Friday 21 December 2007

Ra Portobello!

Saturday 11:03 p.m.
I went walking out of Portobello this morning after four, heading away from Brian Wilson's castle. In a moment of drunken delirium, he had agreed to allow his eighteen year old son to have fifty or sixty friends round for a party. Apart from a few of them drunkenly cavorting over the battlements, Brian Wilson and I were worse behaved than the teenagers. The progeny of the evil bourgeois are really very nice. I had on a cowboy hat whilst walking out of Portobello.

I had already decided to give up drinking alcoholic beverages for a few hours before I got the call whilst sitting doing the juju in the lobby...

The reason I started meditating in the lobby is because that's where the phone is. I stick photies and mandalas and that around the wee table for the phone. If you don't sit beside the phone, by the time you've got some blood into your poor legs .... the buggers have gone.

Funny things have been happening around here, Jack. You mean, you're going mad, Hotboy. The computer stack in the living room went dead. And it wasn't the connections. Brian Wilson, who is a computer expert, told me it was funged. Then the same thing happened to the computer in here. Stack refused to light up. Then suddenly it did. So I goes into the living room and switched on the computery thing and it came on. Hmmm?

The boy says he can't fix the cooker because there's a bit of the gas pipe at the back not capped properly. Capped? Really nice guy. So instead of fixing the thermostat on the oven, he says he won't shut off the gas because I'd just turn it back on, right ... aye, right ...that's the central heating and all the other heating and cooking ... and it's Baltic out there ... so if I just sign this form to say that the gas has been shut off, he won' t shut it off. But get a Corgi Certificated gas installer guy to sort the pipe and they'll come back and fix the oven. What a great interaction! Like Brazil, the movie of the dystopia. I signed a form to say the gas had been shut down so that the guy wouldn't shut it down.

So I got the guy to shove the cooker back into the slot in the working surfaces, and after a while I cooked a loaf using the top oven. The Domestic Bliss arrives home and I slide the cooker out and let her see the offending unconventional capping, etc. Then, a wee while later, she tries to cook something and .... no gas. The dials aren't doing anything. No gas switches on. There is no gas pressure. ... the other gas appliances are working. Though it wasn't. Now, no gas. Looked at the rubbery pipe at the back. No twists. So why no gas?

Be great if I go into the kitchen tomorrow morning and turn the dial and out comes the gas.

If I get killed in a gas explosion ... Like, obliterated instantly .... well, what a fortunate creature I'd be then, eh?

In the formless zone, nobody asks you about microwave ovens. I might have to get one. This will make me part of the Star Trek generation. They say they can cook stuff awful quick.

So what's a microwave? A wee bit of a thing that isn't a thing? Do they leak out of the wee box and make you sorry later on? Are they good for you? Soup and bread is all we're asking for here. A bit of intermediate technology, thank you very much.

I'm now having a wonderful time and not being a Scrooge McDuck at all this evening!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good Morning my rambling friend. Me thinks you need to get the gas sorted out quickly. I've seen what a gas explosion can do to a kitchen. Not pretty.

Computers are tempremental beasties at best. They don't like to be too warm. Perhaps yours needs moving to a cooler spot. Or perhaps just an occasional pounding on.

Microwave ovens can be handy things or useless space takers. Very good for warming the soup and bread. Or leftovers. As long as it is undamaged the little waves won't roast you like a chicken.

Microwaves cook by heating up water molecules. They can be unevenly distributed. Which is why they turn inside or you have to stir things. Nae worries, at this stage they are becoming old technology.

The rain has begun, so winter is here.

Hotboy said...

Marie Rex: I'm so wanting to go and hide in my allotment, but I've got to do loads of stupid flatheided Xmas santy basturn crap today as well as engage with the cooker problem. Why can't I be institutionalised and let the folk in the white coats get on with all this malarkey! Hotboy

Anonymous said...

Trust me, being in any kind of hospital over holidays is the pits. Even the padded rooms and white coats.

I'm not involved with any of that nonsense. Mostly because my family and his family are nae all that near.

Hotboy said...

Marie Rex: It's just a rotten time of the year weatherwise, I suppose. Everyone is coughing and spluttering. I don't remember the last time I felt in such a crap mood generally. Yes! Last year at this time! Hotboy

Anonymous said...

But we have survived the longest night. It gets better from now on.

I try to stay away from folks as much as I can. Just makes for a quieter life over all.

Anonymous said...

I say!

Try cooking on a wood stove in the garden. I've even seen a cake baked that way, though I'm not sure how it was done. I think they burried the tin. You could try your breed that way. I'm sure it will taste nice.

So - what with your cooker problems, you'll be having salad for Christmas dinner?

MM III

Hotboy said...

Mingin'! As usual, the gods have blessed me with two Christmas dinner hostesses par excellence. This time it is the brain the size of a planet, beautifully natured, gorgeous in her day and still remaining so, the hostess with the mostest, Auntie Angela! Hotboy p.s. She is the fairy godmother. She is the perfect person. And still no access to ra bliss. So ra bliss cannot be about being perfect. YOu can be an asshole and still get ra bliss. Between times

rob said...

Did Brian not read Ion's post on what happens when the riff-raff get in? Dearie me.

It would help if you could provide a glossary of technical terms such as stack and computery thing.