This is a policeman directing a motor cyclist. All made from electronic components!

This conversation actually took place outside a post office that was closed
when it should not have been.

A man drives up in a post office van and takes out a sackful of letters.

Me: Ah! Good, could you please take this parcel.

Man: No, I’m not a postman.

Me: But have a post van and a sack of letters.

Man: Yes.

Me: But you are not a postman?

Man: No.

Me: So what can I do with this parcel?

Man: Take to to the post office.

Me: The post office is closed.

Man: Yes.

Me Why?

Man: The girls on holiday.

Me: Couldn’t you put a sign to say so?

Man: No.

Me: Why not?

Man: It’s obvious.

Me: No it’s not.

Man: She can’t, she’s on holiday.

He then picked up the sack of letters, put them back in the van and drove off.

I walked back home with my parcel and took one of my anti-insanity pills.

A bad case of galloping garden gnome disease – a cure is still being sought.

The picture above was taken in 2010. The one below two years later. The contagion has spread, leaving the only one cure – a couple of sticks of dynamite.

The Internet is awash with get rich quick schemes, especially surrounding the stock market.

All these systems are useless, failing to answer four simple questions.

1. If the scheme is so good, why are we being told, why isn’t the seller of the scheme on a beach in Bermuda working out how to spend his next million?

2. If the scheme is so good, why charge for it? The seller must already be stinking rich.

3. Why don’t the big banks use it to stop huge losses in their dealing rooms?

4. If everyone uses it, the stock market will run out of money.

Then I came across this very clever idea.

A trader with a website with a large following, has opened his dealing bank account for the public to see. He also tells you when he has bought a share and also when he has sold it.

And all this information is free!

Last year he made £300,000! So by following him you can make the same!… Er, not quite.

The clever bit is the ‘when he has’. His followers rush and buy a share he has just bought. The price of the share rises. When he has made his twenty per cent the trader sells. The price goes down. The first few of his followers indeed do make money but the majority do not.

And there is a second profit for the trader. He shorts the share before he sells, when the price drops he buys at the lower price and makes even more money.

Now this is not the usual get rich quick rip off. But a bright lad who has worked out a nifty way to make a fortune with your money. Not bad!

After a particularly loud release of pressure she covered it beautifully.

“Excuse me, but my body is interfering with me again!”

A man in the village wanted to sell his house. During the solicitor’s search it transpired the stairs leading to the house did not belong to the house, but to the village.
This made the house impossible to sell.
The mayor of the village could not give the stairs to the house owner because they belong to the commune.
It really was not a big deal as the stairs only led to the house and are of no interest to anyone else.
But now the newspapers are involved.
Why?
The owner of the house has gone on hunger strike until he gets the staircase.
Poor timing, it’s two weeks to Christmas, bet not many people buy him presents!

A Christmas Giggle.

I bough myself a small remote control helicopter (because no one else would buy me one – big kid, childish, etc) for Christmas.
Learned to fly it and when the family was in front of a roaring log fire, decided to show off my prowess as a helicopter pilot.
The flight from my study, across the hall, into the sitting room and the hover down to the coffee table in front of the fire was impeccable.
I then hung the model in a hover half a metre above the coffee table, looked down to the remote control to check the trim, looked up, and blinked – my helicopter had vanished.
“That was clever!” admired an uncle. “How did you do it?”
I had no idea where my helicopter was.
“It shot up the chimney,” giggled a grandchild.
MORAL: Don’t fly small helicopters near a roaring fire, the draught sucks them in.
I never saw the helicopter again, but I still had the box. That came in handy to light the next fire!

Took my dog for quiet evening walk in the forest. We passed several houses, all quite isolated with large guard dogs that snarled as we past – except for one.
An Alsation had dug a hole under it’s fence and, with teeth glinting, hair raising, and barking furiously was charging towards me.
I had only one weapon, a foot, that I raised as the animal prepared to leap. A brown and white flash zipped between my legs. My Jack Russel does not allow anyone to threaten me, with at least five teeth she attached herself to the Alsation.
The barks of fury from the guard dog turned to yelps of pain as the Jack Russel grabbed a bigger mouthful of the Alsation.
A scrabbled turn and the dog raced back to the safety of it’s garden. Problem. The hole was only just big enough for the Alsation, so I watched helpless as the windmill of dogs raised dust and damaged everything near them.
Jack Russels never let go. If I tried to prise my dog off I would also get an Alsation that I did not want.
My timid jabbing with a hand at the melee was stopped by a yell. The Alsation’s owner was swearing at me on the run from his house.
Apparently it was my fault his dog had got out. My reply did ot please him. He picked up a stick and ran around his garden to the gate to get at me.
It was obvious, as I could see him running at me with a stick raised, my Jack Russel could also. Like I said, no one is allowed to attack me and the brown and white flash released the yelping Asation to attend to it’s owner.
The Alsation shot through the fence and hid under a tractor in the garden.
The yelps of pain turned from animal to human as the Jack Russel sampled a piece of leg. The victim tried to hit my dog with the stick. No one is allowed to touch my dog! The stick snapped easily as I caught it and threw it in the garden.
Another yell eurupted. Mrs Alsation had joined the party. She took one look at the scene, summed up the problem and like all good wives, blamed her husband for eveything.
“I told you five time to fix that fence!”
Her husband was holding on to tree and swearing at me. Now I was getting annoyed. I can speak French, but when I get annoyed my French changes to a type of French the French do not understand, which I forgive them for as I can’t understand what I am saying either.
But I was ignored. Madam Alsation was slipping into top gear.
“And you haven’t fixed the bath tap, or the chair leg, or the fireplace, or…”
The list went on and on. Now I can deal with a maniac dog attacking me, I can deal with someone trying to hit me with a stick, but a list of domestic chores strikes fear into my core.
Even the Alsation was covering it’s ears with it’s paws under the tractor.
I needed to retreat but my dog was still attached to the wilting form of the husband.
But when the going gets tough, the tough go for a walk. My Jack Russel, seeing her master walking away without hindrence, let go of Mr Alsation and trotted, with her tail up and only a trace of Mr Alsations bood on her fur, happily behind me. And we continued our quiet evening walk in the forest.

James Bond was around thirty-five years old when we met him for the first time. That was over fifty years ago. I thought it was time someone wrote an update on his adventures…

The black ink of night betrayed nothing as Bond slowly opened his eyes. The noise had come from the sitting room.

His hand reached out and grasped the cold hard shape of the glass on his bedside table, he would need his dentures.

Swinging out of the bed he slipped on his slippers and slipped in his teeth. His walking stick fell into his grip as he hobbled across the bed room. He was naked, it did not matter, this would be quick. Holding his left knee to stop a revealing creek, his gnarled hand quietly pushed open the door of the sitting room. The lights blazed as his stick prodded the switch.

“Oh God!” She gasped, her gaze travelling over his nakedness, at what was left of his body.

He smiled. “He won’t help you my darling.” Bond purred, pleased, that for once the cackled of age did not lace his sexy tone. But the familiar tensing of danger now ached across his shoulders.

Pussy Galore straightened, as much as her hunchback would allow. In one hand, it’s hole of death pointing at Bond’s head, glinted the black metal of a Mauser pistol. In the other, the steadying reassurance of her Zimmer frame.

“You know what I’ve come for.” She croaked. “Take those – now!” The Mauser muzzle moved menacingly.

Bond paled. The three tablets on the coffee table were certain death, an overdose of Viagra. They were Pussy’s favourite weapon. The Viagra caused an erection so huge the victim’s brain died from the lack of blood.

“Drop your stick!” She commanded. Bond’s stick, with the deadly darts in the handle, the canister of nerve gas in the middle, and the atomic bomb in the tip, that he had stolen when M was not looking, clattered to the floor.

He did not hesitate, a tap from his heel and the pink pom-pom from his right slipper hit Pussy’s forehead, dropping her instantly.

Dragging himself around the inert form and then untangling himself from her Zimmer, he hobbled to the kitchen.

He needed a drink.

Taking down his extra strong cocoa, he smiled as he stirred in the hot milk. The name James Bond still meant something. Especially when it was written on something they were all after.

His pension book.

Have a problem with a piece of local folklore.
Truffles are a much prized delicacy and grow here in The South of France among the roots of certain oak trees.
To hunt truffles you need a licence, (even good sized truffle will sell for more than a thousand euros!) a pig, or a dog.
However, with a knowing wink a local confided, in fact you need none of these.
You find a suitable oak tree, sit quietly, and wait for a fly to pass. If the fly hovers near the oak, a quick dig will reveal a truffle below where the fly hovered.
So I sat quitely beneath the suitable oak for ten minutes before the truth dawned.
Truffles are harvested in December. December is winter here – so where are the bloody flies? Answer, asleep until next spring.
There can ony be two answers to this puzzle.
A. I have to wait until next spring for a fly by which time the wild hogs around here will have eaten all the truffles, or they will have rotted away.
B. The local is taking the piss.

Here in the South of France, fire is feared. The lack of rain, hot sun and the fierce Mistral wind combine to make the countryside an ideal fire bed.
Between May and October fires are banned. Even open barbecues are forbidden.
But the local farmers and peasants used to disregard this law and firemen spent weeks chasing dozen of small landowners with smoke rising from their property.
Many of these fires resulted in huge blazes that wiped out hundreds of acres of woodland and vinyards.
Something had to be done.
One day a farmer, standing beside a blazing pile of rubbish, was astonished to see a helicopter land in his field. A fireman walked across and told him to put out the fire immediately as he was breaking the law.
The farmer begrudingly obeyed, the fireman handed the farmer a piece of paper, not a fine, but a bill, 3000 euros for the use of the helicopter. Now it was the farmer who was about to burst into flame.
News of the incident spread faster than a Mistral fuelled fire, and since, there has not been a plume of smoke in the deep blue sky, and the firemen sleep peacfully in their fire stations.

Archie sighed and closed his computer, glaring at the hall clock he opened his front door with an annoyed snatch. Who could be knocking on his door, at nearly midnight?

His gasp, blink, and mouth dropping open married into his astonished stagger back.

A coffin shadowed his entrance!

With an ominous creak the lid slowly opened.

Archie backed away. From the bowels of the casket, a voice, dripping death, poured towards him.

“Room for one inside sir…” The clock in his hallway chimed midnight.

A shiver down his spine rattled both his brain and his bottom but his slow move away was halted with a start – the lid of the coffin banged furiously shut.

He watched, with eye-popping terror, as the coffin crossed his threshold and glided towards him.

Through his sitting room, and across the kitchen the coffin followed. The front door crashed shut as he approached, his fingers ineffectively scrabbling on the sealed door.

The stairs! Caskets cannot climb stairs! He raced upwards, turning to watch, but backed away further as the banisters rattled, slowly the casket hauled itself towards him.

Flying into the bathroom, he locked the door and sat shaking on the toilet, wishing he had put the seat down first.

The door crashed open, the casket loomed over him.

A weapon! He needed a weapon!

But the bathroom cabinet had been fixed firmly to the wall by his Polish plumber.

His hand scrabbled inside as the coffin approached, the lid now swinging open towards him. Grabbing the large bottle of cough syrup in the cabinet he hurled it into the coffin.

And the coffin stopped.

I typed the tag in 8pt because I am so ashamed of it.

I took this picture during my time as a sound engineer in the rock ‘n roll business. It’s a production clock, on stage at Twickenham Rugby Stadium during The Rolling Stones Bigger Bang world tour in 2007.

Notice it counts down to tenths of a second.

So why give you all this guff?

The Stones two and a half hour, 50th anniversary gig, in the O2 arena ended suddenly. The fans got ‘No Satisfaction’ as the last number was cut.

Why?

It was the dreaded curfew.

If the band had gone on playing even a few seconds after the curfew hour, The Rolling Stones Rock ‘ Roll Band Company Ltd, would have caught a hefty fine from the local council.

Now you know why rock concerts sometime finish suddenly.

Sorry about the quality of the picture, but I have a talent for buying mobile telephones with rotten cameras.

During the second world war. The British captured an enigma code machine, considered by the Nazis to produce unbreakable codes. Alan Turin, a British mathematician, broke the codes and saved the lives of many allied servicemen, and some say, shortened the war by two years.

Turin was homosexual, an illegal trait in the forties. He was offered a choice, to go to prison or chemical castration. He chose the latter with devastating consequences, eventually taking his own life. He chose poison and following in the footsteps of Snow White, in his opinion, the purest person on the planet, he injected the poison into an apple and died after one bite.

Now it is said Steve Jobs, of Apple fame, admired Turin’s achievements so much he took a white apple with one bite as his company logo.

I cannot remember where I heard this story and no one believes it when I tell them.

So now I am asking, does anyone know if it is true?

Thank you to all the readers who emailed me on the above. Apparently, the man himself, Steve Jobs was told this story.

He thought it was very dramatic, but, it is not true.

I did not really want to go but I asked myself why not? I could not really come up with a satisfactory answer and so I went.

I was seated next to one of the village’s oldest inhabitants, opposite a draughty door and the starter was foie gras on which I am not keen.

Not a good start.

I had prepared myself for a miserable two hours when the old man started talking to me.

I sat and listened, amazed, as the village that I live next to, suddenly became alive.

Had I noticed the hole under a certain house? Yes, I nodded.

“Ha, that’s were I hid from the Gestapo when they came,” he chuckled.

The splintered stone at the side of the washing fountain apparently was not caused by age, but by Nazi bullets when they executed fifteen young men from the village.

The bend going out of the village he smiled, was not always as narrow as it is now. The French Resistance halved the width of the road so that German trucks could not escape when they attacked from the woods.

He ran, in his bare feet, through10cm of snow for three miles to escape once more when the Gestapo returned to arrest him.

The Germans never had enough food and set snares to trap rabbits. He would go out at first light, and take the rabbits from the traps before the German’s could get them.

Instead of suffering two miserable hours, I sat enthralled for the whole meal as accounts of horror and bravery were offered across the tablecloth.

I spend the war in London during the blitz, it lasted a few months.

My tablemate had it much, much worse, German thuggery – for four years.

And I got enough story lines for three short stories that I shall write some day.

My neighbour was driving home. A rather disreputable figure was beside the road holding out his thumb. It was raining and cold and the neighbour, who never picks up hitchhikers, for once stopped.

The man was extremely greatful and for the next mile did not stop offering his thanks.

The flashing blue light and the siren stopped the conversation and the neighbour was pulled for speeding. Both the driver and the hitchhiker were ordered out of the car. The PC made notes in his notebook and issued a ticked from his ticket pad.

Some ten miles further the hitchhiker reached his destination,

as he left the car he turned to the neighbour.

“I know I look pretty dreadful, but I have just come out of prison.” He said.

“You have been very kind giving me a ride and I should like to show my thanks.’

He handed the neighbour two books, the policeman’s notebook and ticket pad.