Chuff Chuff, Por Shame!

541 THC 05
W/E 28th August 2009
Chuff Chuff, Por Shame!

Five for One – You read, at most, five, then you send me one reply.
All replies to 5014mack@gmail.com or my facebook profile.
One-Line reply – Qualify, No reply - don’t fly.
THC – The Handkerchief Challenge – 52 flag hankys needed to complete it.
See www.thehandkerchiefchallenge.blogspot.com/ for details on the rules, under the post “The Challenge”

Let’s get things in order here first shall we? I didn’t put any props in last weeks’ 541. My apologies, so much good stuff there, like this:

“Time to name and shame Mr.Mack!
I'm hereby semi-officially banning the 541 THC (can't be a full ban if I'm reading them) until you reply to my earlier e-mail/letter and let me know if you ever received a package from me (sweater & a cd) sometime early this summer. If not Canada Post and the Royal Mail have made a serious mistake and earned themselves a lifelong enemy...that or you're addle minded and/or a lazy git. Which is it?

Basically the semi-ban means I will put no feelers out for snot-rags until I hear back from you...that and I'm switching to lager made by multi-national conglomerates, which will hurt me more than it hurts you, or however that saying goes.

Oh yeah and since I'm not responding to any 541 THC's, I also won't point out that hypermiling is also good for other car components such as brakes and shocks/struts as you are usually breaking at a lower speed and with less jarring than if you just jammed on the brakes from full speed after not paying attention to the traffic flow/situation around you.”

Wow eh? Such ire from one of the top repliers of the 541 501!
Justified I say. How dare I not reply to anyone’s email when I had been garnering 501 replies the year before, Right? Yes, exactly right!

But I need to explain something to all of you. I tend to spraff, I write on and on about this, that and anything that comes into my head. You might already be aware of this fact, some of you may just be reaching this conclusion. If I write to or reply to everyone I wanted to (bearing in mind the high spraff-factor) I would have to take it up full time. Consequently, if I’m not doing the 541 I am not writing to anyone.

I think it harkens back to writing to pen friends and trying to cram as much as I could on the two sheets and one envelope of airmail paper (so it cost the minimum amount). Same applies to postcards – “Having fun, wish you were here” sacrilege! A tree has been felled for this, make it count! Write the address first, put a box around it then the rest of the card is for writing, if the recipient has to take a stamp off to read your ramblings - all the better!

I know email is free (essentially, let’s not get into the cost of broadband, the electric etc.) but I think my brain has been wired by the frugality of latter years to spew forth as much blah blah blah, I’m boring myself here, ABORT!

Who knew hypermiling was good for the car too? Makes sense when you think abou ti though eh?

People are usually described as being half-full (optimistic) or half-empty (pessimistic), what if you are half-full, half of the time?

My sis Louise offered an explanation for why Julianna says nincompoop –
“we use the word "nincompoop" if that solves that mystery!
We stay at "Nincompoop farm" ..when [Special K] was small he wrongly re- named the camp site we were at ...Lincoln farm park.”
Alas the problem was solved by simply talking to my wife “It’s used in the book “Carmine , A little More Red” by Melissa Sweet (a re-working of Little Red Riding Hood).

I had to deliver beer to the Great Western Society this week. I rang the guy I was supposed to meet and he said he’d be outside the Didcot railway station with an orange hat on and, “you won’t miss me.”

I didn’t. He asked if I could help him lift the casks up the stairs and then offered to show me their operation. Sure do’s, I’m always interested in other peoples major passions in life. I have to admit one thing here – total ignorance. I kinda thought these guys who would turn up at the brewery periodically had an old steam train that they were trying to do up and get back on the tracks sorta thing. No siree! This is a major operation. If you don’t believe me check out their website:
http://www.didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/index.html

It was great talking to Steve he was a veritable library of knowledge (pertaining to trains) I tried to impress him with my rather scant knowledge of rail gauges (the width between the rails): “Didn’t Brunel have something to do with the current gauge used?”
“Well, actually the broad gauge was Brunel’s design but in 1892 the nation was standardised to narrow gauge”
He was brilliant, I tried to impress him with the fact that my Granddad worked for GWR (Great Western Railway) in Swindon. His eyes brightened and he said, awe suffusing his voice “The headquarters! What did he do?”
“He was the bank manager, I think”
His eyes glazed over and he changed subject to the shed that they had moved from…

Having walked a mile and seen everything including their bar which was a converted railway carriage (it couldn’t really be anything else now could it?) complete with a beer cellar where the toilet used to be, I thought I’d better be getting back. Steve asked if I wanted to go back to the entrance on Tornado, Britain’s newest steam locomotive. “I might be able to get you a ride on the foot-plate. I’ll ask Ace”
Did I ever! Alas I had to use the carriage and slum it like a 1940’s first class customer, but I wasn’t complaining.

Oh yeah, Andrew, In answer to your question, yes we got a package with a beautiful knitted jumper, a blanket and two cd’s One of which was “Snack Time” by the Barenaked Ladies. The latter saved my sanity, nursery rhymes cds were petarding me something chronic, but Julie loved this one and still I can turn to her at any time and say “EEEEEE” and she’ll say “Raser”. Thanks a lot mate, it was remiss of me to not thank you, in all honesty I thought I had so put me down for addled-minded.

William Stavely wrote the following:
“Lena should be able to help if she can find either a Belorussian flag or a Russian flag, but she tells me it is considered profoundly unpatriotic to use the flag to wipe one's nose.”
I never want to offend people but why does that make me want a Belorussian or Russian one even more?
He goes on:
“Since I don't do patriotism -it can all too easily become jingoism - I would not be affronted at the mis-use of an Australian flag.”
And yet that doesn’t make me want an Australian flag hanky less.

Isn’t it great when kids sleep in the arms up “yey!” position?

I was keeping an eye on the pressure in the brew room the other day and was sad to see leaves starting to blow into the main shutters. Autumn’s a coming.

No comments on the pigeon toe debate yet and yet you are all doing the “name these soap stars” or the “name the 1980’s band” facebook apps. This is far more important, inward or outward?

I keep hearing the term feedback loop and I’m not really sure what it is. If you ring someone and the conversation goes like this:
“Hey – up Mack, how are you?”
“Pretty good thanks Gary, how are you?”
“Yeah, great, how are you?”
Have you entered into a feedback loop there?

We went camping last weekend along with Silke, Andrew and their daughter who was celebrating her 3rd birthday. Silke organised a lovely, long treasure hunt for the girls (including loadsa gifts for Julianna to find too) it was marked out by little sawdust arrows pointing the way. Cool as.

Lindsay and Marsha have been putting in the hours on Project Mayem and are absolute stars.

Parp Parp! Welcome aboard Doris Hakkila

My Padawan has a truss now, I’ve seen it!

Texas yey or Texas nay?
Julie Zielaskiewicz reckons yey:
“As a former resident of the Lone Star State (ages 1 to 13 - you can still hear an accent when I'm tired, mad or talking about Texas), I think that it would absolutely be appropriate to include a handkerchief of Texas in your collection (plus it might be much easier to get).”

Cousin Cath says nay:
“Texas doesn’t count unless you want to add all the states, and provinces for us Canadians”
And adds:
“Hats off to your Sandwich fairy. Can I make flag handkerchiefs or do they have to be bought?”

Nowt in the rules about them not being home-made but they do have to be photographed in the country they are representing by the sender or a friend of the sender.

Hmm..interesting idea.

Reading festival is taking place this bank holiday weekend and Marsha got a compliment from a young festival-goer while shopping in Tesco’s “Are you going to the festival?” he asked.
“No, I’m here from the States to visit my daughter and grand-daughter”.

I couldn’t understand why there were so many security guards in the car-park of Tesco’s until I watched for a while and saw group upon group meeting aforementioned guards, having to empty their trolleys (shopping carts) of the numerous crates of beer held within and carry them by hand back to the site (this supermarket being one of the closest).

Dizzy Rascal?
Lisa Jean says the following:
“Your dizzy game reminds me of one I made up when wrangling a slew of 5-8 year-olds for a TV show I was PA-ing. It was called the Sleeping Game. Everyone had to lie around in a confined area and pretend to sleep. If I caught any of them not pretending to sleep, they had to sit quietly off to the side while we finished playing. Unbelievably, they begged me to play it every day for a week. Made me very popular with the production team.”

I’m sure we played a game like this at birthday parties, I had no idea I was getting duped!

52 still to go

Have a great week,

The Mack Daddy