A FROG goes to a fortune-teller who gazes long and hard into her crystal ball. “You are going to meet the most beautiful young girl who will want to know everything about you,” the woman finally mutters. “Tremendous!” shrieks the frog. “Do I meet her at a party?”
The fortune-teller again stares, eyes creased, into the crystal. “Noooo,” she says. “It looks like a biology class to me.”
TWO country and western fans stagger out of a zoo with their clothes in shreds. “You know what?” one says to his pal. “That lion dancing is a lot more dangerous than they make out.”
I'LL never forget my grandfather’s last words. “A truck!” A COUPLE couple of house-hunters stopped me and asked what the death rate was in our parish. Same as everywhere else, I told them – one per person. I INTEND to push the boat out on Valentine’s Day. After the sterling job my wife did fixing loose slates on our roof, she deserves only the best. My gift will be a tad more romantic than last year, though the nasal hair clippers have come in very handy – for us all. And I won’t make the same mistake of combining, in a clumsy attempt to save cash, my Valentine’s message in the local press with a vital classified advert.
The ad proved a resounding success, however, with no end of people ringing Chateau Lockley and asking excitedly: “Is that Mr Squidgy Bottom? Has the Ford Escort gone yet?”
Our trendy vicar, The Rev. Ricky, stopped me in the street this week and asked if we’d be attending his Valentine’s service for lovers. It is a chance for couples to renew their vows, explained the cleric.
I thanked him, but explained I hadn’t used the old ones yet.
“We will,” he boomed, getting on his CofE soapbox, “explore what love is, discover the correct way to love and, in some cases, learn how to love.”
“Listen, vicar,” I told him sternly. “Me and Mrs Lockley have absolutely no problems on that front – and if we did I wouldn’t discuss it in front of the altar boys.
“Anyway, I did all that stuff in Third Year biology. Once I finally realised dissecting a rat isn’t THAT important a part of the reproduction process, I was fine.”
The red-faced vicar huffed and said I’d got it wrong. There is a profound difference between love and base sex, he stammered. I’ve been drunk at enough seedy discos to know that, vicar.
“It’s all a loud of rubbish,” moaned Colin over a frothing pint in The Bell’s now smoke-free snug. “I don’t need some phoney occasion as an excuse to tell my wife I love her.”
I asked when was the last time he’d told his wife he loved her.
“About a couple of years before she ran off with that binman from Wood End,” he mumbled, staring at the bottom of his pint-pot. “I didn’t actually say I loved her, I said ‘be a love and pass the TV remote,’ but she knew what I meant.”
I envy the elderly couple up the road, both in their 80s, but they stroll the parish streets hand-in-hand. “That’s because one of them is blind,” pointed out Colin. “If she didn’t hold him, he’d walk into a lamppost.”
I intend to make Valentine’s Day special, I proudly told my colleague. A meal at a fancy restaurant, free-flowing wine, perhaps some chocolates – then I’ll select the largest battered cod, from the best chippie, for my wife on the way home.
I’ll stroll into the house and put on the one record that reminds me of the first time we met: Wide Eyed And Legless. “That’s hardly appropriate,” scoffed Colin. “We met at a friend’s wedding reception,” I explained, testily. “I can hardly put on The Birdie Song, can I?”
“What’s the best way of putting a little fire back in your marriage?” I asked the pub sage.
“You want to get some of that chocolate body paint – put a bit of spice into Valentine’s night.” “Been there, done that,” I told him. “The wife was on a diet. She insisted I only smear the ‘teenies’ amount on my elbows. Elbow-licking just doesn’t do a thing for me.”
The most romantic thing I’ve ever done is send ten bouquets to my wife’s workplace. “Did you appreciate my little gesture?” I purred down the phone. “I did,” she shouted, “but the seven hayfever sufferers who have been home coughing and spluttering most certainly didn’t.”
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