VICTORY!!

A Celebration
The forces of righteousness prevailed at the Halfway House pub quiz tonight, and team Marsden Morons WON!  without an assist from Harry the Quizmaster, and - but of course! - no Googling on mobile phones in the toilets.  I was rather apprehensive; one question asked "What is the maximum points obtainable from a frame of billiards?" and another asked "How long is the delay before the tape self-destructs at the beginning of "Mission Impossible"?"  I had put down "10" for the first and thought I'd also put down "10" for the second. Which would have been bad.  The second question is in a section called "Wipeout".  Get all ten questions right and you get an extra five points.  Get one question wrong and you lose all the points for that section.  The self-destruct answer was "5" but I'd not written it down, so Phew! and let us now gloat at our £30 beer token.

Translation for any viewers in a foreign clime: "pub" = public house, except it's not a house and public aged under 18 aren't welcome.
"pub quiz" = an invention of the brewery to get people into their pubs mid-week
"Googling" - what cheating rascals get up to if unwatched.
"mobile phones" = hideous electronic gadgets surely sired by Satan
"Toilets" = sanitary amenities frequently used by cheating rascals
"apprehensive" = in this context "Will my quiz partners forgive me for making a complete b0ll0cks of our answers?  Er, probably not ..."
"Billiards" = one of those peculiar games that involve protracted ballistics on a flat green baize, flavoured in the past by clouds of tobacco smoke.
"Mission Impossible" = Lalo Schifrin's finest musical moment.

Song of the siren
I live on a busy main road running between Rochdale - home of the Co-Operative movement doncha know - and Oldham - home of - home of - home - give me a minute - home of the Seton Tubigrip Bandage (apologies to readers in rural Russia or Brazilian favela - imagine the far-flung suburbs of one of your major cities).  This main road runs directly to Oldham Hospital and is used by ambulances because it's the quickest way to get from A to B.  Thanks to our summer weather, all one week of it, the windows have to stay open at night and this means that ambulance sirens get noticed, especially in the small hours.  Bloody hell there's a lot of them!