Month: November 2007

calling names

heres a link
http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk

then click on surnames, it apparently shows the regional distribution of your name today and in 1881, and just how common you are. cheers malc

another very old java applet one, this shows how your first name popularity has changed over the generations

http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

……
……………….
acchh rumbled, just an excuse really to tell one and all the noble and exotic provenance of my name
sure i’ve told everybody this before, but…
….from an old gabble…..
……………………………….

my name was originally italian, Bache Galluppa from Genoa, it means ‘galloping kisses’,
Jonny Bache Gallupa came over to sell oranges in Curry Rivel down in deepest Somerzet back in the 1860’s, 1880’s,
in the time of Garribaldi, the great biscuit.
We know this because one of my dads property developer drinking cronies in the 70’s was a Primarollo and his ancient granny actually remembered him!
Apparently the Baz y Gallupas were a rather famous family of organ grinders from Chiavra
Anyway, once i was on a dole course and met a genovese fellow, i told him this tale and he went ‘oh my sister lives in Baz y Gallupa’, it’s a village, sadly the galloping kisses is thoroughly spurious, and he thought the lupa was from wolf,
me heap big running wolf

about 10 years ago nearly all the Basgallops on the planet were gathered together in one room, in a hotel just off the M25 in Essex.
My uncle had just been awarded the OBE, he was a middle manager at BT, but claire my civil servant spy friend knew him well, rumour has it, confidentally, natch, that he was in charge of some GCHQ project whereby computers listen to every word in every telephone conversation in the whole world, so if you say ‘Nuclear powered Uranium detonation device’ they just so know.
When the queen hands out gongs she has a postcard telling her what each person has done for their honour, when she got to my uncle she queenly squawked ‘Goodness, i had no idea we did that sort of thing!’
back in Essex tho’ golly gosh gorman I met my doppleganger namesake.
the wail, the gnashing of teeth, the debris of hubris! I always thought i was unique. there is another Richard Basgallop. a very sweet fellow too
a 14 year old speccy brummie.
……………………
…………………………………

…… anybody else care to share the tale of their name?

Oxjam

i was moseying along kensington gardens at lunch and there was a free concert going on in the oxfam bookshop
i think theres lots of stuff like this all month, and all in a good cause!

the concert i saw was a pleasant middleaged croatian woman singing gypsy ballards and balkan lullabyes
i thought it was quite beautiful. the sound from her mouth really not what you’d expect
the melancholic songs matched my autumn moods,
one was about a young woman on her death bed, who asked her mother to lift her up, just so she could see the wedding procession of her ex boyfriend go by!
me oh my we’ve all had days like that

this bunch tho’ look just wonderfully carefree cheerful

..and he’s rather chuffed too!

Rantings and Railings

Nobody ever gets there head stuck in railings anymore!
Back in the 70’s you could barely walk down the street without some child stuck and being attended to by Firemen
Whats wrong with the kids, the Yootha Joyce of today
Have childrens heads got bigger, and won’t fit through? All that brain food, omega this omega that, something fishy (oil) if you ask me.
And don’t get me started on the lamentable lack of quicksand
a tired time of year, heres an old email

………….
…………………….
one morn, yonks ago when we were living in Crouch End
pam stormed off out to uni after a row. right! I thought, I shall storm out too, and, and sort out the recycling!
So I did slamming the flats front door behind me.ooops only i didn’t have my keys.
couldn’t get into the flat and as the front door had a dead lock couldn’t get out i was marooned in the corridor. no mans land.
Help! Help! Au secours, I stuck my fingers out the letterbox, like the wafting tentacles on a coral polyp?
Then i hollered. hollered some more. A talking letterbox?
eventually a postie arrived. ‘cor mate, thought you were some small kid, saying hello. i’ll call the fire brigade’
One hour later a fire engine arrived. six burly chippendales sauntered over.
‘How can we help, it’ll cost you 120 quid if we break the door down’
by now, a bit cabin feverish i was somewhat irrate and blustered barnacles.
‘120 , you must be blooming joking. i’ll wait! hrrrumphhh. You can go off and rescue a cat. pew pew barley mcGrew’!
Amazing how bold and rude you can be to burly folk, when safely locked behind a strong door
So away they went.
By now our friendly neighbours were alerted, thgey popped by and posted me some lunch, sandwiches, a small carton of drink, a banana and tobacco, surely it should be an essential requirement of package design ‘in an emergency can this food be posted?’
tyhey also phoned pams uni to try and get her to come home, to no avail
finally after 3 hours of thumb twiddling, somebody came home and let me out.
one week later pam got a note in her uni pigeon hole ‘go home. now. boyfriend locked in corridor’

mosquitos

…. just non specific insect nonsense ….

nibbling midges and pesky mosquitos. horrible critters!
you should deffo go get a gecko
I love the way they clockwork scuttle vertically up the side of a wall!
the one i wore to the summer party got confiscated by security as very late, i finally left the funky fish club.

Once, in Turkey, half way through the night i was awakened by the irksome drone of a mozzie
half woke, flapped my arm about, ‘wazzat’, thinking it might be the early morning call to prayer, the wail away of the meuzzin in the mosque, so then flopped back down onto the pillow
woke up next morning to find a blood splotch i had accidentally crushed teh poor mosquito as i rolled over during the night
just as it was suckling my blood, belly fully laden, so bloated it was unable even to take off. yeuchh.

when we were kids we used to pour kettles full of boiling water over trails of ants and flying ants, for a child a real sense of cruel omnipotence
oh and the worms, my older sister (6) had but a vague notion of reproduction and said that if you cut a worm in half then it makes 2 worms, as both halves wriggle away.
(now i know this is not true!), we’d spend many a happy hour kindly chopping them in half
……
The death of yet another worm is still on my conscience
whilst hitching thru’ austria i got stuck on a quiet country lane, the rule of thumb, slept in a ditch, woke up, rather bedraggled.
A beautiful sunny morn, mountains away in the distance, ho hum, bugger all in the way of cars
a worm crawled up onto the tarmac to warm itself, but then started wriggling itself straight across the road. you foolish bootlace!
I thought hmm i’d better rescue it or it will get runover,
but then i thought, well what if i wasn’t here? maybe if i pretend i’m not here then by the laws of sympathetic magic, maybe i won’t be anymore!
ie i will have succesfully got a lift and begone
also i must admit i was quite curious as to whether colditz, great escape style he’d make it?
anyway, he nearly got there ‘go worm go!’
but then a car came along. Vrooom. splattercated flat worm. oh dear. i genuinely felt guilty.
…..part of me is still by that dusty roadside in austria.

I need some kids

… from an epic post
………..
pick me! pick me!
I’m Ghanain.
Me, Nkrumah and Michael Essien
well kind of, i was conceived there, but the fogies caught a boat back home the month before i was born
apparently a very rough crossing, my poor mum… but i do have a fine pair of sea legs and, grogwise, can hum a couple of sea shanties, well, actually ‘what shall we do with the drunken sailor’ mostly

i could prob act the portly fellow too
or get pavarotti!

I know nothing about the bloke, but he did always seem to be enjoying himself…, which can’t be a bad thing
i saw loads of operas in prague, well the first half of them, in the winter, in the squat it was a bit nippy on a winters eve, so used to pop up to the opera house to keep warm.
Baqck then it was state sponsered so extremely cheap, such a gorgeous, building, ornate icing sugar art nouveau ceilings, such opulence!
Used to be fun to shuffle tramplike to my seat amongst the top hats and frocks of folk in their posh togs
My downfall was always a tipple of wine in the interval, and the seats were such comfortable plush red velvet, so i’d snore thru’ the second half. soothed by the melodrama of the cataclysmic caterwaul of tubby folk bellow singing on stage

…anyway photoshoots, i’ve only been in 3, one for the dss, a recent mental health one and as a drummer in aidans rock band.
Ha the one where wai was ukélélé playing lead guitarist