Clearing The Bookshop

No matter who you are, there are times when you get nervous – and when you get nervous, something has to give. For some people it goes to their head and they get a headache. For some people it goes to their back and their muscles tense, resulting in a back-ache. Some people get a more general nervousness and they shake horribly. All I can say is, those people are lucky bastards. You heard me right, they are LUCKY. Because when I get nervous it goes straight to my stomach. And then it comes out in the form of a fart.

When I was a baby I got pneumonia, the lasting effect of which was that I have no sense of smell. I’ll tell you about it someday, but for now just realize that to me EVERY fart I do is potentially the killer fart from Hell. That means that if I fart, I always want to die of shame, I’m always convinced that it has the “silent but violent” potential to act like a Weapon Of Mass Destruction – and quite often other people agree with me. But I never know how bad my fart was, because I can’t smell it. I never know if anybody else knows, therefore I have to assume the worst and make a quick exit.

The trigger for my farting is usually one “innocent” thought that drifts across my mind and ruins everything…
“Wouldn’t it be AWFUL if I farted now!”. Bubble, bubble, my stomach starts to ferment. “Oh NO!” I tell myself “Not in the lift / job interview / beauty facial / Church*!” I clench my buttocks furiously, I try to relax my stomach, I think about flowers and rainbows… Rumble, hiss, thwarp. Damn.

 Most tragically of all, this illness has robbed me of my greatest joy – Hanging out in the Bookshop. You see, I once farted in a bookshop. It was rather busy and I’d let the “innocent” thought drift across my mind once again. I farted, but ever-so-quietly. No one seemed to notice. I thought I’d got away with it (I hoped like crazy) and then the girl came from behind the counter and sprayed the shop with AIR-FRESHENER, paying special attention to the fallout zone around my ass (well, not too close but very definitely in a huge arc around me). I left in a hurry. I can never go into a bookshop now without the FEAR. And the fear leads to a fart. Waterstones, in The Arndale Centre, is huge but I can’t potter around in there, because by the time I’ve got to the back of the shop (Self  Help and Children’s Literature) I’m brewing up a colon powered genocide. I am too nice to stay long enough to actually buy a book .

So all my books are now from Amazon and I’m reduced to trying to figure a way to stuff a shoe-shaped “Odor-Eater” down the back of my knickers. Of course by reading this I suppose you might run the risk of getting the “innocent” thought yourselves… Gosh, I hope I haven’t started trouble.

I’d better go, I have some Amazon shares to buy. And a cork.

* Delete, or add, as appropriate

I Should Write More

Sometimes, I scan around the intarwebs, looking for new things to read - and then I come back to my own blog, half expecting to see a new post there (or should that be here?) and wondering if it will be better than the last post I wrote.

Only, of course, there isn’t a new entry to come back to, because I haven’t written one. It’s very disappointing. Do you ever do that, or am I mad?

(Oh and HELLO Blogmella! No, you haven’t written anything new, there is still only this poxy little bit of nonsense at the top of the page).

A Vegan Diet Makes You Insane

A vegan ex-friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) has recently protested on her blog, after being sent some photos (presumably of a family barbecue):

“Watching children eat animals makes us all really sick to our stomachs.  It looks profane, in an almost pornographic way to see small children tearing into bits of meat, and taking mouthfuls of cooked flesh from forks held by adults, as if offering a most unholy communion.

I make no secret about my feelings toward meat itself and how gross it is, so I’m really perplexed as to why, in the past year, I’ve been the unhappy recipient of some ugly, vile pictures of friends’ children eating cooked animals.”

Wow. I was wondering how she was… And now I know. She’s even MORE mental than she was when I knew her.