The Full Post Is Going To Be A Tad Late Today,

as we used Diana's telephone to take the photographs of our meal out last night,

and as it is Sunday she is having a late start to the day, back to Saturday, for myself a day in the garden listening to old time radio, I have 40 or more episodes of Round the Horne, a quintessentially British humour radio show, I downloaded all of the episodes at Radio Echoes, from the site:

 '21 Genres of shows, 4,317 Series, for a total of 120,913 Episodes, all from the previous century. You are welcome to instantly play what you like and download what you decide to keep - all for FREE! Thanks for visiting - please come back often!'

all they ask is a donation of your choice, what a great site for both UK and US radio shows, my taste in radio shows runs from Just a Minute to Round the Horne, and today I was listening to Round the Horne, it is a BBC Radio comedy programme starring Kenneth Horne, first transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968, the first episode of Round the Horne was heard on 7 March 1965. Listeners immediately took to the characters introduced, such as Julian and Sandy, Dame Celia Molestrangler, Fiona and Charles, and Rambling Syd Rumpo, a little about Round the Horne,

image BBC the whole show is held together by Kenneth Horne, a most likable chap, it was a BBC Radio comedy programme starring Kenneth Horne, the show was created by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, who wrote the first three series. The fourth was written by Took, Johnnie Mortimer, Brian Cooke and Donald Webster, Horne's supporting cast comprised Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and, in the first three series, Bill Pertwee. The announcer was Douglas Smith, who also took part in the sketches. All except the last series featured music by Edwin Braden, played by the band "the Hornblowers", with a song in the middle of each show performed by the close-harmony singing group the Fraser Hayes Four; in the fourth series, the music was by Max Harris with a smaller group of players than the earlier series, the programme was transmitted on a Sunday afternoon for a family audience, but writers Barry Took and Marty Feldman took advantage of the permissive air of mid Sixties Britain to insert lots of saucy humour, 

the most popular characters, Julian and Sandy, spoke in Polari - the underground slang used before the decriminalisation of homosexuality - and produced several catchphrases that passed into common use, a little about them, Julian and Sandy, played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams respectively, both were in the show playing a couple of camp out-of-work actors, at the time of the shows male homosexuality was illegal in the UK, laws meant that any male homosexual could be arrested by the police, this led to the development of a secret language so that gay men could converse without being understood in front of straight members of the community similar to Cockney rhyming slang, the language was called Polari, it was widely used by the British gay community from the 1900s to the 1970s, it meant that there was a show within a show in which the producers of it the BBC did not know what they were broadcasting! during the day every 30 minutes or so I moved the sprinkler around the garden, in the late afternoon I went upstairs just before Diana arrived home, so shower and change of clothes and we were out for Diana's birthday meal,

Diana's restaurant of choice, Miso in Beckenham,

I made a early start, 'Cheers!',

for our starters we chose deep fired spicy chicken, 

garlic pork ribs, 

sesame seeds sprinkled over prawns on toast, 

time to tuck in, 

'Cheers!',

next for us, 

a quarter of crispy duck served with cucumber, spring onions, hoi-sin sauce & pancakes,

help yourself!

delicious, 

we only ordered one main course which we shared, stir fried chicken breast with red and green peppers, Chinese mushrooms, coconut milk and satay sauce served with egg fried rice, with my wine and two bottles of cola for Diana the bill came to £68.00 plus service charge, we were both full to bursting, 

as we made our way back home, where it was feet up for a Midsomer murder and for myself a spicy rum nightcap or three, before we were off to bed.

Nessie,

the never ending story,

we have visited Loch Ness before, and so has 50 year old Bob Rines, a patent lawyer from Boston, he got his first glimpse of the Loch Ness monster in June 23, 1972, “The hair went up on the back of my neck,” Rines says with a happy sigh, recalling that afternoon. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live. My God, at that moment I knew there was something in there. I knew it was an animal! And that’s what’s kept me going all these years.”, Rines is not some sort of unqualified nobody when it comes to tracking objects, from the article:

‘He was trained as a physicist and engineer at M.I.T., and as an undergraduate he invented a type of high-definition sonar equipment for which he was inducted into the Inventors’ Hall of Fame. A modernized version of another of his inventions guided Patriot missiles during the Gulf war, and has been used to find large objects submerged underwater, such as the Titanic’,

He knows what he is doing!, I found the article in The New Yorker, and whatever your views are of Nessie, it is an interesting read, so if you have time garb a mug of coffee and enjoy, I know I did! and by the way, we did not see Nessie.

I Guess,

we have all seen old metal banded woodened water butts, 

photograph Celtic Water, that look like this, (this is a new one from Celtic Water), but you get the idea, but what many will not know that a butt is actually a measure of volume, back in my youth if someone was relating how much they had to drink the night before, "I had a 'buttfull'", was a commonly used expression, so how much is a buttfull? never underestimate the power of the Internet, 

illustration taken from Names and contents of beer and ale vessels in James Lightbody's, Every Man His Own Gauger, 1695, found on Wikipedia, as it happens looking at one of the measures above, every time I visit Duncan,

 I go past the Fox & Firkin just outside of Lewisham, and way back in 2012, 

we saw The Firkin Pub in the Philippines, and although I do not have a photograph of it, in Beckenham there once was a pub called The Three Tuns, a regular watering hole in my misspent youth!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DIANA!

this must be something of a record,

I remembered both our wedding anniversary and Diana's birthday! and there in the hall a birthday card under the front door,  

in the living room a sign, 

present and card, 

I will not mention how old Diana is, 

and here she is with cards,

and a present, this is a photograph from our wedding in the Philippines in January 2016, I had sent the original to be enlarged and bought a frame for the photograph, after which Diana was off to work as she is on late shift today, tomorrow we will have a birthday meal out, 

as Diana left for work I too was out, I had a few things to buy, 

as we left the park I looked back to the work going on at the entrance, several more weeks to go,

first stop the number 162 for Diana, before going to work she was popping to Bromley for some shopping and to meet Wilma for a coffee and cake before work, for myself into the station to buy next months tickets to visit Duncan, 

the ticket office had one of its shutters down, but all was not lost the other office although closed had the shutter up, which means the the person who works there had just popped out, sure enough in a few minutes the office was open for business as usual,

tickets purchased I had a walk into town in a road called The Drive,

 

under it the River Beck, 

in the distance the High Street, the church tower behind Sainsbury's,

 

over the High Street, 

and into Sainsbury's for some shopping,

4 cartons of beetroot juice for my glass a day and a few other things later and I was walking past the green on my way home,

it was a tad chilly, so no punters outside O'Neil's today,

back into the park and home,

I was helping watering the lawn again today, 

the sprinkler covered quite an area, 

but I still had to move it several times, 

it does not sound a lot but after going up and downstairs all afternoon my knees were letting me know they did not like it!

thankfully lawn watered so time for a read before my evening meal,

'Cheers!', as I tucked into a slow cooked beef hash topped with parmentier potatoes, delicious!

next out to the club to meet Steve, 

the tennis courts being put to good use, 

into the clubhouse where I meet Steve, we chatted the night away, after saying our goodbyes we made a move for our homes, Diana arrived shortly after me, so it was a episode of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, 

image BBC which we both found so funny, we rounded off the evening with a Have I Got A Bit More News For You before we were off to bed.

I Have Always Thought,

that the UK government's secrets are not particularly safe,

image Microsoft, hardly a week goes by without news that a government owned laptop or telephone is left on a train, or coffee shop, (pub), I say hardly a week but it is a lot more serious than that, would you believe 38 a week go missing! apart from the cost of replacing them, according to this article, some £944,092, it is the incalculable loss of secret information on them, so I was surprised to see the the UK government is not the only one to make security breaches, especially as in this case it was one of the strictest regimes in the world, China, 

photo: Getty Images/Unsplash+ a military enthusiast surnamed Zhang, in China bought some military books, that contained state secrets, it happened like this, he was walking home one day when he noticed two bags filled with books at the door of a waste paper collection point, they were not only in pristine condition but also related to military topics, so he asked the recycling centre if he could buy them, he paid 6 yuan for them, at today’s rate .65 pence or .83 cents, so how did this happen? Apparently state security agents found that two military employees tasked with shredding more than 200 classified books instead sold them to a recycling centre as paper waste for 20 yuan, at today’s rate £2.18 or $2.75, “Mr. Zhang thought to himself that he had ‘bought’ the country’s military secrets and brought them home,” the Ministry’s post read, “but if someone with ulterior motives were to buy them, the consequences would be unimaginable!” the original story although old is here, glad to hear that we are not the only country to be lazy with our state secrets, as an aside I could find no mention of what happened to the two military employees tasked to shred the books.