Guess what...

...the chairs didn't come, after we'd sat around waiting all day, yet again. I'm sadly unsurprised, but doesn't it get on your bits when suppliers just plain lie to you?

/XD

We've had Sally with us all day, but after her exhausting weekend, she was very happy to loaf around and kip. After Elanor left us on Sunday, they'd gone to the Chase and had about four hours run around there with her friends.

I'm going to do a post on "how to be happy" soon, but not today! Instead, in order to lighten the mood, I've tracked down the tale of Samuel Foote and The Grand Panjandrum. Foote was an actor, playwright, satirist and impresario in the middle of the 19th century, and he had a bit of a theatrical feud with the then famous actor Charles Macklin. Macklin claimed to be able to recite any text from memory after just one reading, so Foote challenged him to do that with this:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What ! no soap ?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Gosh, that's better. History does not relate if Macklin managed it, though he's said to have dined out on the story for many years.

Hopefully, I'll be in a better mood tomorrow.

/bye