Bye Bye ringtone...

I've just upgraded my mobile phone, and the old one now lies unwanted, unconnected and unusable with all the other handsets. It's in quite a big pile...

I downloaded the original version of this song for a ringtone, as the opening chords are still as vibrant as they were back in the seventies...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMwn_hnoS5Y&feature=PlayList&p=38C177C8D2B1380B&index=0&playnext=1

I hope BT's new machine lets me transfer it again...

Universally Challenged...

A note of explanation: "Dear Abby" was a syndicated column in which people would write in to the person whose pen name was Abby. She would then come up with meaningful responses. The following are a few to which she had no answers.


ABBY ADMITTED SHE WAS AT A LOSS TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING::

Dear Abby,
A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle- aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I've never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese?


Dear Abby,
What can I do about all the sex, nudity, foul language and violence on my VCR?


Dear Abby,
I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much, I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying is his.


Dear Abby,
I am a twenty-three year old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It's getting expensive and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don't know him well enough to discuss money with him.


Dear Abby,
I've suspected that my husband has been fooling around, and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again.


Dear Abby,
Our son writes that he is taking Judo. Why would a boy who was raised in a good Christian home turn against his own?


Dear Abby,
I joined the Navy to see the world. I've seen it. Now how do I get out?


Dear Abby,
My forty year old son has been paying a psychiatrist $50.00 an hour every week for two and a half years. He must be crazy.


Dear Abby,
I was married to Bill for three months and I didn't know he drank until one night he came home sober.


Dear Abby,
My mother is mean and short tempered. I think she is going through mental pause.


Dear Abby,
You told some woman whose husband had lost all interest in sex to send him to a doctor. Well, my husband lost all interest in sex and he is a doctor. Now what do I do?



Remember these people can vote

Bye Bye bristle...

I just can't wait to get one!

It'll be a bit of a bugger to get upstairs, but I'm sure that there'll soon be a way to do this if our boffins aren't stamped on by the bureaucratic dinosaurs which infest Whitehall...

I went to a presentation by the marvellous Trevor Baylis once. He was showing everyone how his wind-up torch was brought to the market despite the tedious time-wasting by officials, and was explaining how the UK Government stifles any innovation, by letting civil servants 'examine' inventions, write lots of reports, waste months of valuable time and eventually cause the inventor to give up and wander off (usually to America).

In one ecstatic moment, he showed everyone a letter he'd received from 'an expert' pen-pusher, who dismissed almost everything he'd worked on for the last few years, and stated loftily that 'It probably won't work', without having a shred of evidence.

These are the types who are now drafting our financial futures, so beware!

And I also want a mower attachment on this fantastic machine...

And a hedge cutter...

Yardarm yarn...

Heart stops at 17mins 51secs...

Some time last year, I took a bit of flak from assembled correspondents here, for stating that I preferred later Pink Floyd songs to their earlier tracks. The comments were understandable, and my only defence was that most of their earlier stuff was produced when Scroblene funds were even lower than a turtle's waistcoat...

Late last year, a Chum gave me 'Live in Gdansk', by David Gilmour, and this has been an Ipod favourite from day one. It was so poignant too, that Rick Wright died just a week before the album was released. Watching the video of 'Echoes', with his beloved keyboard getting the full treatment, the atmospheric eeriness of the middle section gradually reduces the live song to an ethereal quality, which I really find quite disturbing.

But, at precisely 17mins and 51 seconds, David Gilmour's rapturous ringing reel just makes all the hair on the back of my head stand up on end, and the palpitations start!

So, if I start the track at London Bridge, there is usually a small commotion just after Sevenoaks, while a late middle aged rocker feverishly spins the Ipod dial to maximum, rams the noise-cancelling earphones to within an inch of severe aural disaster, and glazes over in a wash of pure delight...

It's just after a minute on this clip...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zC_0qBZzy4&feature=related

Pecker on the loose...

'You'll have to chop out those old columns', said the site foreman, Duncan Disorderly, 'They're in the way...

'There's no way I'm going up there with a bloody pickaxe and anyway, we don't have a long ladder since we ran out of wood for the stove', said Pat, beginning to feel slightly worried, and nervously scratching his trousers.

'Then use the sodding crane Pat, it's sitting there doing bugger all'!

'Oh sod it, alright, but keep the elfun safety blokes away for a couple of hours', said Pat...