BEMLi

[MHW]

Kid Brother writes:

"A colleague was hill-walking in rural Sheffield the other week and on his
way down from the top of a particularly impressive summit, passed by none
other than Dave Blunkett & dog, making the trip up to the top. Unthinking,
he waves a hello to Yorkshire's favourite son and shouts out: 'Oi, it's a
right view up there!'"

--
MHW

[MHW]

Mr G on Valentine's Dat:

"So, I suspect there's two camps for this (notwithstanding the singles).
1) "It's Worldwide Hallmark day. They're not having any more of my cash.
And everything else becomes a fucking rip off for 24 hours." 2) "If you
love someone, show them. Why not on that day?"

Being bemli, I hope everyone's in the first camp. But I'm sure everyone
in that camp is fully aware that, no matter what they say, their partners
want to be made a fuss of for (a minimum of) a day. And if you don't
produce some sort of romantic gesture, it will be remembered - and whinged
about to relatives and other dark forces.

So the ideal solution seems to be some sort of shitty home-made card, and
some daffs from the garden. No? I've only been in this relationship for
7 years, so I'm still figuring out what the fuck I'm supposed to do at
times like this. We went out for a meal one year, but it was a pretty
traumatic, veal-transportation sort of experience. I'd barely put my
napkin down before the remains of my rubbery main course had been swiped
from under my nose and replaced by a manky sorbet. Then, once that had
gone, they abandoned any previously displayed remnants of politeness and
decorum, effectively frog-marching us off the premises.

If anyone hung around in the bar for too long, a kitchen-hand would go out
to the car park and set off a fake car alarm - thus forcing dozens of
people to leave the bar, aimlessly waving alarm-plippers above their
heads, waiting for the OK signal. That's not true, obviously."

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MHW

[MHW]

Professor Payne:

"Just seen a government advert trying to encourage people to go into
Social Care as a career.

It tried to get you to do this by showing imagery of someone washing
an old woman's legs. And, in addition, *talking* about washing old
women's legs.

If 50 to 80 years of aggressive Coca-Cola marketing has told us
anything, surely it's that old women's legs never encouraged anyone to
do anything."

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MHW

[MHW]

Mr G is a keen tourist:

"I've been at a wedding on the Isle of Wight. Jesus fucking Christ,
what a shit-hole that place is. Everything that has been wrong with
English coastal "resorts" over the last 200 years is carelessly
bundled together, perched atop a rapidly eroding lump of chalk and
connected to civilisation by a ferry that costs about £60 a mile.

We visited The Needles on the way back to the ferry. It was Papa
Lazarou's circus, overlooking the most incredibly underwhelming sticks
of chalk near an obviously useless midget-lighthouse. I suspect the
lighthouse is deliberately tiny in order to make The Needles look
bigger in photos. Only once I'd viewed the chalky drumsticks from
above did I understand why every Needles photo I had previously seen
was taken from sea level...

... I drove past that [Blackgang Chine] at about 80mph. Apparently
it's moved from where it used to be, as some of it fell down the
cliff. My g/f wanted to go there so that we could be photographed
standing near a fibreglass giant. Apparently this is why people go
there. Anyway, happily we turned up 2 hours early for the ferry back
and, after much pleading with the disinterested check-in monkey,
managed to escape before the dockside fell into the sea.

... Ladies, I said it was a shit-hole and that it took all the crap
things about such places and cockily displayed them as if they were
its own perfectly planned fuckups. I'm sure there are other English
seaside "resorts" that are at least as crap. After all, I live fairly
near to Weston-Super-Mare."

--
MHW