Blathering “not acceptable”

Henry Youngman once said “my wife and I were happy for 20 years, and then we met”.  Any suggestion however that I am not still blissfully wedded to that nice lady decorator, and that I am anything but ecstatically happy, could not be further from the truth.  She has told me this so it must be true.

Although it was a Friday, and customarily the start of the weekend, I have been having a  continuous weekend for the last three weeks, so I decided to take it a little easier last night and just have a few beers in the web. Discussions evolved around the theme of wives and sayings that men have created to illustrate their idea of wedded bliss; Rodney Dangerfield said “A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong” not that the nice lady decorator is ever wrong, but I think my favourite is Sigmund Freud who said “I had some words with my wife, she had some paragraphs with me”.

I am admonished in the comments section of this column (you can always leave a comment and I will print it unless it doesn’t suit me) by old friend Moya Janko who was unhappy about the repeat publication of my picture a couple of days ago of the pig, so I dare not make the same mistake again, thus today I feature a photo I took when in Venice, enjoying a beer on the Giudecca side, when this monstrosity of a cruise ship was being guided up the strait between Giudecca and St Marks Square, which is now subject to a big campaign to get the practice stopped. Whilst it offers a great photo opportunity to the  happy on board punters (and also me on this occasion) the bow wave from such a massive displacement cannot be having a good effect on this ancient city which is apparently sinking by a millimetre a year. Should be still there by the time I pop my clogs then.

If you were driving, how much of a temptation would it be to floor the accelerator? then watch people on the banks run for their lives

Whilst on the subject of comments, Peter Lynn takes me to task for using a northern expression “Blathering” which means to spray or spread thickly over something, as in the case of the chilli sauce all over the kebab I described yesterday, as the word does not appear in the English dictionary. I have had to apologise profusely and offer the explanation and excuse that I have spent rather a lot of time with those uncouth folks from up north recently, and I am afraid some of it has started to rub off. I know this is unacceptable and I shall be careful never to repeat such a faux pas in the future, especially if I hear of any trouble up at the mill for instance.

After the extended period of rest and recuperation, a full 36 hours no less, we shall journey to Cannes on the train today to take advantage of a free apartment in the famous Rue St Antoine courtesy of qualified wheel grinder and FR2day main man Wayne Brown. It is a long trip, some 17 minutes from nearby Mouans Sartoux station, so doubtless we will have to take with us sufficient sustenance to keep us going until our arrival. Thereafter, I would suggest, a couple of drinks on the beach to see the sun go down and then dinner somewhere nice. I cannot tell you how happy I am to have a day off from work with Currencies Direct. Life can be so tiring, but I must not be downcast, the world of commerce needs me next week, so I must be strong.

Chris France