Month: January 2007

frog mouse monsoon rescue

‘Lord won’ t you buy me a mercedes benz, my friends all have porsches, i must make amends…’
as mz joplin would have it

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I got an overnight lift once in a merc… though it was on the back of a trailer and was sorta being smuggled into the Czech Republic.
I was hitching home to Prague from Slovenia and had wangled a lift from a Slovenian cycle team, upside down bikes on the top of the car and air horns!
afterwards i got completely marooned on the austrian/czech border, but was befriended by a Russian fellow, who was waiting to pick up a trailer load of mercedes and felt like some company to help him drink his vodka
It was one of those bottles, with just a foil lid, like a milk bottle!
He dropped me off, a bit hungover , in the center of old town prague, first thing next morning.. and it was my birthday!

Russian season, as at the time, for a few weeks, i was sharing a room with a Russian, curiously, called Ivan, he had been a paratrooper in Afghanistan and spoke almost no English
Every morning he’d say ‘Vakky ooop! Vakky oop!’
took me a while to work out he was saying ‘wake up, wake up!’
His other snippet of english was ‘Maggot Tatcher’.
Margaret Thatcher!

and this is what the mercedes museum looks like!

when i was younger there was a great indie song ‘i was only a prawn in whitby’, which somewhat bewildered me

are there lots of prawns there? as well as being an epic programmer/ tester spawning ground

The Long Man of Wilmington!
the other week we were up on the hill above it.
having wheelbarrow races over the neolithic long barrows
‘cept Sherbailey managed to put her hand in some cow muck
what would you rather do?
run a mile
jump a stile
or eat a country pancake?

to distract her i explained there was a Princess buried below and that she had once ruled all the land that we could see, from that hill over there, all the way to the rustle silver sea.
Well and good, but the kids are nowadays suspicious of such stories, possibly on account of me telling the exact same tale once in Salt Dean Park
My brother rather cruelly pointed out that, the mound i had claimed as a long barrow, was in fact a grown over bunker from a long lost pitch and putt course!
Still Celtic Princess, a golden torc, dem Bones, burried ‘neath the bunker on the 17th green
seems quite Romantic to me!

here are the four separate riddles from the katie morag stories
a red haired scottish lass, who lives on the isle of Struay

four stiff standers
four dilly danders
two lookers
two crookers
and a wig wag

a wee, wee man
In a dark red coat
a staff in my hand
and a a stone in my throat
who am I?

the land was white
the seed was black
it will take me a good scholar
to riddle me that

as round as an apple
as deep as a pail
it never cries out
till it’s caught by it’s tail

………
can’t sleep! try valerian and the cha cha cha… no that was another fred
i’ll tell you by end of the day

oops nearly forgot!
the answers were:
a cow
a cherry
a book
and a bell

Not Santa, but lots of white beardies being happy.
I like it.
The winner of the Ernest Hemmingway Lookie like contest

for Phil

gaudy texan canuck!
who are you getting to turn on the christmas lights this year. Robbie or Cliff?

oh and from a year ago, but still…

………….
What’s the best part to have in the Christmas Nativity play?
Joseph bloke is a mute stuffed shirt. Whilst them three kings, with their hi falutin’ Harvey Knicks pressies, rather full of themselves, doncha think?
Balthazaar, Melchior and the other one nobody ever even remembers his name?

Nope the Camel is deffo the star of the show. that was always me.
I was the best camel ever. my mum said so.
The secret of being a great camel, rather than a llama also ran, is the walk
Not for nothing are they called the ship of the desert
You have to practise a dipping mooch