Funny Stories (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Boreades]

Apparently there is cross party consensus that medicinal marijuana should be allowed for the purpose of relieving arthritis pain.

There is joint support for joint support for joint support.

[Brian Ambrose]

😆
I’d definitely join.

[Mick Harper]

I have always regarded joints as the most dangerous of drugs. This is because

(a) a joint is really a cigarette with add-ons
(b) often smoked by people who 'don't smoke' for whatever reason but hence
(c) become inadvertently addicted to tobacco, while at the same time
(d) habitually ingesting the add-ons and thus in great danger of
(e) developing the serious psychiatric conditions associated with the long-term habitual use of marijuana.

Whether the long-term use of it for medicinal reasons has the same effect, I don't know. But I would be nervous if it was me or mine. If it is true

[Mick Harper]

Just because I am recycling stories from Medium to the AEL does not mean I can't recycle the stories I recycled to Medium from here in the first place.
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Mick vs the Dorsetshire Cabmen January 18, 2024

Like all ex-members of the shabby-genteel lower middle class, I’ve never really got used to taxis. I can just about manage sitting perched on the edge of my seat in the back of a London black cab watching the meter like a hawk and wondering if he takes Rolexes. I don’t mind that, he’s one of our own.

Out in the sticks, it’s another matter. For a start, you might not believe this, but there’s no ‘back of the cab’ for you, matey. You sit right up front, expected to discuss the price of mangel-wurzels or whatever.

Not me, bub, I always dictated the agenda when, a bit ago, circumstances obliged me to take regular lengthy taxi rides between Point A and Point B. Somewhere not just outside the M25 but somewhere they don’t have motorways at all.

Naturally, with a London swell in their cabs there was no chance of twenty minutes companionable silence. The churls have a need to demonstrate that Jack is as good as his master.

Cabbie 1: Down from London?
Mick: I am as a matter of fact. How about you, where are you from?
Cabbie: Portugal.
Mick: Anywhere interesting in Portugal?
Cabbie: Lisbon.
Mick: Oh.
Cabbie: A village just outside Lisbon actually, called Cintra.
Mick: Where the Treaty of Cintra was signed.
Cabbie: Oh, you know about the Treaty.

It’s just so effortless.

Cabbie 2: Down for the opening ceremony?
Mick: Yes, my mother’s being presented to the Queen.
Cabbie: OAP is she? They generally bus a few in from the care home.
Mick: I really couldn’t say.
Cabbie: Met the Queen twice myself. Prince Phillip three …no … four times. Never Prince Charles for some reason. Royal protection squad.

Royal fantasist more like.

Mick: First time I’ve ever been in a hybrid.
Cabbie 3: Well, it’s the second time you’ve been in this one.
Mick: Golly, one would never know.
Cabbie: Second time you’ve mentioned about it being a hybrid.

He got quite a small tip.

Mick: Your controller was a bit weird when I rang.
Cabbie 4: Tell me about it.
Mick: She thought Shepstone Manor was a village. Then she asked me for the postcode. How would I know the postcode? What a dummy.
Cabbie: She’s not from round here. Comes up from Weymouth every day.
Mick: Why would anyone use a taxi controller who’s not local?
Cabbie: I bring her, she’s my wife.

Medium to large tip.

Cabbie 5: (Yawn)
Mick: I’m not boring you, am I?
Cabbie: Sorry, did a Brighton wait-and-return last night. Didn’t get a lot of kip.
Mick: Ah, Brighton. Used to live there. Sally Thomsett was a good friend of mine.
Cabbie: Not familiar with the name.
Mick: In the Railway Children.
Cabbie: Martin Clunes fills up at the garage I use. We often have a natter.
Mick: Not familiar with the name.

He didn’t know where to look.

Next time: On the buses!

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

In the interests of strict accuracy, Sally Thomsett played at my blackjack table at Sergeant Yorke's Casino in Brighton for twenty minutes.

[Mick Harper]

As promised. More vignettes pirated from the AEL
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On The Buses With M J Harper January 24, 2024

My local bus stop has a visual display showing when the next bus is due. Being a recluse, I don’t have much occasion to use the bus but the other day I had to trek off to Argos to get my sodastream canisters changed. I was pleased to see the display read ‘1 min’. Several minutes later it was still showing ‘1 min’. We were getting fidgety.

Mick (to bus queue): The longest minute in human history.
Bus queue: (No response)
Mick: It’s positively Einsteinian.
Man in queue: Do you know what a plank is?

Nobody calls me a plank and lives to tell the tale but I realised what he was alluding to just in time.

Mick: You mean Max?
Man in queue: Of course I mean Max. Do you know what a planck is?
Mick: Um, I used to know….
Man in queue: It’s ten to the power of minus forty-three part of a second.

That’s the trouble with Notting Hill, too many theoretical physicists. They lower the tone.

— — — — — — —

I had my Freedom Pass nicked the other day (that’s the one that gives you free travel anywhere in London) and I knew I wouldn’t be getting a replacement for several days. Needing to travel by bus I resigned myself to paying the fare. I wasn’t sure how to do this — they’re always changing the regulations — so, as they say, I phoned a friend.

“Fucked if I know,” he said, “I always use my Freedom Pass.”
“Oh well, can’t be helped, “ I said.
“I’m pretty sure you can’t pay on the bus though,” he said.
“So what do I do?”
“Fucked if I know,” he said.

— — — — — — —

When the first horse-omnibuses were introduced to London in the 1830’s it was found that people would pay the driver to sit next to him. Passengers might even pay extra if he allowed them to actually take the reins. This was so widespread a practice drivers’ pay was reduced to reflect these extra earnings.

A correspondent writes in: I know a Luton taxi driver who once got away with kipping in the back while the fare drove himself home to Norfolk.

— — — — — — —

For the first hundred years, there were no bus stops in London. You just hailed the bus as it approached wherever you happened to be. When bus stops were finally introduced they came in two sorts: ordinary (white, bus always stops) and request (red, it will stop if you indicate). These latter were very useful because it meant, if nobody wanted it, the bus could speed merrily past without stopping.

Except when you were on the bus, you wanted to get off and you didn’t know whether your destination bus-stop was red or white. If it proved to be red and you hadn’t pressed the bell, the bus would speed merrily past your stop, deaf to cries of “Oy, mush, I wanted to get off.”
“Sorry, can’t stop now, only at designated bus stops.”
“Oh, please, I’ve got this war wound etc etc.”
“More than my job’s worth etc etc.”

[Mick Harper]

This was Justice Cocklecarrot's debut on Medium. With 'soccer' you have to tread a fine line playing to the ignorant American gallery while not alienating your core British audience.
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Does Schrödinger’s Cat Play Dice? January 28, 2024
Strange goings-on at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium

An important aspect of theoretical physics was on view at the Spurs vs Manchester City cup-tie. A City shot was only partially saved by the Spurs ’keeper and the ball was trickling over the line when Oscar Bobb, the new City striking sensation from Norway, helped it on its way by smashing the ball into the back of the net.

One-nil to the Sky Blues all day long? No. VAR showed conclusively that Bobb’s big toe was ahead of the last Spurs defender’s big toe when the original shot was struck, so the ‘goal’ was ruled out for offside. But what if Bobb had merely ‘accompanied’ the ball over the line without touching it?

This question has got the halls of science echoing to the sounds of frenzied debate. Most agreed with the laws of football:

[Mick Harper]

I continued fileting the AEL for funny stuff since by this time in my Medium career I was putting up two stories a day--a serious one and a non-serious one--and it's God's teeth hard thinking up non-serious ones.
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The Live Theatre: Is It Dead? January 28, 2024
Some snippets from recent times

Laurence Olivier is playing his epochal Richard III at the Old Vic and long queues form outside. A busker spots a good opportunity and starts performing rather bad Shakespearean set pieces for the benefit of people waiting for the next house. Slipping out for a break, Olivier catches sight of him, watches slack-jawed, then strides up to the man.

“How much do you make?”
“You’re not from the Revenue, are you?”
“No, no, I work inside.”
“Well, depends. In a good week, could be fifty quid.”

Olivier walks away pensively. He was making twenty-five.

— — — — — — — —

I was at a do the other week, making myself agreeable. I’m rather good at networking when I can be bothered. I spotted an erstwhile chum, a not-terribly-successful Jewish actor.

“I was reminded of you the other night.”
“Oh yes, why was that then?”
“I was watching Sid Tafler in Pinter’s Birthday Party. I realised neither of you can play anything other than Jewish gangsters.”
“His son said exactly the same thing to me.”

I’m pretty sure he was making it up but you can never tell with these Jewish gangster types.

— — — — — — — — —

[Mick Harper]

This is weird one. Faux advice to psychotherapists treating celebrity clients. As a psychotherapist said to me, "All our patients are celebrities. Don't you think you are?"
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The Kelce Swifts are through to the Super Bowl Jan 29, 2024
Advice for my British psychiatric colleagues treating celebrity clients

No, the Kelce Swifts are not a college football team. American university sportspersons are amateurs so play for sugar bowls and fruit bowls. The billions of dollars they generate go entirely to university administrators. The players, I understand, do not even get to keep the sugar bowls.

The Kelce Swifts I am referring to are a professional couple: a Mr Travis Kelce, who played a starring role in the Kansas City Chiefs’ defeat of the Baltimore Ravens (you can look them up) and a Ms Taylor Swift, who my children tell me is a popular singer.

To all outward appearances they are ‘sweet on one another’ though my children assure me this is, in reality, a cynical political manoeuvre by the Biden administration because all singers in America, apart from country-and-western ones, vote Democrat and all sportsmen, except black ones, are Republicans. I couldn’t entirely follow their reasoning but I offer it to you for what it is worth.

It is easy to assume that Travis Kelce has ‘got it all’ — a beautiful and famous girlfriend and a place in his country’s most eminent sporting event — but let us never forget the immortal words of the bellboy wheeling a trolley into George Best’s Savoy suite. He found the controversial retired soccer ace in bed sipping champagne with the recently crowned Miss World and said, “Where did it all go wrong, George?”

Where indeed. If they are seeking our professional help, something must have. Of course, as celebrity psychiatrists, we are all familiar with retired sports stars being on our couches. Great success often goes hand in hand with the ability to pay our fees.

The most frequent complaint we hear is that nothing in their present lives compares to the excitement of their playing days. Though as an American colleague remarked to me at a recent conference being held on the subject, what he most looks forward to is saying, “Same time next week, Mr Brady.”

We were listening to a paper outlining the various palliatives we might recommend to our clients — coaching, commentating, giving inspiring talks to businessmen — anything for which ex-sportsmen are not remotely qualified but for which nobody else is either.

The greatest applause though was given to a suggestion from the floor. “I find, more often than not, what they really need is reassurance that sitting around all day is absolutely fine. It’s what most men like to do given half a chance. Let’s face it, it’s what we do.”

But further, more intense, analysis often reveals it is the unsuitability of the ‘significant other’ acquired during their salad days that ails ex-sports stars most. In cases like the Kelce-Swift’s, having helpmeets with equally stellar but possibly longer-lasting careers generally solves itself in a relatively short time frame.

‘Irreconcilable differences’ is what it will say on the paperwork if they have a good lawyer. A better lawyer than hers anyway. However, my advice as a practitioner is always the same: “Find yourself a good old-fashioned gold digger.”

[Mick Harper]

Being a recluse is not conducive to slice-of-life stories but it does mean you have to be exceptionally ingenious as to what qualifies as 'of wider interest'. Re-reading it now this is pretty weird but has the bones of a 'why everyman needs a wife/mother' story.
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My Bath Robe* Adventures February 20, 2024
* Is there a difference between a bath robe and a dressing gown or is it a male/female thing?

Getting out of the bath — yes, it was the 17th of the month — I realised the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world was one of those fancy white towelling dressing gowns like the one British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd sported after an early morning swim during a G7 conference in, I suppose it would be, the nineteen-nineties though it is seared so much in our memories it seems like only yesterday.

The reason for my yearning was I’ve had this rubbishy thing for as long as I can remember (it must be at least the nineteen-nineties) and never in all that time have I ever arrived at a

[Mick Harper]

If you thought dressing gowns had a short shelf life when it comes to spinning out comedy lines, here's the laughs you can dredge from a toaster
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A Darker Shade of Pale February 22, 2024
German manufacturing prowess and British mass marketing design.
Is it a fit that can take on the world?

I expect, like me, you mainly live on toast. Not things on toast. Good grief, you might as well go the whole hog and cook a meal. No, it’s a straight choice between buttered hot toast and buttered cold toast. Don’t lecture me on the perils of leaving toast to cool down with the intention of slathering on Anchor Spreadable later, promptly forgetting all about it and eventually finding it’s only fit for faux croutons in your packet soup.

[Mick Harper]

Does this count? Not sure but I laughed at the time. I find it difficult to believe re-reading it now but the greasy pole joke was either unintended or insufficiently signalled.
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Fashion Tips from the Oval Office February 29, 2024

[Mick Harper]

Another slice of the writer's life
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Who was Sir Walter Mildmay? March 4, 2024

As one of Britain’s leading thinkers I have naturally been awarded a grace and favour apartment in one of London’s more fashionable areas. And don’t think for one moment I’m not grateful. If I have to occasionally bite the hand that feeds, that is only one of the many duties of a national heavyweight.

The people charged with meeting my accommodatory needs send me emails about things that seem important to them. I tend to give these short shrift but two caught my attention recently and, since they pertain to les choses Medium, I thought I would bring them to yours.

The first email cleared up the origin of Mildmay as in ‘the Mildmay Line’, one of London’s newly christened minor railways I was telling you about a few days ago. I’m never afraid to be populist. This is what I was vouchsafed verbatim:

[Mick Harper]

You will be able to tell how difficult it is coming up with topics from this one.
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Everyone’s a Fruit and Nutcase March 4, 2024
You’ve bought a pack of this new Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
Fruitier Nuttier Orange Trail Mix in a moment of devilry

* You have worked out how to open it
* You have poured out a proportion onto your desk
* You have looked with some puzzlement at what on earth an assortment of nuts and chocolate buttons is doing on your desk
* You have looked inside the bag to see what’s happened to the orange bits you were promised
* You have wolfed down the chocolate buttons
* You have chewed the nuts dutifully.
* So far so good.