It's September, already!

Good Morning – or whatever it is when you open this.

Delay this time was entirely deliberate. The hip op is due on the 3 October, having been put back for one reason or another. But I never got that date until today.

Otherwise the Grenyer family is tolerably well. Tennis is still being played, and beer and wine is being consumed. Stayed at Bowood, seat of the Marquess of Lansdowne, for a few days last week.

Met old friends from Cayman there – the Woods and the Richardsons. Always nice to meet friends from places that we have enjoyed living in.

Interesting to read that the Government have squeezed police finances so far that we cannot expect any but the most serious crimes to be attended to, and they are having difficulty in recruiting  to such an extent that there are vacancies that have been able to be budgeted for. More or less the same thing is happening to the armed forces, so any pretence at defence is a joke. But we still have the underwater Nuclear Deterrent.

Talking of police finances, the Inland Revenue has finally admitted that they are not prosecuting the Great and the Good when they commit offences in evading taxes, etc., because they will be embarrassed by having to appear in court, and/or if they are generous benefactors of the Conservative party. This does not seem to have caused the stink that I thought it would, and I cannot imagine why!! It seemed to bottom of page 3 stuff in the papers, though.

Heard that I may be profiled in a future edition of my school Old Boys’ Association. Not sure why there is anxiety to air any of that, and I do hope that my indiscretions are not going to be aired after all these years. Particularly as the school is about to become co-ed, and my eldest granddaughter is hoping to move there for her 6^th form education. All sorts of things might wriggle out because of that.

Enough of that. Time for some of this:

Quotes from stand-ups at Edinburgh:

What do you call a dinosaur with a extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

All the toilets in New York's police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

Velcro - what a rip off!

Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.

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A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source.

He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: "Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770- 1827". Then he realizes that the music is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward!

Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him.

By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed.

 This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backwards.

Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backwards.

The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the  reverse order in which they were  composed, The 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th.

By the next day the word has spread, and a crowd has gathered around  the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward.

 Just then the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group.

Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the  music.

"I would have thought it was obvious,” the caretaker  says."He’s decomposing."

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A short blog this month. Enjoy what is left of September and I shall try and publish on time in October.