A lovely quote from the late Jeff Astle, former West Brom and England footballer, as re-told by Geoff Hurst recently in the Scottish Daily Record (a lot of ‘context’ first, but well worth reading through to the punchline) …
“What a fantastic guy Jeff was – a real character. We were in the England squad together for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, which is 5000ft above sea level. The squad was there about seven or eight days and the Duke of Edinburgh was also over playing polo against the Mexicans. He indicated via his equerry that he wanted to see us after training.
We were playing Brazil at noon so were training at 12 o’clock in preparation for that. When the duke turned up after training and all 22 of us were lined up, he started walking along and talking to the players. But he got to the end and Jeff was slumped over a chair in a state of huge distress.
So the equerry says, ‘What’s the problem?’ Jeff replied, ‘We’ve only been here for about 10 days, we’re acclimatising, it’s 105 degrees on the thermometer there and I’m just absolutely knackered.’
He said, ‘The Duke’s been here two weeks, he’s played six or seven games of polo and he’s not reported any signs of struggling physically.’
Jeff looked up and said, ‘Have you asked how his f*****g horse feels?’”
Give me strength! B****y Anne’s gone off with the bleedin’ horse again!
Such is their meretricious nature that Theresa May and her conservative party are, as Terry Thomas would have said, “A shower. An absolute shower!”
Of the £1 billion recently promised by May to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to prop up her minority government, £910 million is to be spent over the next two years. Thereafter, their agreement will be reviewed with the likelihood of additional cash demands from the DUP.
In other words, over the next two years the votes of each DUP member of parliament will cost us £91 million. That is £8.75 million a week that could otherwise have been spent on the NHS or supporting the vulnerable within society across the UK as a whole. But of course, as Theresa May told our nurses (and as parroted by the Home Secretary Amber Rudd on welfare payments for the disabled) there is no magic money-tree for them, only, it seems, for a bunch of regressive, misogynistic, homophobic creationists with a dodgy history of supporting terrorists. As Bonaparte said: “En politique, une absurdité n’est pas un obstacle”.
So, not much humour in this week’s limerick …
There isn’t a magic money-tree, For nurses or the likes of you and me, But to stay in power That tawdry shower Of Tories found one for the DUP.
Postscript: this is not entirely true, of course. It neglects the magic money-tree available since 2009 for bankers (aka quantitative easing) that was used to get them off the hook for the financial meltdown that they caused while the dispossessed pay the price. Theresa May’s much vaunted Christian faith seems distinctly Old Testament: The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7.
So, Daniel Day-Lewis is about to retire. The man with three ‘Best Actor’ Oscars has decided that enough is enough. A shame really ‘cos he’s far from washed-up, but it does tempt me to list the actors of whom I’d like to see less (much less).
How about: Sylvester Stallone, Vin Diesel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, John-Claude Van Damme, Nicolas Cage (absolutely Nicolas Cage!), Steven Seagal, Demi Moore, Charlie Sheen, Orlando Bloom and, sadly given their recent output, Johnny Depp and Robert de Niro.
Anyway, this is about Day-Lewis, so here goes:
The actor that made ‘My Left Foot’ is Retiring (but not out of hubris). So to go with his fame He’ll now have a new name. It’s Daniel “I’ll-Call-it-a-Day” Lewis.
A few years ago, in a televised interview with Boris Johnson, Eddie Mair, a BBC presenter, deflated the current UK Foreign Secretary’s superficial buffoonery and set out some less-than-flattering instances of his behaviour.
Subsequently, at the start of this month, Johnson laid into what he contended to be the BBC’s bias when selecting its audience for the UK election Leaders’ Debate: “the most left-wing” he’d ever seen. (Incidentally, this was the debate that his party leader, Theresa May, refused to take part in presumably because, to borrow Margaret Thatcher’s phrase, she was “Frightened? Frit? Could not take it?”)
So, given the back story, yesterday’s radio interview that reunited Messrs Mair and Johnson was always going to be ‘a bit tasty’. And it was. It soooo was. I’d go as far as saying that it was the audio-equivalent of a bacon roll from Warwickshire’s Hatton Locks Café!
In an exchange that showed it was not only when bedding women-other-than-his-wife that Johnson loses control of his briefs, Mair skewered him on the policies within his party’s new legislative timetable. When, after a point that he couldn’t answer, BoJo tried to return to an earlier question that he had similarly failed on, Mair eviscerated him (figuratively, of course) and it is his quote that made me laugh:
“Well why don’t we do the questions in the order I’m asking them? It’s not a Two Ronnies sketch, you can’t answer the question before last.”
Postscript: BoJo was apparently the UK’s most popular politician a couple of years ago, his buffoonery clearly out-weighing any mendacity that Joe Public may have seen (although more insightful folk were always aware of the smokescreen behind which lay a different reflection). As The Poke’s website states: “Mair once called him as ‘a nasty piece of work’. Now he’s an ill-informed one”.
Sizergh Castle is a National Trust property near my childhood hometown of Kendal. I’ve known of it for decades and always thought the family that owned it from the 13th century until the 1950s was the Stricklands. However, I now know differently, at least for the latter years of the family’s history.
It seems they adopted a double-barrelled name in the 20th century. Consequently, this line from the family’s Wikipedia entry rather amused me when considering the phenomenon of nominative determinism:
“Their first daughter married Henry Hornyold [and] became known as Mrs Hornyold-Strickland …”
A Hornyold-Strickland
I could write the script myself …
Libidinous gentleman: “I say m’dear, are you one of the Hornyold-Stricklands?”
Prim young lady: “Oh no, sir. I’m chaste. ‘Tis my sister I think you’re after.“
When your better half decides to grow a couple of very tall sunflowers and wonders why they are still miniscule several weeks later …
Our sunflowers will soon blossom forth But I don’t think they’re going to morph From exceedingly small To seven feet tall ‘Cos the label that’s on them says ‘Dwarf’!
I told her that I’d never make fun of her sunflowers … I wouldn’t stoop so low 😎
I don’t know about you, but if I was referring to the different perceptions you get when looking at a tall, hefty bloke in baggy shorts and a loose-fitting t-shirt compared to his appearance when booted and suited, I would probably say something like:
“It’s interesting how that outfit makes him look slimmer.”
What I wouldn’t say is what my 89-year-old mother uttered:
“When he has trousers on he looks normal, but when he takes them he off looks huge.”
I wonder if there is a collective noun for a spate of deaths of the performers that comprised the theatrical and musical milieu of a chap’s childhood and teenage years. Of course it’s no surprise that a clutch of the memorable stars of one’s youth begins to fall off their perch when youth itself progresses to middle-age or beyond, but it does become a bit alarming when so many seem to expire in relatively quick succession.
Admittedly 2016 was a year in which quite a number fell off their perches, but saying “ta ra” to John Noakes, for whom the bell has just tolled at the age of 83, really does comprise an end-of-era farewell. For my generation Noakes spanned the televisual experience of TV’s golden years; years that just happened to coincide with our primary and secondary school days.
He was the centrepiece of Blue Peter’s classic line-up: Singleton, Purves, Judd and Noakes.
He was the bloke that was brought in after Christopher Trace was compelled to leave the show due to an extra-marital fling and his divorce (we youngsters couldn’t be exposed to such nefarious happenings).
He was the bloke that was bruised and battered when the bobsleigh he was in crashed when descending the Cresta Run.
He was the bloke that had his foot ‘trod on’ by a baby elephant that also peed on the studio floor (except he later confessed to making up the bit about having his foot stood on).
He was the bloke that jumped out of a plane five miles up with the RAF Falcons and entered the Guinness Book of Records as the first civilian to jump from that height (the British Parachute Association records that he made 27 jumps in 5 years, including a trip to France with 3 relative work jumps, 18 freefalls, 3 water jumps from a helicopter into Poole Harbour, 7 C130 jumps, two 4 ways and his record breaking jump with oxygen from 25,000 feet).
He was the bloke that climbed a ladder up Nelson’s column without any safety lines or harness; an endeavour that seemed anodyne to a youngster watching TV back then, but is gobsmackingly courageous and death-defying to the adult watching the YouTube footage of it today.
He was the bloke that spoke with the same sort of north-of-England accent as me at a time when TV presenters all spoke with received pronunciation.
Most of all, he was the bloke that you watched Blue Peter for, the class jester. What a guy!
The Clown Prince of north country blokes His passing most surely evokes A nostalgic air And quiet despair That we’ll never again ‘Go With Noakes’.
Theresa May has been the target of many negative comments due to her unwillingness to meet with the public during the current UK election campaign, instead surrounding herself with her acolytes in carefully stage-managed events. The general consensus is also that she has done herself no favours by refusing to take part in any of the televised election debates.
So, having made herself a target, it is no surprise that the estimable Victoria Coren-Mitchell had this to say about May when hosting a recent edition of Have I Got News For You:
“After Theresa May missed the debate, the Mirror referred to the absent Prime Minister as ‘Chicken Theresa May’. You can order ‘Chicken Theresa May’ in a restaurant near me. It’s thin-skinned, boneless and refuses to be grilled.“
So there we were, all packed and ready to leave with Priscilla for a three-day break in whichever part of Scotland was forecast to have the least rain and, on this occasion, it meant that we headed to the North Sea coast of northern Scotland.
Somewhere around Alness, my inamorata realised that she’d left her undies at home – not the ones she was wearing, obviously, just the extra pairs that she’d meant to pack. “But I counted them all out” came the plaintive cry, “I just forgot to pack them!”. Replacements were sourced and, by late afternoon, we found a wee gem of a campsite (with utilitarian loo and shower facilities) run by a surprisingly cheerful minister of the Free Church of Scotland at Portmahomack, a small village on the Tarbat Peninsula in Easter Ross.
The sunset was spectacular and set the scene for another successful outing in Priscilla.
Sunset over the Dornoch Firth as viewed from Portmahomack.
Here’s the limerick inspired by the trip:
A chorus of chortles and snickers Met the news that travelled as quick as The fleetness of light, Which made worse her plight, The day she lost sight of her knickers!
Postscript: We’re not supposed to refer to the Free Church of Scotland as the Wee Frees anymore as it is deemed offensive. That’s a shame because instead of calling the campsite ‘a wee gem …’ I could have called it ‘a Wee Free gem …’ with no offence intended. It’s odd how some nicknames can become institutionalised as an affectionate shorthand whereas others are deemed offensive. The Wesleys’ Holy Club at Oxford University was originally nicknamed the ‘methodists’, in a pejorative sense, as they lived by ‘the method’, only for them to take on the name as a badge of honour, thus becoming the Methodists as known today.
… and here’s a joke with Methodists in it:
How many Christians does it take to change a lightbulb?
Charismatics: Only one. Hands already in the air. Pentecostals:Ten. One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness. Presbyterians:None. Lights will go on and off at predestined times. Roman Catholic:None. Candles only. Baptists:At least 15. One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad. Episcopalians:Three. One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was. Methodists:Undetermined. Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, thermometer bulb, or tulip bulb. Church wide lighting service is planned for Sunday. Bring bulb of your choice and a covered dish. Lutherans:None. Lutherans don’t believe in change. Jehovah’s Witnesses:Three. One to screw in the bulb, and two to knock on your door and ask you if you’ve seen the light. Amish:What’s a light bulb?
