Mike's Random Muses

Well, the badger award for the quiz this week, goes to Blue Witch, who happened to be the only person to make any sort of entry in the competition. Click the badger image to link to her site. 


I'm not sure what the low response says about the quiz at all.

Was it too hard, Too boring, just plain stupid, is no one interested in quizes? Was the fact no prize was available put people off or were they just plain scared of been labelled an old fart? If so should I change the quiz title?

Whatever. I'm on holiday from tonight so I intend to extend the quiz deadline. So if anyone is bothered at all you can keep answering the questions until I get back a week on Monday (4th April). I'll post all the answers then.

Ananova reports: "Tony Christie has landed a £50,000 contract to become the face of Stilton cheese"

Somehow I find this entirely apt.

For the want of something better to blog, I've come up with a little quiz. There are 20 questions involved in the quiz including the multi-parters. The rules are simple;

1. One answer per day per person is allowed in the comments, or
2. You can email me all the answers.

As it's a shortish week the cut off for emailed entries is 12 noon GMT on Thursday 24th March. Obviously as I'm a cheap-skate there are no prizes on offer, but the winner will be awarded a "Mike's Muses Badger" in the form of, a winners announcement and link to the winners homepage of their choice. So if you do happen to email me, then include your requested homepage link somewhere in the entry.

Most of the questions are music or old advertisement related. For the want of a better title I give you;

The 'Old Farts' Quiz:

1. Which product cleaned a big, big carpet for less than half a crown?
2. Whose World is built around Punctuality?
3. What looks good, tastes good, and by golly it does you good?
4. i. Name the lady from a background of pearls?
4. ii. What was the title of the song?
4. iii. Name the group who recorded it.

5. What stuck to the tires after the summer rain?
6. Which group sang about a magic carpet ride?
7. i. Who were shifting gears at half past four?
7. ii. What were they singing about?

8. In 1973 Roger Daltrey released his 1st solo album, Daltrey. Which 'One Man Band' co-wrote many of the tracks on the album?
9. Which 1948 Film was the classic Blazing Saddles line: "Badges, we don't need no stinking badges" taken from?
10. Who sang about "Me and you and you and me"?
11. What word does Donovan rarely use in his song Colours?
12. He Smiled with the risin' sun, but what sat by his doorstep?

13. In 1967 who claimed that Uncle Arthur liked his mommy?
14. Who put a tiger in your tank?
15. In 1956 what was mum asked not to forget?
16. What product was advertised in the first commercial shown on TV in Britain.
17. Who roller skated to your door at daylight?

Just in case of arguments, my decision is final.

PS. Question 4 is a bit specialist and the song wasn't a hit, so I don't think too many will get the answer without the aid of a search engine.

In case anyone is wondering why some of the images in my archives have disappeared, I kept them on Lycos, but they have revoked my account, as I wasn't using it as a Website. I'll either be using my Fotopage site or the Hello program by Picasa to post images from now on.

Apart from the moan below we had a pretty good weekend. As everyone knows, Saturday was a damned fine day. We took the opportunity to get down to some serious weeding. Mrs C de-weeded some borders whilst I stripped to the waist and started de-gunging the pond of blanket weed and various other growths. Not a sight to behold I can tell you. Mind, I did get one wolf-whistle but that was from my step-daughter trying to extract the Michael out of me.

Anyway a close inspection of the pond revealed what Birdman told us just over a week ago, nature is rampant. There is frog spawn by the bucket load, I counted 3 mating pairs of frogs all going at it like hammer and tongs. They totally ignored me dredging up handfuls of weed, except when I got a bit too close to their future offspring and then they would investigate what I was up to. One brave amphibian even butted my arm at one point.

It wasn't only the frogs that had been active, the goldfish were showing signs of pairing off and at least 3 females were bulging with eggs. I spotted 3 small fish around an inch long who are probably fry from last years spawning. I think the newt population has risen too, I spotted around 5 of them, though they were only fleeting glimpses as they rose quickly to grab a lung full of air and then dash down for cover again. There's still life in the pond, even if the pumps, that operate the cascade, have stopped working for some, as yet to be discovered, reason.

If you ever want want to be left stranded miles from anywhere at midnight, left with the prospect of a 3 to 4 mile walk home, down dark country lanes, then I've got just the company for you; Skem-Express Cars of Skelmersdale. All you have to do is book a taxi for your journey home, a couple of days before you require it, then Skem-Express Cars Ltd will guarantee to send out a taxi, for the booked time, if they feel like it and, there happens to be a free one passing by the locality at that time.

Yes, we happened to fall foul of this particular bunch of charlatans at the weekend. I should have known that there were going to be problems when they failed to turn up on time for the outward journey, they turned up 20 minutes late and then only after I had phoned to ask where the driver was. Given that initial problem, I asked the driver to confirm that they had a booking for the return journey at 11:30pm. I was assured that they did, and actually heard the confirmation on the drivers radio.

Suffice to say that after a superb meal at the local golf club restaurant, the return taxi failed to appear at the designated time. I gave them 10 minutes lee-way and phoned the office;

"It's ok they replied, he's on his way and will be there in a minute".

Fifteen minutes later the overnight caretaker said he'd chase them up, the staff were starting to leave by then. He got the reply, "There's no one on the way, we haven't got any cabs available and don't know when we'll get one free". Brilliant! By this time most of the staff had gone, the caretaker said he'd try out some more reliable cab companies but given the time of night (the reason we'd booked one in advance in the first place) we might struggle to get one. Whilst he was phoning round; I got onto the phone to "Skem-Express Cabs" to voice my displeasure and find out what they were playing at.

You might find it surprising to know that booking a cab in advance with this company doesn't guarantee you a cab at all, it does allow you to be considered if they have a cab in the area, but if their cabs are dealing with more lucrative fares or shuttle runs to and from pubs, then effectively you can forget all about your pre-booked cab. When I asked for the owners details I was given a name and phone number. It came as no surprise to find the number I had been given was a Fax number.

In the meantime the caretaker was getting no joy elsewhere and I could see that they were wanting to lock up. There were 3 staff remaining, no doubt waiting until all the customers had left (ie. Mrs C and myself) before leaving the caretaker on his own for the night. I was beginning to consider how to break the news to Mrs C that we were in for a long walk home along some pretty dark country lanes, when one of the young waiters said he would take us home and honestly it wasn't out of his way.

To say we were relieved is an understatement, the waiter was duly rewarded with double the amount I would have paid for the taxi ride home. Even though he refused payment 3 times Mrs C and I forced him to take the money offered. So to the staff at Houghwood Golf Club, Billinge, I give a big thank you, you obviously know what good customer service is.

To Skem-Express Cars, I'm giving you more than a big thumbs down, your attitude towards pre-booked customers stinks. I might just be exploring legal ways to make business very difficult for you in the future.

If anyone else wishes to enjoy the lottery of booking a ride with this company then please feel free to e:mail me for their phone number, They're guaranteed not to turn up on time or not at all.

Have you ever wondered how popular your name has been over the ages? Well between 1900 and 2003 in America to be precise? Then look no further, you can find out at The Baby Name Wizard, which actually seems to be a an advert for a Baby naming book.

Michael seems to be pretty popular, having held the number 1 spot for 7 decades, before plummeting to number 2 in 2003.

A comment that I left on one of Jack's posts led me to this:

Rocky Horrorscopes from Mystic Magenta She sees sod all

CANCER (June 22 - July 22)
There is an old Chinese proverb. Anyway, this month sees you at your best, however this will only be during sleep. Get someone else to record you asleep and play it back when you are awake to see what you are missing. A black dog may cross your path, as long as it isn't chasing a black cat you will be fine. Your lucky calculator is a Casio M5-8TV.

What's your Rocky Horrorscope?

No you haven't got rid of me that easily, work continues to take up far too much of my time, but I thought it's about time I came in and delivered another update, if only to say I'm still here and honestly will be back all in good time.

A fair few things have happened over the last few weeks, some of which really got my goat but as I'm not posting regularly I'll steer clear of the negative stuff, I've ranted enough in the last post.

We finally got to one of the concerts at the weekend, the Michael MacDonald one. We started the evening with a pre-concert drink in the Philharmonic Pub on the corner of Hope St and Hardman St in Liverpool, if you haven't been there, you have to see it to believe it, it's like a Victorian time-capsule, the only thing is, it does get very busy and although it sells a good choice of damned good beers, it's a nightmare at times trying to get served.

The concert at the Philharmonic Hall was one was Mrs C's choice, I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I even knew a fair few of his songs which surprised me. Granted he did a fair job of promoting his latest album of Motown Hits by singing a number of tracks from the album, but it was a good performance. He has a good voice and certainly performs to the audience. He started his performance at around 20:20pm and finished at 21:30, which I thought was pretty mean, but give the man his due he came back and did another half hour as a result of shouts for more. Then as a result of more chanting, cheering and requests for even more he came back again and finally finished to a standing ovation at 22:30. By this time the crowd were satisfied that we had had our monies worth.

On Sunday we finally picked up the tickets for The Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel Concert at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester in September. We also booked a couple of nights in a Guest House in the Clifton area of York for the end of the month. So we have a fair bit to look forward to.

In the last couple of weeks I've had an idea or two about how to force myself to make more regular posts to this blog, but you'll have to wait a little longer for those ideas to ferment a bit and take on a better form.