Ann
Our dear friend Ann died this morning. She had been ill for quite some time. She was a genuinely lovely lady.
Our love and condolences go out to Bill and Philip.
Ann
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Category Archives: ann and bill
Compare and Contrast
Ann and Bill just sent me the following:
From L to R: Little Steven (of E Street Band and Sopranos fame); Little Richard (of Gruts obscurity); Hulk Hogan (of I'm not quite sure what).
For the record, I was trying to look like Little Steven at the time. I don’t usually dress like that.
Honestly.
See also: The Devil Woman Game
Big in Latvia (slight return)
Rigid's egg
There was three inches of snow overnight, so we stayed in today and watched the football. The least said about that, the better.
Off to drown my sorrows.
[Hint about the Easter egg inscription.]
Public service announcement
Greetings from sunny Berkshire, where Jen and I are visiting Ann and Bill and their gay dog. Ann has let me use her computer to draw the following important news story to your attention:
BBC: Cats ‘killed by flea treatment’
Hundreds of cats may have died because their owners mistakenly treated them with anti-flea products intended for dogs, a study suggests.
The Veterinary Poisons Information Service found that one in 10 cats referred to it had died after being exposed to permethrin. The chemical is used in flea treatments for dogs but is very toxic to cats, said Alex Campbell of VPIS.
That’s permethrin. Remember the name: permethrin.
Ann helpfully pointed out that lilies are also deadly to cats. I wonder whether lilies would survive in acidic Pennine soils. It’s got to be worth a try.
Physics Saves the Day!
Jen and I have just returned from a weekend at Ann and Bill‘s. And jolly nice it was too, thank you for asking.
This morning, Ann asked for my help: a wine glass had become stuck to a cupboard shelf—could I sort it out? No, I couldn’t: the base of the glass really was stuck very solidly to the shelf. I even tried working the point of a knife under the glass, but it just wouldn’t budge.
I asked Ann if the glass had been wet when she put it on the shelf. No it hadn’t; it had been bone dry; she had taken it out of the dishwasher only last night. I asked her if the glass had still been warm from the dishwasher. Yes it had. A-ha!
I immediately deduced that, as the glass had been placed on the shelf, warm air had been trapped in the little hollow underneath. As the glass had cooled, so had the small pocket of air trapped underneath, causing the air pressure to drop slightly, thereby creating a partial vaccum that stuck the glass to the shelf like an inflexible suction cup.
So I ran the kitchen tap until it was good and hot, soaked a dish cloth in hot water, placed it over the base of the glass, and waited for the air underneath to warm up again. The glass then lifted as easy as pie.
Good to see three years of physics at university weren’t entirely wasted. I’m sure there must be some money to be made on party bets involving wine glasses stuck to tables or something like that.
First Foot
A very happy new year to you all. And an extra-special happy new year to any Romanians and Bulgarians who happen to be tuning in—welcome to the E.U., chaps.
Bill ably fulfilled the role of first foot at our house last night. I explained that, in the Yorkshire version of the tradition, he had to enter the house with some money, a lump of coal, some bread, a glass of malt whisky and half a pound of lard. Bill didn’t believe me for one second, but went along with the joke on the condition that the photo I took of him doing it didn’t appear on Gruts.
I’m a man of my word, hence the absence of a photo.
(It was a pretty crap photo anyway.)
System
As has already been established, I don’t know much about betting on horses. I first realised this while visiting Hitchin in Hong Kong in 1999. We went to the races, where I came up with what I thought would be a sure-fire betting system:
The number 4 is seen as incredibly unlucky in Hong Kong. So I reasoned that the locals were unlikely to bet on number 4 in a horse race. That being the case, if a rational human being such as me, who doesn’t believe in unlucky numbers, were to bet on number 4 to win, he should get far better odds than he deserved (because nobody else would be betting on it). Although such a betting system was unlikely to be successful in any one race, I reasoned that, all else being equal, if I bet on number 4 in every single race, it was bound to pay off in the end.
I lost my shirt.
I had failed to take into account the fact that the superstitious Chinese allocate the unlucky number 4 to the worst nag in each race. Well, that’s my theory at least.
In all the excitement, I forgot to take any photos at Newbury, so here is a photo of Ann & Bill's gay dog instead.
And there it was—No.7 in the third race—Penny Black… It reminded me of Carolyn for two reasons: (1) a few weeks ago, I gave Carolyn my lucky penny (no, I don’t believe in that sort of thing, but I thought Carolyn might), and (2) I have often told Carolyn off for not calling either of her daughters Penny (in which case, they would have been named Penny Farthing, geddit?) So I placed my bet: a fiver on number 7 to win at, ahem, 50:1.
It came in just before the start of the fourth race.
But for that, I could have won Carolyn two-hundred and fifty big ones.
In the meantime, Jen and Ann and Bill had been placing bets for our four-person syndicate, using some bizarre system involving something they called the horses’ form.
Our syndicate won £102.
From now on, my sure-fire system is going to be to take along some people who know what the hell they’re doing.