A price, a tyrant and keeping shtum

25 August 2012

One day I will learn to keep quiet!  Like yesterday; I mentioned that four thieves had been jailed for stealing signal wire making life better for train users.  Opps ... more cabling has been stolen now from a different line, Dorktown to Coventry leading to a bus service having to be put in place instead.

Now according to the Telegraph, a certain Tsar of Russia, one Ivan IV (the Terrible), was born.  He went on to expand the area of Russia quite a bit.  But I'm not quite so sure about the date here - don't the Russians use a different calendar than us? 

As a writer I'm always on the lookout for story ideas but also for a way of making up names for the characters in my story.  The Telegraph prints a column called In the Courts.  So what I do is too cut this one out and keep it.  When a new character is added I use two of the names from the column, first name from one crim, second name for another one.  Today's column lists 21 naughty boys and girls giving me enough names to be getting on with.

So it's now photo time and seeing as today is market day here's from a market day from ages ago ...

Funny ooerr ...

A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at the bar. After an hour of gathering up his courage he finally goes over to her and asks, tentatively, "Um, would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?"
She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "No, I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar is now staring at them.
Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table.
After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm a graduate student in psychology and I'm studying how people respond to embarrassing situations."
To which he responds, at the top of his lungs, "What do you mean $200?"