Walletgate: the resolution

Okay, okay, OKAY.  My conscience has been pricked regarding the wallet and its contents.  My final decision is this:

• The wallet and all its cards will be sent anonymously to the owner's workplace, the name of which was on the Makro cash and carry card.  The book of stamps will be used to cover the postage.
  
• The £120 has been donated in the owner's name to the charity that Ariane suggested the other day.  Proof here.  A note will be placed in the wallet to advise Mr Nunn of his good deed.

And, in the words of McAlmont and Butler: Yes, I do feel better.

Finders keepers?

Yesterday, dear reader, I was faced with a moral quandary that has tested my position as an upstanding pillar of society. I had just finished a long day at work, and having locked up the premises I hopped into my truck for what I expected to be a familiar and uneventful drive home. As I accelerated away, however, I noticed a small black object lying in the road. Initially I dismissed it – it was probably a child’s shoe or something similar – but my curiosity was sufficiently roused for me to do a U turn at the roundabout to return and take a look. Slowing down I could see that it was, in fact, a wallet. I hopped out, slipped it in my pocket and continued to drive home without looking at it further. Back at my flat I examined the contents and found the following:

• Six £20 notes
• Two debit cards
• Nine first class stamps (current value £3.24)
• A Jersey £1 note
• A Homebase ‘Spend and Save’ card along with voucher worth £4.00
• Four (four!) RAC membership cards
• A Boots Advantage card
• A Makro card
• A Nectar card
• A Shell driver’s club card
• A Matalan reward card (classy)
• A BT chargecard (relic from the pre-mobile age?)
• An international phone card with ‘Ghana’ written on the front
• A business card for a Premier Inn
• A Morrison Miles card (presumably for petrol purchases?)
• A voucher for a free cool bag from Wyevale Garden Centres
• A Co-op dividend card (a department store – not sure if it exists outside East Anglia)
• A couple of old receipts
  

Despite all these pieces of identification, there was no hint of an address or telephone number. If this man expects to get his wallet back, he hasn’t made it easy. As I see it, I have the following options:

1. Keep everything of value and throw the rest away, since he’s bound to have cancelled the debit cards already
2. Hand everything over to the police and hope that it remains unclaimed for long enough to get it back again
3. Keep the money and hand everything else over to the police, pretending that it was empty when I found it
4. Try to track the guy down myself and return the wallet anonymously minus the money
5. Try to track the guy down myself and return the wallet and the money in the hope of a reward from the grateful owner and a warm glow from being a good citizen
   

Before you help me decide, there are some other factors to consider. Firstly, the guy’s name is Mr C Nunn. That’s right, he’s just one pen stroke away from being me. We could be distantly related. Surely he would want me to have the money and do our clan proud. Secondly, I have had to take unpaid time off work recently because of my refrigeration problems. This is no fault of my own. To find this wallet – which contains not only sufficient funds to remunerate my lost earnings but also the symbolic voucher for a free cool bag – can mean just one thing: that I have been singled out not by chance but by the providence of a just and sympathetic universe. Thirdly, on a less positive note, I found the wallet directly outside the local police station. My workplace is next door to it. It’s possible that someone inside saw me pick up the wallet without realising what I was doing, and they might have even recognised me or my truck. If my namesake realises where he dropped it and reports it missing, they might put two and two together and come and find me, blowing me away in a hail of machine gun fire before I can beg for forgiveness (Suffolk Police are mean mo-fos). We must concede, however, that this is quite unlikely.

So what would you do? If I lost my wallet, I would of course be eternally grateful to anyone who was honest enough to return it. But I honestly wouldn't expect them to. I would regard it as one of life’s hard but firm lessons in taking better care of my valuables. If I reunite Mr C Nunn with his wallet he’ll never learn that lesson and could find himself mislaying animals, children or small nuclear devices further down the line. Lives could be jeopardised all because I failed to take the hard line. It is surely, therefore, my solemn duty to bite the bullet and have a good ol’ spending spree.

One further possibility that has only just occurred to me is that the wallet was planted there (in close proximity to the police station to allow ample opportunity to do the right thing), as part of a new ITV hidden camera show called ‘Britain’s Most Selfish Bastards’. I’ll be there in a high-def freeze frame as the word BASTARD is stamped across my face to a chorus of audience boos, instantly condemning me to a life of notoriety as a local ne'er do well.

It’s so hard to be good these days.

Saving

My computer at home is less than a year old, well built and mostly willing to do as it’s told. We get on fine and I even overlook the buzzing noise it occasionally emits because I’m a reasonable man with a long fuse. Nobody’s perfect, after all. But the other night, without warning, a message appeared saying that Windows was going to shut down as it had encountered a problem. It was like a teenage strop – completely out of the blue, no explanation, and I didn’t have time to save my work. I’d nearly finished colouring ‘Self Assembly’ and lost an hour of my efforts. My initial annoyance then turned to concern, worry and panic as the machine would not restart. ‘No boot device located’. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me and as before, I started to mentally list all the important files that I may have lost forever, grimacing with increasing anguish at each one. Experience told me not to panic though, so I removed the hard drive and gently caressed its casing, pleading to its tiny silicon heart to give me one more chance.

I won’t drag this tiresome anecdote out – it worked. The computer rebooted and I continued on my merry way, although I haven’t used it since and I’m still anxious as to whether long term failure is around the corner. My somewhat laboured point is that if you’re not in the habit of backing up your work on a regular basis, you really should. Even new-ish drives can fail without warning. An online vault is the safest method and one that until now I hadn’t really considered. Think on’t.

Meanwhile, in my ever fascinating fridge saga, the replacement model is being delivered tomorrow within the absurdly vague timeframe of 7am – 6pm. In my job I have to book appointments with people all the time, and if I started quoting 11 hour windows I’d have been shot by an irate customer before now. Is that really the best they can do? It won’t be long before they just give you a ‘week commencing’ delivery date and take the phone off the hook. More unpaid time off. One surprising bonus, however, is that the replacement model they are sending is worth £600 – twice the value of the old one – so what I’m losing in paid employment I’m gaining in fridge equity (and when the housing market finally implodes and we’re all wading through the detritus of our financial ruin, fridge equity could be crucial). So on balance, I’m happy.

Doormouse Nitpick #2

As threatened, here is the second Doormouse Nitpick strip.

Apologies if you have a slow connection - I couldn't reasonably make the file any smaller.

A post-card from the West Country

My weekend in Bristol was most enjoyable. We went karting in the afternoon, which was fine until the brake cable snapped on my kart and I spun out. Then I bumped Thom off the track without even noticing, gave one of his mates whiplash in the pit lane because I couldn’t stop and generally made a nuisance of myself (there’s probably a memo being circulated around all the karting tracks in Britain right now warning them about a lanky, chaos causing half-wit). After watching a recording of the cup final we all went out and had a very subdued evening playing dominoes and comparing gardening tips, as is traditional on stag weekends.

A chilling update

As concerned and curious readers, I’m sure you’re all wondering what happened to my broken refrigerator. Well, appliance fans, the repair man came yesterday and worked his frosty mojo. The fridge is now working again! Just as the weather turns cold. Anyway, in an exciting twist, it was under guarantee after all because I’d registered online. This is fortunate because the cause of the problem is a reoccurring manufacturing defect and so they are going to replace the whole appliance free of charge. With drama like this, who needs EastEnders?

I’m away in Bristol this weekend for a mate’s stag do. I hate driving so much that I’m tempted to charter a jet, but I’ve probably left it too late now.

Doormouse Nitpick #1

Click here for the full size version.  No offence intended.

Rebel without a clause

I was going to write a post about the increasing use of Americanisms in the everyday speech of people from the UK, but I can’t decide where I stand on it. I’ve realised, you see, that I use the phrases ‘sure’ and ‘no problem’ quite a lot. As soon as they leave my lips I feel a small amount of guilt, but not enough to stop me using them time after time. Ultimately, I don’t care enough about doing things ‘properly’. I’m a rebel.

I do respect the English language and its many rules, but I like the fact that I don’t fully understand them. I never paid much attention in school and still have no idea what adverbs, conjunctions or modals are. Nor do I wish to find out. Who cares? The sole purpose of language is communication, and if someone can get their point across effectively then I really don’t think it matters how many rules they break in the process. I want to read prose that sparkles with raw energy, not something that slavishly adheres to a set of cold, archaic principles at the expense of creative infusion. It’s partly true that you need to know the rules before you can break them, but not entirely.

I’m not advocating a total free for all, of course. Bad spelling still irritates me (though I’m prone to mistakes myself) and obviously if everyone started using phone text language it would not be a good development. But the odd stray apostrophe isn’t going to kill anyone and doesn’t indicate a lack of intelligence. Just because English is not somebody’s forte (and I’ve only just learned that forte doesn’t have an accented ‘e’) doesn’t mean that they have nothing to say. And those Americanisms aren’t such a bad thing either – they add a bit of colour to the language. Like, totally.

A warning

I really shouldn't have left a draft sketch of today's comic within view of my hamster.  As you can see, he now harbours ambitions of one day becoming a Hamsterpop.  Luckily, as we have already seen this week, the pictured appliance DOES NOT WORK.

Cookie had a lucky escape, but please be vigilant around your own hamsters.

Heads up

Changes are afoot. I’m not entirely happy with the format and layout of the comics at the moment, so I’m considering a change to four wider panels stacked on top of each other. This would enable me to use thicker, more varied lines and the smaller details wouldn’t be lost when resizing. I think it would jar a bit if I switched mid-story, so I’ll probably try it out at the start of story three (production of story two is already well underway). There are 20 comics in story one, so if story two has a similar amount then expect to see the new style in early to mid July.

Losing my cool

Have you ever made a list of the things that you’d least like to happen following the onset of hot weather? Me neither. But if I did, I’m pretty sure that ‘dead refrigerator’ would be near the top. I shouldn’t grumble I suppose – it’s given me 15 whole months of loyal service and only the most unreasonable owner could expect more than that. The thing is, I don’t really know what to do next. I had a look for the documentation last night to see if the manufacturer’s warranty was for one year or two, and found the guarantee card that I should have returned within a month of purchase. Balls. So how does one go about getting a fridge repaired? Is it even worth it? Taking time off work to wait for an engineer who’ll probably tell me that he needs to order a part and come back in six weeks may be more hassle than just buying a new one.

I’m an awful consumer. Watchdog would be ashamed of me. If I bought a toaster and it blew up as soon as I plugged it in, I’d probably just buy another one. I always feel terribly guilty when taking items back, as though the store will hate me for being such a nuisance and bar me from ever going there again. I’ve only just recovered from taking a faulty ink cartridge back to W H Smith a year ago. (REFUND? What’s wrong with it? Are you sure it’s not just your printer?)

Anyway, the fridge (or ‘cupboard’, as is now more accurate), is getting increasingly bare as I have to throw away food that is going off. Last night I found the following horror:

Who knew that carrots could turn into liquid? It was a really viscous gloop, like melted cheese, that just turned stringy if you tried to separate it. Oddly though, it smelled quite pleasant. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Carrot Spread ™.

Until I decide what to do with my big white cupboard, it seems that I’m locked into a life of cereal with warm soya milk and drinks that are so unrefreshing that I may as well pour sand down my throat. [I have just discovered, incidentally, that ‘unrefreshing’ is not a valid word. Why the hell not? What’s the antonym of ‘refreshing’?] At least the freezer still works. I think I’m going to have to make space for a few ice cube trays.

Title to follow

I was stopped for directions the other day. This is quite a common event when I’m out wandering aimlessly in my lunch hour. I obviously look like someone who knows the area – a man of honour who can direct a forlorn traveller with authority and precision. So I politely gave the driver very clear instructions on how to reach their desired location, smiled, and waved them on their merry journey. And then, as usual, I realised that I’d sent them completely the wrong way. I do this so often that I don’t even feel guilty about it anymore. I prefer to think that it was their fault for asking me in the first place. My success rate is probably no higher than 10 per cent. I’m terrible.

I think I just have a slow brain. The information is there, it just prefers to take the scenic route to my consciousness. This may also explain why I always think of brilliant witty comments ten minutes after any given conversation has ended. My head is a graveyard for badly timed ripostes.

I did a timed IQ test once and scored less than a hundred. Under pressure my brain just doesn’t work at all, which is a bit worrying. What if I’m ever in the situation of having to think clearly after an accident or something? I’d probably do something incredibly stupid and endanger the lives of all around me. In a crisis, I am not your man. Be warned.

In an hour’s time, when I think of a really clever and humorous way to conclude this post, I’ll kick myself.

Who ate all the pies?

I’m putting on weight. I’ve been in denial about this for some time but I’m now hoping that a public admission will force me to do something about it. My reference point is my best pair of jeans. At least, they were my best pair of jeans when I could still fasten the button. Even then, they were tight to the point of being painfully uncomfortable but my warped logic maintained that if I could do the button up then I was still officially a 32 inch waist.

I can no longer do up the button, largely because the button is no longer there. I sat down recently and it pinged off, comedy style, ricocheting around the room until it came to rest on the carpet and said ‘Mister – you fat.’

I know what’s to blame. When I moved to my current abode I had to start driving to work, which deprived me of two miles of walking per day. That was the only exercise I used to get. I have therefore embarked upon a new ritual of nightly sit-ups, adding five to the total each time. It may not get rid of the flab, but it might make it a little more toned. A little easier to hold in.

My other plan is to hide the peanut jar, from which I gorge on a far too regular basis. As yet, though, I haven’t figured out how one hides something from oneself. 'Aha, the peanuts have gone! Fat be damned!' No, they’re in the cupboard you idiot. At least the act of opening the cupboard door would be a little more exercise I suppose.

The result

After careful consideration, I have come up with the following advert:



Well I'd click on it.  But I may be biased.

A challenge

I have decided to purchase some advertising space on a webcomic listings site. The weak dollar makes it good value, and I think the exposure will be pretty effective. My problem is that I’m not very good at selling myself. Copywriting is a skill I do not possess. I need help.

The advert will be tall and thin, with room only for a few choice words and a couple of character heads to give an impression of the artwork. It needs to do its job quickly and leave people powerless to resist clicking on it. But what could the words be? How can the comic be summarised in a way that makes it sound exciting?

I would embrace all your suggestions. I’d like to think that there are several hundred readers of this blog who have, until now, been too shy to comment. Why not seize the moment and make this your bold introduction? I will post the advert here at a later date. Imagine your pride if it was bearing your slogan! (I should point out that pride would, unfortunately, be your only reward.)