Gruts

A friend has asked me to help settle an argument: is Councillor Eileen Kinnear (Cons, Harrow on the Hill) wearing glasses in her official photo?

I think she might be, but it's difficult to be sure. What do you think?

I know I shouldn't laugh at my own jokes, but it's about the only thing I'm really good at…

Jen and I did a spot of landscape gardening today. Basically, we destroyed a rockery. We need a low-maintenance garden, and this particular rockery had reverted to unmowable grassland.

Unfortunately, the rockery contained some very large rocks. Fortunately, we had exactly the right tools for the job, in the shape of a hefty mattock to loosen the rocks from the surrounding soil, a trowel to excavate underneath, and a large, wooden fence-post to act as a lever.

Several rocks later, I was totally knackered, and I had developed a distinct twinge in my lower back…

Yes, my friends, I seem to have developed post-trowel-mattock stress disorder.

Ann and Bill have just been for a visit. For reasons I needn't go into, we decided to place a convoluted £4 bet at the bookmaker's yesterday. The bet was to predict the first- and second-placed horses in one of the races at Goodwood. As I don't know the first thing about gambling (apart from the fact that one should never bet on horse number 4 in Hong Kong), Bill placed the bet for me.

"Hey, 3–40, they sound like pretty good odds!" I remarked, reading the receipt. "Doesn't that mean that for every £3 we bet, we get £40 back? Or does it mean that for every £40 we bet, we get £3 back?"

"Neither," replied Bill. "That's the time of the race."

See also: System

BBC: Tories to review Human Rights Act
A commission to review in detail the Human Rights Act is to be set up by the Tories, shadow home secretary David Davis has announced. The 1998 Act has given rise to "too many spurious rights" and fuelled a compensation culture which is "out of all sense of proportion", he said.

I must admit, when I heard David Davis going on about 'spurious rights' on the radio this evening, I thought he was talking about the Tory Party. It turns out he was talking about taking away some of our human rights.

Sounds like a real vote-winner to me, but unfortunately David Blunkett is way ahead of him.

BBC: Classics deter bus station yobs
Mozart and Vivaldi have been brought in to tackle anti-social behaviour in a town in East Yorkshire. Residents near Snow Hill bus station in Beverley have complained about youths shouting abuse and urinating near their front doors. Now classical music is being piped into the bus station. The theory is that as youngsters hate the classics they will stay away from the area… A public address system with vandal-proof speakers has been installed in the bus station and along nearby Sylvester Lane. The music will fill the air between 1930 and 2330 each evening.

Apparently, shouting abuse and urinating are seen as anti-social behaviour, but playing music in the street over a public address system at half-past-eleven at night isn't.

This morning, I set myself the interesting challenge of coming up with a very bad pun involving the dream combination of chaos theory and agricultural machinery. I succeeded majestically:

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

I used to love tractors as a kid, but I don't any longer. Yes, you've guessed it: I'm an ex-tractor-fan!

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

I don't know where they come from, I really don't. It's a gift.

Postscript: For those of you who don't get my totally brilliant stranger tractor joke, this article might help.

One of particular interest to Hitchin, methinks:

I've just discovered the Fall Multimedia Project, where you can download MP3s from last week's Fall Peel Session.

Note to self: Time to go broadband. I could be here all night.

Postscript: What the hell am I talking about? I live here; I will be here all night.

Botticelli?

Chilly botty more like!

One end of a telephone conversation, overheard while I was waiting to pay for a replacement tyre for my car last Friday:

Good morning, this is Kwik-Fit. Nigel speaking. How can I be of assistance?
…
No, madam, we don't sell DVD players; that would be Kwik Save.
…
No, madam, I'm afraid I don't have their number.