Jembo, this maybe be controversial but if it ain’t “Dark” it don’t matter.
Well it didn’t matter any more to Buddy Holly, love that song, what a tragedy and he only in his early 20’s, he had great talent and foresight, such a lot of songwriting work covered in that short time, rest his soul.
I’m writing a tale about my paternal grandfather, a terrible sloppy cranky ill mannered old man as I remember him when I was a child, how does this grab ya for an opening line Spitty?. ;-)
“He was sitting comfortably in his favourite armchair listening to the big Pye radio set on a shelf beside him, while at the same time trying to snare a stubborn snot with his little finger stuck up his left nostril”.:shock:
Delightful opening don’t you think, gives the reader a perfect mental image of the character right from the start, Albert Steptoe springs to mind at once, but when it comes to bad manners Albert hadn’t a patch on my grandad.
—————————
I’m lazy but I love studying quantum physics because there’s nothing to learn.
I lost my quantum computer!
I checked to see if it was on, and now I don’t know where it is…
When I found it again there were two of them, one was outside on the window sill and another on the bedroom floor under a planck. 
Amazing isn’t it, if we ever get the hang of quantum physics we’ll all go round the bend, it will change everything completely, like we could go walking down the street in our pelt and thinking we’re dressed to the nines, could be a lot of fun though.
“Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it”. Max Planck.
Ain’t that the truth Max me lad.
“Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.” Wiki.
It seems there’s hope for us all, it just goes to prove that you can be as thick as a Planck and still win the Nobel Prize for physics.
Nothing is everything, and I got plenty of nothing.
Now for the quantum physic scientists international anthem sung by Francis (Fanny) Sinatra.
I got plenty o nuttin one night, it was not justified but it happened, these things happen when you have no choice but to mix, Dolly mixtures are great fun, Geezer mixtures are unpredictable, bit like quarks.
Edited, system just quarked.
“I just got quarked!” he remarked.
I mentioned recently that I’d jump at the chance of having a covid 19 jab.
We both miss the grandkids terribly especially the youngest (8), they say they miss us too so it’s only fair to avail of it when it comes around.
“Well what’d ya know” as our American friends might say, there was I not expecting to have my vaccine shot until God knows when, then suddenly the wife gets a phone call from our doctor asking her could she and meself make it up the his surgery in half an hour as he had a few jabs left and had to use them up, this was at 6.30. pm.:shock:
I needn’t tell you we were up there sitting and waiting in twenty minutes flat, in and out like Flynn, except for the compulsory 15 minutes wait before you leave.
It’s the Pfizer one too and the next shot is in four weeks time, so far so good.;-)
“To ward of the covid infection
One needs some kind of protection
So don’t be off put, get offa your butt
Go out and have the injection”. ;-)
Talking of injections, our dog Rocky stood on something sharp in the garden yesterday, he was whining and limping about so I took him to the vet who’s just up the road from me, the vet examined his paw carefully and found a tiny splinter of glass in it which he removed, then he gave him an injection in the leg to prevent infection.
He’s back to himself today running through the park when I took him out.
Should one have a jab, on the spur of the moment, best ask the gypsy king and the guy in the advert in six months time.
Opportunity only knocks once Spitty, so don’t ask who’s there, just grab a jab and hope for the best.;-)
Just looked at me vaccine card, my final shot is due on April 22, I’m impressed they are not waiting 12 weeks as some countries are, that would be half the Summer gone waiting, well done our HSE, Pfizer said four weeks on the tin and four weeks it is here, always read the instructions carefully as the man says.
What’s the procedure when a long long ship turns sideways in a big canal effectively blocking it?
Don’t know? well your not alone, neither does anyone else its seems, five days have passed now with 200 other ships lined up behind it awaiting to get through and the sideways ship is still sideways, now they reckon it’ll takes weeks to right the ship, and it’s costing 400 million an HOUR according to the BBC news, although I find that hard to believe.
It beggars belief they couldn’t foresee something like this happening and hadn’t a plan to deal with it. If it don’t move with the next spring tide they’ll be in the manure business for sure.
I read that it was a ’gust of wind’ in a sand storm that caused of all this, the captain couldn’t see where he was going, what happened to all the modern technical back up to guide him? 
I mean even boy scouts have the motto “Be prepared”, maybe they have more sense than all the worlds nautical experts?
Now we can all look forward to huge price increases in oil and everything else we import, just the tonic we all needed to cheer us up, never rains but it pours.
Experts me arse, all the real experts are long dead if you ask me, now if Stephenson or Brunel, to name but two, were alive today that ship would have arrived at it’s destination by now, good old fashioned logical brainwork is badly lacking here.
In my most humble opinion, the logical thing would have been not to allow any ship through the canal that isn’t capable of turning around in it, they have already widened the canal a few times, perhaps they could widen the ships and not have them “The length of 4 football pitches”, back to the drawing board lads and multiply the length by the breadth as our old maths teacher used to say, you’re bound to come up with something sensible, or so I’m told, maths are alien to me. ;-)
“A boat got stuck up the Suez
True, cos It’s been on the news.
A sand storm breeze, brought the ship to it’s knees
Now the Captain is singing the blues’.
What they really need at this critical time is my big brother Sylvest, he has a row of forty medals on his chest for ingenuity and bravery, big man strong as an Ox, hellfire when he gets going.
Ah well, I can tell you a story of a bogey hunt up the nose.
We had a number of CCTV safety cameras dotted around the test facilities to spot for leaks and fires and things breaking free, and other hazards.
One day we had a visit, which was not uncommon. We got visits from other departments within the manufactory, and visits from without including air forces from around the world. I had my picture taken with one not very well known bunch of chaps called the Red Arrows.
On this occasion there was a mixed group of men and women, one of whom was extremely attractive.
One of my colleagues got on the pan and tilt camera controls, then zoomed in on the lady in question.
Suddenly all the men nearby started to make derogatory comments … as she buried her forefinger two knuckles deep up her nose.
Suddenly she did not seem to be quite so attractive to my colleagues.
Funny how catching someone picking their nose is a right turn off Fruity, it’s the natural thing to do when your nose is blocked, yet it’s a repulsive sight. That and dirty fingernails, especially on women. are two of my no no’s.
Every time I’ve finished shaving and I reach out for me Old Spice aftershave I think of that Yugoslvian leader Slobodan Milosevic, he was forever in the news back in the 90’s, his first name always sounded to me like ’Slob-it-on’, and it has stayed with me all those years, more so when I’m applying aftershave lotion and paint.
When I’ve shaved, I then proceed to slob on the aftershave, I don’t splash it on like Henry Cooper used to in that old ad, nor do I dab in on like a woman’s power puff, so to me slobbing it on is like hitting a drunken spiritualist (striking a happy medium) between splash and dab, total equality is a big issue nowadays, especially since some women started shaving, well it was bound to happen eventually once they started doing their legs and other parts.
I blame Gillette when they first began advertising little dainty pink “Ladies razors” back in the 60’s, but that’s a sensitive story for another day, preferably when the World has healed and folks are in better humour.
I’m also a very messy painter and inclined to slob the paint on whatever I’m painting, slobbing is much more fun than having to be careful don’t you think, it could be a door or a wall for example, and once I commence my vigorous slobbing the thing is ruined, but then it’s only a door or a wall, and what are they in the great plan of things I ask myself, and the missus, but she never sees things in the same light for some reason.
I have to do this on the quiet because when the wife spots me with a paint brush in hand she has a canary and shouts out “Milosevic! stop slobbing on that paint!”
Then she dashes out to grab the pot of paint off me, the phantom painter strikes again type of thing. She’s a much better painter than me, she tackles the job as if it were the ceiling of the Sistine chapel she was painting, whereas to me paint is just paint, boring old stuff really.
I wonder how Slobodan Milosevic used to paint his doors and walls, ah well he’s dead now and whether he’s in heaven of hell the last thing on his mind would be painting walls.
I’m curious, has anybody ever painted a masterpiece while sitting or even standing in the bath?
Free at last!
We are sailing, the boat goes on.
“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.” (The Ancient Mariner).
Thank God for that sooner than expected refloat.;-)
“Pubs to become remote working hubs in new plan to boost rural Ireland”
“A Government plan to reinvigorate rural Ireland aims to breathe new life into dying towns and villages by transforming disused derelict buildings and pubs into remote working hubs” RTE news.
T’was with a heavy heart I read those headlines today.
What’s a working hub? I was a working hubby but I’m not now, does that make me a retired hub?
A hub according to the dictionary is “The central part of a wheel, rotating on or with the axle, and from which the spokes radiate” That’s what I always thought it was too.
They lied to us when they said the smoking ban would not effect the pub industry, any eejit could see that it would, the pubs would be filled with fresh air and pleasant aromas they said.
“When the lies are loud the truth cannot be heard” (Chief Dan George.)
Well they were certainly filled with fresh air, but that’s about all, nobody was going into them and you can’t take fresh air to the bank, rural people preferred to have a few friends around to the house where they could enjoy a smoke with their drink, a smoke and a drink, the two go together, always have, take away one and the other is bound suffer in the long run.
Then you had the distance to go to a pub in the rural areas, no driving and having a drink (which I always agreed with, one of the reasons I never learned to drive), rural folks just stopped going, dozens of shebeens have been uncovered and people taken to court, but if you ask me I’d say that’s only the tip of an iceberg.
I saw this coming from the start, so it’s goodbye to the tradition pub and hello to the working hub, but I suppose I should be thankful that I was around to have some really great times when the pubs were in their heyday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/GJW19nlzb3Q?list=RDGJW19nlzb3Q
“Switzerland is to allow female members of the army to wear women’s underwear for the first time in an effort to boost recruitment, local media report.
Under the current system, the standard uniform issued to military recruits includes only men’s underwear.” BBC news.
I was surprised to read this, very intrusive I think, poor girls and shame on the authorities, what were they thinking with that stupid rule? They should let them wear any underwear they fancy, most of the army there are only part time anyway.
“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love”
Can you imagine the shock a fella would get if he took a Swiss army girl to bed and discovered she was wearing an army green bra like a web belt across her chest and a pair of matching “Y” fronts! One would need a Swiss army knife to get them off, maybe that’s what it was invented for in the first place. Oh God , there are so many avenues one could go down here, but I’ll hold me tongue for safety sake.;-)
A right turn off in any season of the year for amorous young chaps, I can just hear him saying to himself as he puts on his trousers to leave “It’s not love you want my dear, it’s a tin of Blanco and a brush”
My old drinking mate Paddy Wang is gone missing somewhere in New York.
Paddy’s father is Chinese and his mother is from Co. Cork, he’s a small chap, NYPD police say they are looking for a 5’2” 55 year old Cork Asian.
Ah well it’s original if nothing else.
Swiss knickers gives me an excuse to play this, haven’t heard it for years, I wonder was this Swiss maid in the army?:shock:
First Names.
I’ve always been interested in names ever since I read the bible and saw that the very first names were Adam and Eve, who, when they were banished from the garden of Eden set up house in a cave on earth and changed their names to Ug and Gug, norra lorra people know that, it was quite a drop in social status and they didn’t want to spread it around, not that there were a lot around at the time, but pride is still pride with some folks. ;-)
Well as they used to say “He who dips his wick must pay for the oil”, sorry Adam, but that’ll teach you not to be naughty under the apple tree.:shock:
I watch a lot of old films and always read the credits at the end, you wouldn’t believe some of the names Hollywood employed as producers, actors, writers, editors, studio staff etc. during the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.
Understandably in the early days of Hollywood there were a lot of emigrants from Eastern Europe
familiar with film making and their skills were snapped up, some may have changed their names into English with disastrous results.
On this side of the ocean we had Googie Withers, you may well ask who’d name a child Googie, but I believe Googie means “Little pigeon” in Pakistan where she was born.
I am presently passing time online discovering old first names, their origins and meanings.
I have always thought that children should be allowed select their own names when they reach an age of responsibility instead of having to carry a name they dislike all through life, there are millions of people out there who despise the names their parents lumbered them with, it’s not much to ask and it would do more good than harm, if someone is happy with their name it makes life that little bit easier, especially females, only my opinion of course.
I’m glad my parents stuck to the old formula of picking common well used names, you can’t go far wrong using that system, and when your kids grow up not having to endure years of slagging by their peers they won’t be out after your blood with a hatchet, remember a boy named Sue?. :shock:
I remember when I was a teenager being at a dance and asking a nice girl out on a date, I asked her her name, she said she would tell me when she was out with me, she was actually embarrassed about her name and she whispered it to me in the picture house, it was even worse that “Googie” but I won’t say the name here because there may be someone with that name reading this, all I’ll say is it’s terrible that a lovely girl should have to feel embarrassed about something she was not responsible for.
Bob Geldof has a lot to answer for after the names he gave his girls, but he was always a gobshite anyway.
Some snobs and celebrities name their kids as if they were fashion accessories, I think that’s thoughtless and shameful.
Here’s another name you never hear of nowadays “Bertha”, I have a cousin of that name, although it is mostly a German female name it has Anglo Saxon origins, Beohrtgifu meaning “bright gift” or Beohrtwynn meaning “bright joy”
There was a huge German gun galled Big Bertha, it is also the name of the oldest Cow on record.
“Big Bertha (17 March 1945 – 31 December 1993) was a cow who held two Guinness World Records: she was the oldest cow recorded” Wiki.
Personally I think if I were a female I wouldn’t mind having Bertha as a first name, I like my cousin Bertha, but then again who want’s to be called after the oldest Cow in the World.
I thought Googie as a Geezer.
Sounds as if it should have been.
If you knew the old joke about Googie Withers you wouldn’t wish the name on your worst enemy Spitty, too rude to tell it here and I’ve no intention of going into HA HA land to post it.
We used to have an old lad up in the local who had a gift of imitating that famous gravel voiced racing commentator Peter O’Sullivan, you would swear it was O’Sullivan himself you were listening to, sadly both of them are long gone now. 
The man I speak of, Mick Wallace, was a retired civil servant, they retire early in the service, at 60 I believe, and he spent the fifteen years of his retirement in the local helping to drink off the national debt with the lump sum he got, kind thoughtful old soul and true patriot that he was. 
I miss all those “characters” we used to have in the pubs years ago.
Only trouble with Mick was he used the same commentary for the same race over and over again so I suggested to him that the two of us should sit down and with the help of a few pints write a different version using real horses names at that time, he said fair enough and what a Sunday afternoon that was, it went into Monday morning and I was in the dog house for a week afterwards, but the laugh we had was worth every minute of the punishment.
Anyway Mick was happy with the sketch and used it that Christmas in the pub, it went down well, then in the new year he would use it in the bars at different racecourses netting himself a few quid from the managers and free pints all through the national hunt season, he was good entertainment for the drinking punters, trainers, and owners because they knew all the horses and jockeys involved.
When I was going through some old papers the other day I came across the handwritten collaborated commentary, the only surviving record, this was scribbled down way before the internet arrived, Mick had a memory like Siamese twin elephants and memorised it in no time at all, but he died ten years ago.
I left the two pages of paper on the mantlepiece going to bed last night with the intention of copying it onto the computer next day, when I got up this morning they were gone!:shock:
I casually asked the wife had she seen it.
“Oh you mean them two old bits of paper that were on the mantlepiece?, I threw that in the fire before I came up to bed last night, it wasn’t important, it was over thirty years old with loads of horses names on it, all them horses would be dead now anyway”
She then proceeded to casually ask me the average lifespan of a racing horse, while I stood there with me eyes popped and me mouth wide open in disbelief.
The paper never stood a chance once she clapped her beady eyes on it, it just had to go. 
Oh dear God, if ever a man suffered you’re looking down at him.;-)
We had a brief sojourn in to Switzerland a few years ago whilst having a short holiday with friends near Lake Constance.
Whilst sat outside a cafe drinking hot chocolate, we espied a bare footed lady carrying a load of tools. A knife in one hand, a screwdriver twixt her teeth, a bottle opener in her other hand, a pair of scissors with the handles looped through the toes of one foot, and a small pair of pliers carefully wedged between the toes of her other foot.
When I asked who she was, the waiter explained that she was a Swiss Army Wife.
When I lived in Yorkshire, the local TV topical news programme called Look North had a section about names. Allegedly, a Mr and Mrs Cart named their son … Orson.
Years ago afore my tubes got damaged by a poison gas cloud and various subsequent asthma/lung related illnesses, I used to be able to mimic a few well known voices. Eddy Waring was a Rugby League commentator, so I would copy him to the delight of my friends.
When I was older, I once did a Murray Walker commentary, he of Formula 1 fame, whilst waiting for the air show to begin at Farnborough. I would comment on vehicles driving around and people setting up display stalls as if they were aircraft performing dare-devil manoeuvres.
I bought my first house when I was twenty four, and my Mum gave me several of her old kitchen appliances including the cooker I learned to cook on when I was a teenager. I enjoyed cooking, and loved experimenting.
The cooker came with an instruction book that also had a number of recipes. My mum gave me recipes taken from magazines, and I built up quite a collection that I used to practice on my teenage cousins, and then later on just the youngest girl when we were a courting.
I even wrote down a pizza recipe as it was being performed on a kids TV programme, and it came out absolutely perfectly.
After I moved house, and my Lovely Cousin later moved in, we decided we wanted a more modern kitchen, so set about emptying drawers and cupboards in preparation. To my horror, I later discovered that my Lovely Cousin had binned my folder of recipes.
Oh the misery that caused me. 
Have listened to many Throwaway comments, and stored them, to throw back when the situation is right, comments like anything else lately are up for recycling.
Lovely Post Fruity, a most enjoyable read as always, Orson Cart how are yeh!.
That’s our Fruitcake, nutty but nice.
I just thought you and Spitty might like to know that our mutual friend and ex scribbler has just become a super mod on a big international forum, not allowed mention the place here but many congratulations and best wishes to that person.
We had a good Easter considering the plague lockdown, my youngest grandson brought me some Ferocious Rochers, they sound vicious but they don’t bite you, they make you fat when you bite them, those round nutty chocolates in the clear plastic square box, he knows they are a weakness of mine, bless his kind little heart.
Amazing what you can learn from the internet, it’s a gift and a great time passer for an old uneducated geezer like me, a complete world library at ones fingertips.
I often wondered what Hannibal’s (he of the alps and elephants, not Lector) second name was long before the internet, it was a question in a crossword puzzle that I never got the answers to as I missed the next days paper, when I googled it it was Barca, just plain Barca, I thought it would be more illustrious than that! bloody Barca and that’s it!, that’s the equivalent of Smith or Brown in English, common as muck in Tunisia, I thought it would be more dramatic like Hannibal Glorious or Hannibal Valorious, no wonder nobody I had asked knew it, don’t know why I bothered to find out.
It was akin to somebody winning the Noble prize for micro neurological surgery then asking what their name was and being told bluntly “Fred”
However I do know something that a lot of people don’t know, it’s about Aladdin’s magic lamp, the genie inside it has brown hair, I knew that when I was a little kid from an old song my granny used to sing, it went “I dream of genie with the light brown hair” See! I ain’t that stupid after all.
I noticed a strange BBC headline yesterday, about a woman ship’s captain.
Marwa Elselehdar: “I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal”
Come off it Marwa, no one is that fat!
This is a weighty subject , not sure its advisable to contribute.
You are right Spitty, weighty subjects are inclined to bog one down, move on I say.
In an old film I watched last night.
A man is pointing a gun at two bank tellers and demanding money, one of the tellers says to his colleague “You’d better give him the money Steve, he’s got the upper hand”
Not an unusual scene in a gangster film, but it left me wondering where that expression “having the upper hand” came from, Pug would know the answer to that one, he was great at that sort of thing.
I know I’m in rambling mood here, but when you think about it people do use some very odd expressions without realising the words they are using, it must be tough on someone learning the language, these words sort of come automatically with us humans and are used by the most logical of people, like you can’t get anyone more logical than bank staff where every single penny has to be accounted for at the end of the day, well that was the way it used to be when there were banks everywhere.
Wouldn’t it be using less words and more correct to say “he’s got the advantage”?
There are those who would say that in some marriages the wife always has the upper hand, others say upper hands are tough people and are usually men.
A foreign person not fluent in English might reasonably ask
“Which hand is the upper hand, left or right?”
To which his native friend might logically assume
“If you hold down your right hand then lift the left hand, the left is the upper hand and vice versa.
Then they both would ponder in puzzlement.
“What advantage is it to you to have one hand higher than the other?”
Actually I knew a fella whose left arm was about six inches shorter than his right arm (remember the thalidomide babies, terrible thing that) so one hand was always higher than the other, he would joke that he always had the upper hand and that he was great at shorthand typing, a very jolly fella who enjoyed life to the full.
Heavy handed everyone can understand, that explains itself.
I can find nothing that explains the origins of it on the net, my guess is that it could be something to do with the use of swords, holding a sword high in the hand (upper) as if to strike someone down, just as in the men wearing their swords on the left of the body leaving the right hand free to draw it without hinderance in an emergency, also a lady would link his arm on the left side to keep his right hand free.
They were the times when robbers were thick on the ground, men lived by the sword and felt naked without one, I think that still goes on today in some countries, only with guns and not swords, you never argue with a gun in your face.
The woman on the left of the man, a practice that still went on during my courting days, my missus was always on my left side, even in bed, she doesn’t feel comfortable on the right, strange creatures of habit we humans.
I forgot to add that the bank robber told the tellers not to make any “false moves”, I haven’t a clue what a false move is and I’m not going into it now, either one moves or one doesn’t move, there’s nothing false about moving unless you have two wooden legs.
Time for cocoa and me little green pill now.;-)
Plenty of moving going on here.