The key to a Sussex-ful marriage

A couple of months ago Eleanor and I went to the wedding of her old friends Julie and Jim down in Worthing. I love a good wedding, and let me tell you.. this was a brilliant one. For starters, it was in a cinema! Not one of your soulless, sticky floored multiplexes, oh no. This was a lovely little place right on the seafront. There were kids with cheekfulls of popcorn flooding the place after the ceremony. It was magic.

Add to this the first dance being Metallica, the only beer on tap being Asahi, as well as there being more (great) food than you can shake a ruddy large stick at available at all times, then you've already got a cracking do.

Post "I do's", we all hung out on the balcony, supping on Pimms and overlooking the beautiful briney when there was a sudden "WHAT THE.....!?" mumur from a few of the guests. A peek over the balcony to the bus stop outside the venue cleared up what that was all about:



Julie's folks had organised for a pair of llamas to join in the days festivities, of course! What do you mean you hadn't guessed?

They were very well behaved too, considering they'd never been to a wedding before. There was no drunken dancing or trying to feel up one of the bridesmaids from them (Thankfully, cos Eleanor was a bridesmaid, and I think she quite liked white one). The worst behaviour from them was releasing a few little chocolate hostages on the beach. And that was quite cute, if anything.

We've another wedding to go to down on the south coast next year. No pressure Laurence.

Thread Lightly, Speak Dearly

Although I stress to everyone how important it is to get photographs of the puns they spot (I never want this to be a rehash of lists from other sites which several people have sent me before), but some you just can't take a photo of.

A good example of this is websites. Today's entry comes from Gary, who has been keeping up on his needlepoint and cross stitch enough to find this quaint corner of the internet:



Sew good.

Women Are From Venus, Pun Are From Ma's

Mums, eh? They brought you into this world, and they can take you out of it! Or at least, that's what the guests on Rikki Lake used to say. I'm pretty sure that's murder, but I wouldn't argue with them.

Today I present you with the first entry supplied by a Mum! The dear old mother of KT has sent in a hairdressers she spotted in Victoria while on a coach trip! How wonderful is that?



Superb. I wish my old dear had the ability to spot one, but she's too busy not drinking the endless cups of tea she makes my Dad get her, or daydreaming about Barry Manilow. I kid you not, I went home to visit last weekend and found a note to my brother from here which read:

"Jez,
can you feed the cat please,
I'm with Barry.
Love Mum, x"

WITH Barry!? Honestly Mum, you're bonkers. And Barry looks like someone's forced him face-first through a vacuum these days, the poor old sod.

He's still got it though.
"COULD IT BE MAGIC!?"

All's not lots

Right.. That's it. I've been more slack than Samuel Slack of Slackington Vale of late, so today I present to you a veritable smörgåsbord of delicacies from around the country.

First off, my valued co-founder of the world-famous 4pm Wispa and a Cuppa Club (join the revolution here), Pete. On a side note, I discovered only yesterday that the Wispa Gold has finally made a comeback. The glory days of confectionary have truly returned! Well done, Mr Cadburys.

Pete spotted this one while out jogging(!) along Hove seafront:



Quite rare that the shop name adequetly describes the pun aswell! I think the photo's a bit wonky because Pete was clicking his fingers and shouting "Shutterly Faaaaabulouth!" at the same time.

The Danny Barnes is from the same neck of the woods, but I'm not sure where he caught this one:



One for the Christians there! My dad's big on it, and we always used to get fish 'n' chips on a Friday from Cove's finest chippy. That was until my brother started going to Karate on a Friday evening, so we swapped it for Thursdays! The Disciples would be well narked at Mr Miyagi, but let's face it, he'd take all twelve of them out.

Next, a Newcastle van spotted by driver to the stars, Chris Kiely:



Good timing on that one, considering the half marathon is this weekend! This is not all coincidence, I assure you. Unfortunately another thing I can assure you of is that I quite often lose track of who's sent me what, so I have another contribution sans contibutor. Yes, I'm a horrific fraud and I can only apologise again. Here it is:



From now on I'm making serious notes. I've got one of those NEW Oxford notepads with the REALLY white paper. Have you seen those ads? No wonder kids are flying through their GCSEs these days with their fancy schmancy white pads. I had to scribble my notes on the neck of the poor lad sat infront of me.

He's a doctor now.
He doesn't have a witty blog on wordplay, though.

Tourists Syndrome

What it is, you muddas!

Sorry, I've been away in the Big Apple for the past week, and doing everything in ridiculous NYC/Joisey accents was par for the course. I'll try to keep it to a minimum during today's entry.

While I was away I had an inbox influx so there'll be a few updates over the next couple of days. Unfortunately I only collected a pair while I was away (weyoo), and one was a real stock answer, which I only saw at the departure lounge at JFK:



At least we can all cross it off the list now though, can't we?
The other one though (admittedly spotted by my co-tourist, Gin) is a belter:



The angry rabbit is a nice touch. He looks like he has the kind of surly Noo Yoik accent you'd expect from the driver of such a vehicle. So much so that I was fairly nimble in getting this pic. Especially as we were just round the corner from Ground Zero. Can't be too careful in this day and age folks, remember that.

------------------

And as I've been away for over a week without so much as a bird's fart of a pun for you, here's an update from our Brit abroad, Ben, who's got us another trio! Including this one on another wall from Honest Ed's, that purveyor of fine tat and Canuck wordplay:



Yes! Food puns are always good. Well, apart from when theyre a bit forced, like:



Ben writes "This one isn't as good, but I included it because after I took it, the owner came over to our van, interrupted our A&W hot dog lunch, to tell us (rather aggressively) that he had the name copyrighted. I told him about the site. but i think the words 'blog' and 'pun' had somehow eluded his already limited vocabulary." Well, anger spices this up nicely if you ask me, which you probably would've.

But finally, Ben steal the show, yet again with the first ever haberdasher on The Punning Man:



Das it right dere.

Fast feud

My good friend Rich Phoenix provides today's banquet of puns, and what a deep fried banquet it is! Four eateries of calori-filling proportions from all across the UK:



This could be another one of those unintentional gems. I'm sure it isn't, but how nice would it be if, after the sign is put up, the owners stand back to admire their new venture and then, that glorious moment where they just "get it". Bliss.



Onother chippy here, and another play on "Friar". Can't blame them for not being the first, but equally, you can't blame them fo going with it. Better than SUPERFISH, isn't it?



I love this one. When Rich told me about the ones he'd found this was the one that stood out and actually made me guffaw (yes, guffaw. No I haven't heard that since Blackadder either). Shame it wasn't open though. I hope this doesn't mean the worst for them!

And to finish, there's probably no better way to sign off:

Fish n clips

As if you needed more proof that the West Country were pun fiends, my friend Lee emailed me last night to share a pun he caught while on the National Express back from Cornwall. He reckons this hairdressers is somewhere between Newquay and Taunton:



That's some quick-fingered snaring there. Let that be a lesson to those of you who said "I couldn't get a photo for you, but I'll try". Listen to Yoda, yeah? Bet he'd bag me some good'uns.

Now that's good, but Lee's also attached this beauty, which I think does 'eclipse' his other effort, spotted in Croyden while car shopping:



I particularly enjoyed this given I was nicknamed Prawn for a long old time when I was younger. There were a few animal related nicknames banded about in my group of friends. I got Prawn purely because it rhymes with Sean. I think this adequately illustrates the extent of their imagination.

Croyde rage

Hiya! Sorry I've been away for a while, but the missus and I have spent the last few days down in Devon having a "bit of a relax". It was lovely, thanks for asking.

And what made it even nicer was that the people of Croyde love a good pun. We found five while we were down there.. More than one a day! Let's all applaud the West Country.

This one was in a little gallery come nic-nac shop where I purchased a cheap bodyboard which I managed to single-handedly destroy with my overly muscular physique in one session. It was a tiny sign on a hand made birdhouse which hung in the front window:



Ah, that's cute. You can tell we're only a stone's throw from where Tarka The Otter was written, can't you. It's a nice, gentle entry into Devon punning that. In the same shop though, you could purchase a nose on a keyring, which leaked an off white substance when squeezed:



Another nice little gag, but also a bit of a lie.. because it is a bit funny. I'm 28 and I had a bit of a laugh. Ellie was good enough to demonstrate the snot dynamics for you here, bless here heart.

Now, this next one was in a nother shop, and it's one of those ones that is sort of 'inverted', in that it takes a well-known phrase and illustrates it with the words actual meanings. Some would say it a bit weak. And they'd be right. But given the last one, I wan't going to be picky:



Ellie's hand making another glamorous appearance there. She's becoming the Linda Lusardi of thepunningman.com (the prize stroking Linda, not the naughty one), and I'm fine with that. I just hope she is.

This one was my favourite of the weekend:



Could fall down if you're in favour of the "scon" pronunciation of that particular word, but it should be appreciated nonetheless. One other slight taint on it is the face that you have to drive past Stone Henge on the way home, and this time it took as ruddy AGES. YOU CAN SEE IT FROM THE ROAD YOU TWITS. Christ, we're only driving at 5mph, I could've sat on the roof and filmed the bloody thing with pinpoint precision.

Ugh. Anyway, as the traffic was so obnoxious, we stopped at some local services just after the well arranged rocks and Ellie pointed out the sign above the door:



Six hours of traffic, but it was almost worth it just for that.

Failure to lunch

One of my Kingston-based namesake's collected me today's entry. Spotted in Leeds (where he will be moving to in the near future - not sure who we're getting in return, but I look forward to it), this looks like a nice little eatery:



Check out the other Sean's blog I Am Up Late, and then buy his lovely little zine, of which I have an anonymous entry in. If you can guess which it is, maybe you'll win a prize.*

* You will not win a prize

Toms and Jerrys

Good to see the little guys of the supermarket world embracing gags as part of their marketing campaigns. Who needs a bunch of overweight mumsy-types slapping their arses to sell tomatoes? Not Lidl!



49p per kg is quite a good deal, but (call me snooty if you like) I just don't think I'd get my five a day from Germany's finest discount supermarket. Especially at that price. I have this awful vision of sweatshops full of tomato plants being whipped and told to "GROW FASTER, DEVIL SEED!!" Gosh, it's like something out of Flash Gordon.