Mr Garforth and the Joke

In 1961 I started my first job at The London & Manchester in Finsbury Square in the non-marine department. It was there I met Ann. All of the files were in the basement, and kept in boxes. It was dark and dusty and was tended by one person Mr Garforth. He seemed very old at the time but could have been between 50 and 60. He had I think spent a lot of his life up until then working on the railways in India and although he wasn't indian there was something about the way he moved that seemed very indian. He was always chewing as if he were having having a problem with a set of false teeth. I also remember some of his address because the name intrigued me. It was Half Moon St . He was very excited because Deni his young friend  was coming from India to live with him. I found that slightly odd at the time but couldnt say why and in any event I liked him. Anyway he told me this joke. I cant remember the exact words he used but remember the form and the punchline.

It  was about some great white Bwana addressing a tribe in Africa about how he was bringing civilisation to the tribe. He told of the mighty railroad they would build. He promised them breakfast clubs and everything and after each statement he heard a mighty cheer and the tribe raised there spears and banged on their shields and shouted in unison "Umbala!, Umbala!"

He was over the moon at the reception his speech received and turned to his interpreter  and said " That went down well - but what does umbala mean?"

The interpreter said "When you go back don't go through that field its full cowpats and you will be up to your neck in umbala"

He's Failing

Just had Morrisons delivery. Did not realise how weak I had become. The deliveryman was a girl in her early 20's and slight of build. I had ordered 6 bottles of wine and a load of frozen stuff.

She handed the tray over to me and it was all I could do to pretend casual competence as I nonchelantly strolled inside with it my poor thin little wrists threatening to snap at any moment. I think I made it although when I handed back the tray I fancied I glimpsed the faintest hint of contempt in her smile.

Modern Life

Modern life is bloody awful - nothing works, nobody does anything. businesses are unreachable , proliferating ai employees are retarded.

Police are social workers , the law itself is an ass. Kier Starmer is ahead of his time we are all rushing headline towards

this figuehead moron.

Solepstistical

I look at my hands. Notice nails are growing . Used to bite them. Stupid thing to have done . The novel pleasure I get from scratching and picking up small fallen objects like a toothpick or a valueless coin of the realm......
Still no news of Zonfeld. (Thought in the accent of Richard Burton)
Changed the name rather stupidly really if there actually is nothing outside.
But is there?

Teetering on the edge

Ann's mother Olive loved that attraction in an amusement arcade where you roll pennies down a ramp and they build up close to a ledge until they provoke a fall and you collect your reward. 

I am still here, the lead penny on a trembling bridge of pennies jutting out , by some fluke over the abyss.  I don't really want to be. My mother and my grandmother died at 82 so that is something to look forward to.

I am obsessively recording the ons and the offs of the central heating system which I suspect is developing a malevolent intelligence.

Come the Spring I will get an engineer in to strong arm it into obeying me or face the consequences. 

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough...

Saturday 8th February and in my final year , I hope. I would like to see the sun though, but however warm the sun might be I don't really think it is going to work even briefly in bringing me back . I feel or sense that I am not going to have to do something , that the Earth will be hit by a passing asteroid  or some moronic politician will press a button and do the same job. I don't care. This blog is like a derelict school on a 1960's London bomb site I once wandered through. There are bits here and there that might mean something but overall its abandoned , empty and waiting final destruction. 'Swarm over death'

Still here....

But  down to my last Monkee. They started off with 4 and are down to 1. I think of them as a kind of alternative time scale to my life. I have returned to this fossil I have created to prod it  in order to give it  the appearance of life and maybe delay Google from expunging it entirely for a while longer.

Attended wedding at Crag y Nos on Valentines day. Woke oppressively hot. Got up. Put on dismally dimmed bathroom lights not to wake Ann. Great sultry gloom descended on me. Felt I was in an M R James short story.  Returned to bed.  Laid down but started upright as I saw the shape of a great head like in the Munch painting but with no facial features. My spine really did tingle and this occurred 4 or 5 times before I got to sleep. just before thatI did  I noticed the room was now cold.
I claim nothing for this encounter which may have been between me and  a couple of bottles of red  except that it was real.

Morris round about life number 3

I remember tales of Morris’s earlier lives and the one I liked was when Morris’s owner’s daughter was coming back on the school bus when she noticed their beloved pet mowed down in the gutter. Worse than that, those evil Gudsell boys, the ones who used the Church clock for target practice when their stupid parents thought fit to arm them with firearms, the ones that bent Anns Church warden pole with the brass cross on the top by throwing it about in Church and wrote obscene comments in the visitor’s register, those malevenant little sh..s were prodding the lifeless body of Morris with a stick like some dreadful re-enactment of Aslan’s torment. . The lifeless body was respectfully recovered in plastic bag and taken home by the girl and placed in the garage.
Later in the evening she returned to the garage and was like Lucy genuinely awestruck to meet Morris/Aslan nonchalently strolling back to the house for his evening meal.
Wrong big dead ginger cat.
That is why there are 4 cat graves at Morris’s house even though only three cats have ever lived there

Back but for how long?

I see it is 3 years since my last confession.
Well let me just start off back with the minimum of words.
Here is the cheese song from the recent twinning trip of Brecon to Gouesnou.

Ent

Spotted near Llangoed 11th november

Bird Shit

Here is a picture of me today sitting on a beach in Tenby. Yesterday I was looking at some photographs taken by my facebook friend Vikash among which was was his picture of a piece of bird shit on a wall which he entitled 'Guano'.
Here on the beach in Tenby I am trying to work out how I might comment on this picture that is to say I am actually thinking about Guano. Would you believe it that 10 seconds later a large dollop of the stuff landed on trousers from a passing gull. Of course I immediately bought a lottery ticket.

Vive la France

Just had a visit from the Breton town with which Brecon is twinned and our guest told us the following.

“the lady Mayoress (she came with them) … ..her father he is ill and she tell them if anything happen to Papa put him in the cold room until the weekend.”

Oh the humanity..

Today I left the house and crossed the road into the field opposite and began climbing up the side of a hill. For the next hour and twenty minutes I didn’t meet or see another human being . Here is a snap about 2/3rds up.



I remember in the sixties there was chap called Stan , who like the Rev Dr Donald Soper used to appear regularly at Tower Hill not far from the Tigers Head. Stan would loudly sing ‘Joy, Joy , my heart is full of Joy’ as if it really were and hand out Christian tracts to the unbelievers.
Not seeing another human for more than an hour gave me an inkling of old Stan’s ecstatic state. Last week on another walk I came across a house on the corner, in the village of ‘Three Cocks’. When I was 16 and came by bus from London to visit Ann you had to change buses at Cheltenham and finally get off at Three Cocks. The bus continued its long journey to Tenby. I was trying to find the right bus and asked one of the drivers wandering about the depot.. He called across to his mate “Hey Dai there’s a bloke here wants three cocks!” and no useful information was possible until they had both stopped laughing.
This house on the corner in Three Cocks had a skull and crossbones above the porch and written beneath it was ‘Go Away’ . Much better than a welcome mat I thought.

...and deflate

Once again I have slipped the surly bounds of obesity and am now well ensconced in the land of the ‘moderately overweight’ . Thus in the words of a group that may perhaps once have been known as ‘10 fluid ounces ‘
I'm not obese
So don’t forget it
It’s just a silly pie I am working through

www.insuranceage.com

From the Brokers Forum
Tue 13 Jan 2009 @ 19:33 I dont believe it... Post #1

Douglas Mcleod
Alan Johnston once said that I read more and more like Victor Meldrew - I fear he could be right.
This morning I went to get my eyes tested and by this afternoon I had received the following letter by email.

Dear Mr McLeod

Unfortunately, during the course of your recent appointment with me, I consider that the patient/practitioner relationship was irretrievably broken down and I felt unable to continue with that examination. Without mutual trust, it is impossible for me to fulfil my role as your optometrist.


Accordingly, therefore, I would suggest that it is in your best interests to seek your optometric care with another practitioner. I will be happy to forward copies of your records to any optometrist of your choice.



To which I replied Dear Mr Round,

Thanks for the advice to go to Specsavers. They were able to see me the same afternoon. This gave me time enough to upload my photograph to their website and try out 100’s of different frames. I was able to buy two pairs of varifocal spectacles for the price of one!!

Thanks again I would never have thought of them without you.


Nothing to do with insurance of course but its nearly Friday, well its Tuesday anyway and these days thats nearly Friday to me.




IP : Logged

Posts : 626 This author :


Wed 14 Jan 2009 @ 9:28 Re: I dont believe it... Post #2



alan johnston

Unfortunately, during the course of your recent appointment with me, I consider that the patient/practitioner relationship was irretrievably broken down and I felt unable to continue with that examination. Without mutual trust, it is impossible for me to fulfil my role as your optometrist.

i can only imagine the level of indignant abuse you must have dished out to be sacked as a customer of an optician.
domestic confusion leads douglas to seek new gregories:



...Probably the Best Insurance Broker in Hamilton.


IP : Logged | Edited: Wed 14 Jan 2009 @ 9:28

Posts : 754 This author :

Kent News

The Rev Canon James Tipp, 63, received the life-long ban after abandoning his wife and his Snodland parish in February 2008 to set up home with Elaine Northern, 54.

Northern was given a 12-year ban for her part in the scandal, which left the congregation at Christ Church stunned.

At a disciplinary hearing, Mr Tipp, who was also Rural Dean of Cobham, received the life ban because of his higher level of responsibility.

The father-of-two has hit out at the ban, citing the case of Rev Teresa Davies who was barred for just 12 years after holding church services while drunk and having sexual intercourse with strangers.


One can imagine the Reverend Davies after the service.
“so did you like the shervice service ?..shorry.. sorry about that little buishness , bishness, business with the wine – tell me are you just passing through?”

feets too big

The Wye at lunchtime today frozen over by the Horseshoe Bend. Today I was walking round Boughrood Brest to 'Heroes of British Jazz' and particularly liked Kenny Balls rendition of 'Your feets too big'. "....your pedal extremities are colossal, they always remind me of some old fossil"

...to all my readers

Une danseuse de tecktonik ultra-rapide

Understanding Shakespear

Yesterday 22nd November with heavy snow predicted for London I understood perfectly the line in the sonnet But thy eternal summer shall not fade. Ann made me mow the grass. Perhaps he could have added If I've got anything to do with it just to make it crystal clear.
Erica , who is 89, was telling us about a pig from her childhood called Horace and how intelligent he was but they still ate him. I couldn't resist 'Alas poor Horace they chewed him well'
Went to Cardiff last Wednesday we were going to see Haley Westenra but it was cancelled This big wheel was quite impressive though.

Cila

Absolutely nothing to do - pretended to do something in a notebook for the last hour of the day in the hope I wouldnt get spotted.
Tomorrow I might try,
'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' a few thousand times. Perhaps I could take an axe to work in my briefcase

I curse Freecell you mouse the X and scream silently dive , dive, dive but another window pops up and asks if you are sure you realy want to move the bloody game off the screen!.
I dont think they saw it though.

Even tried to start a novel last Friday. All I managed was two small paragraphs that I might include somewhere in something. Notice I say 'a novel' and not 'the novel'

Rocky Whelk

High above the Wye on the way to Builth Wells just beyond Erwood there are some very small quarry like cuts into the exposed rock. Break off a piece of this and you will find it contains a fossilised seabed which is now several hundred feet above the river valley twisting below. Here you will find some Silurian whelk intact after a brief and uninteresting life on the seabed 400 million years ago. However I cant find any evidence of the lives of my own parents beyond the barest essentials. Those who research their own family history penetrate a few years into the past and at best come up with a ‘history’ that has all the appeal of a telephone directory. This ancient creature slimes his way across some prehistoric sea bottom and is immortalised in stone.
I found this journal by somebody called Mrs J N Noakes containing details of two holidays she had in 1961 and 62 by coach to Denmark and Italy. They are not very interesting although there are plenty of photographs, equally unexciting. Nevertheless I think I will use them to build a website and try and give Mrs J N Noakes, whoever she is/was a little bit of Rocky the Whelks longevity and the website building should be a useful exercise. So I am giving up blogging.

bog standard

I cant get into the office toilet at present because there is a resident rat which has not yet moved on.
Why cant I get a job at Google

this year it was their turn

Day 2 of twinning trip Brecon to Gouesnou in Brittany near Brest. To mark 20th anniversary a tree planting ceremony. Anns friend has not turned up and Ann is worried as she is not in the best of health and this is her first trip with the twinners. Ann speaks to Phillip one of the local organisers. The ceremony continues to the end and then the microphone stutters again and Phillip's voice graveley announces. "We have big news about Shirley Evans...." long pause "she is at the hairdressers".

Drinkers 'ignorant' about alcohol

Three-quarters of drinkers do not know a typical glass of wine contains three units of alcohol, a survey for the Department of Health suggests.

And how many commentators including the fellow who wrote these reams know what a ‘unit’ actually is? I don’t know and I don’t care but these people are taking it seriously so might be expected to know of what they are talking.
a typical glass of wine contains three units of alcohol they will say.
But what does this glass of wine contain in 3 measures?
Why units of course!!
What is a unit?
You get 3 of them typically in a glass of wine!
But what do you get?
Alcohol of course.
But what is 3 Alcohols?
3 units stupid.
I give in.

Functions of Music

This year I have mainly been cutting the grass to the accompaniment of ‘Deaf School’ following the recommendation of Icedink. However for the making of beds I find Bonnie Tyler , ‘Holding on for a hero’ very hard to beat.

A different Boris

At Hay Literary Festival they occasionally have events that interest me.
This year Boris Spassky is to play a simultaneous exhibition against 20 people and so I applied as directed on their website.

Email to HLF
26th April 2008
Good morning,
I would like to play Mr Spassky.
Thanks


No reply

Before the brochure had been published and distributed I noticed on the website that the event was full – no further places. I thought this was a bit much closing an event before the brochure had been issued and so I wrote;

Email to HLF

2nd May 2008

Are you going to bother to reply to this or had you allocated all the places before you advertised it which seems most likely and cant be bothered to answer?

Then on 7th May I get the following from the Festival Director Peter Florence

actually, you were going to get a place as one of the most local applicants, but you're also the rudest, so you won't

To which I replied 10th May 2008

Odd is it not that you were going to allocate me a place when, before you had got round to publishing a brochure, your website said that this event was fully subscribed and there was no point in applying?
But I whole heartedly agree with you that the last thing we want in a chess player is rudeness! Its a pity you were not in charge of world chess when Boris lost his title in Reykjavík it would never have happened.
I do not claim to be a Bobbie Fischer either in ability to play chess or in achieving the necessary level of rudeness, in fact I am struggling now to avoid directly quoting Bobby Fischer for fear that you will not recognise it as a quotation from the master and think I am merely being foul mouthed.
Anyway it would have been nice to play Boris but it is no lifetimes ambition so I am not 'sick as parrot' and to be frank I think your email shows that you have probably been reading some textbooks from the Lifemanship, 'Early Learners' series.
Still good luck with the Festival - Kenn Dodd looks good - rest of it though I am not so sure.

I know the last line will annoy him I am pleased to say.

No wonder I am so cheerful

Saturday before last we were sitting in Oscars at Hay on Wye having a coffee. As I sat there I remembered that an ex customer named Adrian lived round the corner. I hadn’t seen him or even thought about him for 10 years but 3 days earlier he had suddenly come into my head. Adrian was a good musician and I thought he would be the one to recommend a local band or DJ or whatever they call them as we were going to need one. So I said to the others “I am just going out to have a word with my friend he knows all about local music – that’s if he isn’t dead” As soon as I said it there was a terrific bang in the otherwise practically deserted restaurant like something toppling over and crashing to the ground. I got to the house and his son answered the door and you can guess the rest. Adrian had suddenly and unexpectedly died 3 days earlier.
I don’t myself attach any supernatural explanation to this but he was younger than me and it gave me the rather unpleasant idea that my life was like being in an enormous queue , sometimes standing for ages in a single spot , sometimes shuffling forward a few paces. With Adrians death I fancied the queue moved a bit faster for a bit longer and I think I might have caught a glimpse at last of the counter to come and something behind it.

five star

I like trip adviser and there are some great reviews in Top 10 Dirty Hotels. Really loved the English number 1 in Oxford. I am tempted to try it for a night.

One for the road

So they intend reducing the permitted blood alcohol level further for drivers.
I remember when the evidence for road accident frequency and alcohol was first used to justify a law change.
The published graphs showed an exponential increase in accident frequency compared with individual alcohol consumption. But on the far left of this chart, before the accidents and the alcohol started mounting up there was a tiny dip, like a tick, a little valley before the graph took off into a large hill, practically unnoticeable.
The only interpretation is that 1 drink makes you a safer driver. I can’t find that graph now maybe it has been forgotten about. More likely it is unthinkable in this ‘free’ society of ours.

Put it in the Curry

I can say Deoxyribonucleic without a conscious thought but Cardamom I cannot say without my face screwing up in concentration and spelling it first in my head and then reading the image phonetically. Why should this be?

Press

Me to the Brecon & Radnor

Please advise - have you got a new editor yet ?

Who is it?

I hope its not that awful fellow who took my letter - changed the heading, inserted a photograph and a cartoon and manufactured a letter which was about logic into an anti Welsh piece for his own purposes. Citizen Kane he was not.

I need to know to see whether it is safe to send anything in.


Brecon & Radnor to me

Pleased to advise that Julie Chappell is the new editor, not the poor man’s Citizen Kane, and it is presumably safe for you to resume contributing to our letters page.
However I must add I didn’t change the text of your previous letter.
Yours
Twm Owen
News editor

Tel: 01874 610111
Fax: 01874 624097
------------------------
The Brecon and Radnor Express Ltd is a limited company registered in England
and Wales. Registered number: 2677142. Registered Office: The Old Court House, Union Road, Farnham GU9 7PT.

Me to Brecon & Radnor

No just as Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman you did not change the text of my letter. Other than the heading, the Polish cartoon, the photograph and the deliberate misdirection of emphasis, other than that you were a model of journalistic integrity.


He hasn’t replied.

Guilty M’lud

But with extenuating circumstances – I only wanted to play chess not to have to listen to another awful american going on about how good he was.

Dear stanfordlehope ,

Your Electronic Arts Pogo account has been issued a warning for
violating the Terms of Service for Electronic Arts Online.

Violation: Use of inappropriate language
Transmit or facilitate distribution of Content that is harmful,
abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit,
defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, or in
a reasonable person's view, objectionable. Hate speech is not
tolerated.

Chat Log:
StanfordleHope 21:09:35 do fuck off

Mothering Sunday incident at the Rhosgoch Golf Club

Top Bog

Going to Rhosgoch Golf Club today for lunch. As you can see they have a really ‘quacking ‘ bog there and I am looking forward to it. I think they mean quaking but perhaps they are just proud of it.

At least you could eat the Eloi

I have just signed up to Bebo just to read what the local youth are up to.
God they are morons and it is worse than I imagined.
I was prepared to grant for the sake of argument that writing in text –speak might have some merit that I could not yet appreciate; but it has none its an illusion adding nothing to ideas and dropping much. If you are going to write in an abbreviated way then why write ‘is’ as ‘iz’ ? What is saved? What is the different shade of meaning?
They have nothing to say it is almost all about their gr8 m8s etc. At least when the human race degenerated in the ‘Time Machine’ they provided a bit of fodder for the Morlocks.

Alan Coren

Listening to the News Quiz on the way back from work on Saturday and noticed again that Alan Coren wasn't in it. Googled him to find that as I was beginning to fear he had died. How come I am always missing the important events? I remember him answering a question on the appointment of Rowan Williams as Archbishop " I know nothing about him except that when you see him in those robes you just know there is some serious sandaling going on under there"
Just down the road in the next village towards Builth is the Erwood Inn which has associations with Punch.

Llyswen in the top 10 - just

seeSunday Times

Big it up

I ve just looked at some dreadful paintings on a website where the artist declares amongst other things ‘ I paint because I don’t know how not to’ . I think she rather underestimates herself as the stuff I saw was an excellent demonstration of how not to. Where does all this excessive confidence come from these days?
Does it date to Muhammad Ali whose self glorification seemed at least different and was anyway mainly true.?

Cardiff Bay

After Fish and Chips at BHS Newport yesterday went on to Cardiff Bay and had a pot of tea in the warm February sunshine on an outside table on that little pier on the right.
There are some nice buildings but the overpriced Assembly building already looked a little rusty round some of the screws on its fitments and the great wooden underside of the billowing canopy like roof ,if it belonged to us, I would be beginning to fear pressure from Ann to give it another coat of varnish. Also there were a couple of metal pillars there that looked to me like somebody had thought after the event - I think we had better stick another couple in to be on the safe side. Nevertheless it was good to see.

Never trust a dairy farmer – the Cheese Conspiracy

I think I am safe in saying that as they are all sheep farmers in these parts.
We are what we are by reason of our genes and by the accidents of life as we wade through it. From a genetic point of view I can think or I can feel within my self no innate propensity to drink milk or to take it and let it go off a bit before consuming its solidifying remains. Therefore that I have drunk milk and eaten cheese must be due to some event or events which have befallen me. I can imagine no accident however bizarre that would cause me to discover on my own that the milk of an unrelated species was something I should ‘drinka pinta’ day of .
So that is it the false claims of the farming industry that milk, butter cheese etc are ‘good for you’ being established in the climate before I was born.
I am made of genes which are rigid in their influence changing only as they mutate to subsequent generations. I am also shaped by life as I encounter it and it interacts with my genetic propensity. But the body of ‘knowledge’ that exists in the world, like ‘dairy products are good for you’, is also like genes in influencing behaviour except that it exists outside of the body of an individual and can mutate during the lifetime of an individual. That would explain the longevity of certain defunct ideas like democracy for example.

Fish, chips, peas and the Big Issue

Two top hole eating experiences in two days !!
Today it was British Home Stores Newport – fish chips and peas at £5.25.
A bit more pricey than the Bell Hotel and the extra 50p probably reflected the more sophisticated lifestyle of a big city like Newport.
The Big Issue seller was himself from Newport and had a great line in patter.
‘Big issue love? Go on buy it - take it home - sling it in the recycling if you like.’
He worked very hard and I sat watching him while Ann was wandering round Marks.
I calculated that only about 1 in 40 bought despite him working constantly and with an original script. He deserved much more and in another selling environment he would have been top man without too much trouble.
The Big Issue seller in Llandod and the one in Brecon appear to be East Europeans and one is tempted to ask whether their homeless are doing our homeless out of their birthright.

The Beautiful Ote

Sunday Lunch at the The Bell Hotel Talgarth. A friend of mine used to call it the Belle Ote because for a number of years, Reggy Perrin like, it had mysteriously shed the letters from both ends of ‘Hotel’.But now its signage is fully restored and I do not have to wonder what a beautiful ote might be.
This was the first time I had been in despite living here for 26 years.
The menu was roast beef or pork or pheasant - £4.75. I ordered a pint of beer and a tonic water which came to £2.60.
The surroundings were beautifully anachronistic I cant think of a time when I would not have recognised them or been surprised at what the Bell contained.They have permanently diverted all traffic round Talgarth now and the quietness as the sunlight streamed in through the windows from the main road added to the pleasure. Ann had a rice pudding and I had treacle tart and ice cream and this boosted the overall cost by £4. Excellent value but more than that a beautifully ‘unimproved’ experience.

Head of beheading

From the Times
Four men pleaded guilty today over a plot to kidnap and behead a member of the Armed Forces from Birmingham city centre. The group, headed by Parviz Khan, a 38-year-old unemployed charity worker, was arrested in February last year……………

What does an ‘unemployed charity worker’ do for a living when he is working.?

How high is the water Mamma ?

January 13th and river is highish. You can just about see our garage here.

Not enough pearls before the swine

15000 police officers marching for more pay.
I don’t think they are going to get much sympathy this time.
Ive been trying to think of something commendable they’ve done in the last 12 months but I cant.

I recognise the teeth

From thetelegraph

The drawings were based on the account of holiday-maker Gail Cooper, who said she saw the same man of north African appearance acting strangely on three different occasions around Praia da Luz in April last year.
On April 22 she said he was lurking by a group of children who were on a trip to the beach as part of the Mark Warner kids club - an excursion Madeleine joined in with several times before she went missing.
A second time she saw him walking alone on the same beach when it was pouring with rain. On a third occasion, he knocked on the door of her villa, claiming to being collecting money for charity, while her eight-year-old grand-daughter could clearly be seen swimming in the pool at the house.

I am the last person to require any kind of legalistic proof before reaching a conclusion about the guilt of somebody but this chaps strange behaviour seems to amount to;
1)on one occasion standing (or lurking as the Telegraph says) in the vicinity of some children.
2)walking alone on the beach while it was raining.
3)collecting money while a child was visibly swimming in a pool.

I did recognise the teeth though they belong to a local star of karaoke and they keep cropping up in unexpected locations. I am haunted by these teeth. In February of 2007 I met them on a cruise ship on the way to Morocco they were then occupying the mouth of a rather dumpy passenger who belted out "Be my love" in the mode of Mario Lanza.
I was fascinated both by the power of his voice, he declined the microphone, and by the strength of the dental fixative he was using. Had those teeth blown they could have taken an eye out in the gallery. I have seen those teeth on other occassions too. Sometimes a person walking down the street will stop and turn his head towards me for no reason at all and as I look at him the teeth will emerge rodent like and begin to intimidate me.

endgame

What a terrible day Bobby Fischer dead and tonight Vera Duckworth.

PS Ive just realised Bobby was 64 , the number of squares on a chessboard.

Like pulling teeth

Went to the dentist in Brecon today in quite a good mood so you can judge what yesterday must have been like to bestow cheerfulness upon such an appointment.
Ive been going there for 20 years or so and we have never said much to each other, indeed anything.
This time to celebrate the fact that today was not yesterday before going I looked up on the internet and committed to memory the name of the particular tooth that had become chipped.
My plan was as I lay down on the dentists chair and he asked as he always did “Any particular problems?” I would reply “Lower right first bicuspid chipped”
This would surprise him and he would make some remark to which I had intended to lie , “I have always been interested in teeth”.
I went in and as I lay down he asked “Any particular problems” and I immediately replied, “Lower right first bicuspid chipped” ;completely unmoved and in his normal deadpan manner he said “Ill have a look at it later” as if it were quite common for his patients to discuss their teeth in such an esoteric manner. He made no further reference to my contrived entrance.

Correction

Ive just checked on the definition of 'outrageous' because in a sense two hydogen atoms walking down the street could be construed as 'outrageous'.
When I typed into Google 'Define:outrageous' I got; Outrageous" is the fourth and final single released from Britney Spears' album In the Zone released during the second quarter of 2004.

Atomic Theory Confirmed

Had a calender for Christmas which allegedly contained 365 Outrageous jokes. The following is in no way outrageous but its the only one that has made me laugh so far.
Two hydrogen atoms walking down the street. One stops suddenly and says "I think I just lost an electron"; "Are you sure?"; "Im positive"

office party

Annual Office party last Saturday at the Seven Stars Aberedw.

dont think about it

Had to go and see a urologist a week or so ago. After the event as I sat in reception awaiting a blood test I shuddered violently at the memory of the examination which had just taken place. Ann said ‘I don’t know what makes them take up that line of work’ to which I found myself answering ‘ Yes it’s a bit of a niche market’.

not so special delivery

There was a knock on the door and when I got there I found this bloke had opened it and was a slouching silhouette in the doorway filling in his electronic delivery book. Without looking up he said, “Come along young man”. My inclination was to say “Give me the package and Fuck off” But it occurred to me he might well be one of the hoards from ‘off’ seeping into the area like raw sewage in which event I didn’t really want to engage in a prolonged feud. So I said nothing at all. I took the package with the faintest hint of a snatch, signed his electronic book in an almost contemptuous manner and silently closed the door on him just fractionally too fast for good manners. I am not sure he got the message

Horses for courses

Peter the Painter’s heart is really in showbiz. For his latest pre Christmas production, ‘Country Christmas’ at Talgarth he needed a donkey in the nativity scene. Local children in traditional nativity garb would sing the song ‘Little Donkey’. Peter set off to find one and came up with ‘Gentle’. Showbiz was not in her blood and despite pulling, pushing and persuasion with carrots she refused to enter the building. The small crowd that gathered was amused especially some idle builders who offered advice in the traditional manner – but nothing worked.
The show must go on and Peter came up with a replacement that was a little easier to handle. So it came to pass that the nativity part of the show began and Mary & Joseph entered leading the noble beast and the children began the ‘Little Donkey’ song. The Shetland pony was a magnificent actor.

I discover a Pulsar…….sort of

Regularly, every so often, Sky television would splutter a little burst of sound interference.
I tried turning off the central heating, the computer, the cooker , mobile phones and every other electrical appliance I could find but it made no difference. Suspicion turned to the neighbours as mine invariably does. But first I timed the regularity of the pulses of interference and found them to be 40 seconds. I searched the internet using terms like Sky, interference, 40 seconds etc but again came up with nothing.
Then I had an idea. We have a little weather station powered by 6 AA batteries which receives data from sensors in the garden and the garage. I looked up the manual on the web and found that it communicates this data every 40 seconds. Mystery solved.
The reason I am so pleased with this outcome is that my normal methods are not so subtle and if ever I do have any success with technology its usually because I switched it off and when it came on again it was cured.

unfamous last words

Here are some beautiful obituaries Polk County Georgia Obituaries . I cant quite work out why they should not be possible today but that they are not is a matter of regret.
I could not even bring myself to laugh at the sherrif who accidentally shot himself in the head so movingly was it written. (Mr. John Hutchings if you cant read through them all)

What has he done?

For some strange reason I have suddenly had a spate of Googlers looking for Ulick Murphy one of the odd names I have collected. I wonder what he might have done to bring about this sudden attention; when I bagged him he was working for an insurance company as was my personal favorite and the star of my collection
'Dashita Dave'.

Feynman again

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I couldn't remember the name of this fellow in the golf cap for years. I have at last tracked him down - 'Dave Wottle', the name still doesn't ring a bell but his race in the 1972 Olympics certainly does. Brilliant - puts all those boring Paula Radcliffe type plodders in their place.

Where are you R Ton ?

This morning at the end of an elaborate dream which I cant remember there appeared the following Memories are wooden forks and spoons - R Ton. I jumped out of bed and kept repeating it to myself until I had written it down.
Now I cant think why I bothered except I dont ever recall remembering written words in a dream before.

Teeth

Ive got tooth ache and wondered why we had nerves in the teeth or rather what evolutionary advantage does having nerves in teeth give.
All I could find was this exchange on the net.


I had to have my nerve removed from my tooth today and wondered why we have them. I had suffered awful toothache since xmas eve, its ok now but why are teeth so troublesome?

Salamanda Wed 04/01/06 22:22

its like any part of the body...how would we know there was anything wrong with the tooth if there were no nerves to tell us? I think that must be the reason. If there is a big hole in your tooth that needs a filling, you know because it it painful. Can't think of any other reason! Maybe someone call tell us

orange-gnome
Wed 04/01/06
23:16

So that’s the answer it is to remind us to go to the Dentist.

Still rambling

I like this header to the blog of Vikash

I am not perfect and I never will be! What would perfection be? No flaws, I guess. If I were alone on this earth, would I be perfect? Yes I suppose. Everything about me is perfect in isolation. I may stammer, I may limp, I may be anything but I am perfection as myself, I am the perfect me. My speech becomes a stammer when I emulate your speech, My gait becomes a limp when I walk like you and I become imperfect when I want to be as perfect as you. I'm imperfect as you but perfect as me

He is a bit slow with the posts though.

Results

The experiment didn’t work. Although it wasn’t really an experiment more of a demonstration but on either count it failed.
A ‘demonstration’ because it ‘must’ work if carried out properly.
3 dimensional Euclidean geometry is part of the way that the world is, at least on the level of this exercise. If I had properly cut the corners in my journey home there must be a clear difference between the journey there and the journey back but there wasn’t, exactly the same 18.2 miles on the mileometer. Since the instrument only measures to one decimal place either the affect over 18 miles is less than 1/10th of a mile or I wasn’t extravagant enough in cutting the corners, probably a bit of both.
Somebody following me must have been extremely puzzled as it was because I didnt drive fast, just kept to around 40mph but on coming to a left hand bend would hug the inside line like a geriatric formula 1 driver and when encountering a right hand bend, if I couldn't safely cross onto the opposite side of the road, would put my offside wheels onto the central white line and pass the thundering Juggernaut coming in the other direction like some bizarre parody of a Red Arrows 'crossover'.

Machine Code

The purpose of language, English say, must be to enable communication between one human being and another. Why would I need the same language to think in my own head as I need to pass on information to you? For example I tell you ‘I feel hot’ and this conveys an idea to you but I am not conscious of thinking the words ‘I feel hot’ in my head in order to convey to myself the idea that I am hot.

At the base of computers is ‘machine code’ that is the stuff that tells the computer what to do etc. A code of 1s’ and zeros far too messy for humans to usefully employ and so there is a higher language that makes it easier to use plus an interpreter which converts this higher language into the language that the machine does understand. The need to interpret slows the process down considerably.

I feel that there is an analogy here between the machine process and the human process. The higher language , English for example, when used by me to speak to you is the result of some kind of interpreter in my head converting the ‘machine code’ of my thoughts into a language, English, which the interpreter in your head converts into your own private code and you ‘understand’ me.
I know that Wittgenstein says this is all tosh and there is no such thing as a private language but I will carry on with the thought because I am not convinced and because it leads to an chess example and Wittgenstein himself used a lot of chess analogies.

I am an average chess player and I recognise that many good players see father and more quickly than I do. I find that when I am considering a position I do think in English, ‘Pawn takes pawn, knight takes pawn, bishop to king 5 check etc ‘ as well as to a lesser extent being conscious of patterns which are not expressed in my head in English.
It occurred to me to ask why do I need internally this English language to express the moves to myself and I contrasted it with the feeling for pattern in the game which I also had. I thought that maybe the difference between me and the good players must be that they had got shot of English altogether as a thought process and were employing something more in line with machine code in a computer.
When I asked a couple of them about this they looked at me as if I were a total idiot. I got my coat.

Victorian Belly Dancers

Victorian festival in Llandrindod Wells. Here is Mark Bradley yesterday his attention is held by a troupe of Belly Dancers performing in Middleton Street – probably went on all the time in Victoria’s reign.
Managed to hang on to complete self control in the office when an appointment arranged for me with a Mr Hunt turned out, face to face, to be with a Mr Kunt.

You will love the pipeline

As expected my limerick didn't get anywhere as it was was far too politically incorrect. There were only four entries but so desperate was the judge to avoid acknowledging it in anyway she gave second prize to something that wasn't even a limerick - I counted at least14 lines in it.
I say 'at least' because I was trying to count surreptitiously so as not to appear that I was about to mount a serious legal challenge to the result. This feigned nonchalance on my part might have led to slight mathematical inaccuracy, but rest assured there were at least 14 lines, limerick it certainly wasn't.

The Show

Saturday coming is Llyswen show day and Ann is entering a ginger cake.
I am entering the Limerick competition which has the unpromising required opening 'There once was a pipeline....' This refers to the ugly scar which crosses Wales as they lay a huge pipe line to take gas from one side of the country to the other - they might get a few years use out of it before the gas runs out or it is blown up by terrorists. The whole thing is highly suspect , it all seems to have been organised behind closed doors.
So far with the Limerick I have got;

There once was a pipeline of steel
It desecrates every green hill
So thanks to backhanders
And incompetent planners
Hard luck - too late- done deal

Its the 12th but not as glorious as it was.

Day 2 and 1/12 and the Brecon Jazz festival was pretty dull in the streets. It might be the pressure from all the bureaucrats to interfere, contain, sanitise and ultimately lose it as an event.The same bunch of worthless articles who buggered up the roads within the town. This band was very good though and represented the festival as it used to be.

keeping a low profile

Somebody from Acaster Malbis visited today according to Sitemeter.
Went to Google fight where Acaster Malbis defeated my own Llyswen by 36,200 to 28,700. I have never heard of Acatster Malbis (apparently near York) and so am quite pleased that Llyswen is even less hunted.

Experiment (results expected Monday)

Object: To determine reduction in distance travelled by cutting corners.
(Possible application – reduction of carbon footprint )
Apparatus: Vauxhall Astra
Method:
(Note Distance between home (Llyswen) and office (Llandrindod Wells) is approximately 18.4 Miles. (AA Rout planner))

A car was driven from home to office keeping as far as possible in the middle of the left hand lane throughout. The distance measured by the milometer was ……….miles.
The same car was driven in the opposite direction from office to home cutting every corner that it was safe to cut. The distance measured was ……………miles.

Results: (Distance cut/ distance normal) X fuel normal = fuel cut.
100 X(Fuel normal – fuel cut)/ (fuel normal) = % fuel saved

To do list

Due to forgetfulness it would be a pity to allow my last days at work (about 3 years to go) to pass unproductively and so I will keep a note here in the blog of things I ought to do close to retirement as I think of them.
No1) When sending off copy marriage certificates to insurance companies tipex out whats written in the rank or profession of father box and insert 'petty tyrant' or whatever else takes my fancy and then rephotocopy before sending.

Bicentennial

200th post and still this son of a bitch ventriloquist announces through me 'My blog is worth nothing'.