Large packet of skins please

Last week, whilst not shitting through the eye of a needle, I was also making a vague attempt at turning 37 with a degree of dignity.

Not easily done when you can't move more than a couple of rooms away from the nearest toilet. but by the afternoon I was feeling sufficiently improved to chance a trip out the house.

The original plan of cinema, Chinese, then booze went out the window, replaced with a trip to Tesco to secure provisions for one of my birthday presents.

Ladies and gentleman, I am now the proud owner of a mincer/sausage maker.

Whilst through my youth I may have spent part of my birthday searching for all manner of different 'skins', the only variety I was after now would not be rolled around or down anything, but stuffed with minced pork, and a bit of 'special stuff'.

I was rather surprised that no local butchers were prepared to sell me any - perhaps assuming that I would be doing them out of business. Fuckwits. What did they think I was going to fill them with? And where would I be most likely to find the requisite meat?

Not giving up, I found a nice website that sells all things sausage, and procured enough skin to make 60 meters of bangers.

As it wouldn't arrive until the following day, I started my great sausage experiment by making the next best thing - sausage rolls.

Four different blends later left me thinking that sage can be a bit overpowering, cranberries would be nicer if cooked and cooled before adding to the mix, you really shouldn't scrimp on salt, and a sausage lacking in brains, bollocks and bulking agents is far superior to the shit you get from supermarkets.

The weekend saw my first attempt proper at sausages in skins, and I was very pleased with the honey and mustard variety, but more mustard powder next time me thinks.

Today I have moved one step nearer to the Christmas sausage. This year my esteemed siblings and I are giving mother a break from Christmas dinner by all doing a course. As Mrsslippy and I will be staying over, it seemed only right and fair we volunteered to do the main, rather than having some other poor soul have to come round at 7 in the morning to start the turkey off.

So in the Christmas Banger Mark II (Mark I went in sausage rolls) we have

• 200g belly of pork
• 400g shoulder of pork
• 4 large tablespoons cranberry sauce (cranberries simmered in sugar water until coats the back of a spoon/sets when chilled
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly pummeled black pepper
• zest and juice from 1 orange
• 75g fresh breadcrumbs

I've made them 2 different lengths so I can test which is better when wrapped in bacon.

Now they just have to rest overnight before they can be cooked.

Sausage sandwiches for breakfast.

And lunch..

And dinner..


Until I've filled and eaten the remaining 57 meters of skin that's sat on the kitchen worktop waving at me.

Fuck I love sausages.

The Shits

I'm not very well today.

It all started with not feeling very well yesterday, but then I wasn't supposed to feel well yesterday.

I went out on Saturday for early birthday drinks, which started at 4pm with Gingerfeck, with Mrsslippy and the rest arriving later, what with them having to have worked..

So I was fully expecting to feel headachey, with an unsettled stomach - or just plain hungover if you want to call it that.

But it didn't feel like a classic hangover, and rather than feeling better as the day progressed, I just felt worse. My suspicions were aroused that there might be something else going on when I noticed that as we watched TopGear, Mrsslippy (who wears a jumper in the summer), was happily sat on the bed in just a post bath towel, I (who break into a sweat at the merest glimpse of sunlight), was curled up under the duvet shivering.

Out came the thermometer, and as suspected, I wasn't cold, I had a temperature of 39 degrees.

Today, I still feel like shit, and more annoyingly, I feel like shitting all the time. It's probably not the dreaded swine flu, but there is a definite ambiance of farmyard in the toilet.

It's bad, but I've had worse.

I've seen more than my fair share of shit back when I was nursing. It never ceased to surprise me with either the volume or force that a patient could evacuate their bowels. My personal favourite was a gentleman in a standing aid, who had such sudden and explosive diarrhoea as he was being stood up that he blew down his pyjamas, and proceeded to create a toxic puddle so wide that we had to put plastic bags on our feet in order to wade through the effluence and rescue him from the mechanical contraption.

I've told tale here before of a nasty episode of the shits whilst on holiday, but messy as that was, it's still not the worst case of blowing mud...

Several years ago, while I was still living and working at the Hospital, I picked up a nasty little winter diarrhoea an vomiting bug. After a day of lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, only interrupted by frequent trips to the toilet, I decided I would feel better if I had a bath.

Indeed, after a nice long soak I was feeling a little better, and started to climb out. It was at that point that I heard the taps being run on full blast.

Only I could see the taps.

And they were off.

So where was the noise coming fro......OH SWEET JESUS!!!!

Looking down I could be a rapidly expanding brown puddle around where my one leg still in the bath was balanced. Whenever a patient had explained away their feacal incontinence in the past with "I didn't know I was doing it nurse", I was always slightly sceptical.

"You must've known" I would think. "You can't possibly shit yourself without knowing".

But apparently you can.

I had no idea it was coming out of me. It seemed my sphincter had failed, and the only thing that was keeping the contents of my bowels in my bowels was the pressure of one arse cheek against the other.

The very act of spreading my legs to step out the bath had broken the seal, and a gallon of effluence had very suddenly, and without sensation emptied itself into the bath.

I rather embarrassingly rinsed it out and showered off, then dipped into the bathroom next door for a repeat exercise in an unsullied tub, and this time promising myself to take greater care when stepping out.

So as bad as I feel now, I know it could be worse, and that I will get better. I'm just glad that the only time in adulthood that I've shat myself I was naked, on my own, and standing underneath a shower head.

And on that note, I'm off to the toilet again. Cleaning a bath out is a lot easier than cleaning a mattress....

Noisy Drunken Sex

I was recently reminded of an occasion where I was involved in some noisy drunken sex.

I say involved, but I wasn't so much a participant, as in instigator and observer.

Several years ago I shared a house on the outskirts of beautiful Cambridge with some not so beautiful friends. As with all rented accommodation, every room that you could fit a bed in was technically a bedroom, so as to maximise income for the landlord.

I was lucky enough to have a downstairs bedroom, backing onto the garden. I say lucky, because it was nearest to the kitchen - a far greater priority than bathroom proximity - and it was graced with patio doors.

This meant that on a summers morning I could simply roll onto the floor, kick open the doors, and sunbathe in the low morning sun. As the day passed, I could drag my armchair out, and still be able to see my tv, which I'd hooked up to the Sky in the living room with 30 feet of under carpet wiring for a pre Sky Multi-room world.

And best of all, come the evening, I had the largest en suite in the world, because the world was my en suite.

No drunken wandering about the house for me in the middle of the night, just stand up and turn right. I would generally wander down the lawn a bit, but if it was pissing it down, then I was pissing where I stood.

One balmy summers evening, I'd spent a very fruitful few hours day getting well and truly lathered at social club where I worked. The walk home passed a little Kebab van that was always parked a few doors down from me, so feeling the need to settle my swilling stomach, and because I'd been so busy boozing, I'd forgotten to have dinner, a large donor was procured, and practically swallowed whole.

An hour later and I'm tucked up in bed, and everything starts to swim....

Fortunately, the en suite was as ever, unoccupied, and ready to face the full brunt of whatever I could throw at it, and boy did I throw.

Flame grilled lamb with assorted salad, wrapped in lightly toasted flat bread, all in a Broadside jus was served up on the patio. Taking care to try to remember that it was there if I needed to use the en suite facilities again, I left the doors open, and collapsed back on by bed.

I'm not sure how long after that it started, as I had started to drop off, but I was suddenly aware of noises outside. Panting and grunting, getting louder and louder, from somewhere in the darkness. I peered round the curtain from my prone position, but could see nothing in the darkness.

Now standing, I scanned the garden. The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere but I could see nothing. I braced myself to step out into the void, taking care to step over what I'd recently voided, but when I looked down - it was gone!!

And then I saw the first of many pricks.

In the shadow of the doorstep were two hedgehogs, their messy footprints led back to my messy foodstuffs, which it appeared had now been largely consumed.

Like a couple of cheap chavs, wankered on someone else's booze, and stuffed on a discarded donor, they had thrown caution and abandon to the wind, and were going at it like there was no tomorrow in the nearest doorway. Mine. And by God were they loud.

So next time you hear the classic joke 'How do hedgehogs make love?', before you leap in with the obvious 'very carefully', check first whether they are pissed or not.

Because if they are, I can guarantee there's not a lot of care, or affection shown. Just a lot of grunting, and a complete disregard for who's watching, or gratitude for the free night out.