Tuesday, 7 October 2025

Harvest moon...

So tonight, we can see a real British Harvest Moon!

It wasn't that bad a moon last night when I dodged the curtains for a quick peek, but hopefully, I'll see the whole shebang tonight, when the 3 o'clock - er - visit to the loo seems to abound these days...

A lovely chum told me about this song, and it resonates on so many levels, especially where Neil Young sings -

" I wanna see you dance again...'


Still hurts...


Friday, 3 October 2025

The Art of Coarse Hilarity...

While there's very little to laugh about these days, with such depressing headlines and worse to come, Scrobs, as is his wont, reverts to humorous writings by some of the funniest citizens past and present!

Over the years, I've collected most of Michael Green's books, starting from his Coarse Sport series, and now giggling though his two autobiographies!


This is the sequel to his first hilarious volume of his early life, 'The boy who shot down an airship' and one short passage has me laughing out loud every time I remember it...   

It's a description of a somewhat hopeless cricketer friend of Green's, who, like many of us, just enjoyed the game, possibly without ever scoring, or  doing anything else on the field for that matter!

So this character, Alistair, having scored yet another duck, strolls back to the pavilion, and asks the scorer, 'a little crippled lad', how many runs did he score! The scorer, Dave, who was also the team secretary and clerk, looks up and exclaims, "Blimey Alistair, you didn't get any, what made you think you did"?

"I thought I hit a four in the first over" Alistair says hopefully, and Dave would double up with laughter and say something like, "If you ever hit a four Alistair, my prick's a blowlamp"! Everyone present would dissolve into hysteria!

And just typing this has got me chuckling uncontrollably to myself...!


Friday, 26 September 2025

Worms...


Just an aside from the air guitar post a few days ago, Alexa found me this gem, which is one of the most powerful earworms of recent years!

(Rumours that Pink Floyd have been invited to play at the Sodden Prickney Annual Music Festival are grossly exaggerated.)

Saturday, 13 September 2025

Those sackings...



There was uproar at the Sodden Prickney Parish Council meeting at some day or other last week!

(Writes Slimcea Harpic - Reporter).

Cllr Cynthia Molestrangler was running late, having waited in for over four hours for her grocery delivery, only to find that she'd ordered it all for the next day, so the meeting was delayed more than somewhat!

The opening statements and welcoming to the three village residents with several small poodlediddlewiddle dogs who had come in out of the cold were drowned out by a sudden downpour of such ferocity, that Cllr Norman Wibble actually had to leave the chamber to mop out the Ladies toilets, and as he was supposed to be taking the minutes, there was a further delay!

Cllr Basil Kalashnikov started the proceedings with the usual rant about everyone being against him, especially 'The Bugle', a newspaper which has a history of spelling as bad as The Guardian, and on one occasion, even managing to explain to the village the term, 'Bicyclist', which is a religion long-espoused by Cllr Edwina Baggage, and who was not amused, especially as she'd just finished a long ride with a young relative of PC Lumbersnatch!

After Cllr Kalashnikov had been persuaded to sit down and stop waving his arms around, the meeting dragged itself to the first item on the agenda.

There had been a long association between Cllr Newt and Cllr Ron Groat, which sometimes reached the questionable ascendancy of Cleopatra and Anthony, Romeo and Juliet, Starmer and... (get on with it - Ed), and the time had come for these two long-standing, some may say everlasting, others may say...(I said bloody well get on with it - Ed), stalwarts of politics in the village had to become a thing of the past! They had both been embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with various members of the public, who were not a million miles away from the business of Tax Specialist!

It appeared, that after all these years - about seven, according to Cllr Sid Trumpet, there had been serious irregularities regarding the council chamber rent paid, which sometimes appeared in the accounts of the Council, or in Cllr Groat's bank account - often at the same time!

As nobody on the committee knew anything about finance issues, the advisers, a small firm in the next village had decided to explain the issues about all this money floating around, but finishing up in Cllr Newt's love-nest in Worthing, a small village not far from Hove! Their report was in full view of the committee!

It was a sad state of affairs! Cllr Groat immediately demanded that further investigation be carried out on all the firms which had 'advised' them, and that a committee be formed to report back in three years' time. For some reason only known to herself, Cllr Molestrangler immediately agreed, and pretended to take a vote, crashing her gavel with considerable force on the bejewelled fingers on Cllr Baggage, who squealed in anguish, and screamed for compensation with immediate effect!

PC Lumbersnatch mis-heard her demands, believing that a potential bicycling 'event' was on the cards, and immediately ran to her side with a pressure bandage and a large bottle of smelling salts, tinged with a questionable sort of brandy he makes at home!

At this point Dr. Norbert Iodine arrived, having been held up seeing a patient who had plied him with several single malts, and, belching softly, took over the administrations by levering PC Lumbersnatch away from the heaving chest of Ms Baggage, and placing a cold stethoscope amongst the accoutrements displayed quite prominently! This caused an even louder scream to emanate from the unfortunate lady, and while Cllr Wibble and Cllr Newt crept slowly and silently from the chamber, the meeting was abandoned.

The only sounds one could hear after the lights had been turned off, were from an enraged Cllr Basil Kalashnikov who had been locked in and was yelling to get out and that everyone must be sacked forthwith!

Nobody took any notice...


Tuesday, 2 September 2025

Air guitar - Echoes...



I thought that everyone here should know that I have perfected the guitar sections of this epic performance using the unimaginable, but eminently skilful, expertise of an Air Guitar!

There are far too many sections of this classic to describe here, but suffice to say that when the huge climax after the 'soft' section, with Rick Wright and David Gilmour 'fighting' for the front stage with enormous attraction for the performance, Scrobs is well away in front of the cooker, with the new potatoes bubbling away, and the - whatever - steaming/roasting/burning somewhere else, possibly where he cannot be absolutely sure, as the music just takes over...


Saturday, 30 August 2025

Tread carefully...

As some of Scrobs' readers know, we live next to the village church, and little/big dog chooses to walk around the boneyard on some occasions! I still like the walks, and always marvel at the intricate stonework of the delightful building!

My construction roots have often enquired into the way some construction was carried out, what materials were used etc., and that curiosity often manifests itself on wondering how such large stones could have been quarried, brought to the site from miles away, prepared, and most of all, lifted to the top of the tower, which is around sixty feet high!

Of course, the larger pieces of stone are at the bottom, and smaller pieces higher up, but a builder's electric lift wasn't actually invented all those years ago, and scaffolding would have been pretty rudimentary, but what sort of crane system was used to lift these heavy items?

The answer was easy to find...


What an absolute treasure to uncover after all this time!

It makes perfect sense to see how the work was carried out, albeit incredibly dangerous for the poor bloke under a ton of sandstone, swaying in the wind...

I've now got to work out where they placed the machine, and will look for a few dents in the ground from when the rope broke occasionally...


Monday, 25 August 2025

Here we go round the morosity...

Scrobs had a message from Amazon Prime the other day, with an offer of a free film, for some reason!

Now that always needs a little thought, as there's one film I'd like to see again, after all these years, so I popped in a search to see if it was there...


Now, I always liked Oliver Reed, possibly because back then, he was the sort of swash-buckling hell-raiser, with a penchant for pretty women that young chaps in their late teens sometimes enjoyed emulating, (not), but the films he appeared in, like 'The Jokers' etc, just seemed to be the sort of flick my chums and I went to see! So when my lovely chum Ro told me one morning at the office, that she'd been to see this film with her boyfriend, it was going to be the next one to see after several pints at the rugby club!

But...

It's nowhere to be seen on the Prime list! Baaaah!

So of course, while the search box is still open, one wonders what else might be around, and sure enough, another favourite...




...from the same era appeared, and it was actually free! So I started it off on the Electronic Filofax, (iPad), and away we went, with Barry Evans, and lots of lovely girls on recall from all those years ago, and also quite a lot of misty recollection!

It was certainly a film from an era which is now long gone, but great fun, and worth seeing again, if only to see the gorgeous Judy Geeson in a superb part - well, showing several parts actually,  but of course, that's not what I mean, (lying sod, Scrobs - Ed), it was just that those days were very well depicted, and I remember them reasonably well, as of course, we'd be watching the film after several tinctures...

So the film ended, and I mused as to what happened to all those beautiful girls who filled the cast with all sorts of emotions, and a foray into the archives seemed the right thing to do!

Wrong call...




...all popped off this mortal paradise...

Barry Evans also left us some time ago, and we still use the term, 'You're so wearing Waring', from 'The Doctor' series!

But much better news from two of the others: -

Adrienne Posta is still here with us thank goodness, but I haven't seen her anywhere in the press of late! (Oh, Jamie)...

And luckily, I found that Judy Geeson is here too, but living in the US - more's the pity, as a quick 192 might have been on the cards! She was just fabulous in that part; we all loved her to bits!

So, all in all, it was a 'great' evening, and maybe a final Calvados might have started the recall-fest, but there again, who would really want to forget those times, and the lovely ladies us chaps could only dream of!