Free Kindle Download: The Houses On The Green

My friend Eileen Simkiss wrote a book about Fifties life in Ardwick, Manchester. 

For this weekend only it is available for free download to your Kindle.

Why not take advantage?

Her website: http://www.thehousesonthegreen.com/

Tilly’s Blog Jubilee: Day Three

 

Three Six Word Saturdays To Celebrate:

Today’s My Actual Blogaversary – Three Years!

Hope You’re Enjoying The Old Posts.

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I had great fun last year, tormenting the WordPress prompters who helped us to write a postaday2011.  Rather than show whole posts, I have selected some of my favourite responses.

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What non-exercise activity do you wish would keep you fit?

You all think I’m going to say ‘Eating Maltesers,’ don’t you? Guess again. And keep guessing until I hear something I like, then I’ll use that one.

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Describe the perfect crime.

Someone breaks into my house and cleans it.  If they steal the Hub’s crap, that’s a bonus.

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What’s the biggest lesson you learned so far this year?

WordPress prompters can’t grammar.

 

 

How do you decide who to be friends with?

What’s to decide? In TillyBudland, it’s friend until proven unfriend; I don’t see why I have to choose.  I have disliked very few people in my life, but even then I have been friendly to them. It’s just good manners.

Bonus: What defines the difference between a good friendship vs a close one?

The amount of gifts they bring me.

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If you started a music band, what would the name be?

WordPress & the Prompters.

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If you got a tattoo, what would it be?

News to me.

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Make a prediction about life in 2021.

I will be posting 105 times a day.  You have been warned.

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Describe your first job interview.

Boss: Your Mum says you’ll work hard; is she right?

Me: Yes.

Boss: Here’s your desk.

Who says nepotism’s a bad thing?

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What film have you seen more times than any other?

The Terminator. Sigh. The greatest romance ever.

What? We’ve had this argument before: he came across time for her. I rest my case. 

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Write a sequel to your favorite movie. 

Terminator 5: John Connor finally nails those buggers.

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What is your favorite way to procrastinate?

Let me think about that and get back to you.

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Do you like surprises?

Yes, and if anyone wants to throw me a surprise birthday party when I turn fifty, I promise to enjoy it.

[Not particularly funny; I threw it in as a hint]

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How do you know when it’s time to go?

I get a little damp patch around my lower-middle area.

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Why does corruption exist?

Because it works.

Can it be stopped?

Bung me a fiver and I’ll see what I can do.

What can bloggers do to help?

Lend you a fiver?

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Write about the one that got away.

I lost a Malteser in March 1997. I know this because I found it under my bed in 2006, alongside a copy of a letter typed in the same month. You’ve gotta love carbon dating.

 

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And finally, my all-time favourite response to one of the prompts:

WordPress Asked: Does Grammar Matter?

Does grammar matter?

Faints.

 

 

Joke 464

 

Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From my friend Michelle.

It is possible I have given you one of these before, so I have hidden it inside three others.

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A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says, “A beer please, and one for the road.”

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Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

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Two fish swim into a concrete wall.  One turns to the other and says, “Damn!”

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A man was killed last week while eating a bowl of muesli.  He was pulled in by a strong currant.

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Related articles

• 25 of the best Tommy Cooper gags, jokes and one liners (ethendras.wordpress.com)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting Moment

The instruction is to find a fleeting moment on the street.  This photo was taken during the 2006 World Cup but it could be from any football tournament (including the current European Cup): that fleeting moment every England fan thinks we really could win this time.

Tilly’s Blog Jubilee: Day Two

One of the reasons I love blogging is that it allows me to indulge my silly side.  Here are four posts from 2010; you get four because I couldn’t choose between them.

The Son’s Love post wasn’t, technically, my silliness; but I include it to show that it won’t die with me.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m not American but I reckon that if we can import Trick or Treat and McCardboards, it wouldn’t hurt to say what we’re thankful for on one day a year, like our friends across the pond.

Here’s my list:

1) My boys.

 

2) My loving husband.

3) Indoor plumbing (for obvious reasons)

4) Modern dentistry, otherwise I’d look like this:

5) Maltesers (Number 4 refers)

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A Joke For You

A friend of mine posted this joke on Facebook and he said I could share it with you. Be warned: it’s not to everyone’s taste; the Hub for one is going to read it and go ‘Huh?’ He doesn’t see the funny side of puns and nonsense and jokes that subvert expectations, but it had me laughing for an hour after I read it:

Last night I had a dream that I was eating a giant marshmallow. When I woke up this morning, there was a man stood at the side of my bed predicting the punchline.

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Never Misunderestimate A Son’s Love For His Mother

Tory Boy to me on the phone the other day:

Dr Who was right: some points in time are fixed. You are going to be one of those crazy cat ladies some day, aren’t you?

 

A proud moment and yet I’m dressed like a weird movie villain.

 

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At The Movies

 

Cover of The Time Traveler’s Wife

I’ve just watched The Time Traveler’s Wife. 

But he knew that.

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Related articles

• A Joke For You (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
• At The Movies (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
• Happy Thanksgiving  (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
• Never Misunderestimate A Son’s Love For His Mother  (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)

Joke 463

 

English: The Clown and the tightrope walker, Painter:Herbert Schondelmaier (my own painting) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From my friend Michelle.

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Two cannibals are eating a clown.  One says to the other, “Does this taste funny to you?”

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Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.

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I Support Armed Forces Day

British Armed Forces Day is on Saturday.  Not everyone is in favour of it.

The first memorial to the 55,573 airmen killed during Second World War bombing raids opened in Britain today.  I think it is wrong that it took sixty-seven years to honour their sacrifice.

The issue is contentious because of the numbers who died at the hands of Bomber Command, when we were fighting for our survival.  There are no easy answers; I know that.

I do not agree with everything we have been to war about, but I wholeheartedly support our troops and the difficult job they do.  I was therefore disgusted to read that two military personnel were refused service in Coventry because they were in uniform.  They were in uniform because they were on a break between the rehearsal and funeral of a colleague and brother.

My elder brother was in the British Army for twenty-two years.  I am proud of him.  My friend’s son is in the Army; he has done one tour so far of Afghanistan.  He brought home the bullet that had his name on it – it hit the tank he had been leaning against, just as he happened to bend down.

He is in Kenya at the moment, training.  For those who have nothing good to say about our squaddies, I’ll quote from his mother’s email to me:

One of his highlights he said was they went to an orphanage where they’ve had a broken tractor for several years so the children have been ploughing the field. It took them a day and a half to fix the tractor and another day and a half ploughing the field.

Talking of his bending down, when he went off to join the Army, his massive extended family went to the station to wave him off.  Many of them were crying; so, from the train, he pulled down his pants and mooned them.

And they gave this boy a gun! 

I think we’re in good hands.

Tilly’s Blog Jubilee: Day One

This is one of my earliest posts.  I love it because it’s daft but true – the Hub and I really did have this conversation.

And let’s be honest – if the Hub could manage a four-year break from my cooking, he’d take it.

Be warned: plot spoilers in this post.  But seriously – if you need a plot spoiler alert for this film, where have you been for the last twelve years?  On a desert island?

Cover of Cast Away (Widescreen Edition)

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I Blame Tom Hanks for My Bad Cooking

He got me into so much trouble once. I accused a friend of being a Romantic – Not A Good Thing – because she thought it was tragic that Helen Hunt was married when Tom Hanks came back in Cast Away, and she asked how could Helen not go to him?  I – ever the pragmatist – said that it was her duty to stay with the settled-for man, although I agreed it was tragic.

Being Romantic gives you carte blanche to say and do what you like and get away with it.  Whereas we Pragmatics have to cover our backs. Consider me a Pragmatic who ought to think things through: the Hub demanded to know why I won’t be returning to him after his heroic self-rescue from four years being castaway on a desert island. I was cooking a roast dinner at the time so only one part of my brain was functioning and I was left floundering in a sea of potato peelings. Between the roast potatoes and the mashed potatoes I recovered enough to bluster that Helen Hunt was married with a baby, to which he replied, ‘So are you!’  There was no answer to that, so it looks like I’m going back to the Hub.

Between the mashed potatoes and the sprouts it occurred to me that Helen Hunt is a floozy – a mere four years from misplacing the love of her life, she managed to get over him, meet a dentist, get married, and have a baby…. Hardly pining for poor old Tom, was she? 

I know dentists are highly prized commodities in American culture (look at all those dazzling teeth; and middle class female characters in American films are always either married to, about to be married to, or have been married to and recently divorced from, dentists) but she must have worked pretty fast, even for a typical middle class character in an American movie.

I was therefore able to reassure the Hub that I wouldn’t stay with our dentist because the Hub is the father of my children and, of course, the love of my life. Unless our dentist is very rich, of course.

I didn’t dare mention having other children by other dentists because that would have sent the Hub into a jealous frenzy and as dinner was almost ready I didn’t want to give him indigestion.

By the cauliflower & sprouts I was convinced I had brushed through the whole incident with my marriage shaky but intact, and the Hub gave me a reassuring CENSORED (my children read this; I don’t want them knowing their parents kiss each other) to confirm that that was so.

He says I have too much time on my hands because I don’t do enough cooking; but I’m just practicing for when he’s castaway for four years.

Joke 462

 

English: Bunch of tulip cultivars, by a florist, in Paris Français : Bouquet de tulipes horticoles, chez un fleuriste à Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From ajokeaday.com

A shop had moved to bigger premises, and one of the owner’s friends sent flowers for the occasion; but when the owner read the card with the flowers, it said, “Rest in Peace.”

The owner was rather upset and called the florist to complain.  After he had told the florist about the mistake, the florist said, “Sir, I’m really sorry but, rather than getting angry, you should imagine this: somewhere there is a funeral taking place today, and they have flowers with a note saying, “Congratulations on your new location.”

K Is For ‘Kidology’

Leather Vancouver (Photo credit: dejahthoris)

The latest in my A to Z of The Laughing Housewife sees a celebration: on June 30th it will be my third blogaversary!  The third anniversary has ancient (leather) and modern (glass/crystal) symbols; to make it easy for everyone, if you send me a set of glasses in leather holders, like those plastic cups at sports games that keep drinks hot or cold*, I’ll be happy.

*Flasks.

Being a fervent monarchist (yes, I would curtsey to the Queen) and because it’s a jubilee year, I decided to celebrate my blogaversary (leather slippers à la Cinderella will do) by copying QEII: four days off and a trip down memory lane.  There will be no original posts from tomorrow, for four days; just re-posts of my four favourite posts over the last three years*.

*The four posts I can remember writing.

Happy Blogaversary to me!
I get four days blog-free!
I’ll cheat all my readers
And they’ll all leave me…oh…

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A quiz for you: guess which part of this post is a bluff or deception.

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This is for you, Big Al:

kidology [kɪˈdɒlədʒɪ]

n

Brit informal the art or practice of bluffing or deception

[from kid² + ology]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

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I’ll settle for a leather glasses case, if you’re poor.

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Share this:

You should check this guy out.

Joke 461

 

English: from the Nuvola icon theme for KDE 3.x by David Vignoni (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From ajokeaday.com

One day, a Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Chemical Engineer and Computer Engineer were driving down the street in the same car. All of a sudden, the car broke down.

The Mechanical Engineer said, “I think a rod broke.”

The Chemical Engineer said, “The way it sputtered at the end, I don’t think it’s getting gas.”

The Electrical Engineer said, “I think there was a spark and something is wrong with the electrical system.”

They turned to the Computer Engineer to ask, “What do you think?”

The Computer Engineer said, “I think we should all get out and get back in.”

Shakespeare, Facebook & Spam

Spud taught me how to download pictures from Facebook!

Shakespeare does the Hokey-Cokey:

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A recent Facebook status written by Spud:

“The thing about quotes on the internet is that you cannot confirm their validity.” – Abraham Lincoln.

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The photographs of my poems from the Bolton Arts Trail post are too small for you to read.  If you are interested, I posted them on my poetry blog.

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And finally:

The name of a spammer in my spam box today – possibly my favourite piece of spam ever:

Home made penis extenders

My mind has never been so boggled. Roll out the chopsticks!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Create

Look at what the Hub and I created:

Isn’t he lovely?

Yes, just lovely.

Prom Night!

Joke 460

Thanks to Granny1947 for this one.

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Why men shouldn’t be Agony Aunts.

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Dear Phil,

I left home for work last week and after less than a mile my car stalled and wouldn’t start.  I walked back to my house and found my husband in bed with our 19 year old babysitter.  They announced that the affair had been going on for two years.

Can you help me? 

Signed, Desperate.

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Dear Desperate,

The most common cause of vehicles breaking down in the first mile is dirt in the fuel lines.

Hope this helps.

Phil.

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