The Good Pub Guide

(A multinational team of journalists look at video footage of floods in the UK)

Russian News Editor(exasperated): I have no idea where these shots are from, as you can see they were filmed at night and no information has been sent with the shotlist...
Me(squinting): Um...er...it's York, actually.
RNE(incredulous): How on earth can you tell? There are no road signs or anything.
Me(embarrassed): Um...er...well, I know the pub on the corner. It's the Lowther Arms.

Natural Born Killers

Imagine my delight, during the "Best Festive Shop Window" competition a few days before Christmas, to find an entire family of rabbits (Mummy and Daddy rabbits plus two tiny baby rabbits) playing happily in the straw in the window of the local butcher's, ignoring the raw meat laid out just above their little furry heads while delicately nibbling on carrots and daintily sipping water (with complete disregard for all environmental health recommendations, but there you go, it's Christmas in France). Endearingly cute.

Imagine, then, my horror when ONLY ONE DAY LATER AND AFTER THE JUDGING I meander past again to find said rabbits and straw have completely disappeared and the menu of the café next door is advertising a new dish-of-the-day...

(Camera Grunts: sense of horror amplified by Jaws-style foreshortening effect)

Honestly. This explains why the Nativity was never set in France;

1. The French would have eaten the donkey.
2. The heavily-pregnant Mary would never have made it to the stable.
3. Christianity as a belief-system would never have come into being.(Or not with the same prestige, at any rate. Christ the Saviour is born on the roadside doesn't quite have the same cachet.)

Yours disgustedly,

Rosbiff.

PS Happy Christmas to everyone

It's the end of the world as we know it

(end of shift at work)

Me: Right, I'm off. See you next week.
Spain: Maybe not. It's the end of the world tomorrow, remember.
Me: Oh, yeah (thinks) - hmmm, I wonder..
S:What?
Me (mock serious): If you are on shift when the end of the world happens, does it qualify as an "accident du travail"?*
S (tongue firmly in cheek): Good question. You would definitely need to get an arret maladie*. The start date would be ok but the end date might be a problem. You would have to put "infinity". I don't know if the CPAM* would accept that.
Me (mock horror): Its a bureaucratic nightmare.
S (genuine laugh): Only for the French.



*accident-at-work
*sicknote
*social security

Strong to the finich 'cos he eats his spinach

Italian (looking at the internet): 'Ee ees like Pope-y.
Me (nearby but not paying attention): hhmmm, what?
Italian: Pope-y, you know.
Me (perplexed, thinks 'he's italian, maybe it's a Vatican thing?'): Um no, no idea what you mean.
Italian (insistent): SI, you do! Pope-y, con Olivia!
Me (lightbulb goes on): oh, you mean Popeye! and Olive Oil!

(turns out Italian was looking at pictures of a freaky bodybuilder online)