The Befouled Weakly News

7 September 2008


Rainfall

Good morning to you all on yet another grey and dismal day in dour, depressing Byfield. It’s not so much the rain which is intermittent and drizzling at best, but the unrelenting grey, dreariness which persists – day after day; week after week, it seems. There was an interesting article on the BBC web site the other day about how the Brits felt “cheated” by the lack of sunshine this summer. The article describes how the Brits are world class experts at talking about the weather because it is so often so miserable. And this summer it has been, as we mentioned last time, the dullest August on record, hence the feeling of being “cheated”. The article is  too long to repeat here but if you are interested, you can find it at here.

A couple of our recent run of calamities have been remedied over the past week, you will be delighted to learn. I am now the proud owner of a “new-to-me” car which replaces Ms Playchute’s car which, as you will know, has been unceremoniously retired. Ms Playchute has inherited mine so that we are now both mobile once again. The individual who is most pleased about the new arrangements is Molly. Over the past few weeks when we have been reduced to just the one vehicle, her afternoon walks have been somewhat curtailed on those occasions when I have had to go in to Oxford to pretend to work. Normally, her afternoon walk consists of a ramble around the reservoir or a wander around Chipping Warden and Edgecote, both of which require initial transportation in a vehicle to reach the starting point. During this period, however, Miggins has felt grievously deprived on those occasions when my travelling to work has left Ms Playchute without the means to transport her to her favourite walks. A stroll round the recreation ground hardly compensates.

The second calamity to have been remedied this week is the boiler in the Annexe; it no longer has it guts open to the elements to “dry out” and, in the three or four days since its recuperation, it has not caused the electricity in the Annexe to trip out once. So far, so good. Now all we need to wonder about is paying both these expensive and somewhat unexpected bills!

The following from the BBC caught my eye. I am sure our Molly has partaken of some unusual delights from time to time; fortunately we’ve not had anything remotely like the following:

Balls found inside 'rattling' dog

Black LabA dog had to have 13 golf balls removed from its stomach after eating them on walks around a Fife course.

Owner Chris Morrison had been taking five-year-old black labrador Oscar round the Pitreavie golf course in Dunfermline for several months.

He took Oscar to the vet after noticing a rattling sound coming from his pet's stomach.

They then discovered that 13 balls - each weighing 45 grams - were lodged in his stomach.

Mr Morrison, a planning administrator, said one of the balls had been in his stomach so long that it had turned black and was decomposing.

He said: "He finds golf balls like truffles. We're not sure how long exactly this happened over, but it must have been a fair period - several months at least.

"I felt his stomach and heard them rattling around.

"He normally brings a few home, but I had no idea he had eaten so many.
           
"The vet hadn't seen anything like it, it was bizarre.

"He is a black lab so he is a fair size, but to swallow 13 is quite amazing."

The balls were removed two weeks ago in a successful hour-long operation.

Bag full
Oscar is now on the road to making a full recovery on a special post-operation diet of watered-down food.

He also has to wear a muzzle while out and about.

Mr Morrison added: "He does get a bit frustrated now and again."

Bob Hesketh, 40, principal vet at Vetrica in Rosyth, said he had never seen anything like it.
He said: "It was like a magic trick. I opened him up and felt what I thought was two or three golf balls.

"But they just kept coming until we had a bag full.

"I think they must have been in there for several months, one was all black and the shell was swollen."

There is a sketch writer in the Guardian named Simon Hoggart who is generally a good read. He is the Parliamentary sketch writer so, for much of the year he produces a daily column on the nonsense our politicians get up to. During the summer, however, when Parliament is in recess, he produces a weekly column on somewhat random topics (rather like the Befouled Weakly News but perhaps a thousand-fold more interesting). He wrote in a recent column that one can get a good feel for a town or village by its newspaper placards – the headline they put on the board in front of the newsagent selling the paper. (This reminded me of the Red Light Alerts or whatever that column was called in the local paper in Atascadero all those years ago – Steph and Hope will remember. I remember being in stitches one visit when reading how the most pressing crime the local constabulary had to deal with one week was reprimanding young boys who were skateboarding in the street. The great thing was that not only was this the greatest “crime” of the week but also, clearly, the most newsworthy). In response to this particular column, one reader sent him a headline from a local newspaper he had kept since 1926 which carried the news of his grandfather’s death. The headline apparently read, “Cherry thrown from tramcar – girl’s hat spoiled.”

If only that were what we had to worry about nowadays.

Love to you all,

Greg


A bloke from Cinderford buys several sheep, hoping to breed them for wool.

After several weeks he notices that none of the sheep are getting pregnant and phones a vet for help.  The vet tells him that he should try Artificial Insemination.

The farmer doesn't have the slightest idea what this means but, not wanting to display his ignorance, only asks the vet how he will know when the sheep are pregnant.  The vet tells him that they will stop standing around and instead will lie down and wallow in the grass when they are pregnant.

The man hangs up and gives it some thought. He comes to the conclusion that artificial insemination means he has to impregnate the sheep himself.   So he loads the sheep into his Land Rover, drives them out into the woods, has sex with them all, brings them back, and goes to bed.

Next morning, he wakes and looks out at the sheep. Seeing that they are all still standing around, he deduces that the first try didn't take and loads them in the Land Rover again. He drives them out to the woods, has sex with each sheep twice for good measure, brings them back and goes to bed exhausted.

Next morning, he wakes to find the sheep still just standing round.  “Try again." he tells himself and proceeds to load them up and drive them out to the woods.

He spends all day shagging the sheep and upon returning home, falls knackered into bed.
The next morning, he cannot even raise himself from the bed to look out of the window so he asks his wife to look and tell him if the sheep are lying in the grass.

"No," she says, "they're all in the Land Rover, and one of them is beeping the horn."


A Doctor was addressing a large audience in Cardiff .
 
'The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining, Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have, or will, eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?' 
 
After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said,  'Wedding Cake.'

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