Oscar Wilde insisted that nature mirrored art. What he didn't say was the art was created by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Our Queen "opens" Her parliament over which she has no control, wearing a glass hat, an evening gown, though it is midday, dripping with real jewels so vulgar they look like costume gems. She arrives in a horse and cart guarded by men on horses carrying swords and other men in fancy dress wearing tea cosies. She shows her authority by reading a speech written by her audience, some of whom are wearing sexy silk stockings held up by suspender belts and girdles, which they borrow from their wives or shop for surreptitiuosly.
I was struck by this image watching the most nauseating moment of my year. What a patter song could have been rendered by the "warlike" Prince Edward, a failed Lloyd Webber tea boy who bottled out of the Royal Marines, wearing a colonel's uniform, dripping with unearned medals, boasting about his brief visit to the frontline in Afghanistan. With the rousing chorus "It enables me to look fighting soldiers in the eye,"
He was bragging to the unctuous Alan Titchmarsh who is tailor-made for sycophantic duets. It reminded me of George IV talking about his bravery at Waterloo, where he did not serve, and being answered by the Duke of Wellington: "So your majesty has always said."
An odd lot our Royals. Dark characters who might have dripped from the pens of the authors of The Sorcerer:
George I, who murdered his wife's lover, was said to have baked him in an oven. George II promised his wife on her deathbed he would not marry again - only take mistresses. He had two said to be the ugliest women in Germany. He was so afraid of assassination he ruled from Germany and only ventured to England after dark. Georges III and IV and William IV were all bigamists. During the French Revolution, the Prince Regent and at least one of his brothers engaged to look after the fortunes of French aristos but when those few who escaped to England asked for the money they denied taking it.
Queen Victoria took the thousands raised for a hospital to commemorate her jubilee and spent it on gems. During her first years on the throne she was terrified her uncle Cumberland, King of the Rhine, would murder her. George V abandoned his cousin the Czar to the Bolsheviks but it did not stop Queen Mary, a kleptomaniac, from buying the Czarina's jewels at a bargain price. In World War 2, Edward VIII deserted his post and fled to Biarritz when France fell. Ever after, his C.O., Major General Howard Wyse, refused to allow his name to be mentioned. As Duke of Windsor, he arranged with the Nazis that he would return as puppet king.
The Queen Mother is said to be the daughter of a Welsh serving girl, seduced by the Earl of Strathmore (the family were known for making love to servants - his son married one who later killed herself). Our Queen sacked her trainer and kicked him out of his house when he caught a crippling disease which affected his ability to train all the Queen's horses.
There has been an outbreak of commonsense, it must be said, in the Houses of Parliament, which we have already been told by G & S includes members who are half fairies.
How they chorused their horror when Mr Cameron said what everyone knows. Gaza is a prison camp, the result of the infantile policies of both Israel and Palestine, though most of the ordinary people there want a peaceful settlement. He was right, too, in claiming that Pakistan, that unneccesary country created by tired old men who were no longer thinking straight, should not look both ways at the Taliban.
In America, President Obama has wisely agreed that his country, which owes trillions of dollars to the Mikado, should spend no more borrowed money for the next two years on Climate Change chimera.
At this point we move to the art of Disney. Our head of environment secretary Chris Huhne has a surname that sounds like a Winnie the Pooh soundbite. Fitting for one of nature's Pooh-Bahs. He inherited from Labour a £100 billion scheme to erect two monster turbines every day for the next ten years. Alas, it is hardly value for money. This vast concrete forest will supply less than a tenth of our needs.
Huhne wants to plant 6,000 wind turbines in the sea and thousands more to pollute the countryside. Alas, those feet that in ancient times walked upon England's pastures green will scarcely find room to place the feet in the future.Just a thought but has anyone measured the giant carbon footprints that are grinding the face of our planet in consequence of the recurring wars which governments undertake for frivolous reasons
And to what purpose are we to suffer this defacement of England's pleasant land?
Huhne claims the 3,000 wind turbines we have already built have the 'capacity' to generate 4.5 gigawatts of electricity. Alas, wind blows only intermittently. The actual production is barely a quarter of that, roughly the equivalent of one power station. That will be two per cent of the electricity we need and be twice as expensive as a power station. Offshore turbines are three times as costly.
BEYOND COMMENT
Sixty cinemas around the country will pioneer book tours by satellite in a link to the Royal Festival Hall where Stephen Fry will read from his autobiography, The Fry Chronicles. Audiences will submit questions via Twitter, which has made Fry one of the most avidly followed celebrities in the world. Can there be anything more damning?
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Saturday, 24 July 2010
LOTS IN A NAME
Lord Mandelusion commits the ultimate self exposure by giving himself nicknames. A nickname is not something we can give to ourselves. It must be conferred by others since, in order to "take", it must be accurate. Pernicious Peter calls his autobiography "The Third Man".
Does his Grossness really see himself as a man who preens, cheats the sick and ends up in a sewer - admittedly an exact metaphor for parliament? Prince of Darkness? The symbol of ultimate evil. A curious label to hang on one's own neck, though perhaps understandable in one whose chosen public trait is the dark art of the devious; who apparently relishes his ability to inspire fear and loathing.
Priapic Pete? He was proud to be known as the Bobby Kennedy to Blair's Jack. Kennedy Pere was in league with the Mafia which helped his sons to power and was cheated by them. I have always thought their assassinations were contract killings.
Preening Peter has always puzzled me. Why is he surrounded by this steel bubble which makes him ultimately invulnerable? Policy Wonk Pete is said to be a political genius. Why? His only succcessful trick was simple enough. He got Labour elected by persuading its adherents to abandon bedrock Socialist policies and turning it into the Conservative Party. The Apostolic Peter's puppets even announced there were Thatcherite policies they would maintain. Which is a bit like that trick one teaches dogs, not to eat a treat you have balanced on its nose.
Big Deal. I have been pointing out for years that, whatever party they elect, the English vote Conservative. It is the Scots and the Welsh who are the socialists in religion, as in politics.
What, that apart, is Lord Meddlesome most famous for? He was the Midwife of the Millennium Dome, that costly failure, most famously the scene of a Hollywood style smash and grab of millions of fake gems. A Freudian symbol? He was heavily implicated in the Devolution Bill - which we are still paying. His party brought "Peace" to Ireland by freeing IRA murderers, giving their bloodstained leaders top jobs in mis-Government and only failing by the narrowest of margins to pay every terrorist £12,000.
He was twice thrown out of the Cabinet for acts that in Trollope would have been capital crimes. The party he invented ruined Britain with its Health and Safety obsession, its financial profligacy and its record of a new law every three quarters of an hour. Parliament presided over its own financial scandals by making illegal expenses lawful and endorsed by party leaders as a compensation for failng to award pay rises.
His financial trickery is hair raising. He was the architect of the most disastrous election campaign in history. He revels in his ability to inspire fear and loathing and he crowns it all by admitting he created a Cabinet of bitter factions, headed first by a political chancer who was succeeded without an election by a bully and apparent loon.
His only real success has been unwittingly to make a Coalition Government and deeply needed election reform attainable. It's just our luck it is headed by a Nowhere Man who thinks that in 1940 Britain was the junior partner of America. Those of us who remember 1940 do so as the year America bankrupted Britain by making us pay up front for the tools we needed "to finish the job".
It is as well for him that we are dying off with little sighs of relief.
BEARING FALSE WITNESSES
A 'skidmoreislander' I know only as James responds to my panegeric about Bert Balmer by wondering whether he might have made up witness evidence in the Cameo cinema and Cranbourne Grove murders. I know nothing of the Cranbourne Grove affair. But by a strange accident I do have vital knowledge that in the Cameo cinema murder, the main prosecution evidence was false.
In 1949, the Liverpool cinema was the scene of a brutal double murder which led to a miscarriage of justice. The evidence of a prostitute and her pimp, Jacqueline Dickson and James Northam, resulted in life imprisonment for Charles Connolly, 26, and George Kelly, 27, being hanged.
Northam alleged that he and Dickson had been with the two when they plotted the crime; had seen Kelly loading a pistol. Kelly, they claimed, had borrowed Northam's overcoat for use as a disguise during the robbery.
Many witnesses confirmed that Kelly was clearly half drunk on the day. Cinema staff, however, were adamant the man who threatened them outside the manager's office was not somebody who had been drinking. My chum, Chief Superintendent Herbert Balmer who led the investigation, had difficulty in corroborating much of the prosecution evidence and many witness statements bore the sign of police coaching. Statements that favoured the accused men were held back by the police. Scant attention was paid to the fact that another Liverpool criminal, Donald Johnson, had demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the crime. Arrested for a street robbery in Birkenhead, Johnson had been charged with complicity in the murders. He admitted being in the vicinity of the cinema at the time of the murders. In fact he had been stopped by a police constable, suspicious of his loitering, who had demanded to see his identity card and then taken his name. Johnson, during police interrogation, referred to the murder weapon as being an automatic - which was correct but a fact known only to the police, the gunman and his accomplices, if any. He further stated that one of the dead men had been shot whilst on his hands and knees - again, a fact that only the police knew . Unaccountably, Johnson's entire statement was ruled inadmissible, and he was freed. Reputations and careers were in jeopardy and fresh suspects were needed.
At a retrial after the first, a jury failed to agree. Connolly pleaded guilty to charges of being an accessory. His plea destroyed Kelly's assertions of his own innocence and, despite an appeal against his conviction, Kelly was executed at Walton Prison on 28 March 1950. He continued to assert his innocence, even on the scaffold. Connolly was released from prison in 1957 and died in 1997. Shortly before his death, he took part in an interview on BBC Radio Merseyside, during which he reaffirmed both his and Kelly's innocence.
In February 2001 and in June 2003, Kelly's and Connolly's convictions were judged to be unsafe and were duly quashed.
Some months after the hanging, I was having a coffee in the early hours at a mobile snack bar in Piccadilly, Manchester. A young girl asked me to buy a sandwich for her and her boyfriend. She said they had not eaten for days.
The girl was Jacqueline Dickson and the boyfriend James Northam. He showed me the handgun he said he had bought after the trial after being threatened by associates of the two men. They had gone on the run and were desperate. They admitted they had made up their evidence and when I pointed out that if they confessed to a newspaper there was a few quid in it they jumped at the chance. I agreed to introduce them to some newspapermen and there followed a bizarre traipse round all the newspapers offering my sacrificial lambs. In turn the Express, the Mail, the News Chron and the Daily Dispatch turned them down. Some months later I read that the girl had gone to prison for demanding money with menaces from clients and thought I was lucky to get away with a Java and a sarnie.
So my answer, James, is that I don't know if Bert was bent. I think it more likely he was seizing at straws. Though I am never surprised when, as frequently happens, the police are shown to have charged the wrong culprit.
Does his Grossness really see himself as a man who preens, cheats the sick and ends up in a sewer - admittedly an exact metaphor for parliament? Prince of Darkness? The symbol of ultimate evil. A curious label to hang on one's own neck, though perhaps understandable in one whose chosen public trait is the dark art of the devious; who apparently relishes his ability to inspire fear and loathing.
Priapic Pete? He was proud to be known as the Bobby Kennedy to Blair's Jack. Kennedy Pere was in league with the Mafia which helped his sons to power and was cheated by them. I have always thought their assassinations were contract killings.
Preening Peter has always puzzled me. Why is he surrounded by this steel bubble which makes him ultimately invulnerable? Policy Wonk Pete is said to be a political genius. Why? His only succcessful trick was simple enough. He got Labour elected by persuading its adherents to abandon bedrock Socialist policies and turning it into the Conservative Party. The Apostolic Peter's puppets even announced there were Thatcherite policies they would maintain. Which is a bit like that trick one teaches dogs, not to eat a treat you have balanced on its nose.
Big Deal. I have been pointing out for years that, whatever party they elect, the English vote Conservative. It is the Scots and the Welsh who are the socialists in religion, as in politics.
What, that apart, is Lord Meddlesome most famous for? He was the Midwife of the Millennium Dome, that costly failure, most famously the scene of a Hollywood style smash and grab of millions of fake gems. A Freudian symbol? He was heavily implicated in the Devolution Bill - which we are still paying. His party brought "Peace" to Ireland by freeing IRA murderers, giving their bloodstained leaders top jobs in mis-Government and only failing by the narrowest of margins to pay every terrorist £12,000.
He was twice thrown out of the Cabinet for acts that in Trollope would have been capital crimes. The party he invented ruined Britain with its Health and Safety obsession, its financial profligacy and its record of a new law every three quarters of an hour. Parliament presided over its own financial scandals by making illegal expenses lawful and endorsed by party leaders as a compensation for failng to award pay rises.
His financial trickery is hair raising. He was the architect of the most disastrous election campaign in history. He revels in his ability to inspire fear and loathing and he crowns it all by admitting he created a Cabinet of bitter factions, headed first by a political chancer who was succeeded without an election by a bully and apparent loon.
His only real success has been unwittingly to make a Coalition Government and deeply needed election reform attainable. It's just our luck it is headed by a Nowhere Man who thinks that in 1940 Britain was the junior partner of America. Those of us who remember 1940 do so as the year America bankrupted Britain by making us pay up front for the tools we needed "to finish the job".
It is as well for him that we are dying off with little sighs of relief.
BEARING FALSE WITNESSES
A 'skidmoreislander' I know only as James responds to my panegeric about Bert Balmer by wondering whether he might have made up witness evidence in the Cameo cinema and Cranbourne Grove murders. I know nothing of the Cranbourne Grove affair. But by a strange accident I do have vital knowledge that in the Cameo cinema murder, the main prosecution evidence was false.
In 1949, the Liverpool cinema was the scene of a brutal double murder which led to a miscarriage of justice. The evidence of a prostitute and her pimp, Jacqueline Dickson and James Northam, resulted in life imprisonment for Charles Connolly, 26, and George Kelly, 27, being hanged.
Northam alleged that he and Dickson had been with the two when they plotted the crime; had seen Kelly loading a pistol. Kelly, they claimed, had borrowed Northam's overcoat for use as a disguise during the robbery.
Many witnesses confirmed that Kelly was clearly half drunk on the day. Cinema staff, however, were adamant the man who threatened them outside the manager's office was not somebody who had been drinking. My chum, Chief Superintendent Herbert Balmer who led the investigation, had difficulty in corroborating much of the prosecution evidence and many witness statements bore the sign of police coaching. Statements that favoured the accused men were held back by the police. Scant attention was paid to the fact that another Liverpool criminal, Donald Johnson, had demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the crime. Arrested for a street robbery in Birkenhead, Johnson had been charged with complicity in the murders. He admitted being in the vicinity of the cinema at the time of the murders. In fact he had been stopped by a police constable, suspicious of his loitering, who had demanded to see his identity card and then taken his name. Johnson, during police interrogation, referred to the murder weapon as being an automatic - which was correct but a fact known only to the police, the gunman and his accomplices, if any. He further stated that one of the dead men had been shot whilst on his hands and knees - again, a fact that only the police knew . Unaccountably, Johnson's entire statement was ruled inadmissible, and he was freed. Reputations and careers were in jeopardy and fresh suspects were needed.
At a retrial after the first, a jury failed to agree. Connolly pleaded guilty to charges of being an accessory. His plea destroyed Kelly's assertions of his own innocence and, despite an appeal against his conviction, Kelly was executed at Walton Prison on 28 March 1950. He continued to assert his innocence, even on the scaffold. Connolly was released from prison in 1957 and died in 1997. Shortly before his death, he took part in an interview on BBC Radio Merseyside, during which he reaffirmed both his and Kelly's innocence.
In February 2001 and in June 2003, Kelly's and Connolly's convictions were judged to be unsafe and were duly quashed.
Some months after the hanging, I was having a coffee in the early hours at a mobile snack bar in Piccadilly, Manchester. A young girl asked me to buy a sandwich for her and her boyfriend. She said they had not eaten for days.
The girl was Jacqueline Dickson and the boyfriend James Northam. He showed me the handgun he said he had bought after the trial after being threatened by associates of the two men. They had gone on the run and were desperate. They admitted they had made up their evidence and when I pointed out that if they confessed to a newspaper there was a few quid in it they jumped at the chance. I agreed to introduce them to some newspapermen and there followed a bizarre traipse round all the newspapers offering my sacrificial lambs. In turn the Express, the Mail, the News Chron and the Daily Dispatch turned them down. Some months later I read that the girl had gone to prison for demanding money with menaces from clients and thought I was lucky to get away with a Java and a sarnie.
So my answer, James, is that I don't know if Bert was bent. I think it more likely he was seizing at straws. Though I am never surprised when, as frequently happens, the police are shown to have charged the wrong culprit.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
MY FOOTBALL LEAVES NO CARBON FOOTPRINT
My brief moment of glory happened immediately our new pupils' class assembled at Didsbury Central School. By an overwhelming majority I was voted form captain, which carried with it the much prized office of Captain of The Form Football Team. Not bad, I thought, since I had never played football.
After our first game there was another overwhelming majority vote after which I was no longer form captain and especially NOT Captain of Football.
It was shortly afterwards that I devoted myself to the arduous cause of serial truancy. As a result, my next appearance on the football field was as sports reporter of The Bielefeld Bugle, the army newspaper of a Rhine Army holding unit in, surprisingly, Bielefeld. I was tasked with reporting a game between a team of Polish refugees and a team of Czech refugees. Both countries, as grammarians are aware, suffer from a paucity of vowels. To attempt a colourful account of how Czwrrd dispossesed Brwnjwn was beyond my prentice pen. Even player identification was beyond me.
Thankfully many years went by before the Daily Mirror sent me to write a colour piece as Manchester United battled some hereditary enemy whose name I did not catch. The News Editor was rather harsh when I returned. "Finished early?" "Dunno about early but they're all sitting round sucking lemons," I told him.
I only went to one other football match. A crooner called Andy Williams was the guest of the M.U. chairman, a boorish butcher. Oddly enough, his brother was a chum of mine, a fellow member of a dining club, as couth a chap as you could wish for.
The interview was not a success. Williams was monosyllabic and I couldn't think of a thing to ask him. Alas, though age has withered him and the years are unanimous in their condemnation, he still wails in public. So I have recurring reminders of that disastrous outing.
My family do not share my view. Indeed a much loved grandson, on his way to the States for a job interview in Wall Street, went via South Africa so that he could watch some games in a pub.
I can only assume it was a brief spasm of schizophrenia which led me to switch on the final.
Not a good choice. The Dutch team was given nine yellow cards, plus a red card - a record for a World Cup Final. What can I tell you?
I noticed an odd thing. The natives were dressed in smart casual. It was the white supporters who were plastered in war paint. And I played better than either team when I was thrown off the team at Didsbury Central.
No wonder Richard Williams wrote in the Guardian: "No more all-European finals, thank you very much." He remembered the defining moment of the previous World Cup final when Frenchman Zinedine Zidane headbutted an Italian player. Raphael Honigstein bemoaned the Dutch team's "downright cynical fouling."
All in all, I am not surprised the "Beautiful" (???????) game is played in short trousers and the ultimate prize is a school cap.
NEVER WAS SO MUCH OWED BY SO MANY TO SO EVEN FEWER
I was incensed when the Commemoration of the Battle of Britain, which ranks with Crecy, Agincourt, Waterloo and Trafalgar, was third item in the running order on TV bulletins and some newspapers did not mention it at all. Parenthetically, more enemy planes were shot down by the Polish Squadron than the rest of the RAF. You might wish to remember that when there are more complaints about Poles taking the jobs in the strawberry fields here about from Britons too lazy to do them. No arduous ad Astra for them.
POPE AND CIRCUMSTANCES
The news I was waiting for was an announcement that the Pope would find time to canonise the murderous Raoul Moat so great have been the media attempts to celebritise him.
Internet news reported: "After six hours of negotiations and a good Tasering, the cornered man shot himself. As he lay dying the police jumped on him screaming like banshees. A more ignominious conclusion to the most high profile police manhunt since the search for police killer Harry Roberts in 1966 would be hard to imagine."
A Shrine on Facebook, more of the same erected round his house, and an abundance of votive offerings and prayers. His brother, a tax inspector who claimed to have had little to do with him, complained that his death was like watching a public execution. He called for a second autopsy. That was a view not shared by his mother who said he would be better off dead. It is difficult to disagree. According to the Daily Mirror, he dressed in mini-skirts, kicked a dog and left it to die for two days, and wore lipstick.
He is still in with a chance. Saints have done stranger things. St Dwynwen successfully prayed for her fiancee to become impotent and not even that disqualified her for the job of the Welsh St Valentine. St Wilgefortis was a bearded lady who "disencumbered" female pilgrims from abusive husbands. St Edmund came back from the dead; St Fraidd turned the Mayor of Cork into a horse; St David, who levitated in the most disturbing way, was the son of a raped nun. His monks had to pull the plough themselves without draught animals; to drink only water; to eat only bread with salt and herbs; and to spend the evenings in prayer, reading and writing. No personal possessions were allowed; to say "my book" was an offence. Not surprisingly, two of his monks tried to murder him. And you don't want to know about St Augustine's wild youth.
The policemen who had spent anxious days hunting St Moat, a self-confessed police killer, are themselves the subject of a disciplinary inquiry. I hope the policeman who has been blinded by this thug will be invited to give evidence.
When a nation is transfixed by the tapes of a murderer which show him as a "man under pressure" and the "peace" in Northern Ireland is threatened by eight-year-olds, I do not think Western civilisation has much of a future. There is so little one can do but I am unsubscribing from Facebook as a small but determined step.
One bright spot. Scientists have spent a million quid setting up electronic equipment of mind boggling complexity in order to measure the earth. Alas, it doesn't work. Rabbits have nibbled the power cables. Gaia is striking back.
After our first game there was another overwhelming majority vote after which I was no longer form captain and especially NOT Captain of Football.
It was shortly afterwards that I devoted myself to the arduous cause of serial truancy. As a result, my next appearance on the football field was as sports reporter of The Bielefeld Bugle, the army newspaper of a Rhine Army holding unit in, surprisingly, Bielefeld. I was tasked with reporting a game between a team of Polish refugees and a team of Czech refugees. Both countries, as grammarians are aware, suffer from a paucity of vowels. To attempt a colourful account of how Czwrrd dispossesed Brwnjwn was beyond my prentice pen. Even player identification was beyond me.
Thankfully many years went by before the Daily Mirror sent me to write a colour piece as Manchester United battled some hereditary enemy whose name I did not catch. The News Editor was rather harsh when I returned. "Finished early?" "Dunno about early but they're all sitting round sucking lemons," I told him.
I only went to one other football match. A crooner called Andy Williams was the guest of the M.U. chairman, a boorish butcher. Oddly enough, his brother was a chum of mine, a fellow member of a dining club, as couth a chap as you could wish for.
The interview was not a success. Williams was monosyllabic and I couldn't think of a thing to ask him. Alas, though age has withered him and the years are unanimous in their condemnation, he still wails in public. So I have recurring reminders of that disastrous outing.
My family do not share my view. Indeed a much loved grandson, on his way to the States for a job interview in Wall Street, went via South Africa so that he could watch some games in a pub.
I can only assume it was a brief spasm of schizophrenia which led me to switch on the final.
Not a good choice. The Dutch team was given nine yellow cards, plus a red card - a record for a World Cup Final. What can I tell you?
I noticed an odd thing. The natives were dressed in smart casual. It was the white supporters who were plastered in war paint. And I played better than either team when I was thrown off the team at Didsbury Central.
No wonder Richard Williams wrote in the Guardian: "No more all-European finals, thank you very much." He remembered the defining moment of the previous World Cup final when Frenchman Zinedine Zidane headbutted an Italian player. Raphael Honigstein bemoaned the Dutch team's "downright cynical fouling."
All in all, I am not surprised the "Beautiful" (???????) game is played in short trousers and the ultimate prize is a school cap.
NEVER WAS SO MUCH OWED BY SO MANY TO SO EVEN FEWER
I was incensed when the Commemoration of the Battle of Britain, which ranks with Crecy, Agincourt, Waterloo and Trafalgar, was third item in the running order on TV bulletins and some newspapers did not mention it at all. Parenthetically, more enemy planes were shot down by the Polish Squadron than the rest of the RAF. You might wish to remember that when there are more complaints about Poles taking the jobs in the strawberry fields here about from Britons too lazy to do them. No arduous ad Astra for them.
POPE AND CIRCUMSTANCES
The news I was waiting for was an announcement that the Pope would find time to canonise the murderous Raoul Moat so great have been the media attempts to celebritise him.
Internet news reported: "After six hours of negotiations and a good Tasering, the cornered man shot himself. As he lay dying the police jumped on him screaming like banshees. A more ignominious conclusion to the most high profile police manhunt since the search for police killer Harry Roberts in 1966 would be hard to imagine."
A Shrine on Facebook, more of the same erected round his house, and an abundance of votive offerings and prayers. His brother, a tax inspector who claimed to have had little to do with him, complained that his death was like watching a public execution. He called for a second autopsy. That was a view not shared by his mother who said he would be better off dead. It is difficult to disagree. According to the Daily Mirror, he dressed in mini-skirts, kicked a dog and left it to die for two days, and wore lipstick.
He is still in with a chance. Saints have done stranger things. St Dwynwen successfully prayed for her fiancee to become impotent and not even that disqualified her for the job of the Welsh St Valentine. St Wilgefortis was a bearded lady who "disencumbered" female pilgrims from abusive husbands. St Edmund came back from the dead; St Fraidd turned the Mayor of Cork into a horse; St David, who levitated in the most disturbing way, was the son of a raped nun. His monks had to pull the plough themselves without draught animals; to drink only water; to eat only bread with salt and herbs; and to spend the evenings in prayer, reading and writing. No personal possessions were allowed; to say "my book" was an offence. Not surprisingly, two of his monks tried to murder him. And you don't want to know about St Augustine's wild youth.
The policemen who had spent anxious days hunting St Moat, a self-confessed police killer, are themselves the subject of a disciplinary inquiry. I hope the policeman who has been blinded by this thug will be invited to give evidence.
When a nation is transfixed by the tapes of a murderer which show him as a "man under pressure" and the "peace" in Northern Ireland is threatened by eight-year-olds, I do not think Western civilisation has much of a future. There is so little one can do but I am unsubscribing from Facebook as a small but determined step.
One bright spot. Scientists have spent a million quid setting up electronic equipment of mind boggling complexity in order to measure the earth. Alas, it doesn't work. Rabbits have nibbled the power cables. Gaia is striking back.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
WILL YE NO STOP COMING BACK AGAIN>>AND AGAIN
We are witnessing the birth of Radish TV.
Time was when it was buses. Now it is TV programmes. You wait all week for one. Then two
come along.
All I do is watch TV, feed my fish and dream of Dry Martinis whilst whistling the September Song. I bought Freeview, tempted by the heady prospect of sixty TV programmes. None of them were listed as Repeats. That is because ALL of them were.
In desperation I took out a Sky subscription. I now have a choice of many programmes,several days of the week, all showing the same programmes. I watch Taggart so often that the characters are beginning to get the accent right.
The only refuge for the inquiring mind is Sky Arts 2. Somehow repeats of Pavarotti, favourite operas and notable concerts are bearable, indeed welcome.
My wife's noble aunt used to take her ancient nanny to her seaside holiday home in Dorset.
As a treat, Nanny was taken to the cinema where she saw the first James Bond film and was entranced. She was so full of his escapades she made the film unmissable and the Ferret took me to see it.
I was deeply impressed and told Nanny. She was horrified. "That poor Mr Bond," she said. "Did he have to go through all that again?"
What would she make of TV in its latest manifestation? Repeats within 24 hours. An
endless procession of posturing antique dealers, far beyond description in non-obscene words, in "Antiques Masters", heavily "Outnumbered" and a ceaseless interrogation: "Any Questions?", "University Challenge" and more too numbing to mention. A proliferation of Paxman exhibiting all the sneering, snug superiority of a man who has the answers to the questions he hurls written down in front of him. Clarkson with his air of school scarves and chewing gum.Alsis not just to-night that is Frying. It is every night,often twice And if you manage to dodge this shower of unguided missiles you can get them all on your computer for the forseeable future.
Michael "Low" Grade, once a Mirror sports reporter, hangs on grimly to his chairmanship of Pinewood Sheperton Studios despite pleas of major shareholders who gave damning assessments of the chairman's performance and asked for more 'sweat and toil'. In his days as a High Honcho of the BBC in 1986, he bought in "Neighbours" (Coronation Street with Fly Corks) and was thought of as a wizard scheduler. I was not convinced after I learned that his schoolgirl daughter had complained she missed the show because it clashed with Prep. Grade signed up repeats so she could watch it.
Why are there so many repeats? Why is there such brilliant technology and yet such creative poverty?
The Broadcasting Establishment insists it cannot afford to commission new programmes. That from the same Establishment who have 180 staff getting, if not earning, higher salaries than the Prime Minister and unlimited expenses. They also tell us that The Talent is expensive and would not function for less than a million. This is nonsense. I have yet to meet a "star" on TV or Radio who would not pay the BBC if that were the only way to get on Air or in front of a camera.
In regional radio there are many household names working free. Ego Mania is alive and well and living in Medialand.
The truth is that all the troubles in sport and entertainment can be put down to the most recent Media recruit: the Agent. It is the agents who blackmail football managers and media moguls into paying astronomical sums. When I started broadcasting forty years ago, only actors had agents. Finding authors, sports stars and entertainers, even after dinner speakers, was the job of the executives. It was an onerous, time-consuming chore. When agents emerged to take on that task they were welcomed with open wallets. Which they have pillaged with gay abandon.
Time was when it was buses. Now it is TV programmes. You wait all week for one. Then two
come along.
All I do is watch TV, feed my fish and dream of Dry Martinis whilst whistling the September Song. I bought Freeview, tempted by the heady prospect of sixty TV programmes. None of them were listed as Repeats. That is because ALL of them were.
In desperation I took out a Sky subscription. I now have a choice of many programmes,several days of the week, all showing the same programmes. I watch Taggart so often that the characters are beginning to get the accent right.
The only refuge for the inquiring mind is Sky Arts 2. Somehow repeats of Pavarotti, favourite operas and notable concerts are bearable, indeed welcome.
My wife's noble aunt used to take her ancient nanny to her seaside holiday home in Dorset.
As a treat, Nanny was taken to the cinema where she saw the first James Bond film and was entranced. She was so full of his escapades she made the film unmissable and the Ferret took me to see it.
I was deeply impressed and told Nanny. She was horrified. "That poor Mr Bond," she said. "Did he have to go through all that again?"
What would she make of TV in its latest manifestation? Repeats within 24 hours. An
endless procession of posturing antique dealers, far beyond description in non-obscene words, in "Antiques Masters", heavily "Outnumbered" and a ceaseless interrogation: "Any Questions?", "University Challenge" and more too numbing to mention. A proliferation of Paxman exhibiting all the sneering, snug superiority of a man who has the answers to the questions he hurls written down in front of him. Clarkson with his air of school scarves and chewing gum.Alsis not just to-night that is Frying. It is every night,often twice And if you manage to dodge this shower of unguided missiles you can get them all on your computer for the forseeable future.
Michael "Low" Grade, once a Mirror sports reporter, hangs on grimly to his chairmanship of Pinewood Sheperton Studios despite pleas of major shareholders who gave damning assessments of the chairman's performance and asked for more 'sweat and toil'. In his days as a High Honcho of the BBC in 1986, he bought in "Neighbours" (Coronation Street with Fly Corks) and was thought of as a wizard scheduler. I was not convinced after I learned that his schoolgirl daughter had complained she missed the show because it clashed with Prep. Grade signed up repeats so she could watch it.
Why are there so many repeats? Why is there such brilliant technology and yet such creative poverty?
The Broadcasting Establishment insists it cannot afford to commission new programmes. That from the same Establishment who have 180 staff getting, if not earning, higher salaries than the Prime Minister and unlimited expenses. They also tell us that The Talent is expensive and would not function for less than a million. This is nonsense. I have yet to meet a "star" on TV or Radio who would not pay the BBC if that were the only way to get on Air or in front of a camera.
In regional radio there are many household names working free. Ego Mania is alive and well and living in Medialand.
The truth is that all the troubles in sport and entertainment can be put down to the most recent Media recruit: the Agent. It is the agents who blackmail football managers and media moguls into paying astronomical sums. When I started broadcasting forty years ago, only actors had agents. Finding authors, sports stars and entertainers, even after dinner speakers, was the job of the executives. It was an onerous, time-consuming chore. When agents emerged to take on that task they were welcomed with open wallets. Which they have pillaged with gay abandon.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Eigg On Their Face
The Isle of Eigg has a lot going for it. One of the most beautiful Hebridean Islands, 10 miles off the Scottish west coast, south of the Isle of Skye,the island has superb wildlife and birdlife and a temperate maritime climate.
Even better, its 87 inhabitants are sharing out a million pound win. A reward/bribe for being green. The £1m goes in the kitty with £300,000 won in January for its revolutionary electrification project, which generates 24 hour power. The system incorporates a 9.9 kW PV system, three hydro generation systems (totalling 112 kW) and a 24 kW wind farm. It is supported by diesel generators and batteries. The combination of solar, wind and hydro power should provide a network that is self sufficient and powered 98% from renewable sources.
The island's website boasted: "We were entirely dependent upon making our own power and the clattering of generators was always to be heard. Now, the generators are silent and suddenly we have leapt to the forefront of electricity generation."
Sad, really, that this week the islanders have been told "Put that light out! Go easy with the toaster and put away the electric iron." Once more the voice of the generator is heard in the land.
Electricity began being rationed in June after 3 days of mild weather caused supply to fall short of demand. Goodness knows what they will do if global warming happens.
Mind you, there is still money to be made from wind turbines, most of it by rich landowners who will earn millions exploiting the lucrative system of subsidies for generating renewable energy.
The richest Scottish Peer, the Duke of Roxburghe, plans a 48-turbine scheme on his Scottish estate which will "generate" an estimated £30m a year, shared with developers. About £17m of this would come from subsidies from consumers. The firm which will erect the turbines said: “We will build and operate the wind farm and the landowners will receive an annual payment.” He is seeking planning permission for 48 turbines on his grouse moor at Fallago Rig in the Lammermuir Hills in Roxburghshire, again in the face of strong local opposition.
Others seeking to capitalise on the new wind rush include the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Reginald Sheffield, father of Samantha Cameron, and Michael Ancram, the Tory grandee. One controversial proposal is at Mynydd y Gwair, near Swansea, on land owned by the Duke of Beaufort’s Somerset Trust, where RWE power wants permission for 19 turbines. The scheme, which has 1,600 objectors, would generate an estimated income of about £12m a year, including £7m of subsidy.
The growing interest in wind farms stems from the government’s subsidy system. A typical three-megawatt turbine will generate about £670,000 a year, of which £350,000 comes in subsidies. Since the machines cost £2-3m and have a lifetime of about 25 years, the profits are considerable, even after running costs are deducted. Many schemes have gone ahead despite objections from local residents concerned about blight and from economists who bridle at the “excessive” cost of the subsidy system.
No surprise that developers, landowners and wind farm supporters say Britain must accept changes to its landscape, plus the cost of subsidies, as the price of cutting CO2 emissions. RidgeWind is a company set up by Hg Capital to seek out large landowners to set up wind farms. Last August it switched on an eight-turbine wind farm at Bagmoor, part of the 3,000-acre estate of Sheffield, the father-in-law of the Tory leader, generating an income of about £3.5m a year, shared with developers. RidgeWind will soon erect 10 more turbines, each about 410ft high, on the Ellingham estate in Northumberland, owned by Lady Belinda Gadsden, whose title dates back to 1642.
Ironically, the Renewables Obligation certificate (Roc) scheme was created by a Labour government but is handing large profits to investors and country landowners. Under the system, renewable energy generators can claim a Roc certificate for each megawatt hour of electricity produced. A 3MW turbine produces about 7,000 megawatt hours a year, with the electricity fetching £320,000 and the Rocs another £350,000 at current prices. Power companies are obliged to buy Rocs to meet government targets for renewable power but pass the cost to consumers. They also take the bulk of wind farm profits.
.................................... ................................
I hope, in its commendable erasure of New Labour's prodigality, the Coaltion will kybosh schemes like the one by which it helped the University of Warwick to pay
£14,793 for a piece of sculpture "Wet Road" by Richard Long.
Not any old piece of sculpture you understand. According to the Review of the National Art Collection fund at the time,Long combined the awful purity of the modern art gallery with the awful emptiness of the extreme, uninhabited and often remote landscape.
How?
He took a piece of paper and typed on it details of a walk he did on a rain-
soaked road. One piece of paper,fourteen uneven lines of typing and he is £14,793 better off.
The Wet Road
"The times of walking on the rain-wetted road
"Along a 19 day walk of 391 miles
"From the North Coast to the South Coast of France
First day 1 and a half hours
Third day 2 and a half hours"
It is called soft sculpture and the University of Warwick believed it had not only got a bargain piece: it had also got a prose poem.
The Skidmore Collection of Soft Sculpture is a retrospective assembly of works by the Master of Elwyn Court. It represents his development as an artist in this exciting field. It includes Betting Slip, an early work almost stark in its conception, giving subtle hints of the power that lay dormant in his fingers; note the isolation of the nom de plume which speaks of the essential loneliness of the human condition.
Coppernob
2.30 Haydock Park
shilling e.w
Debs Delight
The Master was capable of a tenderness which makes a sonnet of the declaration:
Alice.
Back of school bike shed. 4 pm. Bring mac.
Bring mac. What caring those simple words imply. What pictures of wet playing fields, the heedless passion of youth, tempered with the practical, the almost seminal fear of rheumatism, unique in one so young. Yet in maturity this was to be echoed and re-born as brooding pessimism in the impressive "Application For A Job as Reporter on the Kidderminster Shuttle", a series which he was to extend to cover most of the weekly newspapers in Northern Britain.
The collection contains many examples of his art in its maturity. The cycle of Daily Mirror weather stories conjours up past summers in soft sculpture in a way only Monet acheived in paint. Haunting phrases recur: "Holiday makers in Blackpool
sweltered in the August sun" has the narrative quality of Dutch genre paintings.
For many years the Master explored the possibilties of humility in what came to be known as the Canon of Cringing Letters to the Midland Bank. Impossible to do
justice to their tonality and plasticity in newsprint.That requires the medium on which they were conceived, A4 Just Write Copier, supplied by his patron of many years, the BBC.
(This blog is available as a monochrome print, signed and numbered by the artist.)
Even better, its 87 inhabitants are sharing out a million pound win. A reward/bribe for being green. The £1m goes in the kitty with £300,000 won in January for its revolutionary electrification project, which generates 24 hour power. The system incorporates a 9.9 kW PV system, three hydro generation systems (totalling 112 kW) and a 24 kW wind farm. It is supported by diesel generators and batteries. The combination of solar, wind and hydro power should provide a network that is self sufficient and powered 98% from renewable sources.
The island's website boasted: "We were entirely dependent upon making our own power and the clattering of generators was always to be heard. Now, the generators are silent and suddenly we have leapt to the forefront of electricity generation."
Sad, really, that this week the islanders have been told "Put that light out! Go easy with the toaster and put away the electric iron." Once more the voice of the generator is heard in the land.
Electricity began being rationed in June after 3 days of mild weather caused supply to fall short of demand. Goodness knows what they will do if global warming happens.
Mind you, there is still money to be made from wind turbines, most of it by rich landowners who will earn millions exploiting the lucrative system of subsidies for generating renewable energy.
The richest Scottish Peer, the Duke of Roxburghe, plans a 48-turbine scheme on his Scottish estate which will "generate" an estimated £30m a year, shared with developers. About £17m of this would come from subsidies from consumers. The firm which will erect the turbines said: “We will build and operate the wind farm and the landowners will receive an annual payment.” He is seeking planning permission for 48 turbines on his grouse moor at Fallago Rig in the Lammermuir Hills in Roxburghshire, again in the face of strong local opposition.
Others seeking to capitalise on the new wind rush include the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Reginald Sheffield, father of Samantha Cameron, and Michael Ancram, the Tory grandee. One controversial proposal is at Mynydd y Gwair, near Swansea, on land owned by the Duke of Beaufort’s Somerset Trust, where RWE power wants permission for 19 turbines. The scheme, which has 1,600 objectors, would generate an estimated income of about £12m a year, including £7m of subsidy.
The growing interest in wind farms stems from the government’s subsidy system. A typical three-megawatt turbine will generate about £670,000 a year, of which £350,000 comes in subsidies. Since the machines cost £2-3m and have a lifetime of about 25 years, the profits are considerable, even after running costs are deducted. Many schemes have gone ahead despite objections from local residents concerned about blight and from economists who bridle at the “excessive” cost of the subsidy system.
No surprise that developers, landowners and wind farm supporters say Britain must accept changes to its landscape, plus the cost of subsidies, as the price of cutting CO2 emissions. RidgeWind is a company set up by Hg Capital to seek out large landowners to set up wind farms. Last August it switched on an eight-turbine wind farm at Bagmoor, part of the 3,000-acre estate of Sheffield, the father-in-law of the Tory leader, generating an income of about £3.5m a year, shared with developers. RidgeWind will soon erect 10 more turbines, each about 410ft high, on the Ellingham estate in Northumberland, owned by Lady Belinda Gadsden, whose title dates back to 1642.
Ironically, the Renewables Obligation certificate (Roc) scheme was created by a Labour government but is handing large profits to investors and country landowners. Under the system, renewable energy generators can claim a Roc certificate for each megawatt hour of electricity produced. A 3MW turbine produces about 7,000 megawatt hours a year, with the electricity fetching £320,000 and the Rocs another £350,000 at current prices. Power companies are obliged to buy Rocs to meet government targets for renewable power but pass the cost to consumers. They also take the bulk of wind farm profits.
.................................... ................................
I hope, in its commendable erasure of New Labour's prodigality, the Coaltion will kybosh schemes like the one by which it helped the University of Warwick to pay
£14,793 for a piece of sculpture "Wet Road" by Richard Long.
Not any old piece of sculpture you understand. According to the Review of the National Art Collection fund at the time,Long combined the awful purity of the modern art gallery with the awful emptiness of the extreme, uninhabited and often remote landscape.
How?
He took a piece of paper and typed on it details of a walk he did on a rain-
soaked road. One piece of paper,fourteen uneven lines of typing and he is £14,793 better off.
The Wet Road
"The times of walking on the rain-wetted road
"Along a 19 day walk of 391 miles
"From the North Coast to the South Coast of France
First day 1 and a half hours
Third day 2 and a half hours"
It is called soft sculpture and the University of Warwick believed it had not only got a bargain piece: it had also got a prose poem.
The Skidmore Collection of Soft Sculpture is a retrospective assembly of works by the Master of Elwyn Court. It represents his development as an artist in this exciting field. It includes Betting Slip, an early work almost stark in its conception, giving subtle hints of the power that lay dormant in his fingers; note the isolation of the nom de plume which speaks of the essential loneliness of the human condition.
Coppernob
2.30 Haydock Park
shilling e.w
Debs Delight
The Master was capable of a tenderness which makes a sonnet of the declaration:
Alice.
Back of school bike shed. 4 pm. Bring mac.
Bring mac. What caring those simple words imply. What pictures of wet playing fields, the heedless passion of youth, tempered with the practical, the almost seminal fear of rheumatism, unique in one so young. Yet in maturity this was to be echoed and re-born as brooding pessimism in the impressive "Application For A Job as Reporter on the Kidderminster Shuttle", a series which he was to extend to cover most of the weekly newspapers in Northern Britain.
The collection contains many examples of his art in its maturity. The cycle of Daily Mirror weather stories conjours up past summers in soft sculpture in a way only Monet acheived in paint. Haunting phrases recur: "Holiday makers in Blackpool
sweltered in the August sun" has the narrative quality of Dutch genre paintings.
For many years the Master explored the possibilties of humility in what came to be known as the Canon of Cringing Letters to the Midland Bank. Impossible to do
justice to their tonality and plasticity in newsprint.That requires the medium on which they were conceived, A4 Just Write Copier, supplied by his patron of many years, the BBC.
(This blog is available as a monochrome print, signed and numbered by the artist.)
Saturday, 26 June 2010
love's labours might get lost
My advice to the lovelorn young would be to let your lawyer write your love letters. Undying love is more often than not a contradiction in terms. Then there is the natural carelessness of the mail. Fidel Castro's letters to his mistress and his wife put in the wrong envelopes. That puts me in mind of a friend sent to retreive his wife's ear ring which had fallen off in the car. Alas, the ear ring he brought back belonged to someone else.
I was interested at the way people cite the 12th century lovers Abelard and Heloise. I assume they haven't read them. They were written AFTER Abelard had been castrated by her vengeful uncle Fulbert. Not surprisingly, his letters are heavy on recrimination and self pity. Lines like “You know the depths of shame to which my unbridled lust had consigned our bodies...even during the days of Our Lord’s Passion” do not seem to me to be the stuff of romance. And if you think lust at Easter is bad, he also admits to having his wicked way with her in the refectory of a convent.
It's years since I received a love letter. Though only this week Givenchy sent me a scented advert for a “unique fragrance for men that ignites passions and heightens desire". I have put it in the drawer under my shirts. I await the postman with mounting excitement.
I once had a letter from a listener which claimed that, when I was 12, I had invited her to an orgy and admitted she regretted turning me down. I was highly flattered and quietly proud of my precocity.
TRAVEL ON......
Reading last week's musing about travelling, I thought of my much mourned friend Ronnie Knox Mawer, the former Chief Justice of the South Seas. You cannot get much further than Tonga where in his robes he danced on a beach with the king. Ronnie was no stranger to London’s top hotels and shops. In retirement he toured them regularly seeking handouts for the homeless. It could create difficulties, largely because Ronnie was not a snappy dresser, even by tramp standards. Few retired judges wear TWO elderly Oxfam top coats. Not surprising that a policeman who saw him wheeling a trolley of sandwiches to the tramps’ shelter asked him where he had got them. Ronnie said he had been given them by the manager of Boots.
“Tell that to the old bastard on the bench,” the disbelieving policeman said.
“He WAS the old bastard on the bench,” said a passing tramp fondly.
That most eccentric method of travelling is jogging, of which Australian art critic Bob Hughes wrote:
“The glutton, gross in paunch and thigh,
Eludes the Reaper grim.
Swollen of nose and pink of eye,
The drunkard laughs at him.
The chairbound journalist, the Don,
Carelessly quaff champagne,
The Pop star lives for ever, on
Pills, bimbos and cocaine.
Frustrated by this doleful news,
Death newer victims picks.
He laces on his jogging shoes
And catches Mr Fixx.
The author Thomas de Quincey worshipped Wordsworth who invited him on a visit. de Quincey walked from Manchester to the Lakes. Within three miles of Wordsworth’s home his nerve broke. He returned to Manchester.Then he had a typically de Quinceian notion. He thought he would practise going to the Lakes by making a trial run to North Wales, which he had heard also had mountains and lakes. He was the first Rambler but he had no tent. He slept under an umbrella. His most frightening moment came in Chester as he walked along the banks of the River Dee just as the annual tidal wave The Dee Bore was about to happen. de Quincey longed to ask a stranger what it was. There was a problem. They had not been introduced. He wrote:
“Here now be it understood that in the midst of any great natural convulsion - earthquake, say, waterspout or eruption of Vesuvius - it shall and may be lawful for two English people to communicate with each other, although it shall have been proved by affidavit that no previous introduction had been affected. In all other cases the old statute of non intercourse holds good.
Meantime the present case might be regarded as ranking among the first fruits or blossom of an earthquake. Therefore I spoke without scruple."
Arabist Thomas Kinglakeraces in 1814 published "Travel Brought Home from the East". Riding across the Sinai Desert he spotted an Englishman bearing down from the opposite direction.
“As we approached each other, it became with me a question of whether we should speak. I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him. The traveller perhaps felt as I did, for except that we lifted our hand to our caps, and waved our arms in courtesy, we passed each other as if we had passed in Bond Street."
The masters had no sooner passed each other than their respective servants quietly stopped and entered into conversation. The stranger was the first to speak. “I dare say you wish to know how the plague is going in Cairo?”
Augustus Hare was an early guide book writer. He also travelled the country houses of Britain gathering marvellous stories which he used in two books “The Years With Mother” and “In My Solitary Life”. He had been adopted by an aunt in a curious manner. His parents were a fashionable pair of travellers Happy to dump their children - and not just for the holidays.
“It occured to my godmother as just possible that my parents may be induced to give me up altogether. In July she wrote her petition and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it met with. My father’s reply was very brief. 'Certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is weaned. And if any of your friends would like one, kindly recollect we have others.'”
He wrote of his wealthy aunt Caroline: “Her companion was a Mrs Barbara with whom Aunt Caroline was most furious at times. She had a large pension after my aunt’s death. It used to be said that the reason she only had one arm and part of the other was that Aunt Caroline had eaten the rest.”
THAT FOOTBALL GAME OF INNUMERABLE HALFWITS
World Cup blogger to The Guardian:
"22 millionaires ruining a lawn"
I was interested at the way people cite the 12th century lovers Abelard and Heloise. I assume they haven't read them. They were written AFTER Abelard had been castrated by her vengeful uncle Fulbert. Not surprisingly, his letters are heavy on recrimination and self pity. Lines like “You know the depths of shame to which my unbridled lust had consigned our bodies...even during the days of Our Lord’s Passion” do not seem to me to be the stuff of romance. And if you think lust at Easter is bad, he also admits to having his wicked way with her in the refectory of a convent.
It's years since I received a love letter. Though only this week Givenchy sent me a scented advert for a “unique fragrance for men that ignites passions and heightens desire". I have put it in the drawer under my shirts. I await the postman with mounting excitement.
I once had a letter from a listener which claimed that, when I was 12, I had invited her to an orgy and admitted she regretted turning me down. I was highly flattered and quietly proud of my precocity.
TRAVEL ON......
Reading last week's musing about travelling, I thought of my much mourned friend Ronnie Knox Mawer, the former Chief Justice of the South Seas. You cannot get much further than Tonga where in his robes he danced on a beach with the king. Ronnie was no stranger to London’s top hotels and shops. In retirement he toured them regularly seeking handouts for the homeless. It could create difficulties, largely because Ronnie was not a snappy dresser, even by tramp standards. Few retired judges wear TWO elderly Oxfam top coats. Not surprising that a policeman who saw him wheeling a trolley of sandwiches to the tramps’ shelter asked him where he had got them. Ronnie said he had been given them by the manager of Boots.
“Tell that to the old bastard on the bench,” the disbelieving policeman said.
“He WAS the old bastard on the bench,” said a passing tramp fondly.
That most eccentric method of travelling is jogging, of which Australian art critic Bob Hughes wrote:
“The glutton, gross in paunch and thigh,
Eludes the Reaper grim.
Swollen of nose and pink of eye,
The drunkard laughs at him.
The chairbound journalist, the Don,
Carelessly quaff champagne,
The Pop star lives for ever, on
Pills, bimbos and cocaine.
Frustrated by this doleful news,
Death newer victims picks.
He laces on his jogging shoes
And catches Mr Fixx.
The author Thomas de Quincey worshipped Wordsworth who invited him on a visit. de Quincey walked from Manchester to the Lakes. Within three miles of Wordsworth’s home his nerve broke. He returned to Manchester.Then he had a typically de Quinceian notion. He thought he would practise going to the Lakes by making a trial run to North Wales, which he had heard also had mountains and lakes. He was the first Rambler but he had no tent. He slept under an umbrella. His most frightening moment came in Chester as he walked along the banks of the River Dee just as the annual tidal wave The Dee Bore was about to happen. de Quincey longed to ask a stranger what it was. There was a problem. They had not been introduced. He wrote:
“Here now be it understood that in the midst of any great natural convulsion - earthquake, say, waterspout or eruption of Vesuvius - it shall and may be lawful for two English people to communicate with each other, although it shall have been proved by affidavit that no previous introduction had been affected. In all other cases the old statute of non intercourse holds good.
Meantime the present case might be regarded as ranking among the first fruits or blossom of an earthquake. Therefore I spoke without scruple."
Arabist Thomas Kinglakeraces in 1814 published "Travel Brought Home from the East". Riding across the Sinai Desert he spotted an Englishman bearing down from the opposite direction.
“As we approached each other, it became with me a question of whether we should speak. I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him. The traveller perhaps felt as I did, for except that we lifted our hand to our caps, and waved our arms in courtesy, we passed each other as if we had passed in Bond Street."
The masters had no sooner passed each other than their respective servants quietly stopped and entered into conversation. The stranger was the first to speak. “I dare say you wish to know how the plague is going in Cairo?”
Augustus Hare was an early guide book writer. He also travelled the country houses of Britain gathering marvellous stories which he used in two books “The Years With Mother” and “In My Solitary Life”. He had been adopted by an aunt in a curious manner. His parents were a fashionable pair of travellers Happy to dump their children - and not just for the holidays.
“It occured to my godmother as just possible that my parents may be induced to give me up altogether. In July she wrote her petition and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it met with. My father’s reply was very brief. 'Certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is weaned. And if any of your friends would like one, kindly recollect we have others.'”
He wrote of his wealthy aunt Caroline: “Her companion was a Mrs Barbara with whom Aunt Caroline was most furious at times. She had a large pension after my aunt’s death. It used to be said that the reason she only had one arm and part of the other was that Aunt Caroline had eaten the rest.”
THAT FOOTBALL GAME OF INNUMERABLE HALFWITS
World Cup blogger to The Guardian:
"22 millionaires ruining a lawn"
Friday, 18 June 2010
TRAVEL WITHOUT MOVBEMENT
It is holiday time and all my friends are going a-travelling.Travelling? I needed Quells to cross the Menai Bridge. I travel instead through TV and books.
Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel book in 1322. Were he living today he could have walked onto a job on the Sun. He pinched most of his stories from other reporters and when he couldn't steal them he made them up. But he only stole the best. He was very big on dragons.
"In the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocras in form and likeness of a great dragon. A young man who wist not of the dragon came into the cave and found a chamber. There he saw a damosel that combed her head and looked into a mirror; and she had much treasure about her. She turned her head and asked him what he would? He said he would be her paramour.
"She told him to come on the morrow and kiss her on the mouth. And have no dread for I will do thee no harm, albeit thou see me in the likeness of a dragon. This is an enchantment. If thou kiss me thou shalt have all this treasure and be my lord.
"And the man came on the morrow to kiss this damsel. And when he saw her come out of the cave in the shape of a dragon, so hideous and so horrible, he had so great dread, that he fled. When she saw that he turned not again, she began to cry, as a thing that had much sorrow. And anon the knight died."
Here he is on the Great Khan in Cathay:
"He always hath three wives with him wherever he may be and after his wives on the same side sit the ladies of the court. And all those that be married have a counterfeit made like a man’s foot upon their heads. All wrought with great pearls, fine and orient, and above made with peacocks feathers and of other shining feathers. That stands upon their heads like a crest in token that they be under a man’s foot and under subjection of man..."
In Rome, Adam of Usk witnessed a curious custom at a Papal Coronation which followed the scandal when a woman pope gave birth on the Vatican steps: "He is seated on a throne of porphyry which is pierced beneath and one of the younger cardinals makes proof of his sex...” The cardinal, on proving the Pope had privates, sang "Habet" (he has), whereupon the congregation sang "Deo Gratias" -or "Thank the Lord for that."
John Aubrey was a biographer, folklorist, antiquarian and mathematician. He helped found the Royal Society. Today he would be working for the News of the World. He loved a salacious story of High Life. He tells how Sir Philip Sydney’s sister had a peephole made so that she could watch the stallions serve the mares and then act the like sport herself with her stallions. Sir Jonas Moore, he relates, cured his sciatica by boiling his buttocks. And this is how that great traveller Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, entered history:
"This Earle of Oxford, making his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a fart, at which he was so abashed he went to travel seven years. At his returne the Queen welcomed him home and said, “My Lord, I have quite forgot the fart.'
In 1923 Lord Bangor recalled walking in the fields outside Shanghai:
“Colonel Hayley Bell had lagged behind to examine an old shrine. Suddenly the rest of us were charged by a water buffalo. They are very dangerous and hate foreigners. I suppose we smell different. I was up a tree and my two friends were in a shed. The buffalo was snorting and flicking his tail. The beast stamped its foot and lowered its head. Hayley Bell walked straight up to it and kicked it hard on the nose. The astonished animal turned tail and lumbered off. 'Shock tactics is what it is about,' said Hayley Bell as I climbed out of my tree. 'Just go up to an animal and show it who is master.'”
Francis Kilvert's journals are a joy:
“Miss Childs and her sister, stranded in London at night, went to London Bridge Hotel, having missed the last train. They had little money, no luggage, except for an owl in a basket. The owl hooted all night in spite of them putting her up the chimney, before the looking glass, under the bed clothes and in a circle of candles which they hoped it would mistake for the sun. The owl went on hooting, upset the basket, got out and flew about the room. The chambermaid almost frightened to death dared not come inside the room. Miss Childs asked the waiter to get some mice for the owl.
But none could be got."
LIES, DAMNED LIES - AND STATISTICS
Oh dear, I had such hopes for the Coalition. Sadly they are not above using dubious statistics to acheive their ends. It was ever thus. What is doubly annoying is that, like passive smoking (the WHO researched it for five years but had to admit it could find no proof it caused disease), and the unit measure of safe drinks (which the government has admitted was a guess), the drink drive problem is false. The present figure, and the future reduction of deaths if the limit is cut, is based on a theoretic calculation based on figures for accidents in Australia and Europe. Even the statistic of deaths is false. It is based on deaths in which drink plays a part. AND THAT MEANS DRUNKEN PEDESTRIANS which form the majority of deaths. It also includes collisions which were the fault of the sober driver involved and not the drunken ones.Why do they do it? Is it all part of a programme of controlling the population, like the new law every quarter of an hour the Labs brought in?
Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel book in 1322. Were he living today he could have walked onto a job on the Sun. He pinched most of his stories from other reporters and when he couldn't steal them he made them up. But he only stole the best. He was very big on dragons.
"In the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocras in form and likeness of a great dragon. A young man who wist not of the dragon came into the cave and found a chamber. There he saw a damosel that combed her head and looked into a mirror; and she had much treasure about her. She turned her head and asked him what he would? He said he would be her paramour.
"She told him to come on the morrow and kiss her on the mouth. And have no dread for I will do thee no harm, albeit thou see me in the likeness of a dragon. This is an enchantment. If thou kiss me thou shalt have all this treasure and be my lord.
"And the man came on the morrow to kiss this damsel. And when he saw her come out of the cave in the shape of a dragon, so hideous and so horrible, he had so great dread, that he fled. When she saw that he turned not again, she began to cry, as a thing that had much sorrow. And anon the knight died."
Here he is on the Great Khan in Cathay:
"He always hath three wives with him wherever he may be and after his wives on the same side sit the ladies of the court. And all those that be married have a counterfeit made like a man’s foot upon their heads. All wrought with great pearls, fine and orient, and above made with peacocks feathers and of other shining feathers. That stands upon their heads like a crest in token that they be under a man’s foot and under subjection of man..."
In Rome, Adam of Usk witnessed a curious custom at a Papal Coronation which followed the scandal when a woman pope gave birth on the Vatican steps: "He is seated on a throne of porphyry which is pierced beneath and one of the younger cardinals makes proof of his sex...” The cardinal, on proving the Pope had privates, sang "Habet" (he has), whereupon the congregation sang "Deo Gratias" -or "Thank the Lord for that."
John Aubrey was a biographer, folklorist, antiquarian and mathematician. He helped found the Royal Society. Today he would be working for the News of the World. He loved a salacious story of High Life. He tells how Sir Philip Sydney’s sister had a peephole made so that she could watch the stallions serve the mares and then act the like sport herself with her stallions. Sir Jonas Moore, he relates, cured his sciatica by boiling his buttocks. And this is how that great traveller Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, entered history:
"This Earle of Oxford, making his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a fart, at which he was so abashed he went to travel seven years. At his returne the Queen welcomed him home and said, “My Lord, I have quite forgot the fart.'
In 1923 Lord Bangor recalled walking in the fields outside Shanghai:
“Colonel Hayley Bell had lagged behind to examine an old shrine. Suddenly the rest of us were charged by a water buffalo. They are very dangerous and hate foreigners. I suppose we smell different. I was up a tree and my two friends were in a shed. The buffalo was snorting and flicking his tail. The beast stamped its foot and lowered its head. Hayley Bell walked straight up to it and kicked it hard on the nose. The astonished animal turned tail and lumbered off. 'Shock tactics is what it is about,' said Hayley Bell as I climbed out of my tree. 'Just go up to an animal and show it who is master.'”
Francis Kilvert's journals are a joy:
“Miss Childs and her sister, stranded in London at night, went to London Bridge Hotel, having missed the last train. They had little money, no luggage, except for an owl in a basket. The owl hooted all night in spite of them putting her up the chimney, before the looking glass, under the bed clothes and in a circle of candles which they hoped it would mistake for the sun. The owl went on hooting, upset the basket, got out and flew about the room. The chambermaid almost frightened to death dared not come inside the room. Miss Childs asked the waiter to get some mice for the owl.
But none could be got."
LIES, DAMNED LIES - AND STATISTICS
Oh dear, I had such hopes for the Coalition. Sadly they are not above using dubious statistics to acheive their ends. It was ever thus. What is doubly annoying is that, like passive smoking (the WHO researched it for five years but had to admit it could find no proof it caused disease), and the unit measure of safe drinks (which the government has admitted was a guess), the drink drive problem is false. The present figure, and the future reduction of deaths if the limit is cut, is based on a theoretic calculation based on figures for accidents in Australia and Europe. Even the statistic of deaths is false. It is based on deaths in which drink plays a part. AND THAT MEANS DRUNKEN PEDESTRIANS which form the majority of deaths. It also includes collisions which were the fault of the sober driver involved and not the drunken ones.Why do they do it? Is it all part of a programme of controlling the population, like the new law every quarter of an hour the Labs brought in?
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