Dom Davis (The Blog)

There must be something about the Antipodes and the way that pretty much everything there wants to kill you (especially in Australia) that produces the likes of Steve Irwin (nutcase who used to pick up snakes while telling the audience just how many people a single drop of venom could kill – now dead) and The Lion Man (the nutcase currently on TV).

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m smart enough to realise that big cats, no matter how hand reared and friendly, are great fun to play with right up until the point that they get bored of you. You’ve seen house cats. They roll on their backs, do the whole friendly ‘lets play’ thing and are a big bundle of cute fluff right up until they get bored, the claws come out and they try to take off your hand. That’s a domesticated cat that’s much smaller than you. What happens when a big cat does that? Death. That’s what happens. But no, this bloke is playing football with lions, including Savannah; “…his favourite lion and the one most likely to turn on him”. Lets just revisit that shall we: “…the one most likely to turn on him”. So he knows there’s a chance they might decide to stop being friendly and, in a fight, my money is with the fully grown lion.

His wife seems to have slightly more brains as she’s decided that going into the enclosure to play football is not up there with the world most sensible ideas, then changes her mind, goes in, gets scared (really can’t blame her) and makes a quick exit.

I love big cats, I love watching them and photographing them, but most of all I love the sturdy fence between me and them. Lets just hope that the Lion Man doesn’t end up as Lion Food.

Our little cottage is heated, in the main, by a wood burning stove. We get our wood from the Zoo (offcuts of the timber used to build the place) and have, until now, been burning stuff that was cut and stored a couple of years ago. The nice dry wood ran out recently and we’ve moved onto bits that have been on the ground for a couple of year and that have only just been cut and stored which means getting the fire going can be fun.

Normally I can get a fire started with 1 fire lighter but recently I’ve had occasion to use 2. Today I started with 1 and the fire promptly went out. As I only had two fire lighters left I thought I’d leave nothing to chance and put both of them in, relit the fire… and watched it go out again.

Given I didn’t fancy heading out to the shop to get more fire lighters I decided to try something else and see what we had in the house that was flammable and good for starting fires. The first thing that sprang to mind was nail polish remover, after all the side of the bottle does say ‘CAUTION EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE’.

Anyway, I liberally sprinkled some over the fire lighter box, put that in the fire and the chucked a bit more of the nail polish removed over the wood in the fire, applied the lighter and…

WHUMP!

When the say ‘extremely’ they mean it. There was a 2 foot diameter fireball, bits of ash blown about the place and a roaring fire in the stove (and out of the stove for a few seconds while some of the spilled nail polish remover burned out).

Tomorrow I’ll get some more fire lighters and spare my eyebrows

So today I went hunting for the most mythical of beasts: The cheapest advance fare National Express East Anglia ticket. For those not familiar with this operator (although I suspect all UK train operators are the same), when you log onto the website to buy advance fare tickets it helpfully tells you that you can get the tickets from ‘as low as £6′. This is a special online only price which is never available. Whenever I’ve booked tickets the cheapest has often been £9, but sometimes they’re even more depending what time you want to travel*.

Today, however, I managed to get that very beast. The cheapest of the cheap tickets, and all I had to do was book a ticket 3 months in advance on an off peak service. No doubt I got the only two tickets for that price so everyone else will have to pay the higher price (with the price getting higher and higher the closer you get to the day).

*there is the lunacy of the Monday morning Cromer to Colchester advance fare ticket which is more expensive than a first class ticket bought on the day, and more restrictive since you can only use it on the train you’ve booked it on

The red car and the blue car had a race - Good start, we’ve introduced the main players, identified the situation we’re in.

All red wants to do is stuff his face – OK, not exactly what you’d expect from a story involving two cars, but now we’ve anthropomorphised the cars and indicated that reds mind may not be entirely on the aforementioned race. Still, twists are what keep a story interesting.

He eats everything he sees, from trucks to prickly trees – Now this is a worrying development. A car, ordinarily, eats things derived from hydrocarbons. Since we have anthropomorphised these vehicles we’d possibly expect them to be eating human foods, but trucks and prickly trees are just completely left field and smack of a serious eating disorder. Think about it, here we have a vehicle that is so desperate to stuff it’s face with food that it will eat its own kind, namely a truck that is many times its size. This is very worrying.

But smart old blue he took the milky way – Great, so we’re congratulated blue for being ‘normal’. Never mind that red has a serious psychological disorder and is in need of help, no, smart old blue, doesn’t eat trucks. Isn’t he clever.

He’s looking for a chocolate treat fluffy and light – Talk about rubbing it in. Red probably has big self image problems and blue is simply thinking of himself and taunting red with his desire to eat chocolate. Furthermore, by describing it as a ‘treat’ we’re reinforcing the idea that blue is somehow better than red because he’s more normal.

Cos he knows it won’t spoil his appetite – Lies! When this was rereleased in 2009 the line was changed to ‘Cos he knows it tastes just right’. Why would they do that? The only reason I can think of is that advertising standards have got a lot more stringent since the advert was first released and they can no longer tell us that Milky Way won’t spoil your appetite (Yes, this tawdry tale of alienation against those with eating disorders is an advertisement for a chocolate bar which showed in the UK some years ago and was repeated last year… what did you think I was on about?) So what are they saying now? What is the message being put across now? A chocolate bar tastes nicer than prickly trees and trucks. Well duh!

Oh no! the bridge has gone, old red can’t carry on – Poor old red, just because he eats weird stuff he’s supposed to be a porker that can’t complete the race. What about blue? Blue stuffs his face with chocolate which, contrary to advice given in previous year, probably does ruin your appetite and, by extension, probably isn’t as good for you as was once implied.

But smart old blue, he took the milky way – which makes you realise that blue is an annoying suck up. Oh, smart old blue, isn’t he clever. Makes you wish the bridge went out with blue on it.

Gosh, well that was a faff, but I’ve finally moved myself from over there to over here. Anyway, now we’re all settled in here I’m going to go back to the bitching mightily about unimportant things because I find I just can’t do the whole gushing over how good life is (and it is good). Besides, I don’t actually do much these days and what I do do is either intensely boring for others to read about or personal and none of your business I do, however, watch an awful lot of bad TV (which The Zozo has succeeded in getting me semi addicted to) and regularly pootle into town so I’m sure I’ll have plenty of ranting material.

So, for those who haven’t been keeping up, don’t follow me on Facebook or have only just stumbled on this here’s a little potted history:

Covered in the original blog (now defunct): I’d moved to Colchester, I was miserable, single and overpaid.

Hinted at in the original blog (still defunct): Met The Zozo (now my fiance), got a new job, stopped being so miserable.

Covered in a few blog posts in an abortive attempt to blogging again (soon to be defunct): Rented out my flat in Colchester and bought a little cottage by the sea in North Norfolk where I live with The Zozo, quit work, now living the dream… albeit off my savings, something that needs to be rectified in the next few months.

Not covered in any blogs: Had a fantastic 2 week holiday in Barbados and New York, asked The Zozo to marry, she said yes.

Current situation: Living in our little cottage by the sea, unemployed, messing about day trading and taking photographs, planning a wedding and desperately in love.

Things that haven’t changed: My spelling still sucks, my grammar is still questionable, my abuse of the English language still abounds.

All caught up? Good, lets move on…