Showing posts with label silliness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silliness. Show all posts

Friday, 9 November 2012

We can't have mining here, it's a mining heritage site!

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Welcome to the batty world we live in, one where UNESCO oppose the reopening of tin mining in Cornwall (providing new jobs and new income to England's poorest county):

A report published by Unesco’s World Heritage Committee stated that "mining within World Heritage properties violates the standards recognised by the World Heritage Committee and the International Council on Mining and Metals".


Bear in mind that this is the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site!

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Sunday, 19 August 2012

How we'd snigger at the Very Proper Gander!





We would. Snigger that is. After all we're so much more sophisticated than in times past.


Not so very long ago there was a very fine gander. He was strong and smooth and beautiful and he spent most of his time singing to his wife and children. One day somebody who saw him strutting up and down in his yard and singing remarked, “There is a very proper gander.”

An old hen overheard this and told her husband about it that night in the roost.

“They said something about propaganda,” she said.

“I have always suspected that," said the rooster, and he went around the barnyard next day telling everybody that the very fine gander was a dangerous bird, more than likely a hawk in gander’s clothing. A small brown hen remembered a time when at a great distance she had seen the gander talking with some hawks in the forest. “They were up to no good,“ she said.

A duck remembered that the gander had once told him he did not believe in anything. “He said to hell with the flag, too,“ said the duck. A guinea hen recalled that she had once seen somebody who looked very much like the gander throw something that looked a great deal like a bomb.

Finally everybody snatched up sticks and stones and descended on the gander’s house. He was strutting in
his front yard, singing to his children and his wife. “There he is!“ everybody cried. “Hawk-lover! Unbeliever! Flaghater! Bomb-thrower!“ So they set upon him and drove him out of the country.


Yesterday, a twitter fury erupted because the on-line, human equivalent of that old hen misread or misheard the word "snigger" turning it into a terrible racist slur. And I guess that the only thing is for us to take the 'moral' from Thurber's modern fable to heart - having told the Very Proper Gander's tale, our James concludes:


Moral: Anybody who you or your wife thinks is going to overthrow the government by violence must be driven out of the country.


Or off twitter!

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Thursday, 18 November 2010

The stuffed hedgehog principle...

There you are having a nice pub meal - steak, chips, onion rings plus maybe something green to show willing. And, looking across the bar, you spy something odd. Not quite sure what it is - might be a stuffed hedgehog. You put it down to experience - I mean what kind of establishment would litter its fireplaces with stuffed hedgehogs?

Yet you return - drawn, fascinated, absorbed even - to view the mystical stuffed hedgehog. OK so it's not all that great a stuffing (on closer examination) and it's trying to crawl up a badger's backside. But, wonder of wonders, it is definitely a real stuffed hedgehog.

Such is the essence of modern life. We are faced with things we don't expect to see - Wayne Rooney studying Latin, the Beckhams pigging out on steak and chips at a Harvester and Jeff Stelling singing plain chant - but never a stuffed hedgehog.

I guess my life is complete now.

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