Coming Clean

'Davey! Look at the state of you! About time you had a bath my lad, can't be seen in public like that.'

'Oh but must I? Why must I?'

'Well, I'll consult the Home of Today¹ and tell you... According to Dr Elizabeth Sloan Chesser, MD.

'Cleanliness makes for health and general well-being of mind and body. The skin is an excretory organ of great importance, so that the body should be bathed every day and children encouraged to wash themselves. It saves adult labour and initiates good habits of routine and personal cleanliness.'

I certainly agree that saving adult labour is almost always a good idea (wouldn't you agree that Labour needs saving Tony?), and that kiddy-winkles should be responsible for their own welfare. I certainly don't have to worry about Yoda in that respect, she washes her bottom at least fourteen times an hour, usually in front of my face.

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, we should all fall to our knees and worship Yoda's bum².

Oh, back to bums again are we? Spim wants to talk bottoms. The Home of Today has this to say:

'An unclean or blocked up bowel, commonly called constipation, is the foundation of toxic poisoning of the whole system, as well as the beginning of many other evils.'

Evils such as failing to shower every day, perhaps, or possessing armpit hair (female evil; it's okay if you're male) or shoulder hair (positively unnatural darling, hot wax it out of there this instant).

And we must coat our lymph glands in possibly carcinogenic anti-perspirants so that we can die happy knowing that we didn't smell of ourselves.

I still think Yoda has the right idea.
Though if you can get someone else to do it for you it's even better.

No spim, I'm not licking out your nostrils again; I'm sure you can get machines to do this for you these days.

Anyway, talking of walnuts (as we were while discussing bottoms with Z earlier), they go well with bananas.
Useful pointer there. Here's a genuine zen-devil recipe:

Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• margarine
• sugar
• 3 eggs
• bananas, ripe but not actually resembling old socks
• pinch of salt
• flour
• bicarbonate of soda
• sour cream or yoghurt or dodgy milk
• vanilla extract
• mixed spice
• chopped walnuts

Method

Put oven on at about 150°C - 350°F, Gas Mark 2.

Grease however many pans you can find.

Mix it all together with either blender or handy team of slaves.

Stick in pan - don't overfill! Three quarters full at most: it rises! (as do all good bananas).
For proof see Here.

Bake until a skewer stuck into middle comes out cleanish, probably about an hour and a half.

Defy anybody to eat just one slice.

And to wash it down a hot black stripe from our friend Mr Boothby³:

Black Stripe, Hot

'Into a hot-water glass place a teaspoonful of molasses and fill the glass two-thirds full of boiling water. Dissolve the molasses and fill the glass with St. Croix rum and serve after stirring. A little spice of any description can be served with this drink.

Bananas and walnuts, of course, grow on trees. So here is your quiz for the week from Enid⁴.

Find These Hidden Trees

1. Will you peel me an orange?
2. A wasp and a bee chanced to meet in the honey.
3. Good-bye, Tom! A pleasant journey to you!
4. There is a mist or heat-haze lying over the hills.
5. At the Zoo a kangaroo boxed with its keeper.
6. Put a drop in each cup.
7. If I run I get out of breath.
8. You did not understand all I meant.
9. The hollyhock grew as high as the roof.

Anyway, back to poor Davey, who's still trying to wriggle out of his bath. The naughty lad has managed to avoid it for 500 years, but is still somehow the envy of budgies everywhere - who's a pretty boy then⁵?

The Hootoo Home of Today Archive

Terri & Yoda

and spimcoot

18.09.03 Front Page

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