cutting-edge political joke

Okay, are you ready? Because here it comes!

Hey, everyone! Do you think the new Norwegian government is keeping its stick on the ice?

Ha! Oh, ha ha! See what I did there?

You don’t see, do you.

Because, okay, well, the new Norwegian government that just got elected – and that is, in fact, exactly the same as the old Norwegian government except one person no longer has a chair to sit on in the Big Important Room of Shouting At Each Other any more – is the Red Green Coalition.


And the ever-popular Canadian TV show that features duct tape and men doing comical things – on which Steve Smith always says, in his endlessly loveable way, “keep your stick on the ice” as quite literally nothing less than a hockey metaphor for life itself – is the Red Green Show.

My razor-sharp socio-political witticisms are just lost on you people.

some days

Some days, grey things happen.

But one day months ago I saw a little yellow car peeking round an orange tree.

That, I said, is a picture for a grey things day.

And I was right.

handy

If you are changing the headlamp bulb on your car, and someone comes to offer to help, what do you do?

Because there’s only one blown-out headlamp bulb, and there’s only one spanner. So the option isn’t really ‘help’, so much as ‘doing it for you’.

It’s nice when people offer help. They’re being nice. It’s what nice people do.

But you don’t need the help. You’ve got a spanner, and a bulb, and the know-how.

My new neighbour came over when he saw me under the bonnet of the car. To help. (I suspect, when he saw the very short-haired girl who looks like a boy, wielding a spanner and capably doing basic mechanical things on a car, he may have Surmised some Things. Surmisingly.) Anyway though, we talked for a bit. He has a daughter in Melbourne, so we talked about Australia. While we talked, I changed the headlamp.

There was a pause. Then he said, “Well, you’re a handy girl.”

I’m not. I’m not a ‘handy girl’.

But I’m someone who can read instructions and learn to do things. And if I can do them, I’m unlikely to hand them over and have you do them, is all.