Still here: Homophobic explosion: Dickey gummy bear: Devil’s todger: Manhattan parking: Grassing on a thief: and something to do with Scotland.

Oodles of mist and mellow fruitfulness, just a whimsy of atmospheric movement, not a jot of skywater and bugger all solar stuff at the Castle this morn.

It’s been a bit of a “funny” last couple of months, two close members of the family have shuffled orf this mortal coil, my sister (expected) and “M”’s brother who decided to give up the ghost one day after the ninth anniversary of her exit (not expected).

On the way back from my sister’s thingy (400 mile round trip) the timing belt on the Honda also decided to expire and the engine blew up on the M4.

So I decided to go “European” and am now the owner of a Peugeot 206 in French “racing” green, not a bad motor, only done a handful of miles, it even has automatic lights and wipers (which behave like the French-they only seem to work in the mornings) and an “adaptive automatic gearbox” which is not bilingual.

Time will tell...

 

Poor old Angus has a touch of Ginger’s brother Arthur in his left knee and whilst visiting my general medic he decided to take an inordinate amount of interest in my prostate and rear exit suggesting that he should insert his finger into said orifice to check it out. The second word uttered by poor old Angus was orf, so we settled on a blood test instead.

More to come....

 

East to the land of stuff and water

 

Apparently the annual floods have arrived in Pakistan causing many problems and lack of life, the solution was to blow up a couple of dykes.

 

How homophobic can you get.....?

 

Dahn Unda and right a bit

 

Inappropriately shaped lollies on sale exclusively in the South Island have been branded offensive and recalled from shops.

Barrie Aburn, of Dunedin, said his daughters Cadence (8), Rhianna (6) and Payton (5) bought a bag of Dragon Sweets from Moyles SuperValue in Green Island and gave it to him for his birthday.

Mr Aburn's partner, Jacqui Hawkins, said she randomly took a sweet from the bag and found it was shaped in the form of male genitals.

Another lolly in the bag was a gummy baby with a penis, she said.

''I don't find anything amusing about it at all. I find it disgusting,'' she said.

Dutch Rusk managing director Willem Van de Geest, of Nelson, said the Stoke confectionery company imported 7200 bags of mixed gummy lollies, called Dragon Sweets, from a Chinese manufacturer about six weeks ago.

The lollies were originally designed for sale in England and were not considered offensive in Asia.

In Asia, the shape was considered a sign of fertility and health, he said.

 

Too much whacky baccy Mr Geest?

 

West a lot and up a fair amount

 

The statue of a devil with an erect penis could be back up in Vancouver if the city caves to residents who started a petition after it was removed.

Municipal crews in Vancouver took the statue away Tuesday after it mysteriously appeared near a highway, atop a pedestal that used to have a commemorative statue of Christopher Columbus.

The life-size red devil has black horns, a forked tail and an anatomically faithful -- and naked -- physique.

Officials told Global News it wasn't commissioned by the city.

But plenty of people want the "Beelzebub-With-a-Boner" statue re-erected, according to a Change.org petition which had more than 1,500 signatures as of Thursday evening.

"(It) should be reinstalled as a piece of public art and serve as a reminder that art is in the eye of the beholder and nothing more," Darryl Greer, who started the petition, wrote.

Greer points out the statue cost the city nothing, unlike a "cartoonish" porcelain dog on Main Street that cost nearly $100,000.

 

The devils in the detail.....

 

Dahn a bit

 

A new development, 42 Crosby Street, is pushing the limits of New York City real estate to new heights with 10 underground parking spots that will cost more per square foot than the apartments being sold upstairs.

The million-dollar parking spots will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis to buyers at the 10-unit luxury apartment building being developed by Atlas Capital Group at Broome and Crosby Streets, itself the former site of a parking lot. At $250,000 a tire, the parking spaces in the underground garage cost more than four times the national median sales price for a home, which is $217,800, according to Zillow.

So instead of a 5,000-square-foot house with a wine cellar in Dallas or a 3,500-square-foot home with a sauna in Seattle, one could choose 150 square feet in the basement of 42 Crosby, a condominium designed by the architect Annabelle Selldorf.

 Bloody hell! I hope Grimly dark doesn’t hear about this....

 

Up Norf

 

Maureen McKenna, 58, was caught on CCTV cameras for 40 minutes nicking a lawn.

With an accomplice, she removed the front lawn at 5am and both were seen walking away with pieces of it.

They even stopped for a cigarette break in Skelmersdale, Lancs.

McKenna was arrested and charged with theft after the footage circulated in July.

Appearing at Ormskirk Magistrates Court, she was sentenced to three months prison.

 

Grassed up? 

 

And finally: 

Even further up Norf

Apparently there is going to be a vote in the land of noisy squashy bags and deep fried mars bars about whether the Scots want to remain part of the UK or not.

Good luck to them, if they vote yes then Hadrian’s Wall will have to be heightened and extended, many-many people will have to apply for a new passport, oodles of Scottish MPs will have to be deported and the blue will disappear from the Union flag thingy.

 If they vote no then we will continue to be governed by plonkers with names like Cameron and Alexander, until next year anyway and all will calm dahn and Salmond will crawl back into his sporran and desist his ranting.

 

Or not.....

That’s it: I’m orf to get a Boris

 

And today’s thought:

There’s a shock.

 

Angus

Woodentop tax: EU black hole: Scratch and sniff jeans: Dopey, happy and not bashful Numpty: and the drive through funeral parlour.

‘Tis a whimsy warmer at the Castle this morn, his Maj has finally ventured out and the butler has emerged from the dungeon after his marathon stint shoving fat, drunk teenagers into the furnace.

Le France malady seems to be abating, the only urge I have had today is for soft, chewy cheese.

 

Dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

The chief plod has written to the local police authority asking it not to use a government grant to freeze council tax.

The money would be equivalent to a 3% rise to its part of the council tax.

But the force had proposed an increase of 3.25% from April to ease cuts to front-line services.

Maybe they could save money on less braid...

According to the slow train to news

European Union chiefs are threatening to hit Britain with a £1billion cash demand after discovering a massive black hole in their budgets.

The Brussels-based European Commission identified a £9.2billion gap in funding after over pledging money to regional projects.

EU budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski is now planning to deliver a fresh plea for cash to the 27 member nations.

He said: “There will probably be a deficit at the end of next year for which I will have to ask for extra funding.”

The demand for more cash is on top of this year’s UK contribution to Brussels of nearly £13.5billion.

I’ll have a look dahn the back of the sofa....

Over to the bit on tip of the big thing on the left

The latest thing is Scratch and sniff jeans which smell of raspberries and can be worn for months without washing.

They have just gone on sale at Liberty and Selfridges for £135 a pair.

Makers Naked and Famous Denim, who also do glow-in-the-dark jeans, claim the smell lasts for five washes.

The jeans are already a big seller in the company’s native Canada and varieties smelling of mint, grapefruit, banana, eucalyptus and ­apple are being planned.

Spokesman ­Bahzad Trinos said: ­“Hardcore denim lovers don’t wash them for months to get an individual look.

Perfect for us smelly old farts then.....

East more than a lot

A Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs fan has paid the ultimate tribute to her favourite film - by having the entire cast of characters etched on her skin.

Annfaye Kao, 27, from Taichung, Taiwan, had the intricate art work inked across her whole back in a marathon three month tattoo session.

The colourful patchwork of cartoons was inspired by a dream she once had about the fairy tale.

Annfaye - who says Snow White is her favourite ever movie character of all time - said: 'The motive for the tattoo started in a dream.

'It reminded me of my childhood and my love for Snow White as she is so beautiful.

Should have gone to Specsavers.... 

And finally:

Back over to the left

And dahn to LA (Where else) there is the Drive through funeral parlour where mourners do not even have to leave the comfort of their own cars to peer at the coffin through their window.

The Robert L. Adams drive-through funeral home first opened in 1974 and is only one of a handful in the US, which also gave the world drive-through restaurants and banks.

‘It’s a unique feature that sets us aside from other funeral parlours,’ said owner Peggy Scott Adams, a Grammy-nominated gospel singer who took over the business when her husband died.

‘You can come by after work, you don’t need to deal with parking, you can sign the book outside and the family knows that you paid your respects. It’s a convenience thing,’ she told the LA Times.

Apparently the only drawback is that the 3m (10ft) high drive-through area may not be suitable for mobile homes.

There goes the holiday then...

That’s it: I’m orf to get my asteroids vaporised.

And today’s thought:

Angus

Tired of living-can’t afford to die: Up your Gas: Germany Invaded by Columbia: Criminal Veg: French Tweets: Monkey medics: and a bit more of Pippa.

‘Orrible at the Castle this morn, damp, cold, and breezy, yesterday turned out ‘Orrible as well until 6 of the pm, the bollards are still missing and his Maj has discovered a new way to come and go.

Apparently the C of E is planning to increase the cost of funerals by nearly 50 per cent to bring consistent pricing across its parishes and raise extra revenue at a time of continued economic hardship.

In a proposal set to be discussed today at the church's General Synod in York, the price of a funeral will rise from £102 to £150 while weddings will go up from £284 to £425.

Church leaders stress that the move is an attempt to streamline the way churches charge for their services by bringing in a standard fee in response complaints that parishes often had different pricing lists. But many will feel hit hard by the price increases which have been replicated elsewhere.

Last year, a survey by the National Association of Funeral Directors found that, across the country, charges by local authorities for cremation and burial had risen by up to 48 per cent since 2007. The fees charged by funeral directors for a typical funeral reached an average of £1,515, up 3.25 per cent since 2007.

I wish; it cost me over £3,000 back in 2005 for “M”s do.

And that gracious, caring company British Gas has decided to hike the cost of gas by 18pc next month, some customers face a 24 per cent rise in their gas costs, depending on where they live and how they are charged. An additional 16 per cent average rise in electricity bills will add £190 to the typical yearly dual fuel bill.

British Gas warned customers there may be little point in attempting to change supplier as the move looks set to be repeated throughout the industry, due to wholesale prices having risen by almost a third since the winter.

This latest rise, which comes on top of a 7 per cent increase in December, was announced only two days after a study by uSwitch.com showed that 6.3 million households in the UK are classed as being in fuel poverty, for spending at least 10 per cent of their income on energy bills.

Consumer Focus condemned the rise, saying that consumer bills were now at a historical high despite wholesale prices still being a third lower than the peak they hit in 2008.  

So who is telling porkies?

 Right a smidge to the land of leather trousers and invasions

Experts in the western German town of Bexbach are still searching a supermarket for a spider that jumped out of a Colombian fruit crate on Friday. The eight-legged escape artist is thought to be a highly venomous banana spider.

A spokesman for the grocery store told German news agency DAPD that the supermarket remained closed to ensure customer safety.

He said experts were "frantically" working to track down the creature, though there had still been no trace of it.

Staff from the zoo in Neunkirchen are at the scene, and zoo director Norbert Fritsch said the risk is not to be underestimated if the arachnid in question was, indeed, a banana spider.

He said the spider's bites can be life-threatening, even for a healthy adult. Banana spiders can grow to be 13 centimetres in size. The term refers to two genera of spiders, one of which is large but relatively harmless, and another highly venomous species.

 Still, you could use a rolled up copy of the defunct NOTW for defence if you go shopping there.

 Over to the very ex-colonies

After a warning, a ticket and now a misdemeanour charge, an Oak Park, Mich., woman faces up to 93 days in jail for refusing to remove a vegetable crop from her front lawn.

Julie Bass says that she thought it would be "really cool" for the neighbours and kids to see a front yard garden, but some community members don't appreciate the vegetable plot.

According to a local ABC affiliate, city code states that "all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material."

Posing the question: Are cabbages, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers "suitable" for the front lawn?

"If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers," Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski told MyFoxDetroit.

Nevertheless, Bass has refused to comply with the city's requests to remove the plants or place them in her backyard.

"It's definitely live. It's definitely plant. It's definitely material. We think it's suitable," Bass said.

Surprised they recognised them as vegetables..........(Clarkson would be proud of me).

 

Across to the bottom bit of Carolina

A University of South Carolina professor who encourages her students to use Twitter in French class will be getting honorary knighthood from the French government.

University spokeswoman Peggy Binette says associate professor Lara Anderson has been awarded the Order of Academic Palms for advancing the French language.

The honour was established by Napoleon Bonaparte. Binette says the award and medallion will be presented by the French consul this fall.

Anderson is the author of a book about using social networking and online study to advance foreign language instruction and has promoted new technologies for foreign language teaching techniques.

Anderson says the use of Twitter in the classroom allows students to develop conversation skills and build a sense of communal language learning in and out of the classroom.  

Yeah right, and it saves all that teaching rubbish...

 Right a huge amount of imperial units

Patients at an Indian hospital have been receiving some surprise visitors after monkeys learned how to operate its automatic doors.

Local rhesus macaque monkeys soon worked out how to use the motion-censor doors and have since been running amok in the wards, kitchens and corridors.

They have terrorised patients in the neurosurgery department and recovery rooms, stealing food, playing with medical equipment, attacking staff and generally causing chaos.

With an average of one monkey bite case in the hospital every week, authorities have taken steps to scare off the macaques.

They have hired two larger monkeys - grey langurs – to chase them away.

 Sounds like the “security” at my local butchers shop.

 And finally:

Just to wind up James

Pippa Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sports-loving sister, has joined her local golf club in Berkshire.

In recent weeks, she has been photographed running in a triathlon, taking part in the Highland Cross Challenge and cheering Andy Murray to victory in the quarter finals at Wimbledon. Now, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister is to add another sport to her CV: golf.

Pippa, 27, who is courting the former England cricketer Alex Loudon, has joined the golf club at Bradfield College, a boarding school a few miles away from the Middleton family’s home in Berkshire.

“It’s the talk of the club,” gushes one member, somewhat breathlessly. A member of staff at Bradfield College Golf Club confirms that the Middletons have been spotted on the greens. However, Nick Barton, the club secretary, declines to celebrate his glamorous recruit.

 Is that a hole in one?

That’s it: I’m orf to decode a Potato

And today’s thought: Does killing time damage eternity? 

Angus

What a world

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

Angus