Uncle Albert's Thoughts...

Interesting how the memory retains little interesting (fascinating, even) anecdotes and conversation-stoppers from all them years ago while not being able to retain a simple thought like what sort of sandwich we had for lunch today or was it a bun and a cuppa and what the hell is going on I can't remember where I put whatever it was I thought I might have been looking for or did I just wander in here not knowing what I wanted as usual? Life would be a lot more complicated if everything were simple, Arthur used to say.

• Comedian: nisi sincera vas, quodque infundis ascescit. Has recently discovered that the fairies have left the bottom of his garden, complaining that they are sick of being knocked on the noggin by tins of cat-food (empty), green gin bottles (ditto), stuffocated with festering socks, and generally bombarded with unwanted, undesired and undesirable loads of junk. He of course attributes their escape to reluctance on the part of the local police to patrol at night (if at all) and blames the Government for not paying the police enough. NB: refuses to pay any form of tax. Thinks the Police should be paid by results. (How much to drag a fairy, kicking and screaming, back to a garden she just WON'T live in? ) Tread the lawn with step elastic, to find the roses all are plastic... Now there's a thought to mind the boggle. And what with all the rain we've been having lately, he points out that there are no longer any aphids on his roses; there is, however, one might remark, a whole regatta of water-boatmen instead; not to mention the only ducks in the country with trench feet.

• Bus inspector: motto "Fortibus es in aro". Lived under the impression that all good things come in threes, in particular Routemasters.

• Dancer with Sheikh Ratl n Rol Camel Caravan, (this group now somewhere in the Gobi Desert, last reported at Wadi a 'Alu Wan, some few parasangs south of a deserted Afrika Korps tank. He used to visit the pyramids, but insisted, towards the End, that he could no longer decode the meaning of Life; it remained, he said, (just as it was to Rommel) an Enigma. NB His diary has some obscure references to both camels and sphinxes; Arthur seemed to have collected some very odd ideas concerning these, which some rather underhand characters set to the tune of the Eton Boating Song.

• Light labourer : changed the bulbs for the Blackpool Illuminations every summer. Maintained there was little job-satisfaction in the work.

• Clerk: DSTO (Dept of Stealth & Total Obscurity) where there is no record with his own name on - file misplaced? or confused with suppository or perhaps eaten by the stuffed crocodile he kept by the toilet roll to deter visitors from using too much when caught short after imbibing his home-brew and dandelion curry.

• Economist but denied he has any money to spend - something to do with the continual shrinking of our banknotes; not to mention their interminable uglification.

• Author "Jolly Japes of Julius", "Appy Ours wiv Attilla", and famous for the inscription above the gateway to the route down to Hades: "Ore stabit, fortis arare placeto restat". Numerous illustrated volumes including "Cleopatra's Classical Cookbook, or what you can do with a few grapes, a bath of asses' milk, Caesar's laurels and an asp." This latter title proving too long for the scroll, the Roman publisher shortened it to "300"

• Singer: Neighbours complaining about his habit of singing hymns and carols intermingled with bawdy songs with lewd lyrics.
  It is not clear, however, whether they're twining about the loudness, the lewdness, the noise-level, the non-angelic descant, the stained-glass bathroom windows or just the juxtaposition of the sacred with the profane. Arthur says the bathroom is ideal for the echoes and reverberations that bring out the true beauty and quality of his singing voice. Well, it does keep his mind off women (or at least the hymns should).