I'm back!

It's been a bit quiet on the Doberman front recently, I think my puppy is slowly growing up. That said Fudge and I have invented a new game - Doberman Golf! I hit a golf ball down the garden and Fudge waits until I say 'go' and then she shoots off to retrieve it (repeat several times).

A Shropshire Lad xviii

Oh, when I was in love with you,

Then I was clean and brave,

And miles around the wonder grew

How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,

And nothing will remain,

And mile around they'll say that I

Am quite myself again.

A.E Housman

Online Dating

I've just seen an advert on the television for an online Dating Agency. The advert cheerfully states that if in your first 6 months with them, you don't find 'love', then they will give you another 6 months membership absolutely free of charge. Sounds like a good deal, where do I sign up? Stop! Just think about it for a minute. If you've endured 6 months of scorn and rejection, what are you going to want even less than a jumbo enema? - You got it, another 6 months of feeling like Quasimodo's pulchritudinously challenged brother. Personally I think a kinder company would reward 6 months of abject failure, by providing you with an inflatable friend and a free puncture repair kit. What sick son of a bachelor thought it would be a good idea to drag on your humiliation for a further half year? - Now stop and consider the name of this Dating Agency, 'No More Frogs.Com'. That's a bit presumptuous isn't it? Personally I think that after you'd had a full year of getting the "Can't we just be friends?" treatment, that frankly, amphibians wouldn't be totally out of the question. Beggars can't be choosers. I'm guessing that by this stage you're so lonely that any vertebrate would be given due consideration. You'd be so bloody desperate, you'd be willing to take a hamster home to meet your mother.

The Purple Cow

The Purple Cow

I never saw a purple cow;

I never hope to see one;

But I can tell you anyhow;

I'd rather see than be one!

The Chestnut Tree

The Chestnut Tree

By A.A. Hancock (Gent)

I wish I was a Chestnut tree

And nourished by the sun

With leaves and twigs and branches

And conkers by the ton!

Roman Fleuve

I was introduced to Jerome K Jerome's book 'Three Men in a Boat', when I was about nine by my grandfather. In an attempt to stimulate some form of nascent literary appreciation in me, he used to read excerpts from 'Three Men in a Boat' and 'Treasure Island', both books that I love to this day. Encouraged by his seeming success my grandfather tried to get me to learn chunks of 'The Pied Piper of Hamlin' by heart, and here he met a problem, my fundamental and ingrained laziness. Read to me and I'll listen, try and make me learn something, then one of us is going to be disappointed - and that someone isn't going to be me. To this day all I can remember about the Pied Piper is that he was the kind of man that my mother warned me against accepting sweets from. Sadly the only poem I know from start to finish, concerns an unfortunate girl from Leeds, who inexplicably decided to swallowed a packet of seeds, and the ensuing problems brought about when they started to germinate.
Where was I... That's it, Jerome K Jerome. Much as I loved 'Three Men in a Boat', I never read anything else by J Klapka J until I was in my twenties, and now fast approaching the big four 'O', I still haven't read his other major work, 'Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow', however I have decided to cheekily bastardise the title for this Blog - I can't make up my mind whether that's apposite, ironic or insulting, if you've bothered reading this far, I'll let you decide.