Since giving up the dead tree press a few weeks ago, we've found we have loads more time to read other stuff, and we regularly dip into tomes like 'The Times History of London', (which I recommend to everybody - thanks YD; it is a super present)!
I've also rediscovered some reading that I was given years ago, and just this week, have been laughing uncontrollably at one particular book which is still as funny as it was in the sixties.
I used to have a full set of Michael Green’s ‘Coarse’ books, but have finished up with only two. We actually took ‘The Art of Coarse Sailing’ on a Broads holiday years ago, and had great fun following some of the disaster spots...
But the one here is reducing me to gales of laughter again.
I've also rediscovered some reading that I was given years ago, and just this week, have been laughing uncontrollably at one particular book which is still as funny as it was in the sixties.
I used to have a full set of Michael Green’s ‘Coarse’ books, but have finished up with only two. We actually took ‘The Art of Coarse Sailing’ on a Broads holiday years ago, and had great fun following some of the disaster spots...
But the one here is reducing me to gales of laughter again.
I love the story of why the golf club bar runs out of Guinness, and also how two golfers had to abandon their game, because they were both telling each other sad stories about lost dogs, and finished up in floods of tears!
Well recommended to anyone who has tried to play any game, often came last, but enjoyed the experience nontheless...
40 comments:
Matthew Parris in the Speccie a couple of weeks ago referred to:
"the dictionary of invented names for common thoughts, objects or experiences included in Douglas Adams’s and John Lloyd’s The Meaning of Liff: a splendid list from which I shall give just one example, the verb aboyne, meaning ‘to beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him’. "
I was delighted to read this. Very recently, I beat a top tennis player and an Olympic Modern Pentathlon bronze medalist in a grass court doubles match over three sets with a competent mate of mine. The look on the faces of our opponents as the match slipped away from them was priceless.
We achived this victory with a higher-than usual percentage of very fast first serves, but also a collection of slices, mishits and lucky breaks that, frankly, was shaming.
Just the sort of thing for the art of Coarse Tennis.
How come you gave up newspapers ? Did I miss the post about that at all ?
Comment deleted - Yes I noticed that...
Iders - that book has prime position on our shelves too!
My favourite is Nazeing - 'The rather unconvincing noises of pretended interest which an adult has to make when brought a small dull object for admiration by a child'!
Priceless!
In fact they're all hilarious...
Re your tennis; this is always a great game for levelling egos. I might have worn long whites also...
Mutters - I didn't think it was worth a post actually.
We'd taken the Telegraph since the seventies, and it became a habit I suppose. Just of late, we were getting really pissed off with the BBC, and their Nulabyrinthine bias, so we just get the basics and turn it off now. (The Southern News Extra is excruciating now, with continuing mindless emphasis on the most disfunctional families who have eighty-four step-children, and stupid stories about people who collect pictures of radio masts, etc...).
This led us to get fed up with some of the pointless meanderings of journalists too, and above all, the amount of paper we throw away each week.
So we get all the news over the internet now, listen occasionally, and have saved ouselves £40.00 already!
There, you have a private post to yourself, and I thank you for asking!
"Nazeing"... Fantastic.
Lils; you just must get a copy -but I reckon you already have as you're that lovely...
Another favourite, which really makes me think you'd understand - (the band that is, not the answer...)...
'Lindisfarne - descriptive of the pleasant smell of an empty biscuit tin'.
;0)
Actually Lils, I've just re-read 'Glasgow - The feeling of infinite sadness when walking through a place filled with happy people fifteen years younger than yourself...'
Well, it is still a holiday isn't it!
Ha ha! no I dont have the book but I should check it out. There's a variant of Glasgow, I had one not long ago, a feeling of delight at the lushness of being surrounded by happy people fifteen years younger than myself...:-) Perhaps that's a "Bristol"...
Lilith - as a welcome foreigner, you are clearly unware of the meaning of a "Bristol". Suggest you have words with your other half, failing which, our host will no doubt readily explain.
Well of course, Worrieders,
'Bristol City' has long been rhyming slang for 'Pretty', which Lilith is!
What is little known, is that in the original script for 'West Side Story', Maria was supposed to sing 'I feel Bristol', but was requested to change the lines after a deputation from the Brush Manufacturer's Consortium, as 'Bristle' was supposed to be a coarse object, not some luvvy-dovey milk sop song about fighting on a fire escape...
my father used to play golf...well sort of...it always ended up with clubs in the water...him yelling "sonofabitch" and either my husband or brother getting wet retrieving the clubs...and they always wondered why i never went...hell i went fishing with the man and had to retrieve hooks!
Scrobs: I read somewhere that Calamity Jane is reputed to have had a nice pair of Bristols and that she preferred them to the run of the mill Colt 45s (or, dare I say it) even the famed winCHESTer rifle....
Circle the waggons!
N.V.Worrieders - Calamity Jane also sang a song about 'the windy city...'
She was in fact singing about somewhere miles away from 'Bristle', (Chicago) and I don't recall any Colt 45 beer in the film at all!
Do you think N.V.W., that what you really are trying to tell us all is that Bristol is actually a word to describe 'unmentionable' bits then?
I'd have thought that Trubes and Lilith would have been very cross at all this; everyone knows that 'Bristol' was once the best known cigarette in the South West I can even remember the advert: -
'Take a tip, take a Bristol,
Today’s cigarette is a Bristol,
A real cool flavour you’ll never forget,
Bristol is today’s cigarette'!
By all means come back if you think it means anything else!
Scrobbie - as it happens I used to smoke Bristols in the 1960s when they were 1/8d for 20.
I seem to recall they came in a lovely blue packet, a colour not at all dissimilar to that of those lovely west country birds (feathery type) - blue tits...
Wow, what did I start? Bristol is already taken, I see....:-)Quite an education.
Hey, NRLWN... You're absolutely spot on there!
A very, very old chum had Aunts and Uncles in 'Bristle' when WD and HR Wills' factory went up (literally), in smoke in the late sixties!
The said relatives were among the hordes which raided the site and carried away pounds, even hundred-weights of baccy and fags!
My chum (Dick), said that they filled a whole spare room with the stuff, and when he went to see them, he got two two ounce tins of Golden Virginia as a present!
Apparently, the 'orthorities' sprayed the whole site with diesel to contaminate the rest of the stock, but there must still be some homes with some fags which were 'borrowed'. and good luck to them too!
Lils; you're a local, and you're probably too young, but can you remember the fire?
This is worth a blog on its own and I'll try to get something together if I can...
Nope, Scrobs, I don't remember the fire. I only got to England in May 69...
Phew! Well, I think all that really explored the "coarse" bit of your title!
Titter, titter. er...um..
Now; Happers; - 'titter - um' was part of the chorus of 'The Engineer's song'...
'An Engineer told me before he died, her-um titter-um titter-um titter-um...'
'An Engineer told me before he died that he had a wi** **** *** ***** *********.....
Please don't ask me to say the rest as I really love Trubes and Lils and Daisy popping in - mind you, you could also be of a similar - er - 'bits' person, so I'll shut my mouth...
;0)
WTF did I just write...
'Keep shouting Colonel, we're sending a rope down...'
OK, who started the 'farting answers' then?
Was it you Idle, or perhaps Lakes?
Lils - the smoke would have probably died down by then...
I can't find anything on the net to give me enough for a blog item, which is a bit sad, as I well recall seeing huge piles of baccy being hosed down and smothered, on the News.
1969 you say eh; - young little kid ar'nt ya...;0x
Yes, scrobs, I think I wrote "Keep shouting Colonel we'll have a rope down to you shortly" about ten months back, perhaps on this very blog.
I might be blogging quite a lot this evening; I have 34 16-year-olds in the party tent outside, drinking and talking loudly, above the music (70s theme, lotsa American black stuff at present).
I will attend occasionally in an entirely benign way and try to keep drink flowing in diplomatic quantities, but I doubt I will be welcome when the snogging starts.
It occurs to me that there is approx £9.2m after tax of school fees in that tent (8 to 18, current boarding fees). I might video it surreptitiosly and post it - you decide if it is money well spent.
Scrobs: Your 20.39: Can't say I recall that song (probably because I did not play rugby in my youth?) but the only lines I can think of that would fit the rhyme include a girl/wife with a "wide/large/pretty backside", the latter being a word I often hear American commentators use (American is an odd language) when describing the latter half of a golf course (which brings us back on topic for this thread! Neat uh?
And now, to make a clean breast of things, do rest assured that I have no (as innocently but accurately described by a four year old recently) "bumps at the front".
Pip pip...
sorry - typo: your 20.30.
Naters - you're still awake eh...?
Try googling the words 'wide', and 'satisfied', or just the whole song, and you'll get your answer!
Ha ha ha backside - that's funny, like when Mick Jagger landed in the US for the first time ever, and saying he was gasping for a 'fag'...
native signing off here...just so you know...they are saying "back nine"...my father use to make me listen to hours of them droll on about golf as he wanted to be a "player"...and yes our language is odd i will agree :)
They are gorgeous, are they not Idle? We had 14 17/18 year olds here on Wednesday. Pig was in heaven, and Elby and I went out to see The Dark Knight...
In My Girl's first term at Bryanston 13 lads were caught smoking cannabis in the woods (including Tara Ferry..how's that for a silly name for a boy). Of course, with 5 years left of schooling and school fees pending the school couldn't afford to expel them!
would take much more than that to offend me scroblene...:)
I am sitting here, recent glass in hand, trembling with the knowledge that I haven't a clue who 'Native' is!
Is she/he Daisy (08.28), or if it's Lilith, good chum - used to stay at the Grannex...), or even a mate of Idle's...
Oh hellfire, I'm considering betting it could be Elbey (Lils, did your big, tall Russian speaking chum/mate realise that 'Elbey', is Spanish for 'Honey gatherer'...'El-bee'... ha ha ha my little joke...) or otherwise; I'm in Limbo, (small unpreposessing village near Budleigh Salterton, well known for it's references to a certain book loved by Idle, which desribes things beyound one's sober but wandering comprehension...).
Daisers - pleae tell me, I won't sleep until the five/six hours difference have passed. As for Lilith, we're only twenty minutes on the longitudes...
I will return soon!
not me scroblene...i am having a hard enough time just keeping up with the people i know...let alone creating alter identities...geez i'm nuts enough with just the one :)
B.... hell, Scrobs! I have just followed your advice and Googled the first line of your song. I was right my secluded and sheltered childhood - (ie I played football and not that other nasty rough game where you get bashed up by a bunch of Schwarzeneger wannabees and covered in mud)- kept me from these wondrous compositions.
Gracious me...!! There appear to be at least two versions and I must admit I did like the one about the computer programmer (programer?). Now maybe your turn to do a spot of Googling?
Ladies be warned: unless you have an extremely broad mind (stretching from Penzance to somewhere north of The Wash) I suggest you decline this free offer.
Sorry Scrobs, but like Spider-Man I shall keep my on-line identity to myself.
I wouldn't dream of wishing you to break cover Naters, any name will do as far as I'm concerned!
Computer programmers eh? When I played rugby, computers took up a whole room, and a 'mobile' was something you hung up at Christmas, and watched it twirl...
Beer was much cheaper though, 1/6 a pint, and as you pointed out, so were fags; Gold Leaf, 4/7 for twenty, in a nice big flat packet...
Aaaaah.... cough....
Idle, has your party finished yet?
Thought I heard 10cc wafting over the sward late last night...
Thankfully 10CC didn't make the palylist, scrobs.
I rose at 8 yesterday morning, to find that half the blighters had decided that sleeping on the deck in a large tent resembling an ashtray was Not Good Enough, and had headed for the house...
Daisers,
I knew it wasn't you actually, as my bit of kit (bottom right), didn't show up 'Lawnmower Mansions'...
What I'd like to know is how to get a list of recent blogs like Lils has - makes it easier you see!
Idle - late intrusions like that always smell of damp grass (mowable stuff...), and Stella...
I thoughtr 10cc would have been a must, but there again, I'm an old romantic!
Godley lives around here BTW, and still refuses to do up his huge stone gateway to the mansion! It really looks a mess, and the council - bless - can't get him to do anything!
That sounds great, Scrobs. I hope you give us a lengthier excerpt.
On the subject of the dead tree press I enjoyed John Grishams novel the Last Juror. It came free with a mag (I only buy mags to go on holiday) and normally they contain dire chick-lit but i reccommend this one for both sexes.
Post a Comment