My best boy

Taken today - and he wrote it himself!  :O))

Lonely Hearts

Ads from the Lonely Hearts column of the London Review of Books:

'They call me naughty Lola.  Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist (M, 46).'

'List your ten favourite albums... I just want to know if there's anything worth keeping when we finally break up.  Practical, forward thinking man, 35.'

'Employed in publishing?  Me too.  Stay the hell away. Man on the inside seeks woman on the outside who likes milling around hospitals guessing the illnesses of out-patients. 30-35. Leeds.'

'I like my women the way I like my kebab.  Found by surprise after a drunken night out and covered in too much tahini.  Before long I'll have discarded you on the pavement of life, but until then you're the perfect complement to a perfect evening.  Man, 32, rarely produces winning metaphors.'

'My ideal woman is a man.  Sorry, mother.'

'Your buying me dinner doesn't mean I'll have sex with you.  I probably will have sex with you, though.  Honesty not an issue with opportunistic male, 38.'

'Not everyone appearing in this column is a deranged cross-dressing sociopath.  Let me know if you find one and I'll strangle him with my bra.  Man, 56.'

'Are you Kate Bush? Write to obsessive man (36).  Note, people who aren't Kate Bush need not respond.'

'Stroganoff.  Boysenberry.  Frangipani.  Words with their origins in people's names. If your name has produced its own entry in the OED then I'll make love to you. If it hasn't, I probably will anyway, but I'll only want you for your body. Man of too few distractions, 32.'

'Ploughing the loneliest furrow.  Nineteen personal ads and counting.  Only one reply. It was my mother telling me not to forget the bread on my way home from B&Q.  Man, 51.'

'Mature gentleman, 62, aged well, noble grey looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society seeks...  damn it, I have to pee again.'

'Slut in the kitchen, chef in the bedroom.  Woman with mixed priorities (37) seeks man who can toss a good salad.'

'Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.'

'Romance is dead.  So is my mother.  Man, 42, inherited wealth.'

Myself I think the woman sounds the best of the lot, but which would you go for?  :O))

Mmmm, smell that!

What a miserable wet and dark day it is, and cold too.  The poor ponies in my paddock stand gloomy under the oak tree and from time to time take a slow canter to the fence in hopes of their daily apples, their hooves squelching as if they're running through thick custard.  One little dapple grey who's been served more times this year than we've had sunny days is still 'bulling' so as she's a brood mare it looks as tho she'll be going off to the great catfood factory in the sky before spring.

To cheer myself up a little I've made a small batch of mincemeat ready for the X word - tho I refuse to say it before mid November at the earliest.  I trundled off to Oswestry in the downpour to get the ingredients but forgot to buy some brandy.  Once the weighing in began, my husband asked, foolish foolish man, if he could help - something he never asks when spuds have to be peeled or cabbage shredded.  This time of asking came opportunely for me to say yes, of course, please add ¼ pint of brandy.  We don't have any, said the innocent.  Oh we do, sez I, see just there?  WOT, my calvados???  Is it or isn't it brandy?

I bet he won't ask tomorrow when the Xword cakes are made, but the rest of his calvados will be going in just the same <evil grin>

Come Xword time, he'll tell all and sundry that 'we' made the mincemat and cakes and he'll sniff appreciatively and entirely forget that once he'd poured the hooch he sulked off upstairs to play something written by an extinct southern American black guy entitled 'Ah wish mah wuman would leave me and leave ma hooch alone' blues.

Roma

My week in Rome was wonderful.  The hotel was smashing, central and within walking distance to everything in the City and the weather was great. 

The only thing which marred our stay was a metro crash which killed one and injured 250 - and it happened 15 minutes before we intended to use it. 

I think we saw all of the major sites and we really enjoyed walking the city streets and byways.  We also took an evening tour of Rome by night and while trying to set up my camera for night time shots I discovered on getting home that I'd also taken 4 short videos!  I had no idea that my digicam could take audio-video. 

Here's a pic of a typical Rome roofscape, full of domes:

Another of the Forum and Colosseum:

And finally a view of the Trevi Fountain - and yes I did throw 3 coins in to make sure that one day I'll return

 

 

First pics

A week ago today I attended Mass given by the Pope and I found it very moving. The choir was wonderful and even the Pope sang out.  I did put a word in on your behalf altho I still think you could all make a good Act of Contrition.

The Forum:

The Colosseum:

Arivederci

I'm off to Rome early in the morning for a week.  I shall be in St Peter's Square on Sunday morning for the Pope's blessing. 

Be good while I'm away and I'll offer up a prayer for all you sinners  <g>

Saturday night parties, yeahhhhh

When  Constance's mummy was 4 I said that I was in two minds as to whether I'd allow her to be 5, because she was lovely just as she was.  I got several weeks of exemplary behaviour by putting her on a warning that any mischief and she'd have to stay at 4 for another year.  So shoot me <g>   

She's just told me she wished she'd remembered that scam in time to do the same thing to Connie.  After doing the Conga around the cul de sac with a horde of screaming 4 & 5 year old 'princesses' in tow, I think her dad is going to ban any further birthdays.  He got off light - my vote was for the Tweetie Pie costume and the bright yellow tights 

Connie is the second tot with the big laugh on her face - and she never realised who was suffering inside the furry suit - altho if she had, she'd have laughed even more <g>

Thank your Mum right now, you ingrate

 

What, out of all the unselfish things human beings do during their lifetime brings the most fulfilment?  What from their life’s labours long outlasts them?   What work can an individual do to bring most benefit to their country

 

I’ll tell you the answer; it’s your children, my children, the country’s children.

 

No children means no families.  No children means no future for the country.  No children means no cultural transmission.

Children are not only members of society in their own right as full British citizens; they are also the society which will continue after we’re gone, and the replicators of all future society.

 

Why then do so many appear to want mothers, who literally give life to the country, to do it all without any practical acknowledgement or recognition of the challenges that producing and raising future citizens involves? 

 

People complain about maternity leave, child benefits, mothers who continue to work in paid employment and mothers who don’t, parents who smack and those who spare the rod, parents who shower their children with material goods and those who don’t have the wherewithal to do the same.  People complain about the presence of children in supermarkets, on public transport, in restaurants, in shops, in pubs, on the street and in the workplace.  Mothers get condemned for driving children to school and for working reduced hours to fit in with school times.  They get criticised for restricting children’s freedom to play and for allowing play in public places.  Parents are condemned for assisting their children with schoolwork and for not helping them with literacy and  numeracy, for pushing them to achieve and for neglecting them by not having high expectations.

 

Is it any cause for surprise that fewer and fewer Western women are prepared to put their own lives on hold – and also suffer a negative effect to their future employment opportunities and pension entitlement – when at every turn they are criticised and denigrated for it?

 

Do we not all want our society, our culture to continue?  Do we not want to influence the way that children experience life with us?

Should we expect, when we tell parents to raise their children without any assistance, that we can also tell them precisely how they must do it?

Feed your children, house them, clothe them, educate them, discipline them, entertain them, develop them how we say you must, but don’t ask for any recognition of the problems that might present and definitely don’t expect any help.

 

British birth rates currently are insufficient to replace the people already here.  More than 3 in 10 couples choose not to have children at all, and those who do are having less than two.  The future of our culture is diminishing as fast as the number of potential pension, NHS, defence funding taxpayers.

Unveiled racism

 

There have been literally thousands of messages posted to the General Politics message board following from Jack Straw's comments about the Muslim veil. 

 

Personally I think he makes a valid point - such veils do act as a barrier between Muslim women and the broader society and they mark their wearers out as intentionally choosing to be viewed as separate from the rest of us.  Such views as Straw's - if it is his view rather than a bid for red top popularity and some of Reid's limelight - should be publicly and politely expressed, otherwise how can Britain come together as a nation with shared social understandings?  The Leader of the British Council of Muslims agrees with Straw on this, and says that the veil is a topic of dissension within British Islam.

 

The problem is, and always has been,  that any comment made about Muslim lifestyles from people in the public eye elicit an outpouring of racial intolerance of the basest sort.  On the message board there are (truly) countless messages saying that the veil should be legally banned and wearers forcibly deported.  There is also a distressing amount of people who apparently believe that Muslim women are forced to veil by Muslim men, and/or that they wear veils to hide the fact that they're all too ugly to be seen in the streets.  This is the sort of thing which prevents decent people from having the courage to speak their minds, raises what are little more than trivial differences to become major shibboleths, and allows minor irritations to develop into weird racist theories.

the 6th cheery thing :O))

A happy thing from my day which I forgot to list was wrapping birthday presents for Constance who's 5 on Saturday, and her Mum, who's birthday is on Sunday.  Less fabuloso is being roped in to do games at Connie's 'Fairy Princess' themed party but at least I'll be doing it with Felix on my hip while his Mum's busy wiping up the dropped jelly, bless his adorable little cotton sox.

This is him at 14 weeks.  I know it's too mumsy for words, but I knitted this little jumper myself, good eh?   <gg>

5 cheery things in my day

 

I managed to get the dog out briefly between bouts of rain and she only ate one lump of horsepoo.

 

My autumn flowering cyclamen have self-seeded wonderfully in just a few years and now I have a large swathe of nodding pink flowers beneath my magnolia tree.

 

I've saved myself the £600 quoted for painting my dining room by washing the walls and ceiling with sugar soap and it's come up looking as good as it did when it was first done 4 years ago.

 

I got a quote from the AA for my car insurance £60 beneath Sainsbury's renewal price.

 

My husband's away from home at the mo so I'm forced to eat both chocolate eclairs in the pack.

Things really aint wot they used to be.

 

When I was at school the Sixth Form were exalted Goddesses, rarely seen, much admired heroines who occupied a different world, and certainly a different school, to we lower orders. 

The Angels of the VI  had a suite of rooms at the top of a turret, rumoured to be furnished with easy chairs, sofas and a working fireplace - and they definitely had a weekly coal allowance.  Male teachers called them 'Miss' and had they ever deigned to speak to us, we non 6th Formers had to call them Miss too and if anyone had dared to cheek them they could dish out not only lines like 5th Form Prefects, but detentions too.

 

They wore similarly coloured but very differently styled uniforms to the rest of us, mostly differentiated by what they didn't have to wear - gaberdine macs and grey knickers and socks for example - and they had 'special' scarves and fancy edging to their blazers which were of a better cut and fabric to the common herd.  They were also allowed to put their hair up instead of wearing plaits and could have their ears pierced all of which were forbidden on pain of a letter to Mum for the rest of us. 

 

VI Formers were never seen around the rest of the school except when some of the 7th termers (waiting for their Oxbridge admissions) took a small group for French conversation.  Unlike us, they could use the walled garden which was attached to one side of the Quad at lunchtimes and sit on benches by the fountains during free periods for al fresco revision.  While the rest of us traipsed the corridors moving to different rooms for each subject, they remained in their secluded hideaway and teachers went to them.

 

Compare that to the way that 6th Formers are treated now, trudging the corridors and being buffeted by uncouth Year 9s, dragging their day's worth of text books, rough books, homework, art projects, packed lunches and outdoor clothing from room to room where the whole lot has to be stuffed under the desk where feet should go.  No personal private and permanent desk, no private lockers, mass showers with the plebs, plastic 'easy' chairs in their squalid Common Rooms - when they're allowed such things.  No respect for their voluntary status, no respect for their near-adult age, no respect for them at all.

 

If they knew what post-compulsory schooling was like for their parents, the poor things would never believe that school could be like that.  It's small wonder that, rather than looking forward to reaping a few rewards for surviving GCSEs, today's post-16s barely manage to tolerate school.

C'mon, fess up all you babes :O)

I've been reading someone's blog entry about online crushes.  She describes how it feels to come across someone online who writes things so clever or insightful that they seem to be channeling your own thoughts, if only you could write so eloquently or so wittily.  The beauty of the internet crush is that on the internet, it doesn't matter what you look like —or whether you and the object of your crush is a man or a woman, cute or plain, or sitting around in baggy pajamas.  Rather, you can each judge and be judged on the merits of your mind. This, my blogger says, opens the door to intellectual flirtations freed from the confines of reality.   She finally comments that online crushes are like chocolate sauce ie you won't starve without it but it lends a sweet, enriching and intoxicating touch to online communications, and, she says, it's great fun to cultivate a few intellect-based crushes, enjoy feeling smitten from time to time, and hone your flirting skills via e-mail and blog comments.

 

Now, I'm not too big on internet flirting having some years ago been crushed by someone with a crush but I must admit that from time to time I've felt an attraction to someone whose words have struck me with joy that someone else thinks the identical way that I think only more cleverly, or more often and less intellectually, someone who's stuff is reliably both insightful and witty.

 

I wonder, does anyone feel brave enough to 'fess up to enjoying the occasional online crush?  And more - has anyone ever fessed up to the object of their crush? 

Wot happened next ???  :O))

Blond blokes eh? :O)

Yesterday I was having some work done on the car. A blond VaVaVoom driver came in to the garage and asked for a seven-hundred-ten. The mechanics all looked at each other and one asked, "What's a seven-hundred-ten?"
He replied, "You know, the little piece in the middle of the engine. I lost it and need a new one. It had always been there."
The mechanic gave the bloke a piece of paper and a pen and asked him to draw what the piece looked like. He drew a circle and in the  middle of it wrote 710. The mechanic then took him over to another car which had the hood up and asked, "Is there a 710 on this car?" He pointed and said, "Of course, it's right there."

Click here to learn the identity of the mysterious 710: http://www.mademelaugh.com/gfx/710.jpg