bluebottle

The tenor of The Stationmaster's observation chimed with a couple of lines in a Brian Aldiss story I'd been reading shortly beforehand. Those lines he gave to a character who was returning with companions from a party and "With tipsy solemnity he sang to himself:- "There was a young man in December, who sighed, "Oh I hardly remember, How the girls in July used to kiss me and tie----- " Aldiss, I seem to remember, was rather fond of introducing the topic of Free Love into his stories ...

Very disciplined of you!

Thanks, Q. Helen and Richard (and Richard's mother, a registered child minder) will be watching Emily and the new girl like a kettle of hawks, so she'll be in good hands.

Big sister practice! Emily's just been told to expect a baby sister some time in March, so she's embarked with some enthusiasm on her training in preparation for her promotion to Big sister.

My MIL's gone to the East Indies. Jakarta? No, she flew with Singapore Airlines.

Well, I tried, out of politeness, to think of something, but decided that I couldn't give a fart and went to bed instead...

Make mine a large one please! (The Joels are at Abersoch with the Firbeck Sailing Club)

According to my Sunday school teacher, Manna comes from Heaven, certainly not Stralia!!

I couldn't get my bedside lamp to work until my next door neighbour, an electrician, pointed out that I had to put a lamp in it.

A common dilemma in the days before all-seating footie stadiums. A classic exchange was: "Well, do it in the coat pocket of the bloke on the other side of you." "But he'll notice!" "Maybe not - you didn't!"

Phone call from brother Norrie... "Are you watching the England game?" Me: "No, I'd forgotten about it." Norrie (gleefully): "I've just switched on - Panama's winning 1-0! Oh - hang on... (disappointedly) As you were...England's winning 6-1... Damn. I need to get new glasses."

When the late Tony Capstick was booked for a gig down south, the club organisers made the faux pas of booking him into a local hotel without a bar. Sober but ill-tempered, he became irritated by a prosperous-looking German man who was dominating the conversation in the lounge, and broke into the man's monologue... "You're German, are you? "Yes, that is so." "My father used to go over to Germany on business." "Oh, what business was he in? "He was a bomb-aimer in a lancaster."

There's something wrong with my local TV transmitter - Yesterday, I thought I'd tuned into the BBC for the England vs Tunisia game, but I got some sort of an all-in wrestling competition instead. To whom should I complain?

“Unlike my predecessors, I have devoted more of my life to shunting and hooting than to hunting and shooting...” From a speech by Sir Fred Burrows, the last Governor of undivided Bengal (1946-7), having been President of The National Union of Railwaymen.

One of my favourite lines in "The Simpsons" is Lisa's reaction to an unexpected meeting with a well-known bass guitarist and his missus: "Paul and Linda McCartney! We learned about you in history!"

Sleep tight, everybody.

A busy day at Rother Valley Country Park - Goslings galore - Honk!

Sorting some of my books the other day, I came across my copy of John Hunt's "The Ascent of Everest". I received this as a prize at the end of my last school year at Newcraighall primary, in 1954, before we moved down to South Yorks. I greatly enjoyed reading this, finding the detailed descriptions of the mountain landscape and the climbing techniques and equipment used informative and interesting. It didn't awake any ambitions in me to be a climber, though; I still regard mountaineers as brave, skilful and mad. Looking at the illustrations in the book now, however, I can see things I hadn't noticed before. In the attached copy of the picture of the summit can be seen a human face, partly hidden by snow. This has a gentle expression, kind and wistful, as though it's one of the Buddhist gods whom the Sherpas believe to dwell atop the mountains. And, perhaps going from the sublime to the ridiculous, is that a pair of rock guitarists perched farther down the slopes??

Or a back passage, to connect it to the suppository joke ...

I used to practise that kind of expression in front of the mirror; my first line of defence whether I was in the right or the wrong was to look hurt. Worked like a charm!

Aughton, South Yorkshire In the mid 50s... we saw Finningley-based Vulcans fly over our primary school fairly regularly, once one so low that it seemed to blot out the sky and shake the brickwork. Our teacher, Fanny Newell, a spinsterly tomboy, beat all us boys in the race to the windows. An indelible memory. ... Years later, the opening scene of "Star Wars" seemed a pale imitation...

On each anniversary of the Dam Busters raid, the BOB flight's Lancaster flies over my house on its way to do a few runs over the Derwent dam. On one of these occasions, while my Liz was still alive, I called her to the window to see the Lanc, escorted by a Spitfire. "Oh," she said, not all that interested, "Which one's the Spitfire?"