Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Yeah Fruity, you get the idea alright.

Although we’re not too badly off here as pensioners, €25 a week extra fuel allowance for the cold six months of the year, double your pension as a Christmas bonus, free travel on all public transport, and free TV licence at 66, the state pension is around €250 per week flat rate.
Never have much good to say about governments, but they have always looked after their old folks over here.

Clint Eastwood was good in “Googan’s Bluff” on TV the other night, he played a cowboy copper in New York, there to pick up a criminal and take him back to Arizona,

He gets into trouble with the chief of police in the big city, apparently he “Blew a stakeout”.

I can never figure out the American cop lingo, I thought that only happens at a barbecue when your meat catches fire, but what would I know, we never have the weather for a barbecue either.
Enjoyed the film though, Clint was always good value in his films.

As me Son used to say to me “Dad their showing that Clint Eastwood film again on TV, The good, the Bad, and Yourself”

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Even allowing for the exchange rate, our pensioners do not appear to be treated so well. We get a flat one off £200 cold weather payment for a single person, and £300 for a couple.

Free TV licence used to be for over 75s, but that was stopped last year except for certain vulnerable people.

The state pension starting age varies. It used to be 60 for women and 65 for men, but it was decided it wasn't fair, so it was raised to 65 for both, but then rising over a period of time in order to fund it.
I took early retirement on health grounds when I was 62, thanks to a good works pension, then I got my state pension at age 65 and 8 months, which was also the date I was eligible for a free bus pass.
I get about £125 per week from the state. It's taxed so if it would be more if I didn't have my company pension as well.

The target age for my Lovely Cousin to get state pension I think is now 68, but being ten years my junior, that's 11 years away. By then the eligible age could be raised again. There is talk of it being 70 at some point.
Not everyone makes it until then like my former colleague wo died last week at the young age of 60.

There are three factors for a state pension increase, called the triple lock, and we are supposed to get whichever is the highest. The government has been banging on about this "guarantee", but they are now saying, "Ah, well, we might not be able to afford that after all".

A government going back on it's word. Imagine my surprise.


I've been a great fan of Ennio Morricone's music since I saw the first of the "Dollar" films at the age of 15. I sneaked in with my older brother despite the age limit being 16 at the time due to the violence depicted in the filum.

My all time favourite piece is L'estasi dell'oro (The ecstacy of gold) where our man from East Clintwood is racing around the graveyard with the superbly cast Eli Wallach. The music and tempo keep rising in intensity, and is evocative until right to the end. This is one of those pieces that send shivers down my spine.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PvyBKSmQ_g

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Thanks for that pension info Fruity, the wife has two widowed sisters living in London, both are pensioners.
I think it’s a bit mean and petty taking away the TV licence for over 75’s, shame really when you think of the cost, a drop in the ocean of government spending.

Come to think of it I’m the last surviving husband of the wife’s seven married sisters, when they all get together in the local twice a year I can’t get a word in edgeways, I feel like Mother Mary when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and said ”Blessed art thou amongst women”
*****

Although I’m supposed to a European I know little about European countries.

I was talking to a young Bulgarian chap in the beer garden today, he said it’s his first time in Ireland, he told me he had to leave Sofia in a hurry “Why?, says I “Was she pregnant?”.

Our fellow scribbler Robert Junior, often talked about spoonerism, I think the comedian Ronnie Barker used them in some of his sketches on TV.

I was always interested but didn’t really know how they worked so I read up on the subject.

"A spoonerism is a speech error in which the speaker switches the initial consonants of two consecutive words. ... We owe the invention of the spoonerism, or at least its great fame, to a nineteenth-century English reverend named Archibald Spooner, who was famous for mixing up his words”

Yes indeed, the reverend Archie Spooner, a fart smeller and a great man for stirring things up I believe.

I think I'll have a go at it using some of the examples provided.


It was a doggy fay outside,

I was in the living room listening to the radio while drinking tot he, a bad salad was playing.

The wife was in the kitchen caking bookies and frying chork pops.

Please excuse me, I'm not very good at welling spurds since my old teacher died, sod rest her goul.

The grandson is all dolled up, it's his first time to doe on a gate with a girl, no, I lell a tie, his second.

After dinner I'll probably shake a tower, that's if the boiler is working, the lad who fixed it is a track of all jades.

The dog is lying on the couch asleep, thinks he's the bleeping sooty.

I think I like spoonerisms.


Here he is himself, the very rev. William Archibald Spooner.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

is that the bood gook he is holding?

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I first heard about spoonerisms when an actor called Jasper Carrot used them on one of his shows.
Ronnie Barker certainly made the Reverend Spooner famous.

One of my favourites of his was during a sketch that involved making a toast to Queen Victoria. Do please say it out loud.


"Glaise your rasses to the Quear old deen."


My all time favourite was an American chap who recited the story of Cinderella in spoonerisms. Sadly I cannot remember his name, and only remember the last line. As the clock struck midnight and Cinders legged it, this narrator announced in such a sad and doleful tone,

"She slopped her dripper."

Speaking of Reverends, there was a chap in the eighteenth century called the Reverend Augustus Toplady who liked to write hymns.

You may have heard of a local beauty spot near where I live called Cheddar Gorge, which is close to the village of Cheddar famed for inventing a process for making a certain type of cheese.
The next gorge over is called Burrington Combe, a combe being an old English name for a steep sided valley or hollow. We have quite a few by here, and I believe you have some in Co Kerry.

Anyway, the good reverend (actually I have no idea if he was good or a bad egg) was making his way down the combe when he got caught in a thunderstorm so he sought shelter in a cleft in the rockface.

'Twas there he came up with the hymn, Rock of ages.
He was a bit of a burk though. Fifty metres back the way he had come was a small cave that would have offered him complete shelter in the dry.

Speaking of reverends and Co Kerry, have you heard of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, known as the Vatican Pimpernel? Born in Co Cork he grew up in Killarney and rose through the Catholic Church to become a Monsignor based in Rome.

During WW2 he helped thousands of people escape the Nazis, irrespective of their race or religion. He had a death warrant against him if he was ever caught outside the Vatican, and there were armed Nazi guards posted at every exit should he set foot outside the holy city.
I find his story fascinating. If you are interested in that sort of thing he is well worth looking up on the internet.

I've just discovered that there is a book about his wartime exploits so I'm going to order it from The Big River company.

I met him once in Killarney when we did our tour of the UK and Eire. Here he is heading off to work.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I used to think spoonerisms were when people mixed up their words and got a completely different word than what they meant to say.

For example there was a women who used to drink in my local, she was always saying the wrong word for things, her cousin was in an accident involving an articulated lorry, luckily she was not badly injured, but yer woman was telling us old lads that,

“Not many survive being knocked down by an artificial lorry you know”

Another time her niece went into the maternity hospital to have a child, I asked her the next day how the girl was doing.

“Ah she’s great Jem, but the baby boy is not doing too well, his breathing yeh know, they have him in an incinerator”

The thing is she’s ever so serious telling us this stuff and nobody has the heart (of the guts) to correct her, she was renowned for it, I’d have pains in me jaws trying to hold in the laughing with some of the things she’d come out with, doctors prescriptions were doctors descriptions, and when she was baking she always used shelf raising flour.


You probably know they made a film about Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty in 1963 Fruity, it’s called “The Scarlet and the Black”, it was on TV only last week, he was a good man God rest him.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Gregory Peck is not a spoonerism, its Rhyming Slang!

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Friar Tuck is also slang.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I was once run out of town by a small group of women of dubious morals, it was most unpleasant, being slagged off.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I believe using the wrong word is called a malapropism.

I can't remember if it was on the radio or TV, but there was a programme where one of the leading ladies used malapropisms to great comedic effect.

Edit.

It was the actor Hilda Baker in the radio show, Nearest and Dearest.

A few egg-samples: -

Much of the comedy was derived from Nellie's constant malapropisms. When asked by Lily if she knew the facts of life, Nellie replied with immense dignity, "Of course I do! I'm well over the age of content!" In another episode, Nellie has a suitor named Vernon Smallpiece, whom she addresses as 'Vermin Bigpiece'. When Eli insists on playing the high-powered executive once he is in charge of the pickle business, Nellie asks him who he thinks he is "sat sitting there like a big business typhoon!"


Ah, I remember the filum with Gregory Peck. I hadn't realised it was based on Mr O'Flaherty