Wednesday 10 June

8 weeks gone - 4 weeks to go!

Tina does 2 school visits. I cruise around, get lost trying to find my goal (but I am sorted for tomorrow), watch a game of Crown Bowls, and end up in New Brighton. I look at all the eating places and choose the one filled with locals (they must know what they are doing, right?). I was one of the youngest there. I have The Gammon Special – gammon being a ham steak.

In the evening we have a curry with Ian and Paula.

Today is Prince Philip’s 88th birthday. Here is a statement he made last year, “Tourism is just national prostitution. We don’t need any more tourists. They ruin cities.” That tells us off!

Great pun from local paper. But first, some background. In the Europe elections in the last few days the racist anti-immigration, send-them-all-back-where-they-came-from British National Party got 2 Europe MPs. Now imagine the photo of their leader being splattered with yellow egg yolk. The caption is “… splattered with egg yolk in London yesterday. The BNP only accepts whites.” Excellent writing.

Last week I commented on the great sports writing in the Guardian. Here is another example and, like the last, it is not buried deep in the paper but is from the back page. Here is the first paragraph in full: “Long ago in my variegated journalistic career I came to the conclusion that what I really lacked was an extra layer of intractable prejudice. The trouble was that I could too easily be swayed by the conflicting polemical breezes, so ending up with some sympathy for two starkly contrasting points of view at the same time. It would have made me an impossible juror.”

Now, apart from Jeremy Coney, you don’t get sports writing like this. Here are a few other words/phrases from this erudite writer: “Most of my sporting opinions emanate from the gut rather than the brain”; “I have always looked for and seen the virtues of the opposition as well as those of the team which geographically and emotionally should have made my heart beat faster”; “prejudicial tendencies, even in moderation – and I’m not talking, say, of bigotry – are a necessary component of a free spirit”; “Alas, my mate was quickly eliminated, not helped by my adjectival profusion of praise”; “scintilla”.

The real point of the article is the author’s dislike of fox hunting and finishes, “The … 10th Duke of Beaufort was a hunting man, three times a week … He really did say ‘Hunting is the only thing apart from war which draws the country together’” So there!

And another writer describes NZ’s batting effort against South Africa in a 20/20 as “curiously constipated”.

The last from “Must Try Harder – The Very Worst Best Howlers By Schoolchildren”:
Religion
- The result of the Reformation was that the people could choose either to be Catholics or pugilists
- The Jews were a proud people, but always had trouble with unsympathetic Genitals
- Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. It was a duelist religion.
- The 7th commandment is “Thou shalt not admit adultery”
- One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites
- Solomon had 300 wives and 700 cucumbers
- The Papal Bull was a mad bull kept by the Pope in the Inquisition to trample on Protestants
- David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times
- The entire city of Constantinople rose up with a tremendous ejaculation every time the Christian Emperor Constantine came
- The Philistines are people in the Pacific
- Pompeii was destroyed by an overflow of saliva from the Vatican
- Judyism had one big God named Yahoo
- Oliver Cromwell had a large red nose, but under it were deeply religious feelings
R-rated
- As he walked through his room he heard the sound of heavy breeding
- When the wedding was over the bridegroom clasped his loved one tight in his arms, while the little organ began to swell and fill the room
- While rowing up river I slumped over the whores in a state of physical exhaustion
- In the Middle Ages people lived in mud huts with rough mating on the floor
- The 19th century was when people stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine
- Merchants appeared and roamed from town to town exposing themselves and organising big fairies in the countryside
- The Mona Lisa was the most beautiful woman ever to be laid on canvas
- A census taker is a man who goes from house to house increasing the population
- Gonads are a tribe of wandering desert people
- Roman girls who did not marry could become Vestigal Virgins, a group of women who were dedicated to burning the internal flame
- She lay there semi-naked, semi-conscious and semi-hopeful
- A gelding is a stallion who has his tonsils taken out so he would have more time to himself
- Early Egyptian women often wore a garment called a calasiris. It was a sheer dress which started beneath the breasts which hung to the floor
- Adolescence is the stage between puberty and adultery

THE END of the book!