God is a Gas
Warming Up
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A man came to lay pipe in my house today.
It turned out to be the trickiest job he’d had for a while. For mysterious reasons only known to the men who can control the invisible, godly entity known as gas (you can’t see it, but they insist it’s there and is keeping us alive, but can also kill us instantly if we displease it - religious freaks) they had to put our meter outside and then run a pipe to where the meter used to be so that the gas could get into the house.
They hoped there would be room under the floorboards to do this. There is, it turns out, a crawl place under our house, which you can get into via the meter cupboard. One day, I will infuriate my neighbours by building a very shallow swimming pool down there. He hoped that the Victorian builders of our house had not been so efficient as to build a wall that went right down to the crawl space floor. But his hopes were dashed. There was a wall. It had a small hole in it, but not in the right place for the pipe. I am not sure what he did, but it took him most of the day and a lot of serious drilling to get the job done.
The inventor of the Hoover. It’s not who you think.
It was strange to see a wiry Irishman’s head popping up through the floor of the cupboard in which I keep my Hoover (I have a Dyson, but I keep the ashes of William H Hoover in there too - unlike a Frankingstein the hoover is not named after the inventor, but the guy who bought the patent. That’s why I call my vacuum cleaner a Spangler, which is confusing for everyone else as only me and AI know the truth). It was even stranger as the man who had come round to lay the pipes was from Poland.
I am joking. The man under my floorboards was Irish. He had a carpenter with him, but I don’t think he had to do much more than take up the board from the floor of the cupboard. Maybe we could have done all this yesterday and my dreams of setting up a Fan Heater shop would be dashed. I am hoping that I get so good at selling Fan Heaters that they get named Herrings after me, rather than being named after the Inventors Ian Fan and Ian Heater. No as many people think Fanny Heater.
That name might have played OK in the USA but here in the UK it would have been a very different product. Though of course you can use them for heating your fanny if you wish.
America managing to make their version somehow ruder.
What the Hell has happened to this blog?
Oh wait, it was always like this.
I am listening to Adam and Joe’s Christmas 2025 podcast on my dog walks at the moment and very heartily recommend it if you want some laughs. I don’t often find myself helpless with laughter on the dog walk - it’s a weird thing for anyone passing by to witness - but the bit with the guy playing tunes by squeezing his hands together and the perfect in character reactions from Adam and Joe might just top the very impressive list of the funniest things they have ever done together. So give it a listen (I may have built it up too much).
Also Adam please don’t lose your vulnerability. It is why you are the king of podcasts.
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In writing about Hitchin Cemetery a couple of people have asked if I knew of the literary connection with the place and I had to admit I didn’t. But a quick Google informed me that (and this is typical Hitchin) Charles Dickens’ eldest grandchild Mary Angela Dickens is buried there.
This gives me great hope of being the most famous person in the graveyard when the time comes.
Even with a good idea of where the grave was and a picture of it, I struggled to find Mary’s name. It is right by the gate where I enter but it’s shared with her cousin Margaret Alice Moule, who she lived with in Hitchin.
Mary’s name is on the side. It’s a modest burial for (at least for now) Hitchin’s most famous dead person.
It’s nice to get bits of info on the random graves I have been writing about, but Mary has a wikipedia page and you can see photos of her and buy her books (if you are prepared to pay the reprinting fees or can find one in a second hand book shop) and we know where she lived (without her writing it on her grave) and I was able to go past the house on the way home.
Is it weird to stalk someone nearly 80 years after they have died? No. It’s normal. Is it weird to set up an AI version of Mary so I can talk with her about her life and flirt with her? Yes, that is a little bit weirder. For now. But soon everyone will be doing stuff like that.
It didn’t feel weird to go and see where she lived, though it felt a bit strange to be taking a photo of the house which is now lived in (presumably) by people who have nothing to do with Dickens and might not even know about the history. I can’t imagine many Dickens fans are making the trip to have a look at the house his granddaughter lived in for a bit. But I am not a fan of Dickens (apart from the Muppet Christmas Carol which you have to admit is his best work), I am a fan of trying to find out about the lives of people who died in Hitchin and were able to afford to pay for a gravestone.
I am not sure my devotion goes as far as actually reading her books - though if I can get that AI version set up she could be a guest on RHLSTP Book Club. And also on my chatting with AI sexbots podcast. Sometimes I think AI might be a bad thing.
Sorry paid subs. It seems that the full AMA video did not load, so check below for a link to the whole thing. Why not pay the price of a slighly pricy coffee (depending where you live) a month and you can get these extras too!?