Leisurely Scribbles (part 5) (Part 1)

Hobbies & Pastimes Hobbies & Pastimes: Chat / Discussions
16222

:lol: I think I’m a born sceptic Spitty, question everything til your blue in the face, and what remains must be the truth, didn’t Sherlock Holmes said something to that effect?
The only thing I delete is Jameson’s whiskey using pure Irish spring water. ;-):slight_smile:

I have to give full marks to the bookies around here for the way they are handling this pandemic thing, no more hanging around in the shop, keeping the 2Mtre. distance rule, and hand dispensers all over the place.
You just go in do your business then out again, it must be working because all of the old regulars are still betting, so far (tip wood) no one seems to be sick at all amongst the punting crowd, all present and accounted for when you consider the bookies have been reopened now for four months.

On my way out of the shop today I picked up a clean bookie slip, it was neatly folded in four so I opened it and had a look, someone had put €40 too win on a horse called “Global Wonder” in the 3.10 at Plumpton, it was very clearly written in block letters. Global Wonder had won at 7/1, it had just beaten my horse by 5 lengths so it was fresh in my mind.
I went back in and handed the ticket to one of the lovely helpful girls that work there, there was €320 due back on the ticket.

If it wasn’t already claimed he would have been paid out anyway even if he lost the ticket, all he had to do was rewrite the bet on a new slip to be compared with the original which was copied into the computer, still if some dishonest creep had found it he could have claimed it if he was quick enough and got in before the real punter made his claim.

By the way when I was in the bookies I met the Dalai Lama there, when I asked him what was he doing in a bookie shop he said “I want Tibet”
Ah well we all have our little vices.:smiley:

Rock-a-bye Baby, so warm in your nest
Your poor Da-da’s not well and he must have a rest
His head is just splittin’, he says it’s the flu
But it’s not the real reason, between me and you

He went out on Monday to buy us some shoes
And he heard of a horse now that just couldn’t lose
Well, he bought the new shoes, that I can vow
For the Bookmaker’s daughter is wearing them now.

(Verse from an old Traditional folk song)

16223

Well it seems I spoke too soon, from tomorrow at midnight until the 1st of December (if all goes well that is) the bookie shops will be closed.:shock:
We are back in lockdown till then, only essential shops may open, but it’s good to see the schools will carry on and the kids won’t be missing out too much on their learning.
Back to square one again, the first lockdown was all in vain, does anyone really know anything about this virus?. So many blunders now it appears not. to me anyway.
We’ll just have to plough on and hope for the best come the new year.:wink:

I’m trying to squeeze as much as I can into my posts lately to limit the number I make, I dread reaching the 20,000 post mark, every day onwards will be filled with tension for me, because 20,194 is my unlucky number.:lol:

Tonight I was thinking of the one and only time I visited the USA, it was a disaster, I found this entry in an old diary for 1971.

“I was a very hard up hippy in New York in the early 70’s, I used to have to make my joints with stale bread crumbs, one day I was sitting smoking in a fleabag saloon bar when I saw an old friend pass by, I left the crumby joint and went out to meet him.
It was his first day in the big apple, it was my second, he was tall, I was small, I said hi, he said low, hello hello, you say hello and I say goodbye, well you know the old song.

We were like two idiots standing on the footpath looking for the sidewalk, suddenly a streetcar whizzed by and he was caught up in the gust and squashed beneath the wheels of an oncoming oil tanker, what a mess.
I went back to my stool in the bar and wept into my Bud.

“Closing time Buster” growled the bartender as he lifted my glass and swished a filthy cloth under it, “Ain’t you got no home to go to?”.
Little did he know my home was a cardboard box on zero street.
“Ain’t yeh got no heart?” I asked through my tears, “I just lost my best buddy, can’t I just kip down in the corner over there”
‘Whatcha yeh think this is a hotel?"
I didn’t answer not wanting to spoil his delusions of grandeur so I pulled up my flimsy jacket collar and walked out into the freezing January New York weather.”

- YouTube

16224

Thats such a sad story Jem…i usually smile at your story’s but not last night …not a nice memory for you hope you are OK.

16225

My sincere apologies to you Summer, that never actually happened, I am seldom serious when I post in this thread, and when I am I usually write ‘true story’ before I begin or at the end, that tale was just an abstract sort of way to try to get across some corny jokes, like stale breadcrumbs make ‘crumby joints’. :wink:
It was also a feeble attempt to imitate Mickey Spillane’s private detective Mike Hammer of which I read a lot when I was very young.
Not a lot of folks know that Spillane wrote some of the comic book stories in the 1940’s, adventures for Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and Captain America.

It’s the old weights and balance thing that applies here, being that if it’s not expected to be believed then it won’t be and therefore it’s not a true lie, it’s all pie-in-the-sky stuff so to speak.
I have never been to America, but my imagination has many times, thanks again for your honest concern and I’m sorry that it upset you.:blush:

These electric cars are becoming the way to motor now, the battery takes up the whole floor of the car and I believe they cost a bomb to replace.
I suppose they will become compulsory in the future when all the poison belching petrol models are phased out, I don’t drive so I have little knowledge of any type of car, but I wish all the best to those who do.

There is nothing new about electric cars, my Uncle Dave had one back in 1960, he lived in Cork and travelled all the way up to Dublin (253 KM) at the weekends, back then the car only cost him 800 quid, but the electric cable cost him 10,000 quid, and there was always the fear his wife would pull out the plug when she wanted to use her hoover just as he was halfway up to Dublin.;-):smiley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/Ldyx3KHOFXw

16226

Electric vehicles have been around for ever, in fact, ever since Milk Floated.:lol::lol:

16227
16228

Lou did seventy one years, against all odds, the liver got him in the end, maybe it was his destiny?

16229

Its sort of good when laymen can predict their own demise, not just the knowledgeable ones.:lol::wink:

16230

You can’t beat a walk around Asymmetry, reading headstones and understanding proportionality.:wink:

16231

There are a lot of interesting graveyards all over these fair isles Spitty, one could spend all day reading the headstones, so many people died when they were young back then.:frowning:

Yes the old liver can get some whacking, especially from some of those celebs, bad enough with the gargle without adding the drugs cocktails, that really stretches it to the limit.
Moderation is your only man when looking after the liver.:wink:

It amazes me that Bill Wyman (83) and Kieth Richards (76) survived through all that liver abuse, well done the pair of them, poor Georgie Best just couldn’t pack it in, he was de-livered and got a new one but still carried on drinking and he paid the ultimate price in the end, God rest him.

Talking about delivered, after the last world war the national maternity hospital here had an epidemic of childbirths, the place was jam packed with customers.
Dubliners christened the hospital “The Dick Turpin”, because there were no beds available and the women had to stand and deliver. Boom boom! ;-):slight_smile:

- YouTube

16232

Nice one.:lol::lol:, in them days, that was why there were so many “Dropouts”.:lol::wink:

16233

:lol: Dropouts indeed, the young folks lost the run of themselves back in the 50’s, my old Granny used to blame it all on rock and roll.:slight_smile:

Sorry about bringing up this civid-19 thing again when we’re all cheesed off with it, but lets face it it’s literally all over the place and there’s no getting away from it, but this question has to be asked sooner or later in the interest of public health.

Can you catch civid-19 from a fart?

That thought had entered my mind months ago but I was too polite to ask. :blush:

Seems you can according to this piece I found when I googled the question.

“AnApril 11 article from the British tabloid Daily Star titled "Coronavirus ‘could be spreading across the globe through farts’ claim doctors"had 4,700 shares on Facebook as of Wednesday afternoon.
"Doctors have made the foul discovery that farting could spread the Covid-19 disease – unless infected people wear pants which can protect this from happening,"the article’s secondary headline reads.
The story citesan April 6Twitter thread byAustralian doctor Andy Tagg. It includesreferences to multiple studies based on observations in China. One, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, describes how the virus wasdetected in the fecal matter of an asymptomatic child up to 17 days after exposure.":shock:

So beware of any wayward winds.
If it’s true, I’m just wondering where could I buy me an arse mask, and where would I hang the ear strings?:confused:

- YouTube

16234

I always suspected this method of transmission, stools without wind are ridiculous.:lol::wink:

16235

You make me laugh Jem, your brain must work overtime! :lol:

Frank Ifield used to be my idol in my younger days but now The Wayward Wind has a totally different meaning to me! :mrgreen:

You certainly bring some humour to the forum in these worrying times! :023:

16236

Thanks Mags.
Phyllis was a great fan of Frank Ifield too, we went to see him in cabaret here in the early seventies, there he was crooning around the tables with the mike in hand, he stopped at our table and he kissed her hand, it was like a million quid to her, she never stopped yapping about it for months afterwards. groan. :wink:

I had to laugh out loud in bed last night when listening to the audio book “Ring for Jeeves” by P.G. Wodehouse, read by Martin Jarvis who’s one of the finest readers around the audio book circuit.
(if you like the Wodehouse humour the audio books are all on youtube)
What a literary genius that Wodehouse chap was.

I find the unabridged books are far better and more enjoyable than the visual Jeeves and Wooster, there’s a lot of good stuff left out in the TV series, besides my eyes are not as good as they used to be and it’s nice to have them read for you by an expert reader.
By the way, if you like the Agatha Christie books then Hugh Frazer (Hastings in the Poirot series) is your only man to read them, far better than David Suchet (Poirot himself) in my opinion.

Anyway getting back to what made me laugh.
Bertie Wooster is talking to his ‘man’ Jeeves about a posh friend of his who has just bought a country house in Derbyshire.

“Beautiful house Jeeves, old but with all the modern conveniences, wonderful scenery and smiling meadows, but prone to slight flooding, that’s why he got it so cheaply.
In the Summer months they have the river at the bottom of the garden, and in the Winter months the garden is at the bottom of the river.”:lol:

I knew a fella who bought a house like that here in the midlands, had a terrible time trying to get a buyer for it… True.

Most men I know/knew used to enjoy those beauty contests they had on TV years ago. What red blooded male wouldn’t admire female beauty, where’s the harm in that I ask you.
They stopped screening them for some reason, don’t know why because they always attracted a huge audience, the girls never spoke much, they didn’t have to, as any good auditor would say, “the figures speak for themselves,”;-):slight_smile:

- YouTube

16237

Different spreadsheet in them days.:lol::lol:

16238

I thought accountancy was all straight forward stuff once one got the hang of it, same as with a chambermaid, once you’ve spread one sheet then you’ve spread them all.
Unless of course one is three sheets in the wind, then you’ll be spreading sheets all over the place.;-):smiley:

I was never good with figures, and trying to grasp that algebra testicology nearly caused me my sanity as a boy, but I suppose numbers, just like time, are essential to keep things in perspective, some are genius’s with figures while others are hopeless like myself.:slight_smile:

Although I’m over 60 years in the jewellery trade I still couldn’t tell you the melting point of gold, silver, or platinum, sure enough I learned it as an apprentice but it doesn’t come into me reckoning when i’m melting, I know from all the years of doing it when it’s ready for pouring, platinum has a very high melting point because it takes longer to melt, silver melts fairly quickly, the lower the caret of gold the longer it takes to melt, then simple figureless logic takes over and I tip it into the mould when it’s just right, get it wrong and the mould is ruined.

They’ve been confusing us with fahrenheit celsius and centigrade for years now and getting away with it, bad enough us having to go through three monetary changes in one lifetime (LSD, decimalisation, and then the Euro) without messing with the temperatures, it’s enough to make one’s blood boil, what’s the temperature of boiling blood by the way?:lol:

We get a lot of people coming here from all over the World these days and when they first come they are medically checked out, when they have their temperature taken the nurse will write it down on the official form, in order to save space on the form the temperature is added to the age and height of the person, so it will look like this on the form.

Abdul Macdom, age 34, 95 degrees foreign height. :smiley:

When the examination is finished, the medical team step back, clap, and sing in harmony
“For he’s a jolly good fellow, and CELSI all of US”;-):slight_smile:

Now here’s an old number I’ve always liked, Dusty Springfield before she went solo, her real name is Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, her parents came from Kerry, one the fairest counties in the land.

I just remembered my great Uncle Dave used to keep a vintage American rifle in his attic, it was an old Dusty Springfield.:slight_smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/pgo0_NCIVbo

16239

Just a few words in praise of old girls everywhere.

When it comes down to brass tacks nearly every girl today wants to live to see grannihood, they hope to live a long life and be well into their 90’s when they finally go, they listen to all the experts and take precautions like giving up smoking and drinking, late nights and general messing around.
Some even go to gyms and sweat like politicians at election time, all to ensure they live a long life, and good luck to them all.;-):slight_smile:

In my day most of the girls smoked and took a drink, went to weekend parties and didn’t get to bed (that depends on how one looks at that ) until the wee hours of the morning.
They worked hard in factories (well in my area they did) and looked forward to the weekend when they ‘Let their hair down’ as they used to say. Gyms were for boxers and the dance halls kept their bodies slim and nimble.:smiley:

Strangely enough most of those girls I knew then are still alive and kicking, they enjoyed being young girls, made many happy memories, and are now enjoying being grannies and great grannies. they had their cake and ate it, so to speak, and we all want that don’t we, you have to be tough inside and take risks when you’re young to survive and enjoy being old, I raise my glass to tough old birds everywhere, except turkeys of course, nobody likes tough turkey.:slight_smile:

So get out there on the floor and shake a leg or two girls.;-):slight_smile:

- YouTube

16240

Just some wild thoughts, and maybe some light relief.:wink:

You know how our breaths turn into a visible vapour in winter and on very cold days?
Well this should be very helpful to us all now with this invisible virus, it would allow us to see the direction of the other persons breath and therefore avoid it more effectively, same as if you see an annoying relative approaching, you can cross the street.:smiley:
The very fact that we can’t see this little bugger is the cause of it spreading so widely and
quickly.

Perhaps some technical whizz kid could come up with a neat little gadget that would make our breaths visible all year round, shouldn’t be impossible to do in this day and age, and it could be very rewarding financially.
While we all await a safe vaccine some weird thinking is badly needed now as nothing they have come up with so far seems to be working.:frowning:

How about this for weird.
Everyone who has to go outside takes a mouthful of Helium gas, this will ensure that when the vapour containing the droplets exit the body they will have no option but to travel upwards all the time, like a Helium filled balloon, sending the virus to Mars or whereever, probably came from Mars in the first place, who knows.:smiley:

An retired old explorer from Galway was telling me many years ago (did you know that old explorers never die, they just keep rambling on) about a particular Amazon tribe being struck down by a mysterious disease.
It was rapidly wiping them all out until one of them discovered the virus thrived on eating flesh.
He came up with the weird idea of cutting off two small round bits of flesh from his raw snake meat, he pierced holes in them in order to let air through and stuffed the bits up his nostrils, he changed the bits every two days for two weeks, he got everyone else to do the same, it worked and saved the rest of the tribe.
He became the hero of his tribe and they made him King for life.

What actually happened was when the little virus buggers entered the nasal passage they couldn’t believe their luck, they were surrounded by their favourite food immediately, delighted with themselves they merrily tucked in, result was the greedy gits gorged themselves to death before they could enter the human body proper and their bloated remains imbedded in the meat deterred their families and friends from attempting entry. ;-):slight_smile:

Greed was their downfall in the end, as will be mankind’s, or so de holy bible say.

- YouTube

16241

I’d already thought about the visible breath scenario Jem, I also thought about a “Bacon Pill” see, when you walk down the street, you can smell the local “Greasy Spoon” two streets away, so, if you gave folks some sort of fried bacon pill which was inert until it reacted with any type of virus within the body, folks would sniff the result a hundred yards away, and take appropriate avoidance action.:lol::wink: