I have always viewed Christmas, decorative and wholesome reader, as a time of cheer tempered by appropriate reflection on one’s good fortune and the possibility that there are others who are not as resilient to the blows of fate as one may be oneself. I think it is important to leave a little something for the (oh so discreetly named) dustman and to ensure that the Christmas tree at the supermarket has a tin of Big Sister plum pudding or similar under it to be distributed to the grateful poor.
I don’t seek any thanks for these small sacrifices nor do I imagine that I am alone in seeking to share my good fortune around. Indeed it is clear that I am not. A quick look under the tree at my local Central Provision Store shows that there is a lovely plastic cricket set and a delightful Barbina ™ dolly that some little girl will surely cherish until her brother twists its arm off and the hollow body doesn’t provide enough resistance for her father to push it back on again. Or its hair peels off. Or the dog gets it.
Indeed the mental picture of the pleasure that the local poor child will get when she is able to console herself with a mouthful of processed flour and Turkish raisins is such that I am tempted to wait until Christmas Eve, pop ‘round to the little mite’s hovel and lovingly place the canned pud straight onto her (no doubt urine soaked) mattress myself. Dressed as Father Christmas, or not, subject to costume availability.
Such is the depth of my feeling for my fellow man at Christmastide.
Anyway, it was in this spirit that I tuned into “Christmas Favourites” on the wireless the other night and settled back with a tepid eggnog to enjoy the revels.
I cannot claim that it was all I had hoped it would be. Rather than a selection of Carols, I was greeted by commercialism at its worst. The program consisted mainly of dreadful pop style songs which had been created with the all too obvious aim of cashing in on the universal feelings of warmth toward humanity which we all enjoy at this time of year.
You may tolerate the cynical grab for cash that is “White Christmas” by Bingo Crosby but I remain unmoved. My nerveless fingers groped for the bakelite knob. Unfortunately I was unable to shut the accursed din off before I heard the nauseating opening bars of “The Little Drummer Boy”.
How vile. Honest emotion made me drop the eggnog on the Berber and don’t know if it will ever be the same. The egg really makes a nasty cleaning problem.
What ever happened to the old songs, I wonder? How can we have moved so far from the spirit and intention of the celebration of Christmas? Why have we sacrificed so many of the proud traditions of this humble religious feast in the interests of an annual grab for money?
I am not one to sit back and watch our proud traditions be eroded in this way. It is time that the public, no doubt thirsty for a return to the values of another time are given an unapologetic dose of proper traditional Christmas music. How better to do so than with a close examination of the lyrics of such a song?
On that basis, I am proud to provide you with my seasonal offering, my own “take” as my nephew would have it, on that perennial favourite “Last Christmas” by Mr. George Michael, known to and loved by us all. I think he done it when he was in Wham (or perhaps Wham!) with that other bloke who no-one remembers but who seems to have been rather better than George at keeping his nose etc clean.
But I digress. To the lyric!
“Last Christmas, intones the lugubrious Mr. Michael, “I gave you my heart”.
I do not for one minute imagine that he is referring to his physical heart. He means that he gave his affections. Not his affectations, that would have been too much to fit under the tree. I don’t think this line gives great cause for pause and consideration. It is reasonably straightforward.
He continues:
“The very next day you gave it away”.
How extraordinary. Consider this.
The day after Christmas day is, of course, Boxing Day. Boxing Day is so called because it is traditionally the day on which one presents the staff with a token of one’s appreciation for the year of backbreaking toil they have put in for you. I assume that the gift is given on the day after Christmas in the hope that the butler will be less tempted to despoil the goose if he thinks it will put his small flask of Cypress sherry at risk.
So the ungrateful recipient of Mr. Michael’s heart (whatever that means) appears to have given it to the servants.
How extraordinary. What on earth is the chambermaid, the chauffeur or the boy who cleans the boots and knives going to do with such a thing? I mean to say one would like to think that someone who is sufficiently high on the social scale to still have a staff in this day and age would also have sufficient courtesy to pen a simple note of thanks and put the unwanted gift away for a decent time. Then perhaps give it to the Vicar for the Jumble Sale.
Anyway, Mr. Michael does not seem too disturbed by this. He mournfully insists;
“This year, to save me from tears I’ll give it to someone special.”
I mean to say, what on earth was he doing giving it away in the first place if the recipient was not “someone special”. And if it was given away a year ago, how did Mr. Michael get it back?
This is all enough to make one swoon. The numbers just don’t add up. Indeed, the song concludes thus:
“A face on a lover with a fire in his heart
A man under cover but you tore him apart
Maybe next year I’ll give it to someone
I’ll give it to someone special.”
I don’t pretend to understand the first bit, but the second bit causes even more concern. Having earlier in the song claimed that this year he is going to give his heart to someone special, he is now saying that perhaps next year he will again give it to someone special.
If he is going to do that, he is going to have to get it back again from whoever is the recipient this year. In the same way that he has already done. But that was the upset that caused him to go public with this musical complaint about the person he gave it to last Christmas.
I don’t follow the song at all. But it is a damn sight finer than “White Christmas”.
December 20, 2008 at 7:09 am |
Ollster Mate
Not sure if you mentioned it (didn’t read much of your thing – can you blame me?) but the best Chrissy song is actually Jingle Bell Rock, as sung by that chick in the bar in Ally McBeal. You know, sometimes when they go to the bar there’s this hot chick who sings? Anyway, at Chrissy, when it’s snowing and all, the chick sings Jingle Bell Rock. She was pretty hot – I would have done her.
Coops
December 20, 2008 at 9:13 am |
My Dear Big Olly
I am, as you know, a simple man of science. Even so, at this time of year I find sentiment creeping in to my thoughts, concern for my fellow man, fond remembrances of my undergraduate days – all those things that are normally subsumed by life’s daily bustle.
Occasionally, a card from one of the old members of the Anaximander Club (for which, if you remember, I held the position of secretary for one giddying term!) or a simple missive from one of the chaps with whom I used to bicycle from church to church making altar rubbings, will sit on my mantelpiece, and as I enjoy my pipe of an evening I will think fondly of those far-off days and the stout fellows with whom I spent them.
Now, I am not given much to listening to songs, but neither am I completely made of stone, and one song in particular seems to sum up Christmas for me, and I defy anyone who hears it to remain unmoved.
I refer, of course, to “I Was Only Nineteen” by Mr John Schumann.
“Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon:-
God help me, he was going home in June.”
We know of course that Frankie kicked the mine on July 20 and as he would not be going home until the following June, that he would have missed Christmas with his family. And that as the tour lasted two years he had already spent one Christmas away from home.
Imagine Big Olly, those two Christmases, both for Frankie and his family. The first tinged with sadness that Frankie was far away, yet on the second Christmas imagine what his family felt; what they would have given to have their Frankie alive again – no matter where he was!
I confess, Big Olly, that I have been known to blame an errant wisp of smoke from my pipe for causing the tear that inevitably rises when I hear that song at Christmas, but of course we need look no further than Mr Schumann’s genius to find the true reason for it.
Sigismund.
December 20, 2008 at 9:59 am |
Ully,
I baleive your corespondunt hus it shlighty incorruct. The much luved Christmus carroll, “I Wus Only Narnteen” tulls of Frankie blowing off hus leg, and thus unvoking Dickens Classic Christmus tale: “Where Eagles Dare” in that it reminds us unstantly of Tiny Tim, the the “military adviser” who copped a lug full of schrapnel during a Charlie ambush in 68 on the Meekong, but I digress.
Frankie lived, but like me after 9.00am was legless.
To accomodate his post tour grieving, his family, rather than huve a tree at christmas would decorated a stump.
Wusn’t the tor one year anyway?
Must go now, Ringo is Narrating “Thomas the Tank’s Sodor Christmas run”, based loosely on the Tolstoy classic:”Grunt Magazine”.
T.
December 21, 2008 at 8:02 pm |
The Broken Hill deposit, western NSW, is an intensely deformed and metamorphosed submarine exhalative deposit, with associated hydrothermal alteration and exhalites, formed in a lineament-controlled rift.
It’s a mine, and I kicked it way on back on a school excursion in 1962, to be like frankie, but no effect, apart from a stubbed toe, because I was in thongs at the time, This was pre-Vietnam, anyway, so maybe mines were more benign back then.
As for Xmas songs, the only songs I know are Herb Alpert’s Tijiuana Xmas, which have no lyrics, as evidenced by the following, a sample of ‘Hark the Herald angels Sing’:
”
“
December 21, 2008 at 10:28 pm |
Dear Big Olly
I write to complain about your utter lack of sensitivity to those of us who find something deep, something pure, something totally untarnished about the lyrics of George Michael and the role Wham played in the sticky-date pudding that was 80’s Pop. For a start, B.O. (and I’m sure this acronym is more than appropriate to you) the ‘other bloke that no one seems to remember’ was ANDREW RIDGELEY, the guy who sang the ‘jitterbug ‘ line at the beginning of Wake Me Up before you Go-Go. You MORON! Not only could he sing but he was just as responsible for bringing espadrilles back into fashion as George Michael was. I HATE YOU.
The film clip to ‘Last Christmas’ was the highest expession of video making art in a Christmas song pre 1987. And don’t mention that pathetic, non christmas themed holiday release ‘Aga Doo’ to me. Oh Puhhhleeez!! The story behind the clip was true and real. George and Andrew were taking their girlfriends to a ski lodge on Christmas eve and George gets his heart broken. I bet you didn’t even know that the girls in the clip were Pepsi and Shirlee the Wham back up singers! PRETENDER! Any way it was only repressive censorship laws which stopped them from showing us what the boys got up to after the snowball fights with the girls had finished and they’d tucked them up into their single beds. Let’s just say, that there was more snowballing going on indoors than there was outdoors if you get my drift you total FAKE!
The song had a sad sequel in the courts too. That terrible old queen Barry Manilow had the nerve to suggest that the chorus sounded like ‘Can’t Smile Without You’ – JUST BECAUSE IT DID! And he squeezed George and Andrew for a YEARS WORTH OF ROYALTIES which he then wasted on some charity for African children, none of whom would ever have heard of Barry Manilow let alone Wham.
Now you’ll respond with some snippy little comment like ‘ironically the song did bring some joy to the hearts of those less fortunate than George Michael albeit not in time for Christmas and refracted through the prism of Barry Manilow’s tough mindedness..’ Yeah right. Bitch.
Yours Sincerely
Brad the Impaler
(not my real name) XXXXX
December 22, 2008 at 10:02 am |
All morning I’ve been trying to sing the chorus of “Wake me up before you go go” -or “Before” as we call it in the industry- to “Can’t smile without you” but I can’t.
However, it does fit (with a little poetic licence) to “All the Young Girls Love Alice”, the chorus anyway.
Excellent! It pays to be ahead of the game for George Michael’s funeral.
Bernie
December 22, 2008 at 9:39 pm |
Hey Olly, my real dad’s favourite Christmas song is that one, “Who’s gonna make the gravy” by Paul Kelly. Which is pretty funny ‘cos we always have prawns, garfish and oysters at Christmas and none of those ones taste good with gravy. Grandma Paula took me to see Santa. He is getting me a WWE Raw Arena Playset. We love watching that, especially smackdown.
December 23, 2008 at 8:34 am |
Well, a minor flurry of thoughtful input, for which I thank Das Readerboot from the bottom of my heart.
I am pleased to see that the heady rush of modern life has not been so great that we have forgotten what is so important about Christmas, particularly as expressed by the seasonal favourite “Only 19″. Some would say that song lyrics can be too closely studied but that has never been the fear of this forum.
“Brad”, welcome aboard, but a word of advice. We do not tolerate pseudonyms here. It may sound harsh but it has always been my concern to ensure that my contributors do not try to hide behind a false name to enable them to disseminate false information and unreasoning vitriol.
Having said that, I can see that you are doing no such thing, so I urge you. You have nothing to be ashamed of so why not come out and give your real name.
Your comments caused me to get out my old audio tape of Wham’s greatest seasonal hits and re-listen to the great song. Has anyone else noticed that Mr. Michael sings “gav” instead of “gave” all through the song? Have a listen and see what you think. I wonder why? Why “gav you” and not “gave you”?
Love
Big Olly
December 23, 2008 at 9:22 am |
Leave it out, Big Ollster
I was trying to forget my times as Mr George’s plaything, but you HAD to scrutinise things that closely…..
Back to therapy for me
Gav
December 23, 2008 at 9:42 am |
Olly you great fat fuck –
Fucken Wham! Jesus fuck spare me.
I know all about giving people hearts…
“On Aug the 3rd I gave you my heart,
The next fucken day you were skulling ouzo in a bar on Mykonos.”
That’s more fucken like it!
George Michael never gave anyone a heart – this is what he should a sung:-
“Last Christmas, I shoved my dick up your arse,
The very next day, you worked out I was gay,
That’s how fucken stupid you a-a-a-are,
That’s how fucken stu-pid you are”
Douje
December 23, 2008 at 11:47 am |
Christmas again, Olly, dear fellow? Surely not! Don’t tell me. Madness, I say. The world must be spinning as madly as a mad, spinning thing. No wonder it’s warming up and all those Amazonian forests are falling about every which way. Nell – she’s the lass that does for me – Nell said only the other day, as she wound my woollen comforter round my neck like a bloody carpet snake, I said: “Damn it, woman. I’m burning up” and she says: “That’ll be the global warmin’!” Nincompoop! These days, I’m no more sensible of warmth in my globes than a Mauretanian Buzzahwa, sitting barearsed on the frozen peaks of Mount Atlas trying to channel the gods for the latest intelligence on how to make the desert bloom or rid the land of the whitefella or some such fond hope! The Buzzahwas were their priests and that’s what they used to do, y’know. Rum business! All that howling and blood-letting and frost-bite. To what end, you might think. Still, that’s a Mauretanian Christmas for you.
Dashed persistent, mind. Oh, yes, the old Buzzahwas have been mooning the heavens every winter solstice since Joshua stopped the sun. To what end? What have any of ‘em learnt from their rude ceremony, from all their obscure gyrations in the uplands of their barren wastes? Well, what have any of us learnt, if it comes to that. A year older and not an hour wiser. Unless… Unless, my dear Olly, the quest is the thing, rather than the answer… the damned Russians, of all people, in the lasted wastelands of their own country tell the story of Lieutenant Kije (that’s Kee-Jay to you and me) – not the same Kije, I’m bound to add, whom we had aboard HMS Intemperate during the Crimean War – or was it Incontinent – anyway, he was Turkish blighter whose idea of Christmas present was to float vulcanised balloons full of quick lime along the Russian coast and harpoon them over their emplacements. Fiendishly gruesome work – but quite effective after a fashion. And a great morale boost for our chaps, I don’t doubt, facing the valley of death at Balaclava, to think that legions of the enemy across the way were being slowly reduced to a sort of human slurry.
But I’m away from myself – no a different Kije altogether, this one, sent by the Tsar to find the princess of Byzantium, promised in marriage to some ferocious Muscovite princeling and lost in the steppes. And he plods his way from village to village, to discharge his imperial mission, across the snowdrift wastes of Tartary to find his prize, the pearl beyond price… Well, turns out she WAS found, by and by, by someone else, as it happens, but the thing is, in their excitement and celebration, they forget to tell Lieutenant Kije; and he continued his quest from village to village, loyal to his emperor, faithful unto death – even beyond, for on dark days in winter, his ghost has often been seen, in the antique garb of his era, trudging undaunted and alone through snow-drifts no living being could withstand.
And so you see, for me, Olly old spit, that’s what Xmas is like – “Plod on! Plod on! I say”. You see, faith, it seems to me, doesn’t show us the road to an answer. Faith IS the road. Certainly it’s not the only road we can take, but it’s the only one that’s lit for us, and lit, what is more, with all the brightness of life and love and hope.
Now, you’ve never seen anything more blighted and desolate than the road from Armentières to Mons, Xmas 1914. Blasted to buggery! Not a lamp, not staging-house, not a sign-post, not a tree. Mud and ruin as far as the horizon. Not a road for the Magi, by any stretch. But that year, my dear fellow, and that year alone, I tell you it was a road lit with hope. The hope that dear Polly would be at the end of it and the gods would let me find her there, smiling once more. That road ends, I know, at Mons, but in a way I’ve not reached the end of it. You like Kije, I have yet to find her and so I just keep going.
The bloody Russians, in a rare fit of culture, wrote some music about Kije. Melancholy in parts, but the best Xmas carol for me. Listen to it Olly old stick, especially if you’re alone at Xmas and feeling not quite on top of things, after the other sounds of Xmas: the sad report of the closing door as Nell leaves again, the tick of the pendulum clock in the empty library, the crackle of the dying embers in the drawing-room hearth where (is it 2 hours ago already?) you took a sherry for the brief visit of an old friend’s niece –
and say quietly to yourself: “Plod on, Fruity! Plod on!”.
December 23, 2008 at 12:08 pm |
Don’t worry about George’s heart. He’s never gonna dance again, his guilty feet have got no rhythm. He should have known better than to cheat a friend. Now he’s never gonna dance again, the way he danced with me.
Serves him right.
December 23, 2008 at 3:21 pm |
and Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” leaves Bingo’s white one in the shade
December 24, 2008 at 6:10 am |
The holly and the ivy
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
They are surely two of them.
December 24, 2008 at 11:03 am |
B’Jesus Olly I’m back online and hasn’t me index fingers been twitching like a pigs coit at slaughter-time these past 12 months for want of a key board to blog from.
What with the terrible cold and the darkness and the isolation I thought me days of communicating with you were well and truly over. Don’t you know I was confined to me cell by the Mother Superior a year ago for speaking a heresy and instructed to say the rosary for nine hours a day and beg forgiveness from the BVM until the sin was washed from me corporal frame. It took a fricking year! Me knees is totally banjaxed!
And the heresy? Well Olly I am ashamed to speak of it again especially at Christmas time but I subscribed to an obscure belief in a ‘lost’ Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, namely ‘The Immaculate Hermaphroditism’. Those of us in the cult believed that Mary had a brother who was present at The Immaculate Conception, peering at the proceedings from behind a chiffarobe . He became Envaginated when some of the Fairy Dust sprinkled about by the Angel of the Lord accidentally landed on him. And that’s all it was. A terrible heresy nonetheless Olly.
A tantalising thought though hey Big Olly? But it’s all feckin gobshite. And haven’t I learnt that the hard way!
Must go now, I can hear the Mother Superior’s boots on the stairs.
God Bless Olly. May your sack be filled with good things.
yours,
Sr Cornelia.
January 1, 2009 at 8:49 pm |
Bring back Saturnalia, I say. But keep buying Thunderbirds themed merchandise, I get 30p on everyThunderbird 2 sold, which is not bad for something inspired by something I saw in the Mens toilets at Oktoberfest more than 40 summers ago.
January 6, 2009 at 7:30 am |
Mr Olly,
I too get annoyed at the abuse that our once great language is subjected to on a continual basis.
My teeth grate everytime I hear, on the celestial digital LCD, people being described as being “under the pump” It seems to imply some sort of pressure situation. It seems to apply to sporting situations in the main.
The damned fools don’t realise that to be under the influence of such increased pressure, one must be INSIDE the pump, or in the attached closed vessels, or at the very least so close to an outlet that more than a faint breeze is felt upon their person.
I have been under many pumps, and I have found the experience most pleasant. Not so if stuck under a bilge pump in one of my many steam ships, but what the hell would someone be doing down there in the first place?
Must go….. I have to have my photo taken in front of some chains.
Yours ever,
Kingy
January 6, 2009 at 10:08 am |
Goodness me! I hardly know what I might do to contain the outpourings. Or should I? I have always viewed myself as a mere gatekeeper and don’t seek to control the power of the portal. Of course, if a gatekeeper doesn’t control a portal I am not really sure what he does but am in no state to control my own emanations either. Just ask the housekeeper.
Anyway, Gav and Dujon, it seems to me as though you two might collaborate. There seems to be some shared history there if not a shared perspective. Do you think you could get a little something out in time for Christmas ‘09 (as my nephew likes to call it)? Allow me to suggest a lyric:
“Christmas ‘08 was really great
With all holly and crackers with prizes
Christmas ‘09 I’m sure will be fine
Subject to the Global Economic Crisis”
Hmm. A little strained perhaps. Next time I shall call on Melpomenne or whatever her name is.
Mr or Ms Metcalfe, thank you. I have only just recovered my composure.
Sister Cornelia, a welcome return indeed! We were starting to wonder what had happened. I am concerned to see that you have again fallen into the clutches of Tom Cruise and his cronies. Oh how I abhor the misery that his twisted beliefs have inflicted on the populace and how governments have sat silent and allowed him to use his popularity to seduce the foolish and vulnerable. Couldn’t he have stuck to his famous outback postal service?
Dr. Hackenbacker, it has been a while since we heard from you and I am pleased to see that the twin pillars of your belief system remain as solid as ever. Satan and Thunderbirds. What a happy amalgam!
Finally a big welcome to the spectacularly top hatted one. Well done with all the feats of engineering my man and the well made observations about widely observed abuses of the language. Much appreciated.
Love
Big Olly
January 6, 2009 at 2:10 pm |
Hey! Put your manners back in, Mister!
If you knew Scientology, you’d know we’re just here to help cos we’re like the only ones who can; if you don’t know, well, like go out and learn it, OK, but don’t like pretend that you know what you like don’t know, OK, cos we’re just here to help…
But oh, no, you don’t want that, do you? You and your kind! Servants of Lord Xenu – Anonymous – Will Fuckin’ Smith – types. You’re one of them aren’t you, Mr. So-Called Big Olly – cyber terrorist!
You are Legion – “for you are many” – you neither forget nor forgive.
Well I’ll expect you, alright… I’ll expect you.
January 6, 2009 at 2:20 pm |
Welcome aboard Mr. Cruise, though I suspect you are not the one to whom I was referring, but welcome nontheless. I am pleased to know that you are expecting me. What would you like me to bring? Some bun?
In other matters I can see what you mean about your dyslexia being cured by L. Ron’s methods. Doesn’t it seem odd, though, that he was able to cure you but that his own dyslexia rendered him unable to get his name and initial in the right order?
Love
Big Olly
January 6, 2009 at 2:54 pm |
Oh, you are very glib, aren’t you!
We happen to call him LRH anyway, so it doesn’t even matter where you put his goddam initial. And he never used his first name anyway, cos he thought all those goddam, drug – pummelled, psycotherapy – junkies you call “other people” would probably get him mixed up with Mrs. Lafayette Dubois – yet another goddammed bitch of a morpho – adict – but at least she tried to beat the habit – even tho it meant lots of uncontrolled dribbling an having to listen with an increasingly less equanimity to increasingly long readings from that worthless goddamm brother of Scout’s – tho’ of course they left that out of the film – oh, yes, my friend, Hollywood ain’t interested in drug rehab, just sex and violence – throw in a couple of pre-teens and a twisted-loner called Boo and you got a blockbuster, I should know – but then I do.
Ah what’s the point…
January 7, 2009 at 8:24 am |
The seasons send their ruin as they go,
For in the spring the narciss shows its head
Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red,
And in the autumn purple violets blow,
And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow;
Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again
And this grey land grow green with summer rain
And send up cowslips for some boy to mow.
But what of life whose bitter hungry sea
Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night
Covers the days which never more return?
Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn
We lose too soon, and only find delight
In withered husks of some dead memory.
January 7, 2009 at 10:04 am |
So I’m just the withered husk of some dead memory, am I? Fine! Oh, that’s just perfect – after all I’ve done for you. After all my selfless love and unbending support. A withered husk…
Ye Gods do you SEE this! The monstrous hand of ingratitude that held itself out time and again to snatch from me my genius – yes MY genius – now streches forth one last time to smite my cheek. Oh the words should rather strangle themselves in his gullet than enter the world as parties to such a cruel and wicked sentiment!
Olympus! Hath thine host departed, that in olden days avenging furies had dispatched with all swift and ruinous expedition to punish such unnatural dealing in the world of men – the heartlessness of pride, the wantonness of spite, the bitter reproach of the soul that is grown sick with too much love.
A withered husk!
Well you aint no oil painting yerself!
Bitch!
January 7, 2009 at 2:37 pm |
Now I am beginning to think this Bosie fellow might have written Last Christmas, not our George.
January 7, 2009 at 6:54 pm |
Last Christmas
I gave you my Arse
and the very next day
You threw it away.
This year, to save me from tears
I’m givin’ it to someone special.
(repeat endlessly with strobe effect on the first letter of the word ’special’)
January 7, 2009 at 7:52 pm |
Dear Big Olly
Can I ask for a point of clarification please. I was chewing this one over with some of the postulants after Stations of the Sock.
Are the lyrics to the Bosie Douglas verion of ‘Last Christmas’ meant to be rhyming or in the style of blank verse? I just ask like, because it could change the motivation of the song. If it doesn’t rhyme, then we are not talking about ‘tears’ as in lachrimosity but rather ‘tears’ as in ‘the veil of the Temple was rent assunder’ type of tear. Which would make Bosie’s version far less sentimental and a whole lot more pragmatic if you get my meaning Big Olly. Would it not then more accurately reflect the rougher, pre lube, 19th Century type of toilet trading that Bosie hisself was accustomed to?
Personally I hate remix versions. Still, Bosie could have learnt from what the actress said the the Bishop, (I shat meself when I first heard this one)…
Oops, must go now, Mother Superior is clomping up the stairs – that wasn’t by the way what the actress said to the
January 8, 2009 at 7:46 am |
Did I hear correctly – a twelve inch version of Bosie?
Now, that would be interesting.
Albertus, I am just going outside and may be some time.
January 8, 2009 at 8:36 am |
See, this is what happens when you sing your composition down the phone to Andrew & let him do the writing up. Or rather, it’s what happened when I did… draw closer to the fire, it’s a convoluted & tortuous anecdote.
My perennial Yuletide classic was in fact a bitchy riposte penned to famous German bandleader Herr James Last, who, having attended one of my dinner parties, rather than appreciating the seasonal antlered animal which I bestowed on him one Michaelmass, rather looked the proverbial in the mouth, by having a firm of contractors arrive on the morn to ascertain it’s mass for transportation, & decided he wouldn’t take it without my forking out for shipping charges. The cheek!
OK so now that’s cleared up, altogether now:
“Last, Christmas I gave you my hart, but the very next day you gave it a weigh…”
January 8, 2009 at 10:56 pm |
Like the sickening:~
“So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun”
Yeah well right it might just be a bit of pedantquery by me, but if it’s Dec 25, the new year is a full 7 days away, so this “new one just begun” rot is a load of rot, for want of another word. I managed to get on it for 6 of those 7, Big, so there you have it, case closed.
The big (not related) shame was that that one bloke didn’t have a n extra bullet for Y. Ono, he’d of been even more of a hero, but who’s counting bullets when a full week, one of 52, is disregarded. John Schuman would roll over in his grave on the moon if he’d thanfully do us all a favour and kick a mine, any month will do, and then NASA honoured him by sending his ashes to the moon on a space shuttle, which then crashed on re-entry to bolster news ratings…
January 10, 2009 at 4:38 am |
You f-f-f-f-ff-f-f-ools! Man doesn’t land on the moon until 2041! That John Schumann should be shot! If theres one thing worse than Australian rap then its Schuman’s science fiction folk songs.
By the way Isambard, you are an inspiration! Great Western Railway, nice one! Although I’m a little worried about the big chains, and those poor little boys they found riveted into a compartment of “The Great Britain”. I think you went a bit over the top in your nautical phase…..
On reflection there is nothing worse than Australian rap.
January 10, 2009 at 8:41 am |
Jeez! Christmas is a hard word to rhyme.
I’ve been working on my Christmas haiku for a couple of weeks now, so here we go:-
“Last Christmas
I gave you my isthmus”
I think it was even tougher than baloombas.
Coops
January 10, 2009 at 4:45 pm |
Signore Blok,
Maybe professore Lennon is singing about when Christmas ends on the 6th of January quando la befana brings presents per i piccoli bambini?
La Befana vien di notte
con le scarpe tutte rotte,
con la scopa di saggina:
viva viva la nonnina!
Yoko has a Christmas song for you too
“…ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai…”
Rigardi,
Gianni
January 12, 2009 at 7:33 am |
To others it would be rubbish. A strip of finely beaten aluminum, pith from Portugal, superheated sand, grape juice well past it’s use-by date, intricate wireing, adhesive shiny paper, a pile of rubbish.
But hail the genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel: “Great Western Sparkling Burgandy”
January 13, 2009 at 8:33 pm |
Try Spurkling Bargundy you old poof!
They take some Spurk, add a bit of Barg, some lingundy and there you have it. Lennon J wrote a song abot it’s effects ~ I an the Olly.
My next quaestion is “Where’s Petra fide?” I’ll soon be like Frooty if she’s departed.
January 14, 2009 at 12:13 am |
I’m here & I’ve brought a sick note. Not the most traditional of gifts… there’s still some marzipan liquer knocking about as well.
January 14, 2009 at 9:54 am |
The problem with the lack of rhyme in “Last Christmas” can be overcome by substituting Kristallnacht.
Last Kristallnacht
I gave you my heart
But the very next day
They took you away.
Seems to have all the sensitivity of the original.
January 14, 2009 at 2:00 pm |
PS:
This year I’ll give it to Speer
Or maybe to Albert Kessel…ring.
Still needs some tweaking, maybe.
January 15, 2009 at 12:01 am |
… & how come the object of George’s affections doesn’t recognise him after only a year? At the height of Whamania, he was contractually obliged to change his hairstyle every fifteen seconds, but shirlee that wouldn’t present a problem? (except for when GM, David Sylvyan & Lady Doi confused the rota & all ended up with the same boufant one simultaneously, but that’s by the by).
By implication, (s)he must have had prospagnosia, amnesia or been so hopelessly promiscuous that there must have been lots of other ‘Georges’ since. Herr Quince-Jelly can clear it up by adding a suitable verse about brain-washing.
January 15, 2009 at 10:51 am |
Last Christmas
They gave me no prize
So I chucked my life away
Cos they all hated that my cowboy was gay
This year
Because I’m not here
They felt guilt-riddenly obliged to give me something special.
But all I got was a lousy Golden Globe – I’d rather die. Just as well as it turns out.
January 15, 2009 at 4:00 pm |
I get it. A guy starts talkin’ inches an’ all of a sudden he’s not such a withered husk any more. Yeah, well, I is well awake to likes o’ you, Oscar.
So, get over here ya sexy slut an’ let me lay some on ya!
January 15, 2009 at 7:18 pm |
Ah, Petra my love!
We must head to a Starbucks soon, not the one on the corner, but the one next to it, and there I can hold your hand an smooch you while reading You Lissies.
And so this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
So let’s eat an Easter bun.
January 16, 2009 at 7:48 am |
Gracious Some, you’ve become rather forward since last year! Is it a resolution? (number nine, of course). That natty new picktewer next to your name really suits ‘you’…
January 18, 2009 at 8:33 pm |
Yes – I’m told that Mr Bloke certainly hankers for the fair ladies from the old Dart…..or at least them that lives there
January 20, 2009 at 8:28 am |
CHRISTMAS LAST:
I wandered through young Wridgley’s iced retreat,
The snow on each o’erhanging spray
Flashed bright as mirror’d balls to shame the day;
Two winsome birds with background voices neat
Made show of all their bosoms; at my feet
Like ripe half-moons their pale baloombi lay:
To curve the crotch of manly George away
And on his face a look of longing put
Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
For then my young boy-lord passed singing clear,
‘Jesus son of Mary has been born!
But what care I, whose trousers hold a foot?’
O come now – sow my winter path with seed!
Ah, God! I feel that deep Hellenic need
Extinguishing those unkind memories of pain,
Amidst the Kings, the frankincense and myrrh,
Our Saviour’s here to keep us from a Tear.
January 20, 2009 at 10:24 am |
ON READING “CHRISTMAS LAST”
A Warning to Stop Treating One like a Piece of Meat
O Epiphanic Feast, bright holy dawn,
Reveal by what great mystic reverence drawn,
Thy Magi to this sylvan scene bestir
Themselves with gold and frankincense and myrrh
To please the God that fell in love with Man.
O Balthazar! O Gaspar! O Melchior
Wherefore from out the luggage of thy van
Should I, with like dispatch, some base gewgaw
Or shiny gaud produce to tempt MY god?
When I to win his unaffected love
Have but to loose my pants, remove a glove
And, Moses-like, raise up my glorious rod.
I grant it may not part the sea, but just a look
Can part the folds Oscar’s pocket-book!
January 20, 2009 at 2:14 pm |
Coo, if I might make so bold, things seem to have taken a turn while I was taking my traditional fortnight at the seaside. This is worse than when the bathing machine ran over my gouty toe.
Bosie, Oscar. Petra, Some. It is delightful that you feel comfortable enough to bare your souls to us and it is our uniform hope that we might in turn bring further comfort to you, our troubled youths.
Perhaps a positive affirmation might help.
Love
Big Olly
January 21, 2009 at 8:20 am |
This is my dickie
This is my dickie
This is my dickie
Dick is this!
Well I pull it this way
And I pull it that way
Out of the end
Comes viscous wiss!
January 21, 2009 at 8:02 pm |
Well, during my two weeks personing the lighthouse at Hove, I see that some imposter has impostered me, probably the person who backed it up with that English women line, that incurable gossip old Nell Mangel, mother of Alby I think, and also on Neighbours (?), but that’s another blog altogether.
As juror No. 7 so eloquently put it when reasonably asked for an explanation:~
“Now listen, I dont have terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…….”
January 22, 2009 at 8:27 am |
THE NEW REMORSE:
The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter’s hand.
But who is this who cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up and wonder!) Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?
It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
And I shall weep and worship, as before.
January 22, 2009 at 8:42 am |
UPON READING “THE NEW REMORSE”
My friend Nicky
Had a ten foot dickie
And shewed it to the girl next door
She thought it was a snake
Hit it with a rake
And now it’s only four foot four.
Trad.
January 22, 2009 at 9:54 am |
Dear oh dear. Little wonder they’ve had to close the Cafe Royal…
So, we shall we go, Oscar? The Savoy for old times’ sake? Come on, the writing can wait! A little Thermidor, a Perrier Jouet ‘95, maybe a creme de menthe or two.
Oh, this is lovely.. quite like old times. You were very wicked to me you know, but I think I’ve just managed to forgive you.. and I guess a was a little bit mean myself, albeit under heavy provocation. But, you’ll see, I’ve changed. I really have… Blast! I’ve left my wallet at home. You can spot us this one, tho’, can’t you Oscar, and I swear I’ll pay you back, honestly.
Oh, and lose that Alby fellow – gives me the creeps. Keeps looking at me as though wants to hurl me out of the nearest window.
January 22, 2009 at 10:45 am |
Albertus – my coat; help me on with my coat.
And put a little something into my flask, will you? Against the cold?
Yes, I’m going out.
It’s none of your damned business!
Yes, I know, but that was last Christmas;
This year there will be no tears…
Yes, Albertus, he IS special.
Once bitten and twice shy…
I kept my distance but he still catches my eye.
Ah – the Savoy; nothing’s changed. Where is he? Will I know him? What will I say to him?
Tell me baby do you recognise me?
Well it’s been a year, it doesn’t surprise me
I wrapped it up and sent it
With a note saying “I Love You” I meant it
Now I know what a fool I’ve been
But if you kissed me now I know you’d fool me again
Thankyou Wilcox, my usual table will be fine. For two; I’m expecting company. Yes it has been a while. Indeed Wilcox – Perrier-Jouet 95 and lobster.
A crowded room, friends with tired eyes
I’m hiding from you and your soul of ice
My God I thought you were someone to rely on
Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on
A face on a lover with a fire in his heart
A man undercover but you tore me apart
January 22, 2009 at 11:18 am |
Wouldn’t it be better ending:
“A man undercover but you did a fart”?
Just a suggestion.
January 22, 2009 at 11:30 am |
Now look here Olly, I’m as tolerant as any deity, but I do draw the line at this ongoing cows hoof business you seem to encourage. I dont like pansys myself. Never did. Mentioned it all the time when I was alive but no one wrote it down. Four biographers and not a bally one of them. Tany rate the modern christians have divined my divine thoughts on the matter and good on them. You don’t see them copping one up the tradesman’s in a public toot. They’re off popping out good boys and girls who follow the natural order. None outside of marriage either.
Fancy men talking about kissing other men. Divisive nonsense outside of Europe and you should put a stop to it unless some boarding school young boys get the wrong idea. You’ll be encouraging women to work next.
January 22, 2009 at 2:36 pm |
Ah, the Savoy. Will they remember me… Bound to, really.
Gosh! Late again. Fancy having to walk three whole blocks. The very idea… Beastly bloody cabbies and their no credit policy. Conspiracy against the aristocacracy that what it is. They all ought to be bloody well run in and given a good… Oh, where is he? Where is he? I can’t see him.
“Oh just fine, thankyou, Wilcox. The usual…”
Wait a bit. Who’s that sitting at his table? Could it be? It certainly looks like him. Be still, my heart… Jeez, he’s whooped it on a bit. It’s only been a year! Nevermind. Does he see me? Turn around, Oscar. No don’t. You’ll hate me… Do you see me? Turn around…
Every now and then I know
You’ll never be the man you always you wanted to be
Every now and then I know
You’ll always be the only man who wanted me the way that I am
Every now and then I know
There’s no one in the universe as magical and wonderous as you
Every now and then I know
There’s nothing any better and there’s nothing I just wouldn’t do…
January 23, 2009 at 5:21 am |
Hey, he’s sampling ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’. I want a fucking royalty.
January 23, 2009 at 6:58 am |
Hey there Bonnie – good to hear from you. You’d like a #@!!ing royalty would you? And why would that be, love?
a) because you wrote the song?
b) because you’re a washed up, money hungry skank who’s looking for any way to cash in on the tatters of of her miniscule career?
Let me see… Oh, that’s right… I wrote the song, (yes Bonnie, I wrote the #@!!ing song, darling) so it couldn’t be a) could it?
Gosh, must be b).
January 23, 2009 at 7:35 am |
Well Jim, you also wrote “Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams” so I’d shut the fuck up if I was you. That song was destined to be a Meatloaf B side before I sang it. You owe me, long haired ponce.
January 23, 2009 at 10:50 am |
Ah, a thought provoking debate as ever. Good to see that the season of goodwill and contemplation of the wellbeing of our fellow man has left its mark on the readerpoohstick.
For mine, I am now contemplating Australia Day, whatever that is.
Love
Big Olly
January 23, 2009 at 11:42 am |
Now see here Olly, Australia Day is the triumph of the pioneers, clearing the rugged land, poinsoning wells, the stump jump plough and all that. They weren’t lying down under bushes touching insurance salesman’s willies like your correspondents do that’s for sure. These so called people wouldn’t know Bradman’s average if it was written on a cricket stump and shoved up their bottoms, though I’d expect they’d like to try.
January 23, 2009 at 1:42 pm |
Hey Guys!
Not sure if you’ve noticed this (maybe Mr A. Poet did?) but…
Heart rhymes with Fart!
How cool is that? Maybe it took me a while to get it because of the different spelling, but when you say them out loud there’s no doubt – try it!
Man Oh Man – I can have a field day here!
Last Christmas I gave you my heart
The very next day you let off a fart.
Then there’s Total Eclipse of the Fart!
Imagine that – a fart so big it blocks out the sun!
Who said a good fart these days is hard to find? Not me!
Coops
January 23, 2009 at 3:06 pm |
Hats off to that young man Olly. I acknowledge that material about passing wind is a bit friuty, but so long as the general thrust is OUT of the bottom, rather than IN then I’m not so stuck in the mud not to have a little behind the hands chuckle. Reminds me of my time on the ship to England with Joseph of Arimathea when the coxswain’s mate amused us all no end by playing the first four notes of ‘Jerusalem’ out of his bottom. We never talked about it, but I’m sure we all marked him down as a card.
” And did those feet…”! I’m giggling at the memory!
January 23, 2009 at 3:15 pm |
Some things never change – like (a) the mindadom of Coops and (b) the awe-inspiringly thick hides of those friggin Hoolywood poseurs who have FINALLY – FINALLY nominated me for an Oscar
but you can bet your sweet pawnable ass it’s only cos
(a) it’s one year to the day after I accidentally decelebrated missing out on the last one with one too many pharmaceutical hors d’oevres washed down with a slightly too high gin highball; and
(b) now that Barrack Obama is President it’s OK to be a gay cowboy (even if you’re friggin not)
even tho’ my performance as the Joker was, if I do say so myself (which I do) pure genius in a standalone way and worthy of an Academy Award quite apart from the fact that it was acted by “that dead gay cowboy” who not only didn’t get recognised for his real cinematographic triumph but actually got friggen killed for it.. effectively.
You just watch them try and take it away from me, this time.
January 23, 2009 at 9:36 pm |
Shut up Wilcox!
No! Don’t say a word!
Can’t you see I’m waiting? I’ve no time for your idle chat! God man, this could be the most important moment of my life – another chance, Wilcox! How many of us get that? I don’t deserve it Wilcox, but d’you know what? This time I think I might have it. Just a chance, Wilcox, just a tiny chance, but I surely won’t waste it listening to you when I should be watching and waiting. Now get away man! Well, since you’re here, I’ll have some brandy. Two large ones. No – leave the champagne; that is for my friend. And tell the kitchen that I shall require the lobster directly, but I will tell you when to serve it. Now go!
Hello?
Do I know you sir?
Oh, forgive me sir, I was distracted; you see I have a most important engagement and the young man is keeping me waiting.
Why, you flatter me sir, no – I can see you would not! But then the young have their ways, and we in turn must forgive them. I can tell you frankly sir that in this young man there is much to forgive, but that I am more than willing to do so!
Ah! This young man, sir! Where could I begin? Imagine the frame of Adonis – lithe of limb, fair skinned, a clear face whose young eyes see straight through one! He who can tease, and yet can turn the taunt in an instant to affection! Yes. I am happy to wait, sir, more than happy.
Yes – Wilde, that is my name sir. I am surprised you know it! Indeed there was a time when I would have expected all to know it. There was a time, sir, when I could enter this room and a hush would fall. A momentary hush sir, and then there would be applause! Yes, I would approach this very table, and before I had seated myself a magnum or two would appear – sent by an admirer, or toady, or impresario eager to please me – by whom I cared not! Ah, yes! The first magnum of the evening, then another, and another…
Ah, but that was long ago sir. The days of the halcyon are long past. I am surprised that you even recognised me sir. Oh, you are too kind.
Forgive me if I seem distracted – did I mention that I am waiting for a friend? Well, more than a friend really, I have a chance, sir. I don’t mind speaking frankly with you – this is a great chance to end the desolate years and walk again into the light and warmth of love! I fear I must shock you with such admissions, sir. No? Oh, I see sir, you too are a writer! Well, of course, in that case…
Do I know your work sir? Ah, songs! Well, I have not much been to the musical theatre of late sir. No, my circumstances forbad it.
Well, I will certainly seek your songs out, sir. Jim Steinman you say; I shall be sure to remember that. You prefer Jim to James? Ah, well. I see. No, I don’t believe I do, but if you were to sing a line or two I’m sure…
Yes, of course, please sit down; how rude of me. No, please Mr. Steinman, give me a line or two of one of your best songs.
“And I would do anything for love,
I’d run right into hell and back.
I would do anything for love,
I’ll never lie to you and that’s a fact.”
Admirable sir – I feel at though it refers to me! I suppose that is part of the mystery of your craft. Give me further examples if you don’t mind.
“Anything for love.
Oh I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
Ah! No I won’t do that!”
Indeed! I find that fascinating – anything, but that! And so the question becomes, what is that? Masterful sir!
“And maybe I’m lonely,
That’s all I’m qualified to be.
There’s just one and only, one and only promise I can keep.”
Yes! And speaking of promises, there’s one that I must keep myself. You’ll forgive me sir I’m sure if I return my attention to the room. For as I’ve said, this is my one chance…
January 27, 2009 at 9:55 am |
Now Jesus, whilst it seems we have your attention, I wonder whether you could help me with something.
When one goes to the pharmacy or supermarket nowadays, to buy a moisturising product, instead of old reliable ingredients such as frankincense and myrrh, one gets confronted with products containing “ylang ylang” and “shea butter”. Such tish tosh.
What are these products, and why, in the manner of your omnipresence, (along with that of your father) did you allow the old ways to become so complicated? I saw poor Robert Smith (from the Cure) at the chemist the other day, and he was asking how he could make his kohl out of shea butter, and demanding frankincense….
Oh, and yes, if you could explain how it is that “short selling” on the stock exchange is actually good for the world economy, that would be good too….
Your humber servant, Nell
January 27, 2009 at 11:44 am |
Apologies, Jesus
I meant that I was your HUMBLE servant, not “humber”, whatever that is….
probably something derived from ylang ylang
January 27, 2009 at 3:19 pm |
The Humber was a British motor car of the finest automotive engineering. There was the Supersnipe and the Vogue. I preferred the latter, truth be told, but would have been a proud servant of either.
January 27, 2009 at 4:10 pm |
Thanks all, but Jay, I don’t know what the Hawk did to so offend you that you seem to have cut it off with a shilling.
Love
Big Olly
January 27, 2009 at 5:48 pm |
Jesus is er gone now, yeah that’s it, gone. He said he had to cure the centurion’s daughter or something. It sounds better in song, as I’ll show you:
a one and a two…..
(door opens and car drives off)
January 27, 2009 at 7:02 pm |
The Humber? Reminds me of one of my mega-selling ditties:
‘Like a bat out of Hull…’
January 27, 2009 at 8:28 pm |
Speaking of Heath Ledger, in “Rooms on Fire”, Stevie Nickers sings:~
“Well maybe I’m just thinking that the rooms are all on fire
Everytime that you walk in the room
Well there is magic all around you, if I do say so myself
I have known this much longer than I’ve known you”
No, no, no, sorry, that just doesn’t pass muster, and I’m not disputing the tired “walk in the room” nonsense, though I could if I would, but I doud.
“..if i do say so myself.” (?!!!???!!?)
That relates to something you’ve done, a la some bloke (not related) might say “I’m great at French or swimming at the Geo Bolton, if I do so say so myself…” I’ve heard that from Big, like, totally heaps of time, as his nephew would attest.
An opinion about someone else needs no such qualification.
“Big’s good at French, if I do say so myself.” Well what does that mean? Who else of you is saying it, unless your former Australian cricket captain Mark Taylor, and feel the need to tell interviewers that Mark Taylor feels this or that. If he was singing the song, Big, I could understand, because “I” and “Mark Taylor” are two separate people. “There is magic all around you, if Mark Taylor does say so himself”. Yes, agree, clarification required on this occasion. But Stevie and Nicks are the same person.
Anyway, the last line…! Dearie me, I’d need the ghost of Paul McCartstump to explain that one if he was thankfully dead.
I despair…….
January 27, 2009 at 9:12 pm |
Was the Humber Sceptre the car driven by Steve Forrest in “The Baron”? I’d like to think it was, but more likely a much fancier car.
January 27, 2009 at 10:48 pm |
Hull – I called our first album “London 0 Hull 4″
Happy Hour? Again?
I would have loved a Humber,
but I would have loved any of the girls from Bananarama much more.
Especially the blonde one, whoever she was.
Even tho we snogged at the Hacienda,
I didn’t remember,
cause I was on drugs
and I was so depressed
even tho we didn’t really
no what drugs were back then.
January 28, 2009 at 8:37 am |
Well, sounds as though the Caravan of Love has been hooked up to the old Humber and carted off to the Flinders Ranges for a little holiday. Enjoy Magnetic Hill, even though it is no more than an elusive optical illusion.
As for the Humber Sceptre, I must confess ignorance and get my nephew to do a bit of research. He owes me a favour as he has not quite worked off the Hillman Imp I gave him on the occasion of his 16th birthday. A fine car, the Imp. I particularly like the sliding windows.
Love
Big Olly
January 28, 2009 at 10:17 am |
If I do say so myself. Ah! How that phrase torments the disciplined mind!
“If” in this context does not postulate a conditional. There is no doubt that what is being said is in fact being said and that the postulant is the interlocutor, ie that it is indeed I who am saying it. No, the phrase carries the senses of “even if” – or rather “even though” – as in “even though it is I who say it” – ie. one whose saying of it might be expected to diminish the impact thereof – be it through favoritism or self-interest or the like.
In this sense, – stay with me, now – the strictest and, therefore, the best, grammar would demand the use of our old friend, the subjunctive mood, as in: “even though it BE I who say it”. The passengers of the RMS Titanic – a (very) late liner of the White Star Steamship Co. – would have been acutely sensible of this phenomenon – at least those of them gathered on the savagely listing starboard bow of A Deck singing “Nearer my God to Thee” as the piano slid past:
E’en tho’ it BE a cross
That saveth me.
Well, in this sense, there is no doubt that the cross IS the only path to salvation, but it is the paradox of Christianity – that an instrument of death (which might otherwise be thought to diminish the impact of what is desired) should be the means of life, that demands the subjunctive – curiously, in this case, since most of the postulants in fact drowned or froze to death.
But I digress – the really frightful part of Ms. Nicks little lay is:
The rooms are all on fire every time you walk in(to) the room.
Surely the fire-footed object of her desire doesn’t incendiarise every room in the building merely by entering one of them. Perhaps what she is struggling to tell us is that ANY room he walks into starts aflame, in which case it must be rendered:
All the rooms that you walk into are all on fire when you walk into them.
Or – Such of the rooms as you walk into are all on fire when you do so.
Yes, much more satisfactory!
January 28, 2009 at 11:52 am |
Jeeze – that J.D. certainly puts the “ponce” back in Ponsinby-Molyneux, if I do say so meself.
January 28, 2009 at 12:15 pm |
Jesus….Jesus…..
are you there Jesus????
January 28, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
Mark Taylor wholeheartedly endorses the analysis of J. D. Ponsinby-Molyneux Villliers-Smythe, if Mark Taylor does so say so himself.*
*In Mark Taylor’s struggling to breathe voice.
January 28, 2009 at 1:18 pm |
Mark Taylor has a very scary, almost death-like skeletal, little drawing next to Martk Taylor’s name, if Mark Taylor does say so himself.
January 28, 2009 at 1:26 pm |
Well said, Mark Taylor.
Love
Big Olly
January 28, 2009 at 1:32 pm |
The late-lamented pseudo-punk band “Ratcat” had a nasty little skeletal logo of a rat which was not dissimilar to Tubby’s cartouche there. I can’t presently recall whether it also boasted any cat-like features.
January 28, 2009 at 4:45 pm |
Is there any stone god who might answer me, then…..
Jesus, I foresake thee
January 28, 2009 at 5:29 pm |
Well, we would have talked you if’n the friggin Taliban hadn’t blown us to smithereens.
Like, what was all THAT about? Sheesh!
January 28, 2009 at 5:32 pm |
STOP MUCKING AROUND DEDEWTH. THAT WASN’T FUNNY.
January 29, 2009 at 12:15 am |
Shirley it’s obvious that Ms Nicks had the hots for a fireman? Admittedly one who lives a nomadic lifestyle. Otherwise his own house would burn down when he returned.
January 29, 2009 at 9:10 am |
…plus he’s an amateur prestidigitator, who pursued a vigorous campaign of poster advertising. Hence the foreknowledge.
January 29, 2009 at 12:50 pm |
After reading J. D. Ponsinby-Molyneux Villliers-Smythe and Petra Fide’s comments I’ve come to the reluctant but inevitable conclusion that she must of been singing about Bruce Springsteen.
“Hey little girl is your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
Im on fire”
So while young Stevie is all aflame at seeing Bruce all aflame, he’s actually burning way, no doubt until his horrid death painful minutes later, while she’s thinking she’s imagining it.
That’s the only interpreatation that I can put on Bruce’s lyrics….
…Though, wait a minute, on re-read there’s a fair bit of Jim Henson undertone in those lyrics, and I hope it WAS Bruce seeing the elderly Stevie and not her great great grand-daughter, otherwise string him up and haul him away, and his follow up song could be:~
“Ooh, ooh, ohh I’m hung, drawn and quartered.”
I’m sure that Mark Taylor would tell us that Mark Taylor agrees.
January 29, 2009 at 4:32 pm |
well, I see that Mr Bloke and Ms Fide seem content to respond to each other, almost to the exclusion of all other contributors.
Apart from them, the only ones that seem intent on “corresponding” are Messrs Wilde and Douglas, and perhaps the less said about that, the better.
the only response I seem to be able to illicit is from some fallen idols
I don’t know if I can go on……is there any meaning to all of this?
January 29, 2009 at 9:10 pm |
I thought we all just chucked in our unfounded opinions for anyone else to seize upon & expose our shortcomings in the most humiliating way possible? No? Whoops.
Nell, I’ll happily lend you a sympathetic ear, but meaning eludes me at the best of times. (oh & if you bump into Mr Smith at the chemists again, tell him I recommend patchouli if they’ve nothing else)
January 30, 2009 at 8:57 am |
I hate to throw my weight around but as long as there is breath in my body there will be no recommendation of patchouli. For any purpose.
Love
Big Olly
January 30, 2009 at 8:59 am |
Is patchouli related to Patch Adams, Big Olly?
That might explain your ire…
January 30, 2009 at 11:37 am |
Ollster mate; sure, you’re the big boss and all, but isn’t patchouli pretty useful when you’re trying to rhyme bejoulies?
Ash
January 30, 2009 at 3:17 pm |
Mr Olly,
I have been musing for some time on many things – I’m a bit of a thinker, as well as a doer.
I note that on some of your other blogs, there has been mention of a futuristic piece of theatre about space exploration, and a family named Robinson. I mention it because some days ago we were joined in the other world here by a smallish fellow claiming some link to the show, who waves his arms around , while saying “Warning, Will Robinson, Dr Smith’s probe is approaching the entrance to your waste disposal unit!!”, or some such.
He is both dead, and seems fixed on sexual matters considered somewhat abhorrent in my day, so he should get on well here.
Looks like someone well and truly pulled his power pack, hey?
Hold on, just saw a stack of chains that I’m sure I could whip into a thermo-mix, or something.
Izzy
January 30, 2009 at 10:10 pm |
Piss off Nell Mangel, you old bust body, I talk to Petra and Petra only
January 31, 2009 at 9:09 am |
Isambard Kingdom Brunel…crazy name. What a dude, build us a ship man. If he’d built the Jupiter 2 he would have sealed Will and Penny into the hull of the forecastle.
January 31, 2009 at 5:17 pm |
If he’d locked Judy and Don into the hull of the forecastle, now there would be a fine pornographic film scrip.
Don: “My god, Smith locked us in! It’s hotter than that prison that they sent us to.”
Judy: “Yes, I’ll strip down to my underwear, to escape the hot heat. Don dont you dare, Don no! …. Oh Don..!”
And that’s the entire scrip.
Send payment to Alpha Centauri, or the US circaq 1849, for billy to collect.
February 1, 2009 at 5:56 am |
Shucks.
February 1, 2009 at 11:00 am |
Mr Bloke!!
How DARE you speak of my bust….the nerve
February 2, 2009 at 2:18 pm |
There is NO WAY Judy would’ve voluntarily removed the smallest patch of mauve velor from her galactic-spandex knitwear, let alone stripped to her endothermic undies, in my presence.
Like all these “Daddy’s little girl” fakers – it was always – ooh and ah and “have some more hydroponic pie, Don” until it’s time to put out and then all of a sudden it’s scream and scratch and “How dare you touch me you beast…” Guy could get really frustrated and pent up and horny…
And he frequently did. And took it out on me! Jeez! What a rap!
BTW, the Jupiter doesn’t have a forecastle. There ain’t no fore or aft cos it’s a friggin saucer, right!
February 2, 2009 at 3:35 pm |
What appeals to me in this new film with Big will direct is that the music from the TV show will just fit in perfectly with the on-screen ‘action’. You’ve got that dramatic build up music –
blurn.. blurn.. blurn… blurn.. BLUR-NERN! blurn.. blurn.. blurn… blurn.. BLUR-NERN!
The post root smoko with
do-do-do-do-doooo
do doo doo doooo, etc
And then the final scene when it’s a group orgy and that music when the J2 goes through a meteor shower.
BLURN-NERN BLURN-NERN-NERN BLURN-NERN-NERN
Wobbadobbawobbadobbawobbadobba
BLURN-NERN BLURN-NERN-NERN BLURN-NERN-NERN
Wobbadobbawobbadobbawobbadobba
February 2, 2009 at 7:55 pm |
Oh year poor old Don couldn’t deal with his frustrations. Ha! That’s a laugh. I hope you read the sarcasm in this. Everyone picks Jonathon Harris as the poo eater but let me tell you, Don would push me behing the stabilizers when he was all pent up and try to penetrate my force field, if you get my meaning. Mind you, when the lady from the green dimension was around but alas untouchable as she’d float away don’t think I wouldn’t frot on Debbie the Gloop til the anxieties passed.
Harris was past all that. Too much estrogyn. He thought the pills were a roast pork dinner with three veg. He’d sit under the hair dryer thing with Maureen reading Cosmo and discussing curtains for the suspended animation chambers.
February 3, 2009 at 6:29 pm |
Marta Kristen appears in your banner as a ghost. I checked in Wikipedia (the source of all truth) and she is still alive!!
Stop scaring me.
P.S. Walter Chiari is not alive.
February 3, 2009 at 6:34 pm |
…pronounced “fokes’ll”, stupid Navy. I despise them almos’ as much as the City Earth and Wind Dis-service
February 3, 2009 at 6:38 pm |
Here she is supporting one of her many causes. Princess Diana, indeed!
February 4, 2009 at 8:08 pm |
I remember reading somewhere that one time that Gloop came from and show biz family, and was related to Cobby, indeed, he may of even been his son/daughter.
Gloop had a far better range. Cobby was consigned to some sort of science lab, where his role consisted of pushing the right button and being rewarded with a banana. He never recieved the good scripts that Gloop was offered, like “Lost”, or since there is now a show of that name, “LIS”. Cobby may of smoked a cigar, but that’s standard fare for a chimp.
“Cobby what’s your hob-by?
Show us your new hob-by,
Cobby? what’s your hobby today?”
February 5, 2009 at 10:07 am |
Gloop, y’say?
Gloop, if memory serves, was, as its name suggests, a sort of slurry. It was prepared by Ashanti witchdoctors and administered to give potency to their warriors on the eve of battle.
Its principal ingredient was reputedly an in discriminate melange of the five bodily fluids of the mythological hero, Pantapu, which, we were expected to believe, were miraculously supplied to the witchdoctors in the course of some taboo liturgy – but which, in truth, was likely to have been rather more prosaically extracted from the body of the District Commissioner of the Limpopo – a succession of whom disappeared with alarming regularity in the course of the Zulu Wars and whose mutilated corpses always turned up with the same telltale indicia of their participation in an African Mass altogether unlike the Sunday Eucharist of our own village life.
So there you have it, Olly old stick! Valiant servants of Empire and fiendish savages! The same old story, I’m afraid…
February 8, 2009 at 9:33 am |
Would you shut the freaking door you DAFT COW!… Sorry Big Olly but it’s damned hot in this van and it aint easy being defacto married to a fat drunk who was born in a stable. Ah that’s better….the Mitsubishi Heatmaster can really chuck out a cooling breeze as long as a certain DUMB BITCH keeps the door closed.
Anyway, i was going to talk at you about something. Oh yeah, that soft cock Billy Mummy. Or the Mummy’s Boy as we used to call him on the Paramount back lot. He was always waltzing over to the Wild West Street during breaks in shooting L.I.S, snickering if ever I screwed up twirling my six shooters, tossing lines at the little girls dressed up as madams, generally acting like a big noise, spinning shit about how the Jupiter 2 could really fly and how he’d been given a special tour of Cape Kennedy by some fat arsed Senator with photographers from Life magazine or some shit. Really looking down at me for trying to get a break doing commercials for Nestle Milky Bars.
And my point, ah yeah – oh that’s right, how DARE he try to get attention for himself now by crapping out on Major Don West! He was always pissin’ on about what a great guy he was, how he could really fly a space ship and how he’d really been a Major yada yada yada. And Billy don’t even need the attention, him still doing producing and writing and gettin’ that sweet sweet vocal gig on the Holly Hobby and Friends Christmas Special (2006). Smug prick. Hasn’t called me since ‘71.
But I got plans of my own Big Olly and they lead all the way to a consultancy gig on a new advertising campaign for my yet to be realised proposal for a New Formula Milky Bar (with Guarana). If only I can get those cock heads at Nestle to return my calls.
But first things first. Stage one is to persuade the park manager to let me move my trailer to the vacant spot under that old Sycamore. Stage two is to slam a pre fab on the side and get me connected to the utilities. And Stage three Olly is to dust off that hat and those six shooters and organise me some meetings at the big end of town.
And when that grand, grand day comes Big Olly, then … “The Milky Bars are on Me!”
Yo Bitch!….grab me a Bud from the ice box.
TMBK
February 9, 2009 at 4:30 pm |
Now see here Olly I like as much as anyone else a refreshing beer and to give Mrs Christ (if there was such a person) a little playful giddy-up from time to time, but I protest at the unedited use of swear words vis-a-vis women from your recent coresponent.
Up here in heaven we refer to the women-folk with all proper respect. Well there’s only one here at present, my mother until the final day when the rest get here, but I call her ‘Mother’ at the very least or ‘Their Lady’ if a tad more formal.
I might take me a wife when they all pop up here on the final day, no crash victims nor cremated ones mind, just a nice simple country girl. In a hijab of course.
Oops, did I push send?
February 10, 2009 at 11:23 am |
too little, too late, Jesus
(as always)
February 10, 2009 at 11:34 am |
A BAFTA!.. For ME!.. You don’t say… Ahwr shucks!… There are really so many others that deserve this over me… NOT! I only wish I could be there to accept it in person but I’m afraid I can’t ‘cos, as it happens.. and you really won’t believe this… I’m friggin DEAD, you see. Dead as a doornail, dead as a friggin’ dodo, got it, and all you Hollywood hypocrites, with your crappy tributes and your posthumous awards, you ain’t never gonna change that, and all your friggin, goddammed crocodile tears ain’t gonna do none of yas no good, cos it was you that friggin did it, ya bastards, just as surely as if you had all just knifed me right in the back instead of just not being on hand to stop me from ingesting my medicine the wrong way!
Listen to this…
“Backstage at the BAFTA’s, Terry Gilliam said: “It would have been nice if he had won more awards when he was alive, frankly. Heath was a genius. I really do think there was nothing he couldn’t do. We hadn’t seen anything yet. He was incredibly funny, his timing was brilliant, he could invent dialogue that kept me spinning all the time on Parnassus. And he was probably one of the greatest gentlemen I have known. It is a terrible loss. That is all.”
Spot- fuckkin -on!
Now get out.
February 11, 2009 at 4:24 pm |
Terry Gilliam. Wow! It doesn’t get better than that. “there was nothing [Heath] couldn’t do” he waxes. Kiss a bloke. That was something he could do, the sissy. I expect he’s got all the posthumous awards for “Best Headjob-male division” and “Boy Most Likely To Root Sheepherder”, and c.
He never won acting awards when alive because people rightly had nothing to do with him. He did however win the Glaxo Smith Kline medal for best overdoser, and the Guild Chemist on Hollywood and Vine award for most valued customer.
Another blokey Aussie export, like Helpman, Jamie Redfern, Air Supply and Peter Allen. Or was he a Kiwi?
February 12, 2009 at 7:56 am |
Quite so Francis. I think Terry himself might have had a quick dabble in the cabinet comestibles before he said, “I really do think there was nothing he couldn’t do.”
How about, “I think he could do anything.”? Much simpler Terry.
Take my timeless classic (one anyway). Did I suggest for one moment that the Loaf would sing; “I really do think that there is nothing I wouldn’t do for love (excepting that, where that is that which I would not do).”
Of course not – people would have laughed at him and called him a fat ponce and I would have been stuck with that skank Tyler.
February 12, 2009 at 10:37 am |
As you all know I encourage debate and am always happy at comments that demonstrate a high intellectual level, no matter how controversial.
Unfortunately Francis Thring has overstepped the mark with his comment. Rarely have I had a more base and ill considered offering and it is only because his dreadful and malicious comment has left me weak that I do not strike him from the roll.
I will not, I repeat NOT have Helpmann’s name misspelled. As has been well canvassed here, he added the extra “n” because he wanted to avoid having 13 letters in his name and I say we should respect that, no matter what private views we hold on the wholesomeness of his convictions. At least he wasn’t dreaming about birching his old mum like Percy Grainger.
That two fisted he man.
Love
Big Olly
February 12, 2009 at 11:07 am |
Now see here Big Olly you make a fair point about the instance of abominators in Australia, or Beach as we call it up here. It was never planned that way. Not a single pansy there until the white man came. No by Jove (or by the Rainbow Serpant in their case – doesn’t anyone read the blinking 10 Commandments?) those local chappys were all straight up and down woman lovers.
Look, there’s talk of a bit of innapropriate touching in the initiation ceromonies, but they never had and Corroborree Mardi Gras did they? Come to think of it, dressing up in nothing but a lap lap and decorating yourself with dots and feathers reminds one a little Oxford Street.
Nevertheless, they were all proper men. Joseph of Arimathea’s hand might have slipped and brushed me “down there” when he was knocking my tooth out with a rock on what he assured me was a “Crossing the Equator” ceremony on the voyage to England, but it was perfectly harmless.
February 12, 2009 at 1:39 pm |
Frank Fucckin’ Thring! Give me a break!
No Frankie babe, I didn’t get any awards for acting when I was alive… guess I just wasn’t good enough to be King of Moomba 1982 – sitting up there like a stunned catfish – I guess I never had your looks, y’see. How could ya describe them? How could ya describe someone who looked like Bernard King in a Maggie Tabra cast-off, after he’d swallowed Russell Starke and had an industrial Ausvac applied to the back of his ears? Well, like THAT, I guess.
Frank Fukkin Thring!
Gimme another slice of that phenobutesol tiramisu…
February 12, 2009 at 8:48 pm |
vous know Olly, le blog is like le femme. Sometime she make you smile, sometime she make you laugh. Sometime Olly, she even mak you cry. Yes Olly, cry. She make the beautiful poetry that touch you like the soft summer rain, or ze autumn leaves. And sometime she piss you off, cause all she talk about is Heath Ledger. Ca c’est la femme, that is why we love her.
February 12, 2009 at 9:45 pm |
Now steady on Ledger book, I think you were great in the Shakespearian “Knight’s Tale” [cockney voice: 'it's a lance'] and you shone in BMX bandits. I was a biblical villian in a hollywood blockbuster, and I also had a kangaroo thrown at me in “Skippy and the Intruders” oh, but since you ate so many drugs that you shitted up your throat I guess you’re right to say you were a better actor than moi.
If only you also wacked off whilst hanging yourself in your drug throwes, you’d be a better singer as well.
February 13, 2009 at 8:36 am |
When I sit in my wheelchair smoking my cigar as Governor General, I often tap on the computer to keep intouch with the world, although doing so breaks my fingers.
That Lost in Space chick gives me the horn big time (but at the expense of a broken pubis – the price of love, no?) but she also looks a bit like my niece who is only 10 so I have confused feelings? Help me Olly, it’s a real head-fuc#.
By Order
Q. Bryce
February 13, 2009 at 9:22 am |
Now, Frankie, no need for modesty. You are forgetting your best performances – as “Fingers” in “Alvin Purple Rides Again” and as “Sgt Bastion” in “Up the Convicts” in between all of those excruciatingly witty cigarette commercials and TV chat shows whilst at the same time deftly juggling your failed marriage to a non-man with your chronic alcohol dependency. How did you do it?
I guess, if I ever “spewed shite”, to paraphrase your charming riposte, it can only have been that I had an outstanding role-model.. like toi.
Hang on – did I mention “Beyond Thunderdome”? No? Well that must be because nobody ever DOES!
February 13, 2009 at 10:06 am |
Oh. Err. I quite liked “Beyond Thunderdome”. The Master and the Blaster and all that. Give us the tell. We Don’t Need Another Hero. Tina Turner at her alluring best (even Ike kept his hands to himself so scary did she look).
Love
Big Olly
February 13, 2009 at 11:24 am |
Hang on. Back up! Was that Jim frickin’ Steinman archly sneering at Gilliam’s double negative from behind Frankie’s ample skirts? Didn’t you hear Bosie sampling your sap-trash, pop-junk musak, you bug-eyed counter-jumper? How did it go?
“There’s nothing I just wouldn’t do…”
Take the beam out of your own eye, Jimmie boy!
February 13, 2009 at 4:01 pm |
Hey Heath – fair enough. I was going to tell you about how Bonnie changed them – chucked a hissy in the studio etc, but, well, that’s how they were published and they’ve got my name on ‘em so it stands. Mea culpa.
So – by way of making it up to yiu here’s a little something I penned in your honour.
It’s just called HEATH
“Who’s the dead actor
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
HEATH!
Ya damn right!
Who is the man that would risk his neck
For his brother man?
HEATH!
Can you dig it?
Who’s the cat that won’t cop out
When there’s danger all about?
HEATH!
Right On!
They say this cat Heath is a bad mother
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I’m talkin’ ’bout Heath.
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!
He’s a complicated man
But no one understands him but…”
..er, and then it gets a bit tricky. I was going to say
“But no one understands him but his cowboy friend in the hills that he goes to visit every so often” but I’m not sure that’s doing justice to your range, and I do so want to get it right…
February 13, 2009 at 4:21 pm |
Freak off Steinman, and stop stealing my material
February 13, 2009 at 4:26 pm |
Now look here Big Olly, that young lady shouldn’t fantatsise about her niece like that. Look, there are natural urges of course. Satan sends them, vain old devil. Priests and choirmasters get them every day, but they bally well control them. Sport! Sport’s the answer. Go for a run, or fishing on the lake (don’t forget the other side of the ship mind, a tip from old Jesus) or have a kip in the Garden o’ Olives. That’ll send the old stiffy away and Satan will have to try some other ploy to tempt you, like poping 100 devils into you or something.
There’s no room for those who touch themselves in my father’s house. It’s in the Bible somewhere, I think near the bit where the worm eats the vine.
Regards
Jesus
February 13, 2009 at 5:46 pm |
I turned on the internet and spat out my vice-regal cigar breaking my jaw in the process (in three places) when I saw the pretty space chick getting some “up the bum fun” from Santa Olly! Fair dinkum, where was the XXX warning! TV drunkard Mike Wilisee would have something to say about that, if he wasn’t crying all the time.
I got such an agitated state in my otherwise ruptured vas deferens I broke both thighs. And don’t mention my cocyx – yeouch!
By Order
Q Bryce
February 13, 2009 at 5:51 pm |
Hey Olly, tell that Jesus fellow that I don’t touch myself! Learned that the hard way didn’t I. I got a National Geographic from the Admiralty House library with a generous helping of third world ladies necked from the waist up and broke every bone in my hand as well as my wrist. And that was just opening the cover!
Nope, I’ve never touched the old fella, for fear of breaking it.
By Order
Q Bryce
February 14, 2009 at 7:21 am |
Peace be with you Olly.
The Holy Scripture refers to a worm attacking a plant, but not a vine I’m afraid, lo:
“But at dawn the next day, God ordained that a worm should attack the castor-oil plant – and it withered.” Jonah 4:7
There was no adjacent reference to a prohibition on pulling your pud.
February 14, 2009 at 7:33 pm |
Well I never dun nuffink like that, so at least God still finks I’m a good boy.
February 16, 2009 at 10:40 am |
I think you’re reading from the Douay version, you Romish abominator. In my book, Jonah 4:7 reads:
“But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.”
Now a gourd, if I am not mistaken (and I never am), is a fiendish, heathen device placed about the male member for the sort of divers nefarious and lascivious practices that habitually recommend themselves to the godless!
February 16, 2009 at 1:13 pm |
Now intercept this Jensen, whilst I wasn’t bally well begotton in those old days, but I have seen enough messing about with scripture to boil my blood and water.
Jonah was sitting under a plant to get some shade whilst he waited for the destruction of the city when my Father dispatched the worm to discharge its ruinous office upon the shady plant. I would have simply cursed it, but Dad was always proper about these things. T’any rate, the whole point is that then the sun beat down upon Jonah (not beat off upon him as I had earlier erroneously thought) and made him uncomfortable.
Ivy or a castor-oil plant, they give first rate shade. What blinking shade would a gourd give to anything, other than the creeping things?
Do what you must for your divorces but in future kindly refrain from twisting the Olde Testament to your perfidious needs. Olly, you really should control these people.
February 16, 2009 at 2:14 pm |
I think I can help.
A gourd is both a certain plant of the melon family, which is an annual vine, in this case likely to be the calabash, since it is the oldest plant domesticated by humans, and the hollowed out fruit thereof, used for anything from bowls to musical instruments to, it seems, phallocrypts (Geek for “dick-hiders”) amongst certain tribes of the old Dutch West New Guinea and which are known to the locals as “koteka”.
Apparently, missionaries in the 1950s attempted to alter the local customs by forcing locals to wear shorts, but many of the natives felt exposed without their kotekas and could be seen wearing shorts with their kotekas sticking out of them.
In 1971, the Indonesian government launched “Operasi Koteka” (“Operation Penis Gourd”) which consisted primarily of trying to encourage the people to wear shorts and shirts because such clothes were considered more “modern.” But the natives weren’t given changes of clothing or soap, and were unfamiliar, in any event with the care of such clothes so the unwashed clothing caused skin diseases. There were also reports of men wearing the shorts as hats and the women using the dresses as carrying bags.
Eventually the missionary effort and the Indonesian government’s campaign were abandoned. Nevertheless, western clothing is required in government buildings, and children are required to wear western clothing in school.
Kotekas are still considered acceptable attire in church, however.
So there!
February 16, 2009 at 2:34 pm |
Now see here, don’t you think I know all that, and knew it before it happened and before I was born? There is a little indulgence in the idea that the ‘worm’ was inside a gourd and so that’s where Jensesn’s St Peters College fixation on such matters arises, but My Father was clearly accentuating the leafy aspect of the plant, not the fruity.
As for trousers and such balderdash, we’ve no use for them up here. I don’t blame the native chappies for looking at them askance.
Good day to you!
February 16, 2009 at 4:51 pm |
Oops! Looks like I’ve been well and truly chastened.
As in the day of Midian, in fact.
February 17, 2009 at 4:25 pm |
I wish Olly would blog for the first time in 2009….
February 17, 2009 at 4:31 pm |
Wish? Did somebody say wish?
Now, Nell, repeat after me:
Mekka-lekka hi, mekka hiney hi!
Mekka-lekka hi, mekka chahny ho!
Mola-mekka chala mekka hola hayla hey!
The wish is granted. Long live Jambi!
February 18, 2009 at 4:46 pm |
Please don’t forsake me, too, Nell. I’m way cooler than Jesus.
And I was only talkin’ ’bout Carl…….
Olly, would you like to be able to fly? Jambi could help….?
February 19, 2009 at 10:18 am |
Well, the lobster was rather good – I don’t suppose crepes suzettes would be entirely out of the question? Oh, Oscar you do spoil me.. I hope I’m worth it.. maybe some more frogpop while we’re at it… with fresh glasses – chilled – and tell them all to stop staring a me! Or are they staring at you? Oh, you think so. Well, you would…
Where was I? Ah, yes I don’t quite know why I left you, really. Seems foolish now. But I beg you to understand – there was nothing I could do. A total eclipse of the heart – that’s what it was… A total eclipse of the heart.
February 20, 2009 at 6:46 am |
Thankyou Wilcox, but did I order another Perrier-Jouet?
Oh, from Mt Steinman’s table, I see. Well put it there.
Turn around Bosie, be polite.
Now where were we?
Yes Bosie, this is delightful.
D’you know, I became somewhat tired of listening to the sound of my tears?
Well no Bosie, I can’t describe what the sound was, but it should suffice for me to say that I tired of it.
I became nervous, too, that all the best years may have gone by.
From time to time I also became restless and I dreamed of something wild.
No Bosie – wild as in untamed. Yes. But let me go on.
Because I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you’ll only hold me tight
We’ll be holding on forever
And we’ll only be making it right
Cause we’ll never be wrong together
We can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time
I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark
We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks
I really need you tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight
Well you see Bosie “gonna” is a contraction. Going to. It helps with scansion. Mr Steinman explained it to me earlier. No I was not! He merely came to the table while I was waiting and paid his respects. I seem to recall that I was waiting for some considerable time.
Bosie? For heaven’s sake Bosie!
February 21, 2009 at 3:59 pm |
Hi Olly, sorry I haven’t written to you for a while. My sister,Georgina, and me have been staying at my nanna’s place in Spain. She moved there ‘cos she could be closer to Julio Iglesias. She is is his number one fan!! She is so important fan that when she comes home from a visit to his place she has a police escort. We are back home now but mum is mad because she wanted me to say that I made that girl pregnant. I don’t even know her and she is not even at my school, (Uncle Trev says she goes to Skank comprehensive).
February 24, 2009 at 12:06 pm |
Best Actor in a SUPPORTING role!
Tell the Academy I don’t want it.
February 24, 2009 at 12:32 pm |
Hoo hoo hoo, ha ha ha!
As if dark rhymes with sparks.
That’s just lame.
Hoo hoo etc
February 24, 2009 at 5:19 pm |
How come the Joker gets 2 runs and not a thing for me, the mastermind who vocalized the classic:~
“When’s a train like a clock?”
You give in?
“When it’s two-to-two!”
But no Oscars for me, or C. Romero, just because we refused to do that gay scene. That other druggie R. Phoenix got nominated, Sean Poof got one, seems it’s alls a guys gotta do.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
February 25, 2009 at 10:29 am |
C’mon, Frank, you got to wear those green tights….
February 25, 2009 at 6:45 pm |
Oooh, you boys are such sissies.
My performance was much better, it’s not just the mincing that gets the dog his bone.
Rrrrowww
February 26, 2009 at 12:59 pm |
Hoo hoo hooo ha ha ha
The Riddler got a run in that Batman with Jim Carey. Not Gorshin-esque with that Jimmy Cagney edge, but passable nonetheless. Arnie was Mr Freeze, some woman was poison ivy, they’ve most all had a run, hoo hoo ha. Louie the Lyllac is the only one not dragged up from the poodlemince TV show, but give the coves in the dream factory a minute.
Hoo Hoo – whatever
February 26, 2009 at 1:33 pm |
Tell me, Mr Romero, why Braniac never gets a run in Superman movies?
And please don’t eponymously call me “Braniac” in your response – that would be too obvious, even for you.
Long live Jambi
February 26, 2009 at 11:18 pm |
Ehem, as part of the fraternity acclaimed Joker actors, I believe I am more than capable of answering any of your D.C. or infact any comic queries.
February 27, 2009 at 10:36 am |
Riddle me this then:
Why is Big Olly never on his own blog?
Because he’s King Tut in disguise!
And False Face, The Minstrel and Lola Lasagne never got a gig, so that proves it, case dismissed.
February 27, 2009 at 4:01 pm |
Hoo Hoo fucken Har frikken har
Big Olly was dehydrated as one of the Penguin’s Goons in Ep #127, and he was rehydrated with heavy water that they use in the Bat Cave (which was an horrible industrial acident) and he vanished when he hit a solid object, doubtless his erect penis, but the records are obscure. In any event, hoo hoo he died. Much as Heath “poodlemince” Ledger dun.
Hoo Hoo ha hee
March 2, 2009 at 10:58 pm |
Ciao princess(es). My, how question time is exhausting. I’ve excused myself on pretext of being interviewed by that dyke Fran Kelly. (Really I just wanted to “log on”, as the youngsters say, and read the hillarious new blog by that hunky dreamboat Olly). Shriek! it’s still this dull old one. Oops, I’m off, they’re ringing that silly bell again.
March 3, 2009 at 4:26 pm |
Tch! Like, that Pyne and his party of convenience ways! Labor, yeah, as if!
I was like simpering in the DL’s ear just the other day “Gilly” I like spat through clenched teeth, “Gilly, like that Pyne is sach a batch” I enthused, “Honestly, he’s all like sticky resin, acidic needles and messy nuts, but what would you expect from a Pyne?”
Cha, she thought that was like a heaps good one.
He pays me no heed in the common room, but like I could do something about that curly bird’s nest if he’d let me. I called him poodle to her because he’s SUCH A BITCH and he’s got a tuft of hair like a poodle and that.
Anyway, like he promised soo much and now he’s LIKE NOTHING.
So do you work in the city?
March 7, 2009 at 9:40 am |
Well this one’s ground to a halt hasn’t it, ha ha ha ha yeah.
Not even my intervention can save it.
Olly, if you want a ballard of your readers to see whether they want to vote to put this poodle down or not, I’ve got just the thing.
March 7, 2009 at 4:22 pm |
What happened to that pommy chick that used to write? Did she marry Paul or something?
Ha ha ha ha, yeah.
March 7, 2009 at 4:23 pm |
And them two Pansys? Have they been locked up again and are picking apart a rope?
March 7, 2009 at 4:25 pm |
And the one that wore the two hats? I wear mulitiple rings ‘ence me name, so I suppose he wore two hats, but I never met him.
George wore a t-shirt with “George” written on it. That’s how he got ‘is name.
March 9, 2009 at 2:07 am |
This pommy chick hasn’t heard from Paul in a long time…
March 9, 2009 at 11:04 am |
Gor Blimey!!! I’m bloody cake and bread, isn’t it? I’ve ended up in some not ‘eaven or ‘ell full o’ bloody puffs and that.
At least I won’t have cause to say “Oooh!!..me bristols!!” to get attention, waste o’ reason an’ rhyme wi’ all these horse and hays abaht.
I’m not sure if I should be presenting me Miss Brahms or me Mrs Pete Beale (I’ll f%&ken kill you, Den, if you go near our Shell again) on this forum, so forgive me, Olly, Guv, if I slips betwixt and between.
But I’se off – seems as the last one here I have to do all the tiresome errands for the others, so I’m off to the chemist for a couple of sacks worth for that gay cowboy. What a snivelling groan and grunt ‘e is. Needs a right bollocking.
Anyways, too-rahh!
March 9, 2009 at 12:09 pm |
Welcome aboard Wendy and might I say how lovely it is to hear from you.
I’m afraid I am not well acquainted with your work in “Eastenders” though memories of Miss Brahms did comfort me through many a long winter’s night in my youth. A fellow I know, one Pete Ward, suggested that your physical appearance in Eastenders was strikingly different to that in “Are You Being Served” so I assume it was a matter of hours in makeup, a bit like that Elephant fellow.
Anyway, welcome aboard and don’t bother too much about which of your incarnations tries to express itself here. All are welcome as long as they keep their comments civil. Or incomprehesible.
Love
Big Olly
March 9, 2009 at 1:49 pm |
Ho ho ho! Young Olly, you’d better return my garb sharpish, or you’re on the ‘Naughty’ list! (I’ve checked it twice)
I mean I’m all for keeping the celebrations going, but it’s job demarcation you see? Time’s time & The Easter Bilby is starting to get huffy. (The Ash Wednesday Weevil has already gone off in a sulk because she didn’t get a look in).
Look, just get ‘em dry cleaned & stuff ‘em up the chimney at midnight & we’ll say no more about it. Or do I have to get Donner & Blitzen to come over & have a little chat?
March 10, 2009 at 10:35 am |
THE SAVOY
Is this the place? And these grim streets the same
Whose summons once did launch upon a game
As old as time itself, yet fleet as fame,
One reckless heart whom reason would not tame?
Hotel Savoy! Thy portal grey and chill
Forewarns the costly pleasures of thy Grill;
For had I made his precious blood to spill,
Instead of all that wine you let me swill,
I could have done him no more grievous wrong!
Yet, poised and elegant among this throng,
His effortless command bad me belong,
Whose conversation, like some fatal gong,
Awoke my love and pride – and vanity,
To break his heart on my insanity.
March 10, 2009 at 11:14 am |
Eeeeehhhhhhhh, in’t that lavverly. All posh-like. I’m ‘avin’ second thoughts abaht putting me bristols abaht wi’ that stuff rollin’ off ‘is tongue.
Fancy a bit, love? I’m not common, mind……
March 10, 2009 at 11:45 am |
Leave it art, Trace? Your ‘avvina lenda me, you arr!
March 10, 2009 at 4:31 pm |
Pherrr,
Women men, hooo ho ho haa haa ha (in style of Luke Skywalker) it’s all the same in the dark ain’t it luv.
Hoo Hoo Hoo &c.
Once I thought I was stroking Catwoman’s tale in a melee during a fight when the lights went off (the hot one, not Ertha). The lights came back on and I was stroking King Tut’s beard! Hoo Ho Hoo [claps wrists].
I still shot me load but.
March 10, 2009 at 4:35 pm |
That should have been “tail” hoo hoo, but it makes no difference on reflection.
March 11, 2009 at 10:25 pm |
Cheers Ringo. I’ve been busy, doncha know. I was checking out the hats at the Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras. Also I have been at the Vatican. The Pope wants a new hat designed, I think he thought I was someone else. Anyway, we had a good chat. “Why don’t you ever come over for coffee”, he said in a throaty voice. If I’d seen The Godfather it would have been funny but I thought he was just being weird.
March 13, 2009 at 10:43 am |
Big, I’d always thought it went:~
“Do you know where I been on the Marrakesh Express
Do you know where I been on the Marrakesh Express
It’s taking me to Marakesh.”
And accordingly I was going to tee off at Crosby Stills Nash and Young or CSNY as they’re abbreviatedly known, for penning such ridiculous lyrics that answered the question they had just posed. Unfortunately, I googled the internet for the correct spelling of Marrakesh and stumbled onto the actual lyrics:~
“Wouldn’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Wouldn’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh”
Which for mine are some of the best lyrics ever written, in which case this is the probably the record for the gap between worst wrongly heard lyrics and best actual lyrics. I think the record is currently held by Ginny Prior, who used to sing “Puppy Love” to Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up”. She sang that at the Victor Hotel, but even more excruciatingly embarrassing was Purp Brown miming Elton John’s “Part Time Love” on the dance floor, and this mind you after Captain Fantastic had revealed him to be gay.
Anyway Big, Long May You Run, a lovely CSNY song about former potato farmer Cliff Young.
March 15, 2009 at 9:49 am |
A fellow reckons this is the worst thing about the internet, the kids of today look up the lyrics before they get them wrong.
Hence, he claims, we will no longer get the funny stories of misheard lyrics as we have, from Big or the brothers or the man from the Mount, or the Maltese bloke, the spivs, the fancies, the Professor an’ Maryanne.
March 16, 2009 at 11:49 am |
He’s right you know. I’ve just looked up the translation of: “Wrapped up like a douche, you know the ruler of the night.”
Personally, I prefer my misheard version. It is quite a feat of imagination to picture the Prince of Darkness folded away into a zip-up toiletry bag suitable for carrying primitive instruments of female contraception.
March 16, 2009 at 2:12 pm |
I thought it was
“wrapped up like a dusion of the runner of the night, hoo hoo” (the last bit is mine). I never wondered what a dusion was, some sort of french thing I guessed.
March 17, 2009 at 11:58 am |
I was ‘wrapped up like a dooj, another roaner in the night.’
I didn’t know what a dooj or a roaner were, but the lyrics made sense to me that way, unlike “revved up like a duece.” ?! What the hell does that mean? That the dice has wheels and a motor? Then it will always be a duece unless it crashes.
March 17, 2009 at 2:51 pm |
Ah Olly ta be shoor, is it yer self?
Yes still in Saint NiCLAUS garb so it must be yee, indolent c*nt.
To day is me day dont ya know, celebrated by vile V8 lovers (wi’oot the charm o’ the cars te redeem temselts) drinking green beer till tey vomit in the street.
Yes, when io relect ‘pon being kidnapped as a babe, or fighting the giant crow or peeving snakes and such, oim glad me life time of selt-less service means trash can vomit in pooblic, loik they need an excuse moind, and old ugly skinny wimen with a plastic green top hat on can get a touguee. Yes they al love meselt on this day of days, no toorah loorah loorah about it.
Ahll tell ee Olly, Jeysus is that jealous. Positively GREEN!
March 17, 2009 at 2:53 pm |
I always preferred the clear pronunciation of singers like, for example, the lead singer of “The Knack”, and the fact that they would immediately repeat relevant parts of the line before (in “My Sharona”) to ensure that the message was clear.
Jambi has spoken – long live Jambi
March 18, 2009 at 10:27 am |
Patrick, mon ami, ah know ‘ow you feel. Ah was ze greatest saint in all of Fronce. And when zay cut off ma head ah just picked it up and walked around preaching for a bit and zen ah stopped and really died and zey built a magnifique basillica pour moi and all ze kings of Fronce were buried zere till the pig-dogs started cutting their heads off as well and now no-one goes zere – cept maybe to see ze tiny heart of ze little Dauphin – whom the pig-dog peasant sewer-sweepers slaughtered in ze name of zer filthy godless republique – who would want to be parton of such a country anyway? Not moi, no way, jamais de la vie! Even if they promised to celebrate me once in a while – with some blue beer and a bit of projectile vomiting – and stopped giving all the kudos to Jeanne d’Arc – stupid witch! Alors, bonne nuit, mon vieux. ‘Av a spew for moi!
March 18, 2009 at 11:26 am |
Strewth(*) Paddie an’ Den, turn it up. When I was back in the Coonawarra, we spent all day on the reds, gewin’ our sputs up on the stuff – funnily came out a sort of silty charcoal grey, but that’s the way of old Yazza Yahweh for you, isn’t it.
I wouldn’t mind ya gettin’ rid of a few snakes down here, or cuttin’ off a few ‘eads, mine included – cripes it hurts!
Anyway, fellas, must go and conjure up one more image of God in a Yo Yo biscuit, so hopefully I’ll see you upstairs shortly.
Oo-roo!!
(* It is God’s truth)
March 18, 2009 at 4:24 pm |
Patron Saints by Jove!
One put a spear in a dragon and the Poms love one! They paint their faces with one’s flag and that.
Well, they did, till them Green anti-christs got in. How was one to know it was the last dragon (thaks Viz) and now one is some turd eco-terrorist to them, like one uses plastic bags just so one can shove them down some idiot turtle’s throat who thinks they are jelly fish. Yeah that’s what one does! No one baggs Irish Paddy for killing the evil birds or wiping out snakes.
Oh no, but one is treated like Saint Pig-Rat-and-Sailor who ate the last Dodo.
Rotten Blighters.
One’s spewin’ and one aint had nae bally warm beer yet
March 19, 2009 at 3:56 am |
Atually Georges, he our patron saint, hEnglish make off with she! ¡puñetas!
March 19, 2009 at 9:14 am |
Coops, on your anniversay we have sorted out that brewery corner. Lot of good it does you!
March 20, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
ONE YEAR:
What have I learned?
since I turned
(not quite enough)
then puff!
Into the wall, where I once stood tall.
And sent my organs for the kiddies all
my kidneys, liver spleen
those that were spared by my machine…
but from the other organs apart
I have kept in my chest an aussie heart
And now above I float,
watching – like the shore from a boat…
away, out of reach
as if never reaching the beach.
Alone – with no oars
But my spirit soars
and so, as to write my poems I strive
it is like I am still alive.
Coops
March 20, 2009 at 2:24 pm |
That Cooper boy is all grown up in a year, if his improved poetry is anything to go by…….
March 20, 2009 at 3:24 pm |
It fell about the Martimas
When none dwelt ‘pon the dead
I was a-cheerily racin’
Wnence suddenly through me ‘ead
A bit of brake come flyin’
To fast for eyes ta see
right in the front an’ out the back
To make the dead of me.
It be no use to cry a lot
Or to feign for me your pinin’
you only come the crash to see
who’s killt by errant brake linin’
March 20, 2009 at 5:42 pm |
FOR COOPS
A Reflection on the Lessons of the Past
How now, what evil destiny abates
The mem’ry of thy once unblemish’d face?
One ill-judg’d turn! One fiendish race!
The same unyielding agent of the Fates,
That Icarus flung flaming from the sky
And, Phaeton-like, thy chariot’s career-
And, with it, thine, O hapless charioteer! -
Spun out of glory, stopp’d to watch thee die,
And quoth: ‘Where now the knavish revelry,
With which thou wert so used to cut a dash?
And where the manly limbs in anti-flash
That punch’d the air when thou hadst cheated me?
Lo! Save his innards from the burning cinders
And post them out to warn the other mindas!”
March 20, 2009 at 5:48 pm |
I should say I have merely adopted a conventional approach to the story. Personally, I think young Cooper’s a bit of a spunk.
Oh, and the third line is missing a foot! Like dear Coops himself really. Let’s see.. What about:
One ill-judg’ed turn in one short, fiendish race.
Yes, that’ll do. Don’t want to waste to much time on it.
March 20, 2009 at 7:31 pm |
Ol’ Coops
Flew around that bend
180K
He was having a lend
Never lived in a mansion
Cared not ’bout scansion
Koudous and Kang
The car went bang
And a dead horse to flog
Here on dead olly’s blog
Dead I say! Yes, dead is Big!
Nary seen in his barrister’s wig
And say, is that a pigeon, is it a dove
Our reticent friend, he doth be in love
For love is the answer
And you know that for sure
As you sit in the stands of the sport arena
Waiting for the show to begin
March 21, 2009 at 6:49 am |
Big old Olly
like Bill’s dog
has up and died.
Once interest shewn
now issues unjoined
questions unreplied.
Why comment seek
and offer bone
without flesh or marrow to sustain?
The Jordan crosst
the Styx traversed
we only remain.
To call in caverns vast
to strain for no reply
Olly from you.
To heaven? to hell?
or back under carapase’ shell?
Olly the fat old poo.
March 21, 2009 at 11:13 am |
Never mind all that, just another sixteen & we hit the double century! (Sorry, I appear to be channelling Eddie Waring again)
March 25, 2009 at 7:03 am |
16 you say, dear girl? Surely it is the will of God.
‘Twill be the miracle we are waiting for.
By Jeez.
March 25, 2009 at 8:47 am |
Bally rum do, old Jeev getting the nod in this publication! Still, if any cove knows about “miracle Twill”, he’s the chappie. Nothing like a bit of diagonal weft & what-have-you to liven up one’s trouser! Well worth waiting for. With the lavender shirt today I think…
March 25, 2009 at 4:40 pm |
I remember the halcyon days when Big started this blog and used to pump out the new posts at the astonishing rate of one every 2 or 3 months. But Big was single then, and accordingly had all sort of time on his hands, unlike now when he types purely for private purposes, the loving words which only a brilliant French student like Big could use in the fine art of serenadization.
Which brings me to a song that I’m sure got an airing earlier, but for mine, without doubt is the worst song ever invented in the whole wide world: The Sweet’s “Love is Like Oxygen”. It is to “Ballroom Blitz” what “Banana Republic” was to “I dont Like Mondays”.
Time is no healer
When you’re not there
Lonely fever
Sad words in the air
Some things are better left unsaid
I’m gonna spend my days in bed
I’ll walk the streets at night
To be hidden by the city lights city lights
“I’m gonna spend my days in bed” (!?)
Was that the better left unsaid bit? It reads like it. Anyway, do yourself a favour (Molly Meldrum style) and download it from limewire, play it, and defy me if you’ve heard worse.
Now I’m off to get a cheap high on oxygen, if I can get too much.
March 27, 2009 at 12:57 pm |
I must say, Some Bloke, I thought that ‘Love is Like Oxygen’ was really rather good. Not a patch on my own efforts, ‘Keep the Homefires Burning’ or ‘And Her Mother Came Too’ if I do say so myself (and I do), but infinitely preferrable to ‘Fox on the Run’ – which many years after it’s release was featured on the sound track of a motion picture called ‘Trannyshack’. Apparently.
Ivor.
March 30, 2009 at 11:13 am |
Honourable Mister Ash-reey,
You my hero, and I be like you on Magill Road, and now in Purgatory await final directions.
March 31, 2009 at 10:18 am |
What-ho! What’s that?… Golly, must’ve dozed orf! Where was I, Olly old beacon? Still here, eh? Let’s ring for tea, shall we? Nell won’t mind a bit; nothing better for her to do… Done! Now, Olly, old spit, did I ever tell you about the Peshahwi? No? Well I think you should let me…
Extraordinary folk, really, when you think about them. And there’s one thing I’ll give them, old box. The Peshahwi were the NICEST people that ever lived… anywhere!
And that, I’m afraid, is where they rather came unstuck!
As it happens, you see, they lived in the lower reaches of the Niger, somewhere on the border between the British and French bits of Equatorial Africa – not that they knew it, of course, or would have cared a jot for that matter, even if they did, poor devils.
Oh, I don’t doubt for a minute that there’s some treaty, laid up in a dusty glass cabinet in the Foreign Office somewhere, that defines, in elegantly diplomatic French, the delimitations of that portion of their tribal lands which was within, and that which was without, the jurisdiction of Her Britannic Majesty’s West African Protectorate – but ink, as the Peshahwi will tell you, fades faster than the memory of a people.
And what a people! D’you know, Olly old scone, that they… Oh tea, lovely! Nell, you ARE good. Yes.. Just put it there… Jolly good.. No, no we’ll manage… Quite.. Yes.. Excellent.. No, no don’t fuss.. Yes that’ll do.. No, that’s fine, I’m sure. . Yes.. Alright now..No. No.. I can do it myself..Look, I’m not blithering baby, you simpering dolt! Away with you, woman.. Ye Gods – where was I? Yes, Olly – as I was saying, the nicest people that ever lived!
The thing about them was that they never forgave themselves the injury they caused others, unless and until they saw that they themselves had been forgiven – and, according to the tenets of their preposterous religion, they would readily place themselves, quite voluntarily, in the free service of those whom they considered they had wronged until their honour had been satisfied. Well, you can imagine how that properly queered things up for the colonial administration. The French Peshahwi were always hopping over the border to go into service for their British cousins whom they had wronged, and vice versa, quite as if they had absolutely no idea that they were illegally entering entirely separate Empires!
Oh, don’t misunderstand me; they were the nicest people ever! Never complained, never went to war or anything like that, against us or even against each other. But they caused pure havoc in terms of paperwork. Well it was all too much, in the end. Utterly infuriating!
What became of them? I’m not in the least surprised that you ask that question, Olly old bovril. Well, I’m afraid the Entente Cordiale got a bit sick of them in the end. The British and the French quite cheerfully handed over that whole region of the Niger to Germany at the Congress of Berlin in ’98, in exchange, I think for some concessions in Constantinople, or whatever.
Oh, dear Olly, don’t frown – we got it all back in 1919. It’s just that there weren’t too many Peshahwi left when we did. ‘Cos, in the meantime, of course, they were all rather decimated fighting for Fritz on the Western Front. Not that they had no loyalty, or anything. But, you see, they just didn’t know where to pledge it. They all rather thought they should help the people they had wronged! Well, I can tell you they were all in a pickle on that score, when it came to the third battle of Ypres! And the big guns, I fear, didn’t wait for them to sort themselves out.
So there you have it.
Ye Gods, Olly, old beam! Just imagine how we should have fared if we had had to pledge our loyalty to those whom we had wronged! … More tea?
April 1, 2009 at 2:04 pm |
Well, the person following up that masterpiece had better have something fairly special to say…
April 1, 2009 at 7:53 pm |
Well how about this… Olly you flatulent bastard, pull your finger out of your copious arse and either respond with some witty retort or post another blog, you selfish, lazy prick.
Lacks the ‘Old World’ feel of Fruity’s out pourings I know. But it is just as heartfelt.
Another.
April 2, 2009 at 7:17 am |
“something fairly special”!
Oh, too late. Blinking British ‘Summer’ Time…
April 2, 2009 at 11:36 am |
According to my records, Big last “put in an appearance” (in lawyer parlance) on March 9, so it seems more than likely that he’s given up his blog for Lent.
I recall now that Big gives equal footing to all religious persuasions, and so at most times is giving up his blog for some religious reason or another, be it some Jihad suicidal bomb & plane thing or Hindu Nalbandian non-cow diet, right through the gamut of the running on empty Charismatics and ending with the Jim Jones suicidalists.
My spies tell me that during this time of prayer, Big now spends his days trawling through the leathergoods art’n'craft shops at Hahndorf, hand in hand with a certain friend.
And what’s wrong with that?
I’d like to know…
So here I go
Aaaaaaaaaa-gaaaaaaaaainnnnnnn.
etc
April 2, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
Long live Jambi,
I mean Marta…..
Liebe
April 2, 2009 at 4:02 pm |
Judging by the current picture of Olly, he must of been at Extreme Makeover, and accordingly everyone now loves him.
April 3, 2009 at 8:16 am |
…he’s a changing man (gratuitous Paul Weller reference for the traditional no good reason). Who stole all t’avatars?
April 3, 2009 at 12:05 pm |
Sh*tf#ck and f#cksh*t, 1 short of the miraculous 200 and he/she starts a new blog.
Looks like I’ll never get that miracle, and never get to heaven…
… if you break my heart.
April 3, 2009 at 4:19 pm |
I’ll still talk to you, Olly, if it means I get the big 2 O O…
Jambi has spoken
Long live Jambi