Dip

And I thought to myself : why waste my afternoon pressing various sharp things into my eye socket when I could be writing a blog?

This is something everyone can enjoy! Why should I have all the fun?

It's been a crazy couple of days, I can tell you! I don't know where to begin, I can tell you! I can't tell you everything I've done, I can tell you (in code)! 1234562890*

One thing that I will say is that I'm considering adopting a speech impediment.

We went down to the shelter the other day, and had a look at the poor unfortunate speech impediments that people had discarded. People think that having a speech impediment will be fun, but they don't take the long term view. A stutter will grow. Do you have the capacity to care for a full-sized stutter?

Remember: a lisp is not just for Chrithmath.

They do a good job at the shelter, taking care of them all. But they don't have an unlimited capacity. Some of the unwanted impediments will have to be put down.

The stutters and lisps are popular, of course. And Jonathan Ross has made the soft 'r' a hot property. But I was interested in one of the less popular ones.

I think we're going to provide a home for one that's not so highly demanded. I want to be unable to pronounce my sevens.

It will be good exercise for one thing.

***

AAAAAAAAAHAHAHA.

I took that sentence to its logical conclusion, all right! That's why I should be a comedy. But I abandoned it before it could be resolved. That's why I will never be a comedy.

***

It's more Saturdayish than it was when I wrote the above. If I'd started the "adopting a speech impediment" routine today, it would have been fully fleshed out. It would have had a punchline.

No point in dwelling, eh?

To dwell is to stagnate. Fresh fruit flies free.

What shall I have for lunch? Fresh fruit? Fruit flies? I can't decide. There's football on, so I'm struggling to concentrate.

I'm going to do my best, though. No one wants to paddle in the stream of consciousness. They want to take a proper stiff English dip in a canal.

Here is a well-argued essay on a single topic:

Lawns

The British have always valued their lawns. Every household should have a small rectangle of tamed nature to all their own. Preferably two.

The lawn was introduced to Britain by the Romans. Roman lawns were very different of course - not as green, covered in spears and chariot axles - but the basic principle of giving houses a grass bib was a staple of the Empire.

The native Britons were initially reluctant to adopt this kind of landscaping. Since ancient times, a person's property consisted of a building and several pits. Nature was threatening to the primitive Briton. It was something to be avoided. Grass was associated with disease and witchcraft. Pits were a way of transforming the outside into the inside. After all, what is a pit, if not a worm-laden house?

But people soon began to see the benefits of lawns. Grass was softer to walk on than the usual rocks and bones, and so led to great savings in shoe costs.

Lawns also became a good way to store gnomes. Before the Romans, a household's gnomes would be stored inside, cluttering cupboards and enlumpening beds. Now they could be placed on the grass, clearly visible. Gnome type became a good indicator of wealth.

In the days before lawnmowers, lawns were trimmed by sharp Frisbees, thrown at the desired height.

During the Reformation, the opulent green of the lawn, together with the iconography of the holier gnomes, was associated with Catholicism. Many lawns were burned, and many bird baths were smashed. Protestant England was not a place for clean feathers.

The lawn went in and out of fashion until Queen Victoria popularised the lawn in her hit single "Grass Out Front, Arse Out Back".

Since then, the lawn has been seen as a bastion of Britishness. Is there a more British scene than seeing an old man, asleep on a deckchair, his arm lolling at his side, the tips of his fingers tickling the blades of grass, his wife baking a pie in the kitchen, his son compiling an anthology of cricket statistics, his dog snuffling around the flower beds, looking for the culprit of some hideous crime?

No.

There really isn't.

One day I hope to have a lawn of my own. I will sprinkle it with fertiliser and will plant and water a flag. It will be a Union Flag. But I will call it a Union Jack, because I'm not a stupid pedant.

***

See? I can do anything I put my mind to.

I'm going to stop doing this now.

Have a lovely life.


***

*Code solution:

1: G
2: R
3: A
4: P
5: E
6: F
8: U
9: I
0: T
*: an asterisk, indicating a footnote 

[/Turing]