My book is out and available here: https://sexandducksandbnbs.com

Since Brexit shipping anything to the UK has become a nightmare so UK residents can order on Amazon UK here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/2959466608/

When an English TV crew turn up in a sleepy Gascon town to film an episode of “Brits B&B abroad”, they find themselves in the midst of the World Duck Quack Imitation contest. The local English Theatre Company’s rendition of a Monty Python sketch on stage at this event sparks off a sequence of events with far reaching consequences involving small island communities in the Caribbean sea and the Pacific Ocean as well as incurring the wrath of the town’s evil Mayoress.

An hilarious romp through South West France involving competing B&Bs, duck quacking, sex toys, the storm of the Century and the reunion concert of a heavy cult rock band from the 1980s.

By popular demand, the whole SauerKraut story is posted here.
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Some polemic about the origins of this one.
Some say it was originally shown on BBC TV, back in the seventies – apparently, Ronnie Barker could say all this without a snigger. If this is true, it is hard to believe that the BBC received not one complaint and several Ronnie Barker fans have e-mailed me saying he never would have performed this.
The true origins are documented at matthewgoldman.com where you can find several versions including transcripts and MP3s. It seems that the original version comes from a Colonel Stoopnagel, his version can be found here: fun-with-words.com

Try getting through it without converting the spoonerisms as you read;

This is the story of Rindercella and her sugly isters.
Rindercella and her sugly isters lived in a marge lansion.
Rindercella worked very hard frubbing sloors, emptying poss pits, and shivelling shot.
At the end of the day, she was knucking fackered.
The sugly isters were right bugly astards. One was called Mary Hinge, and the other was called Betty Swallocks; they were really forribl huckers; they had fetty sweet and fetty swannies.

The sugly isters had tickets to go to the ball, but the cotton runts would not let Rindercella go.

Suddenly there was a bucking fang, and her gairy fodmother appeared.
Her name was Shairy Hithole and she was a light rucking fesbian.
She turned a pumpkin and six mite wice into a hucking cuge farriage with six dandy ronkeys who had buge hollocks and dig bicks

The gairy fodmother told Rindercella to be back by dimnligh otherwise, there would be a cucking falamity.
At the ball, Rindercella was dancing with the prandsome hince when suddenly the clock struck twelve.

"Mist all chucking frighty!!!" said Rindercella, and she ran out tripping barse over ollocks, so dropping her slass glipper.

The very next day the prandsome hince knocked on Rindercella’s door and the sugly isters let him in.

Suddenly, Betty Swallocks lifted her leg and let off a fig bart.
"Who’s fust jarted??" asked the prandsome hince.

"Blame that fugly ucker over there!!" said Mary Hinge.

When the stinking brown cloud had lifted, he tried the slass glipper on both the sugly isters without success and their feet stucking funk.
Betty Swallocks was ducking fisgusted and gave the prandsome hince a knack in the kickers.

This was not difficult as he had bucking fuge halls and a hig bard on.

He tried the slass glipper on Rindercella and it fitted pucking ferfectly.
Rindercella and the prandsome hince were married. The pransome hince lived his life in lucking fuxury, and Rindercella lived hers with a follen swanny.

We’ve been eating Beef Salad again and delicious home made pizza with anchovies.

On a completely different subject, I was sent this gem today:

It all makes sense now. Gay marriage and marijuana being legalized on the same day.

Leviticus 20:13 – “if a man lays with another man he should be stoned.” We’ve just been interpreting it wrong all these years.

Sad news today about Robin Gibb
I always wondered about his teeth, especially in the early days.
I thought their early hit “Massive Chew Sets” was a tribute to his dentist.

I’m sure this one has been around for a long time but I only heard it for the first time this week on the radio.
– Tie a piece of buttered toast onto a cat’s back, buttered side upwards
– Throw the cat out of the window

Think about it

A Friend Is Like A Good Bra…

Hard to Find , Supportive
Comfortable, Always Lifts You Up
Never Lets You Down or Leaves You Hanging
And Is Always Close To Your Heart!

I came across this quote from the great French actor Jean Gabin:
I will drink milk when I see cows eating grapes

Meanwhile I got a ukelele as a present, I’m starting to play it quite well and I begin to understand why this was George Harrison’s favorite instrument.

I got this one is the mail this morning:
One guy says to the other: I am dating 2 anorexics, 2 birds 1 stone!!
I didn’t get it at first, having not lived in the UK for about 30 years, I had forgotten that a stone is an obscure British measure of weight. It didn’t help that I thought anorexics were people who had lost their memory.
Sometimes we can all be really thick.

There is a new addition to the family. This little pest (right) has been creating havoc in my kitchen but, fortunately, she seems to be calming down and she is starting to uderstand about no-go areas.

Summer came and has now gone away again, we are underwater practically.

Exciting election day in France. Contribution (left) from one of my fans. Its entitled “Coming soon to every town hall in France”. What was that German movie “Even dwarves started small…”? Herzog, or Fassbinder maybe?

Off on my travels again at the crack of dawn.

No posts for a while, too many things to do since my return from America. I’ve been in Italy twice (which is rather nice actually), met some interesting people, reading a fabulous book (80 men to save the planet or something like that, it’s in French “80 Hommes pour changer le monde”). My novel is even progressing although I have not posted the adbriged version yet (available here).

I was in Paris several times and I even visited Chinatown for the first time. Amazing food of course but the supermarket was incredible. I bought a basket full of spices, chinese sauces, rice, soy sauce, rice vinegar, etc. (all the usual essentials for any respecting chef) and the whole thing came to 10 euros something, so cheap. I had to get the girl at the cashdesk to give me the price 4 times (I couldn’t understand a word she said, maybe she was speaking Chinese or Vietnamese).

Easter has come and gone and the fine weather is here. I got the bread oven working the other Sunday and we had amazing roast beef. We had the local egg festival which included the world egg throwing competition

In a similar vein, here is a postcard received from my fan (actually my mailbox indicates I have a few more fans now, but more of that in a later post) – we are launching the world’s worst postcard competition. Contributions can be submitted online to a website which I will soon set up, we are currently debating an appropriate name.

The very day I was galavanting around Gascony and visiting Condom I received this photo from a friend, who probably prefers to remain anonymous (for the francophiles among us, his name is Grisjambon).

Much like Condom, where the Mayor got so fed up with his town signs being stolen by English tourists he created the world first (and possibly only) condom museum, there is apparently a little town in Austria (where else..) called “Fucking”.

The newspaper article, which accompanied the photo of the town sign, contained some absolute gems:
– “Police chief Kommandant Schmidtbrger said ‘We will not stand for the Fucking signs being removed.'”
He continues:
– “It may be amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke?”
It gets worse:
– “German tourists want to see Mozart’s house in Salzburg, Americans seem only to care about The Sound of Music film, the occasional Japanese tourist wants to visit Hitler’s birthplace, but for the British it’s all about Fucking…….”

The first frosts came here in the South West. We started by lighting a fire in the wood stove but we soon succumbed to putting the central heating on, despite the exhorbitant price of gas.
Great trip around Gascony in the glorious autumn sunlight. Absolutely EPIC time in Condom (no pun intended) at the Hotel les Trois Lys . The tajine of confit de canard was especially memorable, as was the Mascarpone mousse with white armagnac. Such a pleasure to find adventurous cooks who dare to use spices and oriental cooking methods with traditional French ingredients. The full menu in English can be found by clicking here
Great hotel actually, although I didn’t sleep very well as there was a mosquito in the room, she kept biting me … although it might have been in a dream because I couldn’t see any bites in the morning and maybe she was just a very nice mosquito.
But this reminded me of Jacques, the owner of the café in Paris where I used to live. He had a country house somewhere in the middle of no-where and he refused to have a TV set. Instead he took a long extension lead down to the bottom of his garden where he would plug in an ultra-violet insect zapper, the ones that electrocute and even set fire to insects attracted to the light. He would sit with his neighbours having a drink after dark sitting around this contraption and watch the local insect wildlife being zapped, “much better than TV” he used to say, “it’s live”.

In addition to mushrooms, the nasturtiums are out. There are still some chilli peppers ripening as well.

“Pass the finger bowl” said one cannibal to another.