Ducking it out

At our local Water Bird Sanctuary As Long As They're Not Seagulls Centre, I made a startling discovery.

I found a Higgs boson under a rock!

Ha. No I didn't. I was messin' with ya. That would be silly. Bosons are found on merchant ships, obviously. I don't know why Higgs needs his own though. I didn't even know he was a merchant seaman.

No, the discovery I made was of a filmographic nature, involving a piece of British cinematic history.

I discovered that the terrorifying electromagnetic pulse weapon thingy in Bond James Bond's Goldeneye was named after a duck!

It's true, look:

It's a duck. With a goldeneye, golden, goldeneye,
with a goldeneye, goldeneye.

Now it turns out, you don't need much of an imagination to think up names for your weapons of imaginative destruction and your evil villains. You just need to visit a duck zoo. See:

Signs; good or bad? I'm on the fence.

 
"Mr Bond, I've been expecting you! I am General Smew, and this is my henchmutant. Get him Canvasback!"

There's tonnes of others.

"Widgeon, bring our guest a martini."
"Activate the groin laser, Pintail!"
"Hit him with a spade, Shoveler!"

 This post was brought to you by a man having photos on his phone and needing to do something with them.

Bucket o' pies

Putting things in a bucket is a sound sales technique, obviously. Fried chicken, mussels, bolts, dinosaurs, worms, raw black pudding and, at last, pies!

This could easily  develop into  a rant on packaging, or wasting resources, or convenience foods, or obesity, or . . . are those pasties two for 99p there

The real reason I'm posting this is because I was testing Flickr out yesterday and sent it to my blog, whereupon it doesn't just save it as a draft but publishes it in all it's unprepared glory. I haven't yet worked out how to stop it doing that what with having the computer savvy of a dugong so I just ended up removing it. 

Then I get comments hassling me about the bucket o' pies post that was only up for a few minutes and telling me to get on with it.

I'm looking at you Pearl.

Also, although I'm currently up to my earballs with domestic and employemental drudgery at the moment, I  couldn't let the beginning of June arrive without at least the semblance of a post, so what better way to celebrate Summer than showing a picture of a bucket? With pies in it.

Right, I'm off to see if I can find a bucket full of diversions for the kids.

Hi kids, I'm Mr Shiny Face!

It seems like a geological Ian since I last wrote a blog post. An epoch. An age. A bit of a while.

Well, fifteen days.

That's a half a lifetime if you're a housefly.

I suppose keeping a blog must come second to ensuring my children don't do all that diseased starving they seem to go for with just the merest hint of a couple of months neglect.

Arguably.

The point is, I have less time to myself than Big Ben. It takes me about a month to read a paperback at the moment, and I have to pencil in visits to the toilet on the calendar.

The only telly I get to watch these days is children's TV, and like most parents I appear to have absorbed every song and dance routine via some sort of mental osmosis, where information goes from a strong concentration (television) to a very weak one (my brain).

There are certain things my kid likes which I don't actually mind watching as well, such as anything with computer generated trains in it, or Zingzillas which has the universally acknowledged winning combination of monkeys, coconuts and the occasional ukulele.

Then there's the stuff  I can't stand. This includes just about anything with the word "green" in the title, or that purports to campaign for the environment with monotonic children prancing woodenly around city parks telling you to recycle and not eat dog poo.

Also, old stuff that used to be stop motion animation but is now all CG. Lay-zee!

Yeah, I'm looking at you Noddy.

And finally there's the stuff I would probably watch instead of most adult telly programmes. Essentially, Timmy Time, which is ace.

I've also got to know who all the children's TV presenters are now. They invariably portray perky, smiley, intensely annoying caricatures designed to appeal to their target audience, and they do it well.

After a while, though, you start to see aspects of their real personalities shine through, like a thundercloud behind the sun.

Er . . .

Anyway, inaccurate meteorological similes notwithstanding, I used to think the hardest part of the job must be pretending to get all excited over the next episode of some hastily cobbled together art programme where a bloke tries to craft a crown out of twigs without making a four-year-old look like Jesus, when in reality you've just split up with your other half, have a tequila hangover and feel grumpier than a hippo with hemorrhoids.

Which, I have on good authority, is pretty bloody grumpy.

They still have to appear upbeat at a moments notice (TV presenters, not anally challenged hippos).

But then I remembered, parents do that all the time.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy"

"Yes son?"

"You know bananas?"

"Yes son?"

"They are yellow!"

"Fascinating son."

"And do you know something else about bananas?"

"What's that son?"

"They are yellow!"

"Fancy that."

So, presumably, anyone with a child could be a kids TV presenter. And why wouldn't you want to? It looks like great fun.

It'd be even better if you could do it partially drunk.

"Hi Kids! Know what time it is? Yay! Ooh." 

Shake head.Close eyes, then force them back open.

"See that . . . pretty colours, jus' there? No there . . ." 

Swipe at rainbow midges in front of face.

"S'nice, is that. S'ver' nice  . . . ver', ver' nice  . . . zzz . . ." 

Prod from director.

"WHOA! Greeeaaat! That's a lovely show, that is, that . . . er . . . " 

Squint at autocue.

"And now, it's time!" 

Nod sagely; scratch chin and then look at hand.

"Oh, for . . . er . . . cartoons yay!" 

Sit down on floor and stare at camera.

"Why can't I see them? Quentin! Why can't I see the cartoons?" 

Put hand to ear, listen intently.

"Oh, right. Sorry kids! My mistake. It's not cartoon time yet. Let's go over to my good friend Cokey the Clown! Yay! Look at his funny white nose!"


I'd watch it.