Bushcraft

Very good one this month, thanks mate, keep 'em coming.

Two cavemen are sitting on a sandy beach, silently contemplating a fire they've built. Suddenly they notice a third caveman swimming out of the sea towards them. The man runs up onto the beach gesticulating wildly, very excited. The newcomer comes up to them and says: "Hey you two, I've discovered something really exciting that will change your lives, it's called language! It means we can actually start communicating with each other. A fantastic breakthrough, I just had to let you know." One of the two guys by the fire gets up, grabs his club and wordlessly bashes the newcomer over the head, stretching him senseless in the sand. Then he shrugs, turns to his friend and says: "Je déteste les anglais!"

This is one I first heard in Austria - clearly they have their own lavatorial humour for which I make no apologies. A man boards the overnight express train, let's say from Edinburgh to London. Prior to boarding, he's had 3 pints of beer and a hot Indian curry. Sure enough, a few miles into the journey, he starts to feel uncomfortable, his bowels are churning and he realises that he needs to get to a toilet very quickly. He rushes down the corridor in a panic, reaches the toilet and the door is locked - its engaged. Bugger. Now with only seconds to spare before disaster, he thinks fast. It's dark outside, so he pulls down the nearest window, drops his trousers, sticks his bum out of the window and lets fly with a stream of diarrhoea. Blessed relief. Unfortunately the train is just passing a small country station, where a porter is wheeling some baggage down the platform and receives the whole load all over him. The train disappears into the night and he's left there furious. His brother is a police officer in the next town, so he immediately phones him. "John, the Edinburgh to London has just gone through, and some asshole on it has thrown a load of shit all over me. What can I do?" "Well, that's an assault, so if we're quick we can stop the train when it comes through here. Can you give me a description of the bloke?" "It's nighttime and the train was moving fast, so I didn't get a good look at him, but I noticed he had a centre parting, a really long nose and heavily swollen tonsils."

Shock announcement, the health & safety people in the UK have proposed that all men aged 16 or over should be compelled to attach a warning sticker to their scrotum: May contain nuts!

I went to Milk Bar to say hello to my old friend Moulie yesterday, thinking it was open. Nobody at all there, so I popped next door to Le Pub, which I haven't visited for some time owing to an attitude problem in the past. Noticed there were a few new ladies, and one or two girls who knew me came over to say hello but buggered off when I clearly wasn't going to buy them a drink on the instant, despite my being a pretty generous regular during lockdown when things were really bad for them. Sat outside with a beer, five new ladies opposite so busy with their phones that they couldn't be arsed to even talk to the old git who had invaded their space. Left disgusted after 20 minutes, Phil you need to get a grip of your bar!

Returning to this great thread because I have a Kindle problem. Suddenly I'm trying to buy books from the store only to find that they don't download properly and I get a message to delete the item for a refund. This is really annoying. Anyone else have this problem or know what's going on?

I concur about the rumble strips. Back home you'll find them just ahead of crossings and roundabouts, ostensibly to remind you to slow down (bloody nanny state). Here (e.g. Thepprasit, Thappraya and now 3rd road) they're present in large numbers way before there's any need to slow down. Often, owing to traffic, you can't steer through the middle and avoid the really annoying rumble that can't be doing your suspension any good either. These are really useless and very annoying wastes of money for which I guess some prat in authority has earned a nice little kickback.

Well done ladies, they played well against other ladies. I watched this out of patriotic interest, but I'm afraid I'm clearly a dinosaur and don't take any interest in the women's game per se at all. Always good to see po-faced Germans losing though.

A heavy breather phones a woman's number. "Do you have an unshaved, tight cunt?" "Yes, but he's watching the TV right now. Who shall I say is calling?"

Haha nice one thanks. Strangely enough, I've never seen an Indian with a 3-baht gold necklace in Patts before, and now there seems to be a rash of them getting robbed. No doubt they took the precaution of insuring the bling before coming here, and being able to present a police theft complaint should make the scam perfect. Methinks Indian insurers are not so easily fooled ..

She should Earn well if she stays .. and there's reading matter while you're bonking her.

The 300 unquestionably went into her own pocket. No question, I'd gladly have paid the same to avoid another trip.

I did the exact same thing in Soi 5 last week. No problem, I was able to collect both passports with new entries in the new one next day. Free of charge though.

I was in Cherry Bar last night. Everybody checkbinned just before 9 pm and we waited to drink up and see when the BIB would arrive. Adam and his girls left just after 9, and a uniformed copper on a bike plus a young bloke in civvies turned up at 9.30, shouting at people to leave. Seeing that the barstools were all over the place and there were empty beer bottles left along the bar, I tidied up, collected up the bottles and went inside to leave them next to the till. Got shouted at by the young bloke, ignored him and left. Could have been awkward, as he might have thought I was the bar owner and made a problem. In 13 years as a resident, I've never encountered such rudeness or heavy-handed bullying of farang. This place has truly changed for the worse and will have a hard time coming back if this authoritarian tone continues.

Always good for a chuckle, thanks for persevering in these dry times, it can only get better, but only better than it is now.

Keep hanging in there Phil. Is there a delivery charge for meals, how much to Jomtien? Do your girls do the delivering?

That's bad news for all the investors who've been putting up hotels and condos in Patts, but good news for the expats who live here - provided that the Thai goverment cares a damn about ordinary jobless Thai people and opens up the bars, agogos etc. and lets people from other nations in as a matter of priority. That presupposes a mass vaccination programme, which is unaccountably (and suspiciously) delayed. Possibly the Thai elite are still cooking up a scheme how to make serious money from such a programme after all, despite it initially being announced as "free". Don't let a crisis go to waste ...

Of course Treenudgeyergroin is back on the panel, to do otherwise would be apportioning blame in the local way of thinking. Heavens, even the former ambassador who sold the Thai embassy in The Hague some years ago is still working as a senior civil servant somewhere.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if the British ambassador was party to this if its true. My perception is that my government doesn't give a damn about retired UK expats. We don't have a vote, which may be why. Our pensions are frozen here, though not in the Philippines, we're not entitled to free use of the national health service when visiting home - although we've paid the same dues throughout our working lives as UK retirees have.

Q: How does a blind parachutist know when he's about to hit the ground? A: His guide dog's lead goes slack.

I don't think you'll get many takers among the mostly aging Pattaya expat community. Or if you offer punctuation classes. ?

Here's one from the late Tommy Cooper: I went up to a fitness instructor and asked him if he could teach me to do the splits. He said "I think so, how flexible are you?" Me: "I can't do Tuesdays."

Re. #1932 - A wife comes home to find her husband reading a book. "What's reincarnation?" he asks. "Well it means that after you die, you come back to the world as something different." "Sounds great, I'd want to come back as a pig." "You're not listening to me, are you!"

Never heard of O'Brien (fine English surname). What's not to like about national days for a bit of fun, they're not exactly military parades or torchlight processions. In fact national or saint's days have often led to children born on that day being named after them in the British Isles (George, Patrick, Andrew). My son Pancake agrees with me on this.

I think we're allowed to be modestly pleased to be English today. Have a good one.