Tuesday 13 April 2021

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

Following a recent ill advised dalliance with fromage, post 10pm, I have been gifted with a prophetic dream / hallucinatory experience detailing the cause, if not the timing, of my eventual demise! 

I know! 

Handy or what! 

Anywhoo under “cause of death” on my death certificate (which is the only certificate I’ll ever have won by the way) will be the words...Greg’s Steak Bake. What’s weird about it (well apart from everything) is that I have no particular liking for pastry products in general or Greg’s in particular.  

The immediate fallout from this revelation is that I no longer feel able to travel to the end of Cardigan high street, where there is an actual Greg’s, (I mean would you chance it?) and I now anxiously scan the maps on my phone for other branches whenever TCMB and I dare to venture further afield. 

Such an unlikely ending shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when I think about it, because over the last few years there have been a number of occasions when I probably should have snuffed it by more conventional means and haven’t. For the purposes of brevity I shall gloss over the time I fell out of a tree onto my chainsaw and even the time I fell off this building… while trying to take down an unwanted satellite dish. (I did bring the dish down with me so not an entirely wasted effort).

Or even the time I nearly drowned in my own filth in this cellar due to a blocked septic tank pipe.

All that time spent contemplating my own mortality in A&E. All that precious wasted time. Doh. It seems possible that as long as I can continue to avoid these particular purveyors of hot and fatty comestibles I may in-fact live forever, an exciting enough prospect that when I discussed it with the current Mrs Broom she give a deep sigh of (I think) delight. 

So then unless I’m struck down in the street by a pasty wielding maniac, there’ll be no need for someone to engrave the words “Game over player 1. Insert coin to continue” on any tombstone of mine. 

Shame that.

Toodle ooh.


17 comments:

  1. Living on the edge eh?, you're a human timebomb I reckon.

    I knew a bloke known locally as Herman the German who somehow survived the Eastern Front, managed to surrender to the Americans and eventually settle in Northumberland.

    He was a dangerous man, at least he was dangerous to himself. One time he somehow nailed his own hand to a pit prop.
    I met him in the pub one night and was horrified to see his forehead had dozens of stitches from a chainsaw kicking back at him.
    When my dad was working with him at a petrol station he holed the underground tank with a pneumatic drill, the rest of the builders were running for their lives that day!.
    He was a nice bloke but best avoided!.
    Take care.
    Regards,
    Paul.

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    1. Hey Paul, thanks for dropping by. Herman the German sounds like a great guy. Fortunately for the rest of the world I keep myself to myself, so no one round here’s in any danger.

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  2. Being struck down by a pasty-wielding maniac sounds like how poor old Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West) met his maker. No Greggs there, but I’d avoid Teddington if I were you.

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    1. What, two ton Ted from Teddington? He doesn’t scare me, despite the size of his hot meat pies...lol.

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  3. Back to your inspirations daily life tales. Oh, how I have missed them. The sewer break in the basement was a classic and I remember it well. I am still laughing, actually.

    Herman the German, eh? My grandfather was a German Herman too. Is it a coincidence that he was accident prone too? Hmm. I wonder. Boy, do I have stories to tell. How about blowing off a toe while fiddling with the trigger on a rifle while the shooty end rested on his foot? I bet that would be a good story...

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    1. Hi Jonathan. I never made the connection but yeah, Freitag, Friday in German? Blowing off your own toe...ye gods, now that really is accident prone!

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  4. For no obvious logical connection that I can detect, the idea of steering clear of a particular item of food for ever reminds me of a conversation I had with my grandfather when I was about 11. He used to have a yogurt with his breakfast every day (in fact he had yaourt, because he lived in France, and I'd never heard of it before) - he said to me that I should start eating the stuff, because every one you eat you live an extra day.

    We had a good conversation about this - for a start, this was obviously a recipe for eternal life, which is certaonly interesting, and only later did we realise that you didn't have to start eating them until you were in your 80s - it would still work...

    Not sure why I mentioned this, now.

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    1. No, but I’m jolly glad you did. I’m off to get a yogurt right now. Their lifespan advancing qualities might counteract the steak bake. Perhaps I should carry one with me at all times just in case?!

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    2. Yes - never go anywhere without a yogurt - very sound. Without wishing to spoil the message of hope, I have to point out that my grandfather has been dead for years.

      Hmmm.

      Maybe he gave up on the yogurts? Maybe he'd have died in infancy if he hadn't eaten them? I'm looking for some other explanation which avoids the possibility that this eternal-life secret might not work. [Having been brought up a Catholic, I am an old hand at this kind of reasoning.]

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  5. Ah!...
    The septic cellar of doom... still makes me smile 😁
    You appear to have developed a very specific version of Patsrophobia ... which actually sounds more like an Eastern European greeting if said with gusto.
    I personally think Subway is a far more dangerous destination... bread that smells that saccharine must be deadly.

    All the best. Aly

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  6. Pastrophobia to you too comrade Aly!

    Actually you’re right. The more I say it the more Eastern European it sounds. I can see it being shouted as two old friends clink shot glasses of cheap and deadly vodka.

    I always wondered why Subway had that very specific smell to it. Saccharine eh.

    Somewhere else to add to my map of no go zones then.

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  7. to paraphrase Spinal Tap, better to drown in your own filth, than someone else's !

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    1. Hi Guiscard, thanks for dropping by. Love the spinal tap reference. To be honest we’d had numerous guests at our house in the two years before the “incident” so I’m not convinced I was actually drowning entirely in my own filth. Probably best I don’t dwell on that too much. Lol.

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  8. Good stuff JBM, dodgy pastries, festering excrement and roof free fall all in one shot. I must have lived a charmed life by comparison.

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    1. God smiles on the righteous matey. I’m clearly receiving payback for a previously sinful existence!

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  9. Well ,you did better than Roy Hudd,the dish did for him,I'm actually partial to a Greggs every now and then, in moderation of course!
    Best Iain

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    1. I think we all know it was that ruddy emu and not the dish that did for Rod.

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