He denies it, of course, and tells the family he has no need for presents when his birthday comes around — but I can spot that gleam in his eye when he’s presented with some new device or contraption.
It’s an unedifying spectacle, quite frankly, watching him feverishly flicking through an instruction booklet looking for the English version, rather than just winging it, like a carefree hound dog.
I then have to endure the tedium as he identifies all the components and unwraps the various bits and pieces before anything happens. It’s just a pain.
Experience has thankfully taught him to lower his expectations in the almost certain knowledge that this shiny new device will soon stop working and end up in the garbage bin or going to the tip, so he’s pleased that two of the latest gadgets are still going strong.
The first is the indoor mosquito zapper that one of the kids gave him for Christmas. There’s several of these around and some are getting mixed reviews, but this Ozzi Mozzie (not to be confused with the Ozzy Mozzie or the Zappify) seems to be working very well, so far.
It attracts the whining mossies with soft ultra-violet light, as compared to those older-fashioned outdoors models that used bright fluorescents and made a lot of noise as moths and beetles met their fate.
It charges up with a micro-USB in no time and The Boss reckons he and the Missus turn it on when they go to bed and there’s an immediate succession of little zapping sounds for a few minutes — then no more mossies for the rest of the night.
Even more exciting for him is the Bug-A-Salt fly blaster — a mean-looking plastic sawn-off shotgun with a spring-loaded pump action that a considerate son sourced from the BCF store.
It has a filling hole with a lid, where he pours a teaspoon of table salt. After he cocks it, he is ready to go hunting for the nearest fly.
The trouble is, as soon as he filled it up and got it ready on his birthday, the oldest grandson commandeered it and decided that, in the absence of any flies, he should try it out on me. I can tell you it hurts. It claims to kill a fly at a metre.
The Missus is unimpressed and reckons there’s salt on every surface in the house, so from now on The Boss will have to make every shot count.
Apparently the man at BCF confided that the Bug-A-Salt goes even better with poppy seeds, so that’s going to be fun to watch when they are all over the kitchen floor. Woof!
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