Just Relax

For the last couple of months, I've been receiving fortnightly physiotherapy for what can only be described as a groinular injury. I won't go into details, but, suffice to say, I'm seen as something of a conundrum by the physiotherapeutic profession. I've had them pretty baffled.

This morning, my usual physiotherapist sought the second opinion of a colleague who specialises in something I don't claim to understand which seems to involve prodding people. I'm evidently on a bit of a roll this week, because the second physio turned out to be a rather attractive young woman. I promise you I'm not making this up.

So I'm lying there on this couch in just my shorts, thinking of England, with this new physio prodding around down below…

"Could you just relax your muscles, please, Richard?"

"Sure."

"Nice and relaxed… No, that's not it, you're all tense, Richard… Just breathe out slowly and try to relax… No, you're still tense… Do you find it difficult to relax your muscles, Richard?

"I do when you're doing that!"

Amnesia

Carolyn sent me a text message this afternoon:

Why so drunk?

What is that crazy woman on about this time? I wondered. Then I had a horrible thought and checked my 'Sent' messages:

Dear Carolyn, I am extremely drunk, but you are still a 100% Diamond Geezer. Love, R xx

I have no recollection whatsoever of sending the text message, but I distinctly remember cracking open a bottle of whisky with my parents last night. I think my amnesia must be down to a near-lethal cocktail of Famous Grouse and dental anaesthetic.

Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

It's good to be friends with Carolyn again, though.

Assuming she's still speaking to me, that is.

Sexist

I was inadvertantly sexist yesterday.

I visited the dentist's to have a filling replaced. An extremely attractive young dental assistant showed me into the surgery. It turned out she wasn't the dental assistant; she was the dentist.

I'm not particularly good with needles, and flinched as she was injecting my gum. Half of the anaesthetic ended up in my mouth. It was disgusting.

After a while, she asked if my tongue and lips had started to go numb. They hadn't. We gave it a few more minutes. Still nothing.

"Would you like me to give you some more anaesthetic?" she asked. "We did lose quite a bit."

"No, I'll be fine," I said, bravely.

I'm pretty sure I'd have said yes please, if she'd been a bloke.

See also:

Every couple has its moment in a field

BBC: Become scientists, PM urges young

Britain must encourage young people who want to "change the world" to become scientists, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said.

Good start, Prime Minister, but…

He stressed the importance of Britain's knowledge-based economy and said that, to keep it competitive, more scientific pioneering was needed.

ON NO, YOU'VE BLOWN IT!

Science student
A science undergraduate yesterday.

Just listen to yourself, Tony. Exactly how many kids do you think you're going to coax away from watching the telly all day Media Studies with talk like that? Knowledge-based economy, my peach-like derrière! You've got to appeal to their base instincts. You need to sex it up. You're usually good at that sort of thing.

Don't listen to the Prime Minister, kids—he admits he knows nothing about science. Listen to someone who's been through the science mill. I know I'm no oil painting, but, when I was studying physics at university, the chicks couldn't keep their hands off me. I know it sounds bizarre, but talk about leptons and Bose-Einstein condensate and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is a major turn-on to impressionable young women of undergraduate age. Talk about fighting them off with a shitty stick, you wouldn't believe it.

And it works for the girls too. Even more so, in fact. You know how lads go on and on about Battlestar Galactica and computer games and stuff like that? Well, how do you think they're going to react to lasses who can slip terms like quantum chemistry, magnetic moments, banana bonding, large hadron colliders and Oh-My-God particles into casual conversation? The poor bosons won't stand a chance.

So remember, kids, what the Prime Minister was trying to say was:

college + science = S E X !

Q.E.D.

Legal Wrangling

A colleague was telling me yesterday about a solicitor friend of his who was at a nightclub and lost his cloakroom ticket. They wouldn't give him his coat back when he came to leave.

"Legally speaking," explained the solicitor, after several minutes' futile argument, "I am quite entitled to come back there and retrieve the coat myself. It wouldn't be theft."

"No, mate," said the bouncer, "it would be fucking suicide."

Waste Not Want Not

I was at my parents' house last night, and Carolyn was at hers, three doors away. She phoned me to warn me that her children and their cousin were heading my way, trick or treating, so I had better answer the door rather than pretending nobody was in.

She phoned me again today to say thanks, and explained how, after they had amassed a decent haul of sweets, the children had gone back to grandma's and sorted them into two piles: sweets they liked, and sweets they didn't. They then gave the second pile to grandma and got her to palm them off on other trick or treaters.

I wonder how many sweets ended up back with their original owners.

Torturers' Relationship

BBC: Bush enters Cheney 'torture row'

US President George Bush has reiterated his position that the US administration does not condone torture, following comments by Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Hell, I detest Cheney as much as the next guy, but I have to agree with Bush on this one: torturing him seems a little bit harsh.

(Unless it's just a quick dunk in the water, I suppose.)