Gruts

I did a very fine and noble thing this afternoon. I suppose it would be a whole lot nobler if I didn't tell anyone about it, but that's just not my style.

I was just about to start mowing the lawn, when I heard a right old racket coming from a nearby drainpipe. Rats, I thought (both literally and figuratively). But then I noticed a blue tit on a nearby tree with a very concerned look on its face (don't ask, I just did). Putting two and two together, I deduced that its mate must have been gathering cobwebs from the gutter to use as nesting material, and had fallen down the drainpipe.

I looked in the bottom of the drainpipe and removed the dead leaves that were blocking it, but there was still no sign of the expected bird. So guess what Muggins did next… That's right, I only went and got his screwdriver and removed the drainpipe from the wall. And out flew a blue tit, right as rain (which, considering where it had been, isn't a bad simile). Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out.

Of course, you realise this means I'll probably go to heaven after all.

BBC: Rare Woolf manuscripts bought
A series of previously unpublished manuscripts hand-written by Virginia Woolf are among a collection that has been bought by The British Library. The manuscripts form part of two mock newspapers composed by Woolf's nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, as children.

Mock newspaper articles: hardly likely to be of the calibre of The Aftermath, are they?

Nobody I sent post cards to from Barcelona over a fortnight ago has received them yet. Friends, I sent them, honest I did - although I'm beginning to suspect that the yellow postbox I wasn't too sure about might have been a Metro air-conditioning vent after all.

Postscript: The post cards finally arrived.

My dad's favourite gardening fork broke recently, so he asked me if I could try to get him a new handle from the local hardware shop. Yes, that's right, this morning I finally got to walk into a hardware shop and ask for "fork handles".

The woman behind the counter smiled knowingly. "Would that be four candles, or handles for forks?"

I don't know which of us was the most amused.

I'm losing my touch. I was at a meeting this morning where there were three people named Richard sitting next to each other. "I suppose this is what you call an embarrassment of Richards," I remarked amusingly… Not a sausage; not even a snigger.

Then, to make matters worse, I meet Carolyn for coffee, and she tells me that she's told all her kids about my farting the first note of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, and they all think it's incredibly funny. So much so that her two-year-old daughter now refers to me as your Richard who goes pump.

So, in summary: my colleagues didn't think my rather sophisticated pun was in the least bit funny, whereas a two-year-old child is extremely amused by my farts.

I guess I've finally found my audience.

Eureka Alert: Men overestimate the number of sexual partners they have had in their lives [12-Mar-03]
…It remains, however, unclear as to how male overestimation could result in such a wide disparity in the reported number of lifetime sexual partners.

In my day, it was called bullshitting.

Postscript: What the hell am I talking about? It still is my day!