THE PEACE AT THE END OF THE DAY ONLY DISTURBED BY THE WIFES TOENAILS RICOCHETTING AROUND THE BEDROOM WALL.

At the end of the day ,as today slides into tomorrow and in the quite and darkness we retire to the comfort and tranquility of our bed. This peace is only disturbed by the rustle of the quilt, the turning of book pages, the gurgling of stomachs and the passing of wind from those same stomachs, but, also the sound of toenail clippings ricochetting around the bedroom. The lovely Lynne is a (sob!)......Nail picker and a... (Sob!)....Nail biter (sniff, i'm ok now, thanks...she'll always be perfect to me.) . She has a highly stressful job and when shes concenterating will nibble away at the keratin based talons of her fingers .She keeps trying to stop, but with limited success. From time to time she'll let em grow , but she slips back to a good chew , she even chews false fingernails, i kid you not.

I remember my mother worrying about me, as i was biting my fingernails. She kept asking if anything was wrong/was i alright? after a while ,i exploded "yes i'm fine ,ok ,super ,dandy, tickety boo!, for christs sake why? "Well, your biting your finger nails."I had to explain there was nothing mysterious, just that my fingernails seem to grow quickly and i nibble them just so they stay below 4 inches or so. I must admit if i'm lying on the couch watching the telly i may start picking at a toenail and end up splitting my bloody fingernail and having the toe nail split down instead of across. So, 'effin' n' blinding ' i've got to go and find a pair of scissors to cut them as short as i can ,as the nail will catch in my sock over the next few days. This messing around may lead to another unwanted result. There will soon be a shout as my beloved Lovely Lynne finds the heap of toenail clippings i'd accidentally left on the arm of the setee, before becoming distracted in my suffering .Women don't understand that men feel pain too. We do, they just enjoy it more.

As the cartoon shows ,even our heroes and superheroes need to cut their toenails, i wonder how Superman, the man of steel cuts his. With kryptonite laced scissors brought in when he arrived as a baby from the planet Krypton. Batman and most costumed crusaders would have to be careful and have regular pedicural work done as the fate of the innocent and weak could be decided wether Batman n' Robin ,Spiderman, etc, etc had a ladder in their tights/stockings. The fate of the world could not only be in their hands but on their fingernails and toenails. I mean you can't go out battling the Joker or the Green Goblin worrying wether you've got ladders in your stockings/booties or even sleeves and gloves, this distraction from the fight to the death could be the clincher for the forces of evil.

NEITHER MAN NOR MARTIAN CAN FIGHT AGAINST RED TAPE

Theres a lot to be said about being a lazy bone idle get, and being a dedicated, proud 'arlarse' of many years standing(on occassions), i've heard most of them. Everybody needs to have a rest from their everyday activities(or lack, thereof), so, when i'm not slobbing about, i relax by forging my body in the white hot furnace of my will, into a steel hard finely honed fighting/killing machine by doing a bit of Karate. A few parents of kids who go to my daughters school asked if i'd run a little basic afterschool class for them. I thought any opportunity to belt a few snotty kids around the 'lug'oles', is an opportunity not to be sneered at, so i said ok, go'ed(an old ancient Liverpool expression of assent). The school seemed happy enough to have me drag myself off the slightly sticky cover of my couch once a week to go down and reveal the secrets of the Orient ,Zen and the art of smashing somebodies face in. Then the fun starts.

To do ANYTHING, now requires filling in of endless forms detailing everything, place, whom, what, where, why for every ten minutes over the last 20 years. For someone who has an uncontrollable hatred of forms and the people who give them to me ;And the people i've got to send them back too. To await their bloody reply/decision, or whatever, so, i dumped it on my Lovely Lynne ,faithful wife n' form filler-upperer. So this 'effin' form was sent to the police criminal records people, or something to see if i was Jack the Ripper or Gary Glitter, or someone. Apparently, i'm not, so i'm in the clear. I was a little dissappointed to see only a few speeding fines mentioned. I was hoping to be on an old 10 most wanted, somewhere in the world. I'm getting on, i s'pose my wild days're behind me,(sigh, it comes to us all!). Well, with all that sorted, i thought,' well off we jolly well go', but no, that would be too simple.

Now, through the years i've been called a liability on many occassions,( often by many ,if not most of you reading this, ya bastards!)....A public liability , and even a private liability, but we'll draw a heavily stained blanket over the private stuff, as it doesn't really concern us now, as i don't need insurance for that. But i've just been told i've got to pay and be accepted for public liability insurance. All this just to do the local school a favour for half an hour a week. I trained for years and got me black belt ,(yeah ,now!ya boo n' sucks to you!), but i've fought many people ,even won a couple, but i concede defeat to bloody red tape.....RED TAPE HAS BEATEN ME!!!!......There is a company ,THROTTLE, STRANGLE and ENTWINE Ltd and they make red tape for all the goverment departments whose sole purpose is to make the simple complicated and everything baffling and befuddling and not worth doing. Theres health n safety ,those must be strange people .Their job is to find danger, everywhere! Then come up with ridiculous ways of earning their wages by illimnating the ,danger, risk, peril.or whatever that nobody noticed in the first place ,then install 'safety features' that nobody wants or likes or uses . Then, there's probably a very creative busy department that designs forms, for everything..AAh we live in wonderful times.Some of the departments in that big old building with the clock in London must have departments that make the Ministry of Funny Walks quite resonable.

In the wonderful Jeff Wayne's 'WAR OF THE WORLDS', who can forget Richard Burton speaking about the 'RED WEED' that spread across the world strangling the life out of the existing vegetation all over the planet Earth. That was why Mars was red. Because of the Red Weed. That 'Rip-off merchant H.G. WELLS' said the same in his 'War of the worlds'. Now its slightly different our blue/green Earth is being strangled by Red Tape. The martians'll be wondering why parts of the Earth is looking Martian red. I s'pose, one good thing will come out of it, tho'. Well, if we can't walk without stumbling over Red Tape ,what chance do the martians have stomping around in those big,huge tri-pods? They'd be antennae over tentacle before you knew it. So they wont be invading yet. Not 'till they get the forms through, anyhow.