M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S

M is for Mulled Wine, and that kind of stuff, and
E is for Eating and having Enough.
R is for Rudolph and Reindeer as well, and
R is for Repeats (televisual hell).
Y is for Yule Log, which never goes out, and

C is for Carollers, who wander about.
H is for Harry, you know what I mean? and
R is for Robins who’re everywhere seen.
I is for Italian which I thought I had mastered, and
S is for Scrooge, a tight-fisted bastard.
T is for Tim who was ever so tiny, and
M for Médoc which is wondrously viney
A is for Alaska, occasionally baked, and
S is for Sherry by which thirst can be slaked.

And so Ruth and John in the year which is ending
Hope in this New one your spirits you’re mending.
As their move to a new home draws rapidly near
They sincerely wish you a Happy New Year!

TM

What’s in a name? Well, quite a bit of money and amour-propre, if a recent report is to be believed.

Actually I don’t know that there is any recent report, but there probably is and the chances are that some journalist has seen it and is cobbling together a space-filling article which will claim some authenticity by linking itself to the report. You know the sort of thing - “Scientists/Academics (or – if it’s a local paper “boffins”) from Nether Herdovit University have shown for the first time that what you and your mates thought was bleeding obvious was, in fact, first observed by Professor Baggins and his university research team in the course of a three-year EPSRC study. And, by the way, can they please have some more money to carry out lots more career-creating research, the results of which only they and the other 57™ academics worldwide who have any interest in the topic will read?”. But I digress. (Bit of a shock, eh?)

Actually, before I finish this digression (I will, I will), there’s something that puzzled me in my brief flirtation with the life of academe. It’s that the funders, who actually pay for the research - Research Councils and private sector organisations alike - seem to have practically no interest in the results of the research, once it has been published. They just go ahead and fund something completely different. Unlike the academics who keep quarrying the same seam, rewriting the same articles, tweaking them here and there, quoting each other in academic journals, until it is time for them to retire and forget the whole subject. Like everyone else did, years before.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes, the ownership of names. Do you remember that case, long ago, when Harrod’s™ department store, in London’s fashionable Knightsbridge (who was the knight in Knight’s Bridge, I wonder?) sued, I think it was Roy Harrod, the owner of a hardware(?) shop in a dorp in New Zealand. They alleged that people might dismount from their sheep, walk into Roy Harrod’s shop and, seeing the sheep-shearing equipment hanging from the nails on the beams alongside the galvanised buckets say,”’pon my soul, old thing, that Egyptian chappie’s letting this place down a spot, don’t y’ know?”

That’s the same sort of confusion that the manufacturers of American Budweiser™ beer tried to prevent when they attempted to stop the Czech brewers in Budweis calling their beer Budweiser™™, from which the US product had taken its name, in case drinkers bought the original beer by mistake, thinking it was the same thing. The same thing! One of them tastes like carbonated Lysol™ and the other tastes like the Nectar of Elysium™! I couldn’t possibly say which is which, for fear of being sued. (You can see that they had made their case though, as my Spellchecker™, thought “Budweiser™” was OK, but questioned “Budweis”.)

Of course, that was in the days before Transcendental Meditation was called TM™.

A Couple of Things about Ruth

We were sitting here in our mobile home (or le Camping-Car, as we say in France), being buffeted by the icy winds of a December late afternoon, thinking how great (and grate) it would be to be sitting in our own stationary home, roasting chestnuts over our own fire, instead of hearing the wind whistle through the door, cracking my nuts, when Ruth remarked that, aside from a mention of her hair-raising hair cutting experiences or her pursuit of hirsute bears, I hardly ever write about her in the blog. So, here’s a couple of things I have learnt from her.

Thing No. 1 Don’t overuse words such as “always” and “never” in conversation, such as “It always goes wrong when I do that” or “You never let me do that”. It’s seldom true and usually annoying.

Thing No. 2 When we were camping in Romania a bear came out of the woods and rummaged through some waste bins on the edge of town. Ruth wasn’t in the least perturbed. She never grudges bears.

Fantastic!

You knew there was something about me, didn’t you? How many times have you thought,” That John Corley, I’m sure there’s something hidden there. Nobody can really be that much fun, that much excitement, that much fantasticness without there being some amazing hidden history. For one thing nothing is known of him before he got married in 1967 in East Coker parish church, a small village in Somerset where T.S. Eliot’s heart is buried. Surely the truth will come out some day?” Well, friends, that day is here. Now that I have reached retirement age and quit the boards, hung up my scale rule and guitar, it’s time to own up. I am the same person who deducted 43 days from my age (in a salute to the Emperor Claudius who invaded Britain in 43 A.D.) and donned the burnt cork which would accompany my first professional career behind the footlights. Intrigued? Well, here is the entry on my early life, as recorded by Wikipedia™:-

”The Fantastic Johnny C (born Johnny Corley, 28 April 1943, Greenwood, South Carolina) is an American soul singer. Discovered by Jesse James while singing in a church choir, Corley adopted the stage name "The Fantastic Johnny C" and scored a top ten Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1967 with "Boogaloo Down Broadway", written by James, which peaked at number seven, followed by a minor hit, "Hitch It to the Horse", a year later.”

After that, I became a quantity surveyor.

The Usual Abnormal Service will be Resumed as Soon as Possible

Blogging has rather come to a stop in the last few weeks. We left Sicily about a month ago and, stopping over to enjoy some of the delights of Florence (salacious remarks resisted with difficulty but success), we arrived at a site just outside Narbonne in South West France two weeks ago today. Since then we have been looking for and at property. We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted and where, and now have an ugly bad idea of what our investments and shrinking currency are worth. We have been trying to pull the two ideas closer together and now have one or two candidates under consideration. We leave for Spain next weekend, where we are spending Christmas and the New Year, before going on to Portugal from where we shall return to France some time in January when, hopefully, our settlement plans will have some shape. We are going to UK in February to see friends, family, doctors, pub landlords etc. and hope to be in our new home in the Spring. I wonder......

One Problem - Two Solutions

The Problem

Your motor scooter has broken down and you need to get it home or to somewhere where it can be fixed. What do you do?

No. 1 – The Romanian Solution

You get a friend with a scooter to attach a tow-rope to the front of your scooter and to the back of his to tow you through the rush hour traffic.

No.2 – The Sicilian Solution

You get a friend to ride closely behind you on his scooter propelling you forward by resting his foot against your rear number plate. This gives you the advantage of using his lights in the dark as yours obviously don’t work.

LEGENDS OF SIRACUSA

Siracusa was a Greek colony. Aeschylus premiered here and Archimedes ran down the street shouting 'Eureka'.One picture is on his reputed tomb. Clever and arty people lived here a very long time ago.
This is where Arethusa was turned into a spring in order to escape some demanding god's attentions. The spring has papyrus growing in it.
Carravaggio escaped here from prison on Malta. He apparently named this cave as the 'Ear of Dionysus'. Certainly the acoustics are great in it. I think you could hear a whisper.
There is a Carravaggio in the Basillica of St Lucy. It is of her internment after her beheading but Carravaggio has kindly given her only a nick on her neck. The pillar in the Basillica is supposed to be the actual one she died next to. The Siracusa cathedral has a relic of her arm. Most of the other bits of her were stolen and ended up in Venice