Ear, Ear!

 

A visit to bigtown to make an appointment to have ears

syringed as a solution to pain! £70 gov and £6.50 for

a bottle of olive oil (10ml) while you are at it!

(At the point of need? 

Nye where are you when we need you? 

... On the  rotisserie again.)

Surprised to hear rock music, surprised to hear anything.

Is it  some thoughtless  person with a car radio 

making the most of the sunshine!

In fact it is a junior and very putative rock band in front of 

M&S, other shop fronts are available. 

Relating this later, I quip that Los Lobos are still safe. 

Are they still alive was the swift reply?

Bamba, Bamba

(Oh very good. I see what you did there. I'm just speechless ...Ed) 

And I'm a deaf, half blind, pinball wizard!

Anyone for Cake?

I can't believe we have been at this for a dozen years.
BP 12 today!

(God almighty, teenagers...Ed!)

A Seasonal Salmagundi

To compensate in some small measure for the lack of postings.
(Phwaat in god's holy name is a salmagundi...Ed?)
Mr Collins (and others) will with their usual accuracy provide a brief description for those with energy left in their fingertips.

- Thinking about old age & forgetfulness. We will all, no doubt find ourselves in the position of wondering what it is that we wanted to go upstairs for. It is only the realisation that  we are now living in a bungalow indicates we have a problem.

- Told by Hugh Stephenson, the Grauniad Crossword Editor against himself...
 ‘How many times have you made pathetic excuses and tried to shuffle the blame onto someone else? You, sir, are unfit to run a whelk stall. Stand down, please, and let someone with more clout, more guts, more pride and more self-respect take over.’
Now who do we know to whom that could apply, answers please on a postcard to D Cameron!

- Shooting the bries with Pete and Sophie.

- Again the phrase in a book...

"almost her entire family had ended up behind bars"

... had me thinking that the tribe were all in catering. Tell me
 "Did they all work in pubs?"

Tinkers

And another...

If

 'ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers'

An article about hacking and it occurred to me that we needed another word for the people who carry it out. That is the good stuff persons who fix things and make things and do not set out to rob you, or otherwise injure you or deprive you of your private life etc.

How about Tinkers. I know there is a lot of negativity attached but it does have a certain ring to it.

( A fairy ring perhaps.. It'll never catch on... I've seen that look in your eye before... God help us all... Ed)

Horses and Sticks

Our beloved washing machine of many years service has been 'Pritted'
Phwatt, I hear you ask, is pritted when it is at home?
It has come to a sticky end. (Arrgh...Ed. Surely not original)
Are you jokin? Pelagerism is a dreadful cross I bear willingly!

In the meantime here is a nice snap of Jacob which we took on our  day out at the seaside!

A grand fellow, is he not?
could do with a few more like him, eh  Mr Ed...!

Story Time.

I ran across two new stories recently.
For the young at heart, aren't we all.

A Vase for the Princess  is the tale of the adventures of a mouse

and

The Story of Doctorow/Dr Who from a ten year old.

Erwin Schrödinger - A Joke

(Any similarity to a joke told,recently, on a BBC programme - Boffins Telling Jokes - is not coincidental...Ed!)

A garda stops a car on the outskirts of Dublin.

"Could I see your driving license please?"  He says.
The driver, an elderly academic type, pulls it out of his wallet and hands it over.

"Ah Professor Schrödinger! Would you mind popping the trunk there?"

(The guarda had been watching the American Series -  Highway Patrol  on TV and knew this was what you said.)
The driver protested, asking  if it was really necessary. The guarda was adamant. With a resignation that ebbed in long suffering waves over the top of his glasses the driver complies. The guarda walks round the back of the car, looks in the trunk, stages a theatrical double take and needs a moment to compose himself.

He moves to the front of the car and addresses the driver, somewhat uncertainly.

"Professor Schrödinger, do you know you have a dead cat in the trunk?"

"I do now!"

Visions of Poesy

I've been reading Wendy Cope's dream in 
COPE, W. (1986). Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis. London, Faber and Faber.
p 59.

It reminded me of a nightmare which occurred ten years or more before  this was published as I staggered around the festival in Edinburgh.

Down the Festival with Germaine.

It wasn't a grope I had just then
I needed some help to keep level
I wanted to set the record straight.
You think I'm a devil!

(God almighty are you at the  Poesy again, morning, noon and night. Who is it this time? Oh I see now. Old Percy Bish and his Petery Loo. You have had that far away look in the eye ever since you saw Mervyn Peak pronounce on the The Masque of Anarchy. Anarchy indeed I should get paid more for the editing of 'Poetry', highly skilled and exacting work it is too!  ...Ed)

Do you want payment by the yard or will a clip round the ear suffice?

Life Rocks

Doesn't it just?

Scientists analysing Australian rocks have discovered traces of bacteria that lived a record-breaking 3.49bn years ago, a mere 1bn years after Earth formed.

The Grauniad website reports an article from Devin Powell.

Happy New Year to all our readers. Yes, you at the back, come on wake up!

 

Frostwork

And in the night Jack weaves his way from web to flower,
And in the day the sun discloses where the diamonds are.

Is That a Mango in Your Pocket?

I've just finished A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif.
(I have told you about such fruity stuff before; it will play merry hell with the old bag... Ed)
I do enjoy a good paranoid surrealist history with walk on parts by OBL in a suit and the like.
Anyway, imagine my surprise to find a whole wall of mangoes in Lady BP's study the other day!
We have been seeing the odd mango  appear in the fruit bowl recently.
Must watch my step.

Prentice Hand

I came across the phrase in Driftwood and Tangle by Margaret Leigh.
Chapter 10 - At the Peats - is set in 1940. It is, in part, a reflection on WWII.
Leigh also describes her kackhanded cutting of the peat leaving the bank gashed and uneven...

as if it were a huge chunk of butter at which a boy had been hacking with a blunt penknife.

For those of us that have not put 10,000 hours in the meter ours will always be prentice hands.

Every state should have one

A programme in the poverty series on BBC 4 drifted across my shortening attention span the other night. All good stuff and the pilgrim, an earnest young Swiss, was questioning the set up in Zambia in relation to the past disposal of assets, specifically the copper deposits. The VP of Zambia, Guy Scott,  happens to be white and the earnest pilgrim questioned him on his lack of pigmentation and, delicately, asked if this was linked to colonialism and exploitation. I have little knowledge of the Scott's politics, background or probity but I really chuckled at his reply. Obviously, he has been tackled about this before. He indicated that such a situation, having a white VP,  was not uncommon and that he believed the US had one!

Misty, Moisty, Morning

Off to avail myself of the democratic facilities at the urns in the Tithe Barn I slipped the old point and snap in my pocket.
A few photo opportunities ensued.
A web of deceit

A few (fig) leaves of respectability

 

 
In the graveyard of freedom.

Herself was concerned when she returned to find the house locked up, the fire out and the kettle boiling. Not a sign. I had passed into the churchyard and was presenting a damp, solitary figure to the memorial masonry of previous generations. Lost in contemplation of my own mortality.

(So the sun didn't cleave the woodwork then. God, but you can be a miserable bugger sometimes...Ed!)

Fun Guy

We may have missed the 5th November but I would hate anyone to say that I am not a fun guy or appreciate such in others.

Not much room for these sorts of things, I'll just squeeze in here.

Recycling

We do our share.
The council provides for the collection of garden waste, paper, cans and cardboard. We recycle glass (Did I not hear that you had forsworn the devils buttermilk...Ed? ) Herself is partial to a drop of red wine, possibly a nightcap of the finest blended, and who am I to object. Besides, there are always pickle and jam jars, bottles of this, that and the next thing for which our consumer society requires the finest vitrification. I could believe the bloody milk bottles keep some fellow and his mafia cousins from Murano in clover. I religiously take a few rags from my back that have threads bared, the furniture that the mice have had condemned by the parish authorities  and assorted electrical devices that still have their valves glowing to the town dump, AKA the Recycling Centre, to avoid the horror of landfill. As a result of my efforts for the environment I may be responsible, personally, for the failure of the publishing industry because I take my surplus reading matter to the shop that combats famine in Oxford. (I think we get the point, could you move on for the love of god and his blessed mother... Ed!)  Well I also take the little cardboard tube that appears when the toilet roll is exhausted (I share its pain...Ed.) and flatten it, putting it in the recycling. I feel an enormous pressure to do this.

I believe that I could more likely cull badgers, hunt foxes or other defenceless beasts, perform cruel and painful experiments on small animals than fail to recycle the small but dutifully flattened cardboard tube.
Strange isn't it?

Omposable

Not Staged, honest. I wouldn't go anywhere near digging the garden.

Omposable was 'e

You know I think herself is trying to tell me something.

Salad Daze

A Cabinet re-muffle, an Indian Summer and Salad Daze.
We are blissed out, lucky S o Bs.
I will pass over the occupants  of the deckchairs of state on the  good ship of the coalition and move on to the weather.
The Bees, even the S o Bees, have been making up for lost time.

We visited Hackney, not to indulge in Para-Julibumpic watching, but for a literary soiree!
Persons who are known to us and may even be re..(don't start on that bollix again, we will take the disclosure as being full frank and filigree transparent ...Ed) OK then we enjoyed the launch of Salad Days - see the link. Great stuff. Get a copy while it is good and hot!
After the event we wandered down the Lower Clapton Rd. The Blue lights still flashed and the sirens screamed but the old place is definitely on the way up! The party, stout and otherwise, foregathered in the Clapton Hart.
Before it was Chimes (or Crimes) we knew it as Dougies. I did not see this myself, being safely tucked up in bed, but in its Dougies incarnation a drive by shooting once upon a time produced return fire rather than the usual hitting of decks, allegedly. I seem to remember Lady BP going out for a night with the girls there but she claims I am old and foolish and my memory is failing!

Anyway,  we are making the most of it, the weather that is, not the failing memory.

Julibee

Our Queen is a True British Sailor

Is the Duke of Edinburgh still the highest Peer in the land?

Nuff said!

We have sailed

In the beginning we were without sail
then :-

And so to bed.

Sailing By