One of the good things about having saucepans with metal handles is that you can reheat food in them simply by placing them in your Aga oven, rather than having to faff around stirring them on the hotplate.
One of the bad things about having saucepans with metal handles is that, when you take them out of your Aga oven, they look exactly the same as if you had faffed around with them on the hotplate, so you think nothing of picking them up by the handle.
That’s three times this week.
BBC 2 Listings: Winter Olympics: Closing Ceremony
BBC: Scots can upset England – Nicol
Former captain Andy Nicol believes Scotland have their best opportunity to beat England since he led the Scots to victory at Murrayfield in 2000.
“It is the first time for a while that Scotland have a reasonable chance of an upset,” he told BBC Sport.
Let’s hope not:
Test message to Stense this morning:
Stense, I propose a bet: me (England) v you (Scotland) in rugby Saturday. Loser buys £5 joint lottery ticket when she’s not too busy. Do we have a bet? Ri xx
Stense’s reply:
It’s a deal!
The words candy and baby spring to mind.
I have absolutely no honour.
Postscript (25-Feb-2006): Oh shut up! All I can say is that it’s a bloody good job I didn’t proposition Stense with my original idea for a wager, otherwise you would now be looking at frankly saucy photographs of yours truly. And I wouldn’t wish that ordeal on the smuggest of jammy Scots.
BBC: Holocaust denier Irving is jailed
British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison.
No he hasn’t. It never happened.
Meet my (Great) Uncle Fred.
Uncle Fred was born 100 years ago today. He had a birthday card from my mate the Queen to prove it. He’s an amazing old man.
Fred has lived his entire life in the town I grew up in: Bromborough on the Wirral. Only it wasn’t really that much of a town when Fred was born: he was brought up in a house with a mud floor, which apparently wasn’t all that unusual.
Fred once told me about a young lad who went to the local grammar school many years ago. He was a bit of a trouble-maker, having a reputation for making people fall off their bicycles by shoving sticks through their spokes. The young lad’s name was Harold Wilson. They always knew he’d turn into a bad ‘un.
Fred also told me how he and a friend used to go fishing by placing calcium carbide from their carbide bicycle lamps into pop bottles. They would weigh the bottles down then throw them (uncorked) into local ponds. This would cause a small explosion which would stun the fish, which would then float to the surface.
During the Second World War, Fred was in the Home Guard. He spent many a night on guard duty in a bunker next to the first green at Bromborough Golf Course. It was from here that, one night, he saw German bombers flying over to bomb Liverpool.
Throughout his working life, Fred was a plumber. This gave him incredibly strong hands. When I was a kid, he would offer me his hand and let me try to crush it—which I never could, of course—then he would give me a gentle squeeze back, and I would recoil in agony.
We shook hands again today, and Fred gave my hand another gentle squeeze. It still hurt. I told him that I hoped I would make it to 100 one day. “It’s not the years that are important; it’s what you do with them,” replied Fred.
Wise man.
BBC: Driver Derek stays loyal to Skoda
Motorist Derek Wright has a wry chuckle whenever he hears people making jokes about Skodas – he has owned 19 of the cars over the past 40 years.
Mr Wright, 76, from Woodhead, Derbyshire, said he went for a vehicle that was reliable and cheap to run.
Yes, indeed, they’re so reliable that Derek only needs to replace them once every two years.
They’ve replaced one of the printers at work with what appears to be a machine for dispensing Guinness. I haven’t been able to figure out how it works yet, but I’ll keep you posted.
BBC: Smoking ban in all pubs and clubs
MPs have voted by a huge margin to ban smoking from all pubs and private members’ clubs in England.
Next step: the alcohol ban.
Have you seen the new-look George Clooney? Full beard; slight (but distinguished) greying about the temples; handsome, rakish grin.
Remind you of anyone in particular?
George Clooney’s rôle model. I can live with that.
Has anyone apart from Hitchin spotted something of a theme developing here over the last few days?
OK, I know for a fact that a number of my colleagues read this website—which is fine, chaps, provided you don’t ever tell me you’ve been doing it. This one’s for you. The rest of you, please talk amongst yourselves for a while…
It is possible that you might have heard certain rumours about me circulating at work today. For the record, yes, I was indeed spotted entering an expensive hotel in Chester with a very attractive young woman last Saturday afternoon. And, yes, when I realised that I had been spotted, I did indeed say, “Look, you haven’t seen me, right!”. But it was a joke for Pete’s sake!
My companion wasn’t, as some of you might have heard, probably some high-class call-girl; she was, in fact, my dear friend Stense, and it was all totally above board: we were going for tea and scones, I tell you.
(But whatever you do, don’t tell Jen!)
BBC: Trainers bonanza from cargo wreck
Thousands of sports shoes have been washed up on a Dutch island after a ship lost some of its containers in heavy weather.
Rumour has it they loaded the ship to above the Plimsoll line.
BBC Radio 4 recently announced that it will soon be dropping the so-called UK Theme—a truly bizarre medley of traditional tunes including Danny Boy, What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?, Scotland the Brave and Rule Britannia—which has been played before the start of programmes for the last 33 years.
Will they never learn? Don’t they know that it simply isn’t possible to make the slightest change to the Radio 4 schedule without facing a barrage of criticism from sad, old gimmers who think it’s the end of civilisation as they know it? I’m not kidding, I swear some twisted no-wit would complain even if they axed the god-awful You and Yawns.
Oh, yes, and while I’m on the subject, what the hell is What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor? on about? Who the hell decided that the phrase early in the morning should be pronounced earl-aye in the morning? It’s not as if they’ve had to pronounce it stupidly to make it rhyme with something. Are we seriously expected to believe that sailors say earl-aye? I don’t remember my peg-legged (I kid you not), merchant-seaman great-grandfather talking that way. Mind you, he did die before I was old enough to understand whatever the hell it was he was saying.
Oh look, someone’s started a campaign!
Honestly, the things I do for my mates! Stense dragged me to see a whole bunch of naked men on a beach yesterday.
This bird flu thing: I can’t help feeling they’ll start taking it a lot more seriously if it ever jumps the species gap into blokes.
Yesterday, while rooting through the kitchen for something to eat during an attack of the munchies, I came across an unexpected treat: a scotch whisky cake which Stense presented me with last Christmas. I had completely forgotten about it.
Although it was past its consume by date, I reckoned it would still be all right to eat: it was made from dried fruit and malt whisky, for Pete’s sake—how could it possibly have gone off?
Stense, it was fantastic, thanks. Mind you, what else should I have expected? The clue was in the name:
whisky / cake
Jen and I were watching the film Sleepy Hollow last night, when I realised something truly amazing that is most easily conveyed by means of a simple Venn diagram:
Kind of makes you think. Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms.
À propos of nothing in particular, I have been doing some research on this internet thing, and am reliably informed that the French phrase for the wooden spoon is la cuillère en bois.
I replaced a headlamp bulb in Jen‘s car yesterday. It took me over an hour, involving as it did the removal of five screws, some cowling, the car’s radiator grill, and the entire headlamp.
And, yes, before you ask, I did indeed check the car’s manual, and that is how you are supposed to do it.
Call me old-fashioned, but didn’t it used to be a lot simpler in the old days?
BBC: England 47-13 Wales
England’s pack produced a powerful display as they began their Six Nations campaign with victory against reigning Grand Slam champions Wales.
They’re tough, skillful, intelligent, they play by the rules, they are respectful to the referees, when they appear to be injured they really are injured, they know the lyrics to the National Anthem, they don’t marry Spice Girls, there isn’t a prima donna or designer haircut amongst them, and they seem to have acquired the habit of bloody well winning. What better role models could we hope to find for our English youth?
And it’s so much more exciting than bloody cricket.