On taking the piss

On taking the piss

World's greatest living Welshman Rikaitch has been asked by his doctor for a urine sample following a recent health scare. To this end, they have supplied him with a one-gallon drum of the kind usually employed to transport toxic waste.

What, we asked, could we do to make the experience more interesting? More to the point, what's the best way of confusing the poor bugger who's got to taste test the sample at the Heineken factory hospital pathology lab?

It is simple, and involves the application of SCIENCE. Several years ago, I went through a phase of eating pickled beetroot morning, noon and night. I did this because they are tasty gorgeous and I am the only person in my household who will touch them.

Unfortunately – and I only noticed this whilst taking a wee during the interval at a rather posh visit to the opera – that it turns your urine red.

I failed to make the connection at the time, and spent much of the second act convinced I was about to poo my kidneys out. It was only when I got home and indulged in a small snack of beetroot, beetroot, spring onions and beetroot that the awful truth dawned.

I imagine a similar effect could be achieved by drinking neat food dye or Quink Ink, and the uproar of walking into the doctor's surgery with a rainbow of urine bottles would be a joy to behold.

Alternatively, you could eat several packets of Extra Strong Mints and sell your piss as Listerine mouth wash.

And here comes the plan, all in the name of SCIENCE.

Once I have found just the right shade of rusty yellow, I shall decant the whole lot from the jars I keep in the living room into a whisky bottle. A whisky bottle I will then leave in one of Weymouth's tramp-infested seafront shelters.

And wait, camera in hand.

Can hobos, a forthcoming edition of the British Medical Journal will ask, tell the difference between grain alcohol and wee?

The Nobel Prize awaits.

Not just any Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Piss Prize.

Mirth and Woe: Circle jerk

Mirth and Woe: Circle jerk

Back in my days as a Civil Service layabout, the hardest job we had was the huge efforts we went to in order to avoid actual work.

Huge schemes were invented involving trips "to the archive" for a three-hour smoke-break, or going to Tesco for ice cream as part of a team-building exercise.

Any work that came down from on high was skilfully shrugged off by the old hands and landed in the lap of the new bugs, who, in turn would resort to top-quality shirking by giving it all to the lowest of the low: the casual staff.

The lower levels of Her Majesty's Civil Service is run entirely on casual staff, as the establish staff know full well they'd be out of a job come Friday if they're caught staring out of the window without a good excuse.

It goes without saying that I earned every last penny of my massive £4,048 per year salary.

It would only be a matter of time before the shit hit the fan and the staff were expected to put in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

So, when the dire news came through that the envelope-stuffing machine that was supposed to send out thousands of dole cheques to the low-life of our beautiful Thames Valley town had packed up, there was much panic in the tea room, and several people shredded the entire contents of their desks, just to be on the safe side.

This was, we were told, serious business.

If the doleys didn't get their cheques, every single off licence in a ten mile radius would go to the wall, with riots, anarchy, dogs and cats living together, the whole nine yards.

We learned this from the matronly office manager - owner of a frightening basoom and a face like Nora Batty's arse - who made it clear that nobody could leave until the envelopes were manually stuffed and given over to the care of the Royal Mail.

Or, as she put it: "We're all going to sit in a big circle and do an enormous hand job until the postman comes."

I sat next to the luscious, pouting Judy, but alas, nothing came of it. She was more interested in stuffing envelopes.

On local newspaper photographers, again

On local newspaper photographers, again

As a student of the genre, this is by far the best People Looking Sad For The Local Newspaper Photographer I have seen for a very long time.


"Go on... look sad... No, sadder than that... Christ onna bike, somebody's stir-fried your budgie - BE MISERABLE"

All it lacks is someone pointing wanly to a dead cat lying in the gutter and it would have been the Best Local Newspaper Photograph In The World Ever.

In fact, the Reading Evening Post seems to be rather good at this kind of thing. As are the Oxford Mail.

I have every sympathy for local press photographers - hugely over-qualified yet sickeningly under-paid as they are. No wonder they only ever take pictures of people pointing at pavement pizzas. You would too.

Your mission today is to celebrate this burgeoning art: Get out in the wild and find similar. Extra credit for

a) wreath at the site of a tragedy bearing the single word "WHY?!"

b) "...and year 10 kids from St Custards College are so upset by littering in their local park, they've written a rap"

c) pensioner pointing at something in the gutter

Speaking of people who are a bit handy with a camera, it's is my sister's birthday today. She is old. Happy birthday Scarysister.


On selling my soul to Planet Football

"Oi! Scary!" says fellow blogger Neonbubble, "There's a new football social networking site that wants a plug."

"Uh huh", I say, in a non-committal manner.

"FREE STUFF!" he replies.

Where do I sign?

It was as if an occult hand had reached down and told me to say nice things about the totally EXCELLENT football social networking site Footbo, and not just because there's the chance of winning FREE STUFF, either.

To be honest, they've got a fight on their hands, because they're not all that different to Oleole.com, host of the mind-numbingly terrific ARSEBLOG, but certainly worth a sniff if you're into twenty-two grown men kicking a pig's bladder.

I signed up, pinned my colours to Weymouth's mast, awill now devote my life to writing awful lies about the best football team on the planet.

Part of the plug includes a prediction of the Euro2008 final, which I promise not to edit after the fact by way of cheating: Spain 3-2 Germany.

As you were.

On lacking tact

On lacking tact

A phone rings in an office in 1987.

"Hello, Department of Cow Counting, how can I help you?"

"Oo's that?"

"More to the point, who are you?"

"It's Nikki. Oo are you?"

Nicola, six foot of blonde, face like a slapped arse, and a frightening love life that involved just about every married and soon-to-be-divorced man South Reading had to offer. Also: Not one of the Ministry of Cow Counting's more reliable assets.

"It's Scary. And I take it you're not coming in today."

"'Ow did you know that? You psychic or summat?"

"It's Monday. You never come in on a Monday."

"Naaah, tell Jan I can't come in today. Me boyfriend done me up the bum hole on Friday night, an' I haven't been able to walk since."

If I had a computer monitor on my desk, I dare say I would have spat coffee all over it. Instead, I emptied half a bottle of Tipp-ex all over six months' worth of European Union cow-counting statistics.

"Riiight… I'll tell her you've had an accident. Any chance we'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, but you'll have to get stores to send up a cushion. There's no way I'm gonna sit on one of them cheapo office chairs. It still hurts when I go to the shitter. You won't tell anyone, will ya?"

Another poor unfortunate who uses Fairy Liquid for lubricant.

"No. No. Of course not. See ya."

>CLICK<

"HEY! You'll never guess what…"

Tactless, that's me.

On knowing Kung Fu

On knowing Kung Fu

So, I decided to tackle my crippling lack of confidence by taking up the martial arts.

"Scary-san", said my Kung Fu Master at the end of my first lesson, "I have a special task for you. I command you - as your sensei - to come to my house this weekend and paint the fence in my back garden."

"I am honoured," I said, cowering before the man-mountain who was to become my guide in the Way of the Exploding Fist, "Is this so I might attain some sort of zen-like enlightenment of these ancient arts of self defence through the discipline and drudgery of hard manual labour?"

"No," he replied, "I'll break your legs if you don't."

Not having a proper uniform, he also made me wear stuff out of the lost property box. It was either that or grapple with the lightly-oiled brute in my vest and pants. Or "Greek-style", as he put it, the panic rising up inside me like a day-old doner kebab.

"Rule eight of Kung Fu Club", he said, an evil glint in his eye: "If it's your first night at Fight Kung Fu Club, you HAVE to fight."

It's OK. I can walk now. Who knew The Way of the Wedgie was a legitimate move?

On things not to say when accidentally finding yourself at the Nuremberg Rally

On things not to say when accidentally finding yourself at the Nuremberg Rally

You know how these things go.

One minute you're a mild-mannered telephone sanitiser, and before you know it you're transported back to the Nuremburg Rally* in nineteen thirty-something, surrounded by earnest-looking, square-headed, humourless thugs becoming uncharacteristically excited over a speech from Der Fuhrer on Large-Chested Aryan Totty I'd Like To Bone.

You're foreign. You've been to a Bar Mitzvah. You're in the middle of a laundry crisis and you've only got a particularly flowery shirt. For the love of crikey, just don't say anything that'll get you killed.

For example:

- "Who's that twat with the tache?"

- "I say, could one of you chaps direct me to the Turkish bath?"

- "Whatchoo staring at, slag?"

- "Allahu akhbar!"

- "I do believe in fairies, I do. I do."

- "That Eva Braun – I've done her up the wrong'un, you know"

- "Morning Star! Get your Morning Star here!"

- "The other's in the Albert Hall"

- "SPOILER! Winston Churchill WINS!"

Plz to add more in comments. You might save a life.

* Won by Dave Hitler in a Volkswagen

Mirth and Woe: The X Files

Mirth and Woe: The X Files

The school dark room.

If it could talk, what stories it could tell.

Actually, if it could talk, it would say "The wanking club meets on Tuesdays, and all the porn's kept in the suspended ceiling space above the sink."

After-school activities aren't what they used to be.

I – and this is a story I have stuck to for well over twenty years – was one of the few who actually used the dark room for the purpose for which it was designed: developing and printing photographs in those days before digital photography.

OK, there were certain sixth formers and a certain member of large-chested female staff who used the facilities both for photography and for masturbatory purposes (and we had the negatives to prove it), but they were the exception to an otherwise solid rule that involved far too many photographs of trains taken on platform five of Reading station.

Far too keen as this photographic game, I was joined by my long-lost partner-in-crime Geoff, whose real name I am still sheltering after all these years.

We made a right old killing at the school Christmas Fayre, in which we invited our contemporaries to throw darts at home-produced photos of the teaching staff, donating the best part of a hundred quid to the Head's Buy-a-brand-new-Nissan fund even after deducting what we called reasonable expenses.

Others might have called it embezzlement, but photographic paper's more expensive than you think.

Our next great scheme came about as a result of a fortunate accident.

Being complete sad bastards, we decided on making a photographic record of our entire collection of completed Airfix models. One of the prints – that of a plane silhouetted in front of a window - was accidentally over-exposed by a wanking club member bursting in on the wrong day, and the result was a blurry cigar shape, seemingly suspended in mid-air.

Much like a UFO, in fact.

Very much like a UFO.

So much like a UFO, that we shot some more. After a little experimentation, we found that best results could be obtained by cutting out a saucer shape from a cereal packet, sticking it to the window with Blu-Tac and photographing it through the net curtains on a sunny day. A bit of jiggery-pokery in the darkroom, and Robert, as they say, is your Aunt's live-in lover.

Passed around the easily swayed in the school playground and the local scout hut, the smug realisation fell upon us that no-one could tell they were crude fakes.

"You could make a fortune with these!" said one particularly bug-eyed friend.

And gad, we did.

The Reading Evening Post gave us a whole six quid - SIX QUID! - for the pick of the bunch, which was twice the amount I could earn in a week delivering papers for Darth ("Gasp – you – gasp – cunt – gasp") Vader's newsagents in Twyford.

One thing led to another, and our picture appeared on the wall in Fox Mulder's office in The X Files, with the words "I want to believe" added in crude lettering*. Fame, of a sort.

I understand the same people who paid us that small fortune now work in local television, judging by the number of lights-in-the-sky-filmed-on-my-mobile stories they have these days.

The sad denouement is, of course, the occasion I was abducted by aliens one Friday night on the way back from the pub. How else could you explain those lost eight hours, my coming to in a hedge miles from home, and my face being covered with the remains of a recently deceased "Alien" face-hugger that resembled a half-eaten kebab?

The truth is out there.

* May actually be a lie

On doing the world a favour

On doing the world a favour

It transpires that Jimmy Carr will be doing summer season at the crumbling Weymouth Pavilion theatre this summer. I would - as would many others - rather gouge my eyes out with a spork.

In order to preserve both my sanity and my eyesight, I have made arrangements with some new friends who recently traded in their Ford Mondeo for a genuine WWII Sherman Tank*:


Of course, this extreme and entirely necessary course of action will almost certainly result in the painful and violent deaths of many local citizens and visiting tourists who have paid cash money to see Mr Carr on stage.

And my message to their next of kin is this: They bought the tickets, they knew the risks. Harsh, yet fair.

* Not cockney rhming slang

On Room Two

On Room Two

"What room are you in?" asks one of my esteemed colleagues as I pick up a key to the highly-appointed overnight accommodation provided by my employers.

"Room two. Ian's got my usual penthouse suite, so I've got the room below."

"You DO know it's haunted?"

"Come off it."

"No, really, I've stayed in there and I've been woken up by this woman…"

"It wasn't the cleaners, by any chance, kicking you out in the morning?"

"...this ghostly woman, staring down at me..."

"Right..."

"...after I came back from the pub. Long hair. Evil looking face. Dreadful, dreadful screeching."

" It's Yoko Ono," says another colleague, clearly channelling Derek Acorah's not-made-up-at-all spirit guide Sam.

"But... but... she's not dead."

"Give me 48 hours, a baseball bat and a bathful of quicklime and that will cease to be a problem."

I am so scared, I daren't undress. And my night manipulations have gone right out of the window*.

* Not what you think


Other so-scared-you'll-burn-your-neighbour-in-a-wicker-man news

In other so-scared-you'll-burn-your-neighbour-in-a-wicker-man news, the people behind Most Haunted have launched their own TV channel – The Paranormal Channel – number 212 on Sky Digital.

Mindful of the fact that it is owned by Yvette "Aaargh!" Fielding, and more importantly, her husband Karl Beattie – a genuine Ninja master - I will say this is the best thing on television, EVER, and please don't break my legs.

On socks, sandals and having a Berni

On socks, sandals and having a Berni

To celebrate the fact that I am EXCELLENT, my charming wife takes me out to a meal at the swankiest restaurant in town.

That's right, dear reader: We had a Berni.

The reason for this celebration is my selection for the British Olympic Team at the Beijing Olympics in the sport of Socks and Sandals Spotting, in which I am the national champion, and an eighth dan LORD HIGH OF EXCELLENCE in the Art.

The Olympic trials were held in Weymouth – S&S capital of the United Kingdom – this weekend, my score of 56 being a new World Record, despite the obvious BLASPHEMY issues in taking part in such a sport on the LORD'S DAY.


It is my duty, then, to face down these hideous fashion criminals and BLASPHEMERS, laugh at them in the street, and take photographs; for it is all in the line of our nation's Olympic glory and the WILL of our lord JEFF BANKS.

For as we speak, the coastal resorts of China are thronged with crack S&S spotters, some as young as eight years old, in dawn-until-dusk training for this and future Olympic Games.

I, on the other hand, have my trusty notebook, a signed photograph of Lord Coe in a pair of swimming trunks, and a town full of bewildered fashion accidents in shopmobility scooters.

The gold medal is as good as mine.

A Sunday afternoon, we elbowed the heaving masses aside and ran the gauntlet of strange-smelling fellow customers in a range of market-bought shell-suits and waiting staff with stomach-churning piercings, and knuckled down to a fine, fine meal at Britain's second most excellent steak house.

"I'll have the chicken tikka masala" says my lovely wife to the hideously pierced waiter, eschewing the flame-grilled cow, the episode of her burning a Berni Inn to the ground still fresh in her mind after all these years.

"And I'll have the ham, eb and chips, please" I say, feeling particularly adventurous.

"Eb?"

"Oh. I said 'ham, eb and chips', didn't I?"

"Yes. Yes you did."

"What a stupid bit".

On Nelson Mandela

On Nelson Mandela

Hello. My name is Scaryduckling, and I am EXCELLENT. Actually, I'm twice as excellent as my father; and my brother Scaryduck Junior is full of FAIL.

And unlike the pair of them, at least I don't lick tramps.

I have a complaint. And it is this.

I am in a drama and music group at my otherwise brilliant school. Every now and then, we do some sort of performance that fills the school's hall to the brim with cheering parents and relatives. Our recent Romeo and Juliet being a case in point, especially when it turned out that Juliet wasn’t quite dead when they dropped her on the floor.

This term, sadly, they have had us doing the following (and I might point out that this is no criticism of my excellent teachers who may be excused for turning completely tone deaf for a couple of months a year):

* Stupid songs

* Rubbish drumming

* Embarrassing costumes (and face it, with an old man like mine, you know the meaning of embarrassment)

* The worst spack-handed performers for all the solos and key numbers

All for Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert

And HE'S NOT EVEN GOING

Shame on you Mandela. Shame. On. You.

No cake.


Dad note: Scaryduckling has just returned from that France, where she took part in a rather sombre tour of WW1 battlefields and war graves.

"Did you use any French?" I ask.

"Yeah, but whenever I said 'thank you' in shops I got really strange looks."

So, I ask her, what do you think the French words for 'thank you' are?

"Mercy Boo Koo Moo".

That'll be it, then.

Mirth: And Woe upon the BLASPHEMER

Mirth: And Woe upon the BLASPHEMER

Compare and contrast the following. Can you spot a common theme?

"Look. I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.'"

"I know what that shed needs. A nice window box with some flowers."

If you answered that both are prime examples of BLASPHEMY that can only be punished by DEATH, then you are correct. Give yourself a shiny.

However, whilst one was these was a work of fiction, the shed comments actually happened, and resulted in the righteous smiting of the BLASPHEMER by the outraged Gods of Shed.

Let this tale be a warning to those who consider allowing WOMEN near your most sacred garden outbuildings. Yea, and indeed, verily.

A man's shed – as you know – is his castle. His castle, his retreat, and some of the time, his toilet.

My shed has been – following the hurricane-force battering it took earlier this year – showing signs of wear. What better, then, than to repair some of the storm damage and to give it a nice lick of paint. Good, manly colours, I'll have you know, with the words "NO WOMEN" in twelve-inch high lettering on the door.

And, as the third coat of Ronseal Forest Green wood seal went on (doing, as the adverts say, exactly as it says on the tin: "Paint your shed green, you dim bastard") and some new trim went over the door, I had to admit that my Shed O'Doom was looking pretty damn excellent.

It was at that exact point my charming wife came along and angered the Gods of Shed.

"I know what that shed needs. A nice window box with some flowers."

I could hardly contain myself.

Ask yourself this question: When William the Conqueror built the Tower of London did he cave in when Mrs The Conqueror insisted on a nice window box? No he did not. In fact, he put in more dungeons and a big platform for the purpose of executing Enemies of the State.

And the same goes for the shed, and the mere mention of wresting this one bastion of masculinity away from our manly hands can result in but one outcome: Woe.

And so, as I moved around the shed with my big tin of green paint, my foot became entangled around the tarpaulin I was using to keep paint off my lovely, manly patio. An entanglement – mark my words – caused by angry Shed Gods.

"Ooyagh!" I said, in surprise and alarm, "Ooyagh!"

As I tripped, the pot arced through the air, and landed – with a great gloop of Ronseal Forest Green Quick Drying Wood Seal all over the tarpaulin.

"Oh, cock!" I exclaimed, hopping away from the mess, and emerging with only minor spatter.

It is at this point that things turned a bit Final Destination as my charming wife's fate was sealed.

It had – up to that point – been a lovely warm, still morning, with the sun belting down to warm our lovely garden. With BLASPHEMY in the air, the Gods of Shed send down a great wind. A great wind that whipped up my large paint-spattered tarp and deposited straight onto the head of Mrs Duck.

She screamed.

There was a brief silence, in which I steeled myself sufficiently to remove my spouse from her canvas prison.

And so she emerged, with wrath in her heart.

She resembled a rather expensive work by Jackson Pollock, only much, much angrier.

"These... these are my best jeans!" she said as if commenting on a nice piece of halibut.

What could a man do in such circumstances. Only one thing seemed appropriate:

"Well, that'll teach ya."

...is the wrong answer.

I stayed in the refuge of my shed until dark, emerging only to throw water over the burning faggots stacked against the door.

Let that be a lesson to you all. The Gods of Shed are a bunch of miserable bastards.

On the depressing state of the housing market

On the depressing state of the housing market

Gad, I wrote this sub-E.L. Wisty-style piece four years ago, posted it on my other blog which nobody reads, and promptly forgot about it. With the housing market turning to toilet – resulting in the Duck family missing out on our dream nest a couple of months ago – I've given it a nice rub down, a light greasing and given it the good, hard publishing it probably doesn't deserve. So.


On a short encounter in Kensington High Street

That Kirstie Allsopp came up to me in the street the other day. All furtive like, she was, pouncing on your helpless narrator as he went about his innocent business of collecting and cataloguing phone booth Tart Cards for the British Library.

Allsopp's well known for her gift of furt, and here she was, in front of me, being furtive to the hilt. And no wonder.

Make-up smeared across her face as if it was applied by the bricklayer that does damage limitation on Amy Winehouse, Aquascutum twin-set dragged through a hedge backwards and taken roughly from behind in a stable somewhere in the Home Counties, white stilettos like they'd never gone out of fashion in 1986.

A nervous glance to check we weren't being watched and she let me have it.

"House, Sir?"

"I beg your pardon?" I replied, eyes darting up and down Kensington High Street for a potential escape route, but finding none.

"Lookin' for business, love?" she continued in a voice that could turn the finest wines into paint-stripper, "Semi-detatched? Nice maisonette? Very classy. I'm not an estate agent, you know."

It was all I could do to bring myself to reply: "You filthy slattern."

"You filthy slattern," I replied, "That's what you are. Filthy. And a slattern to boot."

"Nice four bedroom fixer-upper, plenty up top if you know what I mean," the trollop continued, not put of by my outburst.

"Get away from me, you disgusting tart," I gasped, the anger boiling inside me, not interested one jot in sullying myself with her disgusting wares.

"Much sought-after location..."

"Piss off!"

"Perhaps you'd prefer Phil, if that's the bag you're into. He drives a hard bargain at the bottom end of the property market."

My look – one of barely disguised contempt – said everything that foul temptress needed to know.

"Oh," she said, crestfallen. I don't suppose a quick greasing up with this catering-size bottle of baby oil's out of the question then?"

Sickening, these celebrities. Besides, fortune smiled on me as I espied Sarah Beeny just down the road, plying her trade outside McDonalds. You should have seen the scaffolding.

On the Seven Seas

On the Seven Seas

I have always been perplexed by the English language and the hideous tortures to which it is subjected. This paragraph, in fact, being a case in point.

Which idiot, for example came up with such descriptive tosh as this: "The heaving bosom of the sea"?

'Does the sea actually have bosoms?', I ask.

After standing for long hours on Weymouth beach at the height of the holiday season, comparing and contrasting the surface of the sea with a number of graphic illustrations from the monthly journal 'Big Ones' in the name of SCIENCE, I have come to one irrefutable conclusion: No. It does not.

Can you put your head between the pinky fleshness of the bit where the North Sea meets the English Channel and go "Blbbl blbbl blbbl"?

No. You will almost certainly be fished out of the brine half-drowned, and the man from the RNLI will dine out for a lifetime once you tell him what you've been up to.

The sea: It does not have bosoms. It tastes of salt, and that is all the aspiring writer needs to know.

As Herman Melville wrote in his classic Moby Dick:

The crew of the Pequod lay exhausted, tossed on the salty jism of the ocean until they were nothing but dry husks, their bolts well and truly shot.

With dread filling their hearts, they lolled around the deck as ship rolled on the swell, until Ahab came amongst them calling: "Who's for sloppy seconds, boys?"

But, to a man, they were limp. Pumped dry.

Now, that's literature.

On breaking the house rules again again

On breaking the house rules again again

House Rule update bulletin No. 1237/2008

Having a couple of blokes of the male persuasion in the house means that the toilet seat gets a bit crusty.

You know how these things happen - it's a long way down, and the aim of late night/early morning number ones often leaves a lot to be desired.

However, I will maintain that the female population of our household is equally culpable, doing arcane no-tail things that are a mystery to the male species, and failing to report "splashback" incidents.

Anyway, getting to the point, my charming wife went out over the weekend and bought a brand new toilet seat, the cause for an annual household celebration following the ritual exorcism of the old one, which is now landfill of the Island of Portland.

And - HEY, WOW - she's really pushed the boat out and bought one of those dreadfully flashy slow-closing lids.

She had barely tightened the retaining bolts when the lad Scaryduck Junior and I invented a new game. It is called The Finish Your Wee Before The Slow-Closing Toilet Seat Closes Game, and the rules are as simple as you might imagine.

Nobody - as yet - has lost a round of The Finish Your Wee Before The Slow-Closing Toilet Seat Closes Game.

Alas, we might never know, for and official edict has been passed down and added to the Official Rules Of This Household:

Rule 1237/2008: The playing of The Finish Your Wee Before The Slow-Closing Toilet Seat Closes Game is punishable by a bog brush up the chuff.

So mote it be.

Let's parler Scaryduck!

Let's parler Scaryduck!

Good moaning.

Many have been the time on these pages when people have contacted me out of the blue and asked: "What the blummin' hell are you on about, bloke?"

Over the years, I confess, a number of running gags, in-jokes and frankly, obscure references have appeared that require a certain amount of explanation.

It is time, then, for a bit of a Scaryduck/English dictionary. Feel free to add to it in the comments, I'll add to this page throughout today.

Ann Noreen Widdecombe: The Scaryduck anti-muse. When sitting down to write a post, I will think to myself 'What's guaranteed to offend the old trout?' Also, thinking of her in the nudd is a quick, permanent solution to unwanted 'wood' problems

Done a poo: Described in the Oxford English Dictionary as "Toilet tense". While normal activity is rendered "I did a task", anything below the waist and above the knee is spoken "I done a poo", or more correctly (and simply) "Done a poo/wee/guff/rampant hand shandy"

I am not mad: A doomed attempt to prove my sanity before the men in white coats arrive

Lightly-oiled [name of female celebrity]: Not all female celebrities may be lightly-oiled (see Ann Noreen Widdecombe), but the following have been approved for future wrestling-in-a-paddling-pool events: Sarah Beeny, Kirstie Allsop, Nigella Lawson

Lucy/Biscuit/Ryan/Spanners Minogue: The standard surname given to any pet in the Duck household. Also used by a couple of Australian entertainers with fantastic bottoms

May contain traces of lie: Everything you read on these pages is 100% absolute and honest truth, so strike me down dead if I'm telling you porkies*

Poor, dead Howard Jones: An epithet given to any celebrity who has disappeared from public view to such an extent that one can reasonably assume they are dead. See also: Poor, dead Joe Dolce, Poor, dead Jade Goody

Scaryduckworth-Lewis method: A scientifically-proven way of rating things for excellence on a scale of zero to 20. The current list: IT IS HERE

Sick inna hedge: The laws of slapstick writing state that all stories about youthful misadventure should end with the words "And then I was sick inna hedge", even if this is not the case. It may not be strictly true, but them's the rules

Yaaaaaaaarch: The sound of rich, brown vomit being projected into a nearby hedgerow

* May contain traces of lie

Mirth and woe: Quitter

Mirth and woe: Quitter

I had a teenage paper round, where a chain smoker known locally as Darth Vader (on account of his ceaseless 40-a-day-habit wheezing) paid me 50p a day to deliver newspapers.

Hardly "This time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires" territory, but when you're that age with a 2000AD habit to support, you take the money wherever you can find it.

The round allowed me to get out of bed early, get the job done by seven, and give me a full hour and a half to get my homework done and give me the evenings free to set fire to things.

I soon found, to my disgust, that the village's other newsagent paid their paperboys a whole, shiny pound per day, but Darth was adamant that "there are gasp plenty of other kids gasp willing to work gasp for peanuts, and you can gasp fuck right off gasp if you don't like it".

You didn't even get extra for Fridays, where everybody in the village got the Maidenhead Advertiser, a doorstop of a publication that never weighed in at less than 100 pages. On top of the slew of Daily Torygraphs, Fridays were a Hell on Earth, and all that effort for ten bob.

Well, sod that, I went and found myself a weekend job in a supermarket where I got to watch people having loads of sex, and worked out a week's notice for Darth in which he would pointedly blow Capstan Full Strength into my face by way of poison gassed revenge.

Still pissed off at his attitude, I hatched a plan. A plan that would – if perfectly executed – engender much-needed community relations in a village that was in danger of becoming little more than a dormitory town, where one neighbour would never even acknowledge the chap over the road.

I gave everybody's paper to the house next door, and all the Advertisers went to the last house on the round, who just happened to be the village doctor. If they wanted their morning rag, they would have to go knock for it.

This was made all the more fun by the fact that one side of the road was entirely posh houses who all took the Telegraph, The Times or the Daily Mail, while the other was decidedly council where the Daily Star was seen as highbrow reading. It was also the side of the road where Peter McCartney's enormously fat mum got dressed in front of the living room window every morning, I sight I never want to see again in my entire life.

I popped into Darth's shop the next day to pick up my money, just in time to see Dr Thomas storming out, veins bulging on his forehead in fury.

"You gasp cunt" said Darth. I didn't get paid, but I was already on Easy Street. One pound ten per hour. One pound fucking ten, and a digital watch that played "It's a small, small world". Stick that in your pipe, Vader.

And then he sicked his lungs up in a hedge.

On using SCIENCE to help the environment

On using SCIENCE to help the environment

A poser for you, in which your humble narrator cannot do right for doing wrong. Degree of difficulty: Involves poo.

Riddle me this: Now that those shrill answer-to-everything enviro-fascists are banning plastic bags from supermarkets, what am I supposed to do when I walk the dog?

Also: With what, pray, are we supposed to fill big holes in the ground if these Green Nazis force us to eat our own landfill? It'll be THEIR FAULT if these big holes in the ground fill with water and immigrants and this proud nation SINKS below the waves which we once, so proudly, ruled.

Lucy Minogue and I walk down to the coast path, and I wait patiently while she does a fragrant flower-scented poo, and I diligently pick it up inside a plastic bag and dump it inna hedge in one of the many receptacles provided by Weymouth and Portland Borough Council.

It is just a shame that so many of my fellow dog owners do not do the same, especially that manky bastard with the Great Dane of the man-sized turds which adorn the coast path like brown speed bumps.

Any road up, now that we are up to our waists in rising sea levels, and global warming has fried my body to a dried-up husk, it seems that I am no longer going to be able to recycle my old plastic bags by preventing the local kids from poisoning themselves to an early grave on dog shit.

Obviously, still possessing at least some modicum of a social conscious, I have to do something, because – and I am sure TV's Monty Don will agree - doggy dollops do not make great garden mulch.

Instead, I propose a ground-breaking, sterile solution for clearing up after your dog, involving the use of SCIENCE. There's money in this plan, so, if things work out, this time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires.

1. Allow your pooch to do her business as usual

2. Spray the turd with a CO2 fire extinguisher you have liberated from work. They'll never miss it. When – answer me this – did they last have a fire? Remember: That horn gets cold cold cold, and never forget to allow yourself a means of escape, in case your flaming turd gets out of hand

3. Lift the now frozen turd with a pair of tongs or similar. The faux silver ones your significant other uses to serve dinner will be fine. You can't get killed TO DEATH off frozen turds. FACT

4. Keep the 100 per cent clean and not deadly at all deposit in the kitchen freezer until required (For example, as a gift to a local Useless Workshy Cunt of A Builder in the small hours of the morning, it being the only language this kind of person understands). There is no need to worry about food poisoning, as rampant diarrhoea can only be A Good Thing in Obese Britain these days

You may – and I can see your thinking – have reservations about the use of a CO2 fire extinguisher when we are – of course – supposed to be cutting down on our CO2 emissions. Worry not – this is GOOD clean Carbon Dioxide for putting out fires and freezing dog shit, and is nothing to do with the BAD filthy planet-raping shit that comes out of VW Touaregs on the school run.

Your conscience will be clean. Unlike Workshy Builder's front hall, which will resemble an IRA dirty protest.

On gender identification

On gender identification

I'm a man of the world.

I've done it, and I've seen a lady naked.

Therefore, I find myself in an ideal position to be able to tell men and women apart. Men, as a whole, tend to have johnsons; whilst the female of the species have a paraphernalia that is referred to in the British Medical Journal as the 'clunge'.

I mention this because I know thngs like SCIENCE and MATHS and still possess a number of diligently cross-referenced and lavishly illustrated journals from my youth that prove that I am well qualified in settling male/female gender disputes.

So, I find it my duty to tell the publishers of the Super Soarway free newspaper Metro that they are carrying advertisements obviously written by somebody who has never seen a lady naked.

"The London Women's Clinic - Expenses paid for sperm donation"

Somebody really ought to tell them. They've got basic biology and SCIENCE very, very wrong.

If I was a girl with bosoms and all the other parts, and possessed this freak-of-nature ability, I would be making a beeline straight to the offices of orange-skinned publicist Max Clifford rather than this bunch of quacks.

Then it'll be paydirt: Channel Five medical freakshow documentaries, Take a Break magazine followed by Richard and Judy and/or Phil and Fern.

This time next year Rodders, we'll be millionaires.

And then I'd realise the dreadful, fatal flaw in my plan. I've had a vasectomy.

Cock.


Stuff that, let's party

To quote poor, dead Glenn Gregory out of Heaven 17: "There's a party goin' on that's gonna change the way we live", and it's right over there on Misty's blog, where she's celebrating her 1,000th post with cake, games, full-frontal nudity an' stuff.

Strictly fancy dress, I shall be attending as Space Hitler, just as soon as I've finished invading the Pole Star (Geddit? Eh? EH?). Then, I shall drink heavily, scarf all the dry roast peanuts and be sick inna hedge. Typical Wednesday, then.

What? Still here? PAR-TAY!

On breaking the house rules, again

On breaking the house rules, again

An update on the latest house rules that I am forced to live under, forced upon me by the tyrannical, yet fragrant Mrs Duck regime.

Every now and then, my charming wife comes up with some new regulation to ensure the smooth running of our household. A new regulation that I have already unwittingly broken since it was passed by a secret house committee ten minutes previously.

For example:

* Don't wipe your arse on the hamster

* Gazpacho Soup must be thoroughly warmed through

* For God's sake, use your own socks as fake bosoms

And now, Rule 387 of This House:

* Don't fart while you're asleep

I'm still trying to come to terms with this particular addition to the regulations, which may have something to do with my new-found love of uncooked organic bean sprouts.

It's like saying to a corpse "Try not to breathe while you're dead". Can't be done, and by God, I've tried.

Instead, I have employed my superior intellect to tackle this problem head-on and have invented the Patent Acme Guff-u-Stop.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "This time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires."

It's a cork.

Like the boy said yesterday: This time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires.

Ram it home with the mallet provided in your Guff-u-Stop kit (you may need help from a grown-up at this stage), and you will experience a peaceful night free of unwanted trump annoyance.

Or, it'll go off at three in the morning and smash an expensive IKEA light shade before coming to rest in the dog.

Instead, I shall – whilst working away from home – replace the Guff-u-Stop apparatus with a football referee's whistle. No reason, I just want to annoy the neighbours.

On my most humiliating experience

On my most humiliating experience

Scaryduck Junior here again, King of LULZ, filling in for the Duck who is no longer funny.

I may only be twelve years old, but I am a bigger genius than my rubbish dad, and am so clever that I have already been on Dragons' Den with one of my EXCELLENT inventions.

As my idiot father says: "This time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires". Which is rubbish, because my name isn't Rodders. It's Junior. But, I took my BRILLIANT idea up to London to show to a load of rich types off the telly.

Anyway, imagine, if you will, a fine-looking young teen, decked out in his best school blazer, going up those famous stairs above a kebab shop in the East End of London, for that is where the Dragons have their Den.

"What ho, young man!" say one of the suits, thinking I will be a pushover like that Reggae Reggae Sauce man, "What have you got for us today?"

I drew myself up to my full height, and showed them: The Building Material Of The Future.

By their silence and the way they were fingering big wads of fifties, I knew they were impressed, but I remembered my dad's advice in the face of the big guns: "Hold out for a monkey, son", whatever that meant.

"So, what you're telling us," says the man who is so rubbish he owns Millwall Football Club, "is that you've built a helicopter out of 300 tons of Blu-Tac?"

Caught like a Treen in a disabled space cruiser. "Yes. Yes I am."

Forced into a corner, I accidentally let slip the one, great design flaw in the design for my helicopter: Every time I land, it gets stuck to the ground.

Also, you can't fly it in the rain, on account of the toilet rolls.

"I'll give you a monkey", said the Millwall guy, as I retreated to the sound of laughter and cries of "Get out of my sight, before we set loose the hounds".

I let down the tyres on his Blu-Tac Bentley. That learned him.

What, I ask, has been your greatest humiliation?