Evening all,
here is the next photo competition – with apologies for my tardy response.
Please post a photo which focusses on some detail we may usually overlook.
Continue reading “New photo competition, ‘DETAIL’ – closing date UK midnight, 15th November”
The Hun is a strange creature indeed. The stray example abroad might prove to be amusing, if not quite charming. This charm, however, rarely extends to the invasive hordes seen in parts of Spain and Italy in August. Observed in their native habitat, Huns are some of the more confusing creatures on earth.
Let us start our discussion of the Hunnish character in the context of humour. The Hun has a reputation for being humourless – a reputation that most Huns are fully aware of. Please allow me to tell you of an instance when this was made clear to me. Last Sunday, through an act of mass spite by the Deutsche Bahn proletariat all trains for the hour were cancelled. Trying to bide my time, I returned to kiosk at Trier Hbf for a second cup of coffee. The attendant, slightly bored due to light traffic, was more than willing to stop and chat. Our discussion eventually touched on jokes. A female Hun, also desperate to stave off boredom, had joined our little conversation a few minutes before. Thinking of nothing better to do, I told them the joke about the world’s shortest book being The Complete Collection of German Jokes. The attendant, clearly of West African extraction, had a laugh. Surprisingly, the Hun laughed loudest and thanked me for telling her a joke to add to her collection. German humour, it seems, tends to be highly situational. Perhaps not the best joke tellers, Huns still find humour in daily situations and make sport of what they can.
Continue reading “Living With Huns IV: the Hunnish Character”
No, it’s not going to be particularly cold in the salubrious suburb of East Acton. I refer to the day of commemoration of the Battle of Balaclava, 160 years ago today. The battle was the second major engagement fought by the British Army in the Crimean War and was fought because the British contingent of the Franco-British Army deployed in support of the Ottoman Empire had been given a position in the developing siege of the Russian fortress and port of Sevastopol. `The Russian general, Menshikov, had taken the bulk of his army out of the defences of Sevastopol to preserve operational mobility and attempt to sever the communication lines of the Allied Army and attacked the port of Balaclava in the early hours of the morning of the 25th October 1854. Continue reading “Balaclava Day”
So Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to 5 years jail for the killing of his girlfriend by shooting at her through a toilet door!
The feeling down here (and I spoke to a fair cross section of people yesterday) was one of relief that any sentence was not wholly suspended and that it wasn’t long enough!
But that’s ‘justice’ these days, one has to accept that times have changed and move on.
Bought 6 of these beauties yesterday, they weigh about 350gm each. (Cost me R200 for all 6, that’s about £12 🙂 )
Now to decide how to cook them, I’ll probably light a fire and braai them, any suggestions?
We call them crayfish, you?
Just seen this on my TV this evening, our satellite provider transmits throughout Africa, hopefully it might help one or two up north.
My dear fellow Charioteers,
I was informed today that
a company wishes to interview me
next month for a permanent position as a co-ordinator
in Bristol. Should thinks work out,
I could be moving to England quite soon.
The Ebola virus has now found its way into Murica and O’Barmy wants answers, so you can imagine the gazzilions of dollars that will be thrown at the problem, like when some ‘celebrity’ pillow-biter in San Francisco first got Aids. Now, in the UK, the gobmunt has announced screening at Thiefrow, Gatwick and the Eurostar terminus to check for ebola symptoms.
Ezcuse me? The gobmunt doesn’t even know who is in the UK, legally or otherwise, so why just those hubs? It is easy to transfer, for example, from T4 or T3 at Thiefrow to any domestic connecting flight without checks as I have done hundreds of times merely by waving my UK passport at something dusky and wearing a scarf, so how about throwing an exclusive military security cordon around the south of England centred on Dover and stop every car, train and lorry coming from abroad?
I’m on ironing detail today as the weather is dark and threatening and the FrizzEase is running low. So there!
OZ
Yes, I am 65 not 6.5 years old 🙂 This question is personal and specifically for Christopher, though everybody else’s insights are, of course, welcome. My second daughter is engaged to a German guy – they will be married in April in Cyprus. I will have to make a speech – in Greek, German and English – and also, since my new in-laws and lots of friends and relations are all coming over for the wedding I will wish to interact with them as much as I can. My German is very rusty and I’m taking online classes with DW but I’d like to switch my ‘background’ radio to a German station. In the same way as I don’t listen ot the BBC, I don’t want to listen to one of the main broadcasters with their boring talking heads so the question is, could you recommend a decent ‘talk radio’ station something on the lines of the London Broadcasting Corporation, where I can hear ordinary people expressing their views and having the occasional rant? (I can say what I want quite handily, and read well, but have trouble understanding what people are saying to me, if they’re speaking at ordinary conversational speed – especially when their normal, everyday usage. Annoying but, since I haven’t actually lived in Germany since 1991, understandable, I guess.)
I was reading an SF story where the heroine had to solve a Schroedinger-like event to save someone’s life after a space battle and an even more puzzling quantum event came to mind – a real poser
A cat always lands on its feet, right? And a slice of buttered toast always lands butter side down. So, what happens if you stick a slice of toast on a cat’s back butter side up…
Boadicea's Chariot 
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