A laying on of hands…
It seems that a modern-day ‘Mrs Doyle’ took her devotion to the Pontiff a bit too far this week and was literally slapped down when she tried to get her hands on him.
The pugilistic Pope Francis later apologised, but I think it was a very human response, so good for him!
It also spawned this…
In a slugfest that soon spawned a trope
Twas Ali who once Roped-a-Dope
But those days are gone
‘Cos the game has moved on
To one where you now Grope-a-Pope!
Veni. Vidi. Ego deditionem!
On quizzing…
If barking up the wrong tree, backing the wrong horse, being wide of the mark or pi***ng into the wind scored points, I’d be a record-breaker. This applies especially to the Royal Statistical Society’s Christmas Quiz.
I ask myself how that it is
I’ve come over in all of a tizz.
The answer’s statistical,
– Analytically mystical –
It’s the annual RSS quiz!
It’s beginning to look a lot like Excess…
It’s that time of the year again and Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas in the Piscibus household without me bemoaning the rampant over-commercialisation of the festive season. So here goes…
‘Tis the season, they say, to be jolly
And for halls to be decked-out with holly,
But there’s no more Divinity
Just the epitome
Of a monsterous Yuletide folly.
It’s interesting that the prospect of being served caviar, the roe of female fish, sends some folk into paroxysms of gustatory delight whereas the thought of eating cod milt (male roe) usually evokes a rather different reaction (for the record, I’d avoid either!).
‘Disgust’ was apparently the reaction in a recent segment of James Corden’s Late, Late Show. Former paramours Harry Styles and Kendall Jenner were obliged to ask each other ‘awkward’ questions. The forfeit if Styles refused to answer Jenner’s question was to sample a plate of cod milt.
Styles chose to forfeit when Jenner asked which of the songs on his last album were about her.
But I have a question too. Most people think of ‘roe’ as fish eggs, so I just wonder how many people have enjoyed cod roe as a kind of caviar for the proletariat without realising that if the product’s packaging said ‘soft’ roe, then what they were buying was, in fact, milt?
Just asking!
A girl that he once used to date
Challenged Harry to eat something he’d hate.
So he went at full tilt
And ingested the milt
Of a codfish served up on a plate.
A final flood of colours
We’ve recently said adieu to a quartet of well known faces in the UK: Gary Rhodes: Jonathan Miller, Clive James and, most recently, Bob Willis. It was the latter two that most engaged me over the years.
Celebrity chefs like Rhodes are not my ‘thing’ and Miller may have been an incredible polymath, but I found him a bit too full of himself to warm to (and according to the BBC’s obituary of him, he was also “famously cantankerous and grumpy, and on occasions devastatingly rude”, so not my tas de thé).
But, to a cricket-watching teen in the 70s (whole summers of free-to-air test matches on the tele!), Willis was a fast bowler who was always worth a spell. And although England’s 1981 series win against Australia is known as Botham’s Ashes, Willis’ 8-43 in the third test after England had been forced to follow on remains firmly lodged in cricketing folklore – the stuff of legends! (If my last boss was to read that sentence I can only imagine the look of contemptuous bewilderment on her face as she tried to fathom what on earth it means!).
Clive James was altogether different. His ‘bouncers’ were not hurled the length of a cricket pitch, but fashioned from words with a turn of phrase that would take out the middle stump of any conceit and pretence whilst standing in awe of his own literary heroes.
He could also bowl a verbal googly if required and although he started out as a literary critic, it was as a TV critic that he bowled to more popular acclaim. Both in writing and onscreen he never failed to delight in wordsmithing his take on the sometimes ludicrous world of the box in the corner of the lounge.
His autobiographical ramblings were humorously illuminating and clear evidence that unlike the Jonathan Millers of this world, he never took himself too seriously. Nevertheless, he never feigned gormlessness or a lack of intellect:
“I see the pain on your face when you say the word intellectual, because it has so many syllables in it.”
I wonder what the critic in him would make of this (not much, I suspect) …
There once was a literary critic
Whose words were quite sybaritic,
But sadly for Clive
He’s no longer alive
Cos his B-cells became lymphocytic.
Postscript: As it’s getting on for Christmas (again) it’s time for me to look back (again) to the story of Lovell’s bride. It’s traditional and it’s here…
The actress formely known as Demelza…
Anyone who is familiar with the tosh served up in this blog will be aware that I batted for Team Demelza in the maelstrom that was her relationship with Ross in TV’s most recent serialisation of Winston Graham’s Poldark novels (I even once managed to find a rhyme for ‘Demelza’ for one of the ALAWs).
Like a lot of TV productions it went on for one series too many, particularly as the final run was not based on Graham’s writings, but upon an interpolation of events that bookcased a gap in the timeline of Graham’s stories. Nevertheless, I was concerned to see that the newly-invented storyline obliged Demelza to frown just as much as she did in the earlier series. I wonder if Eleanor Tomlinson, who played Demelza, would rather her next TV role generated laughter lines rather than fixing for eternity Demelza’s knitted brow!
Which brings me to the BBC’s new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. The series’ show-writer, Peter Harness, is on record as saying that it is “not massively faithful” to Wells’ book. “Not massively faithful” – a bit like Ross, then, in his relationship with Demelza – and, “yes”, its heroic, newly-minted and independent lead, Amy (for Tomlinson is she) frowns rather a lot too. Well, if your world was being invaded by extra-terrestrials, I suppose you would.
I’ve only seen the first episode of The War of The Worlds, and I’m struggling to come to terms with Demelza-as-Amy. Tomlinson’s striking looks and the shared independence and resilience of her character portrayals make one wonder just how the heck Demelza ended up in early-Edwardian Surrey after last being seen in late-18th Century Cornwall!
Please, I would ask, do not blame me
When I say that it’s all cockamamie
The red hair’s the same,
But not so her name
‘Cos Demelza has turned into Amy!
Postscript: Me and Demelza…
A dietary disordure!
A young dog’s perspective on the uniform sapidity of ovine feculence…
A puppy was heard to proclaim:
“I’m a collie and Callie by name.
Though I travel all over
And ramble like ‘Rover’,
I find sheep sh*t tastes always the same!”
… and pigs might fly!
Well, there’s a surprise! A visit to the matriarch in Kendal and it hasn’t yet rained. Blue skies, light cloud and a lazy wind, BUT NO RAIN!
A Cumbrian once opened his eyes
And beheld an almighty surprise,
‘Cos the weather weren’t mizzlin
(that’s ‘misty and drizzling’! )
As he stared at the clear blue skies!
Close the door when you leave…
I had a choice of subject to return to for today’s ALAW: our errant South Aberdeen MP, Ross Thomson, or the Victorian horror that is Jacob Rees-Mogg. What a pair!
Rees-Mogg demeaned the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire this week by implying they didn’t use common sense, like he would have done, after being advised to stay put by the fire service rather than immediately evacuating their flats in the burning tower block. That was not only hugely insensitive, but also spoke volumes of an apparent self-entitled belief that victims have only themselves to blame, whether it is in a tragedy such as Grenfell or those who are less fortunate in society having not had the life chances of the Rees-Moggs of this world.
But the ALAW isn’t about him. I’ve chosen instead to return to the public embarrassment that is our MP here in South Aberdeen.
As an earlier post related, an MP (now known to be Labour’s Paul Sweeney) was wholly dissatisfied with the Parliamentary authority’s response to Thomson’s alleged grope-induced eviction from Westminster’s Stranger’s Bar in February this year. Consequently, he decided to lodge his own complaint about a separate incident in the same bar in which he claimed a drunken Thomson had groped him too. Thomson’s denials of impropriety have since been described as ‘jaw-dropping’ due to the number of witnesses to the alleged act and, again dissatisfied with the Parliamentary authority’s response and the likelihood of Thomson standing for re-election in the forthcoming general election, Sweeney went public with his allegation earlier this week.
As a result, Thomson has now stood down as the Conservative candidate for South Aberdeen. Did he jump or was he pushed by the local Conservative association? I guess we’ll never know for sure, but the fact that on the day after his withdrawal we received an election pamphlet from him suggests, to my mind at least, that he was pushed. I suspect he constituency association thought, like me, that he stood no chance of being elected again.
The pamphlet itself boasted of how hard Thomson had worked for his constituents. That was rich coming from one of the most ardent Brexiteers in the Conservative party ‘representing’ a constituency that voted strongly to remain. Elected members can, of course, choose to pursue their own perspective over that of their constituency, that happens with MPs of all political persuasions, but coming from someone that repeatedly makes the news headlines seemingly as a drunken reprobate, it rather sticks in the craw. We shan’t miss him.
Our MP has decided to go,
Lick his wounds and then to lie low,
But in truth, dear Ross,
You’ll be of no loss
So goodbye, toodle-oo, cheerio!
Jacqueline got a medal FFS!
I was invited back to my old workplace last week because a recent retiree from its library service was to be presented, unbekownst to her, with an Imperial Service Medal for meritorious service.
Her closest colleagues had advised that she would not want a big fuss to be made, so just a few past and present compadres were asked along to an informal presentation and I was chuffed to be one of them.
Although, formally, the medal is awarded for meritorious service, the reverse side of the medal is inscribed For Faithful Service, (so that’s what FFS stands for in text talk😉) but, as well as the inscription, the reverse bears the image of a bloke ‘in the altogether’, which begs the question as to exactly what service was rendered? I suspect that, as always, what happens in the library will stay in the library!
So, in honour of Jacqueline IMS, I give you…
There once was a woman, quite headstrong,
Whose work in a library was lifelong,
But she did it so well
That on her farewell
She received the Imperial gong!”.
You must be logged in to post a comment.