Category Archives: Humour

Love from Rover

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You may have noticed that there are no more heart-shaped balloons in shop windows anymore, that the fluffy pink teddy bears and cute little doe-eyed toy puppies proclaiming “I woof you”  (must be Chinese) have all disappeared, and the card shops on the high street have all undergone an overnight makeover. Yes, that celebration of kitsch ,vulgarity and blatant capitalism, formerly known as the Feast of St Valentine  has left us  for another year.

How times have changed. Like Mothering Sunday (Mother’s Day to the masses), St Valentine’s Day has changed beyond recognition and has become yet another day of rampant commercialism when many people thoughtlessly buy cards and gifts because they feel they have to.

Everybody gets involved now and what was once a simple celebration of love and romance has become something else entirely. I’m neither a curmudgeon nor a grumpy old man – yet, but I had to shake my head whilst choosing a card for my own true love. The trouble was, I wanted something simple and nothing too elaborate or vomit-inducing.

I found one eventually, stuck there among Valentine’s cards from children to parents, from parents and grand parents to children and believe it or not (you will, of course) cards from the family cat or dog. Poor old St Valentine, even his Roman executioners treated him with more respect than that!

Caught in a Trap

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Evidently, London’s Fire Services are bracing themselves for a dramatic rise in call outs from people unable to release themselves or their partners from handcuffs and other restraints following today’s UK release of the “mummy-porn” film “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

According to a fire service spokesman (person, sorry!) they regularly have call outs from all sorts of adventurers who come a cropper, so to speak. There is concern at the higher levels of the fire service that the  release of the film is only likely to make matters considerably worse.

Asked to provide examples, the spokesperson revealed that in the past couple of years fire crews have attended 28 incidents involving people trapped in handcuffs, removed 293 rings including 7 from male genitalia and released men’s genitals from vacuum cleaners or toasters

Now, I’d like to think that I’ve got a fairly broad mind and am reasonably enlightened so that  I can just about understand the warped rationale behind messing around with a vacuum cleaner (though presumably not a Dyson!). However, on the basis that the action is voluntary, I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend the thrill or pleasure in inserting one’s genitalia into a toaster. Or is that just me?

Screening the Undesirables

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I was quite relieved when my US Visa was recently renewed for another ten years. Not because I thought there was any reason why the US authorities would refuse my application but simply because I had managed to negotiate my way through the minefield of bureaucracy.

Such applications have to be carefully vetted, particularly in these dangerous days, and officials need to be both thorough and meticulous to ensure that no undesirable aliens gain entry to their country. Bureaucrats the world over have a tendency to be rather serious and cheerless, in my experience, and so it was a pleasant surprise to be treated with politeness, courtesy and not a little humour when I visited the US embassy in London for my interview.

Mind you, to get to the interview stage applicants have to first complete an exhaustive online application and answer a huge and diverse array of questions some of which are predictable and others not so.

Among the questions were the following, which I quote verbatim –

“Are you coming to the US to engage in prostitution……………………………………….…?”

“Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage…….…or any other illegal activity in the US?”

“Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the US……………………………..?”

“Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted or otherwise participated in genocide?”

What an ingenious deterrent! Just think of the thousands of undesirables whose plans to enter the USA have been thwarted by those cunning questions!

Fortunately I was able to answer them all in the negative and so the good people of America can rest easy in their beds at night, safe in the knowledge that this alien, at least, is going to cause them no trouble at all!

War on Illiteracy

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Recent news headlines have highlighted the Government proposals for a “war on illiteracy and numeracy” and an attack by the  Prime Minister “on school mediocrity”. Well, we do have an election in three months’ time so it’s hardly surprising that education (or lack of it) is to be one of the political battle grounds.

What caught my attention was the plan for every 11 year old to be able to pass a test on the 12 times table and to be able to write a short coherent story. I don’t want to hark back to “my day”, and I hope my memory doesn’t deceive me here, but I’m pretty sure that nearly every 7 or 8 year old in my rather ordinary state primary school class would have been able to do those things without too much difficulty.

Have standards really fallen that much in the last 50 years?  Certainly, when I look at some of the everyday examples of misspelling, punctuation and grammar displayed by adults I am not so sure. Here are some common errors.

First of all, the invention of the verb “of” as in stating or writing “I would of” instead of the correct “I would have” or “I would’ve”. Maybe my English studies were in some way deficient but I honestly cannot remember that particular verb!

Secondly, the confusion over the words “there”, “their” and “they’re” such as “I went to there house” or “Their will be lots of people at the party”. Is there any wonder that so many children are illiterate if this is the sort of example they receive from their parents’ generation?

Lastly, the use of “your” instead of “you are” or “you’re”. I remember once sitting on a Florida beach (thankfully, poor grammar is not a British monopoly!) when a light aircraft flew over the sun-kissed sands trailing a banner which read “Chelsea Your Amazing”.

I cringed and thought how sad that some guy (could have been a girl, of course) had paid all that money only for his message of love to be completely screwed up. Then I thought, rather cynically, the guy is probably so rich that the object of his affection is unlikely to be bothered by his illiteracy, assuming of course, that the lovely Chelsea was aware of it in the first place!

I doubt she would of made a fuss though and I imagine that there happily married by now!

Reverse Karma

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Earlier this week, during a visit to London, like most capital cities a busy and often impersonal place, two events occurred causing me to re-evaluate that viewpoint.

Firstly, after leaving the Underground at Green Park I stopped at a fruit stall. I told the seller that I had no change and asked him would he be able to give change for a £20 note. He said “Yes, I suppose so unless you just want a banana”.

I replied, laughing, “Actually that’s exactly what I want”! He said “Well take one anyway and pay me when you walk past again”. I replied that I wouldn’t be passing that way again and he told me not to worry and to just take one. I said “No, I can’t do that. I’ll get some change from another stall”.

So I bought some mints and a Snickers bar from a nearby stall and, armed with my change, returned and paid 30p for the banana. He even gave me the biggest of the bunch!

I thanked him and carried on my journey with a good feeling about the world.

Three minutes later I turned a corner and suddenly a clearly distressed young woman stopped in front of me, said she was desperate and asked me “Please, don’t walk away”. She told me that she had had an argument with her boyfriend and had walked out of his flat but without any money to get to her home, several miles away to the south of the City. She said she was telling the truth and would leave her mobile phone with me as surety for any money I gave her!

She seemed genuinely upset and so I asked her how much the train fare was. She replied that it was £14. I said I wouldn’t give her that but would give her some change. I gave her a £2 coin and she expressed her gratitude and walked off (still with her cell phone, of course!) no doubt with the intention of confronting somebody else.

Was I scammed? I don’t know. On balance I probably was  but it didn’t matter and after the kindness of the fruit seller there was plenty of goodwill in the bank. Two different ends of the human spectrum and karma in reverse. Whatever, it was worth an extra £2 for the banana!

Some You Loose

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I apologise for the fact that within the space of three days this blog features, yet again, Britain’s “Best-Loved Newspaper”, or however else the Sun comic describes itself these days, but on Saturday morning I noticed their back page headline, “Winners and Loosers!”

The headline referred to a football match the previous evening, during which the “Loosers”, a very large wealthy club, failed to defeat their much smaller and poorer opposition. Perhaps the journalist (and editor) concerned were cracking some sort of joke, maybe because the manager of the “Loosers” is Dutch and he, perhaps, pronounces the word “Lose” as though it has an extra “o”. I have no idea but I hope that is the case.

Political commentators and education experts regularly inform us that literacy standards are at a very low level in the UK and so the most disturbing aspect of the Sun’s headline is the thought that the vast majority of the paper’s 2.2 million daily readership wouldn’t have even noticed the difference.

Visit Australia

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Australians are renowned for their relaxed attitude and lack of reverence and the enquiry section of a national tourism website seems to sum this up perfectly. Here is a sample of questions and answers taken from the website –

Q. Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street?
A. Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

Q. I want to walk from Perth to Sydney – can I follow the rail-road tracks?
A. Sure, it’s only three thousand miles, take lots of water.

Q. Can I bring cutlery into Australia?
A. Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q. Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can dispense rattlesnake serum.
A. Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from. All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q. I have a question about a famous Australian animal, but I forget its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees.
A. It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

The next three questions refer to a district of Sydney called King’s Cross, politely known as the city’s red light district –

Q. Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia?
A. A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific which doesn’t… oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.

Q. Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule?
A. Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is … oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

Q. I was in Australia in 1969 and I want to contact a girl I dated whilst staying in King’s Cross. Can you help?
A. Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.

You really couldn’t make this up! Priceless!

A Fool and His Money

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It was reported last week that an estranged couple, fighting over the sum of £500,000, spent nearly three times that amount, namely the princely sum of £1.3 million, in legal costs.

Not surprisingly, the judge presiding over the case referred to their behaviour as “truly absurd” which is one way of describing their mind-blowingly crass stupidity. When will people learn that on nine occasions out of ten the only beneficiaries from aggressive litigation are the lawyers?

Truly, a fool and his money are soon parted and this story brought to mind a favourite rhyme by the late American poet, Richard Armour – “That money talks I’ll not deny. I heard it once, it said ‘Goodbye’!”

Still, the lawyers, saying “Hello” to that money, must have been laughing all the way to the bank. Followed, no doubt, by a visit to the travel agents to book their luxury Christmas holiday in the Maldives!

Black Friday

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Last Friday we enjoyed, not the right word I know considering the undignified scrapping and punch-ups at stores up and down the country, a relatively new phenomenon (at least for us in the UK) called “Black Friday”.

It is, of course, an American phenomenon which occurs the day following Thanksgiving when, after a surfeit of turkey, Budweiser and Football (the NFL variety), our American cousins pile into the stores to grab bargains at knock-down prices.

We already have a similar shopping frenzy on Boxing Day when shoppers, for some inexplicable reason still not sated by the pre-Christmas spending splurge, think nothing of leaving their cosy warm beds to camp outside stores on a usually cold, wet, wintry night to await opening time and a dogfight for bargains.

Why we would want to copy the Americans and do the same thing the day after Thanksgiving, a day that I imagine most of the shoppers shown on our television screens on Friday night could barely spell, let alone celebrate, is beyond me.

Still, it allowed the rest of the world to see just how far our multicultural society has advanced.

Street Food

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I drove past a restaurant the other day and noticed a line of people, maybe 20 or 30 yards long, waiting to go in. I later found out that this particular restaurant was extremely popular (it clearly was) and the food was excellent. So what? Why would anybody choose to queue up for food when they don’t have to? Why not either go back another time when the restaurant is less busy or just book a table somewhere else?

This seems to happens a lot in both the UK and the USA, where people with clearly enough money (or probably too much) think nothing of lining up like paupers for their food. I just don’t get it. No food is that good. I don’t care who owns the restaurant or how good the menu is, affluent Westerners waiting in line for food is unnecessary and demeaning.

Or maybe I’m just impatient!