I announce the winner

Adoring readers/and or fans: forgive me. I have been in London, which mainly entailed:

Forcing a "Bob" from North Carolina to drink half a pint of bitter  ("Drink it Bob. Drink it". "Ah think ah'll stick with tha lagerbeer"):

Watching the fupbal, drinking over 1,232 glasses of wine and trying to knock this woman's hat off her head:

Eating the breakfast of champions:

And spending a lot of time in my favourite shop:

Other than that, there was rounders, sleeping like a log, singing like a pub singer, staying with "our marvellous hosts", wine, dinner, more dinner, more wine, shouting LADYBABY!!! on Shoreditch High Street, watching people do the mamba accompanied by a Korean man singing in a Tyrolean restaurant, eating all the food in Ottolenghi, sweating, a meeting or two and admitting that I was horribly, terminally homesick - if not for London, for the people I like who live in it, and who remind me what it is all about. (Whatever "it" is.)

Now I am back in Montreal where it is still hot, and where I spend time making phone calls, making appointments to have my "groin area" lasered, and sieving gigantic insects out of the pool so I may swim up and down without eating 3ft crickets.

And what is in Montreal? Yes. A memory of a caption competition.  Were the submissions good? Yes they were. Was the winner judged entirely by how much it made laughter spurt unchecked out of my gaping mouth?  Yes it was.  Is there more than one winner? Correct. Is the best one the one at the top? Yes indeed ma'am, and let me take your arm, because I am recently divorced, your husband is a long, long way away and I am "Bob" from North Carolina.

Original pic:

"You're my wife now."

Beleaguered Squirrel

                     ties with
"Climate sceptics declare first annual conference a success"
Published author Jonny B

"Monkey Boy was happy, even though the Make A Wish Foundation clearly hadn't secured the real Ronald McDonald".

Mr Angry

"Despite enthusiastic marketing, business was slow at Montreal's new 'Monkey Boy' funeral parlour.'"

Published author Jonny B, again

"What the fuck did you do with Tarzan, Clown Boy?"

KatyBoo

There was not one dud in the bunch. The ones I have selected to be 'highlighted' to you just made me laugh more than the rest, mainly because I find jokes about/including the following amusing: 


1. Swearing;
2. "enthusiastic"
3. the Make a Wish Foundation


The Squirrel's does not fall into this list, and yet somehow, strangely, it is my favourite, tied with fucking Jonny-bloody-B'*s very fucking amusing line - one that was also, it must be said, the 'favourite' of the French-Canadian veterinary histopathologist with whom I share my life (and fleas). 

Congratulations, all of you!

Pip pip

NWM

* I am sick to the back teeth of Jonny B.  He has a fucking book out (discounted on Amazon here),  PLUS he once sent me records in the post PLUS all the rest of it. He makes me so angry I could puke.

I run a caption competition

There is no physical prize - only the glory of winning. You may "insert" your captions in the comments box; on Saturday evening, I shall take strong drink and pick the winner.

I find a very funny email

I do not have the words in my fingers to type out the origin and context of this email.  It is enough to simply know that it exists in the world, that the person who wrote it is still alive and happy and working in Paris.  It is also good to know that I was once both fun and professional at one and the same time - no mean feat, I am sure you will agree. 




Hey NWM!


WOOO thanks for all this...! I appreciate A LOT working with you it’s fun and professional I LOVE IT. Thanks you for all things you done because we moving so fast because of you! Let’s do it ! I love working on this campaign it’s rock!

By the way thx for the logo.  :-)






No. Thx to YOU, crazy Frenchman!


WOOOO!!!

I go to the fireworks

 It is all "go" in Montreal all the moment, what with the Jazz Festival and all of that. It is also the International Fireworks thing, and we like fireworks, so we travel to the Parc Jean-Drapeau (after a dinner during which the too-fast service - with its implication that one would want to drink a gin and tonic at the same time as eating a betroot and apple salad - irritates me beyond measure), walk and walk, go through a fairground, find our seats, listen to warnings about bits of flying fireworks and ash*, drink cold beer from plastic cups and wait. And then it is on!  Fireworks, set to music, across the water.

Last year, we saw Great Britain do fireworks to popular theme of Men and Women. (Shania Twain sings; the fireworks go off.  "Damn (whoosh!) I feel like a (zapp!) woman (bang! Whoosh! Fizzzzzzzzz!")  This year it is Portugal that we see with our two dear friends, and I cannot tell you if it was better or worse than Great Britain because it does not matter. Why? Because it is fireworks, and fireworks are probably the best thing in the world, better than cake or the thought of Sting with his tongue caught in a mangle.

An hour's journey back on a bus and a metro and walking and walking picking ash out of our eyes, gunpowder off our clothes and bits of plastic out of hair is all worth it, every scrap, and should I ever need fireworks I shall phone Macedo's Pirotecnia ("The Sky Is Our Limit") and ask them to "do the business".

* Update!!! Nearly 24 hours later, I feel something in my eye. Is it grit? Not it is not. I pull my lower eyelid down and there is a - I gag as I write - a burn on my eyeball (under the iris bit) and on the lower lid where the hot ash has flown in.  It is very weird and vomit-making, but no harm done. I am sure that, in no time,  I will recover and my monkey eyes will be out and probing the darkest corners of the universe to bring you, my adoring readers and/or fans, reports from the "frontline" of the mundane. 

Pip pip!

I have une fraise pornographique