June 6th - June 12th 2005
Sunday Whose
Saturday Cherries
Friday Gearsticks
Thursday As it's painted
Wednesday Figures
Tuesday Jeanius
Monday Ninnyhammer
Sunday 12th June 2005
God only knows what on earth they call it in the year 200100 - but I know what it looks like to me.
Saturday 11th June 2005
Just back from a trip to Borough Market where - contemplating as I am the construction of The Ultimate Plain Cake (duck eggs, the peel from unwaxed lemons, sugar infused with Wild Black Madagascan vanilla) - I paid an outrageous amount of money for a small block of Beurre Echiré.
One thing I haven't mentioned is that an unfeasibly high proportion of the stallholders at Borough Market are... kinda hot, in a latin fashion.
The butter-man was no exception, so things perked up when, whilst I delved for money in my pockets, he dug into a small pot of something red and sticky with a small plastic spoon.
I watched with interest as the spoon moved towards my lips. Was he going to hand me the spoon or, swoon, personally feed me?
(In an upcoming episode of Will and Grace, Will finds himself taking cookery lessons next to a highly attractive man. HAM asks, "Would you mind if I fed you?"; Will replies, "Not if you don't mind me crying while you do it.")
Alerted, and possibly alarmed, by my visibly increased pulse rate, the butter-man flunked it, and simply handed me the spoon, murmuring as he did so, "Wild maraschino cherries, pitted and marinated in kirsch.."
Outstanding.
So I'm not sure who was more alarmed to hear myself mutter, as he handed me my change, and I nodded at his cherries: "You'd have to be naked really..."
Friday 10th June 2005
Hold the revolution: an Italian court has ruled that "It is clear that sexual preferences do not in any way influence a person's ability to drive motor cars safely."
Thursday 9th June 2005
Sterling survivor of the Imperial system of weights and measures that I am, I still have trouble visualising the weight of a kilo, inevitably falling back on the idea that it approximates to the weight of bag of sugar.
So 400kg might be imagined as a pile of sugar bags slightly over 2ft long on each side.
Why am I trying to visualise 400Kg, you ask. Because a story this week reveals that's the weight of the paint on a 747.
Wednesday 8th June 2005
Additional US aid for Africa announced yesterday: $674m
Disaster assistance following hurricanes in Florida: $5.2bn
US arms budget 2004: $455bn
Tuesday 7th June 2005
An entertaining half hour or so at work last night, attempting to come up with a witty headline for the story about scientists' discovery that a woman's ability to achieve orgasm appears to be genetically determined.
I wanted something like 'Mothers blamed for inability to..' until I realised that it might well be the father's genes that were responsible; my (all-male) colleagues spent quite a while playing around with 'Men! It's not your fault...' until I mentioned fish and bicycles.
Problem being, there aren't that many synonyms for orgasm that you can splash around in 24pt type in a family newspaper. I think we settled for some variant of 'Genes make the earth move' in the end.
But only after we'd reluctantly rejected Coming in your genes.
Monday 6th June 2005
I know what it means; I know what it ought to mean
Ninnyhammer: - Instrument designed for the rapid eradication of gross stupidity; see dumbstruck, see numbskull
......previous week
