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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Ermintruder said:
I'm suddenly-struck by how long ago it was that (allegedly) the late British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse was ('they' said) initially incensed by newspaper headlines regarding a foreign woman of questionable virtue named "Sarah Pippeliné", who'd apparently been laid "end to end by hundreds of Arabs".

This anecdote has probably not seen the light of day since well before the end of last millennium, but it's always struck me as being so ludicrous to have perhaps been true.
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Mrs Whitehouse should have focused her anger at the sexism (and implied racism) of this instead:

been laid "end to end by hundreds of Arabs''
 
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Ermintruder said:
I'm suddenly-struck by how long ago it was that (allegedly) the late British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse was ('they' said) initially incensed by newspaper headlines regarding a foreign woman of questionable virtue named "Sarah Pippeliné", who'd apparently been laid "end to end by hundreds of Arabs".

This anecdote has probably not seen the light of day since well before the end of last millennium, but it's always struck me as being so ludicrous to have perhaps been true.
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My guess is that this was originally a joke about an oil pipeline, taken out of context and misinterpreted.
 
escargot said:
It's over 100 years old, not exactly cutting-edge!
Though it probably was in its time.
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The Britishers have always been crap at using concrete for roads.

Even today they still haven't cottoned on to the fact that, unlike in America where they diamond grind in line with the direction of traffic, (making for a smoother and quieter ride), here they either do it across the flow, or don't bother at all.
 
Mythopoeika said:
There was no need for camouflage because of the ludicrously stupid style of warfare that was the de facto standard back then.
Meet in a field, line up facing the enemy, charge. The winner is the side with most men left standing. World War 1 was the last time this style of warfare was employed. They were using camouflage by this time.
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Here's Corporal Jones discussing the use of dust, or khaki in Urdu, to disguise the red uniform coat.
He's turned up to a Court of Inquiry being held about the use of some ammunition in an incident.

Full-dress uniform, sir.
Lord Kitchener always enjoyed a man wearing full-dress uniform when anyone was on a fizzer.
This red coat's been worn by the British Army for over 200 years, sir.
Trouble is, the red showed up a bit and a lot of men got shot.
And they didn't like that, sir.
No.
One hot day in India when the air was all fetid and it was all dusty, some of the men put a lot of dust all over them and they found they didn't get shot.
And they liked that.
That's where the expression comes from, ''khaki''.
That's an old Urdu expression for ''dust''.
Urdu for ''dust'' that is, sir.
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I saw that on its first airing in the late '60s. Brilliant.
 
Ermintruder said:
I'm suddenly-struck by how long ago it was that (allegedly) the late British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse was ('they' said) initially incensed by newspaper headlines regarding a foreign woman of questionable virtue named "Sarah Pippeliné", who'd apparently been laid "end to end by hundreds of Arabs".

This anecdote has probably not seen the light of day since well before the end of last millennium, but it's always struck me as being so ludicrous to have perhaps been true.
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Getting or being 'laid' is an American idiom though. It wasn't current in British speech at the time.

Whitehouse was bafflingly offended by the slightest expression of sexuality or personal freedom.

One wonders how she delivered sex education as a high school teacher. Those lessons must have been short:
'This is what you do, or rather what goes where and you only do it after you've married the person you want to do it with.'
 
escargot said:
Whitehouse was bafflingly offended by the slightest expression of sexuality or personal freedom.

One wonders how she delivered sex education as a high school teacher. Those lessons must have been short:
'This is what you do, or rather what goes where and you only do it after you've married the person you want to do it with.'
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"Illegitimacy in England was never common, the number of such births in the past usually being under two per cent. That number increased to three per cent between 1590 and 1610. It rose to three per cent again about 1750, slowly increased to seven per cent in the 1840s (when about a third of women were pregnant at marriage), and then declined to about four per cent in the 1890s."

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Illegitimacy_in_England

"In 2021, more babies – 51% – were born to unmarried mothers in England and Wales than to those in a marriage or civil partnership for the first time since records began in 1845."

https://theconversation.com/over-ha...a-history-of-stigma-and-discrimination-189025

It's generally accepted that illegitimacy/single parent (usually mother) upbringing has major negative implications for a child's future.

maximus otter
 
My parents lived on a private housing estate, founded in the 1930's, which housed the staff, teams, and crew of motor racers. All the buildings were bungalows of assorted styles and quality. All the roads were named after cars - my parents lived on Daytona Way for instance. 99% of the road surfaces were ridged concrete slabs, joints filled with bitumen.
I admit, we had few potholes!
 
SimonBurchell said:
Brooklands racetrack is, of course, famously haunted.
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Yup, I mentioned it a while ago and was derided for misreading the year of the death of Percy 'Pearly' Lambert, whose ghost is reputed to wander the area.
I was only ten years out! :dunno:

Lambert was only 29 and due to give up racing and marry his fiancee two weeks later.
 
escargot said:
One wonders how she delivered sex education as a high school teacher. Those lessons must have been short:
'This is what you do, or rather what goes where and you only do it after you've married the person you want to do it with.'
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Peter Cook gives a good interview (Parky I think) about what his teacher told him at school.
 
Whilst drying up last night I noticed that the plastic ring from inside the lid of my work drink bottle was missing. This has happened before, so I searched for it in the kitchen sink, but it wasn't there. Puzzled, I turned on the main kitchen light and looked on the floor, but it wasn't there. I shrugged my shoulders, presuming it was just one of those things; took a step forward to put the lid down on the kitchen table, and felt something under my foot. Yes, the plastic ring. I'm unsure as to how I didn't see it with the main kitchen lights glaring away. I said "Thank you" out loud just in case. :chuckle:
 
bugmum said:
Whilst drying up last night I noticed that the plastic ring from inside the lid of my work drink bottle was missing. This has happened before, so I searched for it in the kitchen sink, but it wasn't there. Puzzled, I turned on the main kitchen light and looked on the floor, but it wasn't there. I shrugged my shoulders, presuming it was just one of those things; took a step forward to put the lid down on the kitchen table, and felt something under my foot. Yes, the plastic ring. I'm unsure as to how I didn't see it with the main kitchen lights glaring away. I said "Thank you" out loud just in case. :chuckle:
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Bottle gaskets, yup. :nods:

I have loads rescued from the washing-up bowl and hooked on the kitchen cupboard handles. They go back on eventually. :chuckle:

Had a drinks blender that started leaking. Most annoying.
Early one morning I woke up with the realisation that the problem was a missing gasket.

Jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, selected the most likely-looking gasket and reassembled the blender with it. Success! :cool:
 
Kate In The Desert said:
It reminds me of the famous use of that particular American idiom by Dorothy Parker (in the late 1920s, I think): "If all the girls attending the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
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Yup, when I first came across that quote back in the early '80s I didn't understand it. :dunno:
 
Several decades ago my sister had started work in London and lived in a flatshare. A few months later, fresh out of Uni, I got a job in London. I stayed a few nights there while setting up my own flatshare.

Recently one of my nieces (daughter of a different sister) moved to London for a job. Today I asked for her address to send a birthday card and guess what? The road name leapt out at me and it was the same small road in South London as my sisters flat decades ago. Not the same flat, but 2 doors away. What-are-the-chances? Mad.
 
Benzie said:
Just heard on TalkSport.

When Djokovic lost at Wimbledon to Alcaraz, it had been 2195 days since he last lost at Wimbledon.

Djokovic has just lost to Sinner at the Australian Open - 2195 since he last lost at the Australian Open.
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Well, both tournaments are played at a fixed time in the year, and all of the major tournaments finsh with the mens singles on the final Sunday.

So, although the 2195-day coincidence seems remarkable, it's just 6 years, give or take a day or two.
 
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Ermintruder said:
I'm suddenly-struck by how long ago it was that (allegedly) the late British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse was ('they' said) initially incensed by newspaper headlines regarding a foreign woman of questionable virtue named "Sarah Pippeliné", who'd apparently been laid "end to end by hundreds of Arabs".

This anecdote has probably not seen the light of day since well before the end of last millennium, but it's always struck me as being so ludicrous to have perhaps been true.
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She was even offended by the mid 1980s cult programme Robin of Sherwood (Saturday afternoons, you may recall).

On meeting her, the writer of the programme Richard Carpenter said; "I'm Richard Carpenter, and I'm a professional writer. And you're a professional... what?"
 
Whitehouse has been mentioned before on these forums. Often, it seems, by me.
Well, she was there all through my childhood and adolescence. Like a sort of stalker of the nations's sexuality. :chuckle:
(Neil) Gaiman is on the latest Desert Island Discs.
I was intrigued to learn that he named his daughter after Holly in Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side, a song so subversive Mary Whitehouse didn't understand it. :cool:

Whitehouse did protest against Hot Gossip's dance routine to it in the Kenny Everett Show. She singled out the 'schoolgirl' character which she saw as sexualising children; missing the point, as most us then did, that the 'sexy schoolgirl' dancer was portraying a possibly transgender sex worker. :chuckle:
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I didn't understand some of that song either.
You can probably guess which expression had me, er, scratching my head. :nods:
 
escargot said:
Whitehouse has been mentioned before on these forums. Often, it seems, by me.
Well, she was there all through my childhood and adolescence. Like a sort of stalker of the nations's sexuality. :chuckle:

I didn't understand some of that song either.
You can probably guess which expression had me, er, scratching my head. :nods:
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Heaven knows what she thought of Baywatch, because I've been watching the early episodes and quite frankly even I'm shocked that it was allowed to be on at 5.30pm.

Pleasantly shocked you understand.
 
Floyd1 said:
Heaven knows what she thought of Baywatch, because I've been watching the early episodes and quite frankly even I'm shocked that it was allowed to be on at 5.30pm.

Pleasantly shocked you understand.
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We used to watch that. The ex would in particular enjoyed it.

He was also keen to catch the intro to Miami Vice which featured a short bongoesque sequence matched to the top half of a skimpy bikini bouncing past.
 
Okay, if we can tear ourselves away from boobs for a moment...

I had a weird thing happen last night. Well, not weird, just odd. And no boobs were involved.

I was walking the dog at about five o clock, so not quite completely dark. We headed out of the village down the hill and ahead of us in the middle of the road was a white cat, crouching down. Dog went mad, trying to chase the cat, but she was on the lead so we sort of plunged our way down towards the cat (about thirty feet ahead of us). I was trying to work out whose cat it could be, there are no pure white cats in the village. Then the cat ran to the hedge at the side of the road, then back into the road, across to the other side, and rose into the air. It went up about four or five feet, then back down to settle in the road again.

It was a plastic bag. A very flimsy one, so when a breeze caught it it moved across the road. But it moved exactly like a cat seeing a dog approach, sort of low and slinking, with a pause to check how close the dog was. It was SO like a cat that I couldn't quite believe it was just a bag until we got right on top of it and I could see it. Even the dog - who must have a sense of smell, despite being an utter idiot - thought it was a cat. I assume that expectation (I really did think it was a cat) made it seem to move in a more catlike way than it actually did, and my brain did the rest. But the dog saw what I saw....
 
catseye said:
Okay, if we can tear ourselves away from boobs for a moment...

I had a weird thing happen last night. Well, not weird, just odd. And no boobs were involved.

I was walking the dog at about five o clock, so not quite completely dark. We headed out of the village down the hill and ahead of us in the middle of the road was a white cat, crouching down. Dog went mad, trying to chase the cat, but she was on the lead so we sort of plunged our way down towards the cat (about thirty feet ahead of us). I was trying to work out whose cat it could be, there are no pure white cats in the village. Then the cat ran to the hedge at the side of the road, then back into the road, across to the other side, and rose into the air. It went up about four or five feet, then back down to settle in the road again.

It was a plastic bag. A very flimsy one, so when a breeze caught it it moved across the road. But it moved exactly like a cat seeing a dog approach, sort of low and slinking, with a pause to check how close the dog was. It was SO like a cat that I couldn't quite believe it was just a bag until we got right on top of it and I could see it. Even the dog - who must have a sense of smell, despite being an utter idiot - thought it was a cat. I assume that expectation (I really did think it was a cat) made it seem to move in a more catlike way than it actually did, and my brain did the rest. But the dog saw what I saw....
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Damned fairies again - you got glamoured and the fairy danced off laughing...
 
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