A nurse in Clydebank, whose car had been wrecked by a drunk driver in between her 12 hour hospital shifts, was clearly moved by the offers of help that she received. Her comments made me laugh out loud just as I was taking a mouthful of tea. Laugh? I discovered a new word #snaughling
“I’m absolutely stunned, I’ve been greeting trying to wipe my snotters up through a mask from all the support.”
#peoplemakeglasgow #glasgowlife
Postscript: I do know that Clydebank is not in Glasgow! The hashtags are intended as generic for the city and the towns and villages in its wider environs. Please send complaints about their use in this context to AA (An@llyRetentivePedants Anonymous)
So, Honor Blackman has died at the age of 94 and, predictably, the obituary writers have majored on her rôle as Pussy Galore in in the Bond film franchise production of Goldfinger. Equally predictably so does the limerick that follows, but before that, one or two more substantive things that the obituaries reveal.
I like that she thought little of Margaret Thatcher: “She was a powerful figure, but she did damn all for empowering women. She didn’t surround herself with any women whatsoever or encourage women to come into politics or do anything in particular.”
I like that she felt strongly about tax exiles such as her Bond compadre Sir Sean Connery: “I disapprove of him strongly now. Because I don’t think you should accept a title from a country and then pay absolutely no tax towards it. He wants it both ways. I don’t think his principles are very high.”
(That is something of a volte face from her as, earlier, she had lauded him, not even calling him out over his public expression that “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with hitting a woman“.)
Post-war pic of Blackman (in sandals!) reliving her biker years as a wartime dispatch rider in London
I also quite respect the fact that she declined a gong as she felt it would have been hypocritical of her to accept one given her strong republican views, although, personally, I see shades of grey in the issue.
Here’s the limerick:
Double-O Seven could never ignore A Bond girl from out the top drawer, But he’ll no longer linger With the girl from Goldfinger. ‘Cos there is no more Pussy Galore.
So, we’re all in lockdown and socially isolated, the gyms are closed and it’s cold, wet and windy outside. How am I going to keep bike-fit?
You may remember the ‘Peleton’ advert from last Christmas in which a husband gave his wife a ‘smart’ bike trainer so that he could whole-heartedly patronise her and reduce her to a chattle. The whole tone of the advert was, at best, condescending, but was, in reality, closer to the Graun’s description of ‘sexist and dystopian’.
This is what another limericist, @Limericking, thought at the time:
A Peleton ad has made clear Just what it can do in a year. The Peleton wife Has a beautiful life And a general aura of fear
Apart from belittling your partner, the Peleton business model is based on a smart trainer that allows you to take part in live-streamed ‘group’ spin classes with other Peleton riders and to compete against them if you wish, and to access a library of recorded workouts too.
At nearly £2k for a Peleton bike and around £40 a month to subscribe to its service, it ain’t half pricey, and if you stop subscribing or the company folds then your bike’s USP (and usefulness) disappears too.
or
You can go (mostly) low tech and (mostly) free and hook-up an old road bike to an old ‘dumb’ turbo trainer.
A simple cadence sensor on the bike’s crank arm paired to the Cateye Cycle app on a smartphone allows you to monitor your revs whilst one of the many Global Cycling Network’s free YouTube training sessions puts you through your paces…
The old tech…
A 30 year old steel road bike, a Peugeot Optimum 14 (Reynolds 531 frame and forks, so a nice bit of retro kit) coupled to an equally old dumb trainer
The new tech…
The free Cateye Cycling app loaded onto a smartphone and paired to a cheap cadence sensor on the bike, and one of the Global Cycling Network’s YouTube training videos running on a tablet.
If you have a heartrate monitor, then you can pair that with the CatEye app too. There’s no power readouts unless your bike’s pedals have power meters incorporated and if, for example, you’ve subscribed to Zwift, then you have to guess how resistance will change according to terrain. Personally I’m happy to take the low tech approach outlined here for as long as I can’t get to my regular spin classes, but I’m happier still, on a fine day, to get out on the road itself!
Here’s the limerick:
A chap whose brain was quite numb Saw an advert, to which he’d succumb, For a very smart trainer, But he missed the disclaimer That the advert was utterly dumb!
Postscript#1: I was recently sent Jonathon Watson’s ‘Only an Excuse’ parody of the Peleton advert and, for once, he made me laugh…
(needed to be maximised on my android phone)
Postscript#2: For an authoritative review of Peleton vs ‘other’ smart bike approaches, this article is well worth reading.
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”.
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!
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.
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!”.
‘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
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!
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