Bother it

If it ain't broke..

2011-10-24T11:50:00.001+01:00

What the hell they have done to this site?

It was hard enough before but now it will be damn near impossible for the millions of readers to access the page!

You now have to press 'classic' on the left hand side or add /view/classic to the original address
some spotty adolescent thinks he has been cool changing the antiquated site well let me tell you zit face, you are a ruddy arse!

a ruddy arse yesterday

This bit was written at the start of the rugby world cup and it shows what a great tipster I am

‘There is a house in Marlboro town they call Brown Sherry??

Brown Sherry!! Can you blinkin well Adam and Eve it?

I thought Marlborough had a bit of class but it is obviously lower middle.

I suppose it is slightly less arrogant than amontillado but really.

We, along with most of Hampshire and Wiltshire’s prep school brigade, (most potent weapon; 40ish mummies who are growing large and wrinkly) pottered off to watch Giffords circus yesterday which was wonderful as usual and there, at the end of the common sat a very unprepossessing bungalow called Brown Sherry.

At first I thought it was an instruction to his wine merchant as to where to leave a delivery but no, the house was called Brown Sherry. I looked left and right fully expecting to find Green Chartreuse and Blue Curacao but no, just a stereotypical Puligny Montrachet and Grand Puy Lacoste.

There is a soul singer called Sherry Brown, who is; I suppose it could be named after her and the owner could have been a military type. You know the ones, they put all the last names first so you get tank, chieftan and ignorance, general. etc, etc

whilst we are on sherry there appears to have been a british sherry, as it was allowed to be called then, which went by the wonderful name of 'Pony Cream, British sherry,'
Not so much of the brown, more white.
Not so much the schooner, more the pint.

class in a glass

The new offices for Mencap have opened in Andover today. I am quite surprised they haven’t had one there before. I hope they are aware of how busy they will be.

Good to see a growth industry at these dark times. Good also to see the start of the world cup as New Zealand prepare to justify their favouritism and shake off the tag of ‘bottlers’.

So England take on the Argies tomorrow and there is no hint of anything Malvinas related in the gutter press.

I will either be watching a swimming class or dozing fitfully during a PTA meeting. My father will be rotating like a dervish on acid.

Personally I have had a bit on South Africa at 9-1 so there’s one to avoid.

Nice edition

2011-10-18T16:21:00.004+01:00

This is very old news. I am sorry that I have been away for such a long time, been rather busy. Hope to get up to speed (4mph) soon

Ok here we go! The Editor’s notes are in parentheses. That’s brackets to ITV viewers.

We have just had a lovely time in Cornwall where the weather was nice. Not too hot or too cold, just fine. The wonderful thing about this was that we didn’t have to cover the children in sun cream. The invention of wetsuits and the reduction in the size of my gut in the last two years means that I am able to accompany my children into the spumey brine to indulge in a bit of body surfing.

The locals were friendly and the other visitors from the north of the country had a rest from their daily bouts of fisticuffs for the whole week!. Well done them. (was this due to most of them trashing most of the major cities in the UK rather than Cornish villages?)

not so revolting peasants

We thoroughly enjoyed riding on a speedboat and I contained myself from committing genocide in Padstow as I was unable to find a branch of ‘AK47s R US’ in the whole of the South West Peninsula. (careful!)

I shot the sheriff

Other days out included a delightful cycling expedition where I must give credit to the slightly more portly members of society for making an effort to reduce those gargantuan stomachs and for spending the morning in a town that has no Macdonald’s or Burger King. They really do have guts. Bloody enormous ones.

The other marvellous thing about visiting the Cornish coast in peak season is that it makes you realise how wonderfully varied our culture is. With a wide choice of styles and fashion that alternated between nylon football kits and Boden, it was a joy to see that (the gap in) David Cameron’s big society was growing in stature.

(are you finding this tough?)

Yes, very.

Did you see the article about the woman in Bradford who was wrongly diagnosed that she had lost her baby went by the name of Chelsea Muff!

Wonderful to see that the programme Footballers Wives is having such a beneficial effect of society!

That was in the Telegraph. A similar story about a girl called Accrington Stanley Gash appeared in the Mirror. (stop it right now, this is a nice edition remember)

Some wonderful plus points have come out of the terrible riots that we have had over the last few weeks. The clean up the streets campaign has demonstrated a spirit within local communities that hasn’t been in evidence since the blitz. Amazing to think that it only takes a couple of hundred moronic teenagers to achieve a sense of such camaraderie when seventy years ago it took the whole of the third Reich and thousands of pounds of high explosive!

Despite many hours spent trashing the city the teenagers still found time to donate when the sperm bank collector called

That’s progress David!

I think I can speak for the whole of the country when I say that we were sorry that he had to cancel his Tuscan hols to come back to flaming Britain. I hope that the rest of the family managed to stay out there or that easy jet gave him a decent price on the return fare. Here’s a valuable tip for the future Dave old chum. When I was in the army I always made sure I had a decent second in command who was aware of what planet we lived on and could tie his shoelaces. This way I had a relaxed and peaceful leave.

more fool you

I am also afraid that I must inform your PMness that your education policy is not working terribly well. The rioters have scored badly on the Boycott Bumble crassness indicator. This is a system designer to register the lower levels of intelligence amongst minor lifeforms and is widely used on single celled beings.

The news item that condemned the lack of educational success was that Hackney rioters were found rioting in Hackney and cooking their own breakfast at 0300 having broken into a Macdonald’s on their own high street.

Bonus points were given for attempting to cook for the first time in their execrable lives despite the subsequent salmonella outbreak. One rioter was also commended for attempting to break into the Ivy for an early breakfast. He was thrown out by a caretaker as he hadn’t booked three months beforehand.

Feedback was passed on to the rioters suggesting that the key to profitable unrest is trashing Bond street and Hatton Garden and that they must stop popping dog shit into paper bags, putting them onto doorsteps, setting them alight and ringing the bell of their OWN houses. This insular thinking is not the way to win back the empire.

who's a clever boy then?

I hope this has been of some use as you struggle to come to terms with the loss of three days in chiantishire.

I think I should pay credit to some wonderful people who are really making a difference to the day to day lives of ordinary working folk.

Harry, our part time postman is a thoroughly cracking chap. He always has a smile on his face and I really enjoy a thirty second chat with him though he is a Geordie and therefore rather difficult to understand.

Please let me know if you know of any others! Perhaps we can have a ‘nice bloke/blokess item for the next couple of weeks!

geordie lass on the toon.

I am not quite sure if she is throwing up or sucking up somebody else's pavement pizza?

I failed to predict a riot

2011-08-19T11:48:00.000+01:00

Cornwall

The rain is slanting in at such an angle that, despite the fact that I am wearing long shorts, the tops of my thighs are wet.
There are so many people in this tip of Britain that I really wouldn’t be surprised if east anglia has risen by 6ft as a result.

We are staying on the southern, unfashionable side, of the River Camel. Paradoxically however, this is now becoming more fashionable as the northern side is now too cool for its own good and is populated entirely by nobs from Esher with 4x4s. As a result the beaches are not Cannes but hell I live near Andover and can therefore deal with most things

Talking of which, here is a top idea that might well work if you live near a social experiment that went horribly wrong.

Many people have been saying that we should, like the French, ban the burkah, yashmak or whatever you call that rather nasty nylon black bedsheet that foreign women cut eyeholes in and throw over their head in the slightly misguided apprehension that it makes them slightly better looking.

better in a burka

Don’t you see that the clever thing is it probably does and that if the law was changed to making the wearing of these obligatory then it would be possible to walk through Andover on a Saturday without parking pavement pizzas outside poundland.

Ok so it’s crowded over this side but I dread to think what the other side of the estuary is like. The embarrassment of being seen driving a Range Rover into Daymer Bay car park when every other vehicle is a Porsche. Skodas are Porsches over here.

It’s the silly season for news and as a result my blood pressure rises accordingly.

The north can stand easy for a while as the attention for my ire moves to South Wales and news that Bridgend is home to the youngest ever grandfather at the age of 29.

He became a father at 15 and his daughter is 14. I was so revolted by the first paragraph of the story that I am unsure if she has a Scooby who the father is. Castration at 13 is the answer, both male and female.

boom boom!

A tenuous link to Mamma Mia, which is being watched by the girls for the umpteenth time.

It suddenly dawned on me that this is not a film to show children as it does not stand up as an example of how to behave. Indeed it is merely an upmarket example of Bridgend with three fathers squabbling over who shagged some slut eighteen years ago.

There were nastier pictures

The subtle difference is that the lads in Bridgend couldn’t give a stuff about who shagged who and the only reason they would chase her down would be to give her a good slapping for giving them herpes.

I wish they would then we wouldn’t have all this news about the riots.

I am sorry but we must be the laughing stock of the world. We use the adjective ‘Great’ before our name to exacerbate others amusement.

We, as the French say, are farting above our station. We think we are a major player on the world stage and yet our own, repro, globe is under threat from gangs of teenagers who seem to be inviolate.

The once much respected police force stands and watches as the people who they are paid to protect watch their homes and livelihoods go up in flames or in some cases home with the mothers of the gangsters who initiated the crimes.

Theresa May but probably won’t come down hard on the detritus and untermenschen who perpetrate these riots.

We are trying to tell the world how important we are by getting involved in every fracas in the world just because we want to impress Uncle Sam and yet we seem to not have enough police to look after a few criminals in our own capital.

It is not rocket science. It’s summer so let’s start with water cannon and then move onto rubber bullets.

Whilst we are on the subject can someone please explain why we don’t boost the economy and create employment by building and staffing more prisons? If it is the cost then lets re introduce the death penalty to ensure that there is a good turnover of clientele.

ROCK AND ROLL!
Don’t stop me now ‘cos I’m having a good time!

There is a power vacuum at the top of the met as all the top brass either quit or get fired so now, more than ever, there is a headless chicken scenario as lots of remarkably grey middle managers attempt to ride the Hydra when perhaps a donkey on Blackpool beach might be more their level.

If there is chaos out there it is at its most prevalent amongst those who are meant to be preventing it rather than promoting it.

As always, if the boys in blue, for that is what they seem to be, incapable of independent thought, can’t take the heat then lets pull the men back from Iraq, Afghanistan, Kazakstan, Usbekistan and Mynameistan and sort it!

The ‘smoke’ truly is the smoke. Talking of which…

Ooh look, Bear Grylls

OOH look now! a steam train has just left Basingstoke on the way to Exeter. Perhaps all is well after all.

No its not…

I was fully expecting to have a late one tonight but the 6.30 meeting has been cancelled. There is an air of expectation in town. Most bars and shops are shutting early in areas they think are going to be hit this evening and the 4.20 home is packed with city boys who are looking lost at being on a different train. Being in an office full of ex army bods meant there was a slight Dads Army feeling with everyone wanting to know where one can get an AK47 at short notice.

If I can’t shoot the great unwashed then I’m off to my Hampshire village and I’ll take it out on pigeons. Why are they the great unwashed? What is it that is particularly great about them?

I am exceedingly glad that the Apprentice has finished. Not that I managed to stomach more that 5 minutes of it but that everyone else seemed to talk of nothing else.

People who I had previously though to have a modicum of common sense have proved me a poor judge of character.

To me it is a programme that epitomises all that is wrong with society. Everyone is thinking only of themselves and is out for everything they can get and the concept of teamwork and management never get a look in. It is run by a bloke with a beard, nuff said, who calls himself lord in the same way that Del boy Trotter should style himself god.

Not sweet.

It encapsulates greed, selfishness, bad manners and stupidity into an hour of revulsion.

Stupidity is the ironic thing as these people are meant to be the business leaders of tomorrow. No wonder the economy is in such a shit state.
The winners from series one and two were Vince Cable Knit and George I Wasborne –Yesterday.

Clapham Junction coming up and those brave and foolhardy travellers who are alighting here have rolled up their Telegraphs and are ready to do battle with the looters for the pick of the green tea scented candles and Kath Kidston napkins.

I haven’t had time to mention Norway and the tragedy it suffered but it was interesting that somehow it was Britain’s fault. Apparently the johnny got all his best ideas from the UK. Glad that we have one export that hasn’t gone tits up.

We seem to want to take responsibility for everything and be nice to everybody even if they will be the cause of our downfall.

Someone said that I never have a good word for anyone. This is probably true and yet if people were nicer then I wouldn’t complain so much, you wouldn’t read this and I would write about fairies and how marvellous this year’s marmalade crop in Over Wallop is.

what a lovely pair

I might just try it, a nice blog. Being charming to people for a change. Not as nice as the Canadians are, that would just be too much in one go, I will have to work up to that.

Andover Fist

2011-08-17T18:42:00.000+01:00

The 9.06 as it is now, is really living up to the title of the first ‘inter shitty’ of the day.

A collection of untermenschen delighted us all with their antics on Andover platform with lager swilling and shirt removing. The leader seemed quite pleased that he had the pick of the two girls, she had 6 inch heels and enough paint on her face for an entire series of grand designs. She tottered ‘arahnd’ and filled the morning air with every expletive known to man when he heels failed her. She bore a marked resemblance to the late amy winehouse, as she might look now, and for a second I thought that most delightful of gorgons had not actually departed for Hades, or Croydon as it is known. More of her later.

The rule that a skinny bird must have a uglier and fatter friend with her was applied to the law and in the same manner the alpha male had a speccy geek with him whose job it was to look gauche, a role he played with great aplomb. Neither he nor the fat bird were quite sure whether they were meant to be going out with each other and this merely added to their awkwardness.

Unfortunately the weather was fair and the breeze resembled a debutante’s fart. Not nearly enough to blow them infront of the 08.59 to Yeovil Junction.

Meanwhile an embittered housewife was talking to her friend about her idle and insensitive husband who, as far as I can gather, spent the entire weekend watching sport and drinking Special Brew, or the ‘wife beater’ as it is known.

And finally… a very very fat man started talking to me about the parlous state of the coffee on south west trains. I was clutching my mug of wonderful Colombian café as sold by Harry the hasish Harrovian from his hut at the station and thought he could have done the same. He must have arrived at the station in plenty of time as he wasn’t sweating and therefore didn’t have to rush for the train.

He achieved ‘Twat of the Day’ for his cufflinks which were miniature i phones. This was an early award, especially with a day in London ahead but as he ‘tut tutted’ over his ipad his kindle went off and he watched the tour de france on his blackberry. Fool!

And all this before Raynes Park.

An awful lot has been happening this weekend, a fascinating cricket match at Lords, a disaster in Norway, the start of the Scottish football season, famine in the horn of Africa, the Barton Stacey church fete, the closure of the B 4972 at that nasty bottleneck at Sturminster Bogbrush, just by the Cat and Rotweiller, (formerly the King’s Head) and the death of Amy Shitehouse.

I can’t cover all of the above in this entry so let’s deal a bit more with ms Councilhouse.

Her family said that her death had left a ‘gaping hole in their lives’

A spokesman for her local Oddbins said her death had left a gaping hole in his profits.

christ that's scary!!

Personally the concept of feeling loss for someone who throws their lives away and causes such pain to the members of her family in is wholly alien to me. She should be remembered as a silly little girl who had so much and yet behaved quite appallingly. She joins other morons like Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in the losers department of Madame Tussaud’s.

Ooh…. fat bloke is still going on about the coffee! Some idiot is engaging him in conversation and has unleashed a fate worse than anything Pandora had in her hold all.

I have discovered he has a coffee machine at home which grows the beans, picks them, grinds them, and creates a newly designed Emma Bridgewater mug for every cup of the brown stuff.

His father had a villa in Italy which he sold ‘right at the top of the market’ and he has done a bit of fishing at a place he has in Durban….zzzz…

Sorry, nodding off there. He lives in Penton Mewsey, a suburb of Andover and his father had a couple of factories in the rag trade… shit readers… this is live blogging… blogging, Mark, not dogging. Straight from the pigs mouth and out to the world.

Fat bloke’s children work in retail and for cable and wireless. i.e. a shop assistant and a telephone engineer.

and

Bored, hooray I have never been so glad to see Waterloo

I hope he meets his soon

drum roll......

2011-07-26T21:23:00.002+01:00

and the result is.....
1.
phew!

Open season

2011-07-18T21:34:00.000+01:00

Why can’t people own up when they do anything wrong? Nobody comes clean any more. You will never hear anyone in the public eye say ‘it’s a fair cop guvnor’ ever again.

Hiding the truth to cover ones embarrassment seems to be our new national game.
The Americans have long being doing this, their latest effort being the Obama Bin Liner affair when they initially said that they had a 40 minute gunfight and that the opposition was armed with surface to air missiles and weapons of mass destruction. An hour later and the story had changed to

‘ well I guess that they didn’t have nuclear weapons but there were 400 vicious members of the 14th Peshawar girl guides there and Brown Owl was in a hell of a mood as she had the painters in’

14th Peshawars mug a new mother and steal the child to sell in exchange for weapons

Eventually there was one bloke and his rusty weapon (different rusty weapon from the one Johnny Greek had in the last entry)

In which case how did they manage to crash their helicopter? Who was driving the thing?

Anyway, more worrying than a mouldy Spanish cucumber in your German salad this disease seems to have permeated the very fabric of our society with devastating results.

March in the accused, one Matthew Prior.

After being run out for 4 he stomped back into the dressing room at Lords and minutes later all hell had broken loose along with one of the windows.

The astonishing thing was that this simple act renewed my dwindling faith in the almighty. He hasn’t really been firing on all cylinders recently and apart from making the Lib Dems look bloody silly on the AV vote (hardly a challenge) there haven’t really been many reminders that he is still not to be messed with.

Ok there have been tsunamis and earthquakes but nothing to show his Britishness.

Until now.

If Mr Prior’s story of his glove bouncing of his kit and smashing the window is to be believed then surely he had the assistance of the almighty.

The resulting shards of glass fell to a lower level and cut a ‘young woman’ on the ankle.

The amazing thing about this is that

a) the person was most unlucky to acquire a cut on the ankle

b) The person was most unlucky to acquire a cut anywhere for in God’s eyes she shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Thirty years ago her seat would have been occupied by a retd Lt Colonel who would have had trousers on and have been sporting a panama with a Free Foresters ribbon (The MoD are looking at introducing such headwear to troops serving in Afghanistan, such is there robustness).

God is an Englishman and an honorary member of the MCC. Not necessarily in that order.

Prior, realising this was a crap excuse changes his story. He rested his bat on a window ledge and it ‘bounced off the wall into the glass’

Of course it did, things rested often do this, why only last week Mrs Murgatroyd of Carshalton Beeches was being laid to ‘rest’ in Croydon cemetery when bugger me if she didn’t bounce out of her grave and smash the windscreen of the very hearse that had carried her to the cemetery.

It took three pall bearers twenty minutes to bring the octogenarian to ground but not before she had accounted for three gravestones, two squirrels and a cat called Nigel.

Nigel

Come on Mr Prior, tell the truth. If you are going to behave like a schoolboy having a tizzy then how about being man enough to say that you threw your bat around the changing room.

After all in the eyes of God no one was hurt.

It’s the silly season in the world of footie. Aka Fitba, soccer, oikball, kissball etc.
Its time for all the players to change their lifelong allegiances and hideous nylon shirts and move from one naff part of Cheshire to another some 5 miles up the road.

The strange thing is that managers do it as well though the difference is they get sacked.

Can anyone please name another industry where someone being paid a massive amount of money is relieved of there position for incompetence only for another high flying organisation to sign them up for more cash.

Viz the CEO of Megabank is fired for losing the company £3bn over the sub prime mortgage affair and yet two days later he is running Ragwort Benson. No it doesn’t happen as no sensible company would pay someone more for having a poor track record and yet…

Football teams seem to fight each other to employ sacked managers. Are there only 30 football managers in the UK?
Can nobody else tell 11 people how to kick an inflated pigs bladder around a park?

I’ll do it for half the money as long as I don’t have to wear man made fibres and a track suit with my initials on it

Medical Front
I must admit that I am rather worried about my two appointments next week.

God forbid that they could be so efficient as to get them on the same day. After all they are literally next door to each other so it would make far too much sense to do that.

The results should be done in a week and there are a few options;

1. An unknown consultant walks in. Hooray this is good news as there is no bad news to deliver. He tells me as much and he has no idea what the pains are. I leave happy but unconvinced by their response

2. The whole first eleven walk in. Boo! this is bad news as they have bad news to impart and all the different departments are there to tell me what is going to happen. This can be further subdivided into a) yes we are going to give it ago or b) it is inoperable but we are all here to say why this is so as you plead with them to change their minds.

All in all I am surprised just how calm I am about it. I am fully expecting 2b to be the answer. If it is anything else I suppose I should be happy. If it is 2b I am pretending that I knew it was all along and it hasn’t come as a surprise at all. Actually I will fill my boxers if it is but there is no point in worrying about sorting out wills, funeral plans etc when there will hopefully be at least a month or so to do it after next week.

You may say that I am making too much of this and that anyone who can carry a golf bag around 18 holes is not going to shuffle off his mortal coil before the end of the test series but once the seed is implanted it tends to germinate and the whole thing takes off. Inevitably all possibilities are extrapolated until the very last option, which conversely isn’t really much of an option at all.

So it is rather nice to have taken some time out of a busy workload to help in the recovery pattern of a chum who has just had a stroke.

Part of his resettlement means no driving and a general adaption to slowing down the pace of his life. Never an easy task for one with boundless energy and a penchant for hard work.

He is in the hands of a master however and I write this from the banks of the River Nadder. A chalk stream of some 20 yards width which runs into the Avon in Salisbury.

This chap has spent the past 2 hours attempting to convince a small fish to eat some garishly coloured nylon with a hook on the end of it. The fish, a trout I believe, sits just below the water and laughs at him so much that he nearly pissces himself. Pun intended.

This women has a bad case of crabs

Why, if the fisherman wants a fish for his supper does he not smack the little shit over the head with a log and take it home?

‘Thats not sport’

‘Sport?’

‘Trying to make it harder to achieve your goal in a sport is an interesting concept. The open is on at the moment and as far as I know nobody has yet suggested that the golfers use plastic clubs and those balls with holes in to increase the sport.

The news that lead shot is to be replaced by mushy peas in shotgun cartridges and that the Heythrop hunt are replacing their hounds with guinea pigs has yet to cross my desk
To make it even harder there seem to be even more rules to favour the fish in this battle.

Don’t cast downstream – apparently this is akin to letting one rip whilst receiving a gong from the Queen and declaring ‘ cor sow a button on that one mam’ to rhyme with spam – never say we don’t do etiquette properly at Bother it.

Don’t cast upstream on a chalk river on a Thursday and blue trousers are not to be worn by those under 30 on Scottish rivers.

Only the British could invent a game that they start as the underdog. It like inventing football and giving the Germans a five goal lead

I can only assume that they do this to prolong their day as long as possible as the delightfully bucolic scene that is put before me is one to behold. A flint and chalk village stands some yards away with a Norman church crowning its congregation. The pub is too tempting and I will shortly depart to sample its hopefully warm and flat English ale. A cypress stands as the only reminder of another age where the manor once stood. Demolished in the 1950’s like so many of its ilk.

Further reminders that you have not been transported into the 1850’s come in the shape of the landlord asking you for £3.90 for some hoppy water.

But wait a catch!. The intellectual piscine equivalent of wayne rooney has taken a fancy to the dangerous nylon fly.

When landed it is not quite the supper I anticipated and I can see your average Somali turning his nose up at its size.

It goes back into the river. In golfing parlance this is ‘I’ve won but you can have the hole’

I wonder why we lost the empire.

Some very kind and some rather strange comments but thank you all.

Video killed the radio star - but who killed video??

2011-07-06T09:37:00.000+01:00

http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html

This from Mark to set the tone for this entrance. Wonderful stuff!
cat lovers may be offended by this article.. bovvered

and Rabbit for these...

http://theescapepod.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/latest-work-for-new-client-claussen-pickles/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfrgzs8dToc&NR=1

shameless self promotion but jolly good stuff

Not quite sure why Johnny Yank has such a penchant for what look like picked penii but they also think american football is interesting.

We are all but dust... so someone once said about our eventual destination and yet there are good ways to start this process and bad.

bad is snuffing it in a portaloo at Glastonbury.

Adviser and chum to the PM you may be but unfortunately your fame will be for how you shuffled off your mortal coil with a queue of pant piddling pop pickers banging on the door of the PC

Good is any other way

Northerners haven't quite grasped the concept of portaloos as yet

I am sure you are aware that I give those who live north of ... ooh where shall we say the North starts???

Derby? anyway I do give them a hard time but in all honesty they deserve it.

I met one on a golf course the other day and ye gods he was pleased with himself. Self deprecating was hardly the phrase that came to mind as he expostulated why yorkshiremen were born of god.

He truly believed that he was better than everyone else on the whole course and there was a mixture of assuming everyone knew this and also his wanting to tell the world.

And yet this alleged son of god struggled to spread the word ... as he spoke like Gromit, or is it wallace, never quite sure but wasn't quite as eloquent.

I am sorry but there is no defence for his case ... all I have to say is... is..

is...

'last of the summer wine'

I rest my case

MEDICAL UPDATE

Poor news on this front as I have been experiencing some twinges on the lower left neck and the upper chest.

Went to the consultants yesterday who opted for an urgent CT scan as there is a small lump there as well.

Adding salt to the wound they said that they are doing a biopsy on the tongue which is ulcerated.

These will be done over the next few weeks and results should be in by the end of the month.

All in all it makes for a worrying three weeks as whatever it is it is lower down the body than last time and I am therefore much more nervous about it all.

I try not to think about it as there is absolutely nothing I can do until the results are back and even then I can only react to whatever the news is.

But I am a worrier in these situations whatever logic may say otherwise. It's not easy trying to be upbeat.

More later and apologies for short entry.

Some corner of a foreign field....

2011-06-13T16:17:00.000+01:00

6/6/2011

Greek Edition

It was one of two tough calls that I have had to make over the past week. Neither of them particularly life changing but both important within the strategic positioning of one’s moral fibre.

I , nay we, have just returned from a week’s holiday on the greek Ionian isle of Lefkas. Some call it Lefkada and others Leukada.

greeksy spoon

Imagine having three names for a place. What, oh yes I suppose so. Doncaster. Shitehole and the Garden of Earthly Delight. Though not many Doncastrians are Hieronymous Bosch fans.

Anyway, it was our second year on Lefkas (or whatever) and we were all looking forward to it despite the fact that it coincided with the Lords Test and the Derby.

The accommodation, named Amanisis (Villa of memories) was immediately christened Villa Bling as we approached the electronic gates.

It was wonderful, 77 light switches for a three bedroom house could be seen as excessive and that wasn’t counting the lights for the pool of which there was an estimated eight different sets.

No matter, we were going to have a great time despite getting up at 3.30am to get to Gatwick. Why do we, in the 21st century still have to get up at unearthly hours to fly to an airport that only has six arrivals in a day?

The weather was set fair and I wasn’t concerned about the fact that the house was built on the euro lottery winnings of a shepherd who had been convicted on five counts bestiality.

it's nothing new

Nor was I angered by the fact that they might have tidied away those potentially lethal wires that hung out of the wall where more illumination would have been placed had not the whole of the Greek allocation of naff lights been used up.

Whilst we were there I was able to obtain a copy or two of the Daily Telegraph and I read with interest the debate as to whether the EU should attempt to bail out the Greek economy again. There was evidence of a booming tourist economy, the construction industry was obviously doing well as there were houses springing up all over the place. Indeed we were woken on Monday by a crane making craney type noises a mere hundred yards hence.

We though this rather irritating but I consoled myself that perhaps Johnny Greek (hereafter to be known as Johnny) was making an effort to pull his medieval economy back into the 18th century.

Mr Lazy - a greek man's bible

Johnny crane driver knocked off at about 11.30. This wasn’t a surprise to me, after all it was getting hot and most people stopped at about this time and resumed at 4 ish to work until early evening. Not so Johnny the Crane. We never heard a squeak from him for the rest of the week. Great for having a lie in but it started me thinking about the Hellenic work effort. Big mistake.

The crane sat there for the rest of the week. As inert as a fat man on the dole in Newport.

Newport - Not worth getting out of bed for

With the amount of building that appeared to be going on all over the island I would have thought that crane would have been in use every hour that the sun gave light. Either that or that someone should have started a crane breeding programme to ensure ghastly villas could be build all over the island in completely inaccessible places.

No, it was not to be. There had been no change of heart. Nobody on the island of Lefkas had a clue of what the Greek economy was up to. More of its residents had been to Melbourne than Athens and all they knew of the EU was that it was a cash cow that was there to be milked. With teats as sore as a premiership footballer’s cock it grudgingly gave out more of the western world's taxes to support a hard days drinking Ouzo and writing off cars on lethal roads.

The garage was an afterthought

Still I put this all behind me though when a large German boat anchored offshore I felt a strange sensation coursing through my body. Pity. Pity for a race that I was unlikely to support in a football match against the Daleks. Yes, I understood why the huns don’t want to throw any more of their money to bail out Johnny greek.

And within that instant I felt, in the home of democracy, that I should try to see it from the other point of view. If someone was prepared to pay me to continue to maintain a way of life that hasn’t changed in millennia then why not take it?

More of this later but to my second dilemma and an article in a paper about Alastair Campbell being expectorated upon by a gang of teenage hoodlums in south London.

You decide.

I got over the greek police handing out parking tickets at 9pm in a town the size of Melbury Bubb. I rose above the fact that they drove at 65mph through built up areas and overtook on blind bends. I ignored the fact that they charged £4 for a half of fizzy liquid that tasted like a cup of Nick Clegg’s tea. Wet, diluted, insipid and uninspiring.

I resisted the urge to push some of the obese bathers back into the sea in an attempt to save the rest of their pod following and to therefore avoid a mass beaching but on the day of departure it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

two greek whales were fed on emergency rations whilst efforts were made to return them to their natural habitat

It seemed strange that we were asked to check in two and a half hours early to an airport that handles 7 flights per day but there we are. Last year it was three hours so things were obviously heading in the right direction. HA!

We stood for one and a half hours, there must have been a thousand people waiting to check in, there were seven check in desks but only four were manned.

As the queue snaked forward we thanked our lucky stars that it was only 34 degrees C.

After we handed over our bags for the handlers to rifle through we stood in another queue which snaked around a different part of the terminal. We were not quite sure why we were meant to stand in this but since everyone else was we though we had better do the same. Anyway we are British and it is hard to resist a good queue.

The best q and the worst bond

This queue seemed to be for the security check. Here we had four people occasionally glancing at our hand luggage on an x-ray machine. Once or twice they roused themselves and strip searched an elderly grannie from Budleigh Salterton, implicating her in a fiendish plot to bring down the plane with 300ml of channel number 5. Meanwhile that chap in the sheet, who was in sore need of a shave, smuggled through a couple of exocets.

This process took so long that we were still some 50 yards short of the check with our plane due to leave in ten minutes.

As a snail with a gauloise ambled past me I flipped. It wasn’t that he was French it just that he was queue barging.

I marched to the front, making sure to tread on said mollusc en passant, in an attempt to discover why no one was ensuring those passengers due to leave first were prioritised.

None of them spoke English, or they chose not to. Finally a policeman approached. As his Browning 9mm was safely rusting in its holster I decided to give him a piece of my mind – not too much as I was aware that there was a serious danger of overload for him in such heat.

‘My plane is leaving in 5 minutes is there any chance of getting priority for the Gatwick flight?’

‘No’

‘Will the plane leave without us?’

‘No’

‘What about our take off and landing allocations? Surely if this happening on every greek isle the skies over Sussex won’t have seen as many planes over it since Hitler vainly threw his dorniers at Tangmere’

I thought that Biggin Hill would have sounded better but somewhere deep down I was worried he would have corrected me by saying that Biggin Hill was actually just over the border in Kent – then I would have looked a complete twat.

As it was he stared at me, his hand slowly made its way to his rusty weapon (ooh matron!) and he said

‘you wait’

Well I suppose I should have settled for something other than no but as with so many impotent men in these situations I had to have the last word so I called him a nasty word and hoped that

a) Sandi Toksvig wasn’t listening and

b) that the controllers of Radio Four were – you never know, perhaps they, with no sense of humour, might think I was hilarious and offer me a series of the blog diaries.

Actually I didn’t even manage that. All he got was a ‘Ruddy Arse’ and not even to his face as I stormed of in a huff

badge of greek police - a strange phrase that when translated it can mean any one of bothered, yeah whatever, as if I care and I 'd watch it if I were you matey, I've got a rusty weapon

Eventually we boarded the plane at the same time as our luggage, it obviously takes longer to rifle through that much luggage than I thought.

We took off some 25 minutes late, the captain had a sense of humour, blaming headwinds on the trip over from Gatwick and that he had to wait 10 minutes for a take off slot. By this time we were the only plane at the airport.

It was 14 degrees at Gatwick and pissing down. I was the ruddy arse in shorts.

A suggestion from a reader to solve the problem that the NHS has with its immense (ha ha) bill in dealing with obesity.

Dear Sir

I order to reassign the awful wastage spent on lardarses by the NHS to worthwhile causes may I recommend the following as a potential solution.

A law should be passed that it will be regarded as a crime if you pass a wobblebottom in the street and you do not take the piss out of her / him mercilessly.

Eventually this torrent of abuse will penetrate the thickest of cellulite and either force the heffalump to do something about their weight or to commit suicide. If it is the suicide option then a support team manned by the highways agency could ensure that the mass of blubber could in someway offset the appalling holes in the road caused by the frosts last winter.

Either way the tax payer is a winner. Better NHS, better roads and the ability to walk around Andover without being physically sick.

I remain sir, etc

Roly Poly Puddingand -Pye

Lt Col Retd

Blubberhouses

Colonel Roly yesterday

Colonel don't be so ridiculous! I can’t see the Tavistock by pass standing up to the weight of traffic it has on a bank holiday being constructed of thigh gloop! But it is a free world and I think it is only fair that the good colonel should have his say.

Whilst we are on the subject, you lefties who wrote in to complain about the handling of the student riots can go poke if you think I am ever going to put such rot on this blog.

Thanks for his nice comments about the blog go to Richard who I bumped into for the first time in years. I wondered who read this as I see more evidence of telly tubby poo in my garden than I do of blog readers. And yet the numbers turn over each day which says to me that either I am getting over a hundred hits a day or perhaps my thanks should go out to Mr C for remembering to re visit every 15 mins?

Thanks too for your lovely comment Muzzog, great to have you back. Where's the soap? yes doesn't it.
Thanks too, I think to Janet for her efforts to sell her fashion range via the blog. Back to the marketing drawing board I'm afraid Janet!

Sweet Dreams

2011-05-26T09:12:00.000+01:00

The 10.04 is not a good train, I don’t mean that is has been naughty in any way, well I suppose it hasn’t, how is a train naughty? Ask the Rev Awdry , creator of Thomas the Tank Engine. He had some ideas.

haven't we all darling

No, it’s just that it is half the size of its predecessor and almost one third of that is made up of First Class seating and therefore the rest is heaving.

Whilst we are on the subject of ‘good’ here is another current hate, nay utter loathing, of mine. When I ask people how they are I am asking them about the state of there health, not as to their recent behaviour. Subsequently I do not expect a reply of ‘good’ or ‘I’m good’.

I shall be the judge of that. If you are the recipient of such a question please answer something along the lines of ‘I am very well/ sick as a dog/ have chronic diarrhoea thank you’

gives me the runs...

I have been published again, my third letter to the Telegraph. Well actually its my four hundred and thirty first but only the third that has graced the completely ignored letters page.

I have discovered the art of wheedling my way onto the said page. The key is to construct inoffensive letters about harmless subjects and the example below is a perfect example. Utterly irrelevant and wholly innocuous, in fact a complete waste of time.

Dear Sir

Whilst trying to find a competitive price to renew my car insurance I was asked for my occupation as part of the required information.

I don’t remember my schools career advisor mentioning any of the following

Artificial limb fitter

Bacon Curer

Cashpoint Fitter

Chicken sexer

Chicken chaser?

Clay pigeon instructor??

Parachute packer.

I am still trying to find Director and there was no mention of any officer of the armed services.
Yours etc
Damon Jarrett

here was one of the responses;

SIR – I’m surprised that Damon Jarrett’s careers adviser (Letters, May 5) did not suggest he consider chicken sexing – it’s a vital job. The scientific method of sexing hatchlings developed in the 1930s by Professors Masui and Hashimoto of Tokyo Imperial University is one of Japan’s great contributions to human welfare.

The ability to determine the sex of day-old chicks is of huge economic importance to the poultry industry, since it enables the separation of male chicks, only a few of which are needed for breeding purposes, from egg-laying females at the earliest stage, thus reducing the cost of rearing poultry.

The Japanese were, and may still be, the world leaders in the profession. Among Japanese citizens interned in Britain after the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941 were a number of chicken sexers. Their arrest caused concern, since they were essential to egg and meat production.

The National Poultry Council secured their release, but later the National Chick Sexing Control Board declared that their services could be dispensed with, provided chicken sexing was made a reserved occupation for British nationals.

Graham H.

School of East Asian Studies

University of Sheffield

Christ on a bike! is life really that dull in sheffield?

From top left; boy, boy, girl, boy, girl, girl, alan carr,

Had I written a critical letter of either the paper, one of its articles or possibly world news I wouldn’t have had an earthly.

Unless I was Frederick Forsyth that is he always gets printed and lives somewhere in Hertfordshire, wherever that is.

summed up by hyaving a place called Ware in it...

For all those on linkedin can I please plug the most magnificent of all groups that exist within, namely The Marquee. It is so exclusive that many members of Europe’s greatest royal families are queuing up to gain admittance. The problem is that they just don’t quite fit the stringent admissions test which makes the SAS selection seem as simple as an illegal immigrant obtaining a dodgy passport.

Have a look, as controller of admissions I will take a look at your application, you never know I might like the look of you but don’t count your chickens/hamsters or nits if you don’t have any of the first two options.

It helps if you are a grumpy old man but in a nutshell we consign those who are not contributing in the goal that all mankind should strive for, namely to make the world a better place. Indeed some of those we incarcerate we believe are contributing to the greater malaise that we find ourselves wading through in our daily lives.

Talking of grumpy I am incensed that The Metropolitan police are to set aside 30 men to investigate the Madeline McCann case

The a team

As a father I can in some way understand how terrible their plight must be but when she announced last week that the Portugese and British government and indeed David Cameron must take some responsibility for the disappearance then all sympathy flew out of the window, sorry no pun intended.

How the tory MP for Witney can be held responsible for an act that he knew nothing about happening thousands of miles away beggars belief

What is even more astounding is that Cameron adopts a knee jerk reaction and throws vital resources at something that is hardly in the national interest

The world has gone injunction mad and its looks like Ryan Giggs has been playing away again and it was always on the cards as Manchester united seem to be able to do the business just about anywhere. I can't see a West ham player attracting so much attention and there is no truth in the rumour that Trevor Brooking has been blowing bubbles.
I am sorry but Stacey Giggs, does she by george! is a good looking bird and Giggs is welsh so I would have thought he would be happy for anything but no, like most simplestons ( defined as an idiot who finds car insurance adverts funny) he has to have a bit more. Anyway its very dull and most of the normal public have no interest whatsoever.
Now Chris Whoone on the other hand is not very glamourous and although he is not welsh this wasn't enough to enable him to beat off the totty as they clamoured to strip him of his yellowy orange lib dem y-fronts. As a result he married the product of a brief tryst between jagger and richards behind the bike sheds at the O2.
As to who carried the hideous child I am unsure but there can be no doubt that its sole purpose in life is to scare naughty children who refuse to go to bed.

Zelda from Terrahawks Mrs Whoone

Sleep well

Bloody Republicans!

2011-05-16T15:54:00.000+01:00

Honestly, all I wanted was an hour or so to get away from Huw bloody Edwards and his sneering.

I got to the course and it was packed! people are just using this extra day's holiday to play golf, there was even a society booked in! For heavens sake is there no escape?

Most golfers are complete ....

I am not condemning the day and I wish them well, no I think it is the media and hype that causes my gorge to rise.
The root of my ire is the dimwitted girls and moronic men who are classified as reporters.

They wonder up and down the waiting crowds asking them such questions as
'why are you here today?'
and
'who are you hoping to see today?'
This is often carried out in an often unintelligible regional accent, at a rate of 3000 words per minute and at a pitch that would pass by most labradors.

I realise that they have been given a 6 hour slot to fill and fill it they must but I am not interested in what their postman thinks or indeed the opinions of a shopkeeper from Llandrindod Wells.

Someone has just started up a chainsaw over the road, right in the middle of the vows, I've half a mind to tell him to shut up, I'm that sort of hypocrite.

I could have gone and played water polo with the andover team...

Nature Notes

Another year and it's cuckoo time. Heard on the 16th in East Sussex, on the 24th in Lincolnshire and the 27th here. I'm so glad that it made it passed the bullets in Libya and the murderous peasants in Malta and Cyprus who can shoot anything they like with impunity and shotguns.
Other welcome signs are Yellowhammers increasing their voices and the arrival of house martins and swifts.

Such minutiae to others are landmarks to me for it recognises another year that potentially may not have been

Medical Notes

These landmarks go some way to cheering me up as things haven't been great on this front. I am used to being ill or sick, some might say depraved but I have always been ill and got better. Do your worst I say, I will always grit my teeth and power back to health.

This time, for the first time, it hasn't happened. This time I improved, hit a plateau and then started to slide.
Now I can't eat things that I could a year ago. I seem to be susceptible to various viruses such as cellulitis and paratitis , and there is the thrush that makes swallowing so hard, so hard that you imagine that it isn't thrush but a sodding great cancerous golf ball lodged in my throat.

should have useed a driver

I know that I shouldn't worry but it is difficult not to. I know too that it won't do anyone else any good by worrying, quite the reverse in fact. I have become a grumpy moody cantankerous old bugger who finds all the worst in others and himself when he should be glorying in all that is good.

Being aware of this merely exacerbates the situation as I am greatly troubled by my behaviour towards others and I see myself as a bore who has lost whatever spark there resided in my soul.

In my defence I find large gatherings, parties and the like difficult. It is difficult to be heard and drinking and eating is often impossible. As a result I have not the slightest inclination to to indulge in social intercourse. My words are few these days, and I need to to choose them carefully and for the right audience.

In no way is this meant to sound arrogant, and you should all be grateful. This means a significant reduction in the amount of crap that you are forced to listen to.

I read Mark's last wonderful submission to this blog and realise that there are many greater causes in the world that deserve our thoughts. Thank you for that, it is a valuable lesson.

Some of this may come as a shock to those / you who read the blog yet don't actually know me. Clowns cry too. I always hated clowns.

clown

How many of us use humour as a mask for our inadequacies?
How many hide our true selves, scared of exposing them to other's sight and opinions?

I thought I knew everything there was to know about Ade and I was only after his death that I found out just how wrong I was and that I only scratched the surface.

Perhaps we should ask more questions

One year on....

2011-04-27T09:41:00.000+01:00

Thank you Mark, you have put this so well...

Dear all

Please forgive the intrusion, however it is almost a year since our dearest friend Ade died.

Just last night I was looking at the remembrance sheets, not only of Ade’s funeral but also my father who had died on 29th October 2009 – which was the same date (a year on) when we celebrated Ade’s life with a party in London.
I have missed Ade very much and still look at many of the photographs of the good times we spent together; in London and Cornwall in particular.

This is what Damon, Dickie and I wrote a year ago, it was really a recollection so that we would remember the times that we spent together, please pass it on to anyone who knew Ade:

I know that you will all have your own particular memories, remembered today and in the future with great fondness.

Ade has been described in so many different ways – here are some of the words used about Ade – a true friend, a talker, a debater, a cricketer, a rugby player, quick witted, a story-teller, a teacher, a man of honesty, integrity and dignity. But most of all - people’s memories are of partying and yes – dancing, dancing, and more dancing.

Here are some of our memories.

In the words of Damon -

His dancing was legendary, both Mark and I tried to outdo him but it was one area that we certainly ceded any ideas of superiority. I will miss the man who made Michael Jackson look like John Sargeant.

I met Ade through Damon at Cotsbrook School, where we competed in a cricket match called the Edgar Tankard – old boys of Cotsbrook against a Headmaster’s XI.

Damon remembers Ade from those days:-

Ade was my oldest friend, my past, my memory and my diary. He remembered everything.

I was seven or eight when Ade arrived at Cotsbrook Hall prep school and it was his first taste of rural England. He had come from London and was all alone in a very strange environment. He had a loathing of porridge and would always smear his small portion all over his bowl and spoon to make it look like he had finished and eaten a massive plateful.

Prep school life in those days hadn't changed much from the 1940's. There was no central heating (Ade never liked the cold) and I doubt that health and safety would have been too impressed either.

Over time he got into the groove and rugby, football and cricket were played with great zeal. His love for cricket endured and he was still playing for the London Nigerians. We spent many happy days at the Lords tests and he will take many memories, that we should probably forget, to his grave with him but there are far more wonderful ones that will last.

Dickie said that the thing about Ade is that he always made such a tremendous first impression:

My first meeting with him was on the bus to our first rugby training session at Sheffield Poly. Behind me on the bus was an incredibly loud, but well-spoken (which in the dark Socialist wastes of South Yorkshire was a rarity), opinionated voice waffling on about his sporting prowess. I turned around to give this ebullient chap some grief only to be faced by a little chap with big eyes and an even bigger smile. It totally disarmed me and, needless to say, we hit it off immediately remaining firm friends on and off the rugby pitch.

Damon said - His friends were numerous and from a massive cross section of society. But that was Ade, never afraid to make friends.

After my first meeting at Cotsbrook, Ade was my friend and indeed he was going to see friends in Worcester, a 45 minute car journey from Ross-on-Wye. Both Damon and Ade didn’t pass their tests until they were well into their 20s! Ade was scared stiff, as I drove too fast for him. There were a few other instances with cars; one that particularly tickled him was the time that Ade and I went to my parents. He loved talking to my Father and Mother – mostly about Education, but really anything and everything. I was explaining to my Father about an accident I had had in my car and then explaining that it wasn’t the small crash but a bigger smash! Ade thought that was great.

Another incident was when playing cricket at Malvern, after the match we went to the pub, and then Ade had to get to a phone box to tell who he was staying with that he would be late. We made our calls and then had a small disagreement and began acting rather silly. I locked him out of the car. He jumped on the bonnet – declaring – Ha! You can’t go anywhere now. So I drove off, Ade holding onto the windscreen wipers. 100 yards later may face changed dramatically – a policeman was coming the other way. The policeman thought it was hilarious – Ade was laughing too – all at my expense – I was fined £30 for not having a passenger in the correct place!

Ade and I decided to go on holiday together a year later. As you can imagine it was chaotic. We decided to go to Victoria train station and then we would decide where to go. Paris it was. The train journey to the coast was interesting. We started talking about luck. If a man burgles your house and then when confronting him he shoots you – BUT just misses your heart – are you lucky or unlucky. This discussion went on for 3 hours. The whole of the train carriage was captivated, one person even getting Ade’s phone number, calling him about 6 months later! We spent the first night in the Hotel du Gard du Nord in Paris. We talked until 4 in the morning about everything – the meaning of life – our dreams and aspirations. It was a fantastic conversation, one that I will remember, always.

Having tossed a coin between going to Amsterdam, where Ade had friends and the South of France where I knew some people, next stop was Amsterdam. You can imagine what it was like! One night we were in a night club and a journalist came up to us and asked us why we were in Amsterdam – he said everyone was here for the sex, drugs and rock & roll. We explained that we were here to see friends, play table tennis, and visit the Diamond and Rembrandt Museums. The journalist was completely non-plussed. Needless to say that Ade met a group of girls – all blonde – 7 sisters no less. What a great time we had.

I played cricket with Ade regularly in Oxfordshire and I know that many of them have been very saddened to hear about Ade. He was always waxing lyrical about the one shot he played, on his way to 12! However, there was one very memorable stand I had with him. We opened the batting and both scored 50s. Ade even scored a six – it was short boundary. I scored 60 and Ade 61 – he was overjoyed by that one!

Recently Ade has been playing in London for the London Nigerians and also in Marshfield in Sussex, for Siegfried Sassoon’s XI. We were planning a game this summer. He and Damon also played at Babington, where I play cricket, in a 2005 game. As predictable as the miserable English weather, Damon was bowling, the batsman skied it to Ade, and he dropped it. It was source of much recrimination and mickey-taking.

Damon remembers Ade in this vein:-

We all gave Ade a hard time, always in jest of course, and he always took it on the chin. He would bide his time, accepting all the grief and then come in with a quick retort which would shut us all up in a trice.

We gave him a hard time because we loved him, respected him and knew him.

Now to rugby, a great passion of Ade’s. I think he would say that he was a rugby player first and a cricketer second. He played a very good standard of rugby, at school and at club level. The first game I played with Ade was a game in Bedfordshire where Damon and I had been asked to play for the Western-Kayes (remember the name, the Western-Kayes ) against their cousins. Damon and I were playing with no real scrum in front of us and consequently spent the whole time tackling. An injury and Ade was on, in boots 2 sizes too big for him. I was at full back and Ade on the wing. His first touch was retrieving a kick into our 22. I shouted – let’s see you run then. He promptly kicked it into touch saying he was too tired!

We won the game by a couple of points, thanks to a kick from Damon and then went to celebrate in the local hostelry. The parents were paying and needless to say, that was a mistake. Steak and chips and too many beers later, Ade stood up to thank the hosts and in a slightly slurry voice thanked the Wentworth-Kayles.

Another occasion, we played rugby together, was at the Harrodians club in Barnes, London. Dickie Biddle, his great friend and fellow rugby player from Sheffield persuaded us to play. In one game – and I can’t remember if it was the same game – Dickie broke his nose. Nose completely skew-whiff, blood pouring, but no substitute. He carried on despite Ade trying to persuade Dickie otherwise. 5 minutes later another cry of anguish from the scrum. Dickie emerged with another smash on the nose – but it was straightened! Ade was playing on the left wing and me on the other. Again a kick was sent into the 22. Ade retrieved it and I said “Kick it!” But just to sum up Ade being contrary, he decided to run it out of the 22. He shimmied past one player, passing to me, I passed back, we were now over the half way line and linked up with our forwards, who then surged on to score under the posts.

Ade, an inspirational moment that we all celebrated in true style that night, even Dickie with a straight but bruised nose.

Dickie said this about their rugby playing days in Sheffield:

Anyone who played with him will tell you that he could be one of the most exasperating players to have on your team. He is legendary among the Sheffield players for giving us, the rest of his team, a patronising lecture at half time about not kicking the ball because we were now playing uphill against a very strong wind. Two minutes into the second half and Ade hoists the ball up into the air for it to travel backwards and behind us for 70 yards putting us at an immediate disadvantage. Only Ade could get away with doing something like that without getting a complete thrashing from his own team. We did make him pay for it, however, in the bar after the game. And even though he was invariably the noisiest player on the pitch, a referee's nightmare, you would always forgive him because every now and then, he would do a quick shimmy, a quick turn of pace and off he would go and score. Exasperating, yes, and even though we would never admit it to him, he was a very talented athlete.

The day I was going to call him for a game of squash was the day I discovered that he'd gone to the great sports field in the sky. It breaks my heart that I won't be able to have that banter with him over our sporting successes and failures anymore.

As I said, everyone remembers Ade’s dancing. It was legendary, as Damon said. Although we tried to keep up, he was in his element – the envy of all the men who couldn’t match the rhythm, the innovation and those quick little feet, and the admiration of all the women – who just thought he had got it!

Dickie remembers his own wedding:-

That boy could dance and 18 years on from my wedding, people don’t talk to me about the church, the speeches, the beautiful bride, the lovely weather – they talk about Ade’s dancing. The hundreds of guests formed a great ring that day as Ade hit the floor and held them enthralled with his moves and grooves. No-one dared enter the ring, knowing they couldn’t match his lightening feet. That boy could dance!

I remember, the night clubs in London that we frequented – The 151 Club on the King’s Road, The Polo Lounge, The Bank. But not just there – wherever we were - music would come on; at parties, at any gathering and also down in Cornwall.

Cornwall was always a special place for Damon, Ade and I. We spent my 40th Birthday, with Alastair Smellie and Mark Fone – just the five of us. We went out one night and walked back across the golf course, it was a lunar eclipse and we sat outside reminiscing and having fun. The next day was the golf match – Ade not playing but encouraging. Well, at the 16th with the match in the balance Damon was playing a shot and at the top of his backswing, Ade shouted out he had found a ball. Damon miscued and subsequently lost the match. That evening a quiet supper party ensued with recriminations first and then a lot of laughing.

We did party a lot. And on a number of occasions maybe too much. One weekend, Ade put me to bed and having drawn the short straw had to sleep in the same room. You would not have believed the snoring.

A few weeks later and Ade had had too much Pimms and I tried to repay the compliment but helping him up to bed, however being worse for wear myself I dropped Ade a couple of times, amid much mirth from all!

He was a teacher and early on in his career, he was teaching English to foreign students at Brunel University and I visited him and his students. They adored Ade. He engaged with them. He shone in the classroom. His students glowing with his natural enthusiasm.

Ade believed in education and said this on The Institute for Learning website:-

I think it is only through education (it always has been) that we will make a lasting leap forward to prepare our children, youth and adults to each accept we have a responsibility and a contribution which is important to value.

Over 25 years involved in education, in mainstream since 2001 the purpose I believe is to prepare us for work and life, not separate and apart but intrinsic in all its guises. My experience in teaching and learning has been right through the spectrum from nursery to university graduate and post graduate level, all can find valuable lessons (sorry!) from each other.

More recently I have discovered the ideology to embody this principle called communication ethics (CE) which dates from ancient Greece philosophers – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle who taught that the vital importance of the individual (particularly those more senior in the hierarchy) was to realise the need for self sacrifice and restraint over personal gain and satisfaction, when in contrast to actions which may be detrimental to the benefit of the State. Through education in embracing this principle we allow the person to decide on their cause of action, but with it a preparation to accept the consequences and responsibility.

Only through dialogue and discussion of key fundamentals within our education system can we begin to give the individual the freedom to exercise their rights in a democracy, with the understanding they also require a self discipline and restraint that others, who may differ from their own, so too have those same rights. It is simple but somewhere in time it has got lost and needs to be re-ignited – I hope you agree with me.

Dear Ade, how we will all miss you terribly.

The bright smile.

The quick encouraging word.

The concern in his voice.

The hugs he gave.

The laughter he engendered.

The fun he inspired.

The dancing, oh yes! The dancing.

The love he gave us all.

Please remember Ade in your own thoughts and prayers with these words from Dickie:

Ade has left a gap in the lives of those that knew him. This gap will not be filled, because Ade was truly unique.

MARK

just words

2011-04-19T22:56:00.000+01:00

Letter to Daily Torygraph 28th March 2011

Dear Sir

The recent riots by anarchists in central London raise a few tricky dilemmas that will take some sorting out before life is to return to its humdrum normality.

The most pressing of these is whether the perpetrators of the troubles should be merely sterilised or publicly castrated without anaesthetic. Personally I favour the latter, may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!

The females will of course not have this option and should have the sterilisation carried out at Chelmsford general hospital,( is this too harsh?)

In order that they may not spread their vile theories to the great gullible unwashed they will have their tongues cut out and fingers removed so that they will only be able to communicate a la Mr Hawking and therefore will be pretty crap at rabble rousing at demos.

There, that should do it. Now for the England cricket team…

I remain etc...

Otis Butterscratch.

Colonel (retd) 6th Bridgnorth Hussars

Letter Torygraph 3rd April 2011

Dear Sir

Concerning Colonel Butterscratch’s repulsive letter of the 28th of March, perhaps he might like to lead the police during the next rio... er.... demonstration of civil rights. He might be at home with the fascist bully boy tactics they employ.

Kind regards

Greg Airyarrse

Ps. He can’t spell Bridgenorth.

Letter Torygraph 7th April

Dear Sir

Please inform Mr Airyarrse that I would be delighted to command the 38th Battalion of the Gravesend Girl guides let alone my old regiment (if they weren’t all dead) or the police in an assault on his unruly bunch of soap dodgers.

I imagine he will end up just like all those other terrorists, violent demonstrators and thugs of yesteryear with a life peerage from the labour party or a prominent position in a mainstream political party. viz N Ireland.

I remain etc

Otis Butterscratch

Post scriptum

I sodding well can spell Bridgnorth you ruddy oik.

Letter Torygraph 12th April

Dear Sir

Piss off Butterballs

Greg

Letter to Daily Torygraph 13th April

Dear Sir,

Whilst perusing various television channels in search of finding something appropriate to do the ironing to I chanced upon the England Football team singing the national anthem prior to their recent game.

I say singing, three or four of them seemed to be opening their mouths but the rest remained mute.

Is this because they are ardent republicans or merely ignorant of the words?

I suggest the latter and if there is to be a six figure position in Signor Capello’s entourage to rectify this problem please may I have first refusal.

cheers

Jerry Bowham

Going Underground

2011-04-11T10:49:00.000+01:00

A French journalist is facing the sack and court proceedings after publicising the well known truth that most of the drug dealing done in his country is carried out by non Caucasians. He was a bit more specific and narrowed it down to arabs and blacks but the idea is much the same. I find it hard these days to come to terms with the fact that no one is allowed to call a spade a spade when it is much easier than calling it a portable excavatory implement.

It is a well known fact that people travel on the tube, that the country is partly run by wishy washy wimps and that Uganda is never going to win a swimming gold at the Olympics but if we say that all Ugandans are non swimmers then we get banged up and sent to the clink.

Its no fun having one on your head

Talking of which here is another candidate for the jug.
John Apreski was a barrow boy from the east end who one day told himself that he was going to be a great fashion designer in Paris and that he would change his name to the next thing he saw.

As he walked past his local, the Grasses Head, the rest of him is yet to be found, a man staggered out with the remains of a bottle of some repulsive homosexual liquor firmly embedded in his head. Thus died John Apreski and John Chartreuse- Green was born.

Chartreuse - Green on Thursday

Grudgingly I have to give the man a bit of credit. Firstly he managed to convince people that he was a creative genius, something he patently wasn’t and yet I am still struggling to convince the fashionistas of the Seine that I am.

Secondly, however small it is he is not afraid to speak his mind when pissed. Whereas for most of us this isn’t a problem for one in the public eye this is a bit of a PR disaster. It sits very closely with the poor French journalist above though Chartreuse – Green’s political doctrine was slightly further right than the hacks.

Will this all push free speech underground? Rather like catholicism in the 17th century.

Beth Nell-Green

This is not a land of free speech, not that is unless you are from a minority that has the capability of blowing up train stations or a group repressed for not knowing what the proper purpose of your chap is for, other than pissing out of.

Why can a man take the mick out of the micks on national TV and yet even if they refer to Pakistanis as pakis he will be hung drawn and quartered.

Chalfont and Latimer

All he has done is missed ‘tanis’ off the end. Do their neighbours cry foul when they are called ‘Indis’, Banglis or Afghanis? Should we not call the Aussies, Aussies?

Taffys can just go poke.

I have had another birthday and thanks to all those who kindly sent cards pressies. I am now close to my half century and although very grateful to even be here considering the events of the past few years. I find those who say ‘life begins at fifty’ decidedly odd.

Maid a Vale

What the hell were you doing when you were twenty? Didn’t you go to the pub? seduce and shag members of the opposite (and same – this inclusion forced by the equal rights commission) sex?

Weren’t you travelling the world? Going to Lords and Twickenham? Drinking champagne at the Heythrop point to point? Stealing your soon to be ex girlfriend’s parents silver? Eh? … not true... ed

If life begins at fifty with a knackered body, children to look after, a shagging great mortgage, threats of redundancy and sex on days with a ‘q’ in them then I am not looking forward to what they are going to say happens at sixty.

One to show granny

One of my presents was a gps, purchased so we could all get into the new craze of Geocaching. The idea is that you use your gps to find small boxes hidden all over the country and you sign a book and possibly leave a small momento of your visit in the box and should the urge arise, your children may take a similar piece of shite left by the last family.

We have tried it with others and the test results were favourable. The main point being that the children are happy to go on a five mile walk in January as long as there is the promise that they can take away a broken plastic whistle and the contents of any other unwanted Christmas cracker.

seven sisters

Indeed I recommend putting all such detritus into a bag for this very purpose after the mass of Christ. Geocaching families can be easily spotted by daddies wearing cracker hats in July.

So it was with great relish that I sat down with the instructions safe in the knowledge that within hours we would all be happily skipping down the hill to discover our first hoard of goodies.

Not so. It seemed this GPS, which I now know stands for Guaranteed (to) Pissoff Shopper, wasn’t going to play. I know they work, I’ve seen them work. I’ve seen the smiling faces of the children, I’ve heard them saying ‘my go now please’ its just that getting to that stage wasn’t going to be easy.

Blackfriars

This GPS can, so the instructions say, tell me the best time to hunt caribou in the Yukon and what type of dry fly to use on the upper reaches of the Ganges but all I wanted to do was put in a grid reference and walk towards it. Not a hard concept for it to grab. Too hard for the writer of the instructions however. Buying semi skimmed milk in Usbekhistan? No problems, follow me… walking three miles in Hampshire to grid ref 123456… oh I don’t know about that.

3pm found me digging the soil over with a bloody sore back and the children playing in the garden

Happy Easter!

New Stuff

2011-04-08T09:21:00.000+01:00

We have new followers and I would like all you older boys and girls to make the new ones feel welcome. The ticks, as we used to call them include;

A cartoon boy called Achi
A pair of dogs called Kirsten Sherman, not sure which is which
A cannabis leaf called Logan and
A porn star called Adult Love, well she looks like a porn star and there are messages about where to have sex and stuff...

Welcome one and all and I hope you will all be very happy at St.Syphilitics. Now remember to report to Mr Desarde for whippings before vespers and don't forget that tomorrow is coalition day and there are matches against Gadaffy Hall on upper clegg and lower peston. Head boy for the Tornado term is Ben Garsey.

Imagine how much more fun it would have been if only they hadn't missed off that last 'e'

In discussion with the Scandinavian Bother It rep in the school playground the other day and the subject turned to admonishing poorly behaved children.
This was occasioned by a mother feebly attempting to chastise her incredibly objectionable child.
'Garcia! please stop doing that or I shall put you on the naughty step'

The naughty step... What a complete waste of time. Did she have a portable naughty step that appeared in such circumstances and was Garcia really going to sit on this contraption in the middle of the playground whilst his friends laughed at him?
No of course not, Garcia carried on rubbing the smaller child's face into the mud.
Twice more her plaintive wails implored him to stop and then she gave up and we sniggered at her imbecilic attempts to raise issue. The Bother it rep for the Maldives, who holidays occasionally in the UK so that he is able to remind himself of how lucky he is, questioned once more his reactionary theories of mass sterilisation for the proletariat.

So if one of the stairs in your home is designated as the naughty step why not give all the other ones titles too!
We thought of the following;
The horny step - where you sit when your wife has a headache (no carpet left)
The depressed step - when life isn't too great
The happy step - thick luxurious shag pile.
The pissed step - stained

The goose step

I am sure you will all have your favourites. Send them in and the best one will win a pint when we next meet.

Its worth going to Waitrose

Talking of meeting have you ever met someone who you really ought to like, but you think is a complete arse?
Your child's schoolteacher? your vicar, your new boss blah blah etc, those are not personal examples, only generalisations. You know that you are going to see quite a lot of this person and yet you find them incredibly dull and ennui and every meeting will be as enjoyable as crapping a role of razor wire.
What is the solution?

This is the solution. Proof at last Gershwin was a transexual.

A sexually confused person has just been awarded £21k for the torment he received from fellow employees and a Brazilian women was granted a vast sum because her worker chums called her Square bob and sponge pants or something similar because her voice sounded similar to the TV characters - I'm quite happy to be abused for that amount and you can call me anything under the sun and I won't give a flying F...
Shame I work alone!

A teacher has been done for spraying her smelly children with a room spray by the name of Febreeze. She concentrated upon those children who stank of curry. Now this is racist and cannot be tolerated. As a result all smelly children should be given the once over - and there parents too possibly as it is getting warmer?
We are all aware of the great unwashed and something must be done to help them. Hooray for charity!

Bother it! has secured a rare photo of the ex Mrs McCartney's pussy

Tardy

2011-03-22T18:54:00.003Z

In a break from tradition that will set Telegraphs rustling all over clubland I am now on the 9.35.

When you have recovered your composure I will continue.

They are as different a clientele as a matinee of The Sound of Music is to the 3am screening of some French ‘Arthouse’ film in the ‘Roxy’ just off the Old Kent road.

More eclectic and avant garde, well if Wiltshire and Hampshire do avant garde.

So apart from the fact that I am sitting opposite a woman with a face like a warthog and who makes Sandi Toksvig look like a stunna there is little to report on.

or is it Harry Rednap

It is therefore with great relish that I can announce the launch of the 2011 arse of the year awards. This has been set up after Tiger Woods’s latest expectorations and his apparent failure to apologise in a proper fashion. I therefore nominate him for the overall title and it looks like he will also take the bad sportsman of the year award too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbnDr_IbdIU

tiger works on a plan to shag more women whilst he relaxes at home
Having said that Tiger’s phlegm collection after 18 holes is pretty piss poor in comparison to mine. I do try to avoid doing it on the green unless my opponent has got a five footer for the match and then I find that a well positioned deposit of 10cc of the green stuff just on his line can disrupt his train of thought.

Does he tread it into the turf and risk making an indentation?

Does he look for a stick or leaf to try to remove the offending gob?

Perhaps he will wait awhile and hope that a passing myopic woodpecker will swoop down and pick up what it perceives to be a small frog to take back to its malnourished brood,

Or does he look for a completely different line to the hole?

Hopefully he opts for the latter and although successfully misses the green glob he puts the ball into rabbit hole at the side of the green, nevermore to see his beloved Titleist 3 again.

Titleist is pronounced as it is spelt. If you hear anyone ask you if you have seen their Titeleist you are within rights to pick up the ball and pop it into your bag for you have found a Titleist and he is a ruddy arse.

ruddy arse

So some soldiers have been told they are to be made redundant by email. Get over it! It was going to happen anyway so just get on with the job of becoming a civvy.

I was sitting in a trench in the Zimbabwean bush training Mozambican rebels when someone thrust a piece of paper into my hand saying that the army had probably found a few more people it would want to hold onto rather than me.

This had been sent from London to Harare and then from there to grid reference 183654 via the hands of every Tom, Dick and Moses Ncube. I’m sure they all had a good giggle but what’s done is done – at least emails are relatively private.

I don’t think I would be too worried about being sacked via email when I had a bunch of angry beardie weirdies intent on turning me into stewing steak.

I may have mentioned this before but I am getting a wee bit fed up with ‘this the troops are getting a hard time of it’ scenario. I know it is my job to help them but I think they are getting more help than ever before.

SAILORS SACKED BY SEMAPHORE! – TRAFALGAR CUTBACKS MEAN TOUGHE TIMES AHEAD. YE SUNNE EXCLUSIVE.

I am returning on the 5.20, normally a safe bet for a seat as only the really affluent bankers skive away from the office at this time. However it is half term and it is heaving and the next 75 minutes promises to be horrific as little Johnny, Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail return home after a day out to the Natural History Museum where they have endeavoured to drink the combined weight of their parents in Coke.

Daddy has quite wisely opted to work overtime this week and so mummy has the ire of the passengers all to herself and boy! What a lot there is as the remains of a tuna and sweetcorn baguette strikes a sixty year old man squarely on the nose. It was a splendid swerve from flopsy and despite the man looking as though he thoroughly deserved it he regained some plus points by pushing out his tongue to retrieve some tuna and announcing it to be ‘first rate’

This served only to exacerbate the bedraggled mother’s rapid descent into lunacy and she gibbered aloud until Raynes Park from whence there issued a sort of cuckoo sound all the way to Basingstoke.

Yet more quiz success for the ‘My brain hurts’ gang.
Whilst quaffing a pint of GFB* with Mr Cadbury I perchanced on a sign stating that there was to be a quiz that night and tha there was room at the inn.

We entered and soundly whipped the locals on their own turf and still had time to win the quiz.

I showed my feminine/cross dressing side by knowing what a crinoline was. Hmm?

* Gentlemens Farting Bitter

A recent ultrasound found no reason for the lower left portion of my lip looking like a botched botoxed job. Indeed none of the so called experts have found any reason why it should inflate and deflate at a rate that makes Jordan’s boob jobs look a rare occurrence. It hardly helps my drinking/eating and it affects my speech. Once more I push the limits of medical science!

Oh cock. Basingstoke and something has just sat opposite me with ‘Love’ tattoed on one of his knuckles. I am desperately trying to see if he has ‘Hate’ on the other. Its quite difficult to see without staring though and I must be careful though unless I want to see the clenched answer rapidly closing on my nose.

I may be doing him a disservice, he may be a hippy and have ‘is the answer’ on the other hand. Admittedly this would be unlikely unless he had eleven fingers. Other options include ‘love me do’ or ‘me tender’ (surely that should be ‘my’…ed) what about ‘is a many splendored thing’? again this would mean he would have problems buying gloves.

Indeed it is

His mate, and by that I mean chum not beloved, has just announced in all seriousness that he is going to use the time on the train to do paperwork. He pulls out a copy of the Sun and cracks on with a Sudoku with 3 numbers to fill in each in each box.

The world of Johnny Foreigner is in turmoil and what is on the front page of the Telegraph yesterday? News that Steve Bloke, sorry but he was instantly forgettable, has become the first professional cricketer to come out. That is, for those who are not au fait with this term, to inform everyone that he hasn’t quite understood what he was given a todger for. He is apparently, a wicketkeeper.He crouches behinds the stumps when you are batting. When the slow bowlers are on wicketkeepers he comes right up behind your bottom (ooh) and whisper things like ‘nice arse’ and ‘I think your box needs adjusting’ just to put you right off.

Pink balls please

I am reading ‘Home from the Hill’ the tale of Colonel Hilary bloody silly name for a bloke Hook. This has kindly been leant to me by Peter and I am enjoying his tales of India and the Sudan during and after the Second World War. It is not particularly well written but his tales of pig sticking and hunting tigers are most illuminating.

er... no, not quite got the hang of it

A documentary was made about his twilight years in Wiltshire which showed a man struggling to come to terms with life without servants and presumably a wife. I am on page 179 of 191 at the moment and although he is now aged 50 he only mentioned in passing that he managed to get some leave from Africa to go home and get married. No name, no concept of a courtship or any subsequent mention of his mate. Mate used presumably as in chum rather than beloved.

Parp Parp!

2011-02-14T11:13:00.003Z

Two minutes to go before the train leaves and there is no one sitting opposite me as yet. It is always worth getting my chuffing enormous laptop out and tapping away as if I was drafting a survival document to be implemented in the event of the world being invaded by a race of giant brown urinals in a feeble attempt to stop someone sitting opposite me.

Were off! but I have to keep it up beyond Clapham Junction (ooh Matron! No easy task as it is the busiest urinal in the country, well it certainly smells like it)

More news on the medical front and the consultant says I have 12 months to sort my self out recovery wise and if there is no improvement by then I will be stuck with it.

As there has been a marked decline over the past 12 months in the swallowing I don’t imagine I will be swallowing whole sprouts by December.

It is two years now since the 1st major operation and there are 3 more to pass before they will commit to saying that you are in remission. Personally I am just glad that I am able to sit on the 9.04 wondering when I will be brave enough to tell the lawyer to get a haircut.

Some people go through such life changing experiences and come out the other side with a devil may care attitude. Personally I am still scared of spiders, unlikely to say boo to a goose and wary of solicitors with mullets

Bugger, we are stopping at Clapham, might have to resort to the Jerusalem artichoke farts to maintain my space.

Roughy toughy marines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcTCVSJ5DcM

Its fartichoke season and thanks to Suzanne for allowing me to have a rummage in her undergrowth. Although a little unkempt there were some little beauties in there and after a quick rub I applied a knob of butter and popped them in the pot.

Wilt some spinach and its fun fun fun for those with a mental age of six but hours of misery for everyone else.

chaos as Jarrett lets one off

Thursday

09.04 for the first time in ages. The long haired lawyer from Longparish has washed his hair and it now looks slightly bouffant. He still looks ridiculous.

I am sporting a new set of upper and lower gnashers, well a set of three on top and bottom. I am sorry if this is more than you needed to know but this is a medical blog, well, it was a medical blog.

This means my speech has altered. That is it has become almost indistinguishable from a man singing the Marseillaise with a mouthful of rissoles. Whatever happened to rissoles? Did they turn into faggots and get jobs at the BBC?

Anyhow these new top teeth are jolly long and sharp at one point but not quite long enough to break into peanuts

I will have to get them sanded down. I could do it myself as the chap next door has a sander though my DIY ethos is more CEFTP. (create employment for the proletariat)

Neither set is likely to improve the soup and yoghurt diet of which I am becoming inordinately bored. This despite being given a wonderful book for Christmas of 365 soup recipes, one for each day of the year, dieting on leap years.

Oh do look, there’s a trainspotter. Rather typical of his breed, dull brown plumage with a white wispy crest. Not so many of them around these days due to their natural habitat being wiped out and the fact that trains have all the aesthetic grace of a sloppy duck turd.

Its covert coat season as the slightly milder weather means that we don’t all run around pretending to be Sir Ranulph Fiennes. People who wear covert coats should be over 5”11 and not come from Peckham.

Unfortunately this is a law that is not strictly enforced by the fashion Gestapo and yet in a way this has had a beneficial affect in certain circumstances for if you see someone wearing one with those velvet collars you are 100% guaranteed that the man is a cad and a bounder who sells second hand jags in Beckenham.

This man was quite rightly executed for this crime against good taste

Does anyone know the collective name for caravans?

A desecration?

It has been remarkably dry down south and the River Test is very low for this time of year. If we have a dry spring I fear for hosepipe bans in the summer and that means the upper lake won't have the required pressure to charge the fountains.

We open the garden one day a year to make the oiks envious

Someone is doing very smelly farts. What does one do in this situation? How does one react? What does Debretts say?

I know people who would charge headlong into the fray with a ‘Fuck me there’s a smelly bastad in this carriage’. The voice would be stentorian in manner and on no account would the ‘r’ be inserted into ‘bastad’. It gives an air of compliance with the unwashed northerners who are assumed to be hard.

Most would just sit and bear it though I prefer the choking and eventual asphyxiation role play culminating in an over exaggerated clunk as I collapse on the table in front of me.

I have heard a ‘oh well played sir’ on one occasion.

On the whole though farts are fun. You can tell a Brit abroad as he will be the only one smirking when someone lets one go in a restaurant. Foreigners regard botty burps as no different to a sneeze. Horray for artichokes.

I was very kindly given a ticket to the England Wales match with accommodation provided too. I must admit that the set up there is amazing. You arrive at the station and the stadium is right in front of you and the city centre is minutes away.

My hotel was a further ten minute walk from the ground and the management of the 80,000 people who attended the game was splendid. No shoving, queuing or animosity from those pungent, odious Lilliputians who speedily assumed their place one up from amoebas in the order of things.

It was a shame that their organisational skills weren’t transferred to the field of play for rarely did they show the passion that we associate welsh rugby with.

We had a few verses of Cwm Rhonda but no sospan vach and with the roof of the stadium closed I had expected the cacophony to almost lift it from its hinges but no. The excitement was there but no real oomph.

Gone were the days of Edwards and John at the arms park, no more the sidestepping brilliance of Gerald Davies forcing ‘oohs’ and aahhs’. More like ooze and arse these days, in fact the two women on my right freely admitted that the main enjoyment of coming to these games was to watch the players bums.

You must be able to get more for your money online as £75 to look at 60 buttocks from 70 yards doesn’t seem great value to me, but I am not a women nor do I get on the wrong bus so I am in no real position to pass judgment.

No you are right it hasn’t ever stopped me before.

It was a great experience and we won so yaa boo sucks to taffy and thanks to Red lion who made it all possible.

Wales getting slaughtered

Feeling a bit under the weather? Feeling blue? don't worry at least there are some people who are Bloody stupid for you to laugh at!

http://www.safeshare.tv/v/fJuNgBkloFE

I have just made celeriac, broccoli and bacon soup but I left it unblended over night as I couldn't be arsed to do so.

have just done so and it reeks of farts even before I have consumed it; Christ knows what it will be like second hand.

This is wonderful. Everyone should watch this throughout the whole wide world and every country should play cricket and adopt the ethics of cricket in the 1940's. Especially Pakistan.

Thanks to Cadbury for supplying it. The only man I know to get banned by his own team for breaking the ECB's Spirit of Cricket code. OK, slight exaggeration, slight.

http://vimeo.com/17759994

Talking of which I watched a programme on BBC76 at 11.35 last night about the Afghan Cricket team? Bloody Marvellous stuff.

Its amazing how easy it is teaching a child to hit something thrown at them when it is a hand grenade.

I have a cold

You 'orrible lot

2011-01-28T23:30:00.003Z

Wow, what fun!
I’m on the 7.35 and I simply wasn’t aware of how much fun can be had on it. From the outside it bears a difference to the 9.04 already, it is 3 carriages longer and yet it is probably more crowded. The amusement started long before its lights started to illuminate a dreary platform. With still ten minutes to pass prior to its arrival its potential clientele commenced a strange gavotte that made a bumble bees waggle dance look wholly ennui.

The leader, with precision accuracy, aligned themselves exactly on the yellow line at a given point, marked as x below, and the sheep started to file in behind. This happened all along the 400 yard platform with spacings of some 60 yards between them. There was then a gap of only 5 yards, then 60, then 5, ad infinitum, well, up to the front of the train. Viz:

Platform edge-------------x—x-------------x—x-----------x—x------------x—x----------x—x---------x

So the sheep added to the queues behind x and some were six or seven deep and still they came like a mesmerised hoard of besuitted zombies.

http://www.kontraband.com/videos/5492/Violence-Of-The-Lambs/#show

is this a spoof?

Can't remember it being big in any part of the UK except Wales where they suddenly became very scared
I stood in between the last two queues, wandering as lonely as a cloud and yet I might have been a naked Eric Pickles with a geranium stuffed up my arse for all the looks I attracted.

Who was this person who refused to stand in line? How dare he? Doesn’t he know the form? Why is he practising cricket shots with his umbrella? Ooh look! now he’s pretending it’s a sword, or is it a golf club?

Actually I was dreaming I was back at Sandhurst, they were a new intake of rabble recruits and I was their Colour Sergeant, Bastard by name and nature.

I walked up and down each line and barely stifled a guffaw as I said ‘haircut’ to one and ‘Those boots are in shit order’ to another.

‘Report to the guardroom at twenty two hundred hours’ bought some strange glances and when the train arrived and the doors opened I couldn’t resist a ‘by the right quick march… doft dight doft dight doft dight’

I remain to this day completely bemused why sergeants have an impediment which prevents them from saying ‘left, right’ but there we go. Perhaps they go on a course to get it drilled out of them. Ha Ha!
The thing that makes this story all the more absurd is that after forming this orderly queue they boarded the train on a first come first served basis only to find that there was plenty of room for everyone and that even Colour Sergeant got a lovely seat with plenty of leg room.

And so to a greater analysis of the characters that make up this flock on the 7.35.There is some bald bloke opposite with his eyes shut yet muttering audibly. Well it is audible but I can’t quite decipher it. Perhaps he is a banker and he has a times table test today and he is trying to commit that awkward seven times table to memory.

its not the end if you start to lose your hair....

Many are asleep, mouths agape. I blow my nose loudly and they wake up. I must do this again in ten minute intervals for the rest of the journey.

The reason for my early start is not to lick a useless bunch of tired commuters into a slick well drilled and ruthless platoon of killers but to see the Royal British Legion Industries in Maidstone.

I have never been to Maidstone before in the same way that I have never travelled on the 7.35 before and I doubt I shall do either again. I am prejudging Maidstone but I am sure that the rabble commuters wouldn’t take kindly to another day of pre dawn drill.

I often wonder what the people I meet during the day would think of me if they could read the blog prior to our appointments. Cancel them probably but perhaps you ought to question whether Nigel from accounts who you will be sitting next to at your weekly meeting has a strange alter ego and is he wearing suspenders or is that a canoe in his pocket?

It will be a long day but I will be rewarded by a pint of Doom Bar at the White Lion at the end of it as it is the second Thursday in the month and the Class one father’s beer night.

Is God an Australian and the devil a Pom? Well it’s something we ought to consider as after the loss of the ashes the divine being has send a flood of biblical proportions to let them know that they are under performing.

The traditional Aussie image of greeting the English

I believe that he is also blaming them for electing a bland female ginger as PM. This is further compounded in his eyes by the fact that she is welsh by birth.

I notice too that he has targeted Queensland which is also run by a Sheila.

Oh stingrays can now also be found in the middle bit too

God, who is just Bruce to his saints, is not averse to women in positions of power its just they have to be Margaret Thatcher.

In fact I have it on god authority that the complete demise of the aussie machismo is being prompted by his divine wonderfulness as a result of these inappropriate voting patterns.

We can, as poms, therefore look forward to and undefeated ashes side until we get so bored of winning it that we change the fixture to Borneo in 2034 but we will be receiving a severe thrashing on the men’s netball circuit.

Adelaide take on Sydney. 'Adelaide' is the one in the black jock strap.

There was a ridiculous transvestite at Clapham this evening. I say ridiculous in the same way I don't go to amateur dramatic performances unless someone tells me they are brilliant (yet to happen). This bloke was quite simply crap at being a girl but like am dram acting but that wasn't going to stop him having a go.

He was very pleased with his choice of blue skirt and jacket and he beamed to all and sundry. Here was Edna Bandersnatch playing Judi Dench on platform twelve at Clapham Junction. Pah! who needs the Globe.
Some people have said my scoffing was cruel and that he wasn't doing any harm, well speaking aesthetically he might have been Ian Brady, the moors murderer.... ooh there's a thought, quick! check his cell...

remember when a tranny was just a crap radio?

Talking of aesthetic disasters I recently attended a school reunion, well there were lots of them there but they were trumped by the only woman in the room.

The alumni ranged from 19 to 90 though this sole representative of the female of the species probably clocked in at around the sixty five mark.

I had just made the re acquaintance of a charming chap who was a couple of years above me who will remain nameless when he whispered
'oh dear, there seems to be a dress disaster over there'
I turned to see a sight that was as rare as a test series win in Australia but not quite as edifying for this unfortunate woman had tucked her skirt into the back of her tights after her visit to the water closet.
The dilemma was who was going to inform this woman, who turned out to be the Dowager Duchess of Wetwang, (no.. not really) of her sartorial slip?

Suddenly we were back at school and I said to Angus (oops, sorry Angus)
'You were two years senior to me you tell her'
' I can't do that' he replied and turned for help which he found in Richard, our Head of House
'David, I think you must tell that woman that she has.. ' but the end of his sentence was incoherent as Richard collapsed in a series of guffaws.

We didn't think that this was the right way for the senior prefect present to conduct himself, especially as he had just turned fifty and his children are currently at the same school.

He refused to do anything until he had had a good laugh and then went and told the Housemaster who was ten years his junior.
How do you tell a Dowager Duchess that she has been displaying her arse to a room full of men for the last ten minutes?

Three ties, a scarf and still there is enough tartan left over from an average scottish woman's knickers to make a present of a giant hibernian condom on a recent trade visit to the Vatican

We shall never know but I think I would rather have my toenails plucked.

This is strange yet oddly compulsive, thanks Peter... I think

http://lovedbdb.com/nudemenClock/index2.html

Go west young man

2011-01-18T18:16:00.001Z

I’m down in Cornwall at the moment and have just had a most enjoyable New Year's Eve. In bed by 11:15 and wafted into the arms of Morpheus by a book of short stories by Jeffrey Archer. I had been a toxophilitic virgin until I left my book at home and was forced to pick something of the shelves of Tesco in Wadebridge.
There wasn’t a great deal to go on, somebody had nicked the bog, and what there was was pretty dire.
I only buy second hand books from libraries, charity shops and the like so a Tesco in North Cornwall at half past nine at night was a new experience for me.

a cornish chough

The view from Tesco's in Wadebridge

I have never read Archer as a matter of principle but I will concede that he can turn a tale, admittedly most of these were based on fact so it’s more like reading an enlarged version of Ripley’s believe it or not.

If you do opt for the early night option on new years eve then always hide your mobile or just turn it off as there will always be one wag who defies his age and parties on til three and then thinks it would be a good to give you a call…

‘Friend’: aaayyy … me old buddy !!! happy new yeaaaaarrrr.. how are yaaa?

Self: eh?

‘Friend’: Appy new year you old bugger, hey its great to hear from you after all this time

Self: eh?

‘Friend’: Your sounding really well…eh oops there goes me bastad whisky, Happy, oops Harry get us another Talisker.. so where are you?

Self: I, I am in bed

‘Friend’: Whaa heyy you lucky old bugger! Have I interrupted anything? Its just that its been years since Caroline put out’

Self: Yes you have, Its called sleep. Its three thirty five in the morning.

‘Friend’: Eh you know .. I don’t know if I..I had ever told you this.. Have I?

Self: I’m not sure, it depends what it is

‘Friend’: You.. yes you are the best bloody mate I have ever had.. you are, you’re great, you are a real pal … you know that don’t you? … you are a real brick. I bloody love you I do.. There now I’ve said it but I really mean it… I do you are my best mate and I bloody love you. I’d have your sodding babies if I could… eh fancy a try? You know since Caroline and all that

Self: Caroline? Er who is Caroline?

‘Friend’: Caroline.. erm Caroline.. erm she’s my wife why do you you fancy her? You can have a crack if you like, she really likes you she always has, but I thought you were a leg man?

Self: Why what’s wrong with them?

‘Friend’: You know the accident

Self: Er just who are you?

Etc etc blah blah

You know the score, if you don’t then you are one of the fortunate ones

11/1/11

Ooh look its all the ones today!

Just like the song I’m

‘back on the nine o o four now, you don’t know where you are now, back on the nine o o, back on the nine o o, back on the nine o o four ’

Not many rockers on this train and I can’t see the lawyer with the long locks, the grumpy railway union trio or the bible basher that looks like Ronnie Kray.

All we have is monobrow and a bloke with a face that some would call weather beaten or lived in. Personally I think it looks like my bottom sheet after a dream about scoring the winning try in this year’s rugby world cup.

News that we are soon to have only 50 main battle tanks has reached my eyes. Yes eyes, I read about it.

This will be just enough to equip one regiment and judging by normal procedures about 30% of these will be off the road at any one time due to missing spare parts etc.

In the first gulf war there were just three working tanks out of all the 5 or so regiments in Germany, the rest having been cannibalised and sent to the sandy place.

I can just imagine the Chinese generals wetting themselves when they see that we spend £37 billion on our armed forces of 175,000 personnel, and dropping rapidly, and for £50 billion they manage to run 2.3 million people under arms.

I think we need to shake ourselves out of this lets do everything we can to improve our troops lot by pressurising the MoD to spend less money on kit, civil servants, projects etc which could be better spent about actually putting more people into the field.

a rock and a hard place

It’s a bit like the police, we all want more of them on the street, with the exception of community support officers who should be back stacking trolleys in ASDA and women officers who I am sure are worthy but I keep worrying that if I see one getting mugged I will have to help her out rather than it being the other way around.

God people are so bloody rude these days. Not enough Wykehamists about for if manners maketh man the bloke who just plonked himself opposite me is about as much of a man as that remarkably unfunny carr bloke on the telly. Not Jimmy but the one who puts the ridiculous voice on as this is the only way that people will laugh at him rather than with him. Still a laugh is a laugh I suppose from his point of view.

I’m not quite sure why he does it, oh yes I am because the British proletariat is about as advanced in appreciating decent humour as a turnip. It’s a throw back to the sixties and seventies when it was funny (allegedly) to laugh at camp things because gay still meant happy and banditry of the bot was still banned.

Remember the days when a boy could get wood for a cowboy with stained trousers?

Now that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet (although some higher than others) isn’t it time to stop laughing at someone because he has a silly voice? And anyway what about all those people who actually do have the terrible affliction of speaking like that all the time? Stop cruelty to silly voices I say!. Well except Jane Bollocks and that ghastly woman from Gardeners World.

It doesn’t take much to ask politely if someone is sitting there, it was obvious that no one was, unless they were very teeny weeny but that isn’t the point. On closer inspection he has dodgy shoes. Nuff said.

Train stuck at New Malden. Best time to visit New Malden? Night time I imagine. This was due to 'an incident in the Berrylands area’ apparently. Not sure where that is? Any doctors who could help on that one?

I think that someone is about to find the Berrylands area

No bodies to be seen as we crawl through it at a pace that a woodlouse would call a jog.

New Boots and Ranties

2011-01-10T19:16:00.000Z

A happy new year to you all and for those in Bhutan, happy orang-utan day. I am fully aware that you don't get Orang utangs in Bhutan but all the more reason for celebrating a wonderful animal that you don't often see.
I had a wizard idea about saving money at Christmas.
I will start up a religion that has its major feast day on January the 25th. God this such a money winner I might just take it onto the Dragons nest or whatever it is called.
You get all your friends to join the religion and then you buy all your Christmas presents in the sales, thus saving you an absolute packet!
Other plus points are

You don't have that last minute dash,
I won't put too much religious emphasis on it
No carol singers at your door
Free ' I don't celebrate religious festivals' fairy lights for your house and 'Bugger off Santa you fat bastard' stickers
The perfect excuse not to go to dreadful village drinks parties which serve up warm Blossom Hill Californian blush and weasel's piss strained through a mouldy balaclava.
No shite presents that you really don't want - you know the ones, jumpers and things to make i-pods work in hot air balloons when you don't have an i-pod, or a hot air balloon.
Not having to thank (lie) relations for ghastly jumper and not having to wear same whilst on a walk on boxing day

Minus points

err... well you might not get much time off from the boss to celebrate unless you get him to join the religion and don't worry about the government taking the Christmas holidays off you, they wouldn't dare offend some weirdo pinko subversive loony fringe group.

Fancy naming your own religion? Then drop me a line and a cheque for £5k and if I think it is good enough I might consider it.

I do a lot of ironing. I find it quite therapeutic and get a lot of stick for ironing my boxers and the girls knickers. I do need a new one but every iron I see has a blue coloured water gauge.
Rant Alert!!!!
Pray tell what is the point of a sodding water gauge when you can't see how much water there is in it?
I can't actually see any other purpose it has that would benefit from being an aesthetically pleasing pacific blue so why not make it clear and allow it to do the job that it was created for !

Honestly, I think I will have to calm down with a quick game that I was given for Chrimbo, viz;

Who was Captain Kangaroo and does Cletus know aliens have landed on his head?

I get the feeling from the last poll that some of the readers aren't quite so devout as I imagined but I am keen to make this a non religious blog as i don't want to offend anyone....
Bollocks, its just that if I start talking about the decline of the church of England being due to sandal wearing hippies who have to change the religious texts as they are too bloody stupid to read them then all my followers would up and off citing religious intolerance.... and they would be right.

Thanks to the Ranter for voicing his concerns over the direction of the blog. He has a point, I have deliberately been steering clear of having a go at reality TV programmes for the one reason that I don't like to demean myself. Ha!

Its rather like fishing with grenades and stalking with a machine gun. Similar to slagging off the guard on a train because you haven't secured a seat since Stephenson first ran the Rocket.

I utterly detest programmes such as pop idle and the ex factor ( I really thought the viewing figures were a bit large for a show about retired Scottish land agents) and indeed those who watch them.
'Its harmless' they say
If ignorance is bliss there must be a lot of contented idiots out there.

The uncle who gave Adolf his first 'let's kick Carthaginian ass' kit thought it was harmless fun too

Whilst we are on a roll (cheese and pickle) I have just seen an advert for medical claims. Not only do we have personal injury ones,
'I was given the wrong type of ladder and because I am a moron I didn't realise it was a banana'
but we now have
' have you been poorly treated by a GP, surgeon or NHS kitchen? then call us - Whingeingidlegitswhocan'tbearsedtoleavethesofasorrysettee.com'

It reminds me of a doctor who, at the end of a long day had an appointment with Mrs Edna Pruneface.

Edna yesterday

When asked for the fourth time whether he could guarantee that her imminent hip replacement would be a 100% successful he retorted
' Madam if you want a guarantee go and buy a fucking kettle'
He was struck off and I need a new kettle

There is a producer of kitchen roll called Plenty who have come up with a rather odd advertising campaign led by the creation that is Juan Sheet

the concept that one of his sheets could clear up one of mine is quite preposterous, especially after parsnip soup days

Excellent to meet Yvonne in Devon a few weeks ago who professed to reading the blog and finding it mildly amusing. Thanks too for the tenner for the plug on this edition and if anyone else wants a mention just drop me a line and £12. - VAT is included

Tough titties number 32
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVEKR0S_QA&feature=

You beat Newcastle 3-1 and still incur the wrath of your own fans.

Went to the doc who said that normally he would have any improvement in health for a case such as mine to have been completed by now. He then said I was a slow case (must have watched a couple of minutes of the ex factor somehow) and that he would give me another 12 months before announcing that there would be no further improvement.

This makes me wonder if I should spend the next 365 days in splendid isolation with only a bed, flat warm beer and sky tv rather than running around like a blue arsed fly sorting children and trying to fit in being director of a charity (pro bono - actually I am not pro bono, I think he is a conceited arse)

toodle pip

Aussie Rules? I think not

2010-12-29T09:35:00.000Z

Apologies for the delay on this, since this was written we have lost the third and won the fourth tests.

Now that I have got your attention

Absenteeism from the blog has been due mainly to the inaugural Forceselect Foundation dinner which took place last Wednesday. Despite the conditions and a comedian who was about as amusing as a penile wart (allegedly hilarious unless you happen to be the owner) the night made a net profit of £140k.

This sounds and is mighty impressive but working on the basis that the majority of the organisers were doing it for free or peanuts then the real profit is probably lower. The organisation of this event started in April and the thought of doing it all again in four months time fills me with horror.

Added to that there was a celebration for those who helped put it all together. This took the form of dinner, for those who could, in what was a trendy bar four years ago but now bears all the hallmarks of a Berni Inn for knobs.

Minces of poufs (what is the collective noun for botty bandits?) and oddly dressed women trying desperately to be noticed by the hack from the Covent Garden Gazette swaggering to and fro seemed to make up the paltry audience. Indeed one chanteuse wore a large pair of pants emblazoned with a picture of a chaps sausage and sprouts on the front. I wagered a colleague £20 that there was a real set beneath the picture but he was too scared to check. I thought marines were meant to be tough?

After a dire performance of europop without the fizz on came some rather good eighties music and with it my dilemma.

I am no longer 28.
I still think I can outdance Anne Widdecombe though and on a good day possibly even John Sargeant doing a rumba with a rabid wildebeest.

Normally I would have been up there like a shot but normally I would have had half a bottle of claret in me to act as a protective ridicule jacket. Ridicule jackets are like flak jackets but deflect withering glances and blatantly rude comments rather than bits of shrapnel and 7.62mm rounds.
The problem is of course that I am no longer able to imbibe of the magic potion that provides the aforementioned coat of invulnerability. I tried, how I tried but one pint of peroni with all the bubbles removed simply doesn’t do the job.

So there sat I. The further away from the sober mind and the more the music held sway so that my feet were quickstepping, not goose, and my legs began to join in too.

My fingers were clicking like castanets on speed but the proximity of the arms to the brain meant that they only made token efforts.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror, realised I was 20 years older than any other dancers and stapled my arse to the chair. I was not going to dance.

It was probably a good thing. The youth of today lack exuberance on the dance floor. They have no punk to pogo to, no ska to whatever you dance to ska to and no new romantics with floppy hairdos and ra ra skirts.

In short I would have pranced around the dance floor thinking in was 1985 and all was well but its 2010 and I would have looked like Fred Astaire at a Viennese ball with Mozart at the synthesizer.

It’s not often one gets the chance to compare oneself to Fred Astaire and to be honest I could have used John Sargeant just as well.

I could move better than this bloke though...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11942814

I went to bed far too late thinking that the next time I have a dance it will be at the Chelsea hospital annual ball.

I digress a this weeks main news is that we have stuffed the Aussies in the second test. We should beware wounded dogs/ bears/ anteaters and also not be overly confident. We are world beaters in screwing up seemingly unloseable positions (the computer doesn’t like unloseable. If we have unwinnable, which is fine so say the computer, why can we not have unloseable? Is it because being British things are more likely to be unwinnable than un loseable?) Name any sport and I will show you a brit who was seconds/inches away from winning an event only to bollocks it all up.

Please give me half an hour to think about it though.

Still perhaps we ought to make hay whilst the sun shines. Bloody stupid saying, were are hardly in the hay production business at any other time are we?
viz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3evE7s2LOu8

Hello to three new readers. I think they are from one of our old colonies across the water and by saying that I have probably just lost them. Judging by the behaviour of our students and their sacreligeous acts I think that you are better off without us.

FINANCIAL PAGES

Oohh get this. All grown up and serious aren't we?
Don't worry this won't be a regular feature but thanks to Philip for this, its well worth a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5QwKEwo4Bc

I have been thinking (a rarity - enjoy the moment) that most of the recent followers know absolutely none of the background behind the blog so I might scribble down some of the thoughts and emotions I had before this blog started and when the cancer was first diagnosed... oh whoopee shit ! they say, that should cheer me up over christmas.

Caption Competition

Katherine Hepburn seems to find it funny that Humphrey has followed through and given her a mud pack with a difference but I am sure you can do better

BOOORRRINNGG !!!

2010-12-09T17:49:00.001Z

17/11/10

Well I am sure that I don’t need to tell you about the big news this week.
Once again our quiz team, which goes by the name of ‘my brain hurts’, in deference to the Monty Python sketch, retained it’s title as Wherwell champions which was held in our local pub, The Whippet inn.

weren't expecting that to exist were you?

I felt rather like Alex Ferguson last week, grumpy and monosyllabic? as I was forced to pick my midweek XI after my star player had to drop out to look after her sick children.

Luckily I was able to draw on a large squad thanks to the financial success of our owner, Pete Surhutt, the Italian restaurant owner and his extreme generosity in allowing me to crop the best brains in the village.

Generous Pete yesterday

We have now won 4 out of 4 and this should have been an easy victory for us though favourites do occasionally become overconfident in the early rounds of the FA cup and shock results do occur.

So just to be on the safe side we pulled off the centre forward at half time and gave him an orange too. He was very happy with that as he has been having marriage problems as you have probably read in the national press.

We put the vicar upfront and I was rush goalie. We coasted in with four points to spare and collected a tin of Quality Street to share between six of us. (on half price offer in Tesco until 1/12/10)

When we told the girls that we had won the next morning we mentioned the vicar when we read out the teamsheet and Immy was heard to say to Georgia that we won because ‘they had God on their team’

We are trying to secure a six month contract until the end of the season for God but St Peter is already in talks with Chelsea who are offering Wagon Wheels at half time and use of the comfy bum loo roll in the executive bogs.

Wonder how much the Devil knows about science & nature?

Also in the news this week is the announcement of two twenty year olds who want to get married for a few years.

I suppose that it hardly comes as a surprise to the readers that I think I was the only person who was thoroughly fed up with the whole bloody thing before Buck Pal announced the impending union. Strange that they only use the word impending for marriage and doom.

Fraser is shocked by the news of the engagement

Well let’s see if this generation of royals can do a bit better than the last in the marriage stakes. I was nearly lynched in Ladbrokes when I asked what the odds were for it falling apart before the five year point. When you are confronted by fifteen clones of purple rinsed grannies whose whole raison d’etre is to collect royal memorabilia it’s a rather difficult decision as to whether to wade in with fists flying or to make a tactical withdrawal/run away

Monarchist massacre in Hampshire Market Town!

I wish them well but I also can’t wait until they go on their honeymoon. Its all these facile interviews with people like Simon Pyman, the Middleton’s gardener who did some leaf collecting for a couple of weeks during the autumn of 1985 and thinks he remembers seeing Kate come home from primary school one day.

‘So which designer do you think Kate will go for Simon?’

Asks Sally Vate on ‘Good Morning West Berkshire’

‘Them were mainly lime trees Sally but they did have some deciduous shrubs too if I remember roight, thems moight have been cut down since seein as I do remember gary sayin that in the pub’

‘ok so do you think that they will opt for St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, or Chelsea Town Hall for the ceremony Simon?

‘I erd from the vicar as thems were gettin itched in St Jordan’s Methodist chapel in Slough but that thems better book it soon as it gets fearful busy’

‘Thanks Simon, and now its over to Steve who has Alli Tosis. Alli stood in for their Nathaniel Pilchard, the Middleton’s regular milkman one day in 1764 when Nathaniel had a 24 hour plague.’

‘Thanks Sally, indeed I do, now Alli, you know the family well, what sort of eyeliner do you think Kate will be wearing on the big day …etc …blah blah

Am I the only person in the world who asks if it is alright if I can sit opposite someone on a train?

People just steam in and ask me to move my stuff and plonk themselves down without so much as a by your leave.

Helen Mirren was complaining last week that everyone is too quick to anger these days. Well it’s alright for her with a fat bank account and sated libido. I agree with her though, people are too angry and I try to be as nice as pie but all the angry people shit on me.

Take today for example. There is a metaphorical hole in the roof of the office and the rain is coming in, this hole needs fixing. Everyone else in the office knows that needs sorting but seems strangely reluctant to be arsed to do anything about it. Could this be that they are so used to the piss and wind that comes out of the mouths of a select few? When I fill the metaphorical hole and the rain ceases to fall someone complains that I have picked the wrong material to do the job.

It is at times such as these that I question why I didn’t become a train driver as I promised myself I would do when I was eight.

When I was eight I promised myself I would become a train driver….

When I was an adult that was, not that when I was eight years old I would become a train driver, that is a tad young even for advocates of slave labour. Not that it would have been slave labour. It would have been wonderful.

Ooh there’s a bloke snoring on the other side of the aisle. Great bellows accompanied by a little spittle. I wouldn’t want to be Brian Blessed’s wife.

Anyway back to the fun of the footplate, the roaring fire, the rhythmical songs of the pistons urging us ever forward, The invigorating rush of wind and scenery thrilling my every sense, the coal dust, the backbreaking shovelling, the cold, the bitter cold, the rain drilling into my cheeks as I struggle to see if the Railway Children have left another burned out Vauxhall Vectra on the line at Bluebell cutting.

Sod that and Sod Jenny Agutter

I had the great fortune to meet, albeit briefly, the greatest left handed bat of the modern era last week. I’ll bet you didn’t know that bats had manual preferences and you probably thought they were ambidextrous but no, and this man was a giant in his field.

I can see that I might have caused a bit of confusion here, especially to the foreign reader who struggles to comprehend the complexities of the devilishly difficult English Language.

I have painted a picture of an enormous pipistrelle standing in a meadow.

Anyway he was nice enough but I don’t think I will be having his babies. The rather disconcerting thing was that I had made an appointment for 10.30 only to be greeting by the great man wearing a tshirt and dressing gown. I had trouble relating this to an exquisite cover drive at Lord's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp7UqReWQ2c

I am undertaking an interesting social experiment at the moment. Asking shops/companies for raffle prizes for the dinner in a couple of weeks time. I seem to be getting some rather curt responses and I am beginning to wonder whether I prefer not getting an answer at all.

Normally I phone and they reply by asking me to put the request on an email which they then completely ignore.

Some just say no, thus saving me half an hour composing a long email with the aims of the Foundation.

News that the number of attacks has dropped considerably in Afghanistan as suicide bombers are not quite so sure that they want an unlimited supply of virgins in heaven after coalition troops provide an example

Improve yourself

Hovercraft yangu yakazara nemikunga

My hovercraft is full of eels - in swahili. Most useful though you might have problems explaining what a hovercraft is to a swahili speaker.

MRI - An Insight - not that there's much to see...

2010-11-19T08:56:00.000Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11731636

oh bother It!

How to survive an MRI – a beginner’s guide

Actually that is a rather misguiding title, most people survive MRIs and indeed it is deemed safer than a visitor to chez Jarrett asking if they can watch the X Factor rather than the Ashes.

Basically they slide you into a machine, bit like a mechanic sliding under a car on one of those trolley things, and take millions of images of the suspect area. Its jolly expensive and judging by the state and age of some of the people queueing up for one I started to think of ways that the money could be better spent. Harsh indeed.

Disaster whilst filming the new series of Top Gear when Clarkson suffers a crash whilst testing the latest BMW cabriolet

I thought as I had my third yesterday I might jot down my experiences in case you have one of them coming up and you are a tad worried about it. I must admit this is unlikely amongst the 20 or so people that read Bother It but you never know.

Here then is a step by step guide.

1. Turn up early – the car parks are expensive and full. This applies to any hospital. I parked in a field and appeared at the reception looking like I had just mucked out the pigs.

2. Read the blurb they send you prior to your appointment. Do remove all your nose studs, earrings and your Prince Albert. (this is dependent on which part is being scanned or where you keep your Prince Albert)

3. Wear close fitting clothes. Do not rely on a belt to keep you trousers up as you are given a locker to put all your personal effects into and then you are asked through to the scanning room. Belts go in the locker and I look absurd holding my trousers up.

4. Have a drink beforehand. Although I didn’t mean a G&T on reflection this would be a good thing. It is just that some scans take a long time, mine was 35+ minutes and they don’t want you to swallow in that time.

5. Scratch. If you are to keep still for that amount of time somewhere will start to itch so give you whole body a once over just in case. Bit like telling your children to have a poo at your holiday house before the start of a 5 hour journey on a greek ferry.

6. Cure yourself of claustrophobia. It’s tight in there. Its not like giving Jordan an intimate gynaecological inspection. There is no room for five a side football.

Right prelims out of the way and you lie down on a sliding bench affair and they stuff earplugs into you, try to make sure they put them in the ears, and place a brace over your head.

They offer, nay give you an alarm button to squeeze in case of emergency. I didn’t quite get this. Short of the roof of the machine collapsing I fail to see what the point is of this button. If you don’t like small places, eg Ronnie Corbett’s loo you are not going in there in the first place. If you have a heart attack they will stop the procedure and issue a bollocking for not keeping still and discover the problem. If you have a heart attack and die immediately they will praise you at the end for keeping very still.

Off we go then. The noise is loud, very loud and difficult to pin down as it varies in pitch and tone.

One sounds like a woodpecker on prozac. Others sound like three road drills trying to replicate the halleluia chorus. One even had traces of a herd of flatulent hippos after a home made broccoli and Stilton soup.

Actually I found it all quite restful. I rarely get the chance to get my head down during the day and I wasn’t going to miss this one, farting hippos or not, and remarkably I managed to dismiss my itchy shoulder and postpone the urge to let go a rich and fruity trumpet and I started to nod off. But without the nodding as movement is verboten.

I was just removing the bra from the dark haired girl from ‘The house of Elliot’, Louise Lombard by name, and Simone Bendix was trying to remove my belt and I was telling her that I had to leave it in the locker as it had metal on it when I was removed from the tunnel and a needle was stuck in my arm.

Lombard & Bendix yesterday

‘Oww’ I mumbled, as it had been 20 minutes since I had had a drink and my mouth was drier than Dave Allen’s sense of humour.

In an instant the girls vanished (it must have been very crowded in that tunnel but I don’t seem to remember it being a problem) and an invasive liquid rushed up my arm.

‘That may feel funny’ said the nurse.

In the same way that a well directed kick in the plums feels funny I thought. She patently had never had an MRI.

The girls had gone for good and one more lost opportunity had been added to the list. Ten minutes later they pulled me out.

Jarrett starts the long task of sorting out his new 'Warlord' library

‘Well done – you kept very still. You are still bleeding a bit but we have put a plaster on it. Sorry we had to use masking tape, I couldn’t find any other tape. It may pull a few hairs out when you take it off later’

Indeed it did.

A time to remember

2010-11-10T22:27:00.002Z

Sorry I haven’t communicated for a while and to placate you all here is a bumper edition.

Back on the good old 9.04 and no sign of the long haired lawyer from Longparish. Perhaps he is having an estimate on work to be done on a potential haircut. No union railway guards either which means I have four seats all to myself at the moment. This is good news but I feel that my gain is your loss as I have little to rant about.

Firstly news of a weekend that was spent remembering my friend Ade. For those of you who were not followers earlier this year Ade died of a cocktail of asthma, heart and hypertension problems with a smidgin of being a tad porky. He would have been 48 last Friday and some of his friends met to remember his life and how it affected us.

Ade with his Goddaughter

The one thing I shall take away from that night is how little we know of those that we call friends.

There are diaries, books and even sketches of Ade’s though I will attest to the profundity of the former I cannot remember any great talent in art and yet somebody says that Tracy Emin is an artist and they still have yet to be sued under the trade description act. If I mentioned anything about having faces that would win the world gurning championships though I am sure her people would be speaking to my people very quickly.

This years champion, - seen worse in Andover

Some readers might mention pots calling kettles black and that people in glasshouse being not advised to throw stones but surely as a person whose face resembles an ikea wardrobe with half the pieces missing I am in a perfect position to comment.

Anyway beauty is only skin deep they say – but there again I am trying to wean myself off skinless women.

‘Plenty more fish in the sea’ people said to me after the 48th time I had been dumped in 1983. This made me think that perhaps they were right and I had a very happy two years with a Venezuelan whimple fish.

Oh that fateful day when she didn't return from Sainsbury's

Who are ‘They’? and just why do we listen to ‘people’ ?

They seem to talk utter bollocks most of the time

What Ade showed to the world and his friends was only a part of the whole and despite having known him for forty years I now understand that although thinking I knew the whole, I knew so very little.

In a way he was like one of those plastic things on a trivial pursuit board and I was just a pink cheese that stood for entertainment.. or science & nature, I can’t quite remember which.

The next question is what to do next, how to ensure that he is not forgotten?

Poppy time again and to me a time of intense remembrance of friends and family who served and are no longer with us. A time of reflection, of memorial and of humility. To remember better people than us I have a rant on its way and perhaps not unsurprisingly a rather strange one.

I feel that some people highjack the poppy appeal for their own ends. To show the rest of society that they might be just a bit better at remembering than the average person. These are they who wear big poppies, you know the ones, you see politicians wearing them at the cenotaph, they are plastic and probably three times the size of the normal ones.

These people seem to have the capability to mourn at a higher level than us mere mortals and although they have never been nearer the services than a brief liaison with the scouts/guides they seem to understand PTSD and to be and be able to assemble the working parts of the SA80 whilst blindfolded.

They are drivers of four by fours (probably with personalised plates) and are probably big wigs within the local community (they are nosey).

Ok, if they raise a lot of money for the Legion then all well and good but I suppose it is he Daily Mail syndrome that I don’t approve of.

The ‘look at me! – aren’t I brilliant and better than you and if only you were all like me then the world would be a much better place’

Remembering those who gave so much and asked for so little in return – aye there’s the rub.

Well blow me! (ooh rather!) Sheila who works at the ticket office at Andover station was wearing one today. Bloody enormous great poppy!

She wasn’t impressed when I said that she ought to put it in water or possibly even plant it.

Sheila apprehends a fare dodger yesterday

News from Cornwall where a dyslexic man has been arrested on the grounds of cruelty to animals.

Apparently he was arrested by police in Truro when the public complained that he had a young dog attached to the lapel of his jacket by a large and bloody pin.

When questioned he admitted that he couldn’t quite see the point of ‘Puppy Day’ and how anyone benefitted from such an appeal, though he didn’t want to feel left out and yet was surprised that he was the only one wearing a puppy.*

A brief medical update, the eating situation has gone completely tits up and in comparison to this time last year there has been a marked drop in my ability to eat. I have resigned myself that the situation is unlikely to change and I will just have to get used to living off soup and yoghurt.

etc…

We shall just crack on shall we…

Jane Horrocks, one for the marquee in which sits all that is execrable .

Yes I am sure that she is charming and that one of you has made her godmother to your fourth child and that she is very talented but that bloody voice!!

If it has come to pass that someone makes a living out of the ability to whine then it is time to shuffle off etc or even more dramatic… emigrate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtFkXGDjckA

She turned Piglet into a northern swine! For Christ’s sake there was more chance of finding Noel Coward playing number eight for East Grinstead first XV than finding a pig from Preston in East Sussex in 1930.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0FbK8imH_A

though then again...
I have on more than one occasion threatened to change banks on the basis that I don’t have a ‘branch’ (short ‘a’) I have a brarnch. And I object to being asked to ‘check out the details in branch’

‘In your local brarnch’ is presumably what she meant. I have nothing against those who choose, or even have no choice, but to live oop north but I do object to the fact that we all have to speak the lingo.

When was the last time you heard anyone on the BBC say ‘Glarsgow’ or ‘Newcarstle’?

The answer is probably 1979. tuesday 23rd june

And just don’t even get me started on that ghastly sneering Welshman Huw Edwards with his ‘contraversy’, where is the ‘A’ in controversy you ruddy arse? and anyway how on earth can a Welshman look down on anyone?

Not content with a leg Taffy takes the whole cow this time

Bad news for the ranter who stands well above the rest of at 6ft 5 or even taller …probably… for a recent report states that for every 2 inches over 5ft 9 results in a 13% increase in the likelihood that you will get testicular cancer. Now I’m no mathematician but … hmm… plus four is ten, carry two…. Pearl one … knit one.. That makes me 26% more likely to get it and him at least 52% more likely to get plum rot. Extrapolating (great word, along with crepuscular) that means that anyone of seven foot is guaranteed to get a growth on their gonads.

Ronnie Corbett will not get cobbler cancer.

A load of old cobblers

Whilst we are down there I have been getting an increase in the amount of spam emails re the size of my willy and my inability to even come close to performing tantric sex. Does everyone get these emails or do they know something I don’t?

Who has been letting these secrets out?

What type of spam emails do women get? Add 10" to the size of your funbags!

Has technology advanced so much whilst I slept on the 18:50 that the sender of such missives has the ability to comprehend the contents of my underpants?

Do those who have the fortune to be hung like a donkey receive them?

I left a bid of £10 for 230 Warlord comics at an auction the other day and to my great delight, not shared by my wife, I won them, well not really won but as a tenner is the minimum offer I imagine that nobody else wanted them.

Warlord was launched in 1975 and whereas it doesn’t have the pedigree of the Victor for the sum of 5p it was a good read. The fact that I picked them up for 2.3p tells you something about their investment growth and if you have a bottle of 1976 Margaux don’t swap it for 800 editions of the Beano.

Just when I thought I had completed a trip to town without the Castrol lawyer I see him as I leave the train at Andover. He had been sitting behind me all the way and had consumed two G&Ts during the trip.

I will try to get a photo of the hair for you to peruse though I think it difficult to find an excuse should I be caught doing so.

Your thoughts on Halloween please.. you can guess mine

This was rated as one of the top 5 jokes of all time. It was probably taken from a sample of ‘people’ or ‘theys’

It took me a while to get it but there again I am rather slow

‘I went to the local zoo last week but they didn’t have any animals and only one dog… it was a shitzu’
Still makes me laugh a week later but have I mentioned that I am rather slow.

Trains all gone to rat shit at the moment as it is leaves on the line time of year. A bit of wind and these lethal lime and larch drop their cargoes of terror onto a poor unsuspecting public.

Thousands suffer slow and excruciating journeys as kamikaze foliage throws itself mercilessly onto the rails of England’s once green and pleasant land. Just for the record England was officially Green and Pleasant in 1704.

Fun on Countdown apparently, that is a headline that you don’t often hear, when a student (who else has time to be a contestant?) was banned from creating a word from this lot. HTAESIDCFY. Answer below

He managed an eight letter word and to give you a clue it is something that students spend most of their time being.

Anyway he wasn’t allowed it which I thought most unfair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB6_99FNJOY

and one of these blokes was a vicar and he only got a four....!!

Numpty, there are plenty of fives

* This is complete bollocks

Happy Birthday to Mark C who is now very old. Thank you for all your kindness and contributions to this medium. ponce

I knew of a medium once, well a fortune teller or something similar. The tale is that he was due to meet a young sloaney girl to tell her of dark strangers, 3 children and a happy retirement in Buckinghamshire. She never found out if this was to be as he was killed by a van whilst crossing the Earls Court Road. Apparently he just didn’t see it coming.

She is now languishing in a prison in North Korea on charges of prostitution and assaulting tall swarthy foreigners.

Do you ever wonder what other people are typing when you sit on a train typing ?

I do. I have an uncontrollable urge to look at their laptops and see what they are up to. I imagine that most of it is boring work related crap but then I would say ‘Boring work related crap’ in a loud voice.

If I ever found someone doing something interesting I would sit down next to them and irritate them by reading it. This irritation would be expanded by my making comments such as

‘hold on I haven’t finished that bit, scroll up’

‘keep typing, this is getting interesting’ and

‘ooh you old pervert – that is only legal in some parts of rural Albania’

Just to get the attention of the other passengers.

Here's something that is a little purer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-t5yFM70KE&feature=related

Great stuff and more to come

In the next edition... Adventures of an MRI scan! don't miss it!

Answer of the quiz was ... oh come on work it out!

XXX rated rather than A*

2010-10-21T16:33:00.002+01:00

Great to see four comments on the last article and great to see the return of the Frustrated Ranter. Sorry that you came back to a posting that was relatively rant free, I will endeavour to rectify that soon.

As to the other comments? well sorry Mark, who alluded to the fact that if 'Bother It!' was the Heavy Hedonist's new best thing then she should get a life, but you read it too and it has been my best thing for quite some time now and so don't be so horrid to people...

Bloody hell, what a hypocrite I am.

Great mini rant from Hannah in smellie Parii. Hey, you make your bed- you lie in it.

I am sure Paris would be lovely without Johnny Grenouille but then again so would Surrey without 4x4s and its pseudo snobs.

I can’t quite make up my mind which I am more excited about. The rescue of some Oompa Loompas who have been stuck in a hole on the other side of the world or the fact that some utter bastard is £113M better off but has decided not to tell the press who he is.

I do understand that the rescue of said miners might be important for their friends and families but it hardly is having a great impact outside their little coterie. People have been wrongly imprisoned throughout history and others have suffered greatly in very confined spaces but their ordeals have passed without praise and they will not reap the financial rewards that these miners will as a result of their incarceration.

Oompa Loompa reaches the top to be met by 12 of his 13 mistresses

Some of you will no doubt be turning off this blog for the last time when I say that this could have been the best thing that has ever happened to them. Going from a pittance of a salary with a future that held little prospect apart from respiratory diseases and hacking up a phlegm & asbestos vichyssoise, to fame and financial security. I have consulted others as to whether this should be published and they said

'No way, this is a great story where everyone is a winner'

I say ' Everyone winning? God how boring and PC. Publish and be damned'

I imagine the ones who were met at the top by wives and mistresses might have considered burrowing out of a different exit. Showed a bit of style though it is never clever to get caught.

One of the mistresses hears the great news that her boyfriend will soon be loaded and free

As to the winner of that obscene amount of money, (yes it is obscene, though if I had won it would have been ‘useful’) I hope that the delay in announcing the win is an act of remarkable coolness on behalf of the owner of the ticket.
Money is decidedly vulgar stuff and usually only surpassed in its vulgarity by those who have it.

It is a shame however as I had spent quite a few nights drifting off to the land of Nod working out how I was going to apportion the filthy lucre.

Firstly I would have to buy a house and then I would demand the rest in used fivers and employ someone to count it all day. Each night when they would go home for the 3 hour break I had kindly put in their contract, I would either take away or add some fivers so their task on the following day would be so much more exciting.

Its ok, I‘m only joking… for heaven’s sake take a chill pill, I’d give them at least 5 hours off but the last two would come out of their pay.

On the 9.34 today as this is the earliest train you can get a two day cheap return on. It’s not the same as the 9.04, There is one carriage less and 20% more customers and from my rudimentary calculations this means that some poor bastard is going to have to sit on the roof.

I'm the one in the suit... not sure quite how they know when to stop but there we go.

Whilst we are there did you know the origins of the three peers who have just been sacked for being cheating bastards? - can't go on about this one as much as I would like to or the race relations johnnies will be after me and I won't just get a slapped wrist and be told not to come back to work until 2012... eh Baroness Udders or whatever your name is

Christ it’s cold up here, thank heavens I put a jumper on today. I almost put on a cardie but I knew that my wife wouldn’t let me out of the house with it on.

I am now in cardie limbo. Too old to wear one a la cool Boden catalogue dudes, who smile and look great as they cycle round Edinburgh castle with a stunning bird on his handlebars (fnarr fnarr) and too young to wear one with slippers and a pipe.

Hmm... cooool

I know that I will never get to the slippers and pipe stage so my cardies will remain stuck at the bottom of a draw, destined to exist without purpose. That is until a rogue moth finds them and condemns them to an excruciating and painful lingering death as parts of their parts are slowly nibbled away.

isn't that Mark F back right in the nice brown number?

When you are next feeling that the world is against you and that nothing is fair, don’t think of the starving millions, think about my cardies and the future that awaits them.

The 9.34 lacks the characters of the 9.04. I’m almost longing to see if greasy judge has had a haircut over the weekend or if the railwayys johnnies have had any joy in sorting out the problem of coffee break timetables at Yeovil Junction. No, this lot look very ordinary so I look outside for inspiration and spot a Chinook flying to RAF Odiham.

Oh these RAF types are soooo funny

This reminds me of two things, one is of a bloke from the Army Air Corps (AAC) I met at a swimming pool yesterday (oh yes?) but firstly a quick rant at the US army special forces and their outstanding performance in attempting to rescue that poor British aid worker in Afghanistan. See, I knew it wouldn't take long!

Their equivalent of the SBS are the Navy Seals and they are so named because you could train a seal to do the job that they do. Perhaps they should stick to clapping their flippers and honking horns.

The one reading the paper isn't as clever as you think he is... its the Daily Express

Strange, but I'm with you sensible shoe wearers on this one, seals should never go clubbing though...

I am not sure what the land based equivalent are called, perhaps the bulls, (look in the index under ‘in a china shop’ and ‘shit’ for more information),but if you are ever captured by a terrorist cell outside the UK and you get wind that they are on their way then make peace with your god and look for something to commit suicide with. (McDonalds carton, fossilised dog turd, copy of Blair’s biography ‘mine camp – how the Chileans escaped from their tomb’) anything but the horror the US Bulls will bring with them.

Now that's what the SAS is really like ... form an orderly queue chaps

I am quite safe putting this out into cyberspace as I no fear of reprisals, though I am worried about the old dear who runs the village W.I. two doors down who may be getting a visit from them as it is her house that comes up when you put my details into a satnav.

So back to the suspect swimming sex that I alluded to earlier. Nothing to report really apart from he was a pilot in the AAC whose son was part of a swimming party that my daughter was at. It leads me onto an observation, not a rant, well maybe a little one but ye gods, the size of some of the people in those places. I am not being biased when I say that most of them were women, or female whales as they are known as on Autumnwatch.

Uriah Heep time....

'umble, so very very 'umble - ewe know you want to

The really frightening thing was that they were of all ages so they couldn’t blame this exclusively on having babies and beer. When the three biggest were out of the pool at the same time the water level dropped by two feet and one tried to go down the slide with inevitable results. Things that size should stay in the water, a bit like a walrus,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5h0B2lIotA

I'm amazed he managed to hold his breath that long

This was Romsey for Pete’s sake, what must it be like in Rotherham?

http://www.roulette-king.com/games/01/index.php

Bored at work? want to get sacked? play roulette all day and I am sure your boss will take a very dim view.

You can then blow your last salary by playing it for real in the bookies or a casino if you prefer....

Something for the weekend sir?

2010-10-15T12:27:00.000+01:00

Its 9.08 on the 9.04 if that makes any sense. I suppose that the 9.04 ceases to be the 9.04 as soon as it reaches the next station?
The ephemeral lives of trains

Anyway its crowded and I have had to squeeze into a seat without a table in front of me, just having one of those fold away jobs that are stuck onto the seat in front.

My laptop is rather ancient , indeed some say that is was the original computer designed by Charles Babbage and fitting it onto such a small ledge means that I can see the keyboard but not the screen.

Today's offerings include three middle management train employees who are seated diagonally with a big fat juicy table in front of them. If they get out at Basingstoke its mine.

They are looking most officious in their matching ties and the oldest one has a monobrow and a definite Teutonic nature. He reminds me of the bloke who played the baddie in the Charlie Chaplin films and tied girls to railway tracks. I never quite worked out what they were trying to achieve by that.

No point asking for a ransom, little evidence of a sexual motive, (though that bit could have been cut from the final version) and I have deduced no concept of a suicide bomber in any of such films, ( though may I suggest one if they are planning a remake….

Scene. The American mid west. A tumbleweed drifts across a railway track that stretches as far as the horizon in a straight line. The nearest settlement is Dodgy Pantaloons (pop 78, no wait… 76).is some fifteen miles away. Bugger some other bloke got to their seats. Sorry, where were we? Oh yes the railway. I hope some really smelly tramp or a schoolboy with chronic flatulence comes and sits next to him.. Yes Yes ok, the railway .

From out of nowhere this Dukes of Hazard type of car roars up to the track and pulls a handbrake turn, sending a cloud of dust and gravel all over the shop (foreign readers take note, this is an expression meaning everywhere… there is no shop, I have told you that the nearest place is Smokers Cough (pop 72 and a contender for this years Utah in bloom competition) now pay attention.

Blimey South west trains complain about leaves on the line at this time of year, Utah has stones, red corvettes and nubile virgins in bullet proof petticoats to deal with.

Out jumps monobrow, well not quite as the car doors seemed to be welded shut in an odd attempt to appear cool.
Great when you are 20 but monobrow is 56 and not far off that in stone too.
For a minute he is stuck half in and half out. The only hope is that his profuse sweating will act as a lubricant to assist his escapology. From behind him there is a muffled moan of the squashed and trussed up 20 year old virgin in voluminous skirts.
Monobrow lets one go.
A stifled ‘ oh god’ issues from the passenger. He needs to be careful or she wont get to be tied onto the track alive and it will make for a poor action finale tying up a gassed corpse onto the tracks.

Another tsunami inducing fart pops him onto the dust. Luckily we are miles from water and no tsunami ensues though a couple of pregnant cows miscarry on the Widdecombergers homestead some twenty miles distant.

He drags the almost comatose girl from the car and finds even his own farts quite foul, an indication of great surprise to the average male and he briefly contemplates a diet change.

There is the skull of a cows head lying by the track as he threads the rope under the track, grinning maniacally at the camera. He gives his Kaiser like moustache a turn and completes his task. He rubs his hands with glee. Glee is good for those who work outdoors a lot, softens the skin and eases the removal of grime (most good chemists from £7.99 for a 250ml tube)

Time passes but no trains. This is where the plot starts to go tits up as he has chosen a branch line that runs the 3.10 to Yuma but once a week for things have changed since Cary Grant and Stewart Granger (or whoever it was) could rely on a daily service to do their shopping in the big city. After a few hours the girls comes to, woken by a gopher nibbling her toes.

Oh it was Glenn Ford..

The crew have gone, along with monobrow, to find out the train timetable…

Anyway, monobrow also bore a marked resemblance to the late great Ronnie Barker but with the sense of humour removed. Any excuse for some humour…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SRjqJTD_fs&feature=related

It’s the end of another Indian summer, yesterday was delightful as we strolled across the common and I really did appreciate being alive. Never really took that ‘ it’s a joy to be alive ‘ saying seriously. I do now.

Try I will, no harm in trying

Wonder tis how little mirth

can keeps the bones of man from lying

upon the bed of earth

So wrote AE Housman.. and if you take nothing else away then take that. Shite group

And so to a comment left by the Heavy Hedonist on the last edition. Thanks, a million thanks for that. You all can make a massive difference to others lives by praising them or their work. It gives confidence and instills a sense of purpose. It gives reason and hope.

I know it isn’t easy to praise, especially if it is to one you know or you are lying through your teeth but give it a go.

Smile at people too… it freaks them out.

If you live in a large town or city smile and say 'helloo' to people as you pass by. This may get you locked up but its fun.

In The News..

Daley and Brick win diving gold....

Haircut news .. or possibly the lack of it as the old man with the greasy hair still refuses to splash out on a bottle of head and shoulders.

Yorkshire Police ask the York and Ainsty hunt 'why aren't those dogs on leads?'

Thanks for all the comments.

Warning, adult edition, - this may shock you!

2010-10-05T14:11:00.001+01:00

Pathetic that I have to resort to such tactics to get you to read my blog...

I seem to do most of this scribbling on the 9.04 nowadays, facing the wrong way as per usual and today I will park my pavement pizza (throw up) over an elderly man with hair that is just a little bit too long.

I find it annoying that people over 65 should have hair as I certainly will not. If they must be so vulgar in their appearance, call it OAP bling if you will, I wish they would wash it more often. This chap’s strands stick together and there is the hint of a veteran mullet at the neck. Its not as if he is unable to afford a regular trim. Perfectly respectable shirt, standard gold cufflinks, slightly dodgy tie and now lets just check out the shoes…. Oh dear… oh that’s the clincher, quite revolting. You can learn a lot from a man's shoes.

Here is a police reconstruction of how he might have looked 20 years ago..

Hmm ... nice

On the other side of the aisle is a similarly ancient chap though he is making a jolly good effort at looking cool. Chewing gum, Blazer, open neck shirt (rather ruined by a bit of a gut) but with a comb over. To interpret the comb over to my international readers would be impossible so here is a picture.

The great Sir Bobby Charlton's combover in a distressed state as he curls one out against Luton in the third round of the 1972 FA cup third round
He is wearing a vest too. Could be cool on a thirty five year old but after the age of Forty five vests are to be hidden as things to keep you warm and not to be seen. Even explorers don’t show off their vests, its underwear for Pete’s sake .

Hey girls, don't ever say we don't look after your urges here at Bother it!

It wouldn’t mind a good looking girl showing off the top of a bra on a warm day but I would draw the line at being exposed to a lacy thermal top on a granny.
No photos of that...

what not fair the boys cry... oh go on then, purely in the interest of equality though

I am getting some very strange emails on my work laptop. Rather than the usual Viagra and bookface rubbish I now seem to receive a stream of passages from rather badly written books. Viz.

Man is created to understand." "He is created to love," replied Balthasar sighing. "There are things which cannot be explained." "And what may those be?" asked Sembobitis.

"A woman's treason," the king replied. Balthasar, however, having decided to become a mage, had a tower built from the summit of which might be discerned many kingdoms and the infinite spaces of Heaven. The tower was constructed of brick and rose high above all other towers. It took no less than two years to build, and Balthasar expended in its construction the entire treasure of the king, his father.

Every night he climbed to the top of this tower and there he studied the heavens under the guidance of the sage Sembobitis.

"The constellations of the heavens disclose our destiny," said Sembobitis. And he replied: "It must be admitted nevertheless that these signs are obscure.

But while I study them I forget Balkis, and that is a great boon." And among truths most useful to know, the mage taught that the stars are fixed like nails in the arch of the sky, and that there are five planets, namely: Bel, Merodach, and Nebo, which are male, while Sin and Mylitta are female.

What an immense pile of equine ordure!

I will be printing more of them at a later date just to make you realise that you are fortunate that this Blog could sink to new lows, but then again your meagre numbers could slump even further…

Whether these people are sending these out to millions in the hope that one of the recipients will be the MD of Mills and Boon and take a shine to this ridiculous effluence I know not.
Another morning on the 9.04. The same man sits opposite me and his hair has grown at least another foot and it appears to have had a wash…. In castrol gtx. Ye gods man, grow old gracefully.

The commonwealth games is off and running. The opening ceremony went without a hitch but there again it could have had a live tiger hunt in the middle for all I know as I seemed to drift off during it. I think I would have been bored rigid if they had all been naked, poor pun, sorry.

God spare me from ever being a dignitary/ambassador etc, (thank you God!) as I don’t think I would have been able to sit that without slipping into the arms of Morpheus.

Prince Charles has gone up in my estimation but there is a bit of me that misses his father’s honesty and plain speaking.

perks of the job

More proof today that women’s magazines are a pile of cobblers. Top Health (though they translate the Health into French to fool women it is more sophisticated) have conducted a survey into women’s sexual practices. I imagine that at least thirty similar magazines conducted similar surveys every month as they are hardly likely to go into areas such as the UK’s fiscal policy.

Anyway this particular one surveyed 500 women who lived in Dorking, drove Audis, shopped in monsoon, Waitrose and that charming deli on Broad street. They found out that 81% of women have a better sex life in their 40’s than they did in their 20’s. They also found out that their husbands all had lovely jobs in the city but they didn’t really understand quite what that job was though they did agree that the husbands looked ‘sooper’ in a suit.

I will concede that on part of the report had more than a ring of truth to it. 91% of working women with children under 10 said their sex life had been ‘wrecked’.

I’m surprised it was that low.

Now there's an article not to miss!

Saturday nights once more are no place for the red blooded male in our house. The arrival of yet another series of badly dressed c list celebs making arses out of themselves has meant that I am forced to seek solace in blog writing, far away from ‘strictly cum dancing’.

Though this I am sure might make it a tad more interesting. It might freak Anne Widdecombe out a bit but she would slide across the floor more easily. I am sure students would supply enough covering for the floor and Brucie would have an endless supply of tacky jokes…

The great impressario Roger ' vinegar strokes' Barclay adding to the floor covering

I think it would be a winner and would certainly tune in if only to watch to watch Felicity Kendall with a face full and thus realise most middle aged men’s long held fantasy.

In brief….

I have met a man who had a tick on his dick and a child who was stung on the willy by a wasp. Might try the latter as it seems to be cheaper than the methods suggested by those ‘improve your manhood’ spam emails I get every day.

I think it is important to say that I didn’t see either of the above events and have them on hearsay.

Tube strike today and I have never seen so many staff asking where we were going and offering advice. The trains were punctual and not nearly as crowded as the usual sardine cans they are. If this is striking then I think Boris ought to knight Bob Crow… very hard dubbing Boris!

more comments please, angry or grumpy...
or sleepy, dozy, shorty, etc etc

Flight Lieutenant Smithers is flying his Harrier on patrol in Afghanistan. All of a sudden he spots two flying carpets, one to port and one to starboard, each armed with large machine guns and rocket-firing pods.

Sensing immediate danger, Smithers executes a mid-air manoeuvre, so that he is now facing the flying carpets, and lets loose with several volleys of shots from his 30mm cannon, and watches as the flying carpets explode and fall to the ground in flames.

Flt Lt Smithers does a victory roll, and returns to base. As he is getting out of the cockpit of his fighter, the station CO drives up and shouts out "Smithers come here - you f*"king idiot!!"

Smithers trots over to the Gp Capt, salutes and says "Sir - what's wrong? I've just shot down two heavily armed flying carpets"

"I know you have you arse...they were Allied Carpets"

Fame... I'm gonna live forever... well...

2010-09-24T23:30:00.000+01:00

You wouldn't like that. Has anyone read all of Gullivers Travels?.. Including the Struldbrugs? They live for ever and continue ageing and its all very messy.

Clever man Swift..

You may have heard of this chap...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/09/21/lettuce-nick-him-115875-22576487/

don't know what the fuss was all about really, all the locals are pretty strange around here..

Our postman yesterday

I have decided that I should lead by example and do some fundraising for the Foundation. http://www.forceselect.org .

Therefore the supporter(s) of Bother It and I have made up our minds to do a massive walk before we both become too old to do such a thing. Actually as I write one says he is too knackered and the other is a bit tied down, hmm kinky!

Rumour has it he is in trouble with the police as he posted something on his blog saying he liked page three girls. Nothing odd about that but the 'P' isn't working on his typewriter

We have had lots of ideas but if you would like to suggest any ways of how we might raise a serious amount of money please let us know.

Just to save you the time jumping off a cliff and robbing a bank have already been discounted. Done the former and it hurts.

G has her first day at her new school today and the new parents were invited to tea and to meet other parents.

The headmaster told us not to worry about crying as it was emotional time for all of us. I was under the impression that it was a prep school she was off to. If I had known that she was off to join number one platoon, 'A' company of the 1st Battalion Hampshire Closest to the enemy Regiment of Foot I might have thought twice about shedding a tear. Anyway there were no tears. This mainly due to a quick op to remove tearducts when she was three. Highly recommended.

Off to hear General David Richards talk at the Cavalry Lunch Club on Friday. With massive cuts just around the corner I can’t see that he will be looking forward to it with great relish. He was bloody good actually, thumbs up for the generalissimo

He is thought to want to keep Trident but it is difficult to justify the vast expense, It is not one of those strangely shaped plastic things you discover during a spring clean that you have absolutely no idea why it has been sitting in the cupboard under the stairs for the past ten years so you bin it and find that it is vital and needed the very next week.

It is one of those strangely shaped plastic things that has been sitting in the cupboard under the stairs that has been sitting under the stairs for so long that it has welded itself to the floor and earned its place in the cupboard and therefore cannot be thrown away whether it has any use or not.

Vital bit of kit

It is a bit like squatters rights really, once something has done time under the stairs it stays there and more useful and more modern strangely shaped pieces of plastic haven’t got a chance of getting in.

Italy have 293,000 in their armed forces with a defence budget of £13 billion. Compare this to our 175,000 and £37 billion and you see that something has got to go.

And still there are complaints that they have the wrong kit.

Italy, a modern-ish army and not Iran, who have 523,000 and a budget of £6bn, where they are armed with a piece of bamboo with a toothpick on the end and told to charge thataway.

Surely it would be more of a vote winner to scrap Trident and keep a larger sized army. With all the current operations and a large public groundswell of favourable opinion the army has never been more popular. Already the Sun is calling the expulsion of injured soldiers from the army as ‘Treacherous’

Ok so I am a bit biased in that my regiment will probably get the order of the boot but I have tried to sit on the other side of the fence as a lily livered, bearded nonce and see what they would think of service cuts. I failed, but not before I came to the conclusion that if cuts are to be made let us scrap these weapons of ass disruption

This was based on the fact that any future threat surely will not come from hoards of battalions invading our shores via Dover, Canterbury and Croydon (change for all stations to Gatwick and Horsted Keynes) but from small terrorist cells and suicide bombers. The real threat to this country is ourselves and our inability to stop being so bloody nice to everyone.

Though Horsted Keynes is a lovely place

On the early train today and it is not a pleasant experience. Right from the word go its been an experience that makes me yearn for the scum train when the prices drop by 50%.

So we start by paying a hideously early price and then discover that the papers haven’t been delivered yet.

Then train is even more crowded than the 9.04. Packed with suits, I am wearing Jacket and tie and thought myself quite smart but not on the 8.04 I’m not.

There is a supercilious air to the carriage that I am definitely not part of. With no paper I think about bringing out my Andy McNab book, (‘Dick Francis with attitude’ – Armand Hammer, New York Advertiser).

I bought 4 of them from the village fete for a quid and felt quite chuffed with the bargain but this is not the place for them so I think again and luckily enough I have a copy of Richard Jefferies' Story of my Heart' which is suitably highbrow for this lot though not the sort of think to read on a train – it should be read on a summer's day on a chalkdown hill with swallows swooping on nymphs over a shallow stream.

I read it for ten minutes but it isn’t going in and if anyone had cared to look they would have noticed that I hadn’t turned over a page it the whole time I had my head in it.

Posing done, though completely wasted on them, I look about and spot a chap who was in the same regiment, senior to me but a nice enough chap who I haven’t seen in twenty odd years. What to do?, not being au fait with the 8.04 etiquette I commit a grave error and thrust my hand out. It was patently obvious this was not the right thing to do. Fine on the 9.04 but on the 8.04 I might have well worn a red t-shirt with ‘I heart communism’ on it and ‘Death to thieving bastard bankers’ on the reverse. I felt like a character out of an HM Bateman cartoon… ‘The man who talked on the 8.04 ‘

The hand was met and 20 seconds of very small talk was curtailed with

‘I’m sorry but I must just finish this bit of work ..’

And he started to play with an X box player or whatever the latest piece of essential electronic kit is. You know the one, it’s the device that enables you to get the report on your competitors who are buying the latest thing in coffee, the one that costs £100 a pound as the bean has passed through the digestive tract of a ring tailed lemur prior to being bagged and ground. The bean not the lemur.

I digress.

I felt rather like a naughty schoolboy, but there were none around, who as a third former should have known better than to talk to a prefect and captain of the first XV. Like a new subaltern who ought to realise that the commanding officer doesn’t like being referred to as ‘old boy’ by a novice. Like a man who lets go a really rather whiffy botty burp in an empty lift only for it to stop at the next floor and an absolutely drop dead gorgeous girl enters… so called because she drops dead due to the revolting stench.

Medical Matters

Met the swallowing team yesterday, well two of them. They have given me exercises to do which involve saying ‘g’ and ‘c’ very quickly and loudly and phonetically. Follow and that with ‘Jar, tar’ and ‘bar’, ‘K’ ‘P’ and ‘T’ in quick succession and its off to the funny farm for me.

They said they will see me again in a couple of months but I think it is pretty evident that cows, sheep, pigs, Sumatran tigers and Panda is off the menu from here on in.

The nice surgeon is going to make me some new bottom teeth, well two of them anyway and give me another scan, though I always get CT and MRI mixed up.

My fat lip is just where the fluids from the last op is unable to drain away. When I suggested that I stick a pin in it he recoiled somewhat..... could have been that fart though

To cheer us up here's a joke, or is it another piece of social comment... you decide...

A man and a woman who had never met before but who were both married to other people, found themselves assigned to the same sleeping carriage on an intercity train.

Though initially embarrassed and uneasy over sharing a compartment,

they were both very tired and fell asleep quickly, he in the upper berth and she in the lower.

At 1:00 am, the man leaned down and gently woke the woman saying ... 'Excuse me,

I'm sorry to bother you but would you be willing to reach into the closet to get me a second blanket?

I'm awfully cold.'

'I have a better idea,' she replied 'Just for tonight ... let's pretend that we're married.'

'Marvellous!.That's a great idea!', he exclaimed.

'Good,' she replied, 'Get your own f**king blanket.'

After a moment of silence ... he farted.

The End

Thanks for joining and welcome to our two new supporters !
Thanks too for the note that you are missing me , I'm sorry, I won't leave you for that long again and hope that I left you enough food and water. I will muck out your cage tomorrow.....

LIBERAL EDITION OF BLOG !!!

2010-09-08T12:00:00.000+01:00

Mr Cadbury quite rightly comments that my last episode was a tirade, he is quite right and I apologise. I was under the misapprehension that it was social comment.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ said Keats in his ode to Autumn but I wasn’t expecting a frost in August. And indeed we didn’t get one but it was a close run thing as a heavy dew sat on our tiny lawn on Monday morning. Is everything early this year?, why are the blackberries nearly over? Why do I sound like a bored contributor to the Daily Telegraph letters page?

I have just finished ‘Any Human Heart’ by William Boyd. Recommend it highly. He writes well and apart from his uncanny likeness to Jo Diamond (a friend who has more chance of becoming Crispin Blunt’s boyfriend than reading this blog) I think I would find him most intriguing.

For those of you who haven't been following this interesting tale ...
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/27/breaking-news-tory-mp-crispin-blunt-reveals-he-is-gay/

Rather gives it away in the link that one.

Whilst we are on about being queer... (I am still one of the generation that deplores the use of a word that meant happy and glad for something that is painful and shitty - I imagine) the news of William Hague has put me in a quandary.
Whilst doing the Cresta in St Moritz we had nine of us in one room, all serving officers, and three in one bed. Nothing strange coming from the cavalry I hear you say but nothing happened,,, to me at least... so what's the score?
Can I go to the Fathers night drinks tomorrow or will I come back with ripped jeans, a rainbow flag and a copy of the Village People's greatest hits?
Yes yes I know I shouldn't stereotype, I don't, I monotype... one finger for one key.

Its nothing new... even in 1949 the car industry was at it.

Back to Mr Boyd's book. It is a diary of Logan Mountstuart and written most candidly. I have always wanted to write such a book, you get to expound the wildest of theories and list your most dubious sexual practices and blame it all on some bloke called Stalin Fitz Sausage Muncher.
I am left wondering how much of himself an author put into his main characters. Initial novels are said to be cathartic and that is why there are so many one hit wonders, or disasters but are Logan’s ideas on fidelity all his own?

I am sure Mr Boyd is very happily married with 2.4 etc but to write so well must be more than just research into other’s thoughts, mustn’t it? Perhaps not.
Ann O’ Nimity, great girl.

Ann yesterday- phwoar eh

I never pay full whack, unlike Crispin, for a book. Always get the cast off from libraries and charity shops. yes it does minimise my range but I probably read some greatbooks that you skip over as they are not in the best selling lists. Am halfway through 'Finding your way around london - A streetmap for Dyslexics' a cracking read and before you all say that's irreverent or whatever the word is I was dylsexic sow thair.

So Kevin Pietersen may be fined because he used the F word on twatter. So fucking what? More importantly he should be dropped from the England team for all matches and made to run round Lords with his trousers round his ankles and three stumps stuffed up his arse during the lunch break at the next match. At least then we would get some entertainment value from him which is more than be said for his pathetic efforts this summer….. writes Benito Glockenspiel from Dogging in the Marsh, Gloucestershire.

Thanks Benny, noted and put on the highly democratic blog.

I’d pay to see that. Perhaps the innovative Pakistanis could also atone for their errant ways at the same time. We would welcome ideas and I would be happy to forward them on to the MCC. To give you a starter…

They could be tied to a stake naked and have a bowling machine fire balls at their balls or they could have electrodes put on their genitalia and every time someone hit a boundary a massive charge would shudder through their lithe, young, firm…

Ok Benito that’s great I will let you know, Crispin’s telephone number is 0207 640 2197 and don’t forget the 0044 from Milan.

I played quite a bit with the right Honourable member for Reigate and Redhill, never had a clue. Him about cricket and me about him. There again I worked with another charming and very efficient officer in Canada and I didn’t spot that one either. I seem to attract them don’t I Benito?

On a more serious note I keep reading snippets about throat cancers here and there. I have gone into denial, or is it optimism or ignorance. Maybe it is a bit of all of them. Most of the articles make for gloomy reading and mention a large percentage of reoccurrence within ten years. I am not interested in ten or twenty though I think bits of me will start falling off before thirty years pass.

I look at my fellow passengers on the train and see 60+ year old men in suits dozing off over work papers that they seem to have been looking at for the past thirty years. I don’t want to do that. I had better get scribbling.

Transport for London are encouraging mature inter racial bus sex in an effort to combat the recent tube strikes

They all look so bloody miserable, perhaps they are. I think we should talk to each other more, there are probably some fascinating tales in this carriage but finding one or two out of the fifty might take some doing and we are at Raynes Park already.

Is there a park at Raynes? Who was Rayne? Should it be Rayne’s? So many questions and so little interest.

Reminds me of my favourite piece of graffiti. Discovered on the cistern of the urinals in the Bodleian, Oxford.

‘Who is Armitage? and what is shanking? ’

Home time and the train is full. We stop at Clapham though we are not scheduled to. Very irritating. How do you pour two pints of beer into a pint mug? Ask Southwest trains.

Someone once told me the best way to keep the seats around you free of people was not to expand your broadsheet to its maximum size and fart but to smile at the incoming passengers, pat the seat next to you and put on your ‘come and sit here and we will have a good old chat about things’ face.

I never quite have the courage.

and finally a joke...

An Englishman, a Welshman and a Nigerian are all waiting at the hospital for the arrival of their firstborn children. They are all very excited until a nurse comes out and says that there has been a bit of a mix up with the three children and they are sure whose is whose.
Ignoring the obvious way to approach this, that is paternity tests etc the Englishman marches in first (as is his right) to the maternity unit and a couple of minutes later comes out with the Nigerian baby.

The Nigerian father says

'Hold on, that baby is black and obviously my son'

to which the Englishman replies

'Listen chum, one of those babies in there is welsh and I am not taking any chances'

Just one piece of 'social comment'..
The motorised wheelchairs that used to be used by the limbless and those with chronic illnesses and are now just used by fatties have been relaunched in a blaze of hype.

They are now to be called obesicycles.

Toodle oo

New Blood

2010-08-24T14:47:00.042+01:00

So the heir to Northern Foods, Sebastian Horsley, died of an overdose an inquest has reported.

Horsley, 47 was a self styled dandy and habitual drug user who had just been to the opening night of his first play.

We artists are often our own worst critics but he has taken this to a new level.

May I suggest that the top hat wearing fop who described himself as a ‘romantic nihilist’ was actually just an arse with too much money.
de mortuis nil nisi bonum Jarrett me old chap

Now another 'artist' has thrown himself to his death after singing in a pop festival. I have never been to a pop festival but having seen footage of the type of people there I might become a little depressed but would be unlikely to throw myself from a crane. One of his colleagues threw himself onto the fans in an earlier display of disgust of the oiks (from oikos, meaning 'earth' in greek)

So Tony Blair wants to ease his conscience before entering the kingdom of heaven, well wants to improve/shorten his rather long odds of getting there.

This is nothing new. For centuries rulers have been murdering, raping, pillaging, robbing and voting Labour before paying the church off, lighting more candles than you would find in a trustafarians flat in Notting Hill and wearing a hair shirt. ( Probably purchased from one of those supplements that fall out of the Sunday papers)

I am however constantly amazed in these days of multi media and all informed communications that the PR departments of the rich and famous get it so wrong. The likes of Richard III were probably crying out for an agency to counter ‘Tudor Solutions’ yet in hindsight they would have probably advocated donating the profits of his biography ‘Who nicked all the Horses’ to Save The Children.

One can hardly accuse him of stupidity though as he stand to save £3.2M on a tax law that he pushed through whilst emperor. What, one may ask, is the point of being in power if you are not prepared to use it to further ones life. Ask any African dictator for an answer and you will get a similar retort.

Might it not have been more prudent to donate the lions share to London Zoo and a smaller percentage to saving his soul? Although didn’t Alastair Campbell flog it on ebay ?

contentious

On a train home after a meeting concerning the Foundation dinner. Its early, well I sneaked out of the office as I have to meet a man who may run the 2011 marathon for us. He doesn’t know that yet but I feel that I ought to give him an idea of just why he is putting himself through such torture. So the train has plenty of spare seats and I occupy one of the ones looking forwards, I don’t know if I will vomit profusely if I face the other way but I think it unfair if I even potentially unload my Creamy Chicken soup (purchased at a vast expense for a pathetic amount of cubic centimetres at SCOFF or some such chain) over some poor unsuspecting soul.

That was until some utter, utter arse decides to sit bang opposite me. I already had my laptop out, a good ruse to deter others sitting nearby) but he took no notice whatsoever. He stank of cheap aftershave and wore a shortsleeved shirt and a mickey mouse tie. He must have been 50 and had fewer hairs on his head. Bald as a coot yet sporting an eyebrow that makes Alastair Darlings Monobrow look merely like a bad case of bumfluff.

A friend, yes don’t be shocked, I have his permission to call him that, said a similar thing happened to him on an empty beach in Cornwall this year. 5 square kilometres of sand and the family from hell plonk themselves down within ten yards of him.

They consisted of the father, Gary Fatbloke, 33, who sported a lovely pair of union Jack swimming trunks, though admittedly they were hard to spot under the beer gut that forms a canopy over his genitalia. Probably just as well for everyone really, especially his ‘pardner’, Leesa Wobblebottom, 27, going on 57,who is well aware of the fact that Gary hasn’t seen his mate/chap/old man/best friend ‘Stonker’ without the help of a mirror for some years now. Gary asked Leesa for longer arms as a Christmas present as this would make having a piss a lot easier.

As intonated, Leesa is paying the price for having her first child at thirteen and her body long since waved the white flag of surrender. She only has the four by Gary with her, the youngest being Leesa- Apache who is six, the last time ‘Stonker ‘ saw daylight.

The other three are aged between seven and ten, all having had their noses, ears and one other area pierced as there was an offer on at the Tattooist that week.

Apparently they drank lager and played football for the ten minutes that my acquaintance took to pack up and move on. On their departure the untermenschen gave the misplaced family a v sign and jeered as if they had just conquered their castle.

The bloke who sat opposite me is now asleep with his mouth open. He has two pens in his shirt pocket.

My apologies for the tirade and welcome to two new ambassadors. Both from the deep south, Africa and the USA. One noted that the blog was a bit confusing at times. I would have to agree and offer a weak promise about clarification that I fully know I will be unable to keep. Thank you for your kindwords and for every new follower you recruit you will get a £5 voucher off your next shop at your local supermarket… though they may not be aware of the offer.

I noticed a small boy wearing a football shirt with the words 'Ricketts' on the back.

I find this an interesting development. Are we going to see similar victorian diseases making a comeback in the premiership?
Perhaps we will see test players going under the monikas of 'Diptheria' and 'Leprosy' and Rugby internationals called 'Scabies' and that great maori hooker 'Kwashiorkor'

To the circus in Marlborough last night as Immy is now 5 years old. Wonderful stuff, would recommend Giffords to anyone of any age. Acts included a very funny german (a novelty in itself) who could play five recorders at once. I will let you decide where he put them.

all the fun of the big top...hmm

Sorry about the lack of piccies this time, but you mustn't be so shallow, there is more to life than comics .

Anyway here is Harry Rednap, who apparently is a football manager claiming he is a saint just like St. Tony B Liar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJBsI7RAuvk

Just goes to prove that football is a game played by and run by complete and utter c*%£s, or CAUCs as they are known. Can you imagine Alf Ramsay saying that in 1966 or Sir Pelham 'pottymouth' Warner flinging such a tantrum on the England tour of Australia in 1930?

I think not dear readers

What do you expect?

2010-08-17T11:30:00.000+01:00

Its holiday time.

We made it back from Cornwall and the Isle of Wight without being robbed, I expect he has bigger fish to fry.

Medical Update

Have now had op to sort out scar under chin
Went well when you think what could have happened

I have also had frank discussions with the doc who

hopes to carry out further ops and he is not overly optimistic.

There seems little point in improving the bite if I will be unable to swallow so it is back to the swallowing team

Looking good team! though I am not sure Capello agrees with the 2-6-2 formation. Though this could just be a picture of the worlds first 'Bird table football' ! groan!

They are trying to improve the swallowing first and if they succeed maybe I won't have to

Great tit(s) and pussy(willow). More interesting than a Robin sucking birdseed, just.

So no plans to cease production in the soup factory and the doc was worried that if an op went ahead the soft palate might move allowing more fluid to the lungs which is not a good thing.

Well I hope to be able to start some work as a result of this information and so may I introduce you to The ForceSelect Foundation.

http://www.forceselect.org/

We had an interesting premiere at Leicester square, one of those things to tick off life's list, not that it was actually on there in the first place!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1301674/Katie-Price-let-loose-The-Expendables-premiere.html

This is why you should never buy the Mail.

Well I will be off to the Lords test next week, anyone fancy a pint? I'm buying.

Though don't turn up on Sunday as it will probably be all over and they will be showing this sort of stuff on the highlights on channel five.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUyK_J_W4BI

The Berlin wall was completed on this day in 1961. Bit of a shock for those people who were on holiday in Cornwall and found themselves unable to get home and feed their goldfish.

Which was called Helmut

'oh woe is me'... Surely that should read 'I am woe'

2010-08-17T09:50:00.001+01:00

It is a black, black day here at Bother it HQ. One of my supporters has left us, upped sticks, left for Blogs new.
To be honest I am not sure who it is and to be even more honest I don't care.... that much.
Though who has the time or inclination to actually deselect themselves from a blog they don't read?
If that happened to all those on the supporters list it would just be you and me Mark, wouldn't it?

Mark?

Hello

Oh you are on holiday, phew!
Actually most of the world is on holiday at the moment except burglars and they are too busy to read the blog, so one told me recently.

There we were, all sitting round a table in the pub and in walks a bloke and says 'hello' to one of the assembled company.

He is introduced and offers to buy us a round.

The usual banter was exchanged and once we had all done where did you go to school and which college were you in at Oxford?, Westminster and Oriel, (2:1 in PPE) the inevitable what do you do now cropped up.
'I'm a burglar'
'a what?'
'a burglar, I rob people's house'
'Oh right - how's business? '(trying to remain calm - this was easier than expected as I quickly realised that I was not going to be one of his intended victims with a house like mine)

'Slow but things pick up during the holidays but then there's childcare costs, it's hardly worth sending them there but I can hardly take them with me can I?'

'Do you tend to work office hours?'

'It varies.. of course if the wife is at home I can pop out during the evening -though she still thinks I am an accountant'

' Oh right, so that's what you were then?'
'yes, five days a week up to South Ruislip, got bored'
'I'm not surprised,

no pictures today

Ripped to shreds

2010-07-22T11:07:00.002+01:00

Once again the critics have torn into me.

‘Ranting again’ said the Andover Antagoniser

‘Couldn’t understand a word of it’ from the Chilbolton Crusader

‘Utter bollocks’ The Times.

'Your french is pants' Hannah in Paris

Well Hannah, it maybe ennuyeux in gay Paris but in Hampshire its 'ennui', that was from our village idiot too!
(though he may be about to lose his jobs in the council cuts announced recently)

They miss the point. In the same way that Newspapers have to fill their pages, so do I.

I could merely do what other hacks do and just comment on the parlous state of the world but I try to add a piece of me to the mix, (which bit do you want?, most bits are detachable these days)

You will no doubt find a sloaney woman commentating in The Telegraph on the how awful it must be that women are no longer allowed to breast feed in Sotheby’s or , and this is real, that women are apparently buying more front loading bras as they are unsure of how to do up the ones that meet at the back. Ask any man of my age, this was one of the most important life lessons, along with how to hit a decent cover drive and how to tie a bow tie.

scary!

So the news that Facebook has locked horns with the prime minister over a site that praises the hideously ugly, probably even uglier now, Raoul Moat

(anagram U ROAM A LOT, should come as no surprise).

Facebook is glad of the publicity and has nailed its colours to the mast of the SS DISSATISFIED YOUTH. When have you ever found a satisfied one I hear you say ?

The PM is speaking for the rest of the country and commonsense. Facebook will support whatever the rest of the country doesn’t.

Its just that there aren’t many anti heroes about at the moment. A double dip recession, which sounds for all the world like a type of ice cream, a crap world cup in combination with 2 months of summer holidays leaves a lot of spare hours for the young to search out their latest project to wind up their parents.

You can’t drink in Rock anymore says Rory and anyway the princes don’t go there now and Daddy has had to bin the timeshare in Antigua after he was made redundant.

Rory is relying on his new mate Diego for a foreign holiday this year. Diego’s dad lives in Guatemala and has his own rifle range with real moving targets

Alternatively Dad has been sacked from his position at the builders as they didn’t get the job to build the new gym for the local secondary school and mum has had to take more shifts at Lidl to make up for it. This means that Chelsea can’t go to her gran’s in Hull as gran is also taking more work at the local supermarket. Gran is getting on at thirty four and is also cutting back on her clubbing. It is therefore unlikely that Chelsea will have a new Gramps until the end of the double dip recession.

So a long and tedious summer is about to start for those wannabe James Deans and Facebook is all they can think of.

Sad really

Whilst lunching on mushroom soup on Oxford street today I saw a woman in a full length burkha. Whilst musing on how she wouldn’t get away with this in Paris I noticed a subtle difference to the usual black garb.

This was no ordinary burkha this was ‘pimp my burkha’

The pimping in question was a burberry headscarf.

Dear readers I ask you just what sort of person was underneath said apparel?

Options included:

1. a rebel muslim

2. a chav who was thinking about becoming a muslim and was just trying it out for size

3. An American muslim who was on vacation

4. Dave from Wapping who was about to do a jewellers shop in Bond Street but had run out of dyed sheets.

anyway... Vive la France.

probably got that wrong too.

Another great idea has arrived over a pint. I wonder just how many ephemeral ideas are born over beer, only to die amongst forgotten promises and a curry in the early hours.

This one is so brilliant I am not letting on what it is. It is also so brilliant that someone has obviously thought of it before only to find that it is completely impractical. I mean why would anyone want to wipe their arse on bog roll with a photo of Peter Mandelson on it?

Apart from the joy that Mandelson would get to be near so many arses….. and bits….. and things.

Ok so I might not get permission to use Mindy Mandy's photo but you could use photos of your most reviled enemy. Some people would have to move house to fit in all the bog rolls.

Those who are lucky enough to live in large houses would take all the furniture out and fit lavoratories all over the place.

(Just like the romans did though I am not advocating communal crappers.)

Thery would also foul their breeches a lot as they wouldn't be able to decide which roll would have the honour of wiping the royal arse that day.

This from Pruter;

Students at a local school were assigned to read 2 books, James Cameron's 'Titanic,' And 'My Life,' by Bill Clinton.

One student turned in the following book report, with the proposition that they were nearly identical stories!

His cool professor gave him an A+ for this report.

Titanic: Cost - $29.99

Clinton : Cost - $29.99

Titanic: The story of Jack and Rose, their forbidden love and subsequent catastrophe.

Clinton: The story of Bill and Monica, their forbidden love and subsequent catastrophe.

Titanic: Jack is a starving artist.

Clinton: Bill is a bullshit artist.

Titanic: In one scene, Jack enjoys a good cigar.

Clinton: Ditto for Bill.

Titanic: During the ordeal, Rose's dress gets ruined.

Clinton: Ditto for Monica.

Titanic: Jack teaches Rose to spit.

Clinton : Let's not go there.

Titanic: Rose remembers Jack for the rest of her life.

Clinton : Clinton doesn't remember Jack.

Titanic: Rose goes down on a vessel full of seamen.

Clinton : Monica.. Ooh, let's not go there, either.

Titanic: Jack surrenders to an icy death.

Clinton : Bill goes home to Hillary - basically the same thing

Thanks to all/both who entered the Faggotist compewtition without prizes. The answer was a bassoonist!

Well Hello There

2010-07-14T11:36:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the new 'Bother it' ambassadors!
Firstly Jack and Marie and secondly Aleeza.
Fascinating people all. Jack and Marie seem to visit more blogs than Silvio Berlusconi does hookers and Aleeza seems most intested in how she looks.
No matter, it must be great for them to be part of a group that is so elite it makes even the liberal party members look commonplace!
or West Brom supporters for that matter

Its not every blog that welcomes each individual newcomer like it was a member of their family, for that is what we are, one big (ish) happy family where we...

ok I will shut up.

Had the 1st op. all done and dusted. In and out within a day and a nice new scar under the chin.

I have had enough of operations. It is all becoming rather passe.

It used to be quite exciting but to be honest I am finding it all rather ennui.

Enough franglais.

Talking of which thank the lord we don't have any more bloody horn blowing until 2014.

It is one subject that seems to be taboo at the class three fathers night at the pub (pop 6) is the football. Hooray for that.

The judge who said that those who butter their bread on the wrong side, (got on the wrong bus, are good with colours, etc etc,) and are being persecuted in their home countries for it should pop over hear and enjoy kylie and cocktails (not just the tail either I should imagine) did not get away so easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMVJ0shw_LY

Here how the pythons deal with smugglers. Watch out padre!

This is what the Daily Mail saith:

Dear Mrs Thatcher

The concept of Dover being (fudge) packed with pre op Somalians in miniskirts puking out 'I should be so lucky' (indeed you should madam) whilst whining about the standard of their 'slow comfortable screw against the wall' doesn't bear thinking about.

oh I thought about it...

Hmph, right well anyway it's not what I flew hurricanes during the Battle of Britain for. The fact that I am forty nine and an assistant accountant from Raynes Park is neither here nor there. I would have flown them, and still would if I could find one, to deter the revolting ~~whores~~ hoardes from this ~~septic~~ sceptered isle (of Dogs).

Yours etc

Ray Ciste-Bigott

33 Acacia Avenue

Royal Tunbridge Wells

Kent

Things will be gradually scaled down here as most of the staff are going on holiday over August. as a result we will be showing a lot of films, just like the BBC.

We are having a Gloucestershire festival this week and to start us off here is some cheese chasing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyQBSMeIhM

Yes to all those supporters from foreign climes this is what put the 'great' into Great Britain.

Running on that day was Stephen Hawking , go on have a look, he is the one with a horse's head on. He had to disguise himself so that he can continue to claim his disability pension.

We have had the first rain in months but the River Test is very low at the moment and the trout are looking very accessible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSFZMDcsWVo

Here is the purists ideal

and here is mine, though its not much of a bag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KVyykFS3dY&feature=related

wonder how that would go down in Wherwell?

Three nil, three nil, three nil, three nil....

2010-07-06T21:10:00.000+01:00

We won three nil! (no really? - ed)
Gave them a damn good stuffing and it could go as high as 5-0!*
That'll teach Ponting and his aussies

A right bunch of aussie punts yesterday

Ok so it was 3-2 in the end but it was still a win.

WORLD CUP SHOCKA

A recent poll that voted andrew lloyd webber as peoples choice to replace Fabia Coppelia as England manager has been brutally cast aside by the FA.
The poll was conducted across a wide section of the UK demographic
A whopping 50% of those polled voted Sire Andrew lloyds-bank to get the top job with Dame Vera Llyn coming in second place.

Yet FA bosses hardly took a second look at the poll and allowed the Eye talian to stay in his £6 million job.

A spokesman for Sir Andy said ' He is very grateful for the support but he is a bit busy and he is about to start filming a new programme for the saturday evening spot on BBC1... 'Searching for a Godot'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jhiw2dROCE

If you want to save the viewing figures for that programme you might need a save like the one above.

Medical news

They have decided that the idea of rebreaking both jaws would not be a good thing.
The intention was to pull forward the lower jaw thus pulling forward the tongue and the epiglottis that is blocking the throat and thus the ingression of foodstuffs.
The doc is worried that the radiotherapy damage is too severe. He is also worried that it might make me look like this

An improvement I hear you say

That is as maybe. He will therefore break the upper jaw and improve the bite and therefore the chewing. The slight problem is once chewed how do I get the vincent down my gregory?
He is talking to the throat people about that one.
At least it is a start. I think that we have to come to terms with the fact that I will not be tucking into a filet steak in the near future.
He likened my bite to a rusty and wobbly pair of garden shears and eating to pruning a hedge

all my own work

I am not booking too many dinner parties at the moment, maybe a few tea parties at the zoo though...

Today we had fun at the Southampton clinic where the docs said that there should be no breaking of jaws as this may cause more damage than it would mend.
They pushed and pulled at my face

ow!

and decided that the nutrition and speech johnnies should do what they can. In walk the Salisbury team who say this is bollocks and they will operate. I sit in the middle, a rather deflated football being kicked to and fro.
I say communication is a good idea, they don't quite tell me to shut up so I suggest the following

They tell me to shut up

Here's something you may have missed in the news...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pACePi441ds

are getting back together but time is a harsh mistress

Not quite sure which one is which but their synchronisity has improved tremendously.

We have had a phallus impudicus in our garden. I am impressed by its size, ok, jealous.

It is also known as the stinkhorn and boy does it!

It starts off as a round ball which are apparently edible until the phallus starts to grow.

Easy ladies...

The tip smells of rotting meat, (reminds me of a most unsavoury chap we had at school) which attracts flies, (yes that's the chap), thus spreading the spores attached to it.

It might have been a bit more fun if there had been a Mrs Stinkhorn rather than having one's fellow honking of old spam.

And you thought England were a joke!

2010-06-26T20:41:00.001+01:00

A duck walks into a pub and orders a pint of beer and a ham sandwich.
The barman looks at him and says,
"Hang on! You're a duck."
"I see your eyes are working," replies the duck.
"And you can talk!" Exclaims the barman.
"I see your ears are working, too," Says the duck.

"Now if you don't mind, can I have my beer and my sandwich please?"
"Certainly, sorry about that," Says the barman as he pulls the duck's pint.

"It's just we don't get many ducks in this pub.. What are you doing round this way?"

"I'm working on the building site across the road," Explains the duck.

"I'm a plasterer."

The flabbergasted barman cannot believe the duck and wants to learn more, but takes the hint when the duck pulls out a newspaper from his bag and proceeds to read it.

So, the duck reads his paper, drinks his beer, eats his sandwich, bids the barman good day and leaves.

The same thing happens for two weeks.

Then one day the circus comes to town.

The ringmaster comes into the pub for a pint and the barman says to him.

"You're with the circus, aren't you? Well, I know this duck that could be just brilliant in your circus. He talks, drinks beer, eats sandwiches, reads the newspaper and everything!"

"Sounds marvellous," says the ringmaster, handing over his business card.

"Get him to give me a call."

So the next day when the duck comes into the pub the barman says, "Hey Mr. Duck, I reckon I can line you up with a top job, paying really good money."

"I'm always looking for the next job," Says the duck."Where is it?"

"At the circus," Says the barman.

"The circus?" Repeats the duck.

"That's right," Replies the barman.

"The circus?" The duck asks again. "with the big tent?"

"Yeah," the barman replies.

"With all the animals who live in cages, and performers who live in caravans?" says the duck.

"Of course," the barman replies.

"And the tent has canvas sides and a big canvas roof with a hole in the middle?" persists the duck.

"That's right!" says the barman.

The duck shakes his head in amazement, and says ..

"What the f*ck would they want with a plasterer??!"

All change again on the operation front, back to the 9th of July now. They only have a skeleton staff on Saturdays and they are wary of performing a throat op without their proper ~~aneasthetist~~ ~~annthetist,~~ ~~aethist~~,
bloke who knocks you out. Tedious but better safe than sorry I suppose.

I know its dull but I rather did like the story about the NZ footie manager. Whilst Flabbio Copella earns a cool £6M a year training a bunch of people how to kick a pigs bladder the Kiwi coach does an equally competant job for a mere £25,000. Methinks the sweet FA are missing a trick here.

Have offered to do the job for 75% less but have heard nothing. My email has been playing up recently ...

Bit of a tricky one then.. Johnny Hun and then Juannie Argie, we might have a chance if we put the army up for it but I don't think 11 overpaid nonces with a combined IQ equal to that of a steaming dog's egg have much chance.
Personally I am a bit worried about Flobbia's loyalty.

Giovanni Eyetie changes more times than Kylie doing a gig in the last bash so watch out for tell tale signs....
Bringing on Peter Beardsley could be one.

Talking of all change here is our new MP!

err... it's the one on the right

In 2005, when she took part in a photoshoot for Glamour magazine, Mrs Nokes said: 'I've been told I'm too pretty to be in politics.

Sandra Gidley, deposed by Nokes

Oh well all things are relative!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1286264/Cameron-Cutie-MP-Caroline-Nokess-4-year-affair-toyboy.html

The bloke apparently was also involved with a researcher who became a lesbian partly as a result of crap sex with him.

I will be quiet, people in glasshouses...

No No not that!! It's just that I wouldn't want to judge any man's sex life. Viz

•54% of men think about sex everyday or several times a day, 43% a few times per month or a few times per week, and 4% less than once a month (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

Ok so far....

19% of women think about sex everyday or several times a day, 67% a few times per month or a few times per week, and 14% less than once a month (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

Oh that's not so good..

•1% of married men reported they have never had sex in the past year, 13% reported only a few times in the past year, 43% reported a few times in the past month, 36% reported 2-3 times a week, and 7% reported 4 or more times a week (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

God there are some bloody liars!

94% of married men and women had only one sex partner (their spouse) in the past 12 months, 4% had 2-4 partners, and 1% had over 5 partners (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

MP's therefore make up the 5%, but what's this....

•5% of men and 11% of women have never masturbated (Janus & Janus, 1993).

See! There are some people who are not wank*rs and could become MPs.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics... never a truer word spoken.

'Fun' things to do when England get knocked out... Number 46.

Pop off to your local supermarket and hide ten packs of extra large condoms/ tampons in a trolley under an old man's groceries.

Finally a clip about those damn venezuelas. If they are such an integral part of South Africas tradition and culture where were they at the rugby world cup?

eh?

come on then...

Cobblers,

I'm preaching to the converted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSGXividZCE

bye then.

Ponderings

2010-06-22T09:55:00.000+01:00

Although this title sounds like the name of a house in Carshalton Beeches I think it is time for a little introspective thought.

Not Carshalton yesterday

I was, along with many others no doubt, shocked to see the blind and emaciated figure of Andy Ripley at Buckingham Palace a few months ago.
He died a week or so ago and his is a salutary tale of how even giants can be laid low by cancer.

For those who are not fans of English rugby in the 1970's, ok I have to let you off on that one, not the greatest vintage, Andy Ripley was a giant of a man who crashed through tackles and showed a completely different side to the game. Finesse and graceful are not two apposite words yet when he got steam up it was quite a sight. viz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BndXSRwftpc

errm ... not quite but I couldn't resist a film that is entitled ' Lets go to Birmingham'
Train seems to be driven by a milkman... or is it the latest high speed milk float to enable fresh milk to be delivered to brummies... who think that milk comes from budgerigars ( pop 12,373)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfXV9vus7j8

That's better.

Andy thought that he had beaten prostate cancer and even wrote a book on how he had done so, note to self- no boasting, but it returned with avengence.
It is frightening how many times cancers return after a space of ten or so years to finish off what they started.

Whilst we are on such a subject I am still having dreams featuring a less dynamic rugby player. Ade cropped up as a ghost in last night's episode. After the initial shock we chatted until he refused to give me next weeks euro lottery numbers and I went off in a huff.
It was all a bit Randall and Hopkirk... viz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI__Szq-WaA
much clearer, thank you.

Glad you like the new background Mr Cadbury... anyone else got any thoughts they would like to share?

Thanks to Hannah who met Sarkosy recently and can confirm that he has 2" heels and not the 3' as I had on the sweepstake.

Just what is it about the french and tiny leaders?

Ahhh I thought so

Some said it was because they are all

But who knows

well Mrs Sarkozy I presume, but she doesn't read the blog and so can't comment.

Off to hospital on saturday for an op. Can't move my head too violently for 4 weeks afterwards so that is the end of my bungee jumping season!

Tried to organise meetings for tomorrow afternoon but everyone is making excuses, presumably to watch the oikball. I would have thought any excuse would have been good enough to miss that! even a meeting with me... we could have met in a bar... what are you drinking?

I predict 0-0 and a riot

They think its all over...

2010-06-18T17:06:00.001+01:00

No, still another 3,289 games to go.

I have tried watching with the sound off, loses a bit on the atmosphere but at least you don't have the impression that a swarm of wasps have nested in your head.

Well I nearly profited from Robert Green's goalkeeping howler. Had USA to win at 6-1. nearly lynched as I left the bookies but going back for more with Algeria looking good for a win as Billy the Fish takes over in goal having been released by Fulchester Rovers last week

Robert Green has gone to become CEO of BP. He's good with spillages and likes helping out americans.

Good news on the medical front, I have a date for the minor op that will reduce the scarring on my chin. This should be only one night in and should recover within a few days.

Next Monday! only 7 months late and still no sign of the major surgery to sort out the jaws and eating. Getting bored with this as there is work ahead and I can't really ask for 2 months off as soon as I start a job. This also has further ramifications if one extrapolates this scenario.... paying bills, replacing the rotunda at the end of the south drive and repairing the water damage on the Mattisse and Stubbs. Lord knows when we will get around to doing the east wing, it is in great disrepair after those yobs stole the lead from the roof.

one can imagine the state of the Renoir after a flood like this!

Is it me or is it getting more summery out there? The rabbits have eaten everything on our allottment apart from the potatoes and they are dying as there is no access to water on site. It is at the other end of the village and a long way to fill up watering cans each time.
I just get the feeling that what with the footie people are looking towards those dog days at the end of July already.
So with that in mind here is something to liven everyone up a bit

http://www.kontraband.com/videos/23041/Jet-Ski-Loading-Fail/#show

ruddy arse!

So England are taking on the might of Algeria tonight (pop 732)

I am thoroughly fed up with those sodding Venuzuelas. They are now appearing over here and two even appeared at the end of school today.

I have an idea as to what we can do with them

Georgia is leaving her primary school. This is not as a result of the venezuelas but because its time for a change

Nice gaff

another nice gaff

She will be starting in September, Georgia that is, not the totty holding the gaff. I don't think they allow gaffs at school, unless you are a teacher in which case they can be very useful.

What do you think of the new layout? crap? I thought so

Pip Pip

Stop press..... Teutons beaten by the Serbs. Horray! One in the eye for Franz Ferdinand. 5-1 at half time too!

Grease is the word....

2010-06-08T13:10:00.001+01:00

Hello peeps!

Well that dates you.

Sorry for the long absence but we escaped to Athena.. well Lefkada actually but I am trying to get as many film titles in to the (war and) piece as possible.

We have just come back from a great week on Lefkada or Lefkas, Levkas, levkada or any anagram of those letters that you care to opt for....

Some options being Flakes, Fad Lake or Fakd Ale, the latter being a pint of east London beer that has gone off.

Here it is for those of you with a geographical bent... girls look away now.

It was great fun and the girls loved it. Beaches 25 mins away and empty. Pool with house and shop to buy Daily Telegraph only 10 mins away. Georgia and Immy behaved wonderfully and it really was very relax (ing) ... That's a song and doesn't count... ed

A week is enough though as theree is only so long one can put used bog roll into a bin, wake up with ants enjoying a sup of dribble on ones mouth and sleep with the windows shut in 28 degrees due to voracious mosquitos (coast).

ok so it wasn't quite that hot.

Without all of those wonderfully kind people who gave so generously last year none of this would have been possible so thanks very much once again. We did send you all post cards but as I was rude about Johnny greek on many of them they were probably binned by the postman (always rings twice... not out there he doesn't ....ed) if there are such things.. as we didn't see one.

Which brings me neatly onto the dilemma I faced.

Johnny Greek is bloody idle by any stretch of the imagination (flashback.. just an illusion etc) and I can't see them paying back any of the zillion tillion pounds that they owe to the rest of the world. nor can I see any inclination to do so.

The last known picture of a greek at work. Early experiments in stem cell surgery go horribly wrong and young cretans are forced to live out there days as a taxi for German tourists.

Which seamlessly brings us onto the lates bunch of invaders. There were a fair (ayrians only) amount of bloated teutons (bloody marvellous film) wallowing around out there, acting as they own the place... well I suppose they do now but it is an uneasy peace.

Johnny greek, on his third bottle of ouzo of the day at 2pm, toasts the hun that bought it for him.

The kartonkoph is not too happy

I really don't know why Germany invaded Greece in WW2. it must have driven the germans mad. Nothing ever gets done! bloody hell it made me annoyed after a week, imagine a 3 year posting!

One of the plus points is that they don't give a toss about the world cup, no bloody awful car flags. No cars actually.

The cost of living is astronomical out there... lord knows what the islanders live off.. Bloated germans?

Come to think of it there were some pretty strange looking things on offer in the offer section of the meat counter.

Not a bad price actually.

Footie starts on friday and I hoped this would be a world cup free zone but I think we will start supporting a ( reservoir) underdog... if the greeks haven't eaten them all

North Korea should be up for it. 1000-1 and the threat of ending up on an Athenian dining plate if they lose should do the job.

thanks to Hannah for this clip

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm

Hmm...

Who gives a toss (XXX rated) what it means anyway..

Pip Pip

Nomad

2010-05-21T23:25:00.000+01:00

It was Ade's name for me, nothing complex, just an inversion. I never called him Eda but I was always Nomad.
Thereby hangs a strange tale
more of which later..

Have just come back from the funeral and although it all went well I am totally drained.
It hadn't hit home until I stood to read his eulogy, and then it did.
The internment was pretty hard too. so many people are cremated these days and throwing the soil onto the old chap was a first for me.
Thanks for all those who turned up and offered wonderful support. Thanks especially to Hannah for coming all the way from Paris.

So Back to Nomad.
Well I was told the dreadful news about Ade on Monday the 4th of May. At 3.15 I was sitting in the waiting room at Southampton hospital awaiting my monthly cancer check up I noticed that a horse called Nomad was running at Exeter in the 8.20.
It hadn’t run for a year and I wondered if it was him trying to say something to me.

I ummed and ahhed about how much I should put on it. Was it the old chap trying to tell me something? Should I put all my cash on it? Well that didn't amount to much but I popped in to my accountants on the way home.

I didn’t get to see the race but at 9.15 I checked the result, it had won at 33-1.

My first reaction was that of bugger why didn't I put my stamp collection on it, (Last valued at ten shillings & 6d in 1967)

It wasn’t until I collected my winnings that the bookie said that the finish had been ‘spooky’
I was intrigued so I investigated and was somewhat astounded by the event.
Please watch the 20.20 at Exeter, you may have to register but it is free and it is worth the while
http://www.attheraces.com/VideoConsole/

What did Cappagh see?

What or should I say who allowed Nomad to win?

A friend in the racing business said that Cappagh didn’t like being infront but that is a hell of the reaction!
Most people have never seen its like

Personally I think makes Devon Loch look boring

I await your verdict.....

At very short notice we are all off to Lefkada ...
This is due entirely to the kindness of all those who chipped in to a very generous holiday fund last year.
After recent weeks I think we all need a break.
We will report

More memories of Ade...

2010-05-12T21:49:00.000+01:00

Two Mexicans are stuck in the desert after crossing into the United States, wandering aimlessly and starving. They are about to just lie down and wait for death, when all of a sudden Luis says ...

"Hey Pepe, do you smell what I smell. Ees a bacon, I theenk."

"Si, Luis, eet sure smells like bacon."

With renewed hope they struggle up the next sand dune and there, in the distance, is a tree loaded with bacon.

There's raw bacon, there's fried bacon, back bacon, double smoked bacon ... every imaginable kind of cured pork.

"Pepe, Pepe, we ees saved. Ees a bacon tree."

"Luis, maybe ees a meerage? We ees in the desert don't forget."

"Pepe, since when deed you ever hear of a meerage that smell like bacon ... ees no meerage, ees a bacon tree."

And with that, Luis staggers towards the tree. He gets to within 5 metres, Pepe crawling close behind, when suddenly there is a gunshot and Luis drops like a wet sock. Mortally wounded, he warns Pepe with his dying breath,

"Pepe ... go back amigo, you was right, ees not a bacon tree!"

"Luis, Luis mi compadre ... what ees it?"

"Pepe .. ees not a bacon tree. Ees,

Ees,

Ees,

Ees,

Ees a ham bush ..."

Ade would have punched me if I had told him that. But it is just the sort of joke that would have made him laugh... a lot.

I have been overwhelmed with the wonderful messages that have been left on the blog. From those who knew him so very well to those who hadn't a scooby who he was.

From Mark Cadbury driving around Malvern with Ade on the bonnet of his car, being stopped by a policeman and receiving three points for driving with a passenger in the wrong place to Anonymous who just said that 'he sounded like a very special person'.

From Alison who knew him at Lucton to Jenny who just popped in from the next door blog to see what all the fuss was about. Thanks one and all.

I feel a special mention should go to Dickie for his contribution. I haven't seen Dickie nearly enough and it is a great shame that it has taken such an act to put us all back in touch. Lets stay in touch shall we for it is a good thing to do.

Thanks for all your words, we shall pass them on at the funeral for those who can't make it. For those who can here are the details:

MR ADEGBOYEGA LAWAL`S

WAKE KEEPING - ON THURSDAY, 20 MAY 7-9PM
AND

FUNERAL SERVICE - ON FRIDAY, 21 MAY AT 11AM

AT THE HYDE CHURCH

2b COLIN CLOSE,

COLINDALE

LONDON NW9 6RT

I hope to see you all there,
If not cast up a prayer
and remember...

Withdraw strength from the skies,

Have the confidence to overcome lies,

Let love run until its age

Bids you both exit from life’s stage.

News from the medical front....

Just come back from having a camera down my throat and wow! it was fascinating. Actually it went up my nose and down my throat and if ever there was a case for a picture speaking a thousand words then that was it.

I have a juvenile epiglottis, and it is the cause of much of the problem.

Bleeding juveniles!

So now we know what has been stopping my eating. Basically the epiglottis is not moving much and has limited muscular movement when it does and therefore food is simply not getting past it.

If the food is small and smooth and covered in cream it will slide down the small gap at the side.

If the food is slightly rough it will scrape down the side of the throat as it passes and it will scratch it, thus causing pain. If food is too large to go down it sticks and triggers a vomit reflex... you know similar to realising your ..... bollocks, went and watched Wallender and forgot the rest of the sentence.
realising... realising....

oh something like the fact that the wife is out, there is rugger on the box all night, the claret is at a perfect temperature but the TV is stuck mon the omnibus edition of Pam Ayres reading her entire anthology and you have lost the remote control

Better news today as a cow valiantly attempts to make the world a better place by turning omnivore and eating Pam Ayres

Good man Wallender.. Swedish Johnny and much better than Branagh's effort. Bit worried about the location though, real place called Ystad. Can't be good for house prices with murders going in left right and centre. At least Midsommer murders chops and changes its locations from Midsomer Worthy to Midsomer Tuesday to Midsomer Weasley and Midsomer Arsey, thus diffuse the effect that mass murderers have on the property market.

Village quiz night yesterday, 16 teams of 6 and four of us. We won by a country mile. Some of the team were embarrassed that it was so easy. Is it my fault the rest of the village are idiots?

Not on our team methinks

There will be more of Ade, please keep sending in your memories, we will put them together for Friday

Ade Lawal - In Memoriam

2010-05-05T23:13:00.000+01:00

Ade Lawal 1962-2010

I never thought I would be writing this, I never thought about such things. Silly really, having come so close to terms with my own mortality over the past year or so but thinking about the death of others never really crossed my mind.

Ade was my oldest friend, my past, my memory and my diary. He remembered everything. All the things that I had forgotten and some that I didn't want to remember.

Many of you won't have met Ade, he is pictured above with his Goddaughter Imogen at her christening, and this probably won't mean much to you but humour me at such times.

I was seven or eight when Ade arrived at Cotsbrook Hall prep school and it was his first taste of rural England. He had come from London and was all alone in a very strange environment. He had a loathing of porridge and would always smear his small portion all over his bowl and spoon to make it look like he had finished and eaten a massive plateful. I am sure I 'dobbed' him in a few times, sorry Ads but you needed to keep your strength up in those days.

Prep school life in those days hadn't changed much from the 1940's. There was no central heating (never liked the cold, Ade) and I doubt that health and safety would have been too impressed either.

It was character building and it certainly built his. Over time he got into the groove and rugby, football and cricket (after a fashion- that will really annoy him) were played with great zeal. His love for cricket endured and he was still playing for the London Nigerians. We spent many happy days at the Lords tests and he will take many memories that we should probably forget to his grave with him but there are far more wonderful ones that will last.

We will remember him best at the annual 'Edgar Tankard' old boys cricket match.
Most of the players were fortified by a pint or so of 6X and the cameraderie was wonderful, as was some of the cricket. We all have our own champagne moments watching Ade repeatedly trying and failing to smash the ball off the square was one of my favourites.

We all gave Ade a hard time, always in jest of course, and he always took it on the chin (s). He would bide his time , accepting all the grief and then come in with a quick retort which would shut us all up in a trice.
We gave him a hard time because we loved him, respected him and knew him. You can't be rude to people you don't know.

He was a man of integrity, dignity, honesty and reliability - apart from timings, never his strong point but he was always there and was so very good to me in this last, difficult year.

Never afraid to voice his opinions he was a staunch defender of all that was right and decent. he used to get angry when I would walk through a 'no entry' sign as a shortcut on the underground.

He was vociferous in his condemnation of the parlous state of education in this country, especially in the schools where he taught and it grieved him. He learned his educational ethos from his Cotsbrook days and understood that this would give children a righteous grounding for the moral maze that any child has when growing up.

His friends were numerous and from a massive cross section of society. But that was Ade, never afraid to make friends. Not that he suffered fools though.

His dancing was legendary, both Mark and I tried to outdo him but it was one area that we certainly ceded any ideas of superiority. I will miss the man who made Michael Jackson look like John Sargeant.

Please comment if you knew him, the world has few such wonderful people left and it really is a tragedy to lose one.

'He was a good man who did good things' Hardy
'hon hoi theoi philousi apothneskei neos' Menander

...ish