Your Nuts, Mi Lord? Your Crackers, Mi Lord…

 The title of today’s blog is a famous line from a ‘Two Ronnies’ sketch in which Ronnie Barker, as an impudent butler by the name of Blenkinsopp, serves nuts with a nutcracker to the Lord of the Manor played by Ronnie Corbett. Andy and I often adapt this line for our own amusement - ‘Your nuts, milady?’ ‘Your crackers, milord.’ That kind of thing. The evenings fair fly by chez nous. 

Writing this line, and being an ex-teacher of English, I found myself cringing a tad at the whole ‘your’ (possessive pronoun) and ‘you’re (contraction of you are) thing, and felt momentarily flummoxed as to which version to use so as not to cause offence to my fellow spelling and grammar pedants BUT then I got a grip of myself because life is too short to be nit picky about such things especially where the comedy genius of Mr Ronnie Barker is involved. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? The butler is serving up nouns but with an undercurrent of adjective! Therefore, both/either/and/or homophones work. 

I’m overthinking this. 

Anyway, the point is that when I took Nell for her evening walk yesterday - well, late afternoon now because the sun falls very suddenly from the sky these days and we don’t want to be caught unawares down a dark country lane, do we? - we found these:

No, Nellibobs hadn’t just expelled a humongous pile of oak nuts, or acorns as they are commonly known by normal people, from her nether end. They had been excavated by creature unknown from these holes in the bank:

Nell checked one of the holes, probably for squirrels, but didn’t find any:

My theory is that these acorns were stored by an organised squirrel as insurance against a bleak mid-Winter but the squirrel caused offence to some other creature - a cranky crane maybe, or recalcitrant badger - and in an act of spiteful revenge the squirrel’s store was ransacked and his (or hers) collection was laid waste for all and sundry to steal, including Nell who is partial to an acorn which she shouldn’t really eat because they are, apparently, poisonous to dogs, but she ain’t dead yet. 

And seeing all those acorns instantly made me think of the ‘Two Ronnies’ sketch. Because that’s how my brain works. 

I’ve had a message from a long-time and devoted blog reader asking if there is to be a Christmas Story this year, given my return to Blogland after a five month absence. Or is it too late to plan and write anything? I have given this request due thought, mostly at 5 o’clock this morning. And, because I LOVE churning out a 25,000 word story with a deadline hot on my heels, and because it is almost the season to be jolly, falalalalaaaaa - lalalala, I can confirm that yes, I shall be presenting some kind of Christmas story although it might be a tad slapdash or absurd or lacking its usual qualities of believability and fine editing. 

It’ll be fun and larks. Probably.