Month: March 2020

Quotes that made me laugh #57

A nose for a good story… 

Not really a quote, but a newspaper headline:

The quote made me laugh, but the associated article had me in hysterics. It’s a long time since I cried laughing, but the guy’s explanation of the timeline of events really did for me and the hospital’s discharge note finished me completely: “Denies other magnets”.

Well worth a read and it’s here.

Meantime, once I’d stopped laughing, it inspired this…

There once was a man of Verona
Who tried hard to cure Corona
The method he chose
Was a magnetic nose
That gave him a repellant persona!

 

 

 

A limerick a week #183

Who let the dogs out?

I’ve got a weird dog! Not weird in the sense of weird-looking, but weird in the sense that she loves to go on a walk but always hides whenever she sees me with her lead. And if you ask “do you want to go for a walk, she dashes over to you (so long as there is no lead in sight), turns turtle and begs for a tummy tickle.

When we are out together, they’re her walks not mine, so, for as long as she behaves herself and keeps a loose lead, then if she wants to stop and sniff a lampost, she can. If she wants to say “hello” to other dogs or people, she can (and does!).

@calliebordeaux enjoying a roll in the park

She’s still a puppy, albeit in those ‘teenage’ years when she can be quite wilful, and her recall is not yet rock solid, but she can explore away from me on a long lead and runs off-lead with the pack at the fully enclosed field at Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen.

@calliebordeaux on a favourite walk around the grounds of Dunecht House.

So, although she really enjoys herself outside, she always plays hard to get when when it’s time to go out. It’s truly bizarre, but I think in these strange days of pandemic and lockdown I know why…

There once was a dog kept frustrating
Her owner ‘cos she kept hesitating
To set foot outside
She’d just stay in and hide.
Seems that puppy was self-isolating!

 

 

A limerick a week #182

You are cordially invited…

It’s time, once again, to highlight this year’s ‘short course’ exhibition hosted by Gray’s School of Art. In amongst the enthusiasts’ offerings of ceramics, jewellery, design, drawings, paintings and hand-crafted bags and kilts, you will find an exhibition of old-school, black and white film photography to which yours truly has contributed.

If you are in or around Aberdeen in the next week or two, do pop in to to Gray’s School of Art and have a gander. It’s free!

It’s become a sort tradition
For those of an apt disposition
To add to the mix
Some black and white pics
At the Gray’s School of Art Exhibition.

A limerick a week #181

Dr L Rouge, PhD

And in today’s news it was announced that Nottingham Trent University is to carry out a study on the effect of vehicular traffic on hedgehogs. Given the number of flattened specimens that litter the nation’s roads, I suspect someone might be in line for a PhD thesis that simply comprises a statement of the bleedin’ obvious!

I’m rather fond of hedgehogs because of a familial connection. You see my paternal grandmother was one. More precisely, she was a Ježek, that is she was born in what became the country of Czechoslovakia and her Czech surname  translated into English as ‘hedgehog’.

They even brew hedgehog beer there, at the Pivovar Jihlava (Jihlava brewery). As a hedgehog is the symbol of Jihlava, a town found between Prague and Brno, its Ježek lager represents the soul of the brewery.

Another Ježek is the hedgehog in the cage, a Czech puzzle that comprises a small sphere with protruding spikes of various lengths contained within a cylinder perforated with holes of different sizes. The challenge posed by the puzzle is how to release the sphere (the hedgehog) from the cylinder (the cage).

The Trent research isn’t, of course, as trivial as the puzzle or even observing the effects of a 4×4 on an individual hedgehog, but a broader study on the cumulative impact of traffic-induced mortality on the demographics of localised hedgehog populations and whether there is a way to mitigate that through developments in road engineering (ie hedgehog tunnels) or by defining hedgehog-friendly ‘best practice’ in town and country planning. (According to the BBC news website, a study from 2016 estimated that around 100,000 hedgehogs are killed each year on UK roads.)

Nevertheless, rather than await the outcome of the academic research, here is my five-line thesis as a statement of the bleedin’ obvious that tells you all you need to know…

The impact on hedgehogs of traffic
Is to screw up their whole demographic
‘Cos a sickening SPLAT
Soon renders them flat
In a scene that is gruesomely graphic!

Will it qualify me for a PhD d’you think?

Postscript: The eagle-eyed will have noticed that the current ALAW and its predecessor, both have splat and flat as the rhyme in the third and fourth lines albeit in a different order. This purely coincidental and, as a former collegue once stated “Coincidences are the most paradoxical of things – they should never happen, but they always do!”.