A limerick a week #60

Ordure, Ordure!

If you are old enough, you will remember The Two Ronnies TV show when the titular duo were at the peak of their fame. You might even remember the mini-serial that threaded through their shows in 1976: The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town.

I thought about that when new episodes started to appear in the current soap opera surrounding the pervasive and inappropriate behaviour of powerful men in the Palace of Westminster. Each new instalment seems to introduce another ‘actor’ in the risible life of what passes for the UK Parliament and its band of lecherous cronies. Only, now, the name of the mini-series has changed as we are beginning to find that the miscreants are well-known to the gossip-mongers of the Westminster village (and the Parliamentary whips).

In fact, they are so well-known that some have been given their own nicknames. So what should our mini-series be called? How about The Phantom Taxi Tickler of Old London Town, a phantom whose modus operandi is to accost fellow passengers in the back of a London cab (where, of course tickler is a mere euphemism).

Or could it be the Phantom Lift Lunger of Old London Town, whose speciality is to lunge at otherwise unaccompanied women in elevators? Apparently the Lift Lunger is so well-known for his misdemeanours that young women are advised never to be with him if otherwise unaccompanied. It makes you wonder what they mean when they talk about being ‘elevated’ to the House of Lords.

(Unfortunately, Happy Hands does not fit into the standard Two Ronnies title, so we would have to re-phrase it slightly, Happy Hands: The Phantom of Old London Town and that just doesn’t work, does it?)

The thing is, if the offenders are so well-known then why has nothing been done about it until now other than to give them alliterative nicknames? Why have shameful (or worse) behaviours been allowed to continue until they become almost institutionalised when they could, and should, have been nipped in the bud? Time for a clear-out methinks.

Meanwhile, here is this week’s limerick:

You don’t need a magician to conjure
A scandal to wantonly plunge a
Patriarch-ridden
Political midden
Into ordure; just ask the Lift Lunger.

Postscript: Jo Brand showed how to nip things in the bud this week when calling out the all-male panel on Have I Got News For You this week when it made rather too light of sexual harassment. It’s not often that you see the likes of Ian Hislop with his tail firmly between his legs. A quietly-stated but very powerful intervention from her.

(And talking of Hislop, “yes” I do know that this post’s heading is not original. It originates from Hislop’s periodical: Private Eye.)

Quotes that made me laugh #45

Only time will tell … 

Years ago on our pre-having-a-family mega-blowout holiday to the Antipodes, we crossed the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand. On the approach to landing in Christchurch the (Aussie) pilot reminded us of the time difference between the two countries and also added:

“Turn your watches back two hours … and your calendars 30 years!”

At the time he was right. All the cars we saw were from the 1960s and apart from the adreneline junkies’ Nirvana at Queenstown, the country had a definite retro feel to it. (I’m told that’s no longer true!)

I was reminded of that quote yesterday when I came across comedian/writer/director David Schneider’s autumnal advice on turning our clocks back to daylight saving time – funny, but a little too close to home:

Seems about right!

Postscript: The easy way to remember when the clocks go forward and when they go back is via the mnemonic “spring forward, fall back”, just as Firstborn does when she tries to get up in the morning!

Quotes that made me laugh #43

Strong and Stable Wrong and Incapable

After Theresa May’s cataclysmic speech at the Conservative Party’s annual conference, this quote from Alexander Armstrong on HIGNFY made me laugh:

Theresa May’s premiership has been under threat for a while, but this must be the first time that the coughing has been the final nail.

This made me laugh as well …

… and so did this:

Apparently our Prime Minister thought that people wouldn’t be amused by the P45 prank. Methinks she’s a tad out of touch!

Vans of mash destruction

My microcamper is ready to collect! It is a Hillside ‘Dalbury’ conversion based on a Nissan NV200 (see posts passim) and I’m soon off to Derby to take ownership. Insurance is sorted (at not too bad a price) and I’ve already bought my first add-on, a sticker for the back …

Road.cc's answer to the HGV 'stay clear' posters
Road.cc’s answer to the HGV ‘Cyclists Stay Clear’ stickers. Coming soon to a campervan near you!

It’s completion was three months later than anticipated due mostly to Nissan’s extended lead time for delivery to Hillside, and that means half the summer has passed without it, but I’m already looking forward to its first outing to the west coast at the end of July; a short photography trip with a few friends from the RGU B&W film photography course (staying in a bunk house though, not the van). We’re off to Applecross so it also gives me a chance to recce the Bealach na Bà; the bike’s going too but I’m not intending to attempt to cycle over the pass on this trip!

Meantime, those friendly folk at the Daily Mash have a few words to say about campervans (a few pompous mobile home owners on one of the ‘anorak’ forums took these articles literally, not realising that the Mashters are satirists – sad really).

Postscript: Based in Derby, Hillside names its various camper conversions after towns within the county of Derbyshire, hence the ‘Dalbury’. Forme, a Derbyshire manufacturer of bicycles does the same with its products which is why the Forme road bike that I won a couple of years ago is called the ‘Longcliffe’. Good job neither were named after Fanny Avenue, (Killamarsh), Spanker Lane, (Nether Heage) or Butt’s View (Bakewell) all in Derbyshire, and I hope neither would live up to the name Knockerdown (Ashbourne) either.