Decided today was the day to dig over the raised beds. I noticed that the Brussels sprout plants in the large raised bed had mostly blown sprouts. Very sad, as these were going to be part of Christmas Dinner. Will remove the blown ones, and see if the plants produce more.

Even though it may be too late, I planted the Tulip bulbs. They went in the small raised bed with the rest of the Garlic cloves. Will see what happens.

Planted the rest of the crocus and snowdrop bulbs today - I hope I wasn't too late.

I think the tomato plants are past their best now, so will be getting rid in the next few days. Will be needing the room for other things I'll be planting over the coming weeks. It's a shame really, I've become quite used to them being there on the window sill.

I have a small pumpkin in the oven at the moment. In an hour or so I'll be able to scrape out the flesh and make a puree from it to make the pumpkin and chocolate chip muffins for the kids tomorrow. Will let you know if they taste OK!

The onion sets have started to sprout, some better than others. I think they will probably need some frost protection, so will buy some fleece from Wilko's on Monday (I hope they have some in!). I can already taste those sweet, red onions - yummy!

Going to have a bit of an experiment with the garlic. I planted some of the cloves in the small raised bed today, will plant some more mid-November, and the rest on the Winter Solstice. The Solstice is (if you didn't already know) the day when day light hours start to increase again. This is important for growing Alliums apparently, so by planting the garlic cloves in the way I'm going to be, hopefully by next summer I can see if it makes any difference. They will all hopefully produce lovely fat bulbs.

We lopped the heads off the Sunflowers a few days ago. We were amazed by how many seeds were held within the heads. The heads are on the kitchen windowsill at the moment, although one or two have gone a bit mouldy.

The area where the sweetcorn grew has now been dug over. Sweetcorn will be returning next year definately!

I decided that today would be the day to finally plant the onion sets. I bought 50 red and 50 white sets from Wilko's a few weeks ago which are over-wintering varieties. Two bags of multi-purpose compost and half a box of blood, fish and bone later, I had prepared the bed, so in the sets went. As with everything this year, this is the first time I have grown onion sets, so fingers crossed that they get on OK.

I think I'll take the advice of Gardeners' World magazine, and plant the garlic on cells of compost to get their roots developed before they go out next month. It'll give me time to weed and prepare the large raised bed if nothing else. I hope the garlic won't mind sharing with two Brussels Sprout plants.

Planted two packs of Fratillaria (Snakes Head variety) in the front garden. The bed they're in already has a few old daffodil bulbs in, but the more I think about it, the more I think I should buy more daffodils. As the front garden is north-facing, it doesn't get a huge amount of sunlight, but if the bulbs I have planted over the last few weeks don't do well, I can just dig them up and re-plant them round the back.

I received a huge clump of lovely pink Japanese Anemones from a lady on Freecycle. After soaking them in a big bucket for a few hours, I enriched the soil with some multi purpose compost, removed the weeds, and split the plant into two clumps with a spade. In a few days, I will chop all the growth down to ground level, and wait for them to start growing again in May. They are at the front of the house, which is north-facing. They appreciate not growing in full sun, so I am hoping they will be pretty happy there.

Sent a banana seed through the post. cost 61p!!!! how the feck do they justify the price hikes when I still don't get my mail until midday!!!!!!???? One bloody seed!!! Disgusted.....

Broke my new phone. Gutted.

Meanwhile, in the garden...........

Decided that the planned bed for Spring bulbs under the tree will have to wait. Really need to improve drainage at the top of the garden where we're growing veg first.

I gave the Pansy Palace (yes, I am that sad to name a bed) a major overhaul today. It had become overgrown with Nasturtiums, and the pansies in there had become really leggy. So I pulled everything out. Went to B&Q to have a look round. Came away with 30 pansies for £3, 12 lovely yellow Violas for £3, and a wonderful Christmas Box for almost £7. Enriched the soil with half a bag of the compost that was delivered the other day, and planted everything. I'm delighted with the way it looks. Interplanted the bed with 30 Salome Daffodils.

I have resigned myself to the fact that we won't be having the Barbeque Summer that the Met Office promised us. It is raining now. Actually, it's been raining more or less constantly for a few days, beginning with a torrential rain storm, complete with thunder and lightning. So the garden is flooded. Again.

I ordered six 70 litre bags of multi purpose compost from creativegardenideas.co.uk last week. Free delivery too! They should be arriving today. Most of it will be used to create a spring bulb bed around the tree at the bottom of the garden. I'm hoping that there will be at least one bag left over to enrich the onion bed. Speaking of onions, I'm finding lots of conflicting advice as to when would be the best time to plant the sets I bought. Some sites say September, others October and November. I even saw one recommend the shortest day as the best time to plant them. I don't want them to run to seed prematurely by planting them out too early, but I don't want to wait too long to plant them, as already the temperature is dropping outside.

Well I've harvested the rest of the first row of potatoes. Lovely, huge spuds are now in the fryer. Maris Piper make the best chips. The Nasturtiums have started popping out seed all over the bed. I must have collected hundreds from the little area I did today. I found out today that the reason the Nasturtiums went so crazy is that the soil they were growing in was too rich. Apparently, if you grow them in very poor soil, with little or no nutrients, they grow in a more compact fashion, and you will still get as many flowers. That will be something to experiment with next year.

I picked off the seed pods from one of the Lupins. I could hear the seed rattling within the pods, which had gone a brown colour. They are now outside in some seed compost. I'm unsure whether a frost is needed for the seeds to break their dormancy. We'll have to see what happens.

Well the raspberry cane which took so long to get going has finally given up the ghost.

All this Grow Your Own stuff is really difficult. Planning has been an epic fail. Planning, or lack there of, is the reason why we'll have no raspberries, pumpkins, pish poor onions, no spring onions....... alas, the list of failings is quite long. Still, at least we've learned from them, and hopefully, next year, things will be more successful. Hopefully.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but the Brussels Sprout plants are beginning to form little buttons. Sprouts for Christmas! The leeks are still going strong, and the Maris Piper spuds are ready for digging up. I'm tempted to do it now, but we've had a fair bit of rain. Or is that an excuse.......? Ok, Ok, I'll do it now.....

Bought some autumn-planting white and red onion sets. They are known as Japanese onions, and will go in in the next week or so, to hopefully produce tasty onions in early summer next year. I think that as the pumpkin is unlikely to produce fruit so late in the season, I might pull it up next week, and dig the large raised bed over, adding lot of compost, and plant half the red onion sets in there, and maybe a few cloves of the garlic I bought too.

I was toying with the idea of giving onions a miss next year, but will be trying again, purely because I'm pretty sure it was my fault that this years failed so bad. They're maybe golf ball size, and the tops have flopped over, so they won't be growing anymore. I'll probably lift them tomorrow. I really liked the idea of growing our own onions, so I will be sowing some main crop onions on the shortet day, to hopefully give them the longet possible growing season. Not sure which variety to go with yet.

It will be a mad few weeks once we have harvested what we can. We need to enrich the soil, and improve drainage. I'm sure the best way of doing this will be by using raised beds. I have finally sourced a company on-line which deliver compost. They deliver for free which is even better! Will have to have a look round for some wood to make the frames. We would like to edge the raised beds with gravel on the top of weed suppression membrane. I think this would give it a really nice look.

Well it's mid August now, so I suppose it would be useful to reflect on the growing year so far. I need to work out what grows well in our garden and plan for next years crops.

Onions: I decided against buying sets (small, immature bulbs), and went for seeds instead. The variety I chose was Ailsa Craig, which promised large onions. Well, they were sown 18th April, and looking at them now, they won't be providing us with large bulbs. I think this is probably because we did not enrich the soil prior to sowing the seeds. OK, we did nothing to enrich the soil. My fault. Too eager. Anyhoo.......

Leeks: I'm actually quite proud of these little guys! Sown at the same time as the onions, our Musselburgh leeks are a little more than pencil thickness, and have plenty of time left to grow even thicker. Will definately be growing these again next year.

Parsnips: Dreadful germination for the first batch (Hollow Crown variety), sown around the same time as the onions and leeks. Apparently, parsnips are not the easiest of veg to get to germinate, but I think we have only eight plants out of a whole packet of seeds.

More Parsnips: So, because of the piss poor performance of the Hollow Crown, I bought a packet of a different variety (White Gem), sown on my birthday (2nd. June), without much hope to be honest. We had torrential rain which flooded the patch that these seedlings were growing in. Infact, they were under water for two weeks or more (yes, my fault again for not improving drainage), but they have grown better, with much more vigour than the other kind. Which makes me wonder, is the usual poor germination due to the growing medium being too dry? Maybe they need a boggy area to flourish.

Sweetcorn: Sown 29th April, I managed to raise nine plants. They are all flowering, and there is some evidence of tiny cobs forming - brilliant!

Swede: These are the "Best of all" variety, originally sown 11th. May. They have done fine so far, nice and leafy. I didn't know swedes are members of the Brassica family, hence them being muched on by Cabbage White caterpillers. Will be netting these next year for sure.

Tomatoes: The ones grown in the borders are pretty much devoid of folliage, I think more than likely to do with being water logged, but they have a few green tomatoes on them, which will hopefully be OK. The two plants I grew in pots are going great guns; covered in fruit.

Beetroot: These "Bolthardy" beets produce lovely golf ball sized globes, perfect for roasting.

Brussels Sprouts: Really need to protect these from the caterpillers. The netting covering them at the moment still allows the parent butterfly to stick it's bum through the net and lay eggs on the leaves.

Runner beans: These have been really productive for over a month now. The more you pick, the more they produce! Lovely red flowers too. Will definately be growing these next year.

Courgettes: Not sure about these yet,I had to move them as they were under water. They're starting to grown again, but are only about a foot high.

Carrots: We have had some lovely juicey Early Nantes. They taste so much better freshly picked than supermarket bought ones.

Peas: There's nothing quite like picking a pod off the plant, and eating the sweet, plump peas inside - it is very heaven!

Radishes: These were lovely, definately worth growing again - a firm favourite with the kids.

Disasters:

Howden pumpkin : drown

Hunter Butternut squash : drown

Webbs Wonderful Lettuce: we managed to eat the ones we netted (tasty they were too), however, sparrows ate a lot of the others. Oh, and slugs.

Pumpkin: was given this one, and promised the ladies son that I would take good care of it....... I did rescue it from drowning completely, but now it is suffering powdery mildew. I removed the effected foliage, hoping that the fungus will not spread. Fingers crossed.

Spinach beet: Tasted of absolutely nothing, so we didn't bother eating it.

Spring onions: Unsure why they failed to grow.

Bingo and Mr. Cluck have been with us for almost four weeks. Got them a day before Meg's birthday from a fella on Gumtree.

We had so much rain yesterday that our seedlings are mostly still under water. The heavy clay soil we have is only allowing the water to drain away very slowly, so I think we might lose some of the plants we have worked so hard to grow. It emphasises the importance of looking after the soil, enriching it so it will drain freely.

I brought in one of the tomato plants and have noticed that it has the beginnings of fruit growing!

Finally made a break-through with Humphrey. I had almost given up all hope of getting him to trust me, and to not try to take chunks out of my fingers whenever I put my hands in his cage. I popped him in the ball (which he'll walk into on his own). I usually give him 10 - 15 minutes running around on the floor, and then open the ball and let him walk out of it onto my chest, and then he'll get back in his ball and I'll put him back in his cage via the ball. Saves my fingers that way! Tonight, Humphrey decided he didn't want to stay in his cage, and immediately turned around and climbed on my hand, up my arm to my shoulder. He seemed calmer. I put him back in his cage, but he doesn't want to stay in there, so for the past 20 minutes, I've allowed him to come out when he wants to, and each time he does, he shows even less fear. I'm delighted! I thought Humphrey was not going to be the kind of hamster you can play with. It's only took the best part of two months to get to this point though haha

It seems Dandelion is starting to feel his age, sleeping more. He has started to lose fur on his sides, in the area of his scent glands, and he's drinking more than usual. I fear his time maybe drawing to an end.....

Have been worrying myself half to death about blight. It would be so unfair for our potatoes (and tomatoes) to succumb to that nasty thing, so fingers crossed it doesn't happen - especially as this is our first year.

I thought I would update my blog with some new pictures! So without further ado......

Another warm day. It's 6:10pm and 80°F - I reckon it'll be pretty difficult to sleep tonight....

Moved the Nasturtiums from the Leek bed. I must remember to leave more room between rows next year. I love the idea of companion planting, but when the companions are hiding your crop completely, there's no point them being there. I left the Nasturtiums that are between the rows of onions as there is more room. Funny thing is, those Nasturtiums are Dwarf Tom Thumb variety. I think the buzz word here is dwarf. Dwarf compared to what exactly? Those plants spread more than two feet across! God only know what the "giant" variety are going to be like which are in one of the borders......

Anyway the Leeks are a bit droopy now they've suddenly been exposed to full sun.

I fed the potatoes and runner beans some tomato feed this morning. The spuds have really perked up.

Elsewhere in the garden, the sunflowers are 4ft tall now, the Salvias have been throwing up some lovely spires of bright red flowers, and the Gazanias will be in flower any day now. The peppers are covered in dainty little flowers, and one of the plants have 3 tiny peppers beginning to grow. The tomatoes are really starting to go crazy now, but I think it will be another few months before they are at such a height that they will begin to produce trussers.

We have a cucumber (Telegraph variety) which we call Colin. Colin was outside in front of the parsnip bed, but he was looking a bit sorry for himself. Matty says he has a cucumber plant in his class room, and recommended Colin should live indoors. So we brought him in and he is now almsot 6" taller in a week!!!

All the radishes have been eaten now, I hope the seedlings hurry up lol

Highs of 81°F today - it was crazy hot on the bus home from work. Got home just after 3pm, and went straight out into the garden. Bit of weeding done, ate a few delicious radishes. It's great that all our hard work is beginning to pay off.

I can't believe how much the garden has sprung into life this month. It is so thrilling to see those tiny little seeds I sown just a few short months ago burst into life. They truly are full of promise. I am annoyed at myself for not doing this sooner. Sure, digging is a chore, and weeding is boring, but it is all worth it when you see those little seedlings poking their heads above the soil.

So I thought I would show you some pictures of the progress.

Firstly, the Maris Piper potatoes that we sown at the beginning of April are between two and three feet high. The flowers that they produce are so pretty. We had a bit of a scare a few weeks back when we thought that they may have the dreaded Blight. However, after some careful research, we discovered that a few of them had Magnesium deficiency. Weekly feeding with tomato feed seems to have cured them.


Infront of the potatoes, we have Ailsa Craig onions. They are about 8" tall at the moment. I think I over-did it with the Companion Planting lol


The leeks are surrounded by Nasturtiums, but seem to be growing well. The parsnips didn't germinate very well, and we only have around eight in that bed. They seem healthy enough, we hope they produce well.


The runner beans are very vigorous, and are going across the tops of the 6ft bamboo canes. We can't wait for them to start cropping!

The raised beds that Jason built are also full of life. In the small one are two varieties of carrot, some delicious French Breakfast radish, some lettuce which was attacked by birds so is now under netting, various herb seedlings, and peas (which are yet to come up). Lovingly defended by Wurzel.



The large raised bed is home to carrots, beetroot, spinach beet, Brussels Sprouts, a few onions, peas, and radishes under the netting structure. To the right of that is a whole bunch of seedlings which I thought were dead, but have all decided life is more fun lol I planted a few other plants on the wall of the raised bed: 3 different clematis, water melons, asparagus seedlings, and some netted lettuce. Sally looks after this bed.



In the large border, we have Brussels Sprouts, carrots, beetroot, sweetcorn, and a pumpkin. Oh, and after the poor germination of the other parsnips, we sown a different variety. They seem to have all germinated lol Even after the heavy rain we had recently almost drowned hem under 3" of water for a few days. Amazing! Here they are next to a pumpkin.


Here are the sweetcorn plants (9 of), plus a tomato plant.

The birds were eating the leaves of the beetroot, so we covered them, plus the carrots under this nettig structure.

In the other border, on the opposite side of the garden, we have Capsicums which have tiny little peppers on them. They are such small plants, maybe 12" tall.


We dug this little are yesterday. In it are 4 courgette plants, a water melon, lots of marigold and a sneaky pansy. The netting behind has some sweet peas I bought from Tesco growing up them, albeit slowly.

Below shows our sunflowers (Jason bet me 50p that there would be only 4 with flowers in the end, but look at those babies grow!), giant nasturtiums in front of them, strawberry plants that have just started to flower, and tomato plants. There are more marigolds too. I can't wait to see the amount of colour that (I'm hoping) this border will produce.

Bought a new hammy on Saturday, he's proper cute. Have named him Humphrey.


Dug over another border in the front garden today, and planted some lovely Summer plants.

Wow, the Courgettes only took six days to germinate!!! They started poking up yesterday. I may have done a little sex wee.....

I think I saw the first signs of life in the onion bed this morning, and, unbelievably, the runner beans are coming up. I really thought they would have been munched by slugs as I had planted them straight into the ground, but no, they are little fighters. The Sweet peas don't seem to have grown much, if at all since they were planted out. I think I should have maybe held off planting them outside without hardening them off first. Plus, it did say on the packet of seeds that they really shouldn't be planted outside until May. Same as the Runner Beans. Oooops!

A mixture of sunshine and showers today. Managed to mow the back lawn, and pulled up a load of weeds off the path.

There is a rogue element in the Potato bed. An imposter, which is not of Maris Piper origin. I noticed it this morning. It could well be the remnants of the huge 25kg sack of spuds we bought for a fiver off.... well, to be honest they probably fell off the back of a lorry in all honesty, but they were very tasty so Jas popped a few of the ones that had sprouted onto the window sill to chit next to the Maris Piper seed potatoes. I planted them in the corner of the bed on the same day as the Maris Pipers.

All this "you must earth-up spuds"lark is really confusing me. Do you cover the leaves? Hmmmm probably best I look it up me thinks.

The rain finally came yesterday. It's amazing how much it freshened up the atmosphere. The grass is beginning to look like grass again and not straw, the spuds are really starting to flourish, and the Sunflowers which only poked their little heads above the soil 4 short days ago, are between three and four inches high now, and taking over my living room window sill. The peppers are looking lovely; I'll re pot them into 12.5cm pots in the next few days. The tall Nasturtiums have germinated, as have the tomato plants.

The seeds from the BBC's Digin campaign arrived this morning, so I sowed the 5 Butternut Squash seeds (Hunter variety), some of the Tomato seeds (Gardener's Delight), a row of Bolthardy Beetroot. I sowed a pot of French Dwarf mix Marigolds outside.

I came to a bit of a scary revolation today - what the heck am I going to do with all the flowers I have sown from seed? It's my own fault; I should have read the back of the pack properly. I now realise that the original pack of Nasturtiums were of the tall, single mixed variety. How the feck did I think that a 1.8m plant would fit in between our onion and leek beds!??!!?!?!?!?

It has been a very warm month or two now, with temperatures in the 60's, although I'm pretty sure it has been warmer. We dug another border over yesterday. I had my heart set on a lovely border full of colour with annual flowers. Jason however, brought a load more seeds back, so it looks like my colourful dream border will have to wait. Still though, not bad for nine hours work eh! I'll finish it off tomorrow.



So, onto today. Well firstly, I went back to work after being ill for two months. Bought a mix of 6 peppers from Wilko. Red, green and yellow, about 3 inches high at the moment. Not bad for 3 quid. Wilko also had herbs on sale, 50% off, so I bought some and they are now all potted up on the kitchen window sill.

THE POTATOES ARE GROWING!!!!!!!!!!!!



We also have some growing action coming from the lettuce and sunflowers. Isn't it great when you hard labour starts to show signs of success :-)

Jason made another small raised bed. Just got to decide what should go in there!

Well yesterday was insanely busy planting, digging, swearing.....

Me and my dear son went to Wilko to get supplies. We bought planting troughs, seedling trays, multi-purpose plant food and 100 litres of compost. Which we had to carry back home. Using the bus. Still though, it has been great to get some nutrients into our clay soil, which in the glorious weather we're having right now is like grey dust. Useless.

We sowed Ailsa Craig onions and Musselburgh Leeks in the plot. The compost really holds onto moisture - brilliant! We used the hoe to remove about 5 inches of soil, replaced with compost, set the seeds, and covered them in a thin layer of compost.

We sowed Mesembryanthemum (mixed) into seed trays to go out the front, and Nasturtium (tall single mixed) in trays to be planted in amongst the veggies, to hopefully deter pests.

We planted three strawberry plants in one of the troughs. The planting instructions were naff to be honest, but I think the plants will be OK (touch wood). In another trough we planted Webbs Wonderful lettuce. I found a large planter lying around which I filled with compost and planted the Raspberry cane, stick, erm..... whatever it was, it looked like a stick.

Today was time to re-seed the grass in the front. Had to remove a lot of Ground Elder which was a pain, but hopefully when the grass grows better it will be drown out. Gave the sprinkler a go, attracting every kid in 100 mikle radius it seems. What is it about sprinklers that makes kids flock to you?

It's amazing how far we've come in a few short weeks. Our patch is definately starting to take shape, and caring for it is something I am quite fanatical about . Jason built a raised bed out of dry-stone walling. He's so tired, but what a fantastic job he did! I sowed a few rows of Nantes carrots in there this evening.



Also sowed sunflower seeds (Giant), and tomato (Money Maker) into trays indoors. The raised bed would be perfect for the outdoor tomatoes, as it has full sun for most of the day.

Here is a piccy of the main plot. The light was fading, but you get the idea.

Our vegguie patch's humble beginning, will post another piccy when it's fully dug over (see ya in 10 years then)

Twinkle died yesterday. Play hard at the bridge, little girl xxx

What is it with Steve Wright on Radio 2? WHY must he sing over all the tunes he plays? WHY does he have such sycophantic twits with him? WHY does he only read out the listeners emails, letters etc. that proclaim him as some kind of God? WHY does he think he's so bloody funny? WHEN is he gonna sod off and retire??????

Does anyone else find that all the publicity of Jade Goody's illness makes them feel a little bit...... uneasy? I feel so sad that she has to suffer the awfulness of having her life cut short due to her now terminal illness, and her little boys won't have their Mummy around much longer, but isn't the media the exact same media who were after her blood not so long ago because of the Celebrity Big Brother fiasco? And now they are circling like vultures as this girls life ebbs away. Hypocrisy.

I found this on another website, and felt it was so funny I needed to share it. Probably not true, but hilarious none-the-less.

My bedroom is a converted attic accessed by retractable metal ladders.
I fought my brother for this room at the young age of 12, and being the eldest it really was no contest.

You see at this young age I had already foreseen the benefits of being able to pull the ladders up and shut myself away from the world.

Actually, if I may take this chance to say a few things.

My 15,16,17 and 18 year old would like to thank my 12 yr self for providing the freedom to masturbate at will.

My 19, 20, 21, and 22-year-old self, thank my 12-year-old self for giving me the freedom to shag girlfriends in a fully occupied house.

My 23 yr old self however is less greatful and would have no qualms about kicking my 12 yr old self in his pre pubescent nutsack.....and ill tell you why.

Years of striding down my ladders have resulted in a certain degree of schoolboy arrogance and blatant showboating on my part.
4 steps at a time, no hands, 360 degree turns in mid descent, were some of my more daring moves.
I have managed to navigate these ladders in all states of drunkenness, with a broken foot, carrying crates of beer; fuck I could have probably juggled while hopping backwards on these ladders, until the fateful day.

On those ladders, gravity was my bitch.

However this particular morning, Gravity it seemed, was in no mood to be taunted, and had conspired with dyson to teach my sorry disrespectful ass a lesson... quite literally.

It was a Saturday morning. I woke up fluffy haired and blurry eyed following a heavy night out on the town. I had a football match in 1 hrs time and was faced with what has now become a weekly task of playing 90 minutes hung-over, I take my football very seriously.
The awakening of my bladder dictated that the bathroom would be the first stop of the day and thus urged me towards the ladders for the trusty standard 2-step descent with speed.

I'd made this journey many times, 5 strides and I would be on my hallway.

The first 3 strides were uneventful,

The 4th stride un fucking forgettable,

There was no 5th stride,

For at this point, I was almost raped by a dyson.

If I needed any further clarification that inserting anything up my ass was not going to be a suitable lifestyle choice then this was it.

The speed that I was travelling coupled with the all too perfect positioning
of the vacuum cleaner meant that the attempted anal entry was fast and brutal. (Seriously, I reconstructed the scene many times after and there was only one position the dyson could have been sitting at to enter me with the precision it did that morning)

In hindsight, the lack of lubricant, and my heterosexuality saved me.

Any previous tampering with my asshole, KY jell, vaseline, or spittle on that handle and that fucking dyson would have gone so far up my ass I would have been able to wash dishes and vacuum at the same time, if in fact I actually did either.

Such was the ferocity of the assault, man-made materials were no defence for this custom-built ass raping machine masquerading as a household appliance.
The shaft of the dyson tore right through my combats and my homer simpson boxer shorts, finally meeting its resting place in the shape of my tailbone.

The pain was like nothing I've ever experienced.

Let me take this opportunity to tell you what I have learnt about my body's natural defence mechanism to different forms of pain over the years

Punch on the head = Punch the fucker back
Punch in the stomach = same as above
Kick in the nuts = drop to the floor

To this I can now add,

Vacuum cleaner up the ass = run like fuck with minor terets

This was the first type of pain that my body has ever told me to fucking move, and move fast. Not in any particular direction or to any specific location, just to keep running. Kind of like forest gump.
The desire to run like fuck was accompanied with the desire to swear, and swear continuously.

So I did.

I sprinted down the stairs and must have ran round my kitchen a good 15 times clutching my ass shouting expletives at the dyson

"HOLY GOOD FUCCKKKK!!!, YOU FUCKIN DUST SUCKING BAGLESS BASTARD!"

This was followed by a continual stream of swear words.

As I rounded on what would be my last lap of the kitchen, I found myself slightly impressed with my ability to formulate incoherent sentences purely with swear words.
This brief sense of pride however was quickly overshadowed by the realisation of what had just happened to me

I'd just been anally assaulted by my dyson.

My experience undoubtedly has emotionally scarred me.

You will never now see me descend ladders without a thorough initial scan of the area below, accompanied by a tentative outstretched hand feeling around for any object potentially obstructing my landing area.

You also will never see me do any housework.
Everyday is a struggle, but I have to be strong.

What kind of example would I be setting to the rest of the household appliances? That its ok to sexually assault the occupant and then carry on as if nothing had happened?

There have been times when I've come close to using the toaster, emptying the dishwasher, or clean up the beer id spilt, but you'll be pleased to know these near lapses have only reinforced my determination to never to lift in a finger to help in the house.

I take your applause people.

To Mr Dyson I say this,

You've managed to pay millions to remove the troublesome bags from hoovers, and thus prolong the suction, but would it have really have hurt you to go the extra mile and maybe have foam padding on the handles dipshit?

Surely no other man should have to endure the hell having to watch their mother/partner near collapse lifting a vacuum cleaner up 3 flights of stairs.

To confused teenage boys I say this,

If you think you stare just that little bit too long in the communal changing rooms at your male school chums, go squat on a dyson.
Years of hormonal based confusion answered in a painful/gratifying second. (Delete as appropriate)

Beware the Dyson.

I was reprimanded by a rather large goose at the bus stop on my way to work yesterday.