Final Ebenezering of the year

I am going to bed. Please keep the noise down. See the new year in? Bollocks.

My friends at BBC news are pleased to report that women who exercise by doing housework reduce the risk of breast cancer.

For my final competition of the year, can you guess the gender of the researchers?

If you need a clue, it was the same team who earlier in the year found that sitting in a recliner watching soccer was the equivalent of acupressure on the points most associated with arthritis, liver disease and knob-rot.

We should applaud such scientific discoveries and reward these researchers with titles and cash.

So, come along ladies. You missed a bit in the corner. And please bob down if you are walking in front of the television.

E J Thribb is on holiday

While others have been grieving the passing of major show business legends - a major recording artist (Charlie Drake) and a slapstick genius (James Brown), I would like to draw your attention to the passing of Dennis Linde.
Mr Linde was the composer of the Elvis hit "Burning Love", which, as the title suggests with not too much subtlety, was about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases. Way ahead of his time, and ostracised for being so explicit, he would have perhaps become more famous had Elvis recorded the other song penned at the same time "Stop taking drugs and mainlining hamburgers, you overblown, past-it ball of blubber".
He will be sadly missed.

Post Script, 27th December. Bloody Americans eh? One of our great slapstick comedians dies, and then they have to go and try to cap it.

As you are all well aware, my lookalike is Andie McDowell. I was therefore a little distressed to see on the television this evening that she has taken to advertising products that are concerned with reducing the effects of greying hair. The cynical among you will be of the opinion that she is merely attempting to boost her already extensive fortune. But I have been affected by all of the wonderful messages that have been pouring in here, and have embraced the christmas message.

I telephoned Andie on the videophone (honestly, it is just like talking into a mirror) and told her not to worry. I have not let the aging process affect me, and I still have to fight the women off. She should be more concerned about spreading a little love and happiness than by concern with the transient nature of her appearance.

There are truly lessons out there for all of us to learn

Joy to the world.

I feel that I have been a little harsh on the deep feelings of humanity that are expressed at this time of year, and need to share something very beautiful that I witnessed today, in order to redress what might appear to some to be a balance in this journal that has been thus far loaded in favour of cynicism and ill-humour.

A colleague received an email greeting in Spanish. He parsed it through those nice people at Babelfish, and was delighted to receive the message “A happy christmas and a prosperous new anus.” I filled up. How refreshing that we can share these life-transforming and intimate moments with each other. This is, indeed, the christmas message.

But, let us not stop there. It matters not to me whether your anus is new, old, remodelled, recently decorated or hideously disfigured. Without prejudice, I declare my sincerest wishes that it becomes, or continues to be prosperous.

I recognise that I have strayed from the true path of righteousness, and am now stumbling back towards it. Your warm wishes will help in this quest. Please, however, desist from too much detail about the progress or condition of your anus. Some people, oddly, find it not to their taste (dde). I will return, unopened, any missives with unnecessary detail. This includes length prose or verse, explicit descriptions of any sort, photographs, drawings or etchings and tubes of “Anusol” or “Preparation H”.

My dear friend, MJ, has asked for more T&A on my blog, with pictures. (see previous thread).

That is not difficult, although quite why the need for information about the Bradford Telegraph and Argus is a little intriguing - let's just put it down to the cold Canadian winters.

Here is a picture of a Bingley post office from a recent edition of said organ.

I do love being Santa.

Come and sit on my knee

This evening I sat up later than I intended to fix a problem with my computer.
It was very much a problem created by me: in trying to see whether my printer was malfunctioning due to hardware or software, I installed some old drivers, and buggered up my active desktop.
Brief excursion for the technoplegic. “Active desktop” means having the software on the computer called ‘desktop’ do clever stuff. It does not mean indulging in inappropriate activities on a table.
I found the solution through some nice people on the internet and all is now fixed.
The printer problem was mechanical. It did not malfunction due to my printing my 100 christmas cards. They are very tasteful, and not even the most old fashioned printer would object to them.
Brief excursion for the technoplegic. By printer, I refer to a mechanical/electronic device for producing printed paper, not some old gentleman sitting in the corner of my room with a Caxton machine. He is not a gentleman, and that is not a Caxton machine.
I ordered a new printer from Amazon yesterday. For a small surcharge they guaranteed next day delivery by 1.00 pm. I forgot all about, being involved in some very exciting work, but at around 2.30 a Citylink van parked outside, and a man got out and rummaged around for a few minutes. He then drove away. This did not fool me. I knew that I did not have my printer. I checked on the Amazon site, and noticed that they were still anticipating delivery today. I also noticed that the printer had left Inverkeithing at 2.19 pm. The AA tell me that the journey from Inverkeithing to my house should take 7 hours and 43 minutes. I do not think that I will wait up.
Inverkeithing? (Have you ever inverkeithed, missus?) Just over the Forth Bridge.

Anyway the real purpose of writing this is that my attention was drawn to the Telegraph, who asked several people what they wanted for christmas. (Say what you like about the Torygraph, but I did recognise most of the people who they asked, unlike the sort of people who Betty features on her pages.)

Boris was, of course, on top form. “I would like world peace, piano lessons and my computer printer to stop gibbering in the middle of the night and waking me up.”

I suspect however that his taking piano lessons will not be conducive to world peace. But please note that he refers to his “computer printer” and thereby avoids all of the ambiguity that afflicted me earlier. Perhaps he was referring to a human being though, if his computer printer is sufficiently close to him at night to keep him awake.

So, dear readers, (aMToNW), what would you like for christmas? Be aware that I won’t be buying it for you.

You will all be pleased to hear that the annual time of great stress for me has passed, and I have produced the 2006 christmas card
As usual, it is of the highest standard, and best possible taste, and is available to any of you brave enough to email me your postal address.
If you email me your postal address, I will not be turning up at christmas, as I am aware that my gentle drug-free, vegetarian lifestyle is difficult to accommodate amongst omnivores, drunks, rebelrousers and practitioners of the art of dissipation.
Mrs S and I will, however, turn up for a summer vacation of not more than 12 weeks. We will give you several hours warning prior to arrival - plenty of time for you to get to the airport to pick us up.
I am going to rest now; tomorrow I shall start fretting about next year's card.

Ho Ho Horseshit

A few random observations for the weekend, which is when no bugger reads the blogs, so I am not making much effort.

Tonight on the wonderful “Have I Got News For You”, with the new James Bond, Boris Johnson, there was much speculation about whether the British royal family were responsible for the death of Dianna. Immediately following the programme, there was a trailer for “Newsnight” in which Dermot Murnaghan said “Tonight we bring you the latest news in the search for the Ipswich serial killer. We have an interview with George Clooney”. It may be all very well teasing prince Philip about underhand and criminal dealings, as he is well known for his sense of humour, but to implicate a Hollywood Megastar in a seedy and sordid crime is entirely a different matter. If anyone reading this is in contact with Mr Clooney, please advise him to get an alibi for the last couple of weeks.

Today while working I chose to have Classic FM TV on in the background to help the cerebral processes. They have some jolly tunes, and occasionally some nice videos to accompany them, but tend towards a plethora of pert choirboys which does not really appeal to me, but, as I say, they have some nice tunes. Except at this time of year. Just when I was looking forward to a couple of hours of pleasant music from Bach, Beethoven and Berlioz, they introduce Bing. Yes, Bing Bollocky Crosby singing about dreaming of a white bollocky christmas. There is just no escape from it. Thank heavens none of you have the poor taste to extol the virtues of this most dire of festivals. There was one blog where the author was asking about the three christmas songs that you hate. Three? Bollocky three? I hate the whole bollocky lot. And don’t send your spotty adolescent sons and daughters round to my house singing about bollocky herald angels, unless you want them returned to you in a box of mince tarts.

Which brings me back to my old friend Nasser Bollocky Hussain. He uses the phrase “he plays his cricket”, for example “he plays his cricket in Durham”. Well who else’s cricket would he play, you prize buffoon? I just wish someone else had played your cricket for you, then we would not have been subjected to over ten bollocky years of Gooch, Atherton, Stewart and Hussain playing for and captaining the England team through the most turgid and unwatchable cricket in living memory. Bollocks.

Countdown to the royal divorce - part 14

As I have mentioned before this time of year is particularly tiresome as I am inundated with invitations to spend Christmas at Sandringham.

One year, to get away from it all, I actually spent the holiday season at Windsor Castle. It was a tad inconvenient, but at least the telephone was not ringing every five minutes. They did not think of looking for me there. (That reminds me, did I remember to switch off the electric blanket?).

Ever since Caroline of Ansbach beat George II at Scrabble and thereby indirectly caused the battle of Dettingen, it has been seen to be necessary for members of the royal family to be married to those less intellectually endowed than themselves. As generations of British idiots have been selected as hide-the-sausage partners for the royal house, there has been a diminution of mental prowess in succeeding generations, thereby making the “find a thicky” quest all the more difficult.

We should therefore congratulate prince Philip, whose task it has been to oversee the selection of prize fruitcakes as suitable mates for his offspring. In two cases (so far) he has had to go through the process twice.

Diana sometimes suspected that she was being made fun of, and would sulk, on one occasion Philip sent her to the kitchen for a “long weight”. That sort of thing. Philip is not so pleased with Camilla, because she thinks that everything that happens is a jape anyway, and guffaws like a herniated gibbon even when she is the butt of the joke. They had to drug her, apparently, to get her through the wedding without screeching. She was convinced that the ABofC was, in fact, Jeremy Beadle.

Duchess Fergie was a godsend. They had almost given up finding anyone more stupid than Andrew, but the British aristocracy can always be relied upon. It will be much more difficult should they try to find another for him. I am afraid they will have to follow the William route and go down-market. If anyone knows of a grade A airhead in need of a few bob, who wouldn’t mind putting up with a throwback for a husband, and could open a couple of playschools in Denbighshire each year, at a push, then let me know, and I will put the name forward.

Sophie Wessex and Dim Tim are quite unremarkable. They can sit for hours staring into space, and seem quite happy doing it. Philip has been known to use Admiral Laurence as a hat-stand. The poor chap doesn’t mind, but is not quite up to the job. Hats fall off whenever anyone walks past, because Tim salutes them.

But it was in the selection of the first partner that Philip excelled himself. Auberon Waugh used to say, and who are we to argue, that if you whistled, Mark Phillips would wet himself. I have never seen evidence of that. There is a rumour that his family were thinking of having him melted down and used as fertiliser, but he was saved that fate, and instead married to Anne. Phillips could trace his ancestry back, after only three generations, to a sheep named Trevor. Well, when I say he could trace his ancestry, that is a little unfair, he had to have someone do it for him. Philip was delighted with his choice, and never tired of making fun of Mark. Insisting on serving lamb for dinner was a game that he never tired of, and would repeatedly ask the boy about his family until the plates were empty.

I was with Phil and Liz as they watched the culmination of all of this at the weekend as dear Zara was presented with the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. I have never seen Philip laugh so much, apart from, perhaps, that unfortunate incident with the queen mother and the fishbone. Liz kept up a commentary throughout. She had been amused by an article in the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago that referred to the ‘estuarisation’ of her accent. She can, of course, mimic almost anyone, and was in her element with Zara. (After the programme finished, she fished the speech from the latest opening of parliament out of her handbag, and rendered it into Zaraese; “My government are like, wow, amazing, yeah – we are toadally going to revise the immigration quota. I am all ‘Yeah, who wants any more freeloading Greeks, innit?’” and so forth).

So hats off to Zara. There has been a long line of inarticulate buffoons on this particular programme – Paul Gascoigne, Terry Downes, Ian Botham and Lester Piggott (whose speech impediment allowed him to tell a particularly disgusting tale about dame Kiri te Kanawa, without anyone having the least idea what he was saying) to select but a few, but our Zara outdimmed them all. Amazing. I was like “Wow, she should get her own series”.

The State I'm In

For those of you wondering how to escape the usual dire yule crap on the television this year, you could do much worse than see the splendid BBC production “The State Within”. Those of you expecting this to be a series about self discovery will be the only ones disappointed. It is a jolly entertaining thriller, with a lovely ending. A couple of points about it:

• It has a rather unnecessary, as far as I can judge, sub-plot about a romantic liaison between the head of British Intelligence in the US and the American under secretary for defence. Although they call it defense. I would just like to assure readers who are considering a career in the British secret service that homosexuality is no longer compulsory, nor seen as in any way advantageous. In my day it was different, of course. At my interview I was asked some very pointed questions, and the aptitude test involved picking a colour scheme for a bedroom. I made my excuses and chose a career as a quiz show host instead. There is more than one way to serve your country. I suppose they added this story so that the series had “something for everyone”, but if so they failed – I found no reference to nor footage of the record stand between Tom Graveney and Peter May at Birmingham in 1957.
• It starred someone who was either Cagney or Lacey. (These are the names of characters in a television series, not adjectives). Anyone who might have seen that series (and you can see that I didn’t) might find it a little off-putting. It would be the equivalent of one of the actors in “The Professionals” taking the part of a high court judge. Actors should stick at what they are good at. Look at Ronald Reagan.

The other series that I have been watching that concludes tonight is “Into the West”. I am not so sure about this one. The thing is that I do not believe that native Americans speak in the manner in which they always appear to do in movies and tv series. The characterisation has hardly progressed since Tonto first got butt fucked by Kemo Sabe. (That was an unnecessary reference wasn’t it?). I also do not believe that they were any more imbued with natural wisdom or in tune with the universe than anyone else. They certainly had a hard time of it, being on the receiving end of the bad attitudes that were taken to the New World by social rejects from Europe. (How am I doing so far? Anyone who has not taken offence yet should send me an email and I will include a customised insult in my next posting, you twat). I have never (as far as I know) met a native American. There is one who occasionally visits here. What do they talk like when they are not being filmed for television? John Gielgud? Jed Clampett? Cary Grant? Don Corleone? Beryl Reid? I think we should be told.

Please go and visit Adam. He is very lonely over at his blog. He tries very hard. I think it behoves us all to lend our support to one of the few Republicans who can actually write. And, yes, I know that he can’t spell and his ramblings lean towards the incoherent, but I have to confess a great fondness for the lad. I see him as the disinherited son that I never had.
This week, he has a missing word competition on his site. It is great fun. FFE will be particularly distracted by it.

No word from Alsace

When my old chums Theodore and Evadne Google decided to offer an email service, they contacted me so that I was able to get an email address that was my own name (and I mean the less well known name that I use to conduct my business in the alternative universe, not the witty sobriquet by which you know me), without any fancy characters, or, as in the case of my hotmail account, appending the number “69”. (How I laughed about that one).
I am ever grateful to them for this. One of the downsides of this is that I get a disproportionate amount of junk mail, but Evadne kindly sifts through it every morning before she waters the pelargonium, so I am only left with the cream, as it were.
It appears that there are other people in the world who share my name. None of them, it is barely necessary to mention, share my charms, but some of them have interesting lives. Others assume that the gmail address of these people must be the one that I reserved, and this has led to some bizarre correspondence over the months.
I had a very pleasant correspondence with a dyslexic estate agent who was keen that I buy some property in Texas. I soon became bored with that.
I then had a brief correspondence with a young man of French descent who was keen that I attend his parties. I am ashamed to say I was rude to him, as I thought for a time he was a spammer. I did not go to any of the parties, and so have nothing to report.
Today, however, things started to look up. A young lady, who I shall only refer to as Lorraine, sent me the following:

(it was headed: “Nigeria & Shakleton´s voyage..”)

Folks,

I didn´t lose the email addresses nor did I forget to send the email as requested...see..I can learn from my mistakes!

Boyos..hope you both have a wonderful time in BRAZIL...let me know if you have any interesting stories to tell..

take care and safe travels,
Thank you for an entertaining few days in Patagonia..

Lorraine xxx

I replied immediately:

Lorraine.
How delightful to hear from you.
I am so pleased that you did not lose the email addresses.
My time in Brazil must remain a secret due to international security concerns, but one day I may be able to tell the story. Next time we meet I will be able to tell you a little about it.
I am disappointed that you view the days in Patagonia as only entertaining. In my mind they are amongst the most enervating and erotic in my long and event-filled life.
Did I ever tell you the story about my night in Casablanca with the boy who was later to become Pope John Paul II?
Who are you?
love, peace and coloured orgasms.

I welcome your comments. I am particularly intrigued by Shackleton’s voyage to Nigeria. It is little wonder that he failed to reach the South Pole. I thought that educational standards were somewhat higher in those days, but it appears that dear old Ernie, were he alive today, could expect little more than an A++ GCSE in geography.