I Wish You A Happy Halloween

No but really!!! What is this?! Last year's plans were scuppered, and since then I have been unable to approach Halloween with my customary vigour. As a result, this year I am going as an idiot which, as regular readers will be aware, entirely negates the need for a disguise of any kind.

I have however managed to gather the energy to offer you a short film of a very large pumpkin being dropped on a bus in Oregon sometime in the last century. It is excellent: I hope you enjoy it.

l

This Is Delicious. My Taste Buds Are Going Wild.

If you can tear your eyes away from Mr T, you may enjoy the turkey at 3.03.

Things You See In Canada That You Probably Wouldn't See In England (On 29th October), #1

I Get Some Music In The Post

It has been some weeks now since the French-Canadian veterinary research histopathologist and I dined with Jonny B in Montreal.

Readers of Jonny B's web-blog, Privatesecretdiary, will be aware that he is writing about his trip to Canada at the moment. It is OK (if you like that sort of thing), but I think that exploiting a whole country to make content for your blog is the lazy choice.

As anyone reading my own excellent web-blog will be aware, I do not write about Canada at all. Why? Because I am a really good blogger and Jonny B is a really rubbish one (despite having approximately 1,323% more daily readers than me), and he needs to draw on what is around him and what has happened to him for his content, whereas I just squirt interesting things out of my head like magic.

But I digress. We covered various interesting conversational topics that night, including "What is Little Chef?", "Why do French Canadian women have such enormous gums?" and "Is $20 a reasonable amount of money to pay for two chocolate crêpes?"; at one point, Jonny even said something that was both funny and clever completely by accident*.

But then it got weird, and they (the men) started reminiscing about dank teenage Saturday afternoons under the Jethro Tull duvet cover with nothing but the the triple gatefold cover of Yessongs for company, showing off to each other how many Peter Gabriel-era Genesis lyrics they knew.

The evening finally ended after a particularly unpleasant tussle over The Musical Box. Time passed. Days became weeks, and weeks became just under a month. Then an electronic mail arrived from Jonny suggesting that a parcel was on its way, sent with the sole intention of bringing me and veterinary research pathologist closer together as the long winter nights drew in. I thought it might have in it for e.g. some cocoa or an electric blanket, but no: for the parcel arrived today, and it it were some records:
























And now, dear readers, you must excuse me: for I am now off for some 'privit time' with Genesis and Jethro Tull. Thank you, Jonny, for keeping the love alive!!!

* "I wonder what a good analogy is like?"

Things You Hear People Say In Canada That You Probably Wouldn't Hear People Say In England, #2

There is a LADY pushing a trolley up to the checkout in the supermarket. In her trolley is a PUMPKIN that she has plucked from the PUMPKIN PILE that is outside the supermarket*.

The PUMPKIN takes up the entire trolley; it is in fact a miracle that she could get it in there in the first place. I wonder if she lifted in there herself, or whether she used a forklift truck.

She hefts the PUMPKIN in the trolley parallel with the lady at the checkout. She says to the lady,

"I wanted a bigger one, but I couldn't see any. Are there any more coming in the week?"

I look about me. Everyone else in the supermarket has a pumpkin. I do not want one though. I think that is because I am English, not Canadian.


* This is not a joke. The pumpkins are stacked up around a gigantic tractor, a tractor that would need a stepladder to get into.