A Gentleman's Domain

As Time Goes By

This is rather interesting, I hope you will agree.  Recently The Daily Telegraph has been publishing letters from people who, by one degree of separation, know people born a very long time ago – for example, a man in his seventies who can remember, as a young child, being told by his grandfather that when he was a child he met a man born in 1799,  and similar.  Inspired by this, they also asked if anyone could help them find the oldest person in the oldest photograph and this may well be the record.  It’s a photograph of a shoemaker from Lincolnshire called Robert Morvison.  The picture was taken in 1857, when he was  82 years old.  That means we have a photo of a man born in 1775: before the USA came into existence, before the age of Napoleon, 44 years before the future Queen Victoria was even born.  Photos of people born even earlier may possibly be in existence – please check your attics!
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Two to pass on to you

It’s all part of living in the twenty-first century, I suppose.  I thought I’d just pass in to you a couple of items that may have passed you by in recent days.  The first one is news for someone like me who only very recently has begun to look at the lists of ingredients on the boxes and cans of food he is about to eat (mainly in order to avoid high fructose corn syrup).  I always assumed that organic food was better than non-organic because… Well, because…  Um, well, hey it’s organic.  Gotta be better for you if it’s organic. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?  Bah!  If you have to ask why, then you won’t understand.   Then along comes this report.  Have we been wrong all the time?  One reason I was s sure that organic food was good for you was that it cost twice as much, or more, than the other kind. Id hate to think that all that extra money has been a waste.

And then there’s shopping.  I don’t like it, unless you include shopping in bookstores.  But  the stereotype of women is that they love to shop – and just because something is a stereotype, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Apparently, spending hours converting your money into things that you don’t need and will never use can be very enjoyable.  Anyway, one woman took things a bit too far, according to this news item.  The shoppers among you, be warned!
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Being a bit quizzical

I posted this quiz on Facebook, in one of those note thingies.  But I prefer to blog, so I'm reproducing it here.  If anyone else wants to have a go, please feel free.

1. What time did you get up this morning? The first time, 7.05am

2. How do you like your steak? Medium Rare

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? I think it was W

4. What is your favorite TV show? Right now it’s Ashes To Ashes.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Florida or Vancouver or Singapore or Paris or somewhere in the Cotswolds, or possibly somewhere I haven’t been to yet so I don’t yet know that I’d love to live there.

6. What did you have for breakfast? I don’t eat breakfast.

7. What is your favorite cuisine? French and Italian. Or any kind where they don’t have to drench it in spices to cover up the fact that the food is rotten.

8. What foods do you dislike? Vegetables

9. Favorite Place to Eat? So many to choose from. Fran’s Restaurant on St. Clair Avenue in Toronto perhaps. Or my mother’s kitchen.

10. Favorite dressing? Blue cheese. Lots of it. To cover up the taste of the green leaves and other muck in the salad bowl.

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? Ford focus 5-speed hatchback. Automatic transmission is for the uncoordinated and old ladies.

12. What are your favorite clothes?. Jeans, tee shirt, flip flops.

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? That’s the sort of stupid question you get asked at job interviews. The only correct answer is: it’s both. To be one it must also be the other.

15. Where would you want to retire? See question 5. Add London and Bangkok to the possibilities.

16. Deleted . I wonder what this question was.

17. Where were you born? London

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? None whatsoever!

19, 20 and 21 are all stupid questions. I discard them.

22. Bird watcher? No

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? Night person.

24. Do you have any pets? Yes

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? No.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? I can’t remember - a film star probably.

27. What is your best childhood memory? Far too many. By and large I had a very happy, untroubled childhood and enjoyed far more than I didn’t enjoy. Those 2-month summer holidays in France hold dozens of happy memories.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? I have no prejudice against either species.

29. Are you married? Yes

30. Always wear your seat belt? Always. When I was a police officer I saw far too often what people looked like after going through a windshield.

31. Been in a car accident? Yes.

32. Any pet peeves? Bad grammar, jargon, litter, lack of consideration towards others.

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? Cheese, tomatoes, ham, mushroom, onions, bacon

34. Favorite Flower? None.

35. Favorite ice cream? Indifferent to the stuff.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? None

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? Twice in England. Passed first time in British Columbia and in Florida (you’d have to be a total moron to fail the Florida test)

38. From whom did you get your last email? Some credit card company. Spam, in other words

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? None

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? This quiz

41. Like your job? Sometimes.

42. Broccoli. What about it?

43. What was your favorite vacation? Round the world trip when I was between wives.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? My wife

45. What are you listening to right now? The low hum of my desktop computer’s fan.

46. What is your favorite color? Blue

47. How many tattoos do you have? None, and I never will. Disgusting things!

48. How many are you tagging for this quiz? No one

49. What time did you finish this quiz? 4.52pm

50. Coffee Drinker? Yes, but I prefer tea (When I make it. No one else gets it the way I like it).
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Help required to solve a little feline mystery...

One of our three cats has taken to sitting almost motionless for long periods, sometimes as much as an hour or two, staring into their water bowl.  Sometimes she meows (not soft little mews but full feline yowls) for no apparent reason.  The only thing I can think of is that she sees her reflection and is watching, and occasionally calling to, the cat in the water who is looking back up at her.  Does any other cat owner have a feline who behaves like this? And if so, do you know why?.

Thursday Thirteen #87

If you have ever been in the unhappy situation of having to make an insurance claim following a car accident, you’ll know that on the claim form you have to say what happened.  I found the following in a book called Anguished English  by Richard Lederer.  They are excerpts from actual accident reports from people making claims on their motor insurance.  Here are thirteen examples.

1.    Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.

2.    I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.

3.    I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman, as he bounced off the hood of my car.

4.    A truck backed through my windshield and into my wife’s face.

5.    I had been driving for about 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.

6.    The guy was all over the road.  I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

7.    My car was legally parked as I backed into the other vehicle.

8.    The accident happened when the right front door of a car came around the corner without giving a signal.

9.    The other man changed his mind and I had to run into him.

10.    The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

11.    The pedestrian ran for the pavement but I got him.

12.    In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.

13.    A cow wandered into my car.  I was later informed that the unfortunate cow was half-witted.

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A well planned retirement

I don’t know if this story is true or not,  but I really hope it is

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Outside the Bristol Zoo, in England, there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 coaches, or buses.

It was manned by a very pleasant attendant with a ticket machine charging cars £1 (about $1.40) and coaches £5 (about $7).  This parking attendant worked there solid for all of 25 years.

Then, one day, he just didn't turn up for work.

"Oh well", said Bristol Zoo Management, "We'd better phone up the City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant..."

"Err ... no", said the Council, "that parking lot is your responsibility."

"Err ... no", said Bristol Zoo Management, "the attendant was employed by the City Council, wasn't he?"

"Err ... NO!" insisted the Council.

Sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain, is a bloke who had been taking the parking lot fees, estimated at £400 (about $620) per day at Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over £3.6 million ($7.6 million)!

And no one even knows his name.

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Remember, remember, the fourth of July

In 1605, on the fifth day of November, a group of malcontents led by one Robert Catesby, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London.  They managed to store several large barrels of gunpowder in the cellars beneath the House of  Lords, and they planned to blow them up on a day when King James I would be addressing members of both Houses there.  The plot, however, was betrayed and the conspirators were rounded up. One of them was actually captured in the cellar where he was preparing to light the fuse and retire immediately (There is a very lifelike representation of that occasion in Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum in London).   He was Guido, or Guy, Fawkes and he is the best remembered of the conspirators.

Since then, the fifth of November has been the day, or rather night, when that deliverance has been commemorated.  It is known variously as Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night or, usually, Guy Fawkes Night.   The occasion is celebrated by the letting off of fireworks and by burning Guy Fawkes in effigy on bonfires – except at Lewes in Sussex where every year the townspeople gather to burn the Pope in effigy, since this was seen, not completely inaccurately, as a Catholic plot.  It can be fun.  I have enjoyed many Guy Fawkes parties, and I like setting off fireworks as much as the next person – my faves are rockets.

What always used to annoy me was people who decided to set their fireworks off just to annoy other people – like at three o’clock in the morning.  If you want to be very, very charitable you could suggest that maybe these were people doing shift work, and who were unable to celebrate the occasion any earlier.  I would be touched by your open mindedness but I would disagree with you.  People who do that are yobs and dickheads.  They get more pleasure from the knowledge that they are making  loud noises in the middle of the night, to disturb people, than they do from the occasion itself.  There was little  that one could do about it though, except wait for it to end.

In the last couple of years, though, I have discovered that the same kind of dickheaddery also attends the celebration of the fourth of July.   For most people, the day is a matter of parties, cookouts, barbecues, get-togethers at the homes of friends or family members, and after dark a firework display, either private or at some civic venue.  And a jolly good time is had by all.   But then, way into the night, when all that can be heard outside are the crickets and the tree frogs (I speak of where I live – I suspect the Sound of the Night is different in, say, Manhattan or Detroit), the firework morons start up.  They have a definite preference for fireworks that go bang – never mind beautiful displays of coloured lights. And they do not confine themselves to the fourth.  The days, or rather nights, leading up to the fourth, and away from it, are equally assailed by their detonations.  I fully expect tonight to be the same.  I am resigned to it, but I must admit that I am hoping for a torrential downpour, to wash them out!
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