Monday April 29th 2024 "Knobbly [Knees], i.e. 'squeeze" (Cockney Rhyming Slang)

I wonder, dear Reader, if you're old enough to remember that gloriously anarchic period of English-language journalism, often referred to as "The Van Dyke" years, back in the 1980's ?

That joyous interlude came about when the influential US news organisation Onion News International (ONI) began unwittingly to employ a cheerful, cheeky Cockney chimney-sweep, Richard Van Dyke, as its official London correspondent - the appointment came after a simple clerical error in the organisation's hiring department, historians now believe.

Richard Van Dyke, cheerful but cheeky Cockney chimney-sweep, who,

due to a simple clerical error, for many years managed to hold down

a job as chief London correspondent for Onion News International (ONI)

"How did Van Dyke get away with his atrociously written, if amusing, "copy" for so long?" is what a lot of people used to wonder. The official line is that it was because of Van Dyke's extensive glossaries of Cockney Rhyming Slang (CRS) and other argot, that he routinely appended to his reports. Van Dyke, despite his cheerful market-stall banter, was actually quite an erudite man underneath, with a degree in English from the local chimney-sweep's college.

Lois and I always had another theory about his strange survival in the cut-throat world of modern journos - that due to pressure of other work, Van Dyke's ONI bosses simply never got round to checking his so-called  "copy", relegated as it was with other "overseas news" to page 95 and beyond, in the print edition.

Whichever explanation is the real one, at least, even today, through the magic of the internet, we can still enjoy the freshness of Van Dyke's reporting style, which is nice.

Take this article - one of a series of articles from his "Parliamentary Sketchbook", that Van Dyke was responsible for, over a number of years.

And remember this "doozy" from Van Dyke's classic collection of "News in Brief" items, short, but a little gem in its own way, giving the salient facts without any unnecessary padding?

I know what you're thinking! And yes, indeed, Van Dyke's rather skimpy report on the wedding was criticised at the time for being "a bit too salient", but what the heck - it's several years ago now, and a lot of water's flowed under the Vauxhall bridge in that time - no pun intended!

Nevertheless, I thought of Van Dyke's parliamentary sketches from the House of Lords today, after seeing an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, containing another collection of those amusing Venn diagrams, the series that he monitors for us on a weekly basis.

And it's ironic, isn't it, looking back now, when people talk of the House of Lords as "hundreds there for a whole lifetime, many doing nothing", to think that the debate Van Dyke characterised all those years ago as a near "f****** pagger" was probably the most exciting single moment in the chamber's ten-centuries-long existence.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

But I anticipate!

08:00 Early this morning, before Lois and I have even got out of bed, we're reviewing our angles of bodily flexion, both hers and mine (as you do haha!) !

And it's all because yes! Around 10:15 am this morning, we're going to get one of our 8-weekly visits from Joanne, a.k.a. "footwoman".

Joanne's normal method of pampering our feet and cutting our toenails etc - with us sitting on a chair getting our legs up in sequence in front of her on her portable footstool -  just won't do for me today. Can you see why? 

Yes, you've got it! My shiny new hip!

flashback to earlier this month: me recovering in my bed at the 

Queen Alexandra Hospital, Redditch, following my hip replacement

operation, being visited by our daughter Sarah and granddaughter Lily

It would be a dangerous angle of flexion for me, sitting in a chair in front of Joanne with my leg on a footstool, considering I've just been fitted with a new hip, and Joanne's pampering might just "yank" my new hip out of alignment quicker than two shakes of a lamb's tail. Problem!

Red flag or what haha! And much as we respect Joanne's podiatry skills, if my new hip "popped" right out of its socket this morning, would Joanne know how to "pop it back in again"? I think we should be told before we risk that, that's for sure!

Avoidance of dangerous angles of flexion are a big thing in the first few weeks after a hip replacement. Getting into bed, getting out of bed, going up and down stairs, bending down to take something out of the fridge, it all takes careful planning. I have to be careful with almost everything I do at the moment. I always have to watch my angles of flexion, and Lois says I can do some really nice ones now, which I'm taking as a positive! 

So Lois can sit in a chair for Joanne as usual, but I'll just have to lie on our bed and wait for her to come up and see me, so fair enough!

woman demonstrating a safe angle of flexion

for recovering hippo-holics

How complicated life is, when you've just got a new hip! It's total madness !!!! The good side of it is, that it's already nearly 4 weeks since my operation, and after 6 weeks or so, I can start doing lots of fun things, like driving, and indulging myself in various other pleasures. And it'll be nice to be able to roll around in bed again, instead of just lying there on my back like a beached sea-turtle all night.

Roll on May 16th !

Sunday April 28th 2024 - "Pockets - don't you love 'em!" -

Aren't pockets useful! 

And, dear Reader, I'm not trying to be nosey, but do you have any pockets on you as you read these words? I know I do, as I write the actual words myself. However, if you've bought any new garments in the last 20 years you may find that they don't have any pockets - so-called "smart" fashion designers have "phased them out", on the grounds that they somehow "spoil the line" of the garment. What a madness that is, isn't it!

I bought a pair of so-called "modern" pyjamas last year, in Grayshott, Surrey, while we were house-sitting for our daughter Alison and family. 

MY EXCLUSIVE REVIEW (headline only): ONE STAR ONLY - NOT ONE POCKET IN SIGHT! 

flashback to July 2023: I buy a pair of modern, pocketless,

so-called pyjamas in Grayshott, Surrey, while Lois and I

are staying at our daughter Alison's house in Headley.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Crazy, because, especially for recovering hippo-holics like me, pockets are a godsend, let me tell you. I had a shiny new hip installed nearly 4 weeks ago at Redditch Hospital, and for the first 6 weeks of my new hip, when going up and down stairs, I'm advised to carry a stick in one hand and hold onto the hand-rail with the other. So how do you carry a monster bag of crisps with you as well, for example? I think I should be told, don't you?

My temporary "fix" for this problem is this: in the early morning at least, I always wear a pair of my so-called "unfashionable" old-style pyjamas. My blue pair has 3 pockets just in the jacket which is nice.

When you first see me, you think I've just got just one item of cutlery in my top pocket, and then your glance drifts downwards, and you realise I'm actually carrying a full set - knife, fork and spoon. Like so.....

at first glance I appear to be carrying just one

item of cutlery, in the top pocket of my pyjama jacket...

...but when your glance drifts downwards, you realise

that I'm actually carrying a full set - knife, fork and spoon -

in my blue pyjama jacket's generous 3 pockets.

So there you are, Bob's your uncle, and I'm ready, with knife, fork and spoon, for a full English breakfast of bacon, egg, toast and marmalade etc, without any fuss or delay. Perfect result isn't it.

And that's not all you can do with your pockets. If the conditions are right, and it's safe to do so, parents can even carry children in their pockets, apparently, just like kangaroos do.

I was very interested, and quite pleased, to read in our local Onion News that the current "fashion" for millennial parents to have just one big baby, rather than 2 or 3 average-size offspring, is now being challenged by a newer, competing trend, which is to having several tiny offspring able to be carried around by parents much more easily, in guess-what - their pockets of course!!

This was the recent Onion News article - but be sure to read it to the end: the sting is in the tail !!!!

Which of these 2 trends will win out in the end with today's millennials? It'll be interesting to see, to put it mildly! 

19:00 Having large numbers of tiny children happens a lot in the animal world, doesn't it, as Lois and me are reminded this evening when watching Countryfile, a TV series highlighting issues and developments in the rural areas of the UK, wiht the focus tonight on England's smallest county Rutland, which holds the country's largest man-made lake, Rutland Water.

And if you don't like creepy-crawlies, look away now, I should!

We hear on tonight's programme, that with climate change, researchers have documented that the incidence of ticks is increasing tremendously, and the tick season is getting longer. Ticks are a problem for cattle as well as pets, and so are a risk to UK food production, potentially making us more dependent on imported food.

Yikes!!! Thousands of horrid little baby ticks, just from one mother tick. 

And ticks aren't the only things that are reproducing like crazy in Rutland Water. These little guys (see below), the lesser waterboatmen  (micronecta scholtzi), although only about an inch long, are also busy propagating themselves, and, what's more, they don't bother to be discreet, or to keep quiet about it, like most species tend to do. The more noise the better, apparently.

Lois confirms what I've always suspected, that in the human species such a phenomenon - the sound of a passing freight train from an "interested" male - would tend to be a "turn-off" for most females, but it obviously has the opposite effect with the waterboat-women.

But what a madness it all is !!!!

21:00 To get some sanity back in our brains, we wind down for bed with this week's edition of Bettany Hughes new series on Treasures of the World. Tonight she's in Bulgaria.

Lois and I are always so touched when Bettany is travelling in some far-off country, and a local woman or two are obviously delighted to recognise Bettany from her TV documentaries and become very excited to see her in person. And it's nice to see Bettany always responding by giving her fans a little hug. 

Bettany's programmes must be being shown all over the world, that's for sure, and even in Bulgaria, as we see tonight.

presenter Bettany Hughes, here being recognised by one of her

army of fans, here in a remote little town in Bulgaria.

Tonight Bettany is enthusiastic as ever, sifting through some of Bulgaria's archaeological relics, which testify to the area's unique position as the crossroads of many cultures, from Europe through to Asia and on to Egypt and North Africa.

Bulgaria is also the place where the world's oldest worked gold has been found, at Varna, where we see a cemetery, only excavated in recent decades, and originating from the age when the earliest farming was also being developed. And we see the astonishing intricacy of early gold artefacts associated with an unknown great king who lived, died and was buried here, around 6,500 years ago. 

This civilisation, which flourished for some centuries before being destroyed, probably by earthquakes, nourished a strong belief in the afterlife, so all the graves are packed with stuff people thought their dead relatives would need in the next world: jewellery, weaponry, some other interesting aids, and all that kind of malarkey, like this collection, that was buried with this unknown great king, artefacts all made of gold, and all more or less wrapped around the appropriate parts of his body, as he would have been laid in his grave.

So, jewellery, armour etc for the next world, but also a contraceptive device. And it's interesting that the issue of birth control in the afterlife hasn't really been given enough attention in the past, as I'm sure you'll agree. 

I imagine, however, that childcare facilities etc in the afterlife would be at a premium, so fair enough, perhaps, to continue to "take precautions", even when you're dead !

I wonder..... !!!!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!