by Ken Watkins 24-07-08
I've had a few days off recently, catching up on jobs around the house, and it meant a little more time listening to the radio while wielding a paintbrush. Inevitably, the neighbours may have heard the occasional burst of shouting.
An item on the BBC about the called-off Durham v Yorkshire Twenty/20 cricket match said the postponement was caused by Yorkshire fielding an "inillegible" bowler. Obviously the batsmen had difficulty reading him…
Then coverage of the two-day strike by council workers saw a reporter going on the picket lines to talk to "picketers".
Back in the day, as they say, when the National Union of Journalists had us manning the barricades outside the Western Mail in Cardiff, we were known as pickets. I wonder when that changed.
And if I hear one more advert for the BBC iPlayer, my wind-up radio is in danger of winding up in the pond.
But the newspapers are no better. The Times, once a formidable organ that guarded and cherished the English language, in an article on our Olympic hopefuls, called the athletes Olympiads.
This was followed a few days later by a film review describing a grinning Eddie Murphy as "bearing his teeth". I just gritted mine for a little while…
Anno Domini is catching up with the dogs, who both turned 13 last month. Bluebell used to hear a dog
biscuit drop at 50 paces. Now you have to take them to her.
But the sense of smell remains keen. Open a tin of dog meat, or get the cheese out of the fridge, and she's there by your feet in a flash.
Hamish, a trifle arthritic as a result of a disagreement with a car when he was a pup, and blind in one eye – although the other is fine since his cataract operation – also appears to be going deaf.
We got the proof during recent middle-of-the-night thunderstorms, which woke us up. But the dogs slept on.
None of the usual scrabbling frantically at the kitchen door by Hamish as he sought a place to hide – the wardrobe – from the lightning flashes and noise.
I guess he must have been sleeping on his good ear and good eye.
And Bluebell? She sleeps under a duvet, and nothing entices her out until the morning when the food suppliers get up...
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Weather for Sudbury
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: East
