check out my monumental mason

I'm just about keeping my head above water blog-wise with the book reviews and the noting of notable things in the worlds of golf, literary death and people saying "cunt" on various broadcast media, but there's been a steep drop-off in the occurrence of blog posts dedicated to other, perhaps more frivolous, topics lately. There are a couple of reasons for this: firstly and most importantly we have a seven-month-old baby boy who occupies a substantial amount of our time, and secondly the ha-ha-here's-an-amusing-thought stuff and the hey-look-at-this-idiot-I-found-on-the-internet stuff tend to get posted on Twitter rather than here.

So here's an attempt at correcting that a bit, although it does involve some crossover with Twitter. Here's a tweet from the amusing Postcard From The Past account that I follow:

Have you used your spray gun yet? pic.twitter.com/pH5eWAZJxW

— PostcardFromThePast (@PastPostcard) June 30, 2017

I was interested to know where the imposing building pictured was, and it turns out (via Google's clever image search facility) that it's the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Indianapolis, USA. Scottish Rite, it further turns out, is a branch of Freemasonry (splitters!) with, presumably, some key doctrinal differences in the rolled-up-trouser-leg, secret handshake and burying-your-tongue-on-a-beach areas. They also have an amusing and frankly baffling hierarchy of titles that can be attained, quite a few of which sound like slightly self-aggrandising euphemisms for one's Old Chap:

• Secret Master
• Intimate Secretary
• Intendant of the Building
• Knight of the Sword
• Prince of Libanus
• Chief of the Tabernacle
• Knight of the Brazen Serpent
• Commander of the Temple

I was intrigued as to why "Prince of Libanus" appeared to be named after a village in the Brecon Beacons, but it's more likely that it's a reference to the mountains in Lebanon from which the Welsh village also derives its name.

Anyway, join me as we dangerously train-surf from this train of thought onto another one travelling in a similar direction via Childish Sniggering Parkway towards Toilet Humour Central. Back in our university days my old mate Mario and I used to use the word "mason" as well as the word "como" as laboured euphemisms for the (itself inherently sniggersome) word "perineum", on the grounds that both can be preceded by the name "Perry". So one would arrive back at the hall of residence, throw oneself down in a chair and theatrically declare "phew, it's hot out there: my mason is awash" or "just been playing tennis; my como is in a right old two-and-eight". Indeed the perineum appears to be a particularly well-served area in terms of euphemisms; you wouldn't think people would need to refer to it directly that often, but evidently they do. 

I was reminded of all this the other day when browsing round the condiment aisle in Sainsbury's and discovering this product:

I see what you've done there, @NandosUK, but it's a little too close to "perineum" for my taste. pic.twitter.com/cSMNrlX1Hz

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) June 25, 2017

I don't know what sort of focus groups they fed the new name through, and I can see that there is a temptation to follow the existing convention of adding some product-specific prefix to the suffix "-naise" to indicate that you've stirred your product into some mayonnaise, but really it's hard to believe someone didn't raise an objection.

The inherent amusingness of the "peri" prefix in relation to Nando's is good comedy fodder elsewhere too, it seems.