Summer has come!!!!!

Hi de Hi, Campers!

All a bit ordinary last month. Quick visit to Antigua last week. Sat in an airconditioned office without windows for 3 days. Actually not continuous - because was taken to lunch at Sandals on the Tuesday, and went to Rotary lunch on Wednesday. Otherwise all is well. Viewing approaching 70th with concern - remember Psalm 90, v.10? All depenmds what he meant by strong!!

Off next week to Scotland with the grandchildren, and 2 weeks later to a trip for a week on the Leeds & Liverpool canal. Should be a challenge. Avoiding London like the plague - it is manic with Jubilee celebrations and preparations. Road works all over the shop do not help.

Otherwise I suppose that no news is good news. There have been a lot of e-mails with anti-presidential jokes from the USA. None like the old ones, though, such as:

 Air Force One crashed in the middle of rural America. Panic stricken, the  Secret Service mobilised and descended on the farm in force. When they got there, the wreckage was clear. The aircraft was totally destroyed with only a burned hulk left smouldering in a tree line that bordered a farm.

 Secret Service descended upon the smoking hulk but could find no remains of the crew or the President's staff. To their amazement, a lone farmer was  ploughing a field not too far away as if nothing at all happened.

 They hurried over to surround the man's tractor.

 "Sir," the senior Secret Service agent asked, panting and out of breath, "did you see this terrible accident happen?"

 "Yep. Sure did," the man muttered unconcernedly.

 "Do you realise that is the U.S. President's aeroplane?"

 "Yep."

 "Were there any survivors?" the agent gasped.

 "Nope. They's all kilt straight out," the farmer sighed cutting off his tractor motor. "I done buried them all myself. Took most of the morning."

 "The President of the United States is DEAD?" The agent gulped in disbelief.

 "Well," the farmer sighed, obviously wanting to get back to his work. "He kept a-saying he wasn't ... but you know what a liar he is."

That will do for now. Hasta la vista.

CG

Here we go Gathering Nuts in May

It's Mayday. So you either go on a march, dance round a maypole (the earliest known form of pole-dancing) or go back on to the allotment and try to catch up with what you should have done, but could not because of the weather. Remember last month it was a drought? Now we have drought orders, hosepipe bans amnd flood warnings, all at the same time!

Heathwise it been ominously quite. We went to an 85th birthday party at Jersey - see picture above - which we survived. I am about to get back in the pool after a couple of months off. More holidays coming - five days in Scotland with the grandchildren - or at least 2 of them - and then a couple of weeks later we go on a cruise on the Leeds and Liverpool canal over the Pennines. For details go to http://www.ladyteal.co.uk/ - we have been on this boat before, and it is quite something. And I do not get lock-keeper's bottom pushing open the gates with my backside every 5 minutes!

Nice to get an e-mail from Ryhal Gallagher earlier in April. He seems to lost none of his edge.

Finally - English, Lesson One:

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF

======================

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it's written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation's OK

When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,

Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,

And then singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.

Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.

Though the differences seem little,

We say actual but victual.

Refer does not rhyme with deafer.

Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Mint, pint, senate and sedate;

Dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

We say hallowed, but allowed,

People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the differences, moreover,

Between mover, cover, clover;

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

Chalice, but police and lice;

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,

Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Tour, but our and succour, four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Sea, idea, Korea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Heron, granary, canary.

Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.

Ear, but earn and wear and tear

Do not rhyme with here but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,

Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!

Is a paling stout and spikey?

Won't it make you lose your wits,

Writing groats and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:

Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!!

-- Author Unknown

Have a good one.

Drought!!

It is only the beginning of April, and half of the UK is under hosepipe bans. Standpipes are being cleaned and polished. Here in Bidborough the water pressure is very low at the best of times, as we are on top of a ridge, so we shall have to wait and see. When I started doing planning work as a young solicitor, the planning authority as a matter of course consulted water authorities as well as highways authorities and the other utilities as to whether they had the capacity to sustain the development proposed, but I now learn that the water authorities have been removed from the statutory list of consultees! Something wrong somewhere.

As soon as I got back from Cyprus I underwent a flare-up of the cellulitis, as promised. Once you have it you have it for life. So back on the anti-biotics. Fortunately we knew what it was and caught it in time, but it is clearly going to be a damn nuisance. However, back on track now, and doing all the things that I like doing - except that I still have difficulty in standing for long period of time. So propping up the bar in the local pub is no longer an option, and cocktail parties and the like are difficult. However, there is usually somewhere to prop myself up.

Planning to go to Jersey later this month for an 85th birthday party. The guy is still flying his own plane, too. It's all right for some, but I do admire him. Also planning to go to Scotland in May, and on the Leeds-Liverpool canal in June. That should be enough excitement.

More jokes needed - her is one sent courtesy of a friend in Cayman:

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 the 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 backward.

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

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."

That's all folks!

Back from Cyprus

Here we are back in UK. When we left it was covered with snow. So we went to Cyprus for 3 weeks. Cyprus is just south of Turkey. For the last 3 weeks Turkey has been covered by a massive depression, and has also been covered with snow from its northern borders to the south coast! Cyprus escaped the snow, and we had some wonderful sunny days, but it has been the coldest winter in Cyprus for over 100 years, or so they kept telling up. But it is a country with very cheap wine that has come a long way since the days of Emva Cream sherry.

We stayed at a first class resort called Columbia Beach Resort. Highly recommended to anyone who values good efficient German service (it is German owned) tempered with Greek attitude. Everything worked, but there were no compulsory exercises every morning.

One of the effects of the stay was that I am now climbing up and down stairs with great ease, as we had an upstairs suite, and I must have climbed the stairs at least ten times a day. Very effective physio.

Having been away for at least 3 weeks, ther is not a lot of news. But I can leave you with a couple of lines from a Cayman correspondent:

How Attaturk solved the Burqa problem.

For those struggling to ban women from wearing Burqa in their countries, Mustafa Kamal, who has a nickname of "Attaturk" and who is the founder of modern Turkey, resolved the problem in a very wise way.

He issued the following decree:

"With immediate effect, all Turkish women are privileged to wear whatever they choose, however, all prostitutes must wear a Burqa.

The very next day, no woman in Turkey was seen in a Burqa. Voila!

Have a Good One!!

A Pinch and a Punch on the first day of the month!

It's the 1/2 and very cold. Walking is getting easier as the days pass, but more difficult as the temperature falls. But we get up to London quite often - usually to a play, although we did go last week to Chinatown on New Year's Eve (Chinese) to see the dragons dance and the drummers drumming. All good stuff.

Good to see CDJ putting the boot in to Lord Ashcroft on Panorama the night before last. I expect to hear that he has received a letter from m'learned friends, Messes Sue, Grabbit and Runne shortly.

Later on we shall be going to Cyprus, DV, for a bit of sunshine. I could do with that. At the end of working in the tropics I used to have quite a decent tan, as in the strong sunlight your skin tans under a shirt, but now I am the same colour as my shirts!

I heard from a chap in Cayman the other day:

Read slowly to figure this one.....got it?...well great, but how can one poor fellow arrive in this predicament?

A story about a Jamaican man . . . a story that only happens in Jamaica. . . as he writes:

A went wid mi fasness go get marrid to a widow who had a daughtah dat was big already.

As ting will happen, mi fahdda fall in love wid mi new stepdaughtah an dem get married .


Derefore: Mi fahdda ah now mi son-in-law, while at di same time mi step
daughta a now mi step maddah.

But dat aint all. In di meantime, mi wife get pregnant an' had mi son - mi son who now turn out to be mi fadda breddah-in-law an also mi own uncle 'cause he is di breddah of mi step-mahddah who is also mi step daughtah. Dis is where tings turn raht*id mad.

Mi fahddah wife now hav a son who is technically mi breddah but is really mi gran-son . . .

Derefore: mi wife is mi granmaddah cause she is mi step-Maddah Maddah.

So now I-man is mi wife husban an gran-pickney at di same time! An being a husban of a gran-maddah mek me ah gran-fahddah. So now I en up being mi own granfahddah...

Lawd, what a ra*s mix up!

And that is about that for this month.

Happy New Year

Well, here we are in 2012. There will follow a month of initialled alterations in cheques as we get used to the fact that the year has changed. Here in UK today there have been humungous gales and really penetrating rain. I have managed to get the raspberries pruned over the Christmas break, partly because a generous lady at the bridge club on the Monday before Christmas arrived with a really bad cough and cold, coughed all over us for three hands and then moved on to each table in turn distributing her largesse. I went down with it first, and Sonia followed, so we ended up not going anywhere on New Year's Eve, after which I felt much better and blew away the cobwebs doing the pruning. Then on the following day to Whitstable where I had some of the best oysters you can get anywhere in the world, washed down with a bottle of muscadet. From all of which you may gather that I have more or less recovered.

It has not been a good year for jokes, but the best two are as follows:


A mate of mine recently admitted to being addicted to brake fluid.
When I quizzed him on it, he reckoned he could stop any time.....

I was at a cashpoint yesterday when a little old lady asked if I could check her balance.
Not being one to disappoint, I pushed the old dear over.

My son's been asking me for a pet spider for his birthday, so I went to our local pet shop and they were £70!!!
Too dear, I thought: I can get one cheaper off the web.

Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarves are not happy.
Just heard there was an explosion at a pie factory in Huddersfield .
Because of the factory product, casualties were just 3.1415927 dead

Saw my mate outside the Doctor's today looking really worried.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I've got the big C,"he said.
"What, cancer?"
"No - dyslexia."

I start a new job in Seoul next week. I thought it was a good Korea move.

A Scottish paedophile has raised a dispute with eBay.
He claims that the Wii GameBoy he received isn't what he was expecting.

I got some new aftershave today that smells like breadcrumbs. The birds love it!

I was driving this morning when I saw an Automobile Association van parked up. The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable.
I thought to myself: ‘That guy’s heading for a breakdown’.

The lead actor in the local pantomime, Aladdin, was sexually abused from behind on stage last night.
To be fair, the audience did try to warn him!....

****

Dating in 1957

It was a hot Saturday evening in the summer of 1957 and Fred had a date with Peggy Sue.

He arrived at her house and rang the bell. "Oh, come on in!" Peggy Sue's mother said as she welcomed Fred in. "Have a seat in the living room. Would you like something to drink?
Lemonade? Iced tea?" "Iced tea, please," Fred said.

Mom brought the iced tea. "So, what are you and Peggy planning to do tonight?" she asked. "Oh, probably catch a movie, and then maybe grab a bite to eat at the malt shop, maybe take a walk on the beach..." "Peggy likes to screw, you know," Mom informed him.

"Uh...really?" Fred replied, with raised eyebrows. "Oh, yes!" the mother continued. "When she goes out with her friends, that's all they do!" "Is that so?" asked Fred, incredulous. "Yes," said the mother. "As a matter of fact, she'd screw all night if we let her!"

"Well, thanks for the tip," Fred said as he began thinking about alternate plans for the evening. A moment later, Peggy Sue came down the stairs looking pretty as a picture wearing a pink blouse and hoop skirt, and with her hair tied back in a bouncy ponytail. She greeted Fred. "Have fun, kids," the mother said as they left.

Half an hour later, a completely dishevelled Peggy Sue burst into the house and slammed the front door behind her.

"The Twist, Mom!" she angrily yelled to her mother in the kitchen. "The damned dance is called the Twist!

***

And that just about sums it up. Happy New year to you all, and may it be healthy and prosperous for us all.

Christmas is Coming!!

I missed a month because I had to get a new computer, and a certain amount got lost in the move. Progressing well after the last set-back, and walking is getting better - I managed the best part of half a mile the other day, as there were demonstrations by strikers in London, and there were no taxis or buses. And though I have been on the tube, It was not going to be much help on that particular journey.

Christmas is on the way. We have ordered the tree - 9 feet as usual. We can do this in our place - there are 15 foot ceilings, and anything smaller looks ridiculous. And we get them from a man in the village, who charges only a fraction of what we would pay from a proper commercial outfit. We do the same with the turkey, too.

I am working the allotment - planting more fruit bushes and doing away with some of the vegetable patch. Fruit is less hard work than veggies. We shall have to get a larger freezer.

So all seems to be going OK - have a good Christmas and a happy and prosperous New year.