Saturday 22 October 2016

Your father smelt of elderberries


Every day, the world turns more and more into a sinister episode from a Monty Python film. There is a lot to both laugh and cry at right now.

Something to laugh about: Even Bob Dylan himself thinks it is ridiculous to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is refusing to answer the phone to the officials trying to organise the presentation, and they are very angry with him already. Serves them right!

Something to shed crocodile tears over: British Football hero, Garry Lineker, has been castigated by The Sun 'newspaper' for daring to suggest that the idea of checking the teeth of Syrian children immigrants to the U.K. to make sure they are not really adults in disguise was obscene. Being morally castigated by The Sun must be like being flogged with a wet lettuce. Someone pointed out that if a child of 14 has spent a year in a holding camp, risking his life every night to get to relatives already in the U.K., he quite often looks a lot older than his actual years.

Something else to laugh about: The French minister in charge of the Brexit negotiations has insisted that they should henceforth be carried out in the French language. Ooooooooooh! They should send Boris Johnson over. His French is excrable. I would happily sit up all night to watch the proceedings, just as Theresa May did the other day.

Something to cry about: The Polish fim director Andrzej Wajda has died. The reason for tears? As H.I. just pointed out, he was the last of the truly great film makers. 'Ashes and Diamonds', etc.

Ok, that's enough of the emotional roller-coaster.

I had thought about winding up Heron a little more this morning, but then I remembered an incident of a few years ago, right here in Bath.

Someone wrote in to our local 'newspaper' The Bath Chronical (AKA, 'The Chronic') with a letter to the editor, with what he thought was 'proof' that homosexuality was 'unatural'. Because the editor published it in full, I thought that the man who wrote it was having a laugh.

In it, he said that there had never, ever, been any homosexual behaviour observed in any part of the animal kingdom, proving that the innocent animals which God had seen fit to put on Earth for our pleasure or use (!) were entirely devoid of any gay tendencies at all.

I wrote a letter in reply, saying that if he had looked out of my kitchen window the day before yesterday, he would have seen two male dogs which disproved his theory. The editor loved it, and went on to publish quite a few more.

I became a little famous for a week or so, and I even got asked by a bank-teller who recognised my name if I was the person who wrote the letter about the dogs. When I confirmed this, she burst out laughing and said how much she and her colleagues were enjoying the exchange.

After a few more humiliating replies from me to the man who wrote back saying that I must have been mistaken about the sex of one of the dogs, it became obvious that the writer was a very old, very serious and possibly mentally unstable Christian living on his own, so I had a private word with the editor and we both agreed to end the joke.

You have to be a bit careful when having a laugh at someone else's expense.


29 comments:

  1. Let me be quite clear with you TS I have never claimed to be Irish.
    I have lived on the island of Ireland for thirty years, firstly in Northern Ireland and then in 1991 I moved to my current address. Since then I have studied Irish history and pre history which has given me an understanding of the whole island politically, coupled with a comprehensive knowledge of Irish customs and language.
    My ancestry is Welsh, Irish and English.
    So let me read no more slurs from you about me pretending to be something that I am not.

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    1. Oh, i just wondered why it was going to be me singing Rule Britania and not you. I was beginning to think you had washed your hands of the whole country, but shortly we will no longer be European brethren. Perhaps they should send you to negotiate. Can you speak French as well?

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    2. I would not have the patience...

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    3. Niether - as you know - would I.

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    4. P.S. I've just looked out of the window to see Marco walking down the street, very slowly and pissed out of his head. Maybe I associate you with him and his fakery, which would explain my over-reaction to your comments sometimes.

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    5. I am lucky in that have only ever met him once when he arrived with here with a friend of mine. He was instantly spotted as a 'Wannabe Irish' in actual fact his name identifies him as being from Portland in Dorset.
      "A complete and utter phoney, a first class penis-head and a scrounger" is what the late Lady Oliva from Huntington Castle described him as being. From that you may gather he is not welcome anywhere in Ireland.

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    6. He once asked me to buy him an expensive set of stone-carving chisels and a block of stone. I did, and he set the stone up in a very public place in Bath, then began knocking random chips off it whilst staring at the passers-by, not at the stone. He wanted to pretend to be a stone-carver. For me, that was the final straw.

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    7. Amazingly - even at the time - he had incredible success with women and always had a beautiful girl on hand at any time. I think he must have bored them into submission.

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  2. I understand Bob Dylan's web site has a line stating "Recipient of", etcetcetc. I'm not saying he maintains his own web sit. And since I haven't looked at it personally, maybe it was a laugh at my expense.

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    1. They accuse him of arrogance, but I don't think he put himself forward for the prize.

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    2. The arrogance seems to be on behalf of the prize committee, who seem to think they're God's gift to the world. Maybe he's just very busy, and they've got nothing better to do!

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  3. Now the world can worry itself as to whether or not he will show up for his award on December 10th! According to the BBC...

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  4. I remember on every steamy encounter in mark and Spencer's doorway around 1990!
    But that was in. York

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  5. You're right about the world turning into a sinister episode of Monty Python. Come to think of it the comments here are a bit Monty Python too.

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    1. I had a strong urge to stay in bed all day today, and I sort of wish I had. This does not bode well for January and February.

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    2. Oh no, dont do that. It is not so bad and lots of good things still happenx

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    3. Yes, I didn't and they did. I made myself useful by repairing a gallery browser (which looked as though a 20 stone man had sat on it) for the 44AD, so that H.I. can use it in November. I felt childishly pleased wiath myself when it was done.

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  6. I can confirm your observation. It happened to a dog I was walking in Cambridge (well known for such things).

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  7. How do you know what Bob Dylan "thinks" about anything?

    Tom Stephenson, you'd be the first to castigate anyone who was so precious/negligent to ignore one of your RSVPs.

    U

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    1. Bob and I have been friends since 1969. He tells me what he is thinking by phone or email, once a month.

      As for the RSVPs, I only castigate people who fail to turn up for a dinner that I have spent hours cooking for them. I don't give out awards.

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