What wotnot is wot?

Context is everything.
Seriously. This is something we should all know from reading newspapers or watching the news. You might see a headline and read nothing of the story to which it relates. From that headline, you think you know all you need to know, except you're wrong. Most likely, you aren't even close.
Even worse, you will do it to yourself. You will write yourself a little reminder to do something or to buy something. In a hurry, you will write down a key word or phrase, knowing that will be enough to remind you when you next look at that small slip of paper.
Yeah, right. Not a chance. How many times have you picked up a piece of paper that has your writing on it, only to wonder, "when the heck did I write that? Why the heck did I write it?" You'll be stood there for a good fifteen minutes, looking at the hastily-scrawled word, 'racket', until finally giving up and throwing it into the bin. Only later, when you get a clip around the ear from your beloved, will you suddenly remember that you were supposed to be making a complaint to the apartment block's supervisor about the racket that your upstairs neighbours were making until three in the morning. You'll also wonder how you managed to forget, when you also recall you got a hard look from your other half for commenting on their stamina...

In this case, it's nothing nearly so lurid - I think....
I wrote this Gem down, but neglected to jot down the circumstances in which it occurred. It's not normally a problem, but when the Gem in question involves Julie's favourite word, it turns into a fairly major problem. When my own dearly beloved is stuck for a word, she doesn't stop to try and think what it is she's trying to think of. Instead, she'll just substitute the word 'wotnot'. When we used to have a car, this often became a major problem, especially when Julie was trying to give me directions ("Mind the wotnot." "The what?" "The wotnot - we need to take that oojumaflip there.")
Sometimes, Julie seems to have lost most of the words in her own personal lexicon, especially when the word 'wotnot' appears to be taking over, as you can see here...

Like I said, I didn't write down what was going on to prompt this flood of 'wotnots', so go on, feel free to comment below and suggest what the various 'wotnot's may have been - No prizes for the best, but if there are enough people commenting with possible variants, then I'll post the best of them, in a new entry, sometime in the near future.

Tuesday Bonus: On the Costa Del Geordie

Oh, my mp3 player is a little bundle of surprises. I have thousands of tracks to choose from, and going through them manually is time-consuming, so I get Windows media player to do it for me, randomly slotting this, that and the other onto the player. This means I end up with a playlist with one or two jarring moments - imagine listening to punk one minute and then dropping into a spot of Paul Robeson singing some churchy tune. It's not always like that; since I have a great fondness for Folk, Blues and Reggae & Ska, there is an accordingly proportionate amount of those genres popping up when I use the player. However, to hear this one suddenly come out of the speakers I was using at the time, it was still a case of "ye gods!"

I still like it - it's a fun tune.
Julie likes it as well, although I'm not too sure what part of Spain inspired her lyrics...

Apparently, Newcastle (UK) is now somewhere in Spain...

Snape approves: ExpelliaaAARRGGH!

I had a rough day on Saturday; each time I get a nasty cold I get a vicious little headache just as the cold is coming to an end. This means I wind up with a day of having the cold AND a near migraine experience. As it was, I wound up sleeping in an armchair that night, covered by a duvet. It was the only way I could be near comfortable.
Sunday morning, I was fine. A slight tightness of the head, but nothing I couldn't ignore.
Julie came into the lounge to see how I was, and wound up giving me a head rub. You know how cats and dogs go when they're on the throes of ecstasy? Well, that's me when Julie is giving my scalp a good massage. After that, all I ever want to do is flop down and drift off to sleep. Unfortunately, Julie was in 'Gem Mode', so I had to be (relatively) alert in order to catch as much as I can.
By the way, I used the qualifying 'relatively' just there, because I can remember the Gem itself, but not the situation that led up to it. We weren't watching Harry Potter, nor were we reading it. There's nothing visible in the room to bring it to mind, but Julie still managed to reference it in our conversation. Like I said, I had not long returned to the waking lands (plus Julie's head rub had relaxed me once more), I wasn't too coherent either. With that in mind, here's the whole Gemming conversation (barring a little coda).

We both agreed that it would have been highly entertaining and good ol' Harry just swanned up to Lord Voldemort and surprised him with a swift knee to the 'nads.

Shortly afterwards, I had stood up (so I could grab my pen and jot this Gem down). However, I still wasn't quite awake; I was stood there in a bit of a mental haze and a blank expression on my face. Julie was amused and asked me if I was alright.

You look like someone's just kicked you in the knackers.
Eh? Ye gods, no. This is the look of someone who's just been kicked in the knackers (folds up into a small, whimpering ball on the floor).

And with that, I shall bid you au revoir! See you next time!

But.. how does she know?

A few months ago, we and some friends went to see a comedian by the name of Milton Jones. He's ... odd. Odd to look at, with his unruly, gravity-defying mop of hair and natty line in Hawaiian shirts, and odd to watch. Very bloody odd. Have a look at him performing some of his finest and most surreal one-liners..



Apologies to those of you falling foul of the 'sorry, but you can't watch this in your country, nya nya nya!' syndrome. To those that watched it, you'll understand completely why Milton is one of Julie's favourite performers.

After the show, we drove home and chatted about the show and other things. Somehow, the conversation turned to sleep and sleep-walking and so forth. This reminded me of something I am apt to do quite a lot, much to the consternation of various people. Not that Julie was that impressed, as she then tried to outdo me.

There was silence for a few minutes after that one as three of us tried that one from various angles. The fourth one was still trying to start the mental engines, I think... I mean, I know you can hear things while you sleep. It's what wakes us up in the middle of the night or the morning (sometimes - see a forthcoming Gem), so we can get up for work. But, to actually listen? To make sense of what you hear?

Then again, I guess it's possible. After all, considering I can actually hold a coherent (if bizarre) conversation with someone else as I sleep, then I suppose I must be actively listening. I'm serious. You get me at the right time, and I'll freak you out completely. 

For example, when I was younger and still living at home, my mum heard me and my sister talking. Loudly. Well, we had to - we were in separate rooms. Coming up the stairs to see what the shouting was about, my mum poked her head around my door - the first one she reached.

Are you alright?
Yes, Mum. Why do you ask?

I was totally asleep (as was my sister, apparently), and to answer my mother, I turned my head to face her and replied - without even opening my eyes.

Poor Mum. She had to go and have a large rum & coke to steady her nerves...

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Got a Gem story of your own? Have an acquaintance who seems to be a few words short of a sentence? Why not email us with them?

juliesgemsuk@hotmail.co.uk

Therapeutic broccoli

(There's a notion, eh?)

As much as Julie and myself have a lot in common, there are also many things where our opinions and tastes differ. For example, there is not much overlap in our musical likes. No mean feat, considering I enjoy listening to almost anything.
Another difference of opinion stems from food. While we agree on some things (for example, the pizza we're about to eat - as we watch classic Muppets shows), there are some things that one eats that the other finds repulsive. For the record, I'm the one that likes Marmite and Julie most definitely doesn't. Something else Julie doesn't do too well with is vegetables. I have to admit a lot of it comes from her upbringing, but Julie isn't very good at eating and enjoying veg. If they're there, then she might eat them - but she'll not cook them as a matter of course.
When I say she might eat the veg on her plate, I mean it. Don't put mushrooms there, or spinach - or broccoli. Me, I LOVE broccoli.

The situation now is that I'll eat it and Julie will cook it. Not in that order, though, quite obviously. Mind you, sometimes it could do with a bit longer in the pan or steamer. And other times, I need to use a spoon to eat the stuff. It's quite odd. Julie has cooked broccoli for me quite a number of times now, but she still hasn't got the knack of the right timing. Sometimes, it'll be cooked just right, but usually, it's either tough or mushy.
Julie tried to explain the problem to me:

Well, possibly.
Well, ta-ta for now and ma-nah ma-nah to you all!

When the Protection goes bad

Poor Julie. She's not been feeling well at all lately. I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that the toilet isn't too happy right now either.
The problem is that Julie was meant to be beginning a part-time job at our district hospital today, but we had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn't be all that welcome right now. Especially in view of the fact that the norovirus has closed three of the hospital's wards already (Handy hint, folks. Use those little bottles of alcohol gel wash - they're not there to look good, you know).
This is not to say that Julie actually HAS the norovirus, so don't worry. She has some medication and will be her normal self again in next to no time. At the time, though, we were discussing what we needed to do. Obviously, Julie needed to see a doctor, as normal binding medication hadn't changed things. Equally important, though, Julie needed to call the hospital and let them know what was going on. After all, as Julie said...

Well, at least some things don't change; Julie appears to have all her marbles. She's also not lost her sense of humour. No sooner had she come out with this particular Gem than she burst out laughing. She knew full well what it was she wanted to say, but her wiring had crossed somewhere and come up with a faulty response. Oddly enough, it appears to be one of Julie's favoured current slip-ups.

Julie's Gems presents a bicentennial win

Yes, that's right; this is our two-hundredth post. While the actual Gem count is somewhere higher or lower, I thought it was still quite a nice little achievement. One worth celebrating by celebrating the person that makes it all possible.
Since we began this blog a year ago (February 27th, to be precise - only ten days off), we have posted all manner of verbal oddities and withering put-downs, almost all of which come courtesy of my lovely wife, Julie. Time and again, she has baffled me, my family and now the world at large - but more importantly, we hope she has entertained. Many times, there will be that one time where everyone in the room has been in hysterical laughter. Just as equally, though, when you try and tell your friends, colleagues or just anyone who wasn't there at the time, you'll be convulsed with laughter while they're stood there looking at you like you just grew another head. Eventually, they will mutter something like, "I guess you had to be there," and make good their escape.

Of course, there are plenty of times where the tale does manage to survive the retelling - there are whole swathes of the internet dedicated to all walks of life, as we all know very well. However, we would like to believe that only Julie has the personal capacity to carry this off on an almost career-like basis (Heh - wouldn't it be grand to be able to earn a living just for being a Gemmer?). As I have lamented on many occasions, both here and in the outside world, there have been terrible losses, due to my inability to recall or record some of the finest rambling Gems known to man. However, the great lady shows no signs of veering toward that fusty road marked 'Normality'. Even if she did, then I'm sure the prospect of a glass of wine would tempt her to stray once more to the one, true path.

That, and I have a great wadge of hastily jotted Gems, all as yet unpublished. Don't worry, you're not going to be bored for some time yet, we hope.

For today's offering, I thought it best that we offered Julie some respect and an opportunity to express herself clearly just how she feels about her possibly unique abilities. After all, many people in her situation would feel very self-conscious about it all. Not just that they would be spouting all sorts of bizarre things, but that their loved one would be sat nearby, slavishly scribbling down everything they say.
Not Julie.

Attagirl. Bold as brass and twice as large as life.
With that, I think it only right that I leave you with a little ditty.