Out of the mouths of babes...

Anyone who has the pleasure of little people in their lives has hundreds of these but I'd like to share a recent one of mine.

We got a call from my sister this week that has a 6-month-old son and a five-year-old daughter, the latter of which started "big school" this summer. She was sat playing quietly (my niece that is) when she was overheard singing a sweet little song about baby Jesus.
"That sounds like a nice song" my sister commented, "Where did you learn that?"
"We're learning it for our nativity play. It's all about a little baby called Jesus who was born in a stable" the little one replied.
"Who else is in this play?" she continued to question
"There's her Mum, she's called Mary, and there's shepherds and three kings"
"So who's Joseph then"?
"Joseph is a little boy in my class"


By means of revenge on my niece's behalf, I was reminded tonight of a conversation many years ago when my sister was probably around the same age.

My Mum hails from a little village in Cornwall where just about everybody knew everybody, and on this particular occasion, we had just received a phone call from one of my aunts to let us know that an "old dear" from the village had just passed away.

Mum came off the phone and announced to us all that Mrs so-and-so had just died and although these occasions are always sad, she was fast approaching three figures in age, so it hadn't come as a great surprise to anybody.

"What did she die of?” Dad asked
"The big C" replied mum trying to be euphemistically tactful to which my dear little sister added "What, did she drown?

...aww, bless

'Tis the season...

So once again we are fast approaching the season of goodwill and I am always reminded at this time of the days in my youth working at the local Presto supermarket.

Being a typical student with very limited resources to fund my bar bill, I was always keen to cram in as many extra hours and at Christmas, there were as many hours available as you wanted to work.

What is it with shoppers at Christmas? Every year people go raving mad, from the minute the shops open, they are full of people wandering around for hours on end filling numerous trolleys with things that nobody is going to eat and drink, but “We have to have some – we always buy these at Christmas”. Yes and we always throw them out mid-March when you find the out-dated packets stuffed at the back of some remote kitchen cupboard.

The upside to this when you work in a supermarket is you can stack your shelves from floor to ceiling and pretty much guarantee an empty store by teatime. I clearly remember wheeling cages of stock out onto the floor to build displays of Christmas puddings, tinned biscuits, fizzy drinks of every imaginable flavour, tinned fruit and tinned milk.

However, I was a little puzzled when the store manager asked me what Christmas stock we had left to put out.
“None”, I replied proudly. I had filled every end display with festive goodies of some description in order to tempt our unwitting customers in to buying things they weren’t looking for.

During our tour of the store, he pointed out several pillars around which I had neglected to take any creative advantage. I reminded him that I had put out all stock vaguely connected with the festive season at which point I was instructed to bring down a few cages of tinned tomatoes, baked beans and tuna – those well known festive favourites.

The gem he then imparted has stayed with me ever since

“Listen, it’s Christmas – you can wrap sh*t in silver paper and people will buy it”

The scary thing is that he was right – please heed this warning should you receive any unexpected shiny presents this year.

Everyone should have a "hobby"

OK, this is just an excuse to try posting a picture and creating a hyperlink.
But really, if you ever see it, you should try a pint!

Here goes...

Hello World!

Having happily squandered endless evenings reading other blogs, I'm unable to resist temptation any longer & have to give it a go.

It appears to me that the real challenge is finding sufficiently interesting stories & anecdotes to update it on a regular enough basis.

Sh*t - have I run out of ideas already?