Sunday July 28th 2024 "Is circumcision an acceptable topic at a family barbecue?"

Yes, circumcision and whether the topic should be barred at family barbecues - quite a question! 

But first, may I ask you yet another, even more personal question, dear Reader. Do you understand English? It's almost a sine qua non of reading this blog, isn't it, but I'm going to let that one slide for now - more of that later! [promises, promises! - Ed]

a typical "English as a Foreign Language" evening class

One of the most attractive (and useful!) features of our language is our wealth of words that begin with the delightful letter combination "kn-" (featuring a silent 'k', please note! - it's not considered "cool" to pronounce the 'k' any more - just saying!).

You may not have noticed this, but our Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic linguistic ancestors helpfully devised this 'kn-' opener for words as a bit of a "red flag" that something "knobbly" or "sticky-out" may be coming at you, so duck if necessary (just joking here, mind - actual, physical injuries are rare, thankfully!) !!!! 

nowadays we have to put up these signs

to comply with "Health and Safety"

- how much better (and cheaper!)

was the traditional 'kn' linguistic feature

- just saying!

There's "knob" and "knobbly" for starters, not to mention "knockers", knolls (a grassy hill that sticks out of the landscape, knops (small round protuberances of flowers, or buds), knuckles, knees and kneecaps of course.

Knockers tend to be unisex in our culture, but it's more than a little bit "Anglocentric" to imagine that that is a universal fact of life - because it isn't by any means. In the Middle East doors usually feature separate knockers for men and for women, as countless Bettany Hughes and Samira Ahmed-fronted Channel 4 documentaries have shown time and time again. 

Here's Bettany at a caravanserai in Azerbaijan on the Silk Route, and Samira at a medieval temple in Persia:

Talking point: how long before a third knocker is added; for "binary" callers? 

And, talking of that other "kn-" word, knees, thank goodness (!) Hollywood has at last removed that truly awful 1930's statue of an ageing film producer beckoning a budding female film-starlet to sit on his knee [Source: Onion News].

Yes, "kn- words" tend to have a definite sexual connotation, it has to be said. Knees play a crucial part in human relationships: agreeing to sit on the knee or lap of a potential sexual partner can send a definite 'yes, all right, go on then!' signal, and going down on one knee to make a marriage proposal can often be a sign of a longer-term commitment to that relationship. 

It's one of my own personal lifetime regrets that I never actually got down on one knee to propose marriage to my medium-to-long-suffering wife-of-52-years Lois, and I acknowledge here and now, that playing the Beach Boys' 1966 hit song "Wouldn't It Be Nice" to her, was no substitute whatsoever, but anyway, luckily it all worked out all right in the end, so that's a relief!

flashback to 1970: us, before we were married, and actually

the first ever picture of us together, on a late evening

listening to records at a self-catering cottage in Shropshire

And here are the words of "that song"....

But back to reality!! [Finally! - Ed]

16:00 Here we are 54 years later, and it isn't my knees I'm thinking about, it's poor Lois's, bless her. And her right knee in particular.

close-up: Lois's right knee

Not only has Lois been suffering from shooting pains round her left "ear-hole" for a couple of days, but today she trips over her own garden hose and scrapes and grazes her right knee on the patio. She's really "in the wars" at the moment.

It all started this morning, when Lois was watering the parched grass, fruit and vegetables in the back garden of our new-build home in Malvern, Worcestershire. After that, we had our usual 2 hours in bed in the afternoon, but when we came downstairs, she tripped over her own garden hose, and we had to "plaster" her right knee and leg with a massive band-aid. 

It's like the horrific scenes when Woody Allen, in his film "Play It Again, Sam", gets beaten up in a bar by a gang of "hairdressers", and we later see him being comforted by 2 friends after he got home:

flashback to this morning: Lois watering our

parched lawn with the very garden hose she trips over later

It could have been worse, admittedly - Lois's knee was grazed or scraped, and didn't actually bleed, which is a relief.

[Is that all you two "noggins" have done all day - spending 2 hours in bed in the afternoon, after a little gentle watering work? - Ed]

Well, seeing as how you're asking, absolutely not! 

At 4:30 pm, we're on the couch doing the puzzles in this week's Radio Times, for starters, scoring a creditable 7/10 in Popmaster, and another 7/10 in the intellectually more prestigious "Egghead" questions.

See how many of these "doozies" YOU know!

And when I say the questions are getting more and more obscure, to prove my point, just look at Question 1 in the Popmaster section, all about a so-called "Top 40 hit" by a one-hit-wonder group, i.e. a record that only got to position 31 at the very best, and could have just been a number 39. What madness to pick on something like that, and sheer luck that we can come up with the title between us!!!!

21:00 All in all, we're both pretty  tired by 9 pm, when we settle down on the couch to watch a rerun of the old Scottish sitcom "Two Doors Down" about neighbours in a Glasgow cul-de-sac.

Oh dear - after Lois's "knee scrape", we hardly need even more talk about injuries today, do we (!).  But that's what we get at this cul-de-sac barbecue in Beth's back yard, which is a pity.

Oh dear too much information there, Colin (Jonathan Watson) and new partner Anne-Marie (Sioban Redmond), especially in the context of a family barbecue - that's what Lois and I think anyway. Call us a pair of old prudes if you like haha!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Saturday July 27th 2024 "Talking point: SHOULD fire-doors EVER be propped open with copier paper?"

I've got to admit it, even though you've probably guessed this "yonks" ago! Like many of today's journalists and bloggers I learned my "blog-craft" and general "use of English" from none other than that master of linguistic style, Donald Thuler, the office manager at Johnson Railing Supply, central Missouri's largest wholesaler of rails.

It was the great Thuler who, way way back in the year 2000, wrote that seminal article on the Onion News website, "When I Put Something in Italics, I Mean It". Incidentally, that masterwork is also the "bible" on that other vexed subject of not overdoing either exclamation marks (!) or "quotation marks", so it's always worth a browse, that is, if you've got "several hours to spare" (!).

And I think it's worth quoting Thuler's "take" on italics in full here, because it's important. Thuler wrote, and I quote....

Some castigated Thuler for the perhaps "over-dramatization" implicit in this notice, but I think he was right - because fire can be an awful hazard (!).

And in case you're one of the many "non-believers" on the hazards of fire, at this point I normally ask my readers to take a quick glance up at the ceiling of the room in which they're reading my words. Is there a "smoke alarm thingy" there, amid all the light fittings and other paraphernalia? 

I bet you there is! Am I right, or am I right?

I showcase a smoke alarm in our own kitchen

here in this, our new-build home in Malvern

It IS important to avoid fire hazards, and this is a consideration we should always bear in mind (!), whether we're at work (and not just at Johnson Railing Supply, but generally), or whether we're "at play", maybe just using PlayStation 5 for example, as this story underlines [Source: Onion News again]:

16:30 And fire-hazards were very much on the minds of me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois this afternoon let me tell YOU!

The two of us are sitting alone in an eerily almost deserted Evesham Leisure Centre. Yikes! But you see it's officially "out of hours" now, and there's only a skeleton staff on duty, and we're not even sure if we  know where even they are, even, in this vast almost-empty building. [All right - we've got the point (!) - Ed]

my wife Lois and me, sitting in the eerily deserted, and officially closed,

Evesham Leisure Centre café, with drinks we've got out of an unattended

 machine, which fortunately works in this case and doesn't just 

"swallow" our money  - phew! Oh and YIKES !!!!

Yes, YIKES !!!!!

"And just why are you two "noggins" there, anyway, after closing time, in the massive Evesham Leisure Centre?", I hear you cry [Not me, I don't care! - Ed]

Well, seeing as how you're asking (!), Lois and I, plus our daughter Sarah and husband Francis, have paid for the Leisure Centre to stay open with skeleton staff, just for us and our guests, so that our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica, can celebrate their 11th birthday with a few of their best friends, availing themselve of full use of the swimming pool to "cavort" in, which is nice!

The money we've paid over also includes the presence of a life-guard when the girls are in the pool, a lifeguard who only looks about 11 years old herself (!). What madness !!!!

Normally this huge place, a popular venue for local meetings and activities, with its swimming pools, gyms, climbing walls etc is simply "a-buzz" [Is that a word? - Ed] with fitness fanatics, including couples and families, as it in this library picture I googled off the internet:

a gym, part of the huge Evesham Leisure Centre,

seen here in more normal times, packed with

couples, families and fitness fanatics in general

"But why are you so worried about fire-hazards, Colin?", I hear you cry. [Get on with it! - Ed].

Well, it's the lighting of the firework-candle on the birthday cake, OBVIOUSLY !!!! Lois and I just feel that if alarm bells started sounding all over this massive complex, or, worse, if fire actually broke out and we had to run for our lives with 9 kids and a couple of extra mums, into a car-park full of fire engines and ambulances and sirens going off, that this would somehow take some of the "shine" off our twin-granddaughters' "Eleventh Birthday Experience. 

Call us "worry-worts" if you like haha! 

Luckily, after a massive search of this near-deserted building, we find a young lad who claims to be "duty manager", although he only looks about 12 years old himself. We ask him if it's all right to light a firework candle, and he says "No problem" - so there you are. Bob's your uncle!

Our daughter Sarah (left) lights the firework candle on our twin

granddaughters' 11th birthday cake in an almost deserted

Evesham Leisure Centre this afternoon (the twins are

2nd and 3rd from the left in the line of young girls)

The candle-lighting ceremony is the joyful climax of a long afternoon for my wife Lois and me. We two were alone responsible for transporting the elaborate birthday cake from the family's house in Alcester, a cake decorated by the twins themselves, and we were also responsible for helping Sarah set all the food up on the tables in the deserted Leisure Centre café, for the twins and their 7 young guests.

flashback to earlier this afternoon: we transport the cake

from Sarah and Francis' family home in Alcester,

and then help Sarah to set out all the food on the tables 

in the eerily deserted Evesham Leisure Centre café

20:00 Lois and I arrive home, feeling completely exhausted well, we are 78 you know, plus we had only had about 75 minutes in bed this afternoon, instead of our usual 2 to 2.5 hours - what madness! [You're going to have to stop using that as an excuse! - Ed]

Fully exhausted, we collapse in a heap on the couch on getting home, and we watch a bit of TV before getting into bed again. We didn't even have time to hand over our birthday presents to the girls, so we just left them behind in the family's house in Alcester, and this evening we get a surprise phone-call from them thanking us, which is nice.

flashback to earlier today: we unpack the girls'

birthday presents (knitting, embroidery kits,

plus travel games) and wrap them in birthday wrap

The whole family is going back to Australia at the beginning of September so we thought we'd give the girls some "activity" presents - including games they can play on the plane and that kind of thing. 

The family has tried living back here in the UK for just over a year, after ending their 7 years residence in Perth, Western Australia (2015-2023). However, things haven't really worked out for them in the UK, so they're going back to "Oz" again. One of the more pressing reasons is our son-in-law Francis' health problems - the British climate has exacerbated his difficulties, so fair enough, Lois and I say.

When the twins have a birthday it's a joyous memory to us of the fact that, astonishingly in the view of many leading statisticians, 3 of mine and Lois's 5 grandchildren have a birthday on the same day of the year. We were celebrating our other daughter Alison's son Isaac's 3rd birthday when the news first came in via phone that Sarah had given birth to the twins that very day, in Gloucester Royal Hospital - what are the chances of that happening, eh? [I'll let you know! - Ed]

flashback to July 2013: we are just celebrating our grandson 

Isaac's third birthday with a "Colin the Caterpillar" 

cake on our patio in Cheltenham...

... when a call comes in - with the news that our younger daughter 

Sarah has given birth to twins in Gloucester Royal Hospital

(left to right: Lois's niece Sharon, our elder daughter Alison

(Isaac's mother) and Lois) getting the news, with a picture 

first pictures of the new-born twins

Happy days!!!!

our grandson Isaac, celebrating his 14th birthday

by the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol

And here's a final question for you - do you like to have a laugh in bed? I know Lois and I do, and we often get our laughs on the phone from a Facebook group celebrating traditional British saucy seaside postcards, such as those by ace cartoonist Donald McGill (1875-1962). 

when Lois's Huawei starts "beeping" under the bedclothes...

When Lois's Huawei starts beeping under the bedclothes and my Samsung starts to "diddle" in response, it's often because a new posting has been put up by this Facebook group, and by coincidence, what should "pop up" tonight but this "doozy", weirdly appropriate for today:

And there are plenty of other "doozies" tonight too, like this one that "popped up":

Not to mention:

Also, perhaps more worryingly, with these comes this final "shot across the bows":

My "takeaway" from this little "gem"? When popping to see your secretary, only go round corners with extreme caution, you never know what might be waiting to catch you "off guard".

And that's just the physical side. Because life itself is a bit like that, in a way, isn't it. You never know when you're going to be hit by a "double whammy" right out of the blue.

[Well, I've never heard them called that before. And stop wittering on - just go to bed! - Ed]

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