You’re having a laugh (I hope)

Good morning all. It’s Wednesday so my guest blogger, Rambler5319, is going to take over for some humour to start your day with.

 

After the last two weeks on Genetics & Education I thought I might have a more light-hearted post this week.

Many thanks to Sam Ignarski and his E-zine Bow Wave for permission to reprint these gems taken from his website.

(For any of you with an interest in the Shipping, Insurance & Container fields, this is one website you should visit: http://www.wavyline.com/current.php)

Here we go then. Enjoy!

Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at £2500 per month.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. Now she’s 97 years old and we don’t know where the heck she is.

I joined a health club last year, spent about £400. Haven’t lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there.

I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I’m doing.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

And last but not least: I don’t exercise because it makes the ice jump right out of my glass.
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THE FINAL WORD ON NUTRITION (IN ENGLISH)

After an exhaustive review of the research literature, here’s the final word on nutrition and health:

 

1. Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 2. Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 3. Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 4. Italians and French drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 5. Germans drink beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

 CONCLUSION:

 Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

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Four old retired guys are walking down a street in Yuma, Arizona. They turn a corner and see a sign that says,

“Old Timers Bar – ALL drinks 10 cents.”
They look at each other and then go in, thinking, This is too good to be true.

The old bartender says in a voice that carries across the room, “Come on in and let me pour one for you! What’ll it be, gentlemen?”

There’s a fully stocked bar, so each of the men orders a martini. In no time the bartender serves up four iced martinis – shaken, not stirred and says, “That’ll be 10 cents each, please.”

The four guys stare at the bartender for a moment, then at each other. They can’t believe their good luck. They pay the 40 cents, finish their martinis and order another round.

Again, four excellent martinis are produced, with the bartender again saying, “That’s 40 cents, please.” They pay the 40 cents, but their curiosity gets the better of them. They’ve each had two martinis and haven’t even spent a dollar yet.

Finally one of them says, “How can you afford to serve martinis as good as these for a dime apiece?”

“I’m a retired tailor from Phoenix ,” the bartender says, “and I always wanted to own a bar. Last year I hit the Lottery jackpot for $125 million and decided to open this place. Every drink costs a dime. Wine, liquor, beer – it’s all the same.”

“Wow! That’s some story!” one of the men says.

As the four of them sip at their martinis, they can’t help noticing seven other people at the end of the bar who don’t have any drinks in front of them and haven’t ordered anything the whole time they’ve been there.

Nodding at the seven at the end of the bar, one of the men asks the bartender, “What’s with them?”

The bartender says, “They’re retired people from Scotland, They’re waiting for Happy Hour when drinks are half-price.”

 

Needs Funds

Merci Paul Dixon

A young man was having some money problems, and needed £200 to get his car fixed and roadworthy again. But had run out of people to borrow from.

So, he calls his parents via the operator, and reverses the charge and says to his father. “I need to borrow two hundred pounds,” he says.

At the other end, his father says, “Sorry, I can’t hear you, son, I think there may be a bad line.”

The boy shouts, “Two hundred. I need two hundred pounds!”

“Sorry, I still can’t hear you clearly,” says his father.

The operator cuts in, “Sorry to butt in, But I can hear him perfectly clearly.”

The father says, “Good. YOU send him the money!”

 

Quips and Quotes

Sales clerk to customer:
“These stretch pants come with a warranty of one year or 500,000 calories… whichever comes first.”

Woman huddled under blanket on deserted, wind-swept beach to husband: “Tell me again how much money we’re saving with this off-season deal.”

Man is the only animal that goes to sleep when he’s not sleepy and gets up when he is.
–Dave Gneiser

A good answer is what you think of later.
–Sam Ewing

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application.
–Ken Kraft

No one appreciates the value of constructive criticism more thoroughly than the one who’s giving it.
–Hal Chadwick

My wife and I have structured conversations:
firstly, she gives me her opinion, then she gives me my opinion.

I’m weird, but around here it’s barely noticeable.

The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she’d have children if she had it to do over again. “Sure,” she replied, “but not the same ones.”

Everyone should have a spouse, because there are a number of things that go wrong that one can’t blame on the government.

I accept good advice gracefully —
as long as it doesn’t interfere with what I intended to do in the first place.

I wrote this poem about 15 years ago in Ireland. In those days, that country was so strict you used to have to smuggle condoms through the airport in bags of heroin.
–Punk poet John Cooper Clarke

Never hit a man with glasses.
Hit him with a baseball bat.

Thesaurus: ancient reptile with excellent vocabulary.

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action. –Goethe

I like pigs.
Dogs look UP to us.
Cats look DOWN on us.
Pigs treat us as EQUALS.
–Winston Churchill

Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.
–Frank Crow

If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at maths.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

If things get better with age, I’m approaching magnificent!

You’re so open-minded, your brains fell out

You might as well take all of me — the parts you want aren’t removable.

I have an open mind — it’s just closed for repairs.

At least dogs do what you tell them to do. Cats take a message and get back to you.

I’ve gotta be me — everyone else was already taken.

Do not meddle in the place of dragons … you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.

We occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry on as if nothing happened.

 

Halloween at Ham House

I’ve never been much of a Halloween celebrator. I have put pumpkins in the window and got sweets and waited and the children have not knocked on the door anyway. And that’s the most I’ve done. This year, however, Ham House was in charge and they had an evening of fun planned that I couldn’t help but get caught up in.

After finishing our normal work day, we whipped out the crazy make-up and got ready for the evening.

The house looked fabulous, lit up against the dark sky.

(Just realised that the above photo doesn’t do it any justice at all.)

They had tons of good stuff happening in the house. Unfortunately, I was working in the Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun bar so I didn’t get photos so I’ll tell you about it.

There were séances happening in the attic, scary films showing in the chapel, a pair of real lungs hanging in the meat larder downstairs, mini ghost tours, a design-your-own-gravestone art workshop and a photo booth that made the photos look all old and faded and ghosty.

It was brilliant fun, if the mood of the customers in the bar was anything to go by.

The outfits were amazing too. Everyone had dressed up for the occasion and some people had really gone to town with it. One woman was dressed as a pumpkin and had somehow lit it from inside so as she wandered around the gardens, I could just see this massive orange ball. There were ninjas and witches, mime artists and dead brides, and everything in between.

I’ll try and see if anyone else at work got good photos and I’ll put them here for you to see.

The time I went to Oceana

I dislike ‘clubbing’ as I don’t really drink so end up squashed in between lots of sweaty drunk people while they try and talk nonsense to me and I try to dance around a bit, like a fool.

There is a club in Kingston called Oceana. When I was at university, people used to love going to Oceana. They’d go a few times a week and be all into it. I was kind of under the impression that there might be something good going on there so one time, when we were getting ready for a night out, the plan started to include Oceana and I decided to go along, intrigued by what might be happening there.

It was like an assault on my eyes, people! An assault!

In the main room, there were people dancing as though they were auditioning for a soft porn film. Just so we’re clear, I’m not moaning because members of the opposite sex were dancing together. I’m moaning because they were dancing up against walls and leaving little to the imagination and making my eyes feel violated by seeing them.

We crammed into a corner amongst this madness and various members of our group attempted to get near the bar, which took forever. We watched the people dancing on the podiums around room and bobbed away, bashing into each other a little, as we were basically standing on top of each other.

After about twenty minutes of this nonsense (how it is ever categorised as ‘fun’ is beyond me), the closeness and the sweatiness and soft-porn all got a bit much and I started to feel wierd and breathless and needed to sit down. I left my friends and went downstairs to another of the rooms that was quieter and people sat talking calmly to each other. I stayed there with a glass of water for as long as possible before rejoining the madness upstairs, shortly after which, we decided to leave.

Surprisingly enough, I never went back. And after such a fun visit!? I must be mad.

And that was the time I went to Oceana.

An evening in Venice

Well, not exactly. But it sounded good, didn’t it? Did you think I was about to tell you that I’d gone all the way to Venice just for the evening?…. Ah, if only.

What actually happened was that I went to Covent Garden, to a restaurant called Polpo. Now, the more astute amongst you will be thinking, I’ve heard that name before, didn’t she mention that a while ago?

Well, yes I did. To celebrate having done 200 posts, I cooked a big Italian feast with all the recipes taken from Polpo’s cookbook which, by the way, is the most beautiful cookbook I have ever seen and the recipes are so simple, only about four ingredients in most things, but so delicious. Since having the cookbook, I have been meaning to go to the restaurant. Finally, last night, my friend and I decided it was time to go.

After a bit of faffing around in Hammersmith station trying to get onto the same platform and figure out which train to get and then walking an extremely long way around, we made it to the restaurant. It was long and thin and in the middle, there was a bar where people perched, with plates of different cicheti (which, I think, means starters) nibbling and chitchatting on tall stools. Behind this, was an area with lots of small tables. We were seated against the back wall by a lady who’s smile remained in place all night, despite my requests for recipes from the kitchen, which must have been a bit annoying and slowed her down.

The menu was a paper place mat and I recognised so much of it from the cookbook that I already felt like I was in a familiar place. The Smiths and Goldfrapp played somewhere in the distance and gave me a good feeling about the evening.

We ordered four small plates of food to share for our starters and mains and, unfortunately, my photographs came out either too dark to see or lurid yellowy from my flash. So just bear with the bad lighting on these photos please.

An aubergine and parmesan wrap

Spicy pork and fennel meatballs (these were really good)

Flank steak with rocket and white truffle cream (this was the recipe I requested from the waitress, it was lovely)

We also had a bruscetta with ricotta, proscuitto and artichoke which we stuffed in our faces so fast that I forgot to photograph it. It was really really good though. Maybe my favourite thing, along with the steak and truffle cream.

For desert, I had a panna cotta with rhubarb and pistachio…

… and my friend had a tiramisu.

Both were tasty and served in a small glass, so just the right size after all the other bits had filled us up. My only sticking point with my panna cotta was that I had a small teaspoon when I really wanted a huge soup spoon, to be able to eat it faster. I also had an alfogato di caffe (I think I’ve spelt that wrong), which is an espresso with a ball of vanilla ice cream in it. It’s a very Venetian thing, apparently. So I got one, in my ongoing attempt to become an Italian coffee-lover. I was unsure whether I was supposed to drink the espresso then eat the ice cream afterward or wait for the ice cream to melt, therefore sweetening the coffee then eat the whole thing with a spoon. I went for a bit of both but I’ve definitely got quite a way to go before mastering the technique. When I go to Venice (one day) I will make sure I have it sorted.

Afterward, we got something called chocolate salami, which I have made before at home. It was tasty when I made it so we ordered some of that as well as all the other things we were having for desert.

It is essentially a fridge set chocolate biscuit, with lots of things crushed up and mixed into it. It was quite a bit saltier than mine, so was slightly at odds with where we were in our meal. We were on sweet and we were happy there. Then suddenly salty came along. It was nice but probably needed something else with it. It would have been nice dipped in coffee, to warm it slightly and make the chocolate a bit melty and added a little edge to it with the coffee taste. Well, anyway, I know for next time.

All in all, we were very happy with this trip. It also wasn’t that expensive, given how many different things we ate. I was pleased to see that the fame from the book hadn’t turned them into an expensive once-a-year type of place.

The people at the next table started chatting to us at one point about what the chocolate salami was and what we had eaten and what we recommended for deserts. It’s nice that way. It has an informal feel to it. The waitress checked in on us regularly, was happy to get into conversation about the truffle cream and how great the cookbook was. And the high seats at the bar, where people ate small plates of antipasti with glasses of wine or vin santo, were constantly full. I imagine it’s an ideal place to perch if you’re dining alone or just looking for something small and tasty after a long day at work. Very nice indeed.

Thumbs up for Polpo, just how I wanted it to be after loving the cookbook so much.

Dancing in public (part 2)

Yesterday, I left London (“Urgh! Why?” I hear you all ask). I’ve come north to see the friend I did a lot of travelling with years ago. We haven’t seen each other for years so I decided it was time to make the trip. He met me at the station and there was lots of hugging and catching up. We found a lovely Italian restaurant and I had an amazing fish skewer thing which had swordfish, scallops, prawns and cherry tomatoes on them.

Unfortunately, I only remembered to take a photo once I’d already tucked in.

I finished up with a ristretto, because my ‘coffee habit’ is going ok now.

We were a bus ride from my friend’s flat so we popped into a bar first and each got a cocktail, as they don’t taste too alcoholly (I don’t like the sharp taste of most alcohol, hence being a non drinker). We then went to a ‘cool’ cafe where lots of cool kids were jiving to the Super Mario theme tune…..

On our way to the taxi rank, we passed a bar we’d come to last time I was up and decided to go in. As we entered, our feet stuck to the alcohol-covered sticky grotty floor. Immediately, I knew it was that type of place. You know. That type of place.

We ordered drinks and lingered by the bar and watched the dancers. And it was brilliant. One woman, with badly dyed frizzy blonde hair, was giving it everything, hindered only by the fact that she was in her late forties and extremely out of place.

My friend and I, with our two cocktails on our systems to prevent the usual awkwardness on the dance floor, were ready to join in slightly. We bobbed rhythmically at the side, laughed and joked, reminisced about times abroad, sang along, pointed to the overly drunk people, dancing so vigorously that they almost fell over.

After a while, my friend stopped dancing, looked at me and said, “Laura, I can’t do this anymore.” And we left.

Even though we had had something to drink and danced a little, we didn’t actually want to go tearing up the dancefloor. I’d previously thought that it was the lack of alcohol blocking me from getting into the spirit of things. But I don’t actually think that anymore. I think it’s because it’s just not what I do. It’s not part of my social activities to get drunk and dance like a maniac anymore. And that’s ok.

I think I’ll stick to dancing in the front room to the music channel.

This one’s for you, Hannah

This post was a request from a friend over the weekend. ‘O, go on,’ she said, encouraging my demise and the potential ruining of the so-far sophisticated and grown-up idea that you all obviously have of me. ‘Write about the time you drank your way through the alphabet. Go on. It’ll be great.’ As the good friend I am, I agreed. ‘I’ll do it for you, Hannah,’ I promised.

I don’t know whether I regret this now. Anyway, here goes….

Once, when I was young and foolish, something happened which probably explains why I no longer drink alcohol.

A friend and I were having a night out. I don’t know where I’d got this idea from but we had decided we were going to drink the alphabet. Essentially this means that you have a drink beginning with each letter of the alphabet and aim for Z without passing out. I think we also tried to make sure we went to places which began with the letters we needed too.

I can’t remember all of them but I remember a few where we had to really use our imagination to find a drink. I think for E, we requested our drinks be ‘extra cold’. I remember, if we couldn’t think of something for a letter, we managed to make sambuca fit for most things by prefixing it with something for the letter we were on. For example, Q was difficult so I think we ordered 2 ‘quite small sambucas’.

Anyway, as you can imagine, it very quickly descended into madness. The last place we ended up was a bar called The Walkabout, sitting on the sofas downstairs (we were safer sitting down, than on our feet) and trying to work out how to do U, V, W, X, Y and Z.

Either we decided to leave or the bar closed but at some point we were leaving. A girl was sitting on a curb, looking like she had taken a pretty bad tumble. There was an ambulance near by. I had done first aid a few years earlier and ran about saying, in what I imagined to be quite a comforting manner, “I’VE DONE A FIRST AID COURSE! I’VE DONE A FIRST AID COURSE!” I then kind of lost interest and wandered (stumbled) off.

At some point, my friend hit that stage where a large intake of alcohol causes you to slightly lose control of your limbs and did a lot of falling around, to the extent that the ambulance put her in the back to check if she had been taking drugs. She hadn’t, as I kept telling them. But given that I probably wasn’t forming my words properly, they decided not to take my word for it.

She was taken to hospital and I went along for moral support. I remember that I was really crying and going to them, “Honestly, it’s just alcohol. Honestly. She’s my friend. I know her.” Blub, blub, blub. Unusually, for a drunk person, I did know what I was talking about. But they wanted to be sure, so in we went.

The journey must have been quite bumpy and I probably made the drug-taking suspicions worse by running off and vomiting in the toilet just after we got to hospital. I obviously thought it was like a TV hospital drama and was hanging on to my friend’s hand and telling her it was going to be ok.

They wheeled two beds into one cubicle cause I think we probably cried and insisted we needed to be together and we promptly passed out.

After a few hours sleep, we both woke, covered in white hospital blankets and unsure exactly what had happened. I don’t think anything had. They must have realised that she wasn’t on drugs but just been glad that we had shut up finally and let us sleep.

Immediately, I realised I didn’t have my jacket or my phone. As we had been to so many different bars while drinking the alphabet, I had no idea which it would be in. My heart sank. I loved that jacket. I raised my head slightly and saw something by my feet. It was my jacket! Hurray! I was so utterly comfortable in the hospital bed that I didn’t want to move but I did. And that’s when I realised it.

Where was my phone?! I thought again of all the bars we had been to and which one I could have lost it in. Panic set in. I told my friend, who was also awake by this point. Feebly, she pointed to my feet where my phone lay, in full view, waiting for me to spot it.

After about ten minutes, I think a nurse came and said we could go when we wanted as they hadn’t found anything to worry about.

We called a taxi, my friend still wrapped in her hospital blanket, and went home, with all our possessions, slightly worse for the wear and minus our dignity.

And that is one of the many reasons I don’t drink.

When people ask me why I don’t drink and I say to them, “It’s just not pretty. Trust me,” they don’t believe me. Or they think I’m exaggerating. Surely everyone gets a little messy when they have a drink? Well, no. Now I’ve said it. If it gets to the point where you’re waking up in HOSPITAL after your nights out…. then maybe it’s time to stop….?

My staple diet

We’re going back to my university days again for this one. My flatmates and I were having a bit of a party. I think it was someone’s birthday. It was one of those nights were huge sections of it don’t make sense.

For example, at one point, we were all in the kitchen, listening to music while standing on the chairs and waving teatowels around furiously. Yes. Teatowels. Given that our kitchen window was easily within sight of the campus bar, it’s quite likely that the people in the bar were wondering, in amazement, why the girls in B block were being so crazy.

At one point, one of my flatmates drunkenly said to the other (who was sober), “You’re so drunk!” … She was not drunk.

There had been balloons at this party so after a vigorous session of teatowel waving, it was time to pop the balloons with a knife. Obviously. A shaky video taken on a phone still exists somewhere of me tearing around the kitchen, knocking stuff over, climbing on chairs and tables, chasing these balloons around. Everyone had cleared out of the kitchen, as I was armed and dangerous. One of them hates balloons being popped because it releases the “old stale breath” inside. On the video, there is a little voice in the background going “All the breath! All the breath.”

The finale of the video is me chasing down the last balloon and throwing it gently in the air, with my knife poised underneath it and at the moment the balloon touches the knife and bursts, I let out a short but loud, “WAH!” then smile smugly, although I have defeated a baddie and saved mankind.

So you get the picture, it’s all a bit excitable and silly. Into this mix, we put some hunger. We are hungry and we need to eat NOW, at 1am. What to have? Obviously cheese toasties. There was a toastie machine so we got everything set up, closed the lid and waited impatiently for the green light to click on.

When it eventually did, we were ravenous. So Sophie unclips the clip thing, opens the machine and toasted onto the top of one of the toasties…. was a staple! I still to this day have no idea how that could have happened. As silly drunks, we laughed uncontrollably for maybe twenty minutes. That kind of laughter were you can’t even see straight and your tummy muscles ache and you get breathless. And then Sophie, in her infinite wit, said, “It’s our staple diet!”

Well, we were off again. Up until that point in my life, I think that might have been the funniest thing I had ever heard. Actually, maybe it still is…. Staple diet…. Hilarious.

The bus journey of memories

I get on, beep my Oyster card and sit down. I have a magazine with me, intending to read it, but I know deep down I won’t actually read it. Because this bus journey is one which runs through the memories I have made since coming to London. I’m always drawn to look out of the window.

It starts by the pharmacy where I would come and get Bio Oil every week or so after my operation last year. To try and make my huge hideous scar fade a little. Next I’m at the garage I used to walk to when I was allowed off bedrest, to try and get my energy back. There’s the bike shop where I wheeled my bike in despair one day when I had a puncture while cycling to work. It was a brand new bike and I felt very protective of it. I hung around nervously while they took it in the back to fix, trying to catch a glimpse of it. And there’s the shoe shop where I worked for six weeks before leaving because the manager was awful. And opposite is the Waitrose I don’t like because it’s laid out differently to the one I usually go to. There’s the pub I once went on a date to. One of those dates where you realise that someone is much more likeable from a distance. Moving on to the getting-to-know-you stage had been a mistake. The Oliver Bonas shop is next. I’ve never been in there. I had a friend who worked at one of their other shops. On the left is the running shop which used to be a running and cycling shop. I lost faith in them when they got rid of the cycling part of the shop. I was quite a regular visitor, used to get kitted out in my lycra there. Then here’s the garden centre on my right. I used to cycle down here for compost and seeds etc, when I started keeping an allotment in my final year at uni. Next is the Memories of Mortlake shop. I always look at it from my bike or from a bus window and think it looks lovely but have never been in. Next, we are at the traffic lights and the bus stop on the other side of the road is where I used to wait when I worked at a coffee shop where the shifts started at 5.30am. Once, while waiting for the bus there, an old man started mumbling and shuffling over to me and when I listened to his mumbles, he was asking me what colour my knickers were! I promptly set off walking fast for the next bus stop. Next we come onto a road which is flooded with early London memories. We’re passing my old university on my right and the council estate where I lived for two and a half years having loads of fun but with the worst landlord in the history of the world.

The university buildings cover the whole right side of the road until it ends at the road I used to cycle down when going into the park. I went through a phase of cycling around Richmond Park twice every morning first thing, before I did anything else. Next is the little cobbled road on my left where my uni friends and I would get a takeaway from Dong Phuong’s at least once a week, minimum. Next, up the road to the motorway and on my right is the other council estate where my friend, Sophie, and I viewed a flat before ending up at the one we passed earlier. We pass by Putney Heath and another council estate where Sophie and I viewed a flat with a girl we didn’t know, who never got back to us about whether she wanted to move in. It was a bit of a walk from uni anyway, so we opted for the one just over the road! Turn left and follow the motorway through Wimbledon Common, which I used to cycle across when the coffee company I worked for, needed me to cover shifts at the Wimbledon branch. I once got very very lost on the common for over an hour. I was quite frantic by the time I found a dog walker and asked him for directions. We’re now in Wimbledon Village and the bar where my friend, Robyn, brought me years ago, when I first came to her house and we had gone out dancing. We danced to Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. I had learned the dance moves from the video and we did them, over and over. Down the hill and approaching Wimbledon station, where we dropped Joe off to get the train, before going to the bar I just passed. We turn before the station and it starts to get into unchartered territory. We pass through Southfields, where I thought for years that my friend Jay lived. She would always leave early in the evening to get home on time and I wondered why she was being so over-cautious. After all, she just needed to jump on the one bus…. I think it was Sophie who pointed out that she did not live down the road in Southfields. She lived significantly further away in Southall…. Oops! Well it’s all south, that’s what I say. We go through lots of areas which are unfamiliar until we hit Tooting, and the cafe on my left where I once met Joe so we could go and explore Tooting, to report back to a friend who was soon to move to a campus there from abroad. And the restaurant shortly after where I met an old uni friend for dinner a few months after my operation, still feeling a bit fragile. This is where I get off, to do a bit of exploring and to make some more memories.