We are surrounded by good things.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Friday, 10 December 2010
Monday, 6 December 2010
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Friday, 20 August 2010
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
OGWT
Ever wondered where the title "Old Grey Whistle Test" came from?
According to presenter Bob Harris, the programme derived its name from
... a 'tin pan alley' phrase from years ago. When they got the first pressing of a record they would play it to people they called the old greys [doormen in grey suits] . The ones they could remember and could whistle having heard it just once or twice had passed the old grey whistle test.
Now you know.
According to presenter Bob Harris, the programme derived its name from
... a 'tin pan alley' phrase from years ago. When they got the first pressing of a record they would play it to people they called the old greys [doormen in grey suits] . The ones they could remember and could whistle having heard it just once or twice had passed the old grey whistle test.
Now you know.
Monday, 10 May 2010
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Friday, 9 April 2010
Monday, 22 March 2010
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Thursday, 4 March 2010
An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice...
"Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt great hate for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It's like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die."
"I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.
"Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt great hate for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It's like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die."
"I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.
But...the other wolf... ah! The littlest thing will send him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all of the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing."
"Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Dubious town planning in Brighton.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Who's a clever boy then...
Regular Moscow busy street with some small food kiosks. A middle-aged man buys himself a piece of hot fast food and walks aside chewing it without a rush. Then just in a second he jumps up frightened - some doggy has sneaked up on him and barked out loudly. His tasty snack falls out from his hands down to the ground and the dog gets it. Just ten minutes later, on the same place, the teen youngster loses his dinner in exactly the same manner. The modern Russian dogs are on their urban hunt.
“This method of ambushing people from their back is widely exercised by Moscow dogs”, saying A. Poiarkov, working in Ecology and Evolution Institute of Moscow. “The main point here is to define who would drop the food scared and who won’t, but the dogs are great psychologists they can do it better than us”. Taken from English Russia.
Monday, 1 February 2010
My kind of dictionary
Abscond - to steal someone's cream tea
Adder - common English expression meaning "I have slept with that woman".
Antelope - to run off with one's mother's sister
Beaverbrook - a nude bathing area
Boutique - a startlingly hard wood
Circumspect - the point of view of a Rabbi
Claustrophobia - the fear of jolly white-bearded men wearing red suits
Colonnade - a fizzy enema
Defibrillate - to interpret the meaning of Jeffrey Archer
Dictator - a humorously shaped vegetable
Egret - an apology sent by email.
Gurgle - to steal a ventriloquist's dummy
Granary - a retirement home
Hiding - a bell you cannot reach
Humpty-Dumpty - one who is humped and then dumped
Intercontinental - someone who has wet themselves all over the world.
Knighthood - a medieval contraceptive
Libel - an Australian price tag
Loggerheads - people addicted to sniffing logs
Lymph - to walk with a lisp
Piano - a musical shipping line
Rapscallion - a funky spring onion
Scooby-doo - responsible dog owner
Shellfish - a bit like a shelf
Shingle - Sean Connery's definition of a bachelor
Snuff Box - a coffin
Spectacular - a short sighted vampire
Supersede - Clark Kent's semen sample
Taffeta - a welsh goat's cheese
Tapioca - a disappointingly average dance routine.
Toronto - the Lone Ranger's little known Canadian accomplice
Transistor - a brother who wears his mother's clothes
Urdu - Liverpool Coiffure
Varnish - to disappear in Mayfair
Xylophone - the Greek Goddess of Scrabble.
Adder - common English expression meaning "I have slept with that woman".
Antelope - to run off with one's mother's sister
Beaverbrook - a nude bathing area
Boutique - a startlingly hard wood
Circumspect - the point of view of a Rabbi
Claustrophobia - the fear of jolly white-bearded men wearing red suits
Colonnade - a fizzy enema
Defibrillate - to interpret the meaning of Jeffrey Archer
Dictator - a humorously shaped vegetable
Egret - an apology sent by email.
Gurgle - to steal a ventriloquist's dummy
Granary - a retirement home
Hiding - a bell you cannot reach
Humpty-Dumpty - one who is humped and then dumped
Intercontinental - someone who has wet themselves all over the world.
Knighthood - a medieval contraceptive
Libel - an Australian price tag
Loggerheads - people addicted to sniffing logs
Lymph - to walk with a lisp
Piano - a musical shipping line
Rapscallion - a funky spring onion
Scooby-doo - responsible dog owner
Shellfish - a bit like a shelf
Shingle - Sean Connery's definition of a bachelor
Snuff Box - a coffin
Spectacular - a short sighted vampire
Supersede - Clark Kent's semen sample
Taffeta - a welsh goat's cheese
Tapioca - a disappointingly average dance routine.
Toronto - the Lone Ranger's little known Canadian accomplice
Transistor - a brother who wears his mother's clothes
Urdu - Liverpool Coiffure
Varnish - to disappear in Mayfair
Xylophone - the Greek Goddess of Scrabble.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
For all you tough guys out there
FATHER FORGETS
by W. Livingston Larned
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead.
I have stolen into your room alone.
Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me.
Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you.
I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel.
I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes.
I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too.
You spilled things.
You gulped down your food.
You put your elbows on the table.
You spread butter too thick on your bread.
And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon.
As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles.
There were holes in your stockings.
I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house.
Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with
a sort of hurt look in your eyes?
When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door.
"What is it you want?" I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither.
And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me.
What has habit been doing to me?
The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy.
It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth.
I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character.
The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills.
This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night.
Nothing else matters tonight, son.
I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours.
But tomorrow I will be a real daddy!
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh.
I will bite my tongue when impatient words come.
I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"
I am afraid I have visualised you as a man.
Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby.
Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder.
I have asked too much, too much, yet given too little of myself.
Promise me, as I teach you to have the manners of a man, that you will remind me how to have the loving spirit of a child.
by W. Livingston Larned
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead.
I have stolen into your room alone.
Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me.
Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you.
I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel.
I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes.
I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too.
You spilled things.
You gulped down your food.
You put your elbows on the table.
You spread butter too thick on your bread.
And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon.
As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles.
There were holes in your stockings.
I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house.
Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with
a sort of hurt look in your eyes?
When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door.
"What is it you want?" I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither.
And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me.
What has habit been doing to me?
The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy.
It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth.
I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character.
The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills.
This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night.
Nothing else matters tonight, son.
I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours.
But tomorrow I will be a real daddy!
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh.
I will bite my tongue when impatient words come.
I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"
I am afraid I have visualised you as a man.
Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby.
Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder.
I have asked too much, too much, yet given too little of myself.
Promise me, as I teach you to have the manners of a man, that you will remind me how to have the loving spirit of a child.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Saturday, 9 January 2010
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