Betty's Utility Room

The day that the in-laws go "on-line" is drawing ever nearer, rather like an appointment for a particularly embarrassing and painful medical examination which has been delayed and delayed by the NHS. They have the computer but it has to be set up by someone and there is a "part" which they need.

In one way their lack of computer access has been occasionally annoying. Once every few months they will insist on the husband searching every airline going for the best ticket deal when they are planning one of their numerous holidays. Only the other night he was on the phone for over an hour as he attempted to book up tickets to see A Frank Sinatra Experience at the London Palladium (as some of you may already be aware). From what I can gather, there isn't even an imitation Frank involved - just some sort of televised image with a band playing behind him (not the Jools Holland Big Band as has been mischievously suggested elsewhere). It all costs upward of 40 quid a ticket even for the cheapest seats! For that sort of money I would expect that at least his dug-up corpse would be propped up on stage, or someone would be performing his songs, such as Robbie "Bobbie"* "Royal Variety Club Of Great Britain" "Mad Staring Eyes" "Boo Hoo Nobody Understands Me" Williams, although, heh heh, come to think of it someone would have to pay me for the latter option ...

Anyways, the in-laws just dropped in to have a nose pay a cheery visit while the central heating was being done, and our computer was on although not in use. The husband offered to show them one of his numerous blogs which are clogging up the information superhighway and like a heat seeking missile, the mother-in-law was drawn to his Jamie Oliver dream.

"What's that comments thing?" sed she.

"Okay, I'll show you. You might as well see" sed G.

Of course, the mother-in-law read out the following comment from the inimitable surly girl:

"i hope you told jamie oliver to fuck right off. pasty-faced, fat-tongued, shit-haired monkey wanker."

"It's not monkey, it's mockney," G. helpfully pointed out.

"What's a mockney?" the mother-in-law asked (G. explained).

"She doesn't pull her punches, that one" I added.

"Well I suppose you gave her a bullet to fire back at you" the mother-in-law decided, and I made a mental note to use this expression in conversation a lot in future.

Still, I am dreading the day they finally go on-line because it can only be a matter of time before they find this blog, however I might try to hide it, and a desperate process of censorship will have to take place. Older readers may remember the time that the Daily Mirror insisted that it would fight to the very last man before the awful Robert Maxwell took over ownership of the paper. Then came the fateful day when the editorial cheerily announced that they had a great great new owner - Robert Maxwell! - and infinite pictures of him with his fucking yacht, with his fucking family, offering generous amounts of money to some charidee, attending charidee dinners etc. appeared in the paper until his death at sea (see, it's not always the good who die before their time).

Ahem, it will be on a slightly smaller scale, of course, despite my readership scraping the dizzy heights of nearly a handful of bemused drug addicts one on the days in September.


*thanks to R. for this choice of name, up there with his calling Kurt Cobain Kunt Cobblers the once.