"That's him. I know it is!" she exclaimed as a picture of Michelangelo's David, the sixth in a series of Identikit montages, was laid on the table in front of her.

Inspector Ronald Saunders stroked his well-trimmed beard and wondered. He found it hard to believe that some of the world's finest art treasures were posing as Gas Board representatives and persuading the elderly to part with their meagre pensions and life-savings.

"Do you think you could take just another look?" asked the Inspector.

"What? Big hands, small willy. It's him alright, or my name's not Dorothy Cheesecake!" insisted Mrs Cheesecake.

Reports had been coming in of a wave of small-time swindles by famous artworks whose bogus uniforms had been convincing enough for pensioners to part with their money and valuables. Only the previous week, a recently-widowed caller had reported being deceived by the Venus of Milo into handing over a virtually complete collection of PG Tips vouchers, which were shortly to be used for the purchase of a discount chimp-shaped teapot.

There had also been rumours that the deception was spreading beyond the homes of senior citizens. Department of Health and Social Security Inspectors officials were complaining of fraudulent applications for Family Allowances by a growing number of "Mothers with Child".

Inspector Saunders had only one lead to follow. A few days before, his opposite number in Clermont-Ferrand had called to warn Saunders of a highly effective Anglo-French ring of felonious statues whose alleged mastermind was none other than Auguste Rodin's "Thinker".

Saunders put the picture of Michelangelo's David into a file marked "Unsolved Case" and wondered where it would all end.
 

innovation and forthcoming developments

Shareholders at bob’sbarnablog's AGM were given a foretaste of the blog’s most recent innovation and its forthcoming exercise in stretching the bob’sbarnablog brand, when executives yesterday revealed the world’s first coito-specs.

Blog CEO, Dennis Dearing, told shareholders that the coito-specs represent a huge step forward in the blog’s mission to become a world leader in the design of extremely unlikely and useless articles.

When asked about the secret of bob’sbarnablog’s success, Dearing replied that "bob’sbarnablog’s philosophy is based on three core principles"

Using the first three fingers of his left hand to aid understanding he continued.

"First (index finger), the tireless dedication of blog personnel, second (middle finger), a no-nonsense approach to the exploitation of staff, and third (ring finger), fearlessness when giving a good bollocking to anyone who steps out of line."

However, remembering Golden Rule No. 3 of Volume XII of Rod D. Steinberger’s best-selling "Manual for Third-rate Managers: How to Get What you Want from your People" (which states that managers should always lavish praise on someone or other to compensate for outbursts of sarcasm and the humiliation of others), Dearing added "I’d like to thank the shareholders and our reader and to take this opportunity to express particular gratitude to Señora Pérez and Señor Martínez without whose respective sandwich-making and janitoring skills bob’sbarnablog would certainly not be what it is today."

Señor Martínez, who was standing at the back of the room, beamed with pride.

A spokesman for bob’sbarnablog stated that details of the innovative coito-specs were shortly to be revealed at a forthcoming public launch.

Genesis 2: 25. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Genetic and carbon dating studies on the human louse, which requires human garments in order to survive, suggest that people started to wear clothes around 70,000 years ago.

Hans Baldung Grien's "Original Swimwear" (above) from the early sixteenth century shows Adam and Eve wearing their own-design Copacabana collection.

Although the couple's beachwear is far from ample when evaluated on Victorian and modern Iranian clothing skimpiness scales, some experts believe that this early attire was a response to primitive post-coital bashfulness and guilt.

3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

Other, perhaps more realistic, explanations maintain that Adam and Eve were testing prototypes of either the more complex Parky Trondheim Winter series or their ISO 9002-endorsed safety protection from the sharp claws of playful young kittens. 

just happened to be: deteething problems

Such was the intensity of my toothache and despair that, faced with the choice between non-treatment and a visit to Ustaz Hamed, part-time maths teacher, self-sufficient farmer, seller of stolen goods and dental tinkerer, I decided that having my tooth yanked out would be the lesser evil.

Several people were standing, sitting and lying down, in Ustaz Hamed’s treatment/waiting room.

"Salaam aleikum" I uttered, taking my place at the end of what appeared to be a queue of people who were too engrossed in their own discomfort to acknowledge a visit by a khawaja. Ustaz Hamed’s surgery was the only place I ever saw that was capable of reducing the highly-communicative and sociable Sudanese to silence.

It was seven o’clock and night was falling. I could nevertheless still make out the grime on the walls of the dingy room, long-since painted in the ubiquitous job-lot sky blue that must have fallen off an enormous camel train in the times of the Mahdi and General Gordon. There were no wall advertisements of happy smiling models, dental healthcare schemes or new wonder products for making teeth whiter than white.

In the centre of the room Ustaz Hamed was working on a patient who was reclining in a rickety turn-of-the-century bath cum dentist’s chair. The patient gripped the chair’s arms desperately and emitted a woeful moaning sound.

Hamed lit the paraffin lamps on the table beside him. Kadugli’s generator had packed up a year or so before and had still not been fixed and there was therefore no mains supply. Some international aid agencies and juice bars had their own generators but even the splut-splutt-spluttering of these was no longer to be heard because of the fuel shortages.

The paraffin lamps did not give off enough light for Hamed to see inside the patient’s mouth but I had the feeling he worked intuitively and on the basis of pain indicators emitted by patients. The more they yelled and trembled, the more likely it was that Hamed was working on the right spot.

There was a bicycle in the opposite corner of the room. It was on a stand, the purpose of which was to raise the back wheel off the ground. The pedals were attached to a home-made transmission system that was in turn connected to the belt drive of Ustaz Hamed’s dentist’s drill.

Just then, a southern Sudanese youth called Daniel, wearing what looked like a prison issue blue- and black-striped djellaba, wandered into the room with half a dozen sunflower seed shells resting on his bottom lip. He spat them onto the floor.

"Where’ve you been?" Ustaz Hamed shouted, chastising Daniel for his late arrival. Daniel, thoroughly used to this routine, reacted nonchalantly.

"Ya’ala, ya’ala, ya’ala!" shouted Hamed impatiently, indicating the bicycle with one hand and picking up the motionless dentist’s drill with the other.

"Get a move on boy". He turned to the people waiting and complained to his audience about the laziness of southern Sudanese "blacks". The absurdity of Hamed’s racist outburst was manifest in the colour of Hamed’s own complexion, which was a dark shade of ebony.

Daniel started to pedal and the drill bit began to turn. But Hamed required more power for the drill to have any effect on the patient’s teeth.

"Faster! Faster," he roared, "or you’ll be getting a thrashing!" Anyone with experience in simultaneous dentistry and physical abuse would undoubtedly vouch that it is a great deal trickier than concurrent stomach-rubbing and head-patting, yet nothing was beyond Ustaz Hamed. Daniel got up off the saddle, changed from first into second and then into fifth gear and the drill bit started to whizz.

Hamed placed the drill in the mouth of the unanaesthetised patient, who screamed.

Luckily for me, my tooth was seriously wobbly. I had magnanimously decided that when my turn came I would let Daniel rest and opt not for a filling but rather extraction. Fearing that Hamed’s wrench had not been sterilised, I had brought my own pliers along for the sake of hygiene.

Homage to Doctor Gonzalez 

Giovani Bellini's John the Baptist, patron saint of ambulances (1500-04).

June 24 is Saint John's day and a public holiday in Barna. Although we at bob'sbarnablog are not of a religious bent, it would be unlike us to opt for a thrilling day in the office instead of some fruitless but challenging festive family bickering. 

Todo a cien, Our Lady of Hope and a Platypus

In the last few years Barcelona has seen an explosion of "Tiendas de todo a cien" (Everything for one hundred pesetas shops). That’s what people still call them, even though most of the shops changed their name to the far less snappy "Everything at €0.60 euros (or more)" when the euro was introduced in 2002.

They sell a very wide variety of poor quality, badly-extruded kitsch, ranging from Chinese restaurant-type back-lit pseudo-paintings of waterfalls in which the water appears to be moving, to rotating optic fibre lamps, substandard rubber gloves and fake Vatican-issue condoms.

The shops are often Chinese-run, which probably explains why the items on sale are F6 geared more to the Chinese market than the supposedly sophisticated and design-obsessed Barcelona punter. Perhaps shop owners have read Rod D. Steinberger’s marketing best-seller "Creating demands for useless, aesthetically displeasing sweatshop-produced junk".

erithacus’ was reclining in the dentist’s chair while Doctor González, his surrealist dental surgeon, was prodding around in his mouth with a cold, heavy dentist’s mirror and a piece of Lego.

Doctor González put her tools down and turned round to see to some papers that were flapping about because the faulty unidirectional air outlet in the air-conditioning system wasn’t working. She placed an aluminium tray firmly on top to them. erithacus meanwhile listened to the sound of the compressed air tube in his mouth. He opened and closed his mouth slightly to change the tone of the air and play "Two Ladies" from the film Cabaret, perhaps inspired by the two women who were currently fixing his gob.

Doctor González picked up her tools again and got back to work.

"How strange!" she uttered, gently playing the xylophone on the teeth of erithacus’ lower jaw. "The only other tribosphenic molar I have ever seen was in the jaw of my son’s baby platypus. Do you spend a lot of time in the water?" she asked.

"Guurggh...gh....gh" answered erithacus.

Doctor González picked up the pharmaceutical company-issue notepad from the table beside her.

"I think this is going to require some special equipment" she affirmed, scribbling on the top sheet.

"Carmen" she said to her assistant. "Do you think you could pop out to the ‘Todo a Cien’ and get these?". Unconcerned by erithacus perturbed rapid eye movement, she ripped off the top sheet and handed it to Carmen, who left the room.

Carmen returned carrying a plastic bag from which she drew a heavy-looking glass paperweight. Inside the glass was a representation of "La Macarena" (Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza), Seville’s favourite virgin. Carmen handed the paperweight to Doctor González, who used it to replace the aluminium tray on the papers. From where erithacus was reclining he could make out an inscription on "La Macarena’s" back.

Made in China: proof of Rod D. Steinberger’s pudding.

Our Lady of Hope and dental X-ray 

The Corner Of Pepa: Aquí y ahora (Here and Now)

Today am I who write the blog. eritacus has gone at the dentist.

I want to explain a history that heard it yesterday by the radio. Is much hot in Barcelona these days and in my small flat is very difficult sleep because the bedroom gives on the south. The sun hits strong the exterior wall of the building and makes that inside the flat is unsupportable, above all during the night.

Of all forms, yesterday I was giving turns and turns in the bed but didn’t can sleep. I looked the alarm clock and were 3 o’clock in the morning.

- 3 o’clock in the morning! Joder! (Fuck!) I thought
(I say many many swears and have become mentals signs of punctuation).
- Joder!

(The joder arrives at me to the heart much more that the English fuck because is necessary that I feel it deep in the body to say. I want to say that is not only a word but also a deeply experience and a true manifestation of the bad-being that I am passing in that moment. I don’t say the English fuck is not the same for the Anglo speakers but to me the joder reaches to me more).

Well ... the history ¿where I was? Ah yes.

I put the radio. Sometimes I make this if I can’t to sleep. There was a programme type call center and the Doctor Jorge Corbacho, psychologist from Argentina, answered the questions of the public. I did not make much case until called a man with the interesant history following:

- Hola ¿Cómo te llamas?
- Pedro
- ¿De dónde llamas?
- de Guadalajara

Pedro explain that he don’t stop to see famous historical personalities who appear in all parts and in the places most normals of the world. He began to tell that he was in the super with his woman when he see the Ayatollah Jomeini deliberating between a powder detergent of a leader brand and the own brand of the super.

- Conchita, he whisper in a strong voice and astonished to him wife,
- Conchita!. Look! See you who is this man?”

The Conchita lifts up her head from the scourers of offer, rumage in her bag and takes the glasses. She put the glasses and look in a mistake direction.
- No is the manager?” she ask to Pedro.

- No him, no him, contest the Pedro.

- The man with the beard, the eyebrows, the eyes colds and penetrants and the turbant!

Conchita sees the suppose Ayatollah and say
- Well, sure he is not of this district!”

- Is the Ayatollah Jomeini! insists Pedro not beleiving, with a very strong voice and very very few discretion.
- He of the revolution Islámic in Irak!

Conchita looks and looks in the archives of her memory but the life with she husband has exhausted and crack the hard disc. She stays in blank.
- What revolution Islámic? she ask.

Pedro leaves the subject, put the three-for-two promotion rubbers gloves in the basket and try to forget. He would to forget too but the next day in his car when he waited that change the traffic lights beside the social security building, he listen a loud noise and a woman stop next to he on a Harley and smile. Is the Mother Teresa.

He knew that was a Harley for the noise of the motor.

The Doctor Corbacho say is necessary a long treatment and suggest Pedro that manifestations like this of historics personalities normally are the result of the incapacities of the individual to can live in the present (is to say, the here and now) and it is the consquence of complexes like the guilty, the perfectionism, an excess of preoccupation .... is necessary the help of a specialist and habitually is treated by:

1) Technique of respiration and tranquilling the nervios.
2) Antianxiolytics
3) Hit the head with a big rock for to remember the present and for don’t think in the past or the future.

Around the world with bob'sbarnablog:

All roads lead to Mount Kailash, a seriously holy place for at least four religions and close to the Tibetan border with India. Apparently (I have assigned the word "apparently" to the F6 button), the ancient Aryans believed Kailash (or Meru as they called it) was home to Indra, Vedic god of weather, war and Lord of heaven, and a place where dead souls awaited rebirth. Shiva was also said to dwell at the top of the mountain, the world's supporting pillar from which four rivers flow and divide the earth into four regions.

Kailash was where Tibetan yogi Milarepa (of nettle-eating fame) F6 fought a battle of sorcery against local Bon-religion hero Naro-Bonchung. Since neither was able to get the upper hand they eventually agreed that whoever should reach the top of Kailash first would be proclaimed the victor. While Naro-Bonchung raced upwards on a magic drum, Milarepa's followers were dismayed to see their champion sitting still and meditating. However, just as Naro-Bonchung was about to reach the summit, Milarepa jumped onto the sun's rays, travelled at the speed of light and got there first.

Mount Kailash is F6 visited by pilgrims who make their way around the mountain in the belief it will bring them good fortune. Hindus and Buddhists follow a clockwise route while Jainists and B�n-po followers go anticlockwise. Some pilgrims cover the entire 52-kilometres performing body-length prostrations, a task that takes at least four days and includes lying on snow and ice and in mountain torrents.

Travel tips:
Useful Tibetan expressions:

Ngay n�n-tr� chay y�-pa ha-ko-ma-song = I didn't realise I was doing anything wrong

Ngah tag tay mi-g� = I don't want a blood transfusion (may be complemented with an unidiomatic "tu-jay shay-ta-chay" or "thank you very much") 

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed that, contrary to popular belief, it was not John Logie Baird who invented television but the Ancient Egyptians.

The above image shows three couples waiting patiently for their turn to take part in Nefertiti TV's primetime blockbuster "Tut and Nut" gameshow (later to be renamed "Him and Her" - or Him and Them/Her and Them in the case of royal-household polygamous or polyandrous relationships).

The show format was simple but ingenious. One member of a couple appeared before a studio audience in the grand gallery and was asked questions about the nature of his or her spouse who, to prevent cheating, was meanwhile blindfolded and force-fed easy-listening music through headphones in an antechamber elsewhere in the pyramid. After the initial round of questions had been asked, the spouse was thereupon led into the grand gallery and asked to respond to the same questions that had been put to his or her wife or husband. Success was based on the similarity of the couple's answers and winning couples were those who had most assimilated the irritating, pernickety habits and neuroses of their partners into their own psyches.

With the decline of Egyptian culture, television also disappeared. It was not rediscovered until 16 February 1923, when Howard Carter opened the inner chamber of the tomb of Tutankhamun, only to find that the boy Pharoah had died while watching a 14th-century BC version of "Big Brother". John Logie Baird's London transmission of a static image of Felix the Cat in February 1924, only one year later, was by no means a coincidence.

The great Pharaohs are now believed to have been buried with their, slaves, pet animals and favourite gameshow hosts.

These discoveries have forced archaeologists and anthropologists to reappraise the long-held notion that Egyptian culture was advanced for its time.  

The Corner Of Pepa

Hello blogistas:

I am Peptita another time.

Yesterday or before yesterday Bob (eritacus I want to say) found me writing in his blog. But is a very nice person and he say me that I can write my own section. I will call my section the Corner of Pepa, where I will can explain alls the things that I think they are interesants. And perhaps one day this blog will be mine and his name will be pepa’sbarnablog ...

So here am I. Festival, I will speak some things about me (eritacus says that he can’t think because I don’t stop to molest him asking him words and how are said the things).

I have 35 years old, am Aries horoscope and I work with two others persons here in the central. When I begin in the enterprise, festival, I begin to work like a receptionist in the call center for Spain and Latin America because in the interview I told to the boss that I speak very well the English. That’s why the boss put me in the international section of the customer attention department. I went to a formation course and after of two days I started to respond to calls of all the world.

“Bob’sbarnablog. Good morning, Pepa speaking, may I be of assistance? Could you please tell me where you are calling from?” Was a list of the things on the table I must to say.

But the problem began when the client begin to speak. I didn’t understood nothing of nothing. The boss he was angry with me and tell that I am a liar in the interview. I have lucky he did not fire me and he decided that I to work in the Spanish section, where am happy.

Since that time the enterprise is exteriorising his call center in English to a company in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India, who employs 20.000 of people.

Here, in the Barcelona office I am the responsable of customer service, precisely the section of customer complaints. In many companies this is a very bad work but here I like very much because I am who calls by telephone the customers and I complain and complain about the things that I do not like them until that they (the customers) can’t support it more. These complaints are many many things because I am very expert.

I begin complaining of my husband and his fault of attention to me, always work, work, work, the football, the football. Then I continue about my house, the kitchen, the sofa, my boss, the salary that I win it. After, I say many many bads things about the price of the things, the youngs of today, the programmes of the television, the government and the council, my mother etc. ... and like this I pass the day until that the customers say they no want to listen more.

eritacus writes some stories and I think that he invents. I said him he is a liar but he says he don’t tell lies because her religion not permits it - like when George Washington cut the cherry tree his father says him, who cut the cherry tree? and the little George contests "Was me!", because he doesn’t want to convert him to a cherry.

Comes the boss! Hasta ahora

Pepita

Followers of the Canis Major religious cult claim that NASA has given them irrefutable proof that their religious convictions represent the only true spiritual path. Canis Major worshippers, who believe that the earth is a bone hurled by Orion to his hunting dog to keep it entertained in the vastness of the universe, insist that a recent satellite photograph of Antarctica, which shows the outline and features of beagle (above), is undeniable proof that the earth and the people thereupon are nothing other than the dog's playthings.

Scientists, however, remain sceptical and maintain that brown smudges similar to floppy dog-like ears that have appeared over Wilkes Land and the Amery ice shelf are the result of ice that has melted at isolated spots to reveal brown permafrost and subsoil. A possible explanation for this is a sharp increase in atmospheric temperature caused by an equally dramatic fall in carbon sequestration. This in turn is perhaps the result unchanging phytoplankton colony sizes, itself the consequence of a hunger strike by Antarctic krill, motivated by demands for improved synchronised swimming facilities.

Elsewhere, scientists claim, the black nose-like feature that covers a large part of Graham Land has been caused by unusual formations of the entire world population of emperor penguins, Aptenodytes forsteri. These birds have gathered together and are lying on their fronts, thus revealing only their greyish-black backs to NASA's cameras. Because of Emperor penguins' unusual capacity to tessellate when in large groups, extensive areas of ice are covered without any traces of white bits in between.

A spokeswoman for the cult's Janitor Lethaeus (Hell's Janitor) breakaway sect insisted that the photograph provided conclusive proof that Canis Major is not solely the "Guardian of Europe", as is believed by the Canis Majorian orthodox, Eurocentric hierarchy, but is also the Caretaker of the Underworld, a stance vehemently opposed and considered heretical by conservative Custos Europa clergy. 

Thank you Pepa for standing in.

In "Tooth puller" (1746), Pietro Longhi depicts a cowboy dental practice's no-VAT/invoice-free/no questions asked extraction option. The painting shows a novice molar puller (accompanied by social security contribution-free monkey assistant) proudly exclaiming "I did it! I did it!" and holding up the evidence to onlookers in a typical waiting room scene. 

Hello
My name is Pepa

I am a firend of eritacus. He has gone out of the office and that’s why I wnat to write something in his blog without that he knows it. I have found the password in the note book that he writes the things that he must to do during the day. I see that he does not write anything in the note book since a long time ago. It has not been easy to find it because the table is a fiasco and filled of lots of things like books, headphones, any keys, three useds cups of plastic and a mountain of coins of scarce value, diskettes, Cd’s and etcétera. Mierda! Ahora viene! I close the window quickely and -... to my place!

3 Antarctic krill, "Euphausia superba", (among 50,000 specimens not featured in the picture) give a dazzling display of synchronised swimming at the 2005 Carbon Sequestrator of the Year Award ceremony. A spokesorganism for this year's winner, phytoplankton, praised the dedicated effort of Antarctic krill, without whose relentless production of spit balls and fecal strings phytoplankton would never have fended off stiff competition from grass and trees
 

The uninviting, dirty bar next to the building where I work in the Raval district of Barcelona has been turned into a film set. The bar was probably chosen to suit the aesthetic requirements of the film being made. The head of a bull, killed in a long-gone "corrida", decades before Barcelona Council forbade bullfighting, looks down from one wall at regulars who have spent most of their lives and money here, playing dominoes and cards at the cracked Formica tables. Meanwhile, other locals watch the special-guest chat shows on the opposite wall's enormous television screen. The volume is turned down.

Today, however, the handful of old-timer two-drink per day locals have been kicked out and are observing events from the other end of the street. Being a film location is probably more lucrative for the owner than running a bar.

Rumour has it that the film is about the life of Camaron de la Isla, the Elvis of Flamenco (although Camaron never got so bloated). I am no authority on Flamenco in sixties Barcelona but the bar's ambience seems right. So does the Raval district, one-time scene of Spanish organised and disorganised crime and now home to Moroccan-, Rumanian- and Bulgarian-run drug pushing and prostitution.

Film set gophers and grips rush about looking busy while several hundred other people hang around, some waiting for their chance to stop Mohammed, our neighbouring Pakistani shopkeeper, and the "guiris" (northern European tourists) staying at a local hotel from appearing in the background. They wouldn't have been here in the sixties. Others are there to prevent the doors of neighbouring buildings from slamming.

Something for the locals to talk about for months to come. 

erithacus' saga: a family gathering and more about names

A family party was being held on Mary’s five square yard stretch of lawn to celebrate the diamond wedding anniversary of her Great Uncle Stan and Great Aunt Iris. The spring afternoon was unusually warm and the grass shone fluorescently after several days of rain.

In times long gone, the corporation for which Great Uncle Stan worked had refused to give him time off to wed his beloved Iris. They had therefore opted to marry on Christmas Day. It was strange that the anniversary party should be held in April. Perhaps it had something to do with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.

Family members had arrived from different parts of the country to eat butterfly buns and potted meat sandwiches and drink “pop” and endless cups of tea.

I felt awkward. I didn’t know anyone except Mary and would have found it difficult to explain what I was doing there, had anyone asked me (which they didn’t).

A ruddy-faced man wearing glasses that changed colour in accordance with ultraviolet ray intensity approached me.

“Now then,“ he said, “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby. “My, you have grown,” he asserted.
He’s never seen me before, I thought. Even if he had seen me when I was a baby, growth was something to be expected.
“I’m Uncle Alan” he continued, as if Uncle were some kind of title like Lord or Professor.
“You’re not my uncle,“ I corrected him.
He didn’t take any notice.
“I’m in flues,” he said chortling to himself and mutely repressing his mirth, which was accompanied by a loud hissing noise as he inhaled and exhaled quickly through his nose. “What do you do?”
“I’m in boxes” I answered, not liking having to define myself by my job. My work was more of an accident and circumstances than the result of planned career choices.

Many cultures manifest the importance of work in family names. Smith, Fletcher and Thatcher were first used in early medieval times. Surnames were adopted at certain points in history and families and descendants have kept on using them even though the trades of their forebears have long since been abandoned. If work-related surnames changed with each generation I could now have a haughty-sounding double- or multi-barrelled surname such as erithacus Cardboard Man, erithacus Warehouse Operator or even erithacus Mail-order Washing Machine Electrical Spare Parts Supplier and Mary’s would be Office Receptionist. Perhaps they weren’t so snappy. The erithacus and Mary part of the name would be superfluous anyway.

“What’s your job?” continued Uncle Alan Flues, unperturbed by my reverie.
“I’m a warehouse operator, “ I replied.
“Mmmm, interesting” he said, perusing as he stroked his imaginary beard.
“erithacus!” called a voice. It was Mary. I excused myself, explaining that some emergency butterfly bun carrying was required.

“Don’t let Uncle Alan trap you,” said Mary in a low voice. “He’ll have you cornered for hours and bore you to death with flues or insurance.”

Perhaps I ought to be grateful to her for having saved me from a sticky web of tedium but then again I could have always told him I wasn’t interested.

Fourth-century monk and ascetic Evagrius Ponticus defined eight "passions": gluttony, lust, avarice, depression, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride. In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory I tinkered with these, merged vainglory with pride and came up with the seven deadly sins.

The seriousness of a sin corresponded to the degree to which it offended against love. Pride was considered the worst because it caused a person to be arrogant enough to commit the others. In Peter Binsfeld's Classification of Demons (1589) pride is therefore associated not with lesser devils but with big-cheese demon Lucifer.

Bosch's representation of pride cum vanity (Lat. superbia) shows a demon therapist holding up a mirror to encourage a wimple wearer to explore her notions of self and self-esteem.
 

erithacus' saga: offering from equine present-giver gratefully accepted

“I’ve got to go and pick Gandalf up,” said Mary.
“I’ll come with you,” I offered.
“He’s at a party on the other side of town. There’ll be lots of kids and parents. I don’t think it’ll be much fun for you,” she said dissuasively, taking the decision for me.

“I’ll call you,” continued Mary tenderly, forgetting my shed wasn’t connected to the phone network. Perhaps she was a homing pigeon enthusiast. We kissed softly on the lips one last time and I turned to go back through the park.

___________


I removed the balloon-motif wrapping paper and looked at the gift. It was a mobile phone. On the front of the box was a picture of a seemingly carefree young woman talking into a small apparatus she was holding to her ear.

“I can call you now,” said Mary.
“I don’t know what to say, I said, saying something. “How did you know it was my birthday?” I asked.
“Is it really?” she said astounded.
“Course not,” I said bashfully, embarrassed at taking her in so easily.

I opened the box, took out the small plastic phone and examined its plastic newness and surprising weightiness. I felt important now that I owned a device that symbolised communication and I had a person to call. First, however, the instruction manual and the sleeping sickness-like reaction entailed in reading it would have to be tackled. Much harder tasks such as striking flints to light fires or carving out canoes from tree trunks required not instruction manuals but observation of other people’s skill.

Nevertheless, a strong desire not to be separated from Mary outweighed manualitis and the hurdle was overcome forthwith. I mastered the phone in no time and was soon able to assign irritating electronic personal favourites to hail incoming calls.

“What’s your number? I asked Mary and as she told me I nimbly fingered in the digits in real time.

In Pieter Brueghel the Elder's "Construction of the Ministry of Linguistic Destandardisation" (1563), flunkies in sixteenth century Flemish attire try to convince a management big shot (bottom left) that delays are the result of deficient scaffolding technique.

......After the great deluge people travelled from the mountain of the East, where the ark had rested, and settled on a plain in the land of Shinar. There, they built a great city and tower, the top of which would reach unto Heaven. But the LORD was angered and thundered "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" (Who the devil do they think they are? They're getting too big for their boots!).

Thereupon the LORD confounded the languages so workers on the tower would not understand each othereth and the project would fail. (That'll learn'em). And the variety of languages and the dispersion of humanity were regarded as a curse to all but translators and interpreters whose heyday was about to begin.

... and, ding-dong, pooh-pooh, uh-oh, ya-he-ho, ta-ta, watch-the-birdie and FOXP2 language gene nonsense mutation hypotheses notwithstanding, that's why foreigners speak funny. 

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet:

Our Lady of the Asanas was still in hospital and we were legally obliged to register Little One's name at the Registre Civil within three days after the birth. Although baby birth and official name registration can probably easily be done at the time and in the place of birth, a paternal six-hour wait in an official office would provide the government with a handy few thousand pesetas in respect of baby naming.

It did occur to me to do a Major Major Major and give Little One a name different from that which I had agreed with Our Lady. Tibetan nomads often give unpleasant names to their children to ward off visits from evil spirits and, until recently, the Nyimang people of South Kordafan in Sudan gave their children Arabic names of common household implements (I knew a Scissors, daughter of Cooking Pot, son of Shaving Brush).

I could also give Little One a traditional Spanish name such as Esperanza, Inmaculada or Concepci�n, which would seriously piss off both English and Catalan relatives; the English because they couldn't pronounce them and the Catalans because Catalan names had been banned for over thirty years during Franco's dictatorship.

However, when I reached the front of the queue I realised how much I valued my testicles and decided not to risk Our Lady's wrath. I carefully printed Little One in capital letters on the B27/6 and our baby thereupon existed officially
 

meandering down memory lane and whiling on nostalgia avenue

Barcelona’s Hospital Sant Pau (below) is an impressive example of Catalan Modernisme, an architectural style popular at the start of the twentieth century. It was designed by architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner and was recently awarded World Heritage status by UNESCO.

More significantly, it was where the Little One (daughter of Our Lady of the Asanas and erithacus) made her world debut a few years ago.

Despite the hospital’s pleasant brickwork and cheerful and colourful trencadis (broken ceramic tile) design, are-to-be mothers with contractions who arrive in the middle of the night often find the reception rather cold and uninviting. Nothing, however, including the sergeant major-like welcome from the Stalag 17-trained duty nurse and her denials of basic comforts such as water and a blanket, would impair the joy of the new parents upon the birth of their daughter, the most beautiful baby in the world.

Our Lady’s drawn out labour relegated erithacus’ contribution of nine months earlier to an act of lesser importance and her superhuman effort rendered his whining cowardice an insignificance. Little One popped out and the cord was cut. “Hände hoch!” ordered the nurse a split second later. erithacus raised his hands, only to be passed a bawling, purple, slime-covered bairn whose piercing wails he thereupon accompanied with a rousing rendition of “If you could see her through my eyes.” We were shortly frogmarched out of the delivery room. Our Lady was whisked off to the maternity ward while the gibbering erithacus was asked to sign the delivery note; one copy for me to take to the registre civil for the Little One’s naming rigmarole and the duplicate copy for the Hospital to keep as a souvenir. No money back guarantee; but then again who needed it?

Hospital Sant Pau  

erithacus' saga: if you could see her through my eyes

“Well I am sorry,” she said emphatically. This time I didn’t reply, not wanting to get caught up in the same trap as before. The emotional tide seemed to have turned and I longed to put my arms round her and hold her. Hesitation however made my limbs feel like heavy, superfluous appendages. Tender, romantic moments were not my strong point. Act on impulse, I told myself, so I brushed Mary’s arm with my fingers. I fumbled to take her hand in mine but only managed to get hold of the tip of her little finger. This was lost in my own ape-like forelimb, so I gathered in some more of her arm to enhance purchase.

Hand-holding soon became unsatisfactory. Emboldened by not having been rejected I put my arm around her waist and swung her around, old-film style, to kiss her. I haltered. Self-consciousness had got the better of me and I was caught between action replay-like excessive lingering while my face approached hers and going in at high speed like a hungry hyena cub edging in on a dead animal carcass in the African savannah. I opted for the second approach and our heads banged together. Somehow the contact of my cut, chaffed fleshy mouth-opening with her soft warm lips sent an electric impulse through my body, which twitched spasmodically several times.

Mary drew away, took my hand and led me to a patch of grass away from the path. She threw herself on the ground and pulled me down afterwards.

Was there any great skill to kissing? Did it come naturally or could kissing excellence be achieved trough painstaking dedication and practice? Was it simply a question of kissers wiggling their tongues around in each other’s mouths or did true kiss quality involve a subtle interchange of kisser and co-kisser roles? Perhaps the criteria for success included the absence of copious saliva, coughing fits or high-pitched mosquito-like whining noises.

Suddenly Mary broke the gasket-like seal our lips had made and pulled her face away slightly. She looked into my eyes.

“Look at my eyes” she told me.
“I am” I replied.
“No, I mean really look at them”, Mary insisted.
“I don’t understand” I answered, confused.
“Look into my eyes and tell me what you see;” she went on.

I hesitated a moment and did what she had told me. The twenty-centimetre distance between our heads made it difficult to focus on both eyes at the same time so I looked from one to the other and then back again.

“Well?” she asked.
“They’re very ...pretty” I stammered pathetically. Mary ignored the comment.
“I mean, what do you feel when you look at them?” she continued.

After a lengthy pause I muttered an answer I thought she might want to hear.
“There’s a kind of mixture between happiness and sadness.”
“Try again” she instructed.
I looked again and saw my own reflection in her pupils.
“I can see your loneliness” I went on.
“Is that my loneliness or yours?” asked Mary.

I began to understand. What I thought I saw in her might in fact be a projection of myself. Was the deep connection I felt neither empathy nor understanding? Was I was creating her in my own image and, if so, where did my own image come from?

Klimt's "Couple with cricked necks": Kissing is a learned behaviour the origins of which may be associated with women who chewed up pieces of food and passed them directly into their babies' mouths. This sign of mother-child affection thereafter spread by transference to other relationships. However, there have been and still are non-lip kissing cultures in which food is passed this way. Early Vedic Sanskrit texts apparently (I haven't read them) describe Inuit-like, scent gland-sniffing nose rubbing and pressing, which was possibly a precursor to lip kissing.

Although some Central African tribes find kissing repugnant, kissing is manifest in many different human cultures. Couples often turn their faces to one side or the other when kissing and place their heads at an angle to prevent nose collision. Psychologist Onur G�nt�rk�n, who spent two and a half years as a voyeur collecting data on 124 "kissing pairs" at airports, parks, beaches and railway stations, showed that head turning to the right is twice as common as turning to the left. G�nt�rk�n claimed this phenomenon was the result of neonatal right side preference. 

Close-up of my great-great-great-great grandmother: The world's abundant creationist theories include the ancient belief of the Bushongo people, from the Congo basin, that top-God Bumba vomited the sun, the moon, the earth, plants and animals and thereafter humanity. Bumba notwithstanding, geneticists maintain that an organism's physiological characteristics are determined by information inherited from parents whose DNA is, in turn, passed on to them by theirs and so forth. This process probably goes back to the unicellular organisms that dwelled in the lukewarm squelchiness that was the dawn of life.

Although people's behavioural and social characteristics are very much the result of environmental influences, it is nevertheless interesting to consider that the basis for a person's genetic information originated millions of years ago and that we are carriers of that inherited data.

Furthermore, an individual's genetic information could well have been inherited from peasants, priests, prostitutes, punters, poets, people with squeaky voices, ne'er-do-wells, rascals, scallywags, extortionists, blackmailers, murderers, murderesses, murderees, rapists, victims, jailers, prisoners, misers, philanthropists, beggars, doctors, soldiers, pacifists, reactionaries, revolutionaries, law-abiders, encyclopaedia salespeople, shelf makers, shoemakers, shoewearers, barefoot Carmelites, atheists, God-fearers, dog fearers, Doberman owners, fussers, slow- and sharp-witted Sunday drivers, taxi drivers, taxidermists, tax inspectors, tax evaders, people who can blow bubbles with their saliva and an endless list of people with other characteristics.