(no subject)

I have water on the knee, which I haven't had since I was a boy. Walking is okay, but going up or down stairs hurts like a prize bastard, which is unfortunate at a time when I have cut out the lift at work altogether. Idle research on the net produced an unsettling consensus of osteoarthritis, which, predictably, it isn't at all. I'm only 33, for God's sake. According to the doctor I have somehow strained my knee—possibly during the c*nt-off (qv)—rather than it being, for example, gout. She has given me some powerful anti-inflammatories and a load of codeine. "That stuff's blinding if you mix it with alcohol," she said as she handed it to me. I looked up at her. "I was joking," she said.

(In conversation she told me she had learnt to ski from a Swiss German woman with a heavy accent. She has ever after remembered the earnest instruction that "when you want to stop, make a wee".)

(no subject)

Teacher jailed for sex with pupil

A married teacher who had sex with one of her teenage pupils has been jailed for four years and three months. Elvira Fairhurst, from Liverpool, began an affair with the boy when he was 14 and had sex with him up to 10 times.

She was arrested after a crane driver saw the pair having sex on the top floor of a multi-storey car park while she was on a break from jury service... When questioned, the boy initially said Fairhurst was his mother but eventually admitted she was his teacher.

Whuh?

Putin kisses boy on the stomach



MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday stopped on a walk through the Kremlin to speak to a young boy before lifting up the boy's shirt and kissing the astonished youth on his stomach.

Putin was shown by state television chatting to graduates of military academies before he took a walk through one of the Kremlin's courtyards, often full of tourists.

He stopped and spoke to a young boy who appeared to be aged four or five and turned away shyly when asked his name.

"What is your name?" Putin asked, kneeling down in front of the fair-haired boy and holding him by the waist.

"Nikita," the clearly shocked boy answered, looking from side to side.

Putin then lifted the boy's shirt and kissed him on his stomach. The Russian president then patted the boy on the head and walked off through a crowd of astonished tourists.