It’s probably my age,
but when a bloke speaks to me about his, “partner,”
I presume he’s gay and his partner has a bald head, moustache, and smokes a pipe.
Then, when his partner turns out to be female, I think,“What’s your problem, Sunshine? Why don’t you marry the girl?”

Wpl

Merrie England Still Exists
I wish I was still a real cigarette smoker instead of a brain-fuddled alcoholic hanger-on. When I make one of my occasional cross-country forays by coach I watch with envy as, at the comfort stops, the nimble footed addicts are out of their seats and into the elements, faster than a fox with hounds on his tail, and already disappearing in a cloud of homemade fog, lungs going like the clappers of hell, phlegm flying in all directions, before the driver has finished opening the door or the rest of the crew have prized open their sleep-glued eyes.
Then, while their travelling companions are huddled over jam and drink spattered tables in the rip-off glare of the Services, trying to work out whether they are drinking tea, coffee or urine, our intrepid band of devil-may-care, brown fingered, ‘Whose afraid of the big bad C,’ warriors, are out in the God-given air, come sun, rain or snow, forging bonds of fearless companionship, as only the rejected, despised, outlawed and condemned can do.
 
Sensing the revival of a long lost breed, last seen in the bulldog stubborn Englishness of Robin Hood’s men, ‘Us against the world; Whose afraid of chemo and the surgeon’s knife,’ type of hero who once accompanied Raleigh and Cook on their voyages of discovery, and Nelson at Trafalgar, I feel I have no option but to join them. To do anything other would make me a lesser man – a gutless chicken of a total abstainer.
And so, forgoing the curly butties and soggy pastry of the Services; the bookshop; one armed bandits and McDonald’s; I weather the weather with my modern hero’s, inhale their passive smoke, assure them that I am one of them at heart, an ex smoker with tattered lungs, a heavy drinker with an addled brain and rotting liver and early onset rigor mortis; not up to their high standard maybe, but still a Merry Man at heart; cough and spit with the best of them; join in their merry banter of lung shadows, morning coughs, X-rays, lobectomies, pneumonectomies, cold turkey, stunted growth and breathlessness.

And sometimes, just sometimes, they accept me as one of them. And then, for one fleeting moment, I feel,
“Sod Your Five a Day Real!”

Wpl

 

 

 

Wpl

I’ve Struck Gold!

On this honey jar it says that, “Honey will keep for ever. Honey found in the tombs of the Egyptian Kings was over 2,000 years old and still in perfect condition.’

Further down the jar it says, “Consume Before 2012.”

This must be one of the original jars, and worth considerably more than the 3 quid I paid for it?

Yippee!

Wpl

Wpl

I always thought the girl next door was very plain. But she’s actually quite attractive now she’s shaved her moustache off.

Wpl

Wpl

Nuts

For the dubious amongst us, under the “Ingredients” heading on this jar of peanut butter it says, “Peanuts.” Further down, the allergy warning tells us, “May Contain Nuts.”
Would those be the nuts who composed the label?

Wpl

She Doesn’t Listen

I’m the last of the big drinkers. My wife’s terrified my liver will explode and ruin the wallpaper. I’m also a gadget man. I keep buying things that are supposed to make life easier. But they don’t work so things just get more complicated.

I had this weird dream the other night. I bought a gadget that told me the state of my liver. It was a tube about 10 inches long, filled with mercury that moved up and down a scale like a thermometer. If the reading was 1 or 2 you were OK. But after that you went downhill fast. When it reached 10 you ruined the wallpaper and blew the windows out. My reading was 9.5 and rising! I kept shaking the bloody thing and holding it under the cold water tap but it wouldn’t stop or go down. So I threw it in a rubbish skip.

I told my wife about it at breakfast time.
She said, ‘It’s your own fault for buying it.’

www.poet-on-a-hill.blogspot.com

Wpl

                            She said ...

“I dance to the beat of the pulse of life.
An urge, I leap and romp and jump and climb.
Not pretty and coy, an embryo wife,
I'm a child that's wild and craving playtime.
I'll skip along as free as my brother;
no fettered, skivvy-the-maid, who will toy
with your boring chores – some trainee mother.
That woman-role is to let man stay boy.

Don't make us demure before we mature.
Don't shackle your daughter if not your son.
Rules that enchain us will never endure.
It's soul, not body, that makes the person.
Not shape, but humanity makes us tick.
Spirit's a flame in the mind – not the dick.”

Charlie Gregory
Prifddinas Cymru