Thinking Strange Thoughts
I think it was Sir Robert Menzies who once said “My name is Sir Robert Menzies” but that’s not important now, I want to discuss the little warning signs that you get on children’s toys, you know the sort of thing, it might say “Choking Hazard” or “Not for under 3year old” or something similar, anyway I’ve always wondered why these warnings suddenly stop, it as if manufacturers assume that as soon as you get over a certain age you suddenly become sensible, well I can tell you from personal experience that this is far from the case. Of course the warnings on toys for little kids are a complete waste of time because the kids rarely read them, I remember when our grandson Stevie was about 3years old he absolutely refused to take any notice of the “Do not stick this up your nose” warning ,he started off by taking the little rubber tyre off his racing car and sticking that up his nose, this was closely followed by the wheel and eventually the entire racing car, before too long most of his toys were stuck up his nose , it was abit of a nuisance but at least it kept his room tidy. Of course a lot of children do this and infact when you see an older person with a big nose you can be pretty sure that they had a huge toy collection.

Now the only reason I mention all this, is because of an incident that happened the other day, as usual I was trying to do several jobs at once, namely eat a pie, open a can of beer and change the channel on the telly, during the course of attempting this I put the remote control in my mouth as my hands were full and it shot down my throat, immediately I started doing an superb impression of a man choking to death because he has a remote control stuck down his throat, the amazing thing was that as I staggered about the house , falling over furniture and knocking over chairs, the channels kept changing on the telly ,even though I was close to death I couldn’t help but notice that there was a good movie coming on in a couple of days, I made a mental note. My wife ran into the room and immediately leapt into action, she put the kettle on, I was turning a nice shade of purple by now, but I managed to grab a pen and paper and attempted to write on it “Try the Heinrich Manoeuvre” but due to my bad dyslexia, I actually wrote ‘ Try to hide Rick’s manure”, my wife immediately raced out of the house and was not seen again for several hours, evidently after spending ten minutes trying to find someone called Rick or anyone else who needed their manure hiding, she decided that as she was fairly close to town anyway , she may as well fit in a bit of shopping. Luckily, I had the brilliant idea of hitting myself on the back of the head with a large mallet, this resulted in the remote control flying out of my mouth, across the lounge and smashing through the window. Anyway , suffice to say , when I found the remote and checked the back , there was no “Warning Choking Hazard” sticker on it. My lawyers are looking into it.
steve ainley...Warning, Never Whistle Whilst Eating Soup