A PLATINUM JUBILEE ANECDOTE

 

The Queen played an amusing practical joke on two American tourists who were visiting Scotland according to Richard Griffin, her former protection officer. Speaking to Sky News the ex-security guard explained the visitors didn't recognise the Queen, and even asked her to take a photograph of themselves with him.

He explained: "The American gentleman was telling the Queen where he came from, where they were going to next, where they'd been to in Britain. And sure enough he said to Her Majesty 'and where do you live?' She said 'Well I live in London but I've got a holiday home the other side of the hills'." The American then asked how long the monarch had been visiting the area, to which she retorted "since I was a little girl - over 80 years".

As the meeting took place near to the Queen's Balmoral Estate he responded: "If you've been coming up here for 80 years you must have met the Queen."

Referring to her security guard the Queen, "quick as a flash", replied: "Well I haven't but Dick here meets her regularly."

One of the Americans then asked Mr Griffin what the Queen was like, to which he joked "Oh, she can be very cantankerous at times, but she's got a lovely sense of humour".

Mr Griffin continued: "The next thing I knew this guy comes round, but his arm around my shoulder and before I could see what was happening gets this camera, gives it to the Queen and says 'Can you take a picture of the two of us?'

"Anyway we [later]swapped places and I took a picture of them with the Queen and we never let on.

"We waved goodbye then Her Majesty said to me 'I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photos to friends in America'."

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

THE SPITALFIELD NIPPERS

The squalor and deprivation which existed in 1888 in London’s East End where Jack the Ripper was committing his murders of prostitutes remained at the beginning of the new century.

Horace Warner, the Sunday School Superintendent of the Bedford Institute, one of nine Quaker missions in the East End attempting to deal with alcoholism and prostitution, photographed the sad images of young children living in those conditions, on streets which are now among the most fashionable and expensive in London.

At first he took the photographs for record purposes but in 1913 the images were used by Quaker activists to raise funds for poor relief.  Only 30 of his photographs remain.

The children were known as the Spitalfields Nippers, after the London East End suburb of Spitalfields. They scavenged for rotten fruit in the bins behind the market in East London, dressing in rags that might be shared between ten siblings, and were lucky to have a pair of boots in even the coldest weather. They learnt lives of crime and alcoholism from their parents, if they had any, or from older siblings, and often slept in the streets.

Some of Warner’s images:

Some of the Spitalfields Nippers growing up in one the most deprived and dangerous areas of London

Annie, seven, and one-year-old Nellie, sit sad and hungry on sacking outside their house in Spitalfields. They were among ten children born to single mother Annie Daniels. Five of their siblings died in childhood

Tommy Nail pushes one of his brothers in a make-shift wheelbarrow in the 1890s. The boys' mother died two years later, her death certificate citing the cause as 'exhaustion'

Nine-year-old Charlie Long (left) lived in a workers' eating-house run by his parents. Adelaide Springett (right) was so ashamed of her tattered boots, she took them off for this 1901 photograph

Jeremiah Donovan, six, was nicknamed Dick Whittington because of his pet cat. 

Two children, their toes poking out of their boots, tend a fire in a battered tin brazier to heat buckets and bowls of water in which to scrub clothes. The clean garments would be hung on lines strung across the street

More photographs of the Spitalfield Nippers by Horace Warner . . . 

 

FROM THE VAULT: SOME MONKEYISMS

I was watching something on the TV when I heard a character use the expression “Softly softly catchee monkey.” It reminded me that I had posted about it in Bytes some years back, quite some years when I checked, when things were not as PC as they are today. Now the expression would be frowned upon because of the Asian stereotyping but the origin remains of interest so I am reposting it, with additional content.

It formed part of a post about Monkeyisms and was posted on March 12, 2011 . . .

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Softly Softly Catchee Monkey

Meaning:

Achieving success requires careful and quite planning and strategy.

Origin:

There are various versions before Baden-Powell popularised it:

Actress, Mary Wells (later Mrs Mary Sumbel), records in her 1811 book Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Sumbel listening to a black preacher in London:

Though there was no long-sounding chapter or high-numbered verse from which it was taken, I was convinced notwithstanding, by the arguments of the sooty Ethiopian*, that patience and perseverance will overcome many obstacles. The words were as follow:– “Softly, softly, brethren, and you’ll catch a monkey!”

* Ethiopian was then a common term for any black person.

The Morning Post of 23 Apr. 1846 contained the following:

“Prudens qui patiens” was, if we mistake not, the motto of the great Lord Coke. A sort of paraphrase of it is current among the sable objects** of Exeter Hall** sympathy — “Softly, softly, catch monkey.”

**At the time, Exeter Hall in the Strand was the headquarters of the anti-slavery movement in London, so sable object is an oblique reference to black Africans.

Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts (and the author of the unfortunately named “Scouting For Boys”) spent time in Ghana with the Ashanti. Whilst there he heard the phrase used and recorded it in his book, popularising the expression in so doing:

If it were not for the depressing heat and the urgency of the work, one could sit down and laugh to tears at the absurdity of the thing, but under the circumstances it is a little "wearing." But our motto is the old West Coast proverb, "Softly, Softly, Catchee Monkey"; in other words, "Don't flurry; patience gains the day." It was in joke suggested as a maxim for our levy of softly-sneaking scouts, but we came to adopt it as our guiding principle, and I do not believe that a man acting on any other principle could organise a native levy on the West Coast-and live.

 

The phrase was later adopted as the motto of the Lancashire Constabulary’s Training School. It was advice to aspiring police officers that a bull-headed approach wasn’t the best way to nab criminals. This inspired the title of the British television police series, Softly Softly, from 1966 onwards.

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Monkey On My Back

Meaning:

1. drug addiction

2. a state of constant worry and distress

Origin:

The expression dates from the 1940’s, a jazz term for heroin addiction. The implication is that dealing with heroin is as difficult as having a monkey continually on one’s back.

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Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey

The title of a song written by John Lennon for the Beatles White Album. The expression comes from a quote by the Maharishi Maresh Yogi that “Everybody’s got something to hide.” In respect of the “except me and my monkey” part, George Harrison has stated that he did not "know where that came from".

John Lennon said in 1980 that “me and my monkey” referred to himself and Yoko Ono:

That was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us - you know, 'What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time.

John Lennon

Rolling Stone, 1980

Paul McCartney believes that the monkey was not Yoko Ono but heroin, hence the words in the song “The deeper you go the higher you fly". Apart from the monkey reference being a drug term, as noted above, Lennon and Ono had begun using heroin in 1968, the same year as the song was written.

He was getting into harder drugs than we'd been into and so his songs were taking on more references to heroin. Until that point we had made rather mild, oblique references to pot or LSD. Now John started talking about fixes and monkeys and it was a harder terminology which the rest of us weren't into. We were disappointed that he was getting into heroin because we didn't really see how we could help him. We just hoped it wouldn't go too far. In actual fact, he did end up clean but this was the period when he was on it. It was a tough period for John, but often that adversity and that craziness can lead to good art, as I think it did in this case.

Paul McCartney

Many Years From Now, Barry Miles

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One Monkey Don’t Stop the Show

Meaning:

A minor glitch should not be allowed to interrupt the main proceedings or project.

Origin:

Believed to originally be an African-American proverb. It first appeared as a title of a blues song in 1955 and was covered by The Animals, as well as Joe Tex in the 60s

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Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Polish proverb meaning “Don’t drag me into your drama and your issues—I’m not getting involved.”

In the original Polish, there is one lone mischievous monkey, instead of a plural number of monkeys.

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“I’ll be a money’s uncle.”

An expression used to indicate surprise, astonishment, amazement, shock, and sometimes disbelief or skepticism.

The expression began as a sarcastic response to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. After Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, the foundation of the evolutionary theory, he published The Descent of Man in 1871. People read the book as putting forward humans had descended from apes and were closely related to modern apes. This claim was considered ridiculous and offensive, since most people believed that humans were created by God. Although it is unclear who originally coined the phrase, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” became a popular response to Darwin’s theory. This phrase was later extended to general use as an expression of great doubt or disbelief. Today, it is more often used to express surprise or shock, often in response to quite mild revelations.

A caricature of Charles Darwin as an ape published in The Hornet, a satirical magazine.

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QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

FUNNY FRIDAY

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SOME HUMOUR:

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A Jewish man bursts into his therapist's office, apologising for being late because he overslept. "But I had an Incredible breakthrough in my dream,” he says. “I was talking to my mother and she suddenly turned into YOU! That's when I woke up, got dressed, grabbed a Coke and a donut, and rushed to your office".

The therapist says "A Coke and a donut? You call that a breakfast?"

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A Russian, a Frenchman and an Englishman argued about Adam's nationality.

The Frenchman said, "Of course Adam was French. Look how passionately he made love to Eve!"

The Englishman said, "Of course Adam was British. Look how he gave his only apple to the lady, like a real gentleman."

The Russian said, "Of course Adam only could be Russian. Who else, possessing nothing but a sole apple, and walking with a naked ass, still believed he was in a paradise?"

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Struggles of passwords . . .

"Set password:"

carrot

"Password must be at least 8 characters."

boiled carrot

"Password must contain at least 1 number."

1 boiled carrot

"Password cannot contain spaces."

50boiledcarrots

"Password must contain at least 1 capital."

50FUCKINGBoiledcarrots

"Password cannot contain multiple consecutive capitals."

50FuckingBoiledCarrots

"Password cannot contain swear words"

IfYouDoNotAcceptThisPasswordThenYouCanStickThose50BoiledCarrotsUpYourButt

"This password is already in use."

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There was an artist who worked from a studio in his home. His model showed up at the usual time and, after exchanging the usual small talk, began to disrobe for the day’s work. The artist told her not to bother, since he had a bad cold. He added that he would pay her for the day anyway, but that she could just go home; he just wanted some hot tea with lemon and honey.

The model said, “Oh, please, let me fix it for you. It’s the least I can do.” He agreed, and told her to fix herself a cup as well. They were sitting in the living room chatting and enjoying their tea, when he heard the front door open and close, and then some familiar footsteps. “Oh my!” he whispered loudly, “It’s my wife! Quick! Take all your clothes off!”

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LIMERICK OF THE WEEK:

The typists at Wheesley and Beesley

All fornicate keenly and eas'ly,

In this pleasant way

They add to their pay

Which at Wheesley and Beesley is measly

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GALLERY:

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RELIGION SPOT:

Two beggars were sitting side by side in front of the Love Fountain in Rome, Italy.

One had a Cross in front of him; the other one was holding the Star of David. Many people went by, looked at both beggars, but only put money into the box of the beggar sitting behind the Cross.

The Pope came to the area. He stopped to watch the throngs of people giving money to the beggar who held the Cross while none gave to the beggar holding the Star of David. He felt sorry for him.

Finally, the Pope approached the beggar with the Star of David and said "My poor friend, don't you understand? This is a Catholic country; this city is the symbol of Catholicism. People aren't going to give you money if you sit there with a Star of David in front of you, especially when you're sitting beside a beggar who is holding a Cross. In fact, they would probably give more money to him just out of spite!"

The beggar with the Star of David listened to the Pope, smiled, turned to the beggar who sits next to him with the Cross and says, “Moishe, look who's trying to teach the Goldstein brothers about marketing?"

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CORN CORNER:

If Americans switched from pounds to kilograms, there would be mass confusion.

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Someone keeps sending me flowers with the heads cut off

I think I'm being stalked

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I asked the librarian if they had any books on paranoia.

She whispered, "they're right behind you!"

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Doctor help, I have an irrational fear of Vietnamese soup.

"OK, that's a Pho-bia."

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Dads are like boomerangs.

I hope.

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Man goes in a jeweller’s, says “I want to buy a potato clock.”

Jeweller says “I've never heard of one. I've got grandfather, cuckoo and wall clocks, but I've never heard of a potato clock.”

Man says “I'm starting a new job at 9 tomorrow and the wife said ‘You'd better get a potato clock.’ “

(Okay, I didn’t get it either till I read that the wife had said “You’d better get up at 8 o’clock.”)

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QUOTE FOR THE DAY

“Just because you're going forwards, doesn't mean I'm going backwards”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, quoting lyrics from UK singer Billy Bragg from the song To Have and To Have Not, in Albanese's first speech to the ALP caucus since the election of the new government.

SOME FACTS AND TRIVIA ABOUT JUNE

In the southern hemisphere June is a time when winter is starting to set in properly, and aren’t we feeling it at the moment. The days are shortening and the nights are becoming fresher and fresher, at the moment we are in an Arctic blast.

In the northern hemisphere summer is close to starting, every day gets a little bit longer.

The end of June marks the end of the first half of the calendar year.

The name June is the modern day adaption of the Latin word Junius, which has origins dating back to the ancient Romans. There are various theories as to what the month of June was named after:

• That it was named after the Roman goddess of marriage, Juno.

• That the name originates from the Latin word iuniores, which translates into “younger ones”, as opposed to maiores ("elders") for which the preceding month May (Maius) may be named.

• That the month was named after Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic.

June was called sera monath by the Anglo-Saxons, which translated into “dry month”.

June used to be the fourth month in the year. Before Julius Caesar came to power, the calendar year only had 10 months. In 46 BC he created the Julian calendar by adding two more months to the year, which made June the sixth month.

No other month in the year begins on the same day of the week as June.

June has both the longest and the shortest days of the year, depending on where one lives. In the northern hemisphere, June 21st is the longest day of the year. In the southern hemisphere, then the 21st is the shortest day of the year. These days are known as solstices, and there are two each year, the days on which the sun reaches its maximum or minimum declination, marked by the longest and shortest days. June 21 is the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere and December 21 is the longest, the reverse in the northern hemisphere.

The first day of summer in the northern hemisphere is June 21st.

By meteorological definition, winter starts on June 1 in the southern hemisphere and stays till August 31. However, by astronomical definition, the first day of winter occurs on the eve of the June Solstice.

June has two star signs. If you were born on or before June 20th then you’re a Gemini. Gemini’s are said to be passionate, adaptable, and smart. If you’re born on or after the 21st of June, you have the Cancer star sign. Those born under the Cancer sign are said to be loyal friends with great emotional depth.

June has its own beetle named after it. Called the June beetle, or June bug, it’s normally only found within the months of May and June in the United States of America.

The period of time from the middle of May to the middle of June was considered by the ancient Romans to be an ill-omened time for marriage. The story goes that Ovid, a Roman poet, consulted with the high priestess of Jupiter and asked when would be a good time for his daughter’s wedding. The high priestess decreed that he should wait until after June 15th.

Contrary to Roman beliefs about the best and worst times to get married, June is now considered one of the very best months!

The birth flowers of June are the honeysuckle and the rose. Both of these flowers are symbols of all things relating to love, desire, generosity, and affection.

There are a number of countries that celebrate their flag days during the month of June. Sweden celebrates its flag day on June 6th, the United States celebrates theirs on June 14th and Denmark celebrates theirs on June 15th.

The English tennis tournament Wimbledon runs through the month of June.

June has three birthstones – alexandrite, moonstone, and pearl. Alexandrite is said to represent longevity and health. Moonstones on the other hand are said to bring good luck and are associated with love and passion. Pearls are the main birthstones of June, representing purity and faith.

Some people born in June: Anne Frank, Che Guevara, Jean-Paul-Sartre, Marilyn Monroe, George Orwell, and George H. W. Bush.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

SOME OLD CARTOONS STILL RELEVANT TODAY

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The following cartoon was sent to me by friend and colleague Vince C with the heading “History Being Repeated”. Thanks, Vince.

It also contains an introduction as follows:

The attached picture is of a Punch Magazine dated 24 April 1904.

Despite the passing of a Century plus, a couple of World Wars, a bunch of regional wars, riddance of dictators and despots, dictator comebacks, a lot of boundary/border changes and more, not much has changed, has it?

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Some other old cartoons still relevant today . . .

With English wording . . .

Commentary:

This cartoon was created by a Russian, Stalinist cartoonist as an attack on the United States. A good example of co-option of a liberal position by an extremist, anti-democratic critic.

From https://www.lambiek.net/artists/g/ganf_yuliy.htm

In issue #4 of 1953 (10 February) of Krokodil, Ganf made a cartoon titled 'In America - At This Restaurant Only One Person Is Served'. It shows a restaurant where various business people serve piles of money to a hungry soldier, representing "War". In the background four other customers, Education, Health Care, Libraries and Art wait in vain for service. This powerful and timeless critique of government and business spending on military defense gained more prominence in the Internet age. However, its original anti-capitalist and anti-American context is usually ignored or ommitted by shortening the title to 'At This Restaurant Only One Person Is Served'. This is not just a result of many people being unable to read Russian. Usually just the image itself is shown, without the captions. Ganf's talent is such that even outside the Cold War context and without captions, the cartoon is instantly understandable. One can even argue that the situation depicted in the drawing is universal, rather than tied to just the United States.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/nmatgo/old_cartoon_that_still_remains_relevant_today/

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