December - the 10th month

It's been an eventful month in some ways. Firstly by spending an eye-watering amount buying a new car -a VW Tiguan, which is a cross-over. It has all the electronic gadgetry you could wish for, and then some, most of which I shall not use, and some of which I would have preferred not to have. But there are some surprising omissions - no possibility of measuring the outside temperature, and no provision in the on-board sat nav for warning of approaching speed cameras. No ability to have the digital speed indicator in mph, rather than kmph although the speedo dial is calibrated in mph. But very comfortable, and I can get in and out without ducking my head, which I have never been able to do in any previous car.

We started the month with a visit to the local brewery, Larkins, where I found  porter being brewed. This was a Rotary outing, and we reduced the weeks production by a creditable amount. Then there were issues with the garage door, which took some time and money to get approximately sorted. All because the remote opener was tumble dried by mistake. Later in the month was the Rotary Christmas dinner, with black tie and all. The best bit was Sonia winning a competition where the prize was £50 cash. Riches beyond the dreams of human avarice!!

The Investment Club, which I joined some years ago, held its annual curry night last month too. The Tonbridge Club is one of the oldest investment clubs in the country. It made continual losses until it was dragged into the 21st century, and started computerising its activities. We invest with what are called 'stop-losses' and 'keep-gains' but the trick is to refine the criteria by which they operate - that is to say, the points at which they are triggered. They idea is that if an investment loses more than a stated percentage, it will automatically be sold, but if it increases in value it will drag its 'stop-loss' up with it. If the stop-loss is then triggered, the idea is that you capture the profit. It only works if the limits are set correctly, and it ignores the concept of long-term investment in sound companies - the Buffet policy.

Then to Probus where I had proposed a chap for membership. Always a good thing to do. Probus is really Rotary without the charity bit. You get good speakers and nice people to lunch with, and several outings a year to interesting places.

A splendid couple of jazz evenings last month too. We are very lucky to have a number of talented jazz groups locally. One is the Halstead Jazz Band - go to http://halsteadjazzclubbigband.com/ - started by a chap that I coached at Orpington Swimming Club some years ago, and who is now a very talented saxophone player. The other is a group which plays at one of the local pubs, the Don Steele Jazz Band - go to http://www.sevenoaksforum.com/media/don-steele-jazz-band.103/ and turn the volume up.

All in all too much browsing and sluicing, as Wooster would have it. Finally:

Firstly a couple more links -

http://www.flixxy.com/leosvel-and-diosmani-the-mast-the-worlds-greatest-cabaret.htm?utm_source=nl

http://www.thisishaywardsheath.com/home.htm

We could do with a local web site like the last for Tonbridge. 

and at last:

A woman and her 10 year old son were riding in a taxi in New York. It was raining and all the prostitutes were standing under the awnings.

"Mom " said the boy, "what are all these women doing?"

"They're waiting for their husbands to get off work" she replies.

The taxi driver turns around and says "Geez, lady, why don't you tell him the truth? They're hookers, kid! They have sex with men for money."

The little boy's eyes get wide and he says, "Is that true, mom?"

His mother, glaring hard at the driver, answers in the affirmative.

After a few minutes, the kid asks, "Mom, what happens to the babies those women have?"

"Most of them become taxi drivers." she said.

Legal but not logical

A  young Law student, having failed his Law exam, goes up to his crusty old Professor, who is renowned for his razor-sharp legal mind.

Student:"Sir, do you really understand everything about this subject?"

Professor: Actually,I probably do. Otherwise I wouldn't be a professor, would I?"

Student: "OK. So I'd like to ask you a question. If you can give me the correct answer, I will accept my marks as it is. If you can't give me the correct answer, however, you'll have to give me an "A".

Professor: "Hmmmm, alright.. So what's the question?"

Student: "What is legal but not logical, logical but not legal, and neither logical nor legal? "

The Professor racks his famous brain, but just can't crack the

answer. Finally he gives up and changes the student's failing mark into an "A" as agreed, and the student goes away, very pleased.

The Professor continues to rack his brain over the question all afternoon, but still can't get the answer.

So finally he calls in a group of his brightest students and tells them he has a really, really tough question to answer:

"What is legal but not logical, logical but not legal,

and neither logical nor legal?"

To the Professor's surprise (and embarrassment), all the students immediately raise their hands.

"All right" says the professor and asks his favourite student to answer

"It's quite easy, sir" says the student "You see, you are 75 years old and married to a 30 year old woman, which is legal, but not logical.

Your wife has a 22 year old lover, which is logical, but not legal.

And your wife's lover failed his exam, but you've just given him an "A", which is neither legal, nor logical."

Have a good Christmas!

November

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! -
November! 

However, October was different. Not a lot of travelling, but much browsing and sluicing as Mr Wooster put it. We started by touring the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which seems to be the oldest trading company in the world. Fascinating - they make the bells for most people or organisations who want one, and service the machinery that is used to ring them, but the whole exercise operates from premises that is little larger than a good sized detached house in suburbia. Not easy to book a tour, but well worth the effort.

Actually we did go to Brighton for a couple of days - we had booked a room for the night in June when we went to a Cliff Richard concert in Hove Cricket Ground, but they denied the booking on the day, and when we proved them wrong, having found another place to stay, they gave us a freebie weekend. Actually I would have been more comfortable at home, but it would have been churlish to refuse, and we did get to have an Indian with a very good friend who lives at Lewes, and who will be looking forward to November 5!

Went to see The Ladykillers  - a really good and well-produced play, based on the old film, and very funny. And the following week, to From Here to Eternity. I did wonder how they would make a musical from a story such as that, but it worked very well. On at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

Last week we had The Storm. Bidborough Court stands on the very top of Bidborough Ridge with an uninterrupted view for 30-odd miles to the south-west, from where our weather comes, and I was fearful that we would lose the roof again, but despite threats of 80-odd mph gales, we emerged unscathed. The final check on the tile swill be made as I type, but I am sure that there is nothing much amiss.

To lunch with the Lord Mayor of London a couple of days later. It was a Vintry and Dowgate ward annual lunch. The LM was a very good speaker, modelling himself on Nicholas Parsons, I think, and it worked very well.

From the sublime to the ridiculous - the following day we went to a local Turkish restaurant for Rotary dinner out the following day. I do like Turkish food, and their wine has improved enormously. When we first started going on holiday to turkey about 40 years ago Turkish wine had a well-deserved reputation for tasting of burnt rubber, but they seem to have solved that, more or less. 

Also during the month Sonia had her atrial fibrillation treated with the electric shock treatment that Tony Blair had some years previously. It has worked very well, and she is now climbing hills and playing tennis with renewed vigour.

Two interesting things arrived in the e-mails recently:

CURTAIN RODS ---

On the first day, he sadly packed his belongings into boxes, crates and suitcases.

On the second day, he had the movers come and collect his things.

On the third day, he sat down for the last time at their beautiful dining room table, by candlelight; he put on some soft background music, and feasted on a pound of shrimp, a jar of caviar, and a bottle of spring water.

When he'd finished, he went into each and every room and deposited a few half eaten shrimps dipped in caviar into the hollow centre of the curtain rods.

He then cleaned up the kitchen and left.

On the fourth day, the wife came back with her new boyfriend, and at first all was bliss.

Then, slowly, the house began to smell. They tried everything; cleaning, mopping, and airing out the place. Vents were checked for dead rodents, and carpets were steam cleaned. Air fresheners were hung everywhere. Exterminators were brought in to set off gas canisters, during which time the two had to move out for a few days, and in the end they even paid to replace the expensive wool carpeting.

Nothing worked!

People stopped coming over to visit. Repairmen refused to work in the house. The maid quit.

Finally, they couldn't take the stench any longer, and decided they had to move, but a month later - even though they'd cut their price in half – they couldn't find a buyer for such a stinky house. Word got out, and eventually even the local realtors refused to return their calls.

Finally, unable to wait any longer for a purchaser, they had to borrow a huge sum of money from the bank to purchase a new place.

Then the ex called the woman and asked how things were going.

She told him the saga of the rotting house. He listened politely and said that he missed his old home terribly and would be willing to reduce his divorce settlement in exchange for having the house.

Knowing he could have no idea how bad the smell really was, she agreed on a price that was only 1/10th of what the house had been worth ... but only if he would sign the papers that very day.

He agreed, and within two hours her lawyers delivered the completed paperwork.

A week later the woman and her boyfriend stood smiling as they watched the moving company pack everything to take to their new home ......

And to spite the ex-husband, they even took the curtain rods!!

OH, I LOVE A HAPPY ENDING, DON'T YOU?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This year the grass grew faster than normal…………

GOD: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the dandelions, violets, milkweeds and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colours by now. But, all I see are these green rectangles.

St. FRANCIS: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

GOD: Grass? But, it's so boring. It's not colourful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and worms. It's sensitive to temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilising grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it-sometimes twice a week.

GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS: No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

GOD: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilise grass so it will grow. And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

ST. FRANCIS: Yes, Sir.

GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

ST. FRANCIS: You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it, so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

GOD: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn, they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. It's a natural cycle of life.

ST. FRANCIS: You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

GOD: No! What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?

ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

GOD: And where do they get this mulch?

ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch………………

That's about it for this month. Have a good one.

October - National Stamp Collecting Month

For some reason I discovered that this is an American celebratory month, but I suspect that it is simply a device sponsored by Stanley Gibbons and the like to promote sales. But it prompted me to do a quick internet search and, - low and behold – October is also National Squirrel Awareness Month,  Dwarfism Awareness Month and National Sausage Month. There are one or two other observances for October, but this can get tedious if it goes on for longer than a few lines.

We have been away for a week. We were going to France for a longer period, but things are never straightforward, especially as anno domini takes control.

Anyhow, we went to Devon, not France as my health insurance people are now imposing conditions that would have been expensive whatever either of us might have developed, so foreign travel was out. Fortunately we had booked the hotels through an agency that did not charge for cancellations, no matter how late. Actually you pay extra for that privilege, but it buys peace of mind. So the next step is to research the holiday insurance industry. It will teach us to prepare properly when we plan holidays, and not to imagine that good things go on for ever. Because they do not seem to.

We went to Thurlestone in south Devon, and stayed at the Thurlestone Hotel. Go to http://www.thurlestone.co.uk/home.htm for details. There are 2 pools, indoor and outdoor, both heated, which meant that I could swim every day, The outdoor pool is 16m which means that you do 12 lengths to get a 200m swim, instead of the 8 that I have to do in the Tonbridge school pool. I went back to Tonbridge pool when we returned and found that the school teach water polo in the autumn term, - something that I think is really sensible. There were 2 teams of 14 year-olds who were really playing very well.

Back down in Devon we went on the usual boat trip from Kingsbridge to Salcombe and back – we try to do a boat trip whenever we go away – it is a great way to see both town and country. We also went to Agatha Christie’s house at Greenway – go to http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/greenway/ The National Trust have managed to make it more interesting than they managed with Chartwell, which I thought looked like any other rich old man’s home, all old furniture of no particular interest. The Christies had spent 5 generations there, and they had a mania for collecting, and the wherewithal to be able to collect good and interesting things. And they never threw anything away. It made it look like an over-stocked antique shop, but I happen to like antique shops so I was as happy as Larry there, even though it rained cats and dogs, which stopped my better half from looking round the garden. There was another NT house close by which we called on, called Saltram. It was very much more an historic pile, and has a long history – go to http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/saltram/  

Having been invited to a splendid golden wedding party we have also started thinking about what we are going to do in 2016. It’s a long way away at the moment, but time does seem to pass more and more quickly.

The day after we got back from Devon I had another duty – I had been persuaded to be race controller for the Tonbridge half-marathon. 1500 runners, who between them raised over £60,000 for various charities. Not so energetic for me, but it meant getting up at the crack of dawn and concentrating until the last runners crept in on Sunday afternoon. It’s an interesting event to help organise, and involves road closures, circulating leaflets to the villages who are affected, and communications systems like SW radio, a bank of telephones and cars that go before to check the route and to sweep up the casualties. Actually the most difficult casualty was a huge dead deer that was found across the route first thing in the morning, having been run down by a car some time in the night.

And finally…………

Two crocodiles were sitting at the side of the River Thames .

The smaller one turned to the bigger one and said, 'I can't understand how you can be so much bigger than me.

We're the same age, We were the same size as kids. I just don't get it.'

'Well,' said the big croc, 'what have you been eating?'

'Politicians, same as you,' replied the small croc.

'Hmm. Well, where do you catch them?'

'Down the other side of the river near the parking lot by Westminster .'

'Same here. Hmm.....How do you catch them?'

'Well, I crawl up under one of their Lexus, BMW or Mercedes cars and wait for one to

unlock the car door. Then I jump out, grab them by the leg, shake the shit out of them and eat 'em!'

'Ah!' says the big crocodile, 'I think I see your problem. You're not getting any real

nourishment. See, by the time you finish shaking the shit out of a politician, there's nothing left but an arsehole and a briefcase.

And for being so patient, go to http://m.wimp.com/waitlive/ for something really clever.

Have a good month.