Food that fights back

                                                              Male Sparrowhawk

Looking at that gopher tortoise, the crusty meat pie on legs, reminded me that I don't like food that fights back. For example:
- chilli and curry dishes that burn your lips and your throat
- peas and small broad beans that refuse to let themselves be forked
- peanuts and any crumbly food that takes refuge between your molars
- slushy rice-pudding-type dishes that delight in falling on to your shirt front
- long wriggly pasta or noodles that remain dangling from your lips however hard you suck
Well, you get the idea.
I was also reminded of the notion of food that fights back when I watched a male Sparrowhawk on the lawn the other day trying to subdue a young Starling. If I were a male Sparrowhawk (by the way, in most species of raptor, the male is smaller than the female), I would stick to sparrows and finches. I can see the temptation to go for a Cumberland sausage rather than a chipolata, so to speak, but the struggle burns up a lot of energy. "Say not the struggle naught availeth", well, yes, in the end the Sparrowhawk got the better of the young Starling, but took quite a beating from the Starling's sharp claws and dagger-like beak before ripping its flesh to pieces.
No, I definitely don't like food that fights back.

Gopher it!

I recently received an email with an attachment about the Gopher Tortoise. In the body of the email there was a plea that I should revive this venerable blog (Old Scrote's Home). Because the request came from my Turkish grandson***, I have no choice but to obey - you know how the young always manage to have their way with the old.
So, above, is a picture of a group of Floridan children admiring what, to me, looks like a crusty meat pie on legs.
There, Deniz, torunum benim, you have succeeded in rousing me from my lethargy, though I cannot be sure how long it will last!

*** You might wonder how I come to have a Turkish grandson. I also have a Brazilian granddaughter, Bruna (whom I still think of as Bruninha, even though she is now married and a mother). It's no mystery: I like to collect bright young people to keep my brain from atrophying.

Mrs Trellis gets in touch

Dear Mrs Scrote, your long silence had me preoccupated for a while, so I was relieved to hear from a mutual friend that the rumbles of your death were greatly exaggerated. It seems that you are not dead, just sleeping a lot more than you used to.
That is a condition I understand well, having been married for years to the late Mr Trellis, who always appeared to be asleep even when he was awake. I used to pop into his room from time to time, and the only way I could be certain he hadn't shuffled of his mortal coil was the fact that the tea in his cup had gone down by an inch or so.
Forgive me if I don't write more at this time, but, like you, I have very little lead left in my pencil.
Yours respectably
BTrellis, Mrs, widow, retd, still open to offers.

Please think of the children

If you have a moment, please read the following:

http://capx.co/somebody-please-think-of-the-children/

Turning a blind eye is cowardice

Even allowing for tabloid sensationalism, this is a gruesome story**. Nobody comes out of it well: local authority, local police, social services and so on, They all turned a blind eye because of the tyranny of Political Correctness, a wicked mechanism that suppresses freedom of expression and straight dealing. Please resist it whenever you can.

**Rotherham is not the only town where Asian gangs groomed and abused young girls. It was only when the first prosecution was brought in Oxford that other local authorities realised they could no longer sit on inconvenient truths.

Reparations for what?

This mantra about "Reparations" really is a distortion. Apart from the lack of logic, it ignores certain historical realities. When I was in Tanzania, I visit a coastal settlement called Bagamoyo, about 40 Km north of Dar-es-Salaam. I then went inland about a 90-minute journey to the ruins of a settlement called Kaole. Both settlements were built and run by Arab slave traders. They paid Bantu tribesmen to go into the interior and kidnap people from peaceful settlements. The captives were brought first to Kaole for processing and then marched down to Bagamoyo on the coast, from where they were shipped abroad to wherever there was a market for slaves. So, the idea that it's all the white man's fault is inaccurate.
What is particularly sad is the distortion in that child's mind as she raises her fist in anger, convinced that all white people are wicked and must therefore pay her in some way.
My saying this opens me to charges of being racist or fascist or whatever is the latest PC insult. It will not surprise you to know, dear reader, that I don't give a shit.

The Easily-enticed Bell-end Pecker

I am quite pleased with my dick. Over the years it has given me lots and lots of pleasure, and relatively few problems. So what follows are observations rather than criticisms.

Dicks, as every man knows, tend to lead a life of their own. You're with a lovely lady, it's all shaping up fine, but at the critical moment, just as you don your matador's cape to administer the coup de grace, the Imperial Todger goes into a sulk, and hangs there drooping like the last turkey on a butcher's slab. Conversely, you are in a social gathering or at a business meeting, and suddenly for no reason the Knobbly Ape stands to attention, tenting your pants, and throbbing like a blind cobbler's thumb. Mega-embarrassment and frustration in both situations, because there's not a lot you can do with a limp dick, and there's even less you can do with a stiff one if you're in the middle of a meeting of your local Parish Church Council.

I have no explanation for this phenomenon. It's probably the fleshly equivalent of the apparent contrariness of things, what the Germans call “die Tuecke des Objekts”, the sheer bloody-mindedness of inanimate objects.

There is of course a condition known to an older generation as “pizzle-proud”, which can give an old rake the illusion in the early hours of the morning that the Cherry-capped Dangler is experiencing a new lease of life. But before he can nudge the Memsahib into a cooperative experience, it's gone back to its normal happy flaccid state, where, to quote the schoolgirl who asked her grandpa what a penis was, and when he showed her, said: “Oh, I see, it's like a prick, only smaller.”

Is there a female equivalent of this phenomenon? Delicacy prevents me from inquiring further, though any comments from the ladies would be most welcome. But please put your reply in a plain brown envelope: this is a family channel.