And, we’re off again! Northumberland calls with a number of important tasks and activities! Hurray! The weather is not looking great but most of what we have to do is indoors so we’ll manage somehow, I guess.
Continue reading “13 September 2026”6 September 2026
That’s more like it – a bit of rain on Thursday. At last. Our waterbutts are full again and the grass is beginning to acquire a somewhat greenish tinge. The temperature has also returned to a more normal range for this time of year. Thank goodness that extended drought and heatwave after heatwave turned out to be merely a figment of our imagination. There’s clearly nothing to this climate change nonsense after all, just a beautiful hot sunny summer like they have in more southerly climes.
Continue reading “6 September 2026”6 September 2026 – Amusements
One week before her wedding, a mother pulls aside her daughter (and bride-to-be). She says, “I will now give you the advice that has been passed down from generation to generation, from woman to woman.”
The daughter listened attentively, curious as to what the advice would be.
The mom continued, “Cook a man a fish and you feed him for a day. But teach a man to fish, and you get rid of him for the whole weekend.”
Continue reading “6 September 2026 – Amusements”
30 August 2026
Another great week! We’ve been in Northumbria again and enjoyed the company of our very dear friends and former neighbours Lesley and Graham. It was a lot of fun to show them around the various places we’ve discovered so far.
Continue reading “30 August 2026”30 August 2026 – Amusements
We’ve had these before but they deserve another outing . . .
It got crowded in heaven, so, for one day it was decided only to accept people who had really had a bad day on the day they died. St. Peter was standing at the pearly gates and said to the first man, “Tell me about the day you died.”
The man said, “Oh, it was awful. I was sure my wife was having an affair, so I came home early to catch her with him. I searched all over the apartment but couldn’t find him anywhere. So I went out onto the balcony, we live on the 25th floor, and found this man hanging over the edge by his fingertips. I went inside, got a hammer, and started hitting his hands. He fell, but landed in some bushes. So, I got the refrigerator and pushed it over the balcony and it crushed him.
The strain of the act gave me a heart attack, and I died.”
St. Peter couldn’t deny that this was a pretty bad day, and since it was a crime of passion, he let the man in.
He then asked the next man in line about the day he died.
“Well, sir, it was awful,” said the second man. “I was doing aerobics on the balcony of my 26th floor apartment when I twisted my ankle and slipped over the edge. I managed to grab the balcony of the apartment below, but some maniac came out and started pounding on my fingers with a hammer. Luckily I landed in some bushes. But, then the guy dropped a refrigerator on me!”
St. Peter chuckled, let him into heaven and decided he could really start to enjoy this job.
“Tell me about the day you died,” he said to the third man in line.
“OK, picture this, I’m naked, hiding inside a refrigerator….”
Continue reading “30 August 2026 – Amusements”
23 August 2026
Short and sweet this week you will be pleased to hear! We’ve been in Northumberland all week with Adam, Ava and the girls and we’ve had a lot of fun sharing this place with them. The weather wasn’t fantastic but perfectly acceptable – a tiny bit of rain from time to time – I guess that’s why Northumberland is still green while down south everything is burned to a crisp. A bit fresh but, as Alfred Wainwright famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”
Continue reading “23 August 2026”23 August 2026 – Amusements
A customer walks into a restaurant and notices a large sign on the wall: $500 if we fail to fill your order! When his waitress arrives, he orders elephant ears on rye. She calmly writes down his order and walks into the kitchen.
The restaurant owner comes storming out of the kitchen. He runs up to the customer’s table, slaps five $100 bills down on it and says, “You got me this time buddy, but I want you to know that’s the first time in ten years we’ve been out of rye bread!”
Continue reading “23 August 2026 – Amusements”16 August 2026
Oh my goodness – this is getting a bit tedious. Another heatwave, more drought and no rain on the horizon. Reservoirs running low, rivers running dry, scorching temperatures and scorched fields. And, now it turns out that the temperatures in Europe are rising the fastest of anywhere else on earth. Good to know that we’re a world-beater in some contexts.
16 August 2026 – Amusements
A woman was having an affair during the day while her husband was at work. One day she was in bed with her boyfriend when she heard her husband’s car pull in the driveway. She yelled at the boyfriend, “Hurry! Grab your clothes and jump out the window, my husband’s home early!”
The boyfriend looked out the window and said, “It’s raining out there!”
She said, “If my husband catches us in here, he’ll kill us both!”
So the boyfriend grabs his clothes and jumps out the window. As he began running down the street, he discovered he had run right in the middle of a town marathon, so he started running along beside the others. Being naked, with his clothes tucked under his arm, he tried to “blend in” as best he could.
One of the runners asked him, “Do you always run in the nude?”
He answered, while gasping for air, “Oh yes, it feels so free having the air blow over your skin while you are running.”
The next runner then asked the nude man, “Do you always run carrying your clothes on your arm?”
The nude man answered breathlessly, “Oh, yes, that way I can get dressed right at the end of the run and get in my car to go home!”
A third runner asked, “Do you always wear a condom when you run?”
Without missing a beat he replied, “Only when it’s raining.”
Continue reading “16 August 2026 – Amusements”9 August 2026
Same old, same old. The country is still in drought, it’s still hot and we’ve had no rain in months. Not true, actually. There was about a twenty-minute downpour on Thursday evening. We’re about to enter our fourth or fifth official “heatwave” of the summer so everyone’s looking forward to that.
Continue reading “9 August 2026”