Did you know...

...that the expression "cliffhanger" has its origins in a story by Thomas Hardy which was serialised in a magazine and one episode ended with the hero literally clinging to the edge of a cliff.

Do it right!

Do you dunk?  For those from Mars, dunking involves dipping your digestive biscuit into your cup of tea or coffee until it goes nice and soft.  It's a delicate procedure - overdo it and the biscuit may disintegrate into the cup, and that's a definite no-no.  What's brought this on?  McVitie's (who, again for those from Mars, make biscuits) have done a survey of what might be called "office etiquette" and apparently, dunking is frowned upon - particularly during meetings  So, you've been told!

Plus ça change...

When I studied law, thirty odd years ago now, I did a dissertation on divorce law.  I read it again the other day, and was astounded to find that so little had changed.  I - we - were talking about no-fault divorce law back then, and here we are, nearly forty years later, still talking about it.  

Unbelievable

Believe it or not, in Poland there is a bus route, number 666, that goes to.....HEL

'Ot, innit?

There are two sides to every coin.  These high temperatures may be a bit much for some, but the local vineyards of Halfpenny Green are loving it.  The owners are predicting a bumper crop of high quality grapes and reckon they will produce some 20,000 more bottles than normal.  I'm inclined to say that every cloud has a silver lining - though that's not really appropriate, is it - but I'm sure you get my dr.ift

Ha ha

Hey Sue, do you fancy going for a nice walk?
Oh Harry that would be wonderful.
Great - could you pick me up some beers and a packet of fags on your way back?

Put the kettle on?

Why do you feel hot - or cold?  If you think about it, it's because of the temperature differential between your body and the surrounding air.  If the air is hotter than your skin, you feel hot, and equally if the air is colder than your skin, you feel cold.  So if you're hot and want to cool down, you need to either reduce the temperature of the surrounding air (fans, air-con etc) or - and this seems completely counter-intuitive - increase the temperature of your body.  So, believe it or not,  a hot drink will cool you down!

Does not compute.

Feels strange to be siding with Jeremy Corbyn, but this idea that any criticism of Israel must of necessity amount to antisemitism I too find illogical and unacceptable.

Errrr...

I get more and more confused by Brexit.  As I understand it, the "hard" Brexiteers want us to just leave, and sort out the consequences afterwards.  So - how does this differ from a "no deal" exit?  Like I say, I'm confused.

Nice work if you can get it

So Boris Johnson, despite resigning as Foreign Secretary over a week ago, continues to live in the grace and favour residence which goes with that office.  And nobody seems to care??!

Campanology...

...that's bell-ringing to you and me.  It's a dying art, with fewer and fewer churches using their bells, or having the manpower to do so.  What bell-ringers there are tend to be in their later years and it doesn't seem to have much appeal for youngsters  Bells rang out throughout the country to mark the Armistice in 1918 and, if the personnel can be found, it is hoped that it can be done again on the centenary this year.

If...

We've talked before about whether works of art have any intrinsic value of their own, irrespective of who created them.  The question has arisen again at the University of Manchester, where Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" has been desecrated by some students - not, so far as I can see, on the basis that it has no literary merit, but purely on the basis that - in the eyes of these students - Kipling himself was a racist and an imperialist, and therefore his work should not be displayed.  Discuss, as they would say at University (but not Manchester apparently).

Oh dear.

They say that you can choose your friends but not your family.  I've come to like Thingy, but her family - or at least, some of them - seem like a right royal pain - no pun intended.

Too loud?

As a one-time organist, I should have known this, but the expression "to pull out all the stops" comes directly from the business of playing an organ.  Those knobs which you see running down each side of an organ keyboard are called stops, and you pull one of them out to couple up a particular series of pipes, and equally push it back in to decouple them.  Each series of pipes adds to the overall volume, so pulling them all out gives you maximum volume, and there you are.

1 and 1 is 10....

You remember the millennium bug?  The idea that on 1st January 2000 computers would go haywire as they tried to process the new date.  Came to nothing although to what  extent that was down to the fact that we were prepared for it will never be known.  Well, something similar may be about to happen in 2038.  A lot of computers don't store the date in conventional form, but as a number representing the number of seconds that have passed since 1.1.70.  This number is stored in a file of finite size, and at just after 3 o'clock in the morning of 19th January 2038 this file will be full.  And what happens then is that the computer will reset the date to 13th December 1901, and any program that relies on dates will be useless.  Well, we've got the best part of 20 years to come up with a fix, so I hope someone is on the case! 

Take it from me...

So we've moved on from lip-readers (see May 23rd) to "body language experts".  I'm getting rather tired of people telling me what's going on with other people based on their interpretation of what they think they've seen.  It's all guesswork anyway.  If somebody wants to tell me something, I prefer to hear it from them directly.

The Lazy Cook

Surely the simplest food cheat is pavlova - after all it's just meringue, fruit and cream.  If you're into that sort of thing, then make your own meringue - but really folks, who can be bothered?  You can buy a meringue nest from the supermarket and then it's just a matter of choosing your fruit - I particularly like pineapple - and getting a carton of double cream.  If you want to jazz it up a bit, mix the cream with some booze - white rum goes nicely with pineapple. and if you happen to have some coconut cream handy, you have a piña colada pavlova!

Watch my lips - but I never said that!

Oh, this has got to be the ultimate - Trump gives an interview to the Daily Mirror and when some of the things he said prove to be embarrassing, dismisses them as "fake news"!

World Cup

So that's it - game over.  I've just got one question - why oh why did we stop playing at half-time?

It's the ice-cream man!

So Britain's favourite ice-lolly is a Magnum?  Not mine!  I can't count the number of T-shirts I've had to discard after eating a Magnum as the chocolate shell splinters as you bite into it and deposits bits on my T-shirt which promptly melt and cause a stain.  My favourite ice-lolly is an orange one - essentially  an ice-cold orange drink on a stick.  Can't go wrong.

A what??!

I do try and keep up with modern trends, but what the hell is a cisgender lesbian??

Aargh - continued

And now of course I can't get the damned tune out of my head.  My grandkids didn't seem sure of some of the meanings, so for them, and anyone else of a tender age, here's an explanation -

Thirty years of hurt - The song first came out in 1996, thirty years after our one and only World Cup success.

Three lions on a shirt - the emblem of the England football team off and on since 1872

Jules Rimet still gleaming - Jules Rimet was President of FIFA  from 1921 until 1954, and mainly responsible for organising the competition we now know as the Wolrd Cup.  In his honour the original trophy was named the Jules Rimet trophy and it was this which was played for in 1966 and held aloft in triumph by Bobby Moore.  When Brazil won the World Cup for the third time in 1970 the trophy was presented to them permanently.  It was later stolen and never recovered.  The current trophy is just called The FIFA World Cup Trophy.

It's coming home - it is generally accepted that the game of Association Football as we know it today has its origins in the set of rules formulated by the newly formed Football Association in London in 1863.  It is therefore said that England "gave" the game to the rest of the world, and if we were to win the World Cup. the game would be "coming home".

Aargh!

I really used to enjoy Baddiel and Skinner, but if I hear that song one more time, I shall throw something heavy through the window!

World Cup

I'm getting a bit worried - that was almost too easy.  2-0 against Sweden, and well deserved.  Who's next?  Who's left?  Who cares?  We've already gone one step further then I expected so let's just go with the flow and enjoy it.

How much???

So Trump is coming here for three days starting next Thursday at a cost of £30m.  It's not clear who will be footing the bill, 'though I've a nasty feeling it will be us.  His itinerary appears to have been designed to keep him away from London, and indeed the poor Scots seem to be bearing the brunt.  I assume somebody has done the maths and reckons it's worth it.  Personally I would rather he didn't come, but there you are.

What to wear, what to wear...

School uniform - skirts or trousers?  Used to be so simple - trousers for boys, skirts for girls,  But then you got girls who didn't like wearing skirts (my young granddaughter for one), and - particularly in this hot weather - boys who prefer to wear skirts. And this is before you start dealing with boys who identify as female - or vice versa. You would think that the obvious answer is to let kids decide for themselves what to wear, but then of course you come up against schools who demand the right to formulate their own uniform policy and to discipline any pupil who fails to comply.  It's a right mess!

World Cup

Well, how do we feel now?  The Belgian match didn't tell us anything - it was our B-side against their B-side with nothing much riding on it.  But the Columbia game was a different kettle of fish.  We did lay to rest our penalty-shoot-out hoodoo but in my book we should have put the tie to bed well inside 90 minutes,  My concern is that our goals are mainly coming from penalties - in open play we don't seem to have the skill or guile to cut through defences.  And Sweden - who we meet next - are a very good defensive side...

I wanna hold your hand...

Should gay men hold hands in public?  "No one should ever have to hide who they are or who they love" said the Prime Minister commenting on a survey which revealed that a majority of LGBT people fear about being open about their relationship in public. I think it's less to do with LGBT relationships than it is with social norms. If you see two girls or women holding hands you are unlikely to immediately jump to the conclusion that they are in a lesbian relationship, because that's what women do - they are much more touchy-feely than us men.  Two men holding hands on the other hand is unusual enough for your immediate reaction to be to look for a reason - the most obvious being that they are a gay couple.  If I'm right then the answer to my question is - they should think carefully about it.  Social norms change very slowly and should be observed unless you are determined to make a statement, or otherwise have a very good reason for not doing so.

Overload

Did the schedulers realise that the final matches of the World Cup would clash with Wimbledon?  Did they even think of that?  Thank Heaven for BBC's iPlayer!

Twelve years later...

...amazingly the question of adding folic acid to bread still hasn't been settled. See post dated 11/4/06.  The Government are to discuss the matter (again!) this week.  What's that saying about wheels grinding slowly?

Ha ha

Knock knock
Who's there?
Nobel
Nobel who?
No bell. That's why I knocked.