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2020hindsight said:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmJ6FDj9R1k Boys on Wheels Making Love in the Handicap Toilet - these guys show they still have a sense of humour
yep - if only he'd stuck to painting.noirua said:they failed to enrol him and say "what a great artist you are", and look what happened
Very good! Should be on Joe Blows' "Joke Thread".2020hindsight said:yep - if only he'd stuck to painting.
I notice he had a lot of his paintings framed - so too a lot of his military officers (Rommel and all)
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=569
Churchill At The Time: A Retrospective
by Alistair Cooke, K.B.E. Keynote Speech, Churchill Society International Convention, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 27 August 1998
I THINK it is a happy thing that you are holding this anniversary meeting in New Hampshire, where, as you all know, Winston Churchill spent the last fifty years of his life....
So, I should like to follow Churchill's public life step by step, not to review it by hindsight. Hindsight is the historian's weapon, whereby, having known what happened, he is always able to pretend that things were bound to come out the way they did come out. Or, in the more brutal aphorism of Justice Holmes, "History is what the winner says it is."
I'll start which my very first memory. I was on the verge of eight years of age and I saw in The Daily Mail a very strange picture. It was a picture of Major Churchill, in uniform. I said to my father, "Why is he in uniform?" He replied, "Because of the Dardanelles." This didn't mean very much to me at the time but it very soon did. I don't need to tell you about the enormous tragedy of Gallipoli, but believe me, if you lived in Britain then - even as an unquestioning boy of eight - it was one of the great disasters. The other was the Battle of the Somme in which, in three nights, the British lost 160,000 men and the Germans lost about the same.
It is very hard now, thanks to television and the abolition of front line censorship, to imagine what those terrible events conveyed at the time. Today we see a war on the nightly news and say, "What are we doing there?" when we get a casualty list of 1,000 in a week. It is today impossible to get used to the idea that we could lose 200,000 men in one week.
The Dardanelles was very well reported in the beginning, because it was such a tremendous adventure. Then the many months went by, and - when it was over - we heard that 8,000 men had tip-toed out one night, and then 9,000 and then 10,000. Soon the papers blared with the headline, "The Miracle of Gallipoli" - the evacuation. It's ironical to recall now that Churchill should have been so involved, when 25 years later, after Dunkirk, he would remind the House of Commons, "Wars are not won by evacuations."
But the Dardanelles had been Churchill's conception. We did not know at the time that it was also, as Clement Attlee would say, "the only great strategical idea of the First World War."....
lighterCATS IN THE CRADLE - Harry Chapin
My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it, and as he grew
He'd say "I'm gonna be like you dad
You know I'm gonna be like you"
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then
My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw", I said "Not today
I got a lot to do", he said, "That's ok"
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him"
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue , etc
Well, he came home from college just the other day
So much like a man I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head and said with a smile
"What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys
See you later, can I have them please?"
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue etc
I've long since retired, my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job's a hassle and kids have the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad
It's been sure nice talking to you"
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home son?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then
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