Intelligent question and reversing a car

1. "Can I ask an intelligent question?" Dad would ask before posing a query which would result in an answer he actually knew and everyone would disagree with.

2. When anyone was reversing out of the drive Dad would stand in the middle of the road pretending to halt the [non-existant] traffic with one hand and beckoning the driver with the other - as I do with the mother-in-law when she leaves after Sunday supper. Dad must have been a frustrated traffic cop, I think.

Pic of the day: The happy twins, hands firmly clasped.

 

Two more tennis ones

"Deuce", the scorer calls. "Orange, please!" Dad replies, guffawing at his very unfunny and oft cracked joke. And sometimes he'd play the ball to a corner, we'd return it directly to him then he'd jink it to another corner with the call: "Run!" Just been doing that to Bertie.

Pic of the day: A relatively recently vintage, this one, from 2005. Fine volume, seldom off my bedside table.

Do that again...

When ever you did an incredibly lucky shot like deflecting the ball off the a tree and in to the top corner of the goal, Dad would always say "Do that again and I'll give you a 1000* pounds".  We would then spend the next ten minutes futilely trying to recreate the shot. Found myself saying this to Aidan this morning after he shot his plasma shooter ball (which was thankfully small) right in to my crown jewels from about ten feet.

* - Can't remember if it was 1000, 100 or 1,000,000, but it was a big number...

Holiday reading

Dad always used to buy the local paper when we were on holiday - to see the auction prices, essentially. I do likewise - as I did only last week on Anglesey when I availed myself a copy of The Holyhead & Anglesey Mail. A good read with lots of stories about places I'd been to or through as were The Shetland Times and The Orcadian on previous cycle tours.

Before I know it I'll be tying piles of library books up with string (and getting someone to put their finger on the knot).

Pic of the day: What an absolute classic - from the days kids wanted to be bus conductors and Indians rather than celebrities. Beck has never looked cuter. (Click once on pic for full size).

 

We're on a run here ...

Two Dadisms have cropped up in a conversation with Beck just now ...

"To apply your mind to": to ponder seriously and in a considered manner about - usually at a time when you'd rather be doing something else and about a topic you seldom want to think about anyway.

Writing 'first class' on an envelope. A thoroughly pointless exercise but one which I still do - with a red stamp.

Pic of the day: Another gem from that photo album - of Uncle Andrew and Aunt Pat, of  course, in front of table mountain in S Africa. What a fabulous, colourful, vibrant pic with the pair of them looking in fine form. [Is that another Dadism?] Worth forwarding to Juliet, Beck?

Catching the slips!

Having never really understood "caught the slips" when Dad used to say it - particularly in tennis - I found myself using it in the correct context at a cricket match the other evening!

A very short one

'k you, an abbreviation of "thank you" pronounced as just "cure". Bertie's just picked it up from me.

Pic of the day: Now this is the main reason for the post: a truly classic pic of Dad "selling Ayrshires in Sussex". It's taken from a retrospective photo album he compiled at our request in his final years and which the kids recently rediscovered on the book shelves. Plenty more where this comes from ...