Tag: Limericks

Mulling over parenthood…

As first time visitors to the Isle of Mull, we took one of the tourist trips out to Staffa to see Fingal’s Cave, and to Lunga, one of the Treshnish Isles, to take part in some puffin therapy (highly recommended!).

On Lunga there were hundreds of puffins and, if you sat quietly near their burrows, they would happily ignore you as they went about plucking grass to line their nesting chambers.

We spent two entrancing hours on Lunga and then it was time to rejoin the boat along with our touristic confreres that included an overly loud family comprising Grandma, Grandad, Dad and two youngsters; a little brat and his older brother.

The two kids, particularly the youngest, were not really aware of any behavioural boundaries, and it was clear to see why. Their dad, you see, was inept. No other word suffices. It didn’t help that ‘Grandma’ constantly shrieked at the youngsters, so folk standing many yards away bore witness to two generations of adults with nugatory parenting skills.

Still, their performance inspired this:

You’d have thought he was trying to spoof us
When he named his kids Torven and Rufus
And they both misbehaved
‘Cos the pillock displayed
The parenting skills of a doofus!

An apology of a limerick

I’ve been on a busy narrowboat trip all week and with all the locks to work and time spent at the tiller (and pub), I’ve had little time to develop this week’s ALAW, so here is all I can offer this week:

A fellow once ran out of time
To produce his once-a-week rhyme
So he put it on hold
And will let it unfold
Next week (or the future sometime) .

Normal service will be restored shortly!

The world has held great Heroes,
As history books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!
(Kenneth Graham)

Last year we attempted to raise tadpoles in a large plastic trug (aka a big bucket). We succeeded up to a point, the point being where the tadpoles had developed legs and lay in the shallows. Unfortunately, despite some netting over the trug, the birds got ’em when, due to heavy rain, the water level rose to the level of the net.

Our tadpoles were from a local stream and were shoaling when we found them which means they were from toad spawn and not frog spawn. NB our trug is an isolated ‘pond’ so unless any toadlets had been liberated there would have been no risk of disease transmission from one natural site to another. Moreover, had any of the toadlets survived, they would in any case have been released at the same place at which the tadpoles had been collected.

So, lesson learned and this year we have an ACME anti-predator ‘cage’ around the trug and all we need now are the tadpoles. Naturally, we revisited our local ‘toad hall’ to look for them, but there was none for the simple reason that we were too early to find them. Instead we were faced with a positive orgy of toad procreation.

Interestingly, they were in a fairly discrete area (although none too discreet in their behaviour!) and there was no sign of any other amphibian bacchanalia either upstream or downstream.

Anyway, although there were no tadpoles and the puddock debauchery was still in full swing, there was some spawn of which we gathered a small quantity and we’ll try to hatch our own tadpoles this year.

So, without further ado, here is a down-market limerick about our tadpole hunt…

We went with the intention of bagging
Some tadpoles, and our search was unflagging,
But we set out too soon
(How inopportune!)
And found that the toads were still sha**ing!

A blonde walked in to a bar…

“Ouch!”, it was an iron bar!

I have two favourite jokes. The longest standing one is:

… and now to the football results. Real Madrid: 1, Surreal Madrid: Fish!

It’s no coincidence that it involves word play as that’s the kind of thing that I really like. My other favourite is one that I heard for the first time about 10 years ago. It, too, involves word play, but is also non-PC and ‘blonde-ist’; however I can’t help finding it funny, so please indulge me:

A blonde went in to a bar and asked for a double entendre…

… so the barman gave her one!

Okay, so you didn’t laugh or you’ve heard them before, but there is a reason for introducing them, the second one at least. That is to show the inspiration behind the last in my series of limericks inspired by Vision and Mission statements. This was my final entry to a senior colleague’s request that we provide a Vision or Mission statement in the form of a limerick. It leans heavily on the tradition of Britain’s Carry On film franchise of the 1960s and 70s, and is also the on that got me disqualified from the competition…

The ‘Carry On’ One

My boss is the facilitator
(Or should it be ‘originator’)
Of a Mission to define
A Visionary rhyme
So I’ll ponder and give her one later

Postscript: It’s Good Friday and I was amused by Tom Gauld’s view of one of the modern-day Easter traditions. Unlike his realisation of Werner Herzog, below, I did manage to return home eggless (for the simple reason that I’m still on a weight loss campaign and I know only too well that if I got one I’d scoff the lot – including the sweeties in the middle).

The Great Escape (not!)

Four years before I was able to retire, I genuinely believed that I was going to be successful in gaining voluntary early severance from my job. Unfortunately for me my application fell at a newly created final hurdle. That was disheartening because, several years earlier, the senior management ethos of the organisation had shifted from a collaborative one to one that was autocratic and authoritarian; something that was contrary to my modus operandi and that of most of my colleagues.

Being denied early severance was a blow that even a shift to part-time working never fully allayed and one result of it was that my performance dropped from ‘going the extra mile’ to being ‘just good enough’. But I shouldn’t have worried, because ‘just good enough’ was all our Director of the time wanted (see ALAW #132), so win-win for her!

Anyway, continuing on my recent theme of Vision and Mission statements in the style of a limerick, here is the third entry that I made to the competition organised by a senior colleague and one that is related to my endeavours to leave the organisation prematurely:

The Personal One

My Vision’s a life full of leisure
That’s something I really would treasure.
So the Mission for me
Is how to break free
And enhance my lump sum for good measure!

Postscript: Despite my failure to get time off for good behaviour, I do know how fortunate I was in being able to retire recently at the age of 60 on a pension based on my final salary. That is something that is less and less common in an era when too little attention is focused on the wreckers from both our major political parties who contributed to the downfall of final salary schemes over the last 30 years. Coupled to a neoliberal doctrine that fails to support anything other than poorly paid jobs for many and obscene salaries, bonuses, dividends and pensions for the few, I know just how lucky I was to be able to finish when I did!

Mission impossible…

Following last week’s treatise on vision and mission statements, this week’s limerick continues the theme in more salutary fashion. Just like the previous one (The Sort-of-Serious One) this week’s ALAW outlines the difference between a vision and a mission, but it also usefully reminds you that you need staff buy-in as well, otherwise it’s entirely pointless; much like the corporate bol**cks to which the narrative for ALAW #132 refers.

So here is the second of my ‘Vision and Mission’ competition entries of yesteryear (for readers south of the border, pish is used here in the Scottish colloquial sense and not as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary!):

The Salutary One

A Vision’s an overall wish
That a Mission seeks to accomplish,
But if they fail to enthuse
They are bugger-all use
And amount to a whole load of pish.

On art, limericks and the dead-hand of corporate bol**cks…

Some years ago, many of the artworks on the lecture theatre walls in the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen, were removed and replaced with posters of supposedly corporate relevance and interest. At about the same time, its then Director demanded that we should aim for our science “to be just good enough”.  Hey, guys, let’s forget about creating a vibrant place to work! Who needs the sort of workplace to which bright young scientists could be attracted or one in which we can help them to develop a fulfilling career in science? And let’s forget about organisational reputation too!

No wonder the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist laughed out loud when we told her that was our Director’s ‘vision’!

Oh, and by the way, f**k art!

I was recently reminded of all this when reading an article in the Graun entitled Is your boss a bit daft?. In my opinion, that would be a ‘yes’ when considering the senior leadership teams under which I worked in my later years, but fortunately for them the Graun also tells me that it’s possibly not their fault because:

organisations that emphasise image and symbolic manipulation can often reward smart people for not using their intelligence, creating a culture of “functional stupidity”. [the Graun’s article links to this amusingly-titled paper: Alvesson and Spicer, 2012, A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations]