More Rubbish than Usual: A Birthday, Cloacopapyrology and other stuff

Bloody hell! Snow.

Saturday morning and a dusting of snow.
Here!
In Berkhamsted.
Quelle surprise!
We don't do snow. This dusting represents a deluge of Alpine proportions hereabouts and will no doubt mean no transport and mass starvation with queues outside M and S by Tuesday. Further up the road in the Chiltern Hills, of course, it is almost Arctic and they will already be eating one another.

Should you find yourself snowed in why not try the latest craze sweeping Watford-fruit sculpture. You'd be amazed what you can do with a pineapple.

Or try some gentle exercise.

Undaunted by the weather Pam and I went for a walk near Tring which took us uphill towards Hastoe giving the view of Tring shown below. I'm so pleased we did as the day turned out glorious and despite rushing past the King's Arms in Tring had a very pleasant afternoon culminating in an excellent sea bass dinner with a bottle of Viognier from M and S where the panic buying is in full spate.
More on panic buying at the end of the blog......if you get that far.

The King's Arms, Tring

Sunday and to the excellent Greyhound at Wiggington for a lunch with chums; a birthday lunch to be exact.
If a man's life can be measured in terms of the presents he receives then I must be an odd fish.

Two bottles of wine. Good stuff and a fitting present for a budding smellier. Sorry Sommelier.
Martin Kemp's "Art in History" indicating that some of my friends (Peter and Christine) recognise my intellectual wherewithal plus my love of Spandau Ballet (Ah sorry-different Mr Kemp)
A pair of Racing Drunks from Jim and Sue who kindly drove all the way from and to London for the lunch.
Another book, "What Dogs Want" From Roy and Annie; a kindly thought, well meant but 200 pages too long
Anyway their kindness will benefit Caz, Philip and Florence who are in the midst of training Polly Patch.

Polly Patch

I commend the chapters on Scooting and Humping which are both equally tasteless.

Racing Drunks

Jim went for the fish-looks impressive

I had pork-marvellous

What a grand table. Thanks for coming.

Joe looking pleased with his burger

So good that Jaq and Les could come.

Absent friends Mac and Carrie couldn't be with us as they are sunning themselves in the Orkneys They sent me this picture which is the view from where they are staying with friend Sue.They are staying there till after Burns Night so hang on to your distillery shares.

All in all a thoroughly pleasant day which rendered me overwrought with emotion, overweight with pork and overdrawn at the bank.  I woke about 7 p.m.

Monday and more excitement. Pam to Bristol to say bon voyage to Natalie who is off to foreign parts on a new project. Good Luck Natalie.

I was hoping to take part in the monthly quiz at the Lamb but always struggle to raise a team. However Derek (in the middle)  bon viveur, damaged eccentric and all round good bloke and Bernie (in the cap) kindly joined with me to compete against Berkhamsted's Finest comprising teams of 4,5 or 6 intellectuals and teachers. Our final placing, which was, I think, 6th out of 11 teams did us much credit and had the Music round not contained at least 8 numbers from the 21st Century thus ruling us out we would have fared much better, Well done Bernie and Derek

To Matters of No Import

Are you old enough to remember the panic buying of sugar, toilet rolls, petrol?? The first two in the 70s.

Petrol  any old time. Well we seem ok for petrol/diesel at the moment with prices falling although apparently we should be feeling sorry for the fuel companies at this difficult time. My arse.
A shortage of sugar would now be met with with glee by our health overseers and I wouldn't miss it other than for the essential brewery products so essential to maintaining the NHS.

Toilet rolls however are another matter and if as I recall back in the seventies the shortage rumour was accompanied by a government minister inappropriately urging "restraint" then hoarding will occur.

• I'd hardly call squirrels panic buyers; after all thousands of years of evolution have told them that there are no nuts all winter

More importantly what happened to the old brands so popular in my youth?

Time for a few words on cloacopapyrology  (The study of toilet paper!) from the Latin cloacarum "of the drains" which sounds very much like cloak room to me.

Bronco - bet you've forgotten that one-no longer exists but what a great name for a toilet paper that ensured the nation, nay, continent (and incontinent) walked like a cowboy.

 Izal!
Do you remember Izal when it was a shiny loo paper rather than a bunch of terrorists? I wrote my first Best Man's speech (and a few others since) on Izal starting the speech by telling the assembled I had borrowed some hotel stationery. Got a laugh. Went downhill from there but got a laugh.
You could write on Izal. You can't write on today's loo paper.  No chance. Call that progress?!
It was proper paper. It wasn't particularly soft. In fact it was particularly hard.
Back in the 50's and 60's we all walked like Gene Autry and not because we were great cowboy fans..

Gene Autry

http://www.geneautry.com/home.php

Anyway he's dead now so maybe he ought to be called Gone Autry but nay bother.

Izal was considerably better than Tesco Value paper which whilst softer is undoubtedly the fastest way to get in touch with your inner self.
Not only could you write speeches, shopping lists, letters to the bank on such paper but you could print on it as well giving rise to a tradition of local authorities, government departmenta, hospitals , schools and hotels stamping their authority on it.

Edinburgh Cleansing Department

County Borouh of Luton 1970

A more appropriate use of toilet paper was to offer advice on hygiene. The most commonplace is the once ubiquitous "Council property, now wash your hands, please" but Izal at one time set such injunctions to verse, alternating the rhymes with the information that "As a health precaution this paper is medicated with Izal disinfectant". One example-

Don't leave dirty handkerchiefs about to spread infection
Soak them all in water with some Izal for protection

Hardly Wordsworth is it?

I remember being on a school trip 50 years ago when we discovered that, if we thought British paper was rough, it had nothing on the Belgian variety and by the third day my room mates Messrs Cummings and Malone and I realised the problem must be addressed. We found a pharmacie and by pooling our inadequate French we managed to achieve our end, so to speak. Molly (Malone) was our spokesman and I shall never forget his shouted "Pour le derriere s'il vous plait le Delsey"
On returning to our hotel we soon discovered there was a market for our booty which we sold at  1d a sheet to other kids who were unable to muster either the nerve or the French to get their own.

Enough about loo paper.

How about hospitals-just to cheer you up.
As mentioned last post, chum, Mike Paine has been in hospital since 8th December. Or rather -hospitals.
He's been in three and every time we get some sort of visiting routine they move him. Sometimes within the hospital, sometimes to another hospital. Fair enough; he has multiple ailments and they are attempting to sort them all. After the first move we made a point of phoning beforehand to check if they'd still got him in their tender care. Unfortunately this didn't always work. On Wednesday of this week Ady, Geoff J and I drove to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford having rung the previous evening and been assured they had him and were keeping him.

You've guessed it.

Transferred to Stoke Mandeville where he'd started his epic journey 6 weeks ago.

On the way from Oxford to Stoke Mandeville we invented a new game-Painopoly. Roughly based on Snakes and Ladders it involves throwing dice to decide which hospital you think he's in and you get points if he's still there when you arrive. Ady is an expert at the game as he's managed to attempt a visit  to Stoke Mandeville, Wycombe and Churchill hospitals to find Mike had been moved elsewhere from all three. A three pointer if ever ther was one!
I'm not far behind in that I had to visit three wards on one visit to Stoke Mandeville before I caught up with the bugger. I've only managed to miss him at two hospitals though. We have a sneaking suspicion that because he owes money to all of us for various items-underpants, pyjamas, slippers, that sort of stuff, he gets wind (don't we all) that we're coming and gets himself shifted to avoid paying.

Anyway I got a call this morning to say they were sending him home with a care package (what an horrible expression....and in my opinion an inaccurate one) and did I have keys to his house. I duly delivered them to Stoke M ( and he hadn't been moved!) and got ambushed by the Occupational Therapist. A very pleasant lady who was obviously trying to deal with a situation not of her making. To my untutoured eye the "Care package" hadn't been packaged but he's home anyway and it is our sincere hope that when we visit he's still there! All I will say is that throughout this and previous episodes one cannot fault the medical care but the co-ordination of the various agencies is crap.

Anyway look out for it in the shops by next Christmas-Painopoly.

It is Thursday,22nd January. At 16.45 I walked down towards Cowroast Lock and it was still daylight. Rejoice!
The canal has been a bit frozen this week but nothing to get worked up about and apart from discombobulated ducks no harm done.

There are few things more distressing than to find your Hampton frozen

Forgetting that the canal was frozen I turfed out the remains of my stockpot through the side hatch and watched the unsightly remains of a rather fine beef stew sat, unsunk, by the boat for two days. Ducks, swans, coots, kingfishers and gulls do not eat carrot. Despite my encouragement they declined the chance of one of their five-a-day.

 Bread that's what they eat and they seem fit enough on it. With a thaw the carrot sank this morning....totally ignored by the fish who don't bother with five-a-day either. Good job their not in charge of a "Care Package".

"Still Rockin"

 Below Cowroast Lock I spy "Still Rockin", owned by Carol and George whose blog I have followed ever since I photographed their last boat "Rock'n'Roll from SS Great Britain in Bristol

http://wbstillrockin.blogspot.co.uk/

Rock'n'Roll in Bristol

Time to turn in as soon as I've published this blog.  As mentioned above the days are getting longer which always cheers the soul, I've had a brilliant birthday week-thank you everybody-and the Mighty Fulham have won three games in a row. As I said at the beinning "Quelle Surprise"

Goodnight everybody. Keep rocking.