Syd and Gloria

If we had a Prime Minister called Gloria that would surely be a good thing? Gloria surviving 3 attempts to depose her just doesn't seem right to me, why would anyone want to overthrow Glo?
Margaret or Hillary or Harriet or Benazir I can understand but Gloria must be completely beneficent.

For Christmas I was hoping for an extra large T shirt with a huge picture of a smiling Sid James on the front - I saw one up at the dams at Rhayader a few months back and was very impressed. However the success of my bombay bad boy and eggs diet might mean that I do not have the canvass to do the face justice when the time comes. Mixed blessings indeed.

day 21 still drifting west

I am looking forward to being overweight, only another 10lbs to go.
I estimate that on the present diet of Bombay Badboys and eggs I should hit this happy zone in the dietician’s visual aid in 2 weeks time. You may say, “Well whats happy about that?” Well it wouldnt be very happy at all of course if you were moving from left to right.
I do like the way that terms like obese and morbidly obese are replaced by fat and very fat. I heard Alan Carr say the other night "She was so fat they had to cut her out of a hoola hoop"

Physics

The great Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

The best of my thinking today

Travis would be a good name for a dog.
I calculate 738 calories in my pork chop dinner.
I would be shocked if the Mccanns turn out not to have done it.

Any old irony

Certain words I find myself looking up in a dictionary 2 or 3 times a year going back years. The definition never quite persuades or sticks.
One of them is ‘irony’. Of course I can label the situation ‘ironic’ when a bus driver gets run over by a bus and know that I am on safe ground, even though he obviously was not. I recognise, but cant connect to the squashed bus driver, dramatic irony but wonder whether a film that lacked dramatic irony at its first outing acquires it when you see the repeat. I see Socratic irony turning up too. What I cant see is what connects these various things what are the necessary and sufficient conditions that hold together the concept of irony?.

Too old for comics

Lately I have been harassed by some comic readers . For some reason Stumblesent me to a comic strip and all I did was ask somebody to explain the joke and mentioned that I had to look up eviscerate in the dictionary. The line I like most in this little encounter is from a comic reader who urges her fellow literati to ‘stop feeding the Troll’ -meaning me I presume. Blow me down if the next thing I read is Icedink writing about eviscerated and headless deer. At least I didnt have to use the dictionary this time.

Can you see what it is yet?

This is a bad picture but I didnt have the nerve or the time to worry about the photography. The curving white line near the top might be a clue.
See Comments for the answer if you have a strong stomach.

I yamwhat I yam

According to Wikipedia “I Am What I Am" is a song originally featured on the Tony-award winning Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983 -1987)’
Alec in Coronation Street I remember saying that if he heard another turn I yamming he would lose his mind.
Normally I fall asleep when the television is on but the other night I drifted into consciousness two thirds through a documentary film which actually woke me up for the rest. ‘Deep Water’about the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race of 1968. I cant think how I missed all this drama back in the 60’s. All fascinating characters but Donald Crowhurst the most interesting of all. In a round the world yacht race he hung about off South America faking with great difficulty his log and then slipped back into the race as the others came round the Horn. Then because the boat in front of him sunk and it would mean him winning the race (for the fastest circumnavigation) he completely lost his mind , wrote a 25,000 word essay, which included the phrase ‘I am what I am’ and jumped overboard.
So among other things I am wondering if he was in fact the first Iyamma or whether there where earlier examples.

The prisoner

Llangoed Hall which is just down the road to us was designed by one Sir Clough Williams-Ellis and by chance this week we visited Port Meirion for which he is much better known. Beautiful situation above the estuarine sands that Patrick McGoohan many times got to before being suffocated by the big white aggressive balloon which pursued him in the Prisoner. Here is a picture of me seated on what is definitely not a themed alfresco toilet but rather a kind of shelter.

Gracious Living

I had to laugh. We were in Llanidloes on our way home from Aberdyfi.
Couldn’t get in to the tea room Ann wanted and so she reluctantly agreed the place I like.
The ‘National Milk Bar’ beautifully stuck in 1960 I’d say.
There were waitresses but we ordered at the counter.
Me ‘Black coffee please’ – Ann ‘have you any earl grey?’
Reply ‘Yes cup or mug?’