1. After having my kitchen renewed last summer I looked for something to put on the new walls…. and ended up buying several original pieces of art for different walls in the house, including one in my living room that had been bare for years. What is on your living room wall? Flying ducks, photos, posters, a stag’s head, a priceless Picasso or nothing?
2. Last week’s Aliquestions identified that some superstitions are maybe just habits. So, are you a creature of habit? When not controlled by work or other outside influences, do you follow the same routines or is every day a magical road of discovery? OCD sufferers need not respond.
3. Everybody needs good neighbours, so the song goes. I have been fairly lucky with neighbours in the past: most have been friendly and, in some cases, outright helpful. I’m on at least nodding terms with everyone in my current street apart from the nasties immediately next door, who are permanently angry at the world and appear to believe I’m to blame. Have you ever lived next door to note-worthily bad – or good – people?
4. An old codger asks: Headphones used to be devices for listening to stuff without disturbing family/housemates yet now, it seems, they are fashion items that insulate people from everyone in the street. Do you carry your personal soundtrack with you everywhere or do you endure the sound of traffic, birds and other humans instead?
5. Laughter is, of course, the best medicine. What or who is most likely to crack you up? A particular comedian, a classic sitcom, a film, a cartoon, a cat video, the bloke down the pub or even naked schadenfreude?
This is currently the penultimate EOTWQ, with uncleben scheduled for next week. Ali’s original idea to resurrect it has definitely been a success and, if anyone still wants a go, either speak up and I’ll schedule it or just do it when you have the urge! It can be a sporadic feature rather than an unbroken chain of posts.
The 'Spill 
Is the app Merlin? I really enjoy having help to identify the bird song and was very happy to record a raven when out walking in the Forest of Dean.
Yes, it is.
1. Art: We have a lot of paintings up – most by gifted amateurs and the few professional pieces we could afford. Latest is from a stunning local artist: https://meghanhildebrand.com/
2. habits: I developed the practice of scheduling appointments and running errands in mornings only. By midday my to-do list is clear and the rest of the day is mine. Great for motivation and mental health.
3. neighbours: Lived next to a reggae band. Their music (and other things) would waft into our apartment starting about 10 pm most nights.
4. Headphones: I’d be fine with birds or even traffic. It’s people-cancelling headphones for me.
5. I saw Robin Williams in his classic coke-fueled days. Pulled an oblique muscle or two. On the screen, Kevin Kline cracked me up in In & Out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBPm2Xom_y4
Interesting images. Are the places they seem to portray near you?
Pretty much. Southwestrn B.C.
I do like the paintings - my first thought was that they’re in quite a graphic style – they’d be wonderful as illustrations or posters. Very attractive.
Yeah, they would. Many look like textile collages but they’re all paintings.
Thanks Chris!
Rab C Nesbit – I used to have to put the subtitles on, but he was very funny. All the characters were so perfectly cast – just wonderful.
I do have the capacity for laughing myself silly now and again. WILTY and QI often have that effect. Bob Mortimer always makes me smile, as did the late Barry Humphries in his guise as Dame Edna.
I tend to laugh at ridiculous situations like me getting my leg stuck in a bog on the Pennine Way. Or my son being buzzed by a bat in his bedroom. 🙄
I’m in accord with Ali, mostly. But habitually putting things in their designated spot? Whatever! Chaos rules supreme!
as far as belly laughs go, my grandson told me a knock knock joke that made me laugh, mainly because I know now that I have indoctrinated him enough to drive his mum daft. He (AGE 6) also remarked to me that “there must be 4 elephants in the fridge there” when we drove past a house with a mini parked outside. I had to pull over I was laughing so much. Can’t wait to tell him why an elephant has 4 feet, but he’s too young yet!!
(This was from LTS)
Grandsons! Mine – now 20 – has been a constant source of amusement from when he was a toddler onwards.
Yesterday I must have been a little preoccupied when he told me that his girlfriend was upset because her pet mouse, Elvis, had died.
He was caught in a trap…
🤣
House next to ours was a grow op in one place I lived. Quiet as can be, they were! Wanted to keep their heads down, I guess. After they were busted the house was bought by an alcoholic dump truck driver who took out power to the whole area when he drove to the liquor store with the box up. I preferred the grow op.
Yeah, they would have been fine without the air rifle…
We have a 48-bottle wine rack in the fireplace in the dining room half of our knocked-through downstairs.
It gets regularly refilled.
I need considerably bigger fireplaces
Thanks, Chris, for setting the questions – I think we should continue with it, perhaps doing it sporadically as you suggest, I really don’t mind. I gather from what you say that there was a previous series, which I missed, so I wouldn’t mind setting some more questions in the future.
Wyngate has just volunteered to do 24th April. Shall I pencil you in for the 1st May, or would you prefer a more sponteneous appearance?
1) Living room has my daughters GCSE piece, a collage of photos and paintings of the Humber Bridge
2) Every day is a mystery, depending on weather and who has the car, but for some time has always started with wordle and quordle
3) Had a pair of neighbours that had a feud. It was better than the telly, peaking out to see what happened next .. lots of eggs thrown at windows and rubbish tipped on doorsteps
Otherwise both families were quite nice
4) Spent most of my working life cycling to some office or other. It was only late on that MP3 players came out and I did enjoy a listen on the way there and back. However the random shuffle, never was random and kept playing the Jam or an ELP track that was longer than either journey
5) In her early teens my daughter read about a musical called ‘Spamalot’ and was intrigued. She had no idea what spam was or how much would be a lot. So one rainy Sunday I shut her and younger brother in a room to watch three videos. It was too much of a jump into the deep end to start with Monty Python, so it was a gradual introduction of Duck Soup, Young Frankenstein and then finally Python’s Holy Grail – a fine education, I reckon
( I would add Steamboat Bill Junior but they’ve never taken to Keaton )
Our living room wall is adorned with two large mirrors, one that you can look at yourself in, but the other above a fireplace and too high to serve any practical purpose other than reflecting light. I’ve been meaning to do something about this for the last 30 years or so but haven’t quite got round to it yet. We also have a framed poster for Antony Gormley’s 2007 Blind Light exhibition (which I like a lot) and a few other less notable framed pictures.
I always begin my day with the same breakfast – one cup of strong builders’ tea, a bagel with marmalade, and a bowl of yoghurt with apple, toasted seeds and date syrup. I took the toasted seeds and date syrup on holiday with me last week to be sure the routine wouldn’t go interrupted. I do Wordle and Quizl while I’m eating my breakfast. Once I’ve set myself up for the day in this way, I try not to be quite so habit-bound.
When I was about 12, the two young children who lived next door to us took great exception to my daily piano practice. This wasn’t a wholly unreasonable reaction. We had paper-thin walls and I wasn’t a good piano player. But I could have done without listening to the chant they used to sing in the garden – “We hate our neighbours, they always play the piano”. I was very heartened when, about a couple of years after moving into our current house (in 1994), I called on one of our neighbours (then I’m guessing in her 70s) to apologise for the racket we’d made staying up into the early hours playing loud music and she told me there was no need to apologise and they’d had much more raucous parties in their day.
I do listen to both music and podcasts a lot when I’m out and about, particularly when I’m running. If the weather’s good, I sometimes walk the hour and a half or so back from work and listen to a few podcasts on the way.
I hope this doesn’t mean I’m getting mean-spirited and humourless in my middle to late age, but I very rarely find myself laughing out loud anymore. As a child, I remember being in agonies of laughter watching Fawlty Towers, Dad’s Army and the like. And in the late 80s and early 90s, I had similar experiences going to comedy nights, one of my earliest such memories being Jack Dee and Michael Redmond at the Woolwich Tramshed.
The piano story reminds me of the guy who complained about a neighbour who blasted music in the wee hours …. which made it hard to concentrate on his drum practice.
I don’t have any pictures actually attached to the walls because I can’t be trusted with a drill or a hammer. Even the mirror and the clock were put up by someone else. I do have some Doctor Who related pics propped up on the window sill and signed photos of Olivia Chaney and Bette Davis on to of a bookcase in the back bedroom. All family photos are in albums. Real ones, not digitised.
I tend to get up, have meals and go to bed at the same times most days. And I go swimming and visit my dad on the same days every week. Apart from that I am fairly disorderly.
I have lovely neighbours living upstairs from me now but in the past I have had some of the worst people in the world playing the loudest music in the world until (or sometimes starting at starting at) three in the morning on a regular basis. And getting up the next day to find my back garden full of cigarette butts, paper plates and sometimes broken glass, This carried on for several years with their landlord, the council and the police all terminally uninterested in doing anything about it. I did actually fear for my mental health for a while.
Like a lot of people here, I used to have a Walkman when they first came out. I still have a portable MP3 player, but I never use it. Apart from anything else I have a habit of tripping over paving stones if my mind is not firmly fixed on where I am going. And I like to read a book on tube and train journeys because then I know I won’t get distracted and wander off into another room.
Hardly anything makes me laugh out loud as an adult, although Fawlty Towers still does sometimes. When I was a kid I used to laugh my head off at I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again on the radio and Marty Feldman on the telly.
What is on your living room wall?
A mixture of things. Photographs, a couple of small pieces of art, art reproductions, the TV (mounted on the chimney breast) other space is filled with CD racking and bookcases.
Are you a creature of habit?
Yeah, I suppose I am. Having a routine stops me from lying in bed all day, reading.
Have you ever lived next door to note-worthily bad – or good – people?
Never experienced any bad people and our current neighbours on both sides are really nice.
Do you carry your personal soundtrack with you everywhere?
I always have music when I’m driving but I don’t ever listen to anything when I’m walking around. I think it is weird cutting oneself off from the rest of the world like that.
What or who is most likely to crack you up?
Hard to say, really. I have a fairly odd sense of humour, I think. For example, I am a huge fan of Round The Horne, especially Sandy and Julian’s Polari sketches. Apart from that, it is pretty random.
Loved Round the Horne – I can remember, as a teenager, being barely able to stand up for laughing at one of the gags. Yes, Sandy and Julian were very special and much loved, and without them, I wouldn’t be able to understand Polari! I think, in a small way, they encouraged people to be more tolerant and open-minded. Bona Law -‘We’ve a criminal practice that takes up most of our time!’ Everyone knew what was being implied, but who would send Jules and Sand to prison? Because that was the reality, almost unbelievably now, in those days.
Yes, the reality was terrible and it never really changed after Wolfenden in 1957 and eventual decriminalisation in 1967 (which only applied to England and Wales anyway). I had gay male friends who were convicted of soliciting in the 1980s, usually by being given the come-on by undercover police officers in public toilets or in parks where gay men used to hang out. Of course, there was Section 28 in the 1980s, but we had to wait until 2010 for the Equality Act which removed all the remaining odds and ends of anti-LGBT law. It sadly seems that the Right now wants to remove rights from transmen and transwomen as part of the vile culture war which is being waged agaist progressive liberal society.
On my wall I have a Van Gogh print from a charity shop, an oval mirror on the opposite wall and an aerial view of Filbert St.
I don’t have a particular routine. I used to smoke but kicked the habit
We used to have neighbour who hammered, every evening,
and morning,noon and night at weekends…They moved out after a while and the new neighbours are lovely.
I Listen to music on bus journeys but not out walking
Terry Pratchett never fails to make me laugh, and Father Ted is never to be missed either.
Cool, we have a paitning by my grandfather on our wall too. Why fish?
My eldest son has one wall still papered in a scene from the late cretaceous period with a volcano, dinosaurs, ferns and cycads. He asked if it could remain when I redecorated, so I left it.
I’m a bit a creature of habit, but in an unstructured way if that makes sense. For example , I’ll eat the same thing most days for breakfast year in year out (Shreddies or cheaper equivalents in case you’re wondering) but I’m not rigid about say, the time I have it.
1. Our walls, aside from a mirror an some plants, are covered with photographs my wife has taken. She has a keen eye. My favorite < at least in the living room, is a large print of the Chicago shoreline at sunset following a particularly violent storm. We had scheduled a sailing trip, thought sure it would be canceled, but by evening the Lake was quite placid and she took a series of marvelous images.
2. Coffee, oatmeal and some form of written news. Then I’m open to the wonder.
3. Haven’t had any truly noxious neighbors since college years. So lucky that way.
4.I’ve been using headphones while I ski for 40 years now coinciding with the Walkman intro. I used to listen while I biked but the need to stay alert overrode the pleasure. Beyond that it’s the natural sounds. I’m truly baffled by people who hike with headphones.
5. Richard Pryor & Robin Williams when they were with us. I’ve 2 close friends and we have fallen out in incongruous places more than a few times much to the chagrin of our wives.
What is on your living room wall?
A ‘MAYES – Legend of the Dragonhunter’ tour poster from 2019. A band that didn’t make it through the Covid lockdowns, that was their final tour. (Wipes tear from eye)
Are you a creature of habit?
I only have bad habits and I’m not discussing them here.
Have you ever lived next door to note-worthily bad – or good – people?
I live in a not-quite-a-commune and a couple of years ago one neighbour stabbed another for picking a bloom from a rhodendron. The first guy has since been released from prison (this was several years ago), but is banned from setting foot here ever again. The stabbee died in a house fire two years ago, which we’re still incredibly sad about.
Do you carry your personal soundtrack with you everywhere?
No, I need to listen to the sounds of the world around me.
What or who is most likely to crack you up?
I love to laugh. YES! to Round the Horne, Bill Bailey, Fawlty Towers – Father Ted never made it this far, so I’ll have to take everybody’s word on that. German humour is a bit of an acquired taste and I haven’t really made it that far, but I recently saw the magicians Siegfried & Joy and could hardly breathe for laughing. You’ll find them on all the social media places, generally annoying people by posting the same golden curtain trick over and over again.
Never had any really bad neighbours. When growing up we had a headmaster next door who could be quite pompous and his wife who seemed to be quite delicate, possibly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My mum and dad used to find him unintentionally amusing. When Clockwise came out starring they were higfhly amused at how similar John Cleese’s headmaster was to him. He once walked onto a front garden and started digging a hole. It turned out he’s worked out there was a sunken manhole cover there, and my parents being pragmatic were fine with it, but the fact he didn’t tell us first seemed to speak volumes.
When he got offered the headmaster post he went round to tell a friend and walking up his driveway in the dark tripped and fell in a pile of manure. like I say, he seemed like a John Cleese character.
Years later the neighbours who replaced them who were a bit more down to erath told me they’d continued to receive mail addressed to the headmaster including magazines relating to the swinging lifestyle!
A few years back we moved back to the same house to look after my dad. The house on the other side had a young woman who’d turned it into a party house with people regularly staying late apparently doing coke and sometimes playing loud music – unexpected after living for years in less salubrious areas. It wasn’t too bad though, if we asked them to turn the music down they would without any fuss, my biggest worry was if there were ever any problems with dealers. In the end her mum and dad who owned the house moved back in and it all calmed down.
As for good neighbours , I used to really like the teachers who lived next door when I was 4 or 5 , and was round their all the time playing with their daughter who was a couple of years older who I saw as my best friend. They moved away but I still used to go and visit and stay over until the age of about 14.
I used a tape walkman for years, in fact I last bought one in 2011. I think I was the last person at the nearest Argos to buy one. The young woman who served me looked at it in astonishment and exclaimed “That’s well old school!” So am I. It finally died a death and I haven’t replaced it with an alternative, not least because I don’t want to make my tolerable level of tinnitus worse. Some memorable experiences though such as on a train hitting a slightly grandiose keyboard bit on a Confict track just as I was witnessing sunset over highland moorlands; and listening to this track as I walked across a park in the pitch dark.
Crack me up? Don’t know. Like some here , I’m a bit more “laugh on the inside”. Peepshow and Alan Partridge are favourites. I do laugh out loud , and occasionally have fits of high pitched giggles, but it’s hard to pin down what would set this off.
I think the most I have laughed on one occasion was on a coach trip back from London with a mate who was already an “interesting charcater” but had taken far too much speed. He went to the toilet at one point and the coach went over a bump and he could be heard the length of the coach shouting “WHAT’S HAPPENING MAN?!! IT’S LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER! IT’S LIKE (Alton Towers theme park ride) NEMESIS!” When he emerged he got involved in a very animated but very earnest discussion with another passenger about how difficult it had been to aim under these circumstances , and the ins and outs of going to the toilet as a man. The passenger nodded along but looked terrified. I was reduced to fits of hysterical laughter and could hardly breathe, through which I tried to plead with him to stop because I couldn’t cope anymore. Soon half the passengers on the coach were laughing as well, much to my un-self aware mate’s bemusement.
And yes I’m happy to set the questions again , so book me in!
OK. You’re up on the 24th of this month!
The last Curb was very satisfying indeed. And funny.
We have a painting by my grandfather of Botallack in Cornwall downstairs and a painting by RR regular from the past Amanda Bates of Grey Wethers stone circles in Devon upstairs and some clocks. I would have prints of preraphaelite paintings up, but I do not live alone.
I feel like my schedule is at the mercy of others sometimes, but I tend to rise early and go to bed earlier than everyone else, usually have a walk if I can.
We have nice neighbours and exchange Christmas cards. Currently we have scaffolding up which is inconveniencing our next door neighbours as it goes into their drive, but they are being very understanding about it.
I feel, for security, that I need to hear the world around me when I am out, so only use headphones when at home if I want some peaceful time.
I am easily amused and recently laughed until I was sick at an episode of Taskmaster. It is good to laugh, but it can sometimes be quite dangerous.
I love Taskmaster. It is inevitable that I will splutter with laughter at something almost every episode! There has only been one so far in the current series but there will be more, I am certain.
I have watched Ep7 of Series 7 several times and it always cracks me up despite knowing how angry Rhod Gilbert will make James Acaster…….
This series hasn’t tickled my funnybone as much as others, yet, but as you say, there are often moments which have me crying with laughter, or acutally unable to breathe because I am giggling so much. Rewatching still works too. It is a very silly show, glad to find another fan 🙂
Jenny Eclair on the barge, Mike Wozniak doing almost anything, Bridget Christie’s chicken dance, so many moments.
…and Joe Wilkinson’s potato hole-in-one!
My answers:
One: I now have a mix of prints and original paintings on my walls, vaguely linked by architecture, plus a thangka from a shop behind the Jokang Temple in Lhasa and a mirror.
Two: I’ve accidentally settled into quite a strict timetable since retiring that provides a comforting rhythm and framework for my days.
Three: I may finally be getting GMP to stop my repulsive neighbours from taking out their anger and frustration out on me. It’s only taken them 4 years of ignoring my cries for help and my neighbours’ threats and insults.
Four: My only headphones can’t be used outdoors.
Five: Having been raised on Round The Horne, the Goon Show (cartoon) and Monty Python, I love the absurd no matter where it appears. I have laughed out loud at the ridiculous statements from politicians, as well as at the likes of Eddie Izzard (their early days), Milton Jones and Bob Mortimer. Like beth, I love Taskmaster, the most absurd and reliably funny show on TV.