I’m Plumbing New Depths…

Tags

Dad Jokes, France, French, funny, Humor, Jokes, Porn, Students, University

A recent study has been conducted in France, predominantly focusing on the viewing habits of 18 – 25 year-olds. The independant French research group Groupe de Soixante Neuf have spent the last 24 months compiling data up and down the country in France’s universities and campuses. Their findings appear to support their initial hypothesis and have just been released to the wider scientific community.

The group have sought to verify a correlation between viewing adult films and teen expectations in day-to-day life. Their findings, while accepted as empirical, have also sent shockwaves through France.

Lead spokesman, Doctor Ivor Biggun, had this to say: ‘As we expected, the long-term effects of viewing pornographic films have had a negative impact on the youth of France’. When asked for more details Dr Biggun replied: ‘The majority of French youths now have unhealthy and unrealistic expectations as to how quickly and easily you can get a plumber to visit your house’.

Neighbours In France Are Just As Disagreeable As Anywhere Else In The World…

Tags

Chickens, France, French, funny, Humor, Humour, Life, Neighbours, Relationships

 

My next-door neighbour thinks her neighbour at the back and to the right set her garden on fire.

He didn’t.

It was her neighbour at the the back and to the left. It’s his holiday home and he was cutting the grass and decided to burn it – as you do – to get at the weeds. It got out of hand, he set my neighbour’s grass on fire, and then promptly packed up his car and legged it back to Brittany with his wife.

The neighbour at the back and to the right didn’t burn her grass.

What he did do was cut a hole in her fence in order to cut down a plant on her land that he said was toxic.

My next-door-neighbour is not happy with the neighbours at the back.

I know all this because for the last three days it’s been like world war 3 in the gardens around us with accusations flying left and right.

There was an attempt to bring me into this as the neighbour at the back – the fence-cutter – alleged that I had had enough of my neighbour too. ‘The Englishman is going to explode at you as well’ was the exact phrase used.

I was quick to assure my neighbour that I wanted no part in this, was not on the verge of exploding, and would prefer to remain ‘Switzerland’ if I could help it.

It’s been great for my French – I know so many more gros mots than I did.

We have now reached the point where the neighbour at the back and to the right is erecting a much higher fence, in order to avoid talking to my neighbour.

And she is now selling off a large number of her chickens as she fears they will be killed by the neighbour at the back (and to the right).

As for the neighbours that fled to Brittany? They have yet to return.

Hey, it’s not all sunshine and roses here in France.

Look Out, Look Out! There Are Guard Cats About!

Tags

animals, Cats, France, French, funny, Guard Cats, Humor, Humour, Learning, News

 

I was talking to a French bloke yesterday about cats.

We were at a friends and family get-together, eating and drinking, all the usual things, and I’d struck up a conversation with Bernard a pal of my beau-pere and, naturally, the conversation got around to cats.

I’d mentioned to him that my previous next-door neighbour had 25 cats. 25 indoor cats I should add.

I know this because after she moved out the owner of the property had to clean it up. I got talking to him because he’d spilled cement on my gazebo roof and came round to clean it up, which was nice of him.

’25 cats! Oh, the smell’ the owner had said to me, wafting his hand in front of his nose in case I didn’t understand what ’25 cats! Oh, the smell’ meant in French. But I did, so that was good. ‘The next person we rent the house out to’ he’d continued, with a determined look in his eye ‘No more than 3 cats!’

He was true to his word. Our new neighbour only has 3 cats. And one French bulldog.

And approximately 30 chickens (plus an undisclosed number of indoor chickens).

Back to Bernard and he told me that 25 cats was nothing.

‘There’s a lady in my village’ he said to me ‘Who has a 100 cats’ (He said ‘une centaine de chats’ and I don’t use that number very often in reference to cats, so I had to check with my partner that I’d understood 100 correctly. I had.) ‘I mean she doesn’t feed them all, and they come and go, and are pretty wild, but yes, 100 cats’. I thought to myself that those cats probably wouldn’t go hungry if she died, but I kept that thought to myself.

‘That’s nothing though’ he said to me and commenced to tell me a tale about a friend of his who lives in La Réunion, an overseas French department, east of Madagascar. This friend of his lives in a house surrounded by very high walls, with barbed wire at the top, and owns a team of guard cats.

Yes, you read that right – guard cats.

Bernard visited his friend earlier in the year and witnessed this phenomenon first-hand. There are, according to Bernard, 15 of them, and if you don’t ring a special bell when you enter the premises, or they don’t know you, they will attack en-masse.

‘They come at you all at once, and get their claws out and hiss’ Bernard added, while making a very bizarre expression to let me know what a cat with its claws out looked like, in case I hadn’t understood him. But I had understood him, so that was good, plus I got a free cat impersonation thrown in.

He then explained that these cats will then remain in attack-mode until they receive the stand-down word from either of their owners. Or they kill whatever has disturbed them, whichever comes first.

‘I’d never seen a team of guard-cats until then’ Bernard said to me.

‘I’d never heard of guard-cats until just now’ I replied, still trying to picture what 15 cats all attacking at once would look like, and trying to get the ‘Thundercats‘ theme tune out of my head.

 

So let me know, have you heard of guard cats?

 

 

 

A Terribly Optimistic Experiment In Crap Songs…

Tags

Advertising, Corona Virus, entertainment, funny, Humor, Learning, Life, Music, Youtube

 

I sometimes listen to crap songs late at night on YouTube.

I have, over the past couple of months, begun to draw a correlation between the amount of ads I am forced to view and the level of the Corona virus. As an example of this a few weeks ago – when the virus was arguably at its peak –  I could go through almost the entire back-catalogue of Steps, and be forced to watch just one 5 second ad.

Ditto for Genesis.

Last night I’d only listened to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up, Scatman (ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop) by Scatman John, and the masterpiece that is Blue by Eiffel 65, and I’d already endured a 15 second promo for a rapper I’d never heard of, and been encouraged to buy an Apple watch that cost more than my first car.

However it was when Flat Beat by Mr Oizo was interrupted mid-song that I knew we may be turning a corner, and that things seemed to be back to normal.

I am currently testing this hypothesis by playing Barbie Girl by Aqua, on a ten hour loop and monitoring the ad breaks and I will report back with my findings from this at a later date.

Not The Party Goers I Was Expecting…

Tags

Age, Corona, Deconfinement, Drinking, Elderly, France, funny, Humor, Humour, Life

 

There was a lot of noise coming from a distant corner of the neighbourhood last night. A group of people getting together and partying till the wee small hours. Lots of shouting and chanting and general rowdiness – just a normal, youthful party.

It didn’t bother me too much, but where the noise was coming from is quite a built up area, so I thought the gendarmes might have been called, or at least they would have quietened it down a bit out of respect for their neighbours.

I heard from another neighbour that they were at it till gone 4 a.m. ‘Oh well we were all that young once’ I said to him, before adding ‘They were probably just enjoying deconfinement’ he agreed with me, but rolled his eyes.

I happened to have a stroll past there just now. The music is starting to crank back up.

They were all there, in the garden, a dozen or so of them sat around a table full of bottles, getting warmed up for round two tonight.

Youthful? No. Young at heart? definitely

Not one of them looked under seventy.

I also now know why the neighbours didn’t complain – because they’re all there.

I might nip round later on with a bottle myself…

So We’re Talking To Furniture Now Are We?

Tags

Confinement, Corona Virus, Crazy, funny, Humor, Life, Lockdown, News

 

I’ve just passed my partner on our upstairs’ landing.

She was talking to a chest of drawers.

‘Has confinement gotten to you so much that you’re talking to furniture now?’ I asked as I slipped by her.

‘I was talking to you’ she muttered darkly.

I didn’t believe her.

‘It’s not Beauty And The Beast you know’ I said to her as I went down the stairs ‘They won’t talk back’.

I think it’s the sofa for me tonight.

Panic Buying Does Not Impact My Bad Taste…

Tags

Alcohol, Corona Virus, funny, Humor, Humour, Life, Panic Buying

 

They all laughed at me when I told them what my favourite drink was.

‘Water with chemicals’ ‘Monkey’s piss’ ‘Cooking lager’ and ‘Why?’ were just some of the barbed phrases bandied about by my French friends.

We live in dark times, and panic buying is hitting many of the items we love and need.

So it’s refreshing to know that I when I do my big shop I can still rely on being greeted by the welcoming sight of case after case of unsold Kronenbourg.

Who’s laughing now, eh?

Positive Outcomes Of The Corona Virus Lock-down…

Tags

Corona, Coronavirus, Health, Life, Neighbours, News, People, Relationships

 

I saw something quite lovely last night. I’d gone for a run, and as I reached my hour’s limit I headed for home. As I entered the lower end of my street and rounded the corner I was greeted by the sight of four of my neighbours, all stood on their individual doorsteps, well over 2 meters apart, each with a large glass of wine in one of their hands.

They were all in high spirits as they enjoyed their apéro, chatting and laughing away, one of them even gave me an ‘ooh la la’ as I jogged past, and they all bid me a good evening and a how do you do.

Now I know most of the people on my street, and this group is not one I’ve ever encountered out and about, and if you saw them individually you may not put them together. They had a distinctive ‘Breakfast Club’ feel to them, as though they had sought each other out during difficult circumstances, and were forging new relationships.

I’d like to think that when this is all sorted out – whenever that may be – and we can all  emerge, and start to resume some semblance of a normal life again, that there may well be new, lasting friendships, created by this virus. It would be ironic if this thing that is isolating us all, and keeping some of us apart from our nearest and dearest, actually made us reach out to people that were even closer to home, perhaps people that we’ve never talked to, or socialised with before – maybe even people who live right next door. One can but hope, eh?

An Ode To Wakefield, The City I Grew Up In…

Tags

Childhood, England, games, growing up, Humour, Life, Nostalgia, Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Wake up early on Saturday morning.

Up before the rest of the house.

Dash downstairs to get a bowl of Cornflakes and settle in for the morning cartoons.

Get dressed, grab my stuff and leave the house, hopping on a 102 (I’m a Lupset lad, born and bred) to Wakey.

Get off in the bus station and nip into the bogs, passing by the bus drivers puffing away on fags outside their staff room. I use a cubicle – the graffiti on the walls mean it’s always an education in there – and I make a mental note to ring Sandra, she sounds like a nice girl, although I can’t believe she’ll do all that for ten bob.

I head down to the clock tower and take a seat underneath it, on the cold concrete, sheepishly eyeing up a couple of girls leaning on the railings next to the phone boxes. It’s not long before my mates roll up and we head down to the indoor market to have a gander.

We push through the doors – it takes two of us to open them – and go straight upstairs to browse the computer games stall. We’re not buying ‘owt, we just like looking.

One of the lads wants something new to listen to, so we stop off at the record stand and he buys it.

Then we make our way to Sun Lane, paying our fee and heading inside where we spend a happy hour-and-a-half splashing around and sheepishly eyeing up some girls.

We dry off and get dressed and leave and head straight for Chucky Chicken, pumping ten pence after ten pence into Final Fight, Robocop, Aliens, WWF Wrestlefest and many, many more.

We’re hungry now, so we go to McDonald’s just across the way. We get in line and queue. And queue. And queue. It’s always so busy in here, so many people. We get our food, but it’s standing room only so we head outside and eat on a bench, sheepishly eyeing up some girls while we do, and marvelling at how many people there are. Wakey is always rammed on a Saturday.

We stick our wrappers in the bin and head up the precinct, then we duck down the side of Boots and head inside The Ridings. We ride the glass elevator up and down, up and down, up and down, till the short stocky security guard with the moustache – the one that looks a bit like Super Mario, but with a redder face – starts eyeballing us, and we leave.

To the ABC cinema now, to finish off our afternoon. The smell of fresh popcorn hits us as we enter and pay. We take a seat and the sounds of Pearl and Dean greet us:

‘P-pah, p-pah, p-pah, p-pah, pa-pa-PAH!’

Then we disappear into another world for an hour-and-a-half or so.

The film finishes and we emerge, blinking into the daylight, and we each go our separate ways. I grab another 102 home.

I get off the bus, spotting a few local lads I head over and join them. We play hide ‘n seek and tigs as the sun goes down, only stopping when our mums yell out that ‘tea’s ready!’ at the top of their lungs.

We all say our goodbyes and head inside, the end of another lovely Saturday.

I miss Wakefield.

I miss the Wakefield of my youth.

 

 

My Partner Has Reservations Regarding My Toothbrush Charger Solution…

Tags

Family, France, French, funny, Furniture, Humor, Humour, Life, Relationships

Me (English) says: ‘So here you are darling, I know that you hated having the toothbrush charger just sat on the floor so I’ve found a solution. It was a mere five euros from Troc. 5 Euros! Look at the craftsmanship!

Can you imagine finding anything like it for that price in the UK? It’ll be a conversation starter for all our friends when they come around. Our English friends will marvel at the low price, and ask questions about its original purpose, while our French friends will find the non-traditional placement of a very French piece of furniture quaint and amusing.

Did I mention it was only five euros? I really think it ties the landing together. Look at the craftsmanship. All for only 5 euros. What do you think darling?’

 

She (French) says: ‘Why do we have a bread bin upstairs?’