Category Archives: Humour

Not in the Doldrums

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Just because I haven’t been very active (or not at all) on my blog for a while (ages!) it doesn’t mean that I’ve been in the doldrums. Actually, a stiff and somewhat turbulent wind brought us swiftly to Australia and it seems as though we haven’t stopped since.

Chris and I recovered at Bill and Lita’s in Brisbane; bought a shiny new red bike from a garage sale for just $10 (looking foward to riding it); and went down to New South Wales – all in the first week.

Then it was “Out West” to Toowoomba and the Darling Downs for a taste of both city  and country life; perhaps I’ll tell you about our adventures with Gary, our self-appointed tourguide when I have more time.

Back to Roland’s not far from the Gold Coast we did spot of fishing and enjoying the wildlife, then on to the Sunshine Coast to see my old friend Lorelle. And now I’ve run out of time… as we’re going out.

But before I go I’ll tell you what Chris said when I asked if I had spelt “doldrums” right…and I added:

“That is the place where there’s no wind – isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Chris answered, “It’s the place you want to be when you’re referring to gastric conditions.”

Ever the wit!

All I Wanted for Christmas

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“What would you like for Christmas?” Chris asked of me.

“Nothing. I have everything I want,” I said, “except… perhaps?”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you could write me a poem?”

That’s approximately how the conversation went just before our first Christmas together twenty-one years ago. Since then I’ve a poem for every Christmas, birthday, Valentine’s Day and even those days when nothing was special but I needed a lift. To date I have seventy-five poems from my beloved. Most are humorous, some are romantic and they chart our life together. All show how well Chris knows me.

I wasn’t disappointed this year, either; I had all I wanted for Christmas and more – he wrote me two poems! And here they are below… Hope you’re all enjoying Christmas!

Also see the additions to the family this year, including two day old little Lillibet.

 

BIBI’S BEAUTIFUL BABY   (Bibi is me – Grandma!)

                  Well, nearly my baby!)

 

My sweet baby Penny, she’s top of the tots

with her velvet brown eyes and her freedom from spots

and her giggling laugh in her baby culottes

she’s the cream of the crop, and the queen of the cots!

 

She’s cute and adorable, my baby P.

and I’ve waited so long for her sweetness to see

But now that she’s here I’m as proud as can be

She’s put  joy in my heart, and she’s my cup of tea! 

 

When she beams me a smile I can feel my heart melt

it’s as though all along she would know how I felt

and of all the fine aces that could have been dealt

She’s just so “Pennylicious”, (and that’s not mis-spelt!)

 

She’s a real “fashionista”, all thanks to her Mum

dressed up to the nines, she’s as sweet as a plum

and when she’s all sleepy, to dreams she’ll succumb

while I gently ponder on what she’ll become

 

 

As I gaze in her innocent eyes I can see

all the life and the love that was always to be

and I know that this beautiful child is part-me

she’s so nearly my daughter, this sweet Penny P.

 

So, Lady Penelope, always be sure

that your BiBi will love you, whatever the score

and when you’re grown up and have boyfriends galore

I’ll still be there for you, it’s you I adore!

 

 For Penelope, and Her BiBi Sally, on Christmas Day 2017

     

 

 LEISURE – REVISITED 

A Pastiche,  with apologies to W H Davies

(A Christmas poem for Sally  -December 25th 2017)

 

What is this life if, full of woe,

we have no time to take it slow

 

No time to stop and take our ease

enjoying leisure as we please

 

No time to lose ourselves in song

and feel the music all day long

 

No time to lay amongst the flowers

and make sweet love for hours and hours

 

No time to pause in Life’s mad rush

to seek the peace of gentle hush

 

No time to gaze in wonderment

at Nature’s beauty, heaven-sent

No time to share our happiness

with  all the friends who we possess

 

No time to take our exercise

to shrink our waists, which we despise!

 

No time to spend a day alone

and carry on without the phone

 

No time, even, to write this verse

(which as you see is getting worse!)

 

A poor life this if, full of woes,

we’ve barely time to blow our nose

 

So…please remember, it’s just fine

to take a break at Christmastime!!

 

 

 

Shrinking

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I was small and the world was big.

 

One morning recently I awoke early after a restless night of feeling hungry and shrinking. Yes shrinking! I was about half way through the “Catherine’s  Cabbage Soup Diet” and I could feel changes (even if nobody else could see them). So I was awake and the first thing that came into my mind made me laugh…

 

Strangely, I was remembering back to a time when I really was small, three years old I guess, and Henry was a baby in the pram; my sister Mary must have just started school because she wasn’t with us as we were walking home down Molle Road. Now I happened to be an excruciatingly shy little girl who wouldn’t speak to strangers; I’d run away or hide, often under Mum’s skirts if there was nowhere else to hide. However, on this occasion I didn’t run away when we met a group of ladies coming out of Mrs Cottrell’s place… and one of them had a pram.

 

I didn’t speak of course but I stood by the pram, just as Mum did, and looked inside at the new baby. Young as I was, I knew what a beautiful baby looked like – my baby brother Henry was soft, round and bonny – so I hadn’t been prepared for the sight of the alien little creature in the pram. The baby was bald and pale with a face and skin so thin that all his veins showed through as blue as his sad watery eyes.

 

“Mum,” I whispered as I tugged on my mother’s gathered skirt to get her attention,”Isn’t that a funny looking baby?”

 

My  mother wouldn’t answer so I tugged again.

 

“Mum,” I whispered slightly louder. “Isn’t that a funny looking baby?”

 

My mother reached down and pushed my hand from her skirt but said nothing. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem to hear me.

 

“Mummy!” I shouted whilst pulling at her dress. “Don’t you think it’s a funny looking baby?”

 

Silence. Oh dear! Everybody looked at me. Mum squirmed and I realised I had said the wrong thing. I was too young to make amends so I did the next best thing and disappeared inside Mum’s voluminous gathered skirt where no-one could see me. I knew my mother’s legs quite well in those days… when I small.

 

Nowadays the world doesn’t seem nearly so big and, after a week on “Catherine’s Cabbage Soup Diet”, neither am I. I’ve lost seven pounds. The tricky thing will be to keep it off, especially as we’re on holiday in Spain at this very moment. Actually, I’m hoping to shrink a bit more.‍

 

 

 

Tom Tom?

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“I wonder why they called it TomTom?” Chris asked over his cup of tea in bed this morning.

“Um,” I opened my eyes (I was still lying down – my tea was cold, as usual).

Incidentally, TomTom was on Chris’s mind because yesterday evening my brother Robert asked me to download updates for his device from my computer, seeing as he was having some problem doing so on his. We’re not completely disinterested in the subject as one of our Airbnb guests a year or so ago – a lovely Australian gentleman -just happened to be one of the pioneers of GPS.

“It can’t be because of tom tom drums,” my husband continued, “or the message might be, ‘Is anybody out there?'”

“Or trouble brewing,” I agreed.

“And it can’t have anything to do with Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, who did steal a pig and away did run…” Chris mused with relish.

“And it can have nothing to do with ‘Tom, Tom, turn around…’,” I sat up in bed.

“No, or it would be a sign of faulty GPS!” Chris laughed.

I took a sip of cold tea and added:

“Perhaps two men called Tom developed the TomTom company.”

“Or it was one man called Tom who thought he was so good he named himself twice!”

 

Ah, we were both wrong. A Google search answered the question – TomTom’s founder was called Harold!

 

Auto Tech

In an interesting interview with The Guardian, TomTom’s founder Harold Goddijn talks about the company’s genesis, as well as how it hopes to reverse declining sales and falling profits.

One of the “big three” in Australia, along with Navman and Garmin, TomTom started out as a joint venture with phone maker Ericsson in the late 1990s. When trying to come up with a name for the nascent business Tom was the leading choice, but due to its generic nature the name would not have been registrable as a trademark.

During the interview, Goddijn reflects that the decision to go with the personable — and registrable — TomTom name contributed to the company’s success. He also reminisces about how — prior to his directive that upcoming devices be “buy, take out of box, drive home” — sat navs were, prior to 2004, a complicated jumble of CD-ROM discs, wires and PDAs.

Image result for tom tom the piper's son images

Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the English nursery rhyme. For the film of the same name, see Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son (film).
“Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son”
TomTomthePipersSon.jpg

Sheet music
Nursery rhyme
Published 1795

“Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son” is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19621.

Lyrics[edit]

Modern versions of the rhyme include:
MENU
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Tune for Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,
Stole a pig, and away did run;
The pig was eat
And Tom was beat,
And Tom went crying [or “roaring”, or “howling”, in some versions]
Down the street.[1]

The ‘pig’ mentioned in the song is almost certainly not a live animal but rather a kind of pastry, often made with an apple filling, smaller than a pie.[1]

Another version of the rhyme is:

Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,
Stole a pig, and away he run.
Tom run here,
Tom run there,
Tom run through the village square.

This rhyme is often conflated with a separate and longer rhyme:

Tom, he was a piper’s son,
He learnt to play when he was young,
And all the tune that he could play
Was ‘over the hills and far away’;
Over the hills and a great way off,
The wind shall blow my top-knot off.
Tom with his pipe made such a noise,
That he pleased both the girls and boys,
They all stopped to hear him play,
‘Over the hills and far away’.
Tom with his pipe did play with such skill
That those who heard him could never keep still;
As soon as he played they began for to dance,
Even the pigs on their hind legs would after him prance.
As Dolly was milking her cow one day,
Tom took his pipe and began to play;
So Dolly and the cow danced ‘The Cheshire Round’,
Till the pail was broken and the milk ran on the ground.
He met old Dame Trot with a basket of eggs,
He used his pipe and she used her legs;
She danced about till the eggs were all broke,
She began for to fret, but he laughed at the joke.
Tom saw a cross fellow was beating an ass,
Heavy laden with pots, pans, dishes, and glass;
He took out his pipe and he played them a tune,
And the poor donkey’s load was lightened full soon.[1]

Origins and meaning[edit]

Both rhymes were first printed separately in a Tom the Piper’s Son, a chapbook produced around 1795 in London, England.[1] The origins of the shorter and better known rhyme are unknown.

The second, longer rhyme was an adaptation of an existing verse which was current in England around the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. The following verse, known as “The Distracted Jockey’s Lamentations”, may have been written for (but not included in) Thomas D’Urfey‘s play The Campaigners (1698):

Jockey was a Piper’s Son,
And fell in love when he was young;
But all the Tunes that he could play,
Was, o’er the Hills, and far away,
And ‘Tis o’er the Hills, and far away,
‘Tis o’er the Hills, and far away,
‘Tis o’er the Hills, and far away,
The Wind has blown my Plad away.[1]

This verse seems to have been adapted for a recruiting song designed to gain volunteers for the Duke of Marlborough‘s campaigns about 1705, with the title “The Recruiting Officer; or The Merry Volunteers”, better today known as “Over the Hills and Far Away“, in which the hero is called Tom.[1]

 

 

Chipmunk?

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Image result for chipmunks photosImage result for chipmunks cartoon photos

 

“How do you spell chipmunk?” I asked Chris. (At the time I was writing my blog.)

“Chipmunk?” Chris queried. “Is there any other way to spell it?” and he started to spell it out to me, “‘C-H-I-P…M….”

Suddenly, it dawned on my husband that there might indeed be another way.

“Yes? Go on,” I urged.

“M…U-N-K!” he finished.

“I thought so,” I said (not wishing to sound stupid).

The other spelling would indicate something quite different…” he said laughing, “the chip-fat friar! (fryer). We could all Tuck in!”

“Forgive me for being so bald but I thought it was patently obvious,” I chipped in (in a high-pitched voice not dissimilar to the chipmunk voice on the little video I put on my blog a few days ago).

 

Image result for pics of friar tuck

Friar Tuck with Robin Hood (Richard Greene – the real Robin Hood!)

Correct spelling!

A Real Chipmonk – Correct spelling!

Cliff Hanger on Table Top Mountain

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How about an Australian joke from our good friend Roland, otherwise known as “The Bird Man of Brisbane”?

A well-dressed new-comer to a small town somewhere “Out West” calls into one of the local pubs and makes his way to a vacant stool by the bar. Sitting on the stool next to him is a typical weather-beaten Aussie wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat with corks dangling at the edges to ward off the flies. The local man has a “stubby” (beer bottle) in a cooler on the bar. Down at the foot of the stool is a haggard looking mongrel dog the same colour as the dust from the dirt road – red brown.

After ordering his beer, the stranger turns to the heavily lined Aussie and asks:

“Does your dog bite?”

“No,” the old man retorts succinctly.

“Do you mind if I pat him?” continues the new-comer trying to be friendly.

“Not at all,” says the old-timer putting his beer down on the bar.

The visitor puts his hand down to pat the dog and all hell breaks loose!

“Aaaargh!” screams the new-comer. “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite?”

“Not my dog, my dog’s at home,” replies the ancient Aussie with just a hint of a smile.

 

Below is a recent photograph capturing the antics of some wild lorikeets on Roland’s bird table… also a neat film I produced using material from our friend. (Note the film has been speeded up as it was rather long originally – hence, the chipmunk narration, which is quite funny!)

Sylvester or Tweety Pie

Sylvester or Tweety Pie

2:40

“Joey and his Mum” by ROJ

Sally Porch
  • 1 year ago
  • 8 views
Nearly every day wallabies visit ROJ’s garden and he’s taken to videoing them.

Lost

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My great little niece, Annalise, is like a “speeding bullet”; she started walking at ten months old and now, five months later, she tears around everywhere at a great pace, often making her hard to catch… and quite tiring for those about her. It seems she’s not unlike her famous great-grandma Betty (alias “Supergran”, who, in spite of being a nonagenarian, is still a force to be reckoned with!).

“Annalise is very energetic – isn’t she?” Chris spoke thoughtfully, having seen her only last evening at the house of my sister Mary (Grandma to Annalise).

I nodded. The “rocket” had kept five or six people on their toes for three hours or so.

“Do you think she’s hyper-active?” Chris asked, as if he was trying to remember what our girls were like at such a young age.

I had to stop and think myself, calling to mind what my son James was like as a toddler. My first thought was to say, “Well, Jim was quite placid”, but then I remembered an incident when he was around two…

We were out shopping in Exeter city centre, at least, I was shopping and Jim had to come along too. My young son didn’t much care for shopping for clothes, he preferred looking for toys or even food shopping. As it turned out, he especially disliked hunting for ladies swimming costumes.

“Mum, I’m bored. How much longer are you going to be?” he complained. (He had an excellent vocabulary for a two-year-old.)

I explained that Mummy had just another ten costumes to try on and that he must be a good boy and wait patiently, but he waited only until my back was turned… and he was off!

“Staff and customers, please look out for a two year old little boy called James. He has brown hair and brown eyes; he’s wearing navy and white striped dungarees and a white shirt. If you see him please catch him, hold him, and alert the manager. His mother is very anxious,” came the message (or something like it) over the Tannoy system throughout the multi-storey store.

Anxious! I was beside myself with worry. I flew around, and up and down every floor of the store to no avail; then, my heart racing, I went out onto the pavement of the busy main street and zig-zagged my way into every shop in the vicinity. I met a police constable (those were the days that policemen patrolled the streets) and he assisted me in my search. He had a walkie talkie and had soon alerted all the “Bobbies” and all the other shops in Exeter. Everyone in the city centre was on the hunt. After about ten or fifteen frantic minutes a call came through on the walkie talkie and the Bobby smiled.

“They have him,” he assured, “a member of staff spotted him up in the car park at the back of the shop.”

So I guess that Annalise is quite normal and not hyper-active. I suspect that she has a busy nature and just gets rather bored.

"Anyone for shopping?"

“Anyone for shopping?”

 

And if you’re feeling a bit lost or out of step with this modern world you might like to listen on YouTube to Jordan Peterson, philosopher and Psychology professor at Toronto University. Just click on the links below.

The Art Of Self-Regulation – Jordan Peterson – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndEG28wKOnA
1 Jun 2017 – Uploaded by Intellectual Awakening

”Self–regulation is the ability to act in your long-term best interest”. Dr. Jordan BPeterson talks about …

Jordan Peterson Unfolding Creativit

One Step At A Time – Jordan Peterson – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVWSw5k7KoI
30 May 2017 – Uploaded by Intellectual Awakening

Dr. Jordan B Peterson shares valuable advice for people who seek to regain control of their lives. It’s a …

 

 

 

 

Constructing Your Ger(t) Big Mongolian Yurt

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Firstly, find an appropriate paddock on a beautiful farm, say, in the heart of the South Devon countryside, and appropriate it (never mind the arrival of llamas that wonder what you’re doing in their favourite field). Make sure you have a party of at least five strong people, some tallish and male, to construct your Mongolian Yurt.

Four of the party can easily assemble the elements and piece together the  walls of stretchy latticework around the circular groundsheet perimeter whilst the other worker plays with babies in the farmhouse. At length, the shirker – or is it Sherpa? – will be required to assist in poking long roof poles into the holes in the circular piece of wood held aloft by the tallest group member standing on a step-ladder, and tying the curved ends into the top of the lattice (a canvas envelope running around the outside on top of the lattice walls cups the bottoms and takes the strain). When nearly all the poles are fitted the brightest spark will detect that some of the poles are tied into the wrong joints of lattice and, with a little effort of untying and re-tying (not to be confused with retiring) in the right joints. The two straight poles go either side of the door frame.

When all the poles are fitted perfectly the structure appears to be mighty high and you may well wonder how you will manage to slide the roof canvas into position; don’t panic, the tallest of the group works from inside and guides the canvas with a long pole, and gives instructions on which side should pull when. At last the top canopy – with the plastic window that covers the centre hole – is guided in similar fashion by the man at the top. This done, the Sherpa may return to the babies while the strong-armed ones attach guy ropes and peg them into the ground.

The sun will be going down beautifully behind the rolling hills and, magically, sausages, burgers and skewered chicken (well sekewered) will appear from an open barbecue; and someone will have produced a wonderful salad and accompaniments, and there will be Pimm’s in a jug on the serving table… and all will be well with the tribe… if you’re as lucky as we were last night.

Yurt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Yurt (disambiguation).

A traditional Kyrgyz yurt in 1860 in the Syr Darya Oblast. Note the lack of a compression ring at the top.

A Qaraqalpaq bentwood type “yourte” in Khwarezm (or Karakalpakstan), Uzbekistan

Turkmen woman at the entrance to a yurt in Turkestan; 1913 picture by Prokudin-Gorskii

A traditional yurt (from the Turkic languages) or ger (Mongolian) is a portable, round tent covered with skins or felt and used as a dwelling by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. The structure comprises an angled assembly or latticework of pieces of wood or bamboo for walls, a door frame, ribs (poles, rafters), and a wheel (crown, compression ring) possibly steam-bent. The roof structure is often self-supporting, but large yurts may have interior posts supporting the crown. The top of the wall of self-supporting yurts is prevented from spreading by means of a tension band which opposes the force of the roof ribs. Modern yurts may be permanently built on a wooden platform; they may use modern materials such as steam-bent wooden framing or metal framing, canvas or tarpaulin, Plexiglas dome, wire rope, or radiant insulation.

Etymology and synonyms[edit]

A yurt in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, used as a café.

  • Yurt – originally from a Turkic word referring to the imprint left in the ground by a moved yurt, and by extension, sometimes a person’s homeland, kinsmen, or feudal appanage. The term came to be used in reference to the physical tent-like dwellings only in other languages. In modern Turkish the word “yurt” is used as the synonym of “homeland” or a “dormitory”. In Russian the structure is called “yurta” (юрта), whence the word came into English.
  • гэр (transliterated: ger, [ˈɡɛr]) – in Mongolian simply means “home”.[1][2]
  • тирмә (transliterated: tirmä) is the Bashkir term for yurt.
  • киіз үй (transliterated: kïiz üy, [kɘjɘz ʉj]) – the Kazakh word, and means “felt house”.
  • боз үй (transliterated: boz üy, [bɔz yj]) – the Kyrgyz term is meaning “grey house”, because of the color of the felt.
  • ak öý and gara öý ([ɑk œj, ɡɑˈrɑ œj]) – In Turkmen the term is both literally “white house” and “black house”, depending on its luxury and elegance.
  • qara u’y or otaw ([qɑrɑ́ ʉj, uʊtɑ́w]) – in Qaraqalpaq the first term means “black house”, while the second means “a newborn family” and is used only to name a young family’s yurt.
  • “Kherga”/”Jirga” – Afghans call them.
  • “Kheymah” (خیمه/ख़ॆमा) is the word for a yurt or a tent like dwelling in India and Pakistan, from the Hindi/Urdu (and Persian) :خیمه
  • In Persian yurt is called chador (چادر), in Tajik the names are yurt, khona-i siyoh, khayma (юрт, хонаи сиёҳ, хайма).
  • өг (ög, Tuvan pronunciation: [œɣ]) is the Tuvan word for yurt.

History[edit]

Yurts have been a distinctive feature of life in Central Asia for at least three thousand years. The first written description of a yurt used as a dwelling was recorded by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. He described yurt-like tents as the dwelling place of the Scythians, a horse riding-nomadic nation who lived in the northern Black Sea and Central Asian region from around 600 BC to AD 300.[3]

Construction[edit]

A Mongolian Ger

Traditional yurts consist of an expanding wooden circular frame carrying a felt cover. The felt is made from the wool of the flocks of sheep that accompany the pastoralists. The timber to make the external structure is not to be found on the treeless steppes, and must be obtained by trade in the valleys below.

The frame consists of one or more expanding lattice wall-sections, a door-frame, bent roof poles and a crown. The Mongolian Ger has one or more columns to support the crown and straight roof poles. The (self-supporting) wood frame is covered with pieces of felt. Depending on availability, felt is additionally covered with canvas and/or sun-covers. The frame is held together with one or more ropes or ribbons. The structure is kept under compression by the weight of the covers, sometimes supplemented by a heavy weight hung from the center of the roof. They vary with different sizes, and relative weight.

A yurt is designed to be dismantled and the parts carried compactly on camels or yaks to be rebuilt on another site. Complete construction takes around 2 hours.

  • Mongolian Ger: starting with walls and door

  • Mongolian Ger: starting to place roof poles

  • Mongolian Ger: with roof poles in place

  • Mongolian Ger: placing the thin inner cover on the roof

  • Mongolian Ger: adding felt cover

  • Mongolian Ger: adding the outer cover

  • A ger sits on the Steppes near Mandalgovi

A Few Photos More – Mamhead Fayre

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A Day at the Fayre – In Pictures

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