Bill Hicks BBC Interview

This is a good one. "Can I recommend some jugglers, that you might like?"
Sorely missed.

Collecting Thoughts in a Jar

That's what this is......
A freak show...
weird specimens...
butterflies struggling on pins.

Interesting recording re. RL Stevenson

Here's a link to the Robert Louis Stevenson website, and a recording of his step-daughter relating the circumstances of his death in Samoa, in 1894.

Bit morbid, but interesting all the same.

What a catalogue of work he produced. The one that lives especially vividly in my mind, is Treasure Island, which I read frequently as a child.
The Hispaniola, Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, Long John Silver, Ben Gunn.....Blind Pew, and the Black Spot...

I'm sure it's obvious to most people but I've only just thought that Golding's Lord of the Flies was Treasure Island gone mad really.

Quote of the day - from Coleridge's Frost at Midnight

...again...it is a lovely poem though.


"Or of the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in quiet icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon."

I Worn My Elbows by Ivor Cutler

Coleridge Binge, and the smell of second hand books

I tend to go through obsessive phases with writers and at the moment it's Coleridge.

I'm not new to Coleridge. I went through a Romantic Poet phase about twenty years ago, and read everything I could lay my hands on by Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth and outriders such as Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt. It all felt very fresh and real, and easy to relate to. Sometimes linear time doesn't seem to matter at all.

At university I studied Mary Wollstonecraft. It was an extremely interesting time for women, but they were limited by their biology in a way that men obviously weren't. Crude methods of contraception at best. Dropping like flies due to ghastly puerperal complications. Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth to her daughter, also called Mary, who of course grew up to write Frankenstein and have, I would say, a pretty grim time as Shelley's wife. Who knows what she might have achieved had she lived? She'd already visited Paris during the revolution, and written several books.

Frost at Midnight appeals to me especially, because I love the imagery of ice and frost and also because Coleridge set it at the fireside in his "cottage", which sounds not dissimilar to my own pretty draughty ramshackle and tiny mid-19thC. home.

Here is a link to Coleridge's cottage.

I really like my copy of Coleridge's poems. It's very small, circa 1900, published by Harrap, with a lovely illustration from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. You can stick it in your pocket quite easily. I bought it in a second hand bookshop years ago for three pounds. Where have all the second hand bookshops gone? Ruined by Ebay, that's where. It's not the same, shopping for old books online - you have to hold a book in your hands and SMELL IT to know if you want it or not.

Quote of the Day (2) Coleridge - a fragment from the life of dreams

'Call it a moment's work (and such it seems),
This tale's a fragment from the life of dreams;
But say, that years matured the silent strife,
And 'tis a record from the dream of life.'

S.T. Coleridge, Phantom or Fact (1830)

Petula Clark: La nuit n'en finit plus

'Pet' Clark is 79 years old today! Such a great voice.

An even better Scots wurd o' th' day

Still on page 143 and I've happened upon an even better wurd.

Drabloch, n. refuse, trash, applied to very small potatoes and bad butcher-meat.

Gosh!

When does one ever encounter bad butcher-meat in Scotland? I ask you.

Scots wurd(s) o' th' Day - "Dow'd fish"

Continuing the piscine theme, today's wurd(s) is DOW'D FISH.


Dow'd fish, n. fish that has been drying for a day or two.

Fancy!

From page 143 of Chambers's Scots Dictionary, 1959 reprint of the 1911 edition.

The Viviparous Blenny, or 'Dornicle'

Re. my earlier post featuring the Scots word 'dornicle'- I have now got round to Googling the definition given in Chambers's Scots Dictionary, viz. 'the viviparous blenny'.

It's a fish, basically, also known as the viviparous eelpout.
It is also the only fish which suckles its young. Who knew?

If you'd like to learn more, you can Google it yourself or look here.

Life is full of shadows and light

Life is full of shadows and light. The worst shadow I've encountered is child abuse. It is the ultimate evil.
I saw on the news that the Catholic church can now be held responsible for the abusive actions of some of its employees - priests, and care home workers for example. I'm glad, but at the same time it makes me feel sick because it brings back so much.
I heard many accounts of child abuse as a psychotherapist. All of them were soul-destroying. Some of them involved the church, but most didn't. Most involved 'grandad', 'stepdad', 'daddy', 'mummy's new friend', or 'mummy'.

Family photographs of Army dads in their smart uniforms, with bonny blonde daughters who look just like their proud, blind wives.

Young children climbing out of windows and running through the snow, barefoot in their pyjamas, to get away from 'grandad'.

Single parents, targeted by sickos who pretend to be interested in the adult, but who are really after the little 'uns.

A GP coming in to my room, white-faced after examining a five year old who had clearly been raped. "But couldn't she have said no?" Hardly.

Yes - this is what happens in our communities every day - every day! and I'm not exaggerating. What kind of species are we?

I don't believe in 'the family'. Certainly not the nuclear version. It covers too many shadows with its bright shiny surface.

"Oh no - grandad would never....you're making that up 'slap'."

Too often the truth doesn't come out till many years later. There are far too many horrible old bastards sipping pints in their local "oh aye, he's a great lad, salt of the earth", and pinnacles of the local community hiding sordid secrets who never get called to account.

Disgusting. Is there anything we can do to stop it? Not really. Some adults are born to abuse, or at least are so bent out of shape that it seems that way, and the 'family' will mask it all. I'm fed up trying to understand the whys of it. They know it's wrong, and they still do it anyway because they have the power to terrify their victim into silence.
This is what I meant in an earlier post "Are we innately good?"
I'm tempted to think not any more, but I'm not a defeatist so am hanging on in there.

Scots wurd o' th' day - Hecklepins

Today's Scots wurd is 'hecklepins'.

It's a word I use quite a lot. I used it yesterday and someone - a "blog reader" as it happens - asked me what it meant.
So, here's a helpful definition from Chambers's Scots Dictionary.

Heckle-pins, n. the teeth of a 'heckle'.

As in, "Ah'm oan hecklepins waiting fur mu results frae the doactur."

Or, "Ah'm oan hecklepins till ma gas bill arrives, ah'm fair puggled wi' it ye ken."

Hope that helps!

It might help to know the definition of 'heckle'.

Heckle, n. a sharp pin; a hackle, a comb with steel teeth for dressing flax and hemp; a thorn in one's side - v. to dress flax with a 'heckle'; to cross-question a candidate for parliamentary or municipal honours at a public meeting; to examine searchingly; to scold severely; to tease, provoke.

Find these on p. 256 of Chambers's Scots Dictionary, 1959 reprint of the 1911 edition.

As hecklepins is quite a well-known 'wurd', I'll give another couple, which I've certainly never heard of never mind used. And can I reiterate - I do NOT make these up.

Fisty, n. a left-handed person

Fissle-fisslin', n. a faint rustling sound.

Both can be found on p. 175, ibid.

A few thoughts on Abjection and Last Tango in Paris

I went for a walk round a nearby loch this afternoon; it was cold and clear and the trees were beautiful after two nights of frost, so I was hoping to take some photos of the reflections in the still water.
But my camera wouldn't work. It's OK - it does that occasionally. Then I thought I might take a photo on my phone, but the battery was flat. Then I thought maybe it's just as well not to share. A beautiful afternoon goes deeper than memory - it goes into the soul and remains there as part of you even when you think you've forgotten all about it. A photograph can't begin to capture that.
Then, I saw two young hen pheasants at the roadside, dead. They'd been hit by a car, very recently. They hadn't been squashed, and there was no blood. The way they'd fallen, one had her head lying across the other's neck, in an attitude of complete abjection, eyes closed in submission to the inevitable. It reminded me of Holbein's Dead Christ. (see The Powers of Horror, by Julia Kristeva)
It cut me to the quick but it was easy to resist the crude impulse to shed a crass, bathetic tear. Those deaths were worth more than that.
I've been thinking about Julia Kristeva in another sense today. I was thinking about Maria Schneider, who starred in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. She died earlier this year, aged 58. She was 19 when she starred in that film, and from then on it defined her. If you Google her, "butter scene" is almost top of the list. She is quoted as saying (this isn't word for word) "Never take your clothes off for shiny-eyed middle aged men, especially if they say it's for Art". I've seen that film half a dozen times. I had an obsession with Marlon Brando when I was in my twenties, and saw everything he'd been in as often as I could. I haven't seen Last Tango for maybe fifteen years; I remember thinking Brando's performance was extraordinary. However, there was definitely something about the subtext which unnerved me, which I couldn't quite articulate at the time. I wanted to like Brando, I really did, and my sympathy was with him rather than Schneider's callow film-making boyfriend, but there was something horribly repellent about him.
I now think of the film as an unpleasant exercise in sadism, but I'd be interested to watch it again in case I'm wrong. Bertolucci made an effort to redeem it through intellectualising a basically tawdry premise; Maria Schneider as the centre of his stereotypical shiny-eyed middle-aged fantasy of no-strings no-holds-barred sex with an easily malleable and disposable stranger. Schneider as plastic doll, in other words. Brando, an only slightly less shiny eyed middleager, was playing both sides - only he was worse than Bertolucci because of his duplicity and because I am sure that he knew better but was too jaded to care very much.
What has this to do with Julia Kristeva? I haven't time to explain! She refused to accept the label of "feminist", which is precisely why I like her work so much, but her analysis of the male gaze surpasses anything else I've read. No polemic, no rigid position-taking, and that has to be good.
More *at some point*

Quote of the Day - WB Yeats

"Although I know when looks meet
I tremble to the bone
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone
For love is but a skein unbound
Between the dark and dawn..."

Verse one from Crazy Jane and the Journeyman, by WB Yeats (great title!)

Oban community fireworks fiasco

If you've never strolled along the Oban sea front of an evening, eating fish and chips while watching the gulls wheel high above the ferries and the fishing boats, and planning a trip to Mull, Iona and/or Staffa the next day - you've never really lived. South of France? You can keep it.

Scots Wurd o' th' Day - Dornicle

Haven't done Scots Wurd o' the' day for ages, as I mislaid my Chambers's Scots Dictionary. But now I've found it again.

Today's Scots wurd is "dornicle". It's a noun, apparently. The definition given is as follows: "the viviparous blenny".

I'll be honest - I'm none the wiser, and I can't be bothered Googling it at the moment. Might have a look later on.

Bill Hicks - Little Miracles

A Map of the Rocky Outcrop

Here's a map I made of the geography of the entire blog, as it exists visually in my head. I found it in a drawer just now as was looking for something else. I must have drawn it at least two years ago. I might try and do another one in felt tip so it's a bit clearer - for the Kindle and that, ken.

It's got the cliffs, the infra-inn, the Rocky Outcrop itself, the time-space continuum anomaly (we've all got one of those), the Old Rectory, the old coastguard hut, Overthere, smuggling ships, the Hulks, and so forth.

The Chanting Hordes return for Hallowe'en

"It's All Hallow's Eve, Geoffrey, when the dead rise from the grave and walk the earth."

"Brilliant. When's it over?"

"Don't be negative. I think we should just go with the gloomy vibe, Geoffrey. Let's kill everyone."

"Right. How will we do that?"

"We'll dig a big huge pit, and put lots of sharp sticks in it, pointy end up. Then we'll lure them all in, to their deaths."

"We can't possibly do that. It's a terrible plan."

"Why?"

"Because I can't be arsed sharpening sticks for hours on end. Besides, Who's "them"? And how would we lure them in, precisely?"

"Put a plate of sausage rolls and a coconut sponge in the middle. They'd all run for that willy nilly and without so much as a by your leave. Result. To be honest I don't know who "they" are though. You've got a "point" there. Ha ha. Oh dear - what's that awful moaning, wailing, dragging sound?"

"I think we MIGHT be about to find out....the chanting, puffa jacket-wearing hordes are back (see previous posts)...and they're heading our way. You get sharpening and I'll start digging - we've not got a second to lose - HURRY!!!!"

Sailing - a peom from Geoffrey

Sailing - a peom.

I want to voyage westwards
Into the setting sun
I want to live on apples
And mushrooms on a bun.

I want my boat to sail and sail
And never spring a leak
I want to sail forever
And never have to speak.

Ego? forget it.

I'm interested in tidal patterns - neap, high springs, syzygy and so forth, and was doing a search. "Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels, caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth." (from wikipedia)

Oh - syzygy. Yes. Quite. Well, it will take your mind off the price of gas, mince, biscuits, apples - everything, really. For a while.

What price your tiny little ego? I mean, not just yours, mine as well...

Is Everything an Illusion, and do we have souls?

"Are we safe?"
"No, of course not. Nobody's ever safe. You know that as well as I do. The membrane between life and Death is as fine as the caul on a new-born babe."
"Here we are, sitting comfortably by the fire, just had our supper, everything secure..."
"That's all by the by. Security is an illusion. The material world, as we perceive it, is an illusion. We - and I use the term merely because I can't think of another at the moment - are a collection - a confluence -of energy particles in a condition of flux. In fact, the only permanence, the only security, is flux."
"Is everything random then? Or is there an overall pattern? Look at that piece of driftwood for example. You can see how it's been shaped by its journey through the world. Where did it come from? We can only wonder. It was part of a tree, obviously. But was it part of the trunk, or a branch that fell off during a storm? Was it uprooted by a landslide, swept down to an estuary by a flooded river, and borne far out to sea on a Spring tide?"
"And then washed ashore and left high and dry by the ebb, ready for us to gather for our fire."
"Is that random? is it coincidence, or was it meant to be? And it's riddled with termite holes. It supported life, even in Death - like the story of the lion in the Bible."
"It's still supporting life. It's keeping us warm."
"I don't want to burn it now! I've grown fond of it now that I know it better. It seems like more than just a piece of wood. It's got a soul. I don't want to see it burning up and turning into ashes before my very eyes."
"Happens to us all Geoffrey. Might as well bite the bullet and face it."
"Do you think trees have souls Tuppy? Do WE have souls, come to that?"
"Trees probably do have them. You've probably got one. If not your own one, then somebody else's. I've not got one - I swapped mine a while back, for some decent sausages, remember? I did a deal with Death. I was starving. Well, peckish."
"Do you regret it now, even just a little bit?"
"No, can't say I do Geoffrey. I didn't know I had it in the first place."

The Ladykillers "Such pretty windows."

Mrs Wilberforce aka Katie Johnson, and Alec Guinness resplendent in his wig and teeth. Marvellous.

Byron on Reviews

Byron's thoughts on reviews,  as expressed in a letter he wrote to Shelley in 1821, following the death of Keats. I gather that Shelley must have informed him of the death, and that it had been perhaps hastened or even caused by distress about bad reviews. Keats died of consumption, and state of mind could certainly have affected his physical resilience, as of course it can with any illness.
Bear in mind that Byron himself had recently described Keats' poems as a kind of "mental masturbation" and a "Bedlam vision brought on by too much raw pork and opium". (see my post from a day or two back). Personally, I might take that as a compliment. But I'm not Keats, am I? He was aiming for the sublime.
And it occurs to me - how much raw pork is "too much", exactly? And why would you eat it, in any quantity? I've eaten underdone chops before, and felt a bit 'dicky' after, but it was entirely accidental and I wouldn't say they were 'raw', quite.  More on that later.
To continue.
Byron writes to Shelley, "I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats - is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing....I read the review of Endymion in The Quarterly. It was severe, - but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.
I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress - but not despondency nor despair. I grant that these are not amiable feelings; but in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena.
"Expect not life from pain nor danger free,
Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee."

Hmm... he's got a point - but he's being more than a tad harsh, I'd say. One of the critics had described Endymion as a work of imperturbable, drivelling idiocy. Someone else who sounded like a towering snob had advised the non-Eton/Harrow educated Keats to abandon poetry and go back to his work as an apothecary.

All very well for his Lordship, swimming up and down the Grand Canal with his menagerie and his club foot and all.

So if anyone derides my - or your - work, do remember that they were wrong about Keats.

The genius of Colette

My all-time favourite writer is Colette.

I love how she lived her life, and I love that her writing - and she was so prolific - reflects it.

I don't really like the Cherie/Colette Willy stage. I love her later work though, when she'd broken out of that first stifling marriage. I say stifling, but perhaps what came out of those years of writing servitude was the development of her own superb writing discipline.

I have a couple of favourite stories. One is The Kepi. I'm totally fixated on the ageing female at the moment (being one myself) and for me this encapsulates a certain stage in life that cannot be glossed over or denied. The thing I like best about Colette is that she doesn't flinch.

Another favourite is her novella The Cat. Colette writes superbly about cats and they feature in many of her tales. She doesn't anthropomorphise, but they are just as important as characters in her stories as humans. In The Cat, a woman becomes furiously jealous of her lover's cat. And to be honest, you can understand why. Can one be too "fond of animals"? Personally, I think not, but many people would disagree, and in this complex tale there is a distinct whiff of the unsavoury about their relationship. The cat is also a symbol of his lost childhood and independence and his uncertainties as he hovers on the brink of family life. The woman will never possess him until the cat goes. And the cat, Saha, has no intention of letting that happen - not while she knows she is still loved.

Here's a quote. "Alain looked up; nine stories up, in the middle of the almost round moon, the little horned shadow of a cat was leaning forward, waiting."

"A small shadowy blue shape, outlined like a cloud with a hem of silver, sitting on the dizzy edge of the night..."

"...at the age where he might have coveted a little car, a journey abroad....Alain nevertheless remained the-young-man-who-has-bought-a-little-cat."

"Saha's beautful yellow eyes, in which the great nocturnal pupil was slowly invading the iris, stared into space, picking out moving, floating, invisible points."

Rick Wakeman - Excerpts From The Six Wives Of Henry VIII

Aaarrgghh! I said I'd post more prog and for me this just screams PRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In a very loud voice.
Actually, it's not that bad when you listen to it (it gets unbearable after 3 mins. though - you have been warned). Well, not quite as bad as you'd reasonably expect given the size of his "equipment", the length and weird silkiness of his hair, and the *gulp* cape. I think Wakers now lives on the Isle of frigging Man and likes a game of golf FFS.
Rock ON!!!!!

Another quote of the day - Byron

Presently re-reading Byron - A Self-Portrait, edited by Peter Quennell.

It's a brilliant read. Really fresh and entertaining. It's a collection of letters and diaries, and is never, ever dull. You get accounts in his own words of the famous drinking out of a skull, the menagerie, the countless love affairs, Shelley's death, the lot.

Here's an interesting excerpt from a letter he wrote to legendary publisher John Murray.

"Mr Keats, whose poetry you enquire after, appears to me what I have already said: such writing is a sort of mental masturbation....neither poetry nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium."

Raw pork??

And "I have been reading Grimm's correspondence. He repeats frequently, in speaking of a poet, or a man of genius in any department.......that he must have une ame qui se tourmante, un esprit violent. How far this may be true I know not; but if it were, I should be a poet "per excellenza"; for I have always had une ame, which not only tormented itself but everybody else in contact with it; and un esprit violent, which has almost left me without any esprit at all.

Great reading.

Quote of the day

"The word is not the thing, but a flash in whose light we perceive the thing." (Diderot)

Ramble On - Led Zeppelin

The ultimate autumn song. Leaves are falling all around, etc..
Far, far better band than the Beatles, in every respect.
Compare the present day Robert Plant to McCartney. I think I need say no more.

Monty Python - Nudge Nudge

I LOVE this sketch. Know wot I mean?

Cake of the Week - the fudge doughnut

This week's featured cake is the fudge doughnut. This one was purchased first thing this morning from the local bakery. It was wedged behind a metal support in the glass display case, and the shop assistant was unable to dislodge it with tongs - she had to fling them aside and resort to "bare hands". Age isn't a measure of codgerliness but this lady was well on in years - even older than me by quite a long way. I would happily nominate her for "codger of the week" - my next feature.

I seem to have survived with no ill eff-e-e-e-c-c-c-.....................

Geoffrey goes insane

"I want to paint with my own shit," raved Geoffrey. He was still in his "art" phase. "I want to be primal. No boundaries. No staid, dull old conventions..."



"No consideration for other people," I muttered tetchily, wondering vaguely if Tuppence had managed to loot a strait jacket this time. He was due back from his ram raid any minute. "Who do you think you are, Geoffrey? R.D. frigging Laing?"



"His theories about family and society have been completely discredited," said a smug voice from just outside the window, which was permanently stuck open two inches at the bottom due to an ill-fitting sash. "Pills are the answer nowadays."



"You and your pills can do one, Wilson," said Geoffrey loftily. "We're on a different level here. We're entering a whole new plane."



"Oh yes. Has your old one lost a wing or something? Holes along the fusillage perhaps? Or just metal fatigue? " sniggered Wilson. Yes - the Ghastly Doctor Wilson (who would win Gold every time if Boring People to Death with your Opinions was an Olympic sport) had arrived just as Geoffrey was going spectacularly bonkers (if going Bonkers was an Olympic sport...etc.)

"I'll just take your blood pressures while I'm here," bustled Wilson officiously. "Where's my sphyg?"

"Several inches up your rectum like it should be, I hope," I sneered. I don't like sneering, but sometimes I can't help myself.

"Found it! it was round my neck all the bleedin' time...did you see what I did there? James Robertson Justice. He's my role model."

"I'd say you were more of a Kilmore myself. With your best mate being the Grim Reaper and all. It's like having our very own Burke and Hare."

"I'll take that as a compliment. We're all doomed you know. Doomed!"

"John Laurie. Yes, we know. We're all speeding willy nilly down the steep steep hill to hell in a ricketty handcart. Might as well enjoy some simple pleasures before we hurtle face first into the fiery lake. I mean it Geoffrey - crack open another crate of meths. I could really use a stiff one with a decent head on it. And you could do with getting some colour in your cheeks and all matey."

Once we had thrown some boiling fat over Wilson's clammy, sphyg-clutching fingers as they groped their evil way towards our upper arms, we sat down in our usual armchairs and sipped our meths as the screams died away and he slipped into unconsciousness.

"Nice with a slice of lemon and an olive, isn't it Tuppy."

"No. I hate froot. It makes me vom like a bastard. You aren't really going to paint with your own shit, are you Geoffrey? It smells pretty bad in here as it is."

"Nah. Changed my mind. I'm going to be a performance artist instead. Going to enact a murder - a real one mind - and film it in black and white "slo-mo". It'll look dead classy."

"Sounds like a plan Geoffrey. I like a snuff movie myself but it HAS to be in full technicolour. I wish you all the best with it. Who's the victim going to be, by the way? AAAaarrgghhh!!!!!!!!"

Geoffrey goes insane

"I want to paint with my own shit," raved Geoffrey. He was still in his "art" phase. "I want to be primal. No boundaries. No staid, dull old conventions..."



"No consideration for other people," I muttered tetchily, wondering vaguely if Tuppence had managed to loot a strait jacket this time. He was due back from his ram raid any minute. "Who do you think you are, Geoffrey? R.D. frigging Laing?"



"His theories about family and society have been completely discredited," said a smug voice from just outside the window, which was permanently stuck open two inches at the bottom due to an ill-fitting sash. "Pills are the answer nowadays."



"You and your pills can do one, Wilson," said Geoffrey loftily. "We're on a different level here. We're entering a whole new plane."



"Oh yes. Has your old one lost a wing or something? Holes along the fusillage perhaps? Or just metal fatigue? " sniggered Wilson. Yes - the Ghastly Doctor Wilson (who would win Gold every time if Boring People to Death with your Opinions was an Olympic sport) had arrived just as Geoffrey was going spectacularly bonkers (if going Bonkers was an Olympic sport...etc.)

"I'll just take your blood pressures while I'm here," bustled Wilson officiously. "Where's my sphyg?"

"Several inches up your rectum like it should be, I hope," I sneered. I don't like sneering, but sometimes I can't help myself.

"Found it! it was round my neck all the bleedin' time...did you see what I did there? James Robertson Justice. He's my role model."

"I'd say you were more of a Kilmore myself. With your best mate being the Grim Reaper and all. It's like having our very own Burke and Hare."

"I'll take that as a compliment. We're all doomed you know. Doomed!"

"John Laurie. Yes, we know. We're all speeding willy nilly down the steep steep hill to hell in a ricketty handcart. Might as well enjoy some simple pleasures before we hurtle face first into the fiery lake. I mean it Geoffrey - crack open another crate of meths. I could really use a stiff one with a decent head on it. And you could do with getting some colour in your cheeks and all matey."

Once we had thrown some boiling fat over Wilson's clammy, sphyg-clutching fingers as they groped their evil way towards our upper arms, we sat down in our usual armchairs and sipped our meths as the screams died away and he slipped into unconsciousness.

"Nice with a slice of lemon and an olive, isn't it Tuppy."

"No. I hate froot. It makes me vom like a bastard. You aren't really going to paint with your own shit, are you Geoffrey? It smells pretty bad in here as it is."

"Nah. Changed my mind. I'm going to be a performance artist instead. Going to enact a murder - a real one mind - and film it in black and white "slo-mo". It'll look dead classy."

"Sounds like a plan Geoffrey. I like a snuff movie myself but it HAS to be in full technicolour. I wish you all the best with it. Who's the victim going to be, by the way? AAAaarrgghhh!!!!!!!!"

Gravy of the week - Bisto beef.

This week's featured gravy is Bisto (beef flavour).

It's extremely tasty.

Why sweat over a pan? That's never a pleasant thing to do under any circumstances.

Simply Boil a kettle and make Bisto! Then pour it over your spuds or chips or sausages or all three - and if there's any left in the jug just drink it for afters.

Then get one of these blood pressure-o-meters and marvel as the needle zooms to undreamt of heights.

Not that I'm saying that there is a connection between Bisto, salt levels, and high blood pressure - no. Not at all. Bisto is a tasty beverage-cum-condiment and an asset to any gourmet's kitchen.

Some more jokes from Les Dawson.

I often browse through Les Dawson's Secret Notebooks. Here are a couple of lines that made me smile - like a crack in a septic tank as Les would say.

"Did you ever see the size of his verucca?" "No, I didn't know him that well."

"I'll have you know I'm only twelve stone and some pounds." "How many pounds?" "Sixty two."

"...[Bert]...hasn't performed since Dunkirk. He says it makes the shrapnel move."

re.holidays..."Did you have the shish kebabs?" "From the moment we arrived. Bert blamed it on the way they cooked the chips."

My parents were determined that I should carry on the family tradition of music. For seven years I sweated away on the piano stool. Then things improved - my dad bought me a piano.

My great aunt Margaret, just before she died at the ripe old age of ninety eight, called me to her bedside and whispered, nephew, if you ever fail to get a laugh as a comedian I shall turn over in my grave. That was ten years ago. Yesterday I attended a seance in Birmingham. The medium went into a deep trance and said, 'I don't know for whom this concerns, but I'm getting a very strange message through from someone called Spinning Maggie.'

All from Les Dawson's Secret Notebooks, selected and introduced by Tracy Dawson. £9.99 from JR Books Ltd.

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - "Oh Well", Live@ Music Mash 1969

Love Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. Sheer class.

The Meaning of Existence (oh why not just say life) captured in a sentence #2

I don't love you any more - I haven't for years - but I'll assist you to the toilet because I won't be able to cope with the guilt if I don't.

The Meaning of Existence, captured in a sentence #1

I still love you even if you're old and you can't manage the toilet.

Name this tune in one

#Err...#......got it yet?

Here's a clue. It's nothing out of the "hit parade". Hit parades for the last twenty nine years actually. There you go.

Here's a two and a three. #Err...err....errrrr........#

Prize is, as ever, a year's supply of pork scratchings made from real pig, but this time instead of all the bristles being removed by my own gnarled arthritic fingers, the pigs were waxed. Much simpler.

Pinky favoured the vajazzle so mind your fillings.

Is Life Worth Living?

"Geoffrey?"

"Yes?"

"Pour us a snifter and chuck us the baccy will you? It's gone ten."

"OK. Wait till I get off the bog first."

"JUST HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!!!" interrupted a familiar voice. None other than the Ghastly Dr. Wilson. Covered in seaweed and stinking of sewage as usual. (why is this? I cannot be arsed explaining, but it's All There in previous posts....) Sticking his head in the window without so much as would you mind or a by your leave.

"Oh for -"

"What the Kentucky Fried Chicken are YOU doing here o Ghastly one? Lovely to see you and all that," lied Geoffrey, as he carefully replaced the lav seat and forced a smile.

"I'm here to save you two utter wastes of space from yourselves. Don't have that drink. Put that baccy down. Pop the kettle on and make some hot water instead. Don't have that bacon and egg sandwich. Rather, have a plate of cracked bulgar wheat with a splash of miso, raw garlic and a steamed macadamia nut. If you stick with that regime through the week you can treat yourselves to some Barleycup and an organic sultana each on weekends. Maybe a carob bar. Mind and go for all these cancer tests as well. And don't forget your five a day. Or your compulsory forty five minutes of aerobic exercise."

"Will we live to a ripe old age then Doctor - if we do all that you say?"

"Well you'll avoid the sanctions."

"Sanctions?"

"If you don't adhere to current medical thinking, we'll shoot you. Simple as. You've no right to be alive and taking up space on the planet if you can't take a few simple steps to protect your own health."

"What about pleasure? Cutting loose? Letting go occasionally?"

"Some might take issue but personally I see nothing wrong with having a prune instead of a sultana at Christmas. Surely you can't complain about that! Look at me! I'm a picture of health. Okay, I'm bald, I've got a bad leg, a paunch, piles, hammer toes, gout, halitosis, gingivitis, and chronic flatulence but otherwise I'm the best specimen you're likely to see round here."

"But you're only 27."

"And your point is?"

Geoffrey and I exchanged glances, then nodded.

"Do you have the gun on you now? for doing the shooting part."

"Oh no! a-hahaha! I have other people to do that - nurses, for example. They get £28 a head plus an hour's annual leave. No - I'm a doctor - my role is to cure, never to kill."


No gun, eh? We were safe enough. It was time to unleash the Wheechie Net.

"Press the lever please Geoffrey."

WHEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCCCHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suddenly the Ghastly Wilson was bundled into a sturdy net and wheeched or "drawn" upwards and sidie-ways by hi-powered rope attachments towards the handy catapult which we have installed beside the house for just such eventualities.

"PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEyoinnnnnnnnGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!" catapult twangs.

"SPLAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" The Ghastly Wilson is launched bay-wards, where the ever-hungry, snapping jaws of the orca await.

"Nom nom nom.................."

"Heh heh heh. Bye bye Wilson! What were you saying about cracked bulgar wheat?"

Treble brandies all round.

Taken on Midsummer's Day, 2011

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..........................

Yes - Starship Trooper

Prog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The first Yes album is their only listenable one - in my opinion. Chuck another log on the fire and let's have some more nettle beer. We're not 65 yet!

Scots wurd o' th' day

"Bumfuck" - v., to cough loudly and suddenly in front of a horse. As in, "I got such a fright when you started bumfucking that I dropped my bananas. Can't you gargle or something?"

Scots wurd o' th' day. Bumfuck.

I'm lying of course.

It's "chitterie-chatterie", n., a piece of bread eaten immediately after bathing. As in, "I'm starving after that hip-bath - throw another lump of coal on the fire Isa and pass us ma chitterie-chatterie. Bung some crowdie on it if there's any ben the hoose."

That one IS genuine - from page 83 of Chambers's Scots Dictionary, 1959 edition.

Or

"Dorty-pouch", n., a saucy person. As in, "We dinnae hae nae dorty pouches in this hoose, ken."
From page 141, ibid. as they say.

Benny Hill remake of The Wicker Man

Posted this one before but worth another look. HAPPY SOLSTICE!!!

The Doors 02 Who Do You Love Absolutely Live

Y'see?

re. previous posts - THIS is what spews forth when one has what is commonly called a "hangover".

Death, Biscuits and Baccy

Is there anything else worth thinking about?

Vic and Bob - Mulligan and O'Hare

Still has me in hysterics.