When I was Eleven I took the Eleven Plus exam, if you passed it you went to the Grammar School. If you failed, it was off to the dreaded Spring Bank Secondary School, which was the equivalent of the Spring Bank Primary School, but for older kids. Secondary Schools were there to keep kids at school, but get them more into the technical side of things, learning trades etc. The girls ended up as shop assistants and the like. Elitism was alive and well in Britain in the swinging sixties.
New Mills Grammar School was a fairly old fashioned school, just coming to terms with the post war influx of (smarter?) kids from the hoi polloi. We had to wear blazers, long grey pants, caps and ties. It also had a Quadrangle’, Prefects and taught Latin to first formers, (which in my humble opinion, is like teaching hippopotami to tap dance) but at least it was co-ed.
My first day there was a bit traumatic as my blazer and cap were three sizes too big, but at least my Dad had taught me how to tie a double-windsor knot. When I got there after a 10-minute walk from home, I discovered that the rest of the kids my age were in the same predicament, except they couldn’t tie a double-windsor, so it wasn’t too bad.
By the time I was sixteen my blazer and cap had shrunk compared to me, it looked like I was wearing a yarmulke and the sleeves of the blazer barely reached the elbows, which was a thing to be proud of. I was also a prefect and had a class of thirty young kids to supervise, before the teacher arrived.
I couldn’t really be bothered and let them run riot until just before the master got there, when I threatened them with death through a slow form of torture. For this reason I was considered to be a ‘good’ prefect by the kids. The form master had his doubts.
Being a prefect and head of the table at lunchtime in the school canteen it was my responsibility to dole out the food for the younger plebs. The poor sods at the bottom of the table always got the smallest portions and the older you got the bigger the portion. Until you became a prefect, then you could pig out.
Mum used to pay five shillings a week for the lunch, but I never used to go there after the age of fifteen. I used to go to the pub with a couple of mates and have a pastie and a pint of beer, except for when there was Roast Beef or Apple Crumble on the menu, then I’d go to the dining room and get my pig’s share of it.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Origins of Association Football or (Soccer).
Some misguided Australian souls think that Australian Rules Football predates ‘The Beautiful Game’. To back this up they claim that ‘Rules’ was codified earlier than Association Football (A.F.)
They also claim that a form of ‘Rules’ was played by Aborigines going back thousands of years. There is no evidence to back up this claim, apart from some evidence that they did indeed indulge in kicking stuffed possums around for a bit of fun. This would not really merit any serious consideration that it was a precursor to ‘Rules’.
There is however, hard evidence that the first game of A.F. was played in Britain about 2,000 years ago, between the home side represented by the Iceni and a team of Roman Legionnaires.
In order to get some revenge on Julius Caesar for stumbling onto a British beach and uttering the immortal words “Veni, Vidi, Vici” (which roughly translated from Latin, means “I came, I saw, I beat the crap out of ‘em”). Queen Boadicea/Boudicca/Bouca, (depending on which school you went to.) challenged Julio to a football match.
In fairness to the Romans, the match was played on a neutral ground at what was to become known later as Clacton-on-Sea, which is about halfway?? between East Anglia and Londinium as the dog legs it. The date was set, being the 15th March 0005, (an Ides, co-incidentally).
The Legionnaires left on foot on the 13th (a Friday, co-incidentally) and after a forced march, arrived in Clacton at about 2:30pm on the 15th, about a half hour before kick-off.
Meanwhile, Boadicea (I went to New Mills Grammar) had charioted in her team, who were fresh and raring to go. The Iceni were led onto the pitch by the Queen herself, and she played no further part in the match itself, but was pivotal to the result.
The Iceni had eleven players, including the goalkeeper, but the Romans started off with ten, (they couldn’t count in anything more than tens) In the end they co-opted a Russian Merchant named Leviticus Yashin, who just happened to be passing through, to be their goalkeeper.
The official in charge was Benticus the recently appointed Consul for a City that was later called Scunthorpe, in North Anglia. He had originally been destined for Constantinople, but having been caught ‘In flagrante’ in a public convenience, with two under-aged slaves, a dove and a large female hamster, he had been downgraded in the Diplomatic Corps.
To start the game, Benticus threw the ‘ball’ (an inflated pig’s bladder), towards the Romans, but although they had divested themselves of most of their weapons and armour, they still clanked as they ran. The Iceni, who were clad only in loincloths and a very thick veneer of woad ran rings around them. If it wasn’t for the brilliance of Leviticus ‘The Cat’ Yashin, they would have been 10 goals up by half-time, as it was they were only 2 up.
At half-time Benticus invented the ‘off-side’ rule and ‘substitutes’. He installed a marble bench for each side, which fitted exactly ten men. The Romans took advantage of this and at any one time, there were between 15 and 18 Romans on the pitch. The Iceni had neglected to foresee this and only had a young lad in reserve, who was there to run on with a sponge and a supply of sliced limes.
After an exciting ten minutes the score was 4-3 to the Romans. Queen Bee decided to take some action and sent the lad off to cut down and sharpen a straight branch of good Anglian Yew. She then positioned herself behind Lev’s goal and proceeded to prod him vigorously in the arse, whenever the Iceni looked like scoring, thus destroying his concentration.
Even though the Romans had 19 men in defence, the Iceni managed to score three unanswered goals and emerged victorious. This feat was commemorated by the erection of a plaque on the foreshore of Clacton-on-Sea, but it was unfortunately swept away by the tide that King Canute failed to stem.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
They also claim that a form of ‘Rules’ was played by Aborigines going back thousands of years. There is no evidence to back up this claim, apart from some evidence that they did indeed indulge in kicking stuffed possums around for a bit of fun. This would not really merit any serious consideration that it was a precursor to ‘Rules’.
There is however, hard evidence that the first game of A.F. was played in Britain about 2,000 years ago, between the home side represented by the Iceni and a team of Roman Legionnaires.
In order to get some revenge on Julius Caesar for stumbling onto a British beach and uttering the immortal words “Veni, Vidi, Vici” (which roughly translated from Latin, means “I came, I saw, I beat the crap out of ‘em”). Queen Boadicea/Boudicca/Bouca, (depending on which school you went to.) challenged Julio to a football match.
In fairness to the Romans, the match was played on a neutral ground at what was to become known later as Clacton-on-Sea, which is about halfway?? between East Anglia and Londinium as the dog legs it. The date was set, being the 15th March 0005, (an Ides, co-incidentally).
The Legionnaires left on foot on the 13th (a Friday, co-incidentally) and after a forced march, arrived in Clacton at about 2:30pm on the 15th, about a half hour before kick-off.
Meanwhile, Boadicea (I went to New Mills Grammar) had charioted in her team, who were fresh and raring to go. The Iceni were led onto the pitch by the Queen herself, and she played no further part in the match itself, but was pivotal to the result.
The Iceni had eleven players, including the goalkeeper, but the Romans started off with ten, (they couldn’t count in anything more than tens) In the end they co-opted a Russian Merchant named Leviticus Yashin, who just happened to be passing through, to be their goalkeeper.
The official in charge was Benticus the recently appointed Consul for a City that was later called Scunthorpe, in North Anglia. He had originally been destined for Constantinople, but having been caught ‘In flagrante’ in a public convenience, with two under-aged slaves, a dove and a large female hamster, he had been downgraded in the Diplomatic Corps.
To start the game, Benticus threw the ‘ball’ (an inflated pig’s bladder), towards the Romans, but although they had divested themselves of most of their weapons and armour, they still clanked as they ran. The Iceni, who were clad only in loincloths and a very thick veneer of woad ran rings around them. If it wasn’t for the brilliance of Leviticus ‘The Cat’ Yashin, they would have been 10 goals up by half-time, as it was they were only 2 up.
At half-time Benticus invented the ‘off-side’ rule and ‘substitutes’. He installed a marble bench for each side, which fitted exactly ten men. The Romans took advantage of this and at any one time, there were between 15 and 18 Romans on the pitch. The Iceni had neglected to foresee this and only had a young lad in reserve, who was there to run on with a sponge and a supply of sliced limes.
After an exciting ten minutes the score was 4-3 to the Romans. Queen Bee decided to take some action and sent the lad off to cut down and sharpen a straight branch of good Anglian Yew. She then positioned herself behind Lev’s goal and proceeded to prod him vigorously in the arse, whenever the Iceni looked like scoring, thus destroying his concentration.
Even though the Romans had 19 men in defence, the Iceni managed to score three unanswered goals and emerged victorious. This feat was commemorated by the erection of a plaque on the foreshore of Clacton-on-Sea, but it was unfortunately swept away by the tide that King Canute failed to stem.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Football, or hoofing a ball around a ground.
Football, it means a lot of different games to different nationalities. Most countries think of ‘Soccer’, when they talk about football and let’s face it, it is the only code where only the feet are used. Except of course the legs, torso and head to a limited extent, but definitely not the hands and arms. It is also strictly speaking a non-contact game.
I have broken one of my rules here and used Wikipedia to check out a fact. I normally believe that if you don’t know a little bit about something, you shouldn’t be bull-shitting about it. But in this case my memory wasn’t up to it and I couldn’t remember the name of the Wally who invented the name ‘Soccer’.
It was according to the Wik a bloke called Charles Wreford-Brown who was a student at Oxford Uni and prone to using terms like ‘Brekkers’ for breakfast and ‘Rugger’ for Rugby Football, what a tit! So ‘Soccer’ was only used in upper class ‘Public Schools’, stick that up your jacksies, you ignorant Skips and Yanks.
In America they call Gridiron ‘Football’, which of course it isn’t, as from the little I’ve seen of it, they hardly ever use their feet. They seem to play with two entirely different teams on each side, one when they’re on the offensive and the other when they’re defending. They also seem to wear body armour and smash into each other regardless of where the ball is. In the meantime a quarter back and a wide receiver are playing with each other.
They also have a specialist ‘kicker’ who comes onto the pitch a couple of times each game and tries to hoof the ball through the goals. They earn a couple of million US$ a year, which isn’t a bad way to make a quid in anybody’s language. On top of all this they also have a ‘World Series’, which is a bit cheeky, because only the Yanks play it, or maybe that’s Baseball which is almost the same story.
Other ‘Football Codes’ include the two types of Rugby, ‘League’ was played by miners and factory workers, from the North of England, wearing flat caps and hobnail boots. They were ‘professional’ and were paid a few bob after each game, or if they had a great game, were given a dozen bottles of Tetleys or Newcastle Brown or maybe Boddingtons Bitter, if they were unlucky .
‘Union’ had an extra couple of players and was played by amateur ‘Gentlemen’, doctors, lawyers and other con-men, who should have known better. It was invented on the playing fields of a ‘Public’ school (where else?) by a young ‘prefect’ called Webb or Ellis or some such appellation. Possibly because he had two left feet, he picked up the ball and ran with it, punching the ‘fags’ in the face as he did so.
This obviously appealed to the watching landed gentry, even though they would have preferred it, if the fags could have been given a damned good thrashing at the same time, at least the showers were cold.
In ‘Union’ they wear bandages round their ears, to stop them getting bitten off in ‘scrums’, or if they are bitten off it makes them easier to find and also soaks up the blood. Also, in these scrums it is not unknown for a player to grab the ‘nuts’ of an opponent and squeeze them hard, for obvious reasons this is known as a ‘squirrel grip’ and puts the opponent off his game almost as much as losing his ears.
Another interesting aspect of ‘Union’ is the ‘Lineout’, in this the players from both sides line up and a player throws the ball between the two lines. Meanwhile, two or more players grab hold of one of their own players by the shorts, giving him a terrible ‘wedgie’ and launch him as high as possible to intercept the ball. This, combined with the ‘squirrel grips’, could explain why some players voices are pitched at the upper end of the musical scales. So don’t be surprised if your doctor sounds like Tiny Tim Tippy Toeing through the Tulips, or Maurice Gibb strangling a Bee Gees number.
There are other football codes, such as ‘Gaelic Football’ and ‘Aussie Rules Football’, these are fairly similar, or at least sufficiently so, that the two codes can play a series of three games every year, alternating between Ireland and Aus. These are not a great success as Gaelic is played with a round ball and Aussie with an ovoid one and the goals are different.
Also Gaelic is ‘non-contact’, to the best of my knowledge, whereas Aussie is very much contact. Aus players are bigger, because they eat more meat and less spuds, so they tend to pick up the Irish players and kick them towards the goal, while they are holding on to the ball. This is frowned on by the Irish officials and they usually say that they will take their round ball and go home, which is a tad difficult if they are already home in Tipperary.
As well as the shape of their balls, (I’m not talking about ‘Union’ players here,) the ones used in the different codes have different flight characteristics, but don’t ask me what they are, just trust me. The Goalposts are all different, soccer goals are smallish and have a net, rugby and gridiron goals have two long poles and don’t, Gaelic football has a combination of the two and Aussie Rules has two long poles and two short poles. Don’t expect me to explain the points scored, I don’t know all of them and I don’t think either of us gives a monkey’s anyway.
How does all this affect your truly? Well, I was brought up with soccer and supported New Mills F.C. initially and then Manchester City closely for five years from 1962 to 1967 (I still support them, but from a distance of 12,000 miles). From 1967 to 1973 I followed Rugby Union closely, firstly in Wales and then South Africa. When I came to Aus. I didn’t support anybody at first, but now ‘support’, Melbourne Storm in ‘League’, Man City (of course) through the Internet and Melbourne Victory in Soccer and the Western Bulldogs in Aussie Rules.
Again, you probably don’t give a flying frolic, but for what it’s worth, the Bulldogs haven’t won a Premiership since 1954, which is even worse than Man City. So get on the Bulldog’s bandwagon all you masochistic City supporters, what have we got to lose but our sanity?
Cheers for now,
Sky Blue Skull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
I have broken one of my rules here and used Wikipedia to check out a fact. I normally believe that if you don’t know a little bit about something, you shouldn’t be bull-shitting about it. But in this case my memory wasn’t up to it and I couldn’t remember the name of the Wally who invented the name ‘Soccer’.
It was according to the Wik a bloke called Charles Wreford-Brown who was a student at Oxford Uni and prone to using terms like ‘Brekkers’ for breakfast and ‘Rugger’ for Rugby Football, what a tit! So ‘Soccer’ was only used in upper class ‘Public Schools’, stick that up your jacksies, you ignorant Skips and Yanks.
In America they call Gridiron ‘Football’, which of course it isn’t, as from the little I’ve seen of it, they hardly ever use their feet. They seem to play with two entirely different teams on each side, one when they’re on the offensive and the other when they’re defending. They also seem to wear body armour and smash into each other regardless of where the ball is. In the meantime a quarter back and a wide receiver are playing with each other.
They also have a specialist ‘kicker’ who comes onto the pitch a couple of times each game and tries to hoof the ball through the goals. They earn a couple of million US$ a year, which isn’t a bad way to make a quid in anybody’s language. On top of all this they also have a ‘World Series’, which is a bit cheeky, because only the Yanks play it, or maybe that’s Baseball which is almost the same story.
Other ‘Football Codes’ include the two types of Rugby, ‘League’ was played by miners and factory workers, from the North of England, wearing flat caps and hobnail boots. They were ‘professional’ and were paid a few bob after each game, or if they had a great game, were given a dozen bottles of Tetleys or Newcastle Brown or maybe Boddingtons Bitter, if they were unlucky .
‘Union’ had an extra couple of players and was played by amateur ‘Gentlemen’, doctors, lawyers and other con-men, who should have known better. It was invented on the playing fields of a ‘Public’ school (where else?) by a young ‘prefect’ called Webb or Ellis or some such appellation. Possibly because he had two left feet, he picked up the ball and ran with it, punching the ‘fags’ in the face as he did so.
This obviously appealed to the watching landed gentry, even though they would have preferred it, if the fags could have been given a damned good thrashing at the same time, at least the showers were cold.
In ‘Union’ they wear bandages round their ears, to stop them getting bitten off in ‘scrums’, or if they are bitten off it makes them easier to find and also soaks up the blood. Also, in these scrums it is not unknown for a player to grab the ‘nuts’ of an opponent and squeeze them hard, for obvious reasons this is known as a ‘squirrel grip’ and puts the opponent off his game almost as much as losing his ears.
Another interesting aspect of ‘Union’ is the ‘Lineout’, in this the players from both sides line up and a player throws the ball between the two lines. Meanwhile, two or more players grab hold of one of their own players by the shorts, giving him a terrible ‘wedgie’ and launch him as high as possible to intercept the ball. This, combined with the ‘squirrel grips’, could explain why some players voices are pitched at the upper end of the musical scales. So don’t be surprised if your doctor sounds like Tiny Tim Tippy Toeing through the Tulips, or Maurice Gibb strangling a Bee Gees number.
There are other football codes, such as ‘Gaelic Football’ and ‘Aussie Rules Football’, these are fairly similar, or at least sufficiently so, that the two codes can play a series of three games every year, alternating between Ireland and Aus. These are not a great success as Gaelic is played with a round ball and Aussie with an ovoid one and the goals are different.
Also Gaelic is ‘non-contact’, to the best of my knowledge, whereas Aussie is very much contact. Aus players are bigger, because they eat more meat and less spuds, so they tend to pick up the Irish players and kick them towards the goal, while they are holding on to the ball. This is frowned on by the Irish officials and they usually say that they will take their round ball and go home, which is a tad difficult if they are already home in Tipperary.
As well as the shape of their balls, (I’m not talking about ‘Union’ players here,) the ones used in the different codes have different flight characteristics, but don’t ask me what they are, just trust me. The Goalposts are all different, soccer goals are smallish and have a net, rugby and gridiron goals have two long poles and don’t, Gaelic football has a combination of the two and Aussie Rules has two long poles and two short poles. Don’t expect me to explain the points scored, I don’t know all of them and I don’t think either of us gives a monkey’s anyway.
How does all this affect your truly? Well, I was brought up with soccer and supported New Mills F.C. initially and then Manchester City closely for five years from 1962 to 1967 (I still support them, but from a distance of 12,000 miles). From 1967 to 1973 I followed Rugby Union closely, firstly in Wales and then South Africa. When I came to Aus. I didn’t support anybody at first, but now ‘support’, Melbourne Storm in ‘League’, Man City (of course) through the Internet and Melbourne Victory in Soccer and the Western Bulldogs in Aussie Rules.
Again, you probably don’t give a flying frolic, but for what it’s worth, the Bulldogs haven’t won a Premiership since 1954, which is even worse than Man City. So get on the Bulldog’s bandwagon all you masochistic City supporters, what have we got to lose but our sanity?
Cheers for now,
Sky Blue Skull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Saturday, April 25, 2009
An unbiased Australian view of the London Olympics
Over here in the Antipodes, I’ve lived for more than 37 years of my 60 years on this mortal coil, but I’m still considered to be a ‘Whingeing Pommy Bastard’.This basically means that I am considered to be a bit of an outsider, I’m neither an Aussie or really a ‘Pom’, so I have the best, or worst of both worlds, I choose to think the best. With the Olympics, I am glad to see that the UK is now represented by all four countries. I don’t know what the Mick’s, Taff’s and Pict’s think about it, but I’m all for it. I reckon it’s a great idea.
My adopted country, for some reason seems to think that Australia and the UK have to compete, especially when it comes down to sports. I have to say here that I don’t know many Poms here in Melbourne. We appear to be very few on the ground. Perhaps, I’m mixing with the wrong crowd.
When I ‘worked’ in the Tax Office, I often thought that I was the ‘Token Pom’, taken on just to prove that there was no discrimination. There again most Poms wouldn’t be seen dead working in a Tax Office anywhere. Me included, which is why I spent most of my time there in a semi-comatose state, I fitted in well.
To get back to the Olympics in particular and sport in general, the Skips love to beat the Kiwis (and vice versa) and the South Africans, but there is nothing they like better than sticking it up the Poms. I guess this has it’s roots in history. They did after all send all their thieving ratbags over here, when the rotting prison hulks were sinking into the Thames, so what do they expect? Gratitude?
To make up for this, they love to point out that they got the better part of the deal, golden beaches, hot summers and cold beer and why not throw another prawn on the barbie? To be honest here, I’ve never actually seen anybody throw, or even carefully place a prawn on a barbie and even if they did I wouldn’t eat it, I don’t like the little shit-eating critters.
Back to the Olympics once more, now Beijing is over and done with, we are looking at the 2012 games in London. This has caused a little concern over here in the Antipodes and the bad press has started already, below is a ‘tongue in cheek?’ review from my most un-favourite newspaper.
CAN BRITS LIFT IN TIME?
“So you thought Beijing was going to be bad, we worried about the smog, the police, the food. Every concern under the sun was aired and most of it turned out to be without foundation.
But now a secret dossier has been uncovered, which reveals the threats that London will pose in 2012 to the health and wellbeing of the crowds likely to descend on the City.
FOOD
You can get every cuisine under the sun in London, each with one universal quality - it has no quality.
From Thai to Indian, Chinese to Pub Grub, it won’t make you ill as such, just sad.
TAXIS
Not one taxi driver in Beijing speaks any English, and after a week in London you’ll dream of those halcyon days as yet another cabbie tells you why national service should be reintroduced, it’s never been the same since Mrs Thatcher left and hanging’s too good for them. Almost enough to make you take the Tube. Almost.
THE AIR
The air of despondency that is. Beijing’s army of volunteers, all happy to help and pleased to see you, will be supplanted by a city of people who won’t give you the time of day as they wallow in their own misery.
INFRASTRUCTURE
It took a totalitarian Government with absolute control to to impose on Beijing the necessary building works and venue construction.
By contrast, as if London’s planning laws were not bureaucratic enough, the mayor whose dream it was to host the Olympics and regenerate East London has just been replaced by a bumbling toff, whose pre-occupation is cracking jokes and riding his bike.
BEER
Not just served warm but also fermenting and guaranteed to be alive and kicking inside you the following day.
English “real ale” is barrel conditioned; ie, it’s an ongoing process, so you’ll never be sure of the quality of what you’re drinking until the first mouthful.”
So there you have it my friends, an unbiased Australian preview of the games in four years time.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
My adopted country, for some reason seems to think that Australia and the UK have to compete, especially when it comes down to sports. I have to say here that I don’t know many Poms here in Melbourne. We appear to be very few on the ground. Perhaps, I’m mixing with the wrong crowd.
When I ‘worked’ in the Tax Office, I often thought that I was the ‘Token Pom’, taken on just to prove that there was no discrimination. There again most Poms wouldn’t be seen dead working in a Tax Office anywhere. Me included, which is why I spent most of my time there in a semi-comatose state, I fitted in well.
To get back to the Olympics in particular and sport in general, the Skips love to beat the Kiwis (and vice versa) and the South Africans, but there is nothing they like better than sticking it up the Poms. I guess this has it’s roots in history. They did after all send all their thieving ratbags over here, when the rotting prison hulks were sinking into the Thames, so what do they expect? Gratitude?
To make up for this, they love to point out that they got the better part of the deal, golden beaches, hot summers and cold beer and why not throw another prawn on the barbie? To be honest here, I’ve never actually seen anybody throw, or even carefully place a prawn on a barbie and even if they did I wouldn’t eat it, I don’t like the little shit-eating critters.
Back to the Olympics once more, now Beijing is over and done with, we are looking at the 2012 games in London. This has caused a little concern over here in the Antipodes and the bad press has started already, below is a ‘tongue in cheek?’ review from my most un-favourite newspaper.
CAN BRITS LIFT IN TIME?
“So you thought Beijing was going to be bad, we worried about the smog, the police, the food. Every concern under the sun was aired and most of it turned out to be without foundation.
But now a secret dossier has been uncovered, which reveals the threats that London will pose in 2012 to the health and wellbeing of the crowds likely to descend on the City.
FOOD
You can get every cuisine under the sun in London, each with one universal quality - it has no quality.
From Thai to Indian, Chinese to Pub Grub, it won’t make you ill as such, just sad.
TAXIS
Not one taxi driver in Beijing speaks any English, and after a week in London you’ll dream of those halcyon days as yet another cabbie tells you why national service should be reintroduced, it’s never been the same since Mrs Thatcher left and hanging’s too good for them. Almost enough to make you take the Tube. Almost.
THE AIR
The air of despondency that is. Beijing’s army of volunteers, all happy to help and pleased to see you, will be supplanted by a city of people who won’t give you the time of day as they wallow in their own misery.
INFRASTRUCTURE
It took a totalitarian Government with absolute control to to impose on Beijing the necessary building works and venue construction.
By contrast, as if London’s planning laws were not bureaucratic enough, the mayor whose dream it was to host the Olympics and regenerate East London has just been replaced by a bumbling toff, whose pre-occupation is cracking jokes and riding his bike.
BEER
Not just served warm but also fermenting and guaranteed to be alive and kicking inside you the following day.
English “real ale” is barrel conditioned; ie, it’s an ongoing process, so you’ll never be sure of the quality of what you’re drinking until the first mouthful.”
So there you have it my friends, an unbiased Australian preview of the games in four years time.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Friday, April 24, 2009
Asinine and Equine fun in UK, Afghanistan &USA
This has nothing at all to do with betting on horses (or asses, the main thing I know about them, is you should'nt covet your neighbours, which is easy because they're all big and ugly) as I don’t know the first thing about it and never indulge. Actually, this is not strictly true, because once a year I am coerced by my daughter into laying out some boodle on The Melbourne Cup.
This takes place every November and is known as the ‘Race that stops a Nation’. Work-places throughout Australia run sweeps and if you don’t participate, you’re considered to be the worst kind of wowser. Melbourne has a holiday and most places stop what they are doing and watch it on the TV.
It is supposedly a world famous race, in the same vein as The Derby and Grand National in the UK, the Kentucky Derby, The Arc de Triomph and some race in Hong Kong whose name escapes me. Horses come from all over the world to compete, well at least a few from England, Ireland and Japan. I’ll be in England in November this year, so I’ll check to see if it rates a mention in the racing pages of The Daily Mirror. Damn! I forgot to do that when I was over there.
Having got rid of the betting aspect, I’ll get down to actually personally riding the beasts. Just about every kid in the North West of England worthy of the name, has ridden one of their close cousins (the horse's cousins, not their own cousins, we're not talking incest here), the world famous donkeys on Blackpool Beach. There’s nowt like trotting up the sand for 50/60 yards and back, astride one of those noble creatures. Even if it was being dragged along on a rope pulled by some ruffian.
Apart from that, I have ridden a 'real' horse twice in my life. The first time was in Afghanistan in the Bamiyan Valley, this was in 1976 and the country must have been between wars. I know why I was in the Valley, it was to see the two statues of Buddha that had been carved into the side of a cliff thousands of years ago.
Somebody had defaced them literally, centuries ago by carving off their faces, but they were so big that they couldn’t destroy them completely. This little task was left to the Islamic Taliban in the 1990’s (they didn't like idols, American or otherwise) . They tried blowing them up using explosives, but it didn’t work. So they came up with the idea of using Surface to Air Missiles (SAM’s), this did work and left big holes in the cliff. The Taliban were happy with this and went off satisfied with a good day’s work well done, to persecute a few more unfortunates.
What has this got to do with horses? You might well ask, but this is a ramble and you never know where you’re going to end up. I just thought you might be interested. To get back to the horses, for some unknown reason me and my two travelling companions were asked if we wanted to hire some horses to go for a bit of a ride.
Having nothing better to do, we agreed and paid a seedy looking Afghani an exorbitant amount of money and he produced three nags which we mounted. As another aside here, the national sport in Afghanistan is called Bushkhazi, this is played on horseback and involves two teams galloping around wildly and trying to fling the headless carcass of a calf between two ‘goal posts’, a bit like Polo without mallets really.
If these steeds, upon which we were mounted, had ever been used for that purpose, they were now a little past their prime and could barely manage a slow walk, let alone a gallop. All three of them were suffering from terrible equine haemorrhoids, so after about thirty minutes we left them to recover with their owner and a quiet graze.
My second riding experience took place in Montana in 1978. I was visiting an Aussie mate and his new American wife, who were staying with her godfather on a fairly substantial ranch. I was introduced to the rancher and his family, which included two young girls.
The girls asked me if I would like to go for a horse ride with them. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so they saddled up a horse for me. It was a large horse and we looked at each other rather dubiously, but the girls assured me that it was a very gentle steed.
The two girls jumped onto a couple of smaller horses, without saddles, if my memory serves me correctly and galloped off. The noble steed and me set off at a more sedate pace, with said steed stopping at regular intervals to graze on the pasture.
I decided that it was about time to assert my authority over this equine hulk and pulled sharply on the reins to interrupt it’s lunch and dug my heels sharply into it’s flanks. This surprised it somewhat and we started moving along at a reasonable pace. We came to a gulch (luckily dry, are there any others?) and the steed wanted to go the easy way to the left, but I was determined to maintain my authority and forced it to the right.
This was an error of judgment on my part and we ended up at the bottom with a very steep ascent in front of us. My noble, equine friend turned and gave me a withering look and then bolted up the bank, I held on for dear life and we both got to the top in one piece. After that we came to a compromise i.e. it would do as it liked and I would sit there quietly.
A few minutes later the girls came galloping back and reined in to check on us and then set off back to the ranch house. Upon sensing that it was on the way back to the stability of it’s stable, my loyal companion, also started galloping wildly home. Try as I might, I could not get my arse to go in the same direction as the saddle and at that precise moment, vowed never to sit astride a horse ever again. A vow that I’ve upheld to this day, thirty years on.
Cheers for now
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
This takes place every November and is known as the ‘Race that stops a Nation’. Work-places throughout Australia run sweeps and if you don’t participate, you’re considered to be the worst kind of wowser. Melbourne has a holiday and most places stop what they are doing and watch it on the TV.
It is supposedly a world famous race, in the same vein as The Derby and Grand National in the UK, the Kentucky Derby, The Arc de Triomph and some race in Hong Kong whose name escapes me. Horses come from all over the world to compete, well at least a few from England, Ireland and Japan. I’ll be in England in November this year, so I’ll check to see if it rates a mention in the racing pages of The Daily Mirror. Damn! I forgot to do that when I was over there.
Having got rid of the betting aspect, I’ll get down to actually personally riding the beasts. Just about every kid in the North West of England worthy of the name, has ridden one of their close cousins (the horse's cousins, not their own cousins, we're not talking incest here), the world famous donkeys on Blackpool Beach. There’s nowt like trotting up the sand for 50/60 yards and back, astride one of those noble creatures. Even if it was being dragged along on a rope pulled by some ruffian.
Apart from that, I have ridden a 'real' horse twice in my life. The first time was in Afghanistan in the Bamiyan Valley, this was in 1976 and the country must have been between wars. I know why I was in the Valley, it was to see the two statues of Buddha that had been carved into the side of a cliff thousands of years ago.
Somebody had defaced them literally, centuries ago by carving off their faces, but they were so big that they couldn’t destroy them completely. This little task was left to the Islamic Taliban in the 1990’s (they didn't like idols, American or otherwise) . They tried blowing them up using explosives, but it didn’t work. So they came up with the idea of using Surface to Air Missiles (SAM’s), this did work and left big holes in the cliff. The Taliban were happy with this and went off satisfied with a good day’s work well done, to persecute a few more unfortunates.
What has this got to do with horses? You might well ask, but this is a ramble and you never know where you’re going to end up. I just thought you might be interested. To get back to the horses, for some unknown reason me and my two travelling companions were asked if we wanted to hire some horses to go for a bit of a ride.
Having nothing better to do, we agreed and paid a seedy looking Afghani an exorbitant amount of money and he produced three nags which we mounted. As another aside here, the national sport in Afghanistan is called Bushkhazi, this is played on horseback and involves two teams galloping around wildly and trying to fling the headless carcass of a calf between two ‘goal posts’, a bit like Polo without mallets really.
If these steeds, upon which we were mounted, had ever been used for that purpose, they were now a little past their prime and could barely manage a slow walk, let alone a gallop. All three of them were suffering from terrible equine haemorrhoids, so after about thirty minutes we left them to recover with their owner and a quiet graze.
My second riding experience took place in Montana in 1978. I was visiting an Aussie mate and his new American wife, who were staying with her godfather on a fairly substantial ranch. I was introduced to the rancher and his family, which included two young girls.
The girls asked me if I would like to go for a horse ride with them. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so they saddled up a horse for me. It was a large horse and we looked at each other rather dubiously, but the girls assured me that it was a very gentle steed.
The two girls jumped onto a couple of smaller horses, without saddles, if my memory serves me correctly and galloped off. The noble steed and me set off at a more sedate pace, with said steed stopping at regular intervals to graze on the pasture.
I decided that it was about time to assert my authority over this equine hulk and pulled sharply on the reins to interrupt it’s lunch and dug my heels sharply into it’s flanks. This surprised it somewhat and we started moving along at a reasonable pace. We came to a gulch (luckily dry, are there any others?) and the steed wanted to go the easy way to the left, but I was determined to maintain my authority and forced it to the right.
This was an error of judgment on my part and we ended up at the bottom with a very steep ascent in front of us. My noble, equine friend turned and gave me a withering look and then bolted up the bank, I held on for dear life and we both got to the top in one piece. After that we came to a compromise i.e. it would do as it liked and I would sit there quietly.
A few minutes later the girls came galloping back and reined in to check on us and then set off back to the ranch house. Upon sensing that it was on the way back to the stability of it’s stable, my loyal companion, also started galloping wildly home. Try as I might, I could not get my arse to go in the same direction as the saddle and at that precise moment, vowed never to sit astride a horse ever again. A vow that I’ve upheld to this day, thirty years on.
Cheers for now
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 23, 2009
My personal sporting achievements.
For some reason, my Muse has decided that sport is the flavour of the week, having got rid of the Olympics (temporarily). We (my Muse and I) thought we would give you a bit of an insight into my own sporting achievements.
I was totally useless at soccer and cricket because of my glasses; at least that was my excuse. Anyway, to cut a short story long the Games master did the usual thing and picked the two best players and told them to pick their teams. This inevitably resulted in Me, Daffy-Don Davenport and Charlie Hulme being the last ones chosen. Daffy-Don’s only claim to fame was his ability to make an extraordinarily loud farting noise using a cupped hand and his armpit. (If you don’t believe me, try it sometime on a hot sweaty day).
Charlie must have been one of the original eggheads, he had the biggest cranium I’ve ever seen, he was a brilliant scholar and ended up getting thrown out of London University for wasting his time train-spotting. He also spent every lunchtime at school, cycling around to as many pubs as he could reach, giving them his own version of the Egon Ronay system for pints of beer and pasties.
(I have recently heard from Charlie and although he did fail the first year at Uni, he went on to graduate and became very successful in IT at Manchester Uni. Him and his wife are still cycling around Derbyshire and he still loves his trains. I’m not sure about the ale and pasties.)
That left yours truly, the last but arguably the best of the “useless trio”. I used to be pretty good at cross-country running, which didn’t involve hand-eye co-ordination and some of the best distance runners in history wore glasses. Although I must admit I can’t name any off the top of my head, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
However the smoking and drinking got to me, sooner rather than later, and my running career finally fell flat. Me and a couple of mates were caught smoking by one of the teachers. We were hiding in a quarry having a quiet smoke. We were watching the leaders passing by and waiting for a clear break in the field of runners, so we didn’t finish too high in the placings, (nothing but honest me and my mates).
The lousy, hypocritical sod crept up behind us and confiscated the smokes (he was a smoker himself, of course) He kept us behind, till everybody had overtaken us, including Charlie and Daffy Don and then let the four of us go.
We ran into the school grounds past the assembled pupils and teachers and pretended to race each other, we were all from different ‘houses’ and the crowd was going berserk. As we crossed the finish line, we all ran over together holding hands. Much to the delight of the pupils and the chagrin of the teachers.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
I was totally useless at soccer and cricket because of my glasses; at least that was my excuse. Anyway, to cut a short story long the Games master did the usual thing and picked the two best players and told them to pick their teams. This inevitably resulted in Me, Daffy-Don Davenport and Charlie Hulme being the last ones chosen. Daffy-Don’s only claim to fame was his ability to make an extraordinarily loud farting noise using a cupped hand and his armpit. (If you don’t believe me, try it sometime on a hot sweaty day).
Charlie must have been one of the original eggheads, he had the biggest cranium I’ve ever seen, he was a brilliant scholar and ended up getting thrown out of London University for wasting his time train-spotting. He also spent every lunchtime at school, cycling around to as many pubs as he could reach, giving them his own version of the Egon Ronay system for pints of beer and pasties.
(I have recently heard from Charlie and although he did fail the first year at Uni, he went on to graduate and became very successful in IT at Manchester Uni. Him and his wife are still cycling around Derbyshire and he still loves his trains. I’m not sure about the ale and pasties.)
That left yours truly, the last but arguably the best of the “useless trio”. I used to be pretty good at cross-country running, which didn’t involve hand-eye co-ordination and some of the best distance runners in history wore glasses. Although I must admit I can’t name any off the top of my head, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
However the smoking and drinking got to me, sooner rather than later, and my running career finally fell flat. Me and a couple of mates were caught smoking by one of the teachers. We were hiding in a quarry having a quiet smoke. We were watching the leaders passing by and waiting for a clear break in the field of runners, so we didn’t finish too high in the placings, (nothing but honest me and my mates).
The lousy, hypocritical sod crept up behind us and confiscated the smokes (he was a smoker himself, of course) He kept us behind, till everybody had overtaken us, including Charlie and Daffy Don and then let the four of us go.
We ran into the school grounds past the assembled pupils and teachers and pretended to race each other, we were all from different ‘houses’ and the crowd was going berserk. As we crossed the finish line, we all ran over together holding hands. Much to the delight of the pupils and the chagrin of the teachers.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
St Skull of Assissi
I’ve often thought that I have a way with birds, of the feathered variety. I wasn’t a bad looking lad in my youth ( I will try to prove this by adding a photo here, if I can get access back to my site, if you’re reading this then I am back on line, after a traumatic morning of deprivation). As I was saying, I was a good looking young chap but terribly shy, an attribute I carry to this very day, shyness that is, not good looking.
I still blush when nubile young maidens come up to me and fondle my nether regions whilst whispering “Take me, big boy” into my shell like. Or at least, I think I would if it actually happened.
Anyway, to get back to Avians, the first bird I ever owned was a budgie, bought for me by my next door neighbour, along with a cage and a stick of millet, I think it was eaten by a neighbourhood cat (the budgie not the millet).
My Dad caught the cat in the kitchen and from what he told me later, he closed the doors and chased it around, at one stage it was defying the laws of gravity and was racing around closer to the ceiling than the floor. Whenever it was close to the ground, he helped it along with a hob-nailed boot up the jacksie.
Before you write to the RSPCA protesting, it should be remembered that this was 50 years ago and back then you could get away with that sort of thing. This taught two sentient beings a lesson, the cat never entered the Skull domicile again and I (I’m sorry to say this, if you are a feline devotee) have a lifelong detestation of pussy cats.
This first one was followed by a succession of other Budgies, as a family we didn’t like to see them caged all the time and used to let them fly around the ‘living room’ during the day. I must add here that we only ever had one budgie at any one time, not a flock of them flying around like a bunch of homing pigeons, the house wasn't big enough for that.
This habit led to some unfortunate deaths, one was stepped on by my Mum, another flew off when I answered the front door with it perched on my shoulder. The ingrate took off without even a cheep of farewell and no doubt perished at the hands or beaks of the local sparrows.
The best of the lot had quite a considerable vocabulary, mainly thanks to Mum, and even got drunk one Christmas, when Dad shared a dram or two of Jamaican Rum and Orange with it, he ended up putting it in it’s cage where it lay flat on it’s back, I’m not sure whether or not it had a hangover when it eventually woke up, as I’ve never been fluent in ‘Budgie’. I’d like to say it died of natural causes, but it didn’t, I won’t go into that it’s too painful to contemplate.
To get back to me and why not? I’m writing this stuff!. One day I was walking to Sunday School, when I saw a bunch of kids in a circle. I went to see what was happening and they were surrounding a Rook and were too scared to approach it and were just about to start throwing stones at it.
I didn’t like that, so I went up to it and put my arm out and it hopped on, somebody had obviously tamed it, because it just sat there and eyed me with it’s beady eyes. This was the greatest excuse ever to get out of Sunday School, so I took it home.
I built it a perch and a tray to eat and drink and fed it a few slices of Mother’s Pride bread and gave it some water and we cawed at each other for a while. It obviously felt at home because it stayed there. In fact it stayed for about six months. It became so tame that it used to peck on my bedroom window to wake me up to feed it, before I went on my paper round.
Unfortunately I had to leave it, while we went on our summer holidays to Southport or Morecambe, or some other such exotic tourist destination for a couple of weeks. I gave instructions to a kid next door on how and when to feed it, but he was scared of it. I must admit that this was understandable, it was a large black bird, the sort associated with death and witches and had a diabolic gleam in it’s eyes and a vicious looking beak, with talons to match.
When I got home it had disappeared for ever, I prefer to think that it had gone to live in a nearby rookery and lived happily ever after, raising little baby rooks with a loving lady rook. Rather than thinking that the kid had taken to it with a piece of ‘four by two’, after it attempted to savage him. He vehemently denied any such act on his part
At the moment I’ve only got four birds, a lunatic Rainbow Lorikeet, a Cockatiel and a couple of budgies. The lorikeet terrorises the other three most of the time, the male budgie terrorises the cockatiel and sometimes the lorikeet and the cockatiel terrorises the female budgie, the whole lot are terrified of me. One normal big happy family really.
Since I wrote this. the Rainbow Lorikeet disappeared on a dark and stormy night and the female budgie met a tragic end at the beak of it’s mate, so I’m down to two and the dog hates them both, which means they are confined to their cages.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull (The (ex)-birdman of Albion).
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
I still blush when nubile young maidens come up to me and fondle my nether regions whilst whispering “Take me, big boy” into my shell like. Or at least, I think I would if it actually happened.
Anyway, to get back to Avians, the first bird I ever owned was a budgie, bought for me by my next door neighbour, along with a cage and a stick of millet, I think it was eaten by a neighbourhood cat (the budgie not the millet).
My Dad caught the cat in the kitchen and from what he told me later, he closed the doors and chased it around, at one stage it was defying the laws of gravity and was racing around closer to the ceiling than the floor. Whenever it was close to the ground, he helped it along with a hob-nailed boot up the jacksie.
Before you write to the RSPCA protesting, it should be remembered that this was 50 years ago and back then you could get away with that sort of thing. This taught two sentient beings a lesson, the cat never entered the Skull domicile again and I (I’m sorry to say this, if you are a feline devotee) have a lifelong detestation of pussy cats.
This first one was followed by a succession of other Budgies, as a family we didn’t like to see them caged all the time and used to let them fly around the ‘living room’ during the day. I must add here that we only ever had one budgie at any one time, not a flock of them flying around like a bunch of homing pigeons, the house wasn't big enough for that.
This habit led to some unfortunate deaths, one was stepped on by my Mum, another flew off when I answered the front door with it perched on my shoulder. The ingrate took off without even a cheep of farewell and no doubt perished at the hands or beaks of the local sparrows.
The best of the lot had quite a considerable vocabulary, mainly thanks to Mum, and even got drunk one Christmas, when Dad shared a dram or two of Jamaican Rum and Orange with it, he ended up putting it in it’s cage where it lay flat on it’s back, I’m not sure whether or not it had a hangover when it eventually woke up, as I’ve never been fluent in ‘Budgie’. I’d like to say it died of natural causes, but it didn’t, I won’t go into that it’s too painful to contemplate.
To get back to me and why not? I’m writing this stuff!. One day I was walking to Sunday School, when I saw a bunch of kids in a circle. I went to see what was happening and they were surrounding a Rook and were too scared to approach it and were just about to start throwing stones at it.
I didn’t like that, so I went up to it and put my arm out and it hopped on, somebody had obviously tamed it, because it just sat there and eyed me with it’s beady eyes. This was the greatest excuse ever to get out of Sunday School, so I took it home.
I built it a perch and a tray to eat and drink and fed it a few slices of Mother’s Pride bread and gave it some water and we cawed at each other for a while. It obviously felt at home because it stayed there. In fact it stayed for about six months. It became so tame that it used to peck on my bedroom window to wake me up to feed it, before I went on my paper round.
Unfortunately I had to leave it, while we went on our summer holidays to Southport or Morecambe, or some other such exotic tourist destination for a couple of weeks. I gave instructions to a kid next door on how and when to feed it, but he was scared of it. I must admit that this was understandable, it was a large black bird, the sort associated with death and witches and had a diabolic gleam in it’s eyes and a vicious looking beak, with talons to match.
When I got home it had disappeared for ever, I prefer to think that it had gone to live in a nearby rookery and lived happily ever after, raising little baby rooks with a loving lady rook. Rather than thinking that the kid had taken to it with a piece of ‘four by two’, after it attempted to savage him. He vehemently denied any such act on his part
At the moment I’ve only got four birds, a lunatic Rainbow Lorikeet, a Cockatiel and a couple of budgies. The lorikeet terrorises the other three most of the time, the male budgie terrorises the cockatiel and sometimes the lorikeet and the cockatiel terrorises the female budgie, the whole lot are terrified of me. One normal big happy family really.
Since I wrote this. the Rainbow Lorikeet disappeared on a dark and stormy night and the female budgie met a tragic end at the beak of it’s mate, so I’m down to two and the dog hates them both, which means they are confined to their cages.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull (The (ex)-birdman of Albion).
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Olympic Games, an Australian viewpoint.
This was originally written a few months ago and is now ancient history, but I came across it as I was seeking inspiration for an original blog, so I'm putting it on this new site for your edification and delight. It does provide a bit of an insight into the competitive spirit of my adopted countrymen.
Well it’s all over now and I’m a bit sorry to see it end, I became a bit of an enthusiast for synchronised diving and weight-lifting and although I’m no expert, I would have given all the divers perfect scores and wanted all the lifters to get those weights from on their tits, to over their heads without falling over backwards.
I have to say that some of the divers and most of the gymnasts were a tad too young for my liking, the females that is, all the males were, well too male, I suppose for me, thus proving that my sexual proclivities are bordering on normal.
I did fall in love with the whole of the Netherlands Womens Hockey Team and not a few Beach Volley-Ballers, and Track and Fielders. The swimmers left me a bit cold, but the female water-poloists all looked very cute in their funny little helmets.
Having said all that, I began to wonder what they were all getting up to after they’d finished competing. Let’s face it you’ve got 3,000+ of the world’s fittest young men and women confined together for about three weeks, there must have been a fair bit of the old ‘how’s yer father’ going on behind the ‘Birdcage’.
I read recently, that an American base in Antarctica had just received a consignment of 16,000 condoms and there are only about 150 of them wintering over there. Is freezing cold an aphrodisiac or what? Sod me! we’ll all be trying to get into the cool rooms at the local bottle shops, never mind the beer let's have a bonk!
To get your minds back up out of the gutter, I’ll get back to The Olympics, as far as I can make out the final tally of gold medals had the Chinese well in front of the USA with 51 to 36, although the Yankee Doodles beat the Chinks 110 to 100 on total medals. Giving them both bragging rights although I reckon the ‘septic tanks’ were a trifle off-pissed.
After that came Russia, Great Britain, Germany and Australia. This would no doubt have had Vlad ‘The Impaler’ Putin spewing in his borscht, but to give him his due, he had lost quite a few ‘Stans’ and other assorted territories. It probably didn’t particularly impress Angela either, now that the two Germanies are unified (and presumably drug free).
Living in Australia however, the locals are spitting chips that ‘The Pommy Bastards’ (Brits to those not in the know) got more than they did, 19 to 14 ‘Golds’ and 47 to 46 medals overall. Bugger the others, what are those shitheads doing better than us for the first time in twenty years, it’s an affront to our sporting traditions “We always beat the bloody Poms”.
To overcome this perceived anomaly one of the local papers, the equivalent of ‘The Sun’, or one of Rupert's other 'News?' Papers without the page 3 girls, came out with the following report.
“Australia is belting the UK, US, Russia and China despite what the Olympic medal tally says.
Body for body, the Aussies have outpunched every superpower in the world.
Every other nation in the tally top ten has at least double our population and China is 70 times bigger.
Only the weight of numbers has put us behind them.
When the numbers were adjusted to make the games a fair fight for everyone, we also had a a moral victory over the smug UK.”
There was a table showing that Jamaica was #1, Slovenia #2, NZ #3 and Australia #4. Where did the UK finish? Well, if you really want to know, at #20, with the US at #42 and China at #61. For what it is worth, India finished last with one gold for a population of one billion.
Don’t blame me for that, I’m just showing what has been reported in the local press, but it does get better so you’ll have to read my next posting.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://www.keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Well it’s all over now and I’m a bit sorry to see it end, I became a bit of an enthusiast for synchronised diving and weight-lifting and although I’m no expert, I would have given all the divers perfect scores and wanted all the lifters to get those weights from on their tits, to over their heads without falling over backwards.
I have to say that some of the divers and most of the gymnasts were a tad too young for my liking, the females that is, all the males were, well too male, I suppose for me, thus proving that my sexual proclivities are bordering on normal.
I did fall in love with the whole of the Netherlands Womens Hockey Team and not a few Beach Volley-Ballers, and Track and Fielders. The swimmers left me a bit cold, but the female water-poloists all looked very cute in their funny little helmets.
Having said all that, I began to wonder what they were all getting up to after they’d finished competing. Let’s face it you’ve got 3,000+ of the world’s fittest young men and women confined together for about three weeks, there must have been a fair bit of the old ‘how’s yer father’ going on behind the ‘Birdcage’.
I read recently, that an American base in Antarctica had just received a consignment of 16,000 condoms and there are only about 150 of them wintering over there. Is freezing cold an aphrodisiac or what? Sod me! we’ll all be trying to get into the cool rooms at the local bottle shops, never mind the beer let's have a bonk!
To get your minds back up out of the gutter, I’ll get back to The Olympics, as far as I can make out the final tally of gold medals had the Chinese well in front of the USA with 51 to 36, although the Yankee Doodles beat the Chinks 110 to 100 on total medals. Giving them both bragging rights although I reckon the ‘septic tanks’ were a trifle off-pissed.
After that came Russia, Great Britain, Germany and Australia. This would no doubt have had Vlad ‘The Impaler’ Putin spewing in his borscht, but to give him his due, he had lost quite a few ‘Stans’ and other assorted territories. It probably didn’t particularly impress Angela either, now that the two Germanies are unified (and presumably drug free).
Living in Australia however, the locals are spitting chips that ‘The Pommy Bastards’ (Brits to those not in the know) got more than they did, 19 to 14 ‘Golds’ and 47 to 46 medals overall. Bugger the others, what are those shitheads doing better than us for the first time in twenty years, it’s an affront to our sporting traditions “We always beat the bloody Poms”.
To overcome this perceived anomaly one of the local papers, the equivalent of ‘The Sun’, or one of Rupert's other 'News?' Papers without the page 3 girls, came out with the following report.
“Australia is belting the UK, US, Russia and China despite what the Olympic medal tally says.
Body for body, the Aussies have outpunched every superpower in the world.
Every other nation in the tally top ten has at least double our population and China is 70 times bigger.
Only the weight of numbers has put us behind them.
When the numbers were adjusted to make the games a fair fight for everyone, we also had a a moral victory over the smug UK.”
There was a table showing that Jamaica was #1, Slovenia #2, NZ #3 and Australia #4. Where did the UK finish? Well, if you really want to know, at #20, with the US at #42 and China at #61. For what it is worth, India finished last with one gold for a population of one billion.
Don’t blame me for that, I’m just showing what has been reported in the local press, but it does get better so you’ll have to read my next posting.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://www.keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Friday, April 17, 2009
An update on naked bog hopping in the Peak District
Well, the Summer Solstice has come and gone, with no great surprises. Despite, or perhaps because of, a considerable police presence, in the form of Constable Paddy MacGillicuddie, formerly of the RUC but now with the Royal Cheshire Mounted Police (RCMP, Motto ‘We always get our person’) (Yet another example of Political Correctness gone wild).
Constable MacGillicuddie, a splendid example of a British Bobby, standing 6ft 3in in his size 14 Bobby boots and Bobby helmet, but actually 5ft 6 3/4in without them, reported that he had made no arrests.
He did however sight ‘a bevy’ of naked women skipping through the bogs and gave chase, but lost them as he became bogged down and sank into the bog, up to his strategically positioned, police issue truncheon. It should be mentioned here that the Constable was only attired in the aforementioned boots and helmet in order to blend in with the expected crowd of revellers.
When questioned about how many women constitute ‘a bevy’, he admitted that he was unsure because he had his whistle in one hand and was holding his truncheon strategically with the other, thus rendering him unable to count them all, but stated categorically that there were more than two.
Senior Detective Sergeant Mullet of The Police Association (Well known for his cameo appearance on ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ solemnly intoning “ ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, there’s something fishy going on ‘ere”) has subsequently stated that he will not have his members exposed to that kind of thing in future.
He has since released funds from the Association’s ‘Slush Fund’ to provide knitting needles and wool to Gladys MacPlebian and the spinsters, along with the ‘Vital Statistics’ of Constable MacGillicuddie and asked them to knit a ‘Willy-Warmer’ for future events.
When she saw the ‘statistics’ Phyllis Arkwright gigglingly suggested that the Sen Det Seg’t had failed to take into account the ‘Wind Chill’ effect on the high moors and that perhaps a Man City Blue would be a better colour co-ordination. Mullet told her “Shut your gob! and start knitting, or else!”. Constable Paddy quietly informed her, that Mullet was a ‘dyed in the wool’ Man U supporter and to use the red and white skeins.
Cheers for now. until the Autumn Equinox.
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Constable MacGillicuddie, a splendid example of a British Bobby, standing 6ft 3in in his size 14 Bobby boots and Bobby helmet, but actually 5ft 6 3/4in without them, reported that he had made no arrests.
He did however sight ‘a bevy’ of naked women skipping through the bogs and gave chase, but lost them as he became bogged down and sank into the bog, up to his strategically positioned, police issue truncheon. It should be mentioned here that the Constable was only attired in the aforementioned boots and helmet in order to blend in with the expected crowd of revellers.
When questioned about how many women constitute ‘a bevy’, he admitted that he was unsure because he had his whistle in one hand and was holding his truncheon strategically with the other, thus rendering him unable to count them all, but stated categorically that there were more than two.
Senior Detective Sergeant Mullet of The Police Association (Well known for his cameo appearance on ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ solemnly intoning “ ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, there’s something fishy going on ‘ere”) has subsequently stated that he will not have his members exposed to that kind of thing in future.
He has since released funds from the Association’s ‘Slush Fund’ to provide knitting needles and wool to Gladys MacPlebian and the spinsters, along with the ‘Vital Statistics’ of Constable MacGillicuddie and asked them to knit a ‘Willy-Warmer’ for future events.
When she saw the ‘statistics’ Phyllis Arkwright gigglingly suggested that the Sen Det Seg’t had failed to take into account the ‘Wind Chill’ effect on the high moors and that perhaps a Man City Blue would be a better colour co-ordination. Mullet told her “Shut your gob! and start knitting, or else!”. Constable Paddy quietly informed her, that Mullet was a ‘dyed in the wool’ Man U supporter and to use the red and white skeins.
Cheers for now. until the Autumn Equinox.
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 16, 2009
My life in the Australian Tax Office
To stay on the topic (for a change), I also worked at the ATO for twenty years and would still be there now if I hadn’t been invalided out at the age of 54. The only reason I went in there, was because there were no jobs going around in 1983, so I took the Public Service Exam. I wanted to get into exciting areas like Foreign Affairs (sounds good anyway) or Defence (probably not so good) but the ATO wanted me more or probably less, but they got me anyway.
I really needed the brass so I joined, if a trifle unwillingly. After my first day I knew that this was not the job of my dreams, more like nightmares. My first couple of weeks were spent in a converted wool store (honestly!) I can’t remember what, if anything, I was supposed to do there. After that I was moved to ‘Lodgment Enforcement’ with another two new recruits.
Apart from the three of us there were four of the biggest deadheads ever to inhabit the ATO (and that is no mean accomplishment). The desks were arranged in a circle around a large pot plant, in the centre of which was an even larger hand written sign, proudly proclaiming ‘THE VEGGIE PATCH’ (this is no bullshit).
Of the four, one used to get to work at 9:30 and immediately go to sleep for his fifteen-minute tea break. He was right handed but kept his pen in his left hand and his feet in the desk drawer and with his face away from the supervisor, slept until lunchtime. Another one once walked out of the office and banged his head in the side mirror of a parked truck, drawing blood. He raced back up the stairs (which in itself was a first) and placed his head on the photocopier and took a copy for evidence in his workers comp claim. One of the others pushed his luck a little too far and ended up getting fired for rap dancing on his desk.
This unholy crew was ‘supervised’ by a young woman, who was semi-permanently on stress leave or on the phone or both. After a couple of weeks of this, the manager asked if anyone in the section wanted a move, me and my two relatively normal co-workers were the first in the queue after sending desks, chairs and pot plants flying.
I could go into this further, but the memories are still too close for comfort, so I shall cease and desist for another decade or two.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
I really needed the brass so I joined, if a trifle unwillingly. After my first day I knew that this was not the job of my dreams, more like nightmares. My first couple of weeks were spent in a converted wool store (honestly!) I can’t remember what, if anything, I was supposed to do there. After that I was moved to ‘Lodgment Enforcement’ with another two new recruits.
Apart from the three of us there were four of the biggest deadheads ever to inhabit the ATO (and that is no mean accomplishment). The desks were arranged in a circle around a large pot plant, in the centre of which was an even larger hand written sign, proudly proclaiming ‘THE VEGGIE PATCH’ (this is no bullshit).
Of the four, one used to get to work at 9:30 and immediately go to sleep for his fifteen-minute tea break. He was right handed but kept his pen in his left hand and his feet in the desk drawer and with his face away from the supervisor, slept until lunchtime. Another one once walked out of the office and banged his head in the side mirror of a parked truck, drawing blood. He raced back up the stairs (which in itself was a first) and placed his head on the photocopier and took a copy for evidence in his workers comp claim. One of the others pushed his luck a little too far and ended up getting fired for rap dancing on his desk.
This unholy crew was ‘supervised’ by a young woman, who was semi-permanently on stress leave or on the phone or both. After a couple of weeks of this, the manager asked if anyone in the section wanted a move, me and my two relatively normal co-workers were the first in the queue after sending desks, chairs and pot plants flying.
I could go into this further, but the memories are still too close for comfort, so I shall cease and desist for another decade or two.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Work and Public Servants (aka pubic serpents)
Contrary to popular belief, this is not an oxymoron; it is in fact a double oxymoron. Having been one myself for twenty years, I can say as an ex-insider that they perform quite extraordinary feats in the avoidance of that four-letter word beginning with a w and ending with a k. No! Dear reader, I am not referring to self-gratification. Well I suppose I am, but not of the onanistic variety so reviled by the Catholic Church, what we are considering here is WORK.
The other part of that oxymoron is Public and Servant. If you have ever had the misfortune to deal with one (and let’s say here, that they are so all pervasive, you can’t escape the bastards). You are, presumably, a member of the Public, some synonyms for which are civil, urban and society, whereas others are vulgar, common and hangers-on. A servant can be an attendant or alternatively a footman or a famulus. Put yourself in their position and ask the question “Would you rather be an attendant to a civil society, or put your famulistic boot (foot) into a common, vulgar, hanger-on?
What brought this on, was that the GLW (Good Lady Wife), gave me some rather startling news yesterday. Apparently a son of one of her friends has gone to work at my old workplace, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) at the tender age of 20. If little Johnny and his treasurer Peter Coster-Living have their way and their successors follow suit, this means that the poor sod will still be there in 60 years time i.e. 2067.
The reasoning behind this thinking, is that when the Old Age Pension (OAP) was introduced early last century, the average life expectancy for males was 61years. Barton or Skullin (no relation) or whomsoever, decided that the toilers should not only be given an eight-hour day (provided they worked longer than that). But should also be allowed to retire at 65 and the government would generously provide them with a pittance, to eke out on essentials over their last few miserable years. Secretly hoping, meanwhile, that the vast majority would croak it before then.
Of course the untrustworthy, hoi polloi bastards decided to live longer and the average life expectancy is now 82 and rising, before long the ungrateful dastardly swine will be living as long as Her Majesty and her kith and kin. The buggers will be retiring at 65 and living for another 50 years. What worries Little J and Peter is the ‘Economy’, at that rate you’ll have tens of millions of geriatrics collecting the Old Age Pension (OAP) and clogging up the hospital system. Who will be providing the taxes and hence the wherewithal to pay for this, your kids that’s who!
The obvious answer to this is to raise the age of retirement to 80 right? That’ll fix the sneaky sods and keep them toiling for another 15 years, which will have two benefits. More of them will be dropping off while toiling and will be paying taxes for another 15 years and the rest of them will be so shagged out they won’t be able to make it to the phone, let alone hospital. Brilliant! Why didn’t we think of it years ago? Because it would have affected us baby boomers you brainless berk.
The Pollies have already covered their sweet smelling, little buttocks by creating a ‘Futures Fund’, this cunning little ploy has been instituted, so every Pollie gets $1,000,000 for every year served in Parliament with an upper limit of $1 billion for ministers, prime and otherwise. The hoi polloi are also required to pay for their own pensions by secreting 10% of their wages in Super Funds. So my GLW’s mate’s son gets to work in the ATO until he’s 80. Serves him right I say!
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
The other part of that oxymoron is Public and Servant. If you have ever had the misfortune to deal with one (and let’s say here, that they are so all pervasive, you can’t escape the bastards). You are, presumably, a member of the Public, some synonyms for which are civil, urban and society, whereas others are vulgar, common and hangers-on. A servant can be an attendant or alternatively a footman or a famulus. Put yourself in their position and ask the question “Would you rather be an attendant to a civil society, or put your famulistic boot (foot) into a common, vulgar, hanger-on?
What brought this on, was that the GLW (Good Lady Wife), gave me some rather startling news yesterday. Apparently a son of one of her friends has gone to work at my old workplace, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) at the tender age of 20. If little Johnny and his treasurer Peter Coster-Living have their way and their successors follow suit, this means that the poor sod will still be there in 60 years time i.e. 2067.
The reasoning behind this thinking, is that when the Old Age Pension (OAP) was introduced early last century, the average life expectancy for males was 61years. Barton or Skullin (no relation) or whomsoever, decided that the toilers should not only be given an eight-hour day (provided they worked longer than that). But should also be allowed to retire at 65 and the government would generously provide them with a pittance, to eke out on essentials over their last few miserable years. Secretly hoping, meanwhile, that the vast majority would croak it before then.
Of course the untrustworthy, hoi polloi bastards decided to live longer and the average life expectancy is now 82 and rising, before long the ungrateful dastardly swine will be living as long as Her Majesty and her kith and kin. The buggers will be retiring at 65 and living for another 50 years. What worries Little J and Peter is the ‘Economy’, at that rate you’ll have tens of millions of geriatrics collecting the Old Age Pension (OAP) and clogging up the hospital system. Who will be providing the taxes and hence the wherewithal to pay for this, your kids that’s who!
The obvious answer to this is to raise the age of retirement to 80 right? That’ll fix the sneaky sods and keep them toiling for another 15 years, which will have two benefits. More of them will be dropping off while toiling and will be paying taxes for another 15 years and the rest of them will be so shagged out they won’t be able to make it to the phone, let alone hospital. Brilliant! Why didn’t we think of it years ago? Because it would have affected us baby boomers you brainless berk.
The Pollies have already covered their sweet smelling, little buttocks by creating a ‘Futures Fund’, this cunning little ploy has been instituted, so every Pollie gets $1,000,000 for every year served in Parliament with an upper limit of $1 billion for ministers, prime and otherwise. The hoi polloi are also required to pay for their own pensions by secreting 10% of their wages in Super Funds. So my GLW’s mate’s son gets to work in the ATO until he’s 80. Serves him right I say!
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A light-hearted look at DEATH
Death, not a polite topic at nice people’s dinner parties, but why not? It happens to all of us sooner or later and you can’t escape it. Someone once said that you can’t escape taxes either, but as an ex-tax officer (thankfully ex) I can vouch for the fact that this is not strictly true, there are a lot of sneaky, conniving, dishonest, rich bastards out there ripping off you poor, but honest, snivelling, poor, ignorant wretches.
Back to death, it comes as a bit of a surprise to some, although the surprise lasts for only a few nano-seconds, they are the lucky ones. One second they’re happily shagging, gardening, running marathons or playing polo and the next whammo! Hello worms!
For others, it can take days, weeks or years, not so good! Even then, some welcome it with open arms, believing that they are heading off on a one way trip, to their own particular nirvana. Others have to be dragged off kicking and screaming by the grim reaper knowing that they’ve violated every commandment and are destined for the great perpetual toaster in the netherworld.
Personally, I would prefer an instantaneous to quickish one. I do not wish to be put on life-support and there is a slab of VB in my will, for anybody willing to kick the plug out, while nobody is looking.
I’d like to be turned into a little pile of ashes and kept in a sealed designer urn on the mantelpiece, so the family can put me in the centre of the dinner table, along with a nice vase of petunias on special occasions. The reason for sealing the urn is fairly obvious, it would ruin everybody’s day if some drunken sot sprinkled my ashes on the turkey thinking it was pepper.
Unfortunately, my family are, if not deeply religious, at least ankle-deep Catholics and will want to inter me rather than (b)urn me. There is also the fact that everybody is aware that you might be in a nice cedar casket with beautiful brass handles as you trundle along the conveyor belt. As soon as you disappear through the curtain, they whip you out of the casket into a cardboard job (to create a few more ashes) and whoopsy-doo! Stick ‘em in a nice little porcelain job, bought in bulk from Woolworths.
If I do have to be buried, I’d like to go in the new ecologically friendly way. Whack me in a hessian sack or at the very worst a recycled cardboard coffin and stick me vertically in the ground. Instead of a headstone they can plant a tree on top or next to me. A spreading Oak would be nice, but I would settle (literally and metaphorically) for a Ghost Gum, Weeping Willow or best of all a Sequoia (that bugger would last a thousand years, or at least until the illegal loggers snuck in).
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Back to death, it comes as a bit of a surprise to some, although the surprise lasts for only a few nano-seconds, they are the lucky ones. One second they’re happily shagging, gardening, running marathons or playing polo and the next whammo! Hello worms!
For others, it can take days, weeks or years, not so good! Even then, some welcome it with open arms, believing that they are heading off on a one way trip, to their own particular nirvana. Others have to be dragged off kicking and screaming by the grim reaper knowing that they’ve violated every commandment and are destined for the great perpetual toaster in the netherworld.
Personally, I would prefer an instantaneous to quickish one. I do not wish to be put on life-support and there is a slab of VB in my will, for anybody willing to kick the plug out, while nobody is looking.
I’d like to be turned into a little pile of ashes and kept in a sealed designer urn on the mantelpiece, so the family can put me in the centre of the dinner table, along with a nice vase of petunias on special occasions. The reason for sealing the urn is fairly obvious, it would ruin everybody’s day if some drunken sot sprinkled my ashes on the turkey thinking it was pepper.
Unfortunately, my family are, if not deeply religious, at least ankle-deep Catholics and will want to inter me rather than (b)urn me. There is also the fact that everybody is aware that you might be in a nice cedar casket with beautiful brass handles as you trundle along the conveyor belt. As soon as you disappear through the curtain, they whip you out of the casket into a cardboard job (to create a few more ashes) and whoopsy-doo! Stick ‘em in a nice little porcelain job, bought in bulk from Woolworths.
If I do have to be buried, I’d like to go in the new ecologically friendly way. Whack me in a hessian sack or at the very worst a recycled cardboard coffin and stick me vertically in the ground. Instead of a headstone they can plant a tree on top or next to me. A spreading Oak would be nice, but I would settle (literally and metaphorically) for a Ghost Gum, Weeping Willow or best of all a Sequoia (that bugger would last a thousand years, or at least until the illegal loggers snuck in).
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Saturday, April 11, 2009
A reminiscence of a UK Primary School in the ‘50’s
I joined my elder sister Carol when I was five, at the Spring Bank Primary School in New Mills and my first memory is leaning against the wall, just inside the gate and being joined by another first day kid, whose name was Glynn. We spent a few years together, Glynn and me; he was my best mate.
Being a red-blooded pair of kids, we sat in the back of the class and as I couldn’t read the blackboard, the teacher assumed that I was a slow learning retard. This was perfectly understandable, as half the kids were slow-learning retards, (Cruel but true!).
Eventually, Mum took me to the optician and I got my first pair of specs, they were John Lennon type glasses and the change was amazing, I could see each individual leaf on a tree, instead of a green amorphous blob. My joy was short lived however. I went into the class and Rosemary Hoggins started laughing at me and then most of the kids were taking the piss out of me and calling me “speccy four eyes”. After that I only ever wore them when I was looking at
the blackboard, it took me years to get over that.
At the age of six or seven, Carol, Joyce (my younger sister) and me all went to Hague Bar Primary school, which was much better. The head master was called Mister Hallam and if we misbehaved he used to smack us on the leg with a ruler or if we really misbehaved he smacked us on the backside with a plimsole (sandshoe, no Nikes back then).
After a year or so, I became a ‘milk monitor’; this involved collecting the crates of milk from outside, where the milkman left them. For those of you who didn’t live in England in the fifties. As part of the welfare state, all primary schools were obliged to provide a third of a pint of milk to each pupil. The reasoning behind this was so that all the kids would grow up with strong bones and teeth, I think! (as an aside, Margaret Thatcher became known as ‘Thatcher the Milk Snatcher’ in later years, when she discontinued the practice).
This was good in theory, but not such a great idea in practice. In summer the milk, which had a nice inch or so of cream at the top of the bottle would be warm (yep! even in an English Summer) and bordering on rancid. Drinking it took a very strong stomach and kids would be dribbling milk and trying hard not to vomit. Being the person partially responsible for this form of child abuse, I was not Mr. Popular.
In spring and autumn it was OK apart from the Tits (feathery type Blue-Tits and Great-Tits, not what you were thinking, although the mental connection between tits and milk can be forgiven). The crafty little critters used to peck through the aluminium tops and drink the cream from half the bottles.
A big responsibility for one so young, was deciding who got the untouched bottles. In winter the milk would freeze and as milk expands when frozen, this pushed the tops off the bottles and seemed to keep the Tits away. Could this be the origin of the expression ‘Freeze your Tits Off’?
I remember one winter’s day when the snow was very heavy. Carol, Joyce and me couldn’t catch the bus (which couldn’t get safely through the snowdrifts) and walked to the school, about two miles away, very slowly, throwing snowballs at each other. I got a slippering with a sandshoe from Mr. Hallam for being late and the girls didn’t get punished at all, which wasn’t real fair.
But even in those days it may have been considered improper, for a male teacher to be smacking young girls on the backside with a shoe. All sorts of perversions spring to mind.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Being a red-blooded pair of kids, we sat in the back of the class and as I couldn’t read the blackboard, the teacher assumed that I was a slow learning retard. This was perfectly understandable, as half the kids were slow-learning retards, (Cruel but true!).
Eventually, Mum took me to the optician and I got my first pair of specs, they were John Lennon type glasses and the change was amazing, I could see each individual leaf on a tree, instead of a green amorphous blob. My joy was short lived however. I went into the class and Rosemary Hoggins started laughing at me and then most of the kids were taking the piss out of me and calling me “speccy four eyes”. After that I only ever wore them when I was looking at
the blackboard, it took me years to get over that.
At the age of six or seven, Carol, Joyce (my younger sister) and me all went to Hague Bar Primary school, which was much better. The head master was called Mister Hallam and if we misbehaved he used to smack us on the leg with a ruler or if we really misbehaved he smacked us on the backside with a plimsole (sandshoe, no Nikes back then).
After a year or so, I became a ‘milk monitor’; this involved collecting the crates of milk from outside, where the milkman left them. For those of you who didn’t live in England in the fifties. As part of the welfare state, all primary schools were obliged to provide a third of a pint of milk to each pupil. The reasoning behind this was so that all the kids would grow up with strong bones and teeth, I think! (as an aside, Margaret Thatcher became known as ‘Thatcher the Milk Snatcher’ in later years, when she discontinued the practice).
This was good in theory, but not such a great idea in practice. In summer the milk, which had a nice inch or so of cream at the top of the bottle would be warm (yep! even in an English Summer) and bordering on rancid. Drinking it took a very strong stomach and kids would be dribbling milk and trying hard not to vomit. Being the person partially responsible for this form of child abuse, I was not Mr. Popular.
In spring and autumn it was OK apart from the Tits (feathery type Blue-Tits and Great-Tits, not what you were thinking, although the mental connection between tits and milk can be forgiven). The crafty little critters used to peck through the aluminium tops and drink the cream from half the bottles.
A big responsibility for one so young, was deciding who got the untouched bottles. In winter the milk would freeze and as milk expands when frozen, this pushed the tops off the bottles and seemed to keep the Tits away. Could this be the origin of the expression ‘Freeze your Tits Off’?
I remember one winter’s day when the snow was very heavy. Carol, Joyce and me couldn’t catch the bus (which couldn’t get safely through the snowdrifts) and walked to the school, about two miles away, very slowly, throwing snowballs at each other. I got a slippering with a sandshoe from Mr. Hallam for being late and the girls didn’t get punished at all, which wasn’t real fair.
But even in those days it may have been considered improper, for a male teacher to be smacking young girls on the backside with a shoe. All sorts of perversions spring to mind.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A personal and cynical view of the UK
I was born in March 1949 in New Mills. This is a small town of about 8,000 people in North Derbyshire. It is sort of in the Midlands, but if it was a mile or less further north it would be in Lancashire, which is in the North of England and we all speak (or in my case, spoke) funny like Mancunians (natives of Manchester), so we think we’re Northerners.
Not that that is a real big deal, most Southerners i.e. Londoners and their ilk, think that anything north of Cockfosters (which is the most northerly station on the underground) is the deep north and should be avoided at all costs. Who cares what they think anyway! They’re almost as bad as the French and have spawned the likes of Margaret Thatcher.
Most thinking people recognise that the further you travel from London except South and East, (where they’re all cast in the same mould and even closer to France) the friendlier the people. West Country folk are very nice and not averse to smuggling a few barrels of brandy etc. from the accursed French.
They also make a very nice apple cider (called scrumpy which is best described as ‘Rough Cider’ including the skin and pips and rots your socks off . Up north a bit, you’ve got the Southern Welsh who were kind enough to give me a tertiary education. (more of that later).
East from there, after you jump over Offa’s Dyke you’ve got the Potteries Counties. The dyke was dug by some geezer called Offa and his tribe to keep the Welsh where they belonged, although it could have been intended to keep the Anglo Saxons out of Wales.
A bit further north is the Black Country, which was originally named because of all the factories belching out smoke, during and just after the ‘Industrial Revolution’. These days all the dark satanic mills have been moved offshore to China and India.
Further north still, you’ve got your good people from Manchester, Liverpool and if you hop over the Pennines, Sheffield. The other Yorkshire folk are a bit strange, but alright in small doses. Then you go up further and you get to the Geordies, who are some of the best I’ve met and invented Newcastle Brown and other delicious beverages.
Over to the left, you’ve got the Lake District which is very picturesque and that’s about all I’ve got to say about it. I’ve been there once and it’s got a few lakes and some famous people and poets lived there. I think Wordsworth may have wandered through a host of golden daffodils in that neck of the meadows.
In the far north you cross Hadrian’s wall, obviously built by a Roman Wally called, you got it! Hadrian. This was designed to keep the mad buggers called Picts and Scots back over the border in Glasgow fighting among themselves. The Scots are supposed to be a bunch of dour sods, but the ones I’ve met love a bevy or two and rarely get violent, I may have been lucky there.
To get back to New Mills, it’s situated on the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett (which will never get a mention in any documentary on the great rivers of the world). Although they do eventually flow into the Mersey and if you’ve never heard of that you shouldn’t really be reading this. As you were obviously born after the Beatles and the rest of the Scousers conquered the music scene.
These two, not so mighty, rivers were trapped behind a weir and forced into a mill race, which strangely enough turned a mill wheel, which provided power for a mill or maybe two, milling corn. The local idiot savant said “Oh! New Mills” and the local villeins and serfs clapped delightedly and the name stuck. That’s enough geography for the time being, I don’t want to bore you too much.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Not that that is a real big deal, most Southerners i.e. Londoners and their ilk, think that anything north of Cockfosters (which is the most northerly station on the underground) is the deep north and should be avoided at all costs. Who cares what they think anyway! They’re almost as bad as the French and have spawned the likes of Margaret Thatcher.
Most thinking people recognise that the further you travel from London except South and East, (where they’re all cast in the same mould and even closer to France) the friendlier the people. West Country folk are very nice and not averse to smuggling a few barrels of brandy etc. from the accursed French.
They also make a very nice apple cider (called scrumpy which is best described as ‘Rough Cider’ including the skin and pips and rots your socks off . Up north a bit, you’ve got the Southern Welsh who were kind enough to give me a tertiary education. (more of that later).
East from there, after you jump over Offa’s Dyke you’ve got the Potteries Counties. The dyke was dug by some geezer called Offa and his tribe to keep the Welsh where they belonged, although it could have been intended to keep the Anglo Saxons out of Wales.
A bit further north is the Black Country, which was originally named because of all the factories belching out smoke, during and just after the ‘Industrial Revolution’. These days all the dark satanic mills have been moved offshore to China and India.
Further north still, you’ve got your good people from Manchester, Liverpool and if you hop over the Pennines, Sheffield. The other Yorkshire folk are a bit strange, but alright in small doses. Then you go up further and you get to the Geordies, who are some of the best I’ve met and invented Newcastle Brown and other delicious beverages.
Over to the left, you’ve got the Lake District which is very picturesque and that’s about all I’ve got to say about it. I’ve been there once and it’s got a few lakes and some famous people and poets lived there. I think Wordsworth may have wandered through a host of golden daffodils in that neck of the meadows.
In the far north you cross Hadrian’s wall, obviously built by a Roman Wally called, you got it! Hadrian. This was designed to keep the mad buggers called Picts and Scots back over the border in Glasgow fighting among themselves. The Scots are supposed to be a bunch of dour sods, but the ones I’ve met love a bevy or two and rarely get violent, I may have been lucky there.
To get back to New Mills, it’s situated on the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett (which will never get a mention in any documentary on the great rivers of the world). Although they do eventually flow into the Mersey and if you’ve never heard of that you shouldn’t really be reading this. As you were obviously born after the Beatles and the rest of the Scousers conquered the music scene.
These two, not so mighty, rivers were trapped behind a weir and forced into a mill race, which strangely enough turned a mill wheel, which provided power for a mill or maybe two, milling corn. The local idiot savant said “Oh! New Mills” and the local villeins and serfs clapped delightedly and the name stuck. That’s enough geography for the time being, I don’t want to bore you too much.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 2, 2009
More on Imp v's Metric! Skull's own Scale of Measurement
Having contemplated this further I have decided that my own measuring system is a curious combination of both. For instance, when I weigh myself in the morning after doing my ablutions I stand on the scale and if I weigh less than 75kgs I am a happy chappy, if I weigh more I’m less than happy. I have absolutely no idea what 75kgs is in Stones and pounds.
If I weigh myself in public I am much heavier than that, this is partially due to the fact that I am wearing boots and clothes and have had something to eat and drink. It is possible to weigh yourself in the local shopping centre before consuming anything and you can take off your boots, jacket and sweater with only a few amused glances. However, if you start taking off your jeans and T-shirt people start to get a little worried and if you politely ask a passing little old lady to hold your socks and jocks, all hell will break loose.
The moral of this story is, that if you want to find your true weight and don’t want to end up in the slammer, invest $40 in a decent set of bathroom scales.
When it comes to my height, I’ve always said that I’m 5’ 10’’ but I think I was probably closer to 5’ 9’’, what’s an inch between friends (on second thoughts, don’t answer that). I think that is about 173cms, give or take a cm or two. 5’ 10’’ sounds like a good average height, not too short and not real tall, but 173cms seems like a real midget.
If you’re 2m tall that sounds good, but in reality it’s about 6’ 6’’, which is huge. If you’re 2m tall and your missus is the same, you’re going to end up with kids who are 7 feet tall. This would be great for the lads, they could always become highly paid basketball players or ruckmen in Aussie Rules Football, or lowly paid light-bulb changers and bouncers, but what about your daughters?
Women who are that big scare potential suitors, this is because the male brain has been hot-wired since the days of ‘hunter gathering’ to believe that they are the head honchos, wrestling with sabre toothed tigers and scaring the bejasus out of mastodons.
Nowadays, most of them are pasty-faced, lily-livered clerks, who knuckle a respectful forelock at their ‘superiors’ and go home to kick the dog and shout at the wife and kids to assert their superiority. What are they going to do if they’re confronted with a 7 foot tall Amazon, shout at her or run off whimpering?
The only guys who like their women that tall are the real short arsed ones, like Bernie E. and the Gnomes of Zurich, whose wallets are so thick that they need a step ladder to reach the top of them (the wallets and the women).
These guys are so obsessed with being successful, due to the fact that normal sized blokes used to park their pint pots on their heads while they lit up a Marlboro, that they have gone through life without the simple pleasures, such as sniffing the flowers. This is a bit of a pity really, because they’re closer to the ground, I suppose they make up for it by standing on their tippy-toes and sniffing their wives. I won’t pursue that line of thought, I shall leave it to your own prurient imaginations.
To get back to my original thoughts concerning the metric system, I live on a block of land that is a quarter acre, this is the Australian dream, a house on a quarter acre block. I know exactly what it looks like because I have to mow it. I haven’t got a clue what that is in hectares or square metres but I’m sure it sounds a lot more impressive in square yards.
When it comes to drinks, I am reasonably fluent in both Metric, Australian and Imperial. I know for instance that a ‘pot’ is 10 fl ozs which is half a pint, a ‘tinny’ holds 375ml as does a ‘stubby’, a ‘long neck bottle’ holds 750ml and there are 24 ‘tinnies’ to a ‘Slab’ which fits nicely into an ‘Esky’ with a bag or two of ice.
What more could a bloke ask for, I’m 5’ 9’’ and a bit and weigh approx. 75kgs, my missus is 4’ 11’, I have a son who is 5’ 11’ and a daughter who will be around 5’ 5’’. I live on a quarter acre block within walking distance (a mile and a half) of a shopping centre, where I could either buy a slab of VB cans and store them in an esky or weigh myself ‘au naturel’. I suppose if I could find a wallet, lost by one of the Gnomes of Zurich, I wouldn’t mind going up to 85kgs and consuming a few more ‘long necks’, but you can’t have everything.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
If I weigh myself in public I am much heavier than that, this is partially due to the fact that I am wearing boots and clothes and have had something to eat and drink. It is possible to weigh yourself in the local shopping centre before consuming anything and you can take off your boots, jacket and sweater with only a few amused glances. However, if you start taking off your jeans and T-shirt people start to get a little worried and if you politely ask a passing little old lady to hold your socks and jocks, all hell will break loose.
The moral of this story is, that if you want to find your true weight and don’t want to end up in the slammer, invest $40 in a decent set of bathroom scales.
When it comes to my height, I’ve always said that I’m 5’ 10’’ but I think I was probably closer to 5’ 9’’, what’s an inch between friends (on second thoughts, don’t answer that). I think that is about 173cms, give or take a cm or two. 5’ 10’’ sounds like a good average height, not too short and not real tall, but 173cms seems like a real midget.
If you’re 2m tall that sounds good, but in reality it’s about 6’ 6’’, which is huge. If you’re 2m tall and your missus is the same, you’re going to end up with kids who are 7 feet tall. This would be great for the lads, they could always become highly paid basketball players or ruckmen in Aussie Rules Football, or lowly paid light-bulb changers and bouncers, but what about your daughters?
Women who are that big scare potential suitors, this is because the male brain has been hot-wired since the days of ‘hunter gathering’ to believe that they are the head honchos, wrestling with sabre toothed tigers and scaring the bejasus out of mastodons.
Nowadays, most of them are pasty-faced, lily-livered clerks, who knuckle a respectful forelock at their ‘superiors’ and go home to kick the dog and shout at the wife and kids to assert their superiority. What are they going to do if they’re confronted with a 7 foot tall Amazon, shout at her or run off whimpering?
The only guys who like their women that tall are the real short arsed ones, like Bernie E. and the Gnomes of Zurich, whose wallets are so thick that they need a step ladder to reach the top of them (the wallets and the women).
These guys are so obsessed with being successful, due to the fact that normal sized blokes used to park their pint pots on their heads while they lit up a Marlboro, that they have gone through life without the simple pleasures, such as sniffing the flowers. This is a bit of a pity really, because they’re closer to the ground, I suppose they make up for it by standing on their tippy-toes and sniffing their wives. I won’t pursue that line of thought, I shall leave it to your own prurient imaginations.
To get back to my original thoughts concerning the metric system, I live on a block of land that is a quarter acre, this is the Australian dream, a house on a quarter acre block. I know exactly what it looks like because I have to mow it. I haven’t got a clue what that is in hectares or square metres but I’m sure it sounds a lot more impressive in square yards.
When it comes to drinks, I am reasonably fluent in both Metric, Australian and Imperial. I know for instance that a ‘pot’ is 10 fl ozs which is half a pint, a ‘tinny’ holds 375ml as does a ‘stubby’, a ‘long neck bottle’ holds 750ml and there are 24 ‘tinnies’ to a ‘Slab’ which fits nicely into an ‘Esky’ with a bag or two of ice.
What more could a bloke ask for, I’m 5’ 9’’ and a bit and weigh approx. 75kgs, my missus is 4’ 11’, I have a son who is 5’ 11’ and a daughter who will be around 5’ 5’’. I live on a quarter acre block within walking distance (a mile and a half) of a shopping centre, where I could either buy a slab of VB cans and store them in an esky or weigh myself ‘au naturel’. I suppose if I could find a wallet, lost by one of the Gnomes of Zurich, I wouldn’t mind going up to 85kgs and consuming a few more ‘long necks’, but you can’t have everything.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Mobile Pheromones! How to attract lovely species!
Mobile Pheromones
Just in case you think that this is a typographical error, you are dead set wrong, a ‘Pheromone’ according to my dictionary is “a chemical substance secreted and released by an animal for detection and use by another, usu. of the same species”.
Now, you can make of that what you will, but my understanding is that the chemical substance being secreted is intended to stimulate sexual desire in the other “usu. of the same species”, so that they will get together for a good old fashioned bonk, to propagate the species and have a good old time while they’re doing it.
So, go figure, if this is nature’s way of attracting ‘mates’, why have we created a multi billion dollar industry to try to camouflage our natural ‘pong’, which should be attracting “usu. of the same species” by the dozen.
Thus we get to ‘Personal Hygiene’
Now, being a Pom, I can’t say that I’m fanatical about this. I believe that you should keep yourself reasonably clean, so that you don’t become overly smelly and offensive to other people, who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in procreating with you.
Let’s face it, it doesn’t make for a good start to the day, if you’re trapped in a crowded train with your snot-box stuck in somebody’s smelly armpit. This was not what Mother Nature intended at all, (let’s face it, mass transport has sod all to do with the propagation of the species, or does it?).
Of course, if you’re vertically disadvantaged and your schnozz is firmly implanted in the groin of someone of the opposite sex, pheromones can cause some very strange reactions, but we’ll leave that alone for the time being. Although you could look back at one of my earlier postings, concerning the ‘Gnomes of Zurich’ and Bernie Ecclestone, (I can’t find it, so I don’t really expect you to either. Actually for your edification and delight, I just found it and have published it on my next blog.)
To continue, when I was working in an office, I thought that it was incumbent on me to shower and shave every morning, which I did from Monday to Friday. Even then, I never went overboard and used soap and shampoo in moderation only, none of your bath gel, conditioners or any other exotica for me.
Afterwards a quick shave with a spurt of cream and that was it, no after-shave and maybe a quick roll-on of deodorant, if my fellow train travellers were lucky. I could never see the point of arriving at the office smelling like a pox-doctors clerk. After all, you were supposed to be there to do something productive, not reproductive.
I can’t really say that I was much better when I was single and went out at the weekend, on the hunt. Let’s be honest here, if nature had meant us to attract members (I use the word guardedly) of the opposite sex, she wouldn’t have invented pheromones and instead our sebaceous glands would be secreting Chanel or L’homme.
If somebody could distil Eau de Pheromone, you could throw a bucketful over your head and you’d be fighting off nubile young maidens at the local disco with a three foot piece of four-by-two. You’d probably stink like a rancid buffalo, but I don’t reckon you’d be too worried about it.
So, the point of this so far is, don’t go overboard with the showering, you’re not doing yourself any favours by destroying your natural secretions which keep your skin healthy and acne free and you’re not doing yourself any good by smelling like a sugar plum fairy (unless of course, you’re that way inclined).
With ‘real workers’ i.e. blokes who work up a bit of a sweat doing physical work, there isn’t a lot of point in showering before you go to work and then sweating your mattocks off as soon as you get there, so they generally shower at work or as soon as they get home. Unless of course, the missus is turned on by the pheromones and then they might be dragged into the boudoir, but I won’t go down that path. (I’m beginning to think, that I’m a bit of a prude!).
So there you have it, go easy on the showers. Although, I must admit that when I was in the Philippines, the in-laws were providing me with a case of beer every morning and it was so hot and humid, that I was walking around sweating like a mobile Trevi Fountain. The locals were very concerned and thought I was melting and needed financial assistance, (or maybe they were throwing coins at me and making wishes for some other reason). In those circumstances I was showering five or six times a day, (no soap mind you) and collecting the coins out of my ‘Y-Fronts’.
Finally, cleaning the old gnashers, I can’t start the day without that, even though I gave up the coffin sticks thirty odd years years ago and stopped over indulging in the grog over five years ago. My gob still feels like the bottom of a bird-cage in the morning and the second thing I do is reach for the Macleans. I leave the first thing to your lurid imaginations.
For any of you who were expecting a dissertation on ‘Mobile Phones’, I apologise. I can only say that I’m completely incapable of using them, especially for 'texting' purposes and although The Good Lady Wife has given me one, for my upcoming trip to Anglo Saxony. I have no intention of using it, apart from incoming calls, obviously from the GLW checking up on me.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Just in case you think that this is a typographical error, you are dead set wrong, a ‘Pheromone’ according to my dictionary is “a chemical substance secreted and released by an animal for detection and use by another, usu. of the same species”.
Now, you can make of that what you will, but my understanding is that the chemical substance being secreted is intended to stimulate sexual desire in the other “usu. of the same species”, so that they will get together for a good old fashioned bonk, to propagate the species and have a good old time while they’re doing it.
So, go figure, if this is nature’s way of attracting ‘mates’, why have we created a multi billion dollar industry to try to camouflage our natural ‘pong’, which should be attracting “usu. of the same species” by the dozen.
Thus we get to ‘Personal Hygiene’
Now, being a Pom, I can’t say that I’m fanatical about this. I believe that you should keep yourself reasonably clean, so that you don’t become overly smelly and offensive to other people, who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in procreating with you.
Let’s face it, it doesn’t make for a good start to the day, if you’re trapped in a crowded train with your snot-box stuck in somebody’s smelly armpit. This was not what Mother Nature intended at all, (let’s face it, mass transport has sod all to do with the propagation of the species, or does it?).
Of course, if you’re vertically disadvantaged and your schnozz is firmly implanted in the groin of someone of the opposite sex, pheromones can cause some very strange reactions, but we’ll leave that alone for the time being. Although you could look back at one of my earlier postings, concerning the ‘Gnomes of Zurich’ and Bernie Ecclestone, (I can’t find it, so I don’t really expect you to either. Actually for your edification and delight, I just found it and have published it on my next blog.)
To continue, when I was working in an office, I thought that it was incumbent on me to shower and shave every morning, which I did from Monday to Friday. Even then, I never went overboard and used soap and shampoo in moderation only, none of your bath gel, conditioners or any other exotica for me.
Afterwards a quick shave with a spurt of cream and that was it, no after-shave and maybe a quick roll-on of deodorant, if my fellow train travellers were lucky. I could never see the point of arriving at the office smelling like a pox-doctors clerk. After all, you were supposed to be there to do something productive, not reproductive.
I can’t really say that I was much better when I was single and went out at the weekend, on the hunt. Let’s be honest here, if nature had meant us to attract members (I use the word guardedly) of the opposite sex, she wouldn’t have invented pheromones and instead our sebaceous glands would be secreting Chanel or L’homme.
If somebody could distil Eau de Pheromone, you could throw a bucketful over your head and you’d be fighting off nubile young maidens at the local disco with a three foot piece of four-by-two. You’d probably stink like a rancid buffalo, but I don’t reckon you’d be too worried about it.
So, the point of this so far is, don’t go overboard with the showering, you’re not doing yourself any favours by destroying your natural secretions which keep your skin healthy and acne free and you’re not doing yourself any good by smelling like a sugar plum fairy (unless of course, you’re that way inclined).
With ‘real workers’ i.e. blokes who work up a bit of a sweat doing physical work, there isn’t a lot of point in showering before you go to work and then sweating your mattocks off as soon as you get there, so they generally shower at work or as soon as they get home. Unless of course, the missus is turned on by the pheromones and then they might be dragged into the boudoir, but I won’t go down that path. (I’m beginning to think, that I’m a bit of a prude!).
So there you have it, go easy on the showers. Although, I must admit that when I was in the Philippines, the in-laws were providing me with a case of beer every morning and it was so hot and humid, that I was walking around sweating like a mobile Trevi Fountain. The locals were very concerned and thought I was melting and needed financial assistance, (or maybe they were throwing coins at me and making wishes for some other reason). In those circumstances I was showering five or six times a day, (no soap mind you) and collecting the coins out of my ‘Y-Fronts’.
Finally, cleaning the old gnashers, I can’t start the day without that, even though I gave up the coffin sticks thirty odd years years ago and stopped over indulging in the grog over five years ago. My gob still feels like the bottom of a bird-cage in the morning and the second thing I do is reach for the Macleans. I leave the first thing to your lurid imaginations.
For any of you who were expecting a dissertation on ‘Mobile Phones’, I apologise. I can only say that I’m completely incapable of using them, especially for 'texting' purposes and although The Good Lady Wife has given me one, for my upcoming trip to Anglo Saxony. I have no intention of using it, apart from incoming calls, obviously from the GLW checking up on me.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Naked Bog Hopping in The Peak District
I read a very short piece (about one column inch) in the Melbourne Age, about this degradation of the peat bogs, (not the naked bog hopping part) and sent this off to The Buxton Advertiser as a tongue in cheek review. I got a rather stern reprimand, stating that the bogs in the Peak actually soaked up more CO2 than all the forests in Europe.
Further research showed that the original piece was based on an article written by the Ecological Reporter for the Manchester Guardian. I received a grudging apology and although this was written for a very localised readership, I shall include it here. All the characters in this load of the old proverbial, are figments of my imagination and bear no resemblance to anybody who ever walked in Britain's very first National Park.
THE PEAK DISTRICT PEAT BOGS
I read recently that the Peak District Peat Bogs were a major cause of the dreaded Global Warming, this was a trifle distressing to find out that the bogs were causing more emissions of methane/carbon dioxide than the entire bovine herds of Argentina and ovine flocks of Australia plus rain forest clearing in Brazil and Indonesia.
It has been suggested that the peat bogs be ‘bombed’ with bales of heather, so far nobody knows how she feels about this invasion of privacy, but it has gone ahead regardless, with bales being flung, hither and yon, over the bogs of Bleaklow and subsequently Kinder Scout. This will, they hope, end up with the bogs covered in newly sprouting heather come spring time. In effect draining the bogs and turning them into virtual meadows.
I then discovered that if the bogs were drained, that 17 different types of lichen, found only in that part of the world would be lost for ever, according to Gerald P. Greenbotty the world renowned Lichenologist from Warwick University.
If this was not enough, amateur ornithologist Phyllis C. Heaps said that the the yellow bellied, lesser spotted, great tit, (which had been thought extinct until her husband Arnold stumbled on a nest, literally rather than metaphorically, in the great fog of 1987) was still flittering around in rather depleted numbers.
This is confirmed by Gladys MacPlebian, a well known Scottish eremite, who in traversing the Pennine Way down to Salford to see her sister, fell up to her neck in a bog just south of Kinder Scout. Taking this as a sign from ‘God’, she decided to build a bothy there. She states quite unequivocally that she has heard the plaintiff cries of the great tit quite frequently.
This claim is disputed by Hubert Thistletwaite of ‘Thistlethwaite Bean & Broccolli Growers’, Lower Strange Lane, Edale , tel No 156 472, who requested to remain anonymous. Mr X claims that ‘the plaintiff cries’ heard by Gladys Mac, are in fact the throttled screams of Dan D. Rough the lead singer of local punk band ‘The Hairy Nits’ playing at the Disco in Castleton.
NAKED BOG HOPPING
There are also local concerns about the behaviour of Gladys Mac, who having seen ‘God’, has now introduced ‘Bog Hopping’ to the local spinsters, this apparently involves naked rites at the solstices and equinoxes, where the participants frolic, tits akimbo in the bogs, hopping from tussock to tussock and immersing themselves in the slime.
According to Cyril Neptune of the Manchester Institute of Reptilian Studies, this is seriously affecting the reproductive patterns of the local fauna, specifically the legless shit-brown lizard, which is listed by the RSPCA as being endangered.
Gladys, however, remains unrepentant and claims that Bog Hopping has improved the complexions of the Glossop, Hayfield and Buxton Ladies Ramblers Society (GHABLRS) to such an extent that five of their number have attracted spouses and a few others report fighting off toyboys and gigolos.
She also states that this came to the notice of Maggie T, who joined the GHABLRS at the spring equinox in 1989 and was joined by her adoring hubby Dennis in the bog, (this in itself is unusual, as males generally stay away, as a cold northerly wind does nothing for the proud properties of the male danglers).
However, it is reliably reported that Maggies shrieks drowned out the great tits plaintiff cries, when Dennis gave her a ‘Damned good Rogering’ in the shower afterwards. Subsequently it has been noticed that when Maggie fondly fondles Dennis’ family jewels, his eyes glaze over and his tongue lolls out rather alarmingly.
Rumours that Betty-Nancy Brush, wife of ex-US-president Basil H. W. Brush upon hearing of this miracle cure, has instituted something similar in the peat bogs of Pennsylvania, for the use of the upper echelons of Washington society attending her clinic, are as yet unconfirmed.
Locally however, Lucille Throgmorton of the Little Hayfield, ‘Olde Alternative Pharmacology Store’ has reported record sales of her vials of ‘Peak Peat Bog #5 Slime’, she also expects a record turn out for this year’s ‘Summer Solstice Bog Hop’. As it is expected that this event could rival Glastonbury in years to come, tickets should be purchased early at the store, or other major retailers.
Cheers,
SkyBlueSkull
How could any rational person have taken that lot seriously?
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
Further research showed that the original piece was based on an article written by the Ecological Reporter for the Manchester Guardian. I received a grudging apology and although this was written for a very localised readership, I shall include it here. All the characters in this load of the old proverbial, are figments of my imagination and bear no resemblance to anybody who ever walked in Britain's very first National Park.
THE PEAK DISTRICT PEAT BOGS
I read recently that the Peak District Peat Bogs were a major cause of the dreaded Global Warming, this was a trifle distressing to find out that the bogs were causing more emissions of methane/carbon dioxide than the entire bovine herds of Argentina and ovine flocks of Australia plus rain forest clearing in Brazil and Indonesia.
It has been suggested that the peat bogs be ‘bombed’ with bales of heather, so far nobody knows how she feels about this invasion of privacy, but it has gone ahead regardless, with bales being flung, hither and yon, over the bogs of Bleaklow and subsequently Kinder Scout. This will, they hope, end up with the bogs covered in newly sprouting heather come spring time. In effect draining the bogs and turning them into virtual meadows.
I then discovered that if the bogs were drained, that 17 different types of lichen, found only in that part of the world would be lost for ever, according to Gerald P. Greenbotty the world renowned Lichenologist from Warwick University.
If this was not enough, amateur ornithologist Phyllis C. Heaps said that the the yellow bellied, lesser spotted, great tit, (which had been thought extinct until her husband Arnold stumbled on a nest, literally rather than metaphorically, in the great fog of 1987) was still flittering around in rather depleted numbers.
This is confirmed by Gladys MacPlebian, a well known Scottish eremite, who in traversing the Pennine Way down to Salford to see her sister, fell up to her neck in a bog just south of Kinder Scout. Taking this as a sign from ‘God’, she decided to build a bothy there. She states quite unequivocally that she has heard the plaintiff cries of the great tit quite frequently.
This claim is disputed by Hubert Thistletwaite of ‘Thistlethwaite Bean & Broccolli Growers’, Lower Strange Lane, Edale , tel No 156 472, who requested to remain anonymous. Mr X claims that ‘the plaintiff cries’ heard by Gladys Mac, are in fact the throttled screams of Dan D. Rough the lead singer of local punk band ‘The Hairy Nits’ playing at the Disco in Castleton.
NAKED BOG HOPPING
There are also local concerns about the behaviour of Gladys Mac, who having seen ‘God’, has now introduced ‘Bog Hopping’ to the local spinsters, this apparently involves naked rites at the solstices and equinoxes, where the participants frolic, tits akimbo in the bogs, hopping from tussock to tussock and immersing themselves in the slime.
According to Cyril Neptune of the Manchester Institute of Reptilian Studies, this is seriously affecting the reproductive patterns of the local fauna, specifically the legless shit-brown lizard, which is listed by the RSPCA as being endangered.
Gladys, however, remains unrepentant and claims that Bog Hopping has improved the complexions of the Glossop, Hayfield and Buxton Ladies Ramblers Society (GHABLRS) to such an extent that five of their number have attracted spouses and a few others report fighting off toyboys and gigolos.
She also states that this came to the notice of Maggie T, who joined the GHABLRS at the spring equinox in 1989 and was joined by her adoring hubby Dennis in the bog, (this in itself is unusual, as males generally stay away, as a cold northerly wind does nothing for the proud properties of the male danglers).
However, it is reliably reported that Maggies shrieks drowned out the great tits plaintiff cries, when Dennis gave her a ‘Damned good Rogering’ in the shower afterwards. Subsequently it has been noticed that when Maggie fondly fondles Dennis’ family jewels, his eyes glaze over and his tongue lolls out rather alarmingly.
Rumours that Betty-Nancy Brush, wife of ex-US-president Basil H. W. Brush upon hearing of this miracle cure, has instituted something similar in the peat bogs of Pennsylvania, for the use of the upper echelons of Washington society attending her clinic, are as yet unconfirmed.
Locally however, Lucille Throgmorton of the Little Hayfield, ‘Olde Alternative Pharmacology Store’ has reported record sales of her vials of ‘Peak Peat Bog #5 Slime’, she also expects a record turn out for this year’s ‘Summer Solstice Bog Hop’. As it is expected that this event could rival Glastonbury in years to come, tickets should be purchased early at the store, or other major retailers.
Cheers,
SkyBlueSkull
How could any rational person have taken that lot seriously?
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
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