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.
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