Somewhere in a village in Norfolk lives JonnyB, who writes a Private Secret Diary. Quite what the village makes of that has yet to be determined.

The Alien Question for Anna Littleredboat

Years ago, I was in Germany. On my own for a period of time, I switched on the television set. ‘One Man and His Dog’ was on, with German subtitles.

“Oh good,” I thought. “They have ‘One Man and His Dog’ in Germany.”

Note that this was before the time when we started coming up with TV show concepts and then selling the format overseas to be remade. It was genuine ‘One Man and His Dog’. Not some poor lightweight remake ‘Ein Mann und Sein Hund’. Genuine, original 100% ‘One Man and His Dog’, Phil Drabble an’ all.

Except it had a laugh track.

Watching ‘One Man and His Dog’ with a laugh track and subtitles was disconcerting. I don’t know much German, so it was good to learn the phrase for “Come by! Come by!”. But the gales of laughter seemed somehow wrong. The picture switched away from ‘One Man and His Dog’ and cut to a man in a TV studio.

Then I realised.

I was watching a German equivalent of our Clive James programme where they’d show foreign TV and snigger at it.

Boooooo!!! The Germans did not watch ‘One Man and His Dog’ after all!!! They just put it on to hold it up as an object of immature ridicule.

Just because we won the war.

Years later, my Mad Auntie Miriam came to stay. She lives in a tree farm in a remote area of New Zealand. I wasn’t sure what to do with her, especially after the cannabis debacle. But no matter – she was amazed and enthralled by the supermarket. She went there most days just to look round. It was an emporium of wonder and delight to her.

My point is that I wouldn’t have a clue what aliens might be interested in. If they should land in the wood at the end of my garden, I would probably say something like: “that is Mrs Clarence’s wood, she would really not like you landing there, do you want to park your space craft over here in my back garden, then we will go to the Village Pub and then next door to Short Tony’s for a game of darts and some karaoke.”

That is what I would normally offer visitors to the Village. But this might not be their scene at all. Outside my house, there is a thirty MPH sign. They might find this the most interesting thing on Earth, with its roundness and its red border and its exhortation not to drive faster than thirty MPH. Who can tell? They are aliens after all. Not everybody is like us. Some would ridicule “One Man and His Dog”. It takes all sorts.

· Read more tales of the village at JonnyB’s Private Secret Diary

Non-working Monkey is an unemployed simian from south London. Despite lack of job opportunities, apparently the monkey has “enough money to buy crisps”. Let’s hope they are Salt and Vinegar Discos.

The rest of NWM’s answers are here.

What are your five favourite blogs that AREN’T littleredboat.co.uk?

Last five read (and some of most favourite):

Bifircated Rivets

A Beautiful Revolution

Jonny B’s Private Secret Diary

Tired Dad

Monkey with a typewjkl;

I have a single thick, dark hair that occasionally grows underneath my chin. I am a girl. Is this normal?

Yes.

What’s the point?

I once asked a very eminent and very ancient Professor of Psychology the same question. He laughed through his beard and said: “For thousands of years, man has been asking the same question. If Socrates couldn’t find the answer, I very much doubt that you can.”

Fair dos.

If grey is the new black, thin is the new fat and vid is the new blog, what the hell do you think you’re doing?

It’s EITHER footless tights, tulip skirts OR microdermabrasion. Or cake. Not sure. It’s definitely NOT Tony Parsons.

· more monkey business at Non-working Monkey

Non-working Monkey is an unemployed simian from south London. Despite lack of job opportunities, apparently the monkey has “enough money to buy crisps”. Let’s hope they are Salt and Vinegar Discos.

Name eight (fictional or non-fictional, alive or dead) people you would never, under any circumstances, invite to a dinner party, and why.

Cliff Richard. Rubbish. Weird mouth. Reckons he’s Heathcliff. Would talk about God and Una Stubbs and whatnot.

Sarah Brightman. Voice like a child. Shagged Lloyd Webber. Would scare me with her rolling eyes. Wouldn’t know where to look.

Catherine The Great. Did not die shagging a horse, therefore no point having her round; wouldn’t have much to say.

Cecilia Aherne. Cannot write, yet sells millions of books across the world. Would talk a lot, as publishers have told her she is Important. However, has nothing to say and as can barely string two sentences together on paper despite the services of a team of twelve editors, am not sure how interesting her dinner party chit-chat would be.

Luther. Dry stick. Lived on Diet of Worms, which I would not cook. Would try and nail theses to my door. Went on holiday to places like Warburg, where I have not been, so no light-hearted holiday banter either.

Jamie Oliver. Would say “bish bash bosh” a lot. Lolling tongue would be offputting. Would chastise me for chopping my basil with a mezzaluna rather than tearing it. Jules would be on the mobile giving it “ring ring Jamie where are you I am at home again with the children”. Annoying.

King Lear. Old, confused, would bring Fool (probably wearing hat with bells, and stick with pig’s bladder on the end). Would be giving it “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” before pudding and banging on lack of familial gratitude. Boring and probably incontinent.

Thomas Hardy. Bore. Shut up, Thomas Hardy. Shut up. Idiot.

Tony Parsons would try and gatecrash but I wouldn’t let the fucker in. He’d then go and meet Jon Ronson and Paul Morley in the pub and they’d whine a lot about how they were really important cultural commentators, but no-one really understood them. Then they’d go home (on different night busses) and each write an article about being a cultural commentator, only to meet the following morning at the studios of Five, where they would record a programme called “Top 100 Cultural Commentators” introduced by Janet Street-Porter, commenting on each other and themselves until everyone’s heads exploded. No-one would watch the programme, not even Miranda Sawyer and that bird out of Heat magazine.

What’s the funniest word in the world? Apart from ‘biscuit’?

“Cretinous”.

Also very strong: when crossed, call someone an “espèce de maniaque sexuel”.

Have you ever grown a moustache? If so, where?

Crack.
· visit Non-working Monkey

Yaxlich only ever talks about himself in the third person. Which makes it difficult not to sound like you are Yaxlich, even if you are not Yaxlich. Damn. Yaxlich blogs at World Of Yaxlich.

The social (and specifically relationship based) ettiquette of farting.

Yaxlich has fond memories of his first proper girlfriend. She wasn’t particularly pretty or anything, she had odd looking teeth and she walked a bit like a man but she will always hold a special place in his heart because she was what can only be described as a fart aficionado.

He had had girlfriends before but none of them lasted for much longer than a couple of weeks. He doesn’t recall ever getting chucked specifically for farting but he can’t dismiss it either. It may well be that after reading this that some former girlfriend will appear in the comments section and say that she gave Yaxlich the elbow because, to quote Princess Diana, “there were three of us”.

From a very early age Yaxlich realised that he had a gift. He could fart at will. His mummy will tell you that it started pretty much from the moment he was born. In the days immediately after his birth, for example, he would never fart when they were alone in the hospital. He would wait until visiting hours and the bed was surrounded by cooing family and friends before letting go with a fart that reverberated around the ward to the point where it would wake up all of the other sleeping babies who would then join in as well. “The trumpet involuntary” as his mummy refers to it.

He remembers when he went to big school for the first time. His mummy sat him down and told him that some people might be envious of his gift and that he should only ever use his powers for good. “With great power comes great responsibility” she said and Yaxlich was always very careful to ensure that any farting he did was in context. Punctuating a music lesson with a back door back beat was acceptable but providing accompaniment to the headmaster reciting the Lords’ Prayer at assembly was not.

As he got older he discovered that his gift could be used in lots of different situations. He made a great number of friends because of his ability to trump on demand. He was the only one in his class that was not picked on by the school bully for fear of rectal reprisals in confined spaces. Farting made him popular and farting made him happy. Never was the young Yaxlich more at one with the world than when he was surrounded by his peers pulling his finger.

At around the same time that Phil Collins got to number two in the charts with “In The Air Tonight”, Yaxlich discovered girls or, rather, they discovered him. He had never really paid much attention to them before. They didn’t play football or flick bogies at each other in class so they didn’t really count in the grand scheme of things.

He can only think that they must have seen a crowd of boys, assumed that the crowd was chanting was “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and then rushed over to watch. All Yaxlich can remember is lying on the ground with a box of Swan Vesta next to him and looking up to see three girls pulling faces and saying things like “That is so disgusting” and “He’s so immature”. Blissfully unaware of the shifting hormones in his male counterparts, he carried on with the job in hand and produced a jet of flame that even Red Adair would have thought twice about tackling.

This proved to be a turning point in his life. His former friends now shunned him in favour of spending time with the blossoming chests of the girls. The girls shunned him because they said he was gross. Even the school nerd avoided being seen with Yaxlich in case it ruined his credibility.

He was alone in the world with a special gift to share and nobody to share it with.

He became very withdrawn over the following months to the point that his mummy asked him what the problem was. In flood of tears Yaxlich told her that nobody wanted to speak to “Farty McFart” anymore and that he didn’t have any friends. His mummy explained that not everybody found farting as clever as he did and suggested that perhaps it might be a better idea to try to hold them in in future. Reluctantly Yaxlich agreed to only use his gift on special occasions and went back to school on the Monday with the intention of rebuilding his fragile confidence and making new friends without resorting to farting.

It wasn’t easy but over the next couple of years people eventually forgot about Farty McFart and he had a relatively happy time at school. He played cricket, was top of the class in maths, made new friends and even had a couple of girlfriends but, somehow, it wasn’t quite the same.

Yaxlich left school and went to work in a furniture shop. It was through one of his work colleagues that he met his first proper girlfriend at a party. He has always been shy around girls so didn’t realise at first that she even liked him. He just thought that she was being polite and only came to talk to him because he was on his own standing in the kitchen reading the shopping list on the fridge. After a while she suggested that a walk in the garden would be nice so Yaxlich followed her outside and then she said the words that even now he can recall as if it were yesterday.

“God, that party is dull. I know how to liven it up! Pull my finger!”

His heart missed a beat, he began to sweat and with trembling hands he reached out, clasped her outstretched index finger and gave it a squeeze. The resulting sound was like a choir of heavenly angels to his ears.

Yaxlich started going out with the girl shortly after (about 2 minutes) and within a couple of weeks was invited to meet her parents. He had never met a girlfriends parents before and was a little bit nervous but she reassured him saying “You’ll get on just fine with my dad” and, sure enough, before the evening was out, Yaxlich found himself lying on the floor of the kitchen next to her dad with a box of matches between them trying to see who keep a flame going the longest.

Yaxlich used to love going round for meals because her mum always cooked food which was conducive to creating gas, not that he needed any such excuse. Chilli, curry, sprouts, cauliflower, onions, cabbage, eggs, beans. Everyone would sit down after dinner, watch a bit of TV and just let rip. There would be competitions to see who could fart the longest, loudest, smelliest or hit the highest pitch (her dad once did one that only the next door neighbours dog could hear). Christmas at her parents was an absolute blast. Literally.

Yaxlich spent the next four years of his life with this girl and her farting family and he can honestly say that they were some of the happiest days of his life. Eventually, though, she went off to university and long distance relationships never last so it was decided that it would be better to split up.

That was fifteen years ago. Since then Yaxlich has had other girlfriends but none of them have quite understood his special powers. Some have tried to live with it whilst others have found the whole business of dating someone with such a unique gift intolerable. Yaxlich firmly believes that a good old flumping of the duvet after a renegade raspberry has slipped out is part of the whole courtship process. It is something to be encouraged. Sharing your poo particles with someone you love should be a special moment, not something to be dismissed with a wave of the hand and cries of “You filthy bastard”, pardon his French.

Yaxlich thinks that a lot of women don’t recognise farting as the true token of love that it is. If your boyfriend or husband has taken the time and trouble to fart in front of you, the least you could do is applaud politely.

Cliff Jones don’t write that. He writes this. Or, more accurately, This is This.

We all have our eccentricities. I like matching things. And correctly stacked hings. And can’t handle labels sticking out of clothes. Hell, everyone knows mine. Please tell us all about yours. In horrific detail.

My head makes spoonerisms very quickly, but only when they form real words. This happens without me even thinking and before I can decide consciously whether or not they make any sense.

I’m not sure how or why this happens. My best guess is my head is looking matches to see if the consonants can be reversed phonetically, and the part of the brain that stores the way words sound flicks through an auditory archive very quickly to see if there’s a match. It’s I guess it’s the combination of being a writer and a musician, but for no reason, when I first thought about this post, my head went: “Hey - ‘Little Bed Wrote’ “.

Then I got Raving Private Psion, then To Mill A Cocking Bird. But I don’t come up with get Deservoir Rogs or Ratcher in the Kye, because they make no sense, and I had to think carefully to put those last two together as examples of things that wouldn’t occur to me.

Once the spoonerism tap is open, names and movies that kind of worked as real words or phrases came flooding in.

If they are people’s names, they will surface only if they could be plausible, like Harris Pilton or Reann Limes, Cleric Apton, Thames Jailor or Gill Bates. But I would have to work at names like Shartin Meen or Warbara Binsor because something in my head doesn’t see them as having any order or merit.

It helps that I’m easily amused, and I will chuckle to myself at things like Burley Chassis, Dials Mavis or Fucks Bizz.

Like all eccentricities, I will tell myself that it “just happens” or it’s “something I do” with no explanation to hide the fact that yes it’s anal, it’s possible I’m wired up wrong and this has no purpose to anyone.

I have friends whose names work as spoonerisms, but I don’t want to say them here in order to spare them any association with me while I’m sharing my oddness.

For Little Bed Wrote, I’m Jiff Clones.

· Like Jiff? Read more at This is This

Salvadore Vincent writes for a living, but also at Smaller Than Life, we’ll never know. He has an unhealthy fascination with bathmats.

Read his previous answers here

Name eight (fictional or non-fictional, alive or dead) people you would never, under any circumstances, invite to a dinner party, and why.

The only person I wouldn’t invite would be Hitler, because I wouldn’t want to cook a separate vegetarian meal.

I have a single thick, dark hair that occasionally grows underneath my chin. I am a girl. Is this normal?

Yes. For a freak.

What do you collect (physical or non-physical), and how many do you have?

I have two pictures by AM Cassandre. It is not a particularly large collection.

Would you rather be burnt at the stake, or drowned, or hanged?

Than what?

You are arranging a ‘Punching Party’ to be held at your house. You will be inviting five people that you and your guests can punch at will. Who are they?

No! A punch is never the answer. (Unless it is to the question “Complete the name of this well-known puppet show: _____ and Judy”) I wouldn’t invite any people in particular. I would just ask my other guests why they felt the need to resort to physical violence.

Failing that, I would point out that you can do more damage with a kick, though an invitation to a ‘Kicking Party’ might attract the sort of person who likes ‘banging tunes’, instead of just sucking them when he has a sore throat.

Provide explanation for one of the following images:

Abba reunion this way.

You surely have something you believed in as a child that people later convinced you was fantasy. Yet somewhere within you, you still think it might actually be fact. Wassit?

Probably something quite dull and unoriginal such as there being some kind of point to life.

If grey is the new black, thin is the new fat and vid is the new blog, what the hell do you think you’re doing?

Rocking back and forth in the corner.

I’m bored of questions, what about you?

I am still hoping that you will ask “How often do you have sex?” so that I can answer “In frequently”. Haha. I am funny.

· read more of Salvadore at Smaller Than Life

Salvadore Vincent writes for a living, but also at Smaller Than Life, we’ll never know. He has an unhealthy fascination with bathmats.

Tell me about your childhood (15 words or less, we don’t have all day)

Very deprived. Nothing bad happened that I can blame the rest of my life on.

Alright, so if eating loudly on public transport isn’t the cardinal sin against society, humanity and moral decency that I claim, what IS the worst?

Spelling “all right” as one word. For fuck’s sake, woman, I thought that you worked for a national newspaper. Please don’t give me any crap about Joyce spelling it that way – he made up half his words. Whilst I’m being pedantic, your previous question should have read “15 words or fewer”.

Aliens have landed. What do you show them first? (Please take your penis as a given answer, and move onto the next thing) why that, and how do you explain it to them?

I would show them a war memorial, or a stuffed dodo, or the melting polar ice caps then tell them to leave well alone. No, fuck it, I would show them a dog dressed in clothes. I would not explain it to them, but if they laugh then they are OK and can stay. We can sort the other stuff out, but laughing at anthropomorphised animals is a deal-breaker.

(more…)

.. She was gone.

You know, we just sat down and worked this out, and combined, my beloved and I have been away about 23 times between us this year.

And never once to the same place, or at the same time, or on holiday. And meanwhile, things have carried on getting busier at the same time - in good ways, but also in bad.

And then the winter came.

I have been about to fall over for some several weeks now.

So excuse my random posting, and I bid you farewell for a couple of weeks, and leave you in some funny hands (funny people’s hands, that is, not ‘funny hands’ as in ‘really hairy ones’ or ‘oversized inflatable ones with pointing fingers’ or anything) and leave you only with this:

Warning: really annoying song alert

And safely assume that it’ll probabaly be stuck in your head until I get back.

… and with that, she was gone.

While I am away there are several things that will be happening to entertain you around here.

- Firstly, the archives will be proudly displaying themselves down the side of this site (as per ever) so go and dip into those for some vintage boaty fun!!!

- secondly, something I’ve changed my mind about, so that’s not very exciting.

- Thirdly, and VERY EXCITINGLY, there will be some surprise guest-postings from various randomly selected peoples appearing here. I’m not telling you who, but they’re all Very Funny and I love them all very much for agreeing to do this. To do what?

Well, if you want to know what people might be answering, I enclose below the full email I sent to the surprise guest people. Just for completism’s sake.

(more…)

So, since the last experience was positive (if somewhat surprising), so on Friday I returned to The Bloomsbury Ripper, to make my legs etc all shiny and nice for the whole time I’m away.

And it was all fine. No trauma, no funny stories, just a whole overdose of girly-smalltalk and a straight-forward ripping out of the lower hair legs and some ‘bikini line’ish type hairs but not quite as severe as the last time, thank the lord.

So all is fine.

Of course, three hours later, I’m back at work, which wasn’t the case last time.

I go to the bathroom and there - and I’m hoping this is an educational lesson for anyone thinking about delving into waxing - something a little embarrasing happens.

It seems that even when the wax comes off, a residue is left that can only be removed by a long hot shower, plenty of moisturiser or some other evasive action.

In the toilets on the fifth floor, needing a wee in one of those ‘I’ll put it off because I’m so busy until I really need to go‘ moments. Suddenly I realise.

My knickers are glued on.

My thumbs are hooked around the hip bits, there are people in all the cubicles around, and I’m fighting not to laugh as loud and as hard as I want to because that’s not really what you DO in work toilets. And I’m trying to work out what the next logical step is.

There’s a choice to be made here. It’s a ‘fast or slow’ choice. and both have their up points. And also their down points. There are many more down points, to be honest; due to the physics of the case.

I won’t fill you in more - I’ve already let too much slip, and let us be honest, we’re not that kind of blog.

I say only this:

Ow.

Fucking OW.

Too busy. Too much stuff promised to people. No time.
Arg.
Must pack.
Seem ot be on erroneous night shift instead.
Nothing of note to write about.
‘Funny’ misplaced, possibly behind sofa.

____________________________________________________

In other news, I went to the doctor this morning to try and get some anti-malarials. I say try because apparently doctors don’t cover unusual illnesses (or medicines for such).

I waited forty minutes, and then was called in to see the locum. ‘I wanted to ask your advice on anti-malarials’.

‘Oh no, i don’t know anything about those. About malaria. No GPs do nowadays. The nurse always does those. You have to see the nurse. You shouldn’t have got an appointment with the doctor. Travel advice is all the nurse.‘

Oh right, because I assumed, you know, what with it being a prescription thing…

‘Nono, I just sign them. The nurse orders the prescription from me, I just sign them. You have to see the nurse. I don’t know anything about this thing you want to ask me about. Nothing at all. No GP does, nowadays.‘

Eventually, crowbarred out of the locum doctor’s office after I’d got the idea that he wasn’t going to help me much (but sadly before I’d got the chance to ask the obvious question - “Sorry, You’re a DOCTOR, are you?“) and tried to make an appointment with the nurse.

No appointments with the nurse.

I know it’s a bit of a big ask, but I’m really hoping that if this guy plays locum at my local surgery a lot, he has time to learn something about malaria before I come back with it.

Maybe he can get the nurse to tell him.

[And no, before you all start nagging advising, don't worry, I know I'm feckless, but of course I have a back-up plan]

[Heh. They think I have a back-up plan. Heh.]

______________________________

Other thing: I had chicken flavoured noodles today, and now my urine absolutely reeks of chicken flavoured noodles. I had no idea that chicken flavoured noodles were one of ‘those things’. They are.

We should put them on The List.

_______________________________

Another other thing: Yes, I know that a lot of you aren’t in this country and those that are probably wouldn’t be caught dead watching ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me…‘, but I produced a short piece of guff about it today that I thought was Not Shit, so here you are.

Actually I really quite liked it, if I’m honest. Thought it had a few good jokes evenifIdosaysomyself.
A HA! Perhaps That’s where my funny went…

The Battle of Trouser has been an ongoing campaign; in the months before I wrote about it the first time, and it’s been going on ever since.

I’m not saying I only started on this present healthy-eating-gymming-thinning thing because of a pair of jeans. They were just one of the last straws. Two enormous last straws, constructed of denim and manufactured in the sweatshops of Hades.

I started this thinging-thing for many reasons, which I’ll go into when someone pays me to.
I’m kidding.
Kind of.
It’s just a much longer subject than this post is meant to be. This post is meant to be short.
Short, but clearly getting longer each second I discuss how short it is meant to be.

Ahem.

So.
Bought these jeans a good few months ago that were the size below the size I was currently wearing.

Didn’t try them on in the shop, with the reasoning “well, the size I currently wear are getting really quite baggy, so even if I get these home and they Don’t fit, it is only a matter of a small amount of work to make them fit”

My main evidence for this train of thought was the advert which says Eat Cereal for Two Weeks and Drop a Jeans Size. Which sounds great! And I only had to drop HALF a jeans size! Bonus! One week of cereal!

If only the government put it about a bit more thatlosing weight was this easy, there would be no more problem with obesity etc etc! Those jeans were well within my grasp.

Three months, one diet, seventy gym sessions and two and a half stone later, last week I finally managed to put the second pair of jeans on.

And discovered they’re a really terrible, terrible cut.

Seriously.

Bad Jeans. Nasty.

All that bloody work, and I hate them.

Next time I’m going with the cereal plan.
That cereal is clearly fucking HARDCORE.

But here is this week’s Pickard of the Pops, my new professional column thing. Unlike this site, which, though strictly A Column (it is tall and rectangular), is of course deeply, deeply unprofessional.

I promise I won’t mention it again.

(But you’ll be able to find them every week here until they find out that I’m not a real writer…)

Elephants

Elephants are the pinnacle of big grey things, being not only grey, but also big.
And also grey.

Massively friendly creatures, apart from rare trampling-to-death incidents, elephants are best known for having ears. And liking peanuts. And being big, and also grey.

Elephants are pregnant for a long time. Possibly years. Which may provide some explanation for the whole trampling to death thing. Pregnant people can be grumpy. They have very long noses, and no opposable thumbs, so can’t use staplers.

Not pregnant people, I mean, elephants. Pregnant people can use staplers (though it can be a good idea to test mental stability before handing them ANY sharp object) but elephants can’t, because of the size. And the thumbs.

They are nice and we like them though, because staplers are not always a measure of likability.

Ships

Ships are floating objects, not unlike the small red floating object in the picture on the top of the sidebar to your right, but bigger. And grey.

It would clearly be better if very large ships were red, because it is a far better colour, but paint is expensive, and faffy, and made of something environmentally unfriendly and smelly, like baby seal brains or something.

So they are grey instead, and also large.

They are nice and we like them because they carry cheap consumer goods, and fish. And old people on cruises.

Aeroplanes

Aeroplanes are like ships but further up.

And with less fish.

And more Carbon Wrongness.

And no ears or predeliction for peanuts.

But they are big and grey and nice and we like them because they take people who need the sun to where the sun is. And exciting places and new cultures etc etc etc.

Towerblocks

Magisterial buildings, looming over city centres, the jagged teeth of the area I grew up in, they provide a fabulous horizon, occasionally.

With no opposable thumbs, they cannot use staplers either, but some of them do look really quite a lot like staplers.

And most of them could hold a pretty remarkable amount of staplers if you gutted them and filled them all the way up with staplers inside. Just imagine.

Dude - imagine if you opened the door! Death by stapler avalanche! Dude, that would be the biggest youtube video EVER.

Anyway, they are big and grey and nice and we like them because they are brutalist urban architechture, and also it’s fun to watch when people blow them up. (Unless they were filled with staplers, of course. Imagine the widespread staple damage! Hurty.)

Whales

Whales are like Elephants but further down, wet, and with invisible ears.

The biggest and greyest of the whales will try and tell you it is blue, but IT LIE.

They are big, and grey, and nice and we like them because they make great nature documentaries, and fantastic soap. Or something.

Roads

Roads are not so much ‘big and grey’ as ‘long and grey’, so can’t really be included in this list. Sorry roads.

Other things

Other things are big and grey, and yet also nice, and likable. We commend those things, and if we think of any of them later on the way home, we will add them to the list. Also if you think of some I might include them, in a wild plagerist kind of way. Because there must be many many things that are big and grey that are nice and that we like.

See? Every cloud has a silver lining.

Oh! Hey!

Clouds

Clouds are brilliant, although mainly in small doses. They are very much like whales, but much, MUCH further up. And less planktonny-smelling.

They are most wonderful from above (while simultaeously being BAD FOR CARBON REASONS, see ‘aeroplanes’).

Clouds contain mainly water droplets and electricity, but occasionally rabbits, dogs, sandwiches, staplers, pirates, dinosaurs and other familiar and easily recognisable shapes.

They are nicest when they are small and white and fluffy.

But they are, in Britain in the winter, mainly big, and grey, and yet we like them. And they are nice.
Because they all (I’ve heard) have silver linings.