Mulled Vine

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
Your sweetie says, ‘Let’s go upstairs
and make love,’ and you answer,
‘Pick one; I can’t do both!’

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
Your friends compliment you
on your new alligator shoes
and you’re barefoot.

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
A sexy babe or hunk catches your fancy
and your pacemaker opens the garage door.

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
Going braless
pulls all the wrinkles out of your face.

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
You don’t care where your spouse goes,
just as long as you don’t have to go along.

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
You are cautioned to slow down by the doctor instead of by the police

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
‘Getting a little action’
means you don’t need to take any fibre today.

‘OLD’ IS WHEN…
‘Getting lucky’ means you find your car
in the parking lot.

‘OLD’IS WHEN…
An ‘all nighter’ means not getting up
to use the bathroom.

AND

‘OLD’ IS WHEN….
You are not sure these are jokes?

He opened the door and saw her before him, a pretty young blonde woman with a bright, perky smile, holding a wad of attractive leaflets. Her smile wavered slightly when she saw him, and he knew why – it was a familiar experience for him – he was ugly.

He was so ugly in fact that his father used to joke to his friends that the doctor slapped the mother at birth, causing everyone to laugh, thinking that the boy was asleep, rather than cowered at the top of the stairs, tears flowing down his disfigured cheeks.

The woman on his doorstep recovered her composure, held out a leaflet and said, “Did you know that Jesus loves you?”

He looked at her kindly, conscious of his coarse, gnarled hands, his broken smile and twisted countenance, and recalling the years of lonely pain and sorrow replied, “Does he?”

She stood silent for a while, gazing at this broken creature before her, then reached forward, took hold of his hands in hers, and wept.

“Odysseus, it’s been days in this horse, and those Dardanusians don’t seem inclined to accept our gift.”
“Be patient, Epeius; they are being understandably cautious,” replied Odysseus, “everyone has heard about our great victory in Troy.”
“Do you not think we should have tried another ploy?” continued Epeius.
“Perhaps,” replied Odysseus, “but the Council insisted on arms cuts and I was left with little choice but to reuse the horse.”
“I’m not even sure this is Dardanus, Odysseus – we were supposed to head North from Troy not South – I am certain Ecletus has been smoking his maps again.”

The train pulled into my station, a little too quickly for my liking, but nevertheless I pulled the emergency brake and the train screeched to a shuddering halt.

A very angry conductor came up to me and shouted, “Sir, I hope you have a very good explanation for your behaviour!”

“Why yes,” I replied, “this is my stop.”

The conductor turned a charming apoplectic shade of red and shouted, “Didn’t you know that this is an express train??”

“Of course I did silly, otherwise why would I have needed to use the emergency break?”

I blame budget cuts for the poor quality of staff on our trains in England these days, a very sad state of affairs.

I was stopped on the street by a nice looking young man who asked me if I could spare some change; the thing is he could barely speak English! Now I’m a fairly compassionate sort, but the first thing that occurred to me was this: why don’t you beg at home? I of course reported him to the authorities and watched with a warm glow as they hauled him off back to the immigration centre where he would be well looked after and hopefully sent home – gotta keep out the bleedin’ foreigners, right?

I hear these fellas go through quite a tough time trying to get into the country, many dying in the process, but what’s that to me? Do I complain that the neighbours have a Porsche and I don’t? No, of course not – that would be small minded.

My daughter asked me the other day why a wheel is called a wheel, and I began to answer, before realising that I didn’t know. Ignorance is not something that prevents many people from answering, and I’m usually no exception, but as this was my daughter I thought I’d make an effort.

I thought about it a little while before telling her that words began as tentative sounds, for example “Ug.” “Ug?” “Ug!” “Sorry mate, you’ve lost me there.” “Ug!!!” (pointing at a wheel) “Aah, Ug”, and thus a word was birthed, and since you can’t call everything “Ug”, variations arose and words like “wheel” ended up being adopted by convention.

“Dad, you’ve just made that up.”

“Well, erm, you see its like this … nobody really knows how things began.”

“I think God told us it was a wheel, Dad,” she said, before walking off, shaking her head at my unbelievable stupidity.

I like being mediocre.

There are no surprises when nobody expects anything of you, and life continues predictably, safe, comfortably.

The world has enough go-getters who make the world a dynamic, better place, they don’t need any help from me.

My role is to fill the void, to be that waste of space that no one was using anyway.

After all, if there were no mediocre people then there would be no special people – that is my humble contribution.

I am the median and proud of it.

Genghis looked at his tea mournfully. Killing people just wasn’t the same any more. He remembered the first few where the adrenalin had pumped, and even the later few where he sought to create artistic patterns out of his victim’s spurting blood by experimenting with different strike angles. But these days it was all very dull and he felt that perhaps he needed to do something different.

Arai had suggested planting tulips, and he had lost his head for that, but on further reflection Genghis thought, “Why not? A nice garden would be very soothing.”

The train pulled into my station, a little too quickly for my liking, but nevertheless I pulled the emergency brake and the train screeched to a shuddering halt.

A very angry conductor came up to me and shouted, “Sir, I hope you have a very good explanation for your behaviour!”

“Why yes,” I replied, “this is my stop.”

The conductor turned a charming apoplectic shade of red and shouted, “Didn’t you know that this is an express train??”

“Of course I did silly, otherwise why would I have needed to use the emergency break?”

I blame budget cuts for the poor quality of staff on our trains in England these days, a very sad state of affairs.