How can you make cheap or free international calls (not on FaceTime watsapp etc) now there is no Skype. TIA

I do hope Andrew is ok I know he has health issues but at this rate it will take 27 years to finish

Have any of you appeared at the fringe?

Number one son has just got the lead role in a play there this summer. he has a production team who will sort out accommodation etc but do you have any advice for someone playing there (and visiting) for the first time? He’s 19 and still a bit damp behind the lugs.

I am so sick of lies from the mega rich.

Man Utd were going to go bust by Christmas according to Offshore Jim unless they sacked the tea lady and now they’ve found 2 billion for a new 100,000 seat stadium, the worlds largest outdoor space, a megastore and 17,000 houses.

I’m equally sick of journalists who can’t work out that 2 billion divided by 17,000 is about £117,000 which will barely build you a pigeon loft.

That’s only beaten by Musks plans for a New York to London tunnel costing half as much as the HS2.

Are we in a world where mega projects are just floated to see who bites? I lived in Dubai for 20 years and this happened all the time. See World Islands or flying taxis (to be fully operable by 2018).

Trump, climate change, war in Ukraine, Derek Hatton charged with bribery …. Wait … what???

Seems there’s life in the old dog yet. They’ll be stopping school milk next.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c17qn4ng0gko

Me and my dad were on the same wavelength comedy wise. We used to laugh our socks off at made up song titles … I’m not sure where they came from maybe music hall days?

Such tunes as …

Get the coal in mother (coz there’s not enough slack in your drawers)

I was one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about

Get the meat balls out grandma (coz we’re coming to a fork in the road)

Mother hold the candle (while I shave the chickens cheek)

Any others?

I can never stand under a bare lightbulb without making it swing and saying ‘Callan’. I’ve been doing this for years and NOBODY has ever laughed yet I persist and as the sands of time slip from my fingers the chances of anyone ever laughing become less and less.

What makes you and only you laugh?

And just to prove it I’m going to pronounce a word totally differently to the accepted norm.

Previously Boadicea was of course the standard for this but Putin is making ground on the rails.

Freddy Garrity was Peter Noones milkman.

I was Peter Noones milkman … good name for a fashion boutique.

What’s your favourite South African song? This just brings a smile to my face and takes me back to balmy nights in Mpumalanga.

I’ve just been listening to WIYE and this weeks birthday boy was a gentleman called Chris who recalled seeing Cream at the late lamented Atlanta Ballroom in Woking. Funnily enough I was talking about the Atlanta the other day recounting its famous sprung dance floor. I’m too young to have been but I do remember seeing it before it was pulled down in the 70s.

Things often come back from the past in the most unexpected moments. It was a venue my mum and dad went to every week in the 50s when they were courting. The days when you went with a partner rather than going to find one.

It brought more than a tear to my eye. So God bless you sir and thank you.

BTW the question did Cream ever play Woking again I don’t think they did but I suspect Eric has pulled out his guitar in some pub. Last time he was seen in the area was jamming with Hawkwind at G Live in Guildford a couple of years back.

This must be eating this bloke away. He’s now thinking of buying the rubbish tip.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj3eg3n11gvo

Mine are a bit old hat but here’s my current 3 go to’s …

The rest is history Americast History of rock in 500 songs

This could reveal an awful lot of history

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvrq7dyg6o

So Trumps going to throw out 2 million people from a sovereign state … send in the troops … and rebuild it to provide living room for foreigners.

I’m sure I’ve heard this idea before.

It’s a time of morning in America for the Washington air crash but Trump has weighed in. He has blamed the crash on diversity laws … laws that stood before during and after his first term.

Specifically he has blamed Biden Obama … and dwarfs … and employees with “complete paralysis”.

We are only a week or so in surely there’s much worse to come.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy7kxx74yxlt

I listen to a lot of Dylan these days … has he ever sworn on any song?

I saw the Decemberists in New York a while back. Great show and I came away thinking they coulda played Mariners Revenge … and Sons and Daughters … and This is Why We Fight … in fact without too much thinking I came up with a whole set list I would have gladly listened to. Looking through their set lists they’ve been touring the great new album As It Ever Was playing a fair bit of it live including Joan In The Garden as the ‘new’ Mariners. Is there any other band that plays from such an extensive canon that pays off seeing them again and again? It must take some rehearsing!

https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/the-decemberists-73d6aea5.html

Dumb question but does a radio with Bluetooth (such as makita site radios) mean I can play Spotify through it with my iPhone set on Bluetooth? Thx

Utterly baffling to me but they’ve pulled off an incredible feat. Evidently (which means there’s no evidence except my mate Mike) mossad sent out disinformation that hezbollahs phones were compromised. So they did what anyone would do and ordered a job lot from Thailand which mossad then tampered with. But surely many pagers must be in a store so why hasn’t some warehouse blown sky high? And how did all the explosives get through customs? They’ve just killed their ambassador! And how does the supply chain work? Were they distributed in a day or so? Because given the number of devices surely some would have gone in for repair?

Tipped for a few dates inc Glasto next year. Whenever it happens (and it’s about as likely as rain in Manchester) but did you notice Liam played only Oasis songs at the Leeds festival? Plus Walrus but inc that classic Digsys Dinner. Bit unfortunate if you were expecting tunes from his solo oeuvre.

I’ve no interest I saw them enough back in the day and loved them live but it looks like there’s now enough money on the table.

Do you still use old catch phrases that clearly mean nothing to either the yoof or even the not so yoof?

My go to greeting is “Hi De Hi” which hasn’t graced our screens for 36 years and now just receives a blank look and I can’t resist adding “the rock steady crew” if anyone says “hey you”… a chart smash of 41 years ago.

My dad often said “I remember the day war broke out” while rubbing his face Rob Wilton style and both of them now outdate that.

We all know that da ‘henge was built by druids hundreds of years before the dawn of history (for reasons unknown) but it’s now been established the crowning piece was from Scotland not Wales as once thought.

Built 5,124 years ago (according to wikipedia) I find it fascinating that they (you know, them) now believe the standing stones were from England, some smaller stuff was from Wales and the one stone parked on top of them all was from about 400 miles away in Scotland.

The navigation involved to get the stones and to know where they actually were when they chose them blows my mind. And the communication involved to get them and put them together over the years is fascinating.

Does it reflect their spheres of influence? Where you going? Scotland. Oooh, bring me back a piece of rock.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c207lqdn755o

Time to par tee starting with 1139.

Medals to be won … and there will be drug testing (but bring your own).

When I was 18 I’d never left England or been on a plane. But I had a hunger to see the world. My so called gap year (before the phrase had been turned) became a gap 3 years. 100 countries later and having lived in 10 of them I still have that hunger (or is it a thirst?). This autumn I’ll wave off number one son to uni … like all of his pals he is going straight from school and has no desire whatsoever to do any travelling first. Is this a trend? When I was a teen my idols were Attenborough and Wicker and my inspiration was dusty old history books about Egypt and India. Has the internet killed off the desire to see the world? I didn’t really know what was out there but now the internet tells you it all. Have kids lost their sense of adventure? I once stood outside my mums house in Surrey with a board saying Morocco … and ten days later I was there.