0.769231%...

 

One of these varmints has reduced my tomato crop by the above amount...

This year, as in many seasons past, Scrobs has sown tomato seeds in abundance, sometimes manic, screaming profusion, because we especially like home-grown tomatoes, and the passion also extends to giving plants away to chums whom we particularly like, and they provide a super opportunity for receiving several lingering hugs from the benefactors, especially if they are the local girls!

So the greenhouse has shelving bulging with 130 plants of varying types of tom, 'Shirley' being the main crop, with 'Roma' a secondary sowing, and 'Orkado', which is a new one I'm trying out this year. The 'Roma' seeds were thrust at me by a lady chum last year, as she always had trouble germinating the seeds for some reason, so I acted as surrogate grower for her, and received the obligatory squeeze and prolonged peck for the result, which was jolly interesting, I can tell you!

But this year, the 'Shirley' seeds seemed to go into a sulk, and refused to show in their compost for over three weeks, which is just not normal! The others were also struggling, so in panic, I visited our local garden centre, where the lovely lady there told me not to worry, sit down on a bag of compost to rest, and she would give me three more packets of seed buckshee, as the rep for the seed company was coming in that afternoon, and she'd get a full refund anyway!

So, after her Gladys Emmanuel moment, which is always extremely gratifying, Scrobs returned to sow the new seeds, and pray for a result! The prayers included the wish that at least one or two of the earlier seeds might show, so a decent crop could be managed, and sure enough, about a nano-second after checking the original crop, the whole bloody lot appeared with a symphony of greenery rather like a hundred Kermits on a trampoline!

The new seeds took just a few hours to show, and there was a bemused Scrobs with 130 plants on his hands, and wondering how he could cope with all the hugs, squeezes, pecks etc., which would be due from an increasing list of benefactresses! I began to make a list of names, well away from the interested eyes of Senora O'Blene who would soon be asking certain questions...

But...! Catastrophe!

An early morning visit to the greenhouse turned into an arrival at a murder scene, as one of the dear little Shirleys had been demolished by the very evil sort of mollusc shown in the mug-shot above! The evidence was all there with the slime trail leaping over the edge of the seed tray!

Slug pellets had to be distributed with immediate effect, and sure enough, the following day, the offending little critter had succumbed to the dubious chemical and become a late mollusc, and not before time!

So, there are only 129 little darlings left, and already Scrobs is readying himself to receive the various bodily conversations to be expected in the forthcoming days - one was a phone call, but he is an elderly chum, and the other is an email, but I'll get there sometime very soon, as soon as signing off this post if I'm lucky...

Lost in translation...

 

Fabulous story...

A few weeks ago, Senora O'Blene and Scrobs were discussing various reading options.

Senora is an avid, even compulsive reader, often getting through all sorts of literature in a couple of days, whereas I tend to take much longer and often go back several pages just to get 'things right in my head'!

'A town like Alice' by Nevil Shute was mentioned several times as one of our favourite books, and indeed, a quick foray into 'World of Books' and 'Music Magpie' found a copy, and while we were on, I selected a few more for good measure.

We both went through  the former in a few days, and were hooked - for the second time! 

(I might have mentioned here, that many years ago, I contracted mumps when in my early twenties and back then the doctor would call around, and it was just as well that he did, as I was immediately confined to bed to avoid the dreaded - er - complications - some of which my flatmate painfully experienced as he just carried on carousing - it was Christmas after all! I read 'A town like Alice' in exactly one day, as I'd refused to move an inch in bed - except for mercy visits - to avoid the impending nasties! I'd never read a book that quickly before and haven't since!

So after collecting my breath after the Alice story, the next ones by Nevil Shute have just got better and better, with 'Round the bend' being excellent,'The Far Country' turning out to be a fantastic, emotional yarn, and just last evening, I finished 'Trustee from the Toolroom', which in my opinion must be one of the best books I've ever read! I was even dreaming about the plot during the only night between starting and finishing the story, and while there was the lingering considered inkling of the outcome, there were so many surprises in the second half that I just couldn't put it down!

So it seems that the worthy booksellers above will have to put up with lots of more packaging, 25% offers being taken up, and hopefully they'll get a few more from Walsall Public Library - marked 15p...

 

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!