The Befouled Weakly News
23 March 2008 What an Easter weekend! While only about two inches of the predicted eight feet of snow reached our neighbourhood, we’ve had every conceivable mix of weather over the past couple of days. Bright, blue, sunny skies at one extreme to dark, slate-grey clouds bursting with precipitation at the other. We’ve had rain, snow, sleet, and hail (and, indeed, several varieties of snow) with a wind that would carry away a small car – at one point yesterday the snow was falling in the entrance hall, being forced through the skylight by the gale force wind. And, although it’s not quite a Christmas Day, to paraphrase Robert W. Service, “Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.” and my goodness, it does too. It’s been a mixed few days. On Thursday we (Nick, Pen and me) spent much of the afternoon down at Pen’s folks’ cottage at the other end of the village. You will remember that their place was flooded in July and ever since then Pen’s brother Jeremy has been slowly putting it right. It’s still no where near ready and it’s only just over five weeks before they return from Australia so you can imagine it provided pleasure to no one to be presented with the distraction that part of the wall at the end of their garden had toppled into the stream. The consternation was due to the fact that the rubble was now impeding the flow of the stream and, with the forecasters predicting significant quantities of precipitation there wasn’t anything for it other than to down tools in the house and set about trying to clear the stream. As Jeremy and Nick cleared the debris and Pen and I removed the rubble, it became evident that, at some point in the dim and distant past, someone had what must have seemed to have been a very good idea at the time; they decided to extend their garden by about two metres by dumping a load of hardcore in the stream and filling it with soil thus restricting the width of the culvert under the road by about two-thirds. No wonder the stream flooded in the summer! The wall they had built to retain the dirt and rubble was, to say the least, not the sturdiest construction in the civilised world and, over time, the stream had simply washed away whatever mortar had been holding it together. A bit of rain tipped it over the edge, as it were, and the wall gave way. So, Jeremy and Nick proceeded to remove a large willow tree which had been thriving having been planted, as it had, with its roots perpetually in a stream, along with about six cubic metres of rubble and soil. All this is the bitter cold and biting wind. This will be of some interest to Dad and Mom but perhaps not to anyone else (other than our boys, perhaps). Next Saturday we are to take delivery of a new, upright, free-standing freezer which will replace the one kindly purchased for us by Dad and Mom all those years ago in Radway. Nick and I were trying to work out exactly how old it was; certainly it has been providing faithful service ever since Nick can remember so it must be coming up to thirty years old. And, in fact, it is still going strong, it’s only drawback - a somewhat faulty seal which causes it to frost up more quickly than it should. The only other shortcoming – since it is a chest freezer it can be difficult to keep on top of what you have in the freezer; the items at the bottom rarely see the light of day. We’ve had meat in there for years, some of which was purchased when Britain still had pounds, shillings and pence, I think. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to! While all this has been going on, nothing has slowed the pace of Ms Playchute’s spring clean and re-decorating project. Our bedroom is finished (apart from a few windows, I am told) and the dressing room (which, for those of you who don’t know, is large enough to house a small country) has similarly been painted and received its carpet on Wednesday. The carpet for the downstairs “library” should be arriving sometime this week and, once that’s in place all that will remain on Ms Playchute’s immediate plan of action will be our bathroom. Of course, that won’t keep her busy for very long and this place is rather like the Forth Bridge (would the American equivalent be the Brooklyn Bridge?) where one never finishes but merely starts at the beginning again. Me? I just roll over on the couch. Love to you all, Greg After Mrs. O'Toole's barn burned down, she called her insurance agent to file a claim. She told the insurance man, "We had that barn insured for fifty thousand bucks, and we need that money immediately!" "Just a minute there, Mrs. O'Toole," the agent replied. "Insurance doesn't work quite like that." "What do you mean?!" she said. "The policy here says $50,000!" "That's a maximum," the insurance man said. "What we do is will ascertain the value of what was insured, and then provide you with a new one of comparable worth." After a long pause, she replied "That's how insurance works?!" "Absolutely," the agent said. "Well then," she said, "I'd like to cancel the policy on my husband immediately!" Smart Arse Answers It was mealtime during a flight on a British Airways plane. 'Would you like dinner?' the flight attendant asked the man seated in the front row. 'What are my choices?' the man asked. 'Yes or no,' she replied. A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her. Without blinking an eyelid she said, 'Sir, I need to see your ticket not your stub.' A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at a branch of Sainsbury's store but she couldn't find one big enough for her family. She asked a passing assistant, 'Do these turkeys get any bigger?' The assistant replied, 'I'm afraid not, they're dead.' The policeman got out of his car and approached the boy racer he stopped for speeding. 'I've been waiting for you all day,' the bobby said. The kid replied, 'Yes, well I got here as fast as I could.' A lorry driver was driving along on a country road. A sign came up that read ' Low Bridge Ahead.' Before he realised it, the bridge was directly ahead and he got stuck under it. Cars are backed up for miles. Finally, a police car comes up. The policeman got out of his car and walked to the lorry's cab and said to the driver, 'Got stuck, eh?' The lorry driver said, 'No, I was delivering this bridge and ran out of petrol!' SMART ARSED ANSWER OF THE YEAR 2007 A teacher at a polytechnic college reminded her pupils of tomorrow's final exam. 'Now listen to me, I won't tolerate any excuses for you not being here tomorrow. I might consider a nuclear attack or a serious personal injury, illness, or a death in your immediate family, but that's it, no other excuses whatsoever!' A smart-arsed chappie at the back of the room raised his hand and asked, 'What would happen if I came in tomorrow suffering from complete and utter sexual exhaustion?' The entire class was reduced to laughter and sniggering. When silence was restored, the teacher smiled knowingly at the student, shook her head and sweetly said, 'Well, I suppose you'd have to write with your other hand'. An Irishman was terribly overweight, so his doctor put him on a diet. "No, from f**kin' skippin", the Irishman said. Susie sent this and I can testify, from personal experience, that it’s all true. Men Are Just Happier People Back to Greg's Temporary Home Page
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