Olga, Where are you when we need you?

You may remember that yesterday I suggested a new sport for the 2012 Olympics - on/off road dog boarding. Its got a lot of potential but it got me thinking as I perambulated round the lanes this evening.

How hard can modern rhythmic gymnastics really be?

You've seen them. The girl with the ribbon on the end of the stick, the one with the ball. As Tyson and Marauder charged about on their extending leads dashing from one side to the other enticed by a variety of rural scents and equine presents I was performing a merry dance to make sure that they did not get tangled.

And that's when it hit me. Modern Rhythmic Gymnastics is all about years of dedication, intense training, performance enhancing drugs, synthetic hormones to defer sexual maturity and a lot of shouting from a Communist "Woman" who is harder than your Dad.

There's no reaction or spontaneity and there is only one sticky ribbon thingy - give 'em a couple of Staffies on extending leads with a load of rural odours permeating the mats and lets see how bloody artistic they are then.

Anyway, where was I going to?

Yesterday I wittered on about stuff including the Prius and the Vespa so today I thought I'd continue mining that vein.

Before I do that though I need to mention a (or possibly "the") reader who has contacted me directly about members of the Arachnid Special Forces. Apparently she claims to have given several members of this Secret Service blow jobs. Now before you start conjuring up images of Sean Connery reclining with a foxy vixen who is about to switch political allegiances - THINK AGAIN! This heinous individual uses the hoover to eliminate Agents of ASF. I think my stand point on Spy ders is pretty clear - embrace them, name them, encourage them in to your family for, and I'm guessing here, all they do is study us in the way we tend to study other species on planet Earth. Imagine the Spy der Discovery Channel - you could be the subject of "How Other Species Reproduce"

Right - sorry - back to the Prius......

Many, many years ago I used to work for an enlightened employer. Enlightened in the way that an 18 year old with Daddy's Gold Card is enlightened. So when they decided to give me a company car I looked at my month allowance and said "Your Kidding" and logged straight on to the BMW web site. I now work down at Dante's Nine Circles of Hell and, funnily enough, when I looked at my company car allowance I said exactly the same thing and then Googled the performance stats of a Kia Cee'd.

To cut a long story short I eventually decided to take the cash and invest in the Prius. Now the Prius may not be the most economical vehicle on the planet but I justify it to my Green Ideals by pointing out that a new 3 Series is going to have one hell of a carbon footprint when it rolls off the line plus the fact that I frequently work from home thereby avoiding a 40+ mile round trip. At this rate, if I save any more carbon, we'll be in to another Ice Age.

Also, buying a second hand car is recycling. The more I think about this the more the huge amount of snow in January starts to make sense. I'm starting to think that if my personal impact on reducing global warming increases further I will have to have a chat with the Guys in the Lab about recreating the Mammoth as well as the Shetland Giraffe.

So I went and bought myself a used Prius and I love it. Now I'm guessing that these words have never been assembled in that order in a single sentence before. Yep a first in the bad man's journal.

Remember that I have a penchant for aliases and mild irony. It isn't a Prius. After all who would want to drive a car that may accelerate wildly without warning. That's one hell of a User Notice to have engraved across the steering wheel and makes the "objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear" seem a perfectly understandable piece of advice.

My choice of vehicle - I'll leave you to guess. It is immensely practical, it is not conventionally beautiful but it has a certain presence. It could be described as utilitarian and the kids seem to love it...

..... its a Mr Whippy Ice Cream Van.

No gain without pain

Today has been somewhat frustrating as the Lesser Demons down at Dante's have found other souls to torture and I have been able to take a break from pushing my rock up the damn hill.

Unfortunately I'm not one to sit idly by. I'm not a great fan of pushing boulders up hills but I like to keep busy. So for the time being, it is the old slope / boulder interface that fills my working day. Consequently I get a bit tetchy when I'm not fully occupied. The mind starts to wander and that can be disastrous.

For instance, this morning the shoulders were a little sore on waking and that was either hefting a piece of furniture in to the Prius or the enthusiastic tugging of Tyson and Marauder as we took our daily constitutional yesterday.

Whilst T&M go by the joint alias of the Straining Staffies in this journal, they are actually pretty good at "walking to heel". This is because TP and I have spent much time and effort in taking them to Puppy Classes. It might be worth mentioning that some of the effort is applied to cleaning up vomit as Marauder is not a good traveller.

But I digress ...

They don't generally pull at the lead but if there is one thing to make them try to wrench my shoulders from their sockets it is horse shit. They absolutely love it. They will guzzle it down like the Health Conscious (or gullible as I like to call them) shovel down Activia Yoghurts and bottled water.

It actually got me thinking, does horse manure contain the canine equivalent of Acidophilus bacteria? Should I be developing up a horse pooh / natural yoghurt mixture and knocking it out via Pets at Home with a considerable profit margin?

So, where is this going .... all I need is an intelligent horse, an off road skateboard, some safety equipment and I have the basis for a new adventure sport / dog exercise experience. It goes like this .... The intelligent horse, let call him Mr Ed, completes a pre-ordained dog walking circuit and carefully deposits a "road apple" every 50 or so yards.

You may have noticed at this point that I type Yoghurt in a strange way and my spelling of metres is completely off the wall. This is because I am very much pre-decimal. My Sat-Nav only shows Roman Roads ..... "Yes Centurion, continue down Via Fossa for another Quattro Mille Passus and you will have arrived at your destination"

I then attire myself with the safety equipment, mount the off-road skateboard and pick up T&Ms leads. You get the picture. How much fun is that going to be as we charge round the route, the dogs encouraged by the regular small equine deposits. This is definitely a winner. If the UK needs a new sport to add to the Schedule for 2012 this could be it. Its got it all - competitiveness, thrills, spills, speed and danger! Sort of Ben Hur meets an Ealing Comedy.

Back to reality.

I've not really mentioned my preferred forms of transport before. There have been a couple of references to the Prius and it might get a minor role in one of the future journal entries but I have had a life long love of motorcycles. For some time the object of my affection, AFTER 30%, TP, T&M, Eddy and Potato has lingered neglected in the garage.

A combination of house moves, building projects, ill health and general stuff meant that she did not get the attention she deserved and she gathered dust for several years. Lets call her the Vespa.

The Vespa is an alias but it serves quite well for she is Italian and designed, when viewed from above to look like the silhouette of a woman's torso - wide at the bust and hips, narrow at the waist. Vespa is also Italian for wasp - do a google image search on "waspie" and you will see why it is a good alias.

Oh I was almost getting poetic there - I forgot to mention that she roars like a lion and has a fuel economy of a BMW 2.2 litre, in-line, 6 cylinder, petrol engine, Yep its amazing what a couple of race cans and a new Ignition chip will do.

So - she needs specialist attention and there's not a lot of it in these parts so when I managed to a) locate a man just 30 miles away combined with b) a friend with a van we get c) servicing bills that will make your eyes water.

So rarity + scarcity of skilled resources + neglect = This Years Bonus.

Ho hum - as I said "no gain without pain".