Various...

To everyone's great surprise I'm not dead. I'll refrain from blogging the details of some very messy DIY plumbing.
Thanks to Cnytr for the best Latin joke I've heard all week.

A Jesuit and a Franciscan priest were walking together in the forest, and the Jesuit wanted to see whether there was an echo. So, he called out in a loud voice, "Quod est Franciscanorum regula?" And the echo came back, "-gula, -gula" Then the Franciscan calls out in a loud voice, "Fuitne Judas Jesuita?" And the echo came back, "-ita, -ita".

In the Telegraph we have the obituary of Lord Kingsale (Kinsale?)

The 35th Lord Kingsale (by his own reckoning; by others the 28th or 30th), who died on September 15 aged 64, was Premier Baron of Ireland; his varied career included spells as a kitchen fitter, film extra, silage-pit builder, white hunter, plumber, proprietor of a dating agency in Brisbane and bingo caller in Birmingham before he retired on invalidity benefit to sheltered housing in Somerset.
[snip]
Lords Courcy of Ringoane and Kinsale sat in the Irish parliament as late as the reign of James VI and I. But the family had a knack of backing the wrong side; its fortunes declined inexorably until, by the beginning of this century, the principal asset of Lord Kingsale was the right (unique in the peerage) to keep his hat on in the presence of the sovereign.
Kingsale once undertook a sponsored slim (losing four stones) in the hope that it would give him a better chance of picking up a wife. Securing a spouse and heir was a constant ambition, consistently thwarted. In 1965 the Daily Express announced that he had become engaged to Caroline Graham Porter, a debutante whom he had met at Cowes Week, but nothing came of it.
After that, Kingsale frequently declared his eagerness to wed but, despite being, as he once put it, "the only middle-aged heterosexual bachelor in a 30-mile radius, which has made me a must for any dinner party", matrimony eluded him. He advertised for a wife on several occasions, and got a letter a day from candidates. In 1989, while working as a wine-waiter and butler for hire at £25 a night (including washing up), he became optimistic about a "40-plus, leggy blonde of Hampshire naval stock", but was disappointed again.