An exceptional convoy

A big crane blocks the street

To move relatively small bits of concrete

Beanstalk

Old age is not the end of the road!

Might ask if they do removals.

m
D

Laos talk costs lives

Me (polite): Where are you from, then?
Neighbour: Laos.
Me (thick): Oh, that's nice. What country is that in, then?
Neighbour: It IS a country.

Peninsula War

The Big Basque(reflective): Anyway, you have some very good-looking women in your royal family these days.
Me(gossipy): Well, I don't think you are the first Spaniard to think so. Apparently....I'm not one to gossip, but...King Juan Carlos...years ago...Princess Diana...I am sure it is absolutely not true at all but that's what they say.....
TBB(intrigued): NO! Really?
Me: Let's have a look (quick internet search). There you go.
TBB(looks, astounded, impressed,): Consecrated hosts!* If that's true, you can have Gibraltar!




*"Hostias", the Spanish equivalent of "bloody hell", I suppose. A Bad Word, in any case.

Daddy's home.....

Stray (on phone): Yeah, no, it's been great, mate. We went to the Grand Palais, they have this exhibition on about Dennis Hopper..
Me (lounging, struggling to speak as mouth stuffed with Jelly Babies from M&S on Champs Elysees): Edward Hopper. It was Edward.

rouler une galoche

Can't believe I have just learned this phrase from the little old lady sitting next to me in the hairdresser's.

They may look small, frail and vulnerable but they are minxes, make no mistake.

(It is too rude to get past the Rosbiff censors, so you will have to look it up. Try Wordreference.)

Queen's Pork Rodents

Heard on the football round-up on France Inter just now: "....ze next match weel be against ze Landan clurb Queens Porc Rongeurs".

This prompted me to consider other possible football team howlers. Kidderminster Arrieres was the best I could come up with. Also Glasgow Rongeurs, although obviously I wouldn't say that to their faces, no.

Piles of fun

Me (chewing pen top thoughtfully): I don't have hemorrhoids.
French Banker: What?
Me (pointing at form): It asks here "Have you ever had hospital treatment for hemorrhoids? Or a nose job?"
FB (reading form upside down from across the desk): No,no, it means have you ever been in hospital apart from hemorrhoids or a nose job.
Me (giggling): I did wonder what that had to do with anything.
FB (tries and fails to pull disapproving Paddington Stare): You shouldn't mock, Rosbiff. It is a very painful condition.

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