an abscess that finally burst on Friday night after I had two days off work because of lack of sleep from the pain.

It did mean that I got to go to Becky's party on Saturday to say goodbye as she heads off into the sunset of Canadia. It was a good party despite not being able to drink. It also meant that I went along to the Movie Buff's fair at the Royal York Hotel on Sunday afternoon, in the company of Logan and Mrs Josh and Nathan. To call it a 'Movie Buff' fair was a little (ahem) unfair (ahem), it was more like a Star Wars car boot sale. It would appear that the only movies ever made were Star Wars and Doctor Who judging by what was being sold. There was also York's premier Captain Jack Sparrow look-a-like on hand, along with the Riddler, fat Superman and  a female superhero I am unfamiliar with, but from the tightness of her costume I guessed her name was Camel Toe. I think they had been provided by Hullywood Entertainment, it took about an hour before the name made sense... I actually bought two LPs, the Taxi Driver and Ran soundtracks, so I came away with something.

Logan and Mrs Josh roll into town...

I arrive in style...

Logan was busy stuffing his little bag full of movie related trinkets, and I was with him as he made a purchase of a Katee Sackhoff photo (she's from Battlestar Galactica, he's obsessed with her). The chap who's stall it was, was also offering a 'One time only and unique' opportunity of purchasing, for the amazing price of £120, Sian Lloyd's ACTUAL HAT from her time on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Really, why would you want that? Maybe except to sniff the headband and pretend that you have actually touched a woman, rather than face the grim reality of your virginal life spent living in your parent's basement surrounded by original packaging Star Wars figures.

'Hooray!! I can get out of the basement for the day and meet like minded people and buy celebrity sweat infused items for my collection!'

I digress. Josh and I were chatting about him (Josh) putting a bid on Jet from Gladiators' leotard on EBay when the stall owner's ears tuned in and he slid over to us. He introduced himself by saying 'have I talked to you before?' We were stunned, but he continued by describing how the pictures he was selling had all been gathered by himself and he'd met all the people who's signature he was selling and had pictures of himself and the signatory to prove it. These were being paraded as some form of provenance for the signatures. This explanation went on for about five minutes and started to get uncomfortable, especially given that in all of these 'provenence' photos the guy had the exact same stance and expression on his face. Photoshop is a wonderful thing... Josh handed his money over for the picture and the transaction dragged on even longer when the guy started talking about the guarantee of authenticity he had printed up. He told us he had to design new ones because the old ones had his address on and he would have to change them if he moved house. This begged the question, how often does he move house and for what reason? Are the stars who's signatures he's selling after him? What crimes against Hollywood stars had this man committed? Again he gave us the provenance spiel and told Josh he would email him the picture of himself and Sackhoff to prove he met her and it was her signature, despite not taking Josh's email address. He then finished the transaction by telling Josh the picture he was buying had actually been bought from a separate dealer and in fact the signature hadn't even been gathered by himself anyway... We finally extracted ourselves from his grip and went to the York Tap for a debriefing and a de-nerd session.

Trophies of the hunt...

On the way home I saw this homeless Stormtrooper, reduced to begging after the Rebellion destroyed the Death Star and his livelihood:

*Becky's words, not mine

Kimberworth Chainsaw Massacre

Over on his Dreamland Chronicles blog, Logan Josh was writing about nutters he has met through work, now far from making this a mutual cock sucking session I suggest you read it. As it happens I have also been working for the past week in the company of nutters. My father is a tree surgeon/landscape gardener and I have been helping him and his sometime work partner Darren on a rather large job which consisted of seemingly cutting down primary rain forest on the outskirts of Rotherham. My main task was dragging the trees onto a fire and burning them on site.

Incinerate them all, pig after pig, village after village...

Usually when one starts a fire it drags all the local misfits out to poke their nose in where they think it belongs. Surprisingly this time it didn't despite the fact the smoke that was coming off it was like the Chernobyl radiation cloud. We were burning hawthorn and as I say, it was my job to drag the wretched stuff to the fire. The aptly name hawTHORN tore my arms to shreds so they ended up looking like Niklas Kvarforth from Shining's arms:

Suicide is painless...

But personal injury and smoke billowing about like the dust clouds thrown up in Tunguska in 1905 are not what this blog is about. I'm going to tell you about the nutters that came on site as we worked. The first we didn't really have much contact with as he was busy with his work, so without a name to call him we christened him the Kimberworth Commando:

Don't tell em your name, Pike!

You will note his attire. Combat gear, head to foot. This day was the first warm one we've had for a while so he was without his black beret which he otherwise proudly sported. It turns out he wasn't actually in the proper military at all, but had been a member of the TAs. Yes, the Kimmy Commando had been a weekend warrior, cannon fodder on minefield clearance duty. Yet he still clung desperately to this sense of worth as he emptied the bins for the pub. Darren reckoned he had every box set of Dad's Army in his backroom. We were also graced on the site with the presence of David, the ex-miner, ex-taxi-driver, ex-bread maker, ex-airline pilot, ex-public speaker, blue collar green Eco warrior with his own chainsaw:

'I've got my own saw, do you need any help?'

Darren had been filling our heads with stark warnings about gypsies coming on site and eyeing up the tools. He had spotted cars full of gypsies coming into the pub car park, waiting for us to drop our guard. To Darren, every truck that went past was packed full of Romanies slowing down to survey the site for things they could rob. Apparently they were everywhere, so it comes as no surprise to learn that as David approached I thought 'this is it, my number's up!' He was going to slit my throat, rape me to death, steal the chainsaws and eat my babies. But no, he only wanted to know what we were doing with the logs and if he could have them for his Aga. Now, from a previous POST, I had always assumed that only the very posh had Agas. David proved me wrong. He had had one for twenty years and he was as working class as they come.

Agas, now available for the poor!

David turned out to be a really nice guy except for one problem. He talked. And he talked. And he talked. And he talked. It was a fucking wonder his jaw didn't fall off. There was no pause in it either, it was just one continuous stream of consciousness. He told us everything in mind numbingly minute detail, we learned all about his stray cat, all about his solo flights and all about how many times he went and picked up 'our Gert' from work. We assumed his wife, 'our Gert', worked both a day shift and a night shift just to get some respite from his continual flow of verbal diarrhea. Having said that he did occasionally come up with a little gem of information, but after four days of listening to him continually whitter on most of it was lost on me. If you can, imagine a stream, nay, a torrent of Human Effluence cascading over you, with the occasional tiny nugget of gold sticking out and that was what listening to David was like.