Rhinocratic Oaths
I was, as is my wont, perusing The Jaggy Thistle the other day and found a post headed up with a quote from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band – always a good sign. The quote was from one of Viv Stanshall’s finest moments – Rhinocratic Oaths. As the online lyric sites seem to have mangled at least some of the lyric I’m going to post the full (and correct) one, so there:-
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After his second wife passed away, Percy Rawlinson seemed to spend more and more time with his alsatian Al.
His friends told him “You should get out more, Percy, or you’ll wind up looking like a dog, ha ha.”
He was later arrested near a lampost.
At his trial some months later he surprised everyone by mistaking a policeman for a postman and tearing his trousers off with his bare teeth.
In his defence he told the court “It’s hard to tell the difference when they take their hats off.”
Mrs Betty Pench was playing the trombone when she heard a knock on the door.
“I wonder who that is at eleven o’clock in the morning” she thought, but cautiously opened the door and instead of the turbanned ruffian she had expected, she found a very nice young man.
“Mrs. Pench, you’ve won the car contest, would you like a Triumph Spitfire or 3000 in cash?” He smiled.
Mrs. Pench took the money. “What will you do with it all? Not that it’s any of my business,” he giggled.
“I think I’ll become an alcoholic,” said Betty.
With a geranium behind each ear and his face painted with gay cabalistic symbols, six foot eight seventeen stone police seargent Geoff Bull looked jolly convincing as he sweated and grunted through a vigorous twist routine at the Frag A-gogo Bierkeller.
His hot serge trousers flapped wildly over his enourmous plastic sandals as he jumped and jumped and gyrated towards a long-haired man.
“Uh, excuse me, man, I have reason to believe you can turn me on.”
He leered suggestively.
As if by magic dozens of truncheons appeared and they mercilessly thrashed him.
Poor Geoff, what a turnup for the books.
Much as he hated arguments or any kind of unpleasantness, Ron Shirt thought things had gone too far when, returning from a weekend in Clacton, he found that his neighbour had trimmed the enormous hedge dividing their gardens into the shape of a human leg.
Enraged and envious beyond belief, Ron seized his garden shears and clipped his white poodle Leo into a coffee table.
“That’ll fix it,” thought Ron, but he was wrong.
The following Wednesday his neighbour had his bushy waist-length hair cut and permed into a model of the Queen Elizabeth and went sailing.
Everywhere he went, people said “Hooray!”
Sometimes you just can’t win.
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Mind you, seeing as I have a habit of wandering around in a “My Pink Half of the Drainpipe” t-shirt I would like that wouldn’t I. As I type I am listing to the substantial colection of Bonzos material on Spotify and very good it is too – including several tunes I had forgotten (“Eleven Mustachioed Daughters” anyone?)
I had a brief visit to the doctor’s today for a blood test and a random blood pressure test. It has fallen again so it is going in the right direction but it remains high. Specifically, over the past couple of weeks the systolic pressure has dropped another 10 points but the diastolic hasn’t moved. I guess that this is progress although I had hoped it would be a little lower by now.
Meanwhile, as the photos show, we are now well into Autumn. The cross in the local churchyard was taken on my phone camera a couple of days ago on my way home from work. The shot in the Grassmarket in pale wintry light was a couple of weekends ago, also taken on my phone. The phone is an Android G1 which I have grown really to like over the months I’ve had it, even though I don’t use half of its capabilities and haven’t even bothered to download any apps. which, I suppose, blows away my geek credentials. On the other hand, my ring tone is a piece of Alan Stivell’s Pop Plinn which is kind of geeky.
Postal strike notwithstanding, Amazon delivered today Robert Crumb’s illustrated Book of Genesis. It may or may not surprise those familiar with Crumb’s work to know that he plays it straight. Press reports to the contrary there is nothing satirical about this at all and he has treated it as a straightforward illustration.
Although she was troubled before Andre left for the charms of Mia Farrow, it was the breakdown which followed that event which sparked a remarkable outburst of creativity and songs of immense power. As well as Ms Farrow getting a broadside (“Beware of young girls who come to your door, whistful and pale of twenty and four….”) she wrote directly and frankly about her mental illness and the childhood which gave rise to it. And what songs they are; many of them written during her breakdown, some of them while she was in hospital including the wonderful Mythical Kings and Iguanas.
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