Over the years I have written thousands but sad to say I don't have a great ability in this sphere. It does come as a surprise that for someone whose life seems to consist of intended puns ie me, I can never think of a witty punfilled headline.
In fact I can't remember a single one of any distinction. There were a few obvious ones. When I was a sports editor I did a series of articles on a Venezuelan racing driver whose surname was Gonzalez and of course I always referred to him as Speedy Gonzalez. You probably have to be of a certain age to understand that one.
We got on well - me and Speedy Gonzalez. We got on so well that he told me he would get me an invite to go to Venezuela to meet his President. I told him he must be Caracas. See there's a pun on the capital of Venezuela and the word crackers.
Speedy returned home, we lost touch and I've never been to Venezuela or South America for that matter.
Of course there have been some memorable headlines over the years, most of which have come to my attention.
There's a couple of sports ones I do remember. Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Glasgow Celtic in the Scottish Football Cup. It was a big shock and upset. The head line was along the lines of:
SuperCallieGoBallisticCelticAreAttrocious
You need to know Mary Poppins to appreciate that one.
Another sport headline was a local one about Norwich City in 1959. You have to have some background to get this one. Norwich were up against the mighty Manchester United in the FA Cup and were given little chance of winning. At the time Manchester had many top class young players and were named the Busby Babes after their manager Matt Busby. Norwich had a striker who in those days would have been called a centre forward named Terry Bly. Bly scored two goals and Norwich won 2-1. The headline was
Bly Bly Babes
One of the most famous headlines became famous because of a misspelling. It came out as Queen Victoria Pisses Over Bridge rather than Passes.
I wish I could write witty headlines but I can't and I guess it's a skill it's too late for me to learn now.
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Our Prime Minister is still trying to put a positive spin on getting destroyed in two by elections. I for one wish that just for once he would be truthful and admit that the Tory party are in a mess. It would get him a lot more respect than what he is doing/saying.
I can only liken what he's doing at the moment to a football manager who has just lost 8-0 and telling the Media that he thought his side were the better one and were unlucky to lose.
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I finally listened to a couple of podcasts and almost listened to them all the way through. In fact I managed to do all 16 minutes of a podcast on Bob Dylan going electric.
I have a love hate relationship with Dylan and have to say I prefer his material covered by others. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival Dylan was accused of "selling out" his folk roots by going electric. But I have something to thank him for. On one song he practically invented the genre of folk rock. And if I was pushed to name three genres I really enjoy they would be singer-songwriter, prog rock and folk rock.
The other podcasts I have found features historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. I am impressed by how these two are so knowledgeable about so many history subjects and can produce an hour's podcast every week. There's only 350 episodes to catch up on.
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As you know I collect stupid answers from TV quiz shows. Things like.
Q: Who was American President when the Berlin wall fell?
A: Abraham Lincoln.
Just wrong by about 100 years.
The latest was on Tenable and was about non answers rather than answers. The basis of Tenable is answering a pyramid with 10 questions. This young lady had to give the playwrights for 10 pretty well known plays. She got the whole lot wrong. And what did this person do for a living? She was front of house in a theatre.
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I was delighted to receive a comment from bloggette Lisa to say how much she enjoyed my mentioning all my various book projects and I thought I was boring you all by continually waffling on about them.
So I thought I would give you an update as so far nothing has been published but I'm still sure it will be. I just need the time to go through to edit them. So here goes.
Hell in Paradise - This is our main thrust at the moment. Our Le Paradis Massacre Commemoration Group is very involved in this. The book is currently being proof read by a professional proof reader who is kindly giving her services free of charge as she is a descendant of one of the soldiers who died in the massacre. Once we have the proofs back and have made the alterations we have a chapter to re- write and a small additional piece to insert and then we will be ready to rumble. We are still hoping to have everything sorted out by Christmas.
A Charmed Life - My autobiography of a pretty average life. This is complete but needs some serious editing and sorting out towards the end. Probably a project for the New Year to be self published, probably on Amazon.
My Blogs - As yet untitled. The first year of my blogs covering lockdown's first year. Again these need editing a month at a time as they are rather too long and I need to get rid of erroneous passages. To date I've edited the first of the 12 months. So quite some way to go. Again I intend self publishing.
My Seaside Novel - as yet this is still awaiting a title. I mentioned before that I thought this was lost but came across it when looking through an old portable drive. This is a piece of piffle running to 70,000 words about a young reporter in the 1970s working in a seaside town and loosely based on my time in Lowestoft in Suffolk. Again I've started the editing process and may be re- writing sections before self publishing.
500 Words - This book is very much in its infancy. I am setting out to produce numerous short stories/pieces of exactly 500 words in length. I'm going to need about 100 of these to constitute a book. At present I have just three written and am awaiting inspiration. Watch this space.
I also have a few other bits and pieces of writing swirling around inside my head. There are vignettes which are interesting historical snippets from where I live and I'm also collecting information on our parish church. I have been concerned for some time about the lack of information available to visitors and researchers in the church. A number of years ago I was given a full history of the graveyard with photographs by a colleague at the Norfolk Family History Society. I then indexed these into a spreadsheet. These need to be updated and perhaps published in some format.
Then of course there is the monthly Hethersett Herald e magazine, the monthly Good News magazine and my daily blog. Busy days indeed.
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Yesterday the death was announced of Bobby Charlton. It made it a sad day and in tomorrow's blog I will give my memories of a great man who I once met.