Here’s a little Christmas game to waste 5 minutes …

Shoot snowballs at Santa! But watch out for the evil snowmen (and the turkeys).

(courtesy of the nice people over at www.scenta.co.uk)

We’re easily amused here at Winging It – a picture of a monkey or a YouTube video of a dancing cat is usually enough to have us chortling happily.

But it takes something a bit special to make us howl so dementedly that we’re in danger of rupturing major internal organs.

So be warned: this stupendous spoof of recent housing market woes via footage from the very fine – and actually very serious – film Downfall should be avoided by people of a delicate disposition.

Brookside Close – the whole thing – is going under the hammer today.  All 13 properties on Merseyside’s most famous cul-de-sac are being sold at auction with a guide price of £550,000- £600,000.

It seems quite fitting that the number of houses is an unlucky 13.

Previous residents have suffered an entire catalogue of disasters including a siege, a fire, an explosion, a takeover by a religious cult, and god only knows how many murders.

Then there was that whole body-under-the–patio incident, too, of course.

The whole Close, which in the real world is just outside Liverpool City Centre, is being auctioned by Allsop who say that the houses have been empty since 2005 – is it any wonder?; the place is clearly fraught with danger – so they ‘need a bit of work’.

We’d recommend an exorcism, as well, TV series or not.

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You’ve just been to the office Christmas party. You snogged Ingrid from accounts, called your boss a fat fool, and set your face on fire with a badly aimed flaming Sambuca.

It hasn’t been your finest hour, and now you’re wandering the cold and frosty streets with a dead mobile, half a bottle of Pernod, tinsel in your hair and streamers round your neck.

There’s no sign of a bus, taxis seem to have vanished from the face of the earth, and the nearest station is a long old hike (let’s face it, in your bladdered condition everywhere is a long old hike).

You sit in a doorway and are just about to nod off next to a tramp when a three-wheeled vision floats out of the freezing fog.

You’re trying to remember if there’s a production of Bugsy Malone on at the local theatre when the driver invites you into the back seat, talks to you, for some mad reason, about Yogurt, and pedals you to the station.

You, my friend, have just encountered the future of city centre transport: three-wheeled, battery-and-pedal powered and sponsored by companies like Yoplait, 7-Up and, hopefully, Alka-Seltzer.

It’s called an Eco Cab, and it whisks people round cities free of charge while they listen to some speil about the sponsor from the driver. Which, I guess, makes a nice change from, “I had that Mervyn King in the back of the cab last week…”

The Eco Cab was invented in Berlin, and has been adopted by my compatriots over in Dublin. There are also eco cabs running in Chicago, NY, Toronto and Liverpool.

It’s such a simple and clever idea that it’s surely only a matter of time before you’re slumped in the back seat mournfully singing “Good King Wenceslas,” all the while learning fascinating facts about probiotics.

If I was a city centre developer looking for eco brownie points, I’d be talking to these guys pronto.

Don’t know about you, but I can’t say I find the words “partially converted” very reassuring … not when it comes to a nuclear bunker.

It’s bad enough now, but how hard is it going to be to find a builder after a full scale nuclear attack? (“Sorry mate, can’t start this week, all my tools have melted.”)

I do love the bicycle at the front door, though.

Is that the four minute warning I hear? Quick! On yer bike and pedal like crazy to escape the blinding flash of white light, the rippling shock waves, the mushroom cloud scattering radioactive ash across the Hampshire Downs.

The bunker – or former bunker, to be precise – goes on sale at auction on 16 Dec.

It was originally designed as a refuge for 30 utility workers from the local council but more recently it’s been used by Symantec – the Norton people – for data storage.

Yes, you can sleep easy again: even in the event of a global nuclear wipe out, it will still be possible to access the very latest anti-virus definitions.

But on the downside, you’ll probably be getting council tax bills as well. Bummer.

With every man and his blog listing Christmas gift ideas, who are we to ignore that particular bandwagon? So jump on board the Winging It Blog gift guide to …

10 Duck Themed Presents For The Anatidaephile In Your Life
(That’s ‘waterfowl lover’ to you and me – which is illegal in some countries so careful now.)

Rocking Duck

It rocks!

Duck Hairdryer

It blows!

Aroma Ducks

They smell of fruit!

Stuffed Duck

“… so lifelike and compelling, you almost won’t believe it’s a stuffed toy and not the real thing.”

You haven’t seen many real ducks have you?

Duck Kettle

It’s a duck-shaped kettle. I have nothing clever to say here. Move along.

Duck Icecube Tray

Icy, ducky things for your chrimbo drinkies. Note: they probably go ‘clink clink’ not ‘quack quack’ as the picture would suggest.

Pond Wars Ducks

It’s Star Wars, in the bath, with ducks that glow! It really doesn’t get much better than this.
Oh yes it does!
Oh no it doesn’t, etc. etc.

Robot Duck

This looks nothing like a duck but does walk like one – apparently it’s a ‘Waddling Wonder’. Wow.

Duck Shower Timer

Our token eco gift. We had to have one, it’s contractual.

and finally, in the ‘looks absolutely nothing like a duck’ category, it’s …
Duck Sock Puppet

No really, it’s a duck. You just have to squint a bit.

There are probably a gazillion more duck related gifts out there … so let us know. Or anything else you think would look good in our stockings.

Actually, spend about 500,000 pennies and you could become the proud owner of this ex-public convenience in Parcllyn, Ceredigion.

The blurb states that it could be used as parking and/or storage, but come on, with a bit of imagination surely we can do better than that?

I’d rebrand it as ”LooLand – The Great British Public Convenience Experience” boasting such attractions as:

Loo Roll Lottery. Pick a stall, any stall – will there be any bog roll? You picked stall ‘B’. Sorry, but you’re out of luck and out of paper – it’s gonna be messy!

You picked stall ‘A’? Congratulations! Have some shiny tracing paper – 100% genuine (and genuinely useless).

Pee For Prizes – win with your most creative splashings! Extra points for getting it over your shoes! Extra, extra points for getting it over the shoes of the bloke standing next to you and not getting punched.

Hand-Dryer Hilarity. Laugh as you hopelessly try to dry your hands on the meagre breeze that wafts from the alarmingly buzzing hand dryer.

You may mock, but if someone can plonk a few sheds and a plastic polar bear in the New Forest and call it Lapland, then we want a bit of that action…

Your suggestions please?

Note: this property has now been sold. For other auction properties, check out Essential Information Group

Roll up, roll up, ladeez and gen-tel-men …

It has oodles of history, fantastic sea views, plenty of privacy and no real neighbours to speak of. And if you live here you’re unlikely to be bothered by door-stopping salesmen.

Totland Pier on the Isle of Wight, a slightly dilapidated Victorian charmer that rolls up its trouser legs and wades 88ft out into the ocean, is up for auction with a guide price of £100,000.

The building perched on the end (13ft x 34ft) includes a separate bunkroom/kitchen with water and electricity, a mooring and a landing stage.

In the past it’s been used as an artist’s studio, and the auctioneer reckons it would also make a cool holiday retreat.

I agree but want to live there permanently. I’ll grow a Captain Bird’s Eye beard, learn to play the concertina, and keep a parrot who swears fluently in five languages. It’ll be grand.

You, however, may have different plans, in which case get yourself down to the Barnard Marcus auction in the New Connaught Rooms on Dec 8th and start nodding, winking and tapping your nose …

“First, I’d like to get the confession out of the way. I’m an estate agent. As the rain lashes against the office window and the phones remain mute I can almost feel the waves of antipathy rolling my way …”

So begins an amusingly downbeat piece in last Sunday’s Observer by an unnamed estate agent who also writes a sharp, literate and very engaging blog called Agents Diary.

The anonymous author pitches himself as a put upon forty-something bloke hassled by a wife and kids at home, and “plagued by the cretinous idiots who I work with and for” – if it ever hits the screens Jack Dee is a shoe-in.

The SA has a nice line in self-deprecation and a sharp eye for human folly. His pen portraits of the people he works with are unflinching and often hilarious … if his cover is ever blown I fear they may drive a sharpened For Sale sign through his weary heart.

Let’s hope not – here at Winging It we’d miss his angsty reflections on life, work and the vagaries of the housing market:

“Have you looked at your crotch recently?” asks my wife disconcertingly, over the dusty bran flakes. The choice of possible retorts is virtually endless and with my mind racing out of control, I only end up spluttering out a milky request for clarification.

“The material’s gone again,” she enlightens, as youngest son shudders in horror and scuttles to the bathroom, while I inspect my threadbare nether regions.

“That’s hardly going to help win you any business,” she says with a shake of her head as she scoops up the breakfast bowls, “showing people the colour of your underpants.’

“You’d be surprised,” I tell her defensively and totally erroneously, as I grumble my way upstairs to change my suit.”

As a metaphor for the current state of the market and one man’s mid-life crisis, this could hardly be bettered.

Secret Agent: we salute you!

Are you a financier who raked in a multi-million dollar fortune during the boom?

Bored with your world class art collection, your international portfolio of prime properties, your string of thoroughbred Polo ponies?

Looking for an interesting way to spend some of the $350m you amassed during the wonder years?

Well step forward, my much misunderstood Master of the Universe, and allow me to introduce you to the mighty Phoenix 1000 Luxury Submarine, a 213-foot extravaganza that runs to 5,000 square feet of turbo-charged underwater excess.

The price tag is a suitably insane $78m, and the specifications – across all four floors – are so decadently outrageous that they’d put Caligula to shame (“rich fabrics, beautiful woods and replete with the finest leathers.”)

Of course, for a man such as yourself, an investment of this magnitude is not be entered into rashly and without due diligence (as if!)

So to help you make a decision, here are some points to mull over:

The pros:

• Yachts? Pah! In the mega rich game of one-upmanship the largest private undersea vehicle ever built trumps the lot!
• Dive below the waves when the weather turns choppy; leave the paparazzi floundering in your wake as you sink without trace
• Laugh in the face of Somali pirates, who’ll need a bloody big oxygen tank and frankly enormous flippers to chase you in this.

The cons:

• Das Boot, The Hunt for Red October, K-19: The Widowmaker
• Kinda makes you look like a Bond villain
• Giant octopus! Giant octopus!

Personally, I think you should go for it – and not just because the the folks over at US Submarines pay $50,000 to anyone who refers a suitable buyer (honest!)