the world according to eric (that's me!)

nervous twitch

woke up in a really bad mood. didn't speak to rupert at all after he wiped out my new best friend yesterday and to be honest i'm even off my gingernuts.

had just decided to go and find rupert and bite his nose - when jenny came rushing over. she was bright red in the face and looked furious. red is not a good look for anyone - and particularly not with grey - and the old me would have warned her of the dangers of getting het up and having a heart attack - but i'm that mad that i didn't even bother. let her have a heart attack i thought - see where that gets her.

"you have destroyed my processor" she began.

i explained - reasonably i felt - that it was not a processor, that it was a bug that she had forced into a match box against its will so that she could give misleading and phoney psychedelic test results to poor unsuspecting and paying individuals, and that it had a name.

"how did you know?" she asked.

"i asked him" i said. sometimes jenny can be really stupid!!

"have you told anyone?" she asked

"no - i'm not sure that geoffrey had any family so i'm not sure who i'd tell" i replied.

jenny twitched. not a full blown "walked into the electric fence again" sort of twitch - more of a "can't keep my top lip still" sort of twitch.

it was not very attractive i must say.

anyway, later on jenny came over with a packet of gingernuts and said they were a "peace offering". she also offered me a free psychedelic test with a "proper processor" and said she'd play peeling looks with me and let me win at least three times.

this is very touching. i fear dear reader that i may have misjudged jenny. she maybe - just maybe - does have a sliver of kindness deep down inside that thick, flabby exterior.

pondered this for a few moments, then i went to bite rupert's nose.

feel much better now.

bugs

took my new friend geoffrey to meet rupert today.

geoffrey doesn't have many friends as people think he's so ugly so he took some persuading to come with me.

found rupert in the new shed eating an egg carton he'd discovered in the skip. it looked really tasty.

told rupert i wanted him to meet my new friend geoffrey.

rupert looked up, still chewing - and then his face went ashen.

"stand still". he said. "you've got some hideous bug on your back."

and with that he clouted geoffrey to kingdom come.

life can be trying at times.

especially for bugs.

 

pointy antennae

had a long chat with geoffrey today. it wasn't easy as he speaks in a register that's way beyond the level of my hearing - but i think i got the gist of it all.

turns out geoffrey's a beetle not a processor and he doesn't normally live in the match box at all! he normally lives in the open air but got shoved into the match box just last week.

geoffrey says he didn't see who did it - but he has a vague recollection of a flash of grey and something that looked for all the world like a credit card machine.

asked geoffrey when he had last seen a credit card machine for goodness' sake, thinking he'd admit that they don't use them that often in the open air - and he seemed to get mad - his voice went even higher, he waggled his pointy antennae things at me and jumped up and down.

several times.

i guess he's also been on the receiving end of jenny's deposit system.

anyway, i tried to calm geoffrey down by patting him affectionately on the head - and he vanished! he completely disappeared. right before my eyes!!

i hunted everywhere and was about to get rupert to help when i heard shouting. looked around and discovered it was coming from my own hoof!!

and there was geoffrey hiding under my foot.

how cool is that!

must show rupert - he'll be dead impressed by this!!

geoffrey

went back to see jenny today. she said she was too busy to talk as she had to prepare for a new intake tomorrow.

asked what the intake was of but jenny didn't answer.

rupert says it will be something food related.

anyway i asked if she had at least had time to process my results and she said she had. she said i had come out as "dull, unreliable and likely to catch cold easily".

she maybe right about the cold bit - i do tend to get a bit sniffly sometimes, usually after a night out  - but dull and unreliable??

asked rupert if he felt this was fair. rupert obviously didn't hear me as he didn't answer and wandered off with his mobile phone to his ear.

went to find jill. she was away in the far field talking to madge about the problems of natural childbirth. i asked jill if she thought i was dull and unreliable. she said that not everyone can be fun and dynamic and it takes all sorts to make a world.madge said something too, but she's suffering a lot with her metabolics rate just now and it just came out as a spray of greenish slime.

left feeling much better - if a little damp.

went back to tell jenny she was wrong but couldn't find her. there lying in the stable though was the psychometer. decided to have another look at it.

i pushed it across the floor and was about the stamp on it when i heard something. it was a high pitched shrieky sort of noise - but very quiet and i could hardly hear it at that range. it was coming from the psychometer. it said "piss off" and i think called me a "hooligan".

well i am many things - but i am not dull and i am not a hooligan - whatever that may be. i was getting mad by this time so i opened the psychometer . . .  and came face to face with - something that introduced itself as geoffrey. i went to shake his hand - but which one do you choose??

so i shut the psychometer and slipped it under my arm. i will look into this later when i'm on my own  - and can only hope that no one hears the foul language coming from the psychometer in the meantime. it really is quite shocking!

psychometer

went looking for jenny today for my psychedelic test result but she was no where to be seen.

snuck into her stable and found the psychometer under some straw.

had a good look at it. poked it. sniffed it. shook it. 

 

it was making a funny noise. like a whirring sort of thing.  well - like snoring really.

trigger came in so i had to disappear - but i'll be back. what IS this thing??

 

psychedelic testing

rupert and i met up with jenny first thing today for our first session on psychedelic testing. apparently it's a highly specialised procedure and getting the hang of it can take ages - so jenny wanted to start bright and early.

she said the first thing we should do is a test on each other, as we would then see for ourselves the validity of the results.

she explained that the test consisted of three questions. you had to answer a, b or c to each one and then jenny would plug the results into her psychometer and it would compute the result.

asked what a psychometer is - apparently it's a really high tech and very expensive piece of kit that only certified testers have access to. it looked for all the world like a match box but jenny said i shouldn't be fooled - it had massive processing powers.

so we set to.

i must say i found the questions quite tricky. i couldn't agree with any of the answers and in each case i scored a big fat zero. rupert answered mostly a)s.

jenny gathered up the answers and wandered off behind the hay rack to compute the results while rupert and i settled down to chew over the question papers. i swear i heard jenny talking into the match box - i mean psychometer - but that would be plain silly - and then she came back with the results.

rupert apparently has an "a class personality", is solid and dependable with a quirky sense of humour and is a real hit with the ladies. he also has "really cute toes". that really must be one heck of a machine!

asked about my test results. jenny shook the box a few times and said the server must have gone to sleep. she said i have to come back tomorrow for the results.

come back tomorrow?? what use is that??

bird watching

rupert and i spent hours looking through the book of fishes today.

the candidates seemed to be a motley crew - and i must confess i was more than a little concerned that they all had spots, missing teeth, black moutstaches and black rimmed spectacles.

have these people never heard of personal grooming?? no wonder they're lonely!!

this of course raised a further concern - looking as unhealthy as they did, they would be no good whatsoever at our speedy dating races.

was just discussing my concerns with rupert when jenny walked past. she was carrying a back marker pen. wonder where she was off to?

anyway, as rupert said, who are we to judge these poor, ugly, lonely people - and he suggested that we get on with the task in hand and back to the shredded paper he'd found in the duck shed.

i won't be hurried on important tasks like this - so i told rupert that we needed to do the job properly for once in our lives and that it seemed to me we needed some means of gauging the suitability of each candidate to a meaningful - and lasting -  relationship with brenda.

i have to hand it to rupert - when push came to shove he came up with a great idea - a points system.

so we went through each candidate and allocated points on the basis of looks, personality and interests.

this is harder than it sounds. the looks one was easy enough - they all got zero for not having trendy designer spectacles, for their dental work and for their various skin complaints. honestly - there must be a clinic somewhere that can handle black spots that size. as rupert said, a dog could fall in some of them - well, not wombat of course, he'd get stuck part way - but a smaller dog perhaps that had spent a bit more time in the gym of an evening.

anyway that took us onto personality. we stared and we stared but neither rupert nor i could see past those thick glasses to the person beyond - so personality was also a zero across the board.

finally we came to interests. this was odd. every single candidate had listed bird watching as their one and only hobby. well i say that - in fact most of them had had several attempts at deciding what their interests were and had crossed things out right across the page before coming up with birdwatching.

how weird is that??

birdwatching must be more popular than i thought.

anyway this is ideal for brenda - she loves watching things - so they all got 10.

it had been a long day so trigger came to help us tally up and we ended up with 4 candidates with 15 points each. the rest all got 3 so they were disqualified.

we were just debating how to work through the 4 winning candidates, when jenny arrived. jenny knows so much! she told us about some great exercises we could do to reveal someone's personality. they're called psychodelic tests and apparenlty you can even use them on yourself to test your popularity with girls.

"sounds great" we said - "when can we start?"

"and how would you like to pay?" she said

earwig ho!

speedy dating

went to see caspar today. i took my book on fishes with me.

caspar had a look through it and then sat back and asked me what i thought.

caspar asked what i thought!!!

rupert asked why my opinion was so important all of sudden.  he seemed decidedly miffed to me for some reason. must be something he ate.

caspar said it was because i was in touch with my feminine side.

i tried to explain that that whole thing had been a bit of a misunderstanding really and jill had since agreed that i am in fact all man - but caspar didn't appear to be listening. he was saying something about needing to set up some sort of speedy dating.

now this is right up my street. i love races. rupert and i sometimes race each other just for the fun of it! how cool is that???

we start tomorrow and i've already appointed rupert as my helper.

this is better than dance classes any day!

compromised

caspar had a long chat with brenda and tim today. the meeting was private and was held at the far end of the big field. obviously we all respected this decision as we knew it was a very personal matter.

as it happened, rupert and i had business to attend to by the golf course, so by chance were nearby. jenny was there as well - she said she was looking for more igloo eggs to add to her collection. trigger was there, helping jenny count her eggs. george and the guys were there too - they seemed to be examining the bushes.

there was a lot of muttering and then caspar got really angry - which isn't like him at all. when he gets angry he goes very quiet and it was difficult to catch what he was saying over the sound of trigger counting. eventually jenny told trigger to shut up - but he said he couldn't or he'd forget where he'd got to.

rupert suggested he try "3".

this seemed to work. rupert's so clever!

anyway, next thing we hear caspar tell brenda outright to return the picture - AND SHE REFUSES!!!

one thing led to another and before we knew what was happening brenda had produced a whole book full of pictures. apparently she carries it about with her. i definitely saw one of the wee feckeyedleyeguy - looking rather fetching in blue - and rupert reckons he saw lix, seamus and someone called george looney - although how anyone could be attracted to someone with a name like that is beyond me.

do these people not think ahead?

brenda looney?? Pleeeease!

"jenny looney", yes i could just about manage - but brenda??

so there i was rolling about on my back at the very thought of having to call her "mrs looney" when i heard my name being called.

caspar had summoned me and rupert. i knew we were in trouble then and i started explaining about the research we were carrying out into the density of grass in different parts of the big field.

caspar said he wasn't interested in the grass - he was more interested in this book i have of lost soles.

he told us that brenda has a problem and we as her firends need to get it sorted. i did suggest the skycologist but caspar felt that, given the events of today, tim's position was compromised. not sure what this meant but with any luck it'll put a stop to the dance classes for a while.

so i have to report to caspar tomorrow with the book.

wonder if he'll pick up the charge for the deposit??

 

 

 

10cc

rupert woke me in the night.

he has remembered the elusive song.

apparently it is by a group called 10cc and it was a massive hit at the time. rupert sang the line - which i now know goes "it hides a silly stain that's lying there, whoa yeah".

rupert then fell asleep.

meanwhile i was now wide awake.

how on earth can a stain lie on a wall??? 

surely it would run off??