An Overnight Crash of Erg-Onomics & The New Pensions Double-Lock

The [Greek and Roman] gods alone know what this is in the hedgerow opposite the marina. A doll’s head on a twig? Some sort of gang-land warning perhaps in the squirrel world, or an impromptu item of “The Street Art It Is, Yes Indeed, Myffanwy”. Shocking, in the dusk light, whatever.

It was that we was on the move a week or so ago. Electricus, the Roman god of domestic batteries had other ideas for us though. One day the Cardinal’s domestic batteries were fine, the next as dead as a dodo’s uncle. You can’t do much with a 12V battery at 10.5V. Even the LED lights flickered uncertainly, not wanting to desert me, but, well… they did.

I’ve been reading Wodehouse by the original torchlight.

Arrangements were made and alchemical supplies of new lead and strong acid procured. Co-incidentally, almost exactly to the yard where similar arrangements were made some three or so years ago. Spooky.

At least this batch failed cool, whereas on the previous mass WACO-style Death Of The Batteries they just took to heating themselves up, somewhat worryingly.

The most plausible explanation for their demise is that I have bored them to death. Not used them enough. I shall endeavour to kick seven shades of electrons out of these fresh, and see what happens. No idea how, of course, but I shall try.

The new industrially-styled pensions double-lock lock is now in place over the diesel tank filler, and very butch indeed it looks though I say it myself. I notice that one of the Chancellor’s little whimsies that he failed to mention in his speechlet yesterday was a 23% rise in fuel duty to come into effect March 2023. Can’t imagine why he omitted to mention such. The politicians that aren’t turkeys are plain plucked chickens, aren’t they? Eton breeds them weak in body and mind these days.

Combined with the new 113dB movement-alarms bow and stern one, and one’s assets, feel slightly less vulnerable than hithertofore and wotnot. The new blunderbuss helps, too.

Autumn – or certainly, November – is upon us in spades. Wind, rain, dull, grey, cold, cool, mild, blasting, monsoon, gale, wind, rain, blah blah meteorological blah. This is exactly the variety of weather that has Scandinavians snuffing out their hygge tealights and jumping off ice-floes into sabre-toothed seal infested seas en masse, shouting things such as ‘Think only this of me, Mother, that I didn’t float well or for long’. It feels, to me at least, to have been thus for weeks.

When I last made a minor domestic relocation a couple of days ago there was an unexploded rabbit wedged betwixt Cardinal and towpath, as seems usual. The animal had my empathy. Why, though, it followed me down the lock and appeared alongside next day I can not say. We were never properly introduced or anything.

Notable Benny – an unexploded wabbit (or indeed one such of many other forms of former wildlife) is a beastie, small, medium, or large, that has for one reason or another ended it all in the canal, and internal gases have begun to build up and to inflate matters. If a sphicter gives then all is well, and they become nothing more than peculiarly high-velocity items of ex-animal, burbling past, laying down a trail of methane. If a sphincter does not “give” though, well, they continue to inflate and become… worrisome. High-pressure spherical ex-wildlife is not something that anyone briefs a chap on when first he takes to the inland waterways. One stray spark from a cheroot and The End of Days would look like a Bank Holiday by comparison.

I suppose that some sort of defence might be made, with a bargepole and sharpened nail Duct Taped to the end, as with most things in life. Have at thee, thou soggy and over-inflated creature, I stab at thine intestines not with malice, Alice, but in hopes of restoring some dignity to thine passing. Boooooom!

There’s very little about life that is truly dignified, is there?

England has still not specifically outlawed the practise of stuffing the deceased with fireworks, the better to entertain mourners at the crematorium.

This is a good thing, since such is my only and best last hope for sparkling in any way during life (or death).

Given domestic ergs abounding or absent, and given the whether of the weather, I have little to no idea where or when I’ll be, except when I am, and then we shall see, whenever. It’s all a bit of a storm in a d-cup isn’t it? I have given up trying to plan, and I don’t set all that much store by simply going with the flow, either.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I want to be a tree. Or possibly a penguin.

Not the biscuit kind, no, but the sort that thinks that freezing its arse rigid in six months of darkness spent shuffling around in a circle while holding its testicles off the ice by balancing them on its feet is “a fine old time”.

Actually, no – I could do with a change.

A change is as good as arrest.

Unless it’s cardiac.

Do penguins have cardiac arrests?

I’ll take the tree option.

Chin-chin, chaps.

Ian H., Cardinal W., and An Unexploded Rabbit.