Rathbone's Ramblin'

by **rathbone** » 09 Jan 2006, 11:36

I was lying in the bath yesterday afternoon, listening to Salutation Road and giving myself a telling off. Here we were, a week in to the new year and no action taken on the resolutions.

I made three resolutions this year:
1. To make sure that the guitar stopped propping up the dining room wall and actually got played.
2. To reactivate Bimbo before it was too late.
3. To get Dorothyâ€™s eyes sorted out.

The first one was easily sorted. I took the thing out of its case this morning, plugged it in and played along with Martin Stephenson and the Daintees (Salutation Road, of course.) How long that will last, weâ€™ll have to wait and see. (The aim is half an hour a day, but thatâ€™s ambitious.)

The second was fairly straightforward as well. Bimbo 2007 has begun. When I was at University someone in our year (who shall remain nameless - wonâ€™t you Robin?) had the brilliant wheeze of submitting sub-standard work under a pseudonym. Soon all of use were doing it. If you had something which you knew really wasnâ€™t up to scratch, off it went under the name of B. Plenderleith. Amazingly, the tutors caught on to this and would give B. Plenderleith marks for his work. By the time we came to graduate Mr. Plenderleith (now affectionately known as Bimbo) had amassed an impressive body of coursework, but pretty dire marks. After graduation, he developed into a reunion club. Bimbo now consists of almost all of the people in our year (there are some stick in the muds who donâ€™t play along). We get together every five years and take over an hotel for a long weekend and create mayhem, then go off again and become decent citizens until the next time. This has been going on for decades. The next Bimbo weekend, in 2007, will be the fortieth anniversary. At each event someone is nominated to organise the next one. It usually takes ages, not least in finding a new, unsuspecting, hotel each time. This time round it is my mate Jim Jamâ€™s turn to do the honours and I said Iâ€™d help, so this morning I sent out 41 e-mails checking everyoneâ€™s details and asking for suggestions for (a) the venue and (b) the mayhem.

The third is not so easy. Jim Jamâ€™s wife Dorothy died in 2004. She had been ill for some time with ovarian cancer. My way of dealing with that was to paint a portrait of her as I wanted to remember her, which was laughing on a sunny day up Calton Hill. So off I went, painting away. Every time Jim Jam comes round to our house, he takes a look and says yeah, thatâ€™s okay, or no, that doesnâ€™t look right. This has been going on for a year now and the only bits that havenâ€™t got his seal of approval are her eyes. Maybe by the end of February?.......

by **Dadaist** » 09 Jan 2006, 11:58

I can't speak for Dot, but the monuments etc in the background are fantastic - are you working from a photo?

The colours are very good - is this watercolours?

by **rathbone** » 09 Jan 2006, 13:28

by **Porty** » 09 Jan 2006, 13:50

by **rathbone** » 10 Jan 2006, 10:35

by **rathbone** » 16 Jan 2006, 13:22

by **rathbone** » 23 Jan 2006, 09:01

by **rathbone** » 31 Jan 2006, 11:16

by **Porty** » 31 Jan 2006, 11:23

by **foxy** » 31 Jan 2006, 13:38

by **rathbone** » 05 Feb 2006, 15:44

I suppose thereâ€™s worse things than spending the week in a corset factory.

I spent last week at the former Spirella Corset Factory in Letchworth, where the Government is carrying out a Public Inquiry into the proposed East of England Regional Spatial Strategy. This is the unelected Regional Assemblyâ€™s plans for growth on an enormous scale, including 478,000 new homes by 2021, and no fewer than 67 road schemes.

The argument, put forward by the Government, is that the only way to address high house prices in the East of England is to built more, hence reducing the pressure on the market and bringing prices down.

Not everyone is convinced:

The effects on the countryside and quality of life in the region could be devastating, with development of large swathes of Green Belt land, especially around Harlow, Luton and Cambridge, causing irreparable harm to the character of historic cities, villages and towns and widespread damage to recreation and tourism assets;. Â Light pollution in the region jumped by 21% between 1993 and 2000 and would increase by a further 12% under these proposals. Water resources would become over stretched â€” the region is already the driest in Britain.Â There would be vastly increased levels of road traffic, worsening already bad congestion and contributing to climate change and worse air quality.

You get the gist.

As this was a public inquiry there was lots of lively vox pop interventions. My favourite was from the chap from the Campaign Against Stevenage Expansion who made the point that as a layman, he had sat all morning not understanding a single thing that was being said. Everyone was talking about RSS this and RPG that. The Chairman tried to explain some of the terms, to which Mr. Case replied that he couldnâ€™t understand the explanation either.

I pity the poor Inspector who has to make sense of all this and then explain it to John Prescott.

Perhaps he should take heed of the following guidance for the sellers of Spirella corsets:

To be ready to take advantage of every opportunity, you must always carry with you a sample of the Spirella stay, as a chance acquaintance may give you an opening for a new client. Make a list of all the corset wearers in the section of your district in which your own home is located and work this section thoroughly before beginning another. Plan your route before you start; leave your home every morning at a regular hour, nine o'clock if possible, because the morning hours are the best in which to secure the first interview with your client. At this time present the merits of Spirella through your sales talk which should secure the order. If there is a logical reason why the order cannot be taken at this time, make a definite appointment for an early date.

The Spirella museum was the highlight of my week. I stopped working on my proofs of evidence and began trying to work out how many people in the room were potential corset clients.

by **rathbone** » 12 Feb 2006, 15:29

by **ecm** » 12 Feb 2006, 16:45

by **Epykat** » 15 Feb 2006, 14:07

by **rathbone** » 19 Feb 2006, 14:23

by **foxy** » 22 Feb 2006, 19:41

by **rathbone** » 27 Feb 2006, 11:27

by **Epykat** » 27 Feb 2006, 18:00

[quote="rathbone"]:â€œFreedom of speech is the freedom to tell people things they donâ€™t want to hear.â€

by **rathbone** » 12 Mar 2006, 15:42

by **sunnyporty** » 15 Mar 2006, 10:47

The football team is't called the same as mrs slocombes cat is it :shock:

coz it filtered out my word as well but there are other words you can use for football teams :lol:

Good ramblins bro.I seem to be the only one out of the 3 of us whose eyes have'nt been dilated.........WELL maybe once at what was meant to be a birthday party :oops:

but we wont go into that.

by **rathbone** » 20 Mar 2006, 16:39

by **Porty** » 21 Mar 2006, 00:04

by **foxy** » 21 Mar 2006, 00:07

by **Porty** » 21 Mar 2006, 00:08

by **rathbone** » 21 Mar 2006, 16:11

by **Dadaist** » 21 Mar 2006, 16:30

by **Epykat** » 21 Mar 2006, 18:18

by **Porty** » 21 Mar 2006, 19:21

by **Epykat** » 21 Mar 2006, 23:27

by **arachnid** » 22 Mar 2006, 00:14

by **rathbone** » 27 Mar 2006, 14:12

by **Epykat** » 27 Mar 2006, 14:57

by **rathbone** » 27 Mar 2006, 15:14

by **Epykat** » 27 Mar 2006, 17:31

Rathbone's Ramblin'

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