Friday 19 June 2009

MORE COCK RINGS AND DIPSOMANIAC COUNSEL

My dear friends

Some of you may recoil in horror and alarm at the title of this sumptuous new post.  Some of you. However, my Sitemeter (which I installed all on my own, no help from anyone, Scarlet least of all) shows me that the overwhelming majority of readers arrived chez moi via these vile words.  Cock rings outweigh Dipsomania by an imperial ton, but it was ever thus, I suppose.  Anyhoo, in the interests of driving traffic, I shall use salacious titles from now on.  My next post, for example, is to be entitled Ass Raised Up Entered From Behind.  It will be about Wimbledon Fortnight.

I apologise for my sluggishness this week, but my consort, Scandinavian restaurateur Lars Torrders, is beginning to bore.  And not in a good way.  He can only express his affection through aggressive display and still believes Rodnina and Zaitsev to be the last word in pairs-skating.  I cannot abide a man who lives so stolidly in the past.  Another prime example of this type is Bob Crow, head honcho of the RMT, whose discourses have been spread across several news programmes like an appalling poultice.  Mr Crow is articulate, but I have found myself lost in the scented mists of time, when the names of Sid Weighell, Mick McGahey and Tom Jackson were known to all.  Who remembers them now?  (Apart from me and Kevin Musgrove).  In those days we would have yawned at the spats we now witness between Mr and Mrs Peter Andre; we were fed on tougher meat.  What we wanted, and what we got, was Joe Gormley v Sir Derek Ezra.  To see Gormley (the miners) square up to Sir Derek (the management) was a weekly treat for any enquiring mind.  Sir Derek would routinely regret the threat of redundancies.  Joe would regret the possibility of a strike.  The audience would regret that the two of them couldn't exchange jobs, since it was always obvious that Joe's grasp of the problem was equal to Dezza's, and was accompanied by a far better memory.  

Also enjoyable was any imbroglio featuring Sir Peter Parker and Ray Buckton (sometimes with Sid Weighell, who always sat to one side, often in profile; his catch-phrase "let me make this absolutely clear" was guaranteed to turn previously transparent water into a dreadful oily silt).  Key references were ACAS, The Terms of Reference, Ratified by Executive,  Violated and Abrogated.  Bob Crow simply isn't in this league.  There has been absolutely no progress made.  It is to cry.  

Everything seems terribly toned down these days; there is no great distinction.  Homogenous is putting it politely.  It is an environmental disaster of the first order.  Everyone looks the same - and I don't just mean Ken Dodd and Margaret Beckett - but assuredly, all our young people strive to be clones.  It is most depressing.   I wonder if there is something in the water?  In the early 1950s the male Jews born in Israel were nicknamed "sabra" after the watery fruit of the cactus.  In physical appearance they were invariably taller than their parents, broader, mostly blond or brown haired, frequently with a short nose and blue eyes.  (The girls, on the other hand, remained physically closer to the European Jewish type).  The young male's most striking feature was that he looked entirely un-Jewish.  The phenomenon was a striking confirmation of the theory that the environment has a greater formative influence than heredity, and that what we commonly regard as racial characteristics are no such thing, but a product of sustained social pressure and a specific way of life.  Professor Toynbee called it "the stimulus of penalisations".  I can certainly see how the dread soup of our modern life has resulted in the ill-favoured and poorly dressed young people we see in places such as Telford and most of Wiltshire.  

Anyhoo, back to the burden of my song.  Lars is on thin ice with me, particularly now that I have met his mother.  Her diet is firmly herring-based, and he overheard me refer to her as Lady MacBreath.  I fear that the stimulus of penalisations may be coming my way.




21 comments:

  1. Oooh I'm first and have nary a witty uttering. MTL was at Oxford with Peter Parker. I never get to finish an article on Pete and Kate at the hairdressers so haven't a clue what's happening. And is it just hype to keep the story alive?
    Finally a Jewish boy friend told me the commonest colour of hair amongst Jewish people was red.
    Sorry but it is early. Have you been up all night?

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  2. You have a point about cloning. I blame Bluewater.
    Sx

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  3. Just the mention of Jimmy Knapp's name gets me drifting off into a mist of fantasy, him and me on the barricades together, lobbing bricks at the thin blue line, his admiring look as a bounce one off a bobby's helmet, and growling softly "Ach ye're no a bad shot fer a sassenach, lassie."

    John Monks was the James Bond of the trade union movement. Any idea what he's doing now?

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  4. I spent the Thatcher years in the US, using the Guardian Weekly to keep up to date in those pre-internet days (remember them?) with the divine insanity of Arthur Scargill. I don't think I had a crush on him though.

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  5. And Peter Parker's sons were delightfully handsome in a darkly brooding type of way. That alone made him interesting.

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  6. Oh Clarissa! Remember The Eye of those rail strike days? "Buck Off Back To Work!" screeched the headline. Happy times.

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  7. Attempting to stimulate Lars would be indeed be penal, Mrs Pouncer. Perhaps you could offer your maternal bosom to a disappointed first-round exit at Wimbledon.

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  8. As I was standing in the chemist's (buying sunblock as it happens) I was dismayed to see that seven of the nine magazines on the rack by the till featured the Katie & Pete circus.

    I did a mining surveying course at Uni. We shared the course with mining engineers who were paid by the Coal Board to attend the course (they were the days). From all accounts Derek and Joe were interchangeable: they saw their job as creating dramas to keep the politicians busy so that they couldn't interfere with the business of running the business. As soon as Arthur and the idiot Canadian with the carrier bag took over, the politicians decided they could run the coal industry and it's gone the way of the Empire.

    There is a lesson to be learned there.

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  9. I appreciate the scientificky explanation as to why young Jewish men now all look like Paul Newman. I did have my suspicions.

    Plus, I had no idea that Spiderman's alias, Peter Parker, had been knighted...but what-the-hey, if you're gonna toss a scallywag like Jagger a Knecht, the door is bloody well wide open innit?

    A herring based diet must be brimming with the much ballyhoo'd omega fatty acids so it's all good girlfriend!
    (*snaps fingers)

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  10. Pat, thank you for asking. No, I found my chaste couch at about 2.00 am, which is earlyish for me on a Friday night. I have kept up with the Pete 'n Kate story whilst queueing at the BP garage on the A4. The headlines have sufficed. (a) I Love Pete But He's Broken My Heart. (b) Pete and Me Are Meant to To Be. (c) Katie: I Want Pete Back. (d) He's A Knob And I Hate Him.
    Yes, I think I detect the oily hand of M. Clifford behind all this.

    Scarlet, why do you lay the blame at that gloomsome mall? Have you not been watching Mrs Portas on the television of late? She says we must all shop more often and more heavily. We must spend our way out of this recession. She tells us to shop at Oxfam, where barely-worn vests and Viyella jerkins are to be found at bargain prices. I intend to follow her lead.

    Daphne, you laugh at me for loving Guy Lux, and then you declare yourself for Jimmy Knapp! Really, the whole thing is beyond reason. I would imagine you have come up against John Monks recently hemhem. He is still with ETUC, is he not? And I believe he sits on some board in Bruxelles. You are probably cheek by jowl as we speak. He can't have changed that much.

    Inky, how nice for you. A. Scargill was not insane. He was just maddened by every day being a bad hair day. Of course, this was long before John Frieda's Frizzease.

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  11. Madame De, I knew Nat Parker. He was at the local boys' boarding school; I was at the girls' convent. Our yearly musical events were joint efforts. He was two years younger than me, but these things don't matter in the chorus of Carmina Burana.

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  12. Dr Maroon

    'Twas in the cold Spring of nineteen hundred and seventy three
    When the country was brought to its gouty knee
    As the once ample coal stocks were found to have dwindled
    And our laughing Prime Minister felt that the country had been swindled.
    He felt that the only way forward was to introduce the Three Day Week
    (A shift pattern later adopted by Mr Jacqui Smith, to allow time to watch Anal Boutique).

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  13. Dear Gorilla, it very much depends. I would get my rack out for Djokovic, Verdasco and possibly Del Potro. I draw the line at Cilic. My all time fave rave is gorgeous Goran. I totally would have.

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  14. Kev, not only do you entertain, you also educate. (BTW no need to do the this-is-what-I-bought-at-the-chemist shtik. I just assume it's something secret. We all do. Sun block is just a screen, no pun intended). The thing about Joe was that he never scrupled to remind Sir Del that the miners were asked for increased productivity which they gave. The resulting coal mountain didn't stop the Govt. allowing coal imports to continue. I can't remember why Joe didn't raise hell over this? At exactly the same time, Jack Jones was carrying on like a man whose pants were on fire over the L'pool stevedoring firms (whose costs couldn't be absorbed because the total volume cargo had gone down). Am I right, or have I got that pesky False Memory Syndrome again. The trouble that's got me into in the past!

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  15. How did we get from cock rings to trade unions? Oh ... I see. Obvious really.

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  16. Your comment about Jacqui Smith's Anal Boutique, affixed to your incisive analysis of labour relations confirms my own view that the only way to go these days is to run your own business, keep it staffed by non-union illegal immigrants and put everything on expenses. However, in these days of expenses exhibitionism I was a bit disappointed to find that a Conservative politician has been found claiming for jellied eels.

    PS: What is a cock ring?

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  17. It's the venue for a cock fight, and the cause of many a mangled member.

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  18. Ah, I thought you said cock fright, which conjured up a different image. Anyway, I think I'll stick with fisticuffs and the Marquess of Queensberry rules as demonstrated in the first test in South Africa this weekend

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  19. Joe Gormley is the only person (apart from Scargill who came later) mentioned here who I remember, and then mainly for his eyebrows, political pygmy that I am. I remember Lars Torrders from when I was in Denmark - he had a double act with Ole Tusjustaveanotherone.

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  20. Gadjo, I bet you remember Clive Jenkins, a Welsh, who talked ceaselessly of "stoppages" (both official and unofficial) putting one in mind of a man needing sennapods.

    Dear Mr Jekand, I think the worst revelations of recent days were (a) Lembit's wig and (b) Martin Salter's tanning salon bill. Mr Jacqui has a special place in my League of Badness, though, because of Anal Boutique. It's just not a title that sits happily with the Home
    Secretary's household. I don't know why. Rang the wrong bell with me.

    Daphne, if you'd bestir yourself to read my preamble, you would understand the link. My next few posts (in a pathetic attempt to attract more custom) may be called Naked Apart From My Stilettos Bending Over to Pick Up the 50p You've Glued to the Floor (Wimbledon Fortnight); Lube Tricking Down my Cleavage (Henley Regatta) and Don't Move Baby I'm Stopping Only to Fill my Mouth with Ice (new fears that Northern Rock is about to saturate the mortgage market).

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  21. Mr Coppens! Mr Coppens! How could I overlook you? Such a thing should not be possible, in all your pomp and circumstance. Good heavens, do forgive. And anyhoo, where have you been? Our Peter Parker was a half-French hatchet-man who laid the railways to waste and seemed quite pleased to do so. No-one apart from Sid Weighell (union man) had the measure of him, and he beautiful, beautiful shoes.

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