Category: A Limerick A Week

Rock on …

The small town of Dunbar on Scotland’s east coast is probably best known to outdoorsy folk as the birthplace of John Muir, one of the founding-fathers of America’s National Parks and a co-founder of its Sierra Club. I wonder if he’d be impressed by his hometown’s latest claim to fame?

It arises from an outdoors activity sure enough. Indeed it’s one that’s said to be a contemplative and meditative experience and I’m sure that’s the sort of feeling that Muir would have sought in the peace and tranquility of 19th century Yosemite. But not, I think, by stacking stones on Dunbar’s foreshore (although the results can be rather impressive).

Yes, folks, Dunbar hosts the European stone-stacking championship and this year’s event has just finished.

It was inaugurated in 2016 as The John Muir Stone Stacking Challenge (he’ll be turning in his grave that something so facile has been named after him) and according to the Beeb, Dunbar’s coastline has been declared “rock stacker paradise”.

The Championship’s competitive categories include ‘most stones balanced’, ‘most artistic’ and ‘balance against the clock’ and there are separate classes for both adults and children

The rules are strict. No adhesive substances are allowed and there must be no interference with other competitors’ piles. Neither the throwing nor tossing of stones is permitted, nor is foul language, lewd behaviour or poor sportsmanship. The whole thing rocks!

It also inspires limericks …

In a littoral balancing act
Her pillar of rocks stayed intact.
So she added some more
‘Till you couldn’t ignore
That her structure was truly well-stacked!

Postscript: A few years ago, I came across someone’s stone-stacking effort at Aberdeen harbour and I was really impressed. I took a pic using my phone and thought to return the next day with my proper camera.

Unfortunately, by the next day, it had been kicked over, so here’s my original picture …

… and the Wordsworthian verse that it spawned:

I wandered quietly down the road
That meanders by the River Dee
When all at once I spied a load
Of boulders stacked-up. One! Two! Three …
Astride the bank, above the flow,
I knocked them o’er with one fell blow.

(I didn’t really!)

Liar, liar …

I can’t be the only person to view recent outpourings from the UK’s Home Secretary to amount to more than the mere sophistry and weasel words that we’ve come to expect from politicians. Perhaps the strategy adopted across the pond of openly telling lies to a receptive audience of rednecks has an appeal for her.

I don’t normally quote at length from newspapers, but the following paragraphs from two recent Graun articles certainly point the finger.

First we read that:

“The hostile immigration environment Theresa May set out to create when she was at the Home Office was regarded by some ministers as “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany” in the way it is working, the former head of the civil service, Lord Kerslake, has said.”

And then that:

“Amber Rudd privately boasted to the prime minister that she would give immigration officials greater “teeth” to hunt down and deport thousands more illegal migrants and accelerate the UK’s deportation programme, a leaked private letter has revealed.”

… and then:

“Rudd set out her “ambitious” plan to increase removals and focus officials on “arresting, detaining and forcibly removing illegal migrants” while “ruthlessly” prioritising Home Office resources to that programme.

The aggressive language and tone of Rudd’s approach to immigration enforcement emerged after the home secretary attempted to blame officials in her own department for the Windrush scandal in which it emerged up to 50,000 mostly Commonwealth migrants were facing possible deportation despite having lived in Britain for decades.”

Illegally deporting legal migrants and then blaming civil servants for carrying out the policies that you have aggressively engineered?

That’s not telling the truth … ‘pants on fire’, methinks!

There was a young man from Jamaica
Left his home in order to make a
Difference to the Brits
But the ungrateful gits
Years later said : “Leave! Or we’ll make ya!”.

Sandpapergate!

Ten or so years ago, a BBC ‘quote of the week’ came from Brent Cockbain, then a Welsh international rugby player, who had said: “You cheat and cheat until you get caught out and then you cheat some more“.

Of course with the advent of in-game ‘big screen’ video replays, sometimes those that cheat are made to look extremely foolish, as when an open-handed slap from an opponent causes one of rugby’s tough guys to hit the ground as if he’d been pole-axed by Muhammad Ali in his prime (yes, that’s you I’m talking about, Donncha O’Callaghan!).

All of which calls into question the wisdom and judgement of the senior leaders of Australia’s national cricket team, some of whom have just been sent home from their current tour of South Africa for a rather too obvious attempt to cheat.

Scuffing one half of a cricket ball whilst ‘polishing’ the other half is a well-known ploy to make a cricket ball ‘swing’ in flight; a means to make life more difficult for the batsman.

And, as with many things, there are ways and means to achieve this, but I’m not sure that taking sandpaper from your pocket to illegally roughen the scuffed side of the ball is the wisest thing to do, particularly in an international match when the TV cameras cover your every move!

That sort of stupidity pales into insignificance when the umpires later ask you to turn out your pockets due to their suspicions of cheating and you pull out a hanky and lie to them, only for the TV footage of you previously stuffing sandpaper down the front of your trousers to be shown on the stadium’s big screens.

So, this is my take on the affair:

Time will show that history recalls
The discredit that surely befalls
Australian cricket
Whose search for a wicket
Made the bowler sandpaper his balls!

Postscript: The proud Welsh rugby ‘cheat’ quoted at the top of this post only qualified as Welsh through his residency status, having moved to Wales as a 25-year-old before serving the requisite three-year residency period. Where did he hail from? Er, that would be Australia. Strewth, mate!

A race to the bottom…

(Readers of a sensitive nature look away now!)

A few years ago I was surprised to see a sticker in the toilet cubicles of a German research institute. It comprised a humorous cartoon that illustrated the purpose and use of a lavatory brush and it made me wonder what had happened that obliged it to remind its staff and visitors about basic lavatorial hygiene.

Since then it’s been alarming to know that my place of work has, on occasion, had to resort to posting notes in cubicles to remind colleagues and visitors to leave the ‘facilities’ in the condition they would expect to find them.

So it was of concern recently to read an institute-wide message that re-iterated the need for lavatorial cleanliness and, thus, this week’s limerick hit the fan. It initially comprised part of a poster that I pinned to my office door (to much critical acclaim); however, I took it down on learning that the ‘incidents’ in question were not simply of inconsiderate use, but something more sinister and worrying.

Anyway, here’s the poster and limerick…

On the right track …

“However ordinary each of us may seem, we are all in some way special, and can do things that are extraordinary, perhaps until then…even thought impossible“

Sir Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

At the age of 88, Roger Bannister has died. No-one with the slightest interest in athletics needs to be reminded of his achievement on the running track, but, for any who remain ignorant of it, on 6 May 1954 he became the first person officially to run a mile in under four minutes.

It was a new world record (obviously), albeit one that was eclipsed just a month or so later by an Australian runner, John Landy. Records are made to be broken yet Bannister’s achievement remains the stuff of legend because, quite simply, the four-minute mile was the middle-distance runner’s Holy Grail and Bannister claimed its discovery. It was also done in a gloriously Corinthian spirit. Bannister was a true amateur who trained in his spare time away from his medical studies in Oxford

His two pacemakers on that day in Oxford were Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, both middle-distance runners. Brasher, who paced the first half-mile, later won an Olympic gold in the 3000m steeplechase and Chataway, who finished second at Oxford (and broke the world 5000m record later the same year) paced the remainder until Bannister’s finishing sprint. All three became household names and the two pacemakers remained firmly in the public eye, perhaps more so than Bannister, due to their mix of business, broadcasting and political careers.

It might have made sense back then, I wasn’t around so can’t tell, but it seems inconceivable to me that Bannister then lost out to Chataway to become the BBC’s inaugural Sporting Personality of the Year. To me that’s a calumny that ranks alongside The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York being kept off the 1987 UK Christmas number one spot by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover version of Always on my Mind, or Dances with Wolves getting the 1990 best film Oscar ahead of Goodfellas or Forrest Gump getting it in 1994 instead of Pulp Fiction.

Yet despite his sporting achievement, Bannister’s subsequent career as a consultant neurologist and researcher gave him greater pride if less-widespread renown. As a physician he appears to have been universally liked by his patients and medical peers and, from reading obituaries about him and their ‘below the line’ comments, what stands tall is his fundamental decency. That really appeals to me as my profile on this blog states “Values decency over achievement” in Bannister’s case he had both. In spades!

So, it’s limerick-as-obituary time again …

When you ran past the track’s finish line
 The stopwatch read three-fifty-nine.
 Thus the four-minute mile
Was beaten in style,
But now, sadly, you’ve run out of time

 

 

 

One should not simply gloss over these things…

We’re soon to undergo a kitchen refurbishment that entails among the many other things you would expect:

• a wall to be knocked through;
• the replacement of two hot water cylinders and five (yes, five) cold water storage tanks by a single pressurised cylinder system;
• sunken LED lights to be fitted in the ceiling.

Naturally, we’re getting the professionals in, but we still have to do some preparatory work.

The plaster work around the knocked-through wall and the ceiling will need to be made good after the rest of the works are finished. That means we have to strip the existing wallpaper and ceiling paper back to the plaster before the professionals start.

That has been easier said than done. It turns out the walls had wallpaper on top of lining paper (no problem there) on top of lining paper on top of paint on top of wallpaper on top of some Victorian laquer on top of wallpaper, and then the plaster.

The lacquered layer has been particularly difficult to remove, but that pales into insignificance compared to the ceiling where we had textured paint on wallpaper on paint on lining paper. With no way to score through the textured paint, it has been hell to strip (with the job still unfinished as I write – three days solid work so far).

So, in ‘honour’ of all those DIY handymen that repeatedly paper or paint over the existing decoration instead of doing a PROPER job, I give you:

I’m not a DIY master
And progress could surely be faster.
But the problem I have
Is the handyman chav
That put artex on paper on plaster!

(rant over)

Don’t count your chickens …

Harland Sanders was the ‘Colonel’ that founded the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise (Kentucky Colonel is a non-military, honorary title bestowed by the eponymous state on notable citizens). Yet despite having worked for the business after he sold it, Sanders ultimately denounced the impact of cost-cutting on the quality of its product.

That’s something, perhaps, that KFC’s current bosses should have borne in mind when they replaced Bidfed Logistics, an experienced food haulage distributor, with DHL; a cheaper competitor that lacked experience of that specific sector.

It transpires that DHL was caught out by the fact that “getting fresh chicken out to 900 restaurants across the country is pretty complex”! Certainly, last week’s delivery failures that resulted in the subsequent closure of most of KFC’s UK outlets demonstrated the maxim that you get what you pay for.

To add to their woes, it now it seems that the local council authority could easily have closed down DHL’s one and only chicken distribution warehouse on health and safety grounds because the company had failed to register it as a cold-storage facility!

I wonder if KFC had all that in mind when declaring that it had “specifically chosen DHL for its reputation of ‘innovation in logistics’ across other industries”?

Here’s what I think:

There once was a culinary farce
‘Cos chicken deliveries were sparse.
The folk at Kentucky
Said they were unlucky.
But really? Unlucky? My a**e!