Paddling Around

 

Messing about on boats, a famously enjoyable pass-time in the 1960's, and I guess that includes kayaks.

Bonus - Impressive

Playtime at Newbie School

 

Squinting at the kid's T-Shirt, this appears to be the Mark Newbie Elementary School, in Collingswood in New Jersey.  Squinting at the RHS teacher, she has "Once a Mouse", which places the slide as post-1961. Nice.

Bonus - In September this year, the former Republican congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine had a frightening epiphany. “I find it very interesting how the show The Masked Singer hit America in January 2019, a little bit over a year before they started forcing us all into masks. It’s almost like they were beginning to condition the public that masks were ‘normal’ and ‘cool’,” she wrote on Twitter. “The media is demonic.”  Nurse, fetch the screens !

Made for each other.

 

There's something about this pair from 1966. Something about Miss Felicity Fergusson and Mr Fergal Farkle just suggest that they were destined to be together forever.

Bonus - DRAIN THE SWAMP!   The story that Washington DC was built on a swamp is, apparently, a myth.

Bonus 2 - Jazz Bagpipes???

Congratulation to Kim The Bride

 

Special Congrats to my friend Kim, who seems to have quietly married her soul-mate Andrew in the past few days.  Well Done Princess !

This slide, is NOT Kim. It is Daphne, from Des Moines in 1958. Apparently.

Bonus - Gulp!

Turkey Time, Thankfully

 

As our American colleagues celebrate a Thanksgiving that didn't actually happen as claimed, Here's a shot of a non-socially distancing vent from 1956.

Bonus - 

What has Two Heads, Six Feet and Plays a Drum?

 

Dunno

Well, I don't know, but there's one cross your village square now.

Bonus - The Circles Don't Move    

The Park

 

It's Tedious Tuesday, and we need a rather dull slide.  After a quick firtle, we have this totally nondescript slide.

Wow.

Uninspiring.

Bonus - On the other hand, I can use it as a jumping off point for a little experimentation...

Bonus 2 - A classy advert by Jean Pierre Schüpbach, 1949. 

  

Horrible Screaming Crotch Goblins.

 

What?

No, not any relation of mine, as far as I know.

You're right - I don't have any kids, how did you guess.

Bonus - Cruise Ship Hits Iceberg and Sinks. Thirteen Years Ago Today. No casualties.

Bonus 2 : Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake

Lock Up Your Grandsons

 

When these three Saucy Snowbirds hit the road, you'd better lock up the young men on their route. Florida does seem to be home to some horny grannies.

Bonus - Yes, 22nd Nov.

Bonus 2 - Squirrel Tits.

A Quiet Night In On The Sofa

 

By the look of their eyes, these two old trouble-makers have discovered  a stash of mushrooms, so a quiet but psychedelic evening watching the wallpaper.

Bonus - Weird Penises of the animal kingdom.

The Ride Up Mount Shelton

 

Mount Shelton is the highest peak in the Lincolnshire Alps, and the home of England's only all-year glacier.

This is the cable-car that provides a less energetic alterative to the grueling 34-mile expedition from Stoke-on-Trent that the was featured in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Bonus - 

Karen's Kaftan

Never Out Of Fashion !

(Never in fashion, TBH)
 

Bonus - US government issues bear advice: friends don't let friends get eaten

The Other Captain Jack.

 

This is "Captain" Jack Finch, the major domo of the Newport (Oregon) Sailing Club.

While he looks like a kindly old uncle, Jack was a bit of a swashbuckler, and the cause of the clubs "No Trousers, No Mooring" ule.

Bonus - World Population Distribution

The Dog and Bananas

 

...would be an excellent for a Hipster Real-Ale Pub.

One which I would not visit.

Bonus - Oldest Building in each US State

Waiting For A Bus

 

Of course, seeing slides of weddings, birthdays, holiday, funerals, Christmases, operations and graduations are fun and enjoyable.

But there's a certain satisfaction is seeing normal everyday scenes. Like this scene, of a family in Dundee, waiting for the Number 17 Bus to Kilmarnock.

Bonus - Modern Problems, Modern Solutions.

The Way We Used To Work

 

It seems so familiar, but so alien nowadays, but this is how people worked just a few decades ago. The things that caught me eye...

• Packet of Smokes on the desk.
• Proper Adding Machine.
• Rotary Dial on the mini-telephone-switchboard.
• Paper, not computers.
• Paper filing systems.

Ah.  Memories.

I had a play with the image, and it looks like he's working on an invoice from Castlok Marine, (Sherman Johnson) and a little searching on Google...THIS

Bonus - Baltimore Museum of Art's restrooms to be named in honor of John Waters, for donating 375 pieces of art.

    

Dora and Dinky The Donkey

 

Lovely creatures.  

    Donkeys, that is.

    Dora was a bit of a nightmare. I could tell you how she grew up, and the events of June 8th...but the court injunction is still in place.   But I've never had a Fillet-o-Fish since then.

Bonus - The mystery of "Mostly Harmless". Death on the Trail

All Aboard The Finger-Trap Express

 

It's not me.  I'm no red-haired child.

But elements o ths look familiar.  The harness, to prevent little Timmy from running off - Yes, I recognise that.

But the folding metallic push-chair?  Oh Yes.    That has a definite resonance. And folding mechanisms that could have been designed to trap fingers.  I recall the warnings o "Keep your hands clear, or you could lose a finger".

I wonder if it was hyperbole or genuine...?

Bonus - "A survey by Frontiers, a Swiss publisher of scientific journals, asked some 25,000 researchers in May and June whether lawmakers in their country had used scientific advice to inform their covid-19 strategy."

Illustration below, but more detail

Annie - The Skater Girl

 

Any youngsters (i.e. folk more than a few years younger than me) mat be confused by the unusual footwear that lil Annie is wearing. 

Well, children, before the invention of in-line skates, the Roller skate allowed kids in everyday footwear to enjoy some badly fitting fun.

Bonus - Dumb and Dumber?

Bonus 2 - Cities with population over 100K

The Lone Poppy

 In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

  That mark our place; and in the sky

  The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below

Officer Open Mess

 

After the excitement of the past week - POTUS Elections, possible Covid-19 Drug, etc   it's a relief to get to Tedious Tuesday.

Today, it's a .... mystery Officer Open Mess. Somewhere.

Probably in America.

Bonus - 

The Shaft

 

Oh-Kay.

Right....

It's art, and it's a shaft of naked men.   May I've been infected by mild snowflake-ism, but ... that's a little strange.

Obviously, I do know that this is from Oslo’s Vigeland Park, which is the largest sculpture park in the world by a single artist, boasting over 200 pieces by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland.

Bonus - Keep on digging: Trump team holds press conference at suburban garden centre.  Oh boy.

Ding Dong - The Orange Buffoon Is Gone

 

Yes, it looks like Joe Biden has gained enough EC votes to secure his position as President Elect.

Whether the bloviating Cheeto-faced cock-womble will leave without a fight is another matter.

Still, Americans all the way back to New Year's Eve 1962 have been celebrating.

Bonus - South Ayrshire Golf club owner loses 2020 presidential election

The Wedding Party

 

Sometimes, it's just nice to post a slide without any sarcastic or misleading comments.

Bonus - If this year has taught us anything, it’s that Donald Trump is a regular American citizen.

He caught COVID-19, has massive debt, has five kids by three different women, is about to be evicted from his house and is going to lose his job.

Is that ... possibly ... a young Boris Johnson

 

I mean, it's not that much of a stretch. The grinning moon-face, the mugging for the camera, the shaggy mop of blond hair.    It COULD be Boris, couldn't it ?

Bonus - R.I.P. Geoffrey Palmer.

Reginald Perrin: Who are you going to fight against when this balloon of yours goes up?

Jimmy Anderson : Wreckers of law and order. Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists, union leaders, Communist union leaders, atheists, agnostics, long-haired weirdos, short-haired weirdos, vandals, hooligans, football supporters, namby-pamby probation officers, rapists, papists, papist rapists, foreign surgeons - headshrinkers, who ought to be locked up, Wedgwood Benn, keg bitter, punk rock, glue-sniffers, "Play For Today", Clive Jenkins, Roy Jenkins, Up Jenkins, up everybody's, Chinese restaurants - why do you think Windsor Castle is ringed with Chinese restaurants?

Reginald Perrin : You realise the sort of people you're going to attract, don't you, Jimmy? Thugs, bully-boys, psychopaths, sacked policemen, security guards, sacked security guards, racialists, P***-bashers, queer-bashers, C***-bashers, anybody-bashers, rear Admirals, queer admirals, Vice Admirals, fascists, neo-fascists, crypto-fascists, loyalists, neo-loyalists, crypto-loyalists.

Jimmy Anderson : Do you think so? I thought recruitment might be difficult.

Mary Shows Some Thigh

 

The mini-skirt - fashion icon of the sixties and seventies.  And it too a confident young lady to risk the criticism of her elders and betters in showing some thigh.

Bonus - R.I.P. Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep

"Middle Of The World, Ma ! "

 

Staring intensely at this slide, I could make out the word "Ecuador", and that was all the confirmation that I needed to conclude that this monument is actually Ciudad Mitad del Mundo. It highlights the exact location of the Equator (from which the country takes its name) and commemorates the eighteenth century Franco-Spanish Geodesic Mission which fixed its approximate location; they also contain the Museo Etnográfico Mitad del Mundo, Ethnographic Museum Middle of the Earth, a museum about the indigenous people ethnography of Ecuador.

The 30-metre-tall (98 ft) monument was constructed between 1979 and 1982 by Pichincha's Province Council to replace an older, smaller monument built by the Government of Ecuador under the direction of the geographer Luis Tufiño in 1936. It is made of iron and concrete and covered with cut and polished andesite stone. The monument was built to commemorate the first Geodesic Mission of the French Academy of Sciences.

And I'm sure it comes as no surprise, that the monument is mis-placed, and actually 240metres south of the equator.

Bonus - Denmark to cull entire 13 million mink herd as new mutation of Covid-19 discovered in mink farms. Mink export is roughly 1% of Denmark's entire GDP.

Bonus 2 - 

America Decides

 

So, as Chief Sitting Pretty watches over the States, the Electors of the U S of A are deciding on the POTUS for the next four years.

Bonus - 

Chateau del la Covid

 

Not a lot of people know this. THIS is the French Chateau that the Covid-19 Coronavirus was named after.

Not that this chateau had any part in the creation of the virus...so put those torches and pitchforks away.  In Wuhan, the test bats were all names after French Chateaus, for tracking purposes, and ...you've guessed it ... the bat named after this one was the originator of the world-dominating disease.

Bonus - 

The Covid-19 Lockdown Committee

 

With UK (Sorry, ENGLAND) entering Tier 4 Lockdown (Sorry,  " four-week national lockdown"), I bring you an exclusive picture of the government's Covid-19 Pandemic Advisory Group. Such is the secrecy of their work, then meetings ban the use of mobile phones, tablets, computers or even coffee facilities.  However, smoking is permitted for the over-25's.

Bonus - R.I.P. Sean Connery.    Here's a picture of him eating spaghetti.