The radio this evening warbled on about the first Ashes Test (it's cricket you unbelievers!) and there was quite a bit about the preamble to the match and not so much about the match itself.  This test match, for the first time ever, is being held in Wales.  Before the match started not only did they play the British national anthem as well as the Australian one but Kathrine Jenkins (it's Wales so she's at all the big events) sang 'Land of My Fathers) !!!!!!

Admittedly, after a lifetime of being a keen fan of cricket I was not expecting this sort of show but, apparently and according to the announcer, what happened next really was something to make your eyes pop even more!

Radio Announcer: "There was a lot of ceremony before, traditionally, the captains tossed up before the start of the match."

Have they stopped using coins now?  Must be the credit crunch!  :-D

A few moments ago Mr Warren came into the kitchen and informed me, in a very disgusted tone of voice that: "Michael Jackson is live on five channels!!!"

FJ: "No darling.  Michael Jackson is dead but his funeral is live on five channels!"

Mr Warren: "Smarta**e!"

Oooooh - I just love it when he talks dirty to me!!!! :-D

. . . .  40 years to be precise you discover the word for the condition one of my boyfriends suffered from in his youth!

It's TRICHOTILLOMANIA folks!

He was always a bit of a stupid plucker anyway!

Or more correctly - the tale of the farting hamster!  This has been written especially for louenn so I'll put it under a cut and then the rest of you can go and do something more interesting instead! :)

( Read more... )

I note that the Jackson family want a second autopsy on the body of Michael Jackson to help establish the cause of his sudden death!

For what it's worth and, IMHO, with all the plastic surgery that  the poor chap undertook he probably went into meltdown!

Fascinating programme on the radio this morning about the results of a survey on peoples knowledge of the bible.  The strange thing that the survey pointed out was that a considerable number of those asked did have this book in their home but it did not seem to add to their knowledge.  Some of those questioned had no idea which came first - the crucifixion or the resurrection and one person was reported as saying that for Jesus to be crucified on Good Friday was good timing on his part!   Classic!

Oh! . . . . and do you know who Nimshi was? 

:)

Any person interested in crafts might like to look at or join this new community.

handmade4xmas 

I'm busy polishing my crochet hooks at the moment otherwise I'd say more but the site says it all so why not hop on over for a look.  It's always good to be in at the beginning of the next 'new' thing! :)

The house has been resounding, non-stop, to Michael Jackson music this evening, thanks to Sproglet and Mr Warren, so I thought I'd take a look at one of the icons of my youth and fetched up the Johnny Hallyday site instead! :)  http://www.johnnyhallyday.com/  Sorry, I've always liked him - it comes from having to study so much French in my youth!

What do I find?  -

'Micheal Jackson -  Le Roi de la Pop est mort!' 

. . . . Merde!

Our old blind dog woke up, in the middle of the night, and decided that he wanted to go out.  He's in a pitch dark room but he's blind so he uses his senses to find the door.  He finds said door, which is shut,  so he keeps walking into it. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!  Who needs an alarm clock when you've got a canine who is using his head as a battering ram?  Dutifully, I get up and let the dog into the living room and then out of the front door.  It's dark outside but this doesn't bother the dog overmuch because he can't see!  However, I can't see either so I walk all the way through the house, (yawn) half awake, and turn the outside light on so that I will be able to see a blind, black dog shuffling around the garden.  He's old, he could do with a canine zimmer frame.  I look out of the kitchen window and what do I see?  My shambling, ancient, blind dog skipping around the lawn like a two year old!  Don't ask me - I can't explain it!  Anyway, I totter out into the garden in an attempt not to call him back in - I can't call him because (1) he's deaf and (2) Mr Warren would probably shoot me for waking him up at 2.30 a.m.!  I manage to get the dog's attention, who mysteriously goes into shamble mood once he is aware that I'm in the vicinity, and get him back inside.  The dog goes through his 'Look at me!  Feel sorry for me!  Let your heart bleed with contrition for me!  I can barely put one foot in front of the other! Oh! Woe is me!' routine but I know better!

The dog flops onto the carpet and falls blissfully asleep.  As I type his snores are echoing around the room. Awww!  Moi?!  I'm p**sing wide awake, of course! 

Don't get me wrong - I love him to bits but he's been nothing but trouble ever since he was a puppy.  In those days he lived in the porch with our other dog ( a well-behaved docile idiot who couldn't believe his bad luck when this chaotic black puppy turned up) and he caused havoc!  He ate - in no particular order - the wood basket, the wood, the coal, our shoes, our wellies, the old sofa, the chairs, the curtains, the lino and the inside of the cat flap!  When there was, seemingly, nothing left to eat he jumped on top of the upright freezer and ate the curtain track!  Eventually, he stopped eating everything and went into retriever mode as he was part retriever.  I would go out and hang out the washing and the dear pooch would bring it back in for me, covered in muddy paw marks and with the pegs still attached!  At other times the stuff you threw on the compost heap would be delivered in a smelly pile at your feet whilst aforementioned pooch wagged his tail expecting much appreciation for his feat!  However, he got his comeuppance when he retrieved the bow that Mr Warren had made for Sproglet!  Assuming that we would want this interesting piece of wood brought into the house he picked it up and headed for the porch.  He galloped towards the door holding the bow halfway along its length.  The bow is a twice as wide as the door.  Yup, you're getting the picture already!  He bounded into the porch but the two sides of the bow are caught by the uprights of the door.  I suppose his momentum carried him a good two feet into the room before the tensile strength of the bow took over and threw him backwards out of the room.  There was a loud 'Twang!' followed by an even louder 'Thwack!' as the poor pooch thumped into the wooden door immediately opposite the open porch door.  He did seem to calm down a bit after that but you would still discover the wheel nuts for the tyre you were changing placed in a neat pile by the dog's bowl or find a rather bemused hedgehog in the dog's basket!

He's awake again now so I have to go and let him out.  (Yawn) - it's daylight  - what happened to my beauty sleep? Still - the silly old fool has been part of our lives for over 15 years, during which time I have pulled my hair out over his antics and laughed myself into tears over his mishaps, so I'll have to go and see to his wants!  

Yeah - I know.  One of us is a stupid mutt but I'm not sure which one it is! :)

No thanks!  Celt I might be and therefore more inclined towards this sort of thing but, even I, with my limited brain cells have been wondering, ever since I first went there, why I would walk away from something I wanted to see!  The sun rises in the east folks!  You walk up an avenue towards Stonehenge from the east and then . . .  you turn around to watch the sun rise?!!!  It doesn't make sense!  If I was around when Stonehenge was built I would see no substantial reason to celebrate mid-summer other than that it was part of the calendar of their year.  Also, to celebrate sunrise would seem strange because of the alignment of the stones - simply because sunset works better and you get the impression that the setting sun was the object they were walking towards.

Of course, pure gut feeling plays a part in my appreciation of this place as well.  I'm from a farming family and in the middle of summer you were usually flat out trying to get your crops tended.  In the winter, however, it's a different story!  Then you wanted to celebrate the fact that you had arrived at the turning point for the year - the important one.  This is when the light begins to come back - not start to disappear again!  All farmers know that you need that light, and returning warmth, to grow your crops!  To my mind if Stonehenge was used for any celebration it would have been in winter because that is the point at which a community that had to provide its own food - no supermarkets - would have a reason to celebrate!  It is also the point when they would have had the time to celebrate!  I think I would appreciate the sun setting on the 21st December, which I would interpret to mean that 'Tomorrow the light begins to return!' far more than having a knees up to celebrate the high point of summer and the gradual return of the darkness!  Winter is the point in the year when I would be offering up prayers and what have you to the gods in order to ensure that the annual cycle kept on going and that spring really was going to arrive again!

Another farming point to bear in mind is that animal production was on a very natural scale.  The stock had not been bred to produce year-round food and so the young arrived when nature intended, when their food would be plentiful, and not when man decided the matter.  The stock had food for the summer but when the winter arrived it was a different matter.  The communities, of that time, would have kept what they could manage to feed and would have ate the rest and if you decide to munch your way through a large concoction of fresh meat in the middle of summer you would have been barmy!  You would also waste at least four good months of animal fodder that would have been out their in the natural landscape for them to chomp their way through!  For example - pigs love acorns and they don't fall off the trees in the middle of June!   If you kill stock in the middle of summer there are various points to bear in mind.  The heat would turn the meat off very quickly, the young stock would have been smaller than their optimum kill weight and you would not have been able to preserve the dead animal so well.  In winter,  the animal would have more flesh for you to eat so you could feed more people from it and it would be easier to preserve the carcass in the lower temperatures. 

Of course, this is just my own personal theory but  I would still rather celebrate in the winter than the summer because that is when I can see a reason for doing it. 

However, there are a lot of people today who wish to celebrate mid-summer and good luck to 'em - just don't write my name on the invitation card!