BALLS (announcements thereat)
Mr. and Mrs. Teake and their daughter, whose christian name I don't have .... Miss Teake.
CHRISTMAS
Christmas Alphabet
Have you noticed that the English alphabet takes on a
slightly different form at this time of the year?
A B C D E F G H I J K M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z (if you
want to study this later, don't scroll down to the P.S.)
Isn't it depressing walking through a field full
of sheep at Christmas time?
How often have you asked a ram what he's getting ewe for Xmas and
got the answer
"Christmas? Baaa! Humbug! Don't believe in it!"?
How do you tell if a law applies at Christmas
time?
Examine it and see if it contains a Santa clause.
Why is Santa Claus so hopeless at gardening? He has only three tools - hoe, hoe, hoe.
Let us hope Santa has no trouble completing his rounds on time. It gets more difficult each year, what with there being more and more calls to make, and the police getting ever more vigilant. Last year, in nearly every county someone from the Flying Squad took one look at Rudolph's nose, and pulled him over on suspicion of drinking and driving.
What do
you call a miser with a cold? Ebesneezer Scrooge.
P.S. in case anyone is still wondering about the alphabet -
No eL !
CRIME
Did I ever tell you about the time, when I lived in Cambridge, when I arrived home from university to find that somebody had placed a geranium in my room? I thought this a trifle odd, especially given that there was no note attached, and nobody about who seemed to know anything about it. I had not been thinking for long, when there was a loud knocking at the door, and there stood a bunch of Her Majesty's boys in blue, asking, more or less politely, if they could have a word. I invited them in, and was about to make a cup of tea when I heard "Ah hah!", and they began asking rather less polite questions about the geranium, which one of them had spotted. Apparently there had been a burglary earlier that day at the Cambridge Botanical Gardens. Next thing I knew, we were on the way to the station, where I endured a few hours of the sort of interrogation (insinuations, lights, the works) that one sees on TV, but does not think happens for real (except perhaps to real criminals), until I finally got the impression that they accepted I had not been near the gardens, and was allowed to go home. All for a perishing geranium! It was a relief to get out of that one - for quite a while, I didn't think the officers were ever going to accept that it was a plant.
Wasn't there an alert, a few years ago, about gangs of Chinese "Yardie" criminals on the loose? I thought at least one had a chance of seeing them coming. As far as I can gather, a lot of them are so proud of their organisation that they wear its uniform, a T-shirt with a large "Y" emblazoned on the front, and they like to go around in twos on robbing sprees. The result is, when they arrive in a new neighbourhood, the warning goes round, "Beware the two Y fronts, for they are a pair of nickers".
EXAM Q & A (OR NOT)
Q: Show that you understand the
social context for the erection of certain types of buildings.
> A: I knew a builder's wife who expressed her appreciation of
her old man's
work with the words > "The great thing about being
married to a builder is I get to
benefit from all my husband's erections."
FLORA AND FAUNA
A little bird in my garden asked me what is his favourite vegetable. I said I've no idea, little bird, what is your favourite vegetable? and he replied, asparrowgus.
Do you remember that family of nerdy horses that used to live next door? The ones we used to call the neigh-bores?
Have you heard the wise owl's advice on the subject of the pursuit or otherwise of the opposite sex? - You've got to be a t'wit t'woo.
How does one tell when a camel is angry? - When it's got the hump.
One of my former housemates had a cat that was keen on opera. I asked him what was his favourite Pavarotti number, and he replied "O sole miao".
What do you call a teacher who hops around, carrying her baby in her pouch? - A kanguru.
Why is that duck making all that noise? - He's been under a lot of stress lately, and he's finally quacked.
It seems there is a debate about which animal is collectively known as a parliament. It is certainly not horses. Several groups of nags have tried it over the years, but it did not work. They could not get any laws passed, because whenever anything needed to be voted upon, they all trooped into the "neigh" lobby.
MUSIC
A wind farm is a place where oboes, clarinets and the like are grown.
Imagine the scene in the Bach household at dinnertime, sometime in the 1690's: "SEBASTIAN!!!! Will you stop playing with your organ, and come and eat your dinner!" "But Mum, I'm trying to finish my latest fugue." "If you're not here by the time I count to ten, you'll get something far worse than a fugue - ten, nine, eight ........"
MY WIFE
My wife's gone to East Kent.
> -Wye?
> -Search me.
-My wife went to the fancy dress
ball in her army uniform.
-Khakis?
> -No, she can't drive.
SPORT
Has anybody who has been watching TV sports coverage, especially Wimbledon, where the Hawkeye technology is frequently used to check up on linesmen's judgments, wondered why this appears to be exactly the same version as in previous years? I am sure I heard somewhere that a new, super duper version of Hawkeye was being developed in Scotland, and that it was expected to be in use in time for this year's tennis season. The code name for the project was apparently "'AWKEYE THE NOO"
TRAVELLERS' TALES
This story should bring comfort to anyone who has ever got hopelessly lost whilst trying to find a person or place. Apologies to those who are not familiar with Kentish geography, but I hope you will get the drift.
If any of you are familiar with the (quite famous) book, and can remind me of the author's name, please do so.
The story concerns a travelling gent who was (like me) a general art lover, who, in London one day, came across an exhibition of the works of Graham Clarke, and was so impressed that he decided to seek out and meet the artist.
He asked around some of the people at the exhibition (he preferred this method of information gathering to looking things up), and gathered that Mr Clarke lived in Boughton, and that Boughton was somewhere near the far end of the A2. So he mounted his then means of transport (donkey, Honda or whatever), and set off along the A2, stopping along the way, as was his wont, to chat with people he met, and generally to entertain them in return for a meal or a bed for the night.
After a couple of weeks he ran out of A2 and arrived in Dover. Unperturbed, he asked around for information, and of course he had fallen foul of Murphy's Law. The very stretch of his journey which he had chosen to speed up by using the new A2, as he left Faversham, was the very stretch where he should have kept to the old road in order to find Boughton.
So he set off back the way he came, found Boughton after a couple of days, and asked around the Hernhill side for Graham Clarke. No joy, but someone suggested he try the older, scattered area of Boughton the other side of the new road. After a few hours exploring there, he finally found someone who was an equally big fan of Mr Clarke's work, so much so he could break the news that the artist actually lives in Boughton Monchelsea, and if he wanted to find him he should have had nothing to do with the A2.
The traveller did eventually meet his idol, and published a book about his travels in Kent and all the characters he had met (for selling such books was one of his few real sources of income). This particular book soon became one of his most popular. In view of all the time he had spent fruitlessly journeying up and down the road, he called this book Much A2 About Nothing.
WORDS
Dealing with a number of puns recently reminded me of the tale about a beggar, who was pleading with a housewife: "Surely you don't really need all that bread?" To which the lady retorted, "I most certainly do knead this bread, my man, in fact I do all my own baking". When the beggar realised with what a pun he had been rebuffed, he sighed loudly, "Do-o-o-o-o-o-o-ough", and the housewife was so impressed with his sense of humour that she gave him a piece after all.