Random Jottings
The girl had style. She once went to a Fancy Dress Party as a small plastic container of shampoo. You should have seen the way she sashayed into the room.
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The heavy got heavy. He needed information. He grabbed the man by the lapels and threw him down on to a bean-bag, which burst. The man spilled the beans.
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MISPRINT IN MILITARY BULLETIN: The camp was erected with commendable speed, though the latrines inevitably remained something of a makeshit arrangement.
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A double bed is one in which
Every time you move a-
Bout you feel an angry twitch
And lose a bit more duvet.
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I love it when in an old book you come across a phrase to which the passage of time has added a new meaning. It’s like all those Jane Austen characters who keep ‘exposing themselves’. Recently, in Allan Quatermaine by Rider Haggard, I found this comment on the benefits of a good night’s sleep: ‘It’s like going to bed one man and getting up another.’
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Newspaper ad: COSMETIC SURGERY SPECIAL ON CHINS − TWO FOR ONE OFFER.
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We prepared the Greek salad earlier. By the time our guests arrived, it was a feta compli.
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Cast your bread upon the waters, and it will come back soggy.
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No one but a fool ever crossed Enid Blyton. She knew where the Noddies were buried.
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ACTOR: I’ve just been cast as William Tell. It is a Swiss role.
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He had been meek all his life, and went on waiting quietly for the day when he would inherit the earth.
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I’ve suddenly realised that ‘hutzpah’ rhymes with ‘footspa’. Is it worth writing a whole musical to get in that one rhyme?
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It‘s a bit like my idea for an alcoholic‘s version of Through The Looking Glass. I couldn’t get any further than ‘“Curaçao and Curaçao,” said Alice.’
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Then there’s the fact that the hotel chain ‘Mövenpick’ sounds uncannily like the name of the English author of Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake. But opportunities for the right context to arrive in which one could dazzle people with that particular pun could be few and far between.
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Depression is like picking at your own scabs and then chewing what you’ve picked off.
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For no very good reason, I was trying to think of a fictional name for one of the new wave of Scandinavian Noir crime writers. I came up with Turgid Glümsdottir.
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EPITAPH ON AN AIR HOSTESS
Here lies a girl whose duties were
(Before Death’s Pilot summoned her)
Sidling up and down the aisle
With plastic trays and plastic smile
And serving, with each plastic meal,
Her plastic-packaged sex appeal.
But now her final flight’s begun.
Her eternal safety belt’s undone
And, as her drinks were, so is she.
Now, forever, duty free.
He had an allergy to crisps. He only had to eat one and a virulent rash burst out on his back. The condition is known as Pringles.
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He has these delusions that he’s a vegetable. Yes, he’s way out on the Asparagus Spectrum.
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He had an addiction to football and he couldn’t kick it.
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Are you religious?
God, no.
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And then there was the famous transplant surgeon, Mr Brown, a man after my own heart.
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Circe used to attract boats to her island – she was the first Greek shipping magnet.
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Whatever your occupation, death is an occupational hazard.
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He said I looked ‘well-preserved’. Doesn’t he realise I’m a woman – not a jar of pickled onions!
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She had a lived-in look. Actually, she looked more as though she’d had squatters.
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As one stalk of corn said to another, ‘We’re all ears.’
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The best of my old friends are dead and burnt to ashes – the crème de la crem.
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Emile Zola was famous for inventing the J’Accuzzi.
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I remember when the only thing you’d find online was washing.
Mrs Pargeter's Patio
A bizarre discovery right under Mrs Pargeter's patio turns a quiet and sunny June morning into a thrilling hunt for answers in this new instalment of the light-hearted and entertaining Mrs Pargeter mystery series.
When widow Mrs Pargeter decides to have her morning coffee on the patio of her mansion in Chigwell, her intention is to admire her beautiful garden in peace and quiet. Little does she expect one of the patio's paving slabs to crack in two, depositing her on the ground - and revealing a human skull with a neat hole in the middle of its forehead!
Not wanting to bother the police just yet, Mrs Pargeter decides to save them some trouble and starts investigating the curious find herself. And who better to assist than her late husband's 'business associates', private investigator Truffler Mason and chauffeur Gary?
The trio are soon certain that a murder has been committed and the body disposed of under some convenient building works. But who is the mysterious victim? And more importantly, who put the body under Mrs Pargeter's patio?
Mrs Pargeter and her friends must find out the truth and soon, before the finger of suspicion points in an unthinkable direction: towards the late, great Mr Pargeter, whose business dealings Mrs P remains - naturally! - in blissful ignorance of...