A millionaire friend who flies his own autographed aeroplane and winters in Thailand counsels me against nostalgia. What can I do? The past is my planet and they do things better there. I am only attached to the 21st century for rations and accommodation, and my idea of hell would be to live in Thailand and have the responsibility of running an aeroplane. It was bad enough owning a boat. The past has a beginning and an end but the present has only a beginning, which merges into the future, and that is somewhere I have no wish to go. Indeed, I often wonder if it will exist. Life comes without guarantees. Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot murdered and enslaved millions but it was the kindly Allies who fire bombed Tokyo and Dresden and dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
Life was more fun in the past. Now our entertainment veers from the coarseness of Connolly to the disaffected graduates who dispense the humour of dissatisfaction. I have been reading a biography of Gypsy Rose Lee. Author Karen Abbot recalled old vaudeville acts:
“The man who guzzled hot molten lava and belched up coins, the man who swallowed a goldfish and a baby shark and asked the audience which should reappear first, the man who lit gunpowder on his tongue, the man who discovered that his sneeze made audiences laugh and worked it into his routine, honing, over the course of a year, the mechanics of twitching his nostrils and cranking his jaw, the exaggerated intake of breath and sputtering of lips. A performer called 'The Human Fish' ate a banana, played a trombone, and read a newspaper while submerged in a tank of water. Another had a 'cat piano,' an act featuring live cats in wire cages that meowed Gregorio Allegri's Miserere when their tails were pulled (in reality the performer yanked on artificial tails and did all the meowing himself).
"Alonzo the Miracle Man lit and smoked a cigarette, brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and buttoned his shirt - miracles since he had been born without arms. Louise and June were particularly fond of Lady Alice, an old dowager who wore elegant beaded gowns and performed with rats. The runt settled on the crown of her head, a miniature kazoo clenched between teeth like grains of rice. He breathed a tuneless harmony while the rest of the litter began a slow parade across Lady Alice's outstretched arms, marching from the tip of one middle finger to the other. The girls never understood how Lady Alice controlled the rodents - their own animals weren't quite so obedient - until one day she revealed her secret: a trail of Cream of Wheat slathered on her neck and shoulders.
It is in the past that the explanation of the present lies. I have often wondered why the sensitive Americans I know, cultured, kindly and generous, should be so badly led. Gore Vidal exposed the criminal leadership which was endemic.
Even the avuncular Franklin Delano Roosevelt was heir to the huge Delano opium fortune.
James Bradley, in his book “The Imperial Cruise”, paints a terrible picture:
"Franklin's grandfather Warren Delano had for years skulked around [China's] Pearl River Delta dealing drugs. Delano had run offices in Canton and Hong Kong. During business hours, Chinese criminals would pay him cash and receive an opium chit. At night, Scrambling Crabs - long, sleek, heavily armed crafts - rowed out into the Pearl River Delta to Delano's floating warehouses, where they received their Jesus opium under the cover of darkness. The profits were enormous, and at his death Delano left his daughter Sara a fortune that she lavished on her only son.
"The Delanos were not alone. Many of New England's great families made their fortunes dealing drugs in China. The Cabot family of Boston endowed Harvard with opium money, while Yale's famous Skull and Bones society was funded by the biggest American opium dealers of them all - the Russell family. The most famous landmark on the Columbia University campus is the Low Memorial Library, which honors Abiel Low, a New York boy who made it big in the Pearl River Delta and bankrolled the first cable across the Atlantic. Princeton University's first big benefactor, John Green, sold opium in the Pearl River Delta with Warren Delano.
"The list goes on and on: Boston's John Murray Forbes's opium profits financed the career of transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson and bankrolled the Bell Telephone Company. Thomas Perkins founded America's first commercial railroad and funded the Boston Athenaeum. These wealthy and powerful drug-dealing families combined to create dynasties."
The past warns us of future dangers. Fifty years ago, Eisenhower warned the nation that a ballooning military-industrial complex could not co-exist “with the peaceful intentions of our nation”.
Thomas Jefferson went further. He said: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
Do not knock the past. It was the nursery of the present.
Saturday, 22 January 2011
Saturday, 15 January 2011
THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD...........
This has been deja vu week. An MP faces prison because he fiddled his expenses. Fifty years ago when I was a reporter on the Daily Mirror I lost count of the times when at the end of a successful story the news desk told me: “The editor says well done and stick an extra fifty miles on your petrol expenses.” When I became night news editor I was told I would get a guaranteed fiver a week on expenses because I was already getting paid at night news editor level.
We all loved it when the Telegraph exposed the false expenses that were being fiddled by the MPs. They protested in vain that they had been told to inflate their expenses because the voters would not countenance pay rises. Yet it seems to me that a party leader who encourages false accounting is just as guilty as the person who makes the claim.
As if feeling sorry for MPs were not enough, I even feel sorry for bankers. I spent a lifetime fighting bank managers. A Midland Bank manager told me: “Hamlet was Shakespeare's greatest tragedy as you are the Midland Bank's.” Nonetheless, I do not see why the banks should not be allowed to spend their own money in ANY way they wish. Bonuses are paid to investment bankers out of the many millions of pounds of business they bring to this country. They are paid with money on which tax has been paid by the bank. The bankers who receive bonuses also pay tax on them and go on to spend the money on things which carry 20 per cent VAT.
I feel it isn't fair that I don't get a massive bonus too. I am all for giving bankers a thrashing. But why does no one complain about the exorbitant wages of footballers?
Or indeed editors. Not heard much criticism of greedy journalists from the Daily Mail at the news that its editor-in-chief Paul Dacre cemented his position as the UK’s top paid national newspaper editor by taking home a total of £2.8m for the year ending the beginning of October. Dacre was rewarded with a 70 per cent pay increase as Associated's Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday titles achieved record profits and new highs in terms of market share over the previous year.
The total of £2.8m comes from fees and salary totalling £1.6m; £127,000 in cash allowances; £25,000 in benefits in kind; and a £1m bonus paid in cash and shares. Do I see a glasshouse looming high?
Things could be worse. We could be living in southern Ireland. Gerry Kerrigan wrote in the Irish Independent: ”We accept as normal things that once we would have denounced as outrageous. Last Wednesday, for example, our EU 'partners' borrowed €5bn on our behalf. At an interest rate of 2.59 per cent. And next Tuesday, they will pass the money to our Mr Lenihan. And they'll charge us interest at 5.515 per cent.
“Our 'partners' will make a profit of almost 3 per cent on the €5bn (and all the other billions they'll borrow to lend to us). In fact, they'll make more from the deal than the moneylenders from whom the €5bn is coming. This is called a 'bailout'. Gee, thanks, 'partners'. Every hard-working citizen paying income tax, every unemployed citizen paying VAT on a pair of socks or a sliced pan, will pay for this 'bailout' right into the next generation and beyond.“
The victory this week of Miriam O'Reilly, the Countrywide presenter, brought back the worst time in my life. I was sacked by BBC Wales two weeks after I had been awarded a golden microphone for my services to broadcasting. I took BBC Wales to a race tribunal. I claimed I was sacked because I was English, though there were undercurrents of ageism. A new editor had vowed he ”wasn’t going to have those old bastards working on Radio Wales”. It was small consolation that both the editor and the Controller lost their jobs a matter of weeks after the Corporation settled out of court.
I was born to broadcast. As an 18-year-old soldier I wrote news bulletins and made programmes on the British Forces Network with Cliff Michelmore and Raymond Baxter. They went on to dazzling BBC stardom.
It took me rather longer but I made it in the end and when I sat for the first time in an unattended studio I knew I had come home. In a funny sort of way that was the day my life began. The moment before you go on air the quality of silence in your earphones changes and becomes more intense. That is when what is wrongly assumed to be panic sets in. It is an adrenalin rush marshalling your body to be ready. In that moment I came alive for the first time.
Broadcasting is like drinking champagne. The blood races, the spirits soar. Concentration is honed, wit polished. Your nerves scream but with your first words comes a feeling of peace and content. I imagine pilots get the same feeling as they climb above the clouds. You discover a country of which you are king.
The adrenalin stays in you. When I was broadcasting I had an audience worldwide of 26 million and out of the studio I wrote books and newspaper columns, restaurant and book reviews. I was a theatre critic and an after dinner speaker.
When it ended on February 1, 1999, my creative life ended with it. I became a zombie. I loved my home on Anglesey but when the opportunity came I left without a moment's regret. Nothing seemed to matter any more. There were no highs or lows. The tragedy is that it still doesn't. Miss O'Reilly will be offered the choice of a huge sum in compensation or a return to broadcasting. I hope she chooses broadcasting.
ONCE BITTEN BY A CARROT...
Looking into the relationship between skin hue and perceived attractiveness, researchers at St. Andrew’s and Bristol universities found that people with a yellow hue to their skin were judged healthier and more attractive. They also found that carotenoids (yellow pigments) found in some fruits and vegetables are responsible for producing the yellow hue of people’s skin. (News item)
I will stay ugly and pale-faced. When I was young the Government claimed that eating carrots made our night fighter pilots able to see in the dark. I ate a bagful of carrots after black-out, opened the back door, went out into the night and bumped into the dustbin. Turned out there was a glut of carrots but I never forgave Churchill.
We all loved it when the Telegraph exposed the false expenses that were being fiddled by the MPs. They protested in vain that they had been told to inflate their expenses because the voters would not countenance pay rises. Yet it seems to me that a party leader who encourages false accounting is just as guilty as the person who makes the claim.
As if feeling sorry for MPs were not enough, I even feel sorry for bankers. I spent a lifetime fighting bank managers. A Midland Bank manager told me: “Hamlet was Shakespeare's greatest tragedy as you are the Midland Bank's.” Nonetheless, I do not see why the banks should not be allowed to spend their own money in ANY way they wish. Bonuses are paid to investment bankers out of the many millions of pounds of business they bring to this country. They are paid with money on which tax has been paid by the bank. The bankers who receive bonuses also pay tax on them and go on to spend the money on things which carry 20 per cent VAT.
I feel it isn't fair that I don't get a massive bonus too. I am all for giving bankers a thrashing. But why does no one complain about the exorbitant wages of footballers?
Or indeed editors. Not heard much criticism of greedy journalists from the Daily Mail at the news that its editor-in-chief Paul Dacre cemented his position as the UK’s top paid national newspaper editor by taking home a total of £2.8m for the year ending the beginning of October. Dacre was rewarded with a 70 per cent pay increase as Associated's Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday titles achieved record profits and new highs in terms of market share over the previous year.
The total of £2.8m comes from fees and salary totalling £1.6m; £127,000 in cash allowances; £25,000 in benefits in kind; and a £1m bonus paid in cash and shares. Do I see a glasshouse looming high?
Things could be worse. We could be living in southern Ireland. Gerry Kerrigan wrote in the Irish Independent: ”We accept as normal things that once we would have denounced as outrageous. Last Wednesday, for example, our EU 'partners' borrowed €5bn on our behalf. At an interest rate of 2.59 per cent. And next Tuesday, they will pass the money to our Mr Lenihan. And they'll charge us interest at 5.515 per cent.
“Our 'partners' will make a profit of almost 3 per cent on the €5bn (and all the other billions they'll borrow to lend to us). In fact, they'll make more from the deal than the moneylenders from whom the €5bn is coming. This is called a 'bailout'. Gee, thanks, 'partners'. Every hard-working citizen paying income tax, every unemployed citizen paying VAT on a pair of socks or a sliced pan, will pay for this 'bailout' right into the next generation and beyond.“
The victory this week of Miriam O'Reilly, the Countrywide presenter, brought back the worst time in my life. I was sacked by BBC Wales two weeks after I had been awarded a golden microphone for my services to broadcasting. I took BBC Wales to a race tribunal. I claimed I was sacked because I was English, though there were undercurrents of ageism. A new editor had vowed he ”wasn’t going to have those old bastards working on Radio Wales”. It was small consolation that both the editor and the Controller lost their jobs a matter of weeks after the Corporation settled out of court.
I was born to broadcast. As an 18-year-old soldier I wrote news bulletins and made programmes on the British Forces Network with Cliff Michelmore and Raymond Baxter. They went on to dazzling BBC stardom.
It took me rather longer but I made it in the end and when I sat for the first time in an unattended studio I knew I had come home. In a funny sort of way that was the day my life began. The moment before you go on air the quality of silence in your earphones changes and becomes more intense. That is when what is wrongly assumed to be panic sets in. It is an adrenalin rush marshalling your body to be ready. In that moment I came alive for the first time.
Broadcasting is like drinking champagne. The blood races, the spirits soar. Concentration is honed, wit polished. Your nerves scream but with your first words comes a feeling of peace and content. I imagine pilots get the same feeling as they climb above the clouds. You discover a country of which you are king.
The adrenalin stays in you. When I was broadcasting I had an audience worldwide of 26 million and out of the studio I wrote books and newspaper columns, restaurant and book reviews. I was a theatre critic and an after dinner speaker.
When it ended on February 1, 1999, my creative life ended with it. I became a zombie. I loved my home on Anglesey but when the opportunity came I left without a moment's regret. Nothing seemed to matter any more. There were no highs or lows. The tragedy is that it still doesn't. Miss O'Reilly will be offered the choice of a huge sum in compensation or a return to broadcasting. I hope she chooses broadcasting.
ONCE BITTEN BY A CARROT...
Looking into the relationship between skin hue and perceived attractiveness, researchers at St. Andrew’s and Bristol universities found that people with a yellow hue to their skin were judged healthier and more attractive. They also found that carotenoids (yellow pigments) found in some fruits and vegetables are responsible for producing the yellow hue of people’s skin. (News item)
I will stay ugly and pale-faced. When I was young the Government claimed that eating carrots made our night fighter pilots able to see in the dark. I ate a bagful of carrots after black-out, opened the back door, went out into the night and bumped into the dustbin. Turned out there was a glut of carrots but I never forgave Churchill.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
DOLLADRUMS
Commons speaker John Berscow welcomed our new year of restraint by throwing a champagne party for MPs on the terrace of the House of Commons. With their guests Lesley Garrett, Ross Kemp and singer-songwriter Duffy, they danced to a rock band and watched a £35,000-a-minute firework display. Could have been worse. The organisers saved £70,000 by cutting two minutes off the show.
The firework display was followed on New Year's Day by a Grand March of 10,000 musicians. According to London's deputy mayor Richard Barnes, it was “a good bang for your buck”.
Sadly some MPs missed it. An all party group, the British Swiss Parliamentary Group, left for Switzerland to take part in a skiing competition against Swiss Mps.
The taxpayer has not been forgotten. The Government has arranged for us to win £50 of rice and frozen green beans. It will cost £256 million, underwritten by industry food giants who presumably have gluts of beans and rice and will welcome a reduction in their tax bill. In turn, that will be £256 million that won't reduce our national debt.
BBC Wales spent £149.94 on chocolate biscuits. In excessive spending habits, however, we have much to learn from the Americans. According to the New York Times, the United States spends almost as much on the military as every other country in the world combined.
Although America leads the world in the money it has borrowed from China, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that America spends more than six times as much as that country. China is the country with the next highest budget.
The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its employ.
The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than it spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined. Among its new lethal toys is a rifle that seeks its target and has a range of 2,300 feet, making it possible to hit targets which are well out of the reach of conventional rifles.
All this in a country where 42% of American children live in low-income homes and a fifth of those children live in poverty. And what about unemployment numbers and the plight of the homeless in the US of A, a number that keeps rising?
Other institutions are more careful with their bawbees. I have been corrected over my story of the Prince of Wales last week. It is not every wounded soldier who enjoys a bottle of royal Scotch from him. He only sends letters and Scotch to casualties in the nine regiments under his command. The Royal family's escape from the Civil List into more rewarding pastures will make the Prince the richest king in history. Perhaps he might extend his kindness to the 1,500 who were wounded last year. Cost a lot less than his domestic staff of 150. Oh dear, I said I wasn't going to be rude.
Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!!
Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard
4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets
and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is
to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to
test the strength of the windshields.
British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made,
and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired,
the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel,
crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens,
blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest
in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an
arrow shot from a bow.
The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the
experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US
scientists for suggestions.NASA responded with a one-line memo -- DEFROST THE CHICKENN
SPORTS>>>>WRITERS?
An oxymoron, surely. The Guardian's Mike Selvey gets carried away...
“Thrillingly, as the shadows began to lengthen across the Sydney Cricket Ground, and Australia began to falter, it was Jimmy Anderson, brilliant Jimmy Anderson, indisputably the bowler of the series with daylight second, who plunged the knife into what life was left in the twitching carcass of the Australian cricket team. The old ball reversed, as it always seems to do for England – the same England, said the sages here in the pre-series propaganda war, that would not know how to use a second hand Kookaburra - and not for Australia. But Anderson did not just use it, he had it talking, gabbling away, a ball with verbal diarrhoea.”
The firework display was followed on New Year's Day by a Grand March of 10,000 musicians. According to London's deputy mayor Richard Barnes, it was “a good bang for your buck”.
Sadly some MPs missed it. An all party group, the British Swiss Parliamentary Group, left for Switzerland to take part in a skiing competition against Swiss Mps.
The taxpayer has not been forgotten. The Government has arranged for us to win £50 of rice and frozen green beans. It will cost £256 million, underwritten by industry food giants who presumably have gluts of beans and rice and will welcome a reduction in their tax bill. In turn, that will be £256 million that won't reduce our national debt.
BBC Wales spent £149.94 on chocolate biscuits. In excessive spending habits, however, we have much to learn from the Americans. According to the New York Times, the United States spends almost as much on the military as every other country in the world combined.
Although America leads the world in the money it has borrowed from China, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that America spends more than six times as much as that country. China is the country with the next highest budget.
The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its employ.
The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than it spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined. Among its new lethal toys is a rifle that seeks its target and has a range of 2,300 feet, making it possible to hit targets which are well out of the reach of conventional rifles.
All this in a country where 42% of American children live in low-income homes and a fifth of those children live in poverty. And what about unemployment numbers and the plight of the homeless in the US of A, a number that keeps rising?
Other institutions are more careful with their bawbees. I have been corrected over my story of the Prince of Wales last week. It is not every wounded soldier who enjoys a bottle of royal Scotch from him. He only sends letters and Scotch to casualties in the nine regiments under his command. The Royal family's escape from the Civil List into more rewarding pastures will make the Prince the richest king in history. Perhaps he might extend his kindness to the 1,500 who were wounded last year. Cost a lot less than his domestic staff of 150. Oh dear, I said I wasn't going to be rude.
Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!!
Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard
4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets
and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is
to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to
test the strength of the windshields.
British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made,
and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired,
the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel,
crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens,
blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest
in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an
arrow shot from a bow.
The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the
experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US
scientists for suggestions.NASA responded with a one-line memo -- DEFROST THE CHICKENN
SPORTS>>>>WRITERS?
An oxymoron, surely. The Guardian's Mike Selvey gets carried away...
“Thrillingly, as the shadows began to lengthen across the Sydney Cricket Ground, and Australia began to falter, it was Jimmy Anderson, brilliant Jimmy Anderson, indisputably the bowler of the series with daylight second, who plunged the knife into what life was left in the twitching carcass of the Australian cricket team. The old ball reversed, as it always seems to do for England – the same England, said the sages here in the pre-series propaganda war, that would not know how to use a second hand Kookaburra - and not for Australia. But Anderson did not just use it, he had it talking, gabbling away, a ball with verbal diarrhoea.”
Friday, 31 December 2010
A TOUCH OF THE OLD ADAM
.
.......... And God spoke unto Adam and He said, "Why does it take you so long to come to the phone?"
Adam said: "Have you seen the size of this garden? Also I wish you would have a word with that angel you sent with a blazing sword. I've got scorch marks on the dahlias and the heat is bringing on the chrysanths too early..."
God said: "The angel is Security and outside my remit. But there has obviously been a mistake.
He shouldn't be there till apple picking... "
"I wanted Dobermans,” He continued, “but Finance estimate an overall saving with flames that is very impressive. It's something they picked up from the Competition.
“We are working on garden staffing levels. Research and Development were going to let you invent the plough, then we planned electricity, which I personally am very excited about and cannot wait to
create Faraday."
Adam said: "Talk is cheap. When do I get to invent the plough?”
God said: "R and D have come up with this new concept. Run it up the tree trunk and see if it flaps."
Adam said: "God, sometimes you say things which are a mystery to me..."
God said: "Goes with the territory. But about this R and D idea. It will do the gardening; it's an
entertainment concept and does home nursing.
“R and D are working on a modem called sex which completely does away with the spare rib method I originally planned. It will need a User Manual. I'm thinking of calling it the Ten Commandments."
Adam said: "Does this machine have a name?"
God said: "What's in a name, as Shakespeare is going to say. We were going to call it a slave and then a skivvy but Marketing said names like that give off the wrong vibes, consumerwise. So what we finally came up with was Woman. What takes the Woe out of Man - Woman. Neat,eh?
Copywriting and Graphics reckon we could achieve a 98 per cent penetration of A and AB markets."
Adam said: "I want an assurance from management that this woman machine will never be programmed to take executive decisions..."
And God spoke and He said: "Thursday already? I have to go. I have two days' creating before my rest day..."
And He rang off. It was only later when Eve harvested the apples and there was this Leak from
Head Office about relocation that Adam remembered he had been given no guarantees about negative parity for the woman machine. And Adam was sore afraid.
Meanwhile, a very cross mass of people, 14 million of them, travelled and marked up £25 million on credit cards, spent £14,000 a second in Christmas shopping, tried to see the logic, as they shivered on draughty platforms or icy trains, of BR's boast it had improved its efficiency by cutting its services by a quarter. Nor was there much comfort to millions of land-bound air passengers when the head of BAA refused to take his efficiency bonus. He should have given his salary back.
I am convinced that we are witnessing the final collapse of Western Civilisation and not surprised that, according to The Guardian, things can only get worse.
The report predicts severe disruptions will become common at UK airports, which will become vulnerable to the changing climate. The Met Office could not forecast getting wet in a downpour. Britons might have to get used to power blackouts and disrupted travel plans as the country struggles to cope with the long-term effects of climate change, a report for the government has warned. Consumers will have to learn they cannot expect cheap heating and lighting and to go where or when they want as floods, rising temperatures and higher sea levels threaten the UK's road, rail, water and energy networks, it says. If that warning was not sombre enough in a month when air, rail and road travel has been badly hit by the weather, mighty storms and changes in wind direction could threaten some of the country's busiest ports and airports. That would mean the abandonment of coastal docks and increasing pressure for the building of new runways throughout southern Britain.
The transport system has failed; education is a bad joke; the lethal police dismisseth us; parliament is a nest of quarrelsome backbiters and thieves. We fight unnecessary wars; we give millions to other countries whilst denying our own needy all but the necessities of life; we cannot afford to offer our talented young free education. Our culture is an embarrassment: the music has no essence, the paintings are a mockery, poetry is copywriting. It is the bankers not the crooks who wear the black masks, symptoms of a social structure that has collapsed..
What is it we are celebrating between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night? Only twelve per cent of Britons practise Christianity. Christ's Mass? By any reliable computation the man we call Christ was born in September, 4 A.D. Tax collection in an agrarian society in the darkest days of winter when nothing grows would have been counter productive. A wise teacher has been obscured by conjuring tricks and tacky illusions.
There is no room for gods in my life. They are phantasmagorias created by frightened people to defend themselves in the dark which surrounds them. We are our own immortality, there is no death, life is endless. If Christ were to return no doubt he would be accompanied by hobbits and schoolboys with magical powers.
I do not do reverence but I am very strong on awe. I am gripped by it at the thought of the flower crouched in a tiny seed and the magic of creation. According to Freud, Moses was the exiled priest of a disgraced Pharaoh who tried to make the Egyptians abandon their many gods. Heeding his teaching, the Israelis abandoned Jahveh and Baal and worshipped only the sun, the creative spirit made manifest.
Perversely I believe in Christmas as a precious thing. But it is Christmas Past when I wore clean pyjamas, still warm from the iron, on Christmas Eve and woke on Christmas morning to feel a weight on my feet of a pillowcase filled with toys. It is the memory of the Christmas when I crept downstairs to find my father surrounded by my toys, saying tipsily: ”Father Christmas was too drunk to climb the stairs”; of Christmas dinner when he was flown with wine and impertinence.
Those Christmases lie crushed under the weight of a twelve-day sales promotion by the markets. Their symbols are from past advertising campaigns. Twelve days last for two months. In our family we have separate Christmases for two of our children and the in-laws; the third child in Verona we meet by Skype. For the three days of Christmas, my wife, the dog and I close our front door on the world. Christmas begins with fish and chips to the sound of Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Correlli's Christmas music; we watch the Gondoliers performed by an Australian G and S Company, far better than D'Oyly Carte. We listen later to the carols from down the road at King's College, Cambridge. We watch videos of the Nutcracker Ballet, the classic Dickens' films of the Fifties, I take a little wine for my stomach's sake and we have the neighbours in for a drink after Boxing Day. As a special treat this year a TV network called Horse and Hound showed films of Drag Hunts.
Other religions have a rather different view of Christmas. A 'banned Islamic hate group', Islam4UK, planned to put up 'thousands' of billboards around the UK. They claim that Christmas is the reason for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime, paedophilia, domestic violence (and that is not the complete list). The organizers hope to 'destroy Christmas' with this campaign.
The spirit of Christian Christmas is a little tattered. I cannot believe that my favourite paper, The Daily Telegraph, would send a pair of pretty reporters to encourage Cabinet ministers to badmouth the Government. It is mischief making of the worst kind. Its only effect will be to discourage MPs from talking frankly to their own constituents, almost the only role in which they are any use. There is an even more serious possibility for the journalists concerned and for their newspaper. According to David Howarth, a former shadow solicitor general and Lib Dem MP for Cambridge between 2005 and 2010, the criminal law Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to dishonestly make a false representation with the intention of putting someone at risk of pecuniary loss or with the intention of making a pecuniary gain for another.
RESOLUTION TIME
My wife has a busy social calendar. I have not left the house since the first snowflake fell and will only come out with the snowdrops. Let us hope that this bright New Year I will make only one more resolution. Having heard from the father of a wounded soldier of the lengths Prince Charles and Camilla go to bring comfort to soldiers wounded in Afghanistan (every one of whom gets a bottle of Scotch and several visits from the couple), this column will never again be rude about the Royal Family.
MELLY CHRISTMAS
Among my Christmas gifts this year was a splendid cap made from genuine hallmarked Harris Tweed. Harris is all but impossible to buy in this country since some evil Yorkshireman bought out the crofters, and the only mill on Harris, and standardised their wonderful setts into a few lacklustre designs. The cap was made in China. As was every one of the gifts we were given, including a Kindle reader. Next year I expect that Santa will be wearing Mandarin moustaches and riding a junk pulled by six red-breathed dragons.
.......... And God spoke unto Adam and He said, "Why does it take you so long to come to the phone?"
Adam said: "Have you seen the size of this garden? Also I wish you would have a word with that angel you sent with a blazing sword. I've got scorch marks on the dahlias and the heat is bringing on the chrysanths too early..."
God said: "The angel is Security and outside my remit. But there has obviously been a mistake.
He shouldn't be there till apple picking... "
"I wanted Dobermans,” He continued, “but Finance estimate an overall saving with flames that is very impressive. It's something they picked up from the Competition.
“We are working on garden staffing levels. Research and Development were going to let you invent the plough, then we planned electricity, which I personally am very excited about and cannot wait to
create Faraday."
Adam said: "Talk is cheap. When do I get to invent the plough?”
God said: "R and D have come up with this new concept. Run it up the tree trunk and see if it flaps."
Adam said: "God, sometimes you say things which are a mystery to me..."
God said: "Goes with the territory. But about this R and D idea. It will do the gardening; it's an
entertainment concept and does home nursing.
“R and D are working on a modem called sex which completely does away with the spare rib method I originally planned. It will need a User Manual. I'm thinking of calling it the Ten Commandments."
Adam said: "Does this machine have a name?"
God said: "What's in a name, as Shakespeare is going to say. We were going to call it a slave and then a skivvy but Marketing said names like that give off the wrong vibes, consumerwise. So what we finally came up with was Woman. What takes the Woe out of Man - Woman. Neat,eh?
Copywriting and Graphics reckon we could achieve a 98 per cent penetration of A and AB markets."
Adam said: "I want an assurance from management that this woman machine will never be programmed to take executive decisions..."
And God spoke and He said: "Thursday already? I have to go. I have two days' creating before my rest day..."
And He rang off. It was only later when Eve harvested the apples and there was this Leak from
Head Office about relocation that Adam remembered he had been given no guarantees about negative parity for the woman machine. And Adam was sore afraid.
Meanwhile, a very cross mass of people, 14 million of them, travelled and marked up £25 million on credit cards, spent £14,000 a second in Christmas shopping, tried to see the logic, as they shivered on draughty platforms or icy trains, of BR's boast it had improved its efficiency by cutting its services by a quarter. Nor was there much comfort to millions of land-bound air passengers when the head of BAA refused to take his efficiency bonus. He should have given his salary back.
I am convinced that we are witnessing the final collapse of Western Civilisation and not surprised that, according to The Guardian, things can only get worse.
The report predicts severe disruptions will become common at UK airports, which will become vulnerable to the changing climate. The Met Office could not forecast getting wet in a downpour. Britons might have to get used to power blackouts and disrupted travel plans as the country struggles to cope with the long-term effects of climate change, a report for the government has warned. Consumers will have to learn they cannot expect cheap heating and lighting and to go where or when they want as floods, rising temperatures and higher sea levels threaten the UK's road, rail, water and energy networks, it says. If that warning was not sombre enough in a month when air, rail and road travel has been badly hit by the weather, mighty storms and changes in wind direction could threaten some of the country's busiest ports and airports. That would mean the abandonment of coastal docks and increasing pressure for the building of new runways throughout southern Britain.
The transport system has failed; education is a bad joke; the lethal police dismisseth us; parliament is a nest of quarrelsome backbiters and thieves. We fight unnecessary wars; we give millions to other countries whilst denying our own needy all but the necessities of life; we cannot afford to offer our talented young free education. Our culture is an embarrassment: the music has no essence, the paintings are a mockery, poetry is copywriting. It is the bankers not the crooks who wear the black masks, symptoms of a social structure that has collapsed..
What is it we are celebrating between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night? Only twelve per cent of Britons practise Christianity. Christ's Mass? By any reliable computation the man we call Christ was born in September, 4 A.D. Tax collection in an agrarian society in the darkest days of winter when nothing grows would have been counter productive. A wise teacher has been obscured by conjuring tricks and tacky illusions.
There is no room for gods in my life. They are phantasmagorias created by frightened people to defend themselves in the dark which surrounds them. We are our own immortality, there is no death, life is endless. If Christ were to return no doubt he would be accompanied by hobbits and schoolboys with magical powers.
I do not do reverence but I am very strong on awe. I am gripped by it at the thought of the flower crouched in a tiny seed and the magic of creation. According to Freud, Moses was the exiled priest of a disgraced Pharaoh who tried to make the Egyptians abandon their many gods. Heeding his teaching, the Israelis abandoned Jahveh and Baal and worshipped only the sun, the creative spirit made manifest.
Perversely I believe in Christmas as a precious thing. But it is Christmas Past when I wore clean pyjamas, still warm from the iron, on Christmas Eve and woke on Christmas morning to feel a weight on my feet of a pillowcase filled with toys. It is the memory of the Christmas when I crept downstairs to find my father surrounded by my toys, saying tipsily: ”Father Christmas was too drunk to climb the stairs”; of Christmas dinner when he was flown with wine and impertinence.
Those Christmases lie crushed under the weight of a twelve-day sales promotion by the markets. Their symbols are from past advertising campaigns. Twelve days last for two months. In our family we have separate Christmases for two of our children and the in-laws; the third child in Verona we meet by Skype. For the three days of Christmas, my wife, the dog and I close our front door on the world. Christmas begins with fish and chips to the sound of Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Correlli's Christmas music; we watch the Gondoliers performed by an Australian G and S Company, far better than D'Oyly Carte. We listen later to the carols from down the road at King's College, Cambridge. We watch videos of the Nutcracker Ballet, the classic Dickens' films of the Fifties, I take a little wine for my stomach's sake and we have the neighbours in for a drink after Boxing Day. As a special treat this year a TV network called Horse and Hound showed films of Drag Hunts.
Other religions have a rather different view of Christmas. A 'banned Islamic hate group', Islam4UK, planned to put up 'thousands' of billboards around the UK. They claim that Christmas is the reason for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime, paedophilia, domestic violence (and that is not the complete list). The organizers hope to 'destroy Christmas' with this campaign.
The spirit of Christian Christmas is a little tattered. I cannot believe that my favourite paper, The Daily Telegraph, would send a pair of pretty reporters to encourage Cabinet ministers to badmouth the Government. It is mischief making of the worst kind. Its only effect will be to discourage MPs from talking frankly to their own constituents, almost the only role in which they are any use. There is an even more serious possibility for the journalists concerned and for their newspaper. According to David Howarth, a former shadow solicitor general and Lib Dem MP for Cambridge between 2005 and 2010, the criminal law Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to dishonestly make a false representation with the intention of putting someone at risk of pecuniary loss or with the intention of making a pecuniary gain for another.
RESOLUTION TIME
My wife has a busy social calendar. I have not left the house since the first snowflake fell and will only come out with the snowdrops. Let us hope that this bright New Year I will make only one more resolution. Having heard from the father of a wounded soldier of the lengths Prince Charles and Camilla go to bring comfort to soldiers wounded in Afghanistan (every one of whom gets a bottle of Scotch and several visits from the couple), this column will never again be rude about the Royal Family.
MELLY CHRISTMAS
Among my Christmas gifts this year was a splendid cap made from genuine hallmarked Harris Tweed. Harris is all but impossible to buy in this country since some evil Yorkshireman bought out the crofters, and the only mill on Harris, and standardised their wonderful setts into a few lacklustre designs. The cap was made in China. As was every one of the gifts we were given, including a Kindle reader. Next year I expect that Santa will be wearing Mandarin moustaches and riding a junk pulled by six red-breathed dragons.
Thursday, 23 December 2010
WOULD MAN SPARE THAT TREE ????
In the most definitive study of the perennial real tree versus fake, an environmental consulting firm found that an artificial tree would have to be re-used for more than 20 years to be greener than buying a fresh-cut tree annually. The calculations included greenhouse gas emissions, use of resources and human health impacts.
“The natural tree is a better option,” said Jean-Sebastien Trudel, founder of the firm Ellipsos that released the independent study last year. The annual carbon emissions associated with using a real tree every year were just one-third of those created by an artificial tree.
If only I had known..............
I can never set a foot on the calendular escalator that leads to Christmas without remembering my friend Curly Beard and the free Christmas tree.
Curly was a former champion show jumper for whom I used to ride work in the days when I could be carried by a single horse. He spent much of his retirement drinking in the Sportsman up on the Cheshire/Welsh border at Tattenhall. I was in the bar there one day with Curly and my old man.
"I will have to go after this,” I said. “Going to buy a Christmas tree from the Delamere forest."
Curly said: "You don't have to buy one. I'll get you one free. But we will have to wait until dark."
So I said: "What will you have while we are waiting?"
Curly said he would have a large gin and my old man said,while I was ordering, would I call him up a large scotch? By the time I had added mine, my free Christmas tree had cost me £8 (it was a long time ago). By the time it was dark it had cost me another ten quid and we were in no state to go digging up Christmas trees.
We arranged to meet at opening time the next day. We were just going to have one and then collect a free tree from a friend of Curly's. We would have done, too, if the Wynnstay Hounds hadn't been meeting at the Cock at Barton. In those days hunt followers of standing - or in our case barely standing - shared the stirrup cup, a potent mixture of port and brandy which reconciled people to falling off horses. It tasted so good we stayed on after the hounds had moved off. Let's be honest, we were still on it, at my considerable expense, when the huntsman blew kennels somewhere over by Overton.
We kept meeting like that for about a week and I had lost count of how much the free tree had cost me in drinks. But it was well over fifty quid, seventies prices. To be fair, though, the next night we borrowed the landlord's spade and went off to dig up the tree. I don't know how we managed to break the spade - which I later replaced at the cost of £10. I know how I broke the tree. I remember falling on it. And even if I hadn't remembered, my wife of the time kept reminding me of it for years.
I do hope my little contretemps is not the reason the government plans to sell off state-owned forests. And not just the 635,000-acre Forestry Commission forests. This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands, sites of special scientific interest, heathland, camp sites, farms and sporting estates.
ON SONG
Our cousin Isabel Suckling is having the merriest of Christmases. Her debut record album “The Choirgirl” was sixth in the Classic FM Top Forty. Beaten only by Andre Rieu, Russell Watson, The Classic album of Stars, Bryn Terfel and Aled Jones. She was 7th in the Official Classic Album Chart and on the Chris Evans Radio 2 programme where she sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” the Archbishop of York said she had a magnificent voice and the assembled choirs who shared billing with her gave her the radio equivalent of a standing ovation.
Not so Montreal MP Justin Trudeau
He is in hot water for sending a card of his family to his constituents. Trudeau, wife Sophie and their two small children were decked out in goose-down parkas, trimmed with coyote fur and draped with a coyote fur blanket. Trudeau's spokesperson said the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was simply showing support for Canadian companies and had no ulterior motives. But the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called the card "lurid"and "inappropriate”. PETA spokesperson Lucas Soloway said, “I think it was disturbing, especially at this time of year in a greeting card. Where is the cheer in wearing the skins of animals? Coyotes killed for their fur are usually caught in the wild in steel–jaw traps, which have been banned in dozens of countries and often cause coyotes and other animals to gnaw off their own legs in an attempt to escape." Trudeau's aide Alex Lanthier explained the family wore the coats because they wanted to be supportive of Canada Goose - the company that manufactured the parkas. "It’s a good Canadian company,"said Lanthier. "The coats are made from sustainable products."
A RECIPE for the ultimate Christmas cake from my good friend Colin Dunne;
Ingredients:
* 2 cups flour
* 1 stick butter
* 1 cup of water
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 cup of sugar
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 cup of brown sugar
* Lemon juice
* 4 large eggs
* Nuts
* 2 bottles wine
* 2 cups of dried fruit
Sample the wine to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the wine again. To be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the wine is still OK. Try another cup... Just in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Pick the frigging fruit up off floor. Mix on the turner.. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the wine to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something. Check the wine. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or some fink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window. Finish the wine and wipe counter with the cat.
Go to Coles and buy cake.
Bingle Jells!
“The natural tree is a better option,” said Jean-Sebastien Trudel, founder of the firm Ellipsos that released the independent study last year. The annual carbon emissions associated with using a real tree every year were just one-third of those created by an artificial tree.
If only I had known..............
I can never set a foot on the calendular escalator that leads to Christmas without remembering my friend Curly Beard and the free Christmas tree.
Curly was a former champion show jumper for whom I used to ride work in the days when I could be carried by a single horse. He spent much of his retirement drinking in the Sportsman up on the Cheshire/Welsh border at Tattenhall. I was in the bar there one day with Curly and my old man.
"I will have to go after this,” I said. “Going to buy a Christmas tree from the Delamere forest."
Curly said: "You don't have to buy one. I'll get you one free. But we will have to wait until dark."
So I said: "What will you have while we are waiting?"
Curly said he would have a large gin and my old man said,while I was ordering, would I call him up a large scotch? By the time I had added mine, my free Christmas tree had cost me £8 (it was a long time ago). By the time it was dark it had cost me another ten quid and we were in no state to go digging up Christmas trees.
We arranged to meet at opening time the next day. We were just going to have one and then collect a free tree from a friend of Curly's. We would have done, too, if the Wynnstay Hounds hadn't been meeting at the Cock at Barton. In those days hunt followers of standing - or in our case barely standing - shared the stirrup cup, a potent mixture of port and brandy which reconciled people to falling off horses. It tasted so good we stayed on after the hounds had moved off. Let's be honest, we were still on it, at my considerable expense, when the huntsman blew kennels somewhere over by Overton.
We kept meeting like that for about a week and I had lost count of how much the free tree had cost me in drinks. But it was well over fifty quid, seventies prices. To be fair, though, the next night we borrowed the landlord's spade and went off to dig up the tree. I don't know how we managed to break the spade - which I later replaced at the cost of £10. I know how I broke the tree. I remember falling on it. And even if I hadn't remembered, my wife of the time kept reminding me of it for years.
I do hope my little contretemps is not the reason the government plans to sell off state-owned forests. And not just the 635,000-acre Forestry Commission forests. This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands, sites of special scientific interest, heathland, camp sites, farms and sporting estates.
ON SONG
Our cousin Isabel Suckling is having the merriest of Christmases. Her debut record album “The Choirgirl” was sixth in the Classic FM Top Forty. Beaten only by Andre Rieu, Russell Watson, The Classic album of Stars, Bryn Terfel and Aled Jones. She was 7th in the Official Classic Album Chart and on the Chris Evans Radio 2 programme where she sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” the Archbishop of York said she had a magnificent voice and the assembled choirs who shared billing with her gave her the radio equivalent of a standing ovation.
Not so Montreal MP Justin Trudeau
He is in hot water for sending a card of his family to his constituents. Trudeau, wife Sophie and their two small children were decked out in goose-down parkas, trimmed with coyote fur and draped with a coyote fur blanket. Trudeau's spokesperson said the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was simply showing support for Canadian companies and had no ulterior motives. But the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called the card "lurid"and "inappropriate”. PETA spokesperson Lucas Soloway said, “I think it was disturbing, especially at this time of year in a greeting card. Where is the cheer in wearing the skins of animals? Coyotes killed for their fur are usually caught in the wild in steel–jaw traps, which have been banned in dozens of countries and often cause coyotes and other animals to gnaw off their own legs in an attempt to escape." Trudeau's aide Alex Lanthier explained the family wore the coats because they wanted to be supportive of Canada Goose - the company that manufactured the parkas. "It’s a good Canadian company,"said Lanthier. "The coats are made from sustainable products."
A RECIPE for the ultimate Christmas cake from my good friend Colin Dunne;
Ingredients:
* 2 cups flour
* 1 stick butter
* 1 cup of water
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 cup of sugar
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 cup of brown sugar
* Lemon juice
* 4 large eggs
* Nuts
* 2 bottles wine
* 2 cups of dried fruit
Sample the wine to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the wine again. To be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the wine is still OK. Try another cup... Just in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Pick the frigging fruit up off floor. Mix on the turner.. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the wine to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something. Check the wine. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or some fink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window. Finish the wine and wipe counter with the cat.
Go to Coles and buy cake.
Bingle Jells!
Saturday, 18 December 2010
AMIABLE ARTILLERY
I have a Noble Friend who sends me cards most weeks but
never at Christmas. His cousin sends me a glorious Christmas Cracker,
an annual 'uncommonplace' book of literary gems he has
collected.
Another friend is even now taking a bearing on my mantelpiece
for the barrage of the Christmas card artillery he will launch
in ample time for recipients to return his festive fire of Yule
logs and complacent robins.
The sadomasochists who ruin my Christmas are the people
who cunningly time their cards to arrive on Christmas Eve when
the last post has already sounded. Their strategy is an empty
mantelpiece. No doubt they gloat over their Christmas dinner of
broiled sardine at the missing cards.
"We didn't get a card from Skidmore," they say, rubbing their
dry parchment hands.
Christmas card etiquette is as complicated as kissing as a
greeting, same person sex and shaking hands. One is never sure
who does what, when and to whom.
I cannot take it any more. I have called for stretcher bearers
and wait to be carried out of the front drop-me-a-line.
Clearly what I need is Christmas Card counselling.
I want to attack robins, to pour water on Yule logs and take
down the decorations on Christmas Eve rather than Twelfth Night.
Not so odd as you may think. By Julius Caesar's sensible
calendar, Twelfth Night is Christmas Day. Alas, our adoption of
Papist tinkering in the 18th century means that only on the
Isle of Foula is the old calendar still in use; and
celebrated, for a reason which escapes me, by shooting sea birds.
Foula is clearly the spiritual home of the RSPB which has
done its best to wipe out the ruddy duck and the
red grouse.
But I digress.
Bring back the pre-American Christmas; a season which
was not dominated by a red-suited drunk.
Have you ever worked out how many glasses of sideboarded sherry
the old reprobate gets through in your street alone?
A red-suited drunk, incidentally, who began life a century ago as
an advertising stunt for a New York store.
Do not get me wrong. True, I founded the SAS - the Scrooge
Appreciation Society - but that stemmed from a deep loathing of
the Family Cratchet.
Christmas was fine until Dickens went to America, saw how
it had been exploited and then returned to set up the Christmas
industry in this poor benighted land.
HOW TO TAKE THE STING OUT OF SUCH CHRISTMAS TALES
When by Monday my Spectator had not arrived I rang their subscription department to complain. The telephone was answered by a girl on whom much attention had been lavished in childhood.
“How perfectly frightful,” she said, in a voice throbbing with sympathy. “Do you know, you must be the nine hundredth person who has rung me this morning. I think we must have fallen foul of the bad weather. You won't believe it, but I sent a Christmas card last Wednesday - to my brother actually - and it still hasn't arrived. Do you think it might be the Christmas mail?”
I said I thought it might be.
“So awful for you,” she said. “I wonder what we can do? I'll tell you what. Can you bear to wait until Wednesday? If it hasn't arrived by then, do ring me back and I will send you another.”
I rang off feeling better than I had felt all day. There are still good things about being English. If it hasn't arrived by Wednesday I will ring her back ,if only to find out if her brother's card has arrived.
Being English took a knock when the Home Secretary ruled out the use of water cannon against the students who urinate on cenotaphs and occupy other people's offices. She said it was “Un-British”.
I would have thought “flammenwerfer” more equable. Though imposing six months' imprisonment on anyone selling fireworks to the under sixteens borders on the excessive. What really brought back one's customary disdain was the behaviour of the Establishment in fitting up the WikiLeaks man.
I got this from the admirable Word a Day:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous. -William Proxmire, US senator, reformer (1915-2005)
never at Christmas. His cousin sends me a glorious Christmas Cracker,
an annual 'uncommonplace' book of literary gems he has
collected.
Another friend is even now taking a bearing on my mantelpiece
for the barrage of the Christmas card artillery he will launch
in ample time for recipients to return his festive fire of Yule
logs and complacent robins.
The sadomasochists who ruin my Christmas are the people
who cunningly time their cards to arrive on Christmas Eve when
the last post has already sounded. Their strategy is an empty
mantelpiece. No doubt they gloat over their Christmas dinner of
broiled sardine at the missing cards.
"We didn't get a card from Skidmore," they say, rubbing their
dry parchment hands.
Christmas card etiquette is as complicated as kissing as a
greeting, same person sex and shaking hands. One is never sure
who does what, when and to whom.
I cannot take it any more. I have called for stretcher bearers
and wait to be carried out of the front drop-me-a-line.
Clearly what I need is Christmas Card counselling.
I want to attack robins, to pour water on Yule logs and take
down the decorations on Christmas Eve rather than Twelfth Night.
Not so odd as you may think. By Julius Caesar's sensible
calendar, Twelfth Night is Christmas Day. Alas, our adoption of
Papist tinkering in the 18th century means that only on the
Isle of Foula is the old calendar still in use; and
celebrated, for a reason which escapes me, by shooting sea birds.
Foula is clearly the spiritual home of the RSPB which has
done its best to wipe out the ruddy duck and the
red grouse.
But I digress.
Bring back the pre-American Christmas; a season which
was not dominated by a red-suited drunk.
Have you ever worked out how many glasses of sideboarded sherry
the old reprobate gets through in your street alone?
A red-suited drunk, incidentally, who began life a century ago as
an advertising stunt for a New York store.
Do not get me wrong. True, I founded the SAS - the Scrooge
Appreciation Society - but that stemmed from a deep loathing of
the Family Cratchet.
Christmas was fine until Dickens went to America, saw how
it had been exploited and then returned to set up the Christmas
industry in this poor benighted land.
HOW TO TAKE THE STING OUT OF SUCH CHRISTMAS TALES
When by Monday my Spectator had not arrived I rang their subscription department to complain. The telephone was answered by a girl on whom much attention had been lavished in childhood.
“How perfectly frightful,” she said, in a voice throbbing with sympathy. “Do you know, you must be the nine hundredth person who has rung me this morning. I think we must have fallen foul of the bad weather. You won't believe it, but I sent a Christmas card last Wednesday - to my brother actually - and it still hasn't arrived. Do you think it might be the Christmas mail?”
I said I thought it might be.
“So awful for you,” she said. “I wonder what we can do? I'll tell you what. Can you bear to wait until Wednesday? If it hasn't arrived by then, do ring me back and I will send you another.”
I rang off feeling better than I had felt all day. There are still good things about being English. If it hasn't arrived by Wednesday I will ring her back ,if only to find out if her brother's card has arrived.
Being English took a knock when the Home Secretary ruled out the use of water cannon against the students who urinate on cenotaphs and occupy other people's offices. She said it was “Un-British”.
I would have thought “flammenwerfer” more equable. Though imposing six months' imprisonment on anyone selling fireworks to the under sixteens borders on the excessive. What really brought back one's customary disdain was the behaviour of the Establishment in fitting up the WikiLeaks man.
I got this from the admirable Word a Day:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous. -William Proxmire, US senator, reformer (1915-2005)
Sunday, 12 December 2010
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