where art collides philosoperontap

It’s that finished the jobslist and it’s still not lunchtime yet feeling. Pretty good I’d say. The conservatory doors are open and the cricket is on the wireless. What more can a man ask for? This evening we are having a barbecue. It gets better all the time.  I lit the barbecue last night just for myself. Cooked three sausages. Didn’t use any charcoal. Just burnt some wood and cooked on the embers which seemed much hotter than had it been charcoal. Might not risk that this evening. The family likes certainty though I can’t say that there is ever certainty where charcoal is concerned.

We did have an Australian gas barbecue. It eventually rotted away and I’ve not got round to buying another, mostly because they are horrendously expensive. They also take a bit of assembling. Wots that all about? You don’t want to have to mess about assembling a barbecue. When we moved in to this house I nipped out and bought one. Opening the box I found about 200 nuts and bolts. There was no time to assemble it so I popped back to Tesco for some disposable ones. Disposable barbecues are never as good as the real mcoy.

I quite fancy a Weber. Guaranteed for 25 years apparently. That would probably see me through to the end of my barbecuing career. One wonders how many sausages would have been cooked in that time. It is possible to work it out – average number of bangers per bbq x number of bbqs a year. It will be different for everyone so you need to work out your own total. If you like.

Actually I’d like to think I will still be barbecuing in another 25 years. It will be something to look forward to – the next trip to buy another barbecue. Long wait. There will be other fun things to do in the meantime. Whist drives, bingo evenings etc etc. Never been to a bingo evening though it’s never too late to start. Used to go to the village whist drive when I lived in Waunfawr in North Wales. Long time ago now. Before the internet was discovered.

I say discovered but in reality it was invented. It’s not as if it was always there and one day someone came across it. “I claim this internet in the name of Queen Elizabeth The Second.” That’s the Head of State not the cruise liner. I can’t imagine anyone claiming something in the name of a ship unless we are talking about a berth which we aren’t. It would be a big berth for the QE2. Probably more than one gangplank too. Can you imagine 2,000 passengers all making their way gingerly down a plank onto the quayside. I’m not even sure the QE2 is still afloat, or sailing. These liners tend to end their days as floating hotels somewhere.

I stayed on the Queen Mary in Longbeach a couple of times. Quite dated rooms compared to a normal hotel but full of character. The ship has a great bar call the Observation Deck Bar. It’s a 20’s art deco job at the back of the ship. Top quality. The first time I was there they had a female trio singing Andres Sisters type songs. They did a terrific rendition of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. From Company B. The bugle boy that is not the singers.

The second time I stayed there was when Anne was pregnant. She flew out to meet me at the end of a business trip. On the way home I gave her my business class seat and I sat in coach. The rub was that being pregnant she could not avail herself of any of the free booze they dish out at the front of the plane. I on the other hand had kicked into my long haul flight survival mode. After early consumption of beer I fell asleep for the rest of the flight. Anne periodically came back to visit me during the flight but on each occasion I was dead to the world.  The sleep of the just. Ish.

Yesterday we got rid of our trampoline. You might ask yourselves where is the connection with trampolines and sleeping on planes? Well there isn’t. It came totally out of left field. It’s just like the kid in Anne’s class when she taught in London who one day announced to the world that his “daddy has a caravan”. Okaay.

There is nothing to say that when putting the third law into practice you can’t just flit from one unrelated website to another. This morning I bounced between sites with cut priced champagne offers and those selling Weber barbecues. There is a connection though not necessarily immediately obvious. You can drink champagne whilst cooking a barbecue.

In this case I’m after some serious quantities of champagne to service the guests at our Silver Wedding Anniversary bash in August. Problem is that whilst there are some good offers around I haven’t necessarily tried any of the champagnes concerned. One might consider it worth buying a single bottle to try but Anne doesn’t like champagne so I’d have to drink the whole bottle myself. Unless I invited someone round which I could.

I’m still mulling it over. I may let you know what I decide or I may not. Ve shall see. I quite like a decent bottle of Australian Shiraz but we aren’t talking about red. We’re on champagne although tbh I’m getting bored with the subject.

Bored bored bored bored bored. No comma. Quick fire. Punctuationless. New word for you. Doesn’t roll particularly well off the tongue but whoever said a new word had to be an easy one to say. When they invented discombobulate no consideration was given to ease of use. I imagine that these days when people invent new words they have focus groups and teams of marketing types that evaluate their effectiveness. They might also need to check the availability of the domain name. If the domain name already exists it can’t be a new word though that word doesn’t necessarily have a meaning.

I just checked discombobulate.com btw and the domain name is for sale. Bought by some loser sometime who thought they could make a bit of cash from the word. Problem is no one knows what it means except for my son Tom who used to learn difficult words from the Oxford English Dictionary and slip them into conversations with his teachers knowing full well that the chances were that the teach would have no idea what he was saying.

I prefer the word discombobulate to punctuationless.

3rd Law Part 52 here

3rd Law Part 54 here