are legion in my life, and there's just been another one.
It's a pleasant warm sunny evening. What better than to take one's first drink outside for an undemanding game of croquet with a charming nipper and herself? The nipper gathered the newish, still-quite-good mallets and put the hoops in their places using the correct non-croquet mallet for that. I was quite looking forward to it when the shuddering halt took place: some fool or carphound has sequestered or 'put away' the balls, nice indestructible plastic ones replacing their splintered ancient wooden predecessors, and the sodding things can't be found.
'Hell and damnation, so to speak,' he mumbled, taking another sip.
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>> Dave hid them.
b******O!
Cheers Dewi bach...
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>> Dim problem.
Incomprehensible post.
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">> Dim problem.
Incomprehensible post."
I worry about you, AC - as I've said before.
You put "dewi bach" and he put "dim problem". Now do you get it?
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Kind of you to worry Observer. No doubt you're right to because I still don't get it.
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>> It's Welsh, innit?
So I supposed. But I'm not fluent in Welsh, couple of words and phrases remembered from 65 years ago. Sorry Bach...
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>> You put "dewi bach" and he put "dim problem". Now do you get it?
>>
Duw, Duw.
Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 6 Jun 15 at 21:07
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>> Duw, Duw.
>>
sy'n rhoi cachu beth bynnag
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>> sy'n rhoi cachu beth bynnag
Well you are taking me back a bit. If you went through the yard of the farm we stayed on in Dinas Cross when I was 10 and followed the lane further uphill, there was a smallholding up there with two children, Rita (11) and Dewi (9). They both spoke Welsh at home and at school, and Dewi couldn't speak a word of English although Rita could. I was in love with her and she thought me pretty exotic. 66 years ago.
Duw, duw indeed.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sat 6 Jun 15 at 16:30
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>> Duw, duw indeed.
Rita and Dewi's parents had a goat too, a nanny of course and the first goat I ever met socially.
They seemed terribly poor to me and I suppose they were in a way although their life was a healthy one with plenty to eat. But although they were tough they were nice to me, as were the children in the village school. Fishguard County Grammar was very tough indeed by comparison. Meanness, cruelty and so on are always with us but they don't come naturally to children younger than 12 or so.
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>> Meanness, cruelty and so on are always with us but they don't come naturally to children younger than 12 or so.
Not sure they come naturally to anyone really. They are learned attitudes or behaviours, passed on inadvertently down the generations. A perversion, so to speak, of atavistic hunting and mating drives.
I certainly noticed that there were kindly-raised, or just naturally decent and intelligent individuals who weren't mean or cruel even though they might easily have been. The playground is a baptism of fire (and I went through several of them) but there's no need to exaggerate or strike victimized attitudes. All but the most abused children respect an effort at stoicism and will sympathize with any contemporary they see as having a hard time from teachers or other children.
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>>some fool or carphound has sequestered or 'put away' the balls
Yoos probably left them in the boot of your Bentley.
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>> Yoos probably left them in the boot of your Bentley.
Which one though? That's the problem. I've got dozens of the things.
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The nippers have found the balls, 'in the shed' they claim.
I'm expecting to lose. Ripped already.
Pray for me.
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A vicious game, played with a light veneer of sportsmanship. Very suitable for the vicarage garden, where undercurrents so nearly are exposed.
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I lost badly despite a couple of episodes of shameless cheating which made the nippers laugh.
The new mallets aren't the best, a bit too light in weight. The seven-year-old beat me hollow between annoyingly time-wasting bounces on the trampoline, let alone the 13-year-old. And Herself, an unshowy croquet ace, was off away in the distance before I'd screwed up a couple of strokes. We all limped home in the end, only half a full circuit though.
I thought it would be undemanding but I was wrong. Gruelling and humiliating.
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Minor irritations - No FM2R
