Leisurely Scribbles (part 5) (Part 1)

Hobbies & Pastimes Hobbies & Pastimes: Chat / Discussions
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True words there Solo, counselling was indeed free and you could be selective in who you took it from too, there was parental counselling, school teacher counselling, church counselling, and the one most of us preferred and trusted, counsel from your mates.
Choosing the latter was a mistake because they hadn’t a clue about important stuff either, they just made things up (especially where stuff about girls were concerned) to make an impression on the more sensitive kids like me, sort of a badge of authority to raise them up a peg in the ‘gang’, “Anything yeh want to know lads just ask Farreller, he’s been around and knows everything”
Farreller (aged 13 then) was credited with having went out with three different girls, wow! imagine all that he’d know, Dr. Ruth was only trotting after him on sexual matters.:smiley:
Farreller had been to Hong Kong for two years when his dad was stationed there, and he was the one who told us all about the Chinese girls with the horizontal private parts, how strange is that we all thought, the thing is we all believed it for years after, then another fella joined the navy when he was old enough and when he came home on leave he said it was all codswallop.
Well what do you expect, and how could we prove the Farrell fella wrong, there were no Chinese people in Dublin then, not even a restaurant. :slight_smile:

Quote Spitfire:
“ There is one potential candidate in that photo, the one with the closed mouth”

That child is deep in thought Spitty, taking everything on the screen in and storing it away for future use, one of the clever ones I’d reckon, I’ll bet she didn’t end up in a factory sewing shirts, she’s management material that lass.;-):slight_smile:

Spitty you reminded me of the chap who narrated this record many years ago, older members may remember it, he was once an American newsreader by the name of Wink Martindale, a one hit wonder in the record recording game, I wondered if he’s a distant relation of Billy Eyelash? they could have opened up an opticians “Wink & Eyelash” the best blinking opticians in town.:smiley:
That’s the dirty dozen you see, how many of the actors can you name? I only got Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, and Charles Bronson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/kLwQvjH7-Qw

15843

LOL Jem…I only found out what fibbers lads are once I lived in the Far East that oriental ladies made the same sound as we whities from blighty did when sliding down a bannister…naked :-D:-D

Don’t you just love stories like the Ghost ship that has turned up In Ireland. Although not quite so romantic as the Mary Celeste you do wonder with all our so called security systems in place how it managed to float on without being noticed for so long.

Wonder how long it will take for the owners to turn up once the wreckers get to work…not that I am accusing the law abiding Corkonians of such mercenary practice :wink:

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I forgot to add regarding that peculiarity of oriental Ladies personal anatomy, that every time an oriental woman appeared in a bathing suit on the cinema screen all the young lads heads would go sideways simultaneously like a one way ‘Mexican wave’ :lol::lol:

My favourite shipwreck was the one in the film ‘Whisky Galore’, no ghosts but plenty of spirits to warm the cockles of your heart.:smiley:
Cork folks are very enterprising, wouldn’t surprise me if some businessman bought it and refurbished it, then opened it up as a tourist hotel.

Seriously, this weather has me bored stiff, if it wasn’t for the odd trip up to the local I’d go stir crazy sitting in the house.
I managed to get a bit of paint onto the little cabin today, it’s a dark green colour called ‘Woodland green’ so it will make the cabin blend in with the high 7’ hedge that surrounds the whole front garden, and a good bit of the back, I’m thinking I’ll need to do three coats of paint to get it right.
Phyllis tells me she spotted two robins yesterday, they come to nest in the hedge every year, perhaps a sign of better weather on the way?
I do love the warm weather, you can get much more things done then.

Ah the soothing sound of Ella Fitzgerald.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/XivELBdxVRM

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My beloved garden shed is being held together by a huge clematis and Woodland green paint and has more holes in it than my kitchen colander but at the moment is being used as a prospective maternity ward by my fox.

She does this every year and I leave her be to just get on with it as the cubs will eventually play out on the lawn and thats a lovely sight to watch from the window.

The shed does need replacing but I really don’t have the heart when there is so much life around it :smiley:

Lovely comments below the clip…my favourite…My dad was so proud of the shed he put up that he called my mother to look out the window at it and make him a cup of tea. He leaned on it and it fell over!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/e5pFffNlk-c

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Thank you! (I hadn’t seen that) :slight_smile:

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I got a good laugh from that clip Solo, thanks, and good of you to look after the fox, or should that be vixen?, no a vixen is a maiden fox is it not?, like a filly is a maiden horse, then when she foals she’s a mare, ah forget it, a fox is a fox is a fox, as Maggie would say.:lol:

I never look up medical stuff on the internet, from what I hear there are so many self appointed ‘experts’ out there that after spending half an hour reading all the crap you’d be convinced you only had 24 hours to live. :shock:
One of my good mottos is ’never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you’, it has served me well over the years.
I know not what’s inside me nor most of the medical terms given the various bits needed for a body to function, barring the common parts like heart, lungs liver, and kidneys, after that I’m lost, but no doubt it will be made familiar to me when they start to go haywire, but I’ll cross me bridges when I come to them, what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve for.:wink:
So when I was listening to a Jeeves and Wooster audio book last night in bed, Wooster said on going to meet his notorious Aunt Agatha, who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth, that at the thoughts of seeing her his ‘gizzard froze’.:shock:
I didn’t know humans had gizzards, and I’m not going to look it up to find out, if I have one it has never troubled me so I won’t trouble it.
I remember as a child my grandmother cleaning out chickens and taking out a little thing that looked to me like a flexible walnut, splitting it with a knife and inside was a lot of sandy stuff and small stones, she said she always opened the gizzards after once finding a half sovereign inside one when she was a maid in Liverpool.
I have yet to hear anyone complain of having a pain in their gizzard or having a gizzard removed, repaired or replaced, if we have a gizzard it’s nice to know there is a part of ones body that never bothers one for a change. :slight_smile:

Believe it or not but one morning the wife woke me up and complained she had a pain in her hair!!!
I told her to comb it out and then went back to sleep, honest to God, women, they are a species all of their own, still you have to love them, and where would we be without them. ;-):slight_smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/ZhfWiU8wGCc

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Can’t beat the old ones biffo… https://www.animated-smileys.com/emoticons/animated-smileys-waving-052.gif

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Where your health is concerned there is nowt more true than too much knowledge is a bad thing Jem.:wink:

Nothing worse than lying in a bed waiting for proceedures that you know from experience are going to be a b***dy nightmare and your Doctor winking saying “but you know all about that don’t you”…and you lying there thinking “God I wished I didn’t”. :confused:

Some wise person once said “igorance is bliss” and I am sure they uttered that from experience. :wink:

As a kid I loved watching our butcher prepare chickens cos we were always given the chicken feet so we could pull the tendons to make them move…also the fluffy rabbits tail you could wear till it stunk…and I will have you know that I have had many an eyeball to eyeball deep and meaningful conversation with a pigs head. Sorted many a world problem out without a cross word being said…can you imagine kids today having those pleasures and all for free with a tasty nourishing meal at the end of it.

A free plastic toy with a Macs just doesn’t have the same thrill does it. :-D:-D:-D

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Yes indeed a spell in a hospital sure makes you appreciate your privacy and put things into perspective. I saw an anonymous quote somewhere and I liked it, so true when you think about it.
‘If we all threw our problems into a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back”

I see the ‘big bang’ theory got knocked on the head, not surprisingly, too many holes in it, black holes no doubt.;-):slight_smile:
That theory has held solid with all the experts for over 30 years now and has sent us all back to the drawing board confused and bewildered.:confused:
That’s what I don’t like about scientists putting out their theories as facts, the big bang was put to us all as undeniable fact, the cheeky buggers even went into nano seconds as to what took place immediately afterwards, just as it was with the ‘flat earth’ theory a few centuries before, put forward by men of supposedly infallible knowledge then and now, knowledge that us mere laymen/women dare not question.
I love everyone’s ideas as to how the universe was formed, I even have one of me own, but please don’t ram them down peoples throats as facts until proven to be facts, when in conversation about the subject it’s enough to put your tuppence worth in by saying “Well this is the way I imagine it happened” and end with “How do you think it all began my friend?”:slight_smile:
Now we have lost more than 30 years chasing a wild golden goose with n’er a sign of a golden egg, and the big bang believers can all sit at the bottom of the class with the flat earth dunces, serves them right.;-):smiley:

All the ads I see for Alexa seem to ask the same four basic tasks, did you know that everything you say to this robotic box is recorded and stored as data?, see the BBC news piece on it.
It’s like we are all being hypnotised and lulled into a great big data cloud, the beginning of total control ?:shock:

(1) What’s the weather like Alexa?
(2} Play my favourite tune Alexa”
(3) What time is it Alexa?”
(4) Turn on/off the lights Alexa”

If you know more tasks feel free to add them, but no rude ones like “Scratch my arse Alexa”, that’ll come in with the newer model :-), but those listed are the ones that kept repeating over and over again on the BBC list I looked at.
My point here is that all the actors in the ads are able bodied people, indeed most of them are young folks, and the ad is aimed at the young, so if a young person is too lazy to (1) Look out the window to see if it’s raining or snowing (2) Select your favourite tune from the list of tunes you have stored on a device (3) Turn your arm over to look at your wristwatch (4) Flick on a light switch, then there is little hope for the human race.
Nothing wrong with labour saving devices, but something that openly encourages laziness and the consequences of habitual laziness, is a horse of a different colour, but maybe it’s just a passing fad like the hula hoop and the yo-yo of old.

Maybe if they had something that told you how to get home on foot from a strange country pub it would be helpful, i’ve got lost a few times in my younger days, slept in a barn in Mayo one time with a few cows, the four legged kind.:lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/hid6kGu2Uto

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I did catch up on that Alexa Beeb programme and the first thought that struck me was Besos has the same glazed meglomaniac look as Zuckerberg…and being a tad suspicious of power mad meglomaniacs I would allow neither of them into my home in any shape or form. Nuff sed on that. :wink:

Black holes, similar and knowalls…when you read or are told that something… can be, could be, should be, possibly be, maybe, perhaps be…you know deep down that they don’t actually know anymore than just theories and those are very expensive theories these days.

Non of this looking through a telescope in wonderment these days…they have to spend millions trying to find a black hole so we can hopefully poke it to make sure it’s 1) a Hole and 2) its Black.:shock:

Someone up there is surely having a good laugh at us mere mortals. :-D:-D:-D

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Yep, tis strange, the lifestyle of those young guys north of the border, when you see in the TV ads, the young, cape clad ladies who are Scottish Widows.:-):wink:

Now the theory has been Poo pooed, someone knock on the wall, and tell them to turn the Tevs down, can’t hear yourself think.:lol::lol:

15853

Ha ha! the black hole, greed again, serves him right.:wink:

Definition of EXPERT
“One with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject”

The key word there is “Mastery”

In my opinion the whole ‘expert’ system needs to be revised urgently, the expert market is overrun with Mickey Mouse experts and chancers, now more than ever with the internet.
I was looking at a young chap on TV described as an expert in technology explaining the way a smart TV works to a potential customer, he knew about how to stick in the connections, switch it on and off and how to tune it in, but so does almost everyone else, there is nothing expert or masterly about that. :slight_smile:
Big electrical shops will ask you to consult “one of our experts” in the shop, well in one particular well known electrical shop I use, the experts must be on perpetual holidays because all I get are ordinary counter hands with minimal knowledge of the products they sell, and I don’t blame them, I blame their employers for not training them properly and then expecting too much from them while paying them buttons.
Expert is a very big word to my way of thinking, the top of the game, he who knows all in his field, to be the best at what one does, not just to give one the impression that you are the best. I think the danger here lies in the way the general public take the word of these people as gospel and wouldn’t dream of questioning them, “Professor Plum told me all about it and he’s an expert, he knows it all, end of story”:shock:

There are people on this forum who are excellent at photography, arts and crafts, painting, knowledge of music, telling funny yarns, writing short stories, poems, offering council etc., yet none would be as brazen as to call themselves experts even though they are far better than most so called experts on the mentioned subjects.:wink:

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Just read an article on how school meals have changed over the years and boy did that bring memories flooding back.

My Mother was a fabulous Northern dish cook so maybe my taste buds were spoilt from the start and rebelled at anything less than her tasty standards and that caused me problems back then and still does. I really do have to enjoy what I eat simple as that.

Now remember with those school meals you had to eat every thing that was dolloped on your plate and all done with a ‘like it or lump it’ flourish of the serving ladle. Watery mash, watery cabbage and watery mince is not easy to swallow no matter what you try to wish it was…and telling us that there were starving kids in other countries made it no easier either. Many of us wished we were one of those kids in other countries. Mind you we didn’t put weight on then like they do with todays offerings :-D:-D:-D

Never sure why My Mother put me through that apart from the fact I was a tad sickly youngster and needed extra feeding up as they say .:confused:

Article How school dinners have changed: From spam fritters with mashed potato to an influx of vegetables | Daily Mail Online

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[QUOTE=spitfire;
Now the theory has been Poo pooed, someone knock on the wall, and tell them to turn the Tevs down, can’t hear yourself think.:lol::lol:
:lol:
I enjoyed watching “The Hunchback of Norte Dame” the other day on TV, Anthony Hopkins played Quasimodo, and a fine job he made of it too, great actor that chap.
Did you know Victor Hugo was the first man in space, that was back in the 1800’s, he was a Hugonaut, which is what a French Astronaut is called, Russians call them Cosmonauts, or so a fella from Mullingar was telling me.;-):smiley:

We didn’t get school meals as such Solo, but everyday we got a half pint bottle of milk and a sandwich, I remember exactly what we got every day.

Monday. Cheese sandwich.
Tuesday. Brawn in a sandwich.
Wednesday. One currant bun. (my favourite of the week)
Thursday. Brawn again.
Friday. Jam sandwich.

I used to take the brawn out of the sandwich and give it to one of my schoolmates, horrible stuff, I hated brawn.

I remember one year in the mid fifties the farmers had a strike and there was no milk to be had, we were supplied with powdered milk, it was disgusting and I wouldn’t touch it, but there were always plenty willing to have your bottle of the vile stuff.

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Ah those little bottles of milk, from crates
delivered to the school playground! They
used to freeze in the winter.

And brawn - and tripe? - wonder if you can
still get it?

15857

Tripe is still a plenty:lol:

A real friend of mine went to Australia circa 1972, didn’t take much courage back then, the guy had only 3000 days to contemplate.:lol:

Most of which were spent in formation.:-):wink:

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AAAh those little bottles of milk…if the birds didn’t get there first to peck all the cream out or the frost to lift the milk out like a candle it was then shoved in front of a radiator to …warm up. YUK

The only person I knew who worshiped tripe was my Father…and not your common seam tripe but the honeycomb which according to his forever extolling the virtues of tripe was the best. :wink:

He would religiously fill every honeycomb orrice with vinegar then lovingly and gently sprinkle salt over the it. Having performed that rite he would invite me to taste a small morsel… an offer which I once fell for and accepted but never ever repeated for any to attempt to describe that mistake is well beyond my cullinary expertise. Just lets say in the tried an true Northern way it not only looked like holy shite but tasted like holy shite.

You can still buy the stuff biffo…I was up North last year and sure enough laying on gleaming steel platters in the butchers was that wriggling layers of tripe looking no different than it did years ago. Some it seems would go down fighting rather than give up their tripe and onions. :smiley:

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I can visualise that scene with your Dad eating tripe, you describe it brilliantly Solo. I have me own tripe nightmares after watching me grandfather eating the horrible stuff. :slight_smile:

Another local bites the dust.

Some folks couldn’t have friends in a pub even if they knew how to change water into wine.
Nicky Roach is one of them. It’s his own fault really, I mean I can understand folks who don’t want to be friendly, it’s they’re choice, but this fella is the opposite, he wants to talk people to death with his own views and shuts his ears to anyone else’s, so now he suffers the consequences.
A huge man, looks more like an all in wrestler than a retired civil servant, he sits up at the bar in the local, way down the end of it all by himself. His daily routine is to arrive at 12.30pm with the Irish Times newspaper and plonk himself there, he goes through the paper with his gimlet eye trying to find ammunition for argument, trouble is everyone is wise to him and he has no one to argue with, they all call him “Rent-a-row Roach’, he’s left like a primed bomb itching to go off, all that tension couldn’t be good for anyone.
Then he’ll leave at 3.pm, disappointed at not having found a victim and having consumed a bowl of soup, a toasted cheese sandwich, and three gin and tonics, you could set your watch by him.
The barmen on duty try their best to avoid conversation with him because all he will talk about is politics, nothing else mind you, just politics, trying to steer him off politics is like trying to put up an umbrella in a hurricane, you haven’t got a prayer.
According to his ultra right beliefs he could sort out all the problems in the world today, just whip ‘em and hang ‘em all, thank God he doesn’t hold political office, although he tried in his younger days and actually got 11 number one votes in this constituency, mind you he has got a large family.:lol:
The gang of old lads I sit with gave up asking him to sit in on our domino games long ago,”All games are a complete waste of time” according to him.
He doesn’t get invited any more to the Summer outing or the Christmas party for the old folks, it’s run by the younger patrons and the management, he is barred because he always starts political arguments on the bus/train or in the hotel, he once threw an ash tray at a barman in the hotel while on a pub outing, all because he wouldn’t put the TV on to show a Dail debate, he demanded the debate was more important and should come first and the singing/dancing later, need I tell you he was very nearly lynched that day.;-):slight_smile:

I scribbled out that post last year and then forgot about it. Well God rest his soul, he’ll be buried in the morning, I will pay me respects to his long suffering wife Alice, she’s a walking saint having to put up with him all those years, he was 70, I would never speak ill of the dead but me heart bleeds for St. Peter or whoever gets him.:smiley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/hS7EbVSLQl0

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Not a clue who the guy is/was, but sounds like he left his mark.:-):wink:

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Well now Jem and spitty we could say if we were being charitable and daft enough ‘the poor man’… but I couldn’t nor would I use that as an excuse for know it alls or conversation killers as I call em.

No doubt some highly paid chappy would give a million reasons for that kind of behaviour but in good old fashioned laymans term which costs you nowt it boils down to bigotry…an intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself…and lord knows there are enough of those these days about and on the increase too :frowning:

You do wonder (with respect of course) and with the help of the blessed Dave Allen… he who dwells and dines with St Peter… if this clip will replicate if they can get him to the church quicker than usual whilst he is quiet. :wink: