Let's Hear It for Tan Hands

So there's this guy at my work who is desperate to be mentioned here at Bex. Sad, isn't it? What with my world-wide readership of three, fame is about to come beating down his door.

He wanted to be known as Tan Hands, a name he's given himself as a result of deforming injuries he sustained in a self-tanning experiment gone horribly wrong. As they usually do. Like me and a bottle of Tanfastic! back in high school. I still shudder when people mention streaks.

But my excuse was, and still is, that I was fourteen.

I think I shall call him Hugh Grant. Not because he looks like Hugh Grant, but he sometimes gets this Pommy intonation to his voice that is Grantesque. Grumpy thinks everyone in WA gets the same Pommy intonation in their voice. Dammit, what would he know?

So now he's got his mention. But what to do with it? Well, one person he won't be telling is his brand new girlfriend. Because if she looked through the archives and saw this, I think she would know that a certain Hugh Grant with Tan Hands had been betraying confidences, now wouldn't she??

At least Celtic won.

Despite our poor showing at a couple of quiz nights last year, and his subsequent slide into a week-long depression, The Antiquer got all enthused and organised a table at a quiz night last Saturday night. New Girl and Man Hands (not to be confused with Tan Hands) came along, as did Hong Kong Fooey. HKF had enjoyed several beers before showing up and indulged in a few more during the evening. He seemed to consider his role at the table as providing a few bon mots here and there, hooting and hollering at inappropriate moments and occasionally yelling out, "Yep, we've got the answer to that one," after the quiz master had read out a question. The Antiquer, New Girl and I thought he was hilarious so who cares what anyone else thought.

One question asked during the evening was something like, "What is the name of the list of ships produced each year?"

"Did he say shiPs?" asked Hong Kong Fooey.

"Yes. ShiPs. It's Lloyd's Register," said New Girl.

"I just wanted to check. Because if it was the other sort, that would be BRW."

Oh. We didn't win. Again. Fortunately The Antiquer is too busy doing stuff this time to have an existential crisis about it.

Internet, I Need Your Help

I had a couple of days off work. Thrill! It was a bit too blowy to go to the beach one day so I stayed at home and read the death notices, which are usually mildly diverting. Better than the birth notices, which make me shudder at humanity. I'd worked my way through the Grim Reaper's harvest and was at a bit of a loose end so I thought I'd just flick over to the personals.

I won't go into detail about "Brand new, never done this before, I'll be the best for you"; or "Asian Hot Tomako, mini skirt, lovers delight"; or even "Grandma's Live Phone Talk". Don't ask me. Because I won't. But a lot of the ads referred to French and Greek. Now, look, I know what Greek is but what is French? Is it French kissing? I asked a work colleague and she was mystified.

So we thought we'd ask Tan Hands, as his private life seems somewhat, er, adventurous, but he was similarly baffled. French kissing (and I feel so Year 12, 1986 just typing that) seemed to be the obvious answer. Doing a Google search yielded very little that wasn't "Access Denied" by the web Nazis.

The thing is, there was quite a conversation over whether it could be French kissing and is that really a rule with prostitutes, no kissing, or is this just some myth perpetuated by that Pretty Woman, Miss Julia Roberts?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.