Zombies: 20 things to take in event of an apocalypse

Twenty things to have in the event of a zombie outbreak

1) A six-seater pick-up with coverable roof and a full tank of gas

2)A shotgun

3)A rifle with a silencer

4)A pistol with a silencer

5)A crossbow and quiver

6) Knife 1

7)Knife 2

8)A guard dog

9)One rooster

10) Hen 1

11) Hen 2

12) A crate of bottled water

13) a saw

14) an axe

15) 100m of thick strong twine or thin rope

16) a he-goat

17) a she-goat

18) Proper first-aid kit, including supplements and ladies things

19) blanket

20) big box of matches 

People to take

Hubby

Mum

Cat

Steve & family. Fit and fearless and he's a fireman so would be useful.

Priorities

Get out into countryside

Raid small stores on way for food, clothing and pet food

Siphon off petrol into empty cans where safe to do so

Collect wood, pallets, crates 

Find remote spot with remote farmstead or small holding 

Fortify with fences and barricades

Fortify places for hens, goats and any random farm animals in vicinity

Fortify places of entry into farmstead with high walls, barricades, etc.

Fortify the house itself.

Hunker down amd wait for the helicopters to airlift.

Cash in the attic? More like the car crash of my past

The other day I received a press release entitled: Cash In The Attic.

Apparently, British lofts are repositories of hidden treasures. The press release cited research that put the average worth of items left loitering in the loft at a rather peachy £1,922.

I remain to be convinced as to whether or not lucrative chattels do indeed lurk in hidden corners of England's lofts. They certainly don't rest in my mother's attic, which last time I was sent up there to 'clear it' had a princely treasury of half a table, an empty wooden container from a boxy TV from 1980s and a blue Princess Bike that I took apart when I was seven and could never put back together again.

But the good folk at Essex Rooms (a firm which builds loft conversions) who put the survey together, also discovered that Britons have a lot of really weird, dark scary stuff in their attics and to this, I can relate.

The most unusual items were, according to 2092 UK adults surveyed, dentures, dismembered dolls and urns containing ashes - both human and animal.

Source: Tumblr Strange Taxidermied Cat. Is there one in your loft?

There was also a taxidermied cat, a box of Victorian doll heads ... but no bodies ... and a tin can from the 1930s. No knowledge of what was in it. Probably Spam. I expect it was still good.

The majority of people have in their possession old Christmas decorations, baby clothes and furniture that was inherited from Great Aunt Gert and may be worth something but it is really damn ugly and you don't want it in your bedroom, in case you wake up at 3am to hear the chair creaking in the corner and your dead ancestor sitting in it, knitting a ghostly shawl. 'Don't mind me dearies, you continue with preserving the family line'.

To be honest, I would rather have a questionable-looking divan than a box of Victorian doll's heads, which is pretty creepy. I mean, I've seen those films. Even borrowing a neighbour's DVD of 'The Conjuring' made me  nervous. I became convinced that having it in our house would somehow open a portal to the Western shores of Hell, and I'd come downstairs in the night to see the Anabelle Doll sitting on the cat's cushion, staring at me. And there would be no cat ... taxidermied or otherwise.

How do you know if your parents hated you? Did they give one of these to you? They hated you

In fact, I deliberately spelled Anabelle wrong in case it's like the Candyman or like Bloody Mary or one of those monsters whose name you must not say three times while looking in a mirror, or they will leap out of the reflective surface and kill you.

You know, the sort of creepy tales that older girls delight in telling you, shortly before sneaking up behind you when you're in the school toilets, minding your own business while washing your hands and looking in the mirror, and then shouting 'Bloody Mary' at you three times and running away.

Then Mrs Smith or Mrs Bailey come in to ask why you're screaming and pummeling your wet hands on the mirror when you're alone in the toilet. And then the teachers inform your mother at Parents' Evening: "Your daughter is a little .. odd." Yeah. No kidding.

Where was I? Oh yes, in my attic. Now I have a nice attic. It has already been converted into a brand spanking new Master bedroom and, apart from those freaky-ass ravens jumping around the roof in the wee small hours and whooping like headless Victorian child dolls, it is a pretty un-scary place.

The cupboard space, however, is stuffed full of, well, stuff. Mostly it is Christmas Decorations, and Wedding Mementos. But it is also full of bags and tubs of papers from school and university, things that I do not need but which I don't really feel that I can part with, just yet. Notes, folders, boxes of my earliest literary endeavours - all of this is secreted into the corners of cupboards.

I also found a box load of Commando Comics. My mother gave them to me to 'throw out' as they had been at her house for aeons. I used to love those comics. I lent my favourite ones to my friend Will (WHO HAS NOT RETURNED THEM YET), but I still have dozens of them. I say still have, because I did not throw them out. I took them home and read them all over again.

I don't know why I got so wrapped up in Commando comics. I basically went straight from magazines like Twinkle, Judy and Just Seventeen, straight to NewsWeek, National Geographic and Commando Comics, from about 14 years old. Yes, I was 14 years old, talked like David Niven, obsessed by WWII and learning all about international diplomacy from reading "Dagger for a Nazi" and "Dive, Dive, Dive!". Two of my new favourites from my remaining, if depleted stack.

Commando Comic

Clever Tommy

I also became a polyglot, able to speak the dying words of Germans and Japanese Kamikaze pilots as the brave Tommies and Septics shot them down in a fiery battle.

"Achtung! Der Englander! Schweinhund!"

"Aieee! Tora! Tora!"

Yep, not racist at all.


Having just written all this, it probably does not take too far a stretch of the imagination to work out why my teachers thought I was weird.

So, that's what's in my loft.

Outrageous Predictions for 2016

At this time of the year I am inundated with press releases and marketing material, all predicting 'what will happen next', while assuring us that nobody has a crystal ball.

All these predictions are, of course, mere consensus. Nobody is saying anything too different from the next person and that, quite frankly, is boring. So here are my Outrageous Predictions for 2016. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.

1) Yellen will regret raising rates and try to lower them again.
2) Apple will create a TV screen.
3) World supplies of chocolate will melt away.
4) Nigella will show us how to make a cup of tea.
5) Mario Draghi will smile, perhaps, later on in the year.
6) Carney will rush to raise rates to copy the US, only to get blind-sided by Yellen changing her mind
7) Carney and Yellen will be found dead together in a hotel room in Brussels, hand in hand, oranges in their mouths.
8) The price of orange juice will tumble.
9) House prices will go up - again.
10) Photos will emerge of Cameron and Osborne with farmyard animals.
11) Osborne will be caught with an orange in his mouth, self-asphyxiating over his new tax plans to be announced in the 2016 Budget.
12) Farm payrolls will treble.
13) The government will ban Ofsted.
14) Mourinho will seek to take legal action against his Russian employers. He will later be found in Soho, with some strange depletion of Uranium in his bloodwork. And an orange in his mouth.
15) Trading Places will get a remake with Seth Rogan and Tatum Channing. Channing Tatum. Tanning Chatum? Whatever, that fit chap with the 8-pack and strong shoulders you just want to bite.
16) Something, something Kardashian.
17) Something, something Bieber.
18) Ant and Dec finally break up. Queen declares day of national mourning.
19) Katie Holmes says something nice, with which most people agree. Queen declares national holiday.
20) Dismayed by volatile orange juice prices and poor economic data, Americans turn to Trump and he gets voted in.
21) In direct response, Angela Merkel becomes voted in as president of Europe.
22) Aliens invade, but find property prices in the US and UK too high for them. They go to Canada and cause $10CAN worth of damage.
23) Aliens turn out to be Asgardians and the men all look like Thor. Earth women swoon. Everyone plays The Weather Girls for months while their ovaries throb painfully.

YES PLEASE

24) Aliens seek to migrate across Europe, depleting coffee supplies in cafes everywhere. Mama Merkel announces sweeping, bilateral changes to the Shengen Agreement and Lisbon Treaty. Aliens are shipped off to Syria, where they defeat Isis.
25) Aliens given green cards and free Starbucks for life in gratitude. NHS reports a massive baby boom.
26) Actuarial assumptions start to look better for people's pension arrangements as the demographic trend reverses.
27) All national rail operators agree to add extra carriages and freeze travel price increases for two years. Yeah, Right!
28) FOS carries on as before with no change, despite a mauling from the TSC.
29) Osborne gives Aliens the Isle of Wight in exchange for defeating FOS.
31) Aliens get fined £6m each for SYSC failures and banned for life from operating in any regulated military capacity.
31) Aliens mass-migrate from earth in disgust, taking Boris Johnson with them as one of their own kind.
32) Ant and Dec decide to give it one last chance. They release a cover of 'I got you, Babe'. Cher sues. Everyone is shocked because they thought she was dead.
33) Nobody tunes in to watch non-entities on TV. Real actors and people who have actually achieved something with their lives suddenly get offers of jobs.
34) Jeremy Corbyn turns up in the Commons in a Hermes suit and a tie. Daily Mail journalists simultaneously choke on their oranges.
35) FCA takes over regulation of journalism. All reporters must go to Canary Wharf to get their pencils sharpened. Failure to keep proper notes will be hit with a ban. (This one might actually come true)
36) Jeremy Corbyn buys a home in Hampshire and hires several man-servants to carry him into Westminster each day in a sedan chair. He starts identifying as Cleopatra and is awarded Time's Woman of the Year 2016.
37) Cameron is so dismayed he goes and molests some live farm animals, and is arrested. He is later found trussed up naked like a turkey somewhere near the Brandenburg Gate.
38) Merkel becomes president of the World.
39)  China discovers a seam of oil under its mountains and suddenly becomes the world's main producer - and user - of oil.
40) Russian Oil-y-garchs leave London. Football clubs are forced to close up.
41) North Korea launches a cat into space, which knocks out some major satellite systems. For three weeks, all anyone can use the internet for is to watch live streaming of a cat sleeping 18 hours a day in a spacesuit.
42) Cat seeks American citizenship upon repatriation. Trump refuses asylum and builds a dome around America.
43) Cat becomes big in Japan and gets its own reality TV show.
44) South Korea drops Big Macs across North Korea in a mass show of propaganda. Fuelled by fast food, the people overthrow their leader but have no idea what to do with themselves afterwards.
45) Bob Geldof launches a Concert Campaign to raise money to help North Korea build Subway franchises across the country.
46) Aliens return Boris Johnson to the UK, but thanks to too much probing, he can no longer cycle. Depressed, he sets up a Subway franchise in North Korea and gets fat.
47) Something, something Simon Cowell.

Nice to eat you, to eat you, Nice

48) Bruce Forsyth is unmasked as a 200-year-old vampire.
49) Tom Cruise leaves Scientology to join Boko Haram. He gets lost in the undergrowth and turns feral. Prince Harry is sent to track him down.
50) After a turbulent year, an Alien (looking like Thor) is elected as prime minister of the UK. 98% of the UK's female population turns out to vote him in. He's photographed with his wife, who looks like Sif. Men celebrate everywhere. Daily Heil journalists rise from their graves at the sniff of fresh scandal.

Things that make me feel ill

                          The latest in a series of rants that began before the internet was created. 

Ok so these are First World Problems

1) Halitosis

More specifically, someone else's bad breath. 

I had a real blast of this yesterday on the train home. I was so happy to get a seat, given that the majority of the time we are packed in closer than incestuous sardines in a hillbilly can, but at what cost? At what cost, indeed. For I was next to a smartly-dressed young man with the worst breath in the world. It was so bad I had to sit with my back to him. I opened the window. I had to take off my cardigan because I was overheating with the need to puke. I sprayed my scarf with scent and held it over my face. I don't even know how he could have managed to gut-breath the carriage, given that he rarely opened his gingivitis-beriddled mouth. Even the flowers printed onto the lady's dress opposite wilted. When he got off the train at Streatham, we literally breathed a sigh of relief. Except for the girl across from me, who was dead.

2) Papaya

Nasty little ass fruit

This evil little fruit. Look at its innocent little face. I've had it in drinks before, I've enjoyed the scent of my body butters and hand lotions. Nothing prepared me for the satanic devastation it caused to my tastebuds. It smelled so nice! The juices I have been drinking seemed so rich and nourishing. So when I got the chance for some fresh papaya at a five-star hotel in Thailand, I thought my breakfasting dreams had come true. I loaded my plate with delicious fruit and returned, starry-eyed, to my table and prepared to savour the delights. What a load of ass. Literally. It tasted like ass. I tried it twice, to be sure. It resembled an ass's ass. The ass of a donkey. The sour, vomit-laden assfruit of a dead donkey. The supporating puss-filled colon of a putrefying mule carcass. I suspect my rotting-gummed friend above has been licking papaya. 

3) Farts

Other people's, of course. Mine smell like roses. Or KFC. Sometimes both. I don't understand why people do not seem to enjoy the wind of my labours in the same way that I do. They cannot appreciate art, evidently. However other people's dropped wind is the breath of the devil and all his hellish minions. It is the foul air that emanates from the pit of sulphur and lime, the demesne of all that is wrong. And when it happens on a train, a tube, or in a hospital waiting room (oh that one was the worst - death farts from hideously ill people) ... ugh. But the very very worst, the Titan of all worseness.... the fart of a cat. Just take my word for it.

4) Mint Choc-Chip Icecream

Have you ever licked between the toes of an ageing, tuberculoid polar bear? No? Well try some mint choc-chip icecream and enjoy a similar experience (best to hit the polar bear with a tranquiliser first). After tasting this delicacy, hit yourself with a tranq gun. It will take away the burning pain in your mouth and make everything seem good again. Food colourings, creme de menthe, a frozen putrescence. And that's just what's in a polar bear's toejam. This 'delicacy' even has its own Wikipedia page. Disgusting.

5) Death socks

Socks worn by other people. Socks that have not only been worn by other people, all day, but then end up on your side of the sofa. Socks that you realise, half-way through a film, are stroking your arm. Your bare arm. Touching the skin. Your skin. Dear saints have mercy. Also to fear are the socks being pinged off a pungent foot and waved around near your face. PROTECT YOUR EYES! Protect them from the foot-bogies that will ping off into your mouth, if it is open.

The peculiar incident of the cat in the daytime

Monty Baggins the angelic (?) cat

It started off so well.

Actually, not so well. It started off with me cleaning the windowsill of a (then) empty study overlooking the back garden.

From there I could see our Rum-Tum-Tugger, aka Monty the Cat, perched insouciant on the border fence between our house and the neighbours' on the left.

He was making rude noises at something small and fluffy on their lawn.

It looked like a grey owl, but turned out to be a small kitten, all fur and eyes the colour of ripening pumpkins.

Before I could utter a warning, he had leaped into their garden and was saying very nasty things, dark things, irascible things for which there is thankfully no discernible human meaning. But not for long - as a sudden jet of water sprang out from a hosepipe and he bounded back into the sanctity of our home.

Of course, I laughed out loud, which prompted three ladies sitting in the garden to look up. These were our new neighbours. Correctly, we were their new neighbours, and Monty had just attempted to rough up their kitten. What a bully!

But this was nothing compared to what happened one terrible, sultry, summer afternoon, back in '14.

It happened thus. Monty and I were doing nuttin while sitting inside and saw Rowdy cat (the un-neutered black and white tomcat) prowl into a neighbour's garden and pick a fight with Flea (the fluffy black cat who lives up the way).

They were at it hammer and tongs, dancing the steps of death, hissing and spitting and kicking each other in the face. They leaped over the fence into our garden, then in a few bounds entered Left Hand Neighbours' garden.

There was their grey kitty, still too young to be speyed but old enough to be on heat, lying in the sunshine. Within a few seconds, the two randy males were chasing her round the garden, making those weird, angry sexual sounds that only cats can make.

The ladies next door managed to get their cat in, and the couple to the left had managed to spook the black cat with a gentle squirt to the behind, but Rowdy and the black cat were still circling each other - now in our yard. This catfight had been going on for hours. It was getting out of hand. I looked at Monty. He looked at me. This was now time for the professionals.

They were still spatting by our gazebo. Thinking the coast was clear, and with Monty definitely raring to go outside and show these rug muppets what a real bruising was (he grew up in Streatham), I decided it would be a reasonable, grown-up, adult thing to do to don a cape, put Monty on my shoulders, and gallop out of the back door towards the two spatting cats while singing the Feline version of Ride of the Valkyries.

I called it ..... Apocalypse Meow, and it goes like this.

"Meow Mi-mi MEOW Miaw, Mew mi-mi MEOW Miaw, Mew mi-mi MEOW Miaw, MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOOOOOWWW."

Just in case you were wondering.

Anyway the two caterwauling kitties froze mid-yawl and looked at us in horror: the caped pink, two-legged beast (me) and the Ginger cat sitting astride her shoulders like the Colossus of old. And then they scarpered.

"Yeah" I shouted at their retreating forms. "Monty brought a Human to a cat fight". I think I even did a gangland sign.

Just then, heard a male voice shout with laughter "Well done Mermaid" ... and looked round to see pretty much all neighbours, left and right, looking out of their windows at me.

I will never live this down.