3 April 2014 (Thursday) - Trilby, Chaplin...

Over brekkie I watched the latest episode of "The Tomorrow People". Having been marking time for weeks the plot now seems to be going somewhere. About time too; I was seriously considering giving up with the show.
After brekkie I had a couple of moments spare, so I harvested all the dog dung from the garden. It's amazing how many turds such a small dog can generate. I also took the fluorescent tube out of the fish pond filter. I never know which one to buy when I replace the thing. It was due for replacing.

And so to work. The news this morning featured the revelation that nursery schools aren't preparing toddlers for the rigours of school. The pundits started ranting about how ridiculous it was to have academic expectations of a two-year old. But it seems that the nursery schools aren't preparing toddlers for schools in that many children aged five are going to school for the first time who are not toilet trained and can barely speak.
I would have thought that this was a job for parents, but apparently (so the experts said) only well-to-do parents teach this sort of thing to the fruits of their loins; the vast majority of humanity need someone else to impart these skills. The implication was made that the vast majority of humanity can barely speak themselves and are not toilet trained.

The morning's news also mentioned Charlie Chaplin. He was held up as some sort of an icon on the "Thought for the Day" section. This boiled my piss. There has been a recent biography of him which was discussed on yesterday's morning radio show. I didn't realise that had he lived today he may well have been a candidate for Operation Yewtree; apparently his first two wives were only sixteen years old when he married them. His last wife was eighteen when they married (he was fifty-three) and it was intimated by the biographer being interviewed that Chaplin "liked" young girls. Quite a serious allegation to make on live radio I thought.
Mind you I never liked Chaplin on a personal basis. My grandmother actually knew him; he was a contemporary of one of her older cousins. For all that great show is made of Chaplin's humble origins, no one ever mentions how he turned his back on the very people who helped him during those early years. (Like my great-uncle Ted).

And so to work, where I had a better day than I had been expecting. Again lunchtime was saxophone practice time. My music-reading skills are coming back; albeit rather slowly. Today as well as getting used to Puff (the magic dragon) I experimented with my tonguing skills on some vulgar boatmen. It was an experience I may well share with an unsuspecting public in the not too distant future.
This sax business is going a lot better than I ever imagined it would. Mind you I think that if I am going to do the thing properly I am going to need a black trilby with a white band round it. I have this idea that all the best saxophonists wear a trilby.

Home via the Koi shop in Chilham. I've now got the replacement tube of the pond filter; I just need to fit it and we can re-activate the pond. I was going to do it tonight, but other stuff took precedence.
I took "Furry Face TM" for a walk. We went out through Newtown where we woofed at passing cyclists and came back via Asda where we laid several dog's eggs. I wish he wouldn't make such a show of it.
And with "er indoors TM" off visiting the home of "The Man with No Alias" (patent pending) to peruse the latest developments in kitchenware I set about the ironing. Far from ironing itself, left unattended it seems to breed and multiply...


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