Today’s audio Dollop is a must-listen for parents, as I uncover some startling evidence which will help you protect your children from evil forces. I know most of these Dollops are light-hearted and humorous, but sometimes they also have a serious and important message to impart. Today’s Dollop is one of those Dollops. Do not skip this Dollop; it might just save your life, or your loved one!
Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
Today Sheffield Wednesday were playing at home. Despite having lived in the same house in Sheffield Since April 2015, today was the first time I heard the shouts and chants from the stadium carried on the wind. I couldn’t make out the individual chants, but it got me wondering what Sheffield Wednesday fans chant. Footbal clubs with United in the title, such as Wednesday rivals Sheffield United, will often shout “united, united!” This works well as a chant, as the word “united” is a strong word, a unifying word, a word that represents collective strength, singing with one voice, which is what these fans are doing. But shouting “Wednesday Wednesday!” over and over again doesn’t really have the same gravitas. You’re essentially just shouting a day of the week; and not even one of the good ones
I’ve just Googled ‘Sheffield Wednesday chants’, and it turns out that they actually do just shout Wednesday very enthusiastically.
They also do a version of hey Jude, only instead of singing “na nar nar nanrnarnarnar narnanrnarnar, hey Jude,” they’ve cleverly altered the lyrics to be, “nar nar nar narnarnarnar narnarnarnar, Wednesday!” You see what they did there?
I wonder how these chants become accepted and part of the fans’ collective repertoire. Presumably there must be times when someone tries out a chant, starts singing, optimistically hoping that it will catch on, but then it completely falls flat and fails to get anyone else joining in, and it just embarrassingly fizzles out, leaving the poor person who tried to instigate it feeling a bit awkward.
“We are the Wednesday, my friends, we’ll keep on fighting to the end, We are the Wednesday, We are the Wednesday, No time for Losers, Coz we are the … come on guys! No? Oh, OK. Er …”
If you came to Sheffield, having no idea about Sheffield Wednesday, you’d be rather freaked out to suddenly hear loads of voices on the wind all shouting “Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday,” especially if it wasn’t Wednesday, although it would be really weird even if it was. You’d also be pretty weirded out when you heard them sing that other classic, “Shoes Off If You Love Wednesday.” Why? Since when has anyone expressed their liking for something by taking their shoes off? Is this a recognised denotation of appreciation that I’ve somehow not picked up on? I once chatted to quite a nice girl, who at one point in the conversation mentioned that her feet were aching and so took off her shoes. Maybe this was just an excuse, and I missed an obvious sign, and we should be married with children now.
Sheffield Wednesday sing some crazy shit. For instance, Humpty Dumpty sang to the tune of the nineties pop song No Limit by 2Unlimited. There’s a song called You’ll Never Lick The Beaver. Another one called Mrs Halls Toffee Rolls. ” And, a song which rather aptly goes, “we’re Wednesday, We’re Barmy.” Too right you bloody are.
There’s also a chant that goes, “stand up if you hate the police.” The story behind this relates to the fact that the Police covered You’ll Never Lick A Beaver on one of their B-sides, and never paid royalties or gave credit to the Sheffield Wednesday fans. The Sheffield Wednesday fans have been furious with Sting and his cronies ever since.
“Hey guys, I’ve got another idea for a chant. I think this one is really going to capture the hearts and minds.”
“How many times mate, you’re chants are shit.”
“I thought We Are The Wednesday my friends was pretty good.”
“No, it was shit. Now piss off.”
“Hang on, let me just try this one out on you. It’s Madonna’s Holiday, only I thought we could change the word holiday for Wednesday. So it would go: Wednesday, Celebrate, Wednesday, cele …”
“It’s shit mate. Seriously, piss off. Right lads, now that idiot’s gone, how about singing this one? Let me know what you think. It’s called Mrs Hall’s Toffee Rolls.”
“Oh brilliant, I like it already.”
“I’m pretty proud of it. I can imagine this one spreading around the stadium like wildfire. It goes like this: Mrs Hall’s Toffee rolls are the best,
Mrs Hall’s Toffee rolls are the greatest,
She takes strawberry milk from the breast,
And her husband does the rest.”
These are the actual lyrics to Mrs Hall’s Toffee Rolls by the way.
“Oh my god mate, you’ve done it again. That’s fantastic! That’s even better than You’ll Never Lick The Beaver. And that’s saying something. We’re all going to be singing that one for years. You’re a musical genius. You want to get that copy righted before that bastard Sting rips you off again.”
I’ll leave you with the lyrics to another confusingly crazy Sheffield Wednesday song, Somebody’s Pissed In My sombrero.
Somebody’s pissed in my sombrero,
I told him you twat,
You pissed in my hat,
And he said I don’t fucking care-o…”
Ah, they don’t write them like that anymore.
I am still massively jet lagged and really tired, having only slept 14 hours in the last 4 and a half days. If I try and write a description of what’s included in today’s audio Dollop, I will probably end up falling asleep before I get a chance to publish. So, why not take a leap of faith and just give it a listen regardless? After all, it can’t be any worse than yesterday’s Dollop. Or can it? Listen and find out.
Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
Apologies if there is anyone who religiously waits for these Dollops to be released everyday, only to be disappointed when a Dollop comes in a couple of hours late. The reason for today’s late arrival is due to Katherine, who has read every single Dollop and has commented on a great deal of them. She was at Sidmouth Festival, where we perfomrered today, and we got chatting, and before I knew it, it was half past twelve. I felt that, given that she has listened or read, or even apparently often listened and read every single Dollop, this should excuse me from feeling too guilty that the Dollop was late. I suppose in a way, she was getting her own personal Dollop, although a part of me was wondering whether she was disappointed with the physically present me, maybe thinking, “he’s not as interesting when you actually meet him in real-life; in fact, he’s rather dull. He hasn’t even mentioned his kettle once” I wondered if she was constantly comparing me to the other David Eagle, David Eagle the Dolloper. “What is he going on about? The Dolloping David Eagle wouldn’t have said something so stupid.”
Currently, the physically present me is an absolute wreck. I have had approximately 7 hours sleep in the last 80 hours. I WAS feel tired but I am just unable to sleep. Eventually I managed to fall asleep at 6am, but at 8 my alarm was going off. It was time to set off for Sidmouth Festival. Even though I knew it wouldn’t serve any purpose at all, my brain was screaming out for me to hit the snooze button, giving me an extra six minutes in bed. If I didn’t hit snooze then I would have to get up immediately, as I knew that staying in bed for another six minutes would result in me falling asleep again. I’d spent 6 hours lying in bed, praying for sleep to come, and now, ironically – and yes Alanis , this is the correct use of the term “ironic” – my body and brain was desperate to go back to sleep, the prospect of getting up made me want to cry. My head was aching and everything felt heavy. There was no time to snooze, I needed to get up now, and so I chose not to use the snooze option.
The next thing I was aware of was the sound of my phone ring tone. Shit! I should have pressed the snooze button. I had presumably lost the fight to get out of bed, and without the snooze alarm waking me, I had been allowed to fall into a deep sleep. How long had I been asleep for? This was clearly Sean calling to find out where I was.
I answered the phone, putting it on speaker so as to quickly get dressed while he spoke, in order to try and get out of the house as quickly as possible. Just how late was I. I jumped out of bed and threw a shirt over my head. I heard Sean’s voice coming over the phone’s speaker. Unfortunately I couldn’t make out what he was saying because of the sound of my shirt rustling against my ears as I desperately tried to quickly pull it on, which resulted in me getting the sleeves tangled, and taking mic taking longer than the second it should have taken. I was clearly ridiculously tired, because I was really struggling to get this shirt on. My arms were now poking through a gap in between the buttons. And all the while, Sean was talking, probably wondering where I an. I was in a massive tangle inside the shirt, and if I kept trying to get out of this fabric maze, I would completely miss what Sean was saying, which would make him even more annoyed than he surely already was, for I dreaded to think how long I’d overslept for. So I left the shirt to dangle abserdly over my head while I tried to make out what Sean was saying.
He had received a call from someone from Gatwick airport saying that the accordion and the guitar had been found, and that they could get them to Sheffield for 930. The original plan had been to allow plenty of time to get to Sidmouth, perhaps managing to cram in a couple of hours of sleep when we got there – Sean had hardly slept the day before either – but now we had to wait for the missing instruments to be delivered. It appeared that I hadn’t really gone back to sleep, because it was only five minutes past eight. After condluding the call with Sean, I untangled the shirt and tried to wake myself up with a cold shower. I was so tired that I felt as if I was going to be physically sick. I chose a cold shower because I feared that I’d fall asleep if it was a hot shower.
Even though today’s Dollop is clearly unfinished and very shambolically written, I am going to leave it here, as I keep falling asleep at the computer and then waking up a few seconds later,. I shall continue from where we left off tomorrow. I will have to publish this now, before I completely crash out, slump over the computer and properly fall asleep.
David’s Daily Digital Dollop: Dollop 217 – Everything, Including The Kitchen Sink
Today’s Dollop has everything, including the kitchen sink: there’s an epic drama involving watery mash potato, an anecdote about my trip to the shops earlier today, and a tiny preview of The upcoming Young’uns In The Mix taking place at this year’s Folk East festival on 20th August. Come join me in the kitchen my friends.
Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
The lady from Canmore would be disappointed in me today, as due to having gone 24 hours without sleep and my brain being rather addled as a result, I made loads of typos just typing the title of today’s Dollop.
We arrived back in England earlier today, and more or less as soon as I stepped off the plane I was greeted by Jeremy Corbyn. It was a text message. Perhaps he’d started reading the Dollops and was texting to share his views on kettles maybe. But no, it was just a standard public message, asking whether I’d vote for him. I haven’t really checked the news much while I’ve been in Canada, and have largely enjoyed three weeks of blissful ignorance, but now I’d only just stepped off the plane in England, and already I was being jolted back into reality, instantly reminded about my country’s political situation.
The reality jolt was also helped along by the surly and abrupt nature of the airport staff. The Canadian airport staff had seemed very friendly and hospitable, but the English airport staff were much more austere and loudly barked instructions at us. A Canadian man, presumably a bit groggy after the flight, accidentally went in the wrong queue and was barked at by one of the women supervising the line. He apologised to the lady for the mistake, but she merely responded with, “quick, you’re holding up the queue, move into the other queue sir.” He meekly apologised again and joined the correct queue, lining up behind me. “Welcome to England,” I said to him, smiling. The man chuckled. I think it was a reassured chuckle, although if I got my smile wrong and did the constipated psycho killer instead, then it might have been a nervous chuckle, and in actuality, I’d only served to make things worse for the poor man. I never got the chance to properly find out, because I was being barked at to come forward to get my passport checked.
Our passports were verified, and we were welcomed into the country with a bark of “next,” to indicate that I should move on and let the next person have a turn at being scowled and barked at. We then waited by the luggage carousel for the Accordion and guitar. One hour later and we were still waiting. There was no sign of the instruments. The carousel had deposited all the cases, but there was still no accordion or guitar. Sean went to find a member of staff to see what might have happened. An announcement came over the PA reminding us to keep all our personal belongings with us at all times, otherwise they might be removed or destroyed. But we had no idea where our personal belongings were. There was a part of me worried that they might have gone missing for good. But then there was another part of me that realised that I didn’t really have anything to write about today, and imagined how good it would be if I could write a Dollop about my Accordion in its hard case being mistaken for a suspicious item and blown up. Yes, that would be a good dramatic story for the Dollop, and would probably get me a lot of extra visitors to my website, and maybe even media attention. I began to think up jokes, just in case Sean came back and reported on the destruction of my accordion. Maybe I’d could make a joke about the member of staff at the fragile items desk asking me whether I was checking anything in of significant value, and how maybe I could have found a better choice of words than, “oh yes, this is worth a bomb.”
Eventually Sean returned. They’d said that the instruments might not have been checked on the plane and were maybe still in Canada. We then had to sign a long form, detailing what was in the case, the dimensions and colour of the case, and the estimated value of the items; I decided that now wasn’t a good time to do the “it’s worth a bomb” joke, and so just wrote the price of the instrument. We also had to provide our flight details, and our names, phone numbers and addresses to send the items to, should they be found.
“We’ll do our best,” said the man, which didn’t sound particularly reassuring. They’d somehow already failed to simply put the instruments on a plane and then take them back off again when it landed, and now they were charged with the job of trying to locate the cases somewhere in Vancouver airport, put them on another plane, take them off the plane and get it delivered to our address, which was a lot more complicated than the first easy bit that they managed to mess up.
. As we walked out of the airport, I noticed that the escalator was no longer telling us to take extra care when using it. Perhaps someone high up at Gatwick Airport reads these Dollops and made a note of my escalator observations and dealt with it ready for my return. If you’re reading today’s Dollop, my friend, then maybe you could do something about the barking, surly staff, and try and ensure my accordion doesn’t get blown up. Although, Michael’s guitar on the other hand … feel free; do us a favour.
I apologise if this Dollop hasn’t been up to the usual high standard, but I haven’t slept for over 36 hours and I’ve drfited off quite a few times while trying to write it. Back tomorrow.
Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
I got another surprise comment in my inbox yesterday. It was from someone based in Canmore, where we were playing over the weekend, responding to yesterday’s Dollop about the woman who was intrigued by me being able to type without looking at the keyboard or screen.
“This is an outrage,” said the commenter, “I shall complain to the festival and make sure you are never booked again.”
I then spent the next half an hour trying to work out why this person had got so annoyed. I reread the blog and didn’t think I’d said anything particularly offensive. I called the woman “bloody weird,” but that was a playful, jocular statement; I didn’t think it warranted this kind of outraged reaction. I then spent some more time pacing around the room, mentally composing responses to this person. Maybe I would just be all contrite and apologise for any offence caused and state that it wasn’t my intention to offend. Or maybe I would pick them up on their use of the word “outrage,” and then include a load of news headlines about terrible events that have happened this week. Maybe I’d include a load of quotes from Trump, and ask the person what word they’d use to describe those statements, given that they’d used the word “outrage” to describe my innocuous blog. Surely they’d lost their sense of perspective.
I tried to grapple with how this person had come to this conclusion. Presumably they had seen us at the festival, liked us enough to Google us, and then found my blog, and decided that they were interested enough to give it a read. But then, somehow, they had gone from being a fan to being a foe, due to these few hundred words I’d written, and they were so incensed that they messaged me to say that what I’d said was an outrage and that they’d complain to the festival so that we were never booked again. I read the blog again. Was it just that one line that had offended them: “thanks? but you are bloody weird.” Was that it? If I hadn’t written those few words would this person be angry? Or was it the whole thing? I was feeling rather down that someone had managed to get offended by this.
Why is it that the only time we ever get a complaint is when we’re performing outside of Europe? When we were in Australia, one woman complained to the festival that I was sexist, because of a comment I made on stage (see this Dollop for more on that) and now we’re in Canada, and someone is going to make a complaint to the festival because of a little blog I’d written.
I decided to wait until the morning to respond, but then, unable to sleep due to this person’s comment, I decided to go into the web stats and see where the comment had been sent from. There was something niggling away at me about this comment. I was starting to doubt its authenticity. And then I saw it, and my niggling suspicion was confirmed. The web stats tells me the email address of the person’s comment, and I now knew that the comment had been sent from the UK, not Canada. And I knew who it was: it was regular Dollop contributor Katherine. Relief flooded my body. It was quite a messy business, but once I’d got cleaned up I was able to sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that the comment had been a wined up and wasn’t genuine.
My sound sleeping didn’t last long because I was disturbed my a disconcerting dream. I’ve dreamt this same kind of dream for years, and I’ve spoken to other people who have this sort of dream as well. I get a letter in the post or a phone call telling me to come into school next week to sit my exams. At first I am totally confused. I am thirty-one, why would I be going into school to do exams? But then, slowly, I begin to remember. How could I have forgotten? I knew I had exams when I was thirty-one. I’d had all this time to revise, and now the day of the exam was almost upon me and I’ve done nothing towards it. I look at my life. What the hell have I been doing with my time? I’ve been wasting it writing blogs, travelling the world doing gigs. I am an idiot? But then I get a feeling of indignation. Surely I am doing well. I have created a life for myself, and I don’t need exams to validate me, because I am living my life perfectly fine without them. There must be a get-out option. I try calling the school and explaining to them that I work for a living, that I’ve got gigs in the diary, that I’ve got commitments and important things to do, and that surely I don’t need to do exams in school when I’m clearly doing fine. But they are resolute and inssistant that I have to take these exams. I am thrown into a mad panic. I am a failure, I’ve been wasting my time, frittering it away with gigs, blogs and podcasts. I thought I was doing well. I’d moved away from home, to a different city, I travel the world performing, we’ve won awards, I have loads of friends all over the world, I am making enough money to live. But now my life has been thrown into disaray, because I have to go back to school in Hartlepool to sit some exams. I try bargaining with them, telling them that surely I don’t need to sit the English exam. After all, I write a blog everyday. But they just laugh derisively and tell me that I’m hardly helping my cause with that argument.
I hate this dream, and I always wake up feeling really down. It seems to me as if this dream is a way of highlighting my vulnerability and fragility. I’ve built up this construct on which I prop up my feeling of self-worth and identity. I do what I can to give myself the feeling of having choice, of being individual, but this dream taps into my fears and insecurities that my life could crumble at any moment, that the facade could come collapsing down at any time, and I am forced to confront that other part of me, the scared child who is back at school sitting his exams, waiting to be judged and compared to everyone else. That small scared child who never really went away. I’d pushed him to the back of my mind. I’d forgotten he was there. But then I have the dream, and I am reminded of his presence.
Sometimes our own brains can be our greatest enemy. Why couldn’t I have had a nice dream about flying, or sex? Or even better, a dream about having sex while flying? But no, my brain would seemingly rather remind me of the fragility of my existence instead. Thanks brain, you are bloody weird.
Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
I was writing yesterday’s Dollop backstage at Canmore Festival. While I was writing, a woman came up to me and enthusiastically enquired about how I am managing to use my laptop, given that I am blind. I explained to her that there is a voice that is telling me what’s on the screen. “Great, that’s great,” she excitedly replied, “so does it tell you what to type and then you type it?” I assumed she was joking, but when I laughed, she said, “no, I’m serious, is that not how it works?”
If the voice was telling me what to type, then why would I need to type it? Presumably if the voice knows what I should be typing, then it could surely just put that text on the screen itself? If the computer did tell me what to type and all I had to do was just follow its instructions then it would certainly make writing these Dollops a lot easier. But no, I have to do all the thinking and typing, and the computer merely reads it back to me.
She seemed impressed by the fact that I could type without the screen being on, and she asked me how I knew where the keys were. I explained that I could touch type and therefore didn’t need to be able to see the keyboard, but she didn’t seem to believe me. She asked me to prove it, which involved me facing the other way while she shouted out letters which I then had to press. She seemed delighted by the fact that I got every letter spot on, and she applauded and whooped, as if I was an illusionist pulling off some impressive trick, rather than simply someone who was accurately hitting letters on a keyboard without looking, which in fairness is something that secretaries have been doing for years.
She called a couple of her friends over to take a look. I was beginning to feel a bit embarrassed, given that I was now gaining more of an audience to demonstrate something that, in my opinion, wasn’t at all impressive. Her friends didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic by my ability to accurately hit letters on a keyboard, but did a good job of pretending that they were. I don’t know who they thought they were humouring, me or their friend. She continued to shout out letters, and I continued to press them.
“You have a go?” she said to one of her friends, “shout out a letter, and boy, he’ll get it.” I’m not sure what her thought process was here. Was she getting her friends to shout out letters because she was worried that they might think that the whole thing had been planned in advance, and that me and her had agreed on a sequence of keyboard presses, rather than me actually knowing the letters I was pressing. Maybe she’d misunderstood her friends’ lack of enthusiasm to be due to scepticism about my authenticity. Her friends half-heartedly said some letters, and I typed said letter, until eventually her friends just toddled off.
The woman asked me what I was writing. I lied and said I was doing some boring accounting stuff. After all, I didn’t want her knowing about this blog, as I knew I’d probably end up writing about this incident, and wanted to avoid her reading it, in case she took um bridge with my portrayal of her, even though I think I’ve actually been quite nice and have been accurate in the retelling.
When I’d said, “boring accounting stuff,” I assumed that this would dampen her interest, but I should have realised that if this woman could get excited by a man pressing letters accurately on a keyboard, then maybe the mention of “boring accounting stuff” might also tickle her fancy.
“Can I have a look?” she said, with an unsettling level of excitement in her voice.
Not having any boring accounting stuff on my computer, I would either have to make an excuse about having to leave, or explain about the blog. Ideally, I needed to stay back stage, as it was reaching the end of the day in the UK, meaning that I needed to quickly finish writing the blog and upload it using the backstage WIFI. So I pretended that I’d now just moved on from boring accounting stuff in order to upload my daily blog, which I needed to do in the next fifteen minutes before midnight UK time. But she didn’t take the hint.
“Can I see it?” she said, ramping up the excitement levels even further. She’d been pretty excited before about looking at boring accounting stuff, and now she was nearly orgasmic at the thought of looking at a blog. I needed to get this blog uploaded now, as it was a few minutes to midnight in the UK and we had a gig in half an hour, so I felt I had no choice but to try and hurry this conversation along. So I gave her my website address. She very enthusiastically declared that she would definitely give it a read. Hopefully she just read yesterday’s blog post, and doesn’t come back to check out today’s. But just in case you are reading this: thanks, but you are bloody weird. By the way, that’s not me saying this, that’s my computer telling me to type it. Obviously, I think you are perfectly sane and normal, but I have no choice but to type what this damn computer voice tells me to type.
Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
There’s been yet another ill-researched and confusing write-up about our group. In the Canmore Festival programme, which we are playing this weekend, they get all the details about us right, and describe our sound as “largely unaccompanied with occasional minimal accompaniment.” But then, somehow, despite having managed to get all this information correct, they then include a photo of the wrong band. Have a guess which band’s photo they’ve used. Its The other Young’uns, the Canadian wedding covers band.
There they are, with drums, bass, and electric guitar. You’d have thought that they might have realised, given that our write-up states that we are a largely unaccompanied band, but seemingly not. I wonder if us turning up in Canada and performing on the other Young’uns home patch is going to cause more logistical problems for them. Are they going to get confused people booking the wedding covers band, thinking that it’s us, only to get a shock when they turn up with their drums and amps. They better start learning some Irish Celtic Country songs just in case, as what the people who booked the band expect will very much depend on what write-up they’d read.
We’re learning a few wedding classics just to be on the safe side, songs like Cliff Richard and Congratulations, which would actually be a good choice of song because our publisher also looks after the royalties for Cliff Richard, meaning that he’d get paid by the venue every time we sung that song, and he could then give us some of that money. What a brilliant plan. So maybe all this confusion is a good thing, and might prove rather lucrative. After all, I think it’s doubtful that we could maintain our credibility as a folk group singing Cliff Richard songs, but it would be perfect for a wedding covers band.
I got a nice surprise last night when a comment came in on Dollop 209, about our rather uneventful wildlife tour and hike, which was actually more like a lollop.
“Hi David, We have just been crying with laughter at your description of the wildlife tour. Jonathan and I were on the tour too, a couple of the decrepit pensioners you mentioned! Do you remember the ones from Leeds? We too were somewhat disappointed in the tour which had been sold to us as a wildlife tour, but we very much enjoyed your company and Sean’s company” (but presumably not Michael’s company, which is perfectly understandable) “and coming across that black bear very much saved the day. I’m glad I looked up your website, I read out your description of the tour, whilst crying with laughter, and Jonathan said , That sounded like our tour. I told him that it was the self same tour and that it was you who had written it. Thanks for the Laugh! Hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Canada.”
There are lots of people who ask me whether I make up the things that I blog about, so hopefully this has proved the veracity of my anecdotes. I suppose you could argue that I might have made up the character of Dianne and her husband and then left that comment myself, pretending to be two people who were on the tour with us, but do you really think I’ve got nothing better to do with my time? OK, granted, I write and record a load of nonsense and then publish it on the Internet on a daily basis, so maybe I’m not helping my argument there. But Jonathan and Dianne are definitely real people who came on the tour, and then subsequently managed to find my blog and the account of our trip. I’m not sure how they found it because I didn’t mention my blog to them. After all, we’d only just met, and it’s not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation. It’s not as if I announced to everyone as we said goodbye, “well it’s been nice meeting you, and if you’d like to read up on my thoughts about this afternoon then you can visit my daily blog at davideagle.co.uk.” But they somehow managed to find it. I’d like to think that they started reading the account of the wildlife trip, and have now been hooked in and are going through the back catalogue. There’s a lot to look forward to, including some really funny stuff about kettles.
The odd thing about writing a public blog is that the people I am writing about might read it. I just want to clarify, Jonathan and Dianne, that when I referred to “unfit pensioners,” that obviously didn’t innclude you. In fact, I originally wrote a couple of hundred words in the blog about how impressed I was by your physique, fitness and agility, but Michael and Sean advised me to take it out, as apparently I was coming across a bit creepy and full-on.
Let’s just hope Mr Fat Man or Alanis Morissette don’t read Dollop 210. If you ever get chatting to either of them, could you please refrain from mentioning my blog; I know that might be hard because it’s obviously your natural conversation starter, but please try on this occasion.
Back tomorrow, which will be our final day in Canada before heading back home to England.
Our Canadian adventure continues with a horse ride through the woods of Banff. On our journey, we hear local tales, including a story about a cursed mountain, there’s some interesting mule facts, and there’s some lovely authentic horse-based ambience, including horses pissing and farting. Oh yes, that’s right, pissing and farting horses; these Dollops just get better and better!