From a letter to Stense, 11-Jun-1996

Irish Mick and I went to the pub the other night and he bumped into some woman he knows from the mountain club, although she's more of a canoe fanatic than a climber. He hadn't seen her for several months because, it turned out, she had recently [been seriously ill], as well as having a dislocated shoulder and a ricked neck.

"I'm all right now, though," she explained, "and I finally managed to get down to the swimming pool to get some canoe practice last week. I tried an Eskimo Roll and it was bloody impossible."

"You should try a Swiss Roll," I replied: "that's a piece of cake."

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Unfortunately, the woman completely spoilt it by saying, "How do you do one of those?"

Intermission

I'm off for a couple of weeks to sort out some family business. But fear not! I have selected some choice titbits from letters I have written to Stense over the years, and they will appear here automagically with monotonous regularity. You've got to keep the punters entertained, you know.

Actually, they're more like minced morsels than choice titbits.

I should be back the first week in April.

Dr Skepticus

Fitz has finally got himself a weblog.

If you ever read anything funny or profound in it, he probably stole it from me.

Two-One!

This morning, I was idly flicking my cheek, making a plooping noise vaguely reminiscent of a drop of water falling into a pool. I'm usually pretty crap at making this noise, but this morning I was in the groove.

"What are you doing?" asked Jen
"I'm making a plooping noise by flicking my cheek. Why don't you have a go?"
"I don't want to."
"Go on, have a go!"
"I won't be any good at it."
"Who cares? Go on, have a go!"

So Jen flicked me in the cheek.

[One-Nil]

"Would you mind popping into Hebden Bridge later on?" asked Jen, a couple of minutes later.
"Sure. What for?"
"I need you to go to the dry cleaners and buy a tax disc for my car."
"The dry cleaners don't sell tax discs; you have to go to the post office for those."
"Very funny."
"One-all!"
"No, not one-all at all. That wasn't as good as mine!"
"Yes it was!"
"No it wasn't: mine involved physical violence!"
"Oh, you're right… The dry cleaners don't sell tax discs; you have to go to the post office for those." [Slaps Jen across forehead] "Two-One!"

Public service announcement

Hey, Ann! Far be it from me to cast nasturtiums at your first-born son, but you haven't been letting Philip mess around with your Hotmail account, have you?

That email you sent me this morning appeared to come from someone named Gaylord Mincing Boy.

I would have told you this by return email, but I didn't want to give the chaps at MI5 the wrong impression.

Sap's rising

We appear to have a mental chaffinch in our garden.

I was making myself a cup of tea this morning, when there was a tapping on the window. I looked round, and found myself face-to-beak with a male chaffinch, who was staring menacingly at me through the glass. Weird, I thought, turning back to my teapot.

The chaffinch took great exception to being ignored in this way: he leapt up and started trying to break through the window. Five or six times, he flew up from the window sill and piled into the glass, pecking and clawing at it as he did so. This bird evidently had an attitude problem.

It took me a while to work out what was going on: he was fighting his own reflection, the stupid twat.

It must be getting near spring.

Pier Head review

Liverpool Daily Post (03-Mar-06): Landing stage wrecked by freak weather

The world-famous Merry Ferries landing stage at Liverpool's Pier Head has been wrecked in freak weather conditions.

Marine engineers were last night examining the steel and concrete stage as it sat on the river bed, but it seems almost certain that what is left has been damaged beyond repair. Much had already drifted off into the River Mersey.

I popped down to have a nose there this lunchtime. Here are the photos.

Drunken scrawl

I must have been very drunk at my friend the farmer's birthday dinner-party last Saturday evening. I've just found a scrap of paper in my pocket on which I appear to have noted down in almost undecipherable scrawl a snippet of conversation which I must have overheard:

I've written my biography on my computer: everything I've ever done since I was born…

It's 38 pages!

(It's for the grandchildren really.)

You see, even when I'm totally shit-faced, I'm still thinking of you chaps.