23-04-2019, 07:06 PM
14807
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
Well the wife’s sister gently passed away in the hospital on Thursday evening, R.I P, Phyllis was with her right up to the end, I was glad she was there at the time and that her sister’s suffering wasn’t dragged out too long (cancer)
She was buried on Saturday morning and we arrived back in Dublin today, the deceased don’t hang around for long over here, it’s all done fairly quickly, much better for all concerned I think. I won’t ramble on about it, I’m not being flippant, just that I’m getting so used to funerals and folks I know dying, but I supposed that happens the older you get.
My God you haven’t been up to much in me absence have yiz?, call yourselves scribblers? I thought I’d have a belly full of reading to go through when I got back, but I’ll forgive you due to the good weather and the Easter holiday, better to be out enjoying yourselves that sitting at a screen all day long, I hope it put a bit of colour into your cheeks too.
I’ll have plenty to scribble about in the coming weeks, don’t say you haven’t been warned, all the junk that has been passing through me head lately would fill a skip.
Listening to Martin Jarvis reading Billy Bunter on an audio book while coming home on the train, no one does this better than Jarvis, his Mr. Quelch is marvellous. Bunter is having a history lesson about the King hiding in the Royal Oak, he is not paying attention and when asked what the Royal Oak is he says he’s sure it’s a public house his Uncle drinks in. (actually there’s one called that about 2 miles from where I live, there must be scores of them in Britain)
The stories keep mentioning “The remove”, can anyone who has been to an English public school back in the 50’s tell me what “The Remove” is, and where it came from, I think it means the whole class, but in one’s ignorance one might be inclined to think it was a collective name for undertakers.
Poor old Billy Bunter is not PC these days, pity, I always got a good laugh from the books and comics as a kid, still do from the audio books, that’s the big kid still in me I suppose.
Of course being overweight in those days was sort of unique, the very few fat lads always had plenty of tuck as they usually had fat rich parents, the rest of us were like sticks, now it’s the other way round, the skinny kids eat all the right expensive food and the poor fat kids eat all the cheap crap, skinny is the way to be today while years ago it was to be pitied, funny old world ain’t it.
I remember me granny saying at the dinner table “Eat that big lump of fat Jimmy, it’ll put a big red neck on yeh” I hated fat on meat and I certainly did not want a big red neck, as it turned out I’m neither fat nor skinny and I have a grand little white neck on me, indeed some might even say a hard neck.