SPA News Autumn 2012 - Shell UK

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THE LIgHTER SIDE bRighT SPARKS TEAChER: Why are you late? CAROL: Class started before I got here. TEAChER: John, why are you doing your maths multiplication on the floor? JOhN: You told me to do it without using tables. TEAChER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?' gLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L TEAChER: No, that's wrong gLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it. TEAChER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water? DONALD: H I J K L M N O TEAChER: What are you talking about? DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O. TEAChER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have 10 years ago. WiNNiE: Me. TEAChER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with ‘I’ miLLiE: I is … TEAChER: No, Millie ... Always say 'I am' miLLiE: All right ... I am the ninth letter of the alphabet. TEAChER: Clyde, your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's … Did you copy his? CLyDE: No, sir. It's the same dog. TEAChER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested? hAROLD: A teacher. CLASSiFiEDS …? FREE yORKShiRE TERRiER Eight years old, hateful little b*stard. Bites! COWS, CALvES: NEvER bRED Also one gay bull for sale. FREE PUPPiES Mother is a Kennel Club registered German Shepherd; father is a Super Dog, able to leap tall fences in a single bound. FREE PUPPiES Half Cocker Spaniel, half sneaky neighbour's dog. 8 | SPA NEWS THEN AND NOw The Shell Service Station in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was a filling station constructed in 1930 following a decision in the 1920s by the Shell Company to begin marketing in North Carolina. The building is an example of representational or novelty architecture and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 13 May 1976. Preservation North Carolina, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of historic sites, spent one year and $50,000 to bring the landmark station back to its original condition. Workers removed layers of faded yellow paint to reveal the Shell's original yellow-orange colour. The original front door was repaired and a crack fixed that had been previously sealed with nothing more than black tar. The wooden, trellised shelter that housed the car wash and allowed cars to be washed and/or serviced in the shade was reconstructed as well. Shell donated restored gas pumps and replica lamp posts to help finish off the restoration. The landmark now serves as a satellite office for Preservation North Carolina. Thanks to Bill Scott and Paddy Briggs for this submission. Then .... ... and now!
WRiTE RULES 6: NO LAUgHINg MATTER... You may not regard yourself as a comic writer but even serious stories need moments of levity to lighten the mood. Sometimes a comic scene is deliberately placed before a moment of tragedy to heighten the drama through contrast. Sometimes a funny character can create variety. We don't think of Jane Austen as primarily comic but her ironic analysis of human foibles and creations such as Miss Bates and Mr. Collins demonstrate her great skills as a humorist. There is a broad spectrum of comedy from gentle, observational social comedy to far-fetched, fast-paced farce, to blacklycomic realistic drama. Farce is the staple of TV sit-com but novelists like Tom Sharpe use similar tone and techniques with slapstick elements and frenetic plots. Satire can be farcical but also uses parody and wit as weapons for social commentary. The satirist appears to approve of the very thing he wishes to attack, often reversing expected norms. A good example is The Thick of It, a TV political satire which uses the 'fly-on-the-wall' documentary form to depict bad language, bullying and callous dishonesty as the norm among politicians and their aides. Here are some more comic techniques: 1. Create identification with the central character – we share their viewpoint; we empathise with their discomfort; we enjoy their bad behaviour, e.g. Kingsley Amis' lecherous, drunken, young academic Lucky Jim (1954). We live vicariously and wickedly through our favourite, naughty characters. We may not want Victor Meldrew for a next door neighbour but we enjoy his outbursts on everyday irritants; he says what we think: "I don't believe it!!" 2. Create two dimensional characters, larger-than-life stereotypes with exaggerated personality traits, so we do not take any harm that befalls them seriously; in fact we enjoy their misfortunes – Victor Meldrew again. 3. Comic names – these can be seaside postcard silly, e.g. Mrs Shufflebotham, or reflective of character like snobbish Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced, of course, "Bouquet". 4. bathos – use high-flown, rather pompous language to describe a very ordinary event; apply Olympic jargon to the school egg and spoon race: "Tension mounts in the playground as after months of intensive training and precision egg-laying..." 6. Exaggeration – slapstick action, improbable emotions and attitudes signal to the reader that you intend to be funny so they don't react in the usual way to, for example, violence. When an unfortunate chap in a Tom Sharpe novel inadvertently puts his most "precious possessions" in a blender we laugh, whereas if this were to happen in a Mafia story it would be an horrific torture scene. 7. Fish out of water – placing a character in a situation alien to them is a common device, e.g. the sophisticated Flora amidst her simple country cousins in Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm (1932), or Evelyn Waugh's unworldly nature diarist, William Boot, mistaken for a foreign correspondent and sent to a war zone in Scoop (1938). Role reversals are funny too: in Absolutely Fabulous we enjoy sensible Saffy playing the adult to her delinquent mother, Edina. 8. hyperbole – over-blown figures of speech. Blackadder excels in this when he tells Baldrick his brain is so small "that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit". 9. irony – the use of words to convey meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning, e.g. “You're marrying your fifth wife?! What excellent experience for a marriage guidance counsellor.” 10. Parody – a humorous imitation of serious literature or a specific genre such as Jane Austen parodying the gothic novel in Northanger Abbey. Austen builds tension with gloomy corridors and strange wRITINg TIPS Ardella draws on her experience as a stand-up comedian and script-writer to look at the serious business of using humour in your writing. noises but when young Catherine Morland finds an ancient parchment our expectations are brought down to earth with a bump – it's a mundane laundry list. REcOMMENDED READS COMEDY OUT OF DARKNESS Born in London in 1928, after serving in the Royal Marines, Tom Sharpe moved to South Africa in 1951, where the unjust apartheid regime inspired him to write satire. He was imprisoned, then expelled in 1961. He wrote Riotous Assembly (1971), in which the murder of a Zulu cook sparks off intrigues that lead to ostriches exploding on city streets. Next came a sequel, Indecent Exposure (1973), and Porterhouse Blue (1974), which sent up the inner workings of an ancient university. His biggest success was Wilt, written whilst teaching at a technical college. Wilt, a lecturer, is accused of murdering his wife after he is seen trying to hide a blow-up doll. Sharpe wrote the first draft in 24 hours (although he spent six months revising it). Sharpe admires P G Wodehouse but his dark humour derives from hearing First World War veterans tell grim jokes of life and death in his youth. He recalls a joke about two privates marching up a hill. One asks the sergeant for a rest. He replies: “What do you want a rest for now, lad? You'll be dead in half an hour!'" Now 84, Sharpe is writing his autobiography. His most recent book The Wilt Inheritance (2010) is available in paperback. SPA NEWS | 9
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 160 AUTUMN 2012 OF TRUCKS AND
Page 3 and 4: 138 YEARS AND cOUNTINg … Andy Col
Page 5 and 6: In 1960, after five years in St Hel
Page 7: STAREhE FUTURE and givE AS yOU LivE
Page 11 and 12: TiNA’S NEWS by Tina Gilchrist Sta
Page 13 and 14: Born in Newquay, Cornwall, in 1942,
Page 15 and 16: Claret Race Car Scottish haulier, C
Page 17 and 18: Wendy Garbutt “I was proud and in
Page 19 and 20: Bombay street - even more interesti
Page 21 and 22: DEEP SLEEP DEEEP SLEEEP DEEEEP SLEE
Page 23 and 24: cONGRATuLATIONS - MEMBERS’ ANNIVE
Page 25 and 26: FORTHcOMINg REUNIONS Agrichemical g
Page 27 and 28: ThE hyDRO hOTEL iN EASTbOURNE From
Page 29 and 30: NORTh LONDON & hERTS Robert Hillyar
Page 31 and 32: Jones, Peter (74) - Shell UK Oil -

SPA News Autumn 2012 - Shell UK

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