Who’s A Pretty Boy Then?
Hi Again,
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Once more I am up early and the world is beguilingly quiet…and all mine.
Once again time seems to be stretching.
If I were an insomniac, it would be like having two lives. The private one and the public one.
I wonder how many writers do their writing at night, so that they can hear properly!
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Yesterday, I mentioned being ‘sick as a parrot‘ and as is usual with me, once I get an idea in my head, I cannot stop thinking about it.
So where did such a strange saying come from?
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It could be a reference to the fact that humans can catch a pneumonia-like disease, called Psittacosis. after breathing in the Chlamydophila from contact with affected parrots.
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It may also have been coined by sportsmen who were pissed off by not winning at their particular games.
Perhaps Australians made it up
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Somehow it seems antipodean to me.
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Try saying it with an Australian accent.
Not only did I find that to be great fun, but it is the sort of excellent humour that Australians exhibit.
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I am partial to Australian men. I have met some very handsome fellows in London.
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I also remember being out in Newcastle with my friend Valerie once, when we were young teenagers and getting very keen on men.
We were stopped by some huge American guys, dressed in shorts and wearing beautiful cowboy hats.
They were lost and needed to ask us for directions, they had wonderful smiles, and they kept calling us “Ma-am”.
Oh my!, we spent the rest of the day wanting them.
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I looked on Yahoo!Answers eventually and found a brilliant suggestion, that because there were US quarantine rules about bringing South American parrots in to the country. These smugglers would dose the birds with Tequila to keep them quiet as they were smuggled over the border.
No doubt the poor things were left with the avian version of ‘The Hangover From Hell’ – hence the phrase.
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I have decided that that suggestion definitely gets my vote!
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What a painting idea that phrase now conjures up for me.
I am putting it in my ‘mental ideas book’ for future use.
The colours would be stunning, although I am not sure that anyone would ever buy the resulting work.
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I think that God must have formed Tigers on the Seventh Day, as a moment of pure pleasure, just for himself, because they are so amazingly beautiful to look at, but parrots were probably created late on the Saturday night as a practice run.
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My goodness, is that the time. I must away for my cup of tea and my freshly toasted Warburton’s Potato pancake.
My obsession still rules me with a rod of iron.
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See you soon.
Lots of love
J
Chlamydia Psittaci is also carried by cats, in their conjunctive membranes, but it is rarely transferable to humans. Dogs, however, do not catch it.
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