Seven Swans a-Swimming

During the second world war, my grandad (the Gloucestershire one) managed to get hold of some swan meat.  There was a war on and anything that wasn't nailed down was eaten.  He said that it was almost inedible.  Very strong tasting with a rank fishy flavour.  It was the one of the few things he said he'd never eat again - swan and a few of the things he'd tried eating to stave off hunger during a very poor childhood.

His late Victorian rural childhood involved eating anything he could get his hands on. Rabbit, badger, thrush - even fox.  He drew the line at blackbird and hedgehog. He'd tried them but apparently they tasted even worse than swan.

The family were dirt poor.  In the 1831 census, his own grandfather - one Jasper Roseblade -  was listed as 'Occupation - Outdoor Vagrant'.  Ten years later, Jasper had come up in the world and in the next census was recorded as an 'Indoor Vagrant'.  Sadly, he blew his fortune on a turnip and the family returned to grinding poverty and outdoor vagrancy ten years later.

Because of his poor background, my grandad would eat almost anything - even chitterlings - the 'delicacy' made from pressed (and not always cleaned) intestines.

I've inherited his love of strange food.  As I write this, I have some pigs cheeks bubbling away in the slow cooker.   Wherever I went on my work travels, I would always ask to eat local specialities - especially the ones that tourists would be horrified by.  Inevitably, that means tripe.  Over the years, I've been served tripe several ways in several countries.  All different & all lovely.  I've had pigs ears, raw steak, raw shellfish and so on.  In France, I was told by a local that I ate like a Frenchman.  I took it as the compliment that it was meant to be.

I was given some chocolate made out of camels milk.  It was ok but after I'd eaten it, I was told that camels milk is very creamy and thick and a bit salty.  Also, it seems that camels have to be milked *very* hard and they only have the one 'teat.'..   I'll eat almost anything but I'm going to have to draw a line at dromedary jizz.  Whilst it is respectful to animals to eat as much as can be eaten, the sperm is an exception and will not be knowingly eaten - I'm not Marc Almond.  But it is far better - and less perverted - to have devilled kidneys or marinated & grilled ox heart than to tuck into the unused shagging muscle of a virgin bull - that's fillet steak to you.

Whilst working in Cheshire, I was in a hotel for so long that I got to know the chef and persuaded him to get some unusual things in.  He got freshwater fish - perch and roach.   Perch has bones like caltrops but is very delicious.   Roach is like like chewed-up newspaper wrapped around toothpicks - only not so nice.  After the roach, my throat resembled a game of Ker-Plunk.

The chef also tried to get squirrel but was threatened with the sack if he ever served vermin. The fluffy-***ts have got the hotel managers on their side.

As I get older, I find that high-fibre foods become more and more attractive - no better way to start the day than with an 18 inch stool..  I've always been suspicious of those who keep their libraries in their loo - it strongly suggests a poor diet.  I saw a TV program that said that the diet of lorry drivers is kept deliberately low in fibre as there is little time time in the truckin' day for regular poos.  Instead, the poor sods are kept on an appetising but unhealthy diet of bacon and fried bread to ensure that they only need to go once every three days.

When they do finally get the chance to poo, it's like a chair leg.   The most effective technique get it out is to bounce up and down on the loo, while smacking themselves on the head - like human ketchup bottles.    This does shift things but it usually smashes the toilet.  The broken toilets you find all to often in service stations is not vandalism but simply the bad diet that the poor truckers are forced to eat.

Six Geese a Laying - Christmas 2015

There is no bigger farmyard bastard than Geese.  Bad-tempered, always angry and happy to attack anyone without any reason - the goose is the unlicensed bouncer of the farmyard.  They're often used instead of guard dogs.   Guard dogs can be reasoned with but geese, like unlicensed nightclub bouncers, have no grasp of reason and only want to have a ruck.  Try getting into a farmyard without a check shirt, Hunter wellies and coloured corduroys and they'll be onto you like a shot and will take you round the back of a barn for a beating.  "Six Geese a Laying into some poor sod" is the full lyric from the original song.

Geese are bastards.  Their wing feathers are tattooed with 'love' on one side and 'hate' on the other* and they stomp around the farmyard, terrorising the other animals.  They run protection rackets and extort food from the other animals through blackmail and violence.  Geese in the farmyard means a reign of terror.

The original version of Orwell's Animal Farm had the geese in the role of the pigs.  However, Orwell based it on real farmyard observations and found that the geese were simply too evil even for the Napoleon role.  He had to drop geese from the whole story.   Geese are bastards - if you haven't eaten one for Christmas, do so now.




*Humans (and geese)  having 'Love' and 'Hate' on the knuckles is an odd idea.  I get the 'hate' side but what sort of love can you express with knuckles - apart from 'self love'? I reckon it'd be much better to have 'wank' tattooed on the right knuckles and 'wipe' tattooed on the left knuckles.   It's so easy to get mixed up - this sort of aide memoir would help a lot.

Five Gold Rings - Christmas 2015

Always a bit of an odd one, 5 gold rings.   The song rattles along nicely and then suddenly halts so that '5 Gold Rings' is sung in a Madrigal stylee.   Why?  And why so high pitched?  Choral singers have to reach down and squeeze their testicles in order to reach the high note of  '5'.  I accept that squeezing testicles is part and parcel of being in a church choir but it's not usual to have to squeeze ones own testicles.

Rings in testicles - squeezed or un-squeezed - seem to be very popular these days.  Seems that you're no-one without a cock-ring or a couple of bolts through the scrotum.  Perhaps it's planning ahead - when the knacker-sac gets too saggy and dangly, it can be easily bolted back into place.  But I'm not convinced of the wisdom of attaching weights to something so stretchy.  Sooner or later, you're going to trip over it while stumbling along for a third night-time pee.

It is claimed that the Prince Albert is so named because the real Prince Albert had his cock pierced so that his trousers fitted properly.   Just let me run that by you again.   His trousers didn't fit.  So he jabbed a new hole in his cock.  And then put some metal through it.  He was the Prince Regent - husband of the ruler of the largest empire the world has seen. And yet he'd rather mutilate his cock than ask the royal tailor to adjust his trousers.  I'm pro-Monarchy but that is just barking mad.

I recently had a long haul flight next to a well-dressed professional gentleman in his 40s.  With a small Prince Albert through his nose.  Why was it there?  To stop him digging for roots?  Was it the one from his cock?  Kept in a safe place so that he didn't set of a security alarm?  No idea - I didn't dare ask him.

Many years ago, a friend of mine pierced his foreskin and put a ring through it.  He was ever so proud and insisted on showing us. Erm...  Great...   To be honest, it looked like a cock with an ear-ring.  Only smaller. But it had the desired effect - he showed it to a lot of women and they mostly seemed to think it was cute enough to play with.

In 1982, while still at Cambridge University, Derek Pringle was called up into the England cricket team.  He had a ear stud and this caused a furore at the MCC.  He was told in no uncertain terms that he would be playing but the earring would not be allowed.  Determined that his earring should enjoy the match, Pringle entrusted it to his mate, Muttley.  Word from the wise - never have a mate called Muttley.   Here's why.  Muttley took the earring and as soon as Pringle's back was turned, jabbed it through his own foreskin and then hobbled to his seat at Lords.   The earring didn't have a great view of the match but it was there throughout.  After the match, Muttley removed and returned the earring.  Pringle put it back in his ear and didn't find out about its tour de foreskin until a long way through the beers later that evening.  Didn't take it out though.   Good man.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Andy Partridge out of XTC is not only a fine musician and one of Swindon's most famous sons, he is also a visionary legislator.

According to a recent-ish interview, when he was recording in the studio with XTC, he enforced a rule that should be put onto the law books of every country.  

The rule was simple, elegant and enabled the calm defusing of any stressful situation.    Over to Andy for an quick explanation.
I’d be ordering people around, saying, “Look, come on, can we do another take, let’s try this again.” There’d be lots of muttering under the breath of the band, you know. I guess I got into the bandleader role a little bit stronger on that album than on previous albums. But I thought to lighten the mood…we’d always had loads of porn mags around the studio, so I cut out a particularly well-photographed close-up of a pudenda and made a real sort of Russian commissar’s peaked cap and stuck that where the badge should be on the front. And we had this hat on the mixing desk, and if I suggested or if anybody suggested anything that was a little dictatorial, everyone would point to the hat, and they had to go and put on the Colonel C**t hat.

(I think that as Andy said it, I'm not required to put a quid in the tin.)

What a cracking law that would be, though.  Every time anyone gets above themselves and starts acting like a dick, they'd be forced to wear the Colonel hat.

The whole of Parliament would have to wear them - except for Michael Gove, who'd instead have Grant Shapps sitting on his face.  That'd make Liam Fox soooo jealous.

Every Manchester Utd fan, Chelsea fan, Man City fan  - would have Colonel hats plonked to their heads until they promised to shut up about their glory-seeking 'supporterdom'.  "I supported them when they got relegated"  Did you bollocks - you supported Liverpool for a while instead.   What is it with supporting successful but far off teams?  I feel sorry for these fans - growing up having to support Man Utd because their parents couldn't afford a map and a ruler.  Find your closest team - support them.  And do it quietly unless you want a hat.

For drivers of those ridiculous 'Max Power - Min Penis' street cars -  where the seats are lowered for the ultimate in shortarse chic - where the exhaust pipes are enlarged for the subliminal message that they like back-door action - (have I done that one before?) - these fuckers would have the Colonel hats glued on so that when they try to turn them around to wear backwards, all their shitty over-gelled hair would be ripped off.  Maybe not quite Vlad the Impaler - more Vlad the Super Gluer. 

Golfers - a bunch of badly-dressed ****s in a field - Colonel hat.

This list is endless.

It's Christmas - who would you give a Colonel hat to?