The Befouled Weakly News
25 October 2009 Good morning on what, at first glance, looks like a decidedly mixed Sunday morning in beautiful downtown Byfield. Modest temperatures with a mixture of cloud and clear skies, although the forecast is allegedly somewhat better than that. Indeed, we’ve had a fairly decent week weather wise; certainly there were a couple of nice days leading to a short, fifteen mile bike ride on Friday afternoon. The weather was lovely and the countryside, adorned with what passes for autumn colours in this area, was pretty nice. Our weekend with our friends Sue & Stuart (along with Dave and Sue Walton) on the south coast last weekend was fun. (Actually, it’s always fun to visit Sue and Stuart). On the Saturday night we went to a show by Jimmy Carr, an alleged British comedian. It’s part of the Brighton Comedy Festival which is held every year about this time and which we’ve had the pleasure of enjoying with them for several years now. However, Jimmy Carr is not one of those comedians that I find particularly amusing; his act is, essentially, based on crude vulgarity and while I am certainly no prude, after the first couple of occasions when the supposed humour is based on frequent outbursts of the “C” word (and I don’t mean “crumbs”), it begins to get a bit stale. So, after about ten minutes one begins to wonder whether this is as good as it’s going to get. After about twenty minutes you realise that the answer is “yes”, that was as good as it’s going to get. We have Molly’s surrogate family coming for lunch today; the young couple and the three young kids who looked after her on our recent extended excursion. Apparently, there was much sadness when we took her away with us so she’s had a bath and is looking (and smelling) her best in readiness for the reunion. Courtesy of a Google Alert I have set up, I was able to catch an interview with our favourite diplomat on an Australian radio station the other day. I’m not sure whether it was done during his recent excursion in the area following the tsunami or whether it was done over the past day or so. If you’re interested, you can read and/or listen to it here. The “bad news” this week concerns my camera which suddenly started refusing to take any more photographs. Something doesn’t sound quite right when one depresses the shutter and the display lights up with a helpful “Err 99” whenever one tries to take a photo. Err 99 is usefully described in the manual as an error related to something else! There is an error code for dirty lens contacts and another two for issues relating to the memory card being full or faulty. Finally, there is a fourth error code when something obstructs the built-in flash from popping up. After that, everything falls into the ubiquitous Err 99 category, the only cure for which is external intervention. So, the camera has gone off to Canon for further investigation and a quotation for repair – here’s hoping it’s a relatively cheap and cheerful fix. I suppose the “good news” out of all that is that it didn’t develop this during our trip to the States – that would have been fairly annoying! Much love to you all, Greg A lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He thinks that he is smarter than the deputy because he is a lawyer from New York and is certain that he has a better education then any cop from the south. He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the southern deputy's expense. The deputy says, "License and registration, please." "What for?" says the lawyer. The deputy says, "You didn't come to a complete stop at the stop sign." Then the lawyer says, "I slowed down, and no one was coming." "You still didn't come to a complete stop," says the deputy. "License and registration, please." The lawyer says, "What’s the difference?" "The difference is you have to come to complete stop, that's the law. License and registration, please!" the deputy repeats. Lawyer says, "If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I'll give you my license and registration, and you give me the ticket. If not, you let me go and don’t give me the ticket." "That sounds fair. Please exit your vehicle, sir," the deputy says. At this point, the deputy takes out his nightstick and starts beating the living hell out of the lawyer and says, "Do you want me to stop, or just slow down?" A husband reading a newspaper says to his wife, "You know, honey, I think there might be some real merit to what this article says, that the intelligence of a father often proves a stumbling block to the son." "Well, thank heaven," said the wife, "at least our James has nothing standing in his way." My quiet Saturday morning ended abruptly when my 12-year-old son, Billy, and one of his friends burst through the door. "Hey Dad, announced Billy, "have you met the new neighbors?" "No." "Come on Dad, you have to meet them." "Some other time; I'm busy." "Dad, you have to meet them now." From the urgency in Billy's voice, I assumed the neighbors were waiting outside. I set aside my project and went to the front of the house. No one was there. "Where are they?" I asked. "Well, Dad," he explained, "we haven't met them yet either, but our baseball is in their living room!"
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