…friends in London told us that they’d heard on national radio that Aberdeen’s Broomhill Road had been closed due to a house fire and wondered if it was close to us. It was. Very. In fact it was us! Our roofers had set fire to our house, ironically on Bonfire Night. So on the tenth anniversary of this…
The Evening Express 5/11/12
Here’s the limerick:
I was phoned up at work late one day By a neighbour who’d something to say. The news was quite dire: “Your house is on fire! Seems the builders left your house to sauté.”
In a mad world, only the mad are sane – Akira Kurosawa
The pic below is of a Hillside Dalbury mini-campervan conversion by Hillside Leisure based in Derby. It’s price in 2016 when new, would be ca. £28k.
The model, below, is also a Hillside Dalbury mini-campervan (new in 2016 as well) and is for sale, second hand, in 2022 with 31,660* miles on the clock…
Any guesses as to the asking price?
Well, it is currently advertised by Harbour Creek Motorhomes for £33,995! That’s nearly £6k more than its original price (model specs are similar).
Seemingly, it’s all down to a shortage of semiconductors for new vehicles, Nissan’s decision to cease production the NV200 a couple of years ago (it’s the Dalbury’s base vehicle) and the so-called ‘staycation’ boom. But … even allowing for any discount on the used van’s purchase price, say £2k, it appears that the world has gone mad!
Here’s the limerick…
A campervan buyer was heard To complain that things were absurd. Supply and demand Had got out of hand And his purchase would now be deferred.
* the mileage has been excluded from the advert since I first saw it – don’t ask me why!
Last September I mentioned that I’d completed four years of A Limerick A Week (ALAW) and that I’d give it another year before downsizing to Occasional Limericks Only (OLO).
Well, today’s ALAW marks five years of The Good, The Bad and The Indifferent. No week was missed and, although one or two were a day or so late, there were several bonus limericks to make up for that (including today!).
I would have liked my last ALAW to be a perfect blend of clever word play, intelligent bawdiness and anapestic correctness, but although I’ve given you two to finish with, sadly neither is that…
It’ll never ever be orthodox For ‘gateaux’ to be pronounced ‘gattox’ Which just goes to show Why we don’t say ‘bolleaux’ When he’s told that his lim’ricks are ‘bollox’!
A limericist tried hard to coax A rhyme that’s so pure it invokes The most noble of verse, But his oeuvre got worse So he quit, saying “That is all folks!”
… for now!
Postscript: there are two limericks that I came across over the last five years, written by others, which, I really, really, really wish I’d written myself. But I didn’t. So, with full acknowledgement that these are the work of others…
… the first, by Mick Twister (@twitmericks), uses clever word play and was contemporaneous with the event that inspired it. In this case, it needs context to be fully appreciated (see pic, below):
A Rotterdam artist’s creation Prevented a train conflagration On leaving the rail, It stopped on the whale, Which wasn’t its scheduled cetacean.
As good as that is, if I’d only ever written one limerick, I’d wish it was as clever and inventively bawdy as this one (NB, you have to pronounce the name the American way, ie, ber-NARD rather than the British way, BER-nud):
A cross-dressing monk called Bernard Dropped dead when crossing the yard. Post-mortem inspection Revealed an erection. It seems that old habits die hard!
(Author unknown to me, but I doff my cap regardless – reply in comments for credit.)
Juiced-up MPs and the bewhiskered nature of scientists…
I once met Austin Mitchell a former Labour MP, who died recently. He had travelled to Aberdeen’s Marine Laboratory soon after the Millennium as a member, I think, of the UK Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on some sort of fisheries fact finding mission. We met with the Committee in the afternoon after it had earlier held talks with leaders of the Scottish fish catching and processing sectors.
Austin Mitchell – described by at least one pundit as the MP for lost causes
The Marine Lab commonly hosted such gatherings in its net store where there was room to set up display panels and examples of different fishing gears. After my presentation I meandered to the back of the room to observe the rest of the event from a distance. Soon after that I became aware of a distinctly inebriated presence sidling up to me. It was Mitchell who, in the vernacular of the day, ‘had enjoyed a good lunch’.
The Marlab net store where its research vessel fishing gears are rigged and repaired
As the presentations continued at the front, he quietly asked me about fishery discards and what did I think of the Norwegian fishery discard ban; could such a thing work in European waters? I whispered that I’d recently reviewed the Arctic Fisheries stock assessment working group report in my guise as the UK member of the ICES Advisory Committee on Fisheries Management and told him it made clear that its catch data were quite uncertain due to unreported (illegal!) landings and an unknown quantity of discards despite the discard ban.
I explained that the true discard rate was unknown because the Norwegians had no means to measure it. Their logic seemed to be that discarding was not allowed, ergo it wouldn’t happen, ergo there was no need to monitor it (they do prosecute a handful of cases each year, but inspection and monitoring are quite different activities with differing requirements and processes).
(To be fair to the Norwegians, the discard ban is accompanied by a package of permanently or seasonally closed areas, and some real-time area closures when the likelihood of catching undersized fish or exceeding legal by-catch limits is beyond some specific threshold criteria.)
Anyway, I finished by telling Mitchell that the Norwegian scientists knew as well as I did, and as did many others, that when it came to disposing of any unwanted or illegal catches “in Arctic waters the nights are long and the waters deep!”.
Mitchell guffawed loudly and exclaimed merrily (and just as loudly) “Ah, not just a scientist, but a poet as well!”.
After that he nodded towards a couple of scientists and engineers at the front, and jovially asked “Do you have to have a beard and be bald to become a fisheries expert?”
Some famous bearded scientists. Can you name them?
As I also had a beard, but had not yet started to thin ‘on top’, I told him a beard was mandatory, but that baldness was optional (like integrity in politicians, but I lacked the courage to say that).
There once was a drunken MP Went to a marine lab to see If all scientists were weird And bald with a beard And they were, I’m sure he’d agree!
Postscript: I found an interesting quote on the current status of Norwegian fishery discard estimates. The relevant paper explicitly includes unknown discard rates in the estimation of total unreported landings; an acknowledgement that Norwegian fisheries and their management are not as virtuous as their sanctimonious political headlines would sometimes have us believe!
Clegg, T.L., Kennelly, S.J., Blom, G. et al. Applying global best practices for estimating unreported catches in Norwegian fisheries under a discard ban. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 31, 1–23 (2021).
There can only be one candidate as the subject of this week’s ALAW…
The Fruity Rumba, a dance second only to the Bogo Pogo.
Yup, Michael Gove, a UK Government Minister and former ‘stardust’ devotee, has found a new way to relax after a hard day in the office by dancing his own steps on an Aberdeen techno-club dance floor.
Here’s the limerick…
A Minister once set out to prove That when dancing he’d cut quite a groove, But a gauche hedonist When outré and pi**ed Is nowt but a tw*t on the move.
Although I can’t take part in my regular tap dance class while I’m out of town, I still see its WhatsApp group messages.
So, having recently said ‘cheerio’ to our previous instructor, Gillian, we have now welcomed Chloë as her replacement.
Some of the class had seen my farewell limerick to Gillian and wondered if I’d manage a rhyme for Chloë. That’s my kind of challenge…
Don’t shush me! I’ll make all the noise I wanna!” – Daffy Duck
There was once a young man called Joey Who wanted to tap dance and so he Put on his new Blochs And some music that rocks And ball-changed with a lassie called Chloë.
I take no responsibility for this week’s ALAW. It’s a headline in the Daily Record that’s to blame!
And here it is:
A young man went out to explore Lascivious encounters galore, But ‘the birds and the bees’ Made him fancy the trees And that’s NOT what a knot hole is for!
Some words that came to mind on a fleeting visit to the English Lake District where it started lashing it down on first sight of the fells…
Nuff said!
The Lake District has what it takes For holidays, trips and short breaks But try not to frown When it’s pi***ng it down Cos it’s the rain that makes all the lakes
Postscript: the ‘Bergen’ joke (also applicable to the English Lake District):
Tourist. Hey, tell me, does it always rain in Bergen?
Long story short, my 93 year old mother has been stranded at my sister’s home in Europe for the best part of a year due to Covid travel restrictions.
Brexit, of course, means that Brits cannot remain within the continent’s Schengen zone for more than 90 out of any 180 consecutive days, which is why it’s a surprise to me that the Matriarch has been allowed to stay post-Brexit for 218 days (and counting).
Anyway, she has now been ‘asked’ to leave by the end of August, which is why I’ll soon be travelling south from Aberdeen to meet her at Edinburgh airport, before taking her on to Kendal and assuming residence there myself for a couple of months (or more) to help her settle back in. Fortunately, recent relaxations in the Covid guidelines mean that she will no longer have to self-isolate for 10 days on her return, nor me with her.
All of which loosely (incredibly loosely) has inspired this…
There once was an expat felt thwarted When his ‘leave to remain’ wasn’t sorted And as things then got worse He soon started to curse The ba****ds that had him deported!
Postscript: Talk about ‘boomerang’ kids. Here’s me, retired yet soon to reoccupy my childhood bedroom whilst once again living with my mum. Je suis a boomerang boomer!
My young border collie doesn’t like getting wet and is certainly not a fan of heavy rain (despite being a four seasons breed!). She was distraught this week when the fine weather broke and the heavens opened.
Why does it always rain on me…
That’s when you discover how irksome it can be that an energetic, outdoor-loving and highly active pooch can prefer to remain indoors when it rains, but refuses then to adopt the altogether less-wearing persona of a calm and peaceful companion dog.
Anyway, despite her protestations, needs must, so she was walked in the rain and has, no doubt, been plotting her revenge ever since.
A young dog once thought it remiss Of its owner to simply dismiss Its pleaful refrain To stay out of the rain When ‘il pleut comme une vache qui pisse!’
