Moonstruck

Confused Parent (over breakfast): You know there was a Supermoon last night?
Me (reading paper): hhhmmm
CP: Well, you can still see it. There is an enormous half-moon over there in the sky, it's really bright.
Me (squinting): Where? I can't see it.
CP (points): There! Over the top of that hill.
Me (gets up, peers through window): Do you mean those clouds? They are a bit pinky.
CP (irritated, points): NO! Its a great big luminous white half-circle! Right THERE! LOOK!
Me (panicking, thinks): Bloody hell, my eyes really are bad. I can't see a thing. Or maybe it's my brain? It could be a tumour. Oh God...Oh God...making doctor's appointment for 9am tomorrow..this is it now..the end..
CP: Oh, hang on a minute. It's the reflection from the kitchen light. You can only see it from where I am sitting. (Blithely) Silly me!

What cat? Where?

Cat (thinks): You ain't seen me, right? I am in fact merely a branch of this tree. Come on, birdies, come on down. Nothing to be scared of.....

Vegetables that look like politicians no.2

Following the phenomenal success of the De Gaulle Tomato (see Facebook posting of March 2010), today, with just a few weeks to go until the 2014 European Elections, Rosbiff is pleased to bring you the second in the series "Vegetables that look like politicians"

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, for your all big pleasure (as they say in France) ...................................................the Winston Churchill Potato

Victory!

Photo Shopping No.1

The first of an occasional series featuring shop names that make me smile. 

Just the ticket

(racing through France on the TGV)

SNCF ticket inspector: Is that your diary?
Me (scribbling furiously ahead of scary meeting): What? No.
SNCF: That's a shame.
Me (looking up again, scrunching up face in irritated, rodent-like grimace): Why?
SNCF: I was going to tell you to put dinner with me in for Friday night (wafts off airily).

Buttered Up

(She has gone home now so am safe to post this one)

Confused Parent (licking fingers): That was a lovely bit of battenberg. Ooh, I have just remembered, "Last Tango in Paris" is on BBC1 tonight. We can watch that.

Me (spluttering cake crumbs): Don't you mean "Last Tango in Halifax"? The one with Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi?

CP (blithely): Oh yes, sorry.

Coffee cream

First thing in the morning, yawning in the bathroom, I plunge my freshly-showered hand into the cup of hot coffee I have just poured instead of the open pot of body cream on the washtand next to it. Ow.

Plopsaland

(At party)
Me: So, where did you say you were from, then?
Suave Belgian: Knokke, it's a tiny place on the coast.
Me: Yeah, I know it, actually. We often came on holiday to the Belgian coast when I was a child. Knokke, Oostduinkerke, De Panne, Koksijde. Isn't that where Belgium's biggest sand-dune is?
SB: Bloody hell (Flemish equivalent of), the Hoge Blekker. I can't believe you have heard of it.
Me: Mate, I tried to climb it with my cousins, but it was too big. We were much smaller at the time, though.
And Meli Park! Is it still open?
SB (stunned): Yes! But its now called Plopsaland. And the bees have gone.

Ex-ter-min-ation

- is what a Dalek says in French. I know because I have just heard one.

Almost an armful - more, in fact.

Imagine my surprise* when, worn out after a long day at work, I scramble** up the steps of the antiquated tram home, grasping the nearest pole to steady myself amid the rush-hour surge, only to realise I have in fact grabbed hold of the tanned and muscly forearm of a nice young man sitting down and resting his chin on his hand.




*shock, swiftly followed by horrified embarrassment, slowly followed by growing interest
**crawl