Friday 26 June 2009

So what is dying...

Farrah Fawcett put up a great fight - sadly she lost, and Michael Jackson will be Twittering and Googling for a few days yet.

Yesterday, I was early for a meeting in Tunbridge Wells, and while waiting for the other two reprobates, with whom I have the pleasure of a 'Company Organisation', I wandered around in the street, and found myself looking in the window of a Funeral Directors.

There was a display of the usual kindness and soothing pictures, but also a small writing, which actually brought the Scrobs' eyes to a moisturising condition - a rare event except during (and after) such lunches where the comestibles become heavier than 13%...

I've Googled the words, and here they are, in abbreviated form...


A ship sails and I stand watching
till she fades on the horizon,
and someone at my side says,
"She is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large as when I saw her.
The diminished size and total loss of sight
is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"She is gone," there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout...

"Here she comes!"

... and that is dying.


So now you know.

Sunday 21 June 2009

Bullshit explained...

...


Pocket Oxford Dictionary, first printed July 1924. (Not as Polly Toynbee believes apparently, but then, who really cares what she says anyway).

REDACTION
n, Putting into literary or publishable form, editing or re-editing; new edition.

Balderdash, Parlour game, circa 2009...

REDACTION
n, (see below, I’m a bit pissed off with having to explain things all the time...)

1) An old word re-dug up by spin doctors in Whitehall, to describe how expenses claims are re-invented.

2) To say one thing but mean something totally different to appease ‘The Fees Office’ (a previously unknown organisation which apparently turns up on Thursdays and ‘vets’ how much MPs can get away with).

3) The art of concealing ridiculously inappropriate claims for non-essentials.

4) The business of trying to swindle the tax-payer and hope that because Gordon Brown’s in charge, nobody cares, or notices, because he’s got more problems than you can shake a stick at.

5) Diverting the gullible public from the real problem we face with our elected representatives.

6) The act of hatred of sponging politicians who are useless at their jobs and who will do anything to keep their personal gravy train in full pelt while the country suffers the worst depression for nearly a hundred years.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Little legs...

...



Once upon a time (1955), about this time of year, I was in hospital having an operation on the little legs. Apparently, they were both growing in the opposite direction, and needed a swift chop and restitch, to stop the confounded walking in circles syndrome...

Of course, the butchery was a complete success, and from there on in, there was never a problem, with twelve good years of rugby, golf and cricket followed by the occasional walk home on my hands and knees...

Although I was only seven, I was in The Royal East Sussex Hospital in Hastings for six weeks, and it's not difficult to remember the total love and kindness of all the nurses, doctors, senior staff, and cleaners etc, who buzzed round the Children's Ward 2 all day and night. There were so many people to talk to, all dedicated, and busy making everyone better.

Of course, at that tender age, I would never have understood the mantras of 'administration', 'budgets', 'politicians' etc. etc., but I got the best care in the world.

Listening to that prat Andy Burnham yesterday, (four months 'work experience' with the NHS Federation when he was 27, and now Minister for Health), it isn't difficult to understand why the NHS suffers from the utter waste dumped on them by politicians with their incompetence in dealing with the business of making people better. Because most politicians have never been inserted into the real commercial world, it's not surprising that they spotted long ago, that the NHS was a breeding ground for the very types who should be kept away from it - i.e. themselves.

Perhaps the NHS should become it's own political party, but run by people who work in medicine without a single politician allowed anywhere near. I'd vote for them.

BTW, I'm the lad in the wheelcair on the left with the Ian Botham hat and the new walking plasters, the other lad, Stephen, was worse off, he'd spent months in the RESH, and was almost a member of the family there. I hope he's alright now...

...

Friday 5 June 2009

In loco - er - Wilson Street?...

After a rather heady lunch yesterday, (some would say 'Hero'), when I finally dragged myself up the stairs in our chosen establishment to scamper down to Cannon Street and hence The Weald, this small comment arrived by magic...

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine.. . and those who don't.


As Ben Franklin said:

'In wine there is wisdom,
in beer there is freedom,
in water there is bacteria'.


In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 litre of water each say, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) - bacteria found in faeces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of crap.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whisky or other booze), because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Resuming :

Water = Crap, Wine = health .

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of crap.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information; I'm doing it as a public service, but having read Idle's post this morning, I'm beginning to think that I'm losing my capacity...

And also seeing Killem's result on Tuscs', I've just recalled talking in some detail about a certain Russian lady yesterday, who seemed to take over the whole event!

Scheme me up Botty...