Once again, I’ve just paid £20 to renew the davedawsonhaswaytoomuchtimeonhishands.com domain name I’ve owned for many years.  If the world was a fair and reasonable place, that name would have pretty much zero value and I could just leave it untouched, on the basis that the registrars would just leave it and no one would ever squat on it.

If you Google the name Dave Dawson, it will only come up with a series of books from the 50s that were a Biggles-like set of war stories and David Dawson the actor.
The first of those is made up and the second seems to be a busy actor, presumably with very little time on his hands so domain squatting not likely.

I did read that in the 90s someone registered the name 21stCenturyfox.com or something on the basis that the 20^th Century Fox film company would rename to 21^st Century Fox and pay him a fortune to buy the domain

They didn’t change name and didn’t pay him for the domain, the schadenfreude of which gives me pleasure to this day.

Not sure registrar is the right name for companies that register domains, but I’m now deep in my 50s and something about me using registrars implies a kind of wisdom and gravitas suited to my age.

Part of the reason I don’t write these updates much is my habit of sitting in Costa Coffee of a weekend morning and sending the first drivel that comes to mind by eMail to a privileged group of friends.

My offspring, now well into their 20s have made it clear that eMail is an old man’s way to send this kind of stuff and I should either stop or use some kind of social media channel instead.

Facebook is also an old person’s medium but TikTok, Instagram and so on are the equivalent of people my age wearing backward baseball caps and walking around humming Rap songs.

A Blog seems like a decent middle ground here and I own it anyway so here goes the annual update – this time to actual answer a question that someone out there may know/find out

When clearing out my dad’s house when he died a few years ago, I found the device pictured  here. My recollection is that he said it was used in some way by people that sat in the bomb bay of Lancaster bomber and touched the bombs with it before they were released.
That either to demagnetize them to make them spin more or less (the version of the story changed a different stages of his life) or as a charging thing to make the bombs explode a few hundred metres off the ground, thus causing much wider damage then just making a big hole in the ground.

There is some strange sticky/oily liquid that seeps out of it. I don’t know that this is, although I do remember him saying it was dangerous and we shouldn’t lick it. I was probably in my teens by that stage though and would already have done all my licking of WWII bombing devices by then.

If you can discern what the thing is, tell me and you will be rewarded in the usual way.

Another dangerous item we found incidentally was a 1 litre bottle full of Mercury. That acts as a poison and is absorbed through the skin if you touch it.

That 1 litre weighs nearly 14kg – you can float lead weights on top of liquid mercury

No idea why he had that, other than part of the same craving to gather dangerous objects and place them all within the reach of his children

Breaking news from the admirable, but kind of experimental flights of Elon Musk’s Space X rocket is that the latest disappearance of a rocket into a huge ball of flame a few hundred feet off the ground was announced as an RUD.

I actually thought this was a joke, but that that genuinely stands for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly,

Simply a Masterpiece

I do understand the desire to play down dramatically bad things for the sake of the masses – this I guess along similar likes to British Army Generals who several times referred to events of 1914-18 as Unpleasantness, but even they didn’t try to conceal it with an acronym.

In any case, in the era of instant worldwide coverage of your most recent fuck up, they should probably just call a spade a spade

Following my return to davedawsonhaswaytoomuchtimeonhishands last week, a message flooded in asking me to resume updates as they hadn’t been getting the level of general blithering and shite that was  at the beating heart of this Blog, prior to my 5 year hiatus. I’m therefore resuming in the same spirit of just writing the first thing that comes into my head.

In that vein, breaking news from the Sussex Pandemique is that Emma has begun filming me on her phone while I sleep.

This is not the act of a well adjusted human being, but I’ve seen one of these clips and it was kind of fascinating. Turns out that one of the many weird effects of having MS is that my legs make repeated lunges during the night.

In this clip my leg, which was poking out from under the duvet, quickly stretched up quite high in the air, stayed there for maybe 5 seconds and then quietly recoiled. That whole pattern then repeated continuously on a roughly 30 second cycle.

Almost balletic I thought, but Emma’s view is that it was more akin to the lunges of Eric Cantona than to the pirouettes of  Rudolf Nureyev.

We have therefore ordered a Super King Size bed to enable her to quietly withdraw into the stands/orchestra pit so to speak beyond the reach of my performing legs.

People pay good money for that kind of entertainment I thought, but turns out that’s a very superficial way of viewing it.

I just looked back at this Blog and realised I’ve been paying to own the davedawsonhaswaytoomuchtimeonhishands.com domain each year but haven’t written anything for 5 years. This post brought to you by that realisation – and also that I heard it from the magnificent Stephen Fry which makes it a duty to pass on.

Turns out the Spanish Inquisition was a kind of religious audit process for which they always gave one month’s notice.
Everyone expected the Spanish Inquisition in fact.

I do even start to question whether the other Python sketches were all made up too

There – next update to follow in 2026

A long time ago I announced in a Blog Post here that Japanese was the best language in the world for  having a single word ‘Tsujigiri’ meaning to stab a passer by with a sword.

Recent trip to Finland has revealed a second contender:

‘Kalsarikannit’ – Being at home, in your underwear, getting drunk

I almost set up an online poll here to vote in the Japanese vs Finnish language competition but was no more able to do that via my phone than I was to increase the sodding font size here from about 2.

In any case, much like the Brexit vote in the UK, the answer probably says more about the character of the voter than of the language.

In both cases, one selection is clearly that of someone you wouldn’t want to come round for tea

­

There has been another hiatus in writing this Blog, but I am back in the saddle today as I’m waiting for delivery of nearly a ton of bark chippings for the long term beautification of my garden.

Since you ask, I shall, despite my non-ideal state of health be moving that whole lot from front to back of my house and spreading it around.

That is of little interest so I thought I’d add a few recent snippets of news I’ve come across recently.

i) The annual number of mass shooting events in the US has run at an average of around 400 for several years now – slightly over 1 per day. That’s mass shooting events, not just 400 deaths That’s a statistic the National Rifle Association attributes, no doubt, to infiltration from high spirited middle Eastern types.

The problem is selling guns to anyone for the price of pear drops* and expecting people to treat them in an adult kind of way

*For the benefit of readers outside the UK, pear drops are splendid sweets, shaped like pears which, for reasons I never understood smell of Acetone.

ii)Donald Trump, the high earning enthusiast for the NRA and would-be US President questioned why the recent Paris terrorist shootings happened in a country with strict gun controls. Firstly, the terrorists and the guns came from outside France and, secondly this hardly ever happens.

It would be just a normal day in the US, halfwit.

The vast majority of US shootings are not terrorists but just children, NRA members or general killing enthusiast getting some sport in during the off-season from blowing the heads of deer or parrots or whatever their thing is.

iii) While I’m on that subject, Trump is in the habit of citing his spectacular success in building an $8 Billion business empire as demonstrating that he has a good deal of the skills needed to build a successful economy.

A fair point on the face of it but, on further investigation, turns out he inherited nearly $3 Billion from his father many years ago.

If he had just popped down to a Bank and written a cheque to put it all in a normal stock market tracking investment account, he would now be worth $26 Billion

He has effectively lost around $20 Billion by getting up and existing every day – as well as making life miserable for everyone else of course.

iv)I have just read ‘In Order To Live’ by Yeonmi Park – a book about a girl’s escape from North Korea.

North Korea is evidently a much, much worse place than I’d realised. So much so that even the entertaining hairdo of Kim Jong Un does not make amends.

One snippet in there is the official state mathematics syllabus in North Korean elementary schools uses Americans as units for basic arithmetic.

A typical question starts ‘If one comrade stabs two American Bastards and another stabs three Yankee Devils ….

Amazing

Trump’s latest mocking impression of a disabled reporter in a press conference did sway me further against him, but even for him, this is going a bit far.

American Bastard, Yes, but stabbing, No.

I have recently learned that entire musical genres from my youth passed me by completely – thus making me think I wasted the best years of my life. I write this in the hope that other people will comment to say they don’t remember them either and, hence that I was a normal well balanced teenager, if that term’s not too much of an oxymoron.

Firstly in the 80s there was a type of music called Loutish Grebo. That information came to me from the Reverend Richard Coles on BBC Radio 4.

I say again the Reverend Richard Coles is more in touch with music than me, Admittedly he was in a band called the Communards then but he’s still a man of God

It’s his bloody job just to maintain a look of benign confusion when music is discussed and mine to sigh, pat him on the head and explain it all to him

Second case is music called Gabba which, it turns out is that high frequency pounding dance music from the 90s. By then, I was no longer a teenager but nevertheless, I should surely have been on at least nodding terms with matters musical.

And now the final one, which, at least was originally from 100 years before I was born but I also had never heard of this.

I went with my lovely bride to see a performance of Art Song at the Wigmore Hall in London last night which, it turns out , is a genre in which just a solo singer and a pianist perform songs, the lyrics of which are famous poems. Actually quite entertaining, and improved by the pianist taking a break from tickling the ivories to explain the poem:music linkages each time.

Having said that, I think I had a head start from being a heavy rock aficionado in the late 20th century.
The haunting beauty of the Art Song ‘Chemin d’Amour’ (Pathway to love) has many similarities to the poetry in a number of rock songs.

Ian Gillan in particular broke new poetic ground early in his career by rhyming ‘Ultrasonic’ with ‘Gin & Tonic’ before moving onto the seminal classic ‘Disturbing the Priest’, which featured the  lyric

‘Do we mind disturbing the priest? No, no not in the least’

The greatest achievement of all though was David Saint Hubbins’ interweaving poetic themes and metaphors of

‘My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo, I like to sink her with my pink torpedo’

The bulk of the audience without my grounding in poetic music of that kind stood no chance of understanding Art Song.

This incongruously titled Post brought to you today from my preferred creative venue of Costa Coffee in East Grinstead. A fine British owned organisation I believe, that seems to be staffed entirely by Eastern Europeans, all of whom seem to be helpful, cheerful and prepared to spend their entire day squirting steam into coffee, in a way that local UK nationals, like me really couldn’t be arsed with

The rest of the economic migrants seem to prop up the NHS and care systems by doing the low paid jobs no-one else wants to do or, more importantly, washing the cars of bone idle people like me while they’re doing their shopping.

As you’ll understand, the complete demise of the NHS that would happen without them would be a bit of a blow, but dirt on my car would be just plain intolerable.

Now, down to business with key NFTD items:

i) The political cretin award previously held by the great George W Bush for his inspired ‘the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur’ has now passed to the carpet haired Donald Trump for ‘my grandparents didn’t come all the way from Germany to see this country overrun by immigrants’

In both cases you just wish they were being ironic, but I just don’t think so somehow

ii) Lemmy, the strangely warty head growler of Motorhead is getting on for the same age as my dad and occasionally now having to stop his shows after just a few songs due to illness. He has recently switched from his preferred tipple of whisky to vodka. This act, apparently for health reasons. Lemmy’s miracle cure means we may have a few more years of delight from them.

That remark not as sarcastic as it sounds incidentally. Everything about Motorhead is so wrong that it’s right somehow.I still quite like Ace of Spades and Bomber and never saw them in my youth. I suppose I just look to middle aged and middle class now really, so that opportunity may have gone forever.

I still have a leather jacket in the loft though I think…

iii) I learn from the QI Elves Twitter feed that every inch of people’s height above 5 feet equates to 1.3 years lower life expectancy. Sounds like nonsense to me, but quite few NFTD items come from the Elves so can’t just disregard things like this or NFTD would grind to a halt. I’m 6 foot 2inches which means I’ll live 18 years less than your radical shortster.

Surely this can’t be right. Who’d be left to write this kind of crap when I’m gone?

iv) If anyone wants to be taken off the distribution list for this Blog , let me know, by the way. Notice how I put that right at the end, in a similar way that, right at the end of Google’s T&Cs they say they reserve the right to harvest every detail of your life and use it to market at you until you’re the age of Lemmy or dead or both.

News for the Day here was news from the day of the UK general election:

At the time of going to press, there seems to be a recount for Nigel Farrage’s attempt to win the new South Thanet Fascist constituency so, to ease the tension – and move back to my non-political agenda, I bring you bits of unrelated trivia I learned whilst trying to avoid the election on TV/radio last night

i) The Gavel – the hammer used by judges to call order in court is not used in English courts.

This has appeared in TV crime/legal programmes for my whole life which are just a fraud

ii) First use of OMG for Oh My God was by the First Sea Lord during the First World War – thus beating Hannah Montana by nearly a century.

And is that her real name by the way –  and if so, what were Mr and Mrs Montana senior thinking of?

iii) There is a woman who works for the American arm of a company a friend of mine works at called Ginger Bitz.

This begs the same question of her parents or, alternatively whether she actually married a Mr Bitz and it is self inflicted. In the latter case, Mr Bitz must be quite something for marrying him to be worth a lifetime of that name

I didn’t learn this last night – just seemed to follow on from point (ii) *

iv) Seems there is an increasingly long list of celebrities who are 1 year younger than me. Clearly this suggests I’m becoming paranoid about my age and noticing more.

The latest is Matt LeBlanc who plays Joey in Friends.

I think I can cling on to the fact that he appears to have greyer hair than me, and set aside the fact that his hair is not falling out and that he is rich and famous and women all love him.

I could go on here….

* I don’t think this is sexist– a vaguely similar line could have worked just as well for a man.

Nevertheless, if you’re reading this on a work computer, I urge you not to Google Ginger Bitz. God knows what results that would come up with

I have taken to sending a News for the Day email out at work for the benefit of my department, since I can’t talk at them while I’m typing it. I decided to send them out here as well so I can inflict them on readers of this. You have, after all,  at least tacitly agreed to get this

I have subtly edited it to take out anything offensive.

Probably seems a bit perverse that I have to edit something before I send to the Net, that I’ve already been prepared to send out at work. I’m supposed to be well behaved there, whereas on the Net it seems to be culturally acceptable to send out anything up to, and including pictures of your own gentleman’s/lady’s areas.

I’m told

News items:

1. The number of people telling me I should write a book is now well into 3 figures – most of which, I believe have been to attempts stop me sending this stuff at work.

Some offers to manage distribution for it as well.

Curiously, the site stats on this Blog show the most consistent viewers are from Bolivia and a few other South American countries, which does suggest distributing actual paper books may be a non-starter.

2. I did include a note in an earlier Post asking the Bolivians to make themselves known to me, but they never replied.

A beautiful country, but mostly heavy users of mind-expanding drugs or gangsters I believe so they have bigger things on their mind than replying to me.

That sentence probably a bit high risk – might upset El Padrino*

3. I have a slate house sign outside my house which, from time to time you have to rub with cooking oil to make the slate go black and hence the silver lettering** visible.

I was caught by my neighbours yesterday doing this using a bottle of extra virgin olive oil – that being the most offensively middle class act they’d ever seen apparently. They ridiculed me and committed to keep ridiculing me indefinitely.

Fortunately, I was able to point out the 10 year old bright green Chevrolet Matiz hatchback on my drive.

If you ever need evidence that you’re just a regular guy, not horribly middle class*** I can recommend a few £ hundred worth of Chevvy hatchback.

I could rent it out if anyone asks via response to this.

Ah…I seem to be setting up my own  business, leasing prestige vehicles here.

Sounds a bit middle class really

* Silver paint – not actual silver gilt or anything. That would have crossed the boundary from middle class to aristocracy

** The Godfather – despite being a fluent Spanish speaker, I confess I had to look that one up. The Bolivians would understand that word, at two different levels

*** There are US readers of this Blog as well, none of whom understand this remark. I believe middle class in the US means somewhere between pauper and average, whereas in the UK it means somewhere between average and Royalty

The Japanese are a nation I associate with economising – minimising cost of fish cookery, by not cooking it, cost of dining furniture by just not having it and so on
Language, though is not an area in which I think of them as being particularly frugal. However, word has reached me that they have a single word, Tsujigiri which means ‘to try out a new samurai sword on a passer by’.

That is honestly true – look it up yourself

You’d think that for something that, even for your regular Samurai, presumably only happens once in a while, they could treat themselves to a blow out and use all 10 words above or- if that really seems self indulgent, just say ‘stab a stranger’.

This set me to thinking about other language quirks I’ve come across. Germany, as you’d expect is first target here.

My own son, a splendid and yet deceitful youth convinced me that a common insult in German is Kartoffelkopf – literally ‘potato head’. He led me sufficiently far up that garden path that I tried it in a meeting with 15 Germans in Munich, who just looked at me blankly.

After a short dispute, I looked it up on Googletranslate to prove I had the greater knowledge of their language.

Which I had – but also hadn’t.

Turns out it is literally correct, it’s just that no-one ever says it. Before I broke off diplomatic relations, they explained, in a teutonic kind of way that lettuce head and condom head are both literally correct, you just wouldn’t use them.

Other things I do like about Germany is their use of language though. When you say could I have a beer or whatever in a bar, they just say yes. This all seems right to me whereas, increasingly in the UK people say ‘no problem’

If I ask for a pizza in Pizza Express, I don’t expect it to be a problem really – that is their bloody job and I’m going to pay and everything, so it shouln’t feel like too much of a favour

I once had a language confusion outside a French bar – where they normally have waiter service to your table. Being kind of proud of my French ability, each time they came back I asked for ‘une autre biere’ – literally ‘another beer’.

They came back each time and I asked for the same thing but they seemed to become more and more irritated. I was trying to be nice – speaking their language, not laughing at their nation’s stripy shirts and everything.

After a long lunch they moved into English and just said ‘that is all’. It seemed we had drunk their entire bar out of beer, which explained their grumpy manner.

We were very proud.

However, the French Onion sellers on bikes with strings of onions round the neck would no doubt be there soon and they don’t take kindly to the English at the best of times. Another diplomatic incident was bound to follow.

Turms out that ‘une autre biere’, literally ‘another beer’ is used to mean ‘a different beer’

‘Encore une biere’, literally a ‘another beer’ is used to mean ‘another beer’

They thought we just didn’t like any of their beer and they were moving further and further out of ‘no problem’ territory.

If the Japanese can muddle through with a single word for ‘kill a stranger with a traditional sword’ Jeany Francais could surely manage with just one word for ‘another’.

There has been a bit of a hiatus on Posts to this blog but, I have been prompted to spend $17 or something renewing the davedawsonhaswaytoomuchtimeonhishands.com domain name

Realising that name must be a valuable asset, I have renewed it and, as such thought I ought to write something again.

In my more enthusiastic Blog period I used to write 1,000 words of shite in each Post, but I realise now that less is more for all concerned here.

So I offer just a short confession this time:

I bought my wife a birthday card recently and wrote a touching message on there, completing ‘Love Dave’.

Absent mindedly, I underlined it twice, but then realised it looked all a bit unromantic and business-like

As I didn’t have a second card available I then wrote ‘XXXX’ under the ‘Love Dave’

When viewed through the less understanding eyes of a woman, this apparently looks like me having written 4 kisses, then thought better of it and crossed them out.

I passed to my daughter to get a bit of understanding for an innocent error of judgement.

When viewed through the even less understanding eyes of a daughter, it apparently looks like someone who wrote ‘Love Dave’, then drew some barbed wire underneath

Oh Shit