Ta for the gardening tips Robert…all noted and I will pass your explanation on to Japanese Knotweed who will no doubt be chuffed to bits that it’s really a plant.
Thanks Harold for the ingenious recycling examples
Hope your 2 Grandaughters did not give you too much indigestion Ciderman;-)
On a serios note
When elf n safety dictums can ban WI’s cakes at a hospice of all places because WI bakers must have their kitchens environmental health approved because ‘legislation is legislation’, you know the end is now nigh for any form of common sense.
Some officious health and safety officer, wearing a white coat and a pair of blue plastic gloves, has decided that a hermetically sealed, mass produced cake is going to be a far safer bet, obviously ignoring the number of these product withdrawals because of wrong ingredients, broken glass, broken finger nails, metal fragments, bits of plastic and so on.
Visiting or staying in a hospice has always meant a cuppa and some tasty WI home made cake baked by a genuine cook in her no doubt spotles kitchen and not some souless great factory machine where additives are added by uncaring hands.
Mr Kipling may be smiling about this latest lunacy but there is a saying “He who laughs the last laughs the longest” because hopefully we could all throw Rock cakes at those dictums and cause a right Apple turnover.
That’s ridiculous Solo, what next I wonder.:shock:
I was always lucky in the cakes stakes. I spent a lot of my boyhood with my granny who was an excellent baker, as a young girl she was a domestic in a big mansion in Liverpool owned by an MP, she was a parlour maid but she spent a lot of her time in the kitchen picking up lots of handy cooking tips.
When I married early in life my wife took charge in satisfying my love of good cakes, she still loves to bake, enjoys it she says, the two older grandchildren, who are young men at college now, call in regularly for her apple pies, cream sponges, lemon cake, scones, and all the other goodies she can turn out, God bless her hands and Odlums flour.
You certainly fell on your feet there Jem. Baking seems to be another craft that is dying out and why so many cakes are now shop bought risking all these allergies.
Bake your own then you know what suits you is the obvious answer but hey I’m not banging on too much about this as look what happened to Marie Antoinette after she said “let them eat cake”
97 was a well deserved innings for a remarkable lady. Doris Day’s off screen life was anything but idyllic mainly due to an unscrupulous manager husband and his friends but nothing shook the on screen image of her as an American wholesome virgin, the girl next door, carefree and brimming with happiness
All of her films were a delight to watch and dare I say long to be like her especially when she could capture Men like James Garner so effortlessly. I emulated her for a while and captured mine, but only because I tripped him up outside a pub
Calamity Jane being a firm favourite will always stand the test of time but also as a singer she was also excellent.
My screen was blank before I typed this; however I had already thought what I was going to type. A future event, as envisaged in my thought passes quickly through the present then instantly becomes the past.Points at time being flexible, unstable even.
If the future comes first, the course of events in our lives must have been pre arranged,present, future & past become one thing, pre existing & co existing.
Finally could it be that events we now think of as past are confirmation of events which have already occurred.
What do you think?
Our grasp of what we understand as time is limited and moves forward only, or does it ?
Consider this–
What if we could step outside of time?
What if the order became, future, present and past, doesn’t seem difficult as I have already described that order above, or present and present. Any of these last scenarios p
What if the order became, future, present and past, doesn’t seem difficult as I have already described that order above, or present and present. Any of these last scenarios
Lot to ponder here. The last time I faced a poser like this was when myself and a few comrades were being threatened by a very dangerous mob. Then I’d wished like hell that you could simply blink and physically step out of that time and place. I suppose one day it will become possible to do so.
One things for sure that I am certain about is if my life had been pre arranged, someone sure had a wickedly warped sense of humour when they planned mine. .:roll:
I fell in love with Doris Day when I was 9 and saw her in the film “Calamity Jane”, she was as tough as any cowboy and nothing ‘girlie’ about her, that was it, she was one of the boys, I have loved her ever since, truly talented lady with a great voice. I nearly turned off James Cagney for life when I saw him slappin’ her around in that film “Love Me or Leave Me”
Rest in peace dear lady.
I’m laughing to myself here as I just remembered something, it’s one of those things where one shouldn’t laugh but one can’t help it if you know what I mean.
There was an old lad up in the local who used to sing one of her songs “Secret Love”, it was his party piece and he sang nothing else, wouldn’t have been too bad if he had a decent voice, he was an energetic old fella and when he got to the part “Now I shout it from the highest hill…” he would stand up on the high bar stool and spread his arms wide. One night he had one too many, and yes you guessed it, he fell off the stool and broke his leg, God forgive us all but that got him a bigger clap than his singing ever did.
Yebbut…what you think you may type and the reality of your final offering,avec corrections,is equivalent to what MAY happen you if don’t engage and utilise your abilities…and what WOULD happen if those abilities didn’t exist. But they do-which is WHY you can type without spellnig mistakes-or at least make it appear so. Ergo,it remains ‘future,present,past’ in that order,my dear RJ.
Thinking about time, well here’s my tuppence worth.
A wise old Country Farmer once told me that a dream is a mixture of the past the present and the future, he might have something there. Time does not exist in space, nor in dreams, one could have dozens of epic dream adventures in one night, and one would be lucky to remember the last one. Last week hasn’t happened yet in some parts of space.
Man invented time as a means of calculating his existence, all creatures probably have a system of measuring their existence, when to mate, when to seek food etc., the butterfly only lives for a day yet it crams a whole lifetime into that day, gives a whole new slant on that old saying “It’s all in a days work"
The trouble with mankind is we cannot comprehend eternity, we have to have a beginning and an end to everything, yet we are quite content in the knowledge that there is no final number, we start off with 1 because we have to have our start, yet WE put the 1 there, it wasn’t there until we decided to start counting, it didn’t exist, counting numbers is a man made thing, but we don’t seem bothered that there is no end to counting, it goes on for eternity, we are smugly satisfied that we have our start.
We cannot understand that planets and space were always there, we have to find a ‘start’ to it all so we invent a big bang, we will probably try to justify that by saying that it will also be a big bang that ends it, by what the heck, we’re alive now why worry about the end, the start is all that matters, sort of “cross your bridges when you come to them” attitude, rape the world now and let future generations pay later.
As one scientist said in a program about space and time on BBC4 not so long ago when he was asked an awkward question “The truth is we just ain’t smart enough to figure out these things” How refreshing to hear him admit that, and how true it is, fact is when it comes to time and space we’re all stooo-ped.
Mankind does seem to take a great delight in constantly fiddling, altering, amending and buggering up most things it touches especially if it works well.
Look at all the ways simple names keep getting lengthened to supposedly make them sound better. George Carlin did a brilliant sketch about this in 1988 and it is still relevant today
Watched an old film the other night with George Formby called “Get Cracking” a terrible film, I don’t know about you but I never found Formby funny, he went a bit overboard with the stupid innocent act in my opinion, and that Red Rum smile of his is just too good to be true. But to give him his due he did great work for military moral during the war.
The picture carried a PG certificate, I agree with them, it was Positively Ghastly.
I believe his wife Beryl was a real dragon who controlled him completely, she handled all the finances and used to give him pocket money every week, then he’d have to tell her what he spent it on.
Any man who could take all that from his wife while working all the hours God sent has to be a proper gobshite, or was he up to something else on the sly? Beryl was a mere seven weeks dead when he announced his engagement to a younger woman.
I was always interested in the cinema and actors, also the theatre especially Abbey actors and the Abbey Theatre. I read an awful lot about this ‘hobby’ of mine as a younger man and if there were any biographies on the actors I would get them from the library, autobiographies I don’t trust, no popular performer is ever going to write anything bad about themselves. It’s fascinating to read the lives of these people who thrilled us on screen and stage, some tragic tales too, some of their lives are more interesting than the characters they portray.
There are no less than five biographies about George formby out there, the extracts below are taken from David Brett’s book.
“He was the highest-paid British entertainer of his day. At his peak he earned the equivalent of £1.5million a movie, mostly thanks to the negotiating skills of Beryl.
But their partnership – professional and private – became increasingly strained. She gave him only five shillings (25p) a week pocket money. The only large outlay was their home in Lytham St Annes near Blackpool. It was duly named Beryldene. Beryl remained highly protective of George and would fly into a rage if he went near another woman, as Carry On star Irene Handl once recalled.
“She was such a nasty, spiteful piece of work to just about everyone, including George,” she said.
“She was so twisted and conniving it was impossible to work out what was going on inside that head of hers.”
At one point Beryl banned George from kissing his leading ladies but the public were blissfully unaware of the friction. In fact, by the time he finished touring the world entertaining troops in 1945, national treasure George was rewarded with an OBE”
I don’t think George got over the fact that his granny Sarah used to be an Ashton under Lyne prostitute with 140 crimes underneath her belt…along with other unmentionables. .
As for Beryl the one time clog dancer…No wonder he kept saying “Turned out nice again” if only to convince himself if nobody else. Odd couple if ever there was one or as we say oop North…“Nowt more funnier than folk”
Reminds me of this .
An Actor’s Revenge
by Richard John Scarr
He had positioned himself stage center.
And was giving the audience his all.
When suddenly a seat went up with a “Crash!”
And a woman walk down from the stalls.
And ignoring the audience hissing.
And the thespian’s renderings too.
She crossed in front of the Footlights.
And disappeared into the Loo.
And feeling decidedly slighted.
The actor waited, enraged.
And when the woman came out of the Loo,
he walked to the front of the stage.
Then adopting a theatrical posture.
And in a voice filled with venom and bite.
That carried its way clear up to the Gods
He delivered the best of the night!
He said: "Madam. Whilst there in the privy.
Could you hear my excellent King Lear?
You couldn’t? Well I find that amazing.
For we heard you quite clearly out here!
Ah yes the OBE.
Every time I think of that I think of old Dan Moore, lord be good to him, he used to come into the pub on the first Saturday Morning of every month with the same old joke, he was a countryman and came up to the city on business, God love him we always laughed every time just to humour him.
“Morning lads, I got an OBE this morning, ain’t ya all proud of me?”
Us all together
“And what did you get it for Danny?”
“For me breakfast of course…One Boiled Egg”
Then he’d double up laughing, and when he recovered from his own hilarious joke he’d buy a round of drinks for the shop, see it can pay to humour some folks, especially when they are wealthy farmers.;-)
I asked a “Royal Watcher” what goes on behind closed doors, he was kind enough to condense it and put it into rhyme for me.
“The Queen of hearts bakes some tarts, and they all sing her praises
The King he farts after those tarts, and is met with horrified gazes
The Knave is busy playing cards, albeit they let him win
And the Joker is in the pantry with the maid, committing mortal sin”
Ahem, we’ll say no more about that carry on, that wasn’t quite what I meant when I asked him.
