Author: Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

Gay?

April 22nd 2006
 

The world, after threatening to for so long, has finally gone mad. According the today’s newspaper the Lord Chancellor and his staff will no longer be referring to homosexuals as homosexuals, as it may upset them. Instead they will refer to them as gay. For crying out loud, they should be doing exactly the opposite, refusing to call them gay and insisting on calling them homosexuals!

Until the homosexual fraternity appropriated the word gay its only dictionary definition was ‘happy and carefree’. I for one, and I know there are many more like me who hold a similar view, wish it had stayed that way.
 

Having dual definitions of the word can be misleading to say the least. For example I recently attended a revival of the musical ‘The Desert Song’, a show in which the song ‘The French Military Marching Song’ is part of the libretto. For those not familiar with the musical it’s the song in which one of the leading characters implores everyone else on stage to ‘Come boys, let’s all be gay boys’, an invitation which obviously means ‘Come boys, let’s all be happy and carefree’ and not ‘Come boys, let’s all be homosexuals’. However anyone in the audience under the age of thirty must have wondered, on completion of the song, why the rest of the cast didn’t pair up and disappear behind the sand dunes holding each other’s hands.

Let me say without going any further that I have nothing against homosexuals. It is not my way, and never could be. Christ I once had a doctor poke his index finger up my bottom in search of my prostate gland and that was bad enough. But just because I don’t want to do what they do doesn’t mean to say that I don’t respect their right to do it, as they no doubt respect my right to engage in ‘normal’ sex. For who is to say that I am right and they are wrong? Not me, certainly. Although, if indeed there is a right and a wrong, and as one of the main features of ‘normal’ sex is procreation, I would maintain that until such time as someone is made pregnant by having a penis pump sperms up his rectum that the ‘normal’ method of having it is most certainly not the wrong one.
 

Having said that I am perfectly happy for homosexuals to go about their lives as they see fit. As I have already said, I have nothing against them. And hopefully I never will have anything against them. Especially my genitals. And excepting of course the fact that they have hijacked the word ‘gay’ for their exclusive use.
 

I have often asked myself why they found this necessary, for they already had words in abundance to describe themselves. Homo, bent, queer, to name but three. Brown hatter, pillow biter, shitstabber, to name three more. Shirtlifter, turd turner, uphill gardener, one who bats for the other side, one who swings the other way, nancy boy, poofter, pansy, willie woofter, the titles are legion.
 

Apparently though none of them were good enough and they had to pinch one of my words. But why did it have to be ‘gay’? If nothing else it is a contradiction in terms to use a word that means ‘happy and carefree’ since, for anyone other than a homosexual, one would be anything but ‘happy and carefree’ if one’s anal passage was being invaded by something which must feel to him like the business end of a baseball bat. Good, I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest.

Have a gay day. 

Mellor’s Garden

April 21st 2006

Today’s Brainteaser.

Old Mellor bought his garden many years ago and got it dirt cheap, probably because it was in the shape of a trapezium. The two diagonals of the trapezium divide the garden into four triangles each for vegetables, fruit, flowers and lawn. Mellor remembers that the area of each triangle is a whole number of square yards, that the lawn is 80 square yards in area, and that the vegetable garden is 45 Square yards in area.

Question. What the fuck is a trapezium?

 Answers in the Comments section please. 10 pounds for the first correct answer. The editor’s decision is final.

Answer to last week’s (April 14th) Brainteaser – Barearse.

Throwing the Walking Frame

April 20th 2006

Atkins Down The Road, a man always up for a bit of fun, joined me for my Throwing the Walking Frame training session this morning at ten. Ever resourceful he already had his own walking frame, having picked it up at a charity shop some time ago in readiness for when the time comes that he’ll need one, and employed in the meantime as a support for his climbing strawberries.

When we arrived at the park the man who I met yesterday, Mr Jeffs, was accompanied by two of his friends, who were also interested in training for the Throwing the Walking Frame event. Like Mr Jeffs they were aged about seventy. One was introduced as Mr Barnaby, the other, a Scot, was Mr Ross. It turned out Atkins knew Mr Jeffs, who used to be his milkman at one time.

Straight away Mr Barnaby pointed out that he didn’t actually use a walking frame – the one he had brought along was his wife’s – and inquired if it was in the rules of the competition that a competitor had to be an actual walking frame user, as he didn’t want to waste time training up if this was the case. I confessed that I didn’t know but asked him who was to prove otherwise? I also pointed out that the Paralympic Games were over six years away and by then he would in all probability have the genuine need of a walking frame, as might the rest of us. This seemed to satisfy him.

Before we got down to some serious training I added a refinement in the shape of an 8 feet diameter circle which I painted on the grass with some white emulsion I had left over from decorating our bedroom ceilings.

The training went very well; the only problem being that Mr Ross, who is a genuine walking frame user, fell flat on his face every time he threw his walking frame. I assured him that this wouldn’t lead to disqualification as the rules stated that provided the competitor didn’t step out of, or in his case fall out of, the circle, it would be deemed a fair throw.

In fact it was Mr Ross who threw the walking frame the farthest distance. I wasn’t surprised by this, because of his country of birth, the Scots traditionally being very big on throwing things, hammers, cabers, tantrums, uppercuts and so on. Mr Barnaby wasn’t far behind and it will be interesting to see which of them eventually turns out to be the best thrower. Atkins Down The Road was hopeless, but this was probably because it took him all his time to keep his face straight, let along throw his walking frame.

We ended the session by having a chat about the way ahead and decided to put in for lottery funding, to be taken up by Mr Barnaby. On the way home Atkins and I decided there is no way we can continue without cracking up and resolved not to go again, or if we do, to view the proceedings from the cover of the trees.

Paralympics

April 19th 2006

“Training for the 2012 Paralympics,” I said, then in steps of about a yard in length started to measure out the distance to the walking frame I’d just flung about thirty yards into the distance.

“Paralympics?” said the man of around my age who’d stopped to watch me.

“Throwing The Walking Frame,” I said. “It’s a new event. Apparently the host country can pick an entirely new event and we’ve chosen Throwing The Walking Frame. Just nudged out the Triple Hop, Hop and Hop for the one-legged I believe.”

I’d found the walking frame abandoned in the park a couple of minutes earlier. Don’t ask why someone would abandon a walking frame, I’ve no idea. Perhaps its owner had been suddenly cured by a faith healer and having no further need of its support had dramatically cast it away. Or maybe it hadn’t been abandoned at all, maybe it had been thrown away by someone who had taken delivery of a new, lighter, faster, carbon fibre, tungsten-tipped walking frame, I just don’t know. Anyway it was there.

Thankfully I still have a bit of the devil in me and when I saw the man approaching I thought I’d have a bit of a laugh, hence the walking frame throw above. The man watched as I picked up the walking frame and returned to the spot from which I’d thrown it. I threw it again. This time it went about a couple of yards farther.

“Farther this time,” the man observed, approvingly.

“Must be close to my PB that one,” I said, pleased with myself.

“Can anyone enter?”

“I suppose so. You have to have a walking frame.”

I retrieved the walking frame and made to throw it again.

“Can I have a go?” asked the man, now eager.

I handed him the walking frame. He drew his arm back and threw it a good five yards farther than I had.

“You’re a natural.” I said. “Why don’t you get a walking frame of your own and join me. There’s an individual competition and a four man team event, but we’d need another two for that. I train every morning at ten.“

He said he’ll be there tomorrow, prompt.

April 19th 2006

“Training for the 2012 Paralympics,” I said, then in steps of about a yard in length started to measure out the distance to the walking frame I’d just flung about thirty yards into the distance.

“Paralympics?” said the man of around my age who’d stopped to watch me.

“Throwing The Walking Frame,” I said. “It’s a new event. Apparently the host country can pick an entirely new event and we’ve chosen Throwing The Walking Frame. Just nudged out the Triple Hop, Hop and Hop for the one-legged I believe.”

I’d found the walking frame abandoned in the park a couple of minutes earlier. Don’t ask why someone would abandon a walking frame, I’ve no idea. Perhaps its owner had been suddenly cured by a faith healer and having no further need of its support had dramatically cast it away. Or maybe it hadn’t been abandoned at all, maybe it had been thrown away by someone who had taken delivery of a new, lighter, faster, carbon fibre, tungsten-tipped walking frame, I just don’t know. Anyway it was there.

Thankfully I still have a bit of the devil in me and when I saw the man approaching I thought I’d have a bit of a laugh, hence the walking frame throw above. The man watched as I picked up the walking frame and returned to the spot from which I’d thrown it. I threw it again. This time it went about a couple of yards farther.

“Farther this time,” the man observed, approvingly.

“Must be close to my PB that one,” I said, pleased with myself.

“Can anyone enter?”

“I suppose so. You have to have a walking frame.”

I retrieved the walking frame and made to throw it again.

“Can I have a go?” asked the man, now eager.

I handed him the walking frame. He drew his arm back and threw it a good five yards farther than I had.

“You’re a natural.” I said. “Why don’t you get a walking frame of your own and join me. There’s an individual competition and a four man team event, but we’d need another two for that. I train every morning at ten.“

He said he’ll be there tomorrow, prompt.