Top of the plops

My mother was the first to note a certain family trait; no matter the topic at hand, any conversation involving one or more of us will turn to shit. Or piss. Anything lavatorial, really.

Julie isn't a family member in the genetic sense, but when it came to integrating with my family, she hit the ground running, and has barely slowed down since. Certainly, when it came to my father, she could do no wrong. Anything she said, no matter how ribald or piss-taking it was, was greeted by a full-on snigger from Dad. Seriously, she got away with stuff we would never have even dared contemplate broaching with my father. The bald patch received special treatment, as I recall...

And yes, this does mean that Julie often joins in with phrases for flushing.

Today, for example, Julie decided to call it a night. Wearily dragging herself up the stairs, she decided to parody a certain little ditty made famous by the nephew of Kermit the Frog.

Yes, I know the word is 'down', but that doesn't really matter, does it?

"Uncle Kermit? That's not right, is it?"

He's right. It's not. Here's the original.

A dad and a dog on the Downs

We have some lovely scenery near us. Of course, that could be said of almost anywhere, including the middle of cities (Hyde Park, London; Central Park, New York). For us, though, it's a little special, as we have Britain's very latest National Park on our doorstep; The South Downs National Park.

Last weekend, following a lazy start with Roxy on the bed (see Wednesday's Gem), we decided to go to one part of the South Downs, known as Butts Brow.

Butts Bow, a painting by Lis Lawrence.
NB - all rights to this piece belong to Lis Lawrence. www.lislawrence.com

It was a short, but steep drive up to the car park, where we found that a lot of other people had already had the same idea. There were even a number of cyclists making their way at varying speeds up the hill. Even the car park was not at the top. Once you had parked up, you had a choice of various routes to progress along, although all had the same basic theme of  'uphill'.

Let me tell you, though; It's bloody worth it. When you reach the summit, there is a 360-degree view for miles around. Off to one side, you can see Beachy Head and the sea beyond there. Turning clockwise, you can see the South Downs stretching off into the distance. Further around, there are some hills and valleys a lot closer, but you can still see patches of land between them. For my money, these gaps looked like doorways into different worlds. A final quarter-turn gets you a view of the town of Eastbourne.

Again, this image is not ours. All rights belong to Will Gudgeon.

It doesn't normally look like a view of Orthanc from the film version of Lord of the Rings, but it is an impressive photo, yes?

The three of us spent a good ten minutes admiring the scenery, until the mood was broken by Roxy, who was suddenly rolling around in the grass, in paroxysms of joy. Fortunately, there was nothing that warranted the dreaded B-word.*
Rolling over, Roxy stood and shook herself, grinning hugely. I smiled myself, and, referring to the view once more, remarked how wonderful it was.

Here's to my father, who introduced me to walking in the countryside, and to offbeat humour, and to Toby the Jack Russell terrier who often accompanied him on many a jaunt. Rest in peace.

...and when they were only halfway up...

I try to be clever, honestly. I try to have a ready answer for every situation. Unfortunately, I don't have that spontaneous an imagination. Most of my humour comes from having thought about something and then editing it until it works. Or not - I'm no Terry Pratchett.

Julie, on the other hand, is almost the very epitome of spontaneity. Put her in a situation, and BAM! Out comes a cracking remark. Sometimes it is funny, other times, it is a keen observation on what has been going on.

Of course, these off-the-cuff remarks can arise from something only she was aware of; such as when other people are not looking in the same direction as her.

Such as when I am driving, and Julie has seen something off to one side - or even just inside her own head.

My father always got on famously with Julie; once those two started off on one of their bizarre dialogues, there was little chance of anyone keeping up to speed.

Dad approached this mindset from a slightly different direction to Julie. He had always been a fan of The Goons, and in later years began to have a fascination with abstract art and some of the more way-out types of jazz music.

I have pointed out many times before that our family - like many others, I imagine - have a lot of in-jokes, silly remarks that make absolutely no sense to other folk. Apple strudel, postboxes, burn rubber. Apparently random words and phrases, but they all are strong memory triggers for us.

Dad appeared to be something of a catchphrase generator, mostly when he was driving; I think it may have been a way of breaking up a silence and keeping himself awake. One of these phrases was a 'bloody obvious' comment - like most of them;

"It's uphill, this bit."

And yes, he would be driving up a hill at the time.

The thing is, it was catching. We now say these things ourselves, for pretty much the same reason. Of course, when Julie is involved, things can take on a new life of their own...

All I could think of was this...

Ready for the rubber zoom-room

Here in Britain, we tend to have a certain image of slow, elderly drivers. This image comes from the only thing we are usually able to see of them - their hats. In fact, in our family, this has become an actual term.

"Why are we going so slowly?"
"I think there's a Hat up front."

I know it's an unfair generalisation, but there are enough participants in the Granny Grand Prix each Sunday that there is more than a kernel of truth to it.

My father wasn't a complete Hat, but he was definitely working on it. With a touch of OCD and self-doubt in his psychological make-up, his approach to speed was very much 'I'll get there when I get there'. Fortunately, Dad was also quite mild and had a nice line in self-mockery. When he turned a corner and shifted up to third gear, he would purse his lips and suck air and say, "cor - burn rubber!"

Dad was full of bon mots such as this, and repeated them often enough for them to become catchphrases, sayings that the rest of us would repeat, often to the bemusement of our own passengers.

• "It's uphill, this bit."
• "Straight on a bit." (this on a dead straight road with no turnings for miles)
• "Tide's out."

You may have noticed there's a fair bit of stating the obvious going on. Like I said, though, all these and more have become catchphrases within our family. Certainly me and Julie tend to repeat them when we're out and about.

Bad, bad Julie & Dad.

As threat... umm.. promised, there was indeed at least one more family Scrabble Gem to relate. As anyone who has played Scrabble knows, to be faced with a rack full of vowels or consonants and/or the damnedest, tightest board layout ever is one of the worst things you could face. Apparently, during the course of this particular game, my father was faced with a nasty rack. The abysmal state of the board I can personally attest to. I have never seen so many two and three-letter words played in one game.

As the turns progressed around the board, there was much head-scratching and tutting and a plethora of single-figure scores. Yes, it was that bad.
Some time into the game, it was once more my father's turn and he spent an especially long time huffing and puffing, shuffling his letters and moaning about the state of the board. As we know full well though, that can mean either of two things; yes, his lot is pretty naff or that he has a brilliant word and is having trouble finding a place to put it down. When he finally began stringing together full sentences, we realised that - gamewise - he was in deep doo-doo.
Unfortunately for everyone else, Dad and Julie have long since forged an unholy alliance of sorts. There is plenty of evidence in the Julie's Gems archives to prove they are perfectly willing to collaborate, and it seems that they are so confident in themselves that they are now quite willing to blatantly flaunt their ways right under our noses. Witness this little exchange where Dad is (still) moaning about his letters...

See what I mean? What chance did any other player stand against these two?

------------------------------------------------------------

Right. I want to give some credit here. The image that I have used above comes courtesy of sfantoo on deviantArt. I have told them of this usage, so that's all good, I hope. If you want to check out the original image (and please do), along with more of his material, why not click here?

No pros, but plenty of cons

Back to my family and yet another game of Scrabble. Two games, actually. You'd think we have nothing better to do, wouldn't you? With five people around the table, one person had to sit on the sidelines, and I volunteered with alacrity. Also with appropriate alacrity, I dashed off for my notebook and pen.
Oh come on - you don't think I was giving up a four-way Scrabble game out of the goodness of my heart, do you? Especially considering when two of the four are Julie and my father. OK, so my (currently) reticent mother and my sister were there too, but we all know where the fun lies, don't we?
Actually, in this case, no. Dad and Julie were bucking the trends and setting standards by winning a game each, an unusual event in itself, as they are usually proud of their ability, if that's the right word, to come last in a game. So much so that Dad appears to have himself a catchphrase, which he gleefully calls out as we're setting up the game.

"Bagsy coming last!"*

In one sense, I suppose, it's almost a mantra, to ward off any bad luck (ok, sour grapes, possibly) in case he does lose. Admittedly, if it's just him vs Mum, then the odds are that he'll lose.
Like I said though, He shared wins with Julie over a pair of games, something Mum took badly, sulking over a spectacularly awful set of letters. My sister, on the other hand - despite a couple of brief snits here and there - took their wins with a certain awkward grace...

We all looked at Dad at that point. It was so much like something he would have said it was uncanny. It was almost as if he'd scripted that line. Only the fact he was creasing up proved it was the first time he'd heard that line. Oh, well. At least I got one final Gem out of the game...

...or did I...?

---------------------------------------------------------

*In the USA and other countries, this equates to calling 'dibs'.

Spike lacks focus

Yesterday, we presented a Platy-post courtesy of my father from the last time we visited my folks.
Still at my parents' place, we were having a great time. I was grudgingly abstemious, due to the various bits of medication I was taking, but Dad and Julie decided to share a bottle of wine.
Yes, me and Mum were thinking exactly the same.

"Uh-oh."

Dad can hold his drink quite well, but Julie is another matter. We don't have occasion to drink much at home. I'm far more a tea person than anything alcoholic, and Julie seems to have headed that way too, in recent times.
So after a short while, Julie finished her first glass of wine, smacked her lips appreciatively and then after a few moments more, proceeded to look at me oddly. Oddly enough that I was a little discomfited by her suddenly keen, if wavering expression.

There wasn't a lot I could say to that. Dad, on the other hand, nearly fell off his chair he was laughing so hard.

Getting premature with alcoholic logic.

As you may recall, we had my parents staying with us a couple of weekends ago. We all had a good time, but there was the usual pre-visit flurry of activity; tidying up, vacuuming, preparing the spare room, putting a cover over one chair so the dog can sit on it, getting a few groceries in and - in Julie's case - worrying about the bottle of wine and the small bottle of spiced rum in the dining room.

This is the woman who proceeded to get a little squiffy on the bottle of wine she shared with my father when we went out for a meal.

Genetics by marriage

To round the week off, how about another two-hander featuring Julie and my father?
Seriously, I think the scientists could do far worse than start looking for a gene that deals with the ability to come up with stuff like this.

By the way, I'm hoping you have now got the hang of which typeface goes with which person. I use italics, Julie is the lighter, standard type and Dad is the heavier, darker font. I try and keep it standard across all the posts.

I'll tell you something. Sometimes, both Dad and Julie say things like this on purpose. Other times, it's pure mucked-up language and logic. Unfortunately, it's now got to the point I can't tell the difference between the two.
Ah well. Time to just sit back and enjoy the show then...

Eyeballing the titles

As you know by now, my Dad visited us last weekend and brought Toby, their Jack Russell terrier with him. He's an incredibly intelligent and loyal dog but he has some funny habits - like deliberately wedging his throwing toy under something so he can't get it out. His face is also one of the most expressive I have ever seen on any animal - including a few (alleged) humans I know.

"Take a picture of me, will you? Hah! I blow raspberries in your general direction..."

On one day, Julie was playing with Toby, when she stopped and looked into his eyes.

Indecisive much? Well, it's either that or Toby's eyes are chameleonic.
Shortly after that, we settled down to watch a film. We had asked Dad what he fancied watching, but he decided to leave it up to us. However, when it came to setting things up for it, he did ask which it was we had settled on.

Now, at the end of this week, can you see just why it is Julie and my father get on so well?

Playing games with votes and letters

As a family, we're a little different to many. Yes, there is a television, we have a computer and even an Xbox (an original one, second-hand. We're not made of money, you know). However, when we get together, our favourite pastime centres around a couple of board games. Followers of this site will already know that these games are Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. There are a couple of others, but we always return to these tried and trusted friends.
In the case of me and Julie specifically, Trivial Pursuit is always a good choice on several levels. First and foremost is the fact it's not Scrabble. I'm not doing down Scrabble in the slightest, but it does have to be said that it's not exactly fully interactive; one person has a think, plays a word and a score is jotted down before the next player takes their turn. Only one person is involved at any one point in the game. Sure, it stretches our vocabularies nicely, but for getting everyone involved and interested, there's nothing like a good old question-and-answers session for stimulating discussion - all the more so when you have questions that sound vaguely risqué. Here's an example;

"What sport are you playing if your balls are black and blue?"

The answer, of course(!), is Croquet. (OK, gents, you can uncross your legs now.)
Naturally, when alcohol is introduced, the daft questions magically become utterly hilarious, as do the answers given. Especially when people get so caught up in the game they forget just whose turn it is. Don't they, Julie?

That was a good night; I only managed to get the one Gem out of the two games. Partly because I couldn't keep up with the free-associating banter between my wife and my father. Mind you, the three large glasses of red wine may have had something to do with it to. Oh gods... never again (please bear in mind my alcohol intake is generally limited to a pint a month. If that).

Well, I say 'never again', but it was totally worth it. Especially since Dad won the second game - it made up for him not winning a single game of Scrabble in the days he stayed with us. He's no slouch when it comes to words, not by any stretch of the imagination. However, when the opposition is my mother, he's fairly used to 'winning silver' as he puts it. It's now a family in-joke that he begins each game with "Bagsy coming last!"
Mind you, it doesn't help that he has a rather desperate approach to making words up. At least the rest of us tend to apply a certain logic when we consider alternatives. Another regular feature of family games is Dad playing a word which is met with the chorus of, "What? What the hell's that?" Another problem is that a certain leaning toward jazz-inspired music and comedy may be all well and good when it comes to listening to Stan Getz or The Goons, or meeting Julie on her own ground, but it's not hugely useful when it comes to using the alphabet. That said, it is useful when it comes to describing his inability to make a word out of the (admittedly awful set of) letters on his rack.

See? Witty, knowing and superbly pithy. Shame he came last again though...

Going nutty in a Nissan

Oh, what a weekend.
Over the course of the last few days, I have learned a few things. 'Let sleeping dogs lie' isn't a warning, more a mission statement. Seriously, Toby the Jack Russell is very fond of the easy life. Also, 'fight fire with fire' is all well and good, but you are definitely going to get your fingers burned - in a purely metaphorical (but nonetheless painful) sense. Never again will I attempt to drink in order to attain a state similar to that which Julie and my Dad seem to inhabit at times.

Yes, we had a visitor this weekend. Two, if you count the dog. My dad decided to brave the traffic and come all the way down to the coast to stay with us, lose completely and continually at Scrabble* and to join forces with Julie against me and the forces of logic and sanity. It didn't take long for them to settle into a routine.
By the time I got home from work on Friday, Julie and Dad were already in and settled with a cuppa. I was desperate for one myself, but put it off until I'd helped Dad unload his car. Lovely looking thing, it is; a bright red Nissan something-or-other (can you tell I'm not a car person?).

It was a recent acquisition, a 'nice little runabout', as Dad called it. I remarked, though, that it was a tad on the large side to be a  'little runabout'. He agreed with this, but explained that the smaller car posed a certain problem for him. Being rather on the short side (only just hitting five feet on a good day), he needs to have the seat as close to the pedals as is possible. Unfortunately, the smallest car had a gearstick that was positioned so that is would have been right by his hip - obviously no good. The next size up had a gearstick that was halfway up the dashboard, which made it to the front of my Dad's driving position.
Julie, however, reckoned there should have been a complete overhaul of the car's design...

(Note for people used to the USA way of referring to cars; for 'bonnet', read 'hood'. You know, that bit of the car just in front of the windscreen.)

Not to be outdone, Dad and me were talking about walking into town the next day. I did wonder if he was up to it, considering his health problems, but he poo-poohed my concerns and said he'd be perfectly fine, as long as he took it easy and remembered to take his inhaler with him (yes he did, FYI). It's not that far to town, so I wasn't too worried. We were going to be stopping frequently, after all and having a drink or two to keep the fluid levels up. Mind you, he thought to be cheeky about the size of our town and said:

(A 'park and ride', for those not familiar with the concept, is an idea whereby a large car park is built on the edge of a town or city, and a dedicated bus service runs people between there and the town centre. By and large, it's a decent, successful idea. It's just a pity that not many towns or cities are agreeable to, or are capable of supporting such a service.)

And that was just the start of the weekend. My notepad very rarely left my side and I had a second one ready in case I mislaid the first. I also lost track of the times I rued not having a dictaphone. So much stuff was lost because I was simply unable to keep up with the pair of them.

*More on the Scrabble Wednesday. And on my inability to keep up with Dad and Julie. See you then!

Watching me watching them watching me... what?

My folks came to visit last weekend. It was Easter weekend, so it was a nice long break and the weather was gorgeous. We went out and about a few times, but the evenings were almost always the same - we played a game or two of Scrabble.
Now, the thing is, we're all fairly competitive - but only in the sense that each of us wants to do the best we can with what we have on our racks. This is all well and good except when we have sets of letters that are either abysmal (all vowels/consonants etc) or very promising and the board layout is abysmal. This is when you'll find lots of heavy sighing and much shuffling of letters. In Mum's case, this is usually a warning to the rest of us as she'll more often than not put down a word that garners her a cool 30+ points.
My father, on the other hand, will 'Pffff' and say, 'Oh I'm in pickle, I am.' And then he'll put down a word that doesn't exist or is spelled incorrectly.

In the meantime, you will find exchanges like this one between Julie and Dad...

It's been a few days now, but I still have no idea whether that was a cracker of a zinger or a blank-faced fail. There's no doubting its entertainment value though. Dad, on the other hand, thought it was absolutely hilarious and went right into his 'Muttley snigger'. (it's not precisely the same. Dad doesn't wheeze so much pant between his side teeth (And if that description doesn't help, then I'm stuffed...).