And this is your 'comic diary,' Robin?
Ah, through the mists of time you speak to us....
Doug
On 14-Sep-07, at 3:33 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>> were you an unemployed hermit? confused
>
> No, not umemployed, Roger, at least not at first. I'd signed a proper
> contact with the local big-wig, see, usual stuff, seven years on the
> job and that, dead pukka. Proper victuals, bread, skittles, and rags
> provided, luxurious fully-furnished grotto came with the job, next to
> the gazzebo it was, dead posh like. But ...
>
> See, what got up the nostrils of me and the rest of the boys was this
> particular clause the buggers kept on insisting on, no lushing it up
> on a Friday down at the local boozing ken. "Out of character," it was
> supposed to be, as if, I mean, what's *in character for a bleeding
> English hermit in the middle of winter sitting shivering downwind from
> the sheep browsing the ha ha while the only persons come to see you
> are the local kids who if they ain't gawking are poking you with
> sticks.
>
> Bleeding liberty, and the no rum bouse clause was the last drop in the
> tankard, so to speak.
>
> So us all went on what we had to call a stand-up-and-walk-off strike,
> stick that in your churchwarden we thought and puff on it. Serve the
> buggers right, they'll soon be begging us back since after all what's
> your bang-up eighteenth century garden without a deeply atmospheric
> hermit in residence?
>
> So what did the rotten toerags do the minute they thought on it, the
> horseblankets we'd been romantically sitting on to keep our arses off
> the stonework barely cold? Called in the local stonemasons, they did,
> commissioned a set of reproduction full-sized bloody stone
> *sculptures, right, assorted poses as required, and stuck them in the
> Hermitry instead of us.
>
> Bastards! Minute they realised that there was no overhead on a stone
> hermit, and they were less likely to be caught groping the
> maidservants, that was it for the profession.
>
> http://www.hermitary.com/lore/ornamental_hermits.html
>
> Anyways, in the course of time, what with large families and death
> duties and that, your squire's descendents were as you might say
> whittled down in their circumstances, shoehorned into a semi-detached
> in Chelmsford, poxy wee patch of garden in place of the gazzebo. And,
> naturally, the Stone Hermits went the same way, scunned down to fit
> the reduced circumstances of their owners.
>
> Thus in the course of time, six foot tall Ornamental Hermit Masonary,
> introduced into the English garden in the wake of our thoroughly
> principled refusal of labour till we got us a better contract, evolved
> into the tiny garden gnomies so familiar today, them as we all know
> and loathe.
>
> Blackleg bloody objects they are, and no surprise, as Patrick pointed
> out, that the father of the Grey Man was involved in the manufactuary
> of them.
>
> Him As Was An Eremine Wunce
>
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
People say they have to express their emotions.
I'm sick of that. Photography doesn't teach
you to express your emotions;
it teaches you how to see.
Berenice Abbott
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