My Black Leather Cap

An interesting subject popped up in a reply to one of my questions in Blogger's 'Discuss' Coffee shop the other day, by a good-willed blogger about gay people potentially ruining marriages. Now, I’m not exactly sure what this means or how it works, but I thought it warranted some proper Internet investigation.

It turned out that there is an underground of closet gays masquerading as happily married men, usually with two children, living in a three bed semi in Woking who are constantly thinking about having an affair with Derek the retired Dentist two doors down. To make matters worse, if I didn’t know that I was gay, then it will be thrust upon me-literally-having hit the midlife crisis phase.

Now, I don’t think I’m gay, but having read a particular article, I'm concerned. It's suggesting I may only find out my true sexuality by chance, when I’m in my 40s and bump into a tanned, carefree and welcoming hunk called Bruce in the lift at Selfridges. I have to take this seriously, if only to stock up on Vaseline.

A midlife crisis can apparently be a catalyst for gay feelings to emerge from, and one day soon I may wake up, look at my wife and wish she was Freddie Mercury. I may also be tempted to wear her clothes and walk around the house dusting everything merrily with the Sound of Music soundtrack on CD in the background. I know I’m stereotyping, but I can’t see it, but then maybe that’s the problem, it sneaks up on you from behind.

A friend of mine had a similar crisis with Porn. Having spent his entire youth trying desperately to find old hardcore porn magazines in the bushes of public places and then discovering the Internet - a hub of hardcore porn 'pop up' activity that jumps out at you without warning while searching innocently for topics on Bush Tucker - he defected to soft porn. I mean soft porn, what is the point!

He was once an alpha male with a highly prized 'Ben Dover' collection but he's now resigned to being turned on by two almost fully clothed girls stroking and petting each other in a bubble bath. Disgusting!

I’m not homophobic, but in conclusion, having subjected myself to some improper images of American motorcycle cops from the 70s and hours of intense listening to the village people and Jimmy Somerville, I think I may have got away with it.

The Food Fight!

I entered my office for the first time in nearly a year having completed my secondment in Geneva. I was welcomed back with the excitement and dependable lack of humility that could only be expected from my old secret flame - my admin girl.

She is now the ownership of another so when I say old, this is not in the physical sense. In fact, tasting her forbidden fruit was not likely a legal issue (only just) but may have been a moral one. Luckily, I had left my morals in a grubby pub toilet in Southend with Sheila Tamworthy 20 years earlier.

Jenny had raced towards me in full view of all and sundry and given me a big squeezing ‘welcome home’ hug. I had forgotten how wonderful she looked, how great she smelled and how easily my ego could be massaged.

I gave her a fake kiss on the cheek and held my arms astride until she reluctantly let go. Frankly, it would have been more appropriate to have hung a ‘I used to shag this bloke’ banner outside our office building.

Anyhow, I walked on and raised my eyebrows at the world, shook my head in almost authentic surprise and proceeded to my desk as if the incident had never even occurred.
Immediately, I felt a huge disappointment and complete despondency as I sat down at my desk seeing the same corporate bullied faces sat around me.

I had spent almost a year in the sunny backdrop of snow-topped mountains and spent late evenings with wealthy frustrated women of leisure. My weekends were filled with skiing trips to the Alps with the single task of preposterous posing with my pals. This was not Geneva.

I was back in Blighty and as much as I loved England, it meant full-time exposure to my wife. Her unbreakable frigidity would mean such exposure would not involve any kind of sexual intimacy, just the usual unforgiving verbal diarrhoea.

Later that day a text was delivered to my mobile. It was from Jenny. It read, ‘IMU meet me2nite got a ?4U’.

At first, I assumed she had fallen over a disposable waste sack and landed fingers first on her mobile keypad, but this was some sort of teenage text code not understood by anyone over the age of 30.


To hell with it. I arranged to meet her later that evening. We had a drink. We talked. We laughed. It was surprisingly pleasant and no word of exchanging bodily fluids was mentioned. It was just a ‘how do you do’ with a young woman who loved wearing copious amounts of war-paint and looked like she had had a terrible misadventure with a vat of industrial make up.

Later, I offered to take her home and we jumped into my car. I inadvertently stopped in a disused business car park. Aghast, I promised to drive straight to the car dealers in the morning to complain as both front seats gave way. We fell into the back of my car entangled with my show of middle-aged athleticism disguised as an awkward, fumbling 40something oaf.

As the windows steamed up and things became a little warm under the collar I had this bizarre sensation that her face was beginning to melt on me. True enough, as we broke away for a breath, I looked at my collar and then at her. I noticed that one side of her face looked as though she had been involved in a close-up paint ball fight and I had suffered the debris of her injuries. The heat and passion of the moment was literally dissolving her face before my eyes. I was caked in more make up than Boy George.

I jumped up banging my head on the car roof causing an immediate erectile dysfunction and called an end to the food fight. I considered telling my wife that I had popped into Boots on my way home for a make-over but it sounded far-fetched.

Now, how shall I explain this……..

The 'ManBoobs' incident!

My wife has just joined the gym. Another crying endorsement that she is up to no good. After all, she’s been letting herself go for years.

So why join now, I wonder? A renewed passion for flippantly exposing her body and enjoying 40something sexuality, after all, isn’t it true the female sex drive really starts in the 40s? Well, I’m not seeing any of it.

Now strangely, one of my good pals is also considering admitting himself to his local gym. We had lunch and he explained all.

ManBoobs! I’d never noticed them before, but he assured me he had them. Apparently, they appeared a few months ago during a midnight thunderstorm.

He was awoken by a loud clap of thunder and decided to get up for a pee. Whilst standing over the bowl he looked down to see if he could identify his penis over his potbelly, and then inadvertently shot gunned the entire en-suite with a golden shower as he realised he was turning into a 40something bearded woman.

He says, they have been growing steadily ever since and he’s starting to feel like a pubescent schoolgirl experiencing a hormonal change into womanhood. He’s not happy.

After lunch and a long, awkward but entertaining conversation about how they looked and whether he should go strapless or under-wired, he invited me to have a look for myself. Now he is an old and valued friend, but I was not exactly impressed about ogling the fleshy flab first hand. A description was more than acceptable.

Unfortunately, he insisted. Having become reclusive and self-conscious, he pleaded for my opinion. I reluctantly agreed.

Given our whereabouts, I grudgingly decided that a convenient place for the examination would be in the gentlemen’s toilets, but under no circumstances would I enter a cubicle with him unless the entire vicinity was evacuated by the Police. We checked out the pub toilets looking like a couple of dirty old men and squeezed eagerly into a cubicle. It wasn’t even funny.

Upon locking the door behind me I started to come over hot and flushed and wanted to cry out rape, but I calmed myself down and he unbuttoned his shirt.

They were indeed a fine pair. Milky white and proud. Being starved by my wife of any kind of sexual contact for so long , I was half tempted to cup them up and kiss them but decided against it.

I agreed completely that he should join the gym ASAP or alternatively, start to dress in a tulip flowered frock every Tuesday and Friday.

The unfortunate Cat!

I’ve had a spot of bother. Recently I discovered a dead cat in my garden. Painful as it may seem to cat lovers everywhere, I really do dislike all cats and that’s were my troubles began.

As a rule, I am an animal lover, not literally of course, bestiality is a sin. Although a friend of mine did once watch a DVD called 'Animal Farm'. Interestingly, he said he only managed to watch the first few minutes, but he told me all about it. I couldn’t look a racehorse in the face for almost a year.

Anyway, much as I dislike the felis catus, I really wouldn’t wish death on any cat, a surgical operation to remove its anus maybe, but not death. And that brings me nicely onto why I dislike cats so much. Catshit, crap, anal snakes, faeces, butt mud or toxic turds, whatever you like to call them, you will always find some in my back garden of all shapes and sizes, deposited almost daily by one or more of the sixteen (yes, sixteen) cats that live close to my house.

My back garden is a poo party playground for every one of the blighters. Do they shit in there own backyard? No. Every morning they take it in turns to get together after a slap up fried breakfast and with the Daily Star under one arm they proceed to my garden and back the big brown Bentley out of the garage and onto my lawn. Funny? Not.

Now back to the dead cat. My wife knows I have a dislike of all cats and so do my neighbours and if I see one in my back garden I would happily challenge a fully drugged up Carl Lewis to beat me in a 100m sprint to it. Therefore, I felt sure I would be blamed for the abrupt demise of pussy.

The most annoying mog of all is a scruffy, smarmy ginger thing, no doubt imaginatively named, Ginger. After creating a suitable intestine sculpture he waits at the bottom of my garden and smiles Cheshire style until I get about 6 feet away. He looks at me when I approach calmly but deadly, Kung Fu style, and then says to himself "whatever", and jumps effortlessly up and over the fence. To make matters worse as I retreat defeated, he always pops back up onto the top of the fence again and laughs, I can’t hear it but I know he is. Bastard.

The deceased feline had been impaled on a metal spike left upright in my garden. Dangerous I know. I was dismantling my old shed and the offending scrap metal was chucked safely or so I thought, over to the edge of my garden near some rotten fence panels. Now, my guess is that Mr Shitcake was coming over for his daily dump, the fence panel gave way, and his sphincter squeezing days were over.

I’d say he’d been there a couple of days. He was starting to smell a bit nasty. It was unpleasant but how was I going to remove him from the spike, which incidentally was also attached to a 4ft piece of wood. I had to slide him off somehow. It might be a tad embarrassing walking around to my neighbours with a dead cat swinging from side to side while impaled on a metal spike attached halfway up a plank of wood and asking, "Hi, don’t suppose this is yours?".

At that moment I heard my wife walking up the garden, obviously wondering what was going on. Although I was completely innocent of any calamitous cat crime, I nervously kicked the wooden plank that was attached to the spike that was attached to the cat, into the bushes. I turned my back to it, and smiled. I knew what she would immediately suspect. Unfortunately, it was a poor effort, the wood was indeed now hidden but the cats’ head was poking lifelessly and I dare to say, amusingly, out of the side of a conifer tree. "What the hell is going on". She asked. I screwed up my face for a minute.

After convincing her that I had not in fact, chased the deceased around our garden with a rusty 2ft spike attached to a large plank of wood shouting "come here you little bastard", I explained what I thought had happened to the unfortunate moggy. Even though the mistrustful way she looked at me made me feel like I was lying, I could tell that she believed I wasn't intelligent enough to make it up and accepted my story.

She recognised the cat and we bagged it up. She made me take it around to our neighbours to explain all. It was a sorrowful affair and they said they would break the news to their ten-year-old daughter later that day. Soon after, my neighbour turned up at my house to thank me for bringing the cat over and said his daughter had taken it well and he would make it up to her. "How", I asked. He smiled, "We’re getting her two".

Arsehole!

The Gym Experience!

I have been blessed with a metabolism that can dissolve and dispense with all but the most defiant of fat laden Cheeseburgers and the best the Colonel and his secret recipe can throw at me. I have spent my life carefree in the knowledge that my arteries may well be clogged up with copious amounts of sludge and bad cholesterol but from the outside, I almost look like I jog every other morning. Almost!

This was until recently. My body has starting to reject me. I have been in denial for a year or two but now I have to consider defeat. So I am going to have to do something soon about my steady expansion or turn into a pot-bellied middle-aged member of the British obese society that I see each time I visit my local Town Centre.

For now.......I’m holding out. If I stand shoulders back and breath in deeply, I can just about pull it off. I have tried this several times and the rewards of looking briefly toned only marginally outweigh the hours of pain and debilitating stomach muscle aching I suffer later.

So, the Gym it is. I ordered a pair of tight-fitting vinyl white shorts, a shuttlecock for genital enhancement, a sleeveless slightly off-white vest and a thick black moustache. I could'nt wait.

Upon arriving to sign up to physical greatness I was invited by a male assistant to view the body sculpturing paraphernalia. I was quite sure it worked fine but he insisted on showing me exactly how to use everything.

As I entered the Gym and looked at all the NASA inspired equipment I suddenly noticed I was being eye-balled by a weary looking assortment of Gym enthusiasts already hard into their sweaty, panting -and for some- fruitless work-out routines.

I wondered if I would be accepted into the World of the over-eaters.

I passed the weightlifting area which was strangely cordoned off from the rest of the Gym and watched curiously as troubled looking men who no-doubt had posters of the Governor of Californian on their bedroom wall, chewed on whole pieces of steroid and pumped iron. I admired the vanity in action. These guys had veins on their biceps the size of my arms. Nice!

I decided I was more interested in cardiovascular fitness and was immediately drawn to pretty young female strapped to a strange leg-spreading contraption.

She was resting slightly backwards while she pushed the extremely lucky foam covered metal bars open with her legs, while at the same time exerting deep sensual and pleasurable breathe- in my opinion. This was indeed an excellent visual experience. This was my kind of Gym. I became transfixed but was hastily dragged off by my concerned assistant.

He led me to the changing rooms and showers and said, ‘Off you go’. I enquired, ‘Now?’ He looked surprised. I had suddenly became a little bashful.

How was I to know if I could actually use half of this gear? I was terrified I would sit down on the leg extracting pleasure machine and not be able to open my legs without causing myself a hernia. What if I couldn’t lift those weights and the whole Gym fell about laughing? I was suddenly having second thoughts and visions of humiliation flashed before my eyes.

I changed into my 118118 uniform, attached my moustache and briskly walked into the Gym again. I eyed up the equipment holding on to some in a masculine fashion and looked inquisitively, like I was inspecting it’s suitability for my particular work-out regime.

Then I moved on to the next one and then the next. Having now visited most pieces of gym equipment and inspected its appropriateness and ruggedness, I proceeded back to the changing rooms showered and headed home.

You know........... maybe I have a few more years left yet!

My wife and shaun the Scaffolder Parts 1,2 & 3

Part 1

I’ve just turned private eye. It’s exciting, dangerous and I’m not sure I want to know the results of my investigation.

If I am going to leave my wife, then it will be me that has the affair, walks out with a canoe under my right arm, or leaves my clothes on a beach at Yarmouth.

But, it’s my wife, that’s acting very suspicious of late. Texts at all hours, quick trips to the local shop that take longer than a weekend in Devon and thongs! Yes. Thongs! I didn’t know my wife had any let alone wore them.

Having discussed this with a couple of close pals, apparently this is a classic hallmark of an affair in progress. In fact, the only thing lacking to confirm this is a fully re-invigorated sex life-well I never really had one in the first place so I can rule that one out.

And that brings me nicely onto the point that concerns me the most. I’m told that affairs start with an explosion of sex while the messy things like who gets the kids and the CD collection comes a long way down the line. Well, my wife having explosive sex is about as likely as the Pope buying Asian Babes magazine.

So, here lies a quandary. If my wife is having explosive sex on Shaun the Scaffolders pole, I need to find out.

So, my newly found love, the Internet, has turned up a few tantalising pieces of undercover 'Simon Templar' gadgets that will come in handy. Having decided on the appropriate piece of equipment I set about a plan.

So here it is, have you ever seen such a thing? It’s a SIM card reader, that once inserted into a PC, will read the last 20 deleted texts from a mobile phone. Fan-friggin-tastic.

The excitement quickly turned to fear while reading the instructions.

In order to read the sordid texts between her and her hip-hanging tool belt lover, I would need to do the following without anyone noticing: find the offending phone, remove the SIM card-taking off the battery cover and place into a USB device. Then, take this to the PC, insert, and perform a 3-minute program that reads the SIM and places the info onto my computer. Then, remove the SIM from the PC, return to the mobile phone and replace the battery.

WHAT! That is a 20-minute operation that even the SAS would turn their noses up at. My wife and her mobile phone are attached like Torvill and Dean. This will take some planning, but having recently watched a re-run of 'Steven Seagal' movies, I had an idea…..

Part 2

It was 7am and the sun was shining fiercely through my bedroom. My wife was as ever, putting on the slap and getting herself ready for another triumphant day at the office, a simple 50-minute transformation!

I waited downstairs in the study for the moment to show its sorry face and it came like clockwork. She will dry her hair at exactly 7.30am and that little job will take about 10 minutes-on and off.

The key was this; while she is drying her hair she cant leave the room, it’s a military operation getting her blonde Medusa locks just right and feeding the snakes, but not as big a military operation as mine was going to be.

First blast on the blower and off I went like a missile, darting upstairs and then rolling from a high altitude parachute jump into bedroom number two where she charges her mobile. With one swift movement the phone was in my hand. The blower stopped.

This is where it could all go horribly wrong. While she is drying her hair, it's impossible to be in two places at once, but….


Off it went again and trembling like an alcoholic looking for whisky at a bottle bank I took off the battery and released the SIM.

I was behind schedule due to the trembles, but the battery was back on. Phone looked normal. SIM in hand. I was starting to sweat slightly but took an unhurried walk back down to the study like I didn’t have a care in the world.

Blower on again. I dashed to the PC and fiddled endlessly with the stupid USB thingy. I was panicking-it wouldn't go in. Took a deep breath and it was good to go. Ran the program. Downloaded the info. Hey presto and back upstairs.

The dryer turns off and her door opens on the landing as I walked up the stairs looking like I’d been on a ten mile hike (I should have trained for this first). "Have you seen my….....are you OK...….are you having a heart attack?" I’d bet she’d love that. 'Mouth to mouth? - Oh not right now darling.'

I appeased her and the conversation stumbled as it usually does, and she goes downstairs. I had only seconds to get the SIM back in and the battery back in place before she came back up again.

Then I remember, I left the bloody computer screen on with the program results still showing, and she was just about to walk past it and immediately win in the divorce courts on the grounds of harassment, paranoia or both. I could only do one thing and call her back upstairs before she could see it, but only to find me with her SIM card in one hand and the battery in the other and looking more suspicious than a Muslim wearing a rucksack.

I called her urgently. She comes back up. I slot everything back into place with milliseconds to spare. My heart was pounding out of my chest and I fell exhausted to the floor in a red faced sweaty heap, hands trembling uncontrollably. "Oh my god" she said, "you really are having a heart attack…….."

Part 3

Unbelievable!

Having faked a heart attack and risked certain death, I found nothing. But I’m not convinced……

'The Tandem Jump'

I recently took a promotion and it’s taking up all my time.

Admittedly, I now have a tongue the colour of a chocolate brownie dunked in a full fat latte, and I’m embarrassed to say it, that's how you get places. If you haven’t yet sold your soul to climb up the corporate ladder, then you wouldn’t understand what its like to lick the arse of a fat, old and incontinent senior executive at an investment bank in order to obtain notability.

So, promotion and pay rise in hand, off I went to Geneva in Switzerland to help the rich and deceitful invest and hide wealth. Now, Geneva is beautiful, for many reasons. Mostly, because I am free (temporarily) from my wife of many turbulent years, but also because I can ski which I love and drink excessively, which I love even more. Primarily though, I am here for the rich and attractive women.

I have a plan you see. When I say rich and attractive, this actually has only one singular meaning. Rich women are attractive. Physically, most are as appealing as sand swept ice cream on Bournemouth beach, but that’s not the point.

In my new role here in Geneva, I meet many highly unattractive but more importantly, very rich divorced women. Now, if I need to explain my plan further, then you are reading the wrong blog. This plan though, is a story for another day.

My new boss in the land of tax evasion, hypocrites and rich female divorcees is a French/American adrenaline junkie called Raymond and he wants me to make the most of my free time as a singleton in Geneva - whether I like it or not. He loves nothing more than trying to kill himself each and every weekend. 'Work hard - play hard', he says. What a cock!

So, he gave me what he said was a choice. Bungee or skydive. The only choice I could see in this scenario was do I have a coronary at 10,000 ft above the Swiss Alps or while tied to a fat brown rubber band strapped carelessly to my ankles.

I told Raymond that I was busy washing my hair for the remainder of my secondment to Geneva, but he is one of these guys that is incapable of understanding or accepting the word - no. Such a word often used by my wife of an evening when I have a hard-on.

He also has an annoying tendency to throw his arm over your shoulder while leading you to someplace you don’t actually want to go to, often, in the opposite direction to which you were travelling. You know the type.

I made my decision (which incidentally was to sit in front of the TV with the Swiss equivalent of the Daily Mail). Next thing, I find myself 10,000ft in the air with a thin lipped, square chinned, tanned Dutch guy called Dirk strapped to my back. He carried out his in-flight checks which happened to include making sure my helmet was strapped up correctly.

Ok, let’s think about this for a minute. I was about to be tossed out of a plane at 10,000ft with a 15 stone Dutch playboy tied to my waist. I was going to reach speeds of up to 120mph at terminal velocity while falling out of the sky like Pan Am flight 103. If my parachute didn’t open, would I be thinking, 'thank god I’m wearing a helmet'?

So Dirk, whose constant facial expression was that of a playful and excited teenager, said in his big deep Dutch voice, "You’re gonna love this, it’s gonna be the best experience of your life, just relax, I’ve got ya!"

Excuse me! You’ve got me! So, what you mean is: if the chute doesn’t open I can be reassured by the fact that not only am I wearing a nice bright helmet, but 'you’ve got me!' What are you – Spiderman?

If I had to jump out of plane by myself it simply wouldn’t ever happen but Dirk was pushing me from behind like an opportunistic bum bandit on a crowded subway train and I was going where he was going - like it or not. Problem was he was heading for the bloody door which happened to be wide open, wind swept and led to some big open space of nothing but brown stained boxer shorts and fluffy clouds.

Suddenly, I realised that I loved life, I believed in the God Almighty and I was a yellow bellied coward and I wanted out, but it was no use. Dirk was in control. I was strapped to him like a lifeless puppet and suddenly I’m looking down at 10 acre fields the size of an ant’s eyeball. "Hang on", he shouts. "This is going to be incredible" and the little git pushed me out the door.

Holy shit…….!