The Frumplingtons

Had to turn the sound down on the tv just now. (The volume knobs go all the way up to ‘11′, you know.) It eventually transpired that the problem was nothing to do with our telly. We were watching some tennis. Wanna know who? Maria Sharapova, that’s who. Absolutely unbelievable. She has got more grunt than a Harley Davidson engine. Every time she hit the ball she was going, ‘Aaaaagh!’ or ‘Yeeeeuugh!’ and similar noises of the kind that you normally wouldn’t hear outside of a mediaeval torture chamber.

There’s only one thing for it, we thought. Turn off the sound completely and switch over to subtitles for the duration of the match.

We waited a few seconds for subtitling to activate, and then there they were at the bottom of the screen. White text on a black background. And what were the first words to appear? You guessed it: ‘Yaaaaaaaah!’ ‘Hooooough!’ ‘Yowsah!’

Honestly, it would have been quieter just to listen to some thrash metal for a while.

Chris

Shana (aka ‘Frumplington Number 1′) was looking at spaceweather.com earlier this evening. It’s one of her favourite sites. (I think she harbours a secret desire to be an astronaut, you know. Wouldn’t suit me though, as I’m not keen on heights.) Anyhow, tonight she had her head in the clouds. Mammatus clouds, to be precise. According to spaceweather.com, they form in turbulent air on the undersides of thunderstorms. They were formerly believed to indicate the approach of severe weather, but they are actually most often seen when storms are breaking up. Loads more pretty pictures at the Space Weather site. They also have ‘the science bit’ for brainier visitors.

This excellent photo of mammatus clouds will give you some idea of how they look.

What amazes us though, is that we have never heard of them before. They obviously haven’t just been ‘invented’, and thunderstorms have, equally obviously, been around for ever. (Our Far Eastern correspondent, the mysterious ‘Mr D’ will doubtless furnish us with details of the origins and reasons for the name ‘mammatus’.)

Chris

Customers are forever complaining about their banks: how the banks make billions of pounds speculating with our money; how they spend millions on flashy television ads to tell us how wonderful and caring they are; and how, in order to save themselves a mere tuppence, they are willing to close their rural branches, lay off thousands of staff, and move their call centres to India. Where of course, staff are in all probability paid an awful lot less.

All our suspicions have been proved right now though. Offshore call centres (and let’s face it, India is a jolly long way ‘offshore’ by anyone’s standards) can be harmful to your wealth. Here’s the proof:

Customers with HSBC have had money stolen from their bank accounts through a financial scam operated from its Bangalore call centre in India.

The bank said funds were taken from a “small number” of HSBC customers in the UK and that it had begun legal action against one of its Bangalore employees.

The worker is said to have supplied customer data to fraudsters, leading to a total of £233,000 being taken.

HSBC said it would be assisting the Indian police with their investigation.

Adrian Graves, spokesman for the UK’s National Association of Banking and Insurance Customers, told BBC Radio Five Live that it was a “very serious breach of security”.

“We’ve expressed concern about the foreign location of call centres for some very considerable time,” he said.

“We know that customers prefer to deal with call centres that are based here in the UK where they don’t have any language difficulties and where they can contact their local branch and deal with real people.”

source: BBC News (Thefts at HSBC Indian call centre)

The writers of this blog however are not overly concerned about all this. All of our money goes into a pink china pig. The only time that is ever a danger is if he gets a bit too close to the edge of the mantelpiece.

Chris

Found this afternoon (via k10k), something called Hitler Cats, a blog dedicated to cats that look like Hitler.

We are a tad puzzled: is this wonderfully funny photoblog trying to suggest that the Great Dictator was just a big soft puddy-tat at heart? Or that some cats have an inherently evil nature? I’ve certainly known one or two that have seemed to positively relish the power of their sharp claws on my soft and puny exterior. But I’ve never yet met a cat who wanted to invade Poland.

You can (and no doubt will) go to the website and see these cats for yourself. But remember this: most pets are said to look like their owners. So whatever you do, don’t judge them too harshly.

Chris

Harriet the tortoise, one of the world’s oldest known living creatures, has died in Australia aged about 175. Senior vet Dr John Hangar told Australia’s ABC that Harriet, a Giant Galapagos tortoise, had died of heart failure after a short illness.

Last year staff at Australia Zoo, where Harriet had lived for 17 years, held a party to celebrate her 175th birthday.

Some people believe that Harriet was studied by British naturalist Charles Darwin. However, Harriet belonged to a sub-species of tortoise only found on an island that Darwin never visited. DNA testing has suggested the giant creature was born around 1830, a few years before Darwin visited the Galapagos archipelago in 1835.

At the time of her 175th birthday party, Harriet weighed 150kg (23 stone).

source: BBC News

Chris

Bored with the World Cup? Never fear; other sports are available. There are now only three days to go before Wimbledon starts. Maybe, just maybe, this could be Timmy’s year. We think Henners is wonderful, even if only for his immense comedic value. And every June we spend hours practising the Henman ‘air punch’ (you must have seen it: the low level clenched fist, accompanied by the determined grimace) in imitation of the great man. Wanna know more about TH? Then go to the Tim Henman website, where you can check out over 600 questions from fans in the Questions and Answers section. (It’s actually just one question repeated six hundred times: When are you going to win the damn trophy?)

Perhaps the power of television technology will come to Tim’s rescue this year though: it is rumoured that all of Henman’s opening Wimbledon matches have already been played, and the BBC have filmed alternative endings for them. That should keep the Freeview/interactive/digital set-top box crowd happy. (If you want to see Henman win for once in his life, press your red button now.)

Trouble is, if Henners really did win Wimbledon, we’d never believe it anyway. It’d be like the moon landings all over again.

Ah well, we can but dream…

Chris

You know what this is don’t you, a draught stopper, yes? No.

It’s the new improved Frumplingtons Multi-Purpose Daft Stopper.

It’s designed for those moments when everything/everyone around you is getting just too stupid to cope with. The Frumplingtons Multi-Purpose Daft Stopper, when affixed correctly over the ears will instantly block out all things daft.

However, it has a built-in override, it won’t work when reading this blog.

We will be taking orders for the Frumplingtons Multi-Purpose Daft Stopper when we have sufficient stock to meet demand. It’s going to prove extremely popular, and will prove to be the ideal present for the person who has everything.

Expect a major press release shortly.

Shana

Following last night’s triumphant 2-2 draw with Sweden in the World Cup, a message has flooded in from one of our readers:

Dear Frumplingtons,

Whilst watching England struggle gamely against the mighty Swedes, there was a lull in play as we waited firstly for some of the English strikers to pull themselves up by their bootlaces, and secondly for the poor wretch Michael Owen to be stretchered off, suffering from a recurrence of the housemaid’s knee that has dogged him during this tournament.

During this unscheduled interval, the camera focussed on a certain Mr Beckham, who was walking towards the edge of the pitch to take a throw-in. As ‘Becks’ neared his destination he spat on the ground, rather in the manner, I thought, of Clint Eastwood, who would often spit after partaking of one of those filthy cheroots he used to smoke in those spaghetti westerns.

This is a new side to Mr Beckham that we are seeing, I thought. Not being one of the world’s most clued-up football fans, I have to date only ever seen ‘Becks’ in those telly adverts for razors. You never see him spit in the ads, although, I reasoned, maybe he did his spitting during the out-takes, perhaps after accidentally getting a mouthful of shaving foam.

Whatever the reason (and ‘Becks certainly didn’t have the excuse of swallowing shaving foam during last night’s game) I found all this spitting most unseemly. And, having just had my evening meal, I have to say it was quite off-putting. Any more of this behaviour and I shall be demanding a refund of my television licence.

Yours,

Hugo Spitball (Mr)

Well, Hugo, all we can say is, if you don’t like it, you know where the off switch is. Now, where did I put that cheroot?

Chris

Noshing can wait. First comes the educational bit: the original Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and military leader. There, that’s enough learning for one day. Thinking of military heroes, though, an intriguing thought has just occurred to me. Bearing in mind how popular Montgomery (’Monty’) of Alamein was supposed to have been in World War 2, you’d think there would be some kind of cake or similar comestible named after him. Something like ‘Monty Muffins’ perhaps. But, as far as we are aware, there’s nothing available. There’s a challenge to England’s bakeries then.

Anyhow, we like Garibaldi biccies. We were decorating the living room a couple of years ago and a fly managed to drown itself in one of our tins of brilliant emulsion. Excelling ourselves in wittiness, we declared, “Now we’ve got Garibaldi paint.” This was of course a thinly veiled allusion to the usual joke about Garibaldis being ’squashed fly’ biscuits. It makes us laugh every time.

Anyhow, if you wanna make your own Garibaldi biscuits instead of making that Mr McVitie even richer, here’s how:

Ingredients:

7oz plain flour
1oz cornflour
2oz caster sugar
pinch of salt
2oz butter
1 egg yolk
a little milk
4oz currants
egg white to glaze

Method:

Preheat oven to 400°F/Gas 6 and prepare a baking sheet. Sift the flour and cornflour into a bowl with the sugar and salt. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the egg yolk and mix to a stiffish dough with sufficient milk. Turn out onto a floured surface and roll out thinly to a long thin rectangle. Trim the edges square and sprinkle one half of the dough evenly with currants.

Fold over the dough and press the edges together. Roll with a floured rolling pin to about ¼ inch thick, cut into convenient squares or rectangles and brush with egg white to glaze. Place on the baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack.

Eat.

Tidy up your crumbs. (We really shouldn’t have to tell you all this, you know.)

Chris

We are enjoying watching the World Cup and are constantly amazed at how grown men can manage to feign injury in such a convincing manner. If we tried any of that sort of thing when we were little (usually in order to try to get out of doing PE at school) we would get what used to be technically known as a ‘clip round the ear’. (This has since been outlawed by the EU or the EEC or whatever combination of letters they are now using. ) In the FAFI (sic) World Cup, malingering is, by contrast, positively rewarded. No wonder football attracts so much criticism. They should go back to the old ways: long shorts, rock-hard lace-up footballs, and wages not exceeding fifty quid a week. And no boosting your income by advertising ‘male grooming’ products (whatever they might be).

Whatever you do, don’t follow the example of my Aunt Bertha (’barmy Bertha’) otherwise you will miss all the football. Barmy Bertha had a habit of taking people’s statements far too literally, but she came unstuck one day back in 1974. Those were the days when one Reginald Bosanquet was telly’s top newsreader. (With a name like that, he could probably trace his lineage back to William the Conqueror.) It was FA Cup Final day. Liverpool versus Newcastle. (I know, ‘cos I looked it up on the Wikipedia.) Ever the gentleman, Reggie said, toward the end of the evening’s news, “If you don’t want to know the result, look away now.” It was all done so that you could watch the highlights on Match of the Day without having your surprise spoiled by knowing the winner beforehand.

And barmy Bertha looked away.

Mr Bosanquet, however, omitted to instruct his viewers (most of whom had far more sense than Bertha to begin with) to look back once the result had passed from the screen. So Bertha never saw any football, or indeed any television from that day forward. Don’t follow Bertha’s example. Keep your eye on the ball. Enjoy the beautiful game.

Oh, in case you were wondering, that’s Reggie Bosanquet’s picture a paragraph or two further up the page. Quite dashing, wasn’t he? But from the day of the ‘look away now’ incident, Bertha always believed he was a cad.

Chris