February 2020 – A View From The Lanterne Rouge

A limerick a week #180

To infinity and … splat!

‘Mad’ Mike Hughes told the world that he thought the world was flat (the clue is in his sobriquet) and to prove it, he would launch himself to a sufficient altitude (in a home made ‘steam’ rocket) from which he could photograph the earth as a flat disc.

Unfortunately, he never made it. The parachute that was intended to land the rocket safely, sheared off at the launch and, in the words of Monty Python’s Flying Sheep sketch Mad Mike did “not so much fly … as plummet” and he ended his days as a ‘kicker’ storyline on the evening news.

Rather pathetically, some flat-earthers are claiming that his death was worthwhile as it drew attention to the elaborate hoax that the earth is, in fact, spherical. If so, it’s hoax that has been circulating since the time of Ancient Greece.

Hughes’ PR representative has since stated that “We used flat Earth as a PR stunt… Flat Earth allowed us to get so much publicity that we kept going! I know he didn’t believe in flat Earth and it was a schtick.” No doubt flat earthers will see that as a hoax too.

There once was a man called Mike Hughes
Who thought that an orbital ruse
Would show the world’s flat,
But he came down with a SPLAT
As a footnote in the day’s evening news

A limerick a week #179

On relationships going south…

Mid-february in Aberdeen is not the ideal time to have a new boiler installed. My strategy for dealing with the inevitable disruption and the loss of central heating and hot water was to order in some extra logs and coal.

Management’s solution, along with The Tall Child, was to book flights to Australia and leave me to it.

I’ll leave you to decide who was the wisest!

A chap was once given to wonder
If he’d made an almighty blunder,
‘Cos he stayed on his own
In a cold Scottish home
Whilst the others bu****ed-off Down Under!

A limerick a week #178

I fancied cycling out to a café yesterday afternoon up the Causey Mounth road in Aberdeenshire, an ancient drover’s road and a long uphill drag, but didn’t. Hills are one thing, but a hill with a gale of wind blowing is quite another. So I wrote a limerick instead…

A fair-weather cyclist once tried
To go for an afternoon ride
On a late winter’s day,
But got blown clean away
‘Cos’ twas blowing a hoolie outside.

A limerick a week #177

Parody, litotes and satire

I was too young to be allowed to watch the first series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it aired on TV, but I did catch the second and subsequent series.

There was a lot that was pretty average in most of the episodes and I’m convinced that they are now viewed as ground-breaking not because they were laugh-a-minute shows, but because of the open-ended and nonsensical nature of the sketches and the ease with which the occasional really funny parts could be repeated ad nauseum by schoolkids in the country’s playgrounds.

And now Terry Jones has died, becoming the second of the Pythons to have “shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible”.

Subsequent to the Flying Circus series, Jones’ Ripping Yarns productions (co-written with Michael Palin) were, and remain, a joy to watch and, as an amateur historian, he successfully challenge orthodoxy, writing, for example, about the medieval era that:

A lot of what we assume to be medieval ignorance is, in fact, our own ignorance about the medieval world.

He also got to voice the best ever line in any of the Python productions…

better than: It’s only a wafer-thin mint, sir…

better than: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

better than: Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

and even better than: PININ’ for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?

’tis simply this: He’s not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy.

And here’s the limerick:

There once was a man so imbued
With humour that verged on the lewd
That he took of his clothes
And sat in repose
And played on his organ when nude!