Jolly Old June

Did no one notice May's Alternative News never materialised due to Grumpy's dodgy health in the not so merry month of May. No such problem in June, so what caught the eye.

As usual, the animal kingdom was in the news. A rare shrew was returned home to the Isles of Scilly after stowing away on the ferry to Cornwell. And a chihuahua called Conchita is at the centre of a law suite in Miami. Its owner, Gail Posner left it £10,000 a month in her will, to include, amongst other things, manicures, pedicures and cashmere pyjamas. Ms Posner's son is not amused. Plus zoo workers in charge of pregnant pandas sent back to the Research Centre in Sichuan, China to breed are really taking the job seriously. Those involved will disguise themselves as pandas 'By donning a black and white fur coat and crawling on the ground.' The mind boggles. Nevertheless they are luckier than the eight foxes and fifty chameleons found in extremely large suitcases of a passenger at Cairo Airport bound for Thailand. At least they were alive, which was more than could be said for the the tiger, rare birds and lemurs found in the freezer of a man in Coventry. Some of which, incidentally, were bought on eBay. They reckon Knut the polar bear at Berlin Zoo has psychological problems, minor compared with the two idiots just mentioned. To end this section on a more hopeful note, how about Oscar the two year old cat who has been fitted with bionic legs after a combine harvester accident in Jersey. Good luck, Oscar, I hope you go from strength to strength.

I see Lord Freud, the minister for social reform has come up with a scheme whereby grandparents mentor teenagers and help them 'Navigate the adult world', a policy now officially adopted in David Cameron's 'Big Society' strategy. Are these people real. What do they think grandparents do all their lives, drink tea and watch Jeremy Kyle! Did you notice, by the way, a US study suggests drinking more than four cups of tea a day increases the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Mind you, even they, Georgetown University suggest more studies are needed.

Talking of oldies, did you know 'Tears' by Ken Dodd was the biggest selling record of the sixties after 'She Loves You' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'. Eat your heart out, Tom Jones, Cliff and The Rolling Stones. Plus Doddy is still touring at the age of eighty two with his Happiness Show.

On a macabre note, do you fancy your body going on display, courtesy of Dr von Hagens who has become infamous for displaying treated corpses on public display in tableau's depicting corpses running, playing chess and other less mentionable occupations. Plus his attached supermarket has body parts for sale: a smoker's lung, £3,600, a head and brain slice, £1,500 0r a testicle for a mere £360. Ideal presents for those who have everything. Or perhaps for someone you don't like!

June had so much to offer I will do a follow up concerning ten things that made me smile. But I'll leave you with one or two 'shorties' that caught the eye.

I noticed that Sir Randulph Fiennes, the explorer is regularly mixed up, where officialdom is concerned, ie speeding tickets with Hollywood actor Ralph Fiennes. On a par with the Australian Parliament House gift shop that was selling mugs marked 'Barrack' Obama. Get it right lads. (Barack of course.)

I noticed the American military have ditched Velcro and returned to the humble button. Evidently the fine sand in Iraq and Afghanistan plays havoc with Velcro. So much for the 21st century progress.

And finally one for the ladies. How much do you spend on shoes, my dears. The website Gocompare.com reckons girls purchase their first pair at fourteen and buy seven pairs a year for the rest of their lives. It is suggested the average woman has nineteen pairs of shoes, worth £664.81 in her wardrobe. And the cost over a lifetime? £16,000! No wonder many a man wears clothes reminiscent of Worzel Gummidge. It's all he can afford!

' I Feel Proper Poorly.'

Ever sat in front of your computer and thought, 'What the hell do I write about this week?' Never, I don't believe you! This weeks been one of those weeks then Reg Dixon came to the rescue. Reg Dixon was a comedian, born in Coventry and popular on the 'wireless' in the 1950's

So what brought this doom and gloom scenario to mind.

I reckon it was last week's near miss that set me going. Fate, destiny, call it what you will there's no doubt life has an inevitability about it, whether we like it or not. We live and we die, a certainty common to us all. If, only if, we are at some stage in our lives in perfect health, sooner or later our mortality will be all too apparent. For if it were not so, obviously we would live for ever, for there would not be anything to 'kill us off', so to speak. 'Three score years and ten' is the Biblical suggestion of a life span. So I reckon I'm on borrowed time. Now we have many 'funny turns' in our lives. (Come to think of it, Reg Dixon was 'a funny turn'. Only just, mind!) We, at least some of us, break bones frequently, suffer from flu, hay fever, or become anxious or depressed. All nuisance value conditions designed to irritate but nothing more. I'm a very arthritic seventy year old but it won't kill me. (Unless I'm too slow crossing the road and a bus gets me.)

Amongst my friends and acquaintances there are many more serious conditions that suggest few of us are perfect specimens. Autism, Bio Polar, Aspergers Disease; Coeliacs, Nystagmus, Diabetes, Lupus. The list is endless but you get the message. I'm very ordinary, nothing special, yet have experienced over seventy years, pyloric stenosis when only days old, serious septicemia, a life threatening ulcer, two TGA's and skin cancer. And these are the one's that come to mind.

The point is, some start perfect, some not so, but we all develop imperfections that ultimately 'finish us off'. It's only fair when you think about it, otherwise our world would be awfully crowded by now. Morbid, I know, but I personally take comfort in the fact, rich or poor, kings or paupers we all go the same way.

A Reg Dixon joke. And I promise the next blog, nay the next two will be light hearted.

'I had to go to the doctors the other day and the doctor said "It's me clack." You know what your clack is, it's that little bit of skin at the back of your throat. He said mine was too long, two inches too long. The doctor said if I'd had a big meal I'd have flogged myself to death.'

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

One of my public speaking 'spiels' is tongue in cheek entitled' Is the Whole World going Mad or is it Me.' And you don't have to go far for material. The worry is it may be getting worse. October for instance was brilliant, not counting my alternative news material. (2nd November)
A prisoner from a New York jail, in court, therefore dressed in a suit asked the way out; and a security guard showed him the exit.
Paul Bint, a confidence trickster was convicted at Southwark Crown Court for the 155th time.He has pretended to be, over a long career, A hotelier, aristocrat, banker, doctor, playboy and property magnate. He has also impersonated the Director of Public Prosecutions.
What wonderful imaginations people have. Like the woman who walked into the Ohio shop and said she would pay for customers purchases as she had won the lottery. Fifteen hundred people took advantage of her generosity. Which was unfortunate for the shop as she had done no such thing. Ah well, you can't win them all. Perhaps she was just trying to make new friends. Talking of friends, choose them carefully. A group of men from a martial arts club in Coventry were carrying a wheel-chair bound friend up Snowdon in a charity event. A pity they abandoned him halfway up. He was later rescued by a mountain rescue team.
Yes, I'm sure the world is going mad. In America a six year old is suspended from school for forty five days and ordered to attend an establishment for wayward children. His offence, taking to school his camping utensils, a folding knife, fork and spoon. Classed evidently as a Level 3 violation concerning the possession, concealment or sale of dangerous instruments. I know it was later rescinded but that's not the point. How could anyone in the first place go down this route. The same mentality I suppose who decided that Humpty Dumpty is, contrary to common rumour, capable of being put back together. (A BBC programme for children decided that Humpty 'should be made happy again'.) Who needs the king's men when we have the BBC!
I feel my life ebbing away as I contemplate such things. I peer out of the window looking for the men in the white coats. A surreal feeling reinforced by reading that calling cows by individual names, Buttercup, Daisybell or Norma increases their milk yields. That is, according to the scientists at Newcastle University who are apparently experts in bovine motivational psychology. Who pays for such research I wonder. Recession, what recession? There is a recession of course, McDonald's have closed both their restaurants in Iceland due to the country's economic collapse. All say aahh on behalf of those who had money in Icelandic Banks. Talking of fast food, a man charged with criminal damage to two beefburgers in Swansea was found not guilty. (He rejected them when they were delivered late.)
And this is the real world. Are you sure? a flock of sheep burst into flames when methane escaping from a waste plant caught fire in northern Jordan. The locals thought it was the start of a volcanic eruption. That's the real world. A supermarket cancels an order and 1,090,000 puff pastry pies filled with mixed fruit finish up on e-bay.That too is the real world, 2009 style. We are also perhaps in danger of becoming fools led by fools. Officials (how I hate that word) on an Olympic Committee in Dorset could not differentiate between Lawrence of Arabia and Laurence Olivier when compiling facts about Dorset. And I'll bet they don't earn the minimum wage!
I soldier on regardless. Evidently Britain is ranked 12th in a list of the world's most prosperous countries (measured by wealth and happiness.) (Finland is listed as the happiest place to live.) Me, I know nought. Though a 100 year old Somalian in Mogadishu seems to have the right idea. He's married a seventeen year old girl. He said he had wanted to marry her for years but waited until she was older! She is incidentally his sixth wife. It's all a change from that idiot Home Secretary Alan Johnson trying to tell scientists he's the expert on cannabis, not them. Come to think of it, who the hell needs cannabis in the mad world we live in!