As you all know, I'm keeping busy in these lock-down times with lots of bird-related projects, and I've started with that " pyramid of bird books" which will grace my office/attic/rubbish tip until it all falls over .... Er, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's all getting a bit precarious ..... this is "it" at the moment .......... As well as that "main" pyramid, of which I am quite proud, you can see that all around it are more and more heaps of books ... and that's not all ... ... and there's still loads of them lounging about on the downstairs shelves ..... ... and there's quite a few hugely-hefty books hanging around ... like this ... the dinky Collins thing will give you a size comparison .... ..and ... and .... there's probably loads more still hiding up here in the "office." e for that lot. n a r I'm going to need a c Can any of you lot out there beat that ? If you can, show me the pictures !! seasidebar@mailcom Anyway, I'm now hoping that each day will produce fewer and fewer additional ones, in much the same way we are all hoping the Corona-thing is going to do. One thing that's come out of it is those logarithmic scales on the graphs ... and what is a slide rule but logarithms on a stick ? I am one of those " pre-calculators-ever-existed" types that bore everyone to death going on about how we had to do " proper" maths. But enough !! Music ...... ... and that's not counting all the BBs/Twitching/ and other magazines, the bound volumes of them as well, and county reports ... hey, how many counties have you got reports for/from ?
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There I was, taking my permitted out-for-exercise walk down to the estuary, when I binoculared a pale greyish-white bird of some sort sitting on a post of some sort .... oho, what's this, thought I. At that stage, it was nowt but a speck of some sort. ...... As I got less far away I checked it every couple of minutes ... it was still there. And then, once I had got onto the estuary path, I had another, a-bit-less far-away look ... it seemed to have blackish wing-tips too.... ... quite intriguing, think you not ? More on that after the music .... with which I try to put off having to tell you what it actually was .... From a distance the world looks blue and green
And the snow capped mountains white From a distance the ocean meets the stream And the eagle takes to flight From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the land It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace It's the voice of every man From a distance we all have enough And no one is in need And there are no guns, no bombs and no diseases No hungry mouths to feed From a distance we are instruments Marching in a common band Playing songs of home, playing songs of peace They're the songs of every man God is watching us, God is watching us God is watching us from a distance From a distance you look like my friend Even though we are at war From a distance I just cannot comprehend What all this fighting is for From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the land And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves It's the heart of every man And God is watching us, God is watching us God is watching us from a distance Oh, God is watching us, God is watching us God is watching us from a distance ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well folks, that thing on the top of that pole was a trainer ... in my day they were called plimsolls .... that's probably why it hadn't flown away. Then I plodded back home, and there were 400+ Black-tailed Godwits on a flooded field ..... I'm pretty sure they were BTGs, and almost 100% sure that it was a flooded field. To cheer you up and make you feel superior, here's some more mistakes ... This was somebody else's bog-up ... 686-a-bigger-mistake-than-that-one-on-post-682.html This one was a moth-mistake ... 682-its-not-just-birds-we-can-get-wrong.html The linky thing seems to have packed up ..... I'll sort it out later. Hey... I've just realised ... I should have had a closer look at it, and narrowed it down to species and subspecies .. I'm sure that they must be classified like that, so that the "trainer-fraternity" can establish a heirarchy . One of the " stuck indoors but still doing birdy things" mega-list of projects I made a few posts ago was to sort out all your bird books ...... and one especially gripping project was to make a pyramid of them. And you're all wanting to know how I'm getting on .... Well, the short answer is, I'm a bit overwhelmed ..... there's far more big hefty books than I thought, and they're nearly all downstairs .... but I can't start stacking stuff stealthily straight away, because they will instantly get knocked over in our already overcrowded front room, especially as we keep getting distracted by all the images of birds we have in there as well. And because I've only tidied up about a third of the "office/attic, , I'm having a hard time trying to dig out all the bird books lurking under the billions of other books. But ... I have made a start ... it isn't quite in size order yet, and it's probably only a fraction of all the books ... but yes, it is under way..... Try not to dwell too much on all the stuff in the background. It's what us delusionary folk call "a work in progress, " Here's a coincidence for you ..... it was in yesterday's paper ... ... But it does bring in another "thing" you can do from the comfort of your own home, which you're all probably totally pissed off with by now .. living- room remote birding ... you can watch Hummingbird feeders in the USA, you can watch Wallcreepers going up walls ..... the world is your oyster. ..... .and there was also this .... Come on ... Sheldrake ..... they're Extracting the Michael ! Anyway ... pyramids ... I think mine will reach the ceiling ..... eventually. And now, a "hide joke" especially invented by me this very morning ... it is a bit contrived, and involved a bit of Spoonerism, so let's go .. One of the most unusual hides at Grumbling Stumps is the Old Top Secret War-Time Worky-Out German Coded Messages Brick Building ...... and as it was getting a bit delapidated we got that Phil Sheldrake to ring up the local builder ,,,, could he come round and have a look at what could be done .... could he pick our brains and sort out what need doing ? Well, two days later, when The Trogs entered the hide, they were rather miffed to find that the viewing windows were gone ! And replaced by bricks !!! There they were,in the pitch dark, wondering what the hell had happened. So ...here's what had happened .... He hadn't "Picked their brains" ... oh no ... he had " Bricked their panes" The mistakes are all there, just waiting to be made ! Especially if you're Thick as a Brick ... ..and here's Jethro Tull with said brick-related song, + Locomotive Breath Yesterday I showed you an extensive list of things you could do indoors with the wispiest of associations with birds. And smashing ideas they indeed were ..... And so as to actually have a go at them, I started off with that one about " how many depictions of birds have you got in your house in full view where you can see'em ?" And I've just "done it" for our living room. There were quite a few, to put it mildly.... Black Stork 2 Curlew 1 Oystercatchers 7 Swallow 3 Herring Gulls 6 Domestic Geese 12 Lesser Spot 2 ( one hanging from the ceiling) Er.... don't know 7 ( a surprisingly low figure) Duckling 1 Mallard 1 Chicken 3 Puffin 9 Golden Plover 2 Gt. Spot 1 Blue Tit 1 Brambling 1 Kingfisher 4 Peregrine 1 Black-winged Stilt 1 Black Kite 1 ( Drawing-pinned on the ceiling for 40 years) Toucan sp 2 Toucan other sp 1 Goose sp 9 Canada Goose 10 LBB Gull 6 B H Gull 1 Swallow 2 GRAND TOTAL 97 Not bad for one dinky room. Plus ... I got started on the "pyramid of bird books" idea ..... obviously, I got the biggest ones first, and they got me started with getting on for 1½ metres of books already..... crikey ! And crumbs as well. And there's going to be lots more big-uns up here in the attic/office ... which, by the way, is about half-tidied-up now. I've also discovered I've got at least 5 copies of Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book and 3 of his " The Big Bird Race " which have all fallen apart of course. I'm a bit worried the floorboards might collapse under what may well turn out to be 4 metres + of massive stuff, middle-sized stuff then smaller and smaller bird books grazing the ceiling. Have I seen any "real" birds recently ?... well, yes ... I ventured out for a brisk walk yesterday and there's Chiffchaffs everywhere now, and Gt. Spots banging away, and Bullfinches, Greenfinches, those 4 "dumped" Muscovy Ducks, Tortoiseshell and Peacock Butterflies , Bees, Ants.. it is indeed getting going. Come on you Willow Warblers, Sand Martins etc .... let's be 'avin you ! But does my excursion count as " essential" (?) I suspect not. I suppose I could build the book pyramid outside ... maybe....... OK ... music .......... Well, that's one of them ... it's just waiting for a better attempt..... you could branch out into "foreign" birds .... mind you, it's foreigners that have got us all locked into our dinky houses .... just saying ! Well, obviously there's lots of things you can do indoors in these troubled times, when you're not too busy making toilet paper out of your never-read detective stories and books about woodlice or old copies of Hoverfly News, or learning how to play Canasta or Go, .... but there's plenty of bird-related things to keep you busy for hours and hours ...oh yes ... [a] Exactly how many depictions of birds have you got on display around the house .... there's all those pictures on your walls ( well, in our house there are), there's tea towels by the sink, there's cards on the mantelpiece, there's all your hundreds of LP and CD covers to pore through ... the hours will just zip by ! [b] Now's the time to start your very own TV bird list ... well three really, the "sound" one, the "seen" one and the "mentioned" one .... wizard or what ? [c] And, of course, your Radio bird list ..... and interestingly, next week's "Tweets of the Day" seem to be a bit unusual judging by the titles .... one of them involves some folk singer or other, What ? Have a look for yourselves... [d] Then there's your " Celebrity Names" list .. like when Annie Nightingale introduces herself, or that Katya (?) Adler tells us about the current Brexit negotiations ( Adler - Eagle in German), or someone mentions top singer Taylor Swift ...... that sort of thing. I recommend Radio 3 . [e] Exactly how many " bird books" have you got ? Why not get them all out, and put them in order ... you can do it in lots of ways ..... [a] Best to worst ... then you could give the crap ones to a charity shop. [b] Smallest to biggest ...... you could make your make your very own pyramid ! I've already made a start with that one. It's good ! Back to infancy !!! [c] Which one has the best index ? Or the longest ... or the shortest. And why not look for indexing errors ... there's some examples here ... 491-more-index-fun.html [d] What % of them have NO index ? [e] How many have you got multiple copies of ? [f] Which ones do the pages all fall out of far too easily .... ? [g] What's the best "annotation" anyone's written ... and the worst ? [h] And then there's your window list. You can do a bit of "science" by making a window list for every one of your windows. Start today ! Is upstairs better than downstairs ? [i] Why not work out ...as best you can .. your bird list for every county ? [Jay] Why not try writing bird poetry ..... there's plenty of brilliant examples in my remarkable and hardly-ever-mentioned-by-me collections. 200-all-my-stupid-bird-poems-in-one-place.html 300-another-collection-of-my-ridiculous-poems.html 400-the-latest-round-up-of-my-crap-verses.html 500-yet-another-rotten-ragbag-of-rancid-rhymes.html 600-lots-of-my-poems-from-posts-501-to-600.html 700-more-rollicking-rhymes-about-dicky-birds.html And lets face it ... the world is in dire need or more and more bird poetry... oh yes. I'm sure that you lot out there have your own ways to occupy yourselves, but make sure you wash your hands thoroughly afterwards. Right ... you're sorted .... if you've got more nifty ideas, kindly let me/us know ... either as a comment, or to [email protected] It's been very sad having to shut down my seaside bar for the duration. On the plus side, I'm working my way through all the drink so as not to waste it. Music ....... we need uplifting, beautiful stuff ... ..... and we've had lots of clear nights lately ... Yes, yet another attempt to cheer us all up in these bird-barren-lockdown times....... this is a re-run from post 18, written when I was only about 68 years old ..... but I was dead pleased with it, being also a right bighead ..... off we go .. Leg-gel, Lionoil and other Palindromic Cures I don't suppose that many of you out there will be old enough to remember the Great Wren Collapse in 1972. Back then , before running water, before sanitation and electricity, we had to do what we could to survive. And so did the birds. In 1972 nature-lovers began to notice that wrens were staggering around their gardens in obvious distress, and began to die out in droves when they couldn't catch their usual prey, which in those days was mainly rats. What was to be done ? Well, luckily, researchers at the Palindromic Advanced Research Project (PARP) had been looking into old manuscripts, mainly written by witches, sages, necromancers and downright charlatans when they came across a strange thing .... back in those days ( around 1957) they believed that remedies which were palindromes worked far better than the others. Their first big discovery was Lionoil .... lions, as you know, are always roaring for some reason, and their throats get very sore. What they needed was a medicine which was the same backwards as forwards .... like " Lionoil." Readers, it worked. One teaspoonful of Lionoil twice a day got the lions back to full health, but it did more than that ... it got those boffins thinking up other possibilities. Maybe there were other palindromic medicines they could invent. All children know that when they are ill , pop is the best thing to get them through it. It's palindromic ! And of course mum and dad are the best people to look after them ... they're palindromic too. Grown men, of course, prefer a madam every time. I would too, if I had the stamina. Anyway, when these experts heard about the wrens which were having trouble with their little legs so they couldn't catch any rats, they set to work on the problem and soon came up with Leg-gel .... applied hourly to each leg every day and night for a week, it worked a treat and was so effective that rats got a bit scarce too. But that's another story.... and here it is.... it's enough to say that RatstaR made the remaining few rats famous overnight and they were able to live in swanky hotels, wear inappropriate clothes and generally swan about simply being famous. And more importantly, they were well away from their major predator, the wren. There's that thing about gnats losing their lovely tangy taste in the Falklands a few years ago...this caused a mass starvation amongst Swifts and Hirundines who wouldn't eat them any more. Bird-lovers all over the islands were panic-stricken until the boffins at PARP did a bit of chemistry and invented Gnatang .... it restores their tangy taste ... and within a few hours the swifts etc started eating them again to everyone's delight except the poor old gnats. One of the most remarkable ones was developed to help Puffins .... around the UK Puffins were showing signs of respiratory problems so something had to be done. Within weeks the experts at the PARP had produced a handy nasal spray which did the job perfectly. It was marketed as Puffinsniffup ... or PUFFINSNIFFUP as it appeared on the label. ..which saved our lovely Puffins ! They even learned to self-medicate ... little spray-cans with tiny nozzles were pushed into the soil by each burrow, and the Puffins son learned to plug each nostril onto the tiny tube and press down to get a measured dose of puffinsniffup® and then go about their normal business of entertaining tourists. That's the power of Palindromic Medicine. Even Ferdinand de Lesseps, the brains behind the Panama Canal, hoped it might work for him .... on his gravestone it says .... A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA And as for the music, it's another of Death Cab for Cutie's killer songs. " Marching Bands of Manhattan" This is an acoustic version .... it goes to the heart and the head. I've also picked a words video so you can sing along ... ....... it's that sort of song. I was amazingly chuffed when I invented that PuffinsniffuP thing. And all the others. Sometimes, an idea just works, and grows . And you've got to catch them before they run away. .. but not this one .... I hope you all remember what that is, and where it came from ... if not, simply zip back to the wonderful and rather odd 2nd post on this humungously burgeoning blog and take a look ... On one of Crump's far too frequent visits to his swanky Scottish golf course, Doh! nald (thinks he) spotted a rare bird ... and he's sent off his description of it to the British Birds Rarities Committee ( Beeby Arsy) ... and luckily for us, his account of his specimen has "leaked out" somehow or other into the public domain ! Oh dear ! Oh dear oh dear !! Y'all will have to imagine the fancy cresty thingy at the top of the letter ... FROM THE RESIDENTAL OFFICE OF THE PRECEDENT OF THE U S of A ...... OK, so you guys, wadda-y'know, I was up in your Snotland on my 3000 acre golf coarse and after getting to the 218th hole in a nifty 3 strokes I was feelin' good ! If you guys wanna take isshoo with that, that's your prablam guys, 'cos I can easy send my , let's call-em "segooridy" round to your house , so, look out huh ? Don't mess with the top guy ! That's me by the way ..... the Top Guy. Nobody Topper. Get that ? Nobody. There was this bird, a feathery sort of thing, that's how I knew, there's nothing I don't know,nothing at all, and my doctor, he'll back me up on that, or else. And don't forget, I've got the highest IQ in the world,741 it's all in riting, strate from my personal IQ expert, 741, maybe more, I don't want to boast, could be a lot more, a whole lot more, but that stoopid question about those 3 closed doors with a car and two goats behind them was stoopid, stoopid, and I told him right there to cross it out, or I'd bust his ass ! Now listen up. I'm telling you, this is the dope on that bird standing ( illegally) on MY golf course. Probably shittin' all over it too, the bastard. And I might just take that to the courts ... I never lose a case, never lost one, won 'em all, more of them than any other guy in the universe, so just think about that, you dumb-assed losers. So this bird ... big, white, and like I said, feathery. And after a few seconds while my bodyguards had a few pot-shots at it, it walked into one of my lakes, the bloody cheek of it ..... and started swimming about as if it bloody owned the place. And after a few more shots , it sank in a cowardly, sneaky, losers kinda way. So what have we got.. a big, lazy ,feathery bird, hey, I know a bird when I see one, and this one, well, I know what it was. I know all the birds. Every one,every single bird in the world, no-ones ever done it, just me, nobody's going to argue with that, and I'm not boasting, in fact I'm the humblest guy you'll ever meet, nobody humbler. Nobody. Get that ? I know what it was . I don't want, and don't need your piddling opinion. So you can just get on with this next bit...... So what I want, and read this very carefully guys, is a big, bright, fancy certificate, with my name at the top , in a gold frame, shipped over to The White House Pretty Damned Quick, because the Donald better get what he wants super-pronto, he always does, never fails, and with my IQ of 886 I don't need any crap from you mud-covered, flood swamped losers over the pond. And that's MY pond, all mine, nobody in the world has their own ocean, just me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well readers, I've dug up a suitable song ..... and here it is .. nothing to do, of course, with the subject of this post at all ... as usual..... I'm a bit glum about the probably very long lock-in we're all going to have to put up with .... so I'm dragging some of my funny ( I hope) stuff up from the past and giving it a second airing..... Here's one of my ancient posts where I "imagined" Eric Hardy's style ... he was a legend in his own life-time ... and now you'll see why if you haven't read them before .... this one was originally on post 179, which now seems like millions of years ago ...... here we go then ... brace yourselves, and don't expect any full stops ... off you go Eric .... let-em have it ! I'm writing this from a municipal Birkenhead bus shelter in the pouring rain, that's how I like it, lots of posh cars are shooting by, and I wave my stick at every one of the capitalist thugs, and having spent the whole of the weekend roaming the Mersey Marshes, I've got plenty to report, so, fearlessly I started out from Heswall Bank at 3am on Saturday, getting my first moth on a shop window pane, a fine Mottled Condom, not at all common in these parts due to draining of their habitat ( discarded dustbins) by right-wing factions, and there were plenty more in the next couple of hours, the highlights being 3 Crumbled Hassocks, a single Dishevelled Monastery , 27 Old Fartingales and an outstanding but tiny Crepuscular Halfscarf of the rare variety " crustipants" , well, this would have been enough for the whole day, but there was plenty more to come, all missed of course by the lazy, fattened-calf-scoffing plutocrats snoring in their criminally-obtained eiderdown luxury dossbags, propped up by gold and silver bedsteads specially reinforced to hold the disgusting mass slumped upon them, and even before dawn I was constantly regaled by the calls of the Resplendent Bosh-Owl and, of course, the Prannet, only rarely seen nowadays due to the racketeer farming "community" trashing the landscape, whilst also pleased with the sheer numbers of Bog Sparrows, unique to Birkenhead and its environs, which nest in outside toilets, mainly to avoid having their eggs stolen by rich bastards with indoor toilets, which will be the ruin of the next generation , who will inevitably be in the thrall of consumerism, and will never appreciate the sort of wildlife I was experiencing right then, such as huge banks of Mild Sludgeroot, Evergreen Nevergreen, Three-Petalled Murgatroyd, Swigglers Posyflower and the extremely unusual 27-leaved Clover, by which time the sun was over the horizon revealing revelations like a swarm of 43 Pratt's Cathartics, only the 307th I've ever seen, a flock of 344 Solitary-Birds on the sea wall, or what's left of it due to tidal surges caused not least by the fat-cat industrial giants pouring chemicals into our oceans, not forgetting fungi such as Dog's Arsebox ( with 2 fruiting bodies!), Ruby-Crusted Halfstagger and its close relative Rudely-Breasted Thricetwice, Dribbler's Architripe, Fumerolic Scrad and, rarest of all, the amazingly dull Grey-Flanged Palebum, all under threat from "academics" in their ivory towers who want them all lumped into one "superspecies" just so they can write pompous research papers about it and add to all the jumped up letters after their double-barrelled names, and then it was time for my politically correct breakfast of dustbin-crusts washed down with gutter-water and the dregs left in discarded bottles and cans , which, by the way, turned out to be a source of further interesting finds including the rare, beer-swilling millipede Firkinn's Unremarkable , an unusual- for- Wirral slug, Frangularia graspercraps and best of all, the Temporary Scribble, which only lives for 17 minutes and is mainly seen as a fossil in northern climes, but then it was time to move on to the University of Birkenhead to have a quick go at Professor Hartley Bigwig and let him know how overprivileged he was and that I know that his PhD thesis was copied out of a special secret book for toffs which is full of PhD theses that they can copy out, but he wasn't in, probably because he was at a swanky lunch with lots of other jumped-up copycats like him, so I spent a little while looking for rotifers in the nearby Dregsley Park, shortly to be demolished to make way for a new Stately Home for Viscount Crabbface and his snooty pals, but I was lucky to come across such specimens as Terpsicursus replicans, Ultracumbria vertiginensis and best of all, the extremely unusual Unspeckled Grummage, one of the few rotifers to be given an English name, and which has only been seen once before but unfortunately was quickly consumed by a most unexpected Harpy's Upjerkin, which was well outside its normal range in Scabshire, where I have spent many productive hours dredging the extensive canal system looking for its 87 species of Lamprey, so far totally unknown to science, but predicted by me in the Liverpool Echo 37 years ago but totally ignored by the usual blinkered fossils with posh connections in the Science Museum where I first noticed a most unusual specimen of the Dubious Mattress overlooked by the doddering old fools whom I have denounced for many years ........... ( at this point the tape ran out, so we won't ever find out about the rest of the day ... what a shame, and just as he was getting into his stride as well. ) I you liked that.... here's some more of his/my recent stuff respectfully parodying his style ... well, the links to them anyway ... 481-elric-hardly.html This one is all about him ...... lots of praise and respect for all that he did, and about his amazing radio broadcasts/rants (!) and a clip from one of them.... 582-more-about-eric-hardy.html I can't imagine what would be suitable music to go with that .... oh ...yes I can .. Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you were ... Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were. Old man look at my life, Twenty four and there's so much more Live alone in a paradise That makes me think of two. Love lost, such a cost, Give me things that don't get lost. Like a coin that won't get tossed.... Rolling home to you. Old man take a look at my life I'm a lot like you I need someone to love me the whole day through Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true. Lullabies, look in your eyes, Run around the same old town. Doesn't mean that much to me To mean that much to you. I've been first and last Look at how the time goes past. But I'm all alone at last. Rolling home to you. Old man take a look at my life I'm a lot like you I need someone to love me the whole day through Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true. Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were. Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were. So that you'll be ready for what's coming up, this video might be helpful ... Well .... lockdown or what ? We went to do a tiny bit of essential shopping and the town was almost empty, there was a spaced-apart mini-queue to get into the mini-Sainsburys, got the papers, some milk, paid with my contactless card, walked home observing the 2m limit .... all very strange. It's not going to be much good for us birders for some indeterminate period. So .. I thought I would cheer you all up with a bit of a Blast from the Past ... quite what bird he actually saw on that day nobody really knows, but the Rarities Committee are just the ones to sort that sort of thing out .... so .... .....here's Stanley Unwin's BBRC writy-up in all its wordlyscribing chassis.... and now you've seen the vodio you'll hardly probly no trubbly with the verbylationary .... We allsettly-off on the Silly Onion bouncy-boatly heftling two-words the rockety Aisles of Slyly all of a sloth and tiltio froo-and-toe sicky-up slithery-about-the-deckly and biconklers straggling us and our jugglyscopes slimying acrops the deckboardlies , ink-lundling The Gink of Brightly, his conkerbine, Kween Brightly, Sneevly Heavens, Washly Handbasin, our dogglo Worrals, and a copplof hangly-onners we pict-up on our straggles. Hargly hadwy startled when we evently spottled elevnty Albert-Rozzers snookling acrest the Wavely Newts , swiping our co-blinkers with our honkysleeves to replus the brainys pray in aries. Sniftly I astempled a scrapply-diacrap of the spacy-mens with my trussly byro and snotpad for proposterkitty. Howleverly, evenstubberly we disparked on Briherlo itshelf and swooshled up to our flaverit copspatch wear we ineverstribely stubbled acres a worthitofspotting rary-tree or flagrant wondererer, and we orllcreeped uponi-tanditwas nodoughtly the Creeply-Converted-Corker that wasattick for everlybodly and great joy abountied and parbly our mainlytarglit was eventurgly fullfulluped. Byth thistimely my snotpad haddgot snoako and snoddern with the turble drown-poor engrulfring emblythinglys gurgly sinkly-in. I'm eggspeckling the kermitty will orl be watling for the descrapshun of the Crap-Covered-Corker and earwiggo .... legthn ruffly coprarible to the prevlious one, lettsay a bitless than afoo-torso, curvly of beek, longlylegged, sarndly paleale of boddly, longlytripeyes, sedentlerry molstly, voakulele PRAAKPRAAK harslycroak, swhooshyflitty, unmushtarkarble in evriwey. Unforkutakly no fortycraps were snappled dewtoo inclampment atmosqueclerics and iggorance of the baysicks. I sinkerly and hartlyhope that you will get thatlot scrootly proseedcaked and postlo certstifflicats by the norbel canals. We had a turly turble hellycropper-ryde backlyover to Penance aswel. I subtext the driveler was sploshed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That's one down ..now here's one of Joris Bohnson's Rarity Sightings .... you all know what he's like so you won't need a video ..... .. quite what the BBRC made of it ..who knows ? Well ... phwooooar ! What a corker ! Cripes ! More of a Corker- Sort-er-Stork-er, what ? Big ! I'll say ! Corks ! A right whopper... remember that barmaid at Wynthorpe-Jegger's 21st ? No ... nobody else does either. Talk about whoppers !!! Tell you what ... just between you, me and the butler's mum ..... it was a big-un. Legs !! Miles long !! Stonkers !! Looked a bit like that bit of stuff ... used to clean my rooms at Balliol !! Poop-Poop ! Erk ! Hard to keep things in the old trousers sort of thing. Phwooaaaaar. Ding-Ding-A-ling. Details ! Cripes ??!! Yes, you'll be wanting, er, hang on a minute, what was I on about, wait a sec, got it , yes, no probs, details.... yes... not a "details"sort of bloke really, don't need it in my line of work, whatever, er, whatever it is, hang on , it's coming back to me, er, sort of, reminds me of me old mucker Trentby-Stinker, or was it Stinkby-Trenter, well, one of those, or something, he couldn't remember his own bally name, had a bugger of a time getting home after a bit of a binge down at Jollocks, so did I, come to that, never did find those trousers, but hang on, it was black and, er, white, yes, whatever you do, Joris, don't mention Minstrels, seem to think that might get me in a spot of bother somehow or other, yes, black bits, sure of that, and white,er,other bits, legs ... legs .. they deserve a bit of space on the old page, what, did Stinker-Trentby get his trousers back, no bloody idea actually, moving on, beak, big beak, yes, blimey, what a beak, couldn't help thinking about Beaky Bumface at Balliol, he was always in the Beak's office for something or other, usually the other actually as it happens, now what colour was the beak, wait a sec, it's coming, as the barmaid said to ..hang on, better not do that one, bit near the knuckle, nudge-nudge, Poop-Poop, a blind horse knows no secrets, what, Phooo--aaaaahr !! Corks ! .......................... sorry, sorry,sorry, nodded off a bit there, Moooooo Moooooo, whose party is it, must slip across the bally room and have a word, no no, hang on, beaks.... red. It was red, yes, hold on, jiggers, the legs were red too ... bloody long as well, I'm telling you, no word of a lie, that Brigitte Barcode or whatever she called herself, Wowsy-Trousers, she had legs. Phwooooaaaar! And the rest, hold on, rhymes with rest, no idea actually, mustn't think about them at the minute, we don't want any more Trouser-Trombone-Trouble, anyway, hold on, you'll need to know what it sounded like, sort of old-gaffer noises, grrrrfff, do it myself during the old rumpy- pumpy, blimey, better cross that out, gasping sort of noise, ooo-er missus, clattery noises too, makes me think of poor old Rupert Crust- Heverington that time he fell off the silly billiard table at the Dorkington, lots of clattering there, rolled him outside onto the pavement I reckon, best thing ... not seen him since actually, now, where was I, or, raaaather, where was it, nearly there, woof-woof, oiks, no bloody clue there, hold on, hold on, lakes, I've got 7 or so on the old shaky-pater's grounds you know, which one, that's the thing, got, it, got it, just a minute, er, one of those, you know old chap, the one where bloody Steggers-Stumpington jumped in starkers ...never seen him since either, odd thing, but that's where it was, up to its legs, grrrr, legs, yes, no, er, hang on, can't be er crumbs quite er right, oourrrhhuuuurhhhhhh..................................................................................... pwwwaaaaaaaaaaar... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That's more than enough of him ! But I hope you found a morsel of cheery-hup in there somewhere . I'm quite proud of my invention of "Trouser-Trombone-Trouble" ... I hope I'm the first to use it in print. And now ... a bit of silly music ... Mr. Slater's Parrot ... I think there's another BBRC thingy somewhere, but I'm not sure where ... if I can't find it, I'll do another one.
Huzzah !! This morning ( 11:07 am to be precise) a Chiffchaff sang loudly at the bottom of the garden ... and when I went for a stroll, I got two more. They're "in" as us lot say. And to add to the excitement after what seems like 8000 years of rain and tempest, one of our neighbours told us that a week ago (!) they heard a cuckoo. Crumbs !! Crikey ! Briwsion ! Jings ! Well then ... what is the correct/polite reply ? Luckily The Significant Otter was at my side, and said something nice. Phew ! A lucky escape there. And this afternoon, I cracked that grid puzzle I wrote about a short while ago. I was chuffed ... not least because the "instructions" were rather useless... distinctly misleading actually. For a start, it seems to infer that the first clue leads to a bird that starts with W ..but it doesn't. Brilliant. It's a clever clue though. It was clever clue And so were all the others. But I battled through And the answers I discovered ! But ... I worked out my own sweet way of "doing" it .... aha ! It's on post 812 if you want to have a go..... ... a mere 3 posts back. In these troubled times, we need distraction from the seething hordes of ignorance. Not mentioning any actual names. And certainly not any rhyming with Crump or Bohnson. I bet they couldn't tell a Chiffchaff from a Chuffer-train. We've also spotted a few Bees, and a tortoiseshell butterfly flew through the garden. Wizard !! And one of the Blackcaps, or maybe a "new" one, appeared. Just another day .... I'll put the "answers" somewhere or other on here .... watch this space...
... but just as proof that I've done it, the " hidden message" is HAPPY CHRISTMAS . |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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