The bawdiest banisters

Well, it's a handrail, really.

My mother has trouble getting around now, and got a handyman in to fit a handrail on the wall side of her stairs to go with the banister and rail on the other side. Since I live half the country away, it's not that often that I get to visit, so my sister tends to do what she can - considering she has her own life to run too.

On one of the times both my sister and myself were visiting, I needed to go upstairs for something or other. On one step, I stumbled slightly and snatched at the new handrail for support.

Which moved.

Wait, what?

I took hold of the rail again and pushed lightly against it. I hadn't imagined it, the rail did move. I looked closely and realised that the bastard cowboy who had fitted it had only done the minimum possible. Certainly not enough for someone who relies on sturdy supports.

I went to my sister and showed her the problem. If you were shocked at my use of the term 'bastard cowboy' above, you definitely don't want to know what my sister spat out. Put it this way, it was more venomous than the nastiest of Australian creatures, and more virulent than the bubonic plague.

My little sister has such a genteel soul.

We discussed what needed to be done. Getting a proper professional in, for a start. I'd have done it, but I'm no use when it comes to DIY. I can put up a shelf, but you'd be unwise to load it up too much. For the moment, though, we couldn't do much, as it was the weekend, and I had to get home.

This was my suggestion:

Yeah. Sure, I gave her possibly the best feed line ever, but you know that comment of mine about my little sister being a delicate soul?
Forget it.

Diggin' down on the farm

If Julie has a fault - unlikely, I know - it's that her mouth has a tendency to say something before the brain gets a chance to edit it.
Unfortunately, Julie's mouth doesn't have access to all the knowledge that her brain does, so it tends to tag things and respond accordingly, even when the situation doesn't completely conform to her brain's definitions.

Here's a prime example. We were out for a drive the other day, shunning the main roads as normal and pootling around the small lanes - dodging into gateways every now and then to allow oncoming traffic to pass. Not a lot of conversation was going on; what with the narrow lanes and tall hedges, I needed to be careful with my own driving, just in case someone coming the other way wasn't careful with theirs.

When it comes to this, Julie tends to drift and take only passing note of the scenery, near and far. When we passed (yet another) gate leading onto a field, we caught a fleeting glimpse of an animal with black and white colouring.

Actually, no. Not 'moo'. More like 'whinney' or 'neigh'.
Yep. It was a horse. However, Julie's mouth had done its party trick and made what it had thought to be the obvious connection. Unfortunately for Julie, I had also seen the beastie in question and had recognised its equine nature.
I laughed, and Julie knew immediately what had happened and switched the running of the mouth over to her brain, admitting that it was, indeed, a horse.

Sadly, Julie lost the chance to leave it there and almost literally dug herself deeper.

No. I don't think so.
They're yellow.

Dirty old world

One of the things that Julie and me like to do to relax is to go for a drive. For us, it's a great way to de-stress ourselves. If I have a bad head, for some reason, it works wonders to get into the car and just pootle about for an hour or so. What we like to do is go exploring; lots of little roads, places we've gone past, names we've seen on signposts. Alternatively, just driving along long stretches of road, enjoying the air (if it's warm enough) and listening to music.
That's if Julie manages to stay awake, that is. There's something about the movement of the car that just lulls her to sleep. She has often said that if someone came up with a bed that mimicked the motion of a moving car - while remaining in the one place - then they could make a fortune.

Naturally, we do enjoy the scenery, but as the driver, I tend to miss a lot - we tend to agree that concentrating on the road should be my main objective.* However, because I do pay a lot of attention to details, I often see things that Julie misses or has not seen until then. My peripheral vision will pick up things like the slight movement of a rabbit by the roadside, or some bird of prey hovering over a field.

Red Kite in Wales. Pic from Byrdir, a farm that does accommodation
and has a nice little blog going too. http://byrdir.co.uk/

In contrast, and possibly caused by the aforementioned lulling motion of the car, Julie's visual acuity seems to be less than 20/20...

Quite possibly, love, quite possibly.

*My father was notorious for not being able to keep his eyes on the road. It was very common that we would have to act as a second and maybe even third pair of eyes. I especially recall one family holiday in France. We were driving along one side of a beautiful valley, and Dad was constantly distracted by the admittedly gorgeous scenery on the other side.

(Dad) "That's a pretty chateau over there." 

(us) "It's a very attractive road in front of us, Dad!"

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

PS
I'll tell you what; when I went looking for a picture of a red kite, I never expected to find one as part of a blog by a Welsh farm, a farm that has a large amount of accommodation to its name.
The front of the website looked so good, I decided to see what the options for staying there were like. Very nice, as it happens. A beautiful location, nice cottages to stay in... I think I might have to keep this place in mind for sometime in the future (when we have the money, in other words).
Here's the link again http://byrdir.co.uk/

Ten, not ten.

Last year, Britain stopped airing TV programmes via analogue signals. In the final few months leading up to the switchover to digital TV, there was a sort of genteel scramble to either replace or adapt televisions. It didn't help that many people (us included) thought for a while that we would have to buy completely new TV sets. This was something that incensed us. We don't have much in the way of money, but compared to a pensioner who has to decide whether to spend a day's money on heating or food, it's a small fortune.

In the end, all we had to do was adapt our analogue TV, push the signal through the DVD recorder and away we went. Of course, we had to pay to get someone in to show us that. Nothing we could do got us a reliable signal.

Once it was all sorted, we sat and scrolled through the channels to see what delights lay in wait.
...
...
...
...
...
Well.
What a load of crap.
I knew there was a reason I preferred reading and listening to music.
OK, so we only have Freeview, but we're not going to fork out for stuff we're not going to watch, are we? Especially as a lot of what appears to be on offer are repeats.
To me, one of the oddest channels is Challenge TV; showing repeats of game shows from days gone by. If you are of a certain age and lived in Britain at the time, then you will no doubt recall some of the weirdest notions for game show formats. Bullseye was a cross between darts and a pub quiz, and 3-2-1 asked people to make the most tangential leaps of logic to solve clues and win prizes.

There are other game shows on the channel, too. One of them pits adults against children, the premise being that adults are often less intelligent (or have less knowledge, at least) than their offspring.

When Julie saw the programme title in the listings, she seemed to take it as a very specialised challenge.

Oh deary me...

No man is an island, however...

Usually, if I ask Julie a question in Trivial Pursuit (or another quiz) to which she does not know the answer, then her knack for coming up with a reply that is off the wall and out of the window will usually come up trumps. During this game, though, the wine consumed was taking its effect and snappy answers were becoming a tad rarer. Don't get me wrong, my wife was still apt to verbal shenanigans, it just took a little longer, that's all.
All the same, I was caught wrong-footed by her answer to this question. I mean, I bet I can imagine the answer some of you could come up with...*

In light of the alcohol consumption, I did wait a little while for Julie to complete the word 'mountaineer', but was ultimately forced to facepalm...

In case you were wondering, the answer was 'during take-off', because John Glenn was an astronaut.


*Jogging, of course...

Private Eye: Dumb Britain. Julie responds.

There is a satirical, highly politic and left-leaning magazine in Britain called Private Eye. It's efficiency in annoying the establishment, the arrogant and the merely(?) powerfully inept shows up very well in light of the times that the publishers and editors have been called to court for daring to challenge a dangerously unbalanced status quo. And won. Among many things, Private Eye dislikes celebrities and the cult thereof, the class system, hypocrites, biased journalism (yes, I know), corrupt officials and excess of most kinds.
They also like to poke gentle fun at other things, such as poorly-worded signs, odd things for sale under bizarre pricing conditions, and just how some people only open their mouths to insert their feet. One of their features in this vein is the 'Colmanballs' column. Another is 'Dumb Britain', which centres on questions in quiz shows and the otherworldly responses. Admittedly, it is sometimes the quizmaster fouling things up, but it's usually the contestant. Sometimes, it appears as though the magazine is poking fun at people less educated than themselves, but it does have to be said that a lot of answers go against any kind of internal logic and clues that the question has provided. Take a look at the feature from the latest issue.

In the first two, there is definitely an element of educational snobbery, but the third one has no excuse. They have already been given the county and they go and mention a different one? And as for the 'Dumb Australian', (s)he was told that the answer was a country. Where on Earth is there a country that has a name sounding like 'Fiddler on the Roof'?

Julie enjoys this section usually, so I was reading out the questions to her. Once she had provided an answer, I would go on to inform her what the contestant had come up with. When it got to the final one, I asked, "Which Mediterranean country, whose name sounds like that of a musical, owns the island of Rhodes?"

Oh dear. I thought she was Being Silly, until I saw her expression...
Mind you, at least Julie,unlike the contestant from Australia, managed to come up with an answer that was geographical. The rest of it can be put down to her admirable lack of grasp of matters geographical.

Actually.. and I can't let this slide... Julie really should have known better, because the correct answer, of course, was 'Greece'. The homophonic musical, Grease, is one of Julie's all-time favourite films and musicals.
Oh dear.

Venus in Blurred Jeans and other shenanigans

They say a week is a long time in politics. It's also a long time in science, weather, blogging and - more to the point - it's a long time for Julie to remember things that people may have said.

A week ago, the orbit of the planet Venus happened to pass between us and the sun, resulting in some first class pictures and a lot of scientific data. A little closer to home, where Jubilee mania was well and truly in full swing, the transit of Venus resulted in confusion and a somewhat baffling Gem, courtesy of one of my colleagues. This was posted on Friday. On the following day, Julie and myself were sat in the living room, and I asked if she had read the Gem yet. As it happened, she had, but - touching upon an earlier conversation we'd had - wanted to make a point about it. I was completely unprepared for the resulting conversation.

In other words, you have been warned.
Now read on.

I was absolutely speechless. Just when it seemed Julie couldn't up the 'Odd' ante any more, there she went.
Epic. Truly epic.

The Silence of the Cinema

So, by the time you read this, the prizes from our World Book Night draw will be in the postal system and thereafter winging their way to the lucky people whose names we pulled out of the hat. Finally. Sorry about the wait, folks.

However.
As you may have gathered from various posts and the few videos we have managed to share with you, Gem does have a tendency of begetting Gem. Thus it was that, while I was trying to set the camera up for making the video of the actual draw that I suddenly found myself in the situation of having to hastily scribble something down. You see, after I had the focus and framing to be of semi-acceptable standard, I had Julie sit in her chair and then hit the button to begin recording. As I prepared to move around to sit next to my wife, I waved my hands at her, trying to get her to begin talking, rather than just sit there, watching and waiting for me to sit next to her. Unfortunately, it appeared that my hand-waving was not too clear, and Julie didn't have a clue what I was trying to convey.
Oh well.
I sighed, went back the camera, switched it off, and then explained to her what was needed. "We don't want any 'dead air', as radio parlance has it," I said.
"Oh!" Julie exclaimed, "I get you now. You could have said that before, you know, instead of just waving your hands as me and hoping I'll understand it."
This was very true, and I admitted as much. But then Julie continued, and totally shot herself in the foot.

It's difficult to write when you're simultaneously facepalming, you know.

"Yesterday, upon the stair...

I met a man who wasn't there..."

You may recognise the above quote as the opening lines of the poem "Antigonish" by Hughes Mearns; I was reminded of it quite strongly by today's Gem. Read on and see if you agree.

I had not long returned from work and we were sat having a nice cup of tea and a chat. Apropos of nothing,* Julie commented on her leg, which was had been revealed by the riding up of her trouser leg.

"I've got hairs on my legs!"

I explained, in my picky, slightly anally-retentive manner, that humans have hair all over, apart from the soles of our feet and the palms of our hands. After a brief bout of denial, brought on by the fact my wife couldn't - and wouldn't - believe me when I said that she even had hair on her chest, Julie asked if we had hair on our fingers. I replied that we did, but only on the tops, "treat the underside of your fingers like they were extensions of your palms."

Oh dear...
At least Julie had the self -awareness to burst out laughing when she realised what she had just said.

*Let's face it - this is Julie's modus operandi, isn't it?

Sun tan lotion, SPF 'caterpillar'

This one's going back a year or so now, but it's worth the wait. It's actually kind of fun to rummage around the box of paper under my desk, just to see what Gem may surface. In fact, it's even better than you'd think, because Julie's normal reaction upon hearing what I had written down is something along the lines of, "I never said that! You're making it up!"
Yeah, right. I wish. If I could make up this kind of stuff, I'd be making millions from script and/or book writing.

Normally, when I dredge something up from the depths of time, I find that I have absolutely no ideas what was going on to make it such a howler in the first place. It's precisely like the old family in-joke, the type that's never funny to anyone, because you had to be there at the time. Well, until I learned to jot down a little context, I felt like someone was trying to tell me the story while I'm sat there nodding and smiling politely...
Not this time. I can recall this one very clearly, although I have to admit that the length of the Gem itself does help to fill in some of the details. You see, before Julie managed to land the evening job at the hospital, she would often come and meet me from work and we'd then walk home together. It was really rather nice, especially during the warmer months. The route home is really rather straightforward, just a few main roads once you leave the industrial estate where I work. However, it's much better to nip up and along some of the side roads. It doesn't add much to the journey and it's far better than walking alongside the rush-hour traffic.
We were walking along and generally chatting away, when I suddenly noticed I had a small passenger on my arm.

Cute little fellow, isn't he? This caterpillar was only a couple of centimetres long and a few millimetres wide, but it must have had springs concealed somewhere about its person, because I couldn't recall brushing up against anything.

(please note; the following conversation takes place between Julie and myself, despite the fact my opening line is directed to the caterpillar. I say this only to forestall the inevitable smart comments. You may, however, feel quite free to come up with any other smart comments)

... yes dear.


That's it for this week, we hope you have a great weekend. Next week, we'll be kicking things off with a Gem topic that just will not go away...

A foodie fail by the befuddled

Continuing the hospital theme for the week, it would be remiss of me to completely ignore the patients. I realise it may be a cheap shot, but you sometimes can't help but smile at some of the things people come out with when under the influence of medication, sedation or, sadly, age or dementia.
My maternal grandfather was a big man, and a healthy one to boot. That's actually a rather apt phrase, since he was actually a professional footballer ('soccer player, to those of you that think footballs aren't spherical), and had played for Leeds United and Norwich City, amongst other teams, during his long and successful career. Sadly, during the later years of his life, he developed Alzheimer's disease. After a long, slow decline, he died at a ripe old age, and the world is a less good place for that. However, his dementia did provide a few bittersweet moments, notably the occasion when he turned to his wife (also in her seventies at that point), and said,

How about we try for another kid, Flossie?

For ages after that, Gran loved to recount that story, laughing each time she brought it up. It still brings a sad smile to my face, too.

My Grandad, the soccer star.

Back to the present day, and to an occasion when Julie is serving up evening meals to various patients. As I have said elsewhere, Julie tends to keep a written list of what food is available for a given day. This is especially useful, should she temporarily blank over what is on her trolley. I think we've all done something like that, right? Having said that, no matter how blank she goes, she'll always have a pretty good idea of what the trolley doesn't hold - and of what the meals she lists are made of.

Someone is obviously used to better fare than that offered up by the National Health Service...

Water fool!

The climate is changing, everyone knows this. If nothing else, the tabloids love to scream about it in blind panic. To them, and others who react this way, I bring you this newsflash (normal people - put your sunglasses on now)

The climate is always changing, and it always has. If you want a stable climate, seal yourself up in a bloody crypt. In fact, that's not a bad idea. Why not do it anyway and increase the global intelligence average by a good few points. Sheesh.

Sorry about that. The reason for this little rant is that, as you may know, it's been a rather dry few months in Britain. Unfortunately, the lack of rain or snow this winter has left our reservoirs more than a tad low, so the various water companies around the country are taking steps to make sure our supplies don't trickle to a complete halt. To this end, some companies are contemplating a hosepipe ban, and one or two have already put it into effect. All this means is that you can't use a hose to clean you car (or anything else), or to water the garden  - and yes, that does include attaching the damn thing to a lawn sprinkler.

"Ooooh - I didn't think that counted!"
>SLAP!<

For those of you who think that a hosepipe ban is equivalent to the fall of civilisation, may I introduce to you a handy couple of items.

Now, this is a bucket and a wat - OMG IS THAT A HEDGEHOG?? SQUEEEEE!!!!

We use watering cans at our house. One for watering the plants outside, one for killing the weeds and moss on the paths outside and a small one inside the house for the pot-plants.* Mind you, we're not going to be doing much in the back garden this year. After last year's attempts to try various things were repeatedly fouled up by the neighbourhood cats habit of.. well, fouling things up, a certain ennui has set in. All I'm intending to plant this year is a bed of potatoes, a couple of pea plants - oh, and some landmines, especially for the moggies.
All this, of course, simply leads up to this conversation between Julie and myself.

Oh dear. It turns out Julie thought the ban also included watering cans and any other means of hydrating your hydrangeas.

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

*Not THAT sort of 'pot' plants!
By the way, a hosepipe ban doesn't affect businesses or charities where large amounts of water are essential for their activities. Such as car washes. Because you simply cannot make do with a mucky Mazda, can you?  <sigh>

Unuttering the utterable... What?

So.
You know what the Kama Sutra is, right? Sure you do. Everyone does. They may not know much about it beyond giggling and 'oh, it's naughty, isn't it?'. Some may have even seen it, or - heaven forbid - looked inside it. These people will know that it's an ancient Indian book about sex and sexual behaviour.
I'll admit right away that, after a brief look, I closed the book and pronounced myself gladly vanilla. If nothing else, I am seriously, physically unable to even get MY body to do some things, let alone persuading someone else to...

Mind you, I know someone who has trouble of a different sort with even the words 'Kama Sutra'
Isn't that right, Julie?

Excuse me, I'm just going to go and hide while Julie's still blushing....

Seedy CD I.Q.

OK, I wasn't going to post this. It was going to stay on my personal Facebook profile, but no, it's having an 'official' release.

A friend of mine has been feeling a bit down lately, partly due to this and that, but mostly to do with a nasty bug that's been hanging around for some time. To cheer her up, I sent her a Bread compilation. Please note that this is Bread, the musical act responsible for the excellent 'Guitar Man'. I didn't send her three slices of wholemeal.

Once I'd sorted that out, I popped the discs into an envelope and posted them. Astonishingly, Jules received them the next (posting) day, which impressed me.
Not so impressive, however, was her tech-savviness. It appeared to be rather low, until I realised it was just a memory lapse. I can understand that...

As you can see, it's not much of a Gem on its own. It was, on the other hand, well worth posting on FB, so I did. In the comments, Jules called me an arse (in pictorial form, and quite cleverly, I thought), and then julie came along and capped it nicely.

...er... yes, dear.
(Bread) Roll out the closing music!

Julie and the great platypus debate

Cyfarchion o Gymru! I'm in Cardiff today, on another part of the second Spikeyboy tour. And yet - I'm still managing to update, despite not having a laptop or smartphone. Ain't I good to you? Then too, there was the fact I really needed to get this Gem/set of Gems up and ready fairly quickly, or else they would lose relevance.

On Friday, Julie's Gems introduced you to a lateral-thinking young chap by the name of Scott. Apparently innocently, Scott likened the object of his friend's affections to a platypus, in that she too was unique. The thing is, what with all the different approaches by various people to this subject, all making their own Gems, I felt there wasn't room to add a photo of the poor animal, and instead gave a short description and a link to its Wiki-page.
As it turns out, this may have been a serious oversight on my part, as Julie only took away the sketchiest of ideas of what a platypus looks like. Then again, considering just how much material I came away with, it may have been the ultimate blessing in disguise. You see, Julie had read the post and was wondering about the platypus's appearance...

I mean, seriously. I'm sure I said 'mammal' when I described it last time... didn't I?

Er.. what? Time for a little comparison, methinks.

A giant tortoise - with a human for some scale.

Two platypuses - being held by a human. For scale.

So - what do you say to that, Julie?

Seriously?? Surely you can't get any worse..?

<facepalm>
We were talking about all the above while I let my pen cool down, and as I was reading them out so Julie could also have a giggle (believe me, she does laugh at herself, too), Julie asked me what the difference in appearance was, and what I objected to, concerning her defining common point. When I said that while platypuses may be fairly low to the ground, a high-domed shell is one of the major features of a giant tortoise. Sadly, one of Julie's defining features is a general unwillingness to let go of an idea.

Uh... what? Um.. I suppose you have a point, love, but I think the animal protection societies might come down on you like a ton of bricks...
Back home, Julie was determined to make her point and was busy googling images of platypuses and tortoises. After a slight confusion thanks to a rogue picture of an echidna (also a monotreme), Julie felt satisfied she had been vindicated.

On the other side of the table, I gave her The Look and reached for my pen once more. When I went around to have a look, it turned out, Julie was mixing up tortoises for turtles. To avoid yet more animal-related shenanigans, I avoided the matter completely, by giving her a helpless look and walking away.

Oh, that bloody buddleja

We have a buddleja (or buddleia, if you prefer) in our front garden. It self-seeded, which was quite handy - as far as I'm concerned, that is. There's something of a difference of opinion regarding this 'butterfly bush' (so known because its blooms attract insects and butterflies in abundance). I'm all for it - helping butterflies and other pollinating insects is a good thing as far as I'm concerned - plus, I think it's really quite an attractive plant.

It's a hardy plant too - we've cut it down at the start of a winter season and it manages to grow back the following spring. This year, however, health matters have got in the way of gardening and both front and back (which is now a shrine to cat waste, sadly) are in fairly desperate need of attention. This has meant that the buddleja in the front, while I managed to lop off some of the main stems, has been allowed to carry on doing what it does best.

Annoying Julie.

You see, Julie is all for the bush looking pretty and attracting pretty things, but she's not so fond of it being so
close to the house - the windows in particular. Unfortunately, the front garden is not large, so there's not much option for the poor thing there. It doesn't help that the window cleaner uses it as an excuse to not clean that part of the window.
Julie likes things neat and tidy and in their own place.
I like nature to generally run its course and show its own beauty. Apart from the damn cats. They can take their own aspect of nature and let it run elsewhere. Preferably in their owners' gardens.
So, you see, there is a small conflict of interest.

With that in mind, may I present this particular exchange, one which took place as we were just leaving the house to go shopping. One which begins with me offering a gentle, humorous warning to Julie.

Out came the notepad...

Partial intelligence, partial calming.

Once upon a time, we used to have a car - only a 1 litre Vauxhall Corsa, but it did the trick. I had it from new and eventually had to give it up for scrap after over 100,000 miles, when the cost of repairing it finally became too much.
>sigh<
I still miss ol' Voxy.

Anyway, enough of the nostalgia.
Well, not quite. Julie has a friend, Sue, who she used to work with. The thing is, Sue had/has a reputation for being a bit dappy. She's forgotten her keys so many times, we've lost count and I can assure you that she has a most ... inventive place to store her false teeth (not a complete set - just a plate with a few which replace some lost in an accident). I can also assure you that not many women can lay claim to have accidentally bitten their own boobs.

Yes, you read that right. don't ask.

Moving swiftly on, there were a few times we were in the position of being able to give Sue a lift to one place or another. On this particular occasion, she wanted to visit a friend in Bexhill [On-Sea], so we offered to drive her there. As you can imagine, having Julie and someone like Sue in the same car should be a sure-fire way of hearing a humdinger of a conversation. I was not disappointed.

As we drove along a straight stretch of road, Sue noted the fact that the road seemed to be a little on the rough side. "Here we go," I thought.
However, Sue caught me out, "perhaps it's a traffic calming measure?" she wondered. "It's a long, straight road and maybe they wanted people to go slower."
"OK," I thought, "that wasn't too bad, after all."
If only Sue had left it at that.

You know you're in trouble when Julie starts howling with laughter at your silliness....

Down at Le Café Crazy

It was some years ago that I first came across the concept of a cream tea. In my teens, I would be on family trips and see them on menus, but choose not to have them. As it happened, nobody else had them either, so any curiosity I may have had at the time remained unassuaged.
Some years later, I had dropped ignominiously out of college and everything was, for quite some time operating on a shoestring. Eventually though, things got better and I could then afford to go places. One of the first things I did do was take a trip to a large family event that was taking place quite some distance away. Since the invite was for guest 'plus one' and my sister was taking her current beau - one of my friends - I asked if it was OK to bring along another friend as my '+1'. This friend was the fourth and final member of our little coterie and would have been the only uninvited member. This was OK'd (even though it led to long-running speculation upon my sexual preferences), so we all booked rooms in the same B&B near the party.
The four of us arrived a day early for the party, so we decided to venture out into town (Southend), just to get our bearings. After a while, we decided to take a breather and stopped at a cafe. My friend looked at the menu and opted for the cream tea. I was curious by now about what a cream tea entailed, but I had never ordered one, just in case it meant a cup of tea with cream instead of milk. As it turned out, a cream tea is a pot of tea, one or two scones, some jam and a portion of cream (clotted cream for preference).

NB - many cafes mistakenly include butter with the cream tea. Wrong - this is why you should use clotted cream, because it is effectively replacing the butter. Cut open the scone, spread some cream and then spoon some jam on top. Oh yes - and the scones should be freshly baked to, so they crumble slightly when you bite into them.
Yum.
Anyway... where was I? Oh yes.
Fast forward to the present. I have since met, fallen in love with, and married Julie.
This weekend just gone, the two of us were out and about and popped by a cafe called Neates Cakery. As you can guess, they have a certain specialisation. And believe me, they do very well in that area - here's the menu:

And here's their basic(!) selection of cakes - usually also available as cupcakes.

Pity the website isn't complete - they're on Facebook though.

Lovely cakes, eh?
In the end, though, I went for a tuna/cheese melt panini, and Julie opted for the cream tea. Well, there was a little moment of hesitation before the final decision was made.

Seriously?
If it wasn't bad enough, I've actually lost count of the amount of times, Julie has had, or at the very least shared, a cream tea. Oh, deary me.

Youseddit

Not too sure what it is about mothers at the moment. So far, one friend has supplied me with a couple of Gems from her mum - and assures me there'll be plenty where they came from. Now, Sharron has come to the fore and come up with something from her own mother. I have to admit, though, it's more of a'Fail' than a Gem.
Apparently, the family were sat around, watching Agatha Christie's Poirot on TV. You know - that famous detective from Belgium. The one best played by David Suchet.

Some way into the programme, Sharron's mother evidently has a flash of insight.

Well, yes. Yes, i... Actually, no. No, it's not. It's not 'just like' a whodunnit, it IS a bloody whodunnit.
Fortunately, what with everyone else giving her carefully blank looks (laced with a modicum of humour), Sharron's mother quickly realised what she had just said and led the laughter. Which, I am told, lasted a fair few minutes.

Julie has an identity crisis. A sexual one.

Once upon a time, there was a married couple. They were fairly happy with each other and their lot in life, although things could obviously be better. Everyone and every relationship always finds themselves wishing for more. More fun, more health, more money - you get the idea. As it happens, this couple were fond of having a laugh at their own expense and delighted in humorous banter. This friendly chit-chat turned out to be quite popular among their friends and family, and this of course only added fuel to the fire. In their desire to entertain, the couple found themselves becoming so used to the idea of creating this banter, that it became so second nature to them that they barely realised they were doing it. Fairly soon, it took a special comment or theme for the couple to realise that they had once again slipped into this particular behaviour.

One day, they were swapping jokes and tales that they heard picked up from varying places and, as such things are wont to develop, they found they were trying to outdo each other in increasingly sillier and/or tasteless jokes. After one such tale (involving a woman who was fair of hair), there came this exchange between the couple.

Naturally, this was slightly worrying to the husband. After all, you would expect him to have noticed some clue or other as to his wife's anatomy during the years of their marriage. In the end, he put it down to the fact that a Gem had manifested. Such things, as everyone well knows, have a life of their own and bend idle chatter to their own ends.
And so life continued, suitably baffled and somewhat entertained.

The end.