Illustration Friday - Old Fashioned

These days people mostly use the internet for courtship purposes; however, in those old-fashioned, mediaeval times, falconry was one of the few activities where male and female women of the opposite sex could mix without causing social disapproval.

It was, and still is, an excellent opportunity to get one's leg over, do a bit of riding, dogging and chasing birds.

Dear Agony Auntie,

I work for Timberhonger and District Mental Health Trust (that's part of the National Health Service. Sometimes I think it should be called the National Disease Service, and certainly the bit I work for wouldn't know mental health if it ran up and bit them on the bum, but that's guvverment propaganda for you).

I discovered today that there is a Policy for Writing Policies, and you can also download a leaflet supporting the Policy for Writing Policies and Procedures. However, I have just read the Fire Policy. It is a document which is 3mm thick, and I still don't know what to do in the event of a fire. It doesn't tell you.

This is getting increasingly crucial because a small conflagration has broken out in my bottom drawer. It is threatening my collection of spare bootlaces and the teabags have already gone up in smoke.

What should I do?

Yours,

Billius Tuddington, OBE
xxx

Get yourself a nice new furry jacket

This lovely item of designer jacketwear is hand-crafted from high-quality Astroturf and features optional mole hills, worm casts, weeds of varying degrees of commonality and house sparrows. The deluxe version also features a large lump of lion dung and a water feature.

Be the envy of your friends! At least, the ones who don't think you're a total pillock.

This is the sort of thing we grow in sunny Worcestershire

Just for today, this is perfectly true. Worcestershire IS sunny; I can see bits of it streaming through the window, hitting the floorboards and showing up all the dust!

Anyway, the pic above is going to the redoubtable Bill Stott, as a thank you for sending me one of my favourite cartoons of his - which can be seen here.

Here's another CCGB Entry

This time, it's a captionless one on the theme of the Wild West. But you'd already spotted that, hadn't you?

Dear Agony Auntie,

Well I was talking to this really hot bird I met when I was on my holidays but my house caught fire and I had to hang up really suddenly because the flames were lapping around near the turn-ups of my trousers and the phone melted and then I ran out of the house and accidentally dropped my mobile phone into a cesspit and I'd lost the piece of paper she'd written her phone number down on and I couldn't phone her because I'd stored the number in the other phones (now melted and drowned in cess) and eventually I decided to drive to a local library to look up her phone number on the internet. Her name is Renate Codswallop and she lives in a small village called Frogsbourne, in Derbyshire, and I thought this wouldn't be too difficult to find. It wasn't.

However, dear Auntie, my problems are now threefold:

- I haven't got any phones left
- Who's going to believe that story?
- My wife didn't believe it either.

What shall I do?

Yours,

Declan Bonklecroncher, FRSA
xxx

My plaster still hasn't dried out ...

which means I haven't been able to paint the bedroom walls and most of the stuff is disseminated throughout the house. It's chaos. I can't get to my desk or scanner, and I'm still sleeping (after a fashion) on that effin uncomfortable futon downstairs. So here's another strip from the archive: