You are 18 and so fit your body squeaks. Your muscles ripple under taut skin; you are a crack shot and you can carry 100lbs of kit for miles; your eyes shine with purpose. A grateful country gladly spends one million pounds bringing you to your peak. You have a loving family, or perhaps no family at all, but you are not lonely. You have your regiment, your ship or your squadron. Truly a band of brothers who would die for each other and too often do.
Thanks to the finest medical skills, you know that there is a greater chance than in any previous war that you will be brought back from the gates of death. You do not mind when your government sends you to war for reasons that would hardly provoke arguments between neighbours. You hardly allow yourself to imagine mutilation but even here there is room for hope. Your GOC has ruled that however badly you are wounded the armed services will be your home. It is little remarked in civilian circles but in the services it is possibly the most humane action in history.
After the Armada had been defeated, the navy reduced its fleets and hundreds of sailors were thrown on the street. I had an ancestor who was a Marine Corporal on HMS Arab at Trafalgar. He was killed and so was spared the empty years as a beggar when most of the navy's ships were mothballed after the war. Charles II is the only monarch who has appreciated the needs of old servicemen. He founded the Chelsea Pensioners which replicates the uniformed service life that is so important for their self esteem.
With the GOC's decision we sought to emulate this humane act. The Service, the wounded thought, would still be home when the sticks of dynamite exploded at the roadside. Even though muscles are shattered, limbs disintegrate and the pain that will be there for the rest of life is all too evident, life begins its daily routine.
Sadly, despite its promises, the government sees the wounded in the cushy jobs units have invented for them. It sees the millions that the public has given to Help the Heroes and the British Legion and it has a brilliant idea.
It will kick out the maimed to be cared for in the future by those noble charities.
A leaked document, Management of Army Personnel who are Medically Unfit for Service, says five per cent of the Army is no longer fit for combat. It says the least able 1,500 will go first, with another 750 a year following.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1309297/Betrayal-heroes-Army-force-injured-recruit-new-soldiers.html#ixzz0yk8uA123
I was ready to welcome a Coalition Government because I believe in coalitions. I do not care if Parliament houses more representatives of the third sex than there are daisies in a meadow. The simple truth is that a goverment which betrays its young loses the right for respect.
This government is happy to spend millions on a referendum about voting, though understandably fewer of us than ever vote. More millions are ring fenced so that we can go on helping foreigners. Fifty million will be spent on Trident. For a fraction of that cost it could increase the military establishment, thus ensuring its wounded heroes would keep their homes and be protected from the horrors of civilian life.
I will continue to give a quarter of my pension to charities because I will not be a party to this shabby device and I will certainly post this blog to my MP. May I suggest you contact yours whilst this infamous suggestion is still in the "try it on" stage?
It may be wise to point out that the Sultan of Dubai (a state which is on the verge of bankruptcy and will no doubt soon qualify for aid) is locked in mortal combat with a Russian oligarch to own the biggest multi-million private yacht. The Sultan proposes to add a private beach to the stern of his yacht. The £300,000 million Oligarch's Yacht is already the size of two football pitches.
NONE FOR THE ROAD
My attitude to people who buy bottles of water for purposes other than calming whisky can be judged by spelling Evian backwards.
I had great difficulty in becoming a teetotaller. Perhaps that is why I tire of reading those articles by recovering alcoholics which fill the Sunday papers. A recovering alcoholic in my book is someone who is getting over a hangover. I have spilt more drink down my shirt than most of these pious people have swallowed. The chap for me is he who takes antabuse tablets to see how many he can swallow before drink makes him sick.
I remember an interview I had with a Dr Madden of the Deva Clinic in Chester. He was one of Britain’s great authorities on the sauce and its abuse.
“What do you drink?” he said.
“What have you got?” I asked
“How much do you drink?” he demanded.
“How much have you got?” I countered cunningly.
“Do you find you reach for a drink in moments of stress?”
“ No,” I replied firmly.
“A good sign,“ he remarked.
“Not really. I have usually already got one in my hand,” I said.
“I have just described to you the classic pattern of the alcoholic,“ he told me.
“You have just described everyone I know,” I said.
The best head waiter in history was my friend Jimmy Godwin who left the Blossoms Hotel in Chester in high dudgeon when he was asked to slice a Stilton cheese . As everyone but a barbarian knows, Stilton should be scooped.
Jimmy had a heart attack and when the doctor asked him what he drank he said gin and tonic. "That's what's doing it," said the doctor. So Jimmy gave it up. He changed to whisky and tonic and had another heart attack. “I know what’s doing it,“ he told the doctor. “It’s the tonic!”
Us drunks all know that you can choose not to drink if you don’t want to, whatever proselitising alcoholics tell you. I preferred being drunk to being sober, though I was only an alcoholic between 6 pm and 8 pm.
The advantages of sobriety? I have just emerged blinking from a depression that turned the world into grey mist. Vast quantities of whisky dulled the pain when I was dropped by BBC Wales for the crime of being English; sorrows were eased when I was forced to sell my dogs, my library with its collection of 18th century first editions and my paintings, gifts from leading Welsh artists. It even eased the pain when my favourite dog, Amy, my bloodhound, died of a stress related disease.
In my life I have been in a military prison, unhappily married (the second one has been a joy, but we've only been together for forty years so it may be a mite early to say). I have been sacked more times than a potato harvest.
A contemporary tells me he is depressed to realise how few Christmases he has left. With me, that knowledge acts as a consolation. At the end of the month a new lump is being examined. My doctor puts a third cancer as an even bet. I think about it a lot and I think of Damon Runyon's column "Why me?" when he was diagnosed with throat cancer and I approve of his conclusion "Why Not?".
The Daily Mail’s take on the Wayne Rooney affair:
Miss Wood, 23, a university lecturer’s daughter, and Miss Thompson, 21, the privately-educated child of a wealthy oil company executive, have turned out to be flag-bearers for the celebrity-mad, lascivious culture that has consumed the nation.
And at the bottom of the piece?
Have you got a story on a celebrity? Call the Daily Mail showbusiness desk on 0207 938 6364 or 0207 938 6683.
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Friday, 3 September 2010
THE PEACE THAT PASSES ALL MISUNDERSTANDING
Arab humour reached its apogee when Wilson Kepple and Betty toured the music halls with their hilarious "sand dance" and I was delighted when a friend sent me a clip from YouTube. He also sent a routine by Jackie Mason, a Rabbi who I believe to be the funniest man on the planet.
This week Jews and Arabs premiered a new theatrical enterprise. A farce called"Peace Talks".
This latest attempt of World Theatre is unlikely to succeed. Hammas, the Arab equivalent of the IRA, didn't bother to apply for an audition. President Obama hasn't got the theatrical genius of Blair who brought the IRA to the Peace Table by legerdermain of a high order. Top terrorists got top jobs in the Ulster Government; sinecure election to Westminster without irksome attendance; terrorists were freed from prison; wholesale murders wiped off history's page. Even subsidies for dead terrorists all but succeeded.
.
It is to be hoped that someone persuades Obama to read "The Balfour Declaration. The origins of the Arab Israeli Conflict" by Jonathan Schneer. So far as I am aware, this is the first attempt at a complete investigation of the sleight of hand by Welsh wizard Lloyd George, of whom a cabinet colleague said, "He would leave anyone in the lurch anywhere if he thought it suited his purpose." He did not declare an interest in Israel alrhough his family law firm acted for the Zionists. Despite Lord Balfour's offer of a homeland for the Jews, Lloyd George subsequently offered it to the Ottoman Empire, the current occupiers, in return for a promise to join the Allies against Germany. Although a trety existed to split the Ottoman Empire between France and Britain he offered it to the Arabs
Schneer writes:
"Chaim Weizmann, the leading spokesman for Zionism in Britain, a Russian-born chemist, began to solicit support among the British soon after he settled in Manchester in 1904. He could hardly speak English in those days: his first contacts with British officials were conducted in French...., acting as if he commanded an almost omnipotent power: world Jewry."
The British believed he did.
"Obviously there was no “Jewish power” controlling world affairs, but Weizmann successfully pretended that the Jews were in fact turning the wheels of history. For once, the anti-Semitic image of the Jews proved useful — they were believed to be so maliciously dangerous that one would do best to acquire them as allies rather than as enemies."
Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the Great War, which at that time was not going very well for Britain. More important, policy makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could persuade the United States to join the war. In this sense, as Schneer points out, the decision to issue the Balfour declaration “was based upon a misconception”.
But fear of the Jews was only one part of the story. The other part, which Schneer neglects to explore, was the genuine admiration many of Britain’s leaders, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Balfour himself, felt for the Jews and their history. These men were deeply religious Christian Zionists. They had grown up on the Bible; the Holy Land was their spiritual home. Modern Zionism, they believed, would fulfil a divine promise and resettle the Jews in the land of their ancient fathers.
Schneer expertly analyzes the passionate and fascinating controversy between non-Zionist and Zionist Jews that preceded the Balfour declaration. The Zionists spoke in the name of Jewish nationhood; their Jewish opponents denied that Jews even constituted a separate nation.
The Balfour declaration used deliberately vague language. It did specify, "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities."
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
My oldest friend recalls:
Intended to be a cheap 4 day return trip on the Portsmouth-Bilbao ferry with a few hours ashore... enough time to visit the Gugenheim. Off the boat after b/fast and a 20 min journey to town on the docks railway. Sidetracked by the other attractions, particularly the glorious food market [your influence] coffee + tapas and tobacconists. [I had a long list of needs from addicted friends who had asked for cut price baccy]. Had lost track of time 'cos hadn't bothered to adjust my watch to the time difference and guessed we should get back to the harbour.
Comforted on seeing the huge [7 decked] boat at the quayside as the train pulled in, we strolled from the station the few yards to the departures building only to swear on rounding the corner that the ground was moving away from the boat but, no, it was the boat very slowly leaving the dock! All our kit was in our cabin on board and all we had was what we were standing in... and the contraband baccy. We were the only ones to have missed it and the next sailing would be in 5 days time but the office staff were obviously well rehearsed and after a couple of phone calls told us that there was space on the boat leaving Santander in 3 hours time. The only way to get there in time was by car, a two hour journey away, so we had no alternative but to use a taxi which [of course!] just happened to be standing outside. Explaining to the driver [who could speak neither English nor Welsh] that we had no cash and would have to find a hole in the wall, he set off like someone possessed. After a journey from hell we arrived in Santander and in the middle of hooting traffic stopped outside a bank. Just in case we might have thought of doing a runner, the taxi driver abandoned the car and stood with us until he was paid the extortionate fare. We got to the boarding gate and had to pay again the full fare for what would have been a return ticket, about £250 for both of us because we were now with a different ferry company! Although we were the last to board, Passport Control + Customs were waiting for us. The only bag I had was a small holdall but it was stuffed with the contraband baccy. The official insisted on checking it and raised both eyebrows [independently] asking, "...but you smoke all zis yourself?" [about 9 kilos!] I lamely explained that we were both heavy smokers. "... but zis is not good," he said menacingly. I guess the fact that the captain had a train to catch caused the man to thumb us through and with huge relief we got on the ship. While my companion went to shop for toiletries, my first stop was the bar and as the largest g+t was being dispensed, nonchalantly enquired "...when exactly would the boat arrive in Portsmouth?". "We don't go there, sir. Plymouth were bound for!" "But my car is in Portsmouth ..." I started, then decided it was all too much as mal de mer waved in.
When our turn came at UK Passport Control the buggers were lying in wait. As the officer looked up from my passport another two popped out from behind the screen and invited us to disappear with them. Intense grilling then for about half an hour trying to convince them that all the stuff really was for our own use and that [without a wheeze in my chest or any finger stains] I always had a fag in my mouth. Whipped with a good telling off and obviously not believed, we were eventually released.
Another hefty fare to pay at the railway for a journey back to Portsmouth, via Bristol, and frustratingly only a spit away from the Severn Bridge and sanctuary. Our belongings had been lost, the cleaning squad had, we were assured, squirrelled them away and we would have to wait for them to come back for their next shift or have them boxed up and sent on. Then another 4 hour car journey home where, a couple of days later, a letter arrived from HM Customs and Excise telling me that although excused on this occasion, my particulars and the details of my transgression had been noted and if ever I put a foot over the Severn Bridge again, they would surely get me and duff me up properly! "Bugger that" I thought, and now never go further than the shops.
The Editor; I cannot beat that but my wife had a dreadful experience travelling. She was a guest at a House Party in southwest Ireland. Unwisely she elected to travel by" (T)ryon" Air. Coming home, she chaperoned a schoolboy, a friend of her hostess's son. He carried his tennis racket in his rucksack. At Kerry airport he was prevented from boarding. His racket could be used as a weapon, he was told. My wife said it did not seem likely that the entire air crew and the passengers would be intimidated by a schoolboy with a tennis racket. To no avail. They had to return to the reception desk where the offending racket was removed and put in baggage at a cost of £30. There had been no problem with it travelling from Stansted.
I am so glad that the only travelling I do is falling over. I should have listened to these ladies.................................The Truly Fascinating Aida
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc
CONGRATULATIONS
At 0.700hrs on Wednesday 2nd Lt I.A.McQueen became commander of 6 Platoon, B Company, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
His company will shortly join 2 Para Battle Group in Afghanistan.
This week Jews and Arabs premiered a new theatrical enterprise. A farce called"Peace Talks".
This latest attempt of World Theatre is unlikely to succeed. Hammas, the Arab equivalent of the IRA, didn't bother to apply for an audition. President Obama hasn't got the theatrical genius of Blair who brought the IRA to the Peace Table by legerdermain of a high order. Top terrorists got top jobs in the Ulster Government; sinecure election to Westminster without irksome attendance; terrorists were freed from prison; wholesale murders wiped off history's page. Even subsidies for dead terrorists all but succeeded.
.
It is to be hoped that someone persuades Obama to read "The Balfour Declaration. The origins of the Arab Israeli Conflict" by Jonathan Schneer. So far as I am aware, this is the first attempt at a complete investigation of the sleight of hand by Welsh wizard Lloyd George, of whom a cabinet colleague said, "He would leave anyone in the lurch anywhere if he thought it suited his purpose." He did not declare an interest in Israel alrhough his family law firm acted for the Zionists. Despite Lord Balfour's offer of a homeland for the Jews, Lloyd George subsequently offered it to the Ottoman Empire, the current occupiers, in return for a promise to join the Allies against Germany. Although a trety existed to split the Ottoman Empire between France and Britain he offered it to the Arabs
Schneer writes:
"Chaim Weizmann, the leading spokesman for Zionism in Britain, a Russian-born chemist, began to solicit support among the British soon after he settled in Manchester in 1904. He could hardly speak English in those days: his first contacts with British officials were conducted in French...., acting as if he commanded an almost omnipotent power: world Jewry."
The British believed he did.
"Obviously there was no “Jewish power” controlling world affairs, but Weizmann successfully pretended that the Jews were in fact turning the wheels of history. For once, the anti-Semitic image of the Jews proved useful — they were believed to be so maliciously dangerous that one would do best to acquire them as allies rather than as enemies."
Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the Great War, which at that time was not going very well for Britain. More important, policy makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could persuade the United States to join the war. In this sense, as Schneer points out, the decision to issue the Balfour declaration “was based upon a misconception”.
But fear of the Jews was only one part of the story. The other part, which Schneer neglects to explore, was the genuine admiration many of Britain’s leaders, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Balfour himself, felt for the Jews and their history. These men were deeply religious Christian Zionists. They had grown up on the Bible; the Holy Land was their spiritual home. Modern Zionism, they believed, would fulfil a divine promise and resettle the Jews in the land of their ancient fathers.
Schneer expertly analyzes the passionate and fascinating controversy between non-Zionist and Zionist Jews that preceded the Balfour declaration. The Zionists spoke in the name of Jewish nationhood; their Jewish opponents denied that Jews even constituted a separate nation.
The Balfour declaration used deliberately vague language. It did specify, "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities."
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
My oldest friend recalls:
Intended to be a cheap 4 day return trip on the Portsmouth-Bilbao ferry with a few hours ashore... enough time to visit the Gugenheim. Off the boat after b/fast and a 20 min journey to town on the docks railway. Sidetracked by the other attractions, particularly the glorious food market [your influence] coffee + tapas and tobacconists. [I had a long list of needs from addicted friends who had asked for cut price baccy]. Had lost track of time 'cos hadn't bothered to adjust my watch to the time difference and guessed we should get back to the harbour.
Comforted on seeing the huge [7 decked] boat at the quayside as the train pulled in, we strolled from the station the few yards to the departures building only to swear on rounding the corner that the ground was moving away from the boat but, no, it was the boat very slowly leaving the dock! All our kit was in our cabin on board and all we had was what we were standing in... and the contraband baccy. We were the only ones to have missed it and the next sailing would be in 5 days time but the office staff were obviously well rehearsed and after a couple of phone calls told us that there was space on the boat leaving Santander in 3 hours time. The only way to get there in time was by car, a two hour journey away, so we had no alternative but to use a taxi which [of course!] just happened to be standing outside. Explaining to the driver [who could speak neither English nor Welsh] that we had no cash and would have to find a hole in the wall, he set off like someone possessed. After a journey from hell we arrived in Santander and in the middle of hooting traffic stopped outside a bank. Just in case we might have thought of doing a runner, the taxi driver abandoned the car and stood with us until he was paid the extortionate fare. We got to the boarding gate and had to pay again the full fare for what would have been a return ticket, about £250 for both of us because we were now with a different ferry company! Although we were the last to board, Passport Control + Customs were waiting for us. The only bag I had was a small holdall but it was stuffed with the contraband baccy. The official insisted on checking it and raised both eyebrows [independently] asking, "...but you smoke all zis yourself?" [about 9 kilos!] I lamely explained that we were both heavy smokers. "... but zis is not good," he said menacingly. I guess the fact that the captain had a train to catch caused the man to thumb us through and with huge relief we got on the ship. While my companion went to shop for toiletries, my first stop was the bar and as the largest g+t was being dispensed, nonchalantly enquired "...when exactly would the boat arrive in Portsmouth?". "We don't go there, sir. Plymouth were bound for!" "But my car is in Portsmouth ..." I started, then decided it was all too much as mal de mer waved in.
When our turn came at UK Passport Control the buggers were lying in wait. As the officer looked up from my passport another two popped out from behind the screen and invited us to disappear with them. Intense grilling then for about half an hour trying to convince them that all the stuff really was for our own use and that [without a wheeze in my chest or any finger stains] I always had a fag in my mouth. Whipped with a good telling off and obviously not believed, we were eventually released.
Another hefty fare to pay at the railway for a journey back to Portsmouth, via Bristol, and frustratingly only a spit away from the Severn Bridge and sanctuary. Our belongings had been lost, the cleaning squad had, we were assured, squirrelled them away and we would have to wait for them to come back for their next shift or have them boxed up and sent on. Then another 4 hour car journey home where, a couple of days later, a letter arrived from HM Customs and Excise telling me that although excused on this occasion, my particulars and the details of my transgression had been noted and if ever I put a foot over the Severn Bridge again, they would surely get me and duff me up properly! "Bugger that" I thought, and now never go further than the shops.
The Editor; I cannot beat that but my wife had a dreadful experience travelling. She was a guest at a House Party in southwest Ireland. Unwisely she elected to travel by" (T)ryon" Air. Coming home, she chaperoned a schoolboy, a friend of her hostess's son. He carried his tennis racket in his rucksack. At Kerry airport he was prevented from boarding. His racket could be used as a weapon, he was told. My wife said it did not seem likely that the entire air crew and the passengers would be intimidated by a schoolboy with a tennis racket. To no avail. They had to return to the reception desk where the offending racket was removed and put in baggage at a cost of £30. There had been no problem with it travelling from Stansted.
I am so glad that the only travelling I do is falling over. I should have listened to these ladies.................................The Truly Fascinating Aida
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc
CONGRATULATIONS
At 0.700hrs on Wednesday 2nd Lt I.A.McQueen became commander of 6 Platoon, B Company, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
His company will shortly join 2 Para Battle Group in Afghanistan.
Friday, 27 August 2010
A LAST POSTING
The two Highland Soldiers who stand guard over this column are at attention with arms reversed. On the columnar battlements a lone piper plays the poignant lament "The Flowers of the Forest", the computer is metaphorically draped in black velvet. Even the typeface is in mourning.
We do not believe in death. It is not a buddhist concept; but we still mourn the passing of three merry souls. They, more than anyone else I know, merit Dr Johnson's tribute at the passing of his friend Davy Garrick: "I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
Stanley Blenkinsop was certainly a purveyor of harmless pleasure. A news editor in the great days of the Daily Express, which he believed was the only reason for the invention of printing, he was grouchy, loyal, lovable, pedantic, funny and colourful in a quiet, English way. On his retirement he became a student, pedalling to the university every day on his cycle and being rewarded with a degree in history. Stanley, like me a tamer of teddy bears, was the only newspaperman I have ever met who wore a monocle and erected a flagpole in his garden from which the union jack flew every day he was in residence. He was an indefatigable writer of letters to the Times which were always used. Once in Paris, where he went every year to celebrate Bastille Day, he had his wallet stolen.
"What did it contain?" a gendarme asked.
"My monocle," replied Stanley, and was immediately treated with the fawning courtesy reserved for English Milords.
Stanley's closest friends were Gordon and Beatrice Amory, a couple who enjoyed the happy marriage to which we all aspire. They were the party givers from Heaven; never happier than when they were dispensing hospitality by the ladleful. Gordon organised an annual party in Newcastle for "Geordie" newspapermen which was legendary. I have known him for half a century and can never remember a time when he wasn't smiling. The smile was still there, the emails still supportive and cheery, though since Beatrice died earlier this year, the smile must have been harder to summon. I imagine it came back this week when he was reunited with her.
I thought of an inscription I once saw on a gravestone in Winchester for a widower:
"Tried a little to live without her,
Liked it not
and died."
One of their greatest blessings was Denise, a loving daughter. One's heart goes out to her in what must be a terrible time beyond imagining. Perhaps she can take some consolation now the three of them, in Sir Thomas More's words, "meet merrily in heaven". I will know at the end of the month whether I will be making it a foursome.
THE WELSH WAY OF DEATH
Dying is in its infancy in England. They take it much more seriously in rural Wales where a funeral is not considered well done if there are fewer than three services. It was a Welshman who invented cremation. When I first went there sin eaters were occasionally employed to take on the corpse's sins by eating a meal off the coffin lid. Into the coffin went a tiny ladder with which to climb to heaven.
No one tried harder to vanquish death than Sir John Pryce, 5th baronet (sheriff, 1748), of Newtown, Powys. He was a well-known eccentric, who married three times. His last lady having to insist on the removal of the embalmed corpses of her two predecessors from his bed before her marriage.
SirJohn had already, after the death of his second wife, written to the curate of Newtown, then on his deathbed, to ask him to deliver messages of affection to both his wives in Heaven and to request the second to appear to him. After the death of the third Lady Pryce, he invited a well-known faith-healer, Bridget Bostock, 'the Cheshire Pythoness’, to bring her back to life. The Pythoness undertook to heal all diseases by prayer, faith, and an embrocation of fasting spittle, which she supplied. Sir John requested her prayers for the restoration to him of his third wife, recently deceased. In a letter he asked her: ".... to offer up prayers to the throne of Grace on my behalf that He would graciously vouchsafe to raise up my dear wife, Dame Eleanor Pryce, from the Dead. If your immediate presence is indispensably necessary, pray let me know by return of the Post, that I may send you a Coach & Six & Servants to attend you here, with orders to defray your expences in a manner most suitable to your own desires. If your prayers will be as effectual at the distance you'r from me, pray signify the same in a letter directed by way of London, to, good Madam,
" Your unfortunate afflicted petitioner & humble Servant,
John Pryce.
Miss Bostock is said to have visited him, and to have exerted all her miracle-working powers, but without effect. Sir John died in somewhat straitened circumstances at Haverfordwest on 28 October 1761, whilst meditating a fourth marriage to a lady whom he described as "that dearest object of my lawful and best and purest Wordly affections..."
ODDS ENDS
My own view of death owes a great deal to the professional gamblers I used to run with in Chester. Notably Lol Shone, a character who owed much to Damon Runyon.
Another friend Tony Vyse, landlord of the Bowling Green Inn, had three fixations: Tia Maria, the first favourite on the card and a statuesque blonde receptionist at the Grovesnor Hotel of the sex whom Lol christened 'The Longhaired Bandits'.
We were in the bottom bar of the Grosvenor when. having downed a Tia Maria and backed the first favourite, he surprisingly collapsed at our feet. He died being given the Kiss of Life by the statuesque Long Haired Bandit.
"Lucky bugger," said Lol enviously. Seeing our shocked faces, he explained: "Only two weeks into the flat racing season and he's already got a treble up."
We do not believe in death. It is not a buddhist concept; but we still mourn the passing of three merry souls. They, more than anyone else I know, merit Dr Johnson's tribute at the passing of his friend Davy Garrick: "I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
Stanley Blenkinsop was certainly a purveyor of harmless pleasure. A news editor in the great days of the Daily Express, which he believed was the only reason for the invention of printing, he was grouchy, loyal, lovable, pedantic, funny and colourful in a quiet, English way. On his retirement he became a student, pedalling to the university every day on his cycle and being rewarded with a degree in history. Stanley, like me a tamer of teddy bears, was the only newspaperman I have ever met who wore a monocle and erected a flagpole in his garden from which the union jack flew every day he was in residence. He was an indefatigable writer of letters to the Times which were always used. Once in Paris, where he went every year to celebrate Bastille Day, he had his wallet stolen.
"What did it contain?" a gendarme asked.
"My monocle," replied Stanley, and was immediately treated with the fawning courtesy reserved for English Milords.
Stanley's closest friends were Gordon and Beatrice Amory, a couple who enjoyed the happy marriage to which we all aspire. They were the party givers from Heaven; never happier than when they were dispensing hospitality by the ladleful. Gordon organised an annual party in Newcastle for "Geordie" newspapermen which was legendary. I have known him for half a century and can never remember a time when he wasn't smiling. The smile was still there, the emails still supportive and cheery, though since Beatrice died earlier this year, the smile must have been harder to summon. I imagine it came back this week when he was reunited with her.
I thought of an inscription I once saw on a gravestone in Winchester for a widower:
"Tried a little to live without her,
Liked it not
and died."
One of their greatest blessings was Denise, a loving daughter. One's heart goes out to her in what must be a terrible time beyond imagining. Perhaps she can take some consolation now the three of them, in Sir Thomas More's words, "meet merrily in heaven". I will know at the end of the month whether I will be making it a foursome.
THE WELSH WAY OF DEATH
Dying is in its infancy in England. They take it much more seriously in rural Wales where a funeral is not considered well done if there are fewer than three services. It was a Welshman who invented cremation. When I first went there sin eaters were occasionally employed to take on the corpse's sins by eating a meal off the coffin lid. Into the coffin went a tiny ladder with which to climb to heaven.
No one tried harder to vanquish death than Sir John Pryce, 5th baronet (sheriff, 1748), of Newtown, Powys. He was a well-known eccentric, who married three times. His last lady having to insist on the removal of the embalmed corpses of her two predecessors from his bed before her marriage.
SirJohn had already, after the death of his second wife, written to the curate of Newtown, then on his deathbed, to ask him to deliver messages of affection to both his wives in Heaven and to request the second to appear to him. After the death of the third Lady Pryce, he invited a well-known faith-healer, Bridget Bostock, 'the Cheshire Pythoness’, to bring her back to life. The Pythoness undertook to heal all diseases by prayer, faith, and an embrocation of fasting spittle, which she supplied. Sir John requested her prayers for the restoration to him of his third wife, recently deceased. In a letter he asked her: ".... to offer up prayers to the throne of Grace on my behalf that He would graciously vouchsafe to raise up my dear wife, Dame Eleanor Pryce, from the Dead. If your immediate presence is indispensably necessary, pray let me know by return of the Post, that I may send you a Coach & Six & Servants to attend you here, with orders to defray your expences in a manner most suitable to your own desires. If your prayers will be as effectual at the distance you'r from me, pray signify the same in a letter directed by way of London, to, good Madam,
" Your unfortunate afflicted petitioner & humble Servant,
John Pryce.
Miss Bostock is said to have visited him, and to have exerted all her miracle-working powers, but without effect. Sir John died in somewhat straitened circumstances at Haverfordwest on 28 October 1761, whilst meditating a fourth marriage to a lady whom he described as "that dearest object of my lawful and best and purest Wordly affections..."
ODDS ENDS
My own view of death owes a great deal to the professional gamblers I used to run with in Chester. Notably Lol Shone, a character who owed much to Damon Runyon.
Another friend Tony Vyse, landlord of the Bowling Green Inn, had three fixations: Tia Maria, the first favourite on the card and a statuesque blonde receptionist at the Grovesnor Hotel of the sex whom Lol christened 'The Longhaired Bandits'.
We were in the bottom bar of the Grosvenor when. having downed a Tia Maria and backed the first favourite, he surprisingly collapsed at our feet. He died being given the Kiss of Life by the statuesque Long Haired Bandit.
"Lucky bugger," said Lol enviously. Seeing our shocked faces, he explained: "Only two weeks into the flat racing season and he's already got a treble up."
Friday, 20 August 2010
A PLEA TO BAR " COLOUR" ALTOGETHER
There is no time in my life when I have been without a close friend whose pigmentation differs from mine. At school, in the Army and through my working and retirement life, some of my best friends have been coloured and I would certainly let my children marry one. I had a coloured
uncle and much preferred him to my aunt, his wife. My first wife and our children were mostly Jewish. My father didn't mind what you were, so long as you weren't a Catholic. It ran in the family. My uncle was furious when I introduced his daughter to a friend who was Catholic. A chum, who is a Catholic priest, has to hide his occupation in the Middle East.
My Cambodian sister-in-law is a charmer and has two delightful and brainy sons. Our neighbour is coloured and her two girls are the best mannered and most delightful children I know. My problem is that after a lifetime I suddenly do not know how to describe them. I am white; they are black. But I must not say so. I value them for their qualities and I hope their judgement of me is not based on my lack of colour. I wouldn't mind having friends who are candy striped yet, here I am, victim of a verbal colour bar. It is puzzling. Negro is a corruption of the Latin word for black; black people call each other "niggers" in "The Wire". It would be impolite for me to do so. "Black" in my youth was the favoured nomenclature and gave no offence. Reading the Sunday papers last week, I found that it is no longer acceptable nor, surpringly, is "coloured".
In Liverpol in the Fifties where the argot owed much to American slang, coloured people were called, shockingly but without offence, "Spades". The Spade Clubs were amongst the scariest shebeens. I was in one once when an African the size of the St George's Hall loomed over me and demanded to know whether I believed in the colour bar. "Certainly not," I told him. He gestured towards the door and said: "We do. P...... OFF."
Much store was set by repartee, which in those days by the River Mersey took little account of sensibilities. Queuing for the last tram from Lime Street, the conductress ordered us, "F.... off. The tram is full." A voice from the front of the queue cried out against her obscene language. "I am a Rabbi," he informed her. She was unmoved. "I don't care if you are f....... Popeye. The f...... tram is still full."
In polite society it is considred bad form to stare at people who are in some way different. An RAF chum if mine doing flying training in New York told me that such behaviour attracts cries of "rubber neck" or merely" rubber". On the subway he had been transfixed by a baby so fat it was spherical. "Rubber," spat out the mother, incensed. "Thank God," said my chum, "I thought it was real."
Fortunately I am too short-sighted to stare, even to see; and colour is never part of my conversation. But it does worry me that I haven't an acceptable word to define pigmentation. As to acceptance of differently coloured people, that means nothing to anyone who, like me, lived happily for thirty years in Wales and only left when BBC Wales "sacked" me for being English; only marginally less welcome in the North than South Walians. Conversely, I knew the editor of a South Wales evening paper who offered me a column but refused to employ any Welshman from the North. Mancunians are not immediately welcomed in parts of Liverpool. A Lancastrian in Yorkshire is not universally admired.
The truth is that we are all tribal. Knowing this, it should not worry me that a section of the Muslim population want Bradford to be reclassified as a Caliphate where Sharia law will prevail. It does. It is a betrayal of hospitality, a tradition as old as the tribe. I would go further. A culture which rules that its daughters must marry unknown men at the behest of their fathers is abhorrent. Girls who have been educated in Western standards and, however limited, have enjoyed the relaxed lifestyle of their British peers are sent back to the Indian continent to live in perpetual servitude. Britain
has abandoned the death penalty as inhuman. At the very least, every member of the families which are involved in passing the death sentence for domestic crime should be deported.
A minority, we are told, support these practices. Certainly it is minority who are lost to terrorism. Unfortunately the law abiding majority are held to blame. A new superbug is discovered. It might have come from anywhere. It comes from India. More grist to the anti-Muslim mob. Perhaps it isn't surprising there has been a slow response to calls for help for the victims of the Pakistni floods.
My own family strives to understand the ways of the East. Auntie Jeannie was the widow of my Uncle Tommy, a Scottish Nationalist so incandescent that, ten years after his death, his wife was still afraid to visit England. Her son-in-law, Jackie, who looked after the boats of the Emir of Kuwait, invited Auntie Jeannie to visit.
"It's no in England, is it?" she inquired fearfully.
In the event, she had a great time, including supper with the Emir in his palace. She was not impressed.
"Does he aye get his dinner on tin plates?" she asked Jackie.
"They're no tin," whispered Jackie, "they're real gold."
"Maks nae difference," said my Auntie Jeannie. "Puir man, ye cannae keep food hot on tin plates."
The day she got home, she went to an Edinburgh market and bought the Emir a six-piece china dinner service.
Alas, we have lost the charming letter of thanks the Emir sent.
And finally ...
Media empire Time Warner owner of Warner Bros and CNN has become the latest New York tenant to fall victim to bedbugs. A plague of the blood-sucking menaces has hit Manhattan, affecting high-profile companies such as Abercombie and Fitch. Headline writers have duly dubbed it Abercrombie & Itch. The Guardian, P15
uncle and much preferred him to my aunt, his wife. My first wife and our children were mostly Jewish. My father didn't mind what you were, so long as you weren't a Catholic. It ran in the family. My uncle was furious when I introduced his daughter to a friend who was Catholic. A chum, who is a Catholic priest, has to hide his occupation in the Middle East.
My Cambodian sister-in-law is a charmer and has two delightful and brainy sons. Our neighbour is coloured and her two girls are the best mannered and most delightful children I know. My problem is that after a lifetime I suddenly do not know how to describe them. I am white; they are black. But I must not say so. I value them for their qualities and I hope their judgement of me is not based on my lack of colour. I wouldn't mind having friends who are candy striped yet, here I am, victim of a verbal colour bar. It is puzzling. Negro is a corruption of the Latin word for black; black people call each other "niggers" in "The Wire". It would be impolite for me to do so. "Black" in my youth was the favoured nomenclature and gave no offence. Reading the Sunday papers last week, I found that it is no longer acceptable nor, surpringly, is "coloured".
In Liverpol in the Fifties where the argot owed much to American slang, coloured people were called, shockingly but without offence, "Spades". The Spade Clubs were amongst the scariest shebeens. I was in one once when an African the size of the St George's Hall loomed over me and demanded to know whether I believed in the colour bar. "Certainly not," I told him. He gestured towards the door and said: "We do. P...... OFF."
Much store was set by repartee, which in those days by the River Mersey took little account of sensibilities. Queuing for the last tram from Lime Street, the conductress ordered us, "F.... off. The tram is full." A voice from the front of the queue cried out against her obscene language. "I am a Rabbi," he informed her. She was unmoved. "I don't care if you are f....... Popeye. The f...... tram is still full."
In polite society it is considred bad form to stare at people who are in some way different. An RAF chum if mine doing flying training in New York told me that such behaviour attracts cries of "rubber neck" or merely" rubber". On the subway he had been transfixed by a baby so fat it was spherical. "Rubber," spat out the mother, incensed. "Thank God," said my chum, "I thought it was real."
Fortunately I am too short-sighted to stare, even to see; and colour is never part of my conversation. But it does worry me that I haven't an acceptable word to define pigmentation. As to acceptance of differently coloured people, that means nothing to anyone who, like me, lived happily for thirty years in Wales and only left when BBC Wales "sacked" me for being English; only marginally less welcome in the North than South Walians. Conversely, I knew the editor of a South Wales evening paper who offered me a column but refused to employ any Welshman from the North. Mancunians are not immediately welcomed in parts of Liverpool. A Lancastrian in Yorkshire is not universally admired.
The truth is that we are all tribal. Knowing this, it should not worry me that a section of the Muslim population want Bradford to be reclassified as a Caliphate where Sharia law will prevail. It does. It is a betrayal of hospitality, a tradition as old as the tribe. I would go further. A culture which rules that its daughters must marry unknown men at the behest of their fathers is abhorrent. Girls who have been educated in Western standards and, however limited, have enjoyed the relaxed lifestyle of their British peers are sent back to the Indian continent to live in perpetual servitude. Britain
has abandoned the death penalty as inhuman. At the very least, every member of the families which are involved in passing the death sentence for domestic crime should be deported.
A minority, we are told, support these practices. Certainly it is minority who are lost to terrorism. Unfortunately the law abiding majority are held to blame. A new superbug is discovered. It might have come from anywhere. It comes from India. More grist to the anti-Muslim mob. Perhaps it isn't surprising there has been a slow response to calls for help for the victims of the Pakistni floods.
My own family strives to understand the ways of the East. Auntie Jeannie was the widow of my Uncle Tommy, a Scottish Nationalist so incandescent that, ten years after his death, his wife was still afraid to visit England. Her son-in-law, Jackie, who looked after the boats of the Emir of Kuwait, invited Auntie Jeannie to visit.
"It's no in England, is it?" she inquired fearfully.
In the event, she had a great time, including supper with the Emir in his palace. She was not impressed.
"Does he aye get his dinner on tin plates?" she asked Jackie.
"They're no tin," whispered Jackie, "they're real gold."
"Maks nae difference," said my Auntie Jeannie. "Puir man, ye cannae keep food hot on tin plates."
The day she got home, she went to an Edinburgh market and bought the Emir a six-piece china dinner service.
Alas, we have lost the charming letter of thanks the Emir sent.
And finally ...
Media empire Time Warner owner of Warner Bros and CNN has become the latest New York tenant to fall victim to bedbugs. A plague of the blood-sucking menaces has hit Manhattan, affecting high-profile companies such as Abercombie and Fitch. Headline writers have duly dubbed it Abercrombie & Itch. The Guardian, P15
Saturday, 14 August 2010
JAMES IS NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE I DIDN'T MAKE THIS UP
Observers are anxious at the emergence of a neo-Nazi movement in Mongolia - news item.
Roman Fyodorovich von Sternberg (1886 to 1921) was a Major General in the White Russian army which fought against the Bolsheviks in the Carpathian mountains. His spiritual home would be a hospital for the criminally insane
When the White Russians were beaten, von Sternberg resolved to invade Mongolia, destroy the Chinese administration and forge a Pan-Asiatic empire including Manchuria and Tibet. He could then invade Russia, dismantle Moscow, replace it with a city of tents and crown himself Czar.
Financed by the Japanese Government, he led his “Army of Military Buddhists" - three hundred Tibetans, Cossacks, Mongols and Japanese - and captured Mongolia, of which he became king in all but name. Buddhists do not believe in death. To them, life is an endless path. Von Sternberg consoled himself for the mass murders his troops committed with the belief the victims would be born again to a better life.
He baptised his soldiers with vodka and hashish and ruled them with two aides. The first, Count Sepailoff, suffered from a form of Tourette's Syndrome. Always shaking, he sang wordless songs as he indulged in his favourite pastime of strangling. The other had forgotten his name on the long ride across Mongolia but he was nicknamed “Teapot” and he too was an eager strangler.
Von Sternberg's dazed army entered Mongolia in 1920 and in February 1921 occupied the capital, Urga, now Ulan Batan. His rule of Mongolia was bloody. His drug and vodka fuelled army was defeated by the Bolsheviks. Von Sternberg was captured, locked in a cage and, after swift trial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, was shot.
A cousin of his, the 5th Baron Newborough, a Welsh peer, married three times. One of his wives who I knew, Denista, was a beautiful Yugoslav who after their divorce was charged, though found not guilty on appeal, with running a brothel in her flat, 6 Davies Street, Shepherd’s Market. Shortly before their divorce in 1946, a receiving order was made against her for debts of £951, which she attributed to losses at bridge whilst her skill had been impaired by unhappiness. She recovered her finances by designing outrageous hats, including the “Nicotine Hat” which was covered with cigarettes.
In her obituary in the Daily Telegraph when she died at the age of 79, it was written that she “¼was many things; wire walker, night club girl, nude dancer, air pilot. She was also a milliner, a perfumier and an antique dealer. She only refused to be two things - a whore or a spy.”
She spoke 14 languages and was beyond question one of the great adventuresses of the 20th century who has never really been given her due. Friends noticed that however bizarre her claims - including once having been a nurse - she was able to substantiate them all. In 1958 she published a best-selling autobiography "The Fire in My Blood", a cryptic phrase she used to describe her nymphomania. By her own account, she was sexually awakened by a Roumanian gypsy boy at the age of six when she became his “little wife”. She never ceased to be grateful to him and besides aristocratic lovers admitted to countless sexual encounters with waiters, footmen and chauffeurs. But she also included kings amongst her grateful lovers.
She was 28 when she met the 61-year-old Lord Newborough and she fell for him at once. She recalled: “He was the handsomest man I had ever seen, towering and strong and robust. He looked forty and had the springy timeless walk of a man in his twenties.
“He had been a captain in the merchant marine, surely the most masterful master mariner ever. He was the Pretender to the throne of France, he had a daughter about my age and I thought he was too good for me and said so...”
The 7th Baron, a hero of St Nazaire, was once fined for firing a cannon at holidaymakers. The cannon belonged to the 1st Lord who built two forts to repel a French invasion of Gwynedd. He also raised a private army but its main parade was a birthday banquet for George II. During a Grand Tour undertaken to avoid creditors, he met and married Maria Stella, apparently an Italian carabiniere’s daughter. In fact she was the child of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans. Whilst on an Italian tour, the Duchess was pregnant. They hoped for a boy who would have been directly in line for the throne of France. They reached the little town of Modiliano in Tuscany and there the Duchess was brought to bed. The chief carabiniere was a man called Sergeant Carpini whose wife was also having a baby. The Duchess had a girl, whom she immediately exchanged for the boy. Some years later, Newborough heard the girl, Maria Stella Carpini, singing at a theatre in Florence.
They married and she spent the rest of her life - and a great deal of his money - proving she was a Bourbon. She died in Calais. The sergeant’s son succeeded to the throne as Louis Philippe, the bourgeois monarch who looked like a carabiniere. In her portraits, the girl looks like the Duchess of Orleans and her other daughter. The Bourbon Arms are on her memorial in the village church just below Glynllifon (the only Grade A building in Wales). Her claim was authenticated by a French court of inquiry.
YOU SEE, YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE UP THE BEST STORIES.
FOOTNOTE
We’ve all dreamed of launching into space at one moment or another, but writer Mary Roach is perhaps the first science journalist to explore the psychological impact of getting there, and the human desire to leap into the stars. In her new book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, the author of other notable pop-science books like Stiffand Bonk brings us tales of astronauts, both raunchy and enlightening. She explores the stories that don’t get told about space travel: Spacecraft smell, crafting chimp spacesuits, and early exploits in disgusting zero-gravity cuisine. Packing for Mars will make you think twice about your Buzz Aldrin dreams, but it also gives a more realistic view of life in space than we have ever gotten from a NASA broadcast.
Roman Fyodorovich von Sternberg (1886 to 1921) was a Major General in the White Russian army which fought against the Bolsheviks in the Carpathian mountains. His spiritual home would be a hospital for the criminally insane
When the White Russians were beaten, von Sternberg resolved to invade Mongolia, destroy the Chinese administration and forge a Pan-Asiatic empire including Manchuria and Tibet. He could then invade Russia, dismantle Moscow, replace it with a city of tents and crown himself Czar.
Financed by the Japanese Government, he led his “Army of Military Buddhists" - three hundred Tibetans, Cossacks, Mongols and Japanese - and captured Mongolia, of which he became king in all but name. Buddhists do not believe in death. To them, life is an endless path. Von Sternberg consoled himself for the mass murders his troops committed with the belief the victims would be born again to a better life.
He baptised his soldiers with vodka and hashish and ruled them with two aides. The first, Count Sepailoff, suffered from a form of Tourette's Syndrome. Always shaking, he sang wordless songs as he indulged in his favourite pastime of strangling. The other had forgotten his name on the long ride across Mongolia but he was nicknamed “Teapot” and he too was an eager strangler.
Von Sternberg's dazed army entered Mongolia in 1920 and in February 1921 occupied the capital, Urga, now Ulan Batan. His rule of Mongolia was bloody. His drug and vodka fuelled army was defeated by the Bolsheviks. Von Sternberg was captured, locked in a cage and, after swift trial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, was shot.
A cousin of his, the 5th Baron Newborough, a Welsh peer, married three times. One of his wives who I knew, Denista, was a beautiful Yugoslav who after their divorce was charged, though found not guilty on appeal, with running a brothel in her flat, 6 Davies Street, Shepherd’s Market. Shortly before their divorce in 1946, a receiving order was made against her for debts of £951, which she attributed to losses at bridge whilst her skill had been impaired by unhappiness. She recovered her finances by designing outrageous hats, including the “Nicotine Hat” which was covered with cigarettes.
In her obituary in the Daily Telegraph when she died at the age of 79, it was written that she “¼was many things; wire walker, night club girl, nude dancer, air pilot. She was also a milliner, a perfumier and an antique dealer. She only refused to be two things - a whore or a spy.”
She spoke 14 languages and was beyond question one of the great adventuresses of the 20th century who has never really been given her due. Friends noticed that however bizarre her claims - including once having been a nurse - she was able to substantiate them all. In 1958 she published a best-selling autobiography "The Fire in My Blood", a cryptic phrase she used to describe her nymphomania. By her own account, she was sexually awakened by a Roumanian gypsy boy at the age of six when she became his “little wife”. She never ceased to be grateful to him and besides aristocratic lovers admitted to countless sexual encounters with waiters, footmen and chauffeurs. But she also included kings amongst her grateful lovers.
She was 28 when she met the 61-year-old Lord Newborough and she fell for him at once. She recalled: “He was the handsomest man I had ever seen, towering and strong and robust. He looked forty and had the springy timeless walk of a man in his twenties.
“He had been a captain in the merchant marine, surely the most masterful master mariner ever. He was the Pretender to the throne of France, he had a daughter about my age and I thought he was too good for me and said so...”
The 7th Baron, a hero of St Nazaire, was once fined for firing a cannon at holidaymakers. The cannon belonged to the 1st Lord who built two forts to repel a French invasion of Gwynedd. He also raised a private army but its main parade was a birthday banquet for George II. During a Grand Tour undertaken to avoid creditors, he met and married Maria Stella, apparently an Italian carabiniere’s daughter. In fact she was the child of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans. Whilst on an Italian tour, the Duchess was pregnant. They hoped for a boy who would have been directly in line for the throne of France. They reached the little town of Modiliano in Tuscany and there the Duchess was brought to bed. The chief carabiniere was a man called Sergeant Carpini whose wife was also having a baby. The Duchess had a girl, whom she immediately exchanged for the boy. Some years later, Newborough heard the girl, Maria Stella Carpini, singing at a theatre in Florence.
They married and she spent the rest of her life - and a great deal of his money - proving she was a Bourbon. She died in Calais. The sergeant’s son succeeded to the throne as Louis Philippe, the bourgeois monarch who looked like a carabiniere. In her portraits, the girl looks like the Duchess of Orleans and her other daughter. The Bourbon Arms are on her memorial in the village church just below Glynllifon (the only Grade A building in Wales). Her claim was authenticated by a French court of inquiry.
YOU SEE, YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE UP THE BEST STORIES.
FOOTNOTE
We’ve all dreamed of launching into space at one moment or another, but writer Mary Roach is perhaps the first science journalist to explore the psychological impact of getting there, and the human desire to leap into the stars. In her new book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, the author of other notable pop-science books like Stiffand Bonk brings us tales of astronauts, both raunchy and enlightening. She explores the stories that don’t get told about space travel: Spacecraft smell, crafting chimp spacesuits, and early exploits in disgusting zero-gravity cuisine. Packing for Mars will make you think twice about your Buzz Aldrin dreams, but it also gives a more realistic view of life in space than we have ever gotten from a NASA broadcast.
Saturday, 7 August 2010
OF LEEKS AND KINGS
The Welsh were invented by an ancestor of mine, a Pictish chieftain called Cunedda. Nothing very grand about that. He is only an ancestor by marriage and I share him with most North Walians. Wales is not so much a country as a family. If they took the trouble, most Welsh people could claim similar nobility. It is said of the Welsh that anyone who can take his ancestry back to the sixteenth century can prove a personal flow of princely blood, so avid were national forebears in matters of descent.There is another reason my claim is tenuous. Some time in the 17th century a female Skidmore ancestor got in the wrong bed and there is a blip in my DNA.
In Wales I had three neighbours. One, my landlord the Marquess of Anglesey, claimed King Lear as an ancestor; the vicar's wife Adam's son Seth - a less modest woman would have claimed Adam - whilst Sir Kyffin Williams, the painter, carried the blood of every Welsh prince you could shake a stick at. My chum the rugby legend Ray Gravell was another modest Welshman. When we did a programme with Mike Harding I claimed Owain Glyndwr. Ray only claimed "one of his followers".
What is more, most Welshmen could show you family trees to prove it. The Skidmore tree begins triumphantly with a sister of the Virgin Mary. Had there been a Booker Prize for fiction in the Middle Ages it would certainly have been won by the genealagists.
Alas, I am a professional alien. I shuffle through life with the yellow patch of the stateless trusty sewn on my soul's tunic. My name is pure Viking and the first recorded Skidmore was brought from Normandy by Edward the Confessor to build castles on the Welsh border. His name was Ralph the Knight. Since then, more or less equal portions of Scots, English and Welsh have gone in to mixing the substantial soup which is me. The fairies at my christening wore tall Welsh hats, tartan shawls and Lancshire clogs.
I can always feel this mixed ancestry jostling me. Pushing me into dimly remembered loyalties; making me sing words I do not know to tunes I only remember by the curling of my toes. Wherever I go, I am a stranger. It is the proper condition of a writer, of course, but the fact remains I can call no country home; no patron saint mine.
Living in my body is like driving a vehicle with three quarrelsome passengers, each of whom wants a different programme on the radio. I am not Welsh by accident of birth but by choice. I was a volunteer. I chose to be Welsh because I detected in the Welsh those human qualities which I believe are important. They are: a dizzy infatuation with life and with words; exuberance; an ability to be dazzlingly bright and desperately dull, sometimes within the same hour. Wit. The generosity of a drunken sailor with eight arms, full pockets and only fifteen minutes left of his shore leave. A strong, sometimes crippling, sense of family. A respect for scholarship. But above all, an indefinable quality which I can only describe as a sense of warm embrace. Going to Wales as I did seventy years ago was like slipping into a pair of old slippers after a long day wearing tight shoes. I do not think it an accident that so many Italians settled in Wales, which Rene Cutforth called the Mediterranean in the rain. I believe this happy, talented, tempestuous race settled here because they found total compatability.
I suspect this description of the Welsh might come as a surprise to readers on the other side of Offa's Dyke. The caricature of the Welshman printed on many Saxon minds is of a narrow faced, foxy hypocrite, dressed in a suit made from the covers of old prayer books, leaping from cottage to cottage, flaming torch in hand. Or coming up from the netherworld in a cage after a pit disaster singing Cwm Rhondda. Useless to explain that in Wales hypocrisy is an art form, lovingly practised, and you get points for it on a sliding scale.
A friend of mine, the distinguished consultant psychiatrist Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, has a theory. He is a specialist in drink and drug addiction and he claims it is precisely the Welsh love of a party that informs national behaviour. They need a religious revival every so often to sober them up. I reckon that is why when the hunt was on they chose a narrow-minded, teetotal bigot as their patron saint. St David was chosen to keep an eye on the Welsh. May he keep an eye on you too.
ANOTHER MOMENTOUS EPISODE IN MY HISTORY
Today, in the three years since 'skidmores island' was colonised, we have our first complaint. It is from 'james' who takes issue with my friendship with Bert Balmer, the Assistant Chief Constable of Liverpool and a notable thief taker. He writes:
"So Balmer was your Chum? And as you say, he led the Cameo murder investigation. You then say witness statements bore signs of police coaching. So, ipso-facto, your "Chum" must have done the coaching! Are you sure you met Dickson and Northam with a gun in Manchester and that they confessed to perjury? Or is that just one of your stories you, your friends and Balmer delighted in making up in the Press Club?"
ME: I think more perceptive newspaper readers have realised that it is the function of a newspaper to inform and entertain. News is information and sacrosant. I was once sent thirty miles at midnight by the Daily Mirror to check the spelling of a name. The amusing "human interest" stories we call fillers are entertainment. The kernel of truth which they must contain is stretched to its limits
James has not done with me.
"If you did meet this evil pair, you are as amoral as them. Instead of hawking them around newspaper offices trying to make money, you should have reported them to an "un-bent" policeman for the hellish perjury which destroyed two innocent men's and their families lives."
ME: Two examples from my past (not made up, James) spring to mind. When during the war the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans a pal of mine, Colonel "Cocky" Warren, was ordered to land two agents. The first part of the journey was easily accomplished. The navy loaned him a submarine. A very old submarine which would only do one knot submerged. The collapsible dinghy in which he would row the agents ashore presented difficulties. The Special Forces he contacted refused a loan in case he got captured and could not bring it back. He was forced to go to the Sports Department at Harrods and buy one.
"For what does sir require it?" the salesman asked.
"A little light coastal jaunt," Warren told him, and was surprised when the salesman handed him a bag containing the struts. Warren took the collapsed boat and spread it on the floor. He told me it looked like a swan's nest. The salesman showed him how to assemble it.
The sub surfaced just off the islands and the skipper, whose name was Martell, watched with amusement as Warren tried to assemble the dinghy. Exasperated, Warren told Martell: "You are a matelot, give us a hand."
"Sorry," said Martell, "the Navy has this understanding with Cunard. We don't build our own ships and they don't sail them!"
ME: The short answer to your curious suggestion that I should have reported them to a policeman who was unbent (I would love to know how I would recognise an "unbent" copper. The "bent" ones don't wear black masks and striped jerseys) is that sixty-five years ago I joined the National Union of Journalists not the Police Federation, most of whose members can read. As a matter of course, had a newspaper taken the story they would have kept the pair in the office whilst they contacted the police.
The second story demonstrates - what you seem to doubt - the power of the press at getting things done. In the middle of the crossroads between Chester Assize Courts and The Roodee there was a grassy island where a war hero was buried. His inscription told of his service with The Buffs in the Peninsula Wars and the Waterloo Campaign. He was a private soldier and had many medals.
When the new police headquarters was built, the road was re-laid and the grassy island replaced. There were no plans for moving the tomb. I thought the soldier deserved better treatment. By this time The Buffs were disbanded. I contacted the War Office, Western Command, the Civic Trust, the War Graves Commission, in the hope that someone would protect the old soldier. No one was interested. I even buttonholed the GOC Western Command General Sir Howard Wyse when we were out hunting. In desperation, I got a few ex-army friends to get up a petition and wrote about their "protest campaign" for the Daily Telegraph. Within forty-eight hours the grave had been moved with a Guard of Honour. If you think I made that up, James, you can see the tomb itself on its own lawn next to what was the Monastery opposite Police HQ.
In Wales I had three neighbours. One, my landlord the Marquess of Anglesey, claimed King Lear as an ancestor; the vicar's wife Adam's son Seth - a less modest woman would have claimed Adam - whilst Sir Kyffin Williams, the painter, carried the blood of every Welsh prince you could shake a stick at. My chum the rugby legend Ray Gravell was another modest Welshman. When we did a programme with Mike Harding I claimed Owain Glyndwr. Ray only claimed "one of his followers".
What is more, most Welshmen could show you family trees to prove it. The Skidmore tree begins triumphantly with a sister of the Virgin Mary. Had there been a Booker Prize for fiction in the Middle Ages it would certainly have been won by the genealagists.
Alas, I am a professional alien. I shuffle through life with the yellow patch of the stateless trusty sewn on my soul's tunic. My name is pure Viking and the first recorded Skidmore was brought from Normandy by Edward the Confessor to build castles on the Welsh border. His name was Ralph the Knight. Since then, more or less equal portions of Scots, English and Welsh have gone in to mixing the substantial soup which is me. The fairies at my christening wore tall Welsh hats, tartan shawls and Lancshire clogs.
I can always feel this mixed ancestry jostling me. Pushing me into dimly remembered loyalties; making me sing words I do not know to tunes I only remember by the curling of my toes. Wherever I go, I am a stranger. It is the proper condition of a writer, of course, but the fact remains I can call no country home; no patron saint mine.
Living in my body is like driving a vehicle with three quarrelsome passengers, each of whom wants a different programme on the radio. I am not Welsh by accident of birth but by choice. I was a volunteer. I chose to be Welsh because I detected in the Welsh those human qualities which I believe are important. They are: a dizzy infatuation with life and with words; exuberance; an ability to be dazzlingly bright and desperately dull, sometimes within the same hour. Wit. The generosity of a drunken sailor with eight arms, full pockets and only fifteen minutes left of his shore leave. A strong, sometimes crippling, sense of family. A respect for scholarship. But above all, an indefinable quality which I can only describe as a sense of warm embrace. Going to Wales as I did seventy years ago was like slipping into a pair of old slippers after a long day wearing tight shoes. I do not think it an accident that so many Italians settled in Wales, which Rene Cutforth called the Mediterranean in the rain. I believe this happy, talented, tempestuous race settled here because they found total compatability.
I suspect this description of the Welsh might come as a surprise to readers on the other side of Offa's Dyke. The caricature of the Welshman printed on many Saxon minds is of a narrow faced, foxy hypocrite, dressed in a suit made from the covers of old prayer books, leaping from cottage to cottage, flaming torch in hand. Or coming up from the netherworld in a cage after a pit disaster singing Cwm Rhondda. Useless to explain that in Wales hypocrisy is an art form, lovingly practised, and you get points for it on a sliding scale.
A friend of mine, the distinguished consultant psychiatrist Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, has a theory. He is a specialist in drink and drug addiction and he claims it is precisely the Welsh love of a party that informs national behaviour. They need a religious revival every so often to sober them up. I reckon that is why when the hunt was on they chose a narrow-minded, teetotal bigot as their patron saint. St David was chosen to keep an eye on the Welsh. May he keep an eye on you too.
ANOTHER MOMENTOUS EPISODE IN MY HISTORY
Today, in the three years since 'skidmores island' was colonised, we have our first complaint. It is from 'james' who takes issue with my friendship with Bert Balmer, the Assistant Chief Constable of Liverpool and a notable thief taker. He writes:
"So Balmer was your Chum? And as you say, he led the Cameo murder investigation. You then say witness statements bore signs of police coaching. So, ipso-facto, your "Chum" must have done the coaching! Are you sure you met Dickson and Northam with a gun in Manchester and that they confessed to perjury? Or is that just one of your stories you, your friends and Balmer delighted in making up in the Press Club?"
ME: I think more perceptive newspaper readers have realised that it is the function of a newspaper to inform and entertain. News is information and sacrosant. I was once sent thirty miles at midnight by the Daily Mirror to check the spelling of a name. The amusing "human interest" stories we call fillers are entertainment. The kernel of truth which they must contain is stretched to its limits
James has not done with me.
"If you did meet this evil pair, you are as amoral as them. Instead of hawking them around newspaper offices trying to make money, you should have reported them to an "un-bent" policeman for the hellish perjury which destroyed two innocent men's and their families lives."
ME: Two examples from my past (not made up, James) spring to mind. When during the war the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans a pal of mine, Colonel "Cocky" Warren, was ordered to land two agents. The first part of the journey was easily accomplished. The navy loaned him a submarine. A very old submarine which would only do one knot submerged. The collapsible dinghy in which he would row the agents ashore presented difficulties. The Special Forces he contacted refused a loan in case he got captured and could not bring it back. He was forced to go to the Sports Department at Harrods and buy one.
"For what does sir require it?" the salesman asked.
"A little light coastal jaunt," Warren told him, and was surprised when the salesman handed him a bag containing the struts. Warren took the collapsed boat and spread it on the floor. He told me it looked like a swan's nest. The salesman showed him how to assemble it.
The sub surfaced just off the islands and the skipper, whose name was Martell, watched with amusement as Warren tried to assemble the dinghy. Exasperated, Warren told Martell: "You are a matelot, give us a hand."
"Sorry," said Martell, "the Navy has this understanding with Cunard. We don't build our own ships and they don't sail them!"
ME: The short answer to your curious suggestion that I should have reported them to a policeman who was unbent (I would love to know how I would recognise an "unbent" copper. The "bent" ones don't wear black masks and striped jerseys) is that sixty-five years ago I joined the National Union of Journalists not the Police Federation, most of whose members can read. As a matter of course, had a newspaper taken the story they would have kept the pair in the office whilst they contacted the police.
The second story demonstrates - what you seem to doubt - the power of the press at getting things done. In the middle of the crossroads between Chester Assize Courts and The Roodee there was a grassy island where a war hero was buried. His inscription told of his service with The Buffs in the Peninsula Wars and the Waterloo Campaign. He was a private soldier and had many medals.
When the new police headquarters was built, the road was re-laid and the grassy island replaced. There were no plans for moving the tomb. I thought the soldier deserved better treatment. By this time The Buffs were disbanded. I contacted the War Office, Western Command, the Civic Trust, the War Graves Commission, in the hope that someone would protect the old soldier. No one was interested. I even buttonholed the GOC Western Command General Sir Howard Wyse when we were out hunting. In desperation, I got a few ex-army friends to get up a petition and wrote about their "protest campaign" for the Daily Telegraph. Within forty-eight hours the grave had been moved with a Guard of Honour. If you think I made that up, James, you can see the tomb itself on its own lawn next to what was the Monastery opposite Police HQ.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
CROWNING GORY
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?
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?
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