Farewell Ffffreezing February. Grumpy's Alternative News.

So what did February bring?
I see the parliamentary idiots have learnt nothing from their recent disgraceful behaviour. Now there's a move to force two hundred of them them to pay a profits levy on the second houses they bought with taxpayers money. A move that the MP's are fighting with self righteous fervour. Plus they don't wish us to know about the £138,046 owed in unpaid food and drink bills in the House of Commons. What a sick shower.
Animals, now they're far more interesting. A woman was arrested at a Russian checkpoint with fifty lovebirds under her coat. Evidently they all woke up and were a bit noisy to say the least.
Ten hedgehogs in a Fife rescue centre have to go on a diet before they are released. They're been looked after so well they can no longer roll up into a ball when under threat.
A grey squirrel at Alton Towers is literally living 'the high life'. Nicknamed Sonic, he (or she) has been riding on the Sonic Spinball rollercoaster ride as it's been tested after a revamp. Definitely braver than me!

Plus dogs and cats in China can breathe a little easier. It is going to be illegal to eat either, those caught doing so face a 5,000 yuan (£450) fine and fifteen days in jail. Evidently dog meat is supposed to warm you up and is served with a sauce of ground coriander, spring onion, peanuts and sesame, price 38 yuan. (Who said they don't wish to know that!)
By the way, a team at Bristol University have decided that cat owners are more likely to have a degree than dog owners. (Perhaps because cats, being brighter than dogs choose more intelligent owners.) I often wondered what education spent my taxes on, now I know.

Any drinkers out there? Do you agree with the Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney who says that the monks of Buckfast Abbey should not be brewing a drink that is 15% proof. Evidently it is particularly popular in Scotland, known sometimes as 'bottle of beat the wife'. 'liquid speed' and 'wreck the hoose juice'.

I wonder what the Polish man who has just been jailed for drink driving was drinking. His level was the highest ever recorded in Britain. He was almost six times over the limit (191 micrograms per 100ml. Legal limit is 35.)

I see Marston's Brewery is on the ball. They suggested at a meeting lighter beer bottles would help their carbon footprint. (The chairman suggested the easiest way to make bottles lighter is to drink the contents!)

Congratulations to Amy Fearn, football referee who took over the Coca-Cola match, Coventry City versus Nottingham Forest, the first ever female to do so. I wonder if the Reverend Mark Oden of Kent noticed. He made the news by suggesting in his Valentine sermon that women should be more 'submissive' to their husbands. His views have had a mixed reception but interestingly enough he requested that the newspaper did not interview his wife.

Money, now there's a thing. And talking of money, the world's first postal order, serial number 000001, bought for one shilling in London in 1881 fetched £4,484 in an auction in Warwick. And Sir Stanley Matthews football boots used in the 1953 Cup Final fetched £38,400 in an auction in Chester. But the winner has to be a 22 inch meat dish taken to the Antiques Roadshow in Aberglasney, Carmarthenshire that turned out to be worth at least £100,000.

We do seem to collect as a nation. A recent survey gave us, in the main some fascinating if useless figures. The average Britain has some 3,370 cubic feet of clutter. On average 44% of the room in their homes is taken up by possessions. Comprising mainly of 'junk and clutter', followed by clothes, shoes, books, toys, exercise equipment, electrical equipment, magazines and papers. None of this information stopped the bidders at the Dr Who sale at Bonhams. A Cyberman fetched £9,600 whilst a Mk1 Imperial Dalek fetched a mere £20,000.

Dopiest of the month, two contenders. One, the artificial limbs specialist who fitted a new left foot to a gentleman in Astley Ainslie Hospital in Edinburgh. Unfortunately it was the right foot the patient was missing. To add insult to injury, the specialist never noticed his mistake on two later check ups. Beaten I reckon by the Arab ambassador to Dubai whose bride was not what he thought. On the few occasions they met before marriage she had worn a niquab. It turns out the bride was in fact cross eyed with facial hair. A bit of a shock when he lifted the veil to kiss her! (Mother had tricked him by substituting photographs of her more acceptable sister.) The marriage was annulled but he lost the £83,000 he spent on gifts for the bride.

And there you have it, good old February. What, no rude bits, did I hear someone ask. Oh go on then, the more refined of you stop reading now.

A university registrar offered bogus degrees in return for spanking sessions in a hotel. Very, very complicated, it was suggested it was a 'pain management study'. Prices, £500 for a 2.2 degree, £1,000 for a Masters with Distinction. I kid you not! The judge suggested he had been very naughty and he had now lost his job, his career, his professional reputation and his marriage. (And would he please stop smiling in court, it was not funny. Not true this bit.) I'm tempted to do a piece on the court proceedings but I'd better not. My wife says I'm getting too interested in this case so I'd better move swiftly on! Evidently someone in St Edmunds Hall (Oxford University) is vandalising the community condoms kept in the JCB welfare room. Some were found to have holes in them, a fact reported by a student from 'Teddy Hall' when using the condoms to make jelly ice cubes. How low can some people go!

Finally, are you fed up with reading about Ashley Cole and John Terry. What a pair! And what a pity they don't live in Wisconsin. A cheating man there got more than he bargained for. Four women (one was his wife) lured him to a motel and then glued his penis to his stomach! They each received a year's probation. I bet they thought it was well worth it!

There you have it, Good old February. Plus a little of my own town, Derby. A poll was organised to name a new road in the town, 89% were unanimous in their choice. We now have a road called Laura Croft Way! What do you reckon to that. (The Laura Croft computer game originates from Derby.) You couldn't make it up. Have a nice day.

Anyone seen my leg?

I regularly talk to groups, Women's Institutes, Senior Citizen groups and the like. It's a challenge in a way and keeps my brain in reasonable shape. My bread and butter talk, so to speak is entitled 'There's Nowt so Strange as Folk', based loosely around a book of short stories I wrote a year or two ago. It can't be all bad because on occasion I have been asked back. no mean feat. The last time I spoke I was greeted with the words, 'Pleased to meet you, I hope you are better than the one we had last week, she were terrible.' Not exactly designed to inspire confidence but not as bad as another speaker I know of. Five minutes into his spiel on the workings of computers some old lady stood up and spoke immortal words. 'We don't want this rubbish.' (Evidently the group had been expecting to be taught the basics of how to use a computer, not how the computer's innards function.) They don't mess about, pensioners groups, straight to the point and if they don't like you be prepared to run.

Because of return visits I've been working on a second talk entitled 'Is the whole world going mad or is it me.' Interesting to put together and based on every crackpot, unusual, sometimes simply bizarre individuals and situations in the word today. For instance, pensioners on ASBO's for thoroughly juvenile behaviour; how odd. Sat Nav ambulance crews who took a patient on a 400 mile ride from London to Manchester and back on what should have been a twenty minute transfer between Ilford, London and Brentford in Essex. Universities awarding a PhD. in darts and a dentist who used his surgical instruments to clean his finger nails. (and that was one of his better habits!)

The reason for this particular blog being the news that Alton Towers is dismantling a twenty eight year old, seventy five feet high rollercoaster. Interesting but made even more so when one considers what the dismantlers have found to date.

Now the eight hundred pieces of jewellery found is sad but understandable; anyone who has ever experienced the fast, furious terrifying ride on the Corkscrew as it was called will empathise immediately. Plus three hundred mobile phones. What sort of clown would try and use a mobile phone in such circumstances. (On second thoughts, the whole world seems incapable of walking down the street without phoning so perhaps it's not all that surprising.)

Fifty three odd shoes, an irritating loss but not unexpected, but then it really gets interesting.Ten pairs of underwear. I must be careful what I say here but the mind boggles. I daren't even guess but perhaps its best to leave it to the readers own imaginations!

The last two items found give real food for thought. Item one, a prosthetic ear. Which of course would surely stand little chance of staying put on such a high speed, wind buffeted manic ride as the Corkscrew. Embarrassing to say the least, a difficult ride home especially if you were a driver for how on earth do you keep your glasses on in such circumstances. (Sorry, not meant to offend but you have to smile.)

One final discovery, surely the strangest of them all being one prosthetic leg. I hope it was not the same man who lost the ear, For there would be an unfortunate double whammy. (Why am I assuming it was a man?) Imagine the problems this mishap would cause you, stuck at Alton Towers minus a leg. Its not funny really but if you didn't laugh you would probably cry. All the old jokes immediately spring to mind. You'd really need a leg up and then what do you do, hop down to the information desk? Do they have a set, practiced procedure for lost legs? Surely they don't have spares for such an emergency? 'No problem, sir, left or right?' You could sue them but you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. It would not exactly enhance your day and I've no doubt you wouldn't get a replacement on the NHS the next day. All in all a right bloody nuisance but what a story to tell at your next cocktail party when the conversation flags, the day you were legless at Alton Towers.

Lost, or was it Forgotten.

Today's Times includes the story of the airline passenger who, travelling from Tel Aviv to Paris with five children, his wife and eighteen pieces of luggage, managed to leave one of the children behind.

One's immediate reaction is to be horrified at such incompetent parenting but is that necessarily fair? 'Let him who is without sin' and all that springs to mind.

I remember as a proud father of a two year old visiting the local pub with two friends for a convivial couple of hours. Only to remember after the first pint that we had been left in charge of the infant who was fast asleep in bed, blissfully unaware of our wilful neglect. All three of us were teachers at the time but still hopelessly inadequate beings it seems. Our wives were unimpressed with our dereliction of duty and we were all reminded of it for many a day.

As a teacher also I remember taking, with twenty other staff, five hundred secondary school pupils in eight non too luxurious buses to Drayton Manor for an end of term treat. (Alton Towers declined to accept such numbers on one trip and I don't blame them.) We returned with four hundred and ninety seven. The missing three returned under their own steam some time later. It was all very reminiscent of the 'Albert and the Lion' saga though with a less serious ending. Ironically one of the three tragically drowned in a local river days after the school term ended.

I remember too as a youth leader returning from Blackpool to Derby after a youth club outing minus one young lady. I had to knock on the door of her parent's house and explain we had lost the daughter they had lovingly brought up for the past sixteen years. Not funny, I can assure you, even less funny when she arrived home hours later, having found a 'young man' on another trip from Derby and travelled home with her new found friend on their bus.

Contrary to what people might think we were and hopefully still are conscientious if sometimes flawed individuals. But times have changed and in this 'Madeleine McCann' era woe betide any mistake by those in charge, be they parent or teacher. Sometimes, just sometimes I'm glad I'm just an old fool whose main occupation in life is merely watching the world go by. Or is it only me that did daft things; you tell me.