Following on from Chancellor Osborne’s apparently sudden realisations, our beloved Metropolitan Police have issued a list of plants we should all have to deter burglars.

Yeah OK, so far.

The news report finishes with the Met’s advice that Hedges and shrubs in the front garden should be kept to a height of no more than three feet in order to avoid giving a burglar a screen behind which he can conceal himself.

Leaving aside, for a moment, the implication that female felons don’t try to hide, there’s a problem with this. The list of suggested plants includes Gunnera manicata (above; deciduous and grows to 2.5m), Golden Bamboo (grows to 3.5m) and several conifers, none of which are susceptible to being pruned or trimmed successfully to under 1 metre nor are really suitable for the average suburban garden.

Duh!

amusements, people, personal

Oh Dear Me

15 February 2012 Keith 7 Comments

This week’s challenge at The Gallery is an Embarrassing Outfit.

Hmmm. I don’t generally do “outfits”. They’re not my style. Besides men in skirts tend not to be understood, unless one comes from the heathen lands north of Hadrian’s Wall. Despite being a southerner, there is a tradition, which I’ve never proven, of some Scots ancestry and I did have a kilt when I was young. But I can’t find a photo of me then; even my mother doesn’t appear to have one. That surprises me, but it’s probably just as well.

The best I can do for an embarrassing outfit is me leading off the East Hertfordshire Scouts’ St George’s Day Parade at Turnford in 1964.

Yep that’s me, aged 13, at the front in the poncy white gloves — God they were uncomfortable: thick, stiff leather and whitened to death. And just look at those awful shorts! I led that parade for two or three years; this was probably the first occasion.

I dare you all to show me your embarrassing outfits.

amusements

Where do they get it all?

12 February 2012 Keith

As regular readers will know I always keep an eye on the catalogue produced by our local auction house (who naturally also do house clearance). Over the years they have produced some corkers by way of inappropriate or ambiguous descriptions, strange things and odd combinations of “miscellaneous toot” into a single lot. It’s not always the strangeness of what they sell but the perversity of the combinations which amuse me. One wonders who buys the stuff.

But they must have been reading here because since I’ve been writing about these oddities their descriptions have improved greatly in quality. Maybe they’re just going up-market. So the catalogue for their upcoming sale ha produced fewer amusements than usual. However there are a few …

A World War II leather flying helmet, marked Frank Bryan Ltd 1939, a German military wristwatch — Urofa 58 668903, and a German dagger with stag horn handle in leather scabbard.

A tin containing old clay pipes.

Two bowler hats, a quantity of Royal Worcester Evesham, Sylvac Fauna jug, Wellington china tableware, yellow, black decoration, two metal figurines on marble base; Homepride flour man, Villeroy & Boch ware, egg coddlers, etc.

A pair of antlers, two pairs of binoculars, convex mirror with gesso frame, carved box, fur coat and stole, metal mesh handbag, framed map, silver plate items including teapot, serving spoons, ladles, etc.

A tribal animal skin shield, two clubs and a spear.

A large carved wood tribal mask with bone inlay, and a metal cow bell.

A large brass eagle.

A percussion cap musket, 18th/19th century.

A reproduction Black Forest cuckoo clock, in elaborate carved wood case with revolving figures, three train movement.

A German rare porcelain satirical Suffragette tobacco jar with cover, modelled as a passionate female head and inscribed ‘I say Down with the Trousers’

A Clarice Cliff Bizarre plate …

A Baxter print of a portrait of Nelson in period mahogany frame

A foldable bike, trailer and stroller in one, apparently unused, a wine rack and two Samsonite suitcases.

A Crimplene drop waist dress, other ladies’ clothes, three pairs of boots, Sinclair miniature tv, perfumes, etc.

A charming mink shoulder shrug …

A silk Victorian mourning dress and poke bonnet, consisting of cape/jacket, laced bustle, waistcoat, lace mob cap and silk material remnant.

Four cartons including old hats, metal figures, Steins, marble table lamps, an early German medical box, dressing table items, barometer, carved figure of an immortal, old beer pumps, old newspapers, horse figures, a lead bear, cigarette lighter missing strike, a carved water buffalo, storks, a crumb brush, whisky water jug, convex mirror, etc.

Having said that they do also have some rather nice things. The upcoming sale has a large number of lots of what looks like rather good antique silverware.

amusements, quotes

Wise Words?

11 February 2012 Keith

A selection of recently culled amusing words from the wise and wise words from the amusing.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
[Steve Jobs]

I am not lazy … I just rest before I get tired.
[Thoughts of Angel]

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.
[Miller Williams, The Ways We Touch]

Everything will be OK in the end … if its not OK, its not the end.
[Thoughts of Angel]

amusements

I doubt the mean that …

9 February 2012 Keith

Seen today on a tub of MYCIL Foot Powder:

Possible side effects:
If anything unusual happens, stop using the product and talk to your doctor or pharmacist.

Anything? Are they really interested in my cat catching a parrot in the snow with a butterfly net?

amusements, books

Blue Poodles

9 February 2012 Keith

Book titles can be an endless source of fascination. What makes a good title? When does an amusing title work and when does it just become droll. Why do publishers change your amusing or off the wall working title into something more descriptive but boring? Isn’t Blue Poodles a much better title than The Semiotic Use of Color in Californian Dog Parlours?

But one always wonders how many of the odd titles one comes across are real and how many are accidental. Do publishers and authors really have no sense of the ridiculous? Or are they actually out to lunch?

Grubbing around in the intertubes the other day, the way one does, I found that Horace Bent, the pseudonymous diarist of The Bookseller magazine, has been collecting, and awarding an annual prize for, the oddest book titles.

While not all appeal to my strangely warped sense of the ridiculous, many are brilliant. The list includes:

Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way
Baboon Metaphysics
Strip and Knit with Style
The Industrial Vagina
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
Tattoed [sic] Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan: Magic Medicine Symbols in Silk, Stone, Wood and Flesh
Bombproof Your Horse
Living with Crazy Buttocks
First You Take a Leek
Whose Bottom? A Lift-the-Flap Book
Guide to Eskimo Rolling
American Bottom Archaeology
Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
Optical Chick Sexing
Penetrating Wagner’s Ring
Waterproofing Your Child