Thursday 28 April 2011

Only a day late to the party

No, not THAT party...as a staunch republican I'm torn between my deeply held views and the joyous pleasure of knowing I can get a long lie in tomorrow morning...

I mean Tara's Gallery of course...it was yesterday, but hey ho, as I said these short weeks confuse me immeasurably. The theme is green. And what a lot of green photos I have. Green grass, green trees, The Boy's green bike and so on. But I've chosen this picture of a green frog. I took this with my phone as the frog climbed up the wall of Grandma in Cyprus' house. He had his eye on a juicy fat stick insect (mmm, is that a contradiction in terms?), but I think we messed up his plans. It's always a pleasure seeing the wildlife in Cyprus, and I love going there to see my mum and 'Grandad in Cyprus'. I'm really looking forward to going back later on this year, although how we fit it in with all the commitments the offspring have I just don't know; but I'm sure we'll manage!

Wednesday 27 April 2011

Do not not read this

We seem to be living in a strange void at the moment. A four day weekend last weekend, and another coming up. I wouldn't want you to think that I think this is a bad thing. I don't. I like it. I really do. I've long been an advocate of three day weekends, so logically a four day weekend must be 33% better. After all life is for living not for grinding ourselves into an early grave sweating away in an office. Or a factory. Or down a mine. Or wherever you do your thing. But it gets me confused, and today is Wednesday yet it's only my second day in the office this week, so it should be Tuesday. And tomorrow is my last day in the office, so today should be Thursday. I'm most confused.

Talking of being confused...a year or so I wrote about how The Cat's Mother had bought me the DVD of Ingloriouus Bastards, which we settled down to watch. And wait for Brad Pitt to appear, which he didn't. It took The Boy to point out that we had indeed been watching the original Inglorious Bastards, and NOT Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. No wonder it was such a great parody of a cliche-ridden B Movie. We did eventually get to watch the real thing.

The opening shows a Gestapo officer searching for Jews. He's a Nazi in all senses of the word. So it was quite fun when The Boy showed me this parody last week:



The opening exchange about double negatives was a beautiful reflection of a letter that I've received from the Inland Revenue. As The Boy is heading to sweet sixteen, they wrote because his child allowance comes to an end unless he goes onto further education. I read it and put it to one side because I didn't need to do anything I thought. It took The Cat's Mother to point out that I had misread it and I do need to respond. The crucial phrase was:

Do not fill in this form or contact us if The Boy is not going to do any of the above

I'm not suggesting that the Inland Revenue are Nazis. You may think that. But I couldn't possibly comment.