The Great Byte Hunter

3 January, 2012 (12:02) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

We’ve all heard or uttered the phrase, or something like the phrase, “I’m going to put my foot through the screen…” It’s said of laptops, TVs, mobiles.

Well, I know somebody who put two shotgun cartridges through his screen. (No names, no pack drill, but private applicants will find I will willingly grass up the culprit on production of a crisp clean fiver. Others of you know him all too well…).

It all began when the perpetrator, in a fit of temper, hurled his laptop from him with curses and imprecations. “Wait, Dad,” urged a son, explaining that the laptop’s hard drive had the gentleman’s personal details engraved upon it.

“I’ll give it hard drive…” muttered the father, darkly.

He fetched his 12-bore shotgun and marched purposefully into the garden, where the offending article had been previously hurled. The laptop hunter.

With skill and intent he sniffed the spoor, stalked his prey, loaded, aimed – and fired.

The laptop was blasted into oblivion – but, to their horror, the sons discovered the hard drive was undamaged.

Not for long.

Two cartridges administered rough justice to the laptop, and the great byte hunter stared satisfied at his fallen victim: “D’you think they can rebuild that bugger?”

It has since occurred that this gentleman should be able to advertise his skills and make a passable living from the inhumane destruction of laptop computers, recalcitrant mobile telephones and TV screens broadcasting images of EastEnders or George Osborne. He could be the antidote to all those computer engineers, a sort of RentoBlast – though, of course, many of us would prefer to do the deed ourselves.

Weather report

“Is it still raining?”, enquired Management, as I limped squelchily through the door.

“No, my sweet angel, it is not,” I replied.

“It is not raining. It is still raining. In fact, it is lashing, it is lashing down with merciless, remorseless determination; it is torrentially drowning every single blade of grass within a five-mile radius of this door in a shifting sea of impassable mud; every single second of every single day it is precipitating, my angel, so that the road down the hill outside our house is now a river. It is not raining, it is pouring such that the warmth and humidity engendered have caused mould to grow inside my Wellington boots. It is not raining, it is destroying my clothing. I now have no waterproofs left because every single waterproof I have, even the ones that cost several hundred pounds and are lifetime guaranteed to keep you dry should you fall into an ocean, in fact especially the ones that cost several hundred pounds and are lifetime guaranteed to keep you dry should you fall into an ocean, stinks like a five-day-dead badger and admit more water than our so-called ‘power shower’ admits to my bald head. It is not raining, it is splashing about levels of mud that would make a veteran of the battle of the Somme take one look at our garden and declare: ‘I may have walked at a snail’s pace into a hail of Hun bullets, but I’m not going to try walking on that.’ No, my sweet, it is not raining. It is causing our dog, a collie hardened by hundreds of generations of breeding to tolerate the most appalling of conditions without so much as a flinch, to stand at the doorstep at night and look out with a sneer on her lips, preferring to cross her legs for 12 hours rather than go out for a wee. When she finally does, she takes an hour to dry and then shakes about 100 gallons of muddy water over the floor, furniture and walls anyway. And stinks worse than an MP’s expenses. No, my darling sweetheart, it is not raining. From the dull grey dark sky, in a never-ending stream of relentless, pitiless, cold, wet, leaking, stinking, filthy, rotten, lousy, English, putrid, squalid, foul, stinking misery, it is fucking raining.”

Happy New Year

I am, of course, contractually obliged to wish you a Happy New Year – though when even politicians whose stock in trade is getting you to think they’re great and are doing the right thing are warning that 2012 is going to be a bit dicey, there seems no point.

They’re all at it: New Year messages of doom and despair.

Well, if I were Brother NorMan and his stockmarket chums, I’d be buying, buying, buying right now – I reckon the politicians all know something we don’t. They’re obviously going to print shedloads of money or get rid of the USA or they’ve sold us to China as child labour or the Indians are going to bail out the Euro or something, because they wouldn’t be telling us everything’s going to be awful unless they knew everything was going to be better than awful and they could take the credit for it. You read it here first.

So there: there could be a happy New Year after all.

If it ever stops raining.

Comments

Comment from Another Old Git
Time January 3, 2012 at 6:58 pm

Have you checked for wet rot? ….into every life…

Comment from Hamster
Time January 4, 2012 at 5:32 pm

Extreme damp! It’s what we do

Comment from Stuart
Time January 4, 2012 at 8:04 pm

Hamster, are you in touch with the world once more?

Comment from Hamster
Time January 4, 2012 at 8:26 pm

No not yet, fraserwords is available on mobiles too! However the fallen tree has bin removed from the road so hopefully they there jolly bt men will come long ‘morrow an tie a gurt big bow in they there two loose ends of phone wire an we will be back up n runnin. Fingers crossed

Comment from Hamster
Time January 5, 2012 at 3:42 pm

Wahoo back up and runnin and thanks for your help yesterday Stuart.

Comment from ROGER
Time January 6, 2012 at 6:12 pm

Is this the first case of comicide in Linkinhorne.

Comment from Iain
Time January 6, 2012 at 9:27 pm

Friday night now……guess what…..it’s still raining!!!!

Comment from Iain
Time January 6, 2012 at 9:28 pm

SORRY!!!… I meant, ” still FUCKING raining”

Comment from Iain
Time January 6, 2012 at 9:33 pm

Oh & p.s. I am hoping to arrange an annual re-run of the new Linkinhorne Laptop Boxing Day Stalk (Linkinhorne Rules)…..what do you think?

Comment from Stuart
Time January 7, 2012 at 9:14 pm

Old Father Cullingham already a strong contender for pun of the year with ‘comicide’ – touch of class there. And I think the Linkinhorne Boxing Day Laptop Stalk is such a good idea this website is prepared to sponsor it…. what we need now is an organising committee….

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