Leisurely Scribbles (Part 2)

Hobbies & Pastimes Hobbies & Pastimes: Chat / Discussions
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In the words of that great song writer Donovan

“Freedom is a word I rarely use,
Without thinking, oh yeah,
Without thinking, m-hmm.”

I have many faults in me person but jealousy was never one of them I’m happy to say, let those who have it enjoy it and to hell with the begrudgers. :smiley:

Although there are those who have it and deliberately flaunt it to tease those who haven’t got it, they, as someone so rightly pointed out in a post recently, are asking for trouble, nobody likes a show-off.

Most of the very wealthy people I’ve come across in my life and trade are humble with what they have and never boast about their good fortune, old money people know how to handle wealth much better judging by my own experiences dealing with them.

I’ve known my wife since she was a child, her mother and mine were pals since their schooldays and we spent a lot of time in each others houses, when we started going out together in our teens she once tried to make me jealous by dancing with a mate of mine for most of the night at a party, it didn’t work because I then started to dance all the slow dances with her mate, so it sort of backfired on her, she wouldn’t talk to me all the way home and when we got to her gate she told me it was all off, that lasted for about a week then it was all on again. The silly things you do when your young. :smiley:

Billy Fury, a very talented man in my humble opinion, so sad he died so young, God rest his soul.

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I see on the BBC news site where a lady in Windsor was out in her garden last July when she was ‘splattered’ with human waste from an aircraft, a billion to one chance.
Her clothes and a couple of garden umbrellas were ruined.
She is not suing the company who owns the plane, I think she’s daft, she should take them to the cleaners. :wink:

I knew a chap, worked with him in fact, he was on his way home from work and was walking along the quays to the bus terminal when a heavy metal lampshade fell from one of the old street lamps, it knocked him unconscientious, he was lucky his head wasn’t knocked off.

He sued Dublin Corporation and got enough compensation to open his own jewellery shop. That’s God’s truth.

As he sat at the bench working his fingers to the bone
He dreamed of having a shop all of his own
Then came that fateful day as he walked by the Liffey
When a lamp fell on his head and he was out in a jiffy

As he was taken to hospital covered in plaster
He didn’t know his wish was to come true from this disaster
Now he stands behind an all glass counter with carpets on the floor
And his name in neon lights above his new jewellery store.

Jammy bugger that he was. :smiley:

Reminded me of this song which was popular that year, 1979. your hay-day Spitty. :smiley:

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Yep Jembo, it was, will take a day or so to dig up some memories, even now, seems I was the only folk interested at the time. :laughing: :heavy_check_mark: :biking_man:

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“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”

Pardon my ignorance or call me thick, I don’t mind, but I never did understand this idiom.
As far as I’m concerned I’ll keep my enemies as far away from me as possible, that makes more sense to me, but then again I’m not Sun Tzu, the Chinese military advisor who made that one up. He (Sun Tzu) goes on to explain what he means, but when you have to explain an old adage it loses it’s immediate impact.
What about “sleeping with the enemy”? well if you have them that close to you you may as well go the whole hog. :smiley:

I’m starting to question and lose faith in a lot of these old idioms that some folks swear by, and I’m sure a lot of them live by.
I think it all began with me when I started to compare them and then I realised some contradict others, as these two beauties which first caught my eye:
“Look before you leap”
“He who hesitates is lost”

Talking about memories Spitty, this little joke made me chuckle, I wish I could make up jokes as good as this one, unfortunately it’s not a joke.

“In a deposition, Donald Trump stated that he couldn’t remember that he said he had the world’s greatest memory”

Honest to God!!, Priceless ain’t it. :laughing: :laughing:

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Jembo, I kept my enemies close, and ended up in gang with them, had to wait for them to get banged up, or die, to escape. :smiley: :biking_man:

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:laughing: Yeah I understand Spitty, It’s the same when you keep your in laws close to you, very hard to get shut of them. :smiley:

I was thinking of an old workmate of mine today, I don’t know why but his face just popped into me mind, my dear old granny would say when that happens then whoever it is who’s dead needs a prayer said for them, a good thoughtful soul was she.
He was in his early 40’s when he died from a burst stomach ulcer.
I knew a few people who died from the same thing back in the 60’s and early 70’s, especially those who liked a drink, a few others had operations to remove them.

Strange how one never hears of anyone dying from an ulcer these days, well I haven’t and I visit the pub regularly, folks popping off from all kind of things but not ulcers anymore.
I never had one thank God. Have they found a cure for stomach ulcers now?

In some of the American films back then you would see men taking little pills every now and then saying “Gee, my ulcer is playing up again”, funny enough ulcers never seemed to effect the women in the films, only the men.
If they can fix ulcers then that’s a great thing, but unfortunately as soon as they cure one thing along comes another, somehow I get the feeling mother nature don’t want us on the planet no more. :wink: :smiley:

Kevin Bacon is driving me mad with his galaxy ad, you know the American actor who does all the ads for BT, he’s all over the place with this new one, but I think he may have finally got through to me.

I keep a Stag and a Doe out in my big back garden, I’m hoping to breed reindeer for Santa’s sleigh, the covid wiped out Rudolph and the rest of his stable, but I found out that it’s a long and slow process, so I bought two more Does, I wanted to get more bang for my buck. :wink: :smiley:

Oh God, I’m really losing the little bit I have left. :smiley:

Nice bit of guitar playing here.

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Jembo, today I was Stateless , not complaining, I asked for it. :laughing:

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Not to worry Spitty, could be worse, stateless is not as bad as mindless, I’m coming across all calm and over relaxed these days and I’m trying to figure out why. :wink:

As you know I used to like a good conspiracy theory but now they really have got out of hand, every Tom Dick and Harry have their own special theory nowadays and they all clash, the result is everyone is too confused to enjoy them anymore, you can’t even have a laugh or joke about them as you will be offending some group or other and I never had the wish to offend anyone.

I have me suspicions about this covid vaccine and I’ll tell you why, I think they have slipped something else into the mixture, something that takes a few months to work, a kind of lasting sedative thing that makes one feel satisfied with the whole system, sort of like a mind conditioner.
By the way I don’t doubt for a minute it’s effectiveness against the virus, it has saved millions of lives all over the world.

However since I had my second jab along with the wife last May something strange has slowly come over the both of us, we have not uttered a bad word to each other nor raised our voices in anger about anything since, so what, says you, well it’s not normal with the two of us that’s what, we have been slagging off each other all our lives, it’s what keeps us together and keeps us alert, we enjoy our little disagreements, now it’s as if we were in some way subdued, we are too calm, too tolerant, and I hate to say it, too boring now, nothing makes us feel annoyed anymore, it’s “Peace be with you” to everyone now, and one can’t get a decent argument out of the old lads in the local anymore, except from poor old Arthur who flatly refused the jab on account of his gammy leg, but he always has his mask on and nobody pays any attention to his mumblings, besides he’s barred from the vaccinated tables. :smiley:

So was it something in the vaccine, anyone else have any “couldn’t give a damn if the sky fell down” symptoms?, is there a great plan to suppress all resistance? or is it just old age?

I don’t like being nice all the time, neither does the wife, it’s scary and the rest of the family are frightened. I feel like that if someone hit me over the head with a bottle I’d just turn round and give them a great big hug, that’s how peaceful I feel. :smiley:

Why only today at lunchtime as I was entering the pub a tramp asked me for a fiver to get a sandwich and a cup of tea, I handed him a fifty quid note and said “Forget the sandwich, have a few pints of Guinness instead, sure there’s eating and drinking in a Guinness, and you’ll feel the better for it my good man” :wink: :smiley:

I want to don a white nightie and lie in bed for a week like John Lennon and Yoko Ono did back in the 60’s. :laughing:

Anyone know where I can get some narky pills powders or injections to set me right again before I end up in the nuthouse or the poorhouse.

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Jembo, you have excelled yourself, if only RJ was here to appreciate it :cry:

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Jem, have you tried sucking acid drops? They might make you more vitriolic in your demeaner. :wink:

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:laughing: Great suggestion Fruity, I’ll try a bag of them, if they aren’t strong enough I got a bottle of sulphuric acid in the workshop, might add a drop or two to me tea. :smiley:

Joking apart, every winter I used to get a bad cold sore on me upper lip, they’re an awful nuisance and an ugly sight.

A Turkish chap I worked with told me that if ever I feel a sore coming on to dip a cotton bud slightly into a diluted solution of sulphuric acid and apply it to the area, we use diluted sulphuric acid all the time at work to take the fire stain off gold and silver after soldering, anyway I tried it, it stung like hell for a few seconds but I never got a cold sore again and that was about 30 years ago, one quick application is all it took.

I know nothing about medicine but I have a theory (Oh God!, not another one :smiley:) that as cold sores are a bug called herpes 1 (Herpes 2 is coming to a cinema near you soon :smiley:) and it resides at the back of one’s neck, in cold weather it creeps around to feast on the soft flesh of the lips, so it must have got the shock of it’s life when it was suddenly drenched in acid. I have to say it did try another route to the lower lip but I was on the ball waiting for it with my acid bud, eventually it gave up and must have starved to death, not much soft flesh at the back of my neck, the wife is always saying that I have a hard neck. :wink:

The body is full of nasty bugs, please don’t go there to check it out, if you do you’ll wish you never did, ignorance is bliss when it comes to knowing what’s inside your body, in my opinion.

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I read a few of Mark Twain’s books, I really enjoyed Huckleberry Finn when I was a boy. I was surprised to read this bit about the book on Wiki.

“Many have questioned the appropriateness of teaching the book in the U.S. public school system—this questioning of the “N” word by a school administrator of Virginia in 1982 calling the novel the “most grotesque example of racism I’ve ever seen in my life”.[38] According to the American Library Association, Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States during the 1990s”

Surely people would allow for the times that were in it when the book was written, the 1880’s?

I’m a fan of Agatha Christies books and many today would call her early works racist, (remember the original title of “And then there were none”) a natural reaction by todays standards, but when she wrote what she wrote it was not considered racist at the time, it was what everyone thought back then, including the establishment, if they start to edit all books containing the words used at the time of writing then there will be no stopping them, it would not be an accurate account of the times, some great works of literature would be ruined for future generations, then they might even start on historical documents containing words that are offensive today, where would it all end? It should be clearly pointed out to students and young folks that these authors were not raving racists, they were using the terms commonly used in their lifetimes, wrong now but not considered wrong then.
Just my own opinion of course.

I noticed when showing the old films and programs on TV lately they give a warning beforehand that it may contain offensive material, good idea that.
I can imagine anti smoking schemers hatching a plan to edit out the smoking scenes in all the old films, no easy task that, even the doctors smoked back then, well now they lock the smokes up in special cabinets in the shops out of sight, can’t have the people looking at actors actually smoking real cigarettes on TV can we now? :smiley:

Talking of scheming.
A couple of old lads and meself were toying with the idea of writing a short one hour play to perform in the local Pub theatre festival, we were thinking of calling it “Passing Clouds” as a sort of tribute to the time when one could smoke in the pubs.
There would be very little dialogue needed but lots of smoking, slagging of politicians, cursing, and pint swallowing, generally making a hooley out of it, we believed one is allowed smoke when performing in a pub play, alas we were wrong, only dummy cigarettes allowed, no point in it so, and there was me anticipating local stardom. :laughing:

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I sense conflict, that is no basis for creativity, if one forces, piles is the only result. :biking_man:

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Yes conflict indeed Spitty, it must be tough on the dedicated writers of today, what with having to worry about not only what is permitted today but perhaps in the future too, surely that would kill off creativity.

Piles!, you mean those unmentionables sent by the devil, aha me lad, you cross to the other side of the road when you see those little buggers coming. An apple or two a day keeps them at bay I believe. :wink:

Speaking of apples, all we got as kids calling to the houses at Halloween was fruit, apples. pears, oranges, and nuts, loads of nuts, not very tasty I know but more nourishing and certainly less fattening than the sweets cakes and crisps they get today, not an overweight child in sight back then.
The fruit dealers in Moore St. market used to call Halloween their Christmas, today there is only one fruit stall left in Moore St., and more fat kids than there every was in Dublin, sad that.

Happy Halloween everyone. :smiley:

Here’s Bobby Picket, the best Boris Karloff impersonation I ever heard, and he makes better faces than Les Dawson. :smiley:

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Good job no one had an allergy back then. :biking_man:

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Spitty’s energy thread gave me a few thoughts about the Cop 26 summit., it’s red hot in the news right now.

I have to say I’m a bit puzzled about the name of this summit, for a start, what would 26 coppers know about climate change?, secondly, is that one Cop saying “Hello hello hello” 26 times or 26 Cops saying hello hello hello once? thirdly, why wasn’t PC 49 invited, he was the man to sort things out, no better copper. :wink: :smiley:

I think the Cop 26 conference should address the waste of human energy and look for a way to utilise it both for healthier people and a healthier climate.

The Queen was right when she said there is too much talk and no doing, nothing will come of this huge pow wow only broken promises and happy Glasgow publicans.

How about we make our own electricity?
The human body is crammed with energy when at it’s prime, a real powerhouse, yet people actually spend hard earned money to go to gyms to waste it, why could they not step into a suitably made treadmill installed in their home and store up enough electricity in a battery to power their house for the following day? I’m sure if they can make a battery to get you from London to Glasgow in a car they could make one to power a normal sized house for a day.
All the family could join in and the threaders would be getting all the exercise they need at the same time.

So instead of jogging 15 miles or sitting on yer arse on a Peloton for an hour or two, put that energy into a battery, that way we’d be investing our own energy for when we are too old to generate any more, set up your own energy bank.

Strange why they don’t measure human energy in watts and cubic feet, of course you’d know the answer to that if you had cubic feet. :laughing:

Just how much human energy is wasted on those stupid Peloton bikes for example, channel that into something you can store up and use at your leisure, remember the ‘dynamo’ on your old bike?, why did we ditch that I wonder, we have great battery storage systems now, so between them and a few solar panels on your roof you should have little need for commercial energy suppliers.

Seems we are encouraged to conserve regulated processed energy and then waste our own in the gym or at home on stupid bikes with a TV attached to the handlebars, all sounds illogical to me, the aliens looking down must be having a great laugh at us all running around like headless chickens trying to find solutions to something that plainly can be done but only human greed is preventing it from happening.

Remember good ol’ PC 49, back in the days when coppers were your helpful friends and you respected them for it. :smiley:

pc-49-by-alan-stranks

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The Dynamo made peddling the Bike marginally harder requiring more “input energy”, and, it wore yer tyre out quicker, but, I think there are “Legs” in your proposition. :walking_man: :biking_man:

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The way see it Spitty is if you want to repair something properly you have to strip it down to get to the damage, then clean it up and fix it. That’s what we’ll have to do to fix this beautiful blue planet.

Good news on the deforestation though, lets hope they keep their word.

Painful as it may be to most of us, especially the younger people, I’m afraid we’ll just have to back peddle a few decades in order to put things on the straight and narrow again.

We hear forks moaning about what a disaster it would be if we had to go back to the pre luxury goods days and old fashioned ways, but would it really be that bad?, when you think about it nothing was wasted back then, you had the ‘Ragman’ collecting old clothes and the ‘Slopman’ collecting all the household food waste to feed his pigs.
Glass bottles were returnable and even the horse manure was collected after the milkman’s cart finished it’s rounds and used to grow tastier vegetables and better roses, everyone was a winner even if we hadn’t got a halfpenny to our name. :smiley:

Even today wealthy folks will pay outrageous prices for a simple cottage in the country to live a quiet peaceful life.

With all this techy stuff we have now folks have become too fat and lazy, who could imagine 30 years ago you’d be sitting in your armchair belting out commands to a box to “Turn on my lights Alex” “Open the curtains Alex” “Play my favourite tune Alex” “Wipe my arse Alex” etc., it’s not needed and we are becoming too used to it, just look at what happens when the internet goes off for a few hours, widespread panic!.

The bubble has to burst at some stage and anyone who has never experienced the old ways won’t have a clue how to survive, remember that old adage, “Never put all your eggs into the one basket”. :wink:

Bring back the horse and carriage, the milkmen, breadmen, rag and bone men, bowl haircuts, button boots, paper bags instead of brown envelopes, propelling pencils and fountain pens. :smiley:

And that’s me lot on the cop 26 summit, or as the missus sceptically calls it “The Glasgow Speech Competition”

“She was only a stableman’s daughter, but all the horsemen knew ‘er” :smiley:

I had me eye on this little place in Kerry, I would love to live out the rest of me days there, only problem is the ‘local’… it’s ten miles away!, a man could die of thirst living there. :laughing:

cottage

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That’s because you need input from fellow drinkers Jembo, it seems you need to be socially acceptable, in your weakness :grin:. you just need to get used to the concept of drinking alone, then you can live out in the sticks, just buy in bulk. :blush:

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Looks like the “Global” is going to disappoint the kids this Christmas, this would not have been a problem in “Chad Valley”, kids were never let down there, shame, when the whole world in contained in a container.