Today’s Painting

Tags

acrylic painting, Cotswolds, cow parsley, good neighbours, Six Nations

What you do when The Six Nations is on all Saturday afternoon!

This is a Cotswold view in acrylics.  I shouted to my Significant Other to stop as there was a marvellous view I wanted to photograph.  He stopped there and then and our tyre went into a deep ditch and the wheel just spun round and round.  It was a Sunday afternoon on a lonely road, but a lovely couple stopped.  The chap could not move the car by helping us to push so he phoned his friend who came within minutes with a big SUV and a tow rope.

I dedicate this painting to the wonderful locals in The Cotswolds.

Rugby Clerihew

Tags

clerihew, Greig Laidlaw, rugby, Six Nations

(Photo by Clement Bucco-Lechat.

25/10/14  USO- Gloucester Rugby)

 

Greig Laidlaw,

there’s nae point in greetin’ fur yer Maw.

If it hudnae been fur yer injury,

ye might hae led yer lads tae victory.

Six Nations Clerihew

Tags

clerihew, Finn Russell, Six Nations, Twickenham

Finn Russell,

never heed the English muscle.

Shadow Ford at Twickenham ‘the morra.’

Can thirty four years of history be reversed? ‘Nae borra!’

Crossing the Rubicon

Tags

alea iacta est, Burmese ruby, Caesar, die is cast, Lady Capulet, Mercutio, Mr Bennet, Pele Tower, Queen Mab, Romeo and Juliet, Rubicon, Six Nations, Test Matches, Tybalt, warts and all

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession

of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife, Drusilla had quoted to her

father with a laugh, at her small engagement celebration.

The hint had not been too subtle and he had riposted:

But what about a single man who is not yet in possession of an

indifferent pension?  And, furthermore, I have the humility to question

whether I am ‘a fine thing.’

She had sighed in exasperation: Oh, Dad! Inverted pride, more like!

Now Augustus Snodbury was shaving and meditating as he did so.

He could no longer prevaricate.

Lines from Romeo and Juliet whirled around his mind, as was

usual when he had been drumming a text all term into the

recalcitrant brains(?) of restless adolescents.

I like her well enough, he mused, referencing Juliet’s words to Lady

Capulet, but reversing the gender perspective.

( He did not usually play the female lead, but would generally

assign it to some pretty-looking boy whom he wanted to punish

for a late prep.)

…if looking liking move, he continued.

Was he moved sufficiently?

Terror rushed through his veins and he nicked himself through

self-sabotage, dispensing with a need for a Mercutio, or Tybalt, to

draw blood.  He was aware that he was in a fear or flight situation.

But no more deep will I endear mine eye, whispered one of his angels.

He would never again be able to watch all the Test matches in peace

and absorb himself in The Six Nations, not to mention Wimbledon.

And yet…

He had travelled down to Rochester to Bunbury, Quincunx and Quatrefoil

with Drusilla, to collect the pigeon blood Burmese ruby ring from the

depository, in order to make his proposal to Virginia, with a gem from

Lady Wivern’s bequest.  Dru had not wanted it.  She thought it too vulgar

and had been pleased to resign any right in the stash, in exchange for the

sweet little heart-shaped ring she had acquired to mark her betrothal to

Nigel.

He put himself into the sandals of Caesar himself.  Maybe it would be

treason, treason to his long-held bachelorhood status, but now he knew

that he must cross the last frontier and push his boat into the Rubicon

of married life.

He knew that, like Mr Bennet, he was an odd mixture of quick parts,

sarcastic humour, reserve and caprice.  And yet Virginia, unlike Mrs B,

was a woman of some understanding, much information and a certain

temper.  Would she agree to entering an arrangement of mutual solace?

Was he in the throes of some Queen Mab fantasy?

At his time of life he felt challenged by the concept of establishing a new

permanent relationship.  It made him feel- what?  Peevish.  Yes, that was

it.

When Dru had phoned her mother to tell her about the engagement, Diana

had been in raptures.  Dru was relating how she intended to pay for her

wedding through crowdfunding, but Murgatroyd wouldn’t hear of such a

thing and immediately offered the pele tower as a venue, adding that they

would have a joint celebration at which he and Diana would renew their

wedding vows.

Maybe he should make it a threesome.  No, that was something entirely

different, he believed. Three weddings and whose funeral?

They were having a piper and all the rigmarole that Snod despised.

Anyway, she might turn him down!  That would be a relief, in a way.

He took the ring out of the box and held it to the light.  It seemed to have

flaws in the stone.  When he was having it cleaned he had asked the

jeweller about it.

All the best stones do, he had remarked.  It shows their authenticity.

Well, he hoped Virginia would appreciate him, warts and all!

Alea Iacta Est!

 

 

Rattle Your Dags!

Tags

Berrima, callipyge, camelids, Deborah Robson, Edward III, Emmerdale, House of Lords, Lord Chancellor, New Zealand rugby team, riggwelter, Six Nations, The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, The Merchant of Venice, The Speaker, vicunas, Woolsack, World Alternative games

Off to lunch with Brassica and the two husbands.  Decided on The

Woolpack.  It is fairly local and therefore the males can free

themselves from their jesses, to adopt a falconry metaphor, and

can escape early in the afternoon, to watch both Six Nations rugby

games.

The Woolpack.  Hmmm.  Isn’t that the stuffed seat in The House of

Lords which the speaker sits on?  In the fourteenth century,

Edward III thought that if his Lord Chancellor sat on it in council,

then it would remind everyone of the importance of the wool

trade.

The joke is that, in 1938, it was found to be padded with

horsehair.  So, our present equine scam is not the first.

But, as Brassie informed me, we were not going to The Woolsack.

There is a difference between sacks and packs?  And padding/

stuffing?

Being a convert to the revived craft of knitting, she told me about

The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook by Dorothy Robson, which

features more than 200 animals and their fibers.

(Don’t you just hate American spelling?  I mean over here.)

Fleece and Fiber -the title sounds a bit like that breakfast cereal

that I eat to prevent bowel cancer.  It’s quite edible with

supplementary prunes, but I digress.

All this spinning and toiling; it’s not Brassie’s usual

bent. Well, apparently fibres can be removed and spun from

camelids and vicunas, whatever they are.  She will probably knit

me a scratchy scarf for my birthday.  Lucky me.  I suppose I can tell

her that I’m allergic to lanolin.

We were going to have to rush back to the telly for the Wales/ Italy

Game, indigestion or not.

For this was serious. No, it wasn’t a competition to trial

individuals, to see them showcase their personal

fitness, by rushing up and down 1:4 gradients with a stuffed sack

on their backs, as is an annual tradition in Gemau Byd

Arallddewisol – World Alternative Games.

But, look you, the Italians might as well have been bulky bales, as

evidenced by their subsequent complete trouncing. Maybe the weird

Celtic training has come in handy.

You know, I said.  I always get mixed up between woolpacks and

woolsacks.  Wasn’t The Woolpack a fictional pub on Emmerdale?

Yes, replied a Husband, but I don’t think the one we are going to

today is run by anyone called Chastity.

Husband 2, emboldened by the sarcasm of Numero Uno, and slightly

edgy in case he missed the first few minutes of the match, added:

Yes, you wouldn’t want to patronise that particular hostelry, as in

 1993 there was a plane crash which destroyed its wine bar and

killed off trapped punters.

Warming to the theme of carnage, the other offered more dramatic

detail than was probably in the original series, which wasn’t too

hard:  

Yes, in 2003 it was struck by lightning and a chimney fell down and

killed Tricia Dingle.

(These chaps seem to have retained a lot of televisual, nay, soap

operatic facts.  Maybe it is because they have slouched around for

decades, watching everything and anything that pops up on the

screen.)

Should we be going to a pub with the same name? asked Brassie

nervously.

Don’t be superstitious, I interjected.  There are thousands of pubs

called The Woolsack -I mean Woolpack.

Brassie was worried that her GPS might be confused.  Her

navigational skills are somewhat challenged, revealing her lack

of an inner compass.

Cosmo, her husband, laughed. Well, even you can’t drive to The

Woolpack in the Berrima district of Australia.

Why are you mentioning that one? I asked.

Oh, the barmaid identified a serial axe murderer- a bushranger,

who drank there.

Cosmo! You are putting me off my lunch! implored Brassie, driving

a little erratically, even for her.

But it didn’t put me off mine.  Afterwards I kept thinking about

sheep terminology and Shakespearean quotations, such as wooly

breeders and eanlings and tainted wethers of the flock.  Good old

Merchant of Venice- maybe my favourite play.

When the guys were watching the matches-plural!-I looked up

some sheep terminology, just to have something useful to do.

I discovered and immediately liked the graphic New Zealand

expression, Rattle your dags! which basically is a rude way of

inviting someone to be less dilatory.

(Dags are the bits of unmentionable which attach themselves to

the fluffy hindquarters of sheep.)  Probably the New Zealand rugby

team are familiar with this exhortation.

Brassie was less enthusiastic.

And, having over-eaten at The Woolpack, I could imagine being

described as callipyge: apparently this refers to a natural genetic

mutation which produces over-developed hindquarters.

Alternatively, or additionally, maybe I was falling into the category

of a riggwelter.  This is a sheep that has fallen on its back with its

feet stuck in the air, demonstrating an inability to right itself

owing to its heavy fleece.

I knew that I shouldn’t have shared a muffin the other day and

now I have consumed a bowl of handcut chips.  So, if I don’t want

to resemble a bulging woolsack, perhaps I should desist from

stuffing myself any further.