More or Les (was Bloody Plurals)

[Ozzyjack]

[I'm headed to Scotland soon, so I'm excited about all things Scottish. 

Hi, Anonsi, Have a good one.

Is your trip just to Scotland or is it part of a grand tour?

[Les303]

Good Morning Jack
I am happy to report that my Butler is considerably better than the one in Your Nuts M'Lord My head cook & bottle washer is not only a fantastic cook but very efficient
I am very much looking forward to my trips next month.
I have found your travels very entertaining
To continue with the Scottish theme I thought I would include a little soupcon of Billy Connolly.  The language is rather ripe - do hope you don't mind!
Potatoes Of The Night
Perhaps I should have posted a warning?
Have a very happy Saturday
Pen

G'day Pen,

While i have seen most of these " The Two Ronnies " clips before, they still me make me laugh.
There are not too many shows that can stand such a test of time so i am sure that you will join me in thanking Jack for his uncanny ability to be able to unearth these gems which revive a lot of wonderful memories for me.


I suspect that i know exactly who the head cook & bottle washer might be.

Hope that you have a good trip, of course will be expecting a detailed travel journal.

I have also enjoyed reading about Jack / June's travels, i reckon that they should write a book!

Although i am bit surprised that he has not included the story about the time that he had to go to Queensland for an overnight trip all by himself.

As per normal, June was off partying with her friends & had left Jack all alone to arrange his accommodation in Queensland for the big golf tournament.
Well, we all know what a big softie Jack is, he just could not bare the thought of being alone for even one night so he decided that he would take his beloved dog with him for company.

Better ring ahead & make sure that the hotel that i am booking into is ok with a dog.


So Jack rang the hotel & explained the situation, i can assure you that my dog is extremeley well groomed, very quiet , well trained & will cause you no trouble.

The hotel owner responded by saying, i have never had a dog steal towels or toiletries, i have never had to evict a dog for being drunk & disorderly & i have never had a dog skip out without paying the bill so if the dog can vouch for you then you will also be welcome to stay.


And in keeping with the Scottish theme. here is some Kevin Bridges


https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=best+scottich+comedian&view=detail&mid=095836786811CDDCCD79095836786811CDDCCD79&FORM=VIRE

[Hobbit]

Evening Les
I agree with you about the Two Ronnies & I always appreciate Jack's effort in searching them out for us
You are quite correct in your assumption that the head cook & bottle washer is Zoe
I'm not sure my week in Germany will be exciting enough to warrant a travel journal!  It'll be over in the blink of an eye.  We're staying in Remagen (as in the Bridge at Remagen!).
I laughed at your joke about Jack's beloved collie
I also roared with laughter at Kevin Bridges.  Very funny although sometimes I have to listen very carefully as his accent is very strong
Hope you are keeping ok & work has settled down.
Penx

[Hobbit]

Billy Connolly is good.   You needn't have worried about my sensibilities as I am broad-minded but the choir boys I played Rugby with, and against, may have blushed.  .  I suspect Les may have heard some of the language before as well.

Something a little more refined for you:

A sociopath goes for a job interview (Tracey Ullman Show)

The Two Ronnies - Sultan's Harem

Don't get up to too much mischief over the weekend.

Evening Jack or sorry is it Morning Jack?
I'm going to have to go back through the thread & find that handy little table you did for me which converted the time zones!
I really can't imagine you as a choir boy
As usual The Two Ronnies were top notch & the Tracey Ullman sketch very funny
I would love to get up to some mischief over the weekend   Sadly I don't think it's going to happen
I'm just going to instruct the maid (the same one who is head cook & bottle washer) to put the kettle on or better still open a bottle of something...
Bottoms up!
Pen

[Ozzyjack]

Shrewsbury to Carlisle, Hadrian’s Wall and Reivers Trail

Wednesday 14 July 2010

We packed up and left by shortly after 9:30 am after another great breakfast.  We followed the M6 north of Liverpool and turned off into the Lakes District.  The day is cloudy and misty and so the full beauty of the scenery does not appear, but it is still very striking – brilliant green, grey stone walls and houses, the lakes and steep hills.  There were lots of people out walking – people of all ages.  In one case I thought they might have emptied all the old people’s homes.  We by-passed Kendal and stopped for lunch at Keswick at the Twa Dogs Inn (as we did in 2006, but it was less impressive this time).

I was disappointed to learn that the inn got its name from a Robbie Burns poem and not from the well-known joke about how an American Native got his name (I used to call them Red Indians, but the civilising influence of M and A is obviously kicking in).

As we were about to set off A and I had been debating what would be the more interesting route.  D rather impatiently drove off telling us to put our maps away.  Luckily, he took the right road and said rather proudly “I can get it right sometimes!”  To which A replied quite gently “even a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while”.  D maintained a dignified silence for several seconds.

We found our hotel (Premier Inn).  It is a basic but large place.  Our room is on the ground floor (down some steps) while A’s is on the 2nd floor.  There are no lifts.  Our room is at the far end of a very long corridor – 5⁺ cricket pitches according to D.
  
Our dinner was ordinary.  The menu is basic.  D and I chose sausages and mash on the basis that not much can go wrong with that and they were OK.  A chose the salmon cake which seemed to be dry and tasteless and accompanied by some tired looking beans and carrots.

Thursday 15 July

Breakfast was plentiful but ordinary.  We then took our clothes to the Laundromat.  Just as we parked the skies opened and it really poured down.  Most people do the washing themselves, but we left our clothes with the helpful manager - a woman best described as cheerfully dour.

Our next stop was at Carlisle Castle.  Luckily, the rain had stopped almost as suddenly as it started, so we got around most of it with no trouble.  We went into the dungeons of the Keep to see the licking stones (Click here for details)  and I went up and down some stairs but not to the top floors or the battlements.  A managed to get around all these.  

After that we walked through the underpass to the Tullie Museum.  The man at the desk gave me a light folding stool which almost acted as a walking stick when I wasn’t sitting on it – very helpful.  The displays are very well done and trace the history of the area.  We particularly enjoyed the audio-visual on the Reivers.

A also went through the 19th C house attached to the museum – while D and I sat comfortably on a lounge in the cafe and read the historic newspaper which carries a variety of reports – e.g. Bonnie Prince Charlie is besieging Carlisle today; drunkenness amongst munitions workers (in 1916) is a disgrace and hampering the war effort.  Altogether, we spent about 3.5 hours at the castle and museum and thoroughly enjoyed the visit.  

We collected our laundry and are pleased with it.  There must have been about 2 loads and it came back pressed and neatly folded – all the socks have their mates.  It was well worth £16.  

We did a bit of a drive around the eastern edge of Carlisle – the park and river scene looks like an idealised English painting.  

Back at the hotel I snoozed and watched the British Open on TV.  After considerable debate we went to an Indian restaurant in a nearby suburb for dinner.  This was rated no.1 by TripAdvisor.  The food was good, A and I had a beer with our dinner and D kept to mineral water – he did not seem keen to trust my night vision and as yet I have not tried out the car.

Friday 16 July

We all toddled into town to get me a raincoat (at M’s insistence) and a Border Reiver’s map (at D’s insistence). I think M was having some sort of pleasurable flashback to purchasing school uniforms for me as a child, as she really enjoyed making me model the raincoat and having a discussion with the shop owner while I stood dutifully nearby. The shopkeeper looked a little bit wild-eyed, as I expect he doesn’t have many 40-year-olds’ mothers quiz him. M got some solidarity from another woman in the shop as she made a comment about men taking so long to choose clothes, and the other woman nodded and said “Reet!” The shopkeeper riposted that men took so long to choose clothes because they wore it forever while women only wore theirs for a week and then needed a new outfit, then looked dubious as to whether this was the killer diller response he had envisaged. Anyway, we trooped out of the shop, me with a new raincoat buttoned up tightly to my chin, and M with a satisfied smile. I set D & M up in a coffee shop and returned to Tullies House to pick up D’s Reiver’s Map. The raincoat is sweltering.

We completed these tasks successfully and set off towards Hadrian’s Wall only to realise that our atlases are safely in our hotel room and the only one we have is the Reivers Area map which was drawn up by George McDonald Fraser (“Steel Bonnets”) showing the routes the Reivers took and the sites of major battles.  As this information relates to the centuries well before motor cars it is not a lot of help in showing roads.  However, it does show settlements so we can rely on there now being roads between them and on signposts.

Our first stop is at Lanercost Priory.  It is now a ruin. The English Heritage guide at the desk, Angie, was excellent. She was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, talking about elements of the Priory’s design and its history, giving us little tasting glasses of mead and mead/whisky (D nobly refrained) and successfully selling us a of couple bottles (I can’t say that D’s noble restraint extended to making it a hard sale to make). She set us up with a plastic-covered map and narrative dialogue between a Narrator and the medieval Prior of the Abbey explaining the different features of the ruins (we made A act out all the parts, though his accents tended to drift between bad Scottish, and bad Yorkshire).

The priory has a long history and was probably at its peak in the 13thC when King Edward I spent 6 months there with his court and it was effectively the centre of government.  From the English Heritage guide it sounds as if they are still paying off his bills.  It was sacked 4 times during Scottish raids (so William Wallace is not a popular figure) and rebuilt and was finally wrecked by Henry VIII in the Dissolution.  Many of the walls and tombs remain – part of it was kept and is now a very nice church.  Some of the stones and timbers were reused as a hall when it became part of a private dwelling.  

Our next stop was at Birdoswald Roman Fort.  D had to park the car quite a long way away from the site and walk up a long hill. Then we set off around the in-door museum which is quite good and then D and I had a brief look at the foundations outside while we sent A off to do a more thorough circuit of the fort.  Not too much remains as the local landowner who reportedly loved the ruins, took quite a lot of the stones to build his house in Victorian times.

D went down and brought the car up and I took over driving.  The next stop was Housesteads Fort.  This was a particularly good visit for me as I sat snugly in the car and read “Steel Bonnets” and possibly snoozed while A and D went adventuring in the rain.

Possibly it was a good thing that I had the raincoat as there were a couple of heavy showers as D and I toddled along. We were told that it was a short ten minutes’ walk to the ruins where we could buy tickets to get in. The walking path went down a steepish hill and then up a couple of other hills – D was not impressed. Housesteads is a Roman Mile fort – a complete set of foundations, with the foundations of a bastle house built up against one of the old Roman gatehouses. Bastle houses were used by the local inhabitants between the 12th and 16th centuries as a way of protecting themselves from reivers: the cattle would be herded into the ground floor which would be barricaded, and then people would retreat up ladders to the second floor, pulling up the ladders behind them.

The fort itself was on a windswept steeply sloped hill, so D had a hard time puffing up and down it, in amongst hundreds of sheep. Some of my more enthusiastic descriptions of ruins were met with a terse “Right!” and a mournful eyeing off the long, steep way back to the car. D attempted to find a shortcut back, but had to return to the main entrance, reporting that the defensive walls around the fort were too high to cross over. I suggested that this was the point of them and was impressed at the moderation of D’s response. I suppose though that the only thing to throw at me would have been a handful of sheep droppings.

As we walked back, D relayed his funeral instructions – cremation, but with an open casket service in case someone had got over-eager.

Oddly enough D went straight to sleep once he had squeezed into the back seat of the car.  We went to our last stop along the Wall at Chesters fort.  This has a extensive collection of Roman altars, milestones and other artefacts.  D and I then sent A outside to walk around the remains of the fort which was quite extensive.

After this our task was to find a road which would take us north through the Reivers country.  This was a fun drive for me – D was asleep, the road was straight following the old Roman road but with lots of hills and dales down which I could accelerate.  Some were steep enough to make your ears pop.  From the hill tops there were quite long vistas over green countryside. Much of the road to Hawick in the north was through narrow winding roads and very changeable countryside.  We crossed the Scottish border – marked with a sign and a small section of wooden fence.  At Hawick we turned south and came down the Liddesdale – a dark and forbidding area of bloody actions according to McDonald Fraser.  Its roads are certainly somewhat forbidding –narrow and winding with numerous little bridges set at strange angles to the road so that you can’t see if a car is approaching - the bridge is only wide enough for one car.   We stopped to look at the ruins of Hermitage Castle but we were well after 5pm and entrance to it was shut.  D took over driving from this point and we were back in Carlisle by about 7.30.

We went for dinner at the Gallo Russo.   The food was good and the crème brûlées were excellent as was the Chianti.  We allowed D a small sip with his dinner.  Then back to our hotel where we polished off the Whisky and Mead which we had bought earlier in the day.  A long but very satisfying day.

[Ozzyjack]

Dear Lady Penelope,
I trust your weekend is going well at Bletchley Manor and you are treating the servants kindly.

Life is quiet here except for the howling wind taking the temperature below zero when wind chill is taken into account.  How I envy your warm weather

So all I have to offer tonight, going on 2pm for you, is 2x2 Ronnies and a picture I forgot to add to the last extract from the journal.

The Two Ronnies - Broadway Malady

The Two Ronnies - The Plumstead Ladies Male Voice Choir

Sign on the church door at Lanercost Priory

[Hobbit]

Good Evening Parker.
All is well here at Bletchley Manor.  I trust you have cleaned & polished the Pink Rolls ready for the morning!  Oh I forgot it is morning for you :laugh
A quiet weekend. Been very warm & muggy here this afternoon.  The complete opposite to what you have at the minute.  Still you can always have a nice hot toddy
I love the sign on the door at Lanercost Priory.  I also love your travel journal (sorry that should be June's travel journal )
Interesting & informative & very funny in places.
Off to give the little grey cells a small workout.  You're probably working out in the gym!
Toodle Pip
Pen

[birdy]

Still enjoying the travel diaries.  Anyone want more nature photos?  Will not be offended if no one does!

[Valerie]

Yes please, Birdy.  Have really only had a very small taste so far.  Val.

[Ozzyjack]

That’s two votes for more photo’s, Birdy.

[Les303]

Keep 'em coming Birdy, there is nothing more mystical or magical than nature itself.

Actually, I am surprised that Jack never told you that he once lived next door to a magician.
Imagine his dismay when he returned home one afternoon to find one of his Collies with a rabbit in its mouth.
His dismay turned to panic when on closer inspection he realised that the dead rabbit was " Presto ", the performing rabbit that belonged to his neighbour, the magician.
Distraught that his magician friend would never forgive him, he takes the dirty, chewed up rabbit into the house and gives it a bath, blow dries its fur and puts the rabbit back into the cage at the magician’s house, hoping that he will think it died of natural causes.
A few days later, the magician is outside and asks Jack, “Did you hear that Presto my magic rabbit died?”. Jack stumbles around and says, “Um.. no.. um.. what happened?”.
The magician replies, “I just found him dead in his cage one day, but the weird thing is that the day after I buried him I went outside and someone had dug him up, gave him a bath and put him back into the cage. There must be some real sick people out there!

[anona]

That one made me laugh, Les!

I had a cat who really did bring me strange presents through the cat-flap, with much growling: half an uncut loaf of stale bread (well, couldn't manage it - I found him trying to drag it in backwards) and a pair of partly-burnt mens' woollen Long Johns, obviously from a bonfire somewhere. Those, he was very proud of.

[Les303]

anona was digging a hole in her garden when her neighbour, intrigued, asks her: What is this hole for?
anona responds: "It's to bury my poor parakeet who died this morning.
" My condolences. But ... isn't that a big hole for such a small bird?
It's because my "little bird" is in the belly of your "big cat"

[Ozzyjack]

Actually, I am surprised that Jack never told you that he once lived next door to a magician.

But I did make the mistake of telling Les. He kept pestering me to introduce him to Mandrake so that he might learn some of his tricks.  Mandrake was doing a show in Brisbane so I said to Les "Ill come up and take you to his show and afterwards I take you backstage and introduce you"

Halfway through the show, after Mandrake performed an especially amazing feat, I couldn't help myself, I yelled, “How did you do that?” Mandrake gave a standard answer: “I could tell you Jack, but then I’d have to kill you.” After a short pause, I yelled back, “Okay, then… just tell Les!”


Les, have you seen this one, Roisin Conaty Live at the Apollo

[Ozzyjack]

Good Evening Parker. I trust you have cleaned & polished the Pink Rolls

Oh dear, madam, you're confused again. I am not Parker - I am Carter.  Here are some videos of me in action.
Part 1
Part 2

and the only Rolls we can afford, madam, are sausage rolls.

Must go and polish the silver.