A straw-clutching of postings...

Another day, another opportunity to cruise through some of my Christmas books. This one (again bought by Alfreda) is ‘Shite’s Unoriginal Miscellany’ by A.Parody (Ho, ho - geddit!). It's a sort of bargain basement version of the bestseller, 'Schott's Original Miscellany' by Ben Schott

Now I know what you’re thinking … another toilet book for Alfie’s throne room. No, definitely not. This fine volume will be filed under ‘PAP’ (or should that be 'shite'?) in the library – alongside ‘Dale Winton, the sexy stud muffin’ by ‘Hale Minton’, ‘Good Manners Matter’ by Liam Gallagher and the unabridged version of ‘101 Interesting Bridges’ by Scotsman, Ian Girder. (Note and big hint to Alfreda - why did you not get all my pre Christmas hints and prompts and buy me Terry Jones' excellent book - Who murdered Chaucer?)

Anyway, whilst thumbing through a bit of ‘Shite', I came across a couple of interesting pages. ….Let me rephrase that - whilst thumbing through this book, I happened across an interesting couple of pages on collective nouns. I used to love reciting these, indeed back in the black and white days of my education, we used to have weekly tests on them.

Back to ‘Shite’s’ – yes, some of my favourites are in there …. ‘A crash of Rhinoceros’ …. ‘A bloat of Hippopotamuses’ and ‘A pandemonium of Parrots’.

They also have a page on contemporary collectives, for example… ‘An attitude of teenagers’ …. ‘A smarm of sycophants’ and ‘A crash of computers ….. Inspired by these tame efforts, I’ve done a few more…..

Alfie’s collective noun collection


POLITICS

A leech of Royalty

A googly of Spin Doctors

An invertebrate of Politicians

A chaff of Weapons Experts

An absence of WMDs

A flock of Labour MPs

A celt of Party Leaders


JOBS

A plod of Policemen

A quiff of Hairdressers

A fucking useless pile of Estate Agents

A brilliance of graphic designers (obviously)

A luvee of Actors


SPORTS & LEISURE

A jammyness of Lottery Winners

A quaff of beer drinkers

A nandralone of Athletes

A team of footballers (thought long and hard about this one)

A blag of Bloggers

An omnipotence of Victoria Beckham


And finally… a knackeredness of brainwaves.