ON REFLECTION - ZUT ALORS !!!

Allo mes amis,

Zis storee appened in ze late 19 century in Paris in la belle France. It was in Autumn as ze leaves leave ze trees and cover ze ground all around and you crunch zem wiz your feet as you walk on zem. Ze air is misty and grey and you can smell ze chestnuts on hot coal fires on ze little carts of ze chestnuts sellers at every corner of ze street. Zey are hot in your hand as zey warm you and you enjoy eating zem.

Walking by the river side was a short man called Too Lose Le Trick eating ze chestnuts in his hands. Suddenly a man runs towards him and jumps in ze river. He was in Seine, obviouslee.

Anyway ... let me tell you about Too Lose Le Trick. E was a very short man. E was a painter by profession. Not a painter of houses, or furniture or such things. Oh no ... To Lose Le Trick was a painter of pictures you hung on your wall and admire lovinglee. Zat iz if you could afford to buy zem! Zey cost at least one dozen francs each.

E, To Lose Le Trick, e waz known as a post impressionist painter. Zat iz e stopped doing impressions of ozer people, like hiz friends Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. 

Az I waz zaying ... To Lose waz very short. So short in fact zat e could only paint portraits of ze peoples' knees, becauze zis was as far as e could see. E could not see much higher zan people's knees becoze eet gave him a stiff neck to lok up, and also eet waz veree rude. So e settled to become a veree famous painter of ze knees. Ere is a famous painting of his.

Ze model e used for zis knee portrait was too embarrassed to show er knees totally. She was a demure English woman called Enid Brown. Zis painting gave rise to ze English song "Knees up mother Brown" which you may ave heard singing sometime in ze pub.

Too Lose Le Trick e had a small dog with a detachable tail. Ze dog, when a young pupee, e run round and round chasing iz tail and zen e caught it and bit it off. So Too Lose Le Trick, being a resourceful and inventive man, e made a new tail which e clipped on ze dog. Ze tail would wag back and forth with ze power of electrique batteries. For exercise, Too Lose would take off ze tail, throw it far away, and ze dog would run and fetch it back.

Anyway, back to ze storee ... To Lose was walking by ze river Seine and e went to see an old friend of hiz which used to model for him. Her name was Madame Leggert. Her leg did hurt because of her standing still all ze time while e painted her knees. So for compensation for hurting her, Too Lose agreed to do a painting of her which she could sell and make ze monee. E was too short to see above ze knees so she laid down on ze canape instead. Zis is ze painting of Madame Leggert by Too Lose Le Trick.

To Lose Le Trick also liked to visit Ze Moulin Rouge and see ze Can Can dancers so e could paint zeir knees. Ere iz a painting of hiz Can Can dancers.

I ave also a veree old video of To Lose Le Trick visiting ze Moulin Rouge and seeing ze Can Can dancers doing ze Can Can. It is not suitable for ze people wiz a nervous dispositions. Ere it iz:

On Reflection - I confess

Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

It's been quite a while since my last confession ... I don't know how long ... I don't keep a diary of my Confessions. Let's say it was about six months or so since I confessed last.

Father ... is forgetting a sin? You know ... I half forgot deliberately. Partly I forgot but I was glad I forgot.

Let me explain. My mother-in-law phoned the other day and invited us to a concert at the old peoples' home where she was going to sing. And I almost deliberately forgot to tell my wife. Yes OK ... it was deliberate.

The thing is Father, I am sure you never heard my mother-in-law sing. She sounds like a constipated coyote. When she howls all of nature takes fright and cowers into submission.

I am not being un-charitable Father. In fact I was being charitable to my ear-drums.

Well ... yes of course my wife was very upset at my deliberate forgotteness. But as it happens there was another concert the day after and we had to go.

I put some cotton wool in my ears whilst mom-in-law sang ... I hope this is not also a sin? She then played the violin ... very badly I might add. It sounded as if that coyote was really in agony. She played the violin whilst walking up and down the stage. She said later that the piece of music she played was written for the bagpipes.

I also want to confess another sin, Father. Whilst the football game was on TV I took the batteries off the remote control so no one could change the channel to Downton Abbey. I told them the remote was broken.

Well, it was not such a selfish thing to do, Father because I was sparing them the agony of a whole hour of Downton Abbey. I mean ... have you seen that program? You have? And you like it? Oh boy ... I hope this will not affect my penance Father?

Yes ... I have one more sin to confess. It's the sin of vanity. No not me ... my neighbour. He is so vain and proud of his fish in his pond in his front garden. That's two sins Father, vanity and pride.

Yes I know I should be confessing my sins, not that of others. Well, to play a trick on my neighbour I kept buying other similar fishes from the pet shop and at night I put them in his pond. He got totally confused that his fishes were breeding so fast. I told him maybe they are Catholic. He was not amused, him being Church of England.

I know it's not funny Father ... well, it was at the time. No ... I have nothing more I can remember to confess. No ... I am not deliberately forgetting other sins ...

My penance ... what? A whole Rosary? That's too much Father. Can I share it with other people since it is they who led me to sin? I can't? Oh Father !!!

OK ... OK ... I'm going ... you don't need to add another penance for arguing with you.

On Reflection - Getting It Wrong.

I don't know about you; in fact, how could I know about you; I hardly know you and I've never met you. So let's start again.

I'll tell you about me; and then perhaps you'll tell me about you. That seems fair, isn't it?

I find that often in life I seem to get it wrong. I have a decision to make; do this or do that, go this way or that way, say something or keep quiet, and more often than not I seem to get it wrong. Perhaps this isn't the case with you. Maybe you get it right the first time. But I don't.

Let me give you an example where I got it totally wrong. And oh boy; did I get it wrong. Big time wrong.

And that's the day I said : "I Do."

Two simple words, meant in total honesty, and yet they led to an eternity of un-happiness and regrets.

She asked me: "Do you think this dress makes my backside look big?"

I replied: "I Do."

I mean ... what is it with you ladies? Why do you ask such difficult questions? And do you want an honest answer or just a pack of lies?

What was I meant to say? "No darling ... you look fine." Knowing very well it is a lie which no doubt I'll have to confess later to the priest. What do I tell him in the Confessional? "My wife's backside is huge?" What imagery will that convey to his subconscious? And will I lead him to sin next time he sees her and checks the size of her rear?

Another occasion where I got it wrong is when I was travelling on business and I used to stay in hotels. One evening it took me ages trying to get out of my hotel room because I had mistakenly put the "DO NOT DISTURB" notice on the wrong side of the door. I kept seeing the notice and was not able to get out. Eventually the maid opened the door to clean the room and she let me out.

On another occasion I was driving to a far off place and listening to the lady on the Satellite Navigation System giving me instructions. She told me to turn left at the next junction. The lady sitting next to me in the car, however, looking at the map, told me to turn right.

What was I to do? Obey the Satellite lady and risk yet another eternity of silent treatment from the real lady sitting next to me?

Needless to say ... I got it wrong again!

And then there was the day it was my Birthday. As a present my wife got me two silk ties.

A green one ...

... and a yellow one.

As we were going out to celebrate I decided to wear one of the ties she bought me to show my appreciations. As soon as she saw me she said: "What's wrong with the other tie?"

So I got it wrong ... again!

Last month, to celebrate our wedding anniversary she suggested we go out somewhere expensive. "Don't worry about the cost," she said, "let's go somewhere really expensive for a change!"

So I took her out to the gas filling station to fill up the car with petrol.

And there's more, as they say. I remember the day when we had the mother-in-law visiting. Her middle name is Lucifer!

Anyway ... for dessert we had a choice between apple pie and chocolate gateau. I did not want to seem greedy and have both. I love chocolate gateau but I thought let's pretend to be health conscious and have the apple pie instead. After all, apple is a fruit; and it's healthy.

Little did I know that the mother-in-law had made the apple pie, and my wife made the gateau. I made the wrong choice again, and the silent treatment followed.

You know ... I think men were put on this earth to get all the decisions wrong. And women are here to correct them and show them the way.

It is said that Moses took 40 years to travel from Egypt through the desert to the Promised Land. Considering the short distance involved this must have been incompetence to the highest degree … but then, he did not have a Satellite Navigation System.

I reckon that unbeknown to him, Mrs Moses was asking for directions secretly and, when appropriate, she pointed him in the right direction at night when they were in bed.

Being a woman, she allowed him to take all the credit for getting there at last.

So there you have it ... in every successful marriage I don't think it is a question of compatibility. It is more a matter that one partner in the marriage should be slightly deaf ... preferably the husband.

On Reflection ... What's The Point?

I was painting the house the other day. I've started with the living room and then I'll move on from one room to another. Then it occurred to me ... what's the point?

What's the point of painting these walls and ceilings when in a couple of years' time I'll do it all over again?

A painter expert told me that first I should scrape the old paint off, clean the walls properly, paint an under-coat, and then when it's dry paint another coat.

What nonsense. I just paint one cover over the other. Much quicker. Just splosh the new paint on to the old one. Over the years the walls have become thicker and thicker with one layer of paint over the other. I bet our house all round is now six inches smaller because of the many layers of paints on the walls and ceilings. Pretty soon the house will be so small that even the mice will have hunchbacks.

And that's what led me to think ... what's the point of it all?

What's the point of doing something over and again. Like painting the house. Mowing the lawn. Vacuum cleaning. Dusting. Washing plates and cups and cutlery. Washing clothes. It's all repetitive and leads to nowhere.

Come to think of it. What's the point of wearing clothes anyway? Some people I know have to buy clothes several times a year to keep in with changing fashions. Spring collection. Summer Collection. Autumn and Winter too. And on and on the fashion industry gets us to buy too many clothes we don't need.

What a different world it would be if we wore no clothes at all? Angels are often depicted with no clothes on. They don't seem to mind.

Do you realise how less pompous people would be if they all wore no clothes? These days people use their clothes to influence one another. Power dressing, that's what it is. A man would have the latest fashionable suit on; a woman would have padded shoulders to make her look bigger and more impressive; or the latest shoes or jewellery or fancy hat.

With no clothes on we'd all be equal. What would matter is what sort of person we are - kind, gentle, knowledgeable, helpful and so on.

Without clothes on my boss at work would be much kinder if we could all see her naughty bits. And I suppose we'd be much nicer too if she could see ours.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that there are many things in life with no point at all.

For example, what's the point of me writing books or blogs if I'm going to be ignored anyway? After all, there's only you and me reading this right now. And not everyone seems to comment in support or in disagreement anyway.

As my old school friend Willy Shakespeare put it:

To Blog or not to Blog
That is the question.
Whether it is nobler in the mind
To keep one’s thoughts to oneself
Than reveal them to all
On screens large and small.
And by doing such
Suffer the slings and arrows
Of outrageous readers
Who’d rather Block you
Than read your feeble Tweeters.
Or to bravely face your qualms
And courageously Blog on
Regardless of your audience
Be it great or be it small;
Just Blog on into eternity
And have yourself a ball!

So there you have it. Stop painting the house and wearing clothes. But keep Blogging.