I knew Stuart was going to get rather drunk when he called asking me to meet him at the pub near his work that sells jugs (pitchers) of Carling for seven quid. I didn’t go because I had a client meeting out in Warrington in the morning and drinking did not seem like the smartest thing I could do.

(The train ride up to Warrington was nice. Lots of rolling green hills dotted with sheep and spotted cows. Warrington however may be one of the most depressing places I have ever been to in my entire life. Then again, I haven’t been to Slough. Or Swindon.)

When he came home, yes dear reader, he was off his tits. “Thomas! I have had all sorts of cocktails. I am a regular walking Fleetwood Mac!” (I must admit, I immediately turned and wrote that phrase down because it may be one of the funniest things he has said ever.)

I went to bed and I could hear him putting around downstairs, washing his face, brushing his teeth. It seemed to take ages. I feel asleep.

Finally, he burst into the bedroom. “Thomas! I’ve done a bad, bad thing.”

“What?”

“How do you feel about sculpture?”

“How do I? What?”

“Sculpture. What are your feelings about it?”

“I was sleeping.”

“Never mind.”

“No, what?”

“No.”

“Stuart.”

“Promise you won’t get mad.”

Now I was wide-awake.

“What?”

“Just forget it. I’ll show you in the morning.”

“Show me now.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

This went on for a few minutes.

He finally agreed to show me his ’sculpture’. There on the kitchen table was my handbag. My handbag that I would be using the next day for my client meeting. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I was too angry.

He had stuffed it full of yellow onions. Long wooden spoons and chopsticks were sticking out from the onions. Around thirty matchbooks from various restaurants were balanced on top of the onions. My keys were balanced on top of one of wooden spoons.

I did the only thing that I could do. I sputtered. “My, my, my, my! Handbag! Handbag!”

“It’s art!”

“I- you- my!”

“You said you wouldn’t be mad.”

I pulled out the wooden spoons and the chopsticks, tossed them into the sink and started to pull out the onions.

It was then that I discovered that he had also stuffed in the bag, under the onions our entire collection of take out menus, two bags of raman noodles, a mars bar (recently extracted from the fridge) and a box of toothpicks. It was the toothpicks that pushed me over the edge. I managed to knock open the box. Toothpicks all over on the inside of my bag.

“Just leave me alone for a few minutes.”

“But Thomas.”

“Just leave me alone for a few minutes!” My voice was in an upper register.

“But–”

“JUST LEAVE ME ALONE FOR A FEW MINUTES.”

He left.

I cleaned up my bag. I got rid of all the onion papery bits and all the toothpicks. The act of cleaning up the mess allowed me to calm down.

This morning, he remembered nothing of his art project. He thinks I am making it all up.

I now think it is very funny. That being said, if he even looks at my Kate Spade or my Stuart Weitzman, I will wax his chest hair in his sleep. . .

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I came across an article by Stuart Lee in the Guardian about the differences between German and British senses of humor. Give it a read. Is interesting.

My favorite part was Lee’s telling of a joke called The German Child:

“It goes like this. An English couple have a child. After the birth, medical tests reveal that the child is normal, apart from the fact that it is German. This, however, should not be a problem. There is nothing to worry about.

As the child grows older, it dresses in lederhosen and has a pudding bowl haircut, but all its basic functions develop normally. It can walk, eat, sleep, read and so on, but for some reason the German child never speaks.

The concerned parents take it to the doctor, who reassures them that as the German child is perfectly developed in all other areas, there is nothing to worry about and that he is sure the speech faculty will eventually blossom.

Years pass.

The German child enters its teens, and still it is not speaking, though in all other respects it is fully functional.

The German child’s mother is especially distressed by this, but attempts to conceal her sadness. One day she makes the German child, who is now 17 years old and still silent, a bowl of tomato soup, and takes it through to him in the parlour where he is listening to a wind-up gramophone record player. Soon, the German child appears in the kitchen and suddenly declares, “Mother. This soup is a little tepid.”

The German child’s mother is astonished. “All these years,” she exclaims, “we assumed you could not speak. And yet all along it appears you could. Why? Why did you never say anything before?”

“Because, mother,” answers the German child, “up until now, everything has been satisfactory.”

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I know the title of this post sounds like a set up to a joke. It could be a joke on The Prairie Home Companion joke show, which they do every year and is one of my favorite things ever.

(This reminds me that I haven’t listened to Prairie Home Companion for a while. Prairie Home Companion is something I miss about America. I need to listen to it online. But this post is not about Prairie Home Companion. It is about a Bush joke.

But first, I will tell you another joke. My favorite joke actually. . . A Grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, we have a drink named after you!” The Grasshopper is pleased. He’s thrilled. He claps his feelers. “You have a drink named Steve?”)

Here’s the George Bush joke.

George Bush walks into a Community College where senior citizens are trying to sign up for very confusing prescription drug benefits. He walks around shaking seniors hands and he sees a man in a wheelchair. He goes over to the man in the wheelchair and he says, “You look mighty comfortable.”

Isn’t that HYSTERICAL? Isn’t that a classic? You look mighty comfortable! To a guy in a WHEELCHAIR!!!

You want to know the best part? What is really funny? The part that makes this a classic of the highest art???

It really happened. Look it up.

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It is lucky that it is cold today so that it doesn’t look odd that I am wearing a turtleneck sweater. Yes, dear reader. I have a hickey.

It was not earned through a passionate embrace. No. I have this because Stuart is evil.

It all started with his blowing raspberries. He will pin me down and assess what part of my body he can best achieve:

1. A really loud sound from my vibrating skin.

2. A really loud shriek from me.

Somehow the last month, the blowing raspberry monster became a sucker monster. He purses his lips out like an anteater, rolls his eyes into the back of his head and lunges at me.

When this occurs I either:

1. Shove him off.

2. Retaliate by doing the same thing to him. This really freaks him out especially when he has been making as if he is going to kiss me.

Saturday, Stuart the sucker monster attacked the back of my neck and I wasn’t able to shake him off. I now have a perfectly round half dollar hickey. When he realized what he had done, he had the bright idea to put toothpaste on me. Why toothpaste. I don’t know. Apparently toothpaste cures all. And all this time I thought it was Windex.

So then I had a hickey and it looked like I was pooed on by pigeons. After washing the toothpaste off I still had a hickey. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but my hair is short now so it is easy to see his handiwork. He is rather scared that I am going to retaliate and do it to him.

He should be.

Be afraid Young. Be very afraid.

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Alistair (Ali) has a new flatemate named Betsy. She’s American and in her mid 30’s. They didn’t realize until after Betsy moved in that she is a bit of an emotional mess because she’s recently separated from her husband. The first days in the flat she was walking around sobbing to the other flatmates.

Ali, being British, hid himself away and prayed that she would stop. It is important to know about Ali that if he did not use irony in every single conversation, he would explode. I’m not sure what his accent is. He said once, but I forgot. . . It sounds sort of cockney to my untrained ear, but I know he isn’t from London originally. Yorkshire maybe?

Every morning someone on my team asks Ali how Betsy is. This morning it was Chris. “So Ali? How’s Betsy?”

“Came home with some twenty-three year old.”(Ali is 24.)

“Hey, good for Betsy,” I said.

“Ginger,” Ali said. His voice dripped with disdain.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s right with it?” He managed to drip even lower.

Ravleen, who is Indian British tried to explain the English negative feelings for those with red locks. As someone who always wanted to have red hair, I just don’t get this. Liz, (who is one of the most attractive women I have ever seen) decides to pipe up. Liz is black. “What about Nicole Kidman? There’s lots of pretty gingers.”

There’s lots of pretty gingers. Yes. That is what she said. At this point I’m laughing because it is so completely absurd to me. I almost said, “Some of my best friends are redheads.”

Through it all Ali had a look in his eye that said, “There’s no way that there are any pretty gingers and even if they were, it would still be disgusting.

Whatever. Way to go Betsy. I’m glad you got laid.

Even if he was ginger.

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It’s a beautiful, gorgeous, birds singing, no clouds in the sky, warm, flower smell in the air day today.

So I called in sick.

Coincidence? You do the math. Sorry. Maths. (They say maths here.)

Been watching Little Britain. (Janice voice from Friends) Oh. My. God. I LOVE this show. It pushes the bounds of good taste more than anything I have ever seen and is really apt social commentary. A lot of it wouldn’t translate to American audiences without a primer in British culture- What is a chav, Class bullshit, British racism. . . but it is easy enough to pick up. If they show Little Britain on the BBC they have on basic cable in the US- watch it.

Now I >cough< am off. To go. . . rest. Yes. I am going to drink some tea and honey. I may do it at the park. The sun, you know is good for killing germs. It is for the best. . .

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Screaming.

I wake up. Heart in my throat. I wake up and I can hear a woman screaming outside in the night. I’m alone. Stuart is away on business and Jennifer has a sleep in shift. What do I do? A woman is screaming and I am alone.

Wait.

As I wake up, I realize what it is. It’s a fox. 

In Tucson in the early morning I would often wake up with my heart thumping at dawn to the sound of rabbit screams as they were being killed by coyotes. I had been told that fox barking could sound like screams but this was the first time I’ve heard it.

So far, I’ve only seen one fox here in London. I was walking home at night and we saw each other at the same time. He was larger than I expected. We both froze, and then he glided into the front garden of the house we were standing in front of and disappeared. It felt like I imagined him.

There is something magical and sad about seeing a wild animal in an urban setting. My apartment in Los Angeles was walking distance from Griffith Park. Deer would sometimes wander down to the parking lot at the AFI, and you would often see coyotes skulking around the Hollywood streets. One night, I noticed what I thought was a new cat hanging out outside one of the apartment buildings on my street. There were always three or four that lounged around the front door. When I got closer I realized that it was a skunk that was hanging out with the kitties. Walk away. Just walk away. On the list of bad things that can happen to you, getting sprayed by a skunk comes just after getting cut up into tiny little pieces by a serial killer.

My friend Nanci’s cat was sprayed and her house reeked for weeks. If you even drive by an area where a skunk has sprayed the smell will waft into your car. When you go hiking in Los Angeles (yes, there is lots of hiking in Los Angeles) there are signs warning you about mountain lions.  Attacks are rare, but have been known to happen.

Back to foxes. . . There was a lot of hoopla about the banning of fox hunting in this country. I’m all for it. It isn’t as if you eat the fox so there doesn’t seem to be any point in it. Add to that that it is a terribly cruel thing to do to the animal. . .

The fox population is self-regulating depending upon the availability of food. While I must admit when I walk outside and I see that a fox has ripped into one of our trash bags, I do curse them for a moment, I think hunting them is wrong.

At his flat in Brixton, Stuart used to have a fox that would hang out and sleep on the front step. This last September when he was walking home one night, he saw three foxes together– which was really unusual since they are so solitary. He got the bright idea to chase them away. One ran down the street, one bounced straight up into the air over the wall into a front garden and the third got pissed and rushed him. I’m guessing she must have been a vixen and the other two had been her babies. I told Stuart my theory. “Well, Thomas. When it’s dark and it’s chasing you down the street, you don’t really think about that.”

It never fails to make me giggle. . . imaging Stuart running down a dark London street lined with Victorian houses, waving his arms in the air like Kermit The Frog, a red fox hot on his heals. . .

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