Good Morning all – and apologies for the lack of posts recently. Ms Raccoon has had a few problems of her own to sort out, leaving little enough time to put the world to rights…
All
Continue reading →Parish Notice.
Who do you think you are kidding, Mr COBRA?
Forty years ago, in October 1974, five people were killed in an explosion that ripped through a pub in Guildford; just over a month later, twenty-one were killed in two separate explosions that ripped through
Continue reading →Valuing Antiques – and the Great Pig-Iron Bubble.
A friend e-mailed me this week, asking if I could be of assistance in valuing some antiques for them. Years of ‘antique running’ taught me that there is only one answer to that question – they are worth
Continue reading →A Grovelling Apology.
An abysmal performance yesterday; I can only say how terribly sorry I am for the trouble I caused you all.
When I took the site down before I had my last operation – I managed to delete
Continue reading →Pedagogue or Paedophile?
A long, long, time ago, just after World War 11, six licenses were granted to war veterans that allowed them to take commercial photographs in Trafalgar Square thus overriding the obscure by-law that had long prevented this means
Continue reading →One Man and His Shed.
I needed to open a can of treacle today.
Mr G was off in the middle distance, roaring up and down the field on his tractor; the man who cut the hay had had
Continue reading →Past Lives and the NHS.
Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part Two
Past Lives and Present Misgivings â Part One.
A Requiem for Popsy.
I was in my 30s before I got round to wondering why none of my relatives spoke to any of the other relatives. I just accepted it as a child. Questions were not encouraged.
As
Continue reading →A lâEau, Câest lâHeure
Dear Blog,
Thank-you for being here, you are such a comfort to me.
There I was, minding my own business, as one does when one has an Important Man
Continue reading →A Shropshire Lass.
When I wrote of medieval ale houses, I had in mind old Flossie Laneâs establishment.
Flossieâs grandparents acquired the licence to sell beer and wine from their front parlour to the local farmers
Continue reading →A Shaggy Corgii Taleâ¦
Mr T, who came before Mr G, in my dyslexic litany of marriages, once offered to move a boiler for me so that I could squeeze another piece of kitchen equipment into the resulting space.
Ms Raccoon regrets…
You got up far too late today to catch sight of the Raccoon – she was up and away, on her travels again, before you even put the kettle on…
Once the good Doctors
Continue reading →Gap-year journalism bringing you gap-year jihadism.
The lexicon of corporate life has affected the dead tree press in ways more subtle than the arrest of 63 journalists for offences uncovered by the investigation of the so-called ‘hacking’ investigation, or
Continue reading →The Youdathought bird is back…
The Guardianistas are on holiday. Only their corpus – their spiritual souls are still swarming across Twitter expressing outrage. A moment’s pause in motion brings the fingertips skating across their touch screen. “Oh do look Jeremy, Martha has posted
Continue reading →Whenever I hear the Sparrow Chirping…
During the week, I might have as many as 50 ‘tabs’ open on the computer; articles that have generated a germ of an idea, research for an article I might be writing. They just pile up on me. Sometimes
Continue reading →Ms Raccoon Returns…
My, but I’ve been having fun.
Mr G decided to buy me a car to celebrate my return to normal life – nothing fancy, just a little run around that I could leave in the garage
Continue reading →You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato.
(Note: [remove before publishing] Should be safe enough Ed: they must have run out of vegetable puns after yesterday….)
Hurling abuse is a time honoured occupation. The earliest reference I can find is to an early
Continue reading →Beating Your Curd and Whey.
A tip o’ the Dutch cap this morning to Jasper Kuin for showing Dutch courage in the face of health and safety regulations.Â
It is a Bank Holiday week-end; it used to be called Whitsun, but
Continue reading →Dove Tales.
When we lived in the ancienne poste house in the centre of the village, built into the metre thick walls of the bastide, one of the delights was sitting on the terrace in the morning sun listening to the
Continue reading →Ms Raccoon regretsâ¦
You are too late. Should have called in earlier. She’s already left.
She has jetted off to sunny Glasgow to attend a seminar on Moral Panic.
She thinks Marrakech would have been a better idea
Continue reading →Ms Raccoon regrets…
You are too late. Should have called in earlier. She’s already left.
She has jetted off to sunny Glasgow to attend a seminar on Moral Panic.
She thinks Marrakech would have been a better idea
Continue reading →Death of the Last Taboo.
Nothing is sacrosanct on Twitter, no detail of intimate life too delicate to explore; except death. There is no #death hashtag. It has to be masked – #dyingmatters.
No surprises in the etymology – the word
Continue reading →They'll be Coming Round the Mountain…
Or rather they won’t! Was I the only person who raised a silent cheer at the news that the Nepalese Sherpas had walked off Everest, and that thus ‘this year’s Everest expeditions
Vote Dom! You Know it Makes Sense!
Selection on merit for parliamentary candidates – I’m a great believer in it. Forget ‘all-women’ lists, and parachuting ‘friends of the party’ into safe seats. Every candidate should be individually selected on their aptitude for the
The Return of the Bionic Raccoon.
Done it! Done it! Done it! Been there; got the t-shirt; everything is behind me now – literally!
It was far from ‘the breeze’ that I expected it to be – probably the most testing week
Continue reading →Wake me up before you Go-Gojam!
 Gojam, the ever present, malodorous, spiteful, demanding, unreasonable, illogical, presence in my life, who had no other function in life than to spout bile, has been given his marching orders. From Tuesday afternoon he will be
âAs good be hangâd for an old sheep as a young lambâ?
The new breed of righteous ‘paedophile hunters’ are not a tribe exclusive to the UK. I suspect they were introduced to the native population like grey squirrels – possibly from Australia, where they are even more
Kitty Fiddlers and Your Pussy.
Talking Angela talks dirty.
I wasn’t intending to post today, but I cannot resist it now. ‘Duncan Disorderly’ has spotted such a corker of a row going on in Paedomaggedon land.
‘Talking
Continue reading →