Bliss

(Today's title refers to this incredibly popular Kiwi drinking song that you've undoubtedly heard if you've ever been around drinking Kiwis. The title of the song was originally "Piss" but good taste resulted in a change.) 

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

Smock told me she was going out for dinner at Little Panang tonight. I told her I was going out too, but I didn't know where. She mocked me for being a useless man and then asked me if she was allowed to "know" me if I also happened to be going to the same venue.

I told her she was, but she had better mind her f*cking language.

Ha ha ha! No I didn't say that. This is the woman who thinks "fishheads" is a naughty word, after all.

As it turns out, Caro and me were due to meet LouLou at "Pravda", rather a nice bar/restaurant in town. However, I was distraught to find we weren't there to eat. "Oh no, this is just the tail-end of my regular 'Ladies Who Poo' meeting," explained LouLou.

There were two of her colleagues there, and all three women worked on the "P.O." (product owner) team. So it makes sense. In LouLou-Land.

No, but we were ACTUALLY to meet up with Tiger and eat at "Leroy's" at the bottom of Plimmer Steps. It's not so much a restaurant as a "festy drinking hole" so we had burgers and chips and got slowly hammered with L&T.

I say that. Actually Tiger had been there for some time before we arrived and was already pretty pleased with himself. He and three other colleagues had gone straight from work. It transpired that Anna From Montana (one of said colleagues) had just "f*cking broken up with my motherf*cking partner" and was being taken out to drown her sorrows. 

Her sorrows seemed pretty waterlogged by the time we arrived. She asked us if we'd ever been given a "Roman Helmet".

Huh?

So she explained that this was when you get a willy draped down over your forehead, so that the end of it looked like the front of a helmet.

Oho. It's going to be that sort of conversation is it? 

(Rolling up sleeves).

"Have you heard of 'Monkey Face'?" I asked.

You really shouldn't start these conversations with Caro and me. We have spent years curating terms like "Rusty Trombone" and "Fuzzy Musket". I also explained to the assembled crowd about "Penis Beakers" and "Poo Knives"*. 

So it was intellectual chat, is what I'm trying to say. LouLou told us about her internet dating days. She took a picture of herself with her motorbike behind her. "The internet EXPLODED," she told us. "Men LOOOOOOVE women with bikes."

One guy sent her a picture of himself with a cat. 

"A cat!" said LouLou! "How lovely!" so she arranged to meet him. Apparently they both had motorbikes, so they arranged to go for a ride together and met up in the country. "I got off my bike, and he got off his, and I was a bit surprised that he stayed at the same height," she told us. "Then he smiled and he had three teeth."

"Oh f*ck," she realised. "I've arranged to go on a date with a toothless dwarf." 

Not only that, but he had to apologise for being late. This was on account of how it had taken longer than he expected to break the news to his wife and three children that his marriage was over and he was going on his first big date.

"So that was it," said LouLou. "Three strikes." 

I'm trying to remember the other stories of the evening. A fellow called Ben did volunteer that he had attempted to seduce his wife with gentle caresses in bed the previous night. Apparently she just sighed and asked, "Do you want me to put my book down?" so that was the end of that. This prompted my recollection of the time that Lucky the Cat curled up in the middle of my back and fell asleep one time while I was - ahem - in the middle of things.

I took that as very harsh criticism indeed. It put a bit of a dampener on things to put it mildly. ("We have to stop! You might wake her up!")

The rest of the evening is a bit hazy now. I seem to remember though, that - thematically speaking - Roman Helmets and Fuzzy Muskets might have been the intellectual high point.

It's probably for the best that Smock never showed up in Leroy's. I'm not sure she would have wanted to know me.

S.

* Have we talked about this? I feel like we have but can't be sure. So just in case, this story comes from Reddit and concerns a lady who went to a party and did a big poo. Concerned it wouldn't flush, she found the host and asked where the poo knife was.

"Excuse me?" said the host.

"You know. The poo knife. The knife for cutting up poo. You know. When it won't flush. You must know."

The host did not know. By now the question was attracting some attention. Long story short, NO-ONE in the party had any idea what the unfortunate woman was asking about, but they all had pretty strong feelings of the "eeeeWWWWW!" variety about it.

So anyway, the lady turned to social media and asked other Reddit users if THEY knew what she was talking about. And it turned out that, although poo knives are unknown to most of us, there are indeed many families for whom a "poo knife" is an ESSENTIAL bit of kit.

People who had been hiding their secret shame for YEARS came out of the woodwork, admitting via the Reddit thread that yes, they'd grown up with a poo knife too. Often it was hung on a nail, hidden in a cupboard, far away from the other cutlery so it could never accidentally get mixed in with general population. There was a bit of variety in choice of implement though. Some families had a poo knife while others had a poo spatula, or a poo fish slice, or even a poo spoon. Caro and I recently found out that SOMEONE WE KNOW grew up in a family with a poo knife.

If you, reading this, belong to one of these families, then I need you to know that you don't have to hide in the shadows any more. You will get no judgement from me, although I WILL be bringing my own cutlery with me if I ever come to yours for dinner.