Misguided football followers

I have a new young lady in my front room. I’m assuming she’s a lady because she dresses nicely, doesn’t swear or spit and has a friendly rapport with her grandmother. But should I assume?

Looking more closely she follows what is called a football team. Now, everyone and their dog knows that there is no football played anywhere in the world except in my hometown, in other places they have a sort of a ball, and sort of men in sort of shorts falling on it. That’s not football. (I’ve even heard it’s played with a round ball in some countries)

Football is played with an oblate spheroid on oval shaped playing fields called ovals. There is no falling on the ball. There is no falling on the other players. There is no tackle or scrum or scrim or other fancy names for men rolling around in the mud with each other.

Someone should tell my renter

My lodger

You must have noticed the well-mannered young woman who has taken up lodgings in my front room. A young woman of great good sense (librarian) who eats chocolate teddy bear biscuits when under pressure.

I like the way she has her baby photo blended on her blog. I’m going to ask my Council Home Help girl to ferret out some old snapshots of myself before the world got to me. Maybe there’s still one of me before the school milk changed my appearance (and outlook) altogether.

Blog Things

I found this Blog Things where some people have nothing better to do than sit round painting their toenails and dreaming up litte Cool Things to put in your Blog.

My Council Home Help girl was in raptures about the site, but on a good day she is in raptures about anything. (She gets flashbacks from the 70s)

I am a chocolate chip concoction. Where can I find strawberry?

Nasty looking little thing isn’t it. Is it supposed to be ice cream? It’s more like a warty Darth Vader in negative. But thankfully it bears no resemblance to the B.V.M. No resemblance whatsoever.

You Are Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

You are kind, popular, and generous. You tend to be successful at anything you try. A social butterfly, you are great at entertaining a crowd.You are most compatible with strawberry ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

A buxom poppy

I thought there were only two kinds of Poppies. The narcotic one they make films in strange countries about, and the poppy of wartime remembrance, the red corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas, a common weed across Europe.

But there are more poppies than this. Apart from Nero’s wife (the one who liked the milk baths, I bet she never had to clean her own bathtub) there is another one - the Buxom Poppy.

The Buxom Poppy has a whole blog Horrifying Foodstuffs on the topic of, basically, nausea. It takes all types to make a world and if the poor dear girl wants to hoard recipes that would make you feel guilty just buying the ingredients much less serving them up to people, I’m sure it’s not my place to criticise.

She even wants to make her blog as horrible looking as she can, and to this end is talking about choosing a colour scheme of avocado green, harvest gold, and burnt pumpkin. Her mother should tell her those colours are in fact, not horrible, but very soothing and nostalgic. A slight hint of puce would add the crowning touch.

For those who want to know about the milk bath, just ask the ladies who made it a daily routine. Even though their milk of choice cane from an ass, a cow is just as good (and much cheaper then asses’ milk), and you can still Bathe like Cleo and Poppy

The Colour Purple

After my morning nap and a small glass of Seppelts Purple Para Port, I got my notebook and pen and looked at the colour arrangements again in Incogblogo where the young lass allows you to ‘change skins”. (If only) (I like to see how she’s getting along in her quest to achieve 4000 comments. Apparently she needs only 92 more.)

I found this particularly valuable in choosing a new scheme for my kitchen. She has a couple of lovely mauve and lilac shades that would be just perfect. I think the colour purple is very me. Sort of royal. And my name is Queenie after all.

Cleopatra loved purple too. To obtain one ounce of Tyrian purple dye, she had her servants soak 20,000 Purpura snails for 10 days.

I wonder if my garden snails would produce the same results.

Petropavlosk Kamchatsky

I had another little look at the Clust’r Map in the right hand column over there, and found that there was someone in Petropavlosk Kamchatsky reading this.

Of course I had to look up where Petropavlosk Kamchatsky is. In my day that was ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ and you would be blasted by a lightning bolt if you even looked it up on an atlas.

My school atlas didn’t even have regions marked in those days, just a big fearful red blotch of colour behind the Iron Curtain. But times have changed and we are now allowed to look at the Soviet countries, talk to the people in them, sell them dodgy hamburgers, move next door and marry their daughters.

The world is very small up there isn’t it? You don’t realise how crammed together those places are, everyone is crowded in a little circle around the North Pole, you could take a canoe around with no trouble.

It’s a wonder they aren’t better neighbours being so close, but that might be the problem. Living too squashed together causes outbreaks of name-calling and petty insults, you know what the High Rise are like.

Pyschedelia Nostalgia

This renting blogs is like a lucky dip, isn’t it? You don’t know what you’re going to pull out.

My Council Home Help girl helped me choose my renter Incogblogo this week, and I know why. It’s got this weird device that allows you to change colours anytime you wish. You can read one post in blue, another in purple, another in green and so on.

Why anyone would want to do such a thing is beyond me, I became quite giddy watching the whirling colours while I tried to answer the question “What budding disco icon manged only to shout “Blasphemer! Blasphemer!” in his first film role as a satanic priest in Devil’s Rain?”

I had to have a little sit-down with my shoes off and a small glass of sherry. There is a time and a place for colours in this world, unless you happen to pine for the psychedelic years.

Perhaps the young lass who writes the blog was brought up in one of those free love communes and she’s recapturing her nursery years. She would be better off with a small sherry

Genealogy

I’m sure this new craze of genealogy can be harmful. Why on earth anyone would want to dig out obscure antecedents is beyond me, you never know who you might turn up.

It can stunt your life as well. For example, one young lass I know has her head deep in her Genealogy research Journal (Apparently she reads the GEDCOM standard over breakfast and understands it. Give me the racing guide any day.)

She’s constantly searching for cousins and organising family reunions. In most families I know, a reunion is an effective form of birth control.

But what I want to know is, can a first cousin, once removed, return?

Targeted?

So now I know where Juan Dolio is. My renter, she who lives on a beach in a Life in Paradise, kindly published a map. (I thought the people looked foreign) It’s also interesting to know there is a place in Canada called after my hometown.

But I have been TARGETED. What does this mean? Perhaps a kind soul may be able to tell me. There are some 13 year old children who live down the street, they know all about computers and blogs and targets and things. I’ll just pop over and ask

Backyard renovations

Looking at the pictures of Life in Paradise on the beach in Juan Dolio (wherever it is) I thought I might be able to rig up something similar in my backyard. As it is I’ve got enough potted palms on the patio to fill a small Hollywood set, it would only need one truckload of sand surely.

Or perhaps I could just paint a beach scene on the brick wall in the courtyard? Seriously, if you’ve seen one beach you’ve seen them all.

Just a lot of sand and sun, a beach is a bit like the Taj Mahal, it looks better on a biscuit tin than in real life.