Tomi's Wisdom

Ah my boy!  Over the years I've received some priceless comments from Tom,
three of them below.

"Papa?  - Racing cars
never really get
anywhere do they?" 
(Tomi Evans-Krings, 4 years old)


Excited:  "PAPA !!!!  -
I know how you make paper!  
Make the screen all white . . .
and then print it out!"
(Tomi Evans-Krings, 5 years old)


"But  . . . .  the next
thing you do is
wash your hands!!"

Just seen a UK TV advert for a 'non-touch' soap dispenser
(to avoid getting ALL THOSE GERMS from a dispenser top) 
(Tomi Evans-Krings, 13 years old)

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The Queen, Kate, Obama and the Essential Ash Cloud

An exhausted Michelle - stranded at Edinburgh, keeps her head down as the Ash cloud settles.

What a fantastically cohesive response this essential relationship provided to the renewed threat from Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano - spewing its poisonous, plane-ripping swirls of ash into the midnight sky!

FANTASTIC!  The Queen, only back less than a day from her essential trip to Eire to see Michael O'Leary, Ryan Air boss (he personally oversees every single flight with his name on it, so over-worked for the state occasion that he forgot to say 'yes' to an Edinburgh flight stranded on the ash-spewn tarmac).
But she doesn't stop there - oh no . . . our Monach speeds back to blighty, where her and the newly weds greet Pres Obama and Michelle on their essential trip to the UK.  The relationship this mighty team create is described on BBC TV news reports as 'Essential' - and to make sure no-one worried too much, we were told this SEVEN times in ONE five-minute session during the 6pm news.

Essentially, Obama brings 1,500 helpers with him to the UK - each with a 1 Ltr bottle of Evian water. - They circle a stricken reservoir in Ryan Air-force ONE, open a fan-light in the toilet and pour the contents out - thus ending the possibility of a summer-long drought in ash-torn UK.   Monies collected from this action (toilet fees to Ryan Air) will be distributed amongst Icelandic banking refugees in the coming weeks.

That'll show them eh?  Send up an Ash cloud would you?  Eh ... eh? Well take THAT!  We have our Queen, Ireland, president Obama , Michelle, Kate, Will  - we're READY buddy!  We're stood over here, on UK territory and you just see if that essential ash cloud can doing anything now ... haha ...... think you're big don't you eh?  Think you can float over here do you?, building all over our women, raping our jobs ..... ha!  You'll SEE, we're ESSENTIAL we are.

Eurovision

Ell and Nikki win for Azerbaijan

Well, I watched the last hour or so - and what a fantastic show, a seriously amazing set - and annoyingly all one week before I land in Dusseldof myself.

Norton Kills the Joy

Still in some sort of 1990's national state-of-mind concerning Eurovision, Mr Graham Norton is in serious danger of appearing so yesterday (as I'm sure he probably described some dress, some hair, some dance - whatever, last night) by inserting sneering little jibes into each and every appearance of anything that he thinks we can snigger at.  "Haha - he's only 59 years old, he looks like he's 90 - hahaha"

Still doing it aren't we? Still being taught to sneer at everything, to use trivial non-commenting as if it's humour.

Stop it Mr Norton, European countries out perform the UK in everything nowadays, every day of every week.  And if some of them do this whilst remaining so yesterday - then thank God, because today's UK style, as populated by people like you - can only ever be NULS POINTS.

Sandi Toksvig,The One Show and all that . . .

I hesitated a while before going off on this one.  Having discovered Radio 4 at about 30 years old, and still listening everyday now, 158 years later, it has always (along with BBC 4) represented to me that solid, quality side of life that surprises, delights and informs.

But I have a problem.

Or rather two, (damn - now I've gone and mixed-up numbers for numbers, and typed numbers, and my backspace key was recently vapourised by a passing death-ship from the plant 'Aaarggo' - so you're stuck with it)

Blimmey! Where was I? - oh yeah, TWO problems:

Sandi Toksvig and 'The One Show' - these two are not linked, incidentally, in anything other than the fact that their . . . stuff, comes out of the same hole in my radio when the little light says 92.9, in rather a cool blue tone.

You see satire is good.  But this sneering, complicit, self-conglatutory mush is disturbing in the extreme - and funny, it seriously isn't. Bendan O'Neill (Guardian)  writes: really only massaging our prejudices, stroking our cynicism, rather than challenging us to think about the world differently. Alexander Pope said satirists should "without sneering teach the rest to sneer". Today, in our era of sneering, satire risks becoming a self-congratulatory, back-patting display of shared public cynicism.

It says all I want to - and it's here >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/05/comedy

and Sandie?

I don't like her voice, her sneering manner, and I hate that paused "erm . . . " after a delivery to give us time to laugh.   Don't bother, it's very rarely funny enough for that.

Isa Isa Baby

Weirdness personified - Halifax

No pleeeeeeeze!!!!   Too late to get my hand up to shield my eyes - no, my tormented brain - from this advert, I slump stunned back into the sofa - the sheer aching weirdness of it all washing over me as I lay gasping, helpless amid a sea of depression and confusion.

PLEASE stop showing this Advert - we're all gonna die.
Quite seriously, I cannot look at this Ad, I do actually hold-up my hand to mask the screen from vision until the sound tells me it's all over - it can't be right . . . . . can it?

Only 74mpg? What? With ALL THAT TECH?

New TV Ad (View Ad) shows several look-alike Toyotas all doing amazing things - cutaway graphics display TWO engine systems, Petrol (or PETRAL as spelt somewhere I've just seen) and Electric - achieving a staggering 74mpg.

Now I'm not one for Conspiracy Theories - no really, but ONLY 74mpg - surely we've seen figures like that (and with petrol-only driven machines) for the past three or four years?  We're looking for 150mpg - aren't we?

Care Staff

(This is an non-apologetic re-run of a 2008 post by me).

I visited my ex-wife's father in hospital the other week. It was fantastic to see him, and we shared the same delight in each other's company that we found 23 years ago. He remarked that the care-team had to do unbelievably horrible jobs; those things thrown away under the title "Personal Care". In addition these same people are lifting, restraining, talking-around, cheering-up, dispensing (illegally), bathing, walking, feeding, singing-to/with, anyone and everyone (that's your Mum & Dad and mine) who finds themselves unable to NOT GET OLDER.
Lets be brave here. There are some jobs (changing soiled beds, wiping soiled bottoms) that are done every minute of the day by (usually females) earning the National Minimum Wage.
Just like all (shall we say "jobs" ?) that allow non-qualified entry there is a fair share of hangers-on, can't be bothered (the "am I bothered?" types)and in addition an unjustifiable amount of unfair, unjust, thoughtless, painful, careless treatment dished out to most older people every minute of every day in just about every HOME up and down the UK.


Sprinkled amongst the above these is also (there would HAVE TO BE) a tranch of well-loved, caring, emotionally intelligent, hard-working carers who are THERE BECAUSE IT IS WHO THEY ARE. The natural carers of this world, making astonishing differences to the everyday lives of their charges. They are rare indeed, but worth at least FOUR TIMES the National minimum wage, and equal respect to any professional.