Creative Retirement Activity

Some of my former business associates among other acquaintances have asked me what I do with my time, now that I am retired. I have decided to distribute a series of brief articles on what one can do to remain mentally active in such circumstances.

1. Kill a few Flies

2. Put them in the sun to dry for one hour.

3. Once they are dry, pick a pencil and paper... Let your imagination flow.

Here are a few examples...

Animal abuse

Please read!

If you are an owner of a dog or know someone who has a dog which belongs to a 'dangerous breed' category, or if you have a child visiting your house, please take this as a warning.

Don't leave your dog with any small child unattended under any circumstances!

Only one little moment was enough for the following to happen.


Thank you!

The Dog

The world according to USA

African signs

Funnies

The Benny Hillifier aka The Coolest Thing On The Internet

Presenting the "Benny Hillifier" lol

http://james.nerdiphythesoul.com/bennyhillifier/speedup.php?id=kWfFfPMLXdU

Dear Mr Branson

A real letter of complaint sent to Virgin owner Richard Branson.

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in.

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn't custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation.

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on.

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: [see image 6, above].

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations.

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly

XXXX

Having a bad day

A Ladybird Easy Reading book: The Policeman

Ladybird childrens books updated for the 21st century

My raspberries have been decimated

Funny, but also not funny. 8 crimes on the increase since the credit crunch kicked in.


1. Employee fraud

OK, so perhaps we have all swiped a bottle of Tippex from the office stationery cupboard at some point. But as companies struggle, jobs are less secure and pay and bonuses get frozen, many employees turn theft into a cottage industry.

Recent figures from accountants BDO Stoy Hayward show that employee fraud has cost UK companies more than £77m in the first half of this year - up from just £10m in the same period last year. Some staff are making extra cash through fake expenses claims or stealing company stock or software for resale. Even if you're not ripping off your company, be aware that the finger of blame may be pointed. Disgruntled colleagues who fake more sick days will also leave more work for you.

2. Supermarket theft

Perhaps the saddest example of the crunch is that many supermarkets have had to step up their security. Sainsburys and Tesco have both attached security tags to their chicken and meat - in particular, the more expensive organic items. The devices have to be removed at the till, and let of a shrill alarm if anyone walks out of the door without having the tag removed. Until now, the electronic tags have been attached to small, expensive goods which are easy to sell on such as perfume, batteries, razor blades, booze and DVDs. But with a whole organic chicken costing nearly £10 on average, temptation has increased.

Even more bizarrely, the latest 'must-have' for shoplifters is Slim Fast shakes. Yes, really. The £7 six packs of the meal replacement drinks have been security-tagged after disappearing en masse from supermarket shelves.

3. Allotment theft

Perhaps put off by extra security in supermarkets, food thieves are finding other sources of swag. If you or someone you know has one of Britain's 250,000 allotments or even an impressive vegetable patch there is a new threat to be aware of. Growers who are used to six or four-legged pests are now finding a big increase in two-legged thieves.

Now some angry growers have reached boiling point, forming teams of night-time "vegilantes". In picturesque Ottery St. Mary, Devon, the gardening gloves are off as allotment holders team up to patrol the plots. Local grower Adrian Forster told the Mirror newspaper: "We've always had a bit of pilfering but these days they'll nick anything.

"My raspberries have been decimated. I caught a whole family picking them from my plants and when I challenged them the dad had the cheek to say, 'There's an abundance here. You'll never eat them all.'"

"It's the worst I've known it in 22 years. With the credit crunch, people think they can save money on their food bills. They're running off with our beans, peas and gooseberries. I'm miffed about my goosegogs. They were giant - would've made lovely pies - and they've stripped the bushes bare."

Fellow grower Jackie Roche explained: "I am a vegetarian and totally self-sufficient, so when people pinch the stuff I grow they are literally taking the food out of my mouth."

Adrian added: "These thieves haven't experienced the sweaty effort of wheeling barrows of dung up here, digging it in and tending it all summer. I produce a lot, but I share it with family and friends and swap it for different produce with other growers."

4. Car insurance fraud

Dodgy claims for car crashes are up by 70% with dishonest motorists deliberately writing off their cars to clear their debts. Investigators having uncovered 24,000 fraudulent claims worth £260 million over the past year, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI). At the same time the police forces and the Insurance Fraud Bureau have uncovered a tide of "cash for crash scams" with accidents being staged to raise money.

And if you think insurance fraud is a victimless crime which just affects big businesses, then you're wrong: it pushes up the cost of insurance for everyone.

"Honest motorists pay through higher insurance premiums - an extra £40 a year on average," says the ABI's Nick Starling. "Anyone committing insurance fraud is more likely to get caught, risks a criminal record, and will find future insurance and credit harder to obtain and more expensive."

5. Petrol theft

A few years ago during the petrol shortage, I woke up to find a length of hosepipe sticking out the petrol tank of my car. Luckily the thieves had not been able to siphon off the fuel but as fuel costs remain high, this trick is back in fashion. Petrol stations are also reporting many more cases of people driving off without paying. I always pay for petrol with cash now after so many people I know have had credit and debit cards cloned after filling up.


6. Mortgage fraud

As banks clamp down on lending, mortgage brokers are under increasing pressure to get applications accepted by bank and building societies, sometimes by any means possible. In July alone, the financial regulator, the FSA, took action against nine mortgage brokers, including four firms for mortgage fraud activity.

The FSA now plans to visit 200 financial firms to ensure that their systems protect customers from the risk of fraud. It has even doubled its mortgage fraud investigation team to help tackle the problem.

Michael Coogan, director general of trade body, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, says: "People may not think of lenders as victims of crime, but unless fraudsters are tackled then honest customers are the ones who end up paying more."

7. Travel insurance fraud

This summer has also seen travel insurance targeted by fraudsters. While false claims for things such as cameras, iPods and designer sunglasses are up a whopping 80%, inflated claims for cheaper items are ballooning too.

Some travellers who realise that they cannot afford holidays booked earlier in the year are believed to be cancelling trips after feigning illness and tricking doctors into issuing certificates stating that they are unwell. Most policies offer cancellation refunds when a traveller falls ill before a trip. Unexpected unemployment could also be the basis for a claim, as is the discovery of pregnancy after booking when the date of return home would be within 12 weeks before the due date.

The ABI's Malcolm Tarling says that insurance companies are now primed to spot "tell-tale signs" of false claims: "I won't say what those are though," he adds.

What is known is that claimants can expect forensic inspection of evidence of ownership, with insurers demanding receipts for cameras, phones, watches and other goods, as well as bank statements or money-changing receipts for any claims over mislaid or stolen holiday cash. Insurance company staff are being trained to detect nervy responses and other giveaway signs and are more likely to send investigators to interview claimants face-to-face.


8. Burglaries

Insurance giant Churchill has recently warned those consumers heading off on holiday of the risk of returning to find that they have been burgled. According to statistics released by the group, one in ten people have come back from holiday to find that their home had been broken into and household items had been stolen. Many of those interviewed stated that a burglary had occurred during the period of a short break or a day trip.

Of course it's more likely that an empty home with be targeted but the government appears to gearing up for an increase in break-ins and other crime as a result of the credit crunch. At the beginning of September, a leaked letter revealed that the Home Secretary believes the economic downturn will lead to rising crime levels.

The document predicted sharp rises in burglary and violence - but less funding to put police on the streets to meet the tide of lawlessness. The letter says: "We can expect additional pressures on acquisitive crime, police finances (and officer numbers), citizen attitudes to migration, and pressure on our free income."

In mid-July, Number Ten is believed to have asked a number of major departments how their responsibilities would be affected by the credit crunch - and what they were doing to prepare.

Now, with the Government's attention focused on more pressing financial matters, it looks likely that the carnage in our supermarkets, offices, cars, suitcases, homes and vegetable patches will continue for some time.