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Former scientist, now graduated to a life of leisure;
Family man (which may surprise the family - it certainly surprises him);
Likes cycling and old-fashioned B&W film photography;
Dislikes greasy-pole-climbing 'yes men';
Thinks Afterlife (previously known as Thea Gilmore) should be much better known than she is;
Values decency over achievement.
Occasionally you need to qualify a comment and, for the sake of her dignity, I need to qualify this one. My mum is 88 and sometimes what she means to say is not what she actually says. Put it down to the depredations of age …
An example from a recent trip to Newcastle springs to mind. What she meant to say was something like: “Two shandies and I’m three sheets to the wind”. So, what you really don’t expect your elderly mother to say to the assembled mourners towards the end of a funeral tea is: “Two shandies and I’m anyone’s!”.
As ‘Firstborn’ is one of the Instagram generation’s ‘selfie’ experts I can’t help feeling that this would be her approach to ‘helping police with their enquiries’Ā …
Berger & Wyse foretell the impact of police budgets cuts on the Instagram generation
Postscript: Of course in real life she doesn’t sport sideburns and has neither a receding hairline nor tattooed biceps (much to her parent’s relief) and she can only dream of being 6′ 4″
My microcamper is ready to collect! It is a Hillside ‘Dalbury’ conversion based on a Nissan NV200 (see posts passim) and I’m soon off to Derby to take ownership. Insurance is sorted (at not too bad a price) and I’ve already bought my first add-on, a sticker for the back …
Road.cc’s answer to the HGV ‘Cyclists Stay Clear’ stickers. Coming soon to a campervan near you!
It’s completion was three months later than anticipated due mostly to Nissan’s extended lead time for delivery to Hillside, and that means half the summer hasĀ passed without it, but I’m already looking forward to its first outing to the west coast at the end of July; a short photography trip with a few friends from the RGUĀ B&W film photography course (staying in a bunk house though, not the van). We’re off to Applecross so it also gives me a chance to recce the Bealach na BĆ ; the bike’s going too but I’m not intending to attempt to cycle over the pass on this trip!
Meantime, those friendly folk at the Daily Mash have a few words to say about campervans (a few pompous mobile home owners on one of the ‘anorak’ forums took these articles literally, not realising that the Mashters are satirists – sad really).
Postscript: Based in Derby, Hillside names its various camper conversions after towns within the county of Derbyshire, hence the ‘Dalbury’. Forme, a Derbyshire manufacturer of bicycles does the same with its products which is why the Forme road bike that I won a couple of years ago is called the ‘Longcliffe’. Good job neither were named after Fanny Avenue, (Killamarsh), Spanker Lane, (Nether Heage)Ā or Butt’s View (Bakewell) all in Derbyshire, and I hope neither would live up to the name Knockerdown (Ashbourne) either.
This is a quote that made me laugh not so much through humour as in despair. It seems that the CV posted by one of the contenders to become leader of the UK’s Conservative Party may have been ‘sexed-up’ (which is ironic given that it appeared in the same week as the Chilcot review of events pre- and post- the Iraq war; events that had alleged the production of aĀ sexed-up dodgy dossier):
āIt looks as though the issue is that anyone who reads Andreaās CV and attaches a lot of weight to that particular role may actually be under some slight misapprehension as to what it was she actually did.ā
‘Sir Humphrey’ couldn’t have put it better himself.
Well, he had a good innings. Gordon Murray the creator of the stop-motion Trumptonshire Trilogy has died at the age of 95. Some favoured Camberwick Green – I don’t think Chigley was as popular – but for me the stand-out series was Trumpton. Perhaps it was Captain Flack’s weekly recital (Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb) that called out his firemenĀ to an emergency that seemed never to involve flames, or even smoke, that stuck in the mind. Or maybe it was the announcement at the start of the show that presaged the storyline for that episode:
Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?
Dramatic goings-on in Trumpton
Either way, Murray’s were innocent stories for innocent minds, governed by his wish for children to have a joyful childhood (as quoted in the Graun’s obituary):
āI am very upset, because Iām an old man now, at the short length of childhood that children have. They donāt have childhood for long and I think thatās a wicked shame, because childhood is the most marvellous thing youāve got to remember for the rest of your life.ā
‘Amen’ to that. Here’s my tuppence worth:
You painted a bucolic scene With your stories of Camberwick Green, But with Pugh, Pugh And Barney McGrew It was Trumpton that lit up the screen.
Taken from a late great uncle’s booklet of quotes and press cuttings, this gem comes from a medical bulletin that described the ailment that caused French President Pompidou to miss a diplomatic dinner in April 1974:
“a benign lesion of vascular origin situated in the anal-rectal zone and intermittently hyperalgesiac“.
Piles!
The French named the famous Beaubourg building that he commissioned whilst President, theĀ Centre Georges PompidouĀ in his honour; perhaps it should have been calledĀ Pompidou’s Pile!
Postscript: Pompidou died less than two weeks after this diagnosis, but not from piles; he was actually suffering from a form of lymphoma.
dreich driĖx/ adjectiveSCOTTISH (especially of weather) dreary; bleak. “a cold, dreich early April day”
… and why we go on holiday:
‘Roastit’ š
I struggled to find an appropriate word or phrase for ‘warm and sunny’ in an online Scots dictionary. ‘Roastit’, ‘swealtry’ and ‘cosie’ were the only three words on offer, but note that the latter implies being wrapped up warm and not just warm per se! I found them on the ‘RampantScotland’ website and this is how it introduced them:
“Here are a few Scots words about being warm. Since there were so few such words (!) there are also words about being cold too …”
Enough said, so here is a pic of our pool instead!
Itās a wee while since I was dishonestly āoutedā by Firstborn to all her Facebook friends as:
ā… a cross-dressing rent boy with a penchant for high heels, who turns a shapely calf and holds Audrey Hepburn in high regard; the man who introduced me to Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Audrey Hepburn and Bette Midler, who styled my hair throughout my childhood, and who has very strong opinions on interior design …ā.
All true, of course, bar the bit about being a cross-dressing rent boy with a penchant for high heels but, seemingly, word appears to have spread about the latter. You may recall that a few weeks ago the Graun reported that a PwC agency receptionist was sent home without pay for refusing to wear shoes with 2-4 inch heels whilst at work. I was actually stunned by that and did something that I very rarely do; I signed an online parliamentary petition seeking the discriminatory nature of the agencyās apparent dress code to be debated in Parliament.
Iām delighted to say that the petition worked and I heard yesterday that the matter will be debated. And Iām even more delighted to have been asked to give written evidence of the occasions upon which I have been compelled to wear high heels at work. Sadly, the only time that I can recall was during a workās pantomime when, as one of the ugly sisters, Prince Charming attempted to force my size nine-and-a-half feet into a size four pair of hooker heels. So, maybe not!
Austerity bites …
Whilst on this theme, I should also mention that my āon orderā micro-campervan has already been christened āPriscillaā by Firstborn in advance of its delivery. Thatās as a sort of homage to the series of cross-dressing comedy films that we have enjoyed watching together: Connie and Carla, Some Like It Hot, Kinky Boots and, of course, Priscilla Queen of the Desert; however, I have drawn the line at having a Ken doll dressed in Barbieās clothes as a mascot on the vanās dashboard!
Postscript: Not all movies with a cross-dressing theme are, to my mind, as good as those mentioned above, Tootsie and Victor Victoria for example, but thereās not half a lot of them.
I came across an old professor of mine in the Graun’s Birthday announcements today. Professor William Stewart by name, and I well remember one of the few face-to-face meetings that I had with him.
It was at the start of the summer term in the third year of my four-year degree course in Dundee. I had been called in to explain why I had walked out of a pre-Easter ‘class’ exam without answering any of the questions.Ā The short answer was that I couldn’t, so I told him that, but added (truthfully) that it was because I had spent the entire term training for and playing rugby.
Such is the arrogance of youth that I also told him he shouldn’t berate me for it, but that he should celebrate the fact that someone from his Department was the University’s only first choice player in that year’s Scottish Universities Rugby XV. With an eloquent flourish I then demanded that he judge me on my junior honours exams in the summer and not on a meaningless class exam!
Quietly, he lowered his glasses down the bridge of his nose, tilted his head forward to look over them, smiled malevolently and whispered threateningly in his soft Islay lilt: “Aye, Phil, I’ll do just that!”
That had more effect than any ‘hairdrier’ kind of bollocking could have ever had and my goodness did I work hard to make up for what was effectively a missed term. He has since been dubbed a knight, so “thank you” Sir William Duncan Patterson Stewart DSc, FRS, FRSE (and former Government Chief Scientific Advisor), your understated menace had the desired effect.
Aye, Phil, I’ll do just that!
Postscript:Ā a former colleague and I once disagreed over a detail on a poster that he had created for our library to highlight the fisheries research work of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, a leading scientist of the Victorian school and, like Sir William, a knighted professor. I argued that he should be entitled ‘Professor Sir D’Arcy …” whereas my colleague had labelled him “Sir Professor D’Arcy …”. We asked our Librarian to arbitrate, each confident of inviolability, at which point she quietly put us both in our place by referring to Debrett’s and announcing that he should be referenced by his senior honour only, so, Sir D’Arcy it should be. That’s my kind of pedantry, but clearly not the Graun’s; it announced the birthday of ‘Prof Sir William Stewart’ – see pic, above.
