Birthdays

This blog has always been dedicated to FreeLanceNerd and I miss debating its contents with him more than I can say especially on today of all days.

That is because today is his birthday. Today is also the birthday of William Shakespeare. But I am not too sure FLN had quite the same way with words as the great bard. Except perhaps at Villa Park or Edgbaston watching England play cricket!

Another guy born today is someone FLN had more in common with than WS. He is Michael Moore. Set FLN on course on Sunday with a few chosen words about the past POTUS, one GWB, and there was no need to put the oven on to roast the joint. It sort of happened naturally. Sprinkle odd comment about St Tony and the rhubarb would well and truly stew to make the crumble. All of its own. We often thought MI5 had him watched!

I also learnt that Roy Orbison was born today in 1936. Now I think about it FLN did have a certain quality in his voice. All that growling and Pretty Woman. Must find the track somewhere and listen again!

FLN it's your day.

The return of the Cornish Chough?

Hordes of twitchers are expected to descend on the Tardis this weekend as news spreads of the return of the Cornish Chough.

Teapot the Chough has not been seen in these parts for a long time now. Some say she had flown north many miles and had been seen near the nest where she spent her chick years.

But on Wednesday came the first sighting of her return. And her distinctive cheep. A sort of rhythmic pulse. Try saying "my hanging baskets are dead" a couple of times and you get the idea.

All I can say is that it is wonderful to have her back, dipping her beak into the Rioja as if she had never been away. I shall be on careful Chough watch over the weekend hoping she will not fly away again too soon.

A world without Easter: the ultimate shaggy dog story

The other Sunday I tuned into Desert Island Discs. I happened to be on the journey from Rawtenstall to Manchester and I was taken with the "castaway" and what he might say. He was Sebastian Faulks the author of Birdsong and On Green Dolphin Street amongst other best sellers.

You may know the format of the programme. A well known person is interviewed and asked to select a number of records to take with him or her to a desert island in the event of a shipwreck.

It was his analysis of life that struck me - the ultimate shaggy dog story. Now a shaggy dog story is

"A lengthy, improbable and ultimately pointless story, often told in an attempt at humour."

And I thought that was rather striking. Because in all our activities we sometimes have that nagging wondering "What's the point of it all?" And that is not very funny. Paul wrote about the pity which should be heaped on Christians if Jesus had not broken out of the grave and returned full of life on the first Easter Sunday morning; if there is no resurrection from the dead.

Easter was the start of God breaking into our lives often in the most unexpected places.

Tuesday was going to be a hectic day beginning with a visit to the dentist. So why does his radio play "how great thou art" just as I have a mouth full of the instruments of torture? And what did it mean to me when I passed a white van with "The Lord's my shepherd" written at the top of the Baggies badge on the windscreen (this being the West Brom equivalent to Liverpool's "You'll never walk alone").

No Easter - now that would be the ultimate shaggy dog story.

Home Alone (2)

Saturday and Sunday was clean up day in the Tardis.

Some of my readers may be surprised that the clean up only took two days. But one of the advantages of being a Timelord is having a certain flexibility about time, if you know what I mean.

Searching under the kitchen sink produced a treasure trove of sprays liquids bleaches potions and mixtures of all shapes and sizes. I began to think Merlin had been at work. Teapot is prepared for anything from cleaning the sink to a major biological attack!

And as I went about my chores I went back in time to the bank below the flat in Lancashire where I grew up. There my mum and dad had the job of the daily cleaner and managed to rope in the young Timelord to help out from time to time. The incentive was to finish the daily duties in time for an evening cricket session in the back garden and no more incentive was needed than that. So I polished and dusted and mopped and applied the brasso to the door handles so that I could see my face in them.

No brasso in Teapot's armoury. Still one day I shall take the chance to brasso the Wragge & Co nameplate outside 55 Colmore Row. Mum and Dad would love it.