Geography Degree

Son-blog was just on the phone asking for thoughts on a topic for a geography assignment. After five minutes chatting with an 'O' level grade D geography student (me) he talked himself in to "going down the glaciology route."

He might be on a slippery slope :-)

Text Problems

Lately Mrs Blog has discovered new tech skills which she is applying to her smart phone. The manifestation of these skills is a daily text to my mobile with my horoscope for the day ahead. Since the text has a lot of content it arrives in bits and pieces on my old Nokia handset leading to occasional confusion.

Today I received two texts as follows,

"txt ,missing...bad is waiting for you...txt missing"

"txt missing ...is there a bogeyman hiding under you...txt missing"

I checked and there was no bogeyman hiding under me so I am waiting to see if the same level of accuracy will apply to the first part of the text. If there are no posts for a while you can draw your own conclusions!

Ukrainian fans

One of the features of this blog is that I can identify by country and by post, where and what is being read in the world of inane drivel.

In the last week I seem to have attracted a large following in Ukraine and they seem to be reading Unexplained Mysteries -

This was a post about yoghurt and a trip to London. With everything else that is going on in Ukraine it is heartening that some of its residents have devoted their time to reading the post. I hope one of the readers might put up a comment and explain... why?

(Perhaps they have the answer to the strawberry yoghurt mystery???)

Unexplained mysteries

Last night I was in Aberdeen visiting Daughter-Blog. At the start of the evening I told her of a trip I took to London about thirteen years ago. I was waiting in the queue to check in at B.A. at 5.00a.m. (in the days before online check in) and there was a guy in front of me who was asked whether or not he had any food items in his hand luggage.
"Yes," he replied, and proceeded to take out sixteen pots of strawberry yoghurt. It raises a few questions...

1. Was he going to eat all the yoghurt on a one hour flight?
2. If not why take it on the flight?
3. Was there a likelihood of a London yoghurt shortage at that time of the morning?
4. Why all strawberry?
5. What is wrong with other flavours?

Daughter-blog then added ....

"I had yoghurt in my handbag once!"

"How did that happen?" I asked.

"I sneezed!"

I can only cope with so many yoghurt mysteries so I didn't ask!!

Mustard makes a contribution

About four months ago we acquired three bantam hens named Custard, Mustard and Flustered.

Custard, being older has been laying pretty well since settling all those months ago. Yesterday, Mustard joined the party with a half-hearted effort.

Careful what you wish for...

Last night, mate-blog-David complained that I haven't been putting up many of my works of art lately...

Best pun of the year!

Last week Mrs Blog was making a salad for our tea, the usual mixed leaves with a dressing. Suddenly she had inspiration!

"Would you like Greek cheese on your salad?" she asked.

"No thanks," I replied optimistically.

"Well. it's too late, you're having it anyway!"

"Ah, a Fetaccompli!"

Stylist found

In a recent post click here to read  I explained about a style problem at the local tip. Yesterday I was at the very same tip when I heard the following...

"Hey, you've dressed up. Is that so people won't think you work here?"

It seems mate-blog read the blog!

Bad joke!

You can't trust atoms...they make up everything!

Murder and mystery

Saturday night found me and Mrs Blog out for the night in Edinburgh on a murder mystery tour.

I cannot confess to being enthusiastically expectant before the event. In the end, the evening involved a man who looked and sounded like Charlie Drake, making up parts of stories about murders in Edinburgh, whilst campaigning for a Yes vote in the referendum after the event, and claiming that the speculum owes its existence to the witchcraft trials of the 16th century.

We know how to have a night out!!

Stylist needed!

It is that time of the year when the leaves need to be dealt with. I packed the car up with five bags of the damn things and a shamefully large collection of empty wine bottles and headed to the local recycling centre.

It was one of those mornings when the sun burns off the early morning mist and promises a fine afternoon. To add to the mood enhancing qualities of the weather, I found that I had the tip to myself! As I was dispensing with the last bag when the bubble cruelly burst,

"Where do electrical good go?" asked a man who had just arrived.

"Well, it used to be over there!" I offered, being helpful.

"Oh, sorry! I thought you worked here!" said the man.

This afternoon will be spent clothes shopping.

Farewell Flustered

Two weeks ago we palmed our three chickens, (Custard, Mustard and Flustered) off to the farmer from whom we bought them. We were in need of a holiday and so were they.

When we returned and went to retrieve them we brought back only Custard and Mustard. Flustered, who had been pecked by the other two and looked like a vulture from Jungle Book...did not return.

Before you shed a tear, Flustered is alive and well. It turns out the Flustered is not a "she-chicken" but a "he-chicken" and as such would make a right royal racket every morning. If we kept him, we could expect dawn raids from the community police and neighbourhood watch.

Flustered was last seen in a coop with eight she-chickens winking at us!

.

More aging problems

As mentioned in the last post I have been suffering with signs of middle age,

Whilst on holiday in France last week my hearing was called in to question twice in a single afternoon trying to work out what Mrs Blog had just said.

"Oh look human cheese!" she exclaimed in an outdoor market. Stunned and with my mind racing at the possibility I turned to see and discovered it was in fact cumin cheese.

Later the same day she remarked, "look lovely autistic postcards!" The town we were staying in is famous as a home to Matisse so I should have worked out she meant "artistic postcards".

There is no hope :-(

Age problems

Last week I was on holiday in France where the weather was far better than I had anticipated. This unexpected good fortune led me to buy three T shirts so that I would be appropriately attired. Two days later, having worn the mid-blue and the white T shirt, found me desperately trying to find the third, white T shirt. No luck - I tried searching three times (pure coincidence) but to no avail.

In desperation I asked Mrs Blog to help and she did...

"The third T shirt wasn't white it was dark blue," she said.

Hen Holidays

Mrs Blog and I are away on holiday to France. This means we needed to find someone and somewhere to put the bloody chickens before we left.

First place to put them was in a cardboard box, so that we could transport them to the second place, a farm in the middle of nowhere. Easier said than done. "Herding cats" has become a figure of speech for describing difficult tasks which, in my opinion (IMO for all the young texters) should now be "herding Chickens"!

After wasting half an hour of perfectly good drinking time I finally resorted to threatening them with some Ozzy Osbourne treatment. Job done!

(For those struggling with the reference check out http://kosmo.hubpages.com/hub/The-26-Craziest-Things-Ozzy-Osbourne-Ever-Did Number 11)

Flustered is flustered

In my recent post "Back Again" I mentioned that there were three additions to the blog-household. These are, Custard, Mustard and Flustered, who are collectively Mrs Blog's chickens.

Custard is the oldest and a fully grown hen, Mustard is half grown and Flustered, who is broadly the same age as Mustard, is an under-sized specimen. Custard has established the pecking order and with visible results that show that Flustered is at the bottom of our "bantam food chain".

Flustered has had all the feathers around her neck pecked off, which makers her look like one of the vultures from Jungle Book only much much smaller.

Total Wally of the week!

Having enjoyed a dig at my mate Steve this week it is only fair that I should "fess up" (as the gangstas say) to my own moment of sheer stupidity.

"Hi is that AutoGlass?"

"Yes"

"I booked my car in for a replacement window to be fitted tomorrow."

"Yes we have it here.  You had a twelve inch long crack in it."

"Well... I thought I did, but when I checked, it isn't there after all! I think it might have been sap from a tree that dripped down on the windscreen!"

The emotional cringe can only be described as call-centre revenge!

Whalley of the week 2

Having realised that Steve was not the most tech savvy person in my circle of friends I took full advantage in the car driving back from Glasgow after watching Art Garfunkel do his thing.

"I'll just phone Kate," said Steve reaching for his beyond-him-techy-Iphone.

Moments later he said "Ah, been cut off!"

"Yes Steve," said I, "That's because we are doing 70 mph. If you go over forty the return signal can't find you, it looks for where you were when you speaking."

Not entirely sure if was taken as a joke!

Whalley of the week

On Monday I went to a concert (Art Garfunkel)  in Glasgow with a mate of mine - Steve Whalley.

During the interval we had the following conversation,

Steve: "I wonder what the score is in the England Switzerland match?"

"Well you have an Iphone there Steve why not use that to find out?"

"Yeah. I'll text Kate."

"?????"

Two minutes later,

"Kate doesn't know."

"But Steve it's an Iphone why not go on the internet and search for the result?"

"I haven't got a WiFi connection."

"But you've got 3G  - you showed me earlier."

"Does that let you get on the internet then?"

The score was 2-0 if you need to know!

Prodigal return

Friday past saw the return of Number-one-son-blog (in fact only son-blog) from a seven week trip to Indonesia. Mrs Blog and I had agreed to pick him up from Glasgow airport which as it turned out was an act of kindness for both Son-Blog and the population of the central belt of Scotland recently swelled by thousands of athletes for the Commonwealth Games.

For 55 hours Son-Blog had travelled on coach, ferry and four planes dressed like this...

Thank God he had grown a beard - at least that way we was not recognised by anyone who knows us!