It’s a good job bees don’t suffer from hayfever. If they did, spring and summer days would be punctuated by a cacophony of insect sneezes and subsequent pollen explosions within the flowers. Even if, by some Herculean effort, the afflicted bee were able to transport his pollen back to the hive, he wouldn’t be in any condition to turn it into decent honey. Indeed, because of the discharge from runny apian noses, jars of Gales Honey would probably consist of 90 per cent bee snot. You wouldn’t be able to spread the stuff on your toast; it would soak straight through.
Another thing to bear in mind is that bees assist in plant reproduction by transferring pollen from the stamen of the male plants to the pistillate cones of the females. But, of course, if they were allergic to the pollen and came over all sneezy and runny-eyed, they wouldn’t be able to do this any more and all plant life on earth would eventually die out. And without plants, there would be no means to convert carbon dioxide into breathable air so, in time, humanity would die of suffocation.It therefore behoves us to listen carefully to bee hives. If we hear a single sneeze from within, we should leave a packet of Benadryl outside, just to be on the safe side.
They sometimes get the odd shot off at me, but without much effect. One problem (apart from their lousy aim and general ineptness) is that their weapons, ostensibly automatics, have been modified so that they can only shoot single rounds. So while they're trying to get another bullet into the breach, I've usually darted into the shelter of a nearby Italian restaurant or sandwich shop. Sometimes, I'll even dart into the US Embassy itself. The commotion often brings out a Marine division, who then engage the police in a brief, but lethal firefight, usually wiping them all out. Of course, the Government always imposes a D-Notice on all of this in furtherance of "the special relationship", so you'll never have read about it.
I therefore propose that dead policemen from the glorious past be dug up and their DNA extracted. Then we can clone The Greats and have them patrol our streets and make them safe again. Indeed, we could gene-splice them to create the best of the best. A bobby on a bicycle, for example, who bids people "Evening all" and "Mind how you go, sir", before cutting them in half with an automatic weapon. Or a traffic officer who, while assisting a child across the road, asks "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" before delivering him into the path of a speeding articulated lorry.
As everyone is no doubt aware, earthquakes are caused by drifting tectonic plates slowly pressing up against one another. Eventually, the pressure becomes so great that one of the plates slips and judders violently. The result is a shaking of the earth immediately above, with associated property damage, casualties, and an influx of Christian Aid workers.
Fortunately, all this would help bolster international relations and promote world peace. What head of state would ever again advocate turning a faraway country into a radioactive desert or infecting its population with a plague if there's a distinct possibility that, in a week's time, it's going be the neighbouring postal district? On the other hand, it could fuck up the airline industry totally. Who’s going to pay £4,000 for a First Class return trip to, say, Australia, when all you need do is stand on the beach for a while and wait until Australia to come to you?
In all honesty, however, I can’t think of anything to suggest to the jumper that might help reduce my exposure. I suppose I could insist that she jumps out of the plane over a highly-forested area or above high-voltage pylons, then there’s a least a chance she’ll get stuck in a tree or electrocuted. Then again, even if she does, she could point to the contract (or, in the electrocution case, her Estate could) and hold me to my pledge, pointing out that it’s the jump I was sponsoring, not how far she got, and the fact she didn’t manage the last 20 feet or so is neither here nor there. The cunt.
In my opinion, Greek, Indian, Thai, and other ethnic restaurants based in the United Kingdom shouldn't be allowed to get away with calling themselves such. For a start, invariably, their owners hold British passports. Secondly, unless the food has actually been air-freighted in, it remains essentially English, albeit tarted up with exotic ingredients. Therefore, more properly, these places should advertise themselves as Greek style and Indian style eateries.
On the plus side, though, existing embassies and legations would probably feel obliged to upgrade themselves to restaurant status in solidarity. Which could only be a good thing. At the moment, if I ring up the Chinese ambassador in London and ask for two spring rolls and Peking duck with pancakes, he rarely obliges. But as a culinary diplomatic entity, he'd be forced to, if only to ensure international goodwill. And I'd get the meal in a specially insulated diplomatic bag.
When you think the expression through, however, you realize how ridiculous it really is. As you can clearly observe from this photograph, if you were a fly on the wall, all you would actually see would be the wall, and nothing else. The fly would have to turn round in order to get a view of what’s behind him, and if he did, he’d fall off, as it’s only his feet that are sticky, not his back or wings. 
According to official-looking signs displayed on lampposts hereabouts, if you allow your dog to crap in public and don’t then immediately pick up the resultant turd, you could be liable for a £1,000 fine and/or three months imprisonment. As I’m currently cat-sitting in deepest, rural Buckinghamshire and therefore don’t have the dogs with me, this isn’t an issue. What is and issue, however, is what the signs don’t say.
This morning, just for research purposes, I went on a shit hunt. I wasn’t disappointed. Within 30 seconds walk from this house I must have counted at least 20 horse turds and three cow-pats. If the council applied the same rules to these animals as they do to dogs, they’d already be up £23K on the deal. So why don’t they?
It seems to me, then, that the only way to accord dogs equal status in the pooing stakes is to involve them in the transportation system, too. Mine are a bit small, but could, I suppose, at a pinch, give a ride to Austin Powers actor, Verne Troyer. And, of course, I could harness all three of them together into a team and possibly get them to pull me in a little cart. But in the meantime, if they do take a crap and someone from the council complains, I’ll say it was me, not them. As I said, there’s nothing on the sign prohibiting me from dumping in public.
Yesterday evening I was reading a newspaper feature that likened young children to sponges, in that they’re supposed to passively soak up information and influences from around them. So, for example, if you leave a toddler in a room full of Frenchmen, at the end of the day, he’ll come out speaking a certain amount of French. Or if left alone with a bunch of astrophysicists, he’ll emerge with a passable (if incomplete) theory for the formation of the Universe.
I played the DVD of “Reservoir Dogs”, forgetting that the sponge was still in the room. The next thing I knew, it had teamed up with a couple of J-Cloths and a scourer, escaped from the house, and attempted to rob the HSBC Bank on Fore Street. In the ensuing mêlée, the impressionable sponge and its colleagues were all shot dead by Police marksmen.
I suppose if you work for the Foreign Office, you could multi-task with one of these things. You'd of course rename your awake bag a "diplomatic bag." In addition to allowing you to bounce through foreign embassies and consulates, you could also park on double yellow lines and shop-lift with impunity. Indeed, the awake/diplomatic bag could also act as a shopping bag. You'd be able to hop through the aisles of a supermarket, tucking items into the bag as you did so, and then hop on past the checkout without paying a penny, or even trying to. If Security attempted to stop you, you'd simply point to your bag and claim diplomatic immunity. This could be a great help during the present credit crunch.
I notice that people who drive cars often make use of a garage facility called an “automatic car wash”. (Obviously, they're too poor to afford to personally employ someone to carry out this function for them. But that's by the bye.) Here, cars line up and drive, one at a time, through a set of mechanical scrubbing brushes. Finally, the equivalent of a giant Pifco hairdryer comes down and attempts, as best it can, to eliminate the moisture.
So much for cheap cars. The more expensive cars, like Morgans, Aston Martins, and Ferrari Testarossas would have to be professionally dry-cleaned, in case of shrinkage. In fact, I believe that many so-called Dinky Toys are actually the result of their owners misreading the care labels that are usually affixed to the interior of the bonnets. It must be real bummer when that happens, as I doubt the insurance will cover the damage.
Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Some two thousand years ago, His followers (accounts vary as to who was actually there, depending on whose Gospel you trust) went to Jesus' tomb in order to marinade Him in unguents, or whatever, as one apparently did with Jewish dead bodies back then. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a wasted journey, as they arrived to find that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb's entrance and Jesus had pissed off. Or, as an angel who happened to be around at the time rather unhelpfully put it, "He is not here. He has risen."
That said, it's possible, I suppose, that the holes in Jesus were actually there for a good, practical reason. Going back to the microwave oven analogy again, when you use one of those, you have to prick holes in the plastic packaging of things like lasagnes and currys before they're irradiated. If you don't, they often explode mid-way through the cooking process. So perhaps Jesus might have exploded, too, if those holes hadn't been left in Him. Then the angels would have had to have scraped Him off the tomb walls before they could let Him outside. If so, He'd probably have looked like one of those chicken and prawn biriani dishes that you often see puked up on pavements after closing time on Friday evenings. Hardly the sort of image to inspire a Piero della Francesca Renaissance painting. And certainly not a new religion.
This miraculous process, which is now repeated in churches throughout the world, is known as the Transubstantiation. How fortunate we are, though, that it doesn't work in reverse. If it did, and the Messiah were able to change His body into bread, He might be mistaken for the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Or worse, the Pillsbury Dough Boy might be mistaken for Jesus. 
Basically, then, we should be grateful that Transubstantiation is actually irreversible, like poaching an egg. On the other hand, if Jesus had transformed himself into dough, He'd have been virtually impossible to crucify. It would have been like trying to nail a blancmange to the ceiling.
I'm sure we’re all aware of how the tale subsequently unfolded. Neither the religious authorities nor the representatives of the Occupying Power were very pleased to have in their midst someone who identified so closely with a loaf. And is it surprising? It could, of course, have given risen to a series of copycat incidents wherein people claimed to be dates, castor oil plants, or various kinds of exotic fruit (“Leave your homes and families and follow me, for I am a kumquat sent by the Lord to bring you Salvation.”). Therefore to nip this in the bud, Jesus was executed. Various embellishments were then added to the story, but that's basically it.
In my opinion, however – and this is where I take issue with many theologians, including Bullit-Jonas herself - Jesus shouldn’t have been nailed to the cross; He should have been screwed to it. Then it would have been a lot easier to get Him off afterwards. But because they used nails, the Roman soldiers most likely had to employ some sort of claw hammer to prise those nails out, no doubt with some difficulty. All of this risked damaging the wood, possibly so seriously that the cross couldn’t be used again. 
Anyway, the Romans obviously weren’t very economy minded when it came to basic woodwork, which goes some way towards explaining the ultimate decline and fall of their empire.
Behold My Evening Meal: A delight for all occasions called Slavko's Caribbean Chicken. Herein is its unrivalled Perfection:
Brown the chicken fillets in a heavy-based skillet in olive oil and then remove to one side. Next, fry the onion, peppers, garlic, and chillis for about five minutes. This done, add the the ginger and fry for another minute or so. Next, add the coconut milk, the lime juice, the tomatoes, the tomato puree, the sugar, and the curry powder and stir. Once you have, add the chicken. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 25 minutes or until the sauce is thickened. Five minutes before the end, toss in the pineapple chunks. Season if necessary. Finally, serve with plain boiled rice.
This, of course, can lead to all sorts of ethical dilemmas. If no brain function is recorded, should the hospital staff call it a day, turn the machine off, and then harvest the internal organs for use in transplants? Or should we abide by Catholic doctrine which maintains that it would be a sin to do this as “where there’s life, there’s hope”? The controversial Terri Schiavo case in the United States a couple of years ago exemplifies the entrenched positions.
If a previously brain-dead “hoodie”, for instance, is restored to (for want of a better word) sentience by playing, say, Eminem, 50 Cent, or James Blunt, or whatever his favourite brand of down-market screeching is, then no-one’s going to notice much difference between the vegetative state and the wakeful one, anyway. So, similarly, a carrot made newly sentient by the same music will have an equal IQ, and can still therefore be peeled , diced, and boiled with relative impunity. But, conversely, if you play it the sort of music that a supremely intelligent, cultured person enjoys - Man of La Mancha and My Fair Lady are two examples I pluck from thin air – then it follows that the carrot, too, will acquire a corresponding level of sentience. 
Even if your intention was to drive from, for example, London to Brighton, more often than not, your reanimant would lumber off in his own direction. Invariably, he'd take you to middle European destinations called Vassaria and Ingoldstadt, where he'd trash entire villages and really get up people's noses. Legally, though, you had to follow him, and at the regulation distance of 100 feet. So it must have been quite embarrassing, especially when people came up to you and said, "Oi, mate! Is that yours? He's just tossed my fucking daughter in a lake and drowned her!" or "Are you the cunt who's red flag man has shacked up in my blind uncle's forest cabin and nicked his cigars?" What could you reply? You couldn't deny it, because there he was with his red flag, and there you were with your car, driving immediately behind, so people would inevitably put 2 and 2 together. Then, before you knew it, you'd have hundreds of angry villagers descending on your house, bearing flaming torches and shouting something about witchcraft. Wouldn't you feel like a total arsehole?
Why, I wonder, is the penis the only major human organ that expands and lengthens to any noticeable degree when we get excited? Surely, for example, when we're stimulated by the smells of cooking, our tongues ought to similarly lengthen and expand. Then we could flick them out and grab the food, lizard-like, from a distance.
I suppose, given such a scenario, the world would divide into two groups. Predominant amongst them would be good, morally upright carnelinguals - those who ate meat. But there'd also be an alternative lifestyle sub-group called vegelinguals. They'd no doubt frequent salad bars in Old Compton Street, dress in distinctive leather outfits, and attempt to promote their perversion as being in some way "natural." And wives of apparent carnelinguals might discover that their husbands were actually bilingual and therefore swung both ways.
Accordingly, a person who replies that he needs the capital for, say, household improvements or a new car will, generally speaking, be approved. But if he says he wants to finance a string of sleazy massage parlours or purchase a couple of kilos of high-grade, uncut cocaine, normally he’ll be turned down. No matter that he might be able to provide documented evidence of his ability to import a bevvy of willing girls, cheaply, from eastern Europe, or that he’s taking over an already highly-profitable drugs distribution network – the majority of lenders (maybe even Ocean Finance and Purple Loans, too) will usually say no.
Of course, some fraudulent individuals, although they fully intended to hire a whore and get pissed in The John Snow afterwards, would undoubtedly type, “I’m heavily into early 20th century Russian literature at the moment, so I’m going to use the money to buy a couple of novels by Mikhail Bulgakov. One of them being The Master and Margarita, obviously.” At this point, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the machine would have no option but to take him at his word and dispense the cash. But it would store the client data to its memory for later retrieval. So the next time this particular individual tried to male a withdrawal, the machine would first ask, “What was it like, then?” 
In this way we’d all be encouraged to spend our money somewhat more wisely. Or, if not, then it might convince us to at least get a lot better at lying about what we actually did with it. Which would serve us well for future encounters with the Inland Revenue and for those occasions when we genuinely did need to borrow money from the bank for massage parlours and high-grade, uncut cocaine.
Coat the turkey in the seasoned flour, dunk in the egg mix, and coat on both sides with the breadcrumbs. Next, in a heavy-based pan, heat the olive oil and fry the escalopes on both sides until browned. Then remove to somewhere hot. Meanwhile, fry the garlic, onions and chillis until soft. Add the mushrooms and continue to cook for another four minutes or so. Add the chicken stock and the soy sauce and heat until reduced. When it is, pour in the sherry and the crème fraîche. Put the escalopes on a plate and pour on the sauce. Serve with boiled rice and asparagus. And, if you wish, use the parsley garnish.
Until two days ago, I believed that the fruit of bonsai trees, when planted, would result in another bonsai tree. But apparently this is not so. If you plant, say, a bonsai acorn, you eventually get a fucking big oak tree. This might, or might not be, what you're after. If not, the only way to turn it into a miniature oak is to trim its roots while it's still at the sapling stage, before it sprouts upwards and knocks your roof off. This goes for all other trees, too. 
All of which bodes well for the future. In the meantime, though, I’m going to re-pot my own bonsai tree and stick it somewhere more secure. I don’t want midget dogs pissing against it. And I especially don't want to risk attracting the attention of itinerant midget lumberjacks. They might deforest my entire plant collection, leading to localised soil erosion and in-house global warming. Having the polar ice caps suddenly melt into my living room is just too much of a risk, especially since the new wooden flooring has been put down.
You know what really pisses me off about bubble baths? I’ll tell you: That they're nothing of the kind, that’s what. In fact, they should actually be called, not bubble baths, but bubbles baths. Yes, plural. Because there’s always more than one of the fucking things, isn't there? Which can be a right pain in the arse, especially afterwards, when you have to rinse the bubbly dregs away down the plughole or individually pop each one with a pin.
Naturally, you'd have to take great pains not to fart while in the middle of such a bubble bath. If you did, and you let off a particularly big, stinky one, its lighter-than-air methane composition could well render the bubble equally so, making it airborne. Combine this with a sudden, light breeze and an open window, and you could find yourself drifting, naked, up into the sky, trapped within the bubble; an object of derision for the neighbours. And men with pathetically small cocks would probably be dive-bombed by birds, mistaking their minuscule members for worms. In doing so, the birds’ beaks would most likely pop the bubble, causing its occupant to plunge hundreds of feet to an ignominious death below. There'd be no hope of a respectful obituary in The Daily Telegraph any more. Instead, newspaper headlines would simply read "Naked Man with Small Cock in Sparrow Attack Death Plunge." Or similar.