Archive for July 2010

Bandoobuburazasu rarely observed

Friday, 30 July 2010

It has been a quiet couple of days, at least where Shooting Parrots is concerned. I’ve been working on a new website which is okay, but I’m still finding my feet with WordPress so everything takes longer than it should. On top of that, Parrot Minor is off to Turkey with a friend and family. Again this is okay, except that he didn’t tell us about it until Wednesday night and we have been frazzled trying to fix up a flight. Following that holiday firm collapse the other week, there [...]

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B is for Bee

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Not very original, but appropriate nonetheless as the Bee is the symbol of my home city of Manchester, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. This post begins and ends with Bees. The mosaic on the left can be found at the entrance of Manchester Town Hall and represents the hive of industry the city became. Not to mention the pollution and deplorable working and living conditions.

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Trouble on Oiled Waters

Tuesday, 27 July 2010

I am incredibly grateful to the Greenpeace protestors who closed petrol stations across London today to urge the chairman to drop “his predecessor’s obsession with high-risk, environmentally reckless sources of oil”. Until they drew my attention to it, I had absolutely no idea that BP had caused such massive environmental damage through a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And typical of big business, BP just tried to buy off the problem with a measly £32 billion to hush the whole thing up.

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East of Eden

Sunday, 25 July 2010

Darling daughter was on the phone on Friday full of plans for her first weekend proper in Cape Town, briefly a Cajun supper that evening prepared by one of the American girls at the hostel, a winery trip on Saturday and a visit to Robben Island today.

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On the Origin of Sunpat

Saturday, 24 July 2010

All that swanning around on the Beagle and yet it turns out that all Darwin had to do was wait for J H Kellogg to patent peanut butter to make him realise that all his talk of evolutionary theory was complete bollocks. Well someone’s talking bollocks. From Disinformation.

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And Another Thing

Friday, 23 July 2010

It took me quite a while to get round to reading And Another Thing, part six of three of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I spotted the special edition last year with its wonky neon title on the box cover and the hardback inside with the powder blue towel embroidered with the words “Don’t Panic” and was tempted. Then I saw the £100 price tag and the temptation passed.

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Osama Bin Larwood

Thursday, 22 July 2010

When I was messing around with the various images that appear above, the ones where the parrot appears somewhere, I really wanted to include one on a cricket theme. More specifically, the infamous Bodyline Ashes series of 1932/33.

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ABC Wednesday

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

A is for Abracadabra A magical word special to me as an anklebiter after I was given a David Nixon set set for my seventh or eight birthday.

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Parrot, You Have a Problem

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

I had a phone call last night that began with: “Hello, is that Mr Parrot?” The connection was ropey and the accent was foreign, not so much Indian call-centre, more middle European, and I wondered long it would be before I was reassured that he wasn’t trying to sell anything, or that I’d won a competition I hadn’t even entered, or there were representatives in my area that week. But he didn’t.

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