Rispetto

Respect indeed. Great acting, interesting story, and our detectives right back on form.

There's a new Walk


Lots of our favourite expressions

















Bobby enjoying himself (and probably Vincent too)


A brief visit from The Python





The mountainous back to climb


A specially strengthened footstool to take our Huge Hero


The hands








The camp voice and laugh


Eames' amusement





The handcuff handshake


And the rough handling we'd all love to experience.

They are indeed back with a bang! And with the "doink-doinks"! With dates that are from just last week.

Causes for Celebration and Sadness

I hate to rejoice in someone's death, but it's difficult not to be very happy that Osama Bin Laden is dead. He should be happy, too - now he must be with all those virgins he encouraged others to commit suicide missions for.


His death did push the death of a much-loved son of Britain down the running order, however. Yesterday, Our 'Enry - heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper - also died, aged 76. He was a lovable character, always gentlemanly and full of cockney charm. The main obstacle to his becoming world champion was that his eyes (or more properly his eyebrows) used to bleed very easily, and many a fight he might otherwise have won was stopped because of it. He was British and European champion for many years. In 2000 he was knighted, thus becoming Sir Henry Cooper.



Henry's greatest achievement was using his famed left hook to floor Cassius Clay, before the young American boxer had become world champion and then changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

Henry had an identical twin brother, George, also a boxer, though less successful, who died almost exactly a year ago.

The Good Gambler

Unlike Donald Trump, Britain's most famous gambler and casino owner, John Aspinall, put his fortune into something really worthwhile. He bought a couple of country estates in Kent, in south east England, and dedicated them to the preservation of endangered species. He died in 2000, but his legacy lives on in the Aspinall Foundation, which owns and runs the two wild animal parks I regularly visit and post about, Howletts and Port Lympne. He is actually buried at Howletts.

I went on one of my jaunts there today.

They breed gorillas successfully and have reintroduced some into the wild on their huge reserve in gabon. I wonder if these two babies and playful youngster will ever return to the wild?



The North China leopard is severely endangered (I wonder what parts they like to use in their medicine?) They have a pair that have produced a couple of cubs, but they are all very shy and difficult to see.


They recently had a twin elephant birth, though sadly one died. I think this tiny creature under its mother's trunk must be the remaining twin.


I've never seen elephants crashed out like this before. They were on a slope, which must make it easier for them to get themselves up again.


The Sumatran tiger female couldn't run away with her food, as they'd tethered it. She looks big until...



...you see the Siberian male - Malchek is possibly the biggest tiger in the world.



Anyone fancy flossing his teeth for him?



I guess you can afford to be this relaxed when you are the top of the top predators.

Ruthless Rhyme

Tender-Heartedness

Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,

Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;

Now, although the rom grows chilly,

I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.

NOT the Pants Python

Unfortunately.

Prince Harry

Many people have him down as their favourite Prince, above his brother.

Others are sure he's the result of his mother's indiscretion with Captain James Hewitt.

Here's the good Captain:



Here's the naughty Prince:

Not much resemblance between him and the father whose name is on his birth certificate, is there? I know who my money's on.

Conspiracy Theory?

Or just plain racism?
(I know that my fellow V-vixens, and the man we adore, are not counted among those I am about to lampoon, so please accept my apologies in advance and don't be offended.)

This man, who can afford the best fake hair on the planet, settles for this:

And then he expects people to accept his racist rantings (carefully? disguised as patriotism) that Barack Obama was not born in the US.

But worse - apparently 25% of Americans think he's right!

Presumably they are part of the 50% of Americans who believe they have been abducted by aliens. The outer-space kind of alien. This would appear to be acceptable.

Whereas the kind of alien they are stupid - or racist - enough to believe their president to be is not acceptable.

America, you should know that the rest of the civilised world thinks you are barking. And tars decent, right-thinking Americans with the same brush.

Bath Time!

How to be wet all over instead of just...well, use your imagination!

A Hard Day's Night

Not Eight Days A Week, Music Wench, that was Alma Cogan. Though Peter Sellers did a few Beatles covers. But this is the best - in the style of Richard III.

Big Boy

Could I try to make that grow a bit more for you, sir?

Look what I found on YouTube

After watching a programme about George Martin, The Beatles' record producer, which included Peter Sellers' great cover of A Hard Day's Night, I was thinking about another cover, by the singer Alma Cogan, who released Eight Days A Week. She was huge in Britain in the 50s going into the 60s, dying at the age of just 34 of stomach cancer.

She features at the end of this clip, but the wonderful John Lennon is the main feature:

Huh?

Every week, when I do my "big shop" at the supermarket, I buy flowers in memory of my departed pets. This dates from the day after my first pussy cat loss, in 1991, when a neighbour bought me some flowers after my Biggles died.

This is the kind of sight that confronts me as I walk into whatever store I'm visiting - hordes of colourful blooms:

Today, almost the only thing left was a selection of half dead bunches dotted around some empty buckets. Where have all the flowers gone (long time passing...)?

Gone to street parties every one? I wonder. I don't know of any going on, perhaps there's just one really big one near this particular supermarket.

I managed to snag one decent bunch of yellow carnations tipped with dark red. Kitties and birdies will be remembered appropriately.

Meanwhile, does anyone out there have any plans to celebrate the royal nuptials? I'm sorry the only openly London-living V-blogger will be dsappointing the royalists among you by not going to central London and Westminster Abbey to record the event for the blog.

Or am I?...

Quick feel, anyone?

Or preferably a slow, leisurely one?

More Starkers Stranger

Which bit to salivate over? The shoulders, the chest, the shapely leg? The whole deal?

The Naked Stranger

More popular requests filled with a selection of pictures from Hotel Paradise. Today - the kiss mark we would all have loved to leave:

"There's no way we're getting D'Onofrio'd"

Just heard this line on Psych. They're working on the death of a soldier and the head of the military base told them there would be "consequences" to their conduct.

Gus thought he'd come back with soap wrapped in a towel, hence Shaun's comment.

Just thought I'd share the most interesting thing I've ever seen or heard in an episode of this lame programme (which I'm only watching 'cos there's absolutely nothing else on for me to lose concentration on while I'm on the computer!)

Taking the Plunge

Yes, folks, I finally succombed to the temptation of being able to wear two pairs of earrings at once. I have so many pairs, it's the only way to get to wear them all...eventually.

I was having my hair cut, and my eye lighted upon the pictures of studs for their piercing service. Mine is most like the second down on the left, but it is tiny.

This time, I took advantage of the staplegun method. My first ear piercings were a different matter.

Almost 40 years ago, one of the Junior Year Abroad students from Colorado University at my Alma Mater Lancaster University offered her services. Her first piercing experience had failed, and when the holes had healed, her mother asked her if she'd like her to do it. Su accepted.

A few weeks later, she found her mother in the bathroom, ashen-faced, with a needle stuck in her own earlobe. Su finished off for her, and so her ear piercing career began.

I bought some sleepers and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I marked the precise place on each lobe that I wanted the hole to be. Su sterilised the needle and the earrings with contact lens solution, numbed my lobes with ice cubes, then homed in with her needle.

I didn't feel a thing. I heard the crunching sound though. When she'd done the first, she asked me if I was going to faint for her, and despite my denials, the crunching ensured I did her bidding, and passed out. I came to with my ears duly pierced, and I never had a single bit of trouble.

Hope this method is as trouble-free.

Happy Birthday Eric

Tomorrow is Eric Bogosian's birthday, according to the Birthdays column in The Guardian newspaper.

I've emailed them suggesting that they include our Vincent on June 30th.

Ruthless Rhymes

In 1899, Harry Graham published his Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes. More Ruthless Rhymes didn't come along till 1930.

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a few of my favourites.

Quite Fun

My son Augustus, in the street, one day,

Was feeling quite exceptionally merry.

A stranger asked him:"Can you show me, pray,

The quickest way to Brompton Cemetery?"

"The quickest way? You bet I can!" said Gus,

And pushed the fellow underneath a bus.

*****

Whatever people say about my son,

He does enjoy his little bit of fun.

Last Guy

Come for mummy.

Foxed

This is a picture of the London building that's now officially the tallest in the capital. It's known as The Shard.

This is an artist's impression of what it will look like when it's finished - a real shard of glass, or so they think.

Back in February, there was a story all over the news about this little fellah, nicknamed Romeo, who'd taken up residence on the 72nd of the building's 80 floors. No one knows how he got there, but he was fed by the builders on their lunchtime sandwiches. After his rescue he was released on to the streets of south London with strict instructions to keep his paws on the ground from now on.

Guy 6

Oh where is that right hand going...

New Arrival

My cousin's son just became the proud father of a 6lb4oz baby girl, April Rose, born on Monday. My cousin was pretty sure she was never going to become a grandmother (not that she minded) because her son is nearly 40, and he and his wife live in different places - he in the New Forest, she in London. Neither is keen to move.

So, welcome to the first Anglo-Iranian member of our family. If baby grows up half as beautiful as her mother, she'll be a stunner.

Here's the slightest glimpse of baby's mother at a family wedding soon after she and her future husband met, talking to her future father-in-law.

Don't Worry

Thank you all for your kind words. Let me reassure you. I'm not thinking of giving up blogging altogether, maybe just taking a day or two off for other things.

Before I discovered Vincent, I spent every Sunday morning entering my family tree on the computer, from a 30-page book sent to me by a recently rediscovered cousin in Germany who'd researched it back to 1645.

That tree may be impossible to access because of upgrades of programmes and computers that have made it incompatible with everything I try. I have also made no use of online search facilities because I didn't think I'd have time to make full use of subscriptions, which are pricey.

What's more, my mother's side of the tree is still only back to about 1805. I really need to do some more work on it.

Those of you who knew me way back when will remember the break from blogging I took to go tp a family reunion with folks I'd discovered as a result of my research. In Canada. Family history really does pay off.

Dunking digits in Island Lake, Athabasca, Alberta with fellow family historian Dorothy.


With Dorothy and cousins John and Don outside cousin Linda's house on Island Lake.


With cousin John at his daughter Lisa's house outside Edmonton, Alberta.

Before starting my family tree, I had no idea most of the 117 people at the reunion existed. John was the exception, but I didn't know where he was. Cousin Don (an ex-cop and ex-PI) found him for us all.

The 5th Guy

Lost for words.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Well, statistics, anyway.

I've just been checking mine, and they are down to only about a fifth of what they used to be not so long ago.

I could do with some time to get back to my family tree, which has taken a back seat to my blog for several years, so if I start to post less in the near future, don't be surprised.

At least those who are reading this have remained faithful, not just to me, but to Vincent.

Guy the 4th

I need to recap this with bigger picture size.

Sad Reminiscing

My old school friend Lesley (centre in the picture) died in January 2009 of cervical cancer.

Our mutual friend, Jenny (on the left) has kept in close touch with Lesley's widower and her mother.

Jenny and I meet up a couple of times a year, and this time, Jenny suggested we go together to see Lesley's mum, Joy, who's now in her late 80s.

I bought my house from Lesley's parents, and sleep in the room which was her bedroom for over 20 years. It added an extra layer of poignancy to talk about the things that have changed, and the people who have gone away, or died, since she moved away in 1977, as well as sharing our memories of Lesley.

I'm so glad we went. I look forward to the next time.

Guy Number 3

Up close and naked. Lucky bitch.

Poser!

For those who haven't seen it at TheReel or Nantz's blog, here's our gracious hero being...gracious! Or stalked...

A Second Guy

Clothed, but looking sooooo sultry.

By popular request

It's time for Guy! Just a picture a day to tantalise you.