Hi Lily!

Lily is almost through here probationery period now having mastered the toilet training almost perfectly. She's probably staying but of course don't tell her that.

However there are still one or two issues, notably :

1. After I plant grass seed in the garden, whenever I go to check it there is a bed of lilies.

2. She has tried 4 different anti-pull harnesses and either escaped from or ignored all of them.

3. She still has to travel in a bucket seat in the car.

4. She has issues with horses. Today we encountered some sort of travelling horse event on the back lanes and she went mad every time a horse got near us. She does this funny squeeky talky voice which I have been racking my brains trying to place, then all of a sudden it came to me where I had heard this ridiculous sound before:

Meme of the Month

As a blogger I am of course notoriously reticent about talking about myself in this blog. I've never been tempted to participate in the dreaded Meme world of First Person Singular, preferring instead to muse on matters of Art and Science and the Human Condition.

However (what a brilliant word "however" is - a handbrake turn for narrative, just like the wonderful "suddenly's" in children's stories) I have today had an excellent idea for a new Meme which you are welcome to copy providing you send £1.75 in Royalty Payments via Paypal to the person at the top of the list (me, that is).

This Meme is called "Parallel Universes" - you have to choose another blogger from your roll and list 9 true things you have in common with that blogger - and 1 made up! Your readers then have to guess, providing they can stay awake long enough, which item is untrue! Brilliant eh? It's like a Kinder surprise...I get to talk about myself, another blogger gets to read about himself and everyone else gets a brain-tickling competition to enter!

Here's mine, and I'm going to choose ............ Dave!

Parallel Universes

1. We were both born and brung up in Gravesend, a town in North Kent which does exactly what it says on the tin.

2. We have both run the London Marathon.

3. We both shared our houses with much lamented labrador collie crosses.

4. We both have beards (not in the "Simon Cowell's Girlfriend" sense)

5. We both have connections with the Motorcycle Industry.

6. We both spent time in Lincoln and ended up in South Norfolk. (Reminds me of the Waterboys lyric "It started up in Fife and ended up in Tears".

7. We were both members of Mensa, along with Jimmy Saville and Gary "Nutter" Bushnell.

8. We have both had drink problems and are now completely teetotal, along with Jimmy Saville and Gary "Nutter" Bushnell.

9. We are both almost embarrassingly good looking.

10. We have both produced impressive erections in the corners of our gardens.

Spring Messages

This morning the sun was breaking through the clouds, the birds were twittering ... that's apart from a couple of Blackbirds who were sticking firmly to blogging as they felt restricted artistically by the rigid format of 140 characters.

I took this picture of a sparrow who was still undecided.

Dumb Insouciance

Last night we watched Professor Regan's Diet Clinic, partly from behind the sofa, to see just how far BBC's once proud Science Programming had dumbed down below the Horizon.

The production people just couldn't get over the shock that Professor Regan was, er, a woman and (blimey guv!) A PROFESSOR! Billed on one BBC site as "Professor Lesley Regan, one of the UK's most well-respected (and glamorous) medical experts.." (my italics) the production style of this GCSE in Calorie Counting was an amalgam of Balamory and The Weakest Link, and not in a good way.

For a start, the director was so overcome with the Professor that he used voice over to refer to her in the third person every 30 or 40 seconds ad nauseum. "Professor Regan wants to find out...", "Professor Regan is now wondering what this means.." just became so tedious after the 200th time. Just in case we forgot that Professor Regan was a Professor "AND GLAMOROUS" the scenes were intercut with a little cartoon of her flouncing across the screen in red high heel shoes for no apparent reason.

To do her in-depth research of reading a couple of diet studies she was filmed in an empty library, and when there was a brief mention of the Mediterranean diet we had to see her (with family) in a French market. Then she went to bravely have her own body fat index measured and was simpering like a 12 year old school girl hoping she wouldn't show up as obese when we could all see clearly that she had to run around in a shower to get wet.

The dramatic conclusions that her incisive inquiries produced were (look away now if you don't want to spoil it!) that diets don't really work and the more you eat or the less you exercise you take, the fatter you become. Shock Horror. Who would ever have thought it?!

Am I alone in wondering how Professor Regan, who appears to be a nice approachable person, let herself be a part of this tosh in which she (and the viewer) is patronized silly by the childish production values?.

Can't we understand Science programmes anymore without being spoon fed with gimmicks and lowbrow tosh?

I say this! Bring back Tomorrow's World - now that "tomorrow" is actually here we could do with some intelligent science programmes again!

Recycling is good for the Environment

Some years ago, in the hills above Killarney, there lived Seamus and Isobel Dunne and their family of 6 boys.

It was a happy but isolated existence, so it came as a bit of a shock when eldest son Niel announced that he was off to seek his fortune amongst the bright lights of London. His parents tried to dissuade him but he was focussed on this particular dream and one day in early May he duly set off after a tearful farewell to his family. All they knew was that he would be heading for London WC5 and would be writing back with news and details.

The Summer came and went in that idyllic but changeable area of Kerry. As Autumn approached there had still been no word from young Niel and his parents were worried sick. When the local Publican, Jack, announced that he would be visiting London next week to see his brother, the Dunnes quickly persuaded him to help find out how their boy was getting on in the big City.

Jack duly arrived at Paddington Station in London the following Tuesday armed with the information he had been give .... London WC5.

As he strode purposefully across the concourse he noticed a sign to the right - "WC". He immediately made his way through the door and down the stairs where he encountered a row of small doors with numbers on.

Consulting his notes quickly, he made his way to WC number 5 and banged fiercely on the door.

"Are you Neally Dunne?", he demanded.

"Yes, but there's no paper", came a small voice from inside.

"Dats no excuse for not writing to your Mother!!".

Absolutely Lupine

We are big fans of Norfolk born Shaun Ellis, the chap who adopted a pack of Timber Wolf cubs and grew up with them to become part of their pack in, er, North Devon. He feeds them cooked liver from his mouth and risks serious injury to romp around with these fearsome beasts as their Akela. And he has insisted that his girl friend joins in as a Wolf Nanny, featured in the recent TV programme Mr & Mrs Wolf.

Shaun would be interested in a discovery I made yesterday - a tiny child that had been actually raised by wolves....

And another thing....

Sometimes these things just leap into your brain.

I've come up with the perfect hangover cure.

Just wear your trousers another 3 inches higher.

No, don't thank me....



(I'm turning blogger into Twitter aren't I?)

Wots wrong with this Country....

A primary school in Liverpool is apparently starting to give lessons in Urdu.

Haven't we got enough blinking hairdressers in this Country???!!!

Tip of the Week

Here's a useful tip.

If you're visiting someone with a very small cat version of one of these in their kitchen door:
And you've got a seemingly huge one of these:

Don't assume that (2) into (1) doesn't go.

Lily is the Harry Houdini of the canine World, a sort of David Copperfield without the orange glow. One minute in Kitchen and next minute .... whoosh!!!!! Then we were all in a flap.

Still, all was well in the end. Lily was eventually reunited with us, Cosmo the Cat responded to the trauma counselling and when we got home we found 2 into 1 did go very peacefully:

We're not the perfect visitors though.