My burnt-on image has to do with the curious London Olympics logo. Young Shagwell, of Crazy Horsepower fame, told me something about it which swings vicariously between hilarious, unspeakable and faintly disgusting, depending along which track your imagination decided to travel at the time.
     So if you want to avoid having something unutterable imprinted on your mind for ever more and a day, jump to the end of the picture, below, NOW...

Right, here we go. Have a look at the logo ... Young Shagwell casually mentioned what it reminded him of: it’s young Lisa from The Simpsons, on her knees, doing something very naughty to the boy she is with, certainly something a girl of her age should never be doing, however grown-up she is.
     It’s the blonde hair that does it. Fortunately, Lisa is a fictional character.
     Now Young Shagwell never said what he actually saw, but I have to admit I laughed out loud – and there’s the rub: no matter how hard I now try to blot it out, I simply can’t get the thought out of my head...
                                                                                                                                                        

Anyway, let’s finish with my favourite Olympic quote thus far:
“In an effort to let everyone feel included in the event, it has been suggested that smokers standing outside the pubs will be allowed to get a light from the Olympic Flame as it passes. We’re still waiting to hear back.”
John Delaney, a resident of Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, on the news that the Olympic Torch Relay will pass by the town’s three pubs.
Cheers! Not least in response to that splendid place name, Lochwinnoch.
 

God’s little runabout No 2: nice touch, the pot of red paint, bottom right  Photos: M & Y Media

Chris’s wife, Kerry, who he admits sometimes does not see him because he is so busy with his paintings, said the picture was a good consolation to owning a real Ferrari.
     She said: “Chris has always wanted one but there is no way we could afford it. Painting the Ferrari on the garage door is as close as he’s ever likely to get to it – unless we win the lottery.”

Wednesday, May 16
It never reigns but it paws

POOR old François Hollande, the new President of France.  First he got soaked in a downpour as he rode up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, standing, as tradition demands, in an open-roofed car. Then his presidential plane was struck by lightning shortly after taking off for Berlin, forcing him to return to Paris and board another.
     François Hollande, who was sworn in as France’s new president yesterday at a low-key ceremony at the Elysée Palace, had promised a “normal” presidency, but his first few hours turned out to be anything but. Still, with a sang-froid  that may come to mark his term, Mr Hollande seemed unperturbed, and focused on setting the tone for what he billed as a presidency of “dignity but simplicity” (or so I learnt online).
     Then this morning, this letter appeared in the Telegraph...

Frangela’s first date

SIR – François Hollande, the newly inaugurated President of France, should be able to spend his first day in office in his own country instead of having to rush off to meet Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. Mrs Merkel could have travelled to France, even as a pretend gesture of unity.
Brian Earle, Elgin, Scotland

Fair comment. But I guess he has to paw the ground to impress the good Chancellor. However, I did enjoy this online comment from Mgcocasal:
     Angela Merkel arrives at Passport Control, Athens airport.
     “Nationality?” asks the immigration officer.
     “German!” she replies.
     “Occupation?”
     “No, just here for a few days.”

Ho, ho, ho! Very funny. Mind you, it looks as if the next German invasion proper of Europe will be very different from the last. Everything is building up nicely. And they won’t have to worry about Spitfires and Hurricanes and Churchills...
     Then this comment, but I wasn’t sure in response to what...

grizzly: A former female work colleague routinely called a female co-worker whom she didn’t like a “dickhead”. When I objected to her using a portion of male anatomy to insult a fellow female, she quickly came up with a female alternative which made her chuckle all day long.

Tuesday, May 15
Love (LOL) – and the world laughs at you (LOL)

LOL! I have related this story before, of a middle-aged daughter telling the tale of her mother deciding to take on the challenge of the computer world and venturing online to become a silver surfer – with marked success.
     Mum duly learned how to send e-mails; in fact she sent a brief message of condolence to the daughter of an old friend of hers who had died rather suddenly.
     Unfortunately, she signed off her message LOL, thinking it meant “Lots Of Love” rather than text-talk for “Laugh Out Loud”.
     It sounds a bit of a jokey story, but the elderly lady’s daughter was quite sincere in the telling of the tale. And it is  very funny, in an affectionate sort of way.
     Well blow me, who would have thought that David Cameron would be overtaken by exactly the same delightful gaff. The Prime Minister, until he was put right by Rebekah Brooks*, was apparently still using LOL, in it’s old-fashioned sense, to sign off his now infamous texts and e-mails to her.
     Imagine then my surprise today when Chief Wise Owl showed me a letter to The Times, from a David Sweet of Nutley in East Sussex: “In Welsh the word Lol  means nonsense. QED?”

QED indeed. And of course lol  does mean nonsense. How did I not realise that when I first stumbled upon the curious LOL? And in Welsh-speak it’s quite a commonly heard word. I use it myself i.e. “Ydi, mae Dai Cam yn siarad llawer o lol.” Yes, David “can’t sleep straight in his bed” Cameron does indeed talk a great deal of nonsense. (“Cam” in Welsh means “crooked” or “bent”). LOL!
     Talk about not seeing the nonsense for the laughter.

“The French are wiser than they seem,” observed Francis Bacon (1561-1626), adding, “and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.”
     In another time and place...
“The electorate are wiser than they seem, and politicians seem wiser than they are.” QED?

Talking of politicians, another Bacon slice: “He that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not.”

* Rebekah Brooks: Ever since the phone hacking scandal broke, I’ve been mesmerised by Brooks. In another time and place, I sense that she would have been tied to a stake, etc, etc – but my mother taught me never to make such thoughts public.
     Well blow me, now that she’s been charged with perverting the course of justice, husband Charlie Brooks publicly describes the current to-do as a witch-hunt.
     Now c’mon, if old Charlie himself sees Rebekah in such light, then I guess it really is open season.

                         
                                                                

Saturday, May 12
Returning to our roots

“ONE DAY, maybe I’ll be a national treasure, like Tony Benn, but not yet, I hope.”
George Galloway, 57, British politician, author, journalist and broadcaster, and the recently elected Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West.
[“People are fed-up with sound-bites, spin, sensation and scandal from politicians.”
The aforementioned Tony Benn, 87, British Labour Party politician, retired.]

♫♫♫  Whip crack away
“The question of whether it is truly sexually gratifying to have a Wartenberg pinwheel roll over your nipples while handcuffed to a stretcher bar with a ball gag in your mouth is something I hadn’t really thought about in the sheltered life I lead. I haven’t even been beaten with a Perspex ruler.”
Barbara Amiel, 71, wife of Lord (Conrad) Black, 67 (one-time media mogul and convicted felon), after reading a novel about sadomasochism.
Black has just been released from a Miami prison after being convicted on multiple counts of fraud. It is rather telling that she has suddenly discovered sadomasochism following his release, know what I mean, chief?

Friday, May 11
Ticket to ride

TURNED on the wireless first thing this morning, and this item was on the news...

The orbit structure at the heart of the Olympic Park in east London is being officially unveiled today. The 375 foot tall structure, made of lupin-red steel, was designed by the artist Anish Kapoor.
     “It’s an awkward, kind of edgy, form,” says Kapoor. “It’s a form in a way that’s always in progress, that is to say, becoming in some way or the other. I’ve watched this model and I’ve watched the whole thing going up over the last many, many months – and I still have the sense that it’s evolving...”

Now what on earth was all that about? So I went walkies online...

                                           London 2012 Orbit sculpture: Is this our Eiffel Tower?

Unveiling the tower to the world’s press, Kapoor said: “You know, the Eiffel Tower was hated by everybody for a good many years - 50 years or something like that - and now it’s a mainstay of how we understand Paris. It’s controversial and that’s a place to start. Discomfort is okay.”

So there! I guess you have to be there to feel uncomfortable about it.

Entering the tower will cost £15 for adults and £7 for children and senior citizens. The prices were set by London 2012 organisers and Kapoor has criticised the pricing as “a hell of a lot of money”. He called for a “more democratic” pricing structure in 2014 when the tower is open to the wider public.

 of the Telegraph...
                                                                                                                          

In for a penny, in for an iPad
“The Prime Minister says ‘We are all in this together’. So where do I pick up my free iPad?” Tony Schoonderwoerd, of Littleover, Derbyshire, in a letter to the Daily Mail  following news that MPs will be given free iPads at a cost of at least £200,000 to the taxpayer, despite David Cameron’s promise to make a “virtue of thrift” during the spending cuts.

Wednesday, May 9
Short back and sides

JUST heard this tale during a visit to the Crazy Horsepower: it’s a story about one of the pub regulars, the legendary Chief Wise Owl (CWO), indeed one of the deacons.
     Now CWO is noted for his neat and tidy appearance, always looking as if he’s just stepped straight out of Austin Reed’s flagship store in Regent Street W1; yes, even if only popping out for a pint of milk, let alone down the pub for a quickie or several.
     We regulars always comment on his well-groomed appearance, both behind his back and to his face. Quite naturally he prides himself on being something of a perfectionist, taking as much care in removing items of clothing (at least in the pub) as he obviously does putting them on.
     However, here was a neat tale about age, and how growing older affects all of us in some way or other. So CWO walks into A Clip Around The Year, the male section of a local unisex hairdresser’s...
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                            ...sadly, as with so many rural areas of the UK, we no longer have a traditional barber in Llandampness.
     There is a vacant seat and one of the girls beckons CWO forward. He carefully takes off his coat and scarf and hangs them up; next he removes his sports jacket and carefully arranges it on a handy coat hanger. He then loosens his tie – CWO belongs to the generation that still wears a tie, even when going for a haircut – and undoes the top two buttons on his shirt.
     Finally he sits down in the chair. The girl, waiting by the chair, smiles sweetly – she knows that CWO is a handsome tipper – and asks nicely: “Are you here for a haircut?”
     “But of course.”
     “Perhaps you’d better take your cap off then.”

Oh dear, there’s always a little something that sticks a sprag in our wheel and stops our gallop through time dead in its tracks. It all reminded me of this...

Good deed for the day
The local priest calls at A Clip Around The Year. He duly gets his trim, offers up thanks to Helen, the lady who gave him the haircut and who also happens to be the owner, and asks how much he owes. “Father, you’re a holy man, a man of the cloth, so there is no charge for you.”
     The priest blesses her and says: “Thank you very much,” and goes about his business. The next day, 10 extra-large free-range eggs appear on the shop’s doorstep. Ah, how nice, Helen thinks, for she knows the Father keeps chickens.
     A few days later, the local vicar calls for his clip round the ear, and when the time comes to pay, Helen says: “No money, please, vicar, you’re a spiritual leader, a man of the people, it’s on the house.”
     The next day, magically appearing on the doorstep, 10 Easter eggs, with a note from the vicar to share them among the staff. Helen’s faith in humanity is underlined.
     The following week an unfamiliar face, a rabbi, comes in, has his haircut, goes to pay and Helen says: “No, Rabbi, you are a learned man, a wise man, I can’t take any money from you, go in peace.”
     Yes, the next day, Helen opens her shop - to find 10 rabbis waiting for a haircut.
 

Tuesday, May 8
A foggy day in somewhere or other

CAPTAIN Mark Phillips, 63, is currently in the news as he prepares to decamp to Florida with his new love, 35-year-old Olympic riding star Lauren Hough. This letter duly tickled my funny bone…

Rank outsider
SIR – Mark Phillips (report, May 5) has no more right to use his previous army rank as a title than does Lance Corporal Jones [Dad’s Army].
     Only officers of field rank (major and above) may use their previous rank when retired.
Gerard Needham, Ferndown, Dorset

So there! And what followed was this little online exchange which amused me no end...

lordrayne: I understand that Mark Phillips’ nickname was “Fog” because he was both thick and wet. [The name unfairly dubbed by the Royals, it seems.]

politicallyincorrect: Get it right - Captain Fog!

mfl: And there’s Captain Slow on Top Gear.

olafbloodaxe: Is that the same Captain Slow who drove a Bugatti Veyron around the Nürburgring at 275mph?

[Believe nothing you hear and only half what you see, olafbloodaxe.]

orangputeh: An officer friend of mine having served in the Royal Horse Artillery was once described in a report by his Colonel, thus:  “Looks good in the paddock, but I wouldn’t breed from him...”
Ouch. Do you suppose the officer friend’s response was “Bollocks!”.

At ease, Captain

Every day is a day at school
Yes, it’s one of my tried and tested sayings. Today though I was put in my place when I heard this Homer Simpson clip...

Homer is feeling a bit down and Marge is trying to cheer him up: “There are many things you can do to feel better.”
     “Take another bath in malt liquor?” chirps Homer.
     “There’s that – or you can take an adult education course.”
     “Look Marge: every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course – and I forgot how to drive?”

So that’s why my memory has been playing up of late? D’oh!

Much hot air
Then I saw this headline...
                                            Dinosaur wind may have caused climate change

Eh? Would this have been the Wayward Wind? Or a Trade Wind? Le Mistral, perhaps? No, it seems that huge plant-eating dinosaurs may have produced enough greenhouse gas by breaking wind to alter the earth’s climate, research suggests.
     This is delightful doolallyness at its most exquisite. Are we supposed to believe that Mother Nature, in putting evolution together, overlooked the fact that dinosaurs farting in extremis could kill pretty much everything off, including themselves?

And talking of evolution: if you want to watch 90 seconds of delight, watch The Simpsons – Homer Evolution.
     Oh, and watch out for the guy going the other way – devolution? Come to think of it, we humans are already devoluting at a rate of knots. Enjoy...
                                         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faRlFsYmkeY&feature=relmfu

Sunday, May 6
Dear Sir or Madam

A CHANCE to catch up with some more newspaper letters. First, the Telegraph...
     Now we know about the drought conditions in certain parts of the UK – and that despite all the recent rain and flash floods; also, there appears to be growing concern about the possible demise of the good old fashioned face flannel, would you believe. Here’s a letter that brings both problems perfectly into focus...

All things are possible
SIR – Flannels are the answer to the water shortage. As a child I was given a bowl of water, a piece of soap and a flannel, and told to “wash down as far as possible, up as far as possible, and then wash possible”.
Ann Bartle, Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Fast approaching, at a rate of knots, are the Queen’s Jubilee and the London Olympics...

Putting the bounce back in your life
SIR – Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize winning artist, has built a bouncy Stonehenge to mark the Olympics. To celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee, could we create a bouncy Edinburgh Castle for Scotland and a bouncy Giant’s Causeway for Northern Ireland as well?
Gill Evatt, Chandlers Ford, Hampshire

Mum’s the word
What’s all this nonsense about that 66-year-old Romanian woman being the world’s oldest mum? My mum’s 77. Beat that.

Glass half full
They say football is a game of two halves. Not for me it isn’t. I regularly down eight or nine pints whilst watching a live game on Sky TV in my local.

It’s in the post
I heard recently that, on average, Alex Ferguson receives two turds in the post each week. What I want to know is, who’s sending the other one?
 

And as if by magic...

IT’S IN FRONT OF YOU!!
“Obviously Simon Cowell has love bites on his mirror.” Kathy Lette, 53, Australian gossip columnist and writer.

I liked the honesty of the quote – except I’d never heard of her...
                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                    ...Ahhh, now I see why she has that double-barrelled surname. Phew

Visiting the pub the following evening, May 4, there was much talk of a banana delivered that morning by the postman, but in a plastic bag because it had been squashed while navigating the postal system. All we regulars came under suspicion, but I never let on.
     A year later I sent an actual postcard with a photograph of said banana, see above, bearing a similar message, signed Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ben). A week or so later I wrote about it on this web site, with photographs, look you!
     When I next visited the pub, Thérèse, the manageress, come at me with a stern face: “I knew it was you all along.” She then smiled. “Nobody else would think of doing such a crazy thing.”
     Needless to say, everyone was most impressed with our local posties (warm and VAT free, as opposed to our local pasties which in future will be cold and VAT free in order to keep the cost down), not least that, despite their Royal Mail bosses, they had retained their sense of fun.
     It was a silly little stunt which gave me lots of pleasure. I did go online to try and find some information about the original ad which had used the banana as a post-it note, without success. I’m sure it was used by an electronics company – Sharp, or some such like.
     Anyway, while searching online, I came across this, made entirely of Post-it notes...
                                                                                                                                                   
Clever or what? Is it Elvis? I guess so. Sadly, I do not have the “artist’s” name.

Count me in

                                                                                                                           Picture: Ben Bichll

School children wait with inflatable corgi dogs prior to the arrival of the Queen in Exeter. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were visiting the South West of England as part of their Diamond Jubilee Tour of the country.

There is something so deliciously amusing about that picture. I think it’s how the dogs are looking up, the way dogs do. And the leads. And of course, they are smiling, despite the corgi on the right having its paw trod on...
     I wanted to find out more about the story behind the picture. Where did the idea come from? Whose was it? What sort of discussions did they have at school before deciding to parade the dogs in front of the Queen? I did try, without success.
     Shame, for there’s another picture of the Queen looking down at the dogs, and clearly, she is amused. Also, when I Googled the story, I noticed that the picture has travelled all around the world. Unsurprising, really.

As I perused the Telegraph, this headline on the Letters page caught my eye

Importance of healthy meals shared with family
Teaching children to cook
SIR – Richard Harman, chairman of the Boarding Schools’ Association, is spot on when he suggests that children from families who eat together have a healthier diet (report, April 30). However, education has to be provided for the children and the parents so that an unhealthy cycle can be broken.
     Home Economics in schools needs to take on a more varied and sensible format. My son’s first experience of Home Economics ended with him making a sandwich. He went on to make a pizza and scones. I brought home casseroles, shepherd’s pie and crumble from my domestic science classes, and I was always excited about sharing them with my family.
     Let’s teach good, simple recipes that will give children an excellent understanding of nutrition, and a basis for them to explore more adventurous cuisine in the future. This will stop the ping of the microwave.
Marilyn Wathes, Witney, Oxfordshire

All that made sense to me, I have to say. Indeed, these two online responses grabbed my attention…

Danielfg: My grandchildren are taught to cook from about 4 years old, starting with peeling potatoes, which at that age is exciting. The result was that my 21 year granddaughter cooked a Christmas dinner for fifteen of her friends.
     Cooking should start in the home, but how many parents can be bothered?

That attracted far and away the largest number of ‘Recommends’. However, I particularly liked this one...

Lordmuck: The marking in schools is too lenient ... 20 yrs ago daughter number 2 was in cookery class with other 9-year-olds to make Scotch Eggs. All the class had 9 out of 10 (one mark deducted for mass outbreak of talking), except daughter’s BF who scored only 5. Apparently ‘forgetting’ to insert the egg into Scotch Eggs is still halfway acceptable!

Staying with children...

Wednesday, May 2
Murder, she twinkled

YESTERDAY, I smiled at the brouhaha over AA Gill’s bully-boy comments about Mary Beard. I have the perfect answer for Mary, not withstanding the rather obvious fact that she is fully capable of looking after herself, of course.
     Today I listened on iPlayer to last Sunday’s The Best of Radio Wales. I heard a clip of an interview with PD James the crime writer, now 91, still going strong and sharp as a tack – I mean, who will forget her interview from a couple of years back with Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, when she took him to task in memorable fashion over the Corporation’s failings and made him sound like an overgrown schoolboy and anything but the DG of the BBC.
     [There’s a Telegraph link at the bottom to a transcript of part of the exchanges - it is somehow more telling than actually listening to the interview itself on YouTube.]
     Anyway, Baroness James left school at 16, and wrote her first crime novel at age 39, when she was already a widow. When asked if she had a favourite murder weapon, she said no, but the weapon should always be appropriate to the murderer.
     For example, elderly ladies, however murderous, are unlikely, in the UK anyway, to have access to guns. An elderly lady would probably murder by poison; she certainly wouldn’t have the strength to strangle anybody.
     In real life though, she added with an ominous tinkle in her voice, you would keep it simple. In real life, if you wanted to murder your husband (or Mary Beard wanted to murder AA Gill), you invite him for a walk along Beachy Head. “Come and see this, darling, a most interesting flower, here at the edge...” – and then you give him a push.
     As long as you don’t have a terrible conscience and confess, nobody can possibly prove beyond reasonable doubt that you killed him. He was close to the edge – I was about to call out a warning – and suddenly he wasn’t there...
     And there you have it, the perfect murder. The only flaw I can spot is that someone would be bound to see you. If Jeremy Clarkson wasn’t filming the 50th anniversary celebration of the E-Type Jag, then someone would surely be out walking on Beachy Head...
     Mind you, I still think Mary Beard should try it out on AA Gill.

Then I read this memorable quote – and thought, I hope this is AA Gill speaking...

“I don’t think I shall ever write anything again. I’m going to go out to a clockmaker’s, buy a clock and present myself with it.” Sadly, they are the words of Michael Frayn, 78, English playwright and novelist.
Great quote though, one of those “I wish I’d thought of that” moments.

Finally, and still thinking “I wish I’d thought of that”, only today did I hear this about George Best, the most entertaining footballer the world has ever seen – probably – and spotted on a banner at his funeral back in 2005.
     It seems wonderfully apt that a footballer would have a banner held high at his funeral. Anyway...
                                                 Maradona good; Pelé better; George Best

Here’s the link to the PD James interview:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6920354/How-PD-James-skewered-the-BBCs-Mark-Thompson.html

I note from the above that Samantha is an “award-winning” producer – but presumably a non-descript writer and journalist. Oh dear. Anyway, I enjoyed these two online responses following all the attacks on our Mary.
     This from a Charlie Wild: Mary Beard is a babe. I laughed enthusiastically at that one.
     And I certainly appreciated this next one, especially so on reading the name of the poster: Testaclese_the_Tautologist.
I really enjoyed “meet the Romans” and find Mary Beard a superb presenter, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about her subject. I don’t really care much about her appearance, but she is kind of cute in a sort of nerdy way. Far more an interesting human being than the dark, vain, superficial souls of AA Gill or Ms Brick.

The perfect juxtaposition, above, came about through pure luck rather than judgment

I particularly enjoyed this online comment from a Jane of London: “The dolls are much better looking versions of the real thing. William’s doll has no receding hairline whilst Kate’s doll looks nothing like her because it does not include her elongated chin, turkey neck, high forehead or mannish looking cheekbones.”
     LOL, as they SAL (say a lot) online. I wonder how I could find out how many Barbies they’ve sold?

The other picture is from the couple’s tour of Canada. It makes my choice because many so-called media aficionados hated it: what were they thinking putting themselves about in cowboy hats and looking as common as muck? Delightful nonsense.
     When in Calgary do as the Calgarians do. And the Calgarians clearly loved it.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the past year has been how Kate has effortlessly morphed into the job. She seems more royal than most of the royals. Clearly there’s something of the landed gentry/ruling classes genes firmly lodged in the Middleton DNA.
     I enjoyed this just discovered piece by Will Hutton, written the day after the wedding...

Don’t slip on the soap
Of course that is part of the royal family’s point: to be the longest-running and glitziest soap on the planet – and this wedding was another classic episode: the gallery of medieval-style trumpeters made me laugh out loud, but at other times the effect was touching and affecting.
     Commentary is thus made infinitely harder: apart from the queen, no royal warrants any real reverence, so attempts to be serious collapse into unctuous banality. Simon Schama’s comment to the BBC’s Huw Edwards that there were three marriages going on – between Kate and William, past and future, and monarchy and nation – for my money won the prize.
     There was only one marriage; given the soap the Windsors have become, to suggest that the event represented more was unhinged.

Well, unhinged or not, William and Kate appear to have advanced on all three fronts; indeed, republicans have temporarily retreated behind the barricades.
     Yes indeedy, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Bang! You’re nearly dead

Friday, April 27
More O_noH₂O
The above, [O_noH₂O], is my newly discovered formula for “unholy water”, liquid rain from heaven that has not, curiously, been blessed.
     It could now also be applied to the drought orders issued across a large swathe of the UK [O_noH₂O], or even better, now that it hasn’t stopped raining since the hosepipe ban, with flash floods all over the shop, it could be [O_no - H₂O!].
     I must briefly return to the Letters page of The Daily Telegraph...

Piddlin’ down
SIR – During the past 24 hours Britain has had over half an inch of rain. This equates to more than three billion tons. How much more of the stuff do we need?
Willy Pledger, North Selsey, West Sussex

Yes, it’s the name that grabbed readers’ attention. Here’s a brace of responses from the Comment board...
     Grizzly: Willy Pledger ... Never mind the rain. A lot of women must be asking: “Can you also deliver?”
     jp1000: Or willy (sorry, will he), get a waiver from delivering his pledge?

Oh yes, in another letter, a John Bidder of North Harrow in Middlesex wondered if “all the unseasonably high rainfall since the hosepipe ban was introduced is an example of nature’s quantitative easing”?

Right, back to O_noH₂O proper...

“I once worked out that if I drank less water I could use the toilet less, which meant I could fit more into my day.” Karren Brady, 43, business woman, author, columnist, motivational and public speaker and TV personality, from her book Strong Women: Ambition, grit and a great pair of heels.  She is currently Lord Sugar’s aide on the BBC TV show The Apprentice.

Polly Hudson, reviewing Karren’s book in the Mirror, said this: I presume I’m supposed to find Karren’s story inspirational ... mainly because there’s a vaguely threatening quote on the cover from Lord Sugar saying: “Karren’s story will be an inspiration to women everywhere.” Maybe he actually said irritation, but was misheard.

I have no idea what that “Just killed back to back spin classes” means. Perhaps something to do with a personal fitness regime? Or could she have been meeting Tony Blair who would have advised her how to really spin? After all, the more you spin, the more millions you rake in from a gullible public.
     What’s interesting is that a sub-editor somewhere had taken out those seven opening words for the Quotes of the Day column I spotted. Very clever, for it makes the “Eating a salad, dreaming of a cheeseburger” that much more eye-catching and memorable.
     Everybody who twitters should have their own sub-editor, if only to stop at source the 90% rubbish that is tweeted.
Mind you, the pop diva hits the spot with this tweet in the lead up to the opening show of her global tour, which has just kicked off in South Korea.
                                               

Thursday, April 26
The wit and wisdom of letter writers to our national newspapers

CHIEF Wise Owl has passed me a few Times  letters for my smile spot. Taken together with some spotted in the Telegraph, they confirm what a rich source of entertainment these Letters pages really are. First, this from The Times...

I am shocked, shocked to discover...
Sir, George Osborne says he is shocked at discovering how little tax is paid by the rich. What shocks me is that we have a Chancellor who is shocked to learn a fiscal fact which everyone else has been aware of for decades.
DR MARGARET GULLAN-WHUR, Heacham, Norfolk

On a Comment board, Tebbitforpm summed it up rather well: Some of the wealthy try to screw the taxman and some of the poor do the same to the welfare system. Those in the middle pay for it.

Along similar lines of incompetence, a missive in The Daily Telegraph,  spotted in the wake of this year’s Boat Race disaster, when a swimmer decided to disrupt and stop the race. Oh, and then the Oxford cox goes and forgets her TomTom...

A butterfly stroke in the Thames
SIR – The Boat Race resulted in a fiasco because the stewards and river police were totally unprepared, rather like the starter and organisers of the Grand National in 1993 [the race was declared void after 30 of the 39 runners began and carried on racing despite there having been a false start]. Sheer British incompetence on show to the rest of the world.
     If a man swimming at two miles per hour cannot be stopped by the authorities then I dread to think what will happen at the London 2012 Olympics, which will be the next target for every looney demonstrator, exhibitionist or would-be terrorist, imported or home-grown.
Roger Brown, Lincoln

Back with The Times ~ the 1982 Falklands Conflict remembered, bearing in mind the controversial sinking of the Belgrano after being struck by two torpedoes fired by the British submarine HMS Conqueror...

Depth charge
Sir, While senior backpacking in Argentina in 2010 we were met with friendliness and indifference in pretty much equal measure. But at a tango show bar, on our last night in Buenos Aires, each table was asked to declare its nationalities.
     The band played the intro to the Marseillaise for the French; the Italians got a few bars of O Sole Mio  and so on. For the UK audience? Yellow Submarine.
     Somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to stay.
PETER SAUNDERS, Blakeney, Norfolk

Ouch! Then this one, which really does have the ring of truth about it...

My, my, my
Sir, We recently took part in a “sail away singsong” on a British cruise ship. When the Welsh national anthem was announced we were treated to Delilah  by Tom Jones.
ANDREA RITCHIE, Chislehurst, Kent

Truth to tell, it wouldn’t surprise me if more Welsh people know the words to Delilah than the Welsh words of the national anthem.
     Next, this marvellous Telegraph  effort...

Musical moths
SIR – Sarah Rainey (Features, April 18) warns that the warm spring has led to increased moth activity in our wardrobes.
     My piano restorer reports an increase in the number of pianos needing the felts replaced due to moth infestation. The solution is to put lavender bags, mothballs or a strip of moth paper inside the piano.
Linda Ebrey, Friston, East Sussex

Well, it is not so much the letter, but this smiley online comment, which drew an avalanche of ‘Recommends’...
Geniusloci: “My piano restorer reports...” Now that’s what I call a letter to the Telegraph!

Also, I musn’t forget the Daily Mail, whose readers specialise in one-liner letters, the Time Vines of the “Dear Sir” world – for example, following the huge increases the Post Office recently announced in the cost of postage stamps...

Frankly, my dear
I've emailed Royal Mail to tell them their stamps are too dear.
G Valentine, Rotherham, South Yorkshire

Finally, this from The Times...

Road rage
Sir, Why do pick-up trucks have such bellicose names? I’ve recently seen a warrior, an avenger, a thunder, a ram, a barbarian and a raging bull.
TONY PHILLIPS, Chalfont St Giles, Bucks

The above leads me neatly to this extraordinary photo in today’s Telegraph  Picture Gallery...

                                                  “Hello, is that the very, very nice man from the AA?”
                                                                                             “Pass!”                                                     

Wow! Literally, Wow! I feel dizzy just looking at that. I was struck by three things:
     1)  This is not a place for road rage, whether driving a warrior, an avenger, a ram or a raging bull.
     2)  It is certainly not a place to suddenly breakdown, AA cover or no (other breakdown services are available).
     3)  And what about traffic coming the other way? There obviously has to be some sort of control system, hence the convoy – but I guess patience is a virtue when entering the pass.

Adding the final sizzle
And so to my top smile of the day. Roy Noble, on his afternoon Radio Wales  show, was discussing the finer points of the humble sausage – and fascinating it was, too. Then Roy asked the expert in the studio if he had ever ordered and eaten sausages in the States. No.
     “What a palaver,” said Roy. “The waitress arrives and I order some sausages. ‘Pork or beef?’, she asks: pork. ‘Organic or free range?’: organic. ‘Fried or grilled?’: grilled. ‘Linked or unlinked?’...”

Oh dear, I shall laugh whenever I spot a sausage in future...
 

Oh yes, ‘G-spot spotted at Ding Dong’ at the top? Well, there’s a town in Bell County, Texas, called Ding Dong – which brings me neatly to the next bit of news Vanessa brought us, a story headlined...
                                                                    ‘Dull’ is to twin with ‘Boring’

A place by any other name
First, the familiar Middle Wallop: a village in the civil parish of Nether Wallop in Hampshire. Do you suppose the locals, when they need to visit Nether Wallop, actually say “Right, I’m off to They Don’t Like It Up ‘Em, Sir”?
     Horse and Jockey: a village in North Tipperary, Ireland. That name should win, hands down, but I’m not so sure.
     Land of Nod and Wetwang: both are villages in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
     Dog Town: spotted in California.
     Homer and Wigwig: both in Shropshire. If you were heading for Wigwig but landed in Homer, would you go “D’oh!”?
     Indian Queens: a village near Newquay in Cornwall. Do you suppose the locals call it Bollywood? Anyway, Vanessa actually played a song called Indian Queens, by a Nick Lowe. Every day a day at school.
     Upper Upham: a hamlet and deserted medieval village, set high on the downs, near Marlborough in Wiltshire – perhaps known locally as “Don’t Panic”, in honour of Lance-Corporal Jones of Dad’s Army fame (see also Nether Wallop, above).
     No Place: a small village in County Durham. It has to be pretty small, really. And there are no faint-hearted folk there.
     Nowhere: found somewhere in Norfolk, England; also in Oklahoma, America.
     Nameless: the town with no name, spotted in Tennessee. Quite how, I’m not sure.
     Santa Claus: found all year round in Indiana, America.
     Christmas Pie: a hamlet, near Guildford in Surrey. The curious name owes its name to property owned by a prominent local family named Christmas. The “Pie” part of the name comes from the Saxon term “pightel” or “pightle”, meaning a small piece of arable land.
     Idle: resting in West Yorkshire ... on the High Street is The Idle Working Men’s Club, which attracts membership from all over the world.
     Ugley: hiding in Essex – and yes, there is The Ugley Women’s Institute – but they pronounce the place “You-glee”:
♫♫♫ You say Ugly, we say You-glee – let’s call the whole thing off.

Let’s not call the whole thing off, but go slightly off message, which is well worth the detour: in Shirley, on the outskirts of Birmingham, you will find an Indian restaurant called The Shirley Temple. Ah yes: ♫♫♫ On the Good Ship Lollipop ... Magic.

My own favourite name is a farm, just across the valley from where I live, and called, in Welsh, Golwg Y Byd – meaning, “In sight of the world” – and it is a perfect name because there is a glorious view from the farm. It really is a beautiful Welsh name, which just rolls off the tongue. Trust me. (Note to self: must pop up there to take a picture.)

Finally, how could I not include Knockin, a village near Oswestry? And yes, there really is a shop in the village called – ta-rah! – The Knockin Shop – see a link to a great Flickr photo in the nether regions of this post... In fact, the shop reminds me of an old joke, which highlights the upstanding delightfulness of the English language...
                                                                                                                    Knock-knock!
                                                                                                                    Who’s there?
                                                                                                                    The House of Hillary.
                                                                                                                    The House of Hillary who?
                                                                                                                    The House of Hillary Pute.
Yes, “the knocking shop” is another slang expression for a house of ill repute, brothel, bordello, cathouse, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house and bawdy house. HOUSE!!
     All that means I must now include Hooker, Oklahoma: the city of Hooker is located in the centre of the Oklahoma Panhandle With Care - okay, I added the With Care bit.
     So there you have it, all the above smiles, delivered to my door before half-six of a morning. Not bad, eh? Anyway, here’s the promised link to Flickr’s Knockin Shop...
                                                                               http://www.flickr.com/photos/flickrjrt/5324549450/

Tuesday, April 24
Dylan but never Dull

BBC Radio Wales, in the run up to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations, has just begun twice daily packages of around five minutes or so highlighting the main events of each year of the Queen’s reign; sound bites apropos Radio 2’s recently finished Sounds of the 20th Century, which was an audio journey from 1951 to 2000.
     Radio Wales puts an emphasis on events Welsh, obviously. The series began, yesterday, with 1952 and 1953. The afternoon Roy Noble show broadcasts the second year of the day, so his show featured 1953.
     I enjoyed it so much I decided to listen in again today on iPlayer. The year featured Dylan Thomas, who was then well into his bardic stride and working on Under Milk Wood, a new ‘Play for Voices’; the famous Stanley Mathews Cup Final which Blackpool won 4-3; Hillary and Tenzing conquer Everest; the Queen’s Coronation, and her visit to Swansea; and finally, the sudden and unexpected death of Dylan Thomas.
     The clips began with Dylan Thomas, reading his own piece about Laugharne, his very own square mile.

Now some people live in Laugharne because they were born in Laugharne, and saw no good reason to move; others migrated here for a number of curious reasons, from places as distant and improbable as Tonypandy – or even England – and have now been absorbed by the natives.
     Some enter the town in the dark and immediately disappeared, and can sometimes be heard on hushed black nights making noises in ruined houses...

Magic. What a way with words the man had. Mind you, he did seem curiously over-fond of the word ‘black’. Hm?

During the Everest clip, a reporter asked this: “Hillary-” Although his name was Edmund Hillary, everyone appears to address him as Hillary, even to his face. Anyway: “Hillary, what were your feelings on reaching the top?”
     A fair question, which he responds to with a smile in his voice: “Well, naturally, very pleased to get there – mainly because we had some difficulty in finding the top.” Much laughter in the background. “And secondly, I was distinctly interested in getting down again.”
     More laughter, for it was a most amusing delivery.

Then it finished with the death of Dylan Thomas, at the age of 39 (it seems he had predicted his own death “before the age of 40” - hm, think ‘black’). I really do believe that people can subconsciously sign their own death warrants - but that’s a discussion for another time. Anyway, this tribute from Huw Griffith, the equally famous and characterful Welsh actor...

“I once asked Dylan how would he like to act the part of the fool in King Lear. He laughed and his drooping cigarette wobbled as he answered: ‘You’d be casting too near to type, mun.’ Had he chosen he would have been a great actor. But no, he was a great bard, a great fool, and he has gone to bed at noon.”

What a wonderful line: and he has gone to bed at noon ... halfway through his day, his personal Three Score Years and Ten - plus Godly inflation, obviously.
     One of the more astonishing things about Dylan Thomas is that, even though he was well known and established when he died, and he had indeed done lots of radio work – a sonorous, Burtonesque voice helped, for sure – there is not a single moving frame of him.
     Perhaps it is waiting to be discovered, in an attic somewhere. Perhaps even in Laugharne.

The music played during the 1953 feature included Glow Worm by the Mills Brothers. Some great harmony, and some even greater lines...
              Glow, little glow worm, fly of fire,
              Glow like an incandescent wire;
              Glow for the female of the species,
              Turn on the AC and the DC;
              This night could use a little brightenin’,
              Light up, you little ol’ bug of lightnin’;
              When you gotta glow, you gotta glow,
              Glow, little glow worm, glow!
                                                                              ...and what about the line “When you gotta glow, you gotta glow”? How smiley. I’m sure Dylan Thomas would have approved. There’s a great live performance of the Mills Brothers urging that glow worm to do his thing, right here ... glow man, glow...
                                                                        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8myK93FqbYc

Monday, April 23
A cockeyed optimist

THERE is something oddly satisfying when yesterday’s smiles effortlessly morph into today’s. On Sunday I thoroughly enjoyed a thread of Daily Telegraph  letters about those fleeting bits of overheard conversations that often leave us amused – well, here are a couple more...

The eyes have it

SIR – Overheard at a table next to us in a restaurant, a man said to the woman next to him: “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, it’s the glasses that are no good.”
Nairn Lawson, Portbury, Somerset
Very apropos that – see my response to the next letter...

How’s that?

Sunday, April 22
Hear, hear

OVER the past week or so The Daily Telegraph  newspaper has published a thread of letters about those fleeting bits of overheard conversations that often leave us smiling – and occasionally wondering what the hell all that was about. Here are just a few of my favourite missives...

If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears ...
SIR – I overheard an elderly man say to his companion while travelling on a London bus: “You must be philosophical dear. Don’t think about it.”
Michael Stanford, London SE23

Listening in
SIR – As a Durham undergraduate in the early Sixties living opposite the east end of the Cathedral, I overheard one American tourist say to another, “Gee! What a cute little God box”.
Prebendary Philip Luff, Totnes, Devon

Prebendary! What an unusual name, I thought to myself. So I Googled it: a prebendary, I learn in my ignorance, is a post connected to an Anglican or Catholic cathedral or collegiate church and is a type of canon. Prebendaries have a role in the administration of a cathedral.
     I’m never sure how truthful these letters are – meaning, these overheard “conversations” could be the work of a vivid imagination in order to get a letter published – but I guess I have to believe the good Prebendary.

Hear no evil, see no evil
SIR – It was in the Fifties when, as I stood at some traffic lights, a Hillman California, a British car with the wrap-around rear window which later became commonplace, pulled up. A lady close to me said to another beside her: “I don’t like that; you can be overlooked!”
Stanley Eckersley, Pudsey, West Yorkshire

Jack and Jill...
SIR – I overheard a couple coming out of a shop. She said: “What’s Jill’s name?” And he said: “Jill who?”
Tony Wheatley, Chichester, West Sussex

Now I like the above. I can hear me saying something silly like that.

Unscripted lines
SIR – Overheard in a crowded doctor’s waiting room: “I’ve never seen it as busy as this. It was exactly the same last week.”
Geoff Price, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

Earwigs
SIR – Overheard at a recent funeral, man to woman relative: “What did he die of?” Reply: “Oh, nothing very serious.”
Michael Stoneham, East Preston, West Sussex

Saturday, April 21
Spot the difference

SPOTTED this teaser on the BT/Yahoo! homepage...

                                                 CAN YOU GUESS WHO’S PLAYING HITCHCOCK?
One of Hollywood’s greatest actors is barely recognisable in his role as the legendary Alfred Hitchcock: get ready to do a double take...
                      
                                                                                                                         ...as the first image of Welshman Anthony Hopkins as iconic director Alfred Hitchcock is revealed ... and it is truly an uncanny likeness.
     Best known for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 thriller The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins is almost unrecognisable in the recently released image.

That really is quite remarkable. When I first saw the headline, the name Anthony Hopkins did indeed flash through my mind from somewhere – but when I looked at the picture ... I thought ... no, can’t be.
     It is not so much the likeness – you can pinpoint shortcomings if you so desire – but it’s the projection of the Hitchcock persona within that one shot. It is pretty amazing. However, my laugh of the day – which will probably only register with, and be fully appreciated by, British visitors to this ‘ere square mile of mine – goes to this memorable online comment from Roland:
             I thought Anthony Hopkins was Neil bloody KINNOCK ... I’m off to Specsavers!

Yes indeedy, the famous Welsh Windbag. A wonderfully funny-beyond observation, which unsurprisingly attracted loads and loads of “Recommends” on the Comment board.

Pssssssst...!
ON last night’s Have I Got News For You, hosted by comedienne Jo Brand - Jo can be rather funny when she decides not to swear merely to amuse all 15 year-old boys watching in their bedrooms - anyway, she quoted an anonymous source who had made the observation that “Andrew Marr looks like Martin Clunes with some of the air let out!”.
     A quote that made me, the audience and the teams laugh rather heartily. So today, I Googled away...

Andrew Marr, 50, a British journalist and political commentator. A bit of a serious cove, I suppose: a sparrow hawk and a roundabout, someone to navigate with care.
Martin Clunes, 50, an English actor and comedian. A bit of a jolly old soul, a pussycat and a lay-by, someone to stop for a quick chat and a laugh.
     Anyway, here we are...
                                           
                                                                                                                                          ...wonderful! You know how it is when you meet someone who has lost a lot of weight, their facial features morph ever so slightly. Magic. That both Clunes and Marr are exactly the same age adds a little whoosh to the puncture picture. Shame the source of the quote remains a mystery.

Red alert
“If David Cameron wants a great leap to popularity, he should agree to Scottish independence as soon as possible - then we can invade them.” Peter Sargeant of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in a letter to the Daily Mail. 

“A Caledonian Hitler.” David Starkey, 67, a British constitutional historian and a radio and television presenter, offers a rat-tat-tat opinion of Alex Salmond, 57, Scotland’s First Minister (who is obviously preparing for war).

I’m not sure I’d go as far as to label Salmond a Hitler – but I know what Starkey means. Salmond falls firmly into the polecat category. There is something very unsettling about his persona. I find myself wondering how safe the future of Scotland is in his hands...
                                          
                                                                                                    ...without doubt, there hides a polecat:

                                                       Austrian village F---ing to vote on name change

The Austrian village of F---ing is to vote on a name change in an attempt to escape the constant ridicule and attention the name attracts the picturesque hamlet.
     [Actually, the name rhymes with “booking”, which adds a bit of homeliness to the pronunciation. Back to the Telegraph...]
The 104 residents of the village are about to cast their votes on whether to alter the name. “People are now willing to discuss changes to the spelling of the name,” Franz Meindl, the village’s mayor, said in a television interview. “The only problem is, we need all of the F---ing residents to agree on whether they want to change it or not.”
     For centuries the tiny village in northern Austria lived life in happy obscurity, but everything changed when US troops, stationed in the area at the end of the Second World War, discovered it, and since then the village’s name has been a constant source of amusement for tourists and irritation for locals.
     At least 13 of the £250 road signs bearing the village’s name have been stolen, and the sight of semi-naked women posing for photographs beside signs has become a common sight. One local business woman, exasperated with people stealing her sign, has taken to adding another “g” in the hope it will deter thieves.
     A brisk market in postcards and Christmas cards making liberal use of the name have also managed to spread its fame.
In an attempt to curtail the fun generated at the village’s expense, some locals want to readopt its 16th-Century spelling and replace the “ck” with a single or double “g”.
     Experts say the town’s name is derived from Focko, a 6th Century Bavarian nobleman, and the modern spelling was adopted in the 18th Century.

So there you have it, a delightfully childish tale. I enjoyed all the asterisking bashfulness – fully understood though – but I decided to go down a different trail.
     Wikipedia says this of the place name: German pronunciation: [‘fʊkɪŋ], rhymes with "booking". So I found this letter, ű, with those perfect quotation marks on top (Latin Extended-A subset, apparently), which I have decreed, in my humble opinion, should be pronounced “oo” – as in “booking”!
     So keep that in mind as you read on – it’s pronounced “Fooking”, okay? - and suddenly, the place name sounds delightfully amusing. Well, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.

The above Telegraph  story drew some smiley Comment board responses, the first then from the aptly named Crosscop, which really did hit the mark: Surely the headline should read: “Austrian village to vote on Fűcking name change”

Given the global village nature of our world, Bronazo suggested that, in reality, “We all come from Fűcking”. Very witty.

And a popular suggestion, apart from the idea that they should be building lots of condominiums, was that the village should cash in with a sure-fire T-shirt winner:
                                                                    I  ♥  Fűcking

Fűcking Footnote: The villagers have voted to change the name to Fugging. But then came the news that there used to be a second village with the name Fűcking in Austria – and residents there had already bagged the name Fugging more than 100 years ago.
     Now you would have thought that they would have been aware of that crucial bit of information before voting took place. Whatever, back to the cursing board for the folk of Fűcking ...
 

Intriguingly, the broadcasting media has gone with the in-yer-face, aggressive pronunciation, rather than the gentler and much more amusingly proper one.
     On tonight’s Have I Got News For You there were a few bleeps as they discussed the story, yet if they’d gone with the proper way of saying it – well, it would have been even funnier, and not a bleep in sight.
     Which all goes to prove what a nasty little place to be stranded in is today’s broadcasting world. Ah well, c’est la vie...

PS: If you have already read yesterday’s smile - I’ve added a little something special (to my eye, anyway) at the very end...
 

Thursday, April 19
A brainy polecat or a playful pussycat?

“BRAINS are always attractive, especially in a context where almost nobody has any.” Clive James, 73, Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs.

I like that, very witty, as indeed you would expect from Clive James. However, James, like so many great writers, has always struck me as one of those individuals whose toes I really wouldn’t like to step on, whether accidentally or otherwise, on a dark and stormy night in the middle of nowhere in the back of beyond.
     In other words, he falls into the polecat/roundabout class i.e. best to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in (as President Lyndon B. Johnson so memorable said of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover).

Incidentally ... memoirist? Well, a person who pens a memoir, I would guess, but officially:  As a literary genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latin memoria, meaning “memory”, or a reminiscence), forms a subclass of autobiography – although the terms “memoir” and “autobiography” are almost interchangeable in modern parlance.

Indeed, and as Eric Morecombe often told Ernie Wise while inspecting his supposed wig: “You can’t see the join you know.”

Oh yes, and while on the subject of “pissing”, Lyndon B. Johnson also said this: “Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.”
     No wonder Gordon Brown always looked so bloody miserable.

Meet the familial
“One of my ancestors was a squirrel.” Sir Patrick Moore, 89, legendary British astronomer and television star (and delightful eccentric to boot), when asked if he ever threw anything away.

This set me thinking: which one of my ancestors left its mark on my DNA? A cat, I think. That’s a pussycat, mind, not a big cat: pouncing on a vole for lunch sounds more appealing than having to bring down a zebra with all the attendant risk to life and limb that would entail.
     And yes, stretched out in front of a roaring fire and purring away contentedly while watching the world shoot by as if strapped to a bullet train – and often chasing my own tail for no obvious reason rather than it being a fun thing to do – yep, all that stuff sounds very me, very Hubie.
     Oh yes, I’m also an independent old sod, so I’ll settle for this: “One of my ancestors was a cat.” Mind you, I don’t think all those little songbirds I’ve befriended over the past three years or so, and which you will find dotted about all over this web site, will be best amused by the twist in my tail.

“When I went to the White House, all I wanted to meet was the President’s cat.” Elisha Cuthbert, 29, Canadian film and television actress...
                                       
                                                                                        ...you can probably hear me purring from the other side of the planet.
 

Wednesday, April 18
Coming or going?

SIMON COWELL: WHY I’M A LOVE MACHINE shouted the Daily Express  front page headline much like a frustrated University Boat Race cox.
     Above the headline was a picture of Cowell and a lady called Dannii Minogue. I shared a hearty laugh with the newsagent at the doolallyness of modern celebrity – oh, and we definitely chuckled at where we both rated ourselves in the LOVE MACHINE LEAGUE. Personally, I have always finished out of the frame, often unseated at one of the early jumps.

Anyway, I arrive home from my walk, sit down to enjoy a mug of coffee (laced with a generous dollop of scotch and topped with some double cream – makes up for my hopeless and hapless sex life) and peruse the Western Mail.
     I arrive at my favourite THEY SAID WHAT? column – and by hook or by crook, this was the first in the schnook:

“There were a few bonks and then it petered out when I was in America.”
Simon Cowell, 52, describes his brief fling with Dannii Minogue, 40.

Wikipedia informs me that Ms Minogue is an Australian singer-songwriter, actress, television and radio personality, fashion designer and model. Where on earth does she find time to fit in a “few bonks” along her hurried rush through time? Indeed, does she know whether she’s coming or going?
     Anyway, good luck to her. Mind you, I did find myself wondering what precisely Simon Cowell gets out of making such silly things public. Purely an ego trip, I guess.

Time and emotion study
“All women should be able to drill, paint, wallpaper, sew and cook. I am a passionate believer in doing things yourself across the whole sphere.”
Kirstie Allsopp, 40, wife, mother, businesswoman, journalist and British TV presenter known for the Channel 4 property programmes: Location, Location, Location; Relocation, Relocation; Location Revisited; The Property Chain; Kirstie’s Homemade Home and Kirstie’s Handmade Britain.

Gosh, I’m out of breath just reading Kirstie’s CV. And I bet you anything that, like Simon Cowell, she’s a love machine. Mind you, all that business of being “a passionate believer in doing things yourself across the whole sphere” did set me wondering. I hope she did actually say “whole”.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

Tuesday, April 17
How strange the change from Major to Minor

“There is no better chat-up line than ‘Come up and see my statutory instruments’.”
Edwina Jones, 65, born Edwina Cohen and commonly known by her first married name, Edwina Currie, former Tory MP, reveals her bedroom secrets while subliminally planting in our minds the Major notch spotted on her bedpost overnight.
Shame Edwina missed out the “sometime” - as in: “Come up sometime and see my statutory instruments.”

Infamy, infamy
In 1988, the then health minister Edwina Currie, provoked outrage by saying most of Britain’s egg production was infected with the deadly salmonella bacteria. Egg sales went sunny-side-under. The claim was simply not true and she was forced to resign. No more going to work on an egg for Edwina.
     She effortlessly became a Spitting Image free-range hit...
                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                     ...something she accepted with good humour, as the picture here suggests. Incidentally, is she taking the oath on that Bible?

Infamy, infamy, Major Minor had it in for me
Currie’s Diarrhoeas – oops! – Currie’s Diaries (1987–92), published in 2002, caused a sensation, as they revealed a four-year affair with former Prime Minister John Major between 1984 and 1988, while both were married to other people. The affair started while she was a backbencher (nudge-nudge) and Major was the government whip (wink-wink) in Margaret Thatcher’s government.
     (Everything about the story invited us to make childish jokes – I plead guilty as charged; I mean, she is “commonly known by her first married name”, ho, ho, ho!)
     After Major’s swift promotion to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the relationship ended, but the two remained friends. Currie apparently ceased the affair when it became dangerous and impractical owing to the presence of bodyguards who had to be avoided.
     John Major duly admitted his four-year affair with Currie, and described it as the most shameful event of his life, but said his wife Norma had long known of the relationship and had forgiven him.
     He has since kept his rocket in his pocket. We presume. But he did go on to become known as the “grey man” of British politics, witness this famous Spitting Image puppet...
                                                                                          
What I vividly remember when the news broke of the Major-Currie affair, was the difficulty in picturing the two of them bonking the night away. After all, how can we forget the cartoon of Major with his underpants worn over his trousers following a seriously doolally Edwina informing a cringing public about John Major’s large blue underpants.
     Oh, and their shared baths. How delightfully embarrassing it all was...
                                                                                                                            
If I said you had a beautiful body...
Back with Edwina’s favoured chat-up line, I can only reintroduce my own favourite, paraphrased from the 1954 film, Beau Brummell...
                  “You strike me as a lady blessed with a wonderful talent for reducing the size of a man’s troubles.”

Down the years, before quality control caught up with me (a polite expression for growing older, or womenopause coming up fast on the rails), the line never failed to raise a smile – but I really never cashed in on the sales pitch because I have always been totally useless at closing the deal, whether it be personal or business.
     Still, I have grown to appreciate Dorothy L. Sayers’ maxim that a trouble shared is a trouble halved.

PS: I have some homework, having just spotted this quote in the Western Mail...
“If you can define what God is, I can tell you whether I believe in it.”
Michael Sheen, 43, Welsh stage and screen actor.

God, I enjoy a challenge – definition coming up on the rails, sometime soon!
 

Monday, April 16
The unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbelievable

WITH apologies to the ghost of Oscar Wilde: “One knows so well the popular idea of modern entertainment and sport. The British media galloping after a politician – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbelievable.”

“He looks like he got dressed in a hurry, possibly escaping over a garden fence.” AA Gill, columnist for The Sunday Times, accompanies the sartorially challenged Boris Johnson, Conservative and current Mayor of London Town, on the stump as the Mayoral election hears the bell to indicate the final lap.

“This is our very own Silvio Berlusconi,” Gill tells a very pretty, very Boris, dark-haired Latin girl that Boris has darted across the pavement to accost. “Oh, no, no, no!” Boris protests, “I’m not; really I’m not. You’re not to write that.” The very pretty, very Boris, dark-haired Latin girl doesn’t seem to be put off in the least. Boris trundles on.

Meanwhile, on the next page...
                                                   Silvio Berlusconi trial hears of women dressed as nuns stripping
Former Italian PM’s parties shocked me, says Imane Fadil, adding that she was later warned to keep quiet by a “mysterious” man

A model testifying at Silvio Berlusconi’s trial for paying an underage prostitute has given dramatic evidence of young women dressed as nuns and footballers at the former prime minister’s parties, and has claimed she was warned not to speak about what she had seen.
     Imane Fadil alleged in court that one of the women dressed as a nun was Nicole Minetti, a former TV showgirl now regional councillor for Silvio Berlusconi’s party.
     Moroccan Imane Fadil, 27...
                                                    
                                                                                                        ...told the court she watched as two young women donned black habits and crucifixes to perform a pole dance before stripping to their underwear. At another party, a Brazilian model wearing a mask of the footballer Ronaldinho and an AC Milan shirt, stripped to her G-string.
                                                                                                                                                              [Yes, yes – but did she score?]
Fadil is one of at least three women who have come forward to deny Berlusconi’s claims that the “bunga-bunga” parties at his mansion outside Milan in 2010 were more than just “elegant dinners”.
                                            [Honestly, it gives intercourse chit-chat - small talk between each course - a whole new meaning]
Shocked at what she saw at her first party, Fadil said Berlusconi took her into his office and handed her a watch, earrings and €2,000 (£1,650) in an envelope, stating: “Don’t be offended, but I know you women are always in need.”
                                                                                              [But of course: a friend in need is an accommodating friend indeed.]

Sunday, April 15
Lights, camera, action

THIS Mail Online  headline drew my eye...
                                                         Earth as you’ve never seen it before:
                           The best pictures of our planet taken from the orbiting Space Station

[Thinks: Over recent years I’ve seen plenty of wonderful pictures of our planet captured from the International Space Station (ISS) – so what’s new?]
     I click – and I see one mesmeric photograph of my part of the world. Firstly, I quote:

An astronaut on the ISS has designed a ‘tripod’ for taking spectacular night-time pictures of Earth - quite a technical feat when you’re on board an orbiting craft that moves at more than four miles a second.
     Andre Kuipers installed ‘Nightpod’ - a motorised camera that compensates for the hurtling speeds of the ISS, by tracking points on Earth’s surface. The results are some of the most spectacular pictures ever taken from space.

UK and Ireland by night, with the Aurora Borealis on the horizon, taken on the 28th March 2012

Talking of living in a rural area, this afternoon was such a stunningly beautiful affair under a cloudless blue sky, with a gentle breeze and the temperature tickling 70, I decided to go for a walk through the fields surrounding the cottage.
      It was surreal beyond. If I had taken a picture and posted it here you would have observed, oh, what a beautiful winter’s day down there in the Towy Valley.
      Summertime, I thought to myself, and the living is easy – yet all the trees were totally bare of leaves. As I said: it was bizarre beyond.

And of course, the conditions I described that day applied all over the UK and Ireland – which is clearly why Andre Kuipers up there in his beautiful ISS couldn’t resist the shot. I am convinced that I watched him taking that picture.
     Tonight, at 21.51, under a crystal-clear sky, I again watched the ISS pass overhead - the view lasted some five minutes - and I couldn’t stop myself thinking about Andre Kuipers and his ‘Nightpod’ camera clicking away.
     Here’s a link to the Daily Mail  article, which explains the camera ‘trick’ used to avoid blurred night-time shots. Oh, plus some more incredible photographs, including a stunning moonset, as well as that one of London I mentioned above.
     Below that, a link to a Daily Telegraph  Picture Gallery (some photographs duplicated). Enjoy, as they say...

                                                              http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2129386/Moonset.html

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/9202815/Andre-Kuipers-space-station-astronaut-sends-pictures-to-Earth-via-Twitter.html#?frame=2192333
 

Saturday, April 14
One for the road

THE other day I mentioned that, in my humble opinion, The Daily Telegraph  had overtaken The Times  in the entertainment value of the tail-gunner letters, those smiley missives that prop up the Letters pages.
     Well, The Times  has struck back. Here’s a run of agreeably entertaining letters...

Done Inn
Sir, Wherever I have been recently, in town or country, one of the commonest sights was yet another boarded-up pub. Sadly, we are not only losing the pubs themselves but also a wealth of interesting and amusing pub names.
     Somehow, The Folded Arms just isn’t quite the same.
CLIVE WHICHELOW, London SW19

Last Orders
Sir, Clive Whichelow makes a good point that not only are we losing pubs but also “a wealth of amusing pub names”.
     I know it’s not really funny but I could not help but be struck by the irony of a boarded-up ale house I passed recently outside Guildford named The Hope Inn.
     Unfortunately, there wasn’t much.
DR JOHN WALTERS, Wye, Kent

Sir, Clive Whichelow’s letter about the demise of British pubs has made me wonder about a pub I used to pass on the Heads of the Valleys road in South Wales in the 1960s.
     It was called The Highwayman and boasted an appropriate roadside sign, but hanging below this was another sign which read “No coaches”.
     How could it have survived?
COLIN MUNRO, Kingston St Mary, Somerset

Reading that last letter, I was overtaken by a stand-and-deliver moment: the “No coaches” sign does make sense; after all, you don’t want any old Tom, Dick Turpin or Harriett waiting in ambush outside the pub for some easy pickings.
     Otherwise it would be much like putting bird feeders in our gardens, which is an open invitation to our friendly neighbourhood sparrow hawks: Please, do call and enjoy our daily buffet of delectable tweets provided specially for your delectation.

Meanwhile, back with the Letters...

Sign of the times
Sir, Clive Whichelow bemoaned the boarded-up public houses he has seen and the loss of interesting and amusing pub names.
     In Bury we have also lost several pubs, but they are not all boarded up. There are two about a couple of miles apart on the same stretch of road that have been tastefully renovated with new signs prominently displayed. They are both undertakers.
     A new slant on “last orders”?
GRAHAM HOWARTH, Bury, Lancs

Sir, We were losing excellent pub titles long before the current depression in the pub industry, I recall some decades ago that the pleasing pub name The Sea Around Us, near Loughborough, and just off the M1, was changed to The Junction 23
DR P. W. L. CLOUGH, Rough Common, Kent

Pub crawl
Sir, I still have a notebook of pub names collected by me in the 1930s on travels around the South of England in a motorbike and sidecar. It consists of 641 different names beginning with “The Ace of Spades” and finishing with “The Zulu”.
ERIC BETTS, Colwyn Bay, Conwy

That last one set me thinking. My own local, The Crazy Horsepower Saloon, should feature in any A to Z of pub names. Now you will not find it at the end of any TomTom, or indeed nestling beneath some distant smoke signals, for it is an amalgamation of the pubs and characters I have known along my walk through “Time, Gentlemen, Please!”.
     It used to be simply The Crazy Horse, but we regulars worryingly morphed from mules and stallions into petrolheads. Oh, and I’ve had to add an Asterisk Bar. A **** of the times!
     My current favourite characters, as you may well have observed, are Ivor the Engine and his beloved Glad Eyes (Gwladys to her family).
     As I say, you are always welcome to call: knock three times – four times for a Welshman (or woman) – and ask for either The Preacher Man or Sergeant Sheriff.
     True, nobody will know your name, but all the same we’ll all be glad you came.

Incidentally, did you notice that two of the above letters were signed by Doctors? Hm.

Wednesday, April 11
Beatling about in the archives

HERE’S a little something I spotted in a Telegraph  Picture Gallery, a celebration of the work of photographer Philip Townsend (born 1940). Let’s join up a few dots...

First finding success photographing young debutantes for Tatler  magazine, Philip Townsend spent the 1960s taking pictures of the decade’s most popular stars and notorious personalities.
     Some of the most striking images from those years are now featured in the exhibition Sorry You Missed the Sixties at the Playboy Club in Mayfair in London, on until April 30. Here Townsend recalls the stories behind some of his most memorable encounters.

And here indeed is the lead image, the one that really made me smile...

Monday, April 9
Error on page

BEFORE settling down in front of the box to watch an afternoon of European rugby, I first caught the opening 40 minutes or so of that great biopic from Sixties cinema, Lawrence of Arabia.
     It is not so much David Lean’s tale of TE Lawrence brought so memorably to life by a particularly charismatic Peter O'Toole – the real Lawrence here, in tandem with O'Toole’s astonishing screen portrayal...

                                                           

No, neither is it the film’s dramatic and all-embracing score, nor the majestic shots of desert scenery, which look good even on my ‘big bum’ TV set that still sits comfortably in the corner of the room – incidentally, have you noticed how the improvement in technical quality of the modern television picture is inversely proportional to the dumbing down of what we actually watch on the screen?
     Be all that as it may, what made me watch before switching to the rugby is the scene some 30 minutes into the film: Lawrence and Tafas, his Bedouin guide, are taking water at their very own Crazy Camel Saloon Bar, a well in the desert – when suddenly, on the distant horizon, something grabs their attention.
     Just a speck of dust initially... Is it a bird? Is it a dust storm? Is it a mirage? Slowly, ever so slowly – and quite dramatically – a traveller riding a camel becomes discernable through the wavy heat thermals.
     O'Toole’s body language throughout this scene is spellbinding. The approaching rider, dressed all in black, as if heading to a funeral, grows ever more imposing as he approaches the well across the vast sand plain – when suddenly a shot rings out and Tafas falls dead before he can fire his own gun at the stranger.
    Omar Sharif’s entrance (as Sherif Ali) onto the international stage stands as one of the grandest and most spellbinding in all of filmdom. He arrives at the well, elegantly dismounts the camel and immediately inspects the prone Tafas.

                                                                                                     My name is for my friends

      http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/296447/Lawrence-of-Arabia-Movie-Clip-My-Name-Is-For-My-Friends.html
 

Saturday, April 7
Drip ... drip ... drip ...

A WEEK or so back I shared with you some smiley newspaper letters apropos the drought-hit areas of England. Let’s recall the one from Anna Anderson of Westcliff on Sea, who told the tale of staying at a Scottish guest house in the Seventies, and looking forward to a nice hot soak. She had already disrobed when she noticed this sign: “Bath 25p – ask for tap”.

This water shortage story will run and run, if you’ll pardon the pun. Especially so given these confused weather patterns we are increasingly experiencing. Anyway, today this surfaced, again in The Daily Telegraph...

Water, water, everywhere
SIR – Advertising to attract visitors to the Isle of Man focuses on scenery, beaches, etc. Maybe this year our slogan should be: “Come to the Isle of Man and have a bath.”
Bob Shacklock, Onchan, Isle of Man

The above sales pitch took me back to my schooldays, and I recall our geography master, Mr Spiller, asking the form’s Tommy Tucker (only the name has been changed to protect the guilty): “Where is the Isle of Man?”
     A bit of a pause: “Um, nowhere near the Virgin Islands, Sir.”

Off at a tangent then ... I also liked this:

Capital crimes

SIR – Our bank has just introduced a “summary execution policy” for its customers. It seems rather a harsh punishment for displeasing one’s bank.
James Service, Noss Mayo, Devon

What an extraordinary expression for an organisation to use. Not so much blue sky thinking as foggy day in London Town confusion. Musing on the expression, I wasn’t sure I knew precisely what “summary execution” meant.
     This, compliments of Wikipedia:

A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is accused of a crime and then immediately killed without benefit of a full and fair trial. This includes show trials, but is usually understood to mean capture, accusation and execution all conducted at the same time.
     Summary executions have been practiced by police, military and paramilitary organizations, and are frequently associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency and any other situation which involves a breakdown of the normal procedures for handling accused prisoners (either civilian or military).

That makes it an even more bizarre thing for a bank to write. No wonder it was our banking and financial systems that brought the world to its knees. Time to turn the guns on our summary executioners, methinks.

Oh yes, back with that last letter writer: what a splendid name for a place, Noss Mayo. It is well worth a quick Wikipedia visit – a short entry, but very intriguing.

In tune with the weather

Over recent days I’ve written about the doolallyness of the British weather – again mentioned in passing, just above – so here’s the best description thus far of this phenomenon, as penned by a Nigel Farndale (is he the head of UKIP, the UK Independence Party?) – anyway...
 
The past few years have seen unseasonable heat in April followed by flooding in August. Our weather has become like “Grieg’s Piano Concerto, by Grieg” – as played by Eric Morecambe for André Previn. It has all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

Perfectly brilliant. (Come to think of it, the boss of UKIP is Nigel Farage. Glad I cleared that one up before going to bed.)
 

Friday, April 6
Simple pleasures of life

I HAVE probably mentioned in a previous dispatch that my mother was charmed and seduced by a lark – as opposed to an owl. Meaning, my default setting is to be in bed before ten of an evening – then later I get up and go home, ho, ho, ho!
     No, I tend to be in bed before ten, and then I surface just before five of a morning (I always awaken in time to hear that little click the alarm clock makes just before it goes off - strange but true).
     Anyway, that’s how my sleep habits operate when at home, even on the two days of the year I officially put my feet up, St David’s Day (March the 1st) and Christmas Day (December the – well, you know the rest).
     Yesterday I spoke with affection apropos the doolallyness of the British climate, how every day is a bit of an adventure because we have no idea what lies in ambush (70 degrees and clear blue sky yesterday, 7 inches of snow and grey skies tomorrow, sort of thing: “No, Sir, when a man is tired of the British weather, he is tired of life.”).
     Well now, this morning, at five, I enter the kitchen, and through the window, in the south-western sky, I see a glorious full moon, boasting an eye-catching pinky-orangey tint, hanging there in a clear sky. I put a coat on and go outside – it is cold and frosty – and I take in the glorious sight ... I guess it will set behind the nearby rolling hillsides, oh, in about 30 minutes, and it will be a sight always well worth a few stand and stare moments.
     I have some breakfast – just a few slices of toast and honey – and at half-five I dress warmly to go outside. The moon is now startlingly orange, and as it nears the horizon, an optical illusion makes it balloon in size. At 05: 36 it begins to set...
     At 05:37 something quite magical happens. Out of the south-western sky comes the International Space Station ... although low in the sky – at an elevation of just 16 degrees I discover later – it is perfectly clear and bright in the cloudless sky, and I am able to follow its path eastwards.
     And then, some four minutes later, as if by magic, at the precise same moment, the moon disappears and the space station fades from view.
     You really couldn’t make it up.

At half-six I set off on my morning walk. After climbing the couple of fields directly behind the cottage, I reach the highest local point, and I am now facing east, the Black Mountain and the Carmarthenshire Vans stretching out in front of me – and there, precisely an hour after the moon set, a blood-red sun was rising.
 

All sorts of things make me smile, so who would have thought that watching moonset and sunrise – throw in a space station as a bonus – could generate such a glow of satisfaction in the viewer...

Just to add to the glory of the morning, about an hour later, I am deep in the heart of the Towy Valley; it is perfectly still and very cold – to go from 70 degrees to minus-four in just a few days takes the body a bit of adjusting to – and then I hear it, one of my favourite country sounds. Whoosh ... whoosh ... whoosh ...
     I scan the sky ... and there they are: a flight of swans heading up the valley ... the formidable sound their wings generate as they power their significant body weight through the air is quite awesome. Especially so on such a quiet, still morning.
     I capture a couple of pictures of the group as they approach ... and then I just watch them pass overhead and continue their journey up the valley...
                                              
                                                                                                                                                                      Whenever I catch a science programme which depicts ‘flying dinosaurs’, especially so the size of some of them – and acknowledging the sound a swan makes in flight – then those creatures must have sounded like helicopters when approaching.
     A smile direct from the imagination.

PS: Yesterday’s smile began with a quote compliments of the Clown Prince of Doolally, Russell Brand. Today, featured in the quotes of the day, was this gem:

“Fame is, I think, just a disgusting by-product of what I do. It’s quite a delicate creature – it’s a wild animal of sorts. It can love you, and then it can attack you.”
Katy Perry, singer and ex-wife of the Clown Prince of Doolally, Russell Brand.

Now I would have thought, taking this and the quote just below, in tandem, that they were a perfect match. What is more, proof, if proof were needed, that celebrity does indeed drive our celebrities bonkers.
 

Thursday, April 5
Under the weather
“I DON’T have to let anything go. I don’t hold on to anything negative. It’s the same as zero-ness. It’s not about letting it go. You can’t let go of something you don’t hold, you know. It’s meaningless.”
An enigmatic Russell Brand discusses the weather – no he doesn’t: he is actually discussing his failed marriage to Katy Perry.

But Russell could have been talking about the weather. Well, he could have been talking about anything under the sun.
     I have frequently indulged Russell Brand’s doolallyness – a potential Patron Saint of Doolallyness? – but of late he appears to be trying to convince us that he is well into his descent into madness, which is all rather sad, not least for the man himself.

From bikini to bobsleigh
“WHEN two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.” Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

Johnson could well have said “When two Brits meet”, for we are as a nation obsessed with the weather, probably because the whole shooting match is so unreliable and unpredictable.
     Johnson could also have said: “No, Sir, when a man is tired of the British weather, he is tired of life.” As opposed to: “No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”

Just a week ago I wrote about the unseasonably warm, summer-like weather we were enjoying. I headed my piece:

Picture perfect
I quote: Talking of living in a rural area, this afternoon was such a stunningly beautiful affair under a cloudless blue sky, with a gentle breeze and the temperature tickling 70, I decided to go for a walk through the fields surrounding the cottage.
      It was surreal beyond. If I had taken a picture and posted it here you would have observed, oh, what a beautiful winter’s day down there in the Towy Valley.
      Summertime, I thought to myself, and the living is easy – yet all the trees were totally bare of leaves. As I said: it was bizarre beyond.
      Yes of course, up close the hedges are just starting to burst into leaf, as indeed are some of the trees – but, from a distance, you just couldn’t tell. They appeared bare, as in winter.
      It was a most extraordinary day. And likely to be repeated tomorrow ... before temperatures return to normal – indeed, with the threat of snow in some parts as we head towards Easter.
      I never grow bored of the British weather. Which is why I probably never get bored of life.

Clearly, Samuel Johnson’s words were subliminally planted in my thoughts. And of course, over the past day or so, the cold and the snow returned with a bit of a spring in its step, although my particular square mile escaped with just a few spits and spots of rain. But it has been all very cold.
     Then today, NASA released an amazing brace of photographs, the two images separated by just a week...
 

Tuesday, April 3
Nice set of wheels you got there

“I CALL my sports car my Male Menopausal Machine.” Dr David Bainbridge, 43, science writer, reproductive biologist and veterinary anatomist at the University of Cambridge, currently studying human middle age, in particular if the mid-life crisis in the male actually exists i.e. men running after inappropriately young girls while driving inappropriately powerful sports cars – heard on the wireless quoting his own mid-life soft-top moment.
     He added: “I heard the other day of someone who’d bought a flashy new Audi sports machine and he called it his Concubine Harvester.” Ho, ho, ho! Perfect cornering, no understeer, no oversteer.

Mind you, I am always amused when I hear of men suffering the Male Menopause. Look, if women suffer the menopause, then men, surely, suffer the womenopause?
     Just today, with the heatwave having disappeared and snow promised overnight, I suddenly realised that I too had hit the womenopause when I passed a pretty girl in a very short skirt and thought: Gosh, she must be cold in that.
     (With apologies to Dewi the Butcher of KO Corral territory, Dodgy City – who had it mentioned in dispatches on a local wireless programme.)

All this reminds me of a letter I spotted in The Sunday Times  In Gear motoring section:

Latin lover
I love my new BMW 520d, especially its professional multimedia system. It is so clever, but maybe too clever – or possibly even a Latin scholar.
     It was reading out loud an email to me and it said: “Attached is my one hundred and five.” Intrigued, I looked at the screen to see: “Attached is my CV.” Brilliant!
Colin Allen, Barnet, London
That’s very smiley, but I did find my natural-born cynical self thinking: Believe nothing you hear and only half what you read.

Finally, and continuing in the motoring mood...

Lemming pie
Last Wednesday, when the fuel crisis panic kicked in, I wrote of my own experience that day. Here’s just a taste:

Whenever the car’s fuel gauge hits the halfway spot, I fill up. It is not so much because I live in a rural area and prefer to keep the fuel tank topped up (just in case), but rather I find it less painful to fork out £30-50 a time to top up rather than £60-100 to fill up ...
     Today, the petrol tank was not quite half empty – normally I would say “just over half full”, but these are not normal times - so I topped up anyway ...
     Yes, I’m as doolally as the rest of ‘em, a doomed conformist, straight over the cliff in hot pursuit of the lead lemming.

Well blow me, in today’s Daily Telegraph, this appeared:

Bottom’s up
SIR – Last week I thought that the petrol tank in my car was half full. Now, I realise to my horror that it is actually half empty.
Bob Bruford, Horsham, West Sussex
Great minds think alike, obviously! Obviously.

And finally, finally...
As is my wont, I Googled today’s lead headline – and up popped this:

Nice set of wheels you got there-
Is the use of meronym and synecdoche the same thing? If not, please illustrate. I am confused.
Posted by whimsicalnymph to Writing & Language

Now meronym and synecdoche are words you are unlikely to hear in the Bible or in the Asterisk Bar down at the Crazy Horsepower Saloon. Intrigued, I perused the dozen replies. I’ve picked out a couple:

So your title [“nice set of wheels you got there”] could be either a synecdoche (you bought a new car), or a meronym (you bought a new set of wheels for your car). Synecdoche is figurative; meronym is literal.
Posted by weapons-grade pandemonium  

A meronym is simply a part of a whole. A finger is part of a hand, a sailor is part of a group of men and women on a ship, the White House is part of the architectural layout of Washington, D.C.
   Synecdoche is where the part stands in  for the whole. If I say “All hands on deck”, it refers to hands, yes, but the “hands” mean the crew. If you hear a reporter on television saying: “The White House said today that they are not convening 'Death Panels'”, it doesn't mean that the building itself said anything, being an inanimate object; rather, the Executive Branch / The President is being referred to.
Posted by exlotuseater

Yes, where do those posters get their extraordinary names? I rather liked the user name KlingonOffTheStarboardBow spotted on a recent Telegraph  comment board, who wrote at length about the shortcomings of the EU – it was rather good and well recommended by visitors to the site, but it needed a sub-editor to ruthlessly trim it back.
     Klingons, especially when spotted off the starboard bow, would use very few words to make their forceful points of view.

An interesting observation – although being called “terribly British” made me smile; anyway, with Chatterley and Ulysses you make a conscious decision to enter the imaginary worlds of both D H Lawrence and James Joyce. Just like the Asterisk Bar at the Crazy Horsepower Saloon, really: I go there out of choice.
     The BBC, however, is invited into our homes on the understanding that it behaves properly unless it gives due warning.
Sadly though, it seems the BBC is now run by the luvvies who use obscenity as a tool for daily communication – which is precisely why it has become such a foul-mouthed broadcaster.
     All part of its dumbing down strategy. Probably.
 

 Previously: Smile of the Day 2010