Yahoo! News – 19 hours ago
A Pentecostal pastor famed for handling snakes during church sermons has died after being bitten by a rattlesnake.
Mark “Mack” Wolford, 44, was well-known across the US state of Virginia for his lively church services, which included handling dangerous snakes in a ‘test of faith’. But the pastor died after being bitten by a rattlesnake he had owned for years, mirroring the death of his own father in 1983.
You don’t need to read any more.
Sorry for the delay. I’ll be with you just as soon as I get out of this duffle bag I padlocked myself into. Am typing this post with one finger pushed through a hole in the zip. What do you mean it’s impossible to padlock yourself inside a duffle bag ?? Do you know nothing ? Everyone’s doing it ! Especially us alleged “sexual deviants”. Just ask the lads over at the Secret Service. Or rather don’t bother. They won’t tell you anything, apart from revealing my whole back story, and trash my character. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they immediately tell you enjoyed sordid sex, so you won’t care what happened to me. They’ll tell you everything I got up to, but nothing they did. It’s a secret.
Bag of Bollocks
In a break from tradition I decided to go for a walk this morning. Yes I did, honest. Those who know me well know that I regard Shank’s Pony as the least appealing mode of transport – even less agreeable than flying. But it came to my attention that a) I have done little or no physical exercise since last summer (and even then you had to watch intently to spot anything going on); b) The Incumbent had taken the car to the gym; c) I needed to go to post a package; and d) the Post Office had no helipad nor runway for me to utilise.
Strapping on my Used-As New walking boots, I prepared myself for the hike ahead. A two mile round trip would have seemed nothing to a young fit Bomber as I once was, but over the past 36 years I’ve let myself go a bit. I can hear tittering at the back, but I can assure you that, even by my lowly standards, I am in bad shape. It is time to start back on the road to some sort of fitness. Little steps. Put down the biscuits, pick up the pace. Little steps.
“Blimey”, thought I as I left the house “that’s a bit nippy”. I’d made it to the end of the garden path and I was reconsidering my decision to wear just my Sainsbury’s Tu heavy sweater (coincidentally I am myself a heavy sweater, so I thought it an appropriate garment to don). My neighbour Lou was busy in his garden lugging around dirty great bags of topsoil. I was gonna offer him a hand, but I knew he’d refuse, and anyway he looked happy enough. At 82 he was certainly stronger and fitter than this excuse of a man watching him across the garden fence. That clinched it: I couldn’t turn back now just cos it was feeling a bit parky. What would my octogenarian friend think of me ? I pressed on. The sun was out and but for the biting northerly wind nibbling about at me vitals it could have been pronounced as a Bill Withers Day. I decided to get a move on.
My thinking was that if I got into my stride early, I’d get up a decent pace, get a little sweat on, thus combating the arctic breeze coming off the Thames estuary and the Essex Steppes beyond. I increased speed and, as I did so, the Eton rowing song starting swirling round my head for no apparent reason. I used the rhythm as my pacemaker. Which is a coincidence cos that’s what I felt I needed by the time I reached the top of the road- a pacemaker.
“Lovely Boating Weather…” I sang to myself under my breath- which became a bit boring rather quickly as that was the only line from the song I knew. “La da da DI, da daaa….” I continued. I soon resorted to using the words of a naughty rugby song which had the same tune but is too rude to reprint here. “One day while on a chuff-chuff…there was hardly room to stand...” and so on and so forth. But by the time I’d turned into the alleyway after some 500 yards of my journey I was suffering a worse fate than just forgetting the words of a song. My knee had started to play up. It was as if I hadn’t walked 500 yards for over a year. Which is a coincidence because…
Onward and downwards.
Pressing on through the pain, I crossed over the road at the end of the alley. This was the main route between Crayford and Dartford – a sort of San Diego Freeway without the sunshine. Or the traffic. Nevertheless I found myself having to inject a bit of a spurt on to get out of the way of an oncoming scrap metal dealer’s low-loader. This screeched to a halt ten yards after it passed me. “Oh Christ, what have I done ?” I thought. Six, count ’em, SIX, young lads got out of the cabin of the truck and were making double-quick time towards me. Surely the local Pikey Chapter hadn’t resorted to mugging cripples in broad daylight for whatever was in their brown paper parcels? Before I could creak down to my knees and plead for mercy, the gang turned off the path into a garden to relieve the inhabitants of a bike and a fridge which were standing in front of the house. I decided to let the lads and the current owners of the goods sort out between themselves the fate of the fridge and accompanying BMX (which I have to say looked rather too new and…erm…working to have been discarded). I hobbled on out of harms way as fast as my knee would carry me.
A few more corners turned and I was on the home straight, as far as the outward leg of the journey was concerned, anyway. One of my outward legs was suffering. Apart from the knee going on strike, the shin and calf of the same leg was cramping up (as opposed to camping-up, which I reserve for special occasions). As I’d achieved the goal of working up a sweat, I decided to take the pace down a little. The rest of the journey was taken at glacial pace, packet under my arm, I dragged my right peg slightly behind me, looking like a fourth-place runner-up in a Joseph Merrick look-a-like competition.
Eventually I reached the post office and took my position behind the line of old ladies and gents cashing in their pensions, sending letters to their son who’d fucked off to Canada 28 years ago or paying into the Christmas Club. The woman behind me suggested I take a seat as I looked awful. But I had my pride. Even if I only had one working leg. They shoot horses at Aintree for much less.
Suitably rested, I slowly and delicately made my way home, stopping off at a local shop to by a stick of French bread. In an attempt to stave off hunger, I broke the top off and began munching my way though it. I felt like that bloke at the start of The French Connection, except he had his bread before he was shot in the face. I felt like someone had already taken his Walther PPK to various parts of my body, picking off bits of me for fun.
I finally made it home, sweating audibly, chaffing dangerously, where I collapsed into the shower to rehydrate and lick my wounds. I’m thinking of investing in a bike. I wonder if those scrap dealers would sell me theirs?
"Can I Get a Proof of Postage, Please?"
This just in.
Below is an extract from my old firm The Daily Telegraph, written by a former Editor and ex-guvnor of mine Charles Moore (pictured below, second left, with Dave -far left, which is a first- on a jolly day out). Moore, known by all as Lord Snooty , and the unlikeliest of all Tory critics, seems to have some concerns. Now if HE is starting tho think like this about Dave, Gideon and co, maybe, just maybe there is some hope. (highlights are mine)
By Charles Moore
30 Mar 2012
When I first heard Francis Maude’s suggestion on Sky News that we might all stock up “a bit of extra fuel with a jerry can in the garage”, I did not, I must admit, panic. His remark seemed a little unwise – and you could hear, by the way he immediately began to qualify it, that he thought so too – but I let it pass.
What I was forgetting is that ministerial words about an immediate problem with basics like fuel or food is the only sort of ministerial statement which people believe. It was like when Edwina Currie, the then junior health minister, said in 1988 that most egg production was infected with salmonella. People stopped buying eggs. After Mr Maude spoke, they swarmed to the petrol pumps.
But now that I have heard the Conservatives’ private explanation, which is being handed down to constituency associations by MPs, I begin to feel angry.
The private message is as follows. “This is our Thatcher moment. In order to defeat the coming miners’ strike, she stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour Party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers’ strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed.”
There is a key difference which ministers have not spotted. When Mrs Thatcher piled up the coal at power stations until the strike began in 1984, she was not inconveniencing the public. In 2012, the Coalition is trying to press-gang the public, without saying so, into its political battles. All those people queuing on the forecourts were pawns in a Government-organised blame-game.
So this gerrymandering with jerry cans, along with the rows about pasties, dinners for donors and granny taxes, sheds light on the present discontent. People detect selfishness.
It continues at length, including this
Being myself a southern, public-school, Oxbridge person, I do not feel patronised by this milieu, but even I, as I watched the Budget on television and saw the “Quad” of Messrs Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander all in a self-congratulatory, Oxford Union row, did get that “What do they know about anything?” feeling which, opinion polls suggest, is doing the Coalition harm.
For the rest of the article, please click here and see how some of that lot have started to think. Enjoy and cross your fingers.
Thanks to Matty Nemesis. And he doesn’t even know me.
Dear Trev and Bruce, thanks for the emails.
Personally I am glad the 3rd umpire didn’t give the score: Even though I thought the draw would have been a fair result, I’d much rather delay rugby’s inevitable descent towards a penalty shoot-out for a little while longer (why not have wider posts too???). I also thought if u heard, not read, Strettle’s comments that he came over extremely well- not whiney at all. He thought (as those of us who have ever been in that situation (Trev, u r excused) that he scored. But he didn’t dwell on it either.
Also the fact that ONLY he has mentioned the George North punch into touch (everyone who watched it in my house- even the women- saw it, but not the Kiwi ref) and no other member of the England set up has chosen to do so puts them in a good light. I’d hate to follow a team full of Conspiracy theorists (I’m guessing kiwis must therefore NOT be part of the anglo-saxon conspirancy, right) or not just blame the ref for bad mistakes but the fact that the whole world is against them (some international teams may as well be Scousers. Just where they still blame Thatcher for their shortcomings, you blame the rest of the world).
I had Wales to win by 25 points and Cuthbert to score first. I am pleased that I lost my money because the alleged powerhouses of northern rugby stumbled over the line against a scratch side, and neither of my bets looked remotely like coming in. And by the way the French “breezed” past the Jocks (I know, I know, fucking cheating ref) will give the English pause. But only pause that if they’d have had one more week together they’d have probably won the whole thing. French/Welsh World beaters ? Do me a Favour.
Oh well that’s saved me blogging- tho I think I’ll send it in as a reply.
On a blackberry, in another hospital.
MB
The Sharp Single 