Issue 21

 

The obvious joke:

 

We had new sofas delivered last week. We ordered them back in October and they finally arrived. The night before they came, the old ones were due to be collected and taken away.

 

Being the helpful couple we are, we managed to get one of the sofa’s out of the front room and into the hallway ready for the collection team. They arrived and were grateful and carted it away. They then moved onto the next one (bigger one).

They lifted, they twisted and they manoeuvred as they attempted to get the sofa out of the living room door and past the stairs. They sweated, the uttered curses and exasperated they enquired whether the sofa definitely came in that way.

 

It was at that moment I recalled it didn’t and remembered facing a similar situation when we they were delivered and we ended up coming through the garden. Did I admit that? Of course not, Instead I insisted that it had come through that way.

 

After a few more minutes of struggling. I looked at the wife and kids and it was obvious we were all thinking the same thing. Em frowned at me and shook her head and warned me not to say anything. The kids sniggered as they knew I wouldn’t be able to resist. Finally, I succumbed to temptation and blurted out in my best Ross from Friends voice, “PIVOT!” to which the boys joined in.

To us it was hilarious. The collection team rolled their eyes and asked if they could go through the back of the house. 

Practical and Dad Jokes:

I love them. I can’t say why but they really tickle me. Call me immature but I’d much prefer to laugh than not.

The other day was a really down day. I woke up in a bad mood for no discernible reason and things seemed to just conspire against me all morning. There is nothing worse than being in a bad mood and not wanting to be in a bad mood. Especially as you can’t shake it off. Usually you just have to wait to come out of it in your own time.

Now sometimes this lasts a few hours, sometimes it is the whole day. On this particular day it was a few hours. I was scrolling through my phone when this memory cropped up from 7 years ago. It tickled me then and it tickled me now that I made it into a Tik Tok video. 

This then prompted me to recall a wind up I did on a Whatsapp group. It is a group for all the football managers that run teams at the club I manage Joseph’s team at. I patiently set up the joke by requesting if anyone had the number of a good plumber who could come out in an emergency as we had a leak in the bathroom. My patience was rewarded by a few helpful friends posting the phone number of plumber’s they knew, only for me to post this picture.

Luckily the joke was met with comments such as, “I knew you were setting something up,” etc.

Finally, it is fair to say my boys have adopted my impish mischievousness. This culminated in a prank which completely got me last week.

I mentioned the Ring doorbell and how fantastic it is. My working from home space is located in the small box room at the front of the house and so I overlook the front garden. This means that I usually see people coming to the front door and if I am on a call I mute the microphone as Alexa broadly broadcasts “Motion detected at the Front Door,” to the whole house.

Except last week I was in the middle of a call and I was doing a presentation and so I missed the activity at the front door. I suspect you can think what I am about to say but you’d be wrong. You see Joe and Jamie had figured out how to tinker with the settings on Alexa and so there I was mid-speech when Alexa loudly announced,

“MOTION DETECTED AT THE BIG BUM!”

Well played boys, well played.

 

Boomf

Anyone heard of this company? I hadn’t until they started advertising Valentine’s cards. Basically, you open the envelope and a load of confetti explodes and makes you jump. 

Em and I don’t really do Valentine’s Day. We try to make sure we have a nice meal and have time away from the kids, but Em is not really a flowers type of woman and we both think everything is massively overpriced at the time of year anyway. I made the mistake of peaking 20 years ago on our first Valentine’s Day where I arranged for a rose to be delivered at her work every hour on the hour.

Anyway, I digress, my wife jumps at everything and it is generally really funny when she does as she makes a loud high-pitched scream every time she does. When I make a cup of tea and Emma is in the kitchen, I will lift up her jumper and place the freezing carton of milk against her exposed back just to hear that scream and the boys resultant laugh. It has got to the stage where I do not even need to use the carton of milk now, I just lift up the jumper and I still achieve the resultant scream. She also can’t strike a match without emitting the said scream!

And so, when we saw the Boomf cards advertised on TV a few weeks ok, I commented to the boys, “God can you imagine your mum opening one of those cards and getting that surprise?” They sniggered and I thought no more of it.

As the days past however, every time the advert would come on the TV, Toby (4 today – Happy Birthday Tobes) would run over to Emma and place his hand across her eyes so she couldn’t see. At first, we didn’t realise what he was doing but then we twigged it was because of my comment. It seems I have no choice but to buy Emma a Valentine’s Card from Boomf! She also really likes Jamie Dorman and so I merged out faces on the card!