Things that Have Amused Me This Week

Given that it is half term it explains why this is a very short blog entry…

• My shopping list for Wednesday read as follows:

 

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  1. Stuff for Tilly’s sandwiches
  2. Crusty bread
  3. Mini sausages
  4. Short introduction to Socrates

 

Excellent stuff.  I used to live with a bloke who when I wrote a shopping list would hijack them and write: ‘sweets for Bryn’, ‘helicopter for Bryn’, at the bottom of every list.  Obviously his name was Bryn and he wasn’t just being philanthropic.  It used to make me laugh.

 

• My mum told me that apparently if you bang your elbow hard enough you can black your own eye.  I asked her if she had ever seen it, or seen it being done to someone, she said no, but someone told her it could happen and it sounded cool.  We then discussed whether we could get one of the kids to ‘accidentally on purpose’ do this so we could check it out.  This led to a discussion as to whether sneezing with your eyes open makes your eyeballs fall out.  I’ve always been too nervous to try, but I’m willing to pay someone a tenner to give it a go.

 

• The RSS feed on the BBC news website one day this week had the headline: ‘Satellite sends back historic pictures from Mars.’  This made me laugh so much I snorted coffee down my nose.  I know what they meant but I had visions of the satellite beaming down pictures of men in stove pipe hats and monocles, and women with crinolines holding up lumps of Mars’ surface and looking sternly into the camera.  In sepia, naturally.  Look. You know I don’t get out much.  Just bear with me.

 

• The lady on Radio Four last night who got very hot under the collar and accused Burma of not sharing very nicely with others.  The understatement of the century and let’s face it, they’re a military junta with a fifty year history of despotic rule and torture.  They’re hardly likely to be frightened into good behaviour by some American woman whinging about them not playing well with others and needing the naughty step are they?

 

• The fact that Tallulah said that one of the reasons that she liked hearing the stories about Nicholas so much was because he was, and I quote: ‘A silly sod!’  It had nothing to do with my influence on her, naturally.

 

• When Oscar got given a piece of chocolate caramel shortbread this afternoon and he chewed it very thoughtfully for a few minutes before making a disgusting hawking sound, spitting it into his palm and giving it me back claiming it was ‘too sticky’.

 

• The man on Springwatch this week who was trying to big up stoats by claiming they were ‘the tigers of Britain’.  Bless him for being so enthusiastic and committed to the world of stoats and their pr, but despite being fierce little warriors they’re hardly lithe six foot cats with teeth the size of sabres now are they? They are in fact about the size of an average sausage and come up to your ankle.  Yes they could give you a nasty nip, but you’re hardly likely to see one scurrying off into the undergrowth with your first born clamped between their jaws.

 

• Tallulah cheerfully telling my friend Caron’s sister that she thought that I was probably at least seventy years old today at lunch time.  Thanks for that.  That’s what half term will do to you.  I was only thirty six when I started.