Pages

Subscribe: Subscribe to me on YouTube

Sunday, August 08, 2010

When you've just moved house, and you have a million and one things to do, it's important to prioritise. We didn't find the remote control for the TV until 7 o'clock last night, but I'd unpacked this by lunchtime...

ChirmIt's a Singing Bird! Four months ago, whilst working in Crawley, I took a photo of the high quality workmanship displayed in that plastic bird as it said chirm to Shrek in a tree trunk. It prompted a number of comments (the number being three), which included this statement from my good friend Andrew:

"I WANT the singing bird!!! How much was it?".

Well I'll tell you how much:

Too much.

For reasons known only to the NHS edition of RosterPro, I haven't done a clinic in Crawley since the beginning of April. But all that changed on Tuesday of this week, so with the sound of Andrew's love of birds ringing in my ears, I headed into Crawley town centre at lunchtime to buy him some junk. He and Stefan have bought us enough high quality gifts over the years, so it's about time we repaid the compliment by getting them a cheap plastic bird. It's what you might call tit for tat.

Unfortunately I failed in my mission. The shop still had its range of singing birds, but I was too embarrassed to buy one. The owner of the 'Fabulous' shop (they've dropped the '99' bit since I was last there) obviously prizes his plastic menagerie so highly that he keeps them all in the window behind the till, meaning that you can't just pick one off the shelf and quietly pay for it without making eye contact. You actually have to admit that you want one. And I couldn't bring myself to do that. Frankly I'd have been less embarrassed buying porn.

But after three days spent plucking up my courage, I was back in Crawley on Friday, and this time there was no stopping me. Mainly because I'd had time to grow a beard as a disguise. So I walked into the shop, pointed out the particular tat I was interested in, and asked the bloke in the turban how much it was. He said "Five pounds".

I almost choked on my sandwiches. I had to physically restrain myself from going "Five quid??? This thing would be overpriced in a pound shop!!!". But I thought of all the sperm keyrings and chlamydia breath mints Andrew has given me over the years, and simply said "I'll take one".

LightOf course, once you're holding the tit in your hands, you can see where your money's gone. I thought the thing just said 'Chirm', but in fact "The small bird can sway and send out birds' twitter". Which is quite impressive. It's probably on Facebook too.

I'm also now in a position to reveal that the green thing in the tree isn't Shrek. It's a squirrel. Obviously. Frankly the whole thing's nuts. But the good news is that "The squirrel can sway and give out light". So you could probably use it as a bedside lamp. Or a burglar deterrent.

Needless to say, for only five quid, the Singing Bird doesn't come with batteries, but I've bought some separately, so if you're wondering what the high quality workmanship of a swaying singing bird and light-emitting green squirrel looks like in action, then wonder no more...


If you close your eyes, you could be playing Space Invaders. Andrew's gonna love it.

2 comments:

Dave said...

I would just like to make it clear that i don't want one.

Phil's Mum said...

That's very impressive - I'm referring to your nice tidy table, of course!