Bill Tidy R.I.P...

I guess that the first time I ever really started laughing at Bill Tidy's fabulously funny cartoons, was around 1967, when I started work in Rye, Sussex, and walking past the newsagents one day, I noticed that they had a copy of Private Eye on their stand outside - for 1/6d!

I was immediately hooked on 'The Cloggies', and forever turned first to their antics on the same page as the Barry Mckenzie strip, which funnily enough, I didn't read very much as much of it went over my head for a while...

But Bill Tidy's cartoons will live with me forever! He was so funny and displayed a myriad of subjects in unimaginable situations, in fact some of them were just hilariously improbable, but I'm lucky in having a treasured book of some of his cartoons, and will now look at the whole lot again!

I bet the editors of 'The Daily Heaven' rag will soon be asking him to illustrate their welcoming pages, especially as he used to love depicting vicars, nuns and monks, and that when I eventually get there, I'll ask him to sign my copy of his book...

'Bye Bill; twenty-seven pints please Doris...

 

Klinger gems...

Having recently having to resort to Anglo-Saxon language to get some idiot to see sense, I  tried to remember one of the best 'put-downs' I've ever heard, but was lost for several days, until a light-bulb moment started the quest and Google found the answer! 

“If my dog had your face, I'd shave his butt and teach him to walk backwards!”

— Maxwell Klinger, M*A*S*H, Season 5: End Run

I inherited a book from a dear neighbour called, "I wish I'd said that", and it is just utterly hilarious!

The Sodden Prickney email saga...

There was uproar and more angry exchanges at the Sodden Prickney council meeting last Thursday, when it was discovered that Edwina Baggage, Bicycling Correspondent at 'The Bugle', had made copies of all the emails Ron Groat had sent to Miss Newt during her application to build a 65,000s.f. Community Centre and Retail Emporium. It was well known that all meetings during the Tandemic, (there were two of them), had been conducted by Vavoom on council property Series 1 iPads! There were also questions to be answered as to why Clr Cynthia Molestrangler always seemed to be dressed in a fetching nightdress and negligee, which left very little to be desired! (Do you mean 'imagination' - Ed)? It was assumed that this was conducted to enrage or encourage the various enraged hankerings Cllr Basil Kalashnikov had for the lady, but he sometimes questioned the possibility that as the meeting was in the afternoon, was Ms Molestrangler trying to give him the idea that she'd just got up after another Vavoom with PC Lumbersnatch, who always investigated these issues at a moment's notice, and left his bike around the back of her house, just in case!

What made Clr Kalashnikov more angry, was that 'The Bugle' had started to publish these emails, together with the various dubious attachments relating to certain medical preparations, and pictures of foreign ladies of leisure available online, (occasioned by Vavoom), and that every parishioner now knew that his condition was self-inflicted, and not in any way connected with his visit to Beijing to study ways and means of council road-sign maintenance!

One other reason why Miss Baggage was so angry, was that she was denied a Business Class air ticket to join him on this important (?) three-week foray into commercial enterprise in the Far East, and instead had to watch Clr Kalashnikov take off with the close company of Ms Emily D'Artagnan-Minge, who often offers her advice during (and mostly for a few hours after), the council meetings! Miss Baggage has now filed at least thirty of these emails, and intends to drip-feed the remaining messages, while redacting the ones where she had impinged on Mr Groat, a euphemism one presumes, as Miss Newt had gone round to her house and given her a fourpenny-one on both ears for her trouble!

Dr Norbert Iodine has had to be brought in at a week's notice, during surgery hours of 1.00pm-1.30pm, to try and make Ms Baggage to see sense, but as he is busy with trying to ease Clr Norman Wibble's personal concerns about global warming, VAT increases in horse liniment and a general malaise when confronted with anything Janet Reger nowadays, there's not a lot that can be done about it all, so Clr Kalashnikov may well resign himself to facing yet another challenge when the council meet again, probably sometime in the Autumn of 2024!

Why Solomon Grundy...

I am confused...

Instead of having a musical 'earworm', where a song or theme continues to go round and round my head in a loop, I have this one...

Solomon Grundy,

Born on a Monday,

Christened on Tuesday

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Grew worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday,

That was the end of 

Solomon Grundy!

I first saw this pinned to the wall at school, around 1959, and it was written in his best handwriting by a younger chap called Bill, who sadly popped off with a dreadful disease a few years ago, but he certainly wasn't to know that when he wrote it!

There might be a connection with the TV presenter, another Bill, Grundy, who had a hard time interviewing John Lydon (Johnny Rotten), as from the previous post...

There's a company which makes kits for home brewing and wine-making, but although we make gallons of the stuff, I've never bought any of their products - maybe I should...

And I was blissfully ignorant of the awful-looking comic character if you can be bothered to Google the image, so it can't be that...

So I'm still confused!

Hawaii...

I've never been a fan of punk musuc, but I've only just heard a short piece about John Lydon's sad tribute to his wife, Norah, who is gradually falling into dementia's arms. This piece is incredibly haunting, poignant and emotive, and I find it so sad and even difficult to listen to without tearing up.

My dear mum ended her life after three years of Alzheimers, and we watched her losing her mind so gradually, it was almost imperceptible at times. She didn't even know that my dad had died a year earlier, so neither of them knew the other one had gone!

Shameslessly borrowed from Concrete Sea...

A friend of mine sent me a link to a BBC weather report:-

Why have there been no named winter storms this year?

By February, the UK would normally have had around three storms given names by the Met Office – just like Arwen, Barra and Callum. But so far this autumn and winter, there hasn’t been a single one.

I’m sure we shouldn’t worry, but to help them out I’ve thought of a few:-

Storm Boris. A lot of bluster and blowing with a considerable amount of hot air.
Storm Nicola. A nasty vicious little storm generally prevalent in the North and independent of all other UK storms. People are apt to take little notice of it, but can cause widespread damage in Scotland, apart from to the trans community.
Storm Liz. Blew away before it even started (thankfully).
Storm Kier. Another storm people take little notice of. Often present but generally ineffective and lacking in power.
Storm Rishi. A small storm, but can be persistent and slightly annoying.
Storm Nadhim. Originates from Iraq, but deceptive and often seen offshore, eventually blown away by storm Rishi.

(H/T Concrete Sea - BBBC).

Old address books...

By this PC, and safely tucked away in a drawer, lies our collection of address books, which go back to around 1984. I'm not even sure where the previous ones are, maybe archived in the Scrobsfile in the attic...

I could show you a photo of them, but somehow the software seems to dislike the image, so please, just imagine what three, gnarled, grubby books full of crossings-out looks like, and you'll get the idea!

Sadly, we decided to go through them the other lunchtime, aided and abetted by a glass of red, and the diagonal lines across several names seem to be multiplying as we speak!

Mind you, there were loads of laughs, lots of 'remember her/hims', a few tears, a lot of joy, seeing the names and knowing they're still around, but at our time of life, these dear old books take on a life of their own, and deserve a peek now and then - for old times sake...