Monday shorts...

Diff’rent Strokes…..
Blackburn bathing pool have banned the backstroke at busy times because "It’s too dangerous"…… Thank goodness, they haven’t outlawed my favourite swimming style – ‘The arse-in-the-air-thrash-the-water-into-submission-and-move-with-the-grace-of-a-fat-drowning-jaffa, stroke’.

Well, at least not yet


Windy days …..

On Tuesday, the Sun was shining, the birds tweeting and sap was rising – all around. My thoughts turned to gardening … "It’s about time I visited the Garden Centre"…

On Wednesday, as a special treat, Alfreda bought me a neat little mobile seed propagator for the garden. It’s a tower of about 6 feet tall by 3 feet square, it’s got wire mesh shelving, sturdy tubular frame and a clear plastic, zip up skin. It’s just ideal for ‘bringing on’ delicate seedlings where garden space is too tight to allow a proper green house to be built.

On Thursday, I planted all my Summer seeds in my seed trays and carefully placed them into my brand new propagator.

On Friday, with the wind freshening I check that all is well with my new propagator and its precious cargo of germinating seeds – and yes, all is well. Solid as a rock.

On Saturday, sometime in the early morning, my propagator grew wings and split my garden scene. ‘Solid as a rock’ became ‘Flaccid as a lemon meringue’. All that was left was the base, smashed and twisted, a couple of non sturdy struts from the tubular frame and the carefully placed compost/seed mixture from 10 seed trays now dumped unceremoniously on the deck in a maniacally random way.

That’s put an end to the gardening fad then.


Marketing opportunity….

Idea: Front view mirrors for Blackburn’s backstroke swimmers.

Method: Simply rip off a car wing mirror and super-glue it to your face. Tilt it to an angle of 45 degrees. Thereby, you will be able to navigate your way ahead, carefully picking your route around bloated wobbly people, inconsiderate ‘wallowers’ and arsey posers as they try to impress the girls.

Extras: To effortlessly clear a path in the pool, whilst backstroking and really enhance your water presence why not purchase a two tone Maseratti horn and get it fitted to your trunks. Tune available: the ‘Jaws’ theme.