bits

The Old Railway Line visit August 30 2026

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 10:54:34 +0000

Went to Railway line with Ian for breakfast this morning. We ordered. 'Railway Breakfast ', scorning the much cheaper 'early starter',
W.J George sausage, bacon, field mushroom, grilled tomato, saute potatoes or hash browns, beans.
When it arrived we noticed they had forgotten the eggs , which I might add came as standard. Neither of us felt like sending them back.
At the end as we assembled empty plates for collection I said to Ian, "At least let me write on this napkin 'You forgot the eggs you bastards!!'.
We laughed and left.
We like it there

Ron

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:04:20 +0000

Just remembering Ron, one of the people with 'learning difficulties ' Ann worked with. Ann loved him and I came to like him too over the years. Ron loved children and he would stand at his door watching the children go to school. Must have been very disturbing for a parent if they didn't know him and. that he could never harm them.

He is buried in that cemetery near Cradoc Close where he lived. I hope to go and see if I can find his grave and leave something there.

They used to go on holiday every year and a member of staff would go with them.

My favourite mental image of him is when on one of these jaunts he opened the door to his room, naked expecting the bathroom and accidentally locked himself out. He then wandered round the corridors of the hotel looking for help. A chance encounter with this 'evil' looking homunculus in the dingy corridors of a rambling hotel would have been horrific.

I liked Ron.

Mechanics

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:02:25 +0000

It is bewildering the pace of change.
Occasionally when seated in deep thought I have been startled by the sound of a runaway marble rolling down a metal tray. It turns out to be the last 4 or 5 feet of the toilet roll spontaneously making a last desperate run for freedom leaving the inner cardboard tube bare.
Several times I have tried with pencil and paper to work out the mechanics of this phenomenon, unsuccessfully.
Let me digress. When I was doing my degree with the OU one of the great memories is of the time when we all constructed our own mass spectrometers out of a razor blade, a small lens and the cardboard tube of a toilet roll. To see the spectral line of sodium with an instrument two thirds of which could be found in our bathroom really was a proper use of the word amazing.
Anyway this morning as I retracted the last couple of pieces of paper I suddenly saw that there was no cardboard tube !
My first thought was could I get another 24 rolls of toilet paper out of Morrisons for this obvious product defect. But then the sad truth dawned It was intentional.
It was part of the same process that causes chocolate bars to shrink.
This does not advance the cause of civilisation.

Recap on a day

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:06:45 +0000

So let's recap. Today I produced a smutty translation of a piece of graphiti found on a toilet door circa 1955 into french.

Had an argument with Daily Telegraph subscription department about a renewal which I had not authorised.

Continuing the scatological theme visited the pharmacy in Talgarth and brought back tablets and a large box of Laxido, which I always think deserves a chorus " raring to go, go, go".(like Texaco)

Watched an hour and a half lecture on Wittgenstein.

Posted a moan about broken Britain.

Noticed some small sign of life in our old cherry tree which I thought had died. Nevertheless resurrection is out of the question even though Easter approaches'

Now started on the wine.

C'est la vie.

The day is not yet over. I was speaking to my friend Krishna Bhatt the writer in Nepal on Messanger as I watched an elderly man assisted with two sticks slowly advance down the drive. When he got to the door and I opened it he said he wanted to give me a leaflet for the liberal democrats. I said "I am sorry but I am far right adjacent" . He said "Far right !!" not recognising the 'ajacent' reference, "You don't mean Reform do you!!?". I said "Yes Reform" . He said "Jesus Christ" and shuffled back up the drive faster than he came in

Pinkie

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:06:00 +0000

Speaking of the Raj , we had living in the village a widow called Marjorie Joy and her little black poodle called Flossie.
She often wore pink, Marjorie I mean. She and her husband had spent years in colonial service out east somewhere and I imagined them every evening in the English club at the bar. With Ann , much to Ann's annoyance I used to refer to her as 'Pinkie' partly because of her colour preference and partly I imagined her in the imaginary bar having a preferred tipple of 'pink gin'. "I say Pinkie steady on old girl, that's your fourth".

Mr Garforth and the Joke

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:51:11 +0000

In 1961 I started my first job at The London & Manchester in Finsbury Square in the non-marine department. It was there I met Ann. All of the files were in the basement, and kept in boxes. It was dark and dusty and was tended by one person Mr Garforth. He seemed very old at the time but could have been between 50 and 60. He had I think spent a lot of his life up until then working on the railways in India and although he wasn't indian there was something about the way he moved that seemed very indian. He was always chewing as if he were having having a problem with a set of false teeth. I also remember some of his address because the name intrigued me. It was Half Moon St . He was very excited because Deni his young friend was coming from India to live with him. I found that slightly odd at the time but couldnt say why and in any event I liked him. Anyway he told me this joke. I cant remember the exact words he used but remember the form and the punchline.

It was about some great white Bwana addressing a tribe in Africa about how he was bringing civilisation to the tribe. He told of the mighty railroad they would build. He promised them breakfast clubs and everything and after each statement he heard a mighty cheer and the tribe raised there spears and banged on their shields and shouted in unison "Umbala!, Umbala!"

He was over the moon at the reception his speech received and turned to his interpreter and said " That went down well - but what does umbala mean?"

The interpreter said "When you go back don't go through that field its full cowpats and you will be up to your neck in umbala"

He's Failing

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:43:50 +0000

Just had Morrisons delivery. Did not realise how weak I had become. The deliveryman was a girl in her early 20's and slight of build. I had ordered 6 bottles of wine and a load of frozen stuff.

She handed the tray over to me and it was all I could do to pretend casual competence as I nonchelantly strolled inside with it my poor thin little wrists threatening to snap at any moment. I think I made it although when I handed back the tray I fancied I glimpsed the faintest hint of contempt in her smile.

Modern Life

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:41:52 +0000

Modern life is bloody awful - nothing works, nobody does anything. businesses are unreachable , proliferating ai employees are retarded.

Police are social workers , the law itself is an ass. Kier Starmer is ahead of his time we are all rushing headline towards

this figuehead moron.

Solepstistical

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:39:00 +0000

I look at my hands. Notice nails are growing . Used to bite them. Stupid thing to have done . The novel pleasure I get from scratching and picking up small fallen objects like a toothpick or a valueless coin of the realm......
Still no news of Zonfeld. (Thought in the accent of Richard Burton)
Changed the name rather stupidly really if there actually is nothing outside.
But is there?

Teetering on the edge

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Ann's mother Olive loved that attraction in an amusement arcade where you roll pennies down a ramp and they build up close to a ledge until they provoke a fall and you collect your reward.

I am still here, the lead penny on a trembling bridge of pennies jutting out , by some fluke over the abyss. I don't really want to be. My mother and my grandmother died at 82 so that is something to look forward to.

I am obsessively recording the ons and the offs of the central heating system which I suspect is developing a malevolent intelligence.

Come the Spring I will get an engineer in to strong arm it into obeying me or face the consequences.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough...

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:42:00 +0000

Saturday 8th February and in my final year , I hope. I would like to see the sun though, but however warm the sun might be I don't really think it is going to work even briefly in bringing me back . I feel or sense that I am not going to have to do something , that the Earth will be hit by a passing asteroid or some moronic politician will press a button and do the same job. I don't care. This blog is like a derelict school on a 1960's London bomb site I once wandered through. There are bits here and there that might mean something but overall its abandoned , empty and waiting final destruction. 'Swarm over death'

Still here....

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:05:00 +0000

But down to my last Monkee. They started off with 4 and are down to 1. I think of them as a kind of alternative time scale to my life. I have returned to this fossil I have created to prod it in order to give it the appearance of life and maybe delay Google from expunging it entirely for a while longer.

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 08 Mar 2015 22:03:00 +0000

Attended wedding at Crag y Nos on Valentines day. Woke oppressively hot. Got up. Put on dismally dimmed bathroom lights not to wake Ann. Great sultry gloom descended on me. Felt I was in an M R James short story. Returned to bed. Laid down but started upright as I saw the shape of a great head like in the Munch painting but with no facial features. My spine really did tingle and this occurred 4 or 5 times before I got to sleep. just before thatI did I noticed the room was now cold.
I claim nothing for this encounter which may have been between me and a couple of bottles of red except that it was real.

Morris round about life number 3

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sat, 07 Mar 2015 20:03:00 +0000

I remember tales of Morris’s earlier lives and the one I liked was when Morris’s owner’s daughter was coming back on the school bus when she noticed their beloved pet mowed down in the gutter. Worse than that, those evil Gudsell boys, the ones who used the Church clock for target practice when their stupid parents thought fit to arm them with firearms, the ones that bent Anns Church warden pole with the brass cross on the top by throwing it about in Church and wrote obscene comments in the visitor’s register, those malevenant little sh..s were prodding the lifeless body of Morris with a stick like some dreadful re-enactment of Aslan’s torment. . The lifeless body was respectfully recovered in plastic bag and taken home by the girl and placed in the garage.
Later in the evening she returned to the garage and was like Lucy genuinely awestruck to meet Morris/Aslan nonchalently strolling back to the house for his evening meal.
Wrong big dead ginger cat.
That is why there are 4 cat graves at Morris’s house even though only three cats have ever lived there

Back but for how long?

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:50:00 +0000

I see it is 3 years since my last confession.
Well let me just start off back with the minimum of words.
Here is the cheese song from the recent twinning trip of Brecon to Gouesnou.

Ent

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:20:00 +0000

Spotted near Llangoed 11th november

Bird Shit

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Here is a picture of me today sitting on a beach in Tenby. Yesterday I was looking at some photographs taken by my facebook friend Vikash among which was was his picture of a piece of bird shit on a wall which he entitled 'Guano'.
Here on the beach in Tenby I am trying to work out how I might comment on this picture that is to say I am actually thinking about Guano. Would you believe it that 10 seconds later a large dollop of the stuff landed on trousers from a passing gull. Of course I immediately bought a lottery ticket.

Vive la France

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:17:00 +0000

Just had a visit from the Breton town with which Brecon is twinned and our guest told us the following.

“the lady Mayoress (she came with them) … ..her father he is ill and she tell them if anything happen to Papa put him in the cold room until the weekend.”

Oh the humanity..

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Today I left the house and crossed the road into the field opposite and began climbing up the side of a hill. For the next hour and twenty minutes I didn’t meet or see another human being . Here is a snap about 2/3rds up.

I remember in the sixties there was chap called Stan , who like the Rev Dr Donald Soper used to appear regularly at Tower Hill not far from the Tigers Head. Stan would loudly sing ‘Joy, Joy , my heart is full of Joy’ as if it really were and hand out Christian tracts to the unbelievers.
Not seeing another human for more than an hour gave me an inkling of old Stan’s ecstatic state. Last week on another walk I came across a house on the corner, in the village of ‘Three Cocks’. When I was 16 and came by bus from London to visit Ann you had to change buses at Cheltenham and finally get off at Three Cocks. The bus continued its long journey to Tenby. I was trying to find the right bus and asked one of the drivers wandering about the depot.. He called across to his mate “Hey Dai there’s a bloke here wants three cocks!” and no useful information was possible until they had both stopped laughing.
This house on the corner in Three Cocks had a skull and crossbones above the porch and written beneath it was ‘Go Away’ . Much better than a welcome mat I thought.

...and deflate

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:18:00 +0000

Once again I have slipped the surly bounds of obesity and am now well ensconced in the land of the ‘moderately overweight’ . Thus in the words of a group that may perhaps once have been known as ‘10 fluid ounces ‘
I'm not obese
So don’t forget it
It’s just a silly pie I am working through

www.insuranceage.com

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:49:00 +0000

From the Brokers Forum
Tue 13 Jan 2009 @ 19:33 I dont believe it... Post #1

Douglas Mcleod
Alan Johnston once said that I read more and more like Victor Meldrew - I fear he could be right.
This morning I went to get my eyes tested and by this afternoon I had received the following letter by email.

Dear Mr McLeod

Unfortunately, during the course of your recent appointment with me, I consider that the patient/practitioner relationship was irretrievably broken down and I felt unable to continue with that examination. Without mutual trust, it is impossible for me to fulfil my role as your optometrist.

Accordingly, therefore, I would suggest that it is in your best interests to seek your optometric care with another practitioner. I will be happy to forward copies of your records to any optometrist of your choice.

To which I replied Dear Mr Round,

Thanks for the advice to go to Specsavers. They were able to see me the same afternoon. This gave me time enough to upload my photograph to their website and try out 100’s of different frames. I was able to buy two pairs of varifocal spectacles for the price of one!!

Thanks again I would never have thought of them without you.

Nothing to do with insurance of course but its nearly Friday, well its Tuesday anyway and these days thats nearly Friday to me.

IP : Logged

Posts : 626 This author :

Wed 14 Jan 2009 @ 9:28 Re: I dont believe it... Post #2

alan johnston

Unfortunately, during the course of your recent appointment with me, I consider that the patient/practitioner relationship was irretrievably broken down and I felt unable to continue with that examination. Without mutual trust, it is impossible for me to fulfil my role as your optometrist.

i can only imagine the level of indignant abuse you must have dished out to be sacked as a customer of an optician.
domestic confusion leads douglas to seek new gregories:

...Probably the Best Insurance Broker in Hamilton.

IP : Logged | Edited: Wed 14 Jan 2009 @ 9:28

Posts : 754 This author :

Kent News

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:53:00 +0000

The Rev Canon James Tipp, 63, received the life-long ban after abandoning his wife and his Snodland parish in February 2008 to set up home with Elaine Northern, 54.

Northern was given a 12-year ban for her part in the scandal, which left the congregation at Christ Church stunned.

At a disciplinary hearing, Mr Tipp, who was also Rural Dean of Cobham, received the life ban because of his higher level of responsibility.

The father-of-two has hit out at the ban, citing the case of Rev Teresa Davies who was barred for just 12 years after holding church services while drunk and having sexual intercourse with strangers.

One can imagine the Reverend Davies after the service.
“so did you like the shervice service ?..shorry.. sorry about that little buishness , bishness, business with the wine – tell me are you just passing through?”

feets too big

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:13:00 +0000

The Wye at lunchtime today frozen over by the Horseshoe Bend. Today I was walking round Boughrood Brest to 'Heroes of British Jazz' and particularly liked Kenny Balls rendition of 'Your feets too big'. "....your pedal extremities are colossal, they always remind me of some old fossil"

...to all my readers

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:37:00 +0000

Une danseuse de tecktonik ultra-rapide

noreply@blogger.com (MacDuff) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:34:00 +0000