I just came across this on Facebook. It’s just too good not to share …
Just Too Good Not To …
Monthly Archives: October 2011
Cartoon of the Week
Soundtrack of Your Life
Quite some while back, and I can’t now find who’s weblog it was on, someone asked about the five songs/albums which would provide the soundtrack to your life. Not necessarily songs associated with particular events or people (although that turns out to be almost inevitable) or even ones you would want to take to a desert island, but which provide the right overall background music.
Having put the idea away for another day, I find that day has come and I want to write about it. So here we are; five songs/albums which are my background soundtrack, in no particular order:
1. The Beatles, Abbey Road
It’s that zebra crossing! No, it’s The Beatles!
[youtube
Well you could make that almost any late Beatles (ie. Sgt Pepper’s, Abbey Road, Let It Be) but Abbey Road is the favourite as for me it best encapsulates days as a student.
2. Gregorian Chant
Almost any well done Gregorian chant (male voices, monastic acoustics) will do but for me one of the most ethereal is the Pange Lingua of Good Friday.
[youtube
And yes, that’s despite my not being religious — Roman Latin liturgy has always done it for me. It is after all a form of magic: what is the priest doing walking round the alter with a thurible if it isn’t casting a circle?
3. Cliff Richard, Summer Holiday
I seem to feel I need to put something in here to evoke childhood and what better than Summer Holiday. Those hot lazy days with no school!
[youtube
Not only was Summer Holiday the first film I was allowed to go and see on my own, but Cliff comes from my home town and The Shadows used to practice in the boys club at the back of my primary school playing field. Heady days!
Well back from the ridiculous to the sublime …
4. Monteverdi, 1610 Vespers
The height of Renaissance music, this was one of the early shares which Noreen and I had all those years ago and long before we even thought about going out together.
[youtube
And the 35+ year old John Eliot Gardiner recording is still the best available.
5. Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly
The story of my life: learning to fly (and failing mostly!)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX5R00ndzQo&w=420&h=315]
I don’t know what it is this track does to me, or why. But it does. And that makes it for me one of the great rock tracks of all time. And Floyd are out and away the best rock group ever, for me.
Word of the Week : Numpty
Numpty.
1. A stupid person; an idiot.
2. A bumbling fool or one who is intellectually challenged.
3. Someone who (sometimes unwittingly) demonstrates a lack of knowledge or misconception of a subject or situation to the amusement of others.
4. A reckless, absent minded or unwise person.
5. A good humoured admonition, a term of endearment.
Originally Scots dialect.
In 2007 numpty was voted Scotland’s favourite word.
[39/52] Small Footless Child with Dog
Week 39 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Just haven’t got down to even picking up a camera this week, so here’s one from the archives.![[39/52] Small Footless Child with Dog](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6170/6204092081_2c93892dab.jpg)
Yes, this me, aged about 8 or 9 (so around 1959/60) with our dog Sue. It looks like our back garden, is clearly summer, and was likely taken by my father with his Box Brownie.
Horrible!
No Sense of the Ridiculous
Three snippets from the “Feedback” column of this week’s New Scientist. Some people really do have no sense of the ridiculous.
“Generations of medical students and doctors have been taught to tell their patients to ‘never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear’,” Michael Glanfield, himself a doctor, assures us. The Asda supermarket chain has clearly taken this advice to heart. The warning on its own brand “D” battery, which has a diameter of 3.3 centimetres, states “…if swallowed or lodged in the ear or nose seek prompt medical attention”.
Geoffrey Hardman is grateful to transportdirect.info for warning him: “Certain combinations of outward and return journeys would result in you needing to leave your destination before arriving at it”.
“By now you will have noticed that the sole purpose of our exotic expeditions is to gather gems for Feedback,” says regular contributor Jenny Narraway. Her latest is the multilingual wording on a waste bin seen on a walking holiday in the Azores. It said: “Lixo Indiferenciado” for Portuguese speakers, “Poubelle Indiferencie” for French speakers and, for the English, “Undistinguished trash”.
Why is the waste bin on a walking holiday, one wonders?