Mum’s dog, Ellie, in characteristic sleep mode.
A great dog, but far too lazy to chase cats, unfortunately.
See also: Watch-dog
Ellie Carter (1995-2006)
Reply
Monthly Archives: May 2006
Yorkshire cricket
Hebden Bridge Times: Albert’s ‘Ten-For’ Were Club-Mates
… Old Town [Cricket Club], playing in the second division of the Hebden Bridge League, were the visitors when Birchcliffe played their first match at Nell Carr on Saturday, April 11 1896.
“It was altogether too cold for the game, and at that altitude the breeze was something shocking… under the circumstances, the match hardly lends itself to criticism,” commented the Hebden Bridge Times.
Yes, that’s the famous Victorian Yorkshire cricketing venue of Nell Carr that they’re writing about. Nell Carr was a hill-farm at the time. Today, it’s a rather lovely (although, unfortunately, fieldless) residential house. A very fine Yorkshire lass lives there these days, with some fat, bearded joker—an incomedun from out Liverpool way.
The breeze up there is still something shocking most days.
Comeuppance/Falldownance
BBC: Tree fall man had been egg thief
A 63-year-old man who fell to his death after climbing a 40ft tree to examine a bird’s nest was a convicted egg thief, it has emerged.
Colin Watson from Selby had at one time been one of the most notorious thieves of rare bird eggs in the country, the RSPB said.
I think my heart might be bleeding.
When I’m 41
I went for one of my frequent strolls around the Albert Dock in Liverpool on Tuesday. The shops there have gone a bit more up-market recently, but there is still plenty of tourist-friendly tat on display. This time, a miniature, fake-bronze bust of John Lennon caught my eye. On the plinth underneath was a short, tasteful inscription:
JOHN LENNON
1940–1980
It finally hit home: Jesus Christ! I am older than John Lennon!
No, it’s worse than that: next year, I overtake Elvis.
See also: King all shook up
Confused
Jen and I have been catching up on a major backlog of episodes from the latest series of 24, and we’re very confused:
[Spoiler Alert]
Sam Gamgee had his key-pass stolen, and didn’t report it, right? The terrorists needed the key-pass to gain access to CTU to release the nerve gas, right? This was because of the very tight security at CTU, right? No key-pass, no entry.
So how did Sam Gamgee manage to get back into CTU after being mugged, when he no longer had a key-pass? Answer us that!
And, come to think of it, how did the terrorists know that Sam Gamgee was going to be in CTU in the first place, when he was only sent in from Division a couple of hours ago?
And, come to think of it some more, how did the terrorists know that they would need access to CTU at all, when their original plan was to escape the country with the nerve gas? Are you telling us they managed to make contact and broker a deal with Sam Gamgee’s drug-addict sister’s boyfriend in the space of a couple of hours? Come off it!
And why does everyone keep referring to Sam Gamgee as Lynn? Lynn is a girl’s name!
This one has conspiracy written all over it.
Goodness gracious, small balls of fire
Some indistinguishable icons yesterday.
I must be getting old. Either that, or my eyes are going. I keep launching the wrong programs from my Windows Start menu. I must have done it a dozen times in the last couple of days. It’s starting to get really annoying.
The thing is, to an ageing codger like me, all the desktop icons these days are starting to look remarkably similar. They all seem to be round, with wavy lines or flames shooting out of them. Very much like the old Fireball club pendant/logo from Bullet comic in the 1970s, in fact (don’t ask).
Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t the whole point of icons supposed to be to help you distinguish one program from another?
Well, then!
Telling porkies
Yahoo News: ‘Koranic’ tuna inspires, awes Kenyan Muslims
A tuna fish caught in the Indian Ocean this week has excited Kenyan Muslims who are flocking here by the hundreds to see a Koranic verse apparently embedded in its scales…
Arabic scholars examined the fish and determined the writing was a Koranic verse meaning “God is the greatest of all providers,” said Hassan Mohamed Hassan, an education officer with the National Museums of Kenya in Mombasa.
Co-incidentally, I found some mysterious writing on a rasher of bacon this morning. It had begun to turn green (my standard indicator for determining whether the stuff is inedible). I was about to chuck it in the bin, when I noticed what appeared to be some tiny dayglo-green lettering in the rind. On careful examination, I discerned the letters to read:
SHANG A LANG
Why almighty God, in His infinite wisdom, would choose the title of a classic 1974 Bay City Rollers album as his porcine message to mankind, I have absolutely no idea.
The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
No, I asked for a Number 2, not a U2!
Is it just me, or does this man’s silly haircut look remarkably like The Edge from out of U2?
Silly haircut
The Edge
I suppose that’s what they mean by cutting edge.
Emmelle
I’ve just finished reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Stense bought it for me the other week. Thanks, mate, you were right: it is very funny.
The title of the book is taken from Sedaris’s early attempts to learn French. There is an amusing passage in which Sedaris and his fellow students try to explain the concept of Easter to a Moslem in French. It reminded me of Irish Mick‘s fifteenth (I think) birthday party in (if memory serves) 1980. Carolyn and I were invited, as was Carolyn’s friend, Sandra, who brought along her very attractive, French penfriend, Emmelle.
Irish Mick and Carolyn and I were all studying for our French ‘O’ levels at the time, but this was the first time we had met a real-live French person. It was pretty embarrassing. Mind you, Emmelle was pretty embarrassed too: “Would you like a drink, Emmelle?” we would ask (en Anglais). “Ah don’t maand,” replied Emmelle, shyly. “How about some food?” “Ah don’t maand.” “Would you like to sit outside?” “Ah don’t maand.” Ah don’t maand seemed to be Emmelle’s stock response to everything we asked, which opened up tantalising possibilities to the hormone-drenched lads present.
After a while, I decided that the embarrassed silence was getting ridiculous, so I decided to try to engage Emmelle in a conversation:
“So, then, Emmelle, I’ve not heard that name before. Is it the French equivalent of Emily?”
“Par-don?”
“Is Emmelle the French for Emily?”
“No, no! My name it is Marie-Louise!”
“Sandra said is was Emmelle!
“Sandra, she calls me M-L. It is short for Marie-Louise!”
“Oh, right…”
[More embarrassed silence. Come on, Richard, you idiot, try to think of something intelligent to say:]
“…So do you French really eat snails, then?”
“Snells?”
“Snails… Erm… Escargots!“
“Ah, oui! We do eat the snails sometimes!”
“How about slugs?”
“Slergs? What is slergs?”
“Erm… Molluscs… Erm… Escargots sans maisons!“
“[Laughs] Non, we do not eat ze slergs.”
It could have been the start of a beautiful relationship.
Cl(apt)one
I kept bumping into Eric Clapton in Liverpool this week. Four times, I saw him: he was just in front of me in the sandwiches queue at Marks & Spencer on Monday; he stepped out of a barber’s as I walked past on Wednesday; he was in Waterstone’s this lunchtime; and, half an hour later, we nodded at each other en passant in the stairwell at work.
Eric Patrick Clapton certainly gets around.
Either that, or there are at least four of him.
Knock-knock!
I phoned Carolyn on Tuesday evening. She was driving her kids in the car at the time, so we spoke on her hands-free:
Me: Knock-knock!
Carolyn & Kids: Who’s there?
Me: One-Tup.
Carolyn & Kids: One-Tup who?
Me: Well you’d better go to the toilet, then.
Kids: [Laugh their heads off.]
Carolyn: I don’t get it.
See also: Quoting Peter Kaye…
Play
I’m thinking of writing a play about two French blokes, hanging around together, hoping they will soon be joined by a sexy movie star.
I’m going to call it Waiting for Bardot.
Too late!
BBC: Blair backs nuclear power plans
Prime Minister Tony Blair has given his strongest signal yet that he backs the building of a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK.
Blair needed to do this during his first term in office, not during his twilight months. No doubt whichever spineless politician replaces him will soon start back-pedalling, and will faff around for the next ten years, avoiding the only realistic solution to the country’s energy needs.
Good bloke
You might have noticed there have been fewer Gruts updates this last week. The following extract from an email to Stense this evening offers some explanation:
Thanks for asking about my toothache. Bad news, I’m afraid: the dentist said the offending tooth had to come out straight away. It was a long and difficult process. It was particularly traumatic for me when the dentist trapped my beard in his pliers. And he had to cut my gum to get at the root. And he stitched up my gum afterwards. And he prescribed me some elephant tranquilisers for the pain and some antibiotics to prevent infection. And I left the surgery five minutes before the chemist’s was due to shut. So I had to park on a yellow line for the first time in my life. And, when I came out of the chemist’s, there was a traffic warden standing by my car, typing something into her little computer. And the traffic warden saw me crossing the road towards her, and she saw my face all swollen up (I still had a swab in my mouth), and she said, “What on earth happened to you?” And I said “Hy’f jfft hd u twfff pwllt uwtf!” And she said, “Oh, you poor thing!” And she showed me her little computer with my car registration number on the screen, and she said, “Do you know, if you’d have crossed that road one second later, I would have pressed this green button by now, and it would have been too late to press this red one instead.” And she pressed the red button, and the word ‘CANCELLED’ appeared on the screen. And I told her she was a good bloke, and I would have kissed her, but my mouth was too sore.
It was 150 years ago today…
Charles Darwin
I have just realised that 150 years ago this very day, Charles Darwin took up his pen and began the first draft of what was to become On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The rest, as they say is history.
In celebration of this noteworthy anniversary, I have determined to stop faffing about and finally begin work on a long-planned major revamp of The Friends of Charles Darwin website. Hopefully it should take me considerably less time than it took Darwin to publish his masterpiece.
Postscript: The revamped website went live on 23rd August, 2006.
The Mole Hunter
The subject of moles cropped up during my conversation with an expert gardener earlier this week:
Gardener: Did you get that business card I popped through your letterbox last week? The one for the mole hunter?
Me: Yes I did.
Gardener: He’s very good. You’ve probably seen him around. He’s very easy to recognise: he only has one arm.
Me: Bloody hell! What kind of traps does he use?
Later, I started thinking whimsically about this conversation. It seemed odd that a mole hunter would have business cards. I had visions of him turning up at a prospective customer’s door, briefcase (quite literally) in hand, presenting his card, and opening up the briefcase to reveal a set of samples.
And can you imagine, what it must be like back at mole hunter head office? All the top managers anxiously studying the latest Powerpointed quarterly returns, wondering whether there was anything in the rumours about a potential takeover by Rentokil.
Actually, I think it’s pretty cool that there are still professional mole hunters around. And I think it’s really cool that I now have one of their business cards.
?
The official Fall website: FAQ
Question: Have any of the Fall albums ever gone platinum? – asked by Killian.
Answer: At the present time, no Fall albums have reached the requisite number of sales to attain Platinum status in either the US or UK.
I hope and assume that Killian was taking the piss.
For the record, the day a Fall album goes platinum in any officially-recognised country on this planet is the day I bare my famously peach-like arse in Kendal’s front window. Probably.
The Fall is not—and, I also hope and assume, never will be—a platinum-album-type band. That’s why you should buy their stuff. They are extremely good. Here is what they sound like:
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
Here’s some more:
…Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!
Go for it, chaps!
See also: He talks a lot of wind.
Dock Pudding
Dock Pudding!
For those of you who might have doubted me when I claimed (two years back) that the good folks of Hebden Bridge are in the habit of eating dock leaves with their fry-ups, here is photographic proof.
We had dock pudding for breakfast last Sunday.
Bloody marvellous, ‘appen!
Conversation with an expert gardener yesterday
Me: The weeds have taken over our rockery again this year. I’m thinking of spraying them.
Gardener: I’ve got this marvellous stuff you can use. It kills anything green, but is perfectly safe for children and cats.
Me: You don’t have anything that’s unsafe for children and cats do you?
Trim
Stense and I went out for a pub meal and a few pints last night. She is one alopecoid lady, and a 200 carat diamond geezer.
As luck would have it, the woman who cuts my and Jen‘s hair popped round the morning before. I asked her to try to do a decent job this time, as I was going out on a hot date with one of my other women. She did the best she could with the material available, then, for good measure, she leant over with her scissors and snipped the end off what she described as my curly right eyebrow.
Curly eyebrows. Christ, I’m getting old!