Last week was the run-up to the first-stage Horizon 2020 funding call deadline. I also had sole toddler care responsibility (Chris was in Canada). So this is semi-autobiographical. I can confirm I would score well at Question 5.
1. Tick this box to show you’re not racist
2. Tick the other box to stick two fingers up at the establishment
3. Should we send current immigrants home?
4. Are you dissatisfied with your life right now?
5. Do you want Boris Johnson as PM? [OK, the only person who believes this was the question is Boris]
Normal service will be resumed shortly on t’blog, BTW. Having trouble with non-brexit ideas right now.
Mars from a distance, cherry tomatoes, embarrassed hamsters, cherries, the letter o on a red-letter day, cardinals viewed a safe distance from the Vatican, mosquito bites, ketchup splats, red m&ms, red marbles, chicken pox, miniature roses, sunburnt mice, certain pebbles, the fingerprints of those who are caught red-handed, nuclear chillies, the eyes of albino rats, kisses that are blown into a South Wind, the hats of pissed-off gnomes, pug balls, rubies, boils.
1. The strawberry moon. The full moon in June which marks the start of the strawberry season.
2. The banana moon. A large, yellow crescent moon, low on the horizon, presaging bananas in the road ahead.
3. The Pea moon. A small, green moon that may indicate that one has been kidnapped by aliens and dropped off on another planet.
4. The grapefruit moon. Large, round, yellow, and seldom seen after breakfast.
5. The durian moon. Smellable across the whole world, and probably a little too close for comfort.
6. The peach moon. Its gentle, rosy light presages the arrival of the Bottom Fairy, dispensing dreams of buttocks across the wide and drowsy world.
7. The dragonfruit moon. Wow, that was a good night.
1. Boris Johnson becomes the new Tory leader, with Gove as chancellor. They campaign for a November general election on the basis of carrying out the popular mandate given to them by the referendum, including migration controls which necessitate leaving the EEA. The left is fragmented, with a significant vote in Leave bastions for a UKIP which is now campaigning to actively send non-UK citizens home. The Tories win a majority. They continue with the populist, don’t-believe-experts tone of the Leave campaign. Government without expert advice works about just as well as you’d expect. Scotland votes for independence and becomes a fast-track candidate for EU membership.
2. Theresa May wins the Tory leadership election and negotiates an exit from the EU which involves remaining in the EEA. As it becomes apparent that freedom of movement is being retained, there is significant unrest in some of the main Leave-voting areas. The country remains divided, but there is now also a narrative that economic hardship is an establishment punishment for voting Leave. The second Scottish referendum comes out narrowly on the side of the Union. The Tories hang onto power until 2020, at which point they are replaced by a series of messy and weak coalitions.
3. Following the Leave campaign’s repeated backtracking on its promises, a non-Leave candidate wins the Tory leadership election. A coalition of left-leaning parties wins the subsequent election, having campaigned on a slow and reasoned exit from the EU. They promise to invoke Article 50 only when a set of economic/stability tests are met. These tests are never met. Occasionally EU officials threaten to chuck the UK out, or other parties demand that exit happens at once. Then the markets go belly-up and everyone quietens down again. Eventually the non-invocation of article 50 becomes a long-running background political issue. The constant uncertainty around it is a perpetual economic and social problem.
4. Just as both major parties are tearing themselves to shreds in preparation for leadership elections, a large meteorite lands in the Mediterranean just North of Algeria. A large area surrounding the Western Mediterranean is devastated, including much of Spain and Italy. Negotiations are abandoned as everyone attempts to deal with mass movements of refugees across Europe and Africa. Russia uses the situation as a pretext to invade Ukraine in the name of regional stability. By the time the dust has settled, Europe is so changed, physically and politically, that Brexit is barely a footnote in history.
5. 2016 is recalled for faulty components and poor performance. It turns out it was supplied with the ‘0’ upside-down and that what we thought was a 1 is actually a cut-up letter l. Following a stern letter to the Years Commission, the world is awarded substantial compensation, including the return of David Bowie and Prince, a complementary Truth upgrade on all politicians, a nice biro and five months of amazing sunsets.
Screwed, funted, fucked, staring down the gullet of a hungry python, up shit creek without a canoe, gone off a cliff on a pogo stick, covered in superglue and hugging an angry bear, proper bolloxed up, queuing for a ride on the Titanic, hanging from the gonads above a banqueting table of hungry lions, about to put on that hat that the audience know is full of seagull shit, not welcome in the club anymore, 30m beneath a herd of flying rhinos who’ve just had their first vindaloo, pissing on an electric fence right in front of a bull, proudly boarding Failship One for immediate takeoff, a little bit in the poo.
Train, donkey, unicycle, astride a fish which is steering a wheeled tank, in a chariot pulled by the reanimated corpse of Queen Victoria, on the wings of a song, on turtleback, by plane, by gosh, by magnetic repulsion, in a hamster wheel, under a lorry, up the down escalator, by travelator, by tractor, by tractor beam, by car, by hastily cobbled-together parachute, by kite, by pogo stick, by sail, strapped to a furiously tunnelling mole, by being so fabulous that one is wafted forth on the fickle winds of glamour, on horseback, by kayaking down a stream of piss, by swinging from vines and branches, by swimming, by cartwheeling, by the eventual movement of tectonic plates, by harnessing the power of the solar wind, by using a combination of farting, physics, and an office chair, by being pulled along by a puppy on a lead, by elephant, on stilts, through a pipe, by folding the world up and making a hole through it, swept away on a wave of escaping sheep, on foot.
1. I am trying to find the sea, and this is the direction that it is probably closest
2. I have always believed that when one is up shit creek without a paddle, one should keep digging
3. I am building a grotto for my hermit to live in
4. I am a dog
5. I am putting in the first foundations for a mile-high skyscraper in the shape of an inverted pyramid, it will be named The Colossus, could you move please, you’re standing where the lift shafts need to go
6. After putting all salient details into my Life Simulator, the result with optimal outcome on a net lifetime income basis involves digging here
7. This is where the end of the rainbow touched down, as you may observe from the sheen on the surface of these puddles
8. I said that I was literally digging it, so I thought I had better start
9. I am training for the Olympic digging event
10. Are we all not digging, really, in an existential sense?
1. Steadfast refusal to queue-jump even when the person in front has been steadfastly refusing to move for weeks and may in fact be dead
2. Science experiment gone wrong leads to being blasted into space strapped to a giant bottle of vigorously shaken irn-bru
3. Pulled limb from limb by a rampaging pack of royal corgis following the great gourmet dog food shortage of 2031
4. Fatally skewered by extremely pointed tutting
5. Did not want to make a scene about the whole being swallowed by a python thing
6. Got drunk in a hot climate and accidentally fried self on the white-hot rocks of global warming
7. Swept sixteen miles out on a sea of mud by the great Glastonbury floods of 2044
8. That lady asked really nicely if she could strangle you, it would make her happy, it seemed churlish to refuse
9. Revealed to be an amphibian after a year’s uncharacteristic lack of rain results in 100% dessication
10. Eaten alive from the inside by the World’s Worst Sausage
11. Punch grabbed one end, Judy grabbed the other, and they started to pull
12. Two people tread on each others’ feet simultaneously and are sucked into the Infinite Apology Vortex
1. Flapjack furniture. You are so fond of buttery, oaty snacks that you are prepared to put up with sticky furniture that keeps on getting eaten in order to have a constant supply close to hand.
2. Flat cap furniture. Made in Yorkshire by real Yorkshire people. Ey up, lass.
3. Fat cat furniture. Lightly stolen from the houses of furtive billionaires.
4. Cat splat furniture. Tubbs from Neko Atsume comes round to your house, and you sit on him.
5. AT-AT furniture. For fans of Star Wars and everyone else who just happens to like their chairs with wobbly legs and laser cannon.
6. Flat furniture. For when you have two-dimensional guests to stay.