Friggatriskaidekaphobia

So every morning I regale Jof with my special song:
"I've got a sticky-up willy, a sticky-up willeee, look, I've got a lump in my trousers...". I do it with a joyful tune and all the hand movements and everything, and still she's not impressed. I mean, can't she manage the same trick?
Anyway, I was about to wax lyrical about the status of god, the tooth fairy, centaurs and related fictional characters. But now a newsreader from the states has shot to the top of my all-time faves list.
Ms Kelly of Fox news gathered a load of 'Experts' to discuss a piece in which someone said that Santa should not be a white man any more, because America was a melting pot of all colours. In fact, they said, he should be a penguin, because everyone loves penguins. Ms Kelly snorted with derision and said that don't worry, kids, of course Santa is white - just like jesus, a verifiable fact.
So Santa (originally Turkish, now a Coca-cola advert) and jesus (Palestinian) are whatever you are. So what does that mean for other made-up people? Is Pooh Bear an olive-skinned Peruvian? Is Homer Simpson as yellow as we are led to believe? Is the Zimbabwean Kermit black? Does Robin wear the hood to disguise his true ethnicity? Ditto R2D2, he could be anyone in there! Doctor Who isn't the same from one year to the next - how many more people have I been lied to about?
I was Maths Star of the week, but didn't eat my lunch again as my esteemed colleagues wished to discuss projects with me and you know how that gets in the way. In other news, Ben and Finley and I have decided to write a book. It will have 10 chapters (although that may turn out to be binary) and it is called The Super Nappy. It is a heart-warming tale of a potato-shaped entity who wears a nappy which has special powers and it has 2 guns, one shoots toilet rolls to knock you out and the other one shoots little bits of rolled up poo ARE YOU STILL LISTENING this is important you know and I'm going to write 2 chapters every day and Ben is doing the pictures, he has a superhero cape and goes on a series of diaper-based adventures.

So then I was called upon to go shopping. I made the usual depressed exhalation and opined that the whole escapade should take no more than 3 minutes. 17 minutes later, we pulled up outside the carpet shop in Fratton where Bud used to work 163 years ago. I climbed up Mount Rug and abseiled down the crevasse of Wilton and shouted "Ariba ariba, underlay underlay" from the peak of Scotchguard Lino until they told me to get down. In revenge I hid behind the giant 16 foot rolls of hall, stairs and landing and they didn't find me, however loud and angry the threats.
We bought 2 doormat foot-scrubbers and 3 similar in softer fabric: this follows the muddying incident yesterday and is a future defence against the same thing happening on New Year's Eve when a couple of dozen drunken adults and children will be running in and out to the Pub at the Bottom of the Garden.
All the cashier tills at Jof's work were wrong. Triskaidekaphobia is all very well, but you don't want it messing up your money. So when we picked her up and asked how she was, I chuntered on about a potato wearing a nappy with 3 guns and special lachrymatory anal aggression tactics aaaaaaaall the way home so she couldn't get a word in edgeways.