Loo rules: two flies and a six-point scale

In China authorities have decreed that there must never be more than two flies in a public lavatory.

This clearly begs a number of questions. Do dead flies count? If there are two flies are they allowed to stay? If there are more than two do you kill them all? And how do you actually kill and dispose of them?

The six-point scale applies to the smell on a scale of odourless to unbearable. There should be no dust, surface water, litter or ice – and of course no more than two flies.

An official said that: “while the rule is specific and quantified the inspection methodology will be flexible”. So just like many government targets over here!

Bang goes the neighbourhood

Someone obviously thought it was a good idea before the Queen visited a former industrial town in North-West.

It always pays to check the small print!

Macho car but that numberplate?

I noticed this parked up near Manchester Airport recently.

Big car for  a big lad obviously with a personalised number plate like that. But just asking for some Mancy wit …

I wonder if he ever gets pulled over and asked for his registration?

FYI if you’re not sure about Mancy check out this web-site: http://tinyurl.com/bvzrjpj

The real North-South divide – sex toys and on-line infidelity!

According to Relate, the counselling charity, three out of four sexually active women say they own a sex toy.

You no longer have to sneak into a Ann Summers shop or go on-line; just pop into your local supermarket.

An on-line sex shop, Lovehoney, analysed sales amongst its 750,000 shoppers and found that customers in Fleet, Hampshire, spent four times the national average on sex toys and three times as much on bondage gear.

No wonder Fleet was voted the best place to live by Halifax bank.  According to a story in this week’s Sunday Times young mums in Fleet are apparently clear about what they want sex-wise and aren’t afraid to ask for it.

And the North-South divide? Four of the five top-spending towns are in the South, the exception being Aberystwith. Four of the five lowest spending towns are in the North with Bedford being the exception.

It’s been predicted that sex toys will soon be as widely owned as smart phones. Perhaps someone will develop an App for it – or is your phone already set to vibrate mode?

A spokesman at the Kinsey Institute in America said there were similarities about the need for instant gratification between the use of sex toys and the fast food industry. Some doctors and Relate counsellors warn that relying on battery power for sexual climax can alter your brain circuits and make you less able to respond to the human touch. 

The survey, funded by Ann Summers, will help Relate counsellors working with couples with relationship problems. Perhaps unsurprisingly unmarried couples are happier with their sex lives than married couples – 70% compared with under 50%.

And to think the first sex toys were invented by doctors so that they could give women patients orgasms to cure their hysteria!  And in the same month that science confirms that the G-spot exists (albeit discovered in an 83-year-old women) so Dr Grafenberg will feel vindicated.

And it’s not only sex toys. Last month it was reported that more than a million British adults have subscribed to extramarital dating websites. Almost half of them log on every week looking for someone to have an affair with and it’s married women who are the main users. One UK website, MaritalAffairs, found that the majority of its users were university-educated parents aged 35 to 54 and that women outnumbered men by 3 to 1.

And an American web-site, Ashley Madison, reports that British women are the fastest growing group especially the over-50s. They put this down to the number of British women trapped in sexless marriages (which might also explain the interest in sex toys).

Apparently membership of these sites increases dramatically after Valentines Day, Mothers’ Day and New Year’s Day, suggesting men aren’t paying enough attention to their spouses, especially after days when there might be higher expectations of romantic activities.

FYI The on-line capital of infidelity is Manchester in the North-West of England. So the South is tops for sex-toys but women in the North prefer the real thing.

Bert Weedon – Guitar Boogie man shuffles off

Bert Weedon, an unlikely looking guitar hero, has died aged 91.

Famous for his 1957 “Play in a Day” book, he was ahead of his time writing an instruction book for would-be guitarists at the start of the guitar craze.

This was long before the availability of cheap playable guitars and DVD and Youtube instruction videos. Still in print and available from on-line book-sellers. Now priced at £9.99 it originally sold for 5 shillings ie 25p.

Weedon was a regular performer on TV and radio and backed not only home-grown pop stars, such as Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Tommy Steele, but visiting American artists including Sinatra, Judy Garland and Nat King Cole.

He was the first guitarist to have a top twenty hit when Guitar Boogie Shuffle charted in 1959 but he turned down Apache, written by Jerry Lordan, which was a big hit for the Shadows although he later recorded his own slower version which you can find on Youtube.

He’s said to have influenced a whole generation of British guitarists including the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Pete Townshend and Hank Marvin among others and it’s probably true as there was nothing else around at the time and the 12 bar boogie progressions were fairly easy to play.

“Play in a Day” was a good marketing ploy which gave people hope but it wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, although in theory if you practised for an hour a day for 24 days it would be possible to play some chords and a simple tune.

I can’t find my copy of “Play in a Day ” but unearthed the follow-up “Play every Day” and a book of his guitar solos, together with my copy of “King Size Guitar’ the first LP my Dad bought me.

He was usually pictured playing a Guild guitar with a vibrato arm although I’ve also seen a picture of him with a strat-like guitar and a Marshall amp.

He was already a musical veteran when he became famous so never going to be a guitar god but arguably he was the most influential guitarist in post-war Britain.

The man who inspired 11

has died aged 88. Former drummer and guitar amp designer Jim Marshall gave a new sound to rock, heavy metal, and blues bands all over the world.

Most electric guitar players will have played through a Marshall at some point, whether a stack or a head through other speakers, even if only in the music shop.

I had a Vox AC30 amplifier which I loved but remember seeing the Who playing through Marshalls and realising how loud they were.

Many years ago I wrote to Marshall to trace the provenance of a Marshall 25 watt valve amplifier I’d bought in a second-hand shop. I got a reply from Jim Marshall himself telling me when it was made and where it was sold. That’s customer service! I also met him at a guitar show in Manchester, where I got the beer mat. He was very approachable and clearly loved his job.

The Americans had Fender amps which were excellent with a clean sound. In the UK we had Vox which had a great warm sound and then we had Marshall – clean or dirty but LOUD!

I’ve still got the valve amp, a 4 x 10″ speaker cabinet, not to mention a Marshall acoustic amplifier in my back room. Time to plug in and wake up the neighbours I think!

Women in uniforms

You might have seen the photos of the Ukrainian female border guards or passport control staff having makeovers ready to greet the football fans.

What you have to understand is that women in uniform over there always dress up to look their best.

Police women wear high heels on duty – as you can see from the photograph I took in Kyiv. I don’t know how good they are in a chase, maybe they just shoot you.

The female Polish border staff at Warsaw were the same. Big soviet style hats, tight short skirts, heels, guns and, the scary bit, rubber gloves.

Much the same in Italy I remember. Police women with big hats, big hair, big heels, shades, full war paint, and a gun of course.

Must confess though that my favourite photo is of these female Ukrainian soldiers (thank you Bohdan) and no, that’s not me with the camera!

It’s official. Brewing Beer is a vital community service

Just come across a story about an industrial dispute in Lithuania involving my favourite foreign beer Svyturys.

The Svyturys brewery in Klaipeda was founded in 1784 in what was then Prussia.

It is now owned by Carlsberg and the dispute arose about a year ago over wage demands and collective bargaining rights.

There was also a disagreement about whether or not a planned strike was legal.

The District Court in Klaipeda ruled that as the strike was being called in the middle of the peak brewing and beer drinking season it should be delayed for 30 days as beer production was “a vitally essential service”.

I don’t know if the dispute has been settled yet but I know Svyturys Ekstra has disappeared from the shelves in Tesco. Maybe they’ve fallen out with Carlsberg but I’m going back to Lithuania in April so I will have a chance to make up for that – unless they have gone on strike!

Supermarket prices-confused.com

If you think that you get good value from your supermarkets maybe you should think again.

All the price cutting campaigns appear to be just smokescreens to actually increase the cost of your basket.

The Sunday Times reported on research at Warwick University which examined prices between 2003 until the end of 2010. They found that supermarkets would reduce prices on lots of items by amounts as small as 1p but at the same time increase the price on others by up to 10p.

The researchers think the stores are exploiting the “number blindness” experienced by shoppers faced with hundreds, if not thousands, of price changes.

The ST article gives examples such as Tesco changing the price of Dolmio microwave sauce 88 times over the 8 year period. 40 of the changes were 1p reductions but others were increases of up to 10p.

Sainsbury’s did something similar with Hellman’s Mayonnaise: 46 changes of which 16 were 1p reductions and increases on 10 occasions of up to 10p. Sainsbury’s appeared to have fewer price cuts than Tesco or Asda.

Tesco also came in for criticism from the Grocer magazine which found that over the past 6 weeks Tesco had put up prices on 3 products for every 2 it reduced. Examples were a 35% increase in the price of chicken pieces ie up 69p and up to 35% increases on cooked meat – and all this is during the Big Price Drop campaign!

The supermarkets all claim that they offer the best possible prices to their customers. You make up your own mind.

PS I’ve written before on the supermarkets’ habit of increasing prices and then dropping them but to a higher base level. These price fluctuations are just one example of the psychological ploys used by supermarkets.

Dolphins can be devious, just like people

A crafty cetacean called Kelly has learned how to manipulate its keepers to get extra food.

Dolphins in captivity in Mississippi had been trained to retrieve litter from their pool and when they did they got extra food as a reward for each piece.

But Kelly was getting more than her share of rewards compared to the other dolphins. Kelly would retrieve litter but then hide it. When she felt hungry she simply tore off a piece and presented that to receive a reward.

This is similar to what female operatives used to do in a factory I once worked in. When it was coming up to a special event, like getting married, they would hide work they had finished and “bank” it until the week before their wedding. Then they would suddenly produce a bumper output and boost their bonuses.

So do factory workers think like dolphins or are dolphins cuter than we think (in more ways than one).

btw the young dolphin in the picture (not Kelly but one in Cuba) sideswiped me in the pool, where we were swimming with a number of them, and gave me a painful dead-leg. Just being playful or pissed off with tourists? If I’d started drowning would it have rescued me?