Thoughtful Man and I were just settling down to watch the latest episode of ‘Sherlock‘ yesterday evening when my iPad pinged to let me know that I’d received an email…
“Don’t,” Thoughtful Man told me rather tetchily – we’d waited a long time for the resumption of Sherlock and he didn’t want anything interrupting the next couple of hours.
I looked anyway. “Oh My God! It’s a email from Whizzie!” I squealed with delight.
Thoughtful Man harrumphed but as the show had yet to start, it was in a more conciliatory manner. “Oh yes, how is she?” he asked.
“She’s okay,” I said quickly scanning the email. “Her family’s okay. Blimey, her mum and dad are still going.” Whizzie is my oldest friend, although we hadn’t been in contact for a good number of years; her parents were elderly then.
“Shush. It’s starting,” Thoughtful Man said turning his attention back to the TV screen.
I didn’t need the recap so continued to read Whizzie’s email and then decided to sneak a quick Twitter DM off to Hugo…
… That got me particularly evil squint from Thoughtful Man. I put the iPad down guiltily and gave my attention to the show. Synchronicity be damned – I, too, had been eagerly awaiting the return of the great detective…
*Oh, Clicky, did you have to?*
*/rolls eyes… I’d better get started on my email reply… Where to start…*
*There you are! /taps foot… I got back really quickly. Where have you been, Clicky?
*RedFranks? I left you at BlueFranks… Clicky, dinner is about to arrive and Thoughtful Man and I have ‘Suicide Squad’ to watch… I wanted to write this post before he got home from work… /wrings hands… *
*Chocolate? You think you can get round me with… chocolate? /takes both… Delicious… Damn, did you hear that?*
*That’s Thoughtful Man pulling up now… Okay, Clicky, laters…*
*Oh yeah, fuck… the Debate… That was fucking excellent…*
*Hey! Have you been wearing my Rubedo mask again, Clicky? I was asleep 49 minutes ago… I know, I still have the taste in my mouth… /lights another… Better…*
*Oh yeah, owls… or is that ‘owls?*
*Alright, let me get myself together, Clicky… /yawns… I think I’ll have another coffee… /stop hand sign… It’s okay, darling, I’ll do it…*
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Owls, Dear Reader. MEROVEEFrank mentioned owls in his last (sew above)…
… And puzzles and that’s exactly what PetesQuiz wrote about putting ‘the pieces of the jigsaw together’ in the ‘sew below’ at BlueFrank’s follow up to his ‘Defining the Future’ earlier on today…
*I know! How did he know I was going to use from TBBT in this post?!*
Dear Reader, we have a number of owls at the LoL…
OWL One
None of our owls have names. This fella came from the Packer side of the family. It used to be a table lamp; I’m not sure if Grandad bought it or was given it by German POWs in WW2 – he was Captain of a camp in Egypt and was given lots of carvings by prisoners who appreciated his fair and even-handed treatment. But it hasn’t cast light in a long time…
OWL 2 (and friend)
I don’t know where these guys came from, but they look down on me in the Library every day.
OWLS 3
I remember exactly when these fellas arrived. It was the day the boys broke up from school for Christmas. Thoughtful Man and I were waiting in the playground to collect them. Thoughtful Man had gone off with Kit Kat (who was always first out) for a chat with one of the other dads. I was standing aside, stamping my feet and blow out pretend smoke with my frozen, crystalised breath.
Suddenly I spotted Loops’, smiling from ear to ear, rushing toward me. He looked so excited. Then I saw his puffing, red face teacher, plodding along on behind. She was laden with… OMG, what the fuck was she carrying and why is she mouthing ‘I’m so sorry’ in my direction?!
“Mummy! I got you a Christmas present!” Loopy exclaimed, wrapping his little arms around my waist. “Owls!”
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*Brilliant! Finished it at last, Clicky… /yawn… I think I’ll slip off to bed for a recharge… Give Dear Reader a Song, please…*
My nephew Jake has just returned from a trip to Rome. It was a surprise birthday gift from his girlfriend, Sam. Thoughtful Man and I went there, 25 years ago for our honeymoon.
Jake brought his mum back a gift. Something she would appreciate…
CLICKY: Florence?
*/squint… Yeah, we know David is in Florence knot Rome, Click. Butt I’m telling the story of my afternoon…*
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“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Mrs Minge…”
I opened the front door a little wider to let Juju in, without letting a very excited Poppy out.
“… Happy birthday to you.” Juju finished her greeting and kissed me on both cheeks.
Our dopey dachshund rolled onto her back, presenting her soft, pink belly and wagged her tail. An arc of pee hit Juju’s shoe.
“Ugh, Mistress Ploppy! Every time!” Juju laughed. I handed her a roll of conveniently place kitchen towel and made for the kitchen. Now, sister just loves to make an entrance but, as far as Princess Poppy is concerned, any accompanying splash is entirely the dog’s prerogative. It is her house, after all.
Later, ensconced in the Library with hot beverages and smokes, we caught up on each other’s news. Juju gave me my birthday cards and told Thoughtful Man and I about Jake and Sam’s recent trip to Rome.
“They loved it. Absolutely, loved it. Did you see what Jake got for me?” Juju handed me her cigarette case and her lighter. “I’d recognise those bollocks anywhere.”
“But isn’t David housed in Florence?” I lit a rollie and handed the lighter back. Reluctantly.
Juju smiled. “That’s what I said to Jake.But I don’t care. I love it all the same.”
“Florence? I’m just reading a story about Florence.” Thoughtful Man stirred himself from his computer screen and turned to us. Poppy was laying contentedly across his knees, on her back. He stroked her belly. Bond villain cats have nothing on our girl.
“OMG! Is that the time?” Juju clocked the time onscreen and eased herself off the library sofa. “I’ve got to go and get something for Jake and Sam tea. Give the boys a kiss from me.”
Poppy and I saw her to the door just as two shadows loomed large through the glass. The boys were indeed home from school.
“Happy Birthday, mum.” Louis smiled broadly as he handed me a bunch of flowers. “The card is from my friends.”
I turned it over.
I read the card out loud. “‘Dear Louis’ Ma. Thanks for giving birth to such an amazing friend. From Callum, the llama you adopted.’ That’s very sweet. And you went the extra mile in Design and Technology as well. Well done.”
Thoughtful Man joined us in the hallway and scooped up a hyper Poppy so she could give Juju a thorough goodbye lick. Juju hates that more than the wet shoes welcome, as Thoughtful Man is well aware.”They wanted to surprise you for your birthday. They swore me to secrecy. I gave them a fiver.”
“We only spent £2.50.” Kit Kat whispered solemnly in my ear and patted his jacket pocket. His favourite lesson is Business and Finance. He loped off to raid the fridge.
We said our goodbyes and Juju made her escape from Poppy’s sloppy farewell kisses. Loopy went to look for a vase for the flowers and Thoughtful Man went looking for Kit Kat to get his £2.50 change. Poppy and I returned to the library sofa.
Juju had forgotten to pick up her cigarette case. I opened it and found a lone rollie and a promotion card she’d picked up from her recent trip to New York.
I examined the back of the card. “goUndergroundforlunch.com.” Curious, I opened another page on my PC and typed in the address.
I smoked Juju last rollie and smiled.
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*Pretty. Okay, Clicky. Let’s finish up this birthday with a Song.*
*Yes, Click. On MEROVEE we do it all the time. The first time, I think, was when Frank made a connection between Bond titles and news headlines… and then we all piled in* 😉
Angels feature in the latest post in the Red Universe…
Today, Angel A… Angle Cur… agreed to a Turkey… Turn Key… prosecution of a joker call Boehmermann.
CLICKY: Customs? Like free speech?
*Collected and placed with the rest behind a muslin curtain? Possibly…*
*Filmed in Prague… /rueful smile… Never tear who apart, Click? /raises eyebrows*
Extract from ‘A Family History for Ruth and Julia (Gawd ‘Elp Us!)’, a.k.a. ‘The Ma Papers’ by Judith Eileen Newton (formerly Shewan, née Packer)
I think that Dickie may have been too young to remember Gillian, but she was a smashing girl. She was so full of life and mischief and had her fingers in a lot of pies. She was so funny and really used to make me laugh.
Gill was very sporty, playing Table Tennis and Badminton and she loved to dance. She used to go to Victor Sylvester’s in Lewisham on Saturday night. I was officially too young to go anywhere with her (because I was only fourteen) but with a bit of splosh on my face and a mature air, I managed to get away with it.
The first weekend she took me to Victor Sylvester’s with her friend named Rita Winkle. She insisted it was pronounced Winekel but we called her Winkle anyway. Rita was older and very sophisticated and made up like a model. I really felt like a poor relation, after all they were both at work and I was still at school and a bohemian to boot. All my high ideals about bohemianism were sorely being put to the test.
What was I doing borrowing clothes and makeup, actually going to a dance and pretending that I was eighteen? The biggest problem was that I could not even dance. Oh yes I could shuffle, but this was pre-Beatles days and you either jived or ballroomed. I could do neither.
I remember that first night clearly. It was probably quite shabby but to me it was magical – little tables with lamps and a band, boys in suits… I did not know a boy with a suit.
I will always remember the smell of the ladies’ room, hairspray and perfume, whilst excited girls put on makeup and checked stocking seams, wondering who would ask them to dance with them tonight. It was a situation I had never encountered before and I was excited.
I had lied about my age and said I was eighteen. I was terrified. Gill was popular and seemed to know everyone, Rita was the belle of the ball and I felt like Cinderella.
When two blokes came and sat with us and bought us drinks, I really felt like the odd one out. Gill and Rita seemed so sophisticated and the blokes seemed so old. The evening progressed and I shuffled around with a couple of blokes.
When it was time to go home, the older of the two blokes said he would give us a lift home. Now, to have a car in those days was rare, so Rita’s eyes lit up. I assumed that the boys were taking home Rita and Gill and that I was an also ran. But when we got to Bellingham Lane, the guy stopped the car and told Rita she could walk from there because she lived out of his way. This probably sounds harsh by today’s standards but in those days things were much safer and we were used to walking. If we had not got a lift we would have walked from Lewisham to Bellingham – it’s a long way but we could not afford taxis.
Now I was really scared. Although I knew lots of boys from the youth club, I had never had a boyfriend with a car. They took us home and had coffee and arranged to meet us the next day in Catford to take us to the pictures.
One weekend with Gill and I had pulled. Bohemianism was losing its charm.
*… spare him his life for his pork sausages… doo be doo be doo be doo… Okay, Click, good choice of Song to end on*
No ‘back to work’ ‘for me today, sew … I’ll just continue from 1.8 whilst I figure out what to do with my life. And it’s knot as if Part 1.9 wasn’t already prepped… 😉
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*Thank you, Clicky, for help with this ‘Pointless Exercise’, so far… you’ve been very well behaved. Hear, have a Song… 😉 *
*sigh* Clicky, there seems to be sum confusion over the point of this ‘Pointless Exercise’ series of LoL posts… Could you get me something digestible on Quantum Theory… something eve-n I’d understand *rolls eyes*
Is that it? *squints*
Well, excuse me *indignant huff* … Carry on, Clicky…
There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e, the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to -0.08542455. (My physicist friends won’t recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to π or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the “hand of God” wrote that number, and “we don’t know how He pushed his pencil.” We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don’t know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!
It’s Friday and on Friday mornings I receive digital copies of ‘Building‘ and ‘Estates Gazette‘ magazines. I usually post the issue covers onMEROVEE because they sync so much, but with the overflowing comments, the latest page has become difficult to load…
So for the Meroveeps, or Mirror VIPs, here’s what’s…
Ding Dong, Clicky! What does the little Gazette (‘e states *rolls eyes*) have to say?
Kinda black and white, Clicky. I wonder what it means…
Etymologyonlineis a fantastic resource if words grab your inner rest…
property (n.) c. 1300, properte, “nature, quality,” later“possession, thing owned” (early 14c., a sense rare before 17c.), from an Anglo-French modification of Old French propriete“individuality, peculiarity; property” (12c., Modern French propreté; see propriety), from Latin proprietatem (nominative proprietas) “ownership, a property, propriety, quality,”literally “special character” (a loan-translation of Greek idioma), noun of quality from proprius“one’s own, special” (seeproper). For “possessions, private property”Middle English sometimes used proper goods. Hot property“sensation, a success”is from 1947 in “Billboard” stories.
If you clicked on ‘property’ EOL you’ll see four pages of listings where the word is used. These can be fascinating – both ‘black’ and ‘white’ via ‘bleach’ are Shining words, revealed to me whilst looking for hidden things in‘The Shining’
Look down the first page for ‘Property’ and you’ll find ‘waif’…
waif (n.) late 14c., “unclaimed property, flotsam, stray animal,”from Anglo-French waif (13c., Old French guaif) “ownerless property, something lost;”as an adjective,“not claimed, outcast, abandoned,” probably from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse veif“waving thing, flag,” from Proto-Germanic *waif-, from PIE *weip-“to turn, vacillate, tremble ecstatically” (see vibrate). Compare Medieval Latin waivium“thing thrown away by a thief in flight.” A Scottish/northern English parallel form was wavenger (late 15c.).
Meaning “person (especially a child) without home or friends” first attested 1784, from legal phrase waif and stray (1620s), from the adjective in the sense “lost, strayed, homeless.” Neglected children being uncommonly thin, the word tended toward this sense. Connotations of “fashionable, small, slender woman”began 1991 with application to childishly slim supermodels such as Kate Moss.
Look again at the ‘Building’ cover *scrolls up* and find the waving flag…
Wow, Clicky… Big Ben, flag and Kate Moss…
Anyway, it was whilst I was taking digital snapshots of the magazine covers, when the fire alarm suddenly screamed into life. A drill – just enough time to grab cigs, phone, hat and coat before being ushered down the spiraling fire escape by orangefluorescent wardens.
Too wet and windy to smoke during roll call, so I waited until everyone else sprinted for the lifts and settled my back into a covered corner to smoke and read. “Yippee!” there was a new post from The Slogto think about…
Now if you add all this mayhem up, you could be forgiven for concluding that the two government institutions Britain should steer completely clear of are The United States of America, and the European Union. And if you then look at their disgraceful citizen rights record and parlous econo-fiscal positions, you’d probably add Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China to that list. So it does say quite a lot about the judgement of the so-called British élite that they continue to laud the Special Relationship with the US, are desperate to stay in the rapidly collapsing EU bed, like nothing better than selling arms to the Saudis, have hired Beijing to oversee our nuclear power development, and toddle off to Ankara at regular intervals in order to praise Recep Erdogan to the Heavens.
That right, Clicky, on Saturday you posted a photo of my Thunderbirds Virgil doll. Quite why you decided to arrange it like a cock and balls is beyond me…
That’s me online, my avatar, a dog called Roobeedoo2. And, Click, Rain sounds like reign sounds like rein sounds likeREGN… and that’s MRS to you…
Shall we move on…?
Dolphin
Came with the Library. Now wears trousers.
That’s you, Clicky, helpful assistant. Now that’s 3 syncs with Hugo’s story. but I’d really like 4 for acondor…
Condor means scoring four under par (−4). This is the lowest individual hole score ever made. A condor would be a hole-in-one on a par-five (typically by cutting over a dogleg corner).
come on, Clicky, think…
Weiwei
MyAi WeiWeisunflower seeds! Clicky, how clever… OMG! Is that the time? Clickstar, have a Song…
*Clicky, are you feeling sensitive? Why don’t I just tell them to hit on your images to be transported to somewhere else?*
*Alright! Sheesh …*
This is a post about synchronicity …
… not all of synchronicity, of course, I’d be here all bloody day and night. No, this is a sync concerning this very post, which I was formulating yesterday evening, and with a comment smoking blogger Frank Davis made today, which ended up as his post’s title: “Will someone please tell me what happened to Harley?”.
First up, Christopher Lee died on 7th June but I only read about it yesterday:
When many film fans remember Christopher Lee, his role as evil white wizard Saruman in The Lord of the Rings will be one of the first to spring to mind. But while that performance was brilliant, the ingenious way Lee bagged it is even more awesome.
The British actor, who died aged 93 on 7 June, was such a mammoth Tolkien fan that he re-read the fantasy books every year without fail.
When he once met the author in a pub (yes, in real life, he’s the only cast member to have done so), he had a total starstruck meltdown and could barely speak, despite being a horror movie legend for the likes of Dracula already.
In a pub, eh? He mightn’t have met Tolkien in a pub these days …
This post was … is about a letter hanging in my Library …
For the life of me I cannot remember what fault I found in Josh Kirby’s front cover illustration of a Harley …
… I can’t even drive a car and am certainly not mechanically minded …
*squint …*
… but I remember writing my letter as soon as I’d finished reading ‘Soul Music’ and peppering it lots of …
“Hat. Hat. Hat.” made me laugh so hard, I had to let the author know. I really wasn’t expecting to get a reply …
*Clicky, we’ve had this conversation before about life before the internet … then, books were ‘books’ not ‘boks ‘ …*
Of course, Christopher Lee voiced Death in the TV adaptation of that Discworld story.
*No Clicky, Ian Richardson voiced Death in ‘The Hogfather’ … I’m talking about ‘Soul Music’ … Oh doo keep up …*
Harley Quinnis a character from Batman, of course …
*/puts finger in ear* … STOP PRESS! Harley isOK … I repeat, another smoker is not dead yet …*
“Feeling good for the most part just sore as hell all over and tired. You gotta figure I went almost a month with no sleep and it took til my 4th day home before the pain from my sternum and ribs quelled down enuf to finally sleep. Of course I was off all that damned morphine that made me a literal madman in the hospital for 4-5 days I was swinging and hitting everyone.”
I think that calls for a Song …
*Good choice, Clicky… /taps feet … I’m so glad to hear Harls is feeling better. I should go over there and say hello. Coming?*
Library of Libraries 