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First BBQ of the year!

What a beautiful weekend it has been here in Blighty. Blue skies and 20 degrees Centigrade. Cold by aussie standards of course, but with virtually no wind, a big plus for us still in the UK.

So, having had a lovely day out with the teenagers and dogs at the Point to Point, it had to be a Barbie! No shrimps available alas, but lots of sausages and chicken marinated in some spicy stuff, with jacket potatoes, coleslaw and salad washed down with a lovely spanish white Rioja. Perfik. (typically, the local supermarket had run out of all meat and rolls/buns!)

How glad am I that I cleaned the BBQ after its last use in the autumn?!!

What did everyone else do to enjoy the blue sky April weekend?

Oh, and a quick update, the lawn is looking much better after lots of top soil trodden down in the uneven bits with some see just starting to come through in the bare bits!

Beards – Yay or Nay?

Firstly, I take no credit for this blog, my beloved BBC started the idea with an interesting article the other day about men in uniform and being clean-shaven (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12740975), but it got me thinking.

(Incidentally, the chap in the article should get off his ‘yuman rites’ horse and accept the rules if he wants to join. Silly idiot, I really hope he loses his court case)

I hate shaving, but have always done so due to my job and general upbringing and most recently as my cherished wife hates the feeling of bristles as I peck her on the cheek and variations thereof.

I have to say though, if I can get away with it on my days off I try to not shave as apart from the time it takes, my skin is still sensitive even at my great age.

Beards do seem to be making a come back, the 70’s and early 80’s seemed to be the last heyday – many sporting and fashionable wannabes have been supporting beards of the very bushy variety recently – especially amongst Super 15 rugby players. I have noticed with great amusement the last few years of “Movember”, where moustaches are grown for charity in the month of November.

Alas, I would love to partake for the right charity, but despite needing to shave every day, I can’t grow any facial hair sufficiently enough to qualify as a beard or moustache! I’m just not hairy enough!

So, fellow charioteers, what does facial hair say about a gentleman these days? Is it just a fashion, a fad, a religious statement, an image? Does it suit some and not others? Do you still wonder ‘what’s he got to hide?’, and then, linking into the BBC article above, should men in uniform be forced to shave?

I say yes, but that is not surprising as I have to as I mentioned earlier. Am I a dinosaur? Modern Western Society certainly couldn’t impose an equivalent on women…or does it?

I’d have to say in conclusion to my own thoughts, beards are fine, I just don’t like them when they signify a religious symbol, but that’s just me! But I would like one just for a day…..  😀

The Landlord is always right

The meeting of blowhards was in full swing. There we were, in a pub, a pub that none of us had been thrown out of. Yet. Discussing the various ejections from other bars because of misadventures. In the company I keep, being thrown out of a saloon is a badge of honour. The Wild West we like to call it.

Billy Hiccup recounted the number of staff that hurled him from the Bull Bar. It took hic of them, he said. Then Dad Longworth Continue reading “The Landlord is always right”

Er – like, you know, they’re only words.

On becoming a civil servant in the mid 70s, I found myself in the thrall of what could be called ‘civil service, or Mandarin, English’. That is, writing English as if you were an Oxbridge graduate, never using a single syllable word, when you could find one with at least three. The use of this style extended to the internal memos, which preceded e-mail, and especially those memos sent by senior management and those of us with a pretension to higher things. It took John Major’s Citizens Charter and the promotion of ‘simple English’ within the public sector to bring about a significant change in the attitude and style of correspondence within the public sector.
Continue reading “Er – like, you know, they’re only words.”

Of Mice and Zen and Factoids

The + Plus magazine is for those interested in mathematics and its applications.  While I am certainly not a mathematician, musician or scientist, I am mildly curious about a lot and obsessively curious about little. My curiosity is often triggered by my ventures into the ‘blogosphere’. So for those who do have a real interest in music, and perhaps some talent, the article in + Plus with the title What makes an object into a musical instrument? may interest you.
Continue reading “Of Mice and Zen and Factoids”