Sherry...isn't she lovely?

Lawrence at our regular breakfast meet this morning....isn't he - er...

230

In this blogposting…
*AGM XXI
*Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
*Top Ten
*Spepere
Now, let the devil take the hindmost…

AGM XXI...
...will take place at 1100 on Thursday 11 November in Mowbray Park, Sunderland.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month...

THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU DIDN’T KNOW
A big thankyou to Dave Shannon who has directed me to the Magazine Monitor of the BBC’s website. One of its features is the wonderful 10 Things We Didn’t Know Last Week - grist to the truckshunter mill. All these unlikely snippets of (comparatively) useless information were taken from last week’s tv, radio, newspapers and magazines.

* Crows go to school.
* Flamingos use make-up.
* John and Margaret were the most popular baby names for 30 years.
* Polar bears wave.
* More than half of all Americans dress up at Halloween.
* The normal lifespan of an octopus is three years.
* Liberalism is genetic.
* A footballer can be allergic to grass.
* Mount Everest has its own 3G wireless network.
* Some 7.2 million British people get by without a wristwatch.

Aren’t they wonderful?

(Personally, I’d feel naked without a wristwatch.)

TOP TEN
Kev has sent me these heavily-sarcastic lists of the Top Ten Reasons To Be….
I hope that, like me, you’re able to lay your laudable sense of ‘political correctness’ to one side for a while and find them as harmlessly funny as I did.

TOP TEN REASONS FOR BEING DUTCH
1 You can get arrested for growing plants, but not for smoking them.
2 You can make jokes about the Belgians and still drink their beer.
3a You can legally kill yourself
3b You can legally be killed
4 You're exactly like the Germans, except that nobody hates you.
5 You think you are a world power, but everyone else thinks Copenhagen is your capital...
6 You get to insult people and defend yourself by saying it's a national tradition.
7 You can put your finger in a dyke and it will save your country
8 You live in the most densely populated country in Europe, and still you've never seen your neighbours.
9 If the economy is bad, blame the Germans. If a war is started, blame the Germans. If you lose your keys, blame the Germans.
10 Bikes are public property. Locks are a challenge.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING BELGIAN
1 You get to speak three languages, but none of them intelligibly.
2 If other countries want to fight a war, they will do it in your country.
3 You can brew drinks out of fruit, and still call it beer.
4 You are either
4a Like the Dutch, just less efficient
4b Like the French, just less romantic
4c Like the Germans
5 Decent fries. Real mayonnaise. Great chocolate. The best beer.
6 No one knows anything about you, except for the Dutch and French and they make fun of you.
7 More scandals in a week than any other country in a decade.
8 You can drive like a maniac on the road and nobody cares.
9 All your famous countrymen are either imaginary, or sex-offenders.
10 Face it. It's not really a country, is it?

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING FRENCH
1 When speaking fast you can make yourself sound gay.
2 Experience the joy of winning the World Cup for the first time.
3 You get to eat insect food like snails and frog's legs.
4 If there's a war you can surrender really early.
5 You don't have to read the subtitles on those late night films on Channel 4.
6 You can test your own nuclear weapons in other people's countries.
7 You can be ugly and still become a famous film star.
8 Allow Germans to march up and down your most famous street humiliating your sense of national pride.
9 You don't have to bother with toilets, just @!#$ in the street.
10 People think you're a great lover even when you're not.

If you can think of any more, please feel free to send them to me.

And speaking of being French…

SPEPERE
Eagle-eyed truckshunters may have noticed that Serge has become the latest follower (or ‘member’) of this blog - and not before time.

If you click on his photo at the top-left corner of the ‘Followers’ box on this main page, his membership pop-up window will appear. Click on the topmost ‘spepere’ link and you’ll be taken directly to his blog. (At least, that’s how you do it on a Mac; I’m not quite sure about Windows.)

Serge’s blog is still very much a work-in-progress; he only started it two days ago as a kind of experiment.

It’s in French (naturally) but he has included quite a few photos that you may like to take a look at. The one at the top is of the ancient, and very beautiful, city of Annecy. Then there are some pictures of the AGM Serge attended in August at the Tanfield Railway, followed by a few images (including a video) of the amazing Parc des Oiseaux (Bird Park) at Villars-les-Dombes.

I hope you like them.

Incidentally, I felt it was only polite, in view of this new international dimension to our friendly society, to devise a French version of ‘truckshunters’. However, because of the analytical nature of that abominable language, the best I’ve come up with is…...wait for it….

Aiguillieres des Wagons a Plate-Formes.

If anyone can concoct something less tedious, I’d be very grateful.

CONTACT ME...
...either by leaving a comment in the Comments box of the blog or by sending an email to truckshunters@googlemail.com