31 May 2010

May 29 Numbers

I love those lists of numbers and the FT Mag does a lovely little 'Week in Numbers' that enlivened my morning coffee:

  • In the past seven days, about 2.6m babies have been born around the world.

  • Roughly twice as many computers have been sold in the same period and at least four times as many mobile phones.

  • For every baby born, the world churned out nearly 40 tonnes of food

  • Births outnumber deaths by just over two to one.

  • Worldwide, more than a million deaths occur every week, a rate only slightly higher than the nearly 1m cars produced weekly and greater than the estimated number of abortions (900,000 a week).

  • Moan about the spam or the e-mails we receive, but they represent only a minuscule fraction of the 1,000bn sent in the past week.

  • Roughly 20 e-mails are sent every day for every person in the world, which equates to a much higher average per user, given that most of the global population is still not connected.

  • Google searches are much rarer than e-mails – just 10bn or so in the past week.

  • More shocking are the number of cigarettes smoked (five for every Google search) and the number of dollars spent on illegal drugs – nearly one for every search.
  • Source: Worldometer

  • 30 May 2010

    From the most distant time

    A good friend lost to a road-raging maniac. His girlfriend sent me pics of the wake and this poem she read at the service:

    "Majestic, from the most distant time,
    The sun rises and sets.
    Time passes and men cannot stop it.
    The four seasons serve them,
    But do not belong to them.
    The years flow like water.
    Everything passes away before my eyes."

    The Emperor Wu of Han

    [This may contravene the Baddeley Scurrility Act; too bad.]

    28 May 2010


    i eat at a fish restaurant where i could do with this service

    Kamaki Sutra

    "A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men."

    Please admire my restraint in NOT penning one of my usual smart-aleck comments.

    Calling Jacqui Fischel: Now do you see how right I was ~ and how right you were ~ that BBQ nite on Big Wave Bay?

    Hey Afsar - you are like soo busted, my friend.

    Took 46 years but we got there.

    Dude ~ You can remove the courgette from your Y-fronts now.

    20 May 2010

    DREAM

    I am in a department store with my mother. 'Blowing in the Wind' is on the piped music and a child is trying to sing along but is doing so badly.

    My mother stops and joins it in singing. She sings too loudly and attracts attention and I am embarrassed.

    The crowd watch and stare and grin but then they join in, smiling and clapping to be so spontaneous.

    The dream continues. I am in a department store alone. It is after my mother has passed away. 'Blowing in the Wind' comes on the piped music. I stand there and start to sing, alone in the aisle. In memoriam.

    The people look at me oddly. I am not a magnificent old woman, I am just me standing forlornly singing, in memoriam.

    A shop staff moves to silence me but some people start to sing with me and then more - laughing and smiling and clapping to the beat. Suddenly finding their spontaneity.

    I am standing there with tears pouring down, singing for the memory.

    All around, people clapping and singing and laughing at the joyous spontaneity.

    I wake and of course I have tears pouring down.

    It takes a little time for the sleepiness to go and reality set in.

    19 May 2010

    Pronouncing Brunelleschi

    ‘Church nice. Sun hot. Tony Blair war criminal.’

    ‘They change the sky, not their soul, who run across the sea...’.

    As regular Corfuchsian Irregular readers know, this is the meanest-spirited, snobbishest, diss-determinedest scribbling I can come up with.

    Come the midnight knock on the door, I will be strung up by my heels and given the good news en personne by Del' Boy Smellie himself.

    When his Asp arm tires, the slightly dark-skinned Anjoum Noorani will glower those 'huge oil-coloured eyes' to take over whupping me with his Balliol tie.

    Come touristiki time, I gen up on all the AB and Lidl sweeties' names (especially that humdinger of a cutie with those €200 red specs; ask her)

    I make sure I know all the Greek veg names so that I can turn with the sneering answer to "Wossa Greek for leek? Wossit for Marmite? Where they keep their Brit bangers?"

    I always suspected Lloyd Evans was one of me and his 'Travel Narrows the Mind' piece in the 8 May Speccie delivers.

    Here are extracts that, even as I paste them, quicken my pulse and gladden my dark soul.

    True believers will have already clicked and be reading with narrow-eyed glee.

    Expect a balancing comment from the saintly Sinbad, of whom I take the liberty of posting this heart-warming family-power affirming pic because I know my own gals sneak peeks at their pater's shy-making blog.

    Darlings: that joke about giving you away in an Elvis costume was, like, a joke?

    I just wanted to see the preacher man's face when I did my 'Thank you verr much' line.

    As someone pointed out,

    "You're only such an asshole because you know that Professor Baddeley will come to the rescue and cue you into a responding mea culpa."
    But I digress. The razor rusts; the bovver boot turns to velvette slipper with my gold monogram.

    "The public-school banker flip-flopping around Rome in his shorts and straw hat and glancing at his Architecture of the Italian Renaissance while struggling to pronounce Brunelleschi correctly is no different from the half-naked skinhead who visits Rome for a soccer final and lobs a bar-stool through a plate-glass window before being jumped on by the carabinieri and kicked senseless. The colorations may vary but the species are identical.

    Both specimens have temporarily swapped their real self for an idealised persona based on some earlier version of the English character.

    The banker has become an 18th-century milord on the Grand Tour. The skinhead (who may be a banker too, incidentally) has become a marauding 7th-century Viking. Both have adopted habits of dress they would not follow at home. Both want to interact with an alien society and appropriate a part of its culture within the limited bounds of their physical or mental powers.

    Mass tourism has turned the decent self-respecting Mediterraneans into folk-dancing, zither-smiting, smock-wearing parodies of their ancestors. Go to Turkey and some unemployed cornerboy claiming to be a whirling dervish will rotate on the spot for you for a few minutes before pocketing your gratuity and wobbling off to be sick in the bushes.

    [Cue Gap Yah chundAAH]

    One of the most depressing aspects of foreign travel is watching oneself attempt to communicate.

    [My emboldenment]

    Unless you’re a master linguist, you’re likely to cause distress whenever you open your mouth.

    Even here in England my conversation is known to cause drowsiness.

    Abroad, when I break into a foreign tongue, I can endanger life.

    I’m all too familiar with that look of outraged Gallic pride that crosses a Frenchman’s brow when he sees a rosbif about to essay the language of Racine and Voltaire.

    It’s not an expression I take any pleasure in provoking so I prefer to advance my thoughts in a mutually intelligible pidgin.

    But this narrows my table-talk to the crudest phrase-book inanities.

    ‘Church nice. Sun hot. Tony Blair war criminal.’

    And once the conversation has settled into English I find my hosts all too willing to unfurl a distorted version of our language and harry it to death before my eyes."

    16 May 2010

    BKsAO

    Big kisses, indeed

    Mental health issues ~ Gosh I remember the good old days of silencing mouthy mamzels by hustling them away in a metaphorical strait jacket.

    One loose-cannon bit of candy had surfaced as publication day loomed of some senior government toff's ghosted auto-bio-hagio.

    Le Tout Londres was attending the launch and out of the blue this soft-spoken mamzel came on the phone. Courtesy of printer skulduggery, she'd read the proofs and asked could she come along?

    I was young and naive and thought only of good press. I said why not? She said it was a little bit more than just 'why not?' and needed stealth.

    Well, we never met because we was out-stealthed and my reply to her letter from an Eastbourne rest home was returned 'Unknown'.

    Ethics Probe: The problem here is that Triesman is such a revolting looking specimen. Often, they look slimey and untrustworthy in print because the editors choose the most unflattering.

    In Triesman's case, no one photo adequately captures the full 3-dimensional horror of that oozy evasive hooded-lid gaze and praying-mantis slither of a gait. Shudder. What that poor stool-pigeon creature went through.

    COMMENTGATE

    The comments just keep coming - what a lesson in trial by internet.

    So good that it deserves a post to itself.

    If word gets out, no eulogy will be safe, and watch out all those 'official' kiss-ass gold-watch ceremonies.

    See Vanity Fair's take.

    15 May 2010

    COMEUPPANCE SONGS

    Doncha love clever Athens Plus's weekly 'Take 10' theme songs?

    I grab all my coolest facebook posts from there and sit back and enjoy the admiration.

    This week ... Comeuppance songs and you KNOW how I love to git down wit' all that schadenfreude stuff.

    Respec'

    1. Like a rolling stone ~ The Bobster
    2. Liar - Henry Rollins
    3. Buy nbow pay later - The Whitlams
    4. No money no honey - Beck
    5. The Script - None the Wiser
    6. Rollin' & Tumblin' - Muddy Waters
    7. Who loves the sun - The Velvet Underground
    8. If you can afford me - Kate Perry

      [Reminds me of Dottore Antoine Stevens ~ folks round here still pull out that boring chestnut of how he turned to madame Vicar and waved his ancient mariner digit,

      "Avis, you couldn't afford me."
      Yo! Bumping into some of the cases on the mean streets of Mavili, I often feel like getting the ol' busking cap out and a rogues' gallery showcard with a caption "SPONSOR A SPAZ FOR DOC STEVENS MAKEOVER"

      (It would all go to me)]

    9. In this hole - Cat Power
    10. One by one - Gutterball

    Hot chick touting cool book: You're wondering what that beautiful woman is doing up there flashing Jim Potts' very wonderful cultural history of The Ionian Islands and Epirus.

    Loipon.

  • * It is a wonderful book

  • * I took it along for Prof Potts to sign and be generally ribbed and embarrassed and there he is up there in the specs and turquoise-ish shirt looking much too happy for a scribbler.

    Gurbstgate ~ whether you read Anon's comment or not, do check out the Gurbst story. Damn, this gives the comments feature a good name.

    Oh boy - are eulogies ever safe again? ROFFLMAO

    Out comes the 'official' line, which gets printed, within hours ... the real story.

    Imagine if reviews pages had such facilities - perhaps they do.

    Review of 'Doghouse Blues' by 'Big Jim' Potts. "Another rockin' album from 'Fatha' Potts that will no doubt find its way onto the juke boxes of Kavos and the caïques of Kassiopi. Lord have mercy, as they say, or at least Mr Potts certainly does throughout these rocka-bluesy tracks.

    But oh dear, when oh when is he going to throw off the dead-hand influence of 'Brondesbury' Bert and get his own sound? That camping trip the bluester buddies embarked on during the lost years of 1970-73 may have resulted in the brilliant "GPS Blues" from BB but it did 'Peripatetic Jim' no favours - he's still using a Dunlop 1.4mm pick to try to get that Dustbowl sound. More down n dirty Dorset, you ask me - arrgh.

    Worth the price of the album track is of course the autobiographical title track 'Doghouse Blooz'. That'll keep the denizens of Dassia charlestoning and chunderin' all nite long." - Memphis Clarion (incorporating Streatham Strummer)

    Anon Comment: "Actually, it's not at all autobiog and she's a perfect swee- ... I mean, may I correct your reviewer on a small point?

    I once met Jim at Stav's bar and enjoyed a quality time chat as we queued for the loo.

    I can assure you that Doghouse Blues is entirely made up, especially verse 3.

    So there.

    Another thing, I've just checked all my picks ... I mean, thanks to a powerful magnifying glass over the latest album, I have examined the pick in Mr Potts' whirling blurring right hand (amazing technique!) and see that he uses only the finest 2.5mm bespoke turtle shell plectra from House of Strum, 12 theotoki, Corfu 49100.

    Anyway, what do you know? You weren't exactly landing on the diminished 9th on the Bukka White tribute last Wednesday."

  • 14 May 2010

    SAVE THE AMUR LEOPARD

    My pal Louise de Toit writes again for help after appealing for the wild horses in my birthplace of Oz.

    "I am sharing with you my song for the AMUR LEOPARD, asking your support in saving these beautiful creatures from becoming extinct...there are LESS THAN 40 left in the wild today...

    PLEASE go ahead and spread the word ... forward it to all your friends!"

    Luckily, Louise is so talented there is no difficulty leaping to her - and the equally beautiful Amur's - aid.

    Thanks.

    CORFU DOCTORS

    Doesn't it drive you crazy when you find something on the Net - such as this ace list of doctors etc - and you send it to pals and then one of them comes back and says

    "Ooh, can you send it again because I've lost it"
    and you go
    "Sure thing"
    and you look it up and can you find it? Can you hell - all you get is a bleeding page by some bunch called Agni who're running links for grockles.

    So |'m plonking it here for instant reference next time.

    13 May 2010

    BLUES + ATITUDE

    John~ Roy~Steffi

  • Friday May 14

  • 9pm

  • Stav's Bar, Kondokali (just north of the Pipilas junction, left hand side past Skippers Bar)

    While you're here, check out Cascade Guitars of the USA

  • 12 May 2010


    Bastards! Bastards!

    Talk about hitting a strummer right in the foc'sle where it hurts.

    Ooh! Blimey! Wait til Big Jim Potts hears about this.

    OK so he's like Big Blues Brondesbury 'n' all that but he'll still rally to us Donegal-knits when we's under fire, begorrah, sing hey nonny-no catch the wind.

    Plus, he now has all these Ionian Irregular 'readers' whom he can summon in a trice.

    Just one phone call to Ronnie the Remainder and Mr 'Clever Crayon' Rob Thompson will be wearing 6H cement flip-flops au fond de Lac Copais.

    Respec'.

    08 May 2010

    BALLIOL BUFFOON

    “Why did they even have this brainstorming session in the first place?"

    The moment I heard of the puerile papal prattery, I shuddered:

    "That is FCO territoire.

    And we know from whence the FCO recruiteth.

    Pray God it isn't some Balliol buffoon."

    But I knew it was because the standards now are so low that they even creep into God's own college.

    Sure enough:

    "Mr Mulvain was educated at the £9,279 a year King's School Tynemouth, and studied English at Balliol College, Oxford."

  • Stupidity and lack of judgement beyond belief - measured piece by Christopher Meyer

  • Clueless about Catholicism ~ enter the even seniorer bufone.

    Oh fer Gawd's sake - do me a favour!

  • Anjoum Noorani? Noorani??
  • 'Leader' of the Papal Visit Team?
  • A 'diplomat'?

    I could have told you from here that a shower like that would be 'ineffectual, disengaged and clueless.'

    I mean, you only have to look at him.

    Talk about a majuh bish, yah?

    Bad enough releasing his name but to rub it in with a ruddy great photo ... I dunno.

    Seriously, look at that smirk, that bongo nose, the sheen on those blubbery lips.

    A 'yah' man thru and thru.

    Oh and you know what? He'd team brilliantly with PC 'Lash' Delboy Smelliegogs. I can't believe the Balliol careers officer let Noorers escape the Filth. He has that 'Look', the boasty jaw and the foolish hanging of the nether lip.

    But I digress. Back to the most shaming blow. Imagine my despair when I saw that Nitwit Noorani is also a Balliol man. I do wish the Telegraph had excised that final, cruellest cut.

    Some years back, my college was known for its multitude of undergrads born under sunnier skies.

    There was a delightful story of a showing in an Oxford cinema of Sanders of the River. So there's Paul Robeson leaning to the oar and suddenly some bright spark chirps up,

    "Well rowed, Balliol!"

    Clearly, the dusky input remains unchallenged but the more appropriate salute should be,

    "Well bolloxed, Balliol."

    My nose tells me that this has legs.

    Speaking of noses, look at the varlet. Standing there all lahdy dah, smug contempt oozing. One of the elite.

    He's too sexeh for his chasuble, too sexy for his incense, too sexeh for the Pope.

    The press will have a field day questioning all the cockups:

    • Recruitment standards
    • Oxbridge output
    • Nits like Noorani
    • Fertile ground for a class-ridden twat-hunt.
    • Lord knows what the civilised Roger Lonsdale thinks of all this. Dottore L might even have tutored Noorani - oh eeuuww, what? Having him slime around the Lonsdale sanctuary?
    • Carl? Was the agile Carl Schmidt also encumbered by these jerks?

      Enough! That way lies madness.

    What it does bring home is the lack of 'high seriousness', as we used to call it, among even those who should instinctively know better.

    The litany of sloppy attitudes and behaviour in this dismal incident is telling:

    • The Noorani Twit is described as having, "worked as press secretary at the British Embassy in Russia [dealing] with all Russian media inquiries about Britain’s response to the murder of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko." Gawd help us.
    • Rightly, Papal aides believe the Government’s choice of non-Catholic staff typifies the lack of respect being shown towards the first ever state visit by a Pontiff:
      “The most striking thing about the Foreign Office team has been how ineffectual they are. They have been disengaged and, frankly, clueless.

      “I have never had the impression that any members of the team were informed or even sensitive to the Catholic Church or Catholicism generally.”

    • As one senior Catholic commented:
      “This does beg the question of how seriously this visit is being taken by the Government.

      “All of our dealings with this Foreign Office team have suggested they don’t have any understanding of Catholicism and that’s how this issue seems to have come about.

      Get this ~ “Why did they even have this brainstorming session in the first place? The Pope’s itinerary was decided a long time ago, so it’s not as if there was much room for extra events to be laid on.”

      Doesn't that just say it all? Well rowed, Balliol, indeed.

  • Good rolling thunder Twitter building
  • FB 'Buy wanker Mulvain a drink' link. I'm not sure why - both twerps seem equal malakas.
  • Effortlessly Balliol ~ Facetious rudeness to an honoured guest. The trouble here is that, to carry this sort of thing off, one has to actually have the touch of Balliol in one.

    I know about the quota of overseas inputs etc etc but one still hopes they'll rise to the occasion once in situ, or at least keep schtum that they trod the hallowed halls.

    Popegate is a perfect example of the appalling consequences of the nooranisation of hallowed institutions. Sic gloria.

  • Of course, the buzz is that the Papal team aren't bona fide Balliol scholars at all - look at the memo, complete lack of wit. Dead giveaway.

  • Angry backlash ~ is it rolling, Bob? Can you hear the gathering thunder? This topic touches nerves and will have legs.

  • The job:
    The post of head of the Papal Visit Team had been advertised and officials had stated:

    “Prior knowledge of the Catholic church is not necessary.”

    Ironically the advert noted:

    “High levels of tact and diplomacy will be required.”

    I don't even have to invent this. Let the witch hunt begin.

  • Paki ~ but not Muslim (for what that's worth)

  • The 'Dick': Do read the splendid far-from-retiring Major D. Swami.

    Goodness Golli Me, to paraphrase Sellers, P - and was I not just moments previously telling you of NoorGate being having legs?

  • Balliol man suspended - say no more. The disgrace is complete. The windows are crêpe-lined along The Broad.
  • Or it it? Cherwell begs to differ. "Let off with a slap on the wrist", eh?

    "Diplomat" - I wish they'd stop calling Anjo' a diplomat. It shames all those who sail under that noble flag.

    Delectable Lucy Mangan ~ her usual witty weekly self, painting a picture of the Noor Boor being suspended "by his thumbs while wearing a cilice and being flogged by an outraged monk." There's imagery for you, guys and gals.

    "Moved from blue-sky thinking ... to solid, grounded experience. I'm sure this will reassure everyone."
    What in God's name is meant to be reassuring about idiot diplo-speke like that?
  • UrDirT: All the staff involved ... are to be sent on “urgent diversity training
  • “As we have made clear publicly, it was a foolish document that did not in any way reflect FCO views."

    Fuck FCO 'views' - who cares what their ignorant identikit robotic 'views' are.

  • What's so depressingly nooranic about this whole deBalliol débâcle is the way it exactly reflects the calibre and training of that entire bungling bufone FCO staff.
  • Twit-oorani

    'Clever’, 'affable' ... but lacking the ‘common-sense gene’~ To me, that spells Horse's Arse butthole.

    Idiots, dolts. You don't slice, dice and Occam-razor a person. You take the whole (or, as here, the Hole) and ask is he fit for purpose? The answer in the case of Anjers is a nooranic raspberry.

    Look, too, at the damnation by feeblest praise from the wets they drummed up:

    • 'He's brilliant but lacks the common-sense gene'
    • 'Extremely bright and always full of ideas. He should have gone far in his career, but we always knew he was going to come a cropper.’ In that case, no 'career' and therefore no 'should'. I wish people would grow up and live with reality. The Noor boor was a loose-cannon liability and shouldn't have been allowed to let the side down even as an inconsistent tea-boy.
    • 'Flamboyant lifestyle and fondness for the city’s nightclubs.' Dead giveaway. Mark of a loose-tongued fakir. As I said, that Balliol careers officer wasted all our time not pointing this bogus wastrel straight at the wank rank of the Filth. He's a born rozzer. Look at him. The evasive eyes, the uddery lips, the light dancing off that facial sheen of shame.
    • 'Suave and expensively dressed, he attracted the attention of admirers ... I have never seen such an ideally beautiful man in my life ... Tall and slightly dark-skinned, huge oil-coloured eyes, ideally dressed, ideal style ... Eyes to sink into ...'

      Slightly dark-skinned?

      SLIGHTLY dark-skinned??

      Are you out of your mind, you colour-blind bint?

      You only have to see that photo. He's flippin' black as they come. No, blacker ... he's Balliol, you big girl's blouse. Wakey wakey! No-one can be that obtuse and colour-crass over hide hue.

      There's dusky, there's black, there's black as sin; there's black as night and then there's NooraNite, known among da bruthas as 'noora-nwah

      When the limo company asks which windows I want - 'cause sometimes you secretly do want the punters to see the glam company in which you're cruising - I say Nur'n Noir to sound like Nur'nburg ... Nur'n N'wah, make it look trad and local as if I've gone troppo in the Tropics.

      "Fo' da limo? Noor' Moor, 'f course"
      .

      Did your [grand] parents never watch the Black & White Minstrel Show?

      Is there no sense of proud history left in this country?

    FO culture so pervasive, so homogeneous [that] such anjoumish thinking went unchallenged for so long".

    ReNooranisation (that's the name of the game)

    Anjoum Shrugs ~ And on goes NooraGate - and on, and on.

    It wouldn't be so bad if the press reptiles weren't including the same smugshot of our full-lipped lad's "slightly dark-skinned" features, complete with those "huge oil-coloured" peepers.

    How did some panjandrum so pithily put it?

    "I don't care what those FO types look like, so long as they stay inside, keep their traps shut, and don't frighten the horses."
    Ulp. Nooranised as charged.




    -
  • 07 May 2010

    How Not to Tell a True War Story

    Rather convincing article.

    Some parts read like the sort of wisdom Sinbad sends to keep me honest.

    05 May 2010

    "Now's the time to mention the war"

    London Evening Standard May 4

    GERMAN insistence, led by Angela Merkel and the Bundesbank, that Greece should suffer a period of austerity, is not going down well in Corfu, Peter Mandelson’s holiday playground.

    “I think it’s a bit of a cheek that the Germans are telling us what to do when they are the origin of all our problems,”
    says Count Spiro Flamburiari, whose Corfu villa is next to Lord Rothschild’s, where Mandy holidays.

    “They destroyed our country during the war and they have never offered to pay us any compensation.”

    Flamburiari vented his fury on this page a few weeks ago when it was suggested in Germany that Greece should sell off some of its islands. But now he is angrier than ever.

    “The Germans destroyed 2,000 villages in Greece, as reprisals for resisting German Nazi occupation,”
    says Flamburiari, author of Corfu, The Garden Isle.

    “They dropped incendiary bombs on my house, a Venetian palace, and the Opera House, which was like La Scala in Milan.

    They destroyed the Ionian University, built by Lord Guilford. They ruined everything and they’ve paid us nothing back. There has never been any sort of apology.”

    The Count, who is an anglophile and a member of Boodle’s, believes Germany should be paying war reparations to Greece, and perhaps to Britain as well, instead of extracting debts.

    “It’s a shambles, it’s blackmail,” says Flamburiari.

    “They already own Athens airport and if they lend us money they will earn huge amounts in interest. They ransacked our country during the war and now they are wrecking our tourist industry.”

  • GEOGRAPHY ~ On the question of whose Corfu villa is next to Lord Rothschild’s, the Evening Standard Diary Editor definitely needs to brush up on his geography of Corfu.

    Kudos galore there may be as a neighbour of the Corfu Country Club Estate, but I'm not sure even such a social seeker as Lord R would stretch it to place his handsome estate in the region of Pyrgi, between Ypsos Bay and Barbati


  • IMPORTANT PASSPORT NEWS

    Oyez Oyez ~ As of 8 March 2010, handling of Brit passport enquiries moved to the UK Passport Service Greece Helpline.

  • FAQ ~ With effect from 8 May 2010, the British Passport Production Centre in Madrid, Spain will process all British passport applications from Greece.

  • Here's that link again.

  • I'm not doing this as a Public Service. I'm shoving this up here so that when, as I know there will be, whingey wailing and gnashing of bad british chompers breaks out, renting of those bad-taste threads that only we Anglais could buy let alone wear ... when the familir cry goes up,
    "Whaat?? No one told me ... bloody Embassy, no bloody good if you ask me, blimey, whadda we pay our taxes for? And another thing, that Sandra Titchy wossaname, the consul bird wossshe ever done for us? Never see her about I was down in kavos other day bloody good bash all me mates there free booze never saw a blinking rep of the embassy a disgrace i call it ... typical innit, anyway I'm going back for the match tomorrow and me effing passport only run out dinnit? Last year. They shoulda warned me yeah?"

    I intend to laugh long and loud and with the clearest of clear consciences.

    Read up, citoyens!

  • 04 May 2010

    Feeling better?

    A hazard of posing as a wordsmith is that one is invited to lectures and cultural exchanges and expected to comment socio-linguistically.

    Here is a recent attempt at humour - fortunately by a woman of beauty, making it easier to rustle up a Gordon gorgon smile.

    On the differences between the speech-making habits of different nations:

  • Germans will speak soulfully of Kant and Beethoven

  • Americans colloquially of space and territory

  • Norwegians poetically of mountains and fish

  • Russians proudly of industry and sport

  • British will speak only about the weather, and then to condemn it.

    She had more:

  • What women of different nations are meant to say after love-making:

  • Frenchwoman ~ 'What, finished so soon?'

  • Scandinavian ~ 'My sadness has almost gone away'

  • American ~ 'Great, what did you say your name was?'

  • Russian ~ 'You have made a great contribution'

  • German ~ 'Okay, now let's eat'

  • Englishwoman ~ 'Feeling better, darling?'