If it's going to be eight words, then I'll post my favourite 6-worder here (not mine but can't remember who did write it - though Orson Welles is the name in my head):
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

[INJ] Hemingway.

Tarol Hunt (of goblinscomic.com) has been writing nonsense Twitters, usually of the form 'If I ...' Some of these are worthy of Jack Handy himself: "If I was stung by a bee, it'd better not be a laser bee because those guys are puuuuuure laser." Can we have a go? "If I was a caveman, I probably wouldn't ever say 'Yabba Dabba Doo' unless I was being deeply ironic."

"If I was going to speak, I'd try to be there to hear it. It'd be a pity to miss one after all these years."

I can't believe no-one has anything to say for a whole weekend! So this week, I'm going to post something in here every day. Monday: Whit Monday public holiday here in the Netherlands, so I'm accompanying the Windy Miller (a veteran of four well-executed restorations of stationary engines - portable and wheelbarrow-sized sources of farmyard power, some of which are almost 100-years old) to the largest exhibition of stationary engines in the country, in Eindhoven. I will come back smelling of kerosene, a bit sunburnt and a bit sooty. In return, I get a day's outing somewhere cultural. I'm lining up the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and a Tennyson Society thing in England next week.

[pen] I don't expect that you'll have time to visit the Philips Museum while you are there, but it is worth a shot. No holiday here, that was last week in secular UK. I spent a surprisingly dry and sunny weekend in west Wales, even managed an afternoon on the beach, though the sun failed to hit my Channel Island hardened skin.

I've been in Scotland for a week, with no access (although I was told that wi-fi at Boat of Garten post office cost 'buttons'). 5 days of mostly showery weather and then a stunning day on Friday, so I left the ladies to go cycling in Abernethy Forest and walked into the heart of the Cairngorms (Loch Avon via the top of Bynack Mor). I now have a nicely-burnt left side to my face - the perils of a circular walk.

On the Costa Brava for three days last week, attending a conference held at a hotel on the beach. Wednesday was free, so a colleague and I drove up to see Cadaqués. Came home with a developing cough that took out most of the weekend.

Some herbert has put something in Carpe Diem - Fish of the Day. It was a good game that ended five years ago and could be worth restarting. Any takers?

[Raak] Not swiney cough, one hopes?
[Rosie] Agree - a cracking game which generated huge chuckleness way back then. I have a hunch that it was the game that spawned Breadmaster's legendary " For pity's sake child ..." and then something about tying down the moons of Jupiter. Anyway, my friend, just thought I'd point out that the same game is currently steaming along in OrangeMC under the title Ubersetzen Sie (add umlaut to first letter) - but if one don't play in there - the information I have imparted is rather irrelevant. :)

(Chalky) Let's continue with it on Orange, then, which frankly I'd forgotten about.

[Chalky] No *cough* fever, so *cough* *cough* hopefu*cough*lly not. *cough* *cough* *cough*

Tuesday... hmmm... work. Gridlock traffic getting into and out of Rotterdam, too much good coffee trying to stay awake through meetings, and an hour and a half of ironing when I finally got home. Wednesday? Gridlocked traffic again this morning - a 34km drive took an hour and ten minutes, not enough breakfast (have already made a start on my packed lunch an it's only 09.40) but there's the prospect of a proper English haircut with a proper English hairdresser in England on Saturday morning (it means I can actually ask for the haircut I want, rather than have the one the Dutch dameskappers want to give me) so anything is bearable this week. Even another 3mph crawl home this evening.

Saw Holland (well, bits of it) on the TV last night in an advert. It looked frenetic.

(penelope, Re: Ironing) Can't you just feed the clothes through the millstone?

[SM] Nice idea, but the milling faces of millstones are designed for cutting and shearing the grains, not merely crushing them, so you'd have to piece together the shreds of clothing afterwards. More trouble than it's worth really. The drive home this evening was only 45 minutes - the best time for a week now. Some bits of Holland are frenetic. Luckily, I live in a nice rural bit :o)

(pen) I thought the Dutch were sort of stoic.

[Rosie] Yeah, but they drive ruthlessly on the motorways in their Calvinistic rush to be at home being stoic.

What you need is not a grain mill, but an olive press. Of course it would be hard to get the oil stains out afterwards, but you could definitely get a good crease in those underpants. That would have the additional advantage of being drivable by donkey-power, so you could iron on a windless day.

[INJ] I don't understand how you can control the donkey's flatulence so accurately.