The Moreton Pinkney Picayune

4 September 2022 – Amusements

A friend of mine suggested I put horse manure on my strawberries. I’m not doing that again. I’m going back to whipped cream.

It’s been a (reasonably) good week. Thankfully, the sweltering heat of last week has dissipated but we are still in need some (more) rain. There have been deluges in other parts of the country and even some steady more moderate rain in some parts but we’ve seen almost nothing. We’ve had a few light, brief overnight sprinkles and it gently rained for an hour or so on Thursday afternoon but still not enough to penetrate the rock-hard ground. Quelle merde!

28 August 2022 – Amusements

The Edinburgh Fringe has been on for the past couple of weeks and every year someone produces a “Best One-Liner” from the festival. Here are this year’s top 10:

10 funniest jokes of the Fringe festival 2022

1. I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta – Masai Graham (52%)

2. Did you know, if you get pregnant in the Amazon, it’s next day delivery? – Mark Simmons (37%)

3. My attempts to combine nitrous oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock – Olaf Falafel (36%)

4. By my age, my parents had a house and a family, and to be fair to me, so do I, but it is the same house and the same family – Hannah Fairweather (35%)

5. I hate funerals. I’m not a mourning person – Will Mars (34%)

6. I spent the whole morning building a time machine, so that’s four hours of my life that I’m definitely getting back – Olaf Falafel (33%)

7. I sent a food parcel to my first wife. FedEx – Richard Pulsford (29%)

8. I used to live hand to mouth. Do you know what changed my life? Cutlery – Tim Vine (28%)

9. Don’t knock threesomes. Having a threesome is like hiring an intern to do all the jobs you hate – Sophie Duker (27%)

10. I can’t even be bothered to be apathetic these days – Will Duggan (25%)

21 August 2022

Phew! Non-scorcio! What a relief – the scorcio temperatures have abated somewhat and the rain, when it finally came on Tuesday evening, was pleasant and gentle. Unlike in some parts of the country which experienced torrential downpours, floods and waterspouts! Better for the garden but still a long, long ways to go.

21 August 2022 – Amusements

A real woman is a man’s best friend. She will never stand him up and never let him down. She will reassure him when he feels insecure and comfort him after a bad day. She will inspire him to do things he never thought he could do; to live without fear and forget regret. She will enable him to express his deepest emotions and give in to his most intimate desires. She will make sure he always feels as though he’s the most handsome man in the room and will enable him to be the most confident, sexy, seductive and invincible man alive.

No wait…sorry. I am thinking of scotch. It’s scotch that does all that.

14 August 2022

Scorcio! Scorcio! Scorcio maximo, maximo! My goodness, it’s been hot, hot, hot. The countryside around and about is a crispy tinderbox and we’ve been “enjoying” hot sunny days with temperatures into the mid-30s and not a cloud in the sky. The weather people say we “might” get a spot of rain this coming week and it will be cooler but they also say the drought (officially declared on Friday) may well last until October. (I’m not sure how they know that but it is certainly out of the ordinary for the British to be begging for rain).

14 August 2022 – Amusements

I couldn’t decide whether to go to Salt Lake City or Denver for vacation, so I called the airlines to get prices. “Air-fare to Denver is $300,” said a cheery salesperson.

“And what about Salt Lake City?”

“We have a really great rate to Salt Lake–$99.00, but there is a stopover.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Denver.”

7 August 2022

Scorcio! Scorcio! Scorcio maximo! Just back from a few days in Paris with Ben, Brex-Anna and Max where it was blisteringly, swelteringly hot but somehow, we still managed to have a great time.

7 August 2022 – Amusements

The minister’s wife was a wonder at conserving food and rarely had to throw away a bit of it. At one meal she gave her pastor husband nothing but leftovers that the parson viewed with great disdain. He began to pick at the food, causing his wife to say, “Dear, you forgot the blessing.”

“Listen, sweetheart, if you can show me one item that hasn’t been blessed at least two times, I can’t see what another prayer can do for it.”

31 July 2022

It’s been Scorcio! again this week. Temperatures have been in the high 70s to mid 80s which of course, for us, is hot. No rain for weeks and weeks and weeks. The grass is brown and dusty but thank goodness the Prime Minister was able to let his hair down and party while (some of) the grown-ups in the government were having emergency meetings to try to come up with a plan to deal with the emergency.