No, but seriously… What is a cannery? A can-do attitude to life. What is a rookery? An establishment that manufactures chess sets. What is hooky? Like nooky, but nowhere near as much fun. What is pinochle? A South American military dictator who can’t even spell his own name. What is a ricochet? An Irish radio…
From 2015, a time when I was writing (allegedly) humorous posts purporting to be journalism. This one illustrates how two nations can be divided by a single postcode. Meet The Neighbours Today, we feature the latest product of the joint venture with the online edition of our local newspaper, Le Quotidien de Faire-le-Dodo (87). Our regular…
I like this idea of featuring, for the first Song Lyric Sunday of each month, an artiste or songwriter who was born in that month. However, as usual, I needed to resort to the web to check out a list of March birthdays. But I didn’t need to trawl very far down the list to…
As the saying goes… Mad as a……Reform voter. It’ll all come out in……a rash. Two’s company, three’s…..just greedy. Hi ho……Hu Every cloud has……about a thousand tons of water to rain on you. Sticks and stones……hurt. In for a penny……when going to a football match cost less than a week’s wages. Don’t count your……sheep. Not when…
This week, Jim wants to hear about a song that reminds us of home. It seems to me that this is not as straightforward as it seems, however. My regular reader (sic) will probably be aware that Madame and I live in the depths of La France Profonde in what is very much our home,…
Pull the other one… Borg Robotic Swedish tennis player Caught in 4K Showing off your fancy camera. Cheese pull Grilled mozzarella. Cheugy Foodstuff requiring long mastication. Chopped Foodstuff requiring very little mastication. Cheuzz Diner à deux Crash out Inevitable conclusion to long evening of student debauchery. Blue-Pilled Up all night. Fridge Cigarette Mentholated cancer stick.…
Nothing better than a grumpy old man rant, this one from 2014… Cargo Cult “Undo: If you could uninvent something, what would it be?” Many thanks to the latest ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ for this opportunity to have a good, old-fashioned, grumpy old man rant. What would I uninvent? Oh, so many things if…
We all suffer from them: those tunes that come, unbidden, into your head and steadfastly refuse to leave until ousted by another random nuisance. More often than not, my current earworm will be the song that I’m planning to use for the next Song Lyric Sunday. This may or, less frequently, may not be perfectly…
Say what now? Lowkenuinely A depressed man living in the city known as ‘the ship of the Fens’. Gruzz The lead character from ‘Minions’ taking a nap. Nerf An IT specialist with fat fingers. 41 Not quite the answer to life, the universe and everything. AFAIK A failed guess when trying to solve a Wordle…
From 2013, unveiling the secret world of investment management… Investment For Dummies There are very few things I’d claim to know more than most about. This rather limits – to put it mildly – the range of possible responses to this recent Daily Prompt: “Take a complicated subject you know more about than most people, and…
“It’s life and life only” We’re going profound this week on Song Lyric Sunday, as Jim has asked us for a song that makes us think about life. Back in August, as I recall, we were asked to submit a ‘philosophical’ song, a concept of which I was somewhat dismissive: to the extent that I…
Watch out, Pinocchio… What is a mamba? A ewe. What is a rumba? A drunken ewe. What is a samba? A ewe that identifies as a ram. What is a metronome? A person of diminished stature traveling on the Paris underground railway network. What is a mantra? An unfinished pit with straw laid over the…
Yet another grammar pedant rant, this one from 2015. So; annoying. You have no idea how much of a struggle it’s been not to start this post with the word ‘So’. For that is our subject today, dear reader. More particularly, the increasingly pervasive practice of beginning sentences with this poor, innocent syllable. To borrow another common…
This week we are being called upon to feature a song performed and/or written by someone born during the month of February. Naturally I had to have resort to the internet to discover who might qualify on those grounds, and that is where I discovered that no less an eminence than Johnny Cash was not…
Pants on fire…. What are florins, tanners and bobs? Key workers in a Victorian cotton mill, ranked by weekly wage. What is Dead Man’s Fingers? A tavern in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. What killed the triffids? Not me, guv. I’ve got an alibi. What is the difference between a buck and a…
the only deadhead in the hameau 