Bless you and your little pumping hearts for trying, but I beg you to trouble me no more with manatee related gifts. I can assure you that the manatee novelty does not last. A man has only so much room in his life for stuffed manatees, manatee towels, tea cosies, or, indeed, t-shirts on manatee related themes. The Post Office have informed me that they’ll impose a manatee tax on deliveries to Fry Towers should the flow of this manatee merchandise not abate. So, please, my dear sweet and sometimes insufferable friends: no more. Send your manatees elsewhere. Anywhere but send them not to me.Now I have stated my position on my manatee problem, I would like to take this opportunity to also appeal for calm on another issue. My arm has indeed been cracked asunder but take not your worries out on the one man who has promised to set it right. Richard Madeley is a generous man. Much misunderstood by the British public he may be, but in private he is a man blessed with healing fingers and thumbs to match. If my knowledge of obscure authorities in the Catholic church isn’t to fail me, I believe it was Saint Francis de Sales who advised us to make ourselves ‘familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you.’ Well, make myself familiar with angels I have certainly done. His name is Dick and I would happily swear on the infernal suffrage of all tweed-loving Englishmen that I don’t not understand why you should continue to vilify him.
To underline my devotion to the man whose spare room I now call my home, your favourite Uncle Stephen has gone buttock to seat to prepare something for this blog. He creased a brow to consider the many subjects ripe for the Fry treatment. Should he give you a primer on writing lyrics of light English operetta? No, you have that already. A field manual for fixing battle wounds? Perhaps next week. Needlecraft for the crafty? Edible toe fungi? Effluent disposal in the Kenyan National Park? No, no and no. Instead, I looked down and saw the subject of today’s article staring right at me. I would review my flies! But, fear not for Stephen. There are not any old flies. I should say “Strewth” and compound my surprise with one of these “!” if it were so. These flies are made by the good people at Harrison Tweed. They are the Harrison Tweed P7200 Magnetic Flies no less. They are flies to savour. Pat one’s belly and say “Yum!” after me. Yum!
Restricted to the use of my left hand, I decided this week was the right time to upgrade the Fry flies. I am currently putting the P7200 Magnetic Flies through their trials and flying through the trials the new Fry flies most certain are. They come pre-installed on any Harrison Tweed trousers but can be fitted to any pants that have either zip or button fastening. The compact design, weighing less than two grammes, ensures that there is no unsightly sagging about the crotch, while the prototypes’ notorious faults have also been fixed so there’s no need to worry about your groin spontaneously igniting. Nor, indeed, your eyebrows. Shudder.
One armed men among you will find the magnetic flies’ voice operated mechanism a boon. With a simple to set top secret code word, I can have my flies open with no trouble. The only drawback I can see is the number of occasions when my flies have opened when in conversation with a friend. My advice: choose you secret word carefully. Setting it to ‘I like you hat, Mrs. Wogan’ caused your friend Fry no end of embarrassment at a recent drinks party at the BBC.
Many of you will find the WIFI feature of the Harrison flies a deal breaker. Remotely operated via a suitably equipped laptop, you will always have up to the date minute report on the state of your flies while on the move. The position is tracked to the closest millimetre via GPS so you should have peace of mind about the security of your loins. Indeed, remote sensing is not the end of the Harrison flies tricks. We’re talking about remote operation too. The flies can automatically open in a class leading 0.2 seconds. Lordy, lordy, zip! That’s nearly half a second over its competitors and nearly a second faster than on their manual setting.
The flies are compatible with European protocols, though be warned: there may be a few moments of delay while the flies enter into prolonged handshaking with foreign models. Quel surprise! With integrated alarm, the flies are also protected against intrusion. The manufacturers also assure us that recent reports of East European gangs accidentally hacking into the flies have overstated the problem. All flies now come with a flywall installed, to stop those virtual gropists having access to all your important data, and, indeed, fleshy goods.
When friends next ask me to recommend a set of flies to them, I will not hesitate to point a finger to my Harrison P7200 magnetic flies with WIFI functionality and declare them the best on the market. For the man on the move, or the man with only one arm, they are the best magnetic flies on the market. With the next firmware update promising extending functionality including scrotum detection to prevent those painful bathroom snags, the future of the Harrison flies leaves your Uncle Stephen quivering with excitement. Quiver. Quiver. Quiver.
