The Befouled Weakly News
24 February 2008
Ms Playchute has been working flat out and has essentially completed the redecorating of our bedroom which she began last week and which was inspired, in part at least you will remember, by the eruption of our shower. The bedroom is now a parchment and subdued ochre which, as always whenever Ms Playchute is involved, is a real treat. She’s even taken the plunge and ordered a carpet for the room so, for the first time in the eleven years we’ve been here, we shall have a bedroom carpet! The luxury of it all! As for the “library” there’s still a bit of work to do. Ms Playchute needs to select the replacement carpet, for which we have received a “voucher” from the insurance company. Almost inevitably when dealing with insurance companies the voucher is not nearly what we think they should have given us but according to the carpet sales people is just about fair. Before that, however, there is a bit of “touching up” to do in there – the ceiling is stained from the water and there are marks where it ran down the walls. So, another decorating job and we’ll be ready for visitors again. Some of you will be delighted, some of you less so but I regret to tell you that there will be no Weakly News next Sunday. I go into the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford on Wednesday afternoon for an Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion sometime on Thursday. As many of you know, I’ve had, essentially, chronic pain in my neck and shoulder for the better part of three or four years, I guess, due to the gradual deterioration of the disks between vertebrae 5 & 6 and 6 & 7. After jumping through all the requisite NHS hoops, my turn at the front of the queue has finally arrived. Since we have so many with medical backgrounds amongst our readers, an explanation is probably not necessary but, for those of you without the knowledge of the fraternity, where they used to fuse the vertebrae with bone from the hip (I gather) they have now developed a plastic “cage” which slips between the vertebrae (after the damaged disk has been removed) which most closely resembles some sort of medieval man trap with a couple of spikes on either side to dig into the vertebrae and fuse it all together. They say I’ll be in hospital for three to five days and then six to eight weeks off work; the three to five days sounds a real drag but the six to eight weeks off work sounds ideal. The other bit of good news – I am not allowed to do any gardening, housework or any other chores or activities forever, I think the nurse said. So, we’ll try and cobble something together for two weeks’ time but, in the meantime, Love to you all, Greg A lady answered her front door to find a plumber standing there. "I'm here to fix the leaky pipe," he announced. "I didn't call a plumber," said the lady. "What?" huffed the plumber. "Aren't you Mrs. Snyder?" "The Snyders moved out of this house over a year ago," explained the lady. "How do you like that," grunted the plumber. "They call you up and tell you it's an emergency and then they move away!" On a recent flight, an elderly passenger kept peering out the window. Since it was totally dark, all she could see was the blinking wing-tip light. Finally, she rang for the flight attendant. "I'm sorry to bother you," she said, "but I think you should inform the pilot that his left-turn indicator is on and has been for some time." Into the local pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he's walking with a limp. "What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender. "Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy. "That little shit, O'Conner?" says Sean, "He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand." "That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it." "Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself. Didn't you have something in your hand?" "That I did," said Paddy, "Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight." Spanish singer Julio Iglesias was on television with British TV host Anne Diamond when he used the Spanish word "mañana". Diamond asked him to explain what it meant. He said that the term means, "Maybe the job will be done tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe the day after that. Perhaps next week, next month, next year who cares?" The host turned to Irishman Shay Brennan who was also on the show and asked him if there was an equivalent term in Irish. "No. In Ireland we don't have a word to describe that degree of urgency." Back to Greg's Temporary Home Page
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Good morning to you one and all. This week’s weather report: grey, cold, foggy and freezing much of the early part of the week; grey and dismal albeit largely dry in the second part of the week. Compared to what those of you on the east coast experience, of course, our freezing weather is trifling and inconsequential but on Tuesday we awoke to a bright white landscape. Everything was frozen and the frost painted the trees, branches and twigs an arctic white which persisted all day. Even Ms Playchute’s pond remained obstinately frozen throughout the day, much to the consternation of the pigeons and other birdlife in the neighbourhood. Not quite the same as a frozen Lake George but somewhat impressive for us nonetheless, sheltered here in the British Isles by the temperate comfort of the Gulf Stream. Still, by Wednesday morning the arctic weather had passed and the ice-covered tundra returned to its previous unfrozen (and muddy) state.