Scrapbook: Non-News Story

It’s been a quiet autumn night, so besides:

• Alphabetising my book collection
• Clipping my toenails
• Reorganising my stationery box
• Reading umpteen Wkipedia articles on the chemical content of planet Pluto

I decided to have a look through my scrapbooks.  Among the postcards, village church service sheets, train tickets and various till receipts, I found this excellent local newspaper non-news story from the Darlington and Stockton Times.  “Not our department” seems to be the name of the game.  Enjoy!

Have a newsworthy day, won’t you!

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Had a Good Day?

Whether you’ve had a good day or not, you could always be a lamb.  Now, where’s my mint sauce?

Have a saucy day, won’t you!

Pun, Pun, Pun!

I like listening to BBC Radio Tees’ breakfast show.  They run a headline competition every weekday.  I won once.  Now, in a similar vein, here’s an article I saw last week.

Girl pours grandfather’s ashes into cookies which she had baked.

Here are all the puns that the Brits wrote with true dark humour about this case.

• Instead of biscuits, she could have got some potatoes and made ash browns.
• Her classmates said the cookies were not soft enough: they were, in fact, bone-dry.
• I’m not sure the cookies had a full-bodied flavour.
• She said she only wanted to urn some money by selling these cookies.
• She took full responsibility for her action. It was hearse, and hearse alone.
• She’s been told not to do it again. But I suspect she cadaver ‘nother try.
• Grandma had asked her, “What do you make of Grandad then?” She knew exactly what…
• That just takes the biscuit.Seems these cookies are going to be marketed by Huntley Embalmer.
• When the people eating these cookies found out, they were “coffin” all over the place.
• I hear she made chocolate bour-bone biscuits.
• She needs to have a wreath-think about her life choices.
• She could also have made a pyre (pie) or two.
• Her classmates should have washed the cookies down with a bier or two.
• But really she should not have taken the cookies “inter” school.
• She’s in trouble with the law. Someone has called the corpse.
• Next time she can make chocolate crem cakes.
• It’s lovely when children bake with their grandparents.
• What happened next…. Remains to be seen

One lady commented:

I find nothing funny in it. In fact – disgusting.
Girl needs some psychiatric help – and of course some legal action too.

To which a wag replied:

Definitely not funny at all.  I mean, she didn’t even mix any ginger or nutmeg into the cookie mix.  Shameful!

Putting the “fun” into “funeral.”

Have a punny day, won’t you!

 

 

Wait a Minute, it’s the Telephone Man

Those of you who are over 45 may just about remember this cheery little number from Meri Wilson.

In the previous year, Sunray was nicknamed Telephone Man for his part in ensuring that the overall phone bill for the British Army in Northern Ireland was £1 million.  (Regimental legend has it that Sunray was responsible for £900 000 of it.)  Most of the calls were part of the Night Shift Numbers Game, a version of “pin the tail on the donkey”, when bored squaddies on night shift at HMP Maze would get out the phone book, look up random numbers abroad and phone them to ask such innocent questions as:

Is it snowing in Alabama?

It’s a nice clear line, isn’t it?

etc.  (Men are just boys in long trousers. )

Fast-forward to 2018.  It was my birthday three days ago.  That took me back to October 1976, when, as a wee schoolboy at Wolfenbüttel Primary School, I was told to go to the headmaster’s office.

“Oh dear, what have I done wrong?” I thought.  “Was it for shouting at my teacher last week?”

No.  It was Sunray phoning me up from HMP Maze, wishing my happy birthday.  He was obviously taking time out from:

• Calling his mate, Bryan B, in Australia, to ask how hot it was in Cairns
• Phoning his sister-in-law in Canada to talk to her about boxing bouts
• Prank-calling several taxi firms in Birmingham to order two dozen taxis to one pub on the outskirts of the city
• And much, much more…

Bless his cotton socks, bless his soul.  Quite poignant to think this was the first year when I did not receive a birthday card from him.  This weekend I did think of him as Schatz and I raised our glasses of Sekt to celebrate my birthday.

Have an a-Maze-ing day, won’t you!

Stalin is *not* Dead

This clip from TV Turkmenistan really does show a fine example of mass sycophancy, not seen since the day of Stalin in the USSR or Ceasescu in Romania.  Not so much HROSL (Huge Roar of Sycophantic Laughter) as HROSA (Huge Roar of Sycophantic Applause).

Here’s the clip.

https://www.rferl.org/a/our-hero-lavish-praise-for-turkmen-president-s-cutbacks/29521371.html

Even Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t afforded this much obsequious applause and adulation at the Labour Party conference.  (And that is setting quite a standard, comrades, Genossen and tovarishchi…)

Have a sycophantic day, won’t you!

Your Occasional Bad Joke

Two Yorkshiremen are chatting down the allotment. One says to t’other:

Seth, how’s thee rhubarb coming along this year?

The second Yorkshireman replies:

Aye, reet grand. I’ve been pourin’ hoss manure on to improve the flavour.

Oh aye?

replies the first Yorkshireman,

I find custard does the job for me.

Have a flavoursome day, won’t you!

Your Occasional Joke

Two farmers are in the pub having a beer.  Both are skint and in dire need of some money. All they have is one pig each, and if by luck one is male and the other female.

So after having a few more beers, they hit on a marvellous plan to make money.  By mating the two pigs, they will have lots of little piggies to sell.

So the next morning at the crack of the dawn, the farmer with the sow gets up, dumps the pig in a wheelbarrow and walks around to his mate’s farm.  He introduces her to the boar and after much sniffing, serious bonking ensues.

Lots of squeals, lots of oinks.

“How will I know she’s pregnant?” enquires the first farmer.

“Easily,” replies the other, “when you get up, look at the pig and if she’s rolling in mud, she’s pregnant. If she ‘s eating grass she isn’t, so you will have to come back.”

Next morning comes, and the farmer dashes to the window.  The sow is happily eating grass in the field.

“Humph”, he says, going downstairs.  He grabs the pig and puts her in the wheelbarrow and trundles off to the other farm and more bonking ensues.

Lots of squeals, lots of oinks.  Lots of grunts of pleasure.

This goes on all week with no success.

So on the Sunday morning, the farmer tells the wife to look out the window and tell him what the blessed pig is doing

“Is she eating grass?”

“No.”

“Is she rolling in the mud?”

“No”, says the wife.

“What the heck she doing then” he cries.

“She’s sat in the wheel barrow waiting for you!”

Have a wheely great day, won’t you!