THAT'LL TEACH ME TO KEEP MY BIG MOUTH SHUT!

My first" event" in this week's anticipated busy schedule, Monday's supper at Church, was ruined because I couldn't stop coughing and consequently didn't get to ask any of my silly questions.  My second event on Tuesday, the meal followed by a visit to the cinema, bought with it more coughing.  On Wednesday I set off for golf but then thought "I really don't feel well" so I turned back and endured two "duvet days". Don't you just hate that? 

But, the good news is that the boiler has been replaced, we have heat, we have hot water, BUT my shower is still not working.  So we've come the full circle back to the beginning, I need to get my shower fixed!

The movie that I went to see with my friend Jean was Saving Mr Banks.  I wasn't particularly looking forward to it because I'm not a Mary Poppins or a Disney fan but, boy, was I wrong. It was one of the best films I've seen for a long time and I can thoroughly recommend it. It had me laughing, smiling and even (say it quietly) crying!.  What more can you ask from a movie?  Great. 

And I just discovered that my great-granddaughter Orianne's budgie is laying on his back at the bottom of the cage.  Unfortunately, he is no more.  I think maybe the shock of feeling warm again when the heating came back on again did it for him.  Oh dear,  she will be really upset when she gets home from school.

All in all not a very good week.  In fact I think that I can definitely say that, at best, it has been a mixed week.

So .... what words of wisdom would Winston Churchill have for me at the moment?  "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm".  Good on ya Winny!

QUOTES FOR THOUGHT!

These glorious insults are from an era before the English language became boiled down to 4-letter words.

• A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."  "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

• "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

• "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

• "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow

• "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

• "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

• "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

• "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.." - Oscar Wilde

• "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill.  "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.

• "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop

• "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

• "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

• "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

• "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

• "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

• "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

• "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain

• "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

• "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

• "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

• "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

• "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

HELP - I'M GOING NUTS HERE!

I have been trying to leave comments on some of my favourite blogs and have either encountered word verificators (is that a made up word?)  convinced that I'm am, indeed, a robot or, alternatively, I appear to be out of the "circle of friends".  What's going on?  Did the world go mad in my few weeks blogging sabatical? Are the Mayan loonies correct in saying that the world going to end on 22nd December?  HELP!

Just in case it is, let's have a laugh.  This was sent to me by a good friend. 

Paraprosdokians (Winston Churchill loved them) are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous.


1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

9. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

10. In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, Notify:' I put 'DOCTOR'.

11. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

12. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

13. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure..

14. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

15. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

16. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

17. I'm supposed to respect my elders, but its getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

I have always been fascinated by this man. He marched to the beat of his own drum, had a whole section of the Nobel Peace Prize museum in Stockholm dedicated to him and was nobody's fool. I should add that my mother and father hated him. I think that they were old school socialists who couldn’t bring themselves to like a Tory politician. But that’s another story.

The other morning one of my colleagues was attemtping to quote one of her grandmothers stranger sayings. She couldn’t quite remember her exact words apart from it being something about buggering on at a wedding. Yes, I was confused too, but out of this random, mad conversation one thought led to another and I was reminded that on days when nothing seemed to be going his way, Churchill would start the day off by saying out loud: "KBO - Keep Buggering On!" ... Sadly, in my hugely complicated life, there have been many, many times when I have known the exact meaning of this sentiment!

This small exchange led me to reacquainting myself with some of his best known quotes and this one leapt out at me as being very relevant in today’s world. “I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.” I wonder what he would have made of our dear PM and his massively under-esteemed cohort “The King Maker” Mandelson? I am sure that he would have had a few wise words to share with us don’t you?

Maybe he had a premonition about our PM when he said, “I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns”.

Or he could equally have written this for our current bunch of no-hope politicians “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened”. Now ain’t that the truth?

And here’s a good one for Tony Blair “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events”.

This is fun, but unfortunately I have a life that I must now go and live. But I leave you with one last quote in which, I believe, he really homes in on one of life's most important things “From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put”. Amen to that.

And finally ….. I believe that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance and the same goes for true love.