A Stranger's London
'No noise' pubs
A brewery that banned jukeboxes from its pubs has won the Noise Abatement Society's first Award of Merit.The newly-formed West Midland Brewery's Holt, Plant and Deakin is operating the no-music ban in ten pubs it has taken over this year. The society thinks every area should have some music-free pubs.
Mink terror to wildlife
The Society for the Protection of Wildlife appears to be winning its battle against wanton killing of certain species of animals - ferocious wild minks are threatening to wipe out wildlife on the banks of the River Severn.Wildlife expert Walter Gainey, of Rippie, Glos, said: "If they go on breeding at their current rate nothing living on or near the river will be safe."
Flying pickets and flying justice
With the miners strike going into another week of uncertainty and hardship for everybody involved, a way has been found to deal with the mounting cases of arrests involving miners on picket duties around the mining areas.A squad of flying magistrates is being sent to the coalfields to deal with arrested pickets. The ten-strong team of special stipendaries will hear their first cases in Rotherham, Yorks, Chesterfield and Derby. About 6,000 people have been arrested since the strike began six months ago, but overworked courts have heard only 1,000 cases.
No excuses
"I have been wondering whether there is any country England can beat at cricket" observes Woodrow Wyatt, a columnist of the News of the World. "Perhaps the Fiji Islands. But they are good at rugger. If they took up cricket seriously they would soon wallop the worst team ever to represent England". What a thoroughly sad commentary on the performance of a country from which the game of cricket originated.The Royal birth through the stars
Princess Diana's second child is due in three weeks' time and she hopes the baby will be a girl. Already the astrologers are falling over themselves to predict the unborn baby's future. According to astrologer Marjori Orr, he or she will be able to switch on the charm but, like a politician, only when it suits him. The stars show the child as someone of great charisma who will revel in the luxury and pomp of Royal life. Diana might well despair of this vague, wildly over-enthusiastic child, forever living in a fantasy world.The young Royal's love life will be a source of great joy and great pain. The Queen is likely to put her foot down about unwise escapades. But the need to probe the rock-bottom depths of emotional experience, to be pulled into forbidden relationships could cause real problems.
I dare say that there is a ring of DEJA VU about these predictions, isn't there?
The Naff Guide to sex
Naff - the word immortalised by Ronnie Barker in TV's Porridge series meaning corny, vulgar or tacky, is a subject of a new book by "Naffologist" Dr Kit Bryson, Selina Fitzherbert and Jean-Luc Legris. They first examined the whacky subject in their smash-hit book The Complete Naff Guide.And in their follow-up, The Naff Sex Guide, they take a special look at the naff art of love and marriage. For example, they give the following naff excuses for a woman caught with her lover by her husband.
"Can you honestly say you're surprised?" and "I'm trying to discover who I really am."
Husband having an affair caught in the act by the wife: "It's alright darling, I'm not enjoying it."
Rainmaker
As unpredictable as the British weather is, parts of the country were going through a dark patch and water rationing and conservation were being used by the Water Authorities in the Wales area.So Big Running Chief, alias John Morley left his office desk and donned his Indian traditional outfit and headed west to drought-parched Plymouth.
According to eye-witnesses he shook his turtle rattle and he whooped, hottered, screamed and danced around his portable mini totem pole at the half-empty Burator reservoir.
According to the Daily Mirror report, it must have been heap big magic. Within half an hour, "black clouds rolled up and dropped a few specks of rain."
Thank you Big Running Chief - you can do big business in Africa.
