My poor old mind biggles at the knee deep stupidity which engulfs us :
‘I named my daughter Crumpets and now she’s being relentlessly bullied.’ Doh. Perhaps she should have called her Pikelets?
Thank you Jim Walshe for your article about dementia. I occasionally stretch to find a word and sometimes have to think where am I and what am I doing?
I was looking for my reading glasses and after hunting around for a while I realised I was wearing them! It gave me a giggle but in the main I still have most of my marbles. I read a lot and do some research into all sorts of subjects and of course my poetry exercises the mind. I am going to challenge myself more in order to keep the grey matter stirred. Since I shall be eighty-five in a few weeks time I suppose I am not doing too badly.
I have a 1972 listing of all the Officers and SNCOs of The Parachute Regiment serving at that year (I left in 1977) and I will go through it, as an exercise, looking at those whom I knew and trying to recall all their faces and any events I associate with them. I saw, for instance, second lieutenants rise to the rank of general; for example General Rupert Smith who commanded the UK Ist Armoured Division in Operation Desert Storm, another was General Hew Pike but I never looked at his career, bit of a stuck up prune when he was younger.
I used to do a lot of jigsaws and I must get back to that……so may ways to exercise the old noggin. Of course one of the best ways is to avoid the tv and films.
There is a well loved lady of this Parish who has a job on her hands coping with her husband; so certainly not a laughing matter.
Talking of contributors I tip my hat to our American friend John with his steadfast faith and insights into the American way of life. I was brought up a Catholic and in my boyish enthusiasm I once suggested to my De Lalle Salle Brothers RE teacher that I would like to become a priest. I loved the theatre of the services, the pomp, the music and the latin mass but it all fell away in due course and on reflection I would have been a bit of a short-arsed Rasputin!
Some talk of old remedies – the one that stuck out for me was Fenning’s Fever Cure. First sign of a sniffle and a dollop put down your throat. Seemed to work well, or maybe the terrible taste made me reluctant to take any more medicine!
I never understood the Liz Truss thing, the little I saw I thought she was on the right track, but then that is not what TPTB want. She has now put her head above the parapet – ‘My mistake. if you want to put it like that, was underestimating the sheer malevolence of the economic blob in Britain – we’ve lost our way.
See Bojo has been demonstrating again his total ineptitude, something about supporting Ukraine, I did not bother to look closely at what he said. What an obese bloviating bag of shite he is.
As to why there is so much corruption and perverted practices in all the organs of state it is that they are all overpaid, have lots of free-time at our expense and no responsibilities, no accountability and many gravitate to those occupations because they see all the advantages with no likely come back on them.
I like the idea of a Nonce-Finder-General – he/she would need a big staff!
Waiting at the surgery yesterday a song was played, the first few bars caused me to concentrate, familiar but not heard for yonks. A lovely, lonely song -’Everybody Hurts’ – I had no idea who sang it but looked it up on Youtube. REM. I have heard of them but I have never taken much interest in bands, I could not tell the difference between one or the other and the only live event I have been to was taking my daughter to see Madness in London. I did enjoy that.
Which leads me to a note about Faggotary Friday. Thank you Phil and Ivory for evoking so many memories. As I have written :
The Tune of Life
A phrase, a chord
a cadence poured,
down the years
an old tune heard.The sounds of all
our yesterdays
a note, a line
and life replays.
Saw a buzzard circling the old Swansea docks and I thought that could be a good code for spies meeting for the first time or confirmation of instructions – ‘The buzzard flies over the dock’ in one of those war movies.
Getting very difficult to follow stuff online with so many adverts and pop-ups and some items where it appears impossible to close them down. Time for some real action on ad blockers or pop-up destroyers or whatever it takes.
Notice a bad habit creeping into use in the UK. Living in France I had been used to the frogs tooting whenever the vehicle in front did something which offended them – too slow – wrong lane etc. It is happening here now, driving on unfamiliar roads, trying, possibly in the dark and wet to navigate a route, especially if there are roadworks is a bad experience when people behind are sounding their horn. Just bad manners in my opinion.
Laughed at my wife yesterday, she said she prayed every day for my health. I said the state I am in perhaps we should be sacrificing maidens!
Am planning a lot of time on the continent later on and my mind slipped back to the time I drove to Malta in 1968 on a two year family posting. A lot of the lads bought new cars as they were duty free and I recall I paid about £670 for a Vauxhall Viva estate.
Not sure how it came about or whether it cost much but we all obtained vouchers for discounted petrol from one of the Italian companies. Drove back but in the interim I stupidly crashed the car. It was repaired but I got shot of it once I returned to UK.
© Gillygangle 2025
