Art

The new portrait of Prince Philip by Stuart Pearson Wright is a joyous thing.

Misheard(?)

At the station:
"The service has been cancelled due to imaginary problems which have not been resolved".

Quizzes. Oh Dear.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Soppy

Returning from the school run whereby I walked Ellie and friend Latifa to St. Matts on this miserable wet morning, a gust of wind covered the pavement ahead in a 'snowstorm' of pink petals. It's a memory I'll retain when today is otherwise forgotten.

Sponsor My Ex-Wife To Leap From A Tall Building

"I am seriously considering doing an abseil off the Harlequin shopping centre (Watford) to help raise money for the Peace Hospice. Before I commit to them that I will do it I wanted to find out what the level of support would likely be as I have a minimum amount of ?100 to raise to be able to do it. If you think you would like to sponsor me for this cause let me know so I can get my entry form in before I scare myself into changing my mind !!

Yours..shaking in my boots already..

Ali"

The Peace Hospice is in Watford, Hertfordshire, UK and is a thoroughly good thing.
If you'd like to sponsor her, leave a comment below with suitably disguised-to-prevent-spam email address or other contact method and I'll reply with PayPal details or whatever is needed.

She may be my ex, but I really don't want her to fall off.
It all happens on June 20th.

I know, 0 comments as usual...

Peter Cook

Picked up 2nd-hand in St Martins Lane 'Tragically I was an Only Twin - The Complete Peter Cook" . This will be among the best ?2 ever spent as I bore everyone into submission with quotes and role-play...
"I've got a viper in this box, you know"

Ambulance Chasers

My personal "filter" is that I don't usually visit blogs whose self-descriptions contain any of the following words: "musings" "random" "boring"(!) "rants" "rubbish" or "ramblings" (let alone combinations of 2 or more of those). The following is a RANT, which may or may not be boring.
Bloody Ocean Bloody Finance and all the other leech bloodsucky ambulance chasers on cable TV.
You sit down at a nicely decadent mid-morning time. You've done the school run, all the house stuff is done: you're on the evening shift so you've got an hour before you go. "Oh Good", you say, Ironside's on the TV, I'll sit down and watch that". (You might settle for "Murder She Wrote", but Ironside is pure gold). Now bloody ruin it for me. Every 5. "Credit Cards Out of Control?" "Had an accident in the last 2 years that you can screw out some money for?" "Have you considered a plan for Those Final Expenses?" "CCJs? Bad Credit History?: we'll lend you money, our rates start at just xx%!". "Free DVD player!" "Guaranteed acceptance, no medicals"! "No salesman will call"! Quite the most scandalous are the ones that promise to "unlock" your pension, as if you wouldn't need it later.
Without these crooks I suppose there is no Ironside. I'll read my book instead.
I'll stop now.
Ocean Finance die die die.

Daughter #1

Happy Birthday and all my love to Heather - 12 today.

Semantics

Overheard in IT support: "What's happened is that either the hard drive or the motherboard overheated and the whole thing's just frozen up."
Well, you know what he meant.

A loss

R.I.P. "Hazel" - a rat: after a short illness, passed away on Tuesday aged 3 and a bit.

He'll be asking himself a few questions

So.
Farewell then Big Ron.
You set your stall out early doors for the big lad on the back stick.
That was your
catchphrase.

EJ Boggins aged old and a half.

Irreplaceable.
Idiot.

Yellow Car

Will the inventor of the childrens' travel game "Yellow Car" please report to my office for a right thrashing?
The rules of the game "Yellow Car" are as follows: when travelling with one's sibling or friend in the back of parents' car, the first to spot a yellow car shouts "YELLOW CAR!" very loudly and punches said sibling or friend in that tender spot on the arm just below the shoulder. Game continues until parent pulls over into layby and refuses to continue journey and/or has nervous breakdown.
Thank You.

This is hardly a novel thought but...

...when did "liberal" become a dirty word? I've been reading a lot of US-based weblogs these last few days and it struck me that the word "liberal" is now often used with the same tolerance as are the words "paedophile", "pervert", "Man. U supporter", i.e. with contempt. I had a quick look at Dictionary.com's definition, and it basically says "good, well-meaning, humanitarian person". When did that become a bad thing? And is the opposite of "liberal" therefore a good thing?
But I suppose I'm just a wishy-washy fellow-travelling do-gooder who has no desire to bomb anyone back into the stone age. I'll never be a Man. U supporter though.

My Favourite Poem

Even as the waves of brainless butter'd fish,
With bugle horne writ in the Hebrew tongue,
Fuming up flounders like a chafing-dish,
That looks asquint upon a Three-mans song:
Or as your equinoctiall pasticrust
Projecting out a purple chariot wheele,
Doth squeeze the spheares, and intimate the dust,
The dust which force of argument doth feele:
Even so this Author, this Gymnosophist,
Whom no delight of travels toyle dismaies,
Shall sympathize (thinke reader what thou list)
Crownd with a quinsill tipt with marble praise.


Cabalistical Verses

John Hoskyns (c17)

I've lost the link, because I found this long ago and saved it as text, but thanks, whoever you are....

I wanted to put this on the company intranet but bottled it...

Longest-serving Employee

Mrs Hetty Bimthwot joined HMSO "ooh,ever such a long time ago". She began as a Lubrication Assistant in the now-defunct Trouser Press: no-one really knows what she does now. She last received a pay rise in 1964, still receiving a once-adequate wage of £ 3/8s/6d per week, and a further Disfigurement Allowance of 4 shillings each quarter-day. She has several memories, some fond: "that nice Mr Pillai would come round and sell us home-made bread and butter fingers on his birthday - before the accident".
Her most vivid memory is of a Prime-Ministerial visit. "Mr Attlee didn't actually speak to me but he was ever so nice", she reminisces, "and Mr Pillai brought in some of his lemon-curd barmcakes. They was disgusting".
Hetty has one surviving son, Geoffrey, who manages a retail loofah outlet in Penge and who calls her every fifth Christmas or so. "Everyone's been very kind", she remarks, idiotically. When asked what she'll do with the money raised in her collection she's in no doubt: "I think I'll just drink myself absolutely bandy".

Gary Baker is 103.