Round Robin - 2016

WARNING - THIS BLOG POST CARPET-BOMBS THE C-WORD.  DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED.

2016 has been an arse of a year.  I've personally lost two cats, one school-friend and my mother.  In return, I've gained 8 kilos.   By any measure, that's a shit deal.

All of us have lost this year.   We've lost so many talented bringers of joy.  Entertainers, writers, actors, comics and musicians.  Gone and replaced by whom?  Some X Factor Karaoke gimp?  

And we've lost the warmer, safer, fairer world - a world that was admittedly clinging on by it's fingertips against the assaults of neo-liberalism, wars and David Cameron's fuck-awful government.  We've had the Brexit vote, the open acceptance of racism and proud celebration of ignorance and xenophobia.  We've had indifference and hatred toward migrants - trolls openly celebrating the deaths of other humans trying to escape war.  We've had the murder of Jo Cox, the rise of the Alt Right, the election of Trump and the continued reverence of Farage, Johnson, Gove and other arch-liars.  

2016 has been so bad that the Chinese have had to create another creature of the Zodiac.  2016 has been:

The Year of the Cunt

I can honestly say that a word that was banned from my vocabulary just 18 months ago, has been called upon and thought if not spoken so many times this year that I've had to keep a log.

You'll notice a spike in late June.  This was Brexit.  More of which shortly.  Another smaller spike in November, when Trump's election victory dragged out the same sort of cuntery seen in June.  There's no data for late December but I suspect another peak as Trump appears to have drained the swamp simply to make room to put more cunts in there. 

Anyway, after the peaks, there is a tailing-off but the c-word is still frequently brought to play when having to converse with Brexiters and their ilk.

Although Brexit brought peak cuntery, there are many other factors this year that have had me reaching for the c-word.  The major causes of thinking or uttering the word 'cunt' are listed and annotated below.

1. Brexit - The Players

So these are the cunts that orchestrated the whole thing.   Farage. Gove, Johnson, Grayling, Patel, that awful prick Banks and so on.  In fact anyone that got into the media to promote Brexit has shown themselves to be a dreadful fucking cunt.  Lie after lie after lie.  Xenophobic and nasty campaigns that placed all the blame for all out troubles upon the EU and immigrants.   Arch-cuntery.   And now because these irresponsible fuckers have got their way, despite lying their arses off, the country is going to suffer economic decline, social divisions and pretty much everything getting worse.   And these cunts have such brass necks that when it all goes to tits and their lies are found out, they'll just blame the Germans, the remainers, the migrants - anyone but themselves.   Cunts.

Update Dec 22nd.   I never liked Farage but I'd just seen him as an unpleasant xenophobe who was savvy enough to not fuck up when given the oxygen of publicity.  The BBC haven't spotted this and keep on inviting him on in the vain hope that he'll do a Nick Griffin.   He won't.  Stop inviting him.
Anyway, his recent comments about Jo Cox's widower have marked Nigel Farage out to be an end-level-boss cunt. Farage is indefensible, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever

2. The Cameron Government

Elected as One Nation Conservatives, these cunts soon got that wrong and decided to be One Percent Conservatives instead.  A succession of nastiness that sought to divide the nation and heap scorn and poverty upon anyone who was unfortunate enough to be disabled, unemployed or simply not rich.   We'd all thought of the Lib Dems as be-sandalled Quislings but once they were out of the way, full cuntery ensued.   Austerity meant that there was less and less public money available to support the nation.   But at least that it meant that the public finances were healthier.  Except they weren't.  At all. Chancellor Osbourne managed to put an extra half a trillion pounds onto the Nation Debt between 2011 and 2015.

This government committed countless acts of cuntery - from bedroom tax through to giving Iain Duncan Smith responsibility over people's lives.  But their longest lasting cunts trick was the Brexit referendum.  They led a frankly fucking awful campaign to persuade us to stay - relying on a combination of arrogance and putting the frighteners on us.   They lost, we lost and as soon as Cameron realised that he'd promised to invoke Article 50, he baled out.  Because even he could see that whoever invoked Article 50 and pushed the UK over a cliff, would go down in history as the architect of a massive act of foolhardy cuntery.    Which brings us to...

3. The May Government

Theresa May was Home Secretary for many years.   She was pretty shit but was especially shit at two things.   The first was reducing immigration.  She had complete control over all non-EU migrants and set a target of 'tens of thousands'.   She failed miserably.  She plainly is stung by this failure and so pledged to make Brexit all about reducing EU migration.   That means no Freedom of Movement which means no access to the Single Market or the Customs Union which means our businesses become embroiled in red-tape and tariffs, lose their competitiveness and are wiped out.  Our imports become more expensive which is good for exporters but only if they can manufacture products made entirely from British produce.  Which, given that the only thing we seem to produce in great quantities is narrow-minded cunts, does not bode at all well for our economic health.  But at least Theresa will be able to say that she got migration down and will have bragging rights at whatever hive of cuntery she socialises at.

The second thing that Theresa was shit at was negotiations with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)  Not only did she spout baseless bollocks about not being able to deport someone who owned cat (100% not true BTW) but she failed miserably to deport Abu Hamza because the ECtHR won't allow deportation to places of torture or inhumane treatment.   Now, Hamza is a cunt - no doubt about that - but if the UK enables, encourages or uses torture, then we're no better.   The ECtHR thwarted May (and her Labour predecessor who was also some way along the cunty spectrum) and so she's on a mission to remove us from the European Convention of Human Rights and replace it with a UK version.  What will that be like?  You can bet your arse it'll be depostic, cunty and ill-thought out.
And that's just May.  Then there's her Cabinet.  The 3 ministers of Brexit - Cunty, Cunty and the cunty one.  There there's a Home Secretary with a shady past; a war-mongering defence minister and a transport secretary who opens his door on a cyclist and then leaves the scene without exchanging details.   Cunts.  Cunts who are currently (perhaps temporarily) supported by:

4. Brexit - The Supporters

Dunno about you but if I've been lied to and I find out about it, I get all cross with whoever had lied to me.  I'd have to be pretty cunty to get cross at whoever had pointed out the lie.   I'd have to be pretty cunty to pretend that the lies weren't lies.  I'd have to be pretty cunty to refuse to believe facts and believe lies instead.  I'd have to be pretty cunty to start shouting 'Get over it!' every time someone pointed out an uncomfortable truth.  But it seems that being pretty cunty does seem to the be qualification to be a UKIPer or any other irrational supporter of Brexit.   I say 'irrational' because I've not heard any good reason for the UK to leave.  Make no mistake, the EU is pretty shit but it's the sort of pretty shit that we can sort out by working with others and changing it from within.  It's certainly not going to be sorted out if we keep returning Farage and his disrespectful shower of expense-hoovering cunts over to 'represent' us.  Like be-suited 'Brits on the Piss' football fans, they sprawl and brawl across Brussels making all of us look like cunts.  Our 'ambassadors' to the EU are charmless, artless & clueless scroungers who piss on our nation's reputation at every turn.  And they're cunts too.
And yet to the starry-eyed supporters of Brexit, Nigel Farage should be deified, sainted, ennobled and put in a position of power to negotiate our way out of the EU.  That'll go well.   I have some respect for Nigel Farage.  Anyone who can wear yellow cords and drink that amount of booze without showing a piss-patch either has a bladder of iron or a double-bags the Tena Pads.  I'm going with the latter.

Brexit supporters can be dreadfully cunty but really I should feel sorry for them.  They've been played for suckers by the Brexit players.  Easy populist stories that place blame elsewhere are far easier to accept than having to admit that pretty much all of the nation's problems have been caused by our own governments and their failure to invest in the state.  The Brexit supporters are as much victims as the rest of us. 

You'd think that a major political party would have stepped up and done everything the possibly could to show the population how staying the the EU benefits all of us.   Which brings us to:

5. Her Majesty's Opposition

I have a lot of time for Jeremy Corbyn.  I think he's a genuinely nice man with admirable values.  I just wish that during Prime Minister's Questions, he'd unleash the verbal equivalent of Laser Tits and leave scorched earth where his opponent once stood.

They say that you can judge a man by the company he keeps.   You can also judge a man by his enemies.   Whichever way you choose, you'll find a fair range of cuntiness.  Inept cunts; shouldn't be allowed to speak cunts and you've-not-really-got-the-hang-of-what-the-Labour-party-should-stand-for cunts.   

Frankly, it doesn't really matter if the Labour party are united or not.   Same as it doesn't matter who leads them.  Whoever has that job will be vilified, demonised and lied ceaselessly about by our next selection of cunts.

6. British Media Barons

Tax-avoiding, Brexit-supporting, union-bashing, phone-hacking, reputation-trashing, hatred-spreading cunts.     Not quite the Pepsi ad but you get my point. They have power without responsibility and don't really care at all about the damage they cause to society.

Rather like our next shower of cunts.

7. Fair Fuel UK

We don't like to pay too much for petrol - especially as some of what we pay goes back to Saudi and Qatar where it allegedly goes to support ISIS and other extremist cunts.    And so perhaps we should welcome Fair Fuel UK and their campaign to reduce tax on car fuel.  
That's what I thought when I saw in November that they'd saved £100 Billion in fuel duties.   When I pointed out that that's £100 Billion that's not gone to schools, hospitals, pensioners, veterans etc. etc. they turned on me and went full Libertarian.   They ranted on that tax is evil, the best economies have low taxation and that all governments are evil and all laws are wrong or something.   I lost the details as they deleted the post and blocked me.   However, they showed themselves to be the kind of cunt that pretends to be on the side of the little man when in fact they're an industry-backed cluster of cunts who simply want to defund the state.  What's most impressive is that they've got their 'cunt score' in just two months.  
On the broader subject of the toddler-like libertarians, I will hand over to the much-missed Iain Banks, who sums them up far more articulately than I can.

“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

And on the subject of simple-minded:

8.  Road Tax Martyrs

In 1925, Winston Churchill said “Entertainments may be taxed; public houses may be taxed; racehorses may be taxed…and the yield devoted to the general revenue. But motorists are to be privileged for all time to have the whole yield of the tax on motors devoted to roads. Obviously this is all nonsense…Such contentions are absurd, and constitute…an outrage upon the sovereignty of Parliament and upon common sense.”
In other words, paying Road Tax makes the cunts in cars think that they own the roads.  They don't.
 In 1937, Road Tax was scrapped - replaced by Car Tax.
And yet, 70 years on, the roads are full of cunts who think that they pay Road Tax and as such, only they are allowed on the roads.   They feel that because cyclists don't pay "Road Tax", they shouldn't be allowed on the public highways.
Well now...
Roads are paid by the taxes that we all pay and so when I'm on my bike, I've paid just as much as you have, Mr Cunty Driver, even though I'm supposed to stick to the gutter on the narrow shitty bit of paint that passes for 'provision for cyclists'.
And even then, cunts in cars shout that I should go and pay Road Tax.   How?  Invent a time machine and travel back to 1936, queue up in a Post Office to be told that even back then, cyclists didn't pay Road Tax.  I'd almost look as big a cunt as you do in your shit car, chucking out noise and fumes.  In your shit car that spunks away your cash whilst sitting out in the road doing nothing.  In your shit car that you bought to impress potential sexual partners but that failed miserably to attract anyone other than middle-aged men in motor-racing jackets; men with 'Castrol' written across the backs of their anoraks.  It's a strange sort of man who so boldly declares his favourite lubricant.   Probably the sort of man that does this:

9.  Driving at excessive speeds in a 20 mph limit

Come on then.  What's so fucking important that you have to drive so fast down a residential road?  Down a road where kids are walking to school.  Down a road with cyclists, pensioners and cats all over the place.   Down a road where people live.   It's a residential road - not a race track for bellends.   
Apparently, driving fast is supposed to be sexy and attractive.   Fine.  It is quite fun to do - on motorways and race tracks.  But on roads where people live?  It's simply cunty.

Worse are those who drive fast past schools.  What possible legit reason could there be for trying to look sexy and attractive when driving past children?    The cunts who drive fast past children are simply Paedos in Peugots; Nonces in Novas, erm...   Deviants in Daihatsus?    Whatever...  They're cunts.


 2017 will be much better.   

Seven Swans A-Swimming

During WWII, my grandad (the Gloucestershire farmboy 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.  Roach has so many small bones that after eating it, my throat resembled a game of Ker-Plunk.


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.  If you have time to read while you're on the lav, your diet is too low in fibre.

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.

In the home, it's more usual to find a corkscrew and maybe a crowbar alongside the library in the loo

A diet low in fibre is an invitation for Farmer Giles to set up house in your jacksie, which in turn leads to a spell in hospital - face down, bare arse in the air, while a surgeons 'repairs' your tradesman's entrance with an angle grinder.

Open up your minds and your mouths to the joys of veg, because the alternative is hitting yourself over the head followed by open arse surgery.

Six Geese A-Laying

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.

And while we're self-helping through tattoos, some sort of Plimsol Line 'lobometer' markings on the cock to measure tumescence would be useful - if only for keeping a log of angle over time.  Apparently, a splayed hand roughly represents the angle of dangle for lobs  - thumb is the angle at 20 years, index finger at 30 years and so on.  Can't really comment as I don't keep a protractor handy - that's why some sort of permanent gauge would help.   You could record the angle every morning and plot a graph over time.  In fact, there's an app for that.  Strava and RunKeeper are so last year - you want to get LobLogger - £1.99 from the iTunes store.

Five Gold Rings

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 'penis accoutrement' 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 Queen Victoria - 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.

Four Calling Birds

As a child, I always thought this was "Four Collie Birds".  A cross between a Collie and an Eagle would be a cracking animal for a shepherd to have.  Ranging out far and rounding up the sheep and then returning to perch on the shepherd's outstretched arm.

When I was a shepherd*, I didn't have a dog.  Or an Eagle.  Or even a Collie bird Hippogriff combo.  I didn't have a crook and I didn't even have a Gabriel Oak smock with nothing on underneath.

I've worked in IT for over 20 years now and if there's one thing I can say with complete authority, it is that I am the only person I've met in the world of IT who has gone from shepherding to IT consultant by way of door-to-door salesman, shop-assistant and Roger Bird's fartcatcher.  Apparently this is not the usual career path.

All of my IT peers went to university.  While I was wandering around frozen fields, they were tucked up nice and warm at university having to put up with 3 years of cheap beer and cheap sex.

The flock had 400 ewes so I certainly had an option of very cheap sex but there was no cheap beer.  All I had was a stick and a can of Iodine spray.

The stick was really just for company - it gets lonely out in the fields.

The Iodine spray was for important Shepherd duties..

Every time a lamb is born, the shepherd has to cut the umbilical cord and spray Iodine onto the lambs tummy to sterilise the tummy button.   Then lift the lamb up to the mothers head so that she can lick off the birth membrane and bond with the lamb.   That's the 'Ahhh!' part - very rewarding.  But it is followed by the 'Ughh!' part.

The 'Ughh!' part is simply that you have to shove a hand up the ewe's fanny to check for blockages or other lambs and then quickly squeeze the tits to check that milk is there and mastitis is not.  Sometimes the ewes would loudly baa "Tits before fanny! I'm not a slag!**".

The usual name for this 'inspection' is the Gloucestershire Seduction Technique and it is frequently used on humans.  As you all very well know.



* I was de-smocked and baa'd from working with sheep. Not saying why.
**Thanks to Steve Coogan for that one.

Three French Hens

Yet more foreign birds.  Is my true love trying to tell me something?

Not sure what the advantages of a French chicken would be.  Big coqs for making making Coq au Vin? (aka French Dogging).

And why three?  That's a lot to eat.  Maybe you're meant to keep them and have them around the place, discussing existential novels, smoking Gitanes and not cleaning their teeth.   Although, to be fair, as they're hens, I'll let them off that last one.


Despite the poncy hens, I do like France.  There are so many things that the French have given us that we Brits simply do not appreciate.  Here is just one.

Lee as a middle name - In France, many surnames are 'Le something-or-other', such as Le Roux, Le Noir etc.  Although we don't have the same tradition over here, we have somehow subsumed acceptance of the middle 'Le' by the simple addition of an extra 'e', so that, in one way at least, we don't consider Dave Lee Travis to be abnormal.

There are many 'Lees' who can trace their names back to French origins:

Dave Lee Travis - Literally 'Dave the Hairy Cornflake'.  Travis is composed of two Wallonian words. Tra - meaning 'hair'  and Vis, which is wheat chaff left over from milling.    Only joking.  It is from T'ravise, which is Parisian slang for 'perhaps not a peado after all'.

Justin Lee Collins - From the Breton co linnes  which translates as  'abusive yokel'.

Jaime Lee Curtis - Curtise: French for 'I still would'.

So maybe not three French hens.  Will a chick and two pointless cocks do?

Two Turtle Doves

The turtle dove can be identified by its ability - unique amongst Columbidae - to retract its whole head inside its body.

It's also very rare.  Driven out by the European Collared Dove apparently.

 Look at them, coming over here with their coo-coo calls and their little collars. Apparently, the Collared Dove is so good to eat, Italian men have been known to swap their girlfriends for one.   I got this little factet from an airgun mag in the 80s.  What this says about Collared Doves, Italian men, their girlfriends or me in the 80s, is anyone's guess.

 The Collared Dove didn't breed in the UK until the 1950s.  It first settled in Kent, Suffolk and in my grandfather's wooded garden in Essex.

That wasn't the most exciting thing to happen to him.  He was born in the early years of the 20th Century to a middle-aged German immigrant and the family maid.  His sister arrived a year or two later.  It was a very progressive age - after the death of Queen Victoria, everyone let it all hang out in ways that made the 60s look tame.  Harder drugs, more alternative lifestyles and free love were the order of the day for the Belle Epoque Edwardians - until it was all brutally swept away by the First World War.   For my grandfather, the high spot of these years was attending his parents' wedding - he was a teenager when his father's wife died, thereby allowing his parents to finally marry a week or so later.  Up until then, they'd been happily and unashamedly living in what was later known as 'sin'.

My great-grandfather was apparently known to everyone as 'Herman the German' until the WWI anti-German mood led to pin-pricking a random page of the London telephone directory and him becoming respectable Mr Bennett.  If it was good enough for the Royal Family... Up until then, he'd had the increasingly-unpopular but surprisingly prescient name of Herr Achtung-Spitfire.

My grandfather went to grammar school in Croydon alongside Malcolm Muggeridge.  But instead of becoming a journalist, spy and moral campaigner, he went to work at a stockbrokers in the city.  Pinstriped suit, bowler, umbrella and on the train to London every morning.  Stockbroking wasn't a great trade to be in during the Great Depression and to help make a bit of extra money, he wrote detective novels about murders on the Stock Exchange.  More on these another time.  When I've read them, probably.

He brought up his family in Essex.  A pre-war Essex that was a very different Essex to today’s Essex.  His Essex was Marple-esque Essex of fellow bowler-hatted commuters and maiden aunts; an Essex where the only stilettos were the murder weapons in his detective novels and the only orange tan was on the weekend brogues. 

He worked for a Japanese bank and found himself suddenly unemployed the day after Pearl Harbor.

He joined up and because he was Croydon born-and-bred, he became a junior officer in the Corps of Royal Canadian Engineers.  He hit the Normandy beaches on D-Day +1 and later helped to liberate Eindhoven. His unit built floating pontoon bridges for armour and the re-taking of the Low Countries was a busy and hairy time for him.  He collected all of his letters home and I had hoped to scan them in and turn them into a book.  However, they're full of British understatement and mostly concern food parcels and cigarettes. I assume that he didn't want to worry his family - the minutiae of an uncertain supply of food and fags must have been far more comforting for his wife and daughters than the blood and fire of Normandy.

One story that may sadly never be properly told was that his battle group liberated Herman Goering's private train.   Little is available on the net about the train so all I have to go on is his story that there was so much booze on this train that a whole battalion of war-hardened Canadian and British troops got bored with drinking.

My grandfather brought home a magnum of Goering's champagne and a silver schnapps mug with a swastika on it.  We opened the champagne about 15 years ago.  It had remembered the shock of being kidnapped and carried in a squaddie's kit bag in 1945 and indignantly spunked half its contents across the room and into my second cousin's handbag.  The other half of the bottle was like very fizzy sherry.

I still have the swastika-marked schnapps mug.  Behind the secret wall in my cellar.

My grandfather sent no letters between June 5th and June 11th 1944 and when he did send one, it pretty much said "Sorry for not writing. Been busy."

He returned home and went back to stockbroking.  Being smart with money, he was able to retire very early.  Not rich, just comfortable.  He could have stayed working and made himself rich.  Instead, as soon as he could afford to go, he did.  That gave him a 30 year retirement, which I feel made him the richer man.  I've recently worked out that when my youngest finishes vet school (she's a small girl therefore she wants to be a vet) is when I can start saving for my retirement.  I'll be 68.   *sigh*

My other grandfather had nothing much to do with stockbrokers or doves.  Although, if he'd seen the Collared Dove in my other grandfather's garden, he'd have tried to catch it and eat it.

He was a man who was born poor, lived poor and died poor but was always content with his lot - unfettered by ambition or greed.

He was a bugger for gadgets though.  He had a gramophone just before the First World War and on summer evenings used to play it in the garden of the families' tiny farm cottage.  People in the next village could hear it.  One even complained, which must one of the earliest complaints about young person's loud music.  His son - my father-  perfected the complaining, though.  My dad insisted that the words to every pop song were "Fuck fuck fuck you fuck me fuck your Mum!"  We probably shouldn't have been surprised to find out, on his death, that he was the singer from Slipknot.


My other grandfather had a bicycle with what was then a new-fangled 3-speed gear system.  He rode it to work every morning.  On every journey he'd pass a well-dressed gentlemen cycling the other way.   Every morning, my other grandfather would say "Morning!" and every morning the well-dressed gentlemen would blank him and say nothing.  After several months of "Morning!" and blanking, my grandfather tried a new approach.  Instead of a polite and cheery "Morning!", he bellowed "ARSEHOLES!".  The well-dressed gentlemen fell off his bike.   The next day though, it was back to "Morning!" and blanking.

He had a camera - we have the photos he took in Cirencester in the 1920s and 1930s - that he developed in the cupboard under the stairs.  He had a piano-accordion that only he could get a tune out of.

He also had significantly bad judgement.  This was most evident when he joined the army in 1914 to impress a girl.  She wasn't impressed and apart from a brief sojourn in the Bicycle Corps, he spent the next 4 years in the trenches in Flanders.  Because he was a six-foot-two Gloucestershire farm-boy, he was enlisted into the Durham Light Infantry. Based at the other end of England and made up almost entirely of poverty-stunted miners, it was perhaps not the best choice.  The regiment's nickname is the Bantams - because they are small, tough and wiry.  My grandfather was 8 to 10 inches taller than all his peers, which looks silly on the parade ground - they have the fastest marching rate in the British Army - and lethal in the trenches.  Despite being such an obvious target, he survived the trenches and like all who did, never talked about it.

Instead, he returned home and married a war-widow.  Well...   My grandmother wasn't strictly speaking a war-widow - her first husband had put his head in the oven on receipt of his call-up papers, which may be one in the eye for predeterminism but also very stupid..  Either way, they settled down, had my dad and my grandfather went to work at Cirencester brewery.  As a child, I always thought that he had had an important job that required him to taste the beer each morning.  No.  He simply got there early and snaffled a few pints before anyone else turned up.

His legacy was not large, being made up almost entirely of Gloucestershire phrases, only a few of which I can recall.

"Thys'll shit nine hedges over a crab tree" - said of eating any 'suspicious'  food or drink.  I guess nine hedges over a crab tree is an archaic measure of distance, like a furlong or a rod.  Whatever it is, it does seem an impressive distance to shit.


"As full of wind as a barbers cat".   No idea.  Did he get wind and air mixed up?

"Thee cassent yut flowers"  Said disparigingly of anyone who grew flowers and not veg.

"Slipperier than a cats arse in June" - said of anything slippy.  This one is pretty dodgy and may be connected to his cousin who was in trouble with the law over undisclosed 'farmyard crimes' over near South Cerney according to the parish records and a sadistic woodwork teacher from South Cerney who took pleasure in telling me this aged 13 in front of the whole class.


His last words were "Didn't we have fun?"  That's the way to do it.

A Partridge In A Pear Tree

The native Grey-Legged Partridge used to be very common but is now rare.  It has been driven out by its French cousin, the Red-Legged Partridge, which struts around the countryside in it's showy red pantalon  like it owns the place.  If, like me, you've been scrabbling around trying to find some genuine reason for Brexit - a reason that wasn't built on lies and nastiness - then sending all the Red-Legged Partridges back home is the only credible reason for Brexit I've found so far.

I tried archery recently.  Stood in a field on a cold day, attempting to hit a target about 20 metres away and realising that it's not as easy as Robin Hood made it look.   It is quite a lot of fun but I feel that it would be easier if I had a smaller nose - it kept on getting in the way.  The mythical Amazons were alleged to cut off a breast to stop it impeding the bow-string.  I wouldn't need to go to such extreme lengths - maybe use half an old sports bra to keep a moob out of the way.   However, after whacking myself on the nose every time I released the string, I felt that some kind of protection was needed - maybe the rubber bulb off an old fashioned car horn.  That was certainly was my nose looked like at the end of the session.

A partridge flew by whilst we were shooting.  Probably not on its way to a pear tree.  The elderly and respectable gentlemen shooting next to me declared loudly.

"If you're going for a bird, you've got to go straight up the arse!"

Undoubtedly, this is sound advice.  Perhaps for aiming your bow.  Perhaps for aiming your cock.  Or both. Who knows?  Either way, it was a little random for the middle of a field in November. Also, wasted on me as I am a middle-aged married man.  I might pass this nugget onto my son but not yet - he's only 11 and at best, it will just confuse him. Maybe I'll get it put on a t-shirt for him.

Of all the game birds, apparently the smuttily-named woodcock  (fnarr!) is the best-tasting of all.  The woodcock has rocket-assist take-off. It ejects all the contents of its digestive tract when it takes off - it shits itself into the air.  I would imagine that being shot at helps considerably.   Because the woodcock is shot shitless (try saying it - it's Christmas and you're pissed.  Say it 10 times fast.  Go on!), it can be cooked with the guts still in.   Very nice (apparently) and also brings us in a scat way to pear trees, by way of cider and perry.

Like the woodcock, the hardened cider & perry drinker also evacuates his bowels before taking off.  Not because of a rocket-assisted 'flight or fight' reflex but simply because that's what cider does to your insides.

Cider is evil stuff.   The apple seeds in it make it slightly poisonous and in large quantities, the toxins can induce hallucinations, paralysis and death.  The acidity removes cloggages from internal pipes - all cholesterol build-up is swept away but also the contents of the intestine are rapidly evacuated - usually when you least expect it.  The acidity also causes extreme arthritis and forces Somerset cider drinkers to take their scrumpy with a dash of Vimto in it to cut it.  Order a cider top in rural Somerset and they'll embrace you as one of their own.  Do this anywhere else and you'll look like a big Wendy.

Perry is a more civilised drink - cider made from pears. Perhaps too civilised - most people's experience of perry is Babycham -  the sickly, fizzy GILF-tipple with the Bambi rip-off.  But real perry can be very nice and less fighty than cider.

Simple to make too. I could make it with the pears that grow on the tree in my Mum's garden.   However, the tree and it's precious horde of golden fruit, have always been guarded by swarms of angry wasps.  They jealously guard every last pear - even the windfalls are crawling with the fuckers. If I did manage to get any pears, the perry would be 40% pear juice and 60% liquidised wasp.  They don't let me get near and instead come out to greet me.  The wasps love pears and the wasps love me. It's unrequited - I don't love wasps. At all.

I'm very allergic to wasp stings.  I was stung on the hand a few years back and less than an hour later my hand was the size and colour of an over-ripe mango.  If I get stung in the throat, I'm in trouble. Not as much trouble as I would be in if I wandered around town with jam on my cock trying to get an enlarging sting off a wasp.

But there is a fair chance that a wasp will kill me. And with this in mind, my 9-year-old daughter wrote this  a couple of years back when I was helping her with her maths homework.



Translation:
I hate Dad. He is allergic to wasps stings.  If you see a wasp, please send it to St Davids Road, house number 41, blue door.   Thank you for making my Dad swell up.   <kisses>

Awwww! She's even drawn my grave for me! Bless!



And on that happy note, Merry Christmas to you and yours.

xx