CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

It's not as if it's the first time either.

Questions six to ten: who was responsible for the following quotes section.
Number nine: "Friends, Romans, Countrymen"

M J Harper: Mark Antony
Quizmaster: Nul points, Mick, it was William Shakespeare
Rest of family: Sorry, Mick. Quizmaster's decision is final. We've all got Shakespeare.
Rest of family (sotte voce): Isn't it great getting our own back for years of living in the shadow of one of the finest minds of our generation?

You're probably all wondering what Hatty was doing while these enormities were being perpetrated. Smirking, that's what Hatty was doing.

[Ishmael]

LOL! :-)

[Mick Harper]

I knew you'd take their side.

[Mick Harper]

Five Signs That Show That You Are Smarter Than Others
https://mathladyhazel.medium.com/five-signs-that-show-that-you-are-smarter-than-others-6f59fd4707e7

You are anxious.
Nup
You started reading from a very young age.
Nup
You are left-handed.
Nup
You took music classes as a child.
Nup
You are funny.
Toldya!

[Mick Harper]

I just had a dream that the rail lines coming out of Charing Cross were twin-tracked when I'm pretty sure they are in fact quadrupled. I can see it's all about my repressed homosexuality, but why now?

[Mick Harper]

Here is an appalling story and yet one that will prompt 'there but for the grace of God' feelings in some of us
https://medium.com/publishous/how-a-brilliant-floridian-savant-escaped-prison-seven-times-b09a3c6dc4f0

[Mick Harper]

These endless blue skies. You know what that means is just around the corner. Hosepipe bans.

[Mick Harper]

Amazon At It Again

I read this article from medium.com https://onezero.medium.com/the-airpod-connect-sound-is-beautiful-8283f16cc4ab and decided I could do with one. But I prolly won't (it will involve some technical step I am incapable of) so I only threw thirty pounds at the problem. An Aukey cheapo from Amazon rather a few hundred quid from Apple.

I know the ropes so I declined my free Prime membership every time they asked. Tuesday delivery is fine by me. I should have known better. I asked for Prime membership apparently so it's arriving today and now I can't go out to the shops because it will be in a package designed not to go through the letter box. And I will have to suffer bombardment by Prime all over again until they get bored with me.

Did I tell you that in my early days as a publisher I had to close a bank account because I couldn't close my Amazon account that was taking an appreciable sum out of it every month?

[Mick Harper]

This Week's Tip for the Elderly

Never combine your main shop with a trip to the library to get the two-volume Autobiography of Ulysses S Grant.

[Mick Harper]

This Month From Bol.com

An Illustrated History of the North Waziristan Militia €49.95
An Unreliable History of the Second World War €15.95

[Wile E. Coyote]

I see that my former friend Tony the Tiger, is going to become the face of Kellogs new woke cereal. Wiley put himself forward, but they went for Tony's artificially pumped up muscles and bright red scarf.

The Gay mafia is keeping us scrawny Coyotes out of a job. We are reduced to posting on AE.

[Mick Harper]

And we're with you all the way. All for one and one for all. United and indivisible. Down with modish cant and up with eternal verities.

PS Do you have Tony's email address, I need to contact him about another matter.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The same difficulty is being experienced in America according to CNN.
Item: someone wearing a yarmulke was beaten up by 'Arabs' in Times Square
Item: a Palestinian demo in Los Angeles starts throwing bottles and asking diners at an outdoor café, 'Who's Jewish here.'

This is not necessarily bad news. For decades Western Jews could take comfort in the existence of Israel and, if necessary, draw a veil over its foreign policy. Nowhere in the west did Jews need fear an Arab backlash (irrespective of what they had to fear from native antisemitism). But now, or at any rate increasingly, no western country lacks an Arab/Muslim population with the -- what's the word?-- chutzpah to have a go at local Jews.

If the trend continues there will be something of a shoe being placed on the other foot and it will be Western Jews with a vested interest in restraining Israeli expansionism, not just Palestinians. Perhaps, in time, they might arrange to have joint demonstrations.

[Mick Harper]

Oliver Gillie, a medical journalist with the Sunday Times and the Indie, has died, aged 83. I bring you the news because he used to be a regular poster here on the AEL. The second one, to my knowledge, after 'Alincthun', the French translator of THOBR, who used to post up here. Any others that I am not aware of should contact me through the usual channels.

Which reminds me, the extended family Zoom session was this week devoted to people's supernatural experiences. Although a jolly good time was had by all I have to say the recollections of, what?, five hundred aggregated years of experience was a bit thin. Coupla so-so Ouija Board manifestations, some sketchy dowsing experiments, the time Hatty saw a ghost only it was her husband returning with a glass of water. You know the sort of thing.

I thought it best not to tell them about the repeated anal probes aboard the Arcturan megacruiser on the grounds it was extra-terrestrial rather than supernatural.