A most unusual Valentine’s email…

February 14, 2011 in Comedy | No comments

I have just received this which Gmail caught in the Spam filter.  I’m not sure why!  Surely this is completely legit?  No?  Aah, never mind…

“Dear Friend

My name is Barr perkins George personal attorney to Alexander McQueen – Designer Fashion Label who died on the 11th day of Feb. 2010.I have the documents of a large amount of funds which he handed over to me before he died made you a beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Seven Million Great British Pounds (GBP ￡7,000.000.00) to you in the codicil and last testament to his WILL

Being a widely travelled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were recommended to him by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you good and his friend was a gay as well due to the fact that McQueen was a gay and claimed he realised his sexual orientation when he was six. He told his family when he was 18.

Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE (16 March 1969 ? 11 February 2010) was an English fashion designer known for his unconventional designs and shock tactics.[3] McQueen worked as the head designer at Givenchy for five years before founding the Alexander McQueen and McQ labels. McQueen’s dramatic designs, worn by celebrities including Rihanna, Björk and Lady Gaga, met with critical acclaim and earned him the British Designer of the Year
award four times.

Late Alexander McQueen died on the 11th day of February, 2010 at the age of 40 years, According to him this money was supposed to be used in transporting and getting the new store that was about to be opened in los angeles stocked with his recent designers

You can read more about him from the sites below

(1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_McQueen

Please if I reach you this time as I am hopeful, endeavour to get back to me as soon as possible to enable me conclude my job.

I hope to hear from you in no distant time.

Yours in Service,

P.George & Co. Solicitors”

Well, you have to admit, it’s got a more unique edge to it than most of them.  And, it being Valentine’s Day, I’m utterly stunned not to have received any Viagra offers.  Spammers you’ve let me down!

Mrs B

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Flight of the Conchords: Top Ten Songs: #10

February 14, 2011 in Comedy, Entertainment | No comments

Introduction and song description by David Brown

Mrs B and I first discovered Flight of the Conchords in late 2009 when my wife received a box set for Christmas. Entering 2010 we immediately indulged ourselves with the adventures of the New Zealand folk duo, Jemaine (Jemaine Clement) and Bret (Bret McKenzie), who are in New York trying to win an American audience after limited success back home i.e. the second most popular folk group in New Zealand. It took about two episodes but we were soon hooked and looking back now just over a year later it seemed an appropriate time to share our ten favourite Flight of the Conchords songs. If you’ve never seen the show you are in for a treat my friends.

Business Time

Business Time (Series 1 – Episode 5: Sally Returns)

The return of Sally (Rachel Blanchard) an ex-girlfriend of both Jemaine (Jemaine Clement) and Bret (Bret McKenzie) causes as many problems as it did when she made an appearance in the first episode. Sally decides to give things another try with Jemaine after they bump into each other at the Laundromat but he must move out of the apartment he shares with Bret if things are to work out. While watching his laundry spinning in the washing machine Jemaine drifts off into a fantasy about married life with Sally and the song “Business Time” begins.

Dave says

A typical male chauvinist depiction of married life with Sally doing all the chores while Jemaine gladly sits on the sofa. It’s Wednesday night which is the weekly making love night or business time as Jemaine calls it. The build up is amusing with brushing teeth considered foreplay while Sally sorting the recycling is not part of the process but still important. Despite Jemaine’s boasting about his sexual prowess he lasts a mere two minutes in bed, but reasons the experience is so intense you only need two minutes of it, not that Sally agrees! Bret also makes a welcome appearance in the song, hovering in the background playing the guitar.

Mrs B says

By Episode 5 of Series 1 I was utterly smitten with Bret and Jemaine as a team.  However, this is probably one of the earliest episodes where we see Jemaine’s “cheeky” side and it endeared me to him.  “Business time” suggests many things but not quite the romantic bedroom interlude Jemaine hopes for.  It is typical of these two that their fantasies are actually more like dreary realities! Alas, so often “Business time” is to be juggled around bills, work, sleep, family, shopping, cleaning and so on, so maybe that’s why it strikes a chord with me.  Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that when mundane hygiene preparations become foreplay, there’s something seriously wrong!

Top Ten so far:-

10) Business Time

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 David Brown

Originally published on World According to Dave on 8 February 2011

Reproduced with kind permission of David Brown

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Animals, essays, little sleep and something a little unexpected…

February 6, 2011 in Education | 2 comments

My blog and I parted company for a while. It took me a while to get through the login screen today. It obviously wasn’t very happy with my absence.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so neglectful!” I wailed. “Please…”

After dutifully explaining that – like most people on the planet – I have been doing battle with work, coursework, housework, illness, tiredness and learning to accept the fact that one cannot live on 4 hours sleep a night, I was allowed to return.

I am now several months into my Animal Management course and I sometimes feel like I am ‘Airboarding’ my way from one step of life to another. Everything moves so quickly. There are moments when I think I’ve never been so tired in my life. It’s balanced, though, by the fact that I’ve never felt so exhilarated either.

I fell into bed at 6.30 a.m. on Monday morning. An all night rave? A brilliant party? Nothing so glamorous. Instead a three thousand word Ecology report, complete with illustrations, maps and charts. Yet when I got up just two hours later to go to college – really, what was the point in going to bed?! – I felt lighthearted and happy. I felt like I’d achieved something. In fact, I had. It was tangible and proof of the hard work I’d done over the weekend. Perhaps I’d got a little carried away with all the research and writing but I felt a sense of pride. Tired pride but pride all the same.

There are many things I hoped for when I started this course but of all the things I’ve encountered and obtained so far, the most surprising is a sense of personal pride. I think it came as something of a shock to my Mum last year when I admitted that I had spent many years thinking she must be quite ashamed of how little I had made of my life. After talking to her, I realised it was not her shame: it was mine. I’ve done many things in my life and I’m sure some have made my parents proud (just as I’m sure some haven’t!) but nothing ever seemed to make me proud. I felt like a fraud and like I’d be found out at any moment.

Suddenly at 30, I’m doing something completely alien to me. I’m a complete amateur. I don’t have to be excellent or produce amazing work because I’m learning. And because of that, every time I produce something good, I can pat myself on the back, rather than breathing a sigh of relief that I’ve managed another day of (albeit self-perceived) mediocrity.

Nonetheless, it takes time to learn. It takes energy and effort and commitment. So if I stray from the blog or from Twitter for a while or even if I appear to be slowly becoming an unsociable hermit, bear with me. All these new things can be extremely overwhelming: not least of all, the sudden injection of self-belief!

Mrs B

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Complete the ‘Cats: character traits’ survey

November 25, 2010 in Cats | No comments

As part of my Animal Management studies I’m looking into both cat behaviour and people’s assumptions about cats/cat owners.  If you are a cat owner, it would be wonderful if you could complete this survey.  All information will be confidential and it only takes about five minutes.

www.surveygizmo.com/s3/420425/Cats-character-traits

Thank you so much for your time!

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And they call it puppy love…

October 25, 2010 in Animals, Cats, Pets | 1 comment

Razz is infatuated.  Bizarre as it may seem for a cat to have a case of puppy love, he does – and it’s a serious one.

As well as our four resident moggies we have a frequent visitor in the form of Judy, a 14 year old tortoiseshell and white.  She stays with us around four nights a week in a complex arrangement which involves setting up a room with food, water and a litter tray.  Why?  Because Judy loathes other cats.

That notwithstanding Razz has managed to develop a crush.  He has never seen her – or if he has it has been the most fleeting of glimpses – and she really is old enough to be his great great great grandmother.  In human terms it would be the equivalent of a 25 year old hoping to get it on with a 102 year old.

Every time Judy leaves he rubs himself wherever she has been and every time she arrives he rushes up the stairs in the hope of a meeting.  Since, however, Judy can be decidedly nasty when presented with another cat, we are not encouraging this romance.

Even so, it’s decidedly sweet seeing this first flush of forbidden love.  Perhaps love will overcome the epic obstacles in place?  But, given that Judy spends 23 out of 24 hours asleep these days, I think we can safely assume that this relationship will never venture past the platonic.  Heathcliff and Cathy they most certainly are not.

Mrs B

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A most loyal friend…

October 17, 2010 in Animals, Cats, Pets | 2 comments

I have been unwell for the past couple of months.  Nothing serious but enough to steer me away from my blog and tweeting for a bit.  I am on the mend now and I want to kickstart the blog again with a lovely cat tale.

As I said, I haven’t been too well of late and have enjoyed our cats being around for plenty of love and cuddles.  There’s nothing to cheer you up so much as a snuggle with a kitten or a purring cat on your lap.  However, the affectionate nature of our cat Razz and kittens Buggles and Charlie is something I’ve always enjoyed so it’s no great surprise that I could continue to rely on them.  What has been the biggest surprise is Kain.

Kain is a lovely cat but certainly the most independent of the four.  Though he enjoys a fuss, it’s always on his terms.  He’ll sit with you - not on you - to be petted, doesn’t particularly like being picked up and will look at you as though you’re slightly dotty if you try to play with him.  However, Kain also has a remarkably protective side which came to the fore recently.

Several times in the last few weeks, he has climbed onto my lap and snuggled against me.  On more than one occasion Mr B has come into the bedroom to find him either curled up next to me or sitting watching over me.  He was by my side much more than usual.  It was almost as if he knew I needed some extra love and support.

Now I have begun to improve, he is returning to his slightly aloof nature.  It is as though he knows his job is done and he can leave me and get on with his own life as normal.  Of course he still likes his evening strokes and a scratch behind the ears.  But a short visit at night is more likely now and I even noticed he left the bed as soon as I snuggled down to go to sleep the other day. 

For those who believe that cats are too independent to really care for us, all I can say is you only have to experience the care of a cat at the time when you need it most to realise that they can love us as much as we love them.  Cats can show remarkable loyalty and a remarkable intuition for when you may need their attention most.  There is a reason that cats become friends rather than pets over time.  It’s because, like a good friend, you don’t need to have them with you all the time but they’re always there when it counts.

Mrs B

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David Brown: Cat Observations #1

October 5, 2010 in Animals, Cats, Pets | No comments

Reposted with kind permission from www.elenchera.com/blog examining life with our four cats.

Cat Observations #1

In 2009 Mrs B and I adopted two brothers, Razz and Kain, from the RSPCA. It was my first experience of cat ownership having grown up either with a dog or goldfish in the house, the latter in a tank, of course, and not just in some innocuous location like the sofa or kitchen table. Since Razz and Kain joined the family we have also adopted two kittens, Buggles and Charlie, so you could say it’s quite full in our household now. Though Mrs B knew what to expect, having previously owned both dogs and cats, it has been a steep learning curve for me and my lessons are still not over. In this blog I want to share some of the weird and wonderful antics I have discovered in the feline world, which is much different to the kingdom of dogs where obedience is paramount. A cat’s motto seems to be, “I do what I please, so deal with it, you moron.”

Kain

Beware of Cats Bearing Gifts

At the moment Razz and Kain are the only cats that venture outdoors. Mrs B and I are very protective of young Buggles and Charlie, the latter who is extremely small. Despite never owning cats before I have heard tale of the outdoor ones that go hunting and bring their prey back to the house with them. My initial hope with our cats was that they would be disinclined to hunt. My hopes were not realised!

Razz and Kain, though brothers, are completely dissimilar when it comes to the great outdoors. Razz enjoys an outing but often comes back within an hour, preferring brief but regular stints. He’s clearly focussed on quantity rather than quality. Kain, on the other hand, can be gone for many hours at a time. In fact his only motivation in coming home is to snack on any leftover breakfast or in one instance to use the litter tray! Yes, despite fields and trees on our doorstep Kain decided such amenities were not up to his high standards and that only a litter tray would do.

Kain is an excellent hunter as we have sadly come to find. In the beginning he brought baby mice back to the house alive! On one memorable occasion he brought one back, managed to get upstairs to the bedroom where we struggled to separate him from the poor thing. Once Kain was out of the way it took Mrs B a very respectable two hours to catch the mouse and release it outside. Live catches have occurred at least three times that I can recall but the rest of the time Kain has killed the prey and left them on the doorstep.

It’s something of a ritual when Kain comes home. I tentatively open the door to see if he has anything and cautiously allow him inside. I then check the doorstep for any unwanted gifts and only then can I rest easy. Checking the doorstep is a must. I once went out one morning after the postman had been to find a dead mouse outside the door. I’m not sure what the postman must have thought. Hopefully he didn’t assume the same fate would befall him if he got too close to the house.

Whenever you tell friends, colleagues or family of Kain’s antics the response is always the same, “He’s bringing you a gift.” In the house Kain is the most distant of our four cats but on occasion he can also be the most tender. Delving briefly into the mind of a cat I can see that he is bringing gifts to the house for us and it’s a reflection of how much he loves us. However, I always find myself thinking why can’t he bring something more useful home? Instead of, “I’ve brought you a gift, it’s a dead mouse,” how about, “I’ve brought you a bottle of whisky, a box of chocolates for Mrs B or two tickets to Japan.” That last example is probably a bit much but why not whisky or chocolates? There’s a supermarket just down the road from us.

Mrs B and I have learned not to chastise Kain when he brings something home. Whatever mischief he gets up to on his hunts it’s important we let him know he’s appreciated. I don’t like to lie to him, you understand, but until he does bring a bottle of whisky back I don’t really have a choice!

David Brown

Original post @ www.elenchera.com/blog

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Not the stuff that dreams are made of…

September 8, 2010 in Dreams, Nightmares, recurring dreams, Sleep | No comments

For a while now I’ve been having this bizarre recurring dream.  The setting is often different and the circumstances of the dream vary but there are key factors that are present every time.

There are two snakes in the dream.  One is supposed to be a grass snake but is actually just a very tiny snake, about the length of those fake plastic ones you get in toy shops but bigger.  That one is loose in the house, which worries me but for the snake’s sake rather than my own.  I can’t see much of the house – I only ever recollect the living room (which is similar to a house from my childhood) and the bedroom (an unfamiliar ‘box room’).

The second snake is yellow and white and – from my limited snake knowledge – seems like a sort of python.  This lives in the box room in a tank.  I know it’s there and in the dream I think about the snake and clearly see it, the set up and the room but I don’t actually go in.  I can see my own imaginings. 

The final element of the dream is always the same.  At some point, whether I’m in the house or somewhere else, I always remember the python and that it hasn’t been fed for weeks.  I suddenly begin to fear for it and whether or not it will be dead.  Then I realise that I actually don’t want the snake anymore and a small part of me hopes it will have died but then I feel tremendous guilt at hoping it has starved to death.  Then I feel fear about going in to feed this snake that hasn’t eaten for weeks in case it attacks me.

Sometimes elements of the dream vary, such as what I am doing when I remember about the python.  In the most recent dream, I thought about my cats and feared that they would attack the ‘grass snake’ or that they would be attacked by the python.  This is a new adaptation to the dream.  In all cases, the dream (or at least my recollections) end before I know what happens next.

The dream is very odd, not least of all because I don’t own any snakes, nor have I ever had any desire to own them.  I can’t imagine ever forgetting to feed an animal for a day let alone weeks and I think I’d feel great worry, not relief, at the thought that it had died, even if it was unwanted.  I just have no idea where the dream has come from or what it means.

It’s completely off topic for this blog but it’s such a bizarre thing I had to share.  This isn’t the first recurring dream I’ve had and I doubt it will be the last but it’s probably the strangest!

Mrs B

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Goodbye to a mouse

September 7, 2010 in Animals, Cats, Pets | 1 comment

I love my cats but there are moments when they cause me great distress, albeit unwittingly.

Tonight it was our cat Kain – a born hunter – who presented me with a total quandary.  Normally he jumps onto the door handle when he wants to come in but tonight I could hear him crying outside.  This is very unusual so I was worried but as soon as I opened the door, I realised he was just crying to alert us that he couldn’t leap on the handle.  In fact, he couldn’t do anything as he was too preoccupied with guarding his prey, a poor little mouse.

My husband quickly ushered him inside and lifted the mouse up ready to set it free.  “Wait,” I said quietly, “It’s not going to live.”  He set it down on a towel under the light and we examined it more closely.  Our cat had managed to partially disembowel the poor thing and the wound was gaping and well beyond healing.  It was clear it was dying.  It could barely move and the breaths it took were shuddering and infrequent.

It was clear it wouldn’t survive a trip to the vets, even if there had have been anything they could do and it was also clear that it was going to suffer a slow agonising death.  It was determined to fight it to the end.  I took the painful decision to help things along.  As the mouse took two last shallow breaths and then stilled, I whispered ‘I’m sorry’.

I try to post lovely stories about my cats and the delightful, humorous or downright strange things they have done but there are times when sometimes things are just… sad.  I know it’s a natural instinct for cats and that he’s bringing a gift home but all the same it’s hard to feel anything but sadness for the end of the poor mouse’s life: by both the claws of Kain and the hands of myself.

But you can only ask yourself, could you have done anything differently?  You just don’t know…

Mrs B

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The Cunning of Cats

August 20, 2010 in Animals, Cats, Pets | 1 comment

As much as I adore my cats there are moments when they make me want to dig a huge hole, jump into it and hide in shame.  Recently we had a rare few nights away (our first stay away of longer than a night since we got any of the boys).  We had asked a neighbour to look after the cats and given the kittens the run of the upstairs and the big cats the run of the downstairs.  We also bagged up and labelled dry food in advance to make it easier to feed them (they all have different biscuits and amounts).  Knowing how resourceful the big cats are, I hid their food in a hard to open drawer.

On day three of the trip I received a text message from my neighbour:  “Where do you keep your spare food?  The big cats have been in the drawer and taken all their little bags out!”.  As unbelievable as it was, our resourceful boys had managed to a) open the drawer, b) remove the large bag containing all the small bags, c) tear their way into each of the small bags and d) eat everything.

Oh the shame.

Thankfully my neighbour found it funny.  Just as he found it funny when two of the cats figured out how to open a door and escaped when he entered the house on the final day before hiding under his car.  Just as he finds it funny whenever they manage to sneak into his house.  I, however, find myself experiencing a strange mix of pride and shame.  I’m thrilled to have clever cats but why can’t they use it for good rather than naughtiness!?  They could retrieve a cloth and give the place a quick dust or collect stray washing and deposit it in the laundry basket.  Instead, like many cats, they are driven by the desire for food and sleep. 

Oh well, each to his own.  All the same, it’s a sad day when you realise your cats can easily outwit you.

Mrs B

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