What about a sumo wrestler – anytime you wanted?

Posted: November 16, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

To pre-empt the following; everyone feels down sometimes.

Sometimes, we feel dishonourable to our ancestors.

Fortunately, I’ve been watching television.

And I’ve discovered the Grand Sumo league has free coverage on NHK WORLD-JAPAN.

It’s fantastic, truly.

The slapping, the blessing, the inadvertent headbutts, the little envelopes, the lot – I highly recommend it.

But nothing comes close to the satisfaction of seeing the faces those in the front row change from keen interest, to slow realisation, to horror, to another slow realisation, to joy, as a 300lbs+ man falls on them.

In my front room, watching this, we’d all go “YAY!” and so would the expressions of those in the front row: because clearly their ancestors were smiling upon them.

Whilst officially not encouraged by the league (sumo try not to fall on people), it is genuinely considered a great honour for a sumo to land on you. You see, that means you’re right up close to the action, privileged and cool.

Depression hits everyone – and I believe sumo wrestlers should too.

Imagine, you’re walking home after a crap day at work, missed the bus, no partner waiting at home, dog ran off with the milkman, and its raining.

What you need is a blessing from your ancestors at a very reasonable price.

An uplift in honour – to treat yourself!

Just sign-up to my new app: Sumo On Demand – and a qualified sumo wrestler will come to your location and land on you.

Honour!

Prices vary, but the top price is the ‘Flat Rate’ – due to you being completely flattened by the sumo and honour.

I don’t mean to see obnoxious, but this is a bloody brilliant idea and investors are welcome to get in touch.

Alternatively, I can apply to Dragon’s Den, have one of my dedicated team of highly trained sumo wrestlers land on each of them, and see how that turns out.

I’d be ‘In’.

If you’re interested in being flattened by a sumo wrestler and increasing your personal honour – drop a comment below, I’ll see what I can arrange.

Sam

Everyone needs a zombie apocalypse sometimes

Posted: November 15, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

To begin, I have a lot – A LOT – of tinned food.

Don’t ask why.

It would be a shame to watch it lose its shine due to dust on the shelf.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognised more than most that the beauty of tinned food is its agelessness on the shelf. But they’re also handy in a starvation scenario in which everyone needs more beans.

Nobody wants to see tinned food go to waste, and I’ve got a lot of it – though if you’re my neighbour, please disregard that fact and stay away from my house.

Another point – I’ve a lot of baseball bats.

Slightly more baseball bats than tinned food, actually.

And what a waste it would be – if there was never the occasion to apply a baseball bat to its destiny; not so much baseballs, but the undead.

That eagerness to see nothing go to waste extends to supermarkets, so there’s a good chance for a nice afternoon’s looting too.

The tinned food, the pleasing swish of a swingeing baseball bats, and a trip to the shops. The zombie apocalypse is just something to look forward to.

There’s also the other distinct upsides of the apocalypse:

  • Financial loans no longer require your devotion. Mortgage? Pfft, If you’ve enough baseball bats you can move straight in to Buckingham Palace (though be cautious of infected corgis).
  • That heartbreak you suffered in the bad-old-days has now been pushed out of your mind, either by concern for zombies or a baseball bat rearranging your brains.
  • No more Mondays.

Do you have any idea how little your GCSEs matter at the end of the world? They’re still very important (stay in school. And lock the doors.).

The apocalypse is something people look forward to.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if the world ended”

I suppose definition of “world” is subjective.

For some it’s the planet on which we live, and most people hope remains intact.

For others, the “world” is the society in which they live – demanding their time, money and even enthusiasm, and a lot of people would like to see some change there. Zombies might be the answer.

Lastly, your life is your “world” and you just fancy a change: “It’s a nice day for zombies!”

Maybe, we want to dehumanise the ‘competition’ out there in society or simply start again. Smashing the buggers to pieces without legal ramifications, or be left alone in our bunkers.

Personally, it’s currently a Saturday morning and I do think it’s a nice day for zombies. We’ll see what happens.

Right, must dash – there’s someone moaning and scratching at the door. It’s probably the milkman, who we’ve not seen for 30 years.

And remember, keep your tinned food shiny and your baseball bats plentiful.

Sam

Not all units of measurement are for polite company

Posted: November 12, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Actually, I’m not just talking about genitals.

I’m going to (I’m always going to), but not right now.

Genitals are wonderful things, inspirational even, but there are indeed alternative units of measurements.

One of which is inches.

Then you have ‘feet’ – which are also inspirational, despite being gross.

‘Miles’ is most common, but no-one seems to mind ‘miles’ much at all.

“How many miles to the discotheque?” – we used to ask each other in French at school, and despite the obvious moral issues of speaking French, no one could question the integrity of the unit of measurement.

This measurement, and many others, are always fine.

Some aren’t.

Some units of measurement are simply not for Sunday tea-time.

“One lump or two” when proffered sugar is as vulgar as things should get when we’re talking about spoonful’s of anything.

But there are worse, and Sunday tea-time can become an event with more Effing and Jeffing than fucking Jeffrey.

“How many racial slurs to the vicarage?” we’d ask in the old days, and people would answer – awfully. Racistly (racist slurs are really, really racist!). And most importantly – we’d know how far away the vicarage was.

And things would only deteriorate from there (Sunday tea-time).

Some people prefer feet (perverts, but whatever).

Some, miles.

Most, don’t like units of measurement being racial slurs.

Just ask the vicar.

The vicar, such as he is, prefers to know just “how many knobs to the bank?” and he gets his answer too.

The discotheque, the vicarage and the bank are all within reach, with a variety of units of measurement applied and all manner of folk deeply offended, none the less informed as to the distance that matters to them.

I’ve only one piece of advice now, and it’s not to know your audience (yuk).

My advice is – just say and do something.

Yes it might be deeply offensive, but, well – who needs to be employed really?

More importantly, who really needs to be unoffended?

I don’t.

But I do need to know how far away the bank, discotheque and vicarage are.

Because I’m planning one hell of a a Sunday tea-time.

Sam

(P.S Sunday tea-time might in fact not be that great. But you’re invited!)

My baby girl thinks I’m pretty great

Posted: November 8, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Matters that Matter, Observe my tips | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I took her to the shops today.

She had a massive poo whilst driving there and she handled it like a champ. So did I.

In the rear-view-mirror, her face was doing the typical contortions of one expelling, what I’m sure we can all agree is amongst the worst things ever, a poop – whilst Daddy is singing along to Jessie-Jay on the radio in an attempt to make the whole scene more…musical?

By the time we arrived, her complexion had returned from hellish-rouge to healthy-human, and the gargles and goo-goos were back aplenty, ready for a nappy-change.

Then came my might – the thing of which I am without question the best of in the world:
distractingly amusing sounds and funny faces.

It’s a big difference between babies and men. I’ve never encountered a face so funny, or a sound so amusing, that I wouldn’t know my nappy was being changed.

My daughter was oblivious. At seven months, she generally is.

The amount of things my daughter doesn’t pick-up on is only dwarfed by sheer number of things she picks up and puts in her mouth.

But in the car’s boot, with nothing in reach to distract, it was down to the irresistible power of my face and the sounds that come out of it to make the following two minutes less awful.

There was poo, there was laughter, and there was the risk of each overwhelming both of us – but we persevered, and went shopping.

The dirty nappy went in the shop bin, my daughter went in the pram, and I went into performance mode.

An integral part of fatherhood is taking blows to the brain.

They’re both the height and depths of humour, and like her older siblings, my youngest baby girl loves to laugh at when I do what I do best.

A proportion of those impacts are something I suppose I’m proud:

  • My son (6) hitting me in the head with sporting equipment, for humorous purposes.
  • My eldest daughter (4) hitting me in the head with props, for amateur dramatics purposes.
  • Me (36) hitting myself in the head with whatever is nearest to hand, for competitive purposes (can’t let me son out-do me)
  • And my wife (N/A) hitting me in the head, for reasonable purposes.

The third of those – hitting myself in the brain – goes down something-smashing when it comes to fathering a baby girl.

If you’d like some hints as to what to grab for self-brain-bashing, I’d recommend whatever is nearest to hand for the sake of speed, but noise and colour should be appreciated for the awesome power they hold: like tins of beans and tinsel.

There’s a lot of tinsel at the shop, for arboreal/cultural purposes at this time of year, but no one there knows it’s also for brain-bashing purposes. Same for the tinned beans – it’s got nothing to do with fibre.

I’m struggling to write this blog, due in part to the regular severity of the impacts to my brain which cause such delightful bursts of laughter or, even better, the shining smiles of pure happiness from my baby girl.

It’s also due to the effects of the lychee-liqueur which has thus far turned out to be a wonderful purchase, with the promise of it being less-so tomorrow morning.

Then came the pram ‘uh-ohs’ – in which I push the pram, daughter nonchalantly perched within, away and panic in what I’d best describe as in a ‘flappy headed’ way, before pulling her back with a hint of a jolt but with my own laughing smile upon arrival – matched and soundly beaten only by hers.

She really is the most adorably scrumptious of little things that there ever could be, and you might feel the same about your offspring but I’m right because this is my blog and I’m right.

Take your own kids shopping – I’m occupied with the best thing since someone had the bright idea of having things under the sun, and sliced bread.

Due to what I presume to be a clerical error (by which I mean ecclesiastical rather than administrative) – I find there are no baskets proffered in the shop entrance, meaning I have to load items for purchase beneath the pram itself.

Here’s an opportunity to vanish and return, aka ‘Peekabo’.

With each item loaded onto the conveyer belt towards the till, I duck out. Briefly (and I really do mean briefly – I doubt I’ve ever been briefer), I’m away and suddenly I’m back – and sure enough I’m hitting myself in the same head from which funny noises and faces are emitting.

And she’s smiling joyously. The kind of joy you don’t remember.

From there it’s pay, parking ticket, load stuff in the car, daughter in her car-seat (featuring multiple checks on the way home to ensure I definitely packed her), visor down as the sun sets early this time of year, bish, bash, bosh, I’m a dad.

And the smiles and laughter, in addition to the excited little kicks of the even-littler legs, tells me all I’ve ever really needed to know: my baby girl thinks I’m pretty great.

Sam

Rolling pins: them, me, and the ancient argument as to what constitutes a ‘pin’.

Posted: November 2, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I appreciate there are going to be some alternative definitions from my own, as to what constitutes a ‘pin’. I also know that some of these are going to be ‘factual’.

But what pride themselves on in terms of correctness, they more than let themselves down in accuracy.

A pin is something that you can pin with. If a thing cannot pin, a pin it is not.

Rolling pins – they’re not pins. They’re my ultimate bed fellow of the realm we can all relate to: something you enjoy having around, regardless of its purpose.

I can picture a medieval woman, house-bound, subjugated and bored, being told the local ravishers are on their way to commit their namesake.

Thankfully, she has a rolling pin, which must, simply ‘must’, have been used at least once in human history to defeat the bad guy.

Got yourself a villain? Bop him on the head with a rolling pin.

Got a yourself a villain nearby but just out of reach? Throw a rolling pin at him, the distant git.

Baking?

Baking and interrupted by a villain?

Bop him about the head and neck with a rolling pin, before returning to the esoteric application of a rolling pin outside of villain-bopping and household defence (plus all around justice): somehow flattening dough.

I’ve never really been able to use a rolling pin for anything other than a really good time thrashing it about and some amateur Morris dancing (I haven’t landed a paid Morris-dancing gig yet, but I hear its all about persistence. Keep at it and eventually someone will pay you to leave. They won’t threaten – you’ve got a rolling pin and a fucking hanky.).

When at school I put the rolling pin to dough and nothing really happened – certainly not cakes or bread or whatever it was I was being taught. Least of all flattened dough.

As I got older I treated myself to a basic, this’ll-do, rolling pin, in preparation for the day in which I’d be bopping anti-social behaviour in the face.

I’ve still got it. My wife uses it for cooking every now and again (and bloody again), whilst I prefer to chase my children with it – so the whole family gets good use out of it.

In the event of a fire, or perhaps some near-world-event, if I’ve time to grab something from the house before dashing for the village hall, I’m grabbing my rolling pin. And kids.

And people at the village hall would be pleased, commending me for bringing so jolly-decent a thing as a rolling pin to the end of the world that the whole Parish can find some relief from.

I don’t know if it would necessarily aid in clearing rubble in search of wounded, or be massively handy when it comes to building a new basic infrastructure system once the fallout has cleared, but it wouldn’t half give me confidence in the new world.

Such confidence, that in fact it would aid in clearing rubble, and in developing basic infrastructure. Because we’ve got a rolling pin.

But it’s still not a ‘pin’.

Spur of the moment, I’m going to rename them to “Oods”.

I like that, it works, and I like that and it works.

And even if it doesn’t work, you can’t deny I like that.

Sam