Last Post

I'm afraid this is my last blog post as I didn't come home from the vets today - in Big Nana's parlance I'd "gone off my legs" you see.

Sadly the title of my blog is suddenly not relevant or accurate.

I've gone off from Blogland to another imaginary land populated by real creatures to meet Bobby, Bess, Bertie Bucket, Oscar, Magwitch, Chalkie, Mrs Poll, Ginnie, Dave's Dog and all those other wonderful canine celebrities who inhabit it. We're remembered in our prime, vibrant and full of life, chasing ball, sticks, rabbits and postmen.

I've enjoyed being East Angular's Leading Blogger for 474 posts and your company has been appreciated so I don't want to get mawkish and carried away with my own obituary - or o-bitchery as Oz would possibly prefer. At some stage Oz, who has always seen himself as "Clever Trevor" may feel up to grabbing the Blogging Baton in his teeth and running with it. Perhaps even Small Lil will be capable of giving you a Franglais version of affairs? I wouldn't even be surprised if the old misery Drew even starts his own blog - you have been warned.

I'm pleased to tell you that canine reincarnation is actually a fact of life so next time you see a small Lab-cross puppy it could actually be myself - who knows, I may even turn up in the White House as a Labradoodle Dandy!

Whatever happens I trust that you won't go through life murphlessly.

Green Shoots of Recovery

As you may gather I'm recuperating dodgy muscles so I've been sitting on my basket being thoughtful.

I'm pleased to report that Lily & Oz came back from the longer walk this morning with pictures of snowdrops poking their hopeful little heads through the frosty oak leaves of Winter.

Now we've passed the 21st January I always say, in my wise old Labrador manner, that we are into the warmest and lightest 10 months of the year and the darkest 16.66% is behind us. Hurrah!

Not that you'd think signs of hope were around if you read the weekend Recession Newspapers wallowing in their slough of despond. To save you the bother of spending £1.40 or whatever on your Mailyograuntellytimesgraph here is a summary of the 27 page supplements that will fall out of all of them:

Yes it's official - We're in Recession!!!

Not to be "slumped" for ideas, here's out top tips for weathering the Crunch!!!

1. Don't flush the loo when you go! You'll save valuable water and give the next person a pleasant surprise!

2. Needing a personal number plate for your BMW 4x4? Save £££££'s by changing your name to your existing number! (Thanks to E762 GBH for that top tip!)

3. Is your Polish nanny using up valuable heat? Wire the radiator thermostat off in her bedroom - she's used to those Polish winters remember!

4. Save those duracells! Take them out of your doorbell and simply check your front doorbell every 5 minutes! Brilliant - you also get fitter so it's win-win!

5. Worried about that Ski Holiday? Simple - only go for 2 weeks instead of taking the whole of February off! And send the nanny by train to cut down on your flying footprint!

6. Knitting is the new black! Knit your own clothes or better still, get down to Primark and support organic local businesses rather than stuff imported from 3rd World sweat shops.

7. Try walking more! Have you thought about actually walking down that garden path to your BMW instead of taking the electric cart?

8. The Chancellor is considering the formation of a "Toxic Bank" to take on all the rubbish loans that fat-cat Banks no longer want. What about a national "Toxic Shop" chain set up to stock all the old tat that nobody wants to buy?!! (Ed: they tried this - it was called Woolworths).

9. If you have a list of ten things to compile, simply leave one out and save 10%!

10. If you're a Newspaper Proprietor, sack all your decent journalists leaving you with a few overpaid "celebrity" scribes and a skeleton staff of underpaid junior hacks who replace proper news with this kind of space-filling tripe! Brilliant!

For now ain't the time for your tears...

On 4th August 1961 Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

On February 1963 there was a Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore at which a drunken 24 year old tobacco farmer called William Zantzinger behaved outrageously and assaulted staff with his cane. One of those staff, a poor black 51 year old serving lady and mother of 11 children, was Hattie Carroll who died shortly afterwards. Zantzinger was arrested.

In June 1963, Zantzinger and his team of five top flight attorneys got the murder charge reduced to manslaughter. For the death of Hattie Carroll he was sentenced to six months in jail and given a fine of $500. The judges deferred the jail sentence until September to give Zantzinger time to harvest his tobacco crop.

In 1964 Bob Dylan's Album "Times They are a-Changin'" included a song that was to become a classic. "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" which told the story of William Zantzinger, his trial and subsequent derisory 6 month jail sentence was performed at Newport Folk Festival. It was still a time of segregation in Southern USA and although Dylan had taken some dramatic license with the story it still exposed in sharp relief the comparative values placed on black and white lives.

On January 3rd, 2009, William Zantzinger died at the age of 69. (Thanks Dave)

On Tuesday 20th January, 2009, Barack Obama walked into the White House as President of the USA.

Pull the other one

I've been to the vet today so he could look at my dodgy shoulder muscle.

He gave me some pills called Diazepam which have been making me feel a bit woozy so I looked them up on Wikipedia. It says they are actually Valium and helpfully goes on to inform me that "The State of California offers diazepam to condemned inmates as a pre-execution sedative as part of their Lethal Injection program."

I was gingerly taking up my rightful pole position in front of the fire this evening when I felt a niggling sensation in my right rear offside.

It was OK though, it turned out to be the phantom snuggler...

Broken Britain

This post was going to be about something I spotted in the BBC4 Programme "The Comic Songbook" which reminded me of some absolutely brilliant and witty comic composers such as Tom Lehrer and Neil Innes. From Noel Coward right up to Armstrong and Miller and their wonderful pastiche of Flanders and Swann the programme was full of genius wordy gems (if you discount the interview with Ed "Stew Pot" Stewart wetting himself about Benny Hill of course).

The thing that caught my eye and to which I was going to draw your attention was a section where Nicholas Parsons (Mr 'Live from NORWICH' himself) was extolling the virtues of Noel Coward and for all the world Nicholas has adapted his speech patterns to morph into this person (viewers of a nervous disposition please look away now):




That was to be the end of the post - a simple observation of Sir Nicholas turning into Saint Margaret of Grantham.

Then I started reading the comments on the You Tube video.

Private Eye run a regular feature taking the piss out of "the online community" and the Web 2.0 culture of everybody being "empowered" and having a worthwhile point of view and it is hilarious. Commenters such as "Broken Britain" go on about "Bottler Brown" and "Save our Maddie" in textspeak and it appears to be a wonderful satire on our web and media obsessed culture.

However, I didn't realise that "Broken Briton" actually exists and the Private Eye feature is simply art imitating life. These are the actual first few comments on the Thatcher video cut and pasted from YouTube:

TDuffy04 (3 days ago) she was a great prime minister theres no doubt.. but i still hate her fukin guts, it jus depends wot way u look at it... for example 1st ever feamle and longest ever running PM with 3 election wins.. Won a war (falklands) .. she was a very good speaker, and could intimdate even the russions who nick named her the IRON LADY a nickname she later adopted. so her achivements were great,, but her mistakes were alot worse

aeronuk1 (2 days ago) But you are too young to remember the mess the country was in before she came to power.
In atot of ways she saved the country.

TDuffy04 (2 days ago) 2 b onest at the start things got worse, unemployement rose under her within the first year . but people didt not trust labour after the winter of discontent, so thats why she won the first election... second election she wud of defintley lost if it werent for the falkland, and labour party spliting into SDP, who infact looked likely to take power but for the popularity of the falk win. she fuked housing up and she fuked british gas up by privatising it,, wer luky we stil have a NHS

aeronuk1 (2 days ago) Things had to get worse before they got better. The unemployment of the early 80's was partially created by the govt to bring down the 30% inflation which Labour had left. She would have won the '83' election even without the Falklands war, the labour party was totally unelectable under Foot, and she won the '87' election because her policies were starting to work and people were becoming more prosperous.

mikeboy909 (4 days ago) stupid bitch stealing from the poor slag

politicalcompass09 (1 week ago) One of the best she was, a great PM

AUTOKAPUTT (1 week ago) ugly, bad woman

Jabaline15 (2 weeks ago) We need another PM like this one..

brokenbriton (1 week ago) We need a PM full stop...The sooner mumbling bumbling Brown goes the better.

theultimateclown2009 Yeah he resembles a garden knome

And you probably thought that intellectual debate was dead. There are hundreds more in this vein but I felt too depressed to carry on....

Is it because I is Black?

Once again the New Year Honours come and go and here I am out in the cold.

New lists of Conrad Blacks and Jeffrey Archers are summoned to the palace and I am once again left unrecognized and plain old "Mr" Murph.

I realize your heart is sinking as you think "How can I possibly help this poor, talented cross-labrador to achieve the recognition he deserves in his dotage? I'm helpless and impotent."

Well, now you can!

There is a new Facebook group called "Never mind Brucie, What about a Knighthood for Mr Murph?".

Get down here if you can!

Lil things mean a lot

Well, it was interesting to note that my last post, which fell into the Misery-Memoir-Boo-F-ing-Hoo school of blogposting elicited loads of comments. I suspect readers like a bit of tortured-soul which probably explains why Hallelujah became Christmas number one.

However, I feel a positive, upbeat, life-affirming post is required on this drab, dark January day to celebrate the fact that little Lil is just coming up to her first year at Murph Towers.

Lily, as you may be aware, is a Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen (PBGV) which means "rough haired short arsed game dog" or Kazzius Mancunious or sometimes "Heeby Geeby". It's almost 12 months ago that she was rescued by Drew & Mrs Rine from a puppy farm and a life of single-parent misery. I say "rescued" which sounds like they used assault helicopters and AK47's whereas all that was involved was driving down to Essex in a Doblo and paying a woman £200.

She's pushed all of us a little way out of our comfort zone, which in Drew's case is the size of South Norfolk. The down side is that she took best part of a year to get the idea that our personal toilet is the garden and she leaps into my basket without so much as an excuse-moi - I suppose that's the French for you. She isn't allowed off her lead because she'd be several counties away before noticing - they used to say that about me before I became the suave, debonair trusted John Le Mesurier of the pack.

So here's a toast to The Lilster in which you may notice I've slipped in a small Hitchcockian cameo for myself.