Author: Robert Wringham

Enjoying some time in bed with the sniffles, I decide to sign up to Netflix — or “Net Flicks” as I naively thought it was called until today. When did I get so old? Why can’t we live forever?

A universally popular TV-streaming service, I think, probably beats staring at the formation of cracks in our ceiling that some say looks like Sir Roger Moore and others say looks like a knackered bedroom ceiling.

Besides, I must admit to harboring a degree of curiosity about this thing everyone’s talking about. First time for everything, I suppose.

I’ve resisted Netflix for some time, in part because it’s one of the things contributing to the BBC’s redundancy and I hate to think of Messrs Attenburgh, Castle and Blobby not having anything to do anymore.

But it’s a tad hypocritical to worry so much about the Beeb when I don’t actually give them any money, isn’t it? The TV license, you may not know, can be avoided when you exploit the simple loophole of slinging the telly out of the window. Just make sure it’s not going to fall through the roof of a detector van before you push it off the ledge.

Anyway, what strikes me first and foremost about Netflix is its uncannny resemblance to the in-flight entertainment systems you get on airplanes.

The main comparison lies in how, despite there being a bewildering range of programming on offer, it never has quite what you want — presumably because the aim of whomever curates programming for each of these cloud-based services is to mollify a bored, anxious, probably grounded, international audience.

The effect is that you sit in your own stench, contemplating the likelihood of a pending fiery death, wile fingering a just-about-responsive interface composed of colourful, twerp-proof Whytech buttons. Yes, it feels very much like something that should be stuck in the back of another passenger’s reclined, dandruffy head.

You ask it to show you The X Files which can’t be done but, God bless it for trying, you can have any one of seventeen other things with David Duchovney instead.

You try to browse the comedy section but you end up viewing the first 13 seconds of something called Mindhunter thanks to a slow-loading banner ad.

Beyond a huge number of expensive-looking superhero- and monarchy-based exclusives is what can only be described as “an abyss of tat.” Firmly in this category is an awful lot of old BBC content. Obviously Netflix will have paid the BBC some money to show these programmes but I wonder if the The Big British Castle also receive royalties after a certain number of viewings? I don’t know for sure, but this is what happens with books — you get a certain amount up front and then a percentage after selling, say, 10,000 copies. Or so my publishers assure me.

This gives me an idea. Could we not rescue the BBC from its funding crisis by leaving old episodes of Blackadder playing from beginning to end when we all go out to work? You’d leave in the morning with Brian Blessed on the screen and come home in the evening to the fate of Speckled Jim. Meanwhile you’ve made 20p for the BBC. If everyone did this, Aunty would be rolling in pence.

Better still, we should choose to play old episodes of Bottom, just so the campaign can be called “Bottoming”. That is, #Bottoming.

Part way through an episode of an alienating, joyless cash-in called Star Trek: Discovery, I find myself wondering which is the button that will tell me the time remaining until our destination.

Might go back to staring at those ceiling cracks.

Friday night and my arm is worn out. Not for the reason you’re thinking of (honestly, madam, where do you get it from?) but because I’ve been writing a letter.

Yes, a proper, long-form letter with an old-fashioned pen and paper. Two sides of A4 if you must know (and you must).

A friend wants to keep in touch by writing letters and who am I to deny him this archaic pleasure? If it weren’t for the distraction, he’d only roam the halls of his family seat, bellowing in his pantaloons and wistfully playing the lute.

Besides, letter-writing turns out to be good clean fun and I certainly hope to continue the practice for a while. I mean, it took me so long to find a pen, I’m invested now.

The pen turned out to be hiding in some sort of “case” along with a few coloured pencils, a half-moon-shaped piece of plastic, and one of those devices for stabbing other children in the back of the hand. It’s amazing to think that schools once asked us to maintain such kits of bizarre and sadistic gadgetry but there must have been some reason for it all.

Acceptable writing paper took time to excavate too. I genuinely considered tearing up a cereal packet into squares. Alas, we don’t have an empty one at the moment, and having to eat six bowls of Sugar Puffs in order to write a letter quickly put paid to the idea. Besides, my friend had already set a high standard by writing to me on such nice-quality paper with his home address embossed along the top that it did not seem adequate to reply using a jigsaw puzzle of the Honey Monster’s face.

I eventually found — between some fossilized layers of gas bill — a single sheet of A4 printer paper, probably half-inched from some office job of yore. Come to think of it, what do people steal from work these days to make it worth going in? Bandwidth?

When it finally came to writing the letter, I’ve not had so much physical activity in years. Up and down the pen-strokes go, across and around, dotting and looping. You must avoid the temptation to put down so many exclamation marks, just because the motions inspired by their shape is so appealing. It’s worth reserving such punctuation for phrases like “send help!” or “trapped in a drain!” if you want them to have conviction.

And then you have to tear it all up and start again because you’ve drifted off and written “cockholes” instead of “dear friend” or because you’ve crossed out too many misfires and the pen has leaked and you’ve knocked your glass of water over it.

But just six hours and two small fires later, and you have a beautiful, hand-written letter replete with meaning and personal confidence. It’s a shame the diagonal slant promoted by sitting at a table for once makes everything radiate from the top left-hand corner like an upside-down version of the explosive symbol.

It takes you back, writing a letter. You remember all manner of things — checking the dictionary before committing a word to print; putting the address in the “correct” corner; taking letters dictated by parents and teachers, mischievously including the interjections of passing strangers and pets.

Remember all of the rules like the requisite number of blank lines between date and address, and ending with “Yours Faithfully” if you began with “Dear Sir”? Today, as you know, it’s perfectly acceptable to start an email to a parent or employer with “Alright, Cunt?!?!”

And now, as I seal my masterpiece into the envelope — what better way to end a respectful epistle than with the application of saliva? — my arm is like that of the false Rod Hull. I’ve always had skinny, string-like arms but after writing the letter I fear my limbs will now only move again with the application of Kermit the Frog-style rods.

Off I go now to the Post Box. Hey, remember when we had to put one of those sticky “Queen’s head” things onto the envelope before posting it? Crazy days!

Every now and then, something from my working-class childhood floats up in memory to give me a shudder. The Nit Nurse, for example, or a scene glimpsed through a Blackpool window in 1993.

And then there’s Athlete’s Foot. Whatever happened to it? The 1980s was a golden age for Athlete’s Foot, a festive dusting of Tinaderm on the rim of every toilet bowl. Today? It is gone. I’m reminded of Richard Dawkins saying that “to allow a species to fall into extinction is to will the destruction of a masterpiece.”

Admittedly, Dickie may not have been thinking of Athlete’s Foot when he said that, if indeed he ever said it at all (which he didn’t), but it would be disingenuous for a biologist of his stature to so adore, say, the mountain gorilla and not our old friend tinea pedis, as I’d call it in said working class childhood.

“My tinea pedis, mater,” I’d exclaim in a broad Dudley accent, aggressively rubbing my de-socked feet against the rough edges of the Dudley skirting boards, “Ubi dolor, ibi digitus,” to which mother would inevitably respond “I’ll give you ubi dolor, ibi digitus ’round the head in a minute.”

But Athlete’s Foot is not what I sat down to tell you about today, loyal reader. No! That particular blast of nostalgia was merely the warm-up. What I’d meant to raise today is the strange case of the washed neck.

What was the grownups’ obsession in our childhoods with washing our necks? “Go to the bathroom,” they’d say, “and wash your neck.” I was forever being sent to the bathroom to wash my neck. The hours lost to it are probably why I never took the piano beyond Three Blind Mice.

Why the neck? Why not a traditionally smelly area like the armpit or, in my strange case, the arnus? Why not the hands, forever touching grubby surfaces and coving orifices as they do? Why not the fungus-addled feet? Or why not, simply, one’s whole self?

It was a long time ago, I suppose. Perhaps in those days they thought a clean neck kept draclias away (draclias being what we called Vampires in the British Midlands — not to be confused with Dracula who was simply a draclia who happened to be in the public eye). But if that was the case, why not pop a little clove oil behind each earlobe while you’re at it? And surely a clean neck could only make you more tempting to creatures of the night. Perhaps, then, it was a courtesy to the draclias. We knew our place.

Perhaps neck-washing was a sacred ritual to the British working classes and its significance was never explained to me. The human neck, if I remember my anatomy lessons correctly, is what keeps the human body attached to the human head (or your head attached to your body if you’re a pessimist, or your head attached to someone else’s body if you’re a surrealist, etc.) but beyond that I’m not sure of the significance of frequent localized neck cleansing.

Perhaps “wash your neck” was an aspirational expression, borrowed from a more arisocratic class who’d be understandably proud of a highly-buffed neck — a comforting, almost satirical superstition developed through their residual fear of the chopping block.

On the other hand, maybe it was a euphemism I failed to pick up on. Did “wash your neck” somehow mean “have a shit” or “tap one out”? Or! Perhaps it was a secret code between parents — a bit of predetermined patoir for “let’s get rid of the kid so we can get it on (i.e. neck)” perhaps?

Wait. I think I’ve got it. If we recall that “neck” sometimes meant “a brazen attitude” as in “a brass neck” or “the neck of hell,” perhaps “wash your neck” simply meant “reign it in, lad,” in a similar way to how “wash your mouth out with soap and water” was a response to swearing. If this is the case, then I spent far too much time in the bathroom taking the request literally. My poor parents. That poor, bald flannel.

I found myself thinking today about Luke.

You remember Luke. He was the chap who, when I was on work experience at the council, occupied a corner office designed to segregate him from the others lest he distract them with his exquisite beauty.

He was the one who taught me how to skive by playing Minesweeper with some invoices beside me in case someone came in.

Anyway, for the first few days of my work experience week, I thought Luke was it. We had a connection, I thought. He’d give me knowing winks. He once had me in hysterics when he breezed through the main office, singing “have a banana.”

For all this admiration, I knew we were very, very different. He was a man’s man. I was a boy. And not even a boy’s one.

He once said “Hello Fruity,” to one of the receptionists and she seemed genuinely charmed by it. I’d never be able to say “Hello Fruity.”

If I ever said “Hello Fruity,” my name would be taken down. Rightly.

It was 1998 and one of the things Luke and I both loved was South Park. South Park was huge and I had a squishy plastic Kenny on my key chain. Luke was thrilled when he saw it. He unfastened his suit jacket and showed me his Mr Garrison necktie. It was brilliant.

During my work experience, the long-awaited second series had just started to air. I watched it at home one night and came dashing into work, excited to see Luke. “Did you see it?” I asked him, panting.

“Yeah!” he said with shared enthusiasm, “the baby went up in her head! Ew!”

And we laughed.

But something was wrong. The baby hadn’t “gone up in her head,” it was a conjoined twin. That was the whole point. Conjoined Twin Myslexia. It was practically a catch phrase, repeated and repeated throughout the whole episode. I can still remember it, eighteen years later. Conjoined Twin Myslexia!

He hadn’t understood it. I’d met my first grown-up idiot.

I mean, I already knew my parents were cultural philistines but all that meant was they weren’t interested in South Park so they didn’t watch it. This was “stupid” but I’m certain they’d have understood what they were watching had they done so. There was a difference. Luke had sat on a sofa beneath three homely wall-mounted flying ducks, watching his favourite television programme, not understanding it. But he’d laughed.

So that’s why he had the corner office.

On my last day, I went with Luke on a routine inspection of council houses. In one, the tenant had blu-tacked some pages from a pornographic magazine onto the walls.

“Oy-oy,” said Luke, and made an obnoxious vaginal suction-sound between his tongue and lower lip.

I occasionally make that noise when I think nobody’s there to hear it.

The customs officers at JFK do not take kindly to flouncers, flaneurs or fops.

If you ask me, they’ve had it in for us since Wilde’s “nothing to declare” jibe, or “Geniusgate” as they call it now.

Back 2009, I was rather full of myself. I’d been recognised a couple of times as a comedian, I was flying around in Europe and North America simply for fun, and I was sleeping with people with full sets of teeth for the first time in my life. I thought I was it.

None of this held any weight at JFK Security.

“Hello!” I said.

I’d flown in from Montreal where I’d been romancing the lady who’d eventually become my wife and was now off to New York to romance someone else entirely. It was, as they say, the business.

“What is your business in New York City?” said the customs official.

“Well,” I said. “I suppose you could say I’m here for pleasure.”

“Pleasure?” she growled.

“Yes,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows left, right and impossibly centre.

“What is your profession please?” she said.

“A bit of this,” I said, “a bit of that.”

“Some kind of comedian, sir?”

“Yes!” I said, delighted, “though between you and me I’d be more happily placed in the feuilletons of a decent broadsheet than the stage.”

She eyeballed me over the top of her glasses in exactly the way as a careers adviser would.

“What is your address in New York City?”

“I don’t have an address in New York City,” I said, fingering the unicorn on the passport, “I live in Great Britain.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can see that. But what at what address will you be residing while in New York City.”

“Gosh,” I said, “I have no idea. I’m just meeting my friend at Grand Central in about forty minutes from now. At an Oyster Bar apparently. You don’t happen to know it do you?”

The officer stood up. She was short but impressively wide.

I noticed for the first time that we were both wearing blue gloves, mine alpaca and hers rubber, but almost certainly for different reasons. Well, not entirely different reasons and we’d both probably end up thinking of England. But it all comes down to motivation.

“Sir,” she said, “You must have an address if you’re to enter New York City.”

Today, of course, I’m a far wiser traveller. I always know the address of where I’m staying and, if for some reason I don’t, I could make one up. I could simply have said “I’m staying at the Waldorf Astoria” and slipped unhindered through the barriers like a swamp adder through the bedroom duct of an unwanted heir.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t have the exact address with me. I’m staying in the Bronx, I think. Is Chinatown in the Bronx?”

“That’s no good. What if we need to contact you?” she said.

“What if who needs to contact me?” I asked.

“The TSA,” she said.

“Who’s that?” I said.

“That’s us,” she said tapping the insignia on her breast pocket, “the Transportation and Security Administration.”

“Frankly,” I said in all innocence, “that eventuality had never occurred to me.”

Ah yes. I’d got her on the ropes alright. This is probably why she huffily prodded some computer keys and said, “I’m putting a note on your record. Make sure you have an address next time.”

I suspect this was bluff as no customs officer in the meantime has referred to this “note” on my “record”. But it’s quite exciting to think that the TSA care so much about staying in touch.

I unhooked Enrique, my umbrella, from her Plexiglas sneeze guard-thing and settled back into the mood for oysters.

A few weeks ago, in downtown Montreal, we noticed a large truck emblazoned with the festive colours and corporate iconography of Planters Nuts.

I wouldn’t like to describe it here as “a truckload of peanuts” because I have no idea. For all I know, there was just one single, highly pampered, peanut inside or maybe Planters were transporting office supplies to their workers in a truck that looked like it might contain peanuts. Perhaps the truck wasn’t anything to do with Planters at all and the friendly “Mr Peanut” logo was being used to disguise a far-darker cargo. Pringles perhaps. I don’t know. It’s something of a Schrödinger’s Peanut situation, and I think we’re getting off the point.

Look. The side of the truck displayed a picture of smiling Mr Peanut, who looks more and more like Clive Anderson with every redesign. And next to his beaming portrait were the words: MR. PEANUT (MD).

MD? I was at once delighted by the idea that Mr Peanut might be a Medical Doctor and angry at myself for not realising it before. Of course Mr Peanut was a medical doctor. It made complete and total sense.

Clearly, a successful medical practice is how he affords such fine accouterments: the top hat, the monocle, the ebony cane, the spats.

How else? You didn’t think he made his fortune as a peanut magnate did you? For crying out loud, he is a peanut. He’s hardly likely to sell his brothers and sisters to be rolled in salt and casually scoffed in pubs and airplanes. That would be downright sick.

Also, there are a lot of people out there who are deathly allergic to Mr Peanut and his kind. It must be very difficult for Mr Peanut to walk down the street or go to the cinema without making a lot of people nervous. At least this way, should his very presence accidentally trigger an anaphylactic shock in a passing stranger, he’s able to be useful and to make repairs.

“Is there a doctor in the house!?”

“Yes!”

In such a situation, Mr. Peanut is at once curse and cure. That’s what he keeps beneath the top hat: an EpiPen. He never leaves home without one.

My wife pointed out that the “MD” after his name was the French equivalent of “TM” in English. The MD was simply pointing out that Mr. Peanut is a registered trademark.

Oh!

Of course he wasn’t a medical doctor. He’s known far and wide as Mr. Peanut, not Dr. Peanut. Someone who wears a top hat and a monocle would never choose the more humble of those honorifics. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s not going around calling himself Dr. Prof. Rev. Peanut (MD) even without the medical degree.

I had been a fool. And my wife was laughing at me.

The strangest thing about all this is that, weeks later, part of me still thinks that Mr. Peanut is a medical doctor.

I saw some Planters Nuts in the supermarket today and something in me said “Mr. Peanut can write prescriptions.”

Even though it never made sense to begin with, and even after Samara filled me in on what the MD really signified, I’m still slave to my first, wholly mistaken, impression.

When I’m old and senile, I will almost certainly tell the nurses that Mr. Peanut is one of the finest doctors in the land and that might want to consult him about my quinapril doses.

This really could end badly. I myself have a peanut allergy. If I should ever have the misfortune to sit next to Mr. Peanut in the cinema, I’ll incorrectly assume he’ll be the one to help reduce the swelling.

Worst of all, nobody will shout “Is there a doctor in the house?!” because nobody else on the planet sees Mr. Peanut and thinks “Medical Doctor”.

And in the cinema specifically, they’re far more likely to be shouting “Down in Front!” because of his fucking top hat.

From now on, to be safe, I will only go to IMAX cinemas. They don’t tend to screen the kind of medical dramas that would attract Mr. Peanut and the 3D doesn’t work if you have a monocle.

Montreal! Where albino squirrels run amok, Mr Peanut is an MD, the hockey team can be controlled with the mind; and (soon) my blimp will patrol the skies.

Down in the parks: topless men, bottomless drinks, bits of stadium, visible panty lines.

Out on the streets: beret-wearing women riding side-saddle with cigarettes, peg-legged pirates, cross-eyed babies, puking Torontonians unaccustomed to the fun.

At any one time, half of Montreal’s population is underground. I refer not to “the underground city” that the tourists are always looking for (any day now, they’ll find it), but to the perpetual state of digging the streets up. Either there’s a year-round treasure hunt that nobody’s told me about or the mayor has lost his keys.

The women and men of Montreal could all work as models if they wanted to. The women could model high fashion, the men could model anything from gravel to grit.

I don’t mean to patronize Montreal’s women by suggesting they’re all beautiful or to insult Montreal’s men by suggesting they’re all hideous (so very hideous), but nowhere else in the world have I so frequently been moved to say the words “I’m sorry Madam, but is this man upsetting you?” only to discover he’s the husband of twenty years.

Montrealers are generally prepared to get from A to B by any means necessary. Boulevard Saint-Laurent looks like the Wacky Races. In a single day last week I saw a home-made motor-trike; an ersatz batmobile; some sk8er bois old enough to know better; a procession of Hell’s Angels, the leader of which wore bunny ears; a hipster with Icarus wings; Leonard Cohen and PK Suban on a tandem Bixi; and a dwarf on a pogo stick.

At first I assumed they were after me, but it may have been chucking out time at Cirque du Soleil Anonymous.

Jerusalem was built on seven hills, as were Rome, Paris, Budapest, Byzantium and Edinburgh. Efficient Montreal did it in one. But it’s not a hill, dammit, it’s a mountain.

There are no truly high-rise buildings due to a bylaw about structures not exceeding the height of Mount Royal itself. Presumably the City Council are afraid of angering the Volcano Gods.

Further credence is lent to Volcano Gods theory when you consider “The Tams”. It’s supposed to take place on Sunday, but there’s always at least one drummer sitting in the shade of that statue thrubbing along on his own. Why? Because if the drumming were to stop, the Volcano God would awake. Those crusties are in the pay of the City Council and we should all be glad of it.

That Earthquake last year? A warning shot. The on-duty drummer must have been distracted by one of those model women or a pogo dwarf.

There’s a giant orange on the side of the Décarie Expressway. I’ve been there. There’s a hotdog stand in the bottom. I asked a lady working there what they keep in the rest of the orange. She said “Nothing”. Suss.

Montreal, as David Cronenberg knows, is the ideal place to hide from the supernatural. That towering cross on Mount Royal (though its main function is a massive key to wind up the town each morning) sends out a clear message to vampires: “you may be welcome in the rest of Canada, but Montreal’s not having it. We’ve got quite enough pale young men with top hats and pierced nipples, merci.”

Zombies meanwhile will never breach our city, thanks to a convenient flap on the Jacques Cartier bridge. At least I assume that’s what all the seemingly-functionless light switches in Plateau apartments are connected to. One flick of the wrist and Johnny Deadfellow is in the Saint Lawrence. We’ll lose the odd Boston rideshare that way, but it’s something to chat about in the lavatory at Expozine.

Speaking of Cartier, he and his posse must have must have arrived here in the summer. “Zut Alores!” they must have said, “Is zis not a paradise, yesno? We will settle down ‘ow-you-say tout-sweet.” And by the time winter came along, they’d already built a whole city and it was too late to move a few degrees south.

Dogs, cats, gerbils: all socially-acceptable fauna to share a home with.

There aren’t many people who have pet silverfish.

In fact, the only reason I’m able to pick out a silverfish in a lineup is that we used to get them in our outbuildings when I was little and Dad always insisted they be given the back of the shoe. Yes, snuffed out with the traditional method reserved for minibeasts: squishing.

Being a ridiculous greenie today and having far too much empathy for my own good, I’m reluctant to do anything about the silverfish currently occupying our bathroom.

It’s not like they’re using up all the hot water or leaving hairs on the soap.

Indeed, they don’t seem to be doing any harm at all. Silverfish, as I understand it, consume paper and while this would be an obvious threat to precious things like books or papier-mâché hats, the ones in our bathroom seem to be subsisting on the tissue-paper dust that snows down onto their home in the ventilator when somebody tears off a piece of toilet roll.

It’s a rather charming little ecosystem.

Not ones for venturing out during daylight hours (something I can very much relate to), the silverfish and I only cross paths in the event of a midnight pee.

Even then, they largely ignore the gigantic vertebrate in their midst (that’s me) and swim quite playfully around my bare feet (moving in a way evocative glistening little fish, hence their name).

If there are high-flying ladies out there paying good money for goldfish pedicures, I don’t see why I should be turning down silverfish pedicures for free.

Silverfish pedicures: the poor man’s indulgence.

Silver is only second prize, after all. I’m willing to accept that.

To tell you the truth, dear reader (and why wouldn’t I? I’ve already confessed to my shameful bathroom infestation), the silverfish are actually rather cute. The baby ones are the size of eraser rubbings. How can such a tiny form contain anything like a mind? It seems impossible, but there they are.

Yes, reader, there are baby ones. There were originally only two silverfish. We called them Silvia and Silvio on the rather heteronormative presumption that they were a male-female couple. Hasty, yes, but soon proven accurate, as their numbers began to increase.

You may be thinking: Kill them! Kill them now before it’s too late! and I agree it may be possible that the infestation is getting out of hand. But there’s the Montreal Agreement to consider.

You see, the silverfish and I have an unspoken agreement. If they stay in the bathroom, they can continue to live and to thrive.

After all, who am I so snuff our their tiny lives for no good reason? I’m no beastly Titan, you know.

But if I see one elsewhere in the apartment, I’ve given myself license to thwack it. Until that day, I’d allow them to live in peace rather than, as the case would be, pieces.

That day arrived today. I found a silverfish in the bedroom.

When I squashed the rogue animal with the spine of How to Be Idle (sorry Tom, it just happened to be to hand — it’s a testament to the book that it’s always so close by) it reduced to a barely-identifiable smudge, like a smattering of ash.

Needless to say, I felt terrible about this. A life smudged out. But them’s the rules, silverfish. You saw the agreement on the table. I must protect my books and any house guests who happen to wear papier-mâché hats.

I’m now thrown into a moral quandary. Do I make a preemptive strike by exterminating all of the silverfish–innocent babies and all–as they sleep? Or do you think they’ll get the message when none of their scouts ever seem to return from beyond the bathroom door?

Strike in advance to protect my books? Or punish only the offending parties? I don’t think it’s hyperbole to suggest that this must be exactly how President Obama feels about ISIS.

While I was idling in the hammock today, an airship passed overhead. Next door’s pug and I were equally delighted.

It was a lovely thing to see on a quiet autumn day, drifting proudly across a backdrop of cirrus clouds.

Oddly enough, we recently enjoyed a curious BBC documentary programme called Cloud Lab about a team of scientists flying around in a custom-made airship discovering things about clouds.

Not for the first time this week then, I was struck by how grand it would be to actually have an airship to ride around in.

What does it cost to have an airship, I wondered. Far too much, surely. About a hundred thousand dollars perhaps, or even more.

And then it struck me. That actually wasn’t very much. It’s more money than I have, obviously, because I’m an indolent wastrel, but it’s the kind of money that fairly ordinary people spend on things like houses and cars and all the rest of junk they think they need.

An airship was no more ridiculous that those things, dammit! I could have an airship if I wanted one.

My mind began to race. I loved the idea of an airship, perhaps permanently moored above the city, like how the HMS Belfast is moored in London.

I wouldn’t need an address any more. When people asked where I live or work, I could just proudly say “oh, I live in the blimp” and gesture up into the sky.

“You live in the blimp?!” they’d say.

And I’d say “Yes. Yes. I live in the blimp.”

The HMS Belfast is a tourist attraction in London, as is the permanently moored Tall Ship in Glasgow. I can only assume that the City of Montreal would be delighted by my plan. The blimp would attract people from far and wide–Ottawa even–and if they paid enough money I could take them for rides, maybe even drop them off at home.

I’d fulfill my ambition of being able to take a rope ladder to work. I’d be the only person higher than the crane operators. Their necks would creak as vertebrae groaned with the unfamiliar sensation of looking upwards. “Sweet Jesus,” they’ll say, “Someone found a way.”

It wouldn’t be very nice for the people who lived in the shadow of the blimp, I suppose. They’d never get any sunlight. The value of their property, now permanently eclipsed into a state of permanent night by my blimp, would plummet. The plants in their window boxes would shrivel and they’d all complain of a D-Vitamin deficiency. To them, I say: sorry.

This is the kind of revelry that comes to mind in a hammock, of course. There’s no practical application to any of this, of course. And even if there was, it would be highly unethical to plunge so many people into a state of permanent twilight. Of course.

But. Ah, but.

I got onto Google and searched “how much does it cost to buy a blimp?”

According to the first result on WikiAnswers, “A lot of money, but don’t worry. Keep smoking your crack pipe and I’m sure you’ll find one.”

Another answer: “It costs a quarter of a million dollars to rent the Budweiser Blimp for two hours.”

Yet another: “The Goodyear Blimp cost them three million dollars. And you’d need a special hangar to keep it in, which would also cost millions.”

Hangar. Pfft. Hadn’t they thought of a permanent mooring? Leaving it floating in the sky eternally would be free, the idiots. No one has thought this through except me.

And my blimp wouldn’t need to be as ostentatious as the Goodyear or Budweiser blimps. Mine wouldn’t be decked out in flashing lights to amuse the painted yobbos at Molson Stadium. The very thought.

I bet I could find someone willing to sell me a more humble blimp, perhaps one that I could deck out in the New Escapologist masthead colours or even a likeness of my own face like some kind of Batman villain might do.

And that’s when I found www.personalblimp.com

It costs “between $100,000 and $200,000”. That’s perfectly affordable and I’m sure my bank manager (who has been trying to get me into a mortgage for years) will be delighted to stump up the cash.

The personal blimp website also says something about FAA certification and needing permission to fly an airship around above a city, but I’m sure that’s all just legalese and nothing to worry about. I think I can confidently say that I’ll be flying (driving? piloting? plenty of time to learn the specifics) my own blimp pretty soon.

Look up, Montreal, and maybe you’ll see my new home office.

I awoke prematurely this morning from a nightmare inspired by the hit anime series Attack on Titan.

It was 10am. Early enough for me, but Samara had been long awake and was sitting right next to me, showered and coffeed, reading a book and generally firing on all cylinders.

Anyway. Attack on Titan is about hostile, skinless, eerily-grimacing giants who routinely break through the defenses of a walled city to eat the humans within.

It’s terrifying. It’s also horribly nihilistic since the Titans don’t actually need to eat. They don’t digest anything. They just chomp the humans up and swallow them down for no clear reason whatsoever. Well that’s just plain naughty.

“If I were a Titan,” I said sleepily to Samara, “I wouldn’t eat you.”

It was just my dreamy, morning way of saying “I love you”.

“That’s kind of you,” she said.

“I’d keep you safe from the other Titans,” I said, “in a little house inside my big Titan house and I’d just look in at you through the windows.”

“Would you be all skinless and grimacing?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m not at all certain that I’d enjoy that.”

“But I wouldn’t be able to help the skinlessness and the grimacing,” I said, “That’s just how I’d look.”

“Well, I suppose that’s okay then,” she said.

She saw me laughing and she knew what would be coming next. I always say the same thing when we’re talking about giants looking through windows, a surprisingly common occurrence.

“Would you be wanking?” she said in that tone of voice suggesting she’s heard all of this before.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” she said, “And crying at the same time, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I said.

There is nothing funny about mentally-ill giants, looking in windows and wanking and crying at the same time.

She was reading An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, which I thought was a bit of a creepy coincidence.

“I’d make sure you were comfortable,” I said, “and that you’d be spared from the Titan rampage.”

Sensing that this somehow wasn’t enough of a proposal, I added, “and I’d make you a sandwich every day.”

“A nice tofu sandwich?”

“Yes. But it’d be difficult to make it with my massive Titan hands, so I’d have to keep a puny human chef around on retainer.”

“He’d live with me?”

“No,” I said, “he’d have his own tiny house.”

I thought about this a little more.

“And,” I said, “I’d have to keep some farmers around to grow the beans required to make the tofu.”

The ramifications of this sandwich promise began to dawn on me. I’d need to spare some human farmers to grow the wheat to make the bread for the sandwich. I’d need bakers to bake it, other farmers to grow any seeds to add to the bread, and further farmers to grow any salads or other vegetables my tiny human wife might want in her daily sandwich.

“Oh, the whole thing’s too complicated,” I said.

Before I knew it, I’d end up with a whole human village in my Titan house. Where I come from, that’s called an infestation.

“Why can’t you just eat Titan food like I do?”

“Titans don’t eat, remember.”

“Oh yeah.”

I didn’t have a solution to any of this. Before I knew it, the entire human race would be safe and uneaten in my house. That wouldn’t be any good at all. I’d be the laughing stock of the Titans.

“I wouldn’t eat you,” I said again, perhaps a little too defensively.

“Okay,” she said, “Thank you.”

“I probably would eat you, actually.”

“But you just said that you wouldn’t eat me.”

“Yes,” I said, “I feel that way now, but I’d be a Titan. It would be in my nature to eat you.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound very fair to me,” she said.

“You’re just saying that because you’re a puny human. If you were a Titan, you’d understand. I’d just have to eat you up. I’d pop your head right off. Om. Nom. Nom.”

I mimed what this would look like, in case it wasn’t clear.

I patted my stomach and pretended to burp.

“Quite tasty,” I said, “Not delicious. But quite tasty.”

I got up and stretched and went off to cook our breakfast of non-human vegetable matter.