Naich

Screwing in skirting

With the words “screwing” and “skirting” in the title, this post will no doubt produce some interesting search terms in the logs but sadly, it’s not as exciting as it sounds. I am, of course, referring to the stuff that goes round the bottom of your walls and the best way of attaching said stuff. Don’t worry sir, the next link down will probably about transvestite sex – just hit the “Back” button on your browser. Bye!

Right, those that are left are now either interested in DIY or twisted enough to become sexually excited at the thought of wooden planks. If it’s the latter then I am seriously impressed and I take my hat off to you for developing a truly original perversion. You must spend a lot of time in the B&Q toilets.

Now, I’m not going to cover the nitty gritty of getting your skirting to line up nicely with lovely mitred corners; I can’t even do that myself so there’s no point trying to teach others. Being useless at getting bits of wood to line up is why decorator’s caulk was invented. This is purely about the mechanics of getting it attached to the walls. “No More Nails” I can hear you thinking (no, of course I can’t really), and to some extent you are correct. If you’ve got lovely flat walls and if you’ve got lovely flat wood and if you don’t ever want to take it off again. On the other hand, if you live in a Victorian house there won’t be a flat wall in sight and the plaster will consist of sand and pebbles, bound with dried-out spit. You will probably also find that your skirting is slightly warped or, if you’ve bought it from B&Q or Homebase, bent like a fucking corkscrew. By screwing it into the wall, you can fit the wibbly wobbly line of the walls and unbend the wood as you go. You can also take it off easily, should you want to fit extra sockets, paint neatly under the skirting board line or if you get a sudden urge to dress it up in a negligee and sleep with it, you sick, sick person. So here is my method to get those screws wanged in at exactly the right position and at a phenomenal rate.

You will need:

• Three cordless drills. Well, you don’t need three but you will be using 2 drill bits and a screwdriver, so the more drills you have the quicker it’ll be because you won’t be swapping bits all the time.
• Red rawlplugs. Probably red. I’ve found the ones for size 8-10 screws always are.
• Screws – Size 8, 2″ long. Or longer if you’ve got nasty plaster. Size 10 if you need more force to unbend the wood.
• A 6mm wood drill bit and a 6mm masonry drill bit. Check the rawlplug to make sure you have the correct masonry drill bit. Use the same wood drill bit size as this one.
• A hammer (Oh yes!)

Method:

1. Put the skirting on the wall, where you want it fixed.
2. Drill through the skirting with the wood drill.
3. Make sure the skirting is in exactly the right place and then drill into the wall with the masonry drill, through the hole you just made in the skirting.
4. Put the rawlplug into the hole in the skirting. Screw a screw into the rawlplug by a 1/2 a turn or so – just enough to hold it in place.
5. Tap the screw with the hammer to bosh it and the rawlplug through the skirting and into the wall. There should be about a rawlplug’s length of screw sticking out when the screw/plug combination hits the bottom of the hole.
6. Screw the screw in.

The depth of hole you drill in the wall depends on the length of your screws, but you can estimate it to start with by holding a screw up to a bit of skirting, seeing how far it sticks out the back and seeing how far up the drill bit you need to go to go that deep.

If you find that the screw stops going in before the board is tight to the wall, and just spins round in a pathetic way (“pathetic” is an accurate description – you wait until it happens to you), your hole might not be deep enough causing the screw to bottom out. That last phrase should get a few more perverts here. Or it could be that you aren’t inserting the rawlplug deep enough into the wall for it to reach anything solid to grip in. Try using a longer screw and drilling further into the wall – until you drill into the brick.

With three drills and a mouthful of screws and rawlplugs, you can get your badly-cut, wrongly sized bits of skirting screwed cock-eyed onto a wall before your wife can say “christ, look at the state of that – why the hell couldn’t we have got in a proper carpenter, you tightwad?” Good luck!

How about some more beans, Mr Taggart?

It’s 4.20am and young Nibbles is thrashing around and crying in the corner of our bedroom, suffering from some nasty wind. When you are only 18 inches long, a bubble of gas going through your digestive tract is a big deal and it’s understandable that he gets upset. I’m comforting him, giving him little pats and ssshhhs and popping a dummy in when he wants it. Then –

Pppphhhhhrrrppbb!

“That was him” I hasten to tell Jen, lest she think I’m some sort of flatulent oaf that just stands there, venting gas while his son is in pain.

Pbbbffffpphhhhb! “Oh, actually that one was me”

Phhhhhuurrrt! “That was him again”

Pppbbbbbbbt! “Sorry – me that time”

Phhhhhbbpppbb! “That was him, honestly”…

And so on, much in the vein of the beans scene from Blazing Saddles. “Like father, like son” Jen observed in a sleep-deprived sort of way. I must say that the little guy makes me proud.

What is it when dog gags up white frothy phlem?

What is it? It’s a trip to the vets and a bill that will get you hurking up white frothy phlegm too.

In the same way Victorian asylum owners would allow honoured guests to poke their unfortunate inmates with sharp sticks, here for your amusement are the search phrases that have brought people to my blog. People who were desperately searching for answers to real problems, only to find themselves here, having the piss taken out of them. Piss and yellow poo. Hee hee, snurk.

• prius car bandsaw – is that one shaped like the other or the best way to use one on the other?
• toddler cough symptom weasel sound – Has your toddler gotten a lot more hairy recently? Grown a bushy tail, a pointy nose and whiskers? You remember when you went for that picnic in the woods and you put your toddler down on the ground while you did up your shoelace? There’s a possibility you might have picked up something other than your child.
• toddler gets constant colds – Tell me about it. And any other disease that comes within 10 feet of them. Nibbles treated us to some fairly serious constipation recently and didn’t poo for a couple of days. He decided to let go just as I was running a belt-full of shopping through the till at Tescos. The nappy he was in didn’t stand a chance of containing the explosion and he almost blew a hole in the trolley seat. That was a fun drive home. Oh, and he’s got another cold now.
• blinking light in my bmw x3 – Yeah it’s supposed to do that. It’s called an indicator light and it shows other people what you are about to do with your fuck-ugly tank. You know that sticky out thing on the side of the steering column that you hang your handbag on? Try moving it up and down. See? That makes those orange lights blink. Now, believe it or not, there ARE other people on the road, and telling them where you are about to turn means they can take steps to avoid being crushed to death under the wheels of your Panzer.
• vomit blog kids – Now that’s a catchy name for a group of perky Web 2.0 teenagers with a video camera and a desperate lust for pointless fame on YouTube. It’s the Vomit Blog Kids! *dah de dah de dah* “Dudes! This week it’s vinegar! *Blooaargh*” etc. etc. Who am I kidding? It’s probably been done so much it’s passée. It’s probably happy stabbing or something equally revolting that’s in vogue now.

Nibbles!

Just a quick post to make up for the lack of blathering recently. I’d like to say that the reason for this is that I’ve been occupied with our latest wibbler, James, but that doesn’t really wash because I’ve had time to not only sort out his website with the novelty “nibbl.es” domain, but also another one of “asshol.es”. So there we go – I’m a big fat liar of a weasel with two absolutely hilarious new domains. Mind the ribs. Oh yes, “asshol.es” is for sale, if you want it. Just don’t tell me what you intend to put on it. I’ve seen things that… well, just don’t tell me, OK?

But the important thing is that James is doing fine. He’s got the nickname “Nibbles” because he’s always hungry; if he’s not attached to a boob, he’s not happy. Insert obvious joke here. The reason becomes clear when you realise that his weight has increased from 7lbs 1oz to 9lbs in two weeks. So he’s putting on a pound every week – that’s 14% of his body weight. No wonder he’s hungry all the time – that’s like me putting on almost 2 stones in a week. That’s some serious porking.

That’s it for now. I’ll be getting back to the normal codswallop, vague unfocussed rantings all too soon.

Naked vomit poo driver

Oh good lord, it’s that time when I look at the website stats and see what searches have brought people here. Despite my valiant attempts to improve the class of searches by deliberately planting the words “celery”, “anal” and “leech” a few posts back, it’s more of the same really with the familiar theme of vomit/poo/BMWs.

Let’s start off with

• naked bmw driver – Scary
• adjectives beginning with s – that’s seriously and stupidly shit.
• my motorbike seems wobbly when i go fast – That’s a speed wobble caused by the resonant frequency of the steering system. The trick is to go faster and then it’ll stop. Or get a steering damper, but that’s not so fun. There you go – some genuinely helpful advice. Who says this blog is just full of useless crap?
• naked woman road rage – was this person a victim of it? I don’t know whether to be jealous or not.
• things your mum used to sayto you when you were a kid – “bloody hell, what are you doing in that bathroom day and night? Come on – other people need to use it too”.
• bmw wanker a bicycle – Naich confuser by search term.
• that’ll never happen no more tablature – yeah, but you always think that and then BAM – some more tablature comes along and you have to degrease your elk costume again.
• zoe ball farting – well, we’ve all wanted to find information on Zoe Ball’s rectal emissions at one time or another, haven’t we? Come on – admit it. You have.

So there we have it for another month. Celery anal leech, for the third and last time. Come on.