Sir/Madam, should your father have really said that, then he was dredging the pond of poor taste! The term turd varnishing is one step lower than 'brown nosing'; it refers to those moments in an office when everything is up-to-date and staff are at a loose end. (Ed: Yeah, right!) Most go to the pub. Others, the 'turd varnishers', head off to the head and take with them 'procedure manuals', a copy of the remarks section of the most recently purchased software core, the company 'directions' manifesto or copy of the latest speech made by their Project Manager, supposedly to 'polish their skills'. I'm sure you get the drift.

Now, oddly enough, also gleaned from and I.T. type - what the heck is a Farenheit Burster?

In the depths of the IT department wallows the BOFH and the ever present PFY. And it to this latter ungodly creature that we must turn our attention. Not too bright the the PFY lurks in front of humming screen and servers, surfacing only briefly to ghost into a work area first thing on a Monday morning, 'Tut' three times before removing a computers base unit as the Farenheit Burster looks on in spluttering astonishment.

Next time I go to the beach should I take a scanning basket.

A scanning basket is the latest timesaving supermarket idea which scans the shopping as they are placed in the basket and a running total appears on the handle. It will also scan the shelves and direct you to the special offers and when you reach the checkout it scans your retina and wallet and deducts the amount from your bank account. The trial was discontinued after the baskets were stacked together and went into a neverending loop charging Tesco £28Billion for a small pack of strawberries.

Slipping Toffee tasty or what?

Um while I don't know about slipping toffee could someone explain Frognal twitching to me? I'll get back to the toffee later.

Slipping toffee - only tasty if you get away with it. It was a disparaging term invented around the "Cash for Questions" kind of time - it referred to the brown envelopes of money which bore a passing resemblance to the paper bags which the older politicians remembered taking their pocket-money toffee home in, and the underhand delivery of said envelopes between those involved became known by their disapproving colleagues as "slipping toffee".

Frognal twitching is the state of frustration experienced by a man when he thought he would be invited in by his new girlfriend after walking her home. Related to the expression Finchley Road and Frognal, meaning a couple who are (or are presumed to be) having sexual relations.

What is Double Bassooning?

Apart from painful?

Double Bassooning is a variation on breaking wind similar to "stepping on a duck" whereby one breaks wind on each stride but in this instance two people are involved with one playing the counter melody. An attempt by the Coldstream guards to achieve this on mass was the highlight of the 1964 Trooping the Colour.

Tricycle Ointment can it be trusted to do the job?

Trinity Ointment might well do the job of Tricycle Ointment. The latter is a lubricating and emollifying material for smoothing the axle of the Three Great Turnings of the Wheel of the Dharma; put more prosaically, it is an anti-haemorrhoid cream for monks who must spend many hours sitting in meditation.

Where might one see a Manchester Gallop?

Prefixing a Face Pyjama with the word Manchester traditionally coarsens the thing described. For example "I unscrewed it with a Manchester Spanner" means you used a Hammer. "I knocked it back into place with a Manchester Hammer" means you kicked it, and so on. So, a "Manchester Gallop" must mean one of those stumbling runs with random reels to one side or the other and frequent collisions with road furniture that are popularised by the consumers of Strong Drink.

Portsmouth Kettle

The use of the word Portsmouth in a Face Pyjama is very similar to the use of the word Manchester above. It is used to describe something that is unutterably dull. Obviously a Portsmouth Kettle either needs a good polish or lacks charisma.

But what are Budgerigar Trousers?

Ah ha! You have come to the right man for that information. Back in the Dark Ages, circa 1958, I was heavily involved in the breeding of those delightful little creatures - budgerigars, that is, not trousers. Actually I would have taken on trousers but, in those days, it was nearly impossible to get the zips mated. However, I digress.
The main aim of breeders at that time was to produce a bird which would 'drop it's daks' only for the right mate; it was considered that this would enable the use of multi-species aviaries without the risk of any cross-breed infections. To this end many, many experiments were undertaken and, sadly, in the interest of science, many birds perished. Eventually, being a leading light in this field, I was successful - to a degree anyway. Regrettably, whilst the finished product looked fine and theoretically should have worked, it didn't. It turned out that the male budgies were only 'turned on' when the female produced with the new genes was deceased. So, effectively, the breed died out after only one generation. It became obvious that, instead of producing a budgies gene rouser, I had inadvertently come up with a budgie rigor rouser. This was a spectacular failure which, to my chagrin, has gone down in the annals of the bird breeding community as a 'cheap and seedy' endeavour. Unfortunately it was also picked up by the popular press (in particular the "Parrot Breeders' Bible.") So, with it's wide circulation - and numerous typographical errors - the term which they coined has now entered the common vernacular. I'm sure that most of you would know the phrase (although some are more protected than others) which both sexes use in the pub when a particularly attractive specimen of the opposite sex is sighted wearing a well fitting pair of jeans?
Basically it means that s/he wouldn't be interested in you even if you were dead!

Leaving wild life to itself these days I am now more involved in the 'meaning of everything'. So when I came across an articulated case the other day, I was rather intrigued. Something to do with the law? A strange and mobile computer container? The title of a detective novel? Anybody know?

This is a doctor's discreet euphemism, when speaking in front of the patient, to signify that the patient has a screw loose, is unhinged, a leg short of a trivet, etc.

Speaking of trivets, or perhaps not, what is a trivet screw? I don't see it listed in Machinery's Handbook.

Ah! I think you'll find that should be T-rivet screw, and it's under Screws, Rivet, T-section in most catalogues, but don't ask what they're for. However, as a face pyjama, it carries the connotation of a rather unconventional coupling of human animals of either or both sexes usually in threes, but sometimes in ambitious pairs. I am unwilling to describe the configuration here, but Google should point you to an explicit How-To website.

Soap Sausage

Soap Sausage is anything served up for a meal in any particular popular evening television show. These delicacies serve 3 purposes.
1) To provide something to be thrown in an argument
2) To be a backdrop for a date that doesn't happen(ie, dater spends hours preparing said meal for datee, burning the house down in the process, or at least causing GBH to some poor passer by), and
3) To be on a fork midway between plate and mouth when the argument in scenario 1) breaks out in a public place.

Speaking of trouble, what is a Speke Lexden?

Ah, my dear, you are showing your age. A Speke Lexden is simply a dictionary (including pronunctiations) of "modern" English - i.e. as it is spoke.

I was glancing through one of my wife's specialist magazines the other week and came across the term tipple peak. To be honest I'm not sure whether I mis-read the words but, if not, can anyone help?

You read correctly. I assume this is latest edition of 'Hot Toddy Monthly', the magazine for liqueur coffee connoiseurs. The tipple peak is the small bit of cream on the top of, say, an Irish Cream that ends up on your nose if you glug it down.

Now that you are enlightened, can anyone tell me the purpose of Kemsing Ringers?

hahahahahahahahahaha this is so crap

james is so stupid someone threw a petrol bomb at him and he drank it.

Ah a prime example of a Mornington Wassak. Which brings me on to Kemsing Ringers. Basically it refers to anyone who looks like Albert Kemsing (ie 7 foot 2, bald, jug-eared and a tatoo of an armadillo on his chin).

But what is a Christmas Dixon?

Christmas Dixons are policement on the beat during the shopping season trying to look friendly and avuncular, like the eponymous copper of Dock Green. This is a rather difficult act to pull off nowadays, when they go clad in bullet-proof vests and fluorescent yellow overcoats, with side-handled telescopic truncheons and rigid handcuffs stuffed into their belts.

Would one go to the other Dixons for Purple Headphones?

Certainly not! I think you'd be likely to get slapped should you dare ask for such a thing! Let's just say you'd be more likely to find that sort of, erm, 'entertainment' in, say, Soho or Montmartre or 5 Bradley Road, Peterborough. (Just say Angus sent you...).
Now that I've tipped you off, what is the purpose of an Easter Staverley?

That's an ancient religion. Devotees turn their back on Mecca, whistle three times and pray to their cooking pots. Of course with the advent of modern gas stoves, this particular cult has fallen into decline. I came across a reference to a Hogsbotham in a book I'm reading, but can't for the life of me work out what it is. Can anybody help?

Literally a hogshead's bottom, this means something similar to the modern expression "scraping the bottom of the barrel". A hogsbotham is something so produced.

Perhaps we have reached the hogsbotham of this game? Perhaps the definition of Inverted Nuptials will decide?

A posh name for divorce in which the grounds for separation relate to a so-called "sixty-nine" act performed by one of the partners with NOT the other partner (IYSWIM). Keen mathematicians will immediately perceive that 69 looks the same upside-down as right-way-up.

As to termination, I agree, Raak. But, just as a final question, what's a Mornington Crescent?

Don't ask me!

a facial game

how's it goin

this is weird an a half

what is this that i'm in right now?