Recently, admired and august reader, I was reviewing some ponderings from the old manila folder. The one that contains those letters that one has written in a white hot passion but has elected to retain rather than to post in anger. Now that the following, regarding one of the 20th century’s most prominent Polish persons, has become somewhat cool, I elect to put it up for your consideration. I am not sure that I maintain the views exprsessed here, but wonder what you might think. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of it is that there is no mention of his beingcalled Carol by his friends. In the hurley burley of my own friendships, this would not escape comment.
In any event, from a year or two ago I give you this;
I have naturally been following the outpouring engendered by the recent death of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II. You may not have seen today’s paper, but I think that they have covered every breath he ever took.
This type of event always creates a delightful flurry of letters to the editor, and my heart soared as the eagle when I saw a letter from a prominent atheist of some sort.
After a promising start in which the late leader of the Catholic Church is denounced as, essentially, an evildoer who promoted one of a selection of 6,000 year old myths for personal gain, the letter descends into a tedious assertion that free use of condoms would save the world from every one of its current ills and that the Pope is a person of enormous influence in those places that these precautions are most needed.
I should state at this point that I consider the prohibition of contraception as a ludicrously hidebound and short sighted view. I don’t agree with it myself.
These, however, are issues of individual social choice and not amenable to a wide ranging discussion on non partisan lines.
What did interest me was the fascinating description of his holiness, the late Pope as “anti-pro-choice”.
Clearly the “anti” and the “pro” cancel each other out. Presumably this means that the writer was suggesting that the Pope is choice. Hmmmmm. Choice.
The only time I have ever heard anything described as “choice” it was a term of frank approval (although I concede I have not heard it for some time). The general context of the letter did not suggest that the author was a papist, but the only interpretation I can reasonably place upon it is that he was a fan. Possibly the letter was the work of a Jesuit or one of those people from “The Da Vinci Code” who feel the need to disguise their meanings in this sort of way.
In the happy days when butchers’ windows were frequently painted with garish advertisements for their meats, ‘choice quality’ was, I think, one of the promises frequently made. I think I may, in my younger – perhaps school -days, have used ‘choice’ as a way of describing a young lady who in today’s terms might be described as ‘hot’.
In that event, of course, “choice quality” is something of a tautology. An oxymoron, as our American cousins would have it. While not the same thing, it puts me in mind of some of the retail merchants who are obliged, by reason of economy or the desire to dissociate themselves with the educated classes, to describe themselves as providing goods and services for sale at “cheaper prices”.
The least examination of such a claim will reveal that the prices are lower, but how can they possibly be cheaper? It is the goods, not the prices that are for sale. The goods are cheaper. The prices lower.
I would rather wash a corpse than avail myself of this sort of alleged bargain.
The late Pope was fluent in many languages and I wonder whether he would have had a view on this vexed issue. Possibly he could have called on his old friend Bob Dylan (who has mysteriously escaped recent consideration of terrible song lyrics, despite being a recidivist in this matter) to whine about it while accompanying himself on a 12 string.
We will never know and I don’t suppose it benefits us to ponder further. Or does it?
June 5, 2007 at 3:38 am |
Dear Mr Olly, or may I call you Big?
I’ve never been on a blog before, but I notice you are very polite to all your correspondents, and I hope you’ll be kind to me.
Song lyrics, choice meats and low, low prices have already come together in a single place: when the great Cat Stevens sang “The first cut is the cheapest”.
And while I’m here, can I just say that I would rather eat a piece of toast than do most things?
I hope this finds you as it leaves me,
Kind regards
Mme Stanley
June 5, 2007 at 9:14 am |
Olly,
What’s all this nonsense about the Popes being responsible for AIDS in Africa?
If the people there are happy to commit the mortal sin of adultery why do they get so hung up on the lesser crime of contraception?
S.
June 5, 2007 at 10:29 am |
Ms. McD,
I don’t think that contraception is a crime, despite the best endeavours of the late Pope. Having said that, I take your point. Possibly there has been a study done that demonstrates that you are wrong, but it would be surprising.
Not as surprising as Bob Dylan playing for the old dodderer, but still surprising.
Love
Olly
June 5, 2007 at 11:18 am |
Big Olly
Ms McDago raises, with her usual élan, an interesting point, but as you suggest perhaps she has not considered all the implications of His Former Holiness’s edict.
I remember with sadness John Paul II’s passing, and I recall public comment a the time that his stand against contraception had been responsible for an increase in the spread of AIDS in Africa.
Apparently, with condoms banned by HFH, the preferred method of contraception for African men was to boff their wives in the bot, so to speak.
A brief search of the literature reveals that the following ditty was common in Africa shortly after the passing of HFH:
“In days of old when men were bold,
and JohnPaul banned the franger,
we’d simply flip the wifey round,
and in the bot we’d bang ‘er.”
This practice, with multiple partners and often with prostitutes, had dire consequences.
(note that the African men were pretty good with scansion)
June 5, 2007 at 12:11 pm |
Err, ooh, ah, Sigismund, thank you for your interesting insight into the home lives of the denizens of the Dark Continent. I leave it to my readership (possibly “readerboat” may be more accurate for such an exclusive group) to consider the implications of His Former Holiness’ edicts, though this has really been dealt with by Ms McD.
On another note, I don’t suppose that I can complain about the slight lessening of the plain of discussion given that I started it. I suppose that is really the answer to those who seek to defend HFH. We can never really know if his utterings caused the spread of disease, but he drew attention to himself and could be said to have started it too.
Love
Big Olly
June 5, 2007 at 12:32 pm |
Mme Stanley;
I am afraid that your contribution did not come to my attention until now. For some reason it had been associated with a prominent luncheon meat and I was obliged to retain my nephew to release it from cyber-bondage for me.
Might I start by welcoming you aboard and commending your observation about the work of Cat Stephens, or Yusuf Islam to use his real name. We find the explantion for the first cut being the cheapest in the fact that, as observed by Louis Prima, “the closer to the bone, the sweeter is the meat”.
Love
Big Olly
June 5, 2007 at 12:35 pm |
I combine this topic with the previous.
As Chuck Berry penned, “Oh Carol, don’t let him steal your heart away
I’m gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day”.
He is being warned not to let the devil steal his heart, and that in return he (Chuck) will learn to be a Catholic if it takes him 24 hours to do so.
June 5, 2007 at 2:19 pm |
Dear Stable-O, welcome.
How delightful that you have been able to combine topics and it did not occur to me that the Carol of whom Berry sang was the original May-Not Pole himself.
I rather suspect that it may have taken Chuck more than 24 hours to come to grips with the ancient mysteries of Catholicism. On my recollection there would have been quite a bit of preliminary spade work, such as expunging “My Ding a Ling”.
And that’s just for starters.
Love
Big Olly
June 5, 2007 at 4:48 pm |
Big Olly
I am, as you know, an uncomplicated man of science and seek no more than to contribute well-considered scientific debate to your blog.
I make no apology if you feel such statement lessens the plane (surely not the plain, Big Olly) of the discussion. I report the ditties of the African people as pure socio-anthropology, nothing more.
Much may be learned from the songs and informal rhymes of any society.
The African ditty, which I acknowledge may titillate some wowserish element that perhaps lurks in the bilges of your readerboat, is interesting in that it is at least factually self consistent.
It is of course, a variant of the many “In days of old, when Knights were bold…”
ditties, perhaps the most famous of which contains the lines:
“In days of old when Knights were bold,
and frangers weren’t invented,
They wrapped their socks around their —–,
And —– until contented.”
While I hope that obscuring the more colourful words therein will lessen any embarrassment that your gentle readerboat may suffer, I must now apologise to the scientifically minded who have been deprived of the chance to see that this scansion is in fact inferior to the African version.
Even a Mary Whitehouse acolyte could plainly see, hovever, the historical inaccuracies in this later version, as most people will know that it is socks that were not invented in days of the Knights, while male contraceptive devices have been in use since Roman times.
June 5, 2007 at 5:11 pm |
Dear Big,
As a woman I do not understand things like “frangers” or even “condoms”, as these are things that “A woman ain’t s’posed to see” as the song goes.
But I do care about AIDS and that is why I avoid eating watermelon – you know what happened to Liberace!
Anyway everyone knows the Church made up the concept of hell just to wring money from the poor.
There, I think that about covers it.
S.
June 5, 2007 at 5:13 pm |
Oh, I missed a bit…
They’d get money from the poor to buy heaps of Piatas and Rubens and that.
S.
June 5, 2007 at 9:24 pm |
I think Judith Wright summed up the dire African sexual situation most accurately, in iambic pentameter (scansion to the common folk) to boot:
“The eyeless labourer in the night
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day-
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.”
Apparently the foregoing describes the aftermath of a root. I wouldn’t know, being celebrate, as was she, so it begs the question just how the how the dickens would she know about the journey of the eyeless labourer?
Having said all that, she was “choice” as a youth.
June 5, 2007 at 10:18 pm |
Big Olly,
it is good to see a fellow member of the religious orders enter the debate, although Norbet is not, I’ll grant you, an Irish Jesuit.
Any way, to comment on the matters at hand;
Olly, I have washed corpses on several occassions and in my view it is over rated. Stick to buying cheap bargains or what have you.
As for the Holy Father being responsible for the spread of AIDS in Africa, I’m afraid to report that the Holy Roman Church doesn’t fare so well in the old deepest darkest. There are about 800 million Africans, 50% of whom are Mahomedens. In those countries which aren’t Muslim, there are many which have indigenous beliefs as the largest religion (for want of a better word dear Olly, I’m doing my best to keep an open mind). Of the rest, our own, dear, one true Church and path to salvation is not always the predominant Christian belief. Orthodoxy is spreading over the Dark Continent like a turd smeared across the breeches of an altar boy, making it darker still! And so why does no one ever point the finger at the Patriarch of Alexandria I hear you ask? Why indeed Big Olly, did not the Greeks invent the ‘Flippin of the Missus’?
But I am sure that of the teeming millions of Catholics in Africa there was not a man or woman amoungst them not hanging out for the latest reprints of ‘Humanae Vitae’ and not a single one who took the strictures of the Pope’s teaching with the grain of salt that so often pollutes materialistic Western minds. I mean, the poor savages would hardly be able to make their own minds up now, would they?
The origin of the aids virus was of course the taste the African’s had for eating bush meat. From rat to monkey to man. Fancy that. No jokes about acquiring a taste for bush meat in the convent thankyou! I have not been well lately and am in no mood for schoolboy smut.
yours etc,
Sr Cornelia
June 6, 2007 at 7:06 am |
I think Judith Wright summed up the dire African sexual situation most accurately, in good scansion to boot:
“The eyeless labourer in the night
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day-
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.”
Apparently she was celebrate, so it begs the question just how the how the dickens would she know about the journey of the eyeless labourer? Still the sooner that Africans realize that the joy of sex takes place after copulation, the better.
Having said all that, she was “choice” as a youth.
June 6, 2007 at 7:09 am |
Sorry, I see that Fr Olsen was mining a similar vein to me, though my amendments are an improvement on his. Maybe he was drunk when he recited his tale.
June 6, 2007 at 8:09 am |
Olly,
I’m sad to see that these once scholarly pages have decended into a lifestyle program peppered with jokes.
Having said that:
Q: Why should you practice sex before marriage?
A:’ Cause you get none after it
June 6, 2007 at 8:11 am |
And,
Q: How many wives does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, lazy f#cken bitches
June 6, 2007 at 8:42 am |
Q: How many husbands does it take to tile a bathroom?
A: Just one – as long as you slice him thinly enough
June 7, 2007 at 7:50 am |
Orry-san,
I am honourably intrigued by matters raised by Mr Sigismund (pronounced shigisuman-do in my neck of the woods). I too have heard rumours of male contraceptive devices used in ancient times. But I look at my trojan with raised ribs, and know it exists due to the marvels of modern science. Science wasn’t so modern in them old days, so, my point, if you’ll let me get there…..thank you… is how the hell did they do it?
Try as I might, and I don’t really spend too much time thinking on it, but it has been raised here and I feel compelled, I can’t think how the hell the Romans did it.
Or the Gauls, for that matter.
I’d ask the pope, but don’t think I’d get past the first monsignor, and certainly not the Swiss guard.
Over to you, Siggie.
June 7, 2007 at 7:51 am |
PS, konnichiwa.
June 7, 2007 at 9:08 am |
Peace be with you Ollie
I’m a bit embarrassed to have to raise it with you (hence I must insist on anonymity, although Jesus sees everything) but you seem to have a handle on theological matters.
If the Pope was flying in an aeroplane over a city, and was giving general absolution to the people on the aeroplane, with the people of the city be absolved of their sins?
Thanks Peter God in anticipation of your answer,
Bishop XXXX
June 7, 2007 at 9:50 am |
Goodness, another flurry of activity. Allow me to deal with your observations in more or less the order in which they have been made.
Sigismund, thank you for that bit of proof reading. I hope that the readerboat accepts that, given the volume of material with which we are now dealing, there will be occasional errors. I accept that the argument takes place on a plane but I do hope that it will always be in plain English. Though it seems to me that that would be Amish.
As for the suggestion that the ditty to which you refer is inaccurate, I accept that male contraceptive devices have been used since Roman times, but I wonder whether what they used would comfortably have fallen into the definition of “franger”. It is difficult to get a decisive definition of the term but I would say it is neccessarily something that one could carry in one’s wallet. Them Roman ones were made out of sheep’s stomachs or something, weren’t they?
Ms. McD, I blush that I should be discussing such matters with a member of the gentle sex, but accept Sigismund’s point that we must deal with science in a robust and frank way. That being the case I can advise that there is only one thing that a “woman aint supposed to see”, that being the bit of skin between a man’s scrotum and anus. Indeed, a man isn’t supposed to see it either unless it is his own, using a mirror. Even then, about once a year is ample.
Father Olsen, welcome. I had not imagined that this observation would bring us to every schoolboy’s favourite poet Judith Wright. I am delighted that it has.
You suggest that Wright was celibate. Although the passion of her writing (“this was our hunter and our chase, the third who lay in our embrace” – a haunting evocation of physical congress – I imagine) suggests that she was not, I should point out that she had the mind of a poet and therefore the capacity to describe experiences that she had not had.
You will recall that Ms Wright produced a large body of poetry protesting the Vietnam War, much of it evoking the experiences of the soldiers, even though she did not serve. A bit like Schumann….
Sister Cornelia, thank you as ever for that breath of convent air. The smell of candle wax and wood polish is unmistakeable.
Having said that I ask that you display a little more Christian compassion rather than reveal your narrow minded Irish prejudices against Greeks, Africans and Altar Boys.
I was, however, fascinated to read your breakdown of the performance of the faith in Africa. Presumably the church will blossom there as long as its members are not using contraceptives and the rest are all dying of disease. Imagine all the piatas you will be able to buy then.
Some Bloke, noting the times of the postings I assume that you wearily read Fr. Olsen’s offering just before you turned in, then woke thinking it was your own, having mulled it over in your sleep. This is not surprising given that the work of Judith Wright has the power to touch us all right where we live.
Phil, Anna let me say that a little levity is always welcome, particularly in such a delicate area as this one, but I would prefer that any jokes not divide the readerboat along gender lines, or attack the sanctity of marriage.
Surely one of you knows a nice clean one about Jewellers and Gaolers?
Finally, Ohira. I am afraid that I may have partly answered your question on shigisuman-do’s behalf. With luck he will complete the answer. Even if he doesn’t, I would counsel you to rumble with the Swiss Guard. They carry blades and defend their own turf fiercely.
Love
Big Olly
June 7, 2007 at 9:54 am |
Bishop XXXX, what an honour to have the input of such a senior Churchman. Welcome, your Grace ( or whatever outmoded title it is that you insist upon).
I can see that you want to take our discussion onto a different “plane”! Ha ha. Get it? See Sigismund’s last comment and I am sure that you will not fail to let a chuckle. I am wiping the tears from my eyes. Gracious me, it is just that sort of remark that made me the popular wag of my sunday school. Aha. Ha.
In answer to your question, no.
Love
Big Olly
June 7, 2007 at 1:16 pm |
A house in darknes due to wives not changing light bulbs, a marriage without sex, a bathroom tiled with human flesh and skin. The horror. I laughed and then having nightmares I am.
June 7, 2007 at 4:08 pm |
Big Olly
I am delighted that no fewer than two of your respondents have introduced the work of Judith Wright into the discussion.
Reference to Miss Wright’s oeuvre surely raises the plane of any discussion. Both your respondents Fr Olsen and Mr Bloke feel that Miss Wright was celibate, and while this is the view of the majority I commend to both these gentlemen a book by Mr Eric von Däniken entitled “Getting it Wright? –the Early Life of Judith Wright” in which the author provides startling evidence that Miss Wright spent a period of time in her early twenties working as an Oyster Girl in Broome, where she may have “tipped the velvet” during a close friendship with the daughter of a local diver. He cites:
West of my Days:
West of my days’ circle, part of my cravings within,
rises that fever, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the gaze of sun,
low shrubs, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite-
clean, lean, hungry country.
The crack’s leaf-silenced,
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;
and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.
– Which evidence, I would say, speaks quite plainly in favour of Mr von Däniken’s assertion.
As for the question of the Romans and prophylactics, you and Takahashi-san are correct. Sheep’s intestines were used for this purpose, which, one cannot help but observe, is one of the more wholesome ways in which the human male ejaculate could enter them.
June 7, 2007 at 7:01 pm |
Big
Do you know the song:~
“Jonah lives in a whaaaaale
Jo-nah lives in a whaaaaaale
He made his home in a fish’s
A-do-mennnnnnnnn
Jonah he lives in a whale.”
Later it says:~
“Whatever you’re liable
To read in the Bible,
It aint necessarily soooooo!”
My point being……
Sorry there is no point, save to say (1) it’s an improvement on Wright, J., and (2) is it good scansion or not?
(And Sigismund, I am actually Pakistani, so it’s Mr Some. Bloke is my first name.)
June 7, 2007 at 8:03 pm |
Actually, it’s “My Lord”, not ‘your grace’.
Look what is in the Bible is true, like in the Macabees where they cut the ladies’ hands and tounges off, and in Genisus where somebody begat Huz and Buz.
It is your secular interpretations that are the problem.
Go in peace etc…
June 8, 2007 at 9:36 am |
Dear Readers;
It is a long weekend here, Monday is a holiday to celebrate it being about a month and a half after the birthday of Her Brittanic Majesty, E II R the Queen of Australia and its Dominions. In honour of this event I am taking an extra day and will be retreating to the outback with a few carefully selected cronies.
We will be living in teepees, having steam baths and in the evening we will relax with by standing round the old tom toms and letting forth with a few cheery primal screams. I confidently expect to re find the inner man and will come back all hairy. Plus I plan to make a dreamcatcher with emu feathers coming off it and that.
Should an emergency arise I can be contacted at the camp where I will be using the name “Moonglow Houndstooth”.
I will comment on the above when I get back and possibly provide another musing. In the meantime, I see that Unkindly Refrain and Icy have each had a further observation, which I commend unto ye.
Love
Big Olly
June 9, 2007 at 9:10 am |
Dear Big,
I had the great thrill of visiting Vatican City while PJP II lay in state. I was quite taken with his brown shoes. How clean they were, I thought. Closer inspection revealed no wear at all on the soles. Presumably they were new. What a waste, I mused. What a terrible, terrible waste. This is, sadly, indicative of what is wrong with the Catholic Church today.
Dick.
June 12, 2007 at 9:24 am |
Peace be with you Big
One usually does not want to argue with the laity, but how can one avoid it?
As everybody knows, the Pope’s shoes would have little if any wear on them because he spent so much time bending over to kiss the tarmac. It’s all there in Leviticus.
Go in peace etc
Bishop XXXX
June 12, 2007 at 11:08 am |
OK, I am back if not as refreshed and spiritually healed as I had expected. The steam baths were a disaster and I strained a vocal cord with my first primal scream and had to restrict myself to the odd croak. Plus there was another Moonglow, which was a little embarassing.
Anyway, thanks again Sigismund for that thoughtful exposition of the early home life of the late (I am pretty sure) Judith Wright. The more I think about it, the more I see that I could go an oyster at the moment. Of course, it being a month without an “r” in it, they are out of season. Or is it the other way ’round?
Mr. Some I think that song is from “Porgy and Bess”, though I am happy to be corrected. The scansion is pretty good but not perfect.
My Lord Bishop XXXX, your point is well taken. I should add that anyone who has been sullied by the secular interpretations put up here probably needs to sacrifice a pigeon in a synagogue, as probably prescribed in Numbers or somewhere.
Dick and your Orchestra, lovely to have some professional musicians on board. Possibly you can help with the terrible arguments we have about scansion. As for His Former Holiness’ brown shoes, there is every chance that he had a few “new” pairs floating about the place. You see they tend to accumulate at Lourdes. Someone comes in in their wheelchair with a nice pair of shoes on that do not show any sign of wear. They are promptly cured but on leaping to their feet find that the shoes pinch a bit, so they toss them onto the wheelchair that they also leave there, and run joyous and barefoot to greet the world.
Of course, it is still a dreadful waste of a pair of new shoes. If the Pope distributed the shoe mountain around a bit he wouldn’t have to spend so much time washing beggars’ feet.
Love
Big Olly
June 14, 2007 at 2:29 pm |
One wearies on the ceaseless complaints of others when One has suffered so much at the hands of Church Authorities (In between One discharging Ones other duties such as inspecting soldiers or doing endless work for charities).
If all the Church of England did was insist on people wearing Frenchy’s when they root monkeys you wouldn’t hear one complaint out of One. Rather they prevented One from marrying Group Capt Townsend and One has and never enjoy happiness ever since (unless getting shit faced all the time is happiness – and quite frankly it is).
Where are me smokes….
June 14, 2007 at 2:33 pm |
Townsend was divorced, so as Wallis Simpson. Hasn’t anyone heard of King Henry VIII, who invented the freakin Church of England?
Where’s me gin……
June 14, 2007 at 2:39 pm |
You think it’s easy living a life of unbridled extravagance? It’s like being addicted to a drug. I haven’t had sturgeon for days.
You people should get into in Imelda Marcos’s shoes and walk around in them before you criticise me
[Ma'am come away from the typewriter now]
Get your hands off me you dirty stinking ape….
June 14, 2007 at 3:39 pm |
Gentlemen (and Schwester)
Knights had not Socks but Hose, shirley.
And were not in these Days the Guts of Sheep employed to intercept the the Konkourse of the Sputum? This is my Rememberung.
And why should Fornikation not be sinful? All the world today wishes to behave like Schwein and think themselves Engels. Which, since Engels was a Schwein, is, on the Second Hand, not so surpise-making.
June 14, 2007 at 3:39 pm |
Well how honoured I am to have the benefit of the thoughts of HRH The Princess Royal.
Not a dry eye in the house, she never stopped doing the Lambeth Walk all through the blitz, what a loveley smile (particularly considering what she is working with) etc.
Or was that the other one? I can never split them.
Anyway, thanks for the observations and long may you reign. Over people’s hearts.
Love
Big Olly
June 14, 2007 at 3:42 pm |
Ohh. It appears that yet another new reader, Freddie has delivered a thought while I was replying to HRH.
Having said that I am not sure quite what he is getting at. In any event, perhaps the knights in Prussia had different habits to those of Merrie Old.
By the way, why Merrie and not Merry? Is it Olde Worlde spelling, like Olde Worlde. If so, I suppose it should be Merrie Olde England.
Love
Big Olly
June 14, 2007 at 5:55 pm |
Mr Olly
I too was up north recently in the steam baths, or steam teepee in our case, and ours was a stellar success, with one fellow devotee having an excellent out of body experience, so much so that he died, and his soul now roams the ground in the far north. As luck would have it, I paid a visit to local Lyndhurst celebrity Talc Alf, felt my deceased friend’s presence, and had Mr T Alf sculpt in talc a wigwam, to remind me of the fun adventure we had.
Anyway, I had to tell my story in Adelaide about all the running around and jubilation on the glorious night, and Counsel assisting the Coroner, a certain A. Finch, repeatedly posed the question:
“During all this running did somebody call for a doctor?”
What the-?
June 14, 2007 at 11:29 pm |
Big Olly
Merrie England was a term invented by the Victorians (the 1800s UK ones, not your ones)
Merrie England is now a chain of cafes where you can enjoy coffee with a skin on it & shrink-wrapped scones whilst surrounded by oak beams, wrought iron candelabras & stained glass. The authenticity is only rivalled by the historical accuracy of the musical ‘Camelot’. or that one with Tony Curtis where his girlfriend castigates him thusly: ‘War, war war! That’s all you think about Dicky Plantagenet!’
June 15, 2007 at 9:55 am |
Anyone who doesn’t sculpt in talc is a fool.
June 17, 2007 at 9:35 am |
Question for the Princess Royal: Did Pete Townsend marry Wallace Greenslade?
Lionel
June 17, 2007 at 9:57 am |
Look to be honest One never followed him up after the enforced dumping. One’s tastes have changed now to prefer a face on a plate with only a left eye, a tusk and a tounge lolling out.
June 18, 2007 at 10:12 am |
I have heard Big Olly that the reason his Holiness’s shoes were so unworn is that he always wore a little pair of Scalextric cars strapped to them to commute from his fourposter to the papal balcony and back. They were a pair of SEAT 1500’s given to him by General Franco and did sterling service. However they were always going through those little tyres.
June 19, 2007 at 12:36 pm |
The Supreme Pontiff wears the Shoes of the Fisherman, n’est-ce pas?
This, however do I not believe in. What Fischerfolk wears any shoes, let alone red ermine slippers embroidered with the Triple Crown of Universal Jurisdiction! And how could they so clean be kept mit all the Blood and Guts and Worm-piercing and Mouth-Hooking and Disembowelling required of his Vocation as a Priest?
June 20, 2007 at 9:59 am |
What’s that crazy man fool bi Gully doing not putting on a new mews? The fool doesn’t even respond any more, the crazy man.
Has he had a heart attack or something?
And make sure you use talc when you weight lift or you will get a blister or something.
June 21, 2007 at 10:36 am |
Well, a few more backed up this time. I will attempt to treat in order.
Some Bloke, I do had the gimlet eye of Finch directed at me in the course of the inquisition. He had the impertinence to ask me the same question but I silenced him by advising that we didn’t need a doctor, we knew who done it.
Petra, I am not surprised that our Victorians did not invent the term “Merrie England”. They are famous for stealing things rather than for inventing them so I am sure that their dreadful capital, Melbourne, is studded with the eateries to which you so evocatively refer. I could really use a shrink wrapped scone.
Mr. T Alf, how delightful to have your contributions. Might I add that, from what I have heard, anyone who fences without a mask is no friend of the Fonz. That certainly gave me something to chew over when I first heard it and I have lived by it ever since. Hence my ruddy cheeks and firm, manly handshake.
Lionel, welcome aboard and an intriguing question, exceeded in mystery only by Her Royal Highness’ response. I hope much more comes of this.
Dr. Hackenbacker, your theory does provide an answer to the question that has been bedevilling the group for some time now. Of course he must have had a special pair if shoes for kissing landing strips in. Ones with extra durable toes.
Freddie, your ( if I might say) rather narrow view of the appropriate footwear for fishing makes it clear that you didn’t ever wet a line with Bobby Helpmann for whom ermine fishing slippers were de rigeur. I will concede that a certain amount of soiling did occur but there was nothing to be done.
There. I think that covers it.
Love
Big Olly
June 21, 2007 at 12:15 pm |
It was the face on the Gordon’s Gin bottle, which curiously looked a lot like my mother, HRH the Queen Mother (No, not HRH the Princess Royal Mother, bunch of f#@&ing c#@ts).
June 21, 2007 at 12:27 pm |
Ah, thank you for the explanation, your Serenity. I must say, I had you pegged for a Bombay Sapphire girl.
Love
Big Olly