Marzipan, what's that about?

Having retired to the library with a fistful of cigars and a bottle of the Colonel's finest port and bemoaned the fact that the housekeeper's mulligatawny soup was vastly inferior to that made by our esteemed wooden-legged sergeant-major during the first Malay uprising, Marmaduke opened my eyes to the truth. What he recounted there in that smoky room completely overturned my prior knowledge, suggesting that marzipan was not in fact to be found in significant volumes upon the planet Mars, nor was it best served in pans, thus prompting me to make a mental note to tan Mrs Winterbottom's hide most vigorously for her scurrilous misinformation in this regard.

Not out of your back yard

I like my farts. I like the sensation of farting, I like the smell my farts make and, although I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, will waft them towards me to get a better sniff.

However, I do not appreciate other people's farts.

Poodolph the Ohdeer


While rummaging around a box of Christmas stuff this afternoon looking for something festive with which to decorate her room, my first-born stumbled across a long-forgotten Yuletide item: a plastic deer that shits Smarties.

Yes, you read right: a plastic deer that shits Smarties.

Clever girl that she is, my daughter immediately dubbed him "Poodolph the Ohdeer."

Thursday

Thursday: a.k.a. Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow, The Day After Tomorrow or, equally often, The Day Before Yesterday.

Thursday: the fourth of seven siblings, Friday's ugly sister, less outgoing than Saturday, but more lively than Monday and less hung over than Sunday, the immediate successor to the least-liked Wednes- or Humpday; the One To Be Overcome.

Thursday: the day we cast our minds back to earlier times the way some people throw back their hair, often with similar insouciance and perhaps ennui.

Thursday: which, thanks to the Vikings, we associate in our language and culture with Thor, the god of lightening, storms, the bearer of an oversized hammer and wearer of an Asterix-like horned helmet in keeping with our stereotypical Celtic barbarian.

Thursday: eight letters, none repeated, yet repeatedly weekly.

What do I have against Thursdays? Nothing. 

And everything.


Cold

I have a cold.

Or, to be more precise, a cold has me. Albeit - luckily - not quite by the short and curlies. Nasal pubes aside, of course.

I don't know why we call it a cold. I'm not even cold. On the contrary, I'm pretty hot right now. In a non-sexual kind of way. Indeed I would hazard that I am anything other than sexually enticing in my present condition.