Funny Old Age

** ROMANCE ...

An older couple were lying in bed one night. The husband was falling asleep but the wife was in a romantic mood and wanted to talk. She said:

"You used to hold my hand when we were courting." Wearily he reached across, held her hand for a second and tried to get back to sleep. A few moments later she said:

"Then you used to kiss me.” Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek and settled down to sleep. Thirty seconds later she said:

"Then you used to lightly bite my earlobe." Signing, he threw back the bed clothes and got out of bed, making for the bathroom door.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To get my teeth!"

** OLD FRIENDS ...

Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades. Over the years, they had shared all kinds of activities and adventures. Lately, their activities had been limited to meeting a few
times a week to play cards. One day, they were playing cards when one looked at the other and said,

"Now don't get mad at me ... I know we've been friends for a long time ... but I just can't think
of your name! I've thought and thought, but I can't remember it. Please tell me what your name is."

Her friend glared at her. For at least three minutes she just stared and glared at her. Finally she said,

"How soon do you need to know?"

Due to my forgetfulness, I am not sure whether I had posted this before; if so, have another giggles anyway!

Tags:oldfriends,romance

Current Mood: Amused

A Confession

A priest was being honoured at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician, who was also a member of the congregation, was chosen to make the presentation and give a little leaving speech at the dinner. He was delayed so the priest decided to say his own few words while they waited.

'I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen a television set and, when stopped by the police, had almost murdered the officer. He had stolen money from his parents, embezzled from his place of business, had an affair with his boss's wife, taken illegal drugs. I was appalled. But as the days went on I knew that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of good and loving people.'

Just as the priest finished his talk the politician arrived full of apologies at being late. He immediately began to make the presentation and give his speech.

'I'll never forget the first day our parish priest arrived, 'said the politician.' In fact, I had the honour of being the first one to go to him in confession ... '

Tag:Confession

Current Mood: Amused

Birds Of Bodega Bay

My friends Zach with his dog Puli had returned to see me a couple of times, as I expected they would. I got to know them both much better, more so with Zach of course, as Puli couldn't have told me much except with his very expressive body language. Okay more of a tail language. It never stopped wagging at such wild speed I almost feared it might come flying off.

Zach is quite different. His body language is far more subtle. Mainly with his eyes and his smiles, both constant and intense, as expressive as Puli's tail and the paw he kept offering me. If I didn't accept it he would nudge my knee until I took it and make a bit of fuss to thank him. In a way he kept interrupting the conversation; I didn't mind though. Not often I am shown such devoted love and adoration! Here I go again, I was going to write about the conversation Zach and I had, but I kept talking about the dog instead!.

As Zach's mother is American, the family is in America quite a lot, at least once a year, most years more often. And their home town is San Francisco, the city, or California I am most familiar with, where I visited more times than the others. I was once there for 3 months, not in the city itself, but only 12 minutes' train ride from there, more like metro except it's not underground. So we talked about this particular place called Bodega Bay, which we both know; and which brought back bitter sweet memory for me but, that's another story, a close chapter.

Bodega Bay is a little town, north of San Francisco, more like a fishing village really, a bit like Roses which I now call home. Getting to Bodega Bay is like reaching the end of something. The kind of urban core where the highway stops, seeming like there's nothing more further on. One of the reason this little place is well known is because of it's most charismatic attribute, where some of the sequences of Alfred Hitchcock's cult movie 'The birds' had been filmed there. The topography of this place seems to possess an abstract atmosphere, somewhat end of the world sort of 'feel' to it. Was it the place that created the film? Or the film that had created this place?

Some scenes were filmed over the bay, but the most dramatic ones were shot in the village itself, around the only school there, with the birds pursuing the children who were running and screaming. Zach told me the school is closed now, but the exterior is well preserved, with a memorial plague on the wall recording it as the place where the film was made. The solitude of this little monticule produces a strange sensation, a seemingly habitable and live place but presented as a of décor something happened more than half a century ago. A place evokes the past without being in a state of apparent decomposition.

The American film industry does not usually conserve their film sets or locations, accustomed to the systematic destruction and reconstruction. In rare cases this happens like the school of Bodega. One realises that film memory is another element applied to a landscape, as important as a tree, a house, a human geography or mineral topography. Or a bird, like the ones still flying there and we look and think of them as descendants of those that had created our secret terrors.

We could have carried on talking for hours about California, but Puli began looking a bit bored with so much talk and no action, so we took a walk at the beach, so that Puli could entertain himself running wild chasing invisible rabbits, while we continue our reminiscence. Or was it each other's private memory?

Tags:birds,bodegabay

Current Mood: Artistic

Barcelona - The City Of Cafes

The first time the word 'coffee' appeared in price boards of Barcelona was in the year 1698. Considered to be a drug, it's also called 'el vino de Los arabes' - 'Arab wine'. The first cafe or coffee bars that served such black beverage were installed in Barcelona a whole century behind the cities like Amsterdam, London, Venice, or Marseilles. Starting from there the author Paco Villar has written a book without precedent: 'The city of cafes, Barcelona 1750-1880, which is the story of the city told through the vicissitudes of the first premises that served coffee, of it's followers and adversaries, the municipal norms and the political repression in 1831 driving the proprietors to exile. After having written the best book available about the district of China Town, Paco Villar dedicated 12 years to investigate the origin and evolution of the cafes and the cafeterias of Barcelona, going deep into achieves, historical, municipal, newspaper, magazine and news journal libraries. This had helped to bring to light his first volume, which promises to be the longest, most encyclopedically complete account of all the cafes, bodegas (wine cellars and bars), restaurants and other leisure establishments of Barcelona. In this first volume, one discovers things so curious as to who was the first invented the menu of the day, which place was the first to install the billiard room, and why coffee was loved by some and condemned or attacked by others. How some have managed to become the most elegant and luxurious meeting points for the high society, and others for the literary or the celebrities. In fact, the author told the story of Barcelona through these colourful locations, considered to be the first dens of vice and sin, gambling, and later politico conspiracies of diverse ideologies. There were cafes where people played billiard, cards, and other prohibited games. In others there staged spectacles, from a single guitar to philharmonic concerts, to comedies and freak shows of people with deformities. Yet some others are as redoubts of patriots, liberals, or revolutionaries, even mutiny of frock coats! Places where concentrated manifestations of all kinds by labourers, burgesses, artists, writers, painters, journalists, even delinquents. Where business deals are made or dissolved, politics discussed, formed or reformed, crimes planned and committed ... On passing, it even told of how matches were invented and commercialised in a cafe bar, how some have transformed into inns with a restaurant attached, with a room or two for overnighters. And, which is the cafe reserved for women only, why the Duke of Victoria sent the coffee traders to exile, and Queen Elizabeth ll gave amnesty for them to return to the city. The 515 pages of the book is completed by recordings and photo albums, showing from the decoration to the many styles of menu cards, historic documents of opening licenses, sanctions, municipal norms, texts of detractors and supporters of the cafes. Once you have savoured the first volume, you would sure want to read the 2nd, centring on the 19th century, and the third, ending in the 20th century. Reading Villar's book is like taking coffee, a drink that incites you to take a second, and to a magnetic meeting point to unite with friends, telling each other a thousand and one stories. Christmas card from the employees of the Ocean Cafe to their Boss. Tags:bar,cafe,Barcelona

Current Mood: Accomplished

Charlie & The Seal Pups

Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird's wonderful up close experience with animals and nature when he encounters some seal pups on the beach. He met the seals while travelling through Antarctica following the route of explorer Tom Crean’s final expedition alongside Ernest Shackleton aboard the Endurance in 1914-15.

Coca-Cola Happiness Machine

This Coca-Cola 'Happiness Machine' dispenses more than just soda; it serves Happiness! Cool huh?