The Edmondson Blog

As compiled by a reader survey in Rolling Stone magazine. Some critics have commented that the list is heavily biased towards the 60s and 70s, but - hey - they were the best of times.

1. Jimi Hendrix
2. Duane Allman
3. B. B. King
4. Eric Clapton
5. Robert Johnson
6. Chuck Berry
7. Stevie Ray Vaughan
8. Ry Cooder
9. Jimmy Page
10. Keith Richards
11. Kirk Hammett
12. Kurt Cobain
13. Jerry Garcia
14. Jeff Beck
15. Carlos Santana

A man was stood at the pub bar looking glum. He had had too much to drink and had been sick down his jacket. His mate asked him what was up.

"I had a big argument with my wife last night about getting drunk and here am I, drunk as a skunk and to top it all I've been sick down my best jacket and ruined it. I'll be in big trouble with my wife when I get home!"

"No you won't, this is what you do. Tell your wife someone else was accidentally sick on you. Put a £20 note in your inside pocket, explain what happened and pull out the £20 to demonstrate the truth of the story."

So, pleased with this plan, he staggered off home. As he lurched through the front door, his seething wife was stood waiting for him.

"YOU ANIMAL! LOOK AT YOU - YOU'RE SO DRUNK YOU CAN HARDLY STAND UP, AND YOU HAVE BEEN SICK ALL OVER YOURSELF!!"

"I'm terribly sorry darling, but it was not me who was sick on my jacket, it was a complete stranger who was sick on me. He was very apologetic and insisted I took £20 from him to get the jacket dry-cleaned."

With that he pulled two £20 notes out of his inside pocket and waved then in his wife's face.

"So why do you have two £20 notes?"

"Oh, the other one's from another complete stranger who shat in my pants."

The 1960s were not all sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll. Here is something, er, slightly different. Tiny Tim was in the hit parade 40 years ago with his version of Tiptoe Through The Tulips. Hmm.

Take off clothes and place them sectioned in laundry basket according to lights and darks.

Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown.

If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.

Look at your womanly physique in the mirror - make mental note to do more sit-ups / leg-lifts, etc.

Get in the shower.

Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah, wide loofah and pumice stone.

Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins.

Wash your hair again to make sure it's clean.

Condition your hair with grapefruit mint conditioner enhanced.

Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for 10 minutes until red.

Wash entire rest of body with ginger nut and jaffa cake body wash.

Rinse conditioner off hair.

Shave armpits and legs.

Turn off shower.

Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower.

Spray mold spots with tile cleaner.

Get out of shower.

Dry with towel the size of a small country.

Wrap hair in super absorbent towel.

Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and towel on head.

If you see partner along the way, cover up any exposed areas.

Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them in a pile.

Walk naked to the bathroom.

If you see partner along the way, shake willy at her making the woo-woo sound.

Look at your manly physique in the mirror.

Admire the size of your willy and scratch your bum.

Get in the shower.

Wash your face.

Wash your armpits.

Blow your nose in your hands and let the water rinse them off.

Fart and laugh at how loud it sounds in the shower.

Spend majority of time washing privates and surrounding area.

Wash your bum, leaving those coarse bum hairs stuck on the soap.

Wash your hair.

Make a Shampoo Mohican

Wee.

Rinse off and get out of shower.

Partially dry off.

Fail to notice water on floor because curtain was hanging out of bath the whole time.

Admire willy size in mirror again.

Leave shower curtain open, wet mat on floor, light and fan on.

Return to bedroom with towel around waist.

If you pass partner, pull off towel, shake willy at her and make the woo-woo sound again.

Throw wet towel on bed.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Thomas Jefferson 1802

Triskaidekaphobia, from Greek tris = three, kai = and, deka = ten, is an irrational fear of the number 13.

A specific fear of Friday the 13th, called paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.

White Rabbit

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all.
Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall.

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.
Call Alice, when she was just small.

When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice, I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "Off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said:
"Feed your head,
Feed your head"

The classic 60s song written by Grace Slick and performed by Jefferson Airplane was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass (plus – just possibly – a little help from certain illegal substances).

Note for all those with too much time on their hands: Yes I know that some of the details are wrong. Although events in Carroll’s books, such as changing size after eating mushrooms or drinking an unknown liquid, are referenced in the song, and Alice, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse are all also mentioned, some of the other details are incorrect. The White Knight does not talk backwards, as the song states, the Queen of Hearts, not the Red Queen, says "Off with her head!" (although, of course, the queen of hearts, as a playing card, is a red queen). Lastly, the final lines of the song, Remember what the Dormouse said, "Feed your head, feed your head," erroneously quotes the Dormouse.

Puff The Magic Dragon

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee,
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.

Oh, Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee,
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on puffs gigantic tail,
Noble kings and princes would bow whene’er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flag when puff roared out his name.

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave.


The lyrics for Puff, the Magic Dragon were based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, a nineteen-year-old student who was inspired by an Ogden Nash poem titled Custard the Dragon. Lipton passed his poem on to friend, Peter Yarrow, who created music and more lyrics to make the poem into the song. In 1961, Yarrow joined Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to form the singing trio Peter, Paul and Mary. The trio incorporated the song into their live performances before recording it in 1962.

The song is believed by many to refer to smoking marijuana, due to references to paper, dragon ("draggin'"), puff (smoke), traveling "along the cherry lane" (the burning ember of a cigarette or joint is called a cherry, and moves up the cigarette's length as it burns), and Hanalei (Honalee) is a town in Hawaii known for marijuana use. This theory led to the song becoming a hippie anthem. The authors of the song have repeatedly and vehemently denied any intentional drug reference.

The concept of telephones, being able to speak directly to a distant person via electrical wires, became established in the 1870s. Originally, you would lift your handset, speak to the operator and request to be connected to the person you wished to speak to, and then the operator would manually connect you.

Almon Strowger was an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1890 he became convinced that he was losing business to a competitor because his local telephone operator was the competitor's wife and Stowger believed she was wrongly diverting his calls.

He therefore set about inventing an automatic switch so a caller could be directly connected to the other party without the operator being involved. His patent for the Strowger Switch was registerd on 10th March 1891 and became the universal method of automating telephone exchanges right up to the 1970s.

Go to Paddington Station, to Platform One and you’ll see a man reading a letter. He’s always there. Stare at him for a bit. He’s there to be stared at. And if you don’t feel a pricking in the corner of your eye, or a nut of emotion in your gullet, you’re made of sterner stuff than me, though not him.

On the fourth anniversary of the end of the Great War, Soldier Reading A Letter – a bronze standing on black marble and Mezzano white marble, Aberdeen grey and Belgian black granite – was unveiled by the Board of the Great Western Railway in remembrance of the 3,312 men and women of the company who gave their lives for King, country and that complicated and spectral coalition of politics and emotion that was the enigmatic motivation for the war that began the modern age.

The soldier was sculpted by Charles Sargeant Jagger, who produced two of the greatest war memorials made. This is one of them. The soldier stands waiting for a train, his helmet set at an angle, his greatcoat slung over his shoulder, the collar turned up. He’s wearing the muffler his mother knitted for him, and he’s looking down at a letter. He holds it gently, saving the envelope – It will have to sustain many readings. His face shows no outward emotion, it has that concentrated calm we use for letters and hymn sheets, and standing for the two minutes’ silence. His feet are firmly placed on his plinth, he has a purposeful air. Just now he’s reading and waiting for his train, but soon he’ll get down to business, soon he’ll be dead. But now, he stands here on Platform One, an immortal everybody in bronze, waiting and re-reading his letter. The eye is constantly drawn to the letter, the lines and the tensions of the sculpture tug you back; it’s been folded in the old-fashioned way, like a pamphlet for people who are frugal with notepaper.

Letters from and to soldiers are so familiar to us; they are the stuff of drama and war films, of sadness and of memorized poetry. The letters of war are great symbols of national empathy, particularly for the English, who like to think of themselves as, if not people of letters, then the children of people of letters. And as a nation that’s chronically incapable of expressing emotion, and even proud of this constipated inability, the letter is a stiff-lipped device for imparting something that you really wanted to say, but hadn’t managed to. Except that not being able to say it in letters is also a particularly English trait. Reading between the lines is England’s second language, and perhaps that’s appropriate for a railway station.

It’s the little strained observations of life that are so chest - tighteningly poignant. The small, bland, uncomfortable stabs at intimacy, the heavy metaphor of trivia and understatement. “Hoping this finds you as it leaves me,” “Chin up,” “No sense in grumbling,” “All the best,” “Remember me to ... remember me.” We know all the small plots of war letters, and we wonder who this one is from – a mother’s note that came with the scarf, and a tin of cigarettes from a sweetheart, this being the age before girlfriends; good luck from workmates, a wife perhaps? Though he’s young to be married, but then they were, weren’t they? Too young for any of it.

As you stare at the young man reading his letter, you grow too hot to blush and realize that actually, of course, it’s from you. You’re composing it as you look at him, at this bronze boy who reads the thing you wanted to say, but were never able to. How England went on without him, how the station’s changed, he’d not recognize half the stuff in the coffee shop, the tea’s still dreadful but hot and sweet, that his country still thinks about him. And the great-grandchildren with the names he’d hear as strange – not a Wilf, Alf or Herbert amongst them - send their best and hope this finds you as it leaves us. Thank you.

This was not Jagger’s first idea for the memorial of the Great Western Railway. At first he proposed a soldier carrying a trench catapult – he liked kit, he knew what it was for and what it did. He knew that soldiers had become extensions of things, of stuff – fuel for the machine. The Memorial Committee was chaired by Winston Churchill and he was a man who knew the truth of the English heart, the image that gripped their shy sense of belonging. He asked Jagger to think again, and the soldier with the letter was born out of the clay that his inspiration had dug, blown up and finally been buried in. It always seems an almost unbearable irony that these memorials start with mud and grow to become molten, then cold metal – a transubstantiation that is life and death and resurrection and immortality.

From The Angry Island, Hunting The English by A. A. Gill.

Having a bad day?

Feeling the world is against you?

Cheer up! It could be worse!

Here are a few snips to show how bad it could be.

Have a nice day!

Rarely sung second verse to the National Anthem (so much the pity):

O Lord God arise,
Scatter our enemies
And make them fall!
Confound their knavish tricks
Confuse their politics,
On you our hopes we fix,
God Save the Queen!

It was late December back in '63 and Fred had a date with Peggy Sue. He arrived at her house and rang the bell. "Oh, come on in!" Peggy Sue's mother said as she welcomed Fred in. "Have a seat in the living room. Would you like something to drink? Lemonade? Cup of tea?"

"A cup of tea, please," Fred replied.

Mum brought the tea. "So, what are you and Peggy planning to do tonight?" she asked.

"Oh, probably catch a movie, and then maybe grab a bite to eat at the coffee bar, maybe listen to the juke box..."

"Peggy likes to screw, you know," Mum informed him.

"Really?" Fred replied; eyebrows rose.

"Oh yes," the mother continued. "When she goes out with her friends, that's all they do!"

"Is that so?" asked Fred, incredulous.

"Yes," said the mother. "As a matter of fact, she'd screw all night if we let her!"

"Well, thanks for the tip!" Fred said as he began thinking about alternate plans for the evening.

A moment later, Peggy Sue came down the stairs looking pretty as a picture wearing a pink blouse and a hoop skirt, and with her hair tied back in a bouncy ponytail. She greeted Fred.

"Have fun, kids!" the mother said as they left.

Half an hour later, a completely disheveled and furious Peggy Sue burst into the house and slammed the front door behind her.

"The Twist, Mum!" she angrily yelled to her mother in the kitchen. "The f***ing dance is called the Twist!"

Thanks to Claudia at the Last Turkey Blog.

During a service, the pastor asked if anyone in the congregation would like to express thanks for prayers which had been answered.

A lady stood up and came forward.

She said, "I have a reason to thank the Lord. Two months ago, my husband, Jim, had a terrible bicycle accident and his scrotum was completely crushed. The pain was excruciating and the doctors didn't know if they could help him."

You could hear an audible gasp from the men in the congregation as they imagined the pain that poor Jim experienced.

She continued, "Jim was unable to hold me or the children and every move caused him terrible pain. We prayed as the doctors performed a delicate operation. They were able to piece together the crushed remnants of Jim's scrotum and wrap wire around it to hold it in place."

Again, the men in the congregation squirmed uncomfortably as they imagined the horrible surgery performed on Jim.

She continued, "Now, Jim is out of the hospital and the doctors say, with time, his scrotum should recover completely."

All the men sighed with relief.

The pastor rose and tentatively asked if any one else had anything to say.

A man rose and walked slowly to the podium.

He said, "Hi, I'm Jim and I would like to tell my wife, the word is sternum..."

Thanks to Jim Madden (but this Jim is married to Liz).

Man is found glued to toilet seat

A man had to be taken to hospital still attached to a steel toilet after super-glue was deliberately smeared on the seat.

Firefighters were unable to free the man and were forced to remove the entire toilet with the man attached.

The 35-year-old was in a public toilet cubicle in Brierley Hill in the West Midlands when he became stuck.

He was taken to hospital where doctors had to get into the ambulance before using chemicals to free him.

Toilet re-installed

An ambulance service spokesman said: "He appeared to be none the worse for his ordeal other than being understandably somewhat embarrassed."

It is thought the glue had been smeared on the toilet seat by a prankster.

An ambulance crew and a rapid response vehicle attended the scene just before midday but they were unable to free the man.

"With the help of a local authority and the fire and rescue service, the man was removed from the cubicle still attached to the stainless steel toilet," the spokesman said.

The toilet was later taken back to the public convenience and re-installed.

Hello! My name is Maggie.

Hello! I'm Sylvia. How'd you die?

I froze to death.

How awful!

It wasn't so bad. After I stopped shaking from the cold, I began to get warm and sleepy and finally died a peaceful death. What about you?

I died of a massive heart attack I suspected my husband was cheating, so I came home early to catch him in the act. But instead I found him all by himself in the house watching TV.

So what happened?

I was so sure there was another woman somewhere that I started running all over the house looking. I ran up into the attic and searched and then down into the cellar. I went through each wardrobe and checked under all the beds. I kept this up until I had looked everywhere, and finally I became so exhausted that I just keeled over with a heart attack and died.

Too bad you didn't look in the freezer. We'd both still be alive

Father: Claudia my darling, do you use the same preparation to wash your hair as you use to wash your wigs and hair-pieces?

Daughter: No dearest Papa, I use shampoo for my real hair and real poo for my sham hair.

(Guffaws of appreciative laughter from audience.)

I've been thinking of changing my car. I hadn't realised how seriously manufacturers had taken the need for smaller models. I think I'll get another Corvette (at the bottom).

You would think you could take a good guess at a rough translation of the Welsh part of this bi-lingual sign, wouldn't you? Well, you'd be wrong, it translates as I am out of the office at the moment. Please send my work to be translated.

Hmmm. Well done Swansea Council.