Living Wittily

Predictive Texts and Embarrasing Consequences

The predictive text on my ancient Nokia (the one on the left above) which was produced shortly after cuneiform became obsolete. I once discovered only after sending that when I type 'meal' its first choice is 'neck'. If you don't check before sending that can be embarrassing.This Christmas I had to send a number of texts which informed, invited, described or intimated a meal.

I am taking the staff out for a well earned meal.

We had a long lesiurely meal at Cardosi's.

Last night was the annual fellowship meal.

For once we had a meal together without arguing.

Are you free to come over for a pot luck meal with the rest of the house group.

We had a hot meal, which was just what we needed.

Need I go on. Just substitute neck for meal in any of the above.

Always check the predictive spelling then. Does your phone do stuff like that?

All Things Bright and Beautiful

Captions Please in the Comments - and I'll add them to either the ducks or the Smudge photos. By the way, we don't like the curtains so once Smudge progresses through adolescence we'll replace them!

 

 

 

Amazon Book Searches - A Quick Way to Become a Polymath :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I went looking on Amazon for a recent monograph on Paul’s great charter of freedom and equality before God in Galatians 3.28. I found it, and it costs £66 – looks like inter-library loan time.

No Longer Male and Female: Interpreting Galatians 3:28 in Early Christianity (Library of New Testament Studies) Pauline Hogan (2008)

However the first page of hits for the simple search phrase “male and female in Paul” brought up some titles grippingly irrelevant for my purposes. Here’s three of them.....

A growth study of young lambs: comparing male and female Southdown, Suffolk and Cotswold cross lambs intensively reared on a barley diet fed at two different levels by Paul William Knapman (1976)

Pay Differences Among the Highly Paid: the Male-Female Earnings Gap in Lawyers' Salaries (Discussion paper / Institute of Public Policy Studies, University of Michigan) by Robert G. Wood, Mary E. Corcoran and Paul N. Courant (Paperback - 1991)

"Other People's Money": An Empirical Examination of the Motivational Differences Between Male and Female White Collar Offenders. by Paul Michael Klenowski (2 Sep 2011)

I took the photo in Glen Dye - it's a Scottish blackface sheep reared on a grass and bracken diet fed quite high up the hill!

The Happy and Glorious Victoria Sponge!

I want one of these :))

Called a Jubilee Cake.

Has one of my five daily portions per slice.

So five slices would be healthy.

What's wrong with that logic.

Not much.

Once every 60 years!

Recipe on link below.

 

 

 

http://www.parentdish.co.uk/2012/05/14/jubilee-cake-recipe-easy/?ncid=wsc-uk-parentdish-headline

Scunnered and other Scottish Philosophical Concepts

Des Dillon's wee book, Scunnered. Slices of Scottish Life in seventeen gallus syllables, (Luath Press), is a tonic. Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, somtimes amusingly angry; considering in haiku such philosophical concepts as midges and neds, the Gulf War, wind turbines, psychology, consumerism and much else, trivial yet serious, wistful but laser sharp.

ATTENTION SEEKERS.

Self assertion is

the very heart and core of

all conversation.

 

THE NECESSARY BLINKERS

Life - a series of

disappointments glued brightly

together by hope.

 

HA HA LLELUJAH

Cosmic but comic

angels fly because they take

being holy lightly.

......................

More of this tomorrow!

The life enhancing secret in the photograph!

Well finally someone asked. I wondered how long it would take, and it has taken three months. But finally someone needed to know. The photo of me on the home page.

Why am I looking so delighted and pointing enthusiastically at a plate of lentil soup?

Sure health food is good for you - there are those who do indeed get enthusiastic about lentil soup, though I doubt they feel the need to take a picture of it!

The dress code is a clue - and the tie is seriously making a statement ( I love ties!) - so this is me in Vienna as a guest having a meal out in one of its best Italian restaurants.

The fork is also a clue - lentil soup can be thick, but doesn't usually need a fork to eat it.

The reason for the beatific grin and the pointing finger and the need to have a photographic record is - I am about to enjoy the biggest creme brulee I've ever seen in my life. That large oval dish with its acres of brown caramelised sugar is a dream come true. After the photo shoot, I remember slowly making my way across the plate oblivious of all dietary consequences and aware only of finally knowing how loosely I'd previously used the adjective delicious. This creme brulee recalibrated the word for me. Once I thought I knew what it meant - now it is defined and its colour is yellow beneath caramelised sugar - and is not small :))

The intellectual life of a highland cow

 
One of the first photos I took with my new camera.

The beast is looking at me with

 

puzzled perplexity thinking,

                                     "Why do these people bother?"

 

monumental boredom sighing,

                                      "You sad man. Get a life."

 

bovine compassion empathising,

                                     "Poor man. So little hair on his wee heid."

 

territorial aggression, calculating,

                                    "Can I get him before he reaches the fence?"

 

existential well concealed joy, ruminating,

                             "Grass, blue skies, celebrity status - I've got it all."

 

The Environmentally Friendly Nature Loving White Van Man

White van man and woman are one of the easy targets for derision, criticism and general opprobrium.

They drive selfishly, assume a sovereign claim on highway territory, behave like gladiators wielding a weapon, and have made an art form of the tailgate intimidatory tactic.

This morning white van man was in front of me.

He braked suddenly and hard, and a squirrel went scampering safely across his absolute right of way.

As the squirrel settled on the garden wall and looked askance at white van man, the driver window opened, a hand appeared, and that squirrel got a finger wagging telling off that would have done credit to a teacher instilling some health and safety consciousness into a jay walking student!

I like white van man.

What does that have to do with the price of fish?

Now here's a retail mystery that is hard to understand but easy to solve - if there's the will to do so.

I stopped on Thursday night for a fish and chip tea on my way to Aberdeen.

The menu offered for £8.15 small haddock with chips + pot of tea + buttered roll + ice cream.

I ordered but said I didn't want the roll or the ice cream.

Went to pay and was charged £7.55 for the fish and chips, and £1.20 for the tea - total of £8.75.

I said I had had haddock and chips (three hads in a row:)) tea.

No I hadn't had the ice cream or roll - but if I took them now I could have the cheaper price.

So I have to eat more calories to get it cheaper, huh?

Or I take the roll and ice cream, but leave them on the table, and get the cheaper price.

Or I don't take them at all, and pay 60 pence more for less food.

Now how does that work?

I reasoned reasonably, persuaded persuasively, charmed charmingly, looked pained painfully, and eventually was charged for the fish tea at £8.15

That was at the Bridge of Allan chip shop - and let me say, the fish and chips were superb. So not knocking this fine establishment, (which I've patronised for years and will again), just asking them to not create the kind of offers that either waste food or waste waists!

Fish Supper Haiku

Light, crisply battered,

deep fried piscean banquet,

served with chips, and tea.

 

Buttered roll, ice cream?

Superfluous additions

to a perfect meal.

 

Fish Supper Fibonacci

Fish.

Chips.

Enough.

Fish and chips!

Forget the ice cream!

Battered haddock, not buttered roll.

Calories, cholesterol and saturated fat

are all fine in moderation, so choose your vice carefully and stick with fish and chips!

 

 

Be lifted up ye ancient gates - prayer for a garage door.

Yesterday I innocently went to put the bin out.

Opened the garage door, wheeled the bin to the pavement.

Came back and pulled the garage door closed and the tension wires snapped.

Garage door now across my shoulders making me feel like Samson stealing the Gates of Gaza.

How to tell Sheila who is at the other end of the house with doors shut, probably with the hoover on.

Neighbour in a hurry mistook my weight-lifting exploits for knowledgeable enterprising can do.

Before I can tell her to ring our bell, she's in the car and waving cheerio.

Can see she's well impressed that I'm repairing the door myself while holding it up.

Tried quoting the Bible, "Lift your heads, you gates. Be lifted you ancient doors."

Didn't work. Decided not to try the musical version, Ye gates lift up your heads on high.

By an improvised contortionist act I can just about reach the step ladders with one leg.

Means standing on one leg still holding up the door.

The leg in question is the recently referred to leg with the torn corpuscnesium.

Like those films of prisoners stretching to reach the keys beyond the bars, the extended leg slowly inches towards the step ladders, not quite reaching.

Just one toe-length more..but to misquote the Sermon on the Mount "who by worrying can add one inch to their leg length"?

Well me actually!

Using legs, arms, back, and a number of neologisms and alternative linguistic apellations for doors and ladders, the ladders are maneouvred into position.

Minutes later, traumatised but triumphant the garage doors are propped up.

Later the repair man came, rewired it and re-set the spring.

I watched him do it so that next time.....