Try telling your parents that indelible brown stain on the carpet is directly attributable to love. 

Or then again, perhaps not.

Of course, with some dogs, it just happens.  Cocker Spaniels, for example, have particularly loose bowels, something not helped by the docking of Spaniel tails..  One particular example in the ownership of a friend was so pleased to see visitors, he'd wag his whole body until the centrifugal force overcame the canine sphincter with predictable results.  Their hallway carpet looked like it had been tie-dyed.  After a while, they took to locking the dog in the kitchen before answering the door, if only because it's considerably easier to scrape it off linoleum. 

Eventually, they took to swinging the dog in a circle in the garden just before visits.

A wise old owl lived in a tree.

The less he said the more he'd see.

The less he said the more he heard.

Soldiers should be like that old bird.

British Army Propaganda Poster, 1916.

 

 

I think this says a lot about their respective Team performance in the World cup.

I'll tell you why.  It's because of this strange obsession with "Frische Luft".

Middle of winter, what does my girlfriend do?  She OPENS the window in the bedroom!  It's -4 outside!  We've just spent a couple of hours with the radiator on in there so that we can walk in bare feet without the skin freezing to the floor, so why, in God's name, WHY?

Because she can't sleep if it's TOO warm. 

Too warm presumably being anything over slightly comfortable for a Polar Bear. 

This means getting into bed is a race against time, before anything freezes and snaps off. 

And once I've finally gotten warm and stopped shivering...bam! She puts her two freezing-cold feet on me!

Now, I have pointed out that comedy is like football : the audience always thinks it can do better, until it tries.  Then I thought back to my childhood.

Where I come from, from age 8, very little value was placed on anything other than being able to kick a ball.  It didn't matter if you were good at anything else, if you couldn't kick a ball in the right direction, you were regularly humiliated and made to feel useless by those who could.  No opportunity for cruelty was missed. 

Well, now it's their turn.  I'd say Schadenfreude, but they're so thick they probably wouldn't understand.

I was lucky enough to meet him in 2004, at the Dutch Kinks meeting in Utrecht, where he played one song with The Kastoff Kinks, including original drummer Mick Avory, and Dave Dalton, who replaced him on bass. This was probably the last time he played in public.

Rest in Peace.

I refer my readers to this post.

Normally, we will be presenting five comedians per night.  Unlike most Cologne shows, where the line-up is fixed in advance, we'll be using the "Berlin" model, where performance is limited to the first comedians who walk in the door.   It's a risk, but, on the other hand, it's a chance.

Am 25.er Juni 2010, gibts der erster "Stand Up Workout" show beim "Club Papermoon".  Moderiert beim Steve Dix, diese Pröbebühne benutzt der "Berliner" format : die erste 5 komiker, die kommen durch dem Tür bekommen 10 minuten auftritt.  Naturlich, für unser erste show haben wir ein paar geplänte Auftritte.

Lassie was a lovely dog, and was mostly well-behaved.  Like most greyhounds, she was a thief if given the opportunity, but by and large, you wouldn't notice she was there.

There were, however, exceptions.  Wasps, for example.  She couldn't stand wasps, and in the hot, hot summer of 1976, there were lots of wasps.  Bad-tempered wasps, looking for trouble.  It was on a hot, sun-drenched day that Lassie snapped at a wasp which wouldn't leave her alone.  The wasp promptly landed on her nose and stung it.  There was a yelp and she shot under the table.  We had to drag the violently vibrating whippet from underneath the caravan table, fearing that the sting had somehow sent her into anaphylactic shock, such were  the tremors.  Fortunately they were only fear, and some soothing insect-sting medication helped.  We took her to the vet, and he said not to worry.  She'd probably learned her lesson.

How much she had learned her lesson was demonstrated the next day, when we had parked our Cortina Mk4 in the parking field just behind Charmouth beach.  This was during lifeboat week in Lyme, which was a big event.  They used to get, amongst other things, the Red Arrows, Ian Gillan, and, on this occasion, they had outdone themselves by getting a flyover from an F111 swing-wing supersonic bomber, at practically zero feet.

Now, I don't know if you are familiar with a General Dynamics F111, but to the typical Whippet, Wasps and F111s basically fall into the same category : Loud things that fly. Fearing that somehow she had invoked the wroth of the wasp's big brother, she gracefully leapt into the boot of the car and hid.  It took three of us to get her on the beach, where she promptly dug a hole and hid in it.  Next day at Lyme Regis beach, she did the same thing.   This time we helped her cover herself up.  I built the body of a Sphynx out of sand with her head coming out of the top, and draped a handkerchief over her ears, which got a few laughs and photos from passers-by.

From then on, whenever we were on Lyme or Charmouth beach, Lassie would always dig a hole and cover herself.  After a few years, we found a spot next to the harbour wall where all the rocks where, where one of the rocks made a little cave, just right for a whippet.  If not, then we dug her a hole (it was better than letting her spray everyone with sand) and erected a little sun-screen round her out of towels.

She never did it at any other beach, just Lyme and Charmouth, and she never tried catching wasps again.

So, if ever you are sorting through old photographs and come across a picture of a whippet doing an impression of a Sphynx at Lyme Regis beach, I'd be grateful for a copy.

Coincidence?

I think not.

;->

Sharky will be arriving tomorrow.   It has, however, made me all the more determined to find a decent Mini.  No, not the crap BMW thing, the real thing like this :

50 YEARS OF MINI from one pound pictures on Vimeo.

And as soon as I have it, I want to put one of these in it.

That'll show her.