How Did Hodmandod Senior Manage To Grow Up?

Tonight Hodmandod Senior discovered that if you switch on a hand blender in a bowl of water it is possible to pick up objects of limited weight. This, he decided was due to the blender causing some sort of up draught of water.

I pointed out that since the blender was half submerged in water and attached to the mains that this was a dangerous activity and he should desist at once.

'But soup probably conducts electricity more than water and you use it for that.'

I agreed that he was probably right (as usual).

'Anyway,' he said, 'I've had a couple of shocks from the mains before, and it's not that bad.'

'What?'

I have known Hodmandod Senior for more than half my long life now and I hadn't heard this one before. I already know about his mother dropping a pair of scissors on his head and the blade implanting itself in his cranium; the time he made (and exploded) nitroglycerine in his garden shed; and the incident with a pulley over a tree in which he managed to knock himself out and has never properly recovered his sense of smell. But tonight I found out that he once waggled wires around in a mains socket and apart from all the muscles in his body becoming weirdly stiff (presumably in a spasm) he also saw lights (and maybe his life) flash before his eyes.



I listed his lives on the fingers of my hand and asked him if there was anything else I should know about.

'Well there was the time I got squeezed some gunpowder between two bolts and it exploded in my hands...' he said.

'How did you make it to adulthood?' I said, as I always do.

He shrugged and smiled. If, like a cat, a Hodmandod has nine lives Hodmandod Senior has only three left.