When things go wrong in the country as they often do nowadays I simply say "we're going to hell in a hand cart." In other words things are all going awry and we are all going to the dogs (to use another phrase).
My initial thoughts were that going to hell in a handcart came from the French Revolution where carts called tumbrels took people to their death via Monsieur Guillotine. But no the phrase is British. It refers to the Great Plague in London where the dead were left in the street and were collected by a bailiff who did not risk horses so used a handcart like a wheelbarrow to transport them to a common grave.
Going to the dogs is even easier one I thought. It obviously refers to greyhound racing. But no, once again I got everything wrong. This is what the internet had to say about this.
"The saying go to the dogs has been around for a very long time. It seems to have started in the sixteenth century from the idea that useless or spoiled things, like food, should be thrown to the dogs rather than be eaten by people."
So now you know and so do I.
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Monday morning walk into Wymondham with Cousin Belinda. Late breakfast and my usual listening into conversations. Overheard in the cake shop.
"Morning how are you?"
"Well I woke up again this morning so I must still be alive. I'm still above ground."
A cheery piece for a Monday morning.
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A touch of daytime television before doing the school run. I shouldn't watch reality TV because it makes me angry.
Had never seen a programme entitled "Dress To Impress" before, mainly because it's on ITV2. It probably should be hidden away on ITV 27.
Talk about trivialising relationships. The idea behind this one is that a single young woman decides on which one of three single men to date according to what outfits they buy for her to wear (yes you did read that correctly).
"I wouldn't be seen dead with a guy who wears a tracksuit," said the girl as if character, personality, intelligence etc is irrelevant. Problem is with this heap of tosh it probably is.
"I'm liking the vibe, " says winning guy.
They went ten pin bowling where they proved that their prowess with that game was equal to their dress sense.
Then they voted on whether they wanted to see each other again. The girl said no and the boy said yes and so off they went their separate ways thus proving that the whole farce was totally irrelevant. Had me riveted though as I seethed and wrote this section of the blog.
Then changed channels and found a documentary on the Second World War. After the advert it came with one of those content warnings. This one said "contains war scenes." Might also have said "warning contains men jumping out of planes."
There were shots of Hitler speaking to his generals and this made me think that in our coming book set in the Second World War we don't actually mention Hitler.
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Talk about news overkill. The entire 6 pm bulletin yesterday was given over to the news that the King has been diagnosed with cancer.
This is a comment on the news coverage and not the news itself.
The news was given out from a statement issued from Buckingham Palace. So far so good. But then we had to go to a reporter outside Buckingham Palace who repeated what we had already been told. Then the BBC really got into it's stride. Up came Royal correspondent Nicholas Waffle (sorry Witchell) who was in Hong Kong and repeated everything we had already heard and then embellished it with everything that has happened in the last two years which we already knew.
Then on two occasions we went to political editor Chris Mason who told us what we already knew but then added a political and constitutional angle to it.
Back we went to Hong Kong to see if Waffle knew anything more but, being thousands of miles away, he could only repeat what we already knew.
Where to next? Yes back to Chris who was asked the same questions again and actually used the words "as I said before." He then repeated everything he had said before.
Then over to the House of Commons where the Speaker was delivering the statement to the House. The only problem is there looked as if there were about 10 MPs present and four of them seemed to be asleep.
Then we had the Palace statement again. I'm sure by this time many of us were at screaming point. We wish the King every good wish but please BBC let's put some perspective on this and report new facts rather than going over and over the same information. And we would like to hear some of the other news which had been banished from the bulletin.
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Today it's the first of the two monthly sessions of our Forget Me Not Club. We have a music quiz and a soup lunch. Looking forward to that.
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Now there seems to be some considerable consternation about my list of 20 favourite artists of all time.
Contributor Tommy Titt escaped from his bunker to chastise me for having 21 in my top 20 and he didn't mince his words with the following comments.
"The recent top 20 artists as chosen by the blogger in chief, which in fact were 21 due to some spurious logic, does raise some cause for concern. Where will this end? Will we see the day when there are actually 30 in the top twenty due to there being ties for positions 10, 12, 15, 16 and 6 tying for position 20. To continue this nonsense, if there were two tied in each position, there could therefore theoretically be 40 in the top 20. This is obviously ridiculous. As for the veiled threat to produce a top 50 will we then see another tie at position 50 to produce a list of 51. Rest assured I will continue to monitor this numerically cavalier approach for the sake of common sense and good order.
"Of perhaps more concern is the potential conflict in law, in particular the provisions of the little-known statute colloquially known as the “Numerical distortion and manipulation Act” which dates from the late Middle Ages. This was originally drafted to deal with rogue traders who sold customers short. However, it appears that loose wording and subsequent conflict with Brussels and the EU and ultimately the ECJ over Brexit, the act now applies to over provision as well. The only exemption appears to be in favour of bakers where a “Baker’s dozen” is in fact 13, and not 12. Perhaps a similar exception can be made where a “Bloggers twenty” is in fact 21 (or any number that he cares to fabricate).
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Sad to see that Welsh rugby star Barry John has died. I remember watching and admiring him playing in that wonderful Welsh team of all talents. I particularly remember Welsh comedian Max Boyce singing about Barry John and making comments about Wales producing a never ending conveyor belt of Barry John clones and fly halves, something they stopped doing many years ago.
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Tomorrow I will talk about an interesting article on AI I read in a national newspaper over the weekend and I will tell you why I'm calling our garden summerhouse The Sherlock Holmes Room.