The Official Nonsense Thread

[Caspin]

The poor girl. "International clearance"? Surely that is breaking some kind of EU rule - she should call Brussels!

So, who likes "Murder, She Wrote"? Come on now, speak up and tell Aunty Caspin all about your guilty pleasures! I ask because tonight I'm going to see this new production of Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit" starring Angela Lansbury.




Should be amusing! I think it would be excellent fun to be ghost and go around haunting ex-husbands!

Also, what is going on with this?! I thought that it was an April Fools joke that hadn't been taken down or something. The Opening Ceremony for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year will consist of blowing up some old blocks of flats. I just don't know what to make of it. I appreciate that ceremonies of this sort do usually involve fireworks or some kind of pyrotechnics but this seems very odd. Still, it's different isn't it.....

[Minty]

Angela Lansbury is brilliant. It's a shame that she's only remembered for "Murder She Wrote" (Nancy Drew at the menopause) & "Bedknobs & Broomsticks". She's one of those jills of all trades who can do every style of theatre on top of musicals & be casually good at it.

Noel Coward productions are just her thing - she got a Tony for his role in the past.

Making the Red Row demolition part of the Commonwealth opening is very bad taste. A lot of families were evicted in various parts of Glasgow or had their homes compulsory purchased to build the athletes village. The corrupt council used it as an excuse to bulldoze a big chunk of Dalmarnock & scatter communities citywide as well as pay off those people that had bought their council houses at a fraction of the real market cost. Reading those Labour councillors & their pals calling them "iconic" makes me puke - none of their families or relations lived in one of them, they made those on the Housing convenor board make damn sure of that!

One of the reasons they decided to demolish was the bad publicity they got as a dumping ground for asylum seekers when a family who lost their application & were told they were going to be deported all jumped to their deaths, whereupon some enterprising journalist discovered they were meant to have been condemned years before as they're riddled with asbestos, but the council shelved the report.

The Red Row was notorious & few will miss it, but dynamiting homes as "entertainment" is sick. I wonder how those Commonwealth countries that have suffered civil wars will feel about this for an opener.

Sorry, sorry, on my soapbox again!

[Caspin]

Oh. I was hoping you were going to laugh at me for believing an April Fools' news story. I'm sad that the demolition story is actually real. It's a really crass idea for entertainment and nothing to do with sport. They say that the theme is supposed to be the city's "regeneration" but all the demolition says, surely, is "destruction". People living nearby whose houses will need to be evacuated during the demolition extravaganza will be given tickets to see the show at Celtic Park. Are they going to let all the asylum seekers go to that party too? Or have they been deported already. Surely they could come up with an alternative spectacle for the opening ceremony. Jeez.

Angela Lansbury was great and got a huge cheer when she came on stage. It's hard to believe she's approaching 90 years of age! She must have some serious stamina to still be treading the boards. It's true about her only being remembered for a few things - as soon as you see her you really just think "Jessica Fletcher"! The other members of the cast were really good too and the play was very well done with a lot of laughs and, topically it would seem, a set that fell apart at the end, destroyed the ghost wives in poltergeist mode. Two mobile phones rang during the performance but I managed to control my rage and indignation. It was a good night out and nice to be in a theatre in which the ceiling falls down on stage as part of the play, rather than the ceiling falling in on the audience.

Today I had a day off (bliss!) and went off to the British Museum to look at the Viking exhibition. I sometimes want to smack the curators of these big exhibitions - they always shove a load of interesting but really small artefacts right at the beginning, so people all stop by the entrance and nobody can move through or see a damn thing. Also why can't they put the descriptions above and below the artefacts - the stuff written up on the walls was fine because you can look up and read that over other people's heads, then wait your turn to get close enough to actually look at the thing you've read about. Anyway, I should moan less - it was still very enjoyable and I'm lucky to be able to go to see all these things.

They had on display the longest viking long ship ever discovered (and it was really huge), or at least the 20% of the wooden planks that could be recovered, put into a metal frame to represent the whole ship. They are such strange boats - so shallow - it's difficult to imagine them covering such vast distances in such vessels.

There were pictures of a longhouse that they've reconstructed in Borg (Norway) that is now on my wishlist of places to visit. It looked like something straight out of Skyrim with its fire in the middle of the room with loads of pots hanging over it, containing horker stew for sure.

They had a lot of swords as well and grave goods and hoards of coins and other bits and bobs that have been dug up all over the place. Funny to think how much must still be out there - buried for safe-keeping and then the owner dies and all that nice silver and gold is forgotten. Maybe we should dig random holes in likely locations (Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire!) and we might find a fortune! I always thought that those gold/silver torcs they wore around their necks were just decorative jewellery and a display of status, but today I learned that in fact it was just like carrying all your wealth with you (since they were travelling a lot I guess you'd need a handy way to carry your cash other than a big sack of coins). So they would wear these heavy rings of precious metal round their necks, then if they needed to pay someone they would untwist a bit and snip it off and hand it over as payment. They had one truly massive gold neck ring (2 kg of gold) that looked as though it would surely just be decorative, as it was entirely impractical to wear such a thing, but there was clearly a link twisted out where the owner had started to snip bits off to use as currency. You learn something new every day, or some days anyhow.

Think I'll shut up and go buy my sim a bakery now.

[Minty]

There appears to be the start of a backlash against the demolition plans. There's already some demanding an investigation as to whether money given to Glasgow for the games is being misused to carry out "urban regeneration" (a euphamism for knocking everything down).

It also turns out only four of the five towers will be exploded, not the fifth as it is still being used. Considering its proximity and the way two falling towers brought down a third from the vibrations in NYC once upon a time, I hope the residents take all their valuables with them when they're evacuated on the big day, or invest in a shovel for later.

Glasgow has 10 000 asylum seekers, which for a city of 600 000 is ridiculous. They're not allowed to work (officially, but don't you believe it) & most of them can't cope with a Scottish winter (it's the damp more than the cold). But it keeps lots of people in the "refugee" industry in jobs, so you get lots of poor sods sitting around the city centre or in parks all day wasting their lives away waiting for the day they get the accepted or rejected letter, if they haven't topped themselves first!

(Worst of all, not a decent footballer amongst them - you'd think there would be at least one "next Pele" anxious to acquire Scottish citizenship!)

The British Museum trip sounded great. The Viking longships were made for speed, their shape means they move with the sea so you never lost speed when rowing. Apparantly at the right time of year you can do 300 miles in a day in one. What gave any of them the idea to try crossing the North Sea in them however is anyone's guess (probably some drunk coxwain, "It's OK lads, second star on the right & we'll be back home before our wives have noticed we've been out pillaging again!")!

[Caspin]

Well those Vikings certainly managed to get around the world so I suppose the ships were not so crazily designed - must have been terrifying in a storm though!

I was quite interested in a skull that they had on display. It was from a Viking warrior who had filed grooves in this teeth so he could put colourful stuff on them and run onto the battlefield with his gnashers showing a bold rainbow stripy effect!

In a couple of hours it is meant to start raining. If it doesn't I may go a bit nuts. The air quality seems a little better today but I've breathed in far too much of the sandy smog this week and my lungs are no longer my friends. It seems to be giving me heart palpitations, which can't be good! A good downpour would be very helpful - also I can't be arsed to go out and water the pots and the lavender is looking worryingly crispy, so come on the rain.

Marine play Whitby this afternoon. We need some points, boys, so let's see another win please!

*crosses toes*

[Minty]

Ah well:-





33 years, but we'll be back (hopefully!).

[Caspin]

Aw, very sorry. We heart Hearts. Yeah, they'll be back I'm sure of it. But I hope they get their finances organised soon.

We drew 1-1 with Whitby. Hopefully the lads feel OK that at least we didn't return to a losing streak.

In the meantime I was impressed to see that the England women's team managed to to win a match with not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight, but NINE goals to nil! That would have been a great match to watch live. Nine celebratory sausage rolls!

I am not sure what to make of George W Bush's artwork. Certainly he has managed to put some paint onto a brush and then transfer it to some canvas. I'll give him that much.






I just can't help feeling that these are sim portrait paintings!

Speaking of sims (because I suppose we can do that from time to time), I was walking about earlier (looking for the rain that still hasn't turned up) and I was wondering whether it drives Australian simmers crazy that the seasons are the wrong way round for their hemisphere. Then I was thinking that I could play the game in real time by deactivating all but the current actual season. Then manually change it when the seasons change for real. Then I stopped thinking about that and started thinking about an onion bhaji.

Anyway, where is my rain? It was foretold.

[Minty]

YAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Raith Rovers 1 - Piggy Eyed Weegie Neatherthal Bigots - Nil!

Second biggest budget in Scottish football, & they STILL lost!

Happy happy happy day!

"Oh Turnball Hutton we love you!"

[Caspin]

Well that cheered you up didn't it!

My week has not started too well. Either I've bruised my coccyx or I've got sciatica. I don't know which. All I do know is that I've got an actual pain in the bum! And in my back, but that's less entertaining and at the moment I need to laugh for the endorphins. I had to stand up at work, with my computer raised up on a box, since after a few hours sitting down was impossible. I've had a hot bath and some painkillers since coming home so this is a brief but wondrous pain-free moment. I hope it clears up soon. I'm sure I'm too young for this sort of thing, although I did damage my lower back working as chambermaid in my 20s so perhaps not. You can only change so many beds in a day before something goes crunch.

And I'm missing yoga damn it. Not so much downward-facing-dog, more stuck-in-the-bath-with-a-duck.

I need to be vaguely able to sit on a chair tomorrow evening as I'm going out for pizza with a friend who is coming to stay with me. He moved house to the middle of nowhere (Bodmin Moor!) so I don't see him very often and it will be nice to catch up. I think I might need to take a cushion to sit on in the restaurant.

In other news, the rain is lashing down now. Bliss.

[Minty]

Poor you. Anything of a back nature is a real drag, not least of all for in order to go about your daily routine you keep rehurting it. On the plus side it's an excuse for a hot bath every day & to hell with showers saving the environment.

Bodmin Moor? Lucky him! No really! Dozmary Pool's up that way where Excaliber was supposedly flung after King Arthur's death. One of those places a lot of people get creeped out being near during the day, never mind at night (although it's not as bad as Crazywell on Dartmoor!). Wouldn't fancy the heating bills though!

Pizza, yum!