New old news

Even before we suspected anything was wrong, Dad was one of those people with an offbeat sense of humour and liked to look at things from skewed directions. He was also well known for being easily distracted and for getting his sentences tangled up.

When we finally noticed he was becoming even more vague than usual, we suspected Alzheimer's disease. The real cause, a massively aggressive brain tumour, floored us all.

As a tribute to my late father, I want to dedicate this week to him with three Gems (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Silly and yet sharp, he's still missed, and always will be.

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My dad is the reason I'm a big fan of surreal humour. The Goons, Monty Python - even The Young Ones - all came to me via my father. It may have surprised some people, knowing him as a sober-looking besuited man with a very well-maintained beard, that he would have such a liking for these things. However, 'silly and surreal' was a very good way for him to let his hair down. One of our favourite things was to hold a conversation about nothing at all, with each sentence being replied with something that took the chat in another new direction.

"So, what do you think?"
"Orange. Definitely orange."
"Not square, then?"
"It's a close call, but square is very Marmite."
"True, true. The brakes make too much noise as it is."

See what I mean? Absolutely bizarre. This is why he and Julie would get on so well. In fact, they would take this conversational art and take it to new, utterly baffling (yet logical) extremes.

A few years ago, a new newspaper was launched in the UK.

Nice and cheap, the i is a news digest, meaning that all the stories are pared down to the minimum. In other words, no rambling articles where the same thing is repeated ad nauseum. As an added - or removed, possibly - bonus, there is very little in the way of celebrity crap. Even better, being a sister publication to The Independent, it is resolutely liberal and fairly open-minded. Unlike the 'newspaper' below...

Yes, it's a fake. Yes, that's me.

Originally, this newspaper was only published Monday-Friday. It was less than a year, though, that a Saturday edition was introduced for the stratospheric cost of 30p. Before that point, though, my dad and I had a conversation...

It took me far long than it should have done to work that out.

Time to sleep

As I type this, it's 1am. Yesterday saw some abysmal weather of the rain variety. Or, to put it another way, it was pissing down for most of the day, and just when some idiot commented that "it couldn't rain much harder", someone Up There replied with, "challenge accepted." Yeah. Thanks for that.

I have a weight problem, and as part of an agreement with a dietician, I'm trying to walk at least five thousand steps a day. Some days are good, others not so. Part of the problem is down to the headaches I get, partly the fact my main hobbies involve sitting down (reading, internet, Magic gaming) and, of course, the weather.

Not me, but the pose is.
Especially the mug of tea.

Yesterday involved a case of  'all of the above'.

Because of the weather, me and Julie decided to drive to a garden centre that we knew was under cover, but was still quite large - in other words, we got to have a bit of a walk. Unfortunately, I started feeling a bit woozy, and we had yet to do the food shopping.

On our way home, we called in at Morrisons, mainly because they have a fantastic salad bar, and their cous-cous is amazing. I was very glad to get home, though, because by that stage I was definitely feeling under the weather (no pun intended).

After a brief time surfing the web while having salad and a cup of tea, I gave in to the inevitable and decamped to the front room, took painkillers and gingerly placed a cold wheatbag across my eyes and forehead. And slept.

All too soon, I woke up. Grumbling, I made a cup of tea, tried some other painkillers and settled down again.

The face ain't mine, but the expression is.

10:45 pm - awake once more. Bloody hell. At least the headache had subsided somewhat. And - surprise, surprise - so had the rain. It might have been late, but I was definitely in the mood for a spot of fresh air.

And here I am. Still tender in the temple, but getting there.

Here's Julie on the subject of taking a nap:

Cause and effect overturned

Julie likes to enter competitions in the magazines she buys, the sort where there are loads of puzzles and prizes of varying worth. I'm not condemning this, not at all. I enter prize draws whenever I can myself. The main difference between our habits is that hers come from printed magazines and mine are generally found online.

We haven't won any holidays yet, although we have both got some decent prizes. I have won a fair few books and Julie got various games. My personal best was a brand new blender and a month's supply of Greek yoghurts. The yoghurts were rather tasty, although after a month of them, I was glad to see the back of them. My sister was a happy camper though; she had just moved into a new flat and called dibs on the blender. As we already had one blender, one which didn't see much in the way of action, it made sense for me to pass the blender over to a suddenly cheerful sibling.

Julie, in the meantime, stayed with the gaming theme for her top prize - a Mario Kart Nintendo Wii box set. Sweet. It's not my wife's cup of tea, but I was most definitely chuffed to bits.

Some time after Julie's big win, her brother came round for a visit. It didn't take long for the subject of the win to be raised. Never mind the pride and excitement, it's a little difficult to cover up a gaming console when it's attached to the front of the TV...

Colin, Julie's brother, was properly pleased for her, and asked how she had managed to win it. Julie then explained that it was one of the many contests she played for in her magazines. In this case, a sudoku puzzle magazine. As we chatted about the contests, we both had to admit that while we had had a few wins, it was more often the case that we didn't win anything. In fact, Julie has yet to win anything from any magazine other than the sudoku one. It's a little frustrating, as there are lots of decent prizes in the other periodicals. However, as I have pointed out a few times, it's all down to how many people actually enter the competitions. The sudoku puzzles are very specific, which means the fewer people chancing their luck have better odds. It hasn't put Julie off them though. As she says, you have to be in it to win it.

Well, that's not strictly true. What Julie  actually said was this:

I'm not sure, but beneath the loopy language, I have a feeling Julie just violated the laws of time and space...

The Birds of Time

(heh - sounds like a Doctor Who adventure, doesn't it?)

We have a nice pier in Eastbourne. In fact, considering the fiery fates of the pier in Hastings and West Pier in Brighton, the town and city either side of Eastbourne, it's doing rather well.

Yes, it needs a coat of paint, but it still has that essential Victorian seaside charm. Having said that, when we went past it last time, I noticed something wrong...

No, even Julie didn't know what that meant, either. However, as she said, "it sounds good, though, doesn't it?"

The Weekly Wotnot Club

There's a pub near us that advertises a 'Monday Club'. Now, given that this pub isn't the most salubrious of drinking establishments, I would really rather not know what this club entailed. I wouldn't mind betting, however, that it doesn't involve a nice game of shove ha'penny. Shove broken bottle, perhaps.

Putting that aside, it's perhaps just as well we don't really want to go, as I'm not sure just when it takes place.
Well, I was.
But that was before Julie decided to put logic and sentence structure into a drug-crazed TARDIS and send the schedule bouncing around the space/time continuum like a rubber ball on steroids.

My head hurts...

Timey-wimey went all wibbly-wobbly

Every now and then, I find there isn't a lot I can say to explain or pad out the details of a Gem. This is one of those occasions.
Essentially, there was a little confusion over what the time was, and Julie had read a clock wrongly. Unfortunately, her reasoning for her failure was rather more 'fail' than 'reason'...

Even now, neither of us can work out just what she meant.

Longer doesn't mean longer.

The passage of time is a very subjective experience. Poor situations seem to make the day drag out interminably. Conversely, if you're enjoying yourself, you're bound by the laws of conversational narrative to utter the immortal line, "what, already? I just started! I don't know - just where does the time go?" As the author Terry Pratchett has also noted, your perception of time already elapsed will vary too. You may look back on a work or school day and lament how it never seemed to come to an end. However... wait, what? We've just had the longest day of the year? I could have sworn it was February yesterday! Or, as Sir Terry has it...

Of course, you don't need any such mundane approach to time dilation when Julie is around. If nothing else, after a few Gemmed-up exchanges with my wife, you'll have only the vaguest idea as to what century you're in. What I wasn't aware of, however, is that even Julie is affected by her in-built temporal distortion field. Even more oddly, Julie can turn this field on by having a nice lie-in.

I'm not a morning person, never have been. Unfortunately, being Gemmed later in the day means my brain is awake and then ties itself into knots trying to figure out the meaning behind what the ears have just fed it. So, there I was, mug of tea raised partway to my mouth and an expression of terminal bafflement on my face. Julie saw my confusion and decided to help me out.

Well, that's nice. Do you think you could find the time to explain it to me?

Marty McFly had a cool time

I just wanted to share this with you. Not sure why, but it seemed oh-so-apt to share it here...

Logic and language obviously have a problem when it comes to dealing with the fourth dimension...

Julie and the Gems of Time

First up, I need to take a few deep breaths. I did something at the weekend which was stupid, irresponsible and has me beating my head against the walls.* I lost one of my Gem notepads, one which contains many, many fine Gems, including at least two platyposts. There has already been some discussion over on our Facebook page, so if you want to pop along and berate me or commiserate with me, then feel free.
The one glimmer of light in this debacle is that I can remember one Gem perfectly.

Now, Julie has a sort of love/hate relationship with this blog. On the one hand, it's a tad embarrassing for her. On the other hand, she's actually rather pleased and touched** that so many people find her witty, charming and entertaining. So it is, then, that Julie likes to know what I have posted and how I have presented it. Some days I'll nail it and other days I'll get an unexpected smack around the back of the head. Normally, the question is a supremely cynical, "So, what have you said about me today?" However, there can be occasions when Julie isn't quite so guarded about how she's phrasing things (yeah, I know, I know).

...and then there are times when I have to jump into a TARDIS to find out what I'm posting. Apparently.

* Gently. I'm not into pain.
** Yes, a lot of people would say Julie is touched...

Dazed about days; Too many hours in the day.

People who know me are aware of a certain individual, a colleague of mine, one I shall refer to only as BD. My friends will know precisely who I'm talking about. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, it's true. In fact, to be perfectly honest, if we're using cutlery as a scale, he's somewhere around 'wooden spoon'. The only reason, sometimes, that I haven't clobbered him is that I'm too busy facepalming or beating my head against a brick wall.
Not long after he had started in the warehouse, the two of us were in the packing area together. I gave him a tape gun and got him to pad out and seal some boxes while I set our some address labels. Ten minutes later, the labels were done, but the boxes weren't. Why? Because the tape gun had run out of tape. And he didn't have the wit to say something about it, so he just stood there like the pillock that he is, waiting for the next thought to arrive.
Gah.
Oh, and another thing; he's a moaner. About how many orders he has to pick, the size of a box, where something is, how scratchy his throat is (despite the fact it hasn't got better on its own, instead of, say, buying some lozenges)... You get the idea. Every day begins the same way; sat in the canteen before we start, listening to BD moan about how we may be busy or quiet and how he can't wait for the weekend. In fact, he decided to take it a little further and wish it was the weekend all the time. I know, I know - what's so odd about that? Most of us feel the same way too, right? Sure, but BD likes to be a little more... avant garde* in his approach. (caution - naughty word ahead, although it has been 'blanked')

Yes, I know what BD meant, but look again, and you'll see that the prat has included Friday in the weekend. Last I knew, he was working Fridays, just like the rest of us. Also, when I commented on his desire, he just sat there and grinned nervously; I'd confused him and he was waiting for either an explanation or some sort of permission to forget about it and move on. Like it was with the tape gun.

(* okay... maybe 'avant garde' isn't the right term. Try 'bloody stupid')

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Talking of people who are somewhat slow at times, here's a clip of a couple in a car. The man is driving and trying to explain the concept of 'mph' and what it means. If you don't facepalm at least once when you watch this, that'll be because you're too busy doing the *head-desk*.

Me, I love the expressions on the guy's face. Seriously, I have had ALL of them when talking to Julie sometimes. Although I have to say (quite protectively) that Julie is in no way as dopey as the woman in that clip.

The calendar and the whiskey diet

Hola and Happy New Year, folks! We thought we would be kind and treat you to one last Gem for 2011. Of course, by the time we post this, it will be 2012 for a fair part of the world, so...

Over a drink earlier today, Julie was telling me about an article she had read somewhere about the island of Samoa, and the fact that they are changing their status regarding their position to the international dateline.
Mind you, what with Julie's epic facility for recalling details and her masterly grasp of Geography, it actually came out more like "I read this article about something, somewhere, it was some island somewhere, I think it was..." Fortunately, Julie realised she was heading towards a rambling Moment and stopped to tack stock of what she was trying to say.
Apparently, the island of Samoa lost December 30th this year to the mists of time. Like I said, it was all to do with their position relative to the International Dateline. You can read more about it HERE.
What Julie told me triggered a vague memory of some thing that I, myself, had read on a very similar theme.

That must have been a hell of a party for an entire country to be so smashed out of their heads to have lost the best part of a fortnight....
Of course, the reality is very different. Basically, Britain was quite some way behind the times, when it came to reckoning time - especially on an annual scale. While much of Europe had switched to the new-fangled Gregorian Calendar, stubborn ol' Britain continued to use the Julian calendar. Of course, since the Julian calendar was based on the solar year, as opposed to the astronomical year, the days were tagged as being somewhat shorter than they actually were. All this meant that, by the time Britain finally gave in and adopted the Gregorian calendar, we were out by ten whole days.
Of course, there was the predictable set of complaints about people who were concerned that their businesses may suffer due to the change, which is fair enough, one supposes. But then too, there were also plenty of others who literally believed they were going to lose ten whole days of their allotted lifespan. I dread to think what it would have been like if that parochial and reactionary rag, The Daily Mail, had been around then...

Video via TARDIS

I've often mentioned -sometimes here's, usually just as the Gems happen - that what we really could do with is an mp3 dictaphone. Switch it on, make sure it's in 'ear'shot of Julie and wait for the long, rambling Gems to come in. Something else we have both talked of, and appears to be a popular idea, would be to get a camcorder with which to record actual sessions of me and Julie talking about various subjects. This, however, is how Julie put the situation...

This one nearly slipped past me undetected, I have to admit. Everything was fine right up until the last word, which lulled me into a false sense of security. Mr Tennant, you caught it too, I see. Another fine paraprosdokian in action there... (Don't know what that is? Click the tag below to see more of the same, including one with a definition.)

Einstein gets a headache.

During a working, week, our habit is to sit down quietly for a while when we get home. Sometimes, it's on our own, sometimes we sit together and have a cup of tea and a chat on how our days have been. For me, this normally doesn't take long, as work in a warehouse doesn't lend itself to stimulating conversation. Julie works in a more dynamic environment and there's usually plenty to talk about; she's always busy and there's plenty of idiots to laugh/moan about.
One day, we sat in the lounge and Julie was rather subdued. Concerned, I asked if she was alright. She was fine, but it appears that she'd had something of a hectic day and was pretty knackered. Then again, as Julie put it....

Julie saw me giving her The Look and said, "What? That makes sense, doesn't it?"
No, love, I'm afraid it doesn't. I mean, I know Einstein said that time was relative, but I don't think he meant it that way...
Besides which, hasn't some clever set of scientists just proved that time travel is impossible? Spoilsports...

Trivial Pursuit Week II: Anachronistic cheats in ancient Greece

Every now and then, Julie will come out with a Gem that goes that extra mile. You'll be there thinking that's it - she can't get any worse now... when all of a sudden, BAM! It does. Usually, when she does this, it's the beginning of a ramble, one I have no way of writing down (I must look into shorthand), unless I'm very lucky.
On rare occasions, Julie will stop after the second blow - sorry, Gem - but that may have something to do with the fact she's seen my reaction and she's forced to mentally review what she's just come out with.
It's normally a few minutes before my wife can stop giggling.

For the final one of this week's Trivial Pursuit-themed Gems, we head back to ancient Greece. Be warned - there is a double whammy ahead, so please do not be drinking or eating when you read it.
I'm serious. That stuff's murder to get out from between the cracks in your keyboard...

Oh. My. Gods.
I warned you, didn't I? Now look at the state of that monitor...
(by the way, just in case you don't know what space hoppers were/are....)

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OK folks, another reminder for the free book draw - you still have just over a week to get your name in the hat.

Also, I'm always happy to publish Gems by other people. Come on, I know there have been times when we've all slipped up, or you've been privy to some baffling incident involving a drunken party. Why not drop us a line and tell us all about it - or them.

The email address for both the free draw and Gem submissions is juliesgemsuk@hotmail.co.uk

OK then - tata, have a good weekend and see you all next week!

Trivial Pursuit Week II: Bro-king thinking

OK, a little history today - British history, us being Brits and all, don't you know. Specifically, we're going to be looking at the British royal family.
Now, I fully realise that the British aristocracy is a particularly inbred part of society. Not only that, but thanks to Queen Victoria needing to marry off her many children, this also extends to much of the European royal families too. Come to think of it, I could probably just use the singular there; since they're all cousins or aunts/uncles by x degrees of removal, they're all one big dysfunctional family.
That said, I'm pretty sure that Julie's not completely on the money with her explanation here...

Unless Doctor Who was muddying the royal genetic pool, I'm pretty sure this was impossible...

Coming up on Friday: Doctor Who visits the ancient Olympics. And if you don't find this one funny, then there is seriously something wrong - even Julie was helpless with hysterics after I read it back to her...

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Don't forget to enter our little free draw to win a copy of The Devil's Dictionary.

I promise you that I will only be sending out the brand new, non-fondled copies to the three winners (read the comments for an explanation).
There's no tricky question or restriction on entry; all you have to do is send us an email to juliesgemsuk@hotmail.co.uk with your name (real or assumed). We will only ask for any addresses should you win.
Good luck and don't forget you only have until Saturday July 23rd to enter!

What's that about pride and falls again?

There's a telephone box (booth) next to a bowling green near where me and Julie live. On a glorious day, out for a gentle stroll, we happened to pass it. Or nearly. On this occasion, Julie stopped and glared at it for some reason. Then we had this exchange - Julie leading off with her forthright declaration.

(NB - the "><" indicates where I suddenly realised we were in danger of becoming stuck in a loop and stopped what I was saying.)


Obviously, what I had meant to say was that, in all the time since I had moved down here, there had always been one phone box.
Yeah, I know. Too little, too late.

By the way, Julie challenged me; "I bet you won't put that one on the website, will you?" However, I am nothing if not fair and even-handed. If I didn't post it, I would be all shades of hypocrite, and I refuse to be that.