You will not have heard of her but when Rebecca Osborne died a bright star went out of our firmament. Someone told Lloyd George, “I thought you would have been taller.” Lloyd George replied: “In Wales we measure people from the neck up!”
By those standards Becky was the only giant I ever met. In size she was no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman. A crippling illness meant that she was only three feet high and weighed just 40 lb. She suffered from Werding Hoffman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes wasting of the muscles.
Suffered? Not Becky. Although almost totally paralysed, with only slight movement of the head and hands, she was a successful novelist and short story writer, a painter, a maker of exquisite miniature rooms and a gardener, though her garden was a toy wheelbarrow. She made jewellery and greetings cards, lace and tapestries on tiny canvases with a miniature needle and very fine thread.
She also made friends like Princess Anne, the writer Celia Haddon and the actor Anthony Andrews, who took her to lunch and gave her his prized “Brideshead” teddy bear.
She was an indefatigable charity worker. With her mother Jenny she turned their garden at Foxbrush, Port Dinorwic, in North Wales, into an award winning member of the National Gardens Scheme.
She was 28 when she died. Even in that she was a record holder because no one else suffering from the disorder, including her sister Vicky, had ever lived beyond the age of six. Nor, it should be said, have many fit people packed so much into so short a time or extended so much love and friendship to so many people.
She once said to me: ”I am long past my sell by date but I cannot let something as silly as a disability stand in my way. There is no point in letting it beat you.”
It never did. She exhibited her tiny 3D model rooms at National Eisteddfods all over Wales. She had sell-out shows at Oriel Ynys Mon, Anglesey, for which she won the North Wales artists development award; Oriel Bangor and the Beaumaris Festival in which she competed successfully against hundreds for a showing in the festival exhibition.
She lived with her parents Jenny and Brian at Foxbrush, a converted 17th century mill. Devoted parents who every night for 28 years took it in turns every half hour to turn her over in her tiny bed; who tirelessly supported her, were her ardent followers in everything she chose to do and were broken hearted and bereft at her loss.
Becky was never able to go to school. Teachers came to her but she had to take whatever teacher was available. For a year it was a music teacher; for two years she learned nothing but maths. She enrolled at the Gwynedd Technical College to do A level English. More accurately, the College enrolled in Foxbrush. A tutor would arrive with five fellow students who became her devoted friends. Needless to say, she passed with top grades.
But nothing in life became her so much as her manner of leaving it. She had been deteriorating since 1997, when she was told she had only three weeks to live. In contemptuous response she joined the Sealed Knot, went to a dozen musters a year, researched the Civil War in exhaustive detail and cozened her parents into a frenzy of costume making and creating cameo roles.
For ten weeks before her death, she bravely battled against excruciating pain which became worse over the Christmas holiday. Even then she was building 3D rooms for her next exhibition and when her hands became totally paralysed used her mother's hands.
When she died there was a Memorial Exhibition of her works although in truth she needed none. Becky is her own memorial which she erected in the heart of anyone who was privileged to know her.
IT'S A PUZZLEMENT..........................
I do not wish to rain on anyone's parade but in the matter of Overcoming Osama how does the Arab, a desert dweller, acquire a tradition of burial at sea? I know the camel is the ship of the desert..........
From the Nazis down to Sad Saddam the tradition has been to bring monstrous criminals to trial and execution. So why kill the pyjama clad binned Lada? He was surrounded by wives and unarmed. They said they shot him to prevent him committing suicide Either wasy he is jusy as dead and a murdered martyr has the edge. Thpmas a Becket's death by asprin butty would not have had quite the resonance How much greater the humiliation of bringing him to public trial than to shoot him in the presence of his children, a practice universally condemned when done by the IRA? We got terribly upset when America invaded Grenada without telling us. How would we feel if the S.E.A. L's raised an angry flipper raiding a terrorist cell in London?
And while we are in questioning mode, who were the two nuns who were sitting the best seats opposite the winning post at the Royal Wedding? I am not saying they had no right to be there but I am puzzled that none of the so-called commentators saw fit to explain their presence.
When I covered Royal Visits or any great occasion I always wore comfortable shoes because it involved a certain amount of pavement pounding. The ladies whose job it was to mingle with crowds at the wedding wore shoes with heels so high they could scarcely totter. The three principal commentators demonstrated a total inability to Dimbleby (senior, not the dreadful brothers). I do not think that Huw Edwards, BBC man in the hot seat, should have needed the teleprompt to which his eyes nervously strayed. Would never have caught Wynford Vaughan Thomas, Vincent Kane, Hywel Gwynfryn orAlun Williams, Welsh presenters and my old chums on such occasions, allowing one in their presence.
You may have heard how at the Glamorgan match Edward Bevan, veteran BBC Wales commentator, continued his commentary as a cricket ball smashed the window of the commentary box, hitting him in the back. That was the THIRD time it had happened to Bevan. They don't make commentators like that any more.
STORY BOARD FOR THE ATTENTION OF DEAN SWIFT
A GIANT orange pumpkin will loom large over a historic market town if tourism campaigners get their way.
They believe a 131ft high structure in Gwydyr Forest above Llanrwst would rival Gateshead’s iconic Angel of the North as an attraction.
ARC, a group set up in 2004 to boost tourism in the Conwy Valley through cultural regeneration, claim the eco-friendly sculpture, designed by New York artist Steven Brower, would bring in visitors.
ARC member Megan Broadmeadow said: “It’s at the planning stage at the moment, but we'd like to hear people's views and involve everyone in developing this landmark structure.
“It will be not only a visual icon, but so large that educational, arts and green activities can happen inside it. It will be built from recycled materials and be eco-friendly where possible.”
++++++ +++++++ +++++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++
Police seized £300,000 of cannabis plants in a huge drugs raid - then had the haul stolen from under their noses.
Detectives boasted about the giant drugs bust and even posed for pictures with the massive crop of illegal plants.
But, as police stood guard at the front of the cannabis factory, thieves broke in through the back.
+++++++ ++++++ ++++++ +++++ ++++++ ++++++
Council staff in South Wales have spent the equivalent of more than 888 years on sick leave last year.
A combined total of 324,431 days were taken off sick by staff employed by councils.
Stress, neck pain, headaches and viral infections were among the reasons given by staff for time away from the office and tucked up in bed.
Bridgend council staff took off sick most frequently, with every employee (equivalent) taking 10 days and seven hours off work on average during last year.
+++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++ +++++++
Northumbria Police spent £1,775,996 on “corporate communications” in the last financial year. This includes £458,602 on “media services”, with the rest going on public consultation, internal communications, marketing and the force website.
The Sunday Post monitored press releases between 9am on Friday, March 11, and 9am, on Monday, 14 March.
During those three days, the media services department released: a minor road accident; a robbery at a shop; a stolen car; a stolen dog and an appeal regarding an assault from a week earlier.
However, a request under the Freedom of Information Act revealed there were 4,665 incidents, including 674 crimes.
These included 55 cases of grievous bodily harm, 20 other assaults, one armed robbery and three other robberies, five rapes, 12 other sexual assaults and 69 burglaries.
+++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++
A chief fire officer who retired with a payout of £425,000 returned to work soon after to do the same job with a salary of £75,000.
Peter Holland, from Lancashire Fire and Rescue, has even claimed that the deal has saved taxpayers a 'fortune'.
Not even my old chum Ken Ashton could make that lot up!!!!!
Friday, 6 May 2011
Saturday, 30 April 2011
A HEALTH UNTO THEIR MAJESTIES
The Big Idea had been hiding halfway down the second bottle of an indifferent Chilean Chardonnay and when they reached it the Head Honchos of Channel 4 pounced on it with many a glad cry.
“Let's Dig the Dirt on the Middletons,“ they chorused, and off they went clutching their buckets and spades. They struck pay dirt straight away. The young bride's great-grandfather was a coal miner!!!! The groom's great-grandmother OWNED coal mines.
History was clearly not the a strong point with the Honchos or they would have been aware that it was a far, far greater thing to be an honest miner than to be numbered among the mine owners, some of the more justly reviled men in recent history. One even had his plea for forgiveness cut into his gravestone.
But to what joys of discovery this led. The Duchess of Cambridge's (the last Duke also married a commoner) near relations were a supermarket manager, more miners and a leisure centre cleaner. As it turned out, they were also very likeable, honourable and happy and not at all envious. The supermarket manager and cleaner had little schooling and had worked fiercely to get to the positions they had achieved. Unlike their new in-laws.
Royal families, until recently, had defied all efforts to educate themselves and they had lied, cheated and murdered for centuries to get where they are today. By his own efforts, one great-grandfather of the bride had amassed considerable wealth, which he left to ensure that his descendants, including the bride, could get the sort of education that only the most recent royals could boast; and in doing so produced the first Queen in history with a university degree.
It is only fair that examination should be held into the family into which she has married.. The Queen, for example, and the question of whether she is entitled to rule on religious grounds. She descends from Prince Albert, whom, it was said, was the product of an affair between his mother and a Jewish court chamberlain. Curiously, late in his life, Edward VII befriended the Jewish banker Ernest Cassell, whom he knighted in return for financial advice. The two men looked so alike it was said they were BOTH the sons of the Jewish courtier by different mothers. Ernest was known as Windsor Cassell and Edward as The Caresser. When he died, one of his mistresses threaded black ribbons through her daughter's underwear and a Jermyn St grocer sold black Bradenham Hams. Recalling, no doubt, his prowess at Bed and Board.
Our Queen's Georgian ancestors include a barking madman, three bigamists, two murderers and a traitor to the Crown.
Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, the Albany Herald, claimed in his book “Lord of the Dance“ that, amongst others of history's notables, he and the Queen descend from Vlad the Impaler, the historic Dracula, and Elizabeth Bathory who bathed in the blood of maidens. The late Queen Mother, claimed the American investigator Kitty Kelley, was the daughter of a Welsh housemaid. Wallis Simpson and her appalling traitorous husband teased her with the nickname “Cookie”, and James Lees Milne claimed to have heard the Queen tell her mother: “The difference between us is, I am Royal.”
I should add that it was from that much loved commoner that the Royal Family became human and survived. The new Duchess will repeat the magic.. I just wonder if we are doing the right thing marrying the loving and lovely Catherine into this disfunctional assemblage.
HUZZAH FOR THE BBC
The decision to put the R4 “Today” programme on air at breakfast time was sheer genius. They are right in thinking that is when the most people turn the radio on. My Archives programme, which followed it, took over its audience of seven million.
What the BBC fails to take in is that people may switch it on but at that time of the morning are far too busy to LISTEN to it. They have not reacted with fury at the way its abject presenters treat the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, both men of considerable intellect, like recalcitrant school boys. Their manner is rude, their frequent interruptions are offensive. They make the novice interviewer's error in believing they and not their guest is the person to whom we wish to listen.
Their own gods, who are allowed to rant untrammelled, are rather strange. Ian Hislop is an ex-schoolmaster who edits “Private Eye”, the organ of elderly undergraduates. Nothing more. Yet he was allowed to bad mouth Andrew Marr without interruption. Surely it does not matter how belatedly Marr rejected his own decision over super injunctions? He did so. Hislop is society's disagreeable terrier whose proper province is the heel.
Meantime your sympathy is sought.................................
Despite paying annual salaries of hundreds of thousand of pounds, BBC Director General Mark Thompson claimed it was “extremely hard” to fill executive roles as the broadcaster tried to cut costs.
In the past year, the BBC has pledged to reduce what it pays in some executive roles after repeated criticism.
Mr Thompson is trying to find a new director of television after Jana Bennett left the public service part of the BBC to join BBC Worldwide, its commercially-funded arm.
Miss Bennett’s remuneration in the last financial year was £517,000, but it is understood that the salary on offer to her replacement could be less than £400,000.
How can anyone live on that!
On a luxury note: We celebrated my first day as a monarchist with fish n' chips and champagne. God Bless the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who have the good sense to live on Anglesey, guarded by Meyricks, with whom any upstairs servant who gossiped with downstairs servants was sacked. When we lived down the road, the Meyricks had a game keeper who terrorised an entire district. Glad I am no longer the island news gatherer.
“Let's Dig the Dirt on the Middletons,“ they chorused, and off they went clutching their buckets and spades. They struck pay dirt straight away. The young bride's great-grandfather was a coal miner!!!! The groom's great-grandmother OWNED coal mines.
History was clearly not the a strong point with the Honchos or they would have been aware that it was a far, far greater thing to be an honest miner than to be numbered among the mine owners, some of the more justly reviled men in recent history. One even had his plea for forgiveness cut into his gravestone.
But to what joys of discovery this led. The Duchess of Cambridge's (the last Duke also married a commoner) near relations were a supermarket manager, more miners and a leisure centre cleaner. As it turned out, they were also very likeable, honourable and happy and not at all envious. The supermarket manager and cleaner had little schooling and had worked fiercely to get to the positions they had achieved. Unlike their new in-laws.
Royal families, until recently, had defied all efforts to educate themselves and they had lied, cheated and murdered for centuries to get where they are today. By his own efforts, one great-grandfather of the bride had amassed considerable wealth, which he left to ensure that his descendants, including the bride, could get the sort of education that only the most recent royals could boast; and in doing so produced the first Queen in history with a university degree.
It is only fair that examination should be held into the family into which she has married.. The Queen, for example, and the question of whether she is entitled to rule on religious grounds. She descends from Prince Albert, whom, it was said, was the product of an affair between his mother and a Jewish court chamberlain. Curiously, late in his life, Edward VII befriended the Jewish banker Ernest Cassell, whom he knighted in return for financial advice. The two men looked so alike it was said they were BOTH the sons of the Jewish courtier by different mothers. Ernest was known as Windsor Cassell and Edward as The Caresser. When he died, one of his mistresses threaded black ribbons through her daughter's underwear and a Jermyn St grocer sold black Bradenham Hams. Recalling, no doubt, his prowess at Bed and Board.
Our Queen's Georgian ancestors include a barking madman, three bigamists, two murderers and a traitor to the Crown.
Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, the Albany Herald, claimed in his book “Lord of the Dance“ that, amongst others of history's notables, he and the Queen descend from Vlad the Impaler, the historic Dracula, and Elizabeth Bathory who bathed in the blood of maidens. The late Queen Mother, claimed the American investigator Kitty Kelley, was the daughter of a Welsh housemaid. Wallis Simpson and her appalling traitorous husband teased her with the nickname “Cookie”, and James Lees Milne claimed to have heard the Queen tell her mother: “The difference between us is, I am Royal.”
I should add that it was from that much loved commoner that the Royal Family became human and survived. The new Duchess will repeat the magic.. I just wonder if we are doing the right thing marrying the loving and lovely Catherine into this disfunctional assemblage.
HUZZAH FOR THE BBC
The decision to put the R4 “Today” programme on air at breakfast time was sheer genius. They are right in thinking that is when the most people turn the radio on. My Archives programme, which followed it, took over its audience of seven million.
What the BBC fails to take in is that people may switch it on but at that time of the morning are far too busy to LISTEN to it. They have not reacted with fury at the way its abject presenters treat the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, both men of considerable intellect, like recalcitrant school boys. Their manner is rude, their frequent interruptions are offensive. They make the novice interviewer's error in believing they and not their guest is the person to whom we wish to listen.
Their own gods, who are allowed to rant untrammelled, are rather strange. Ian Hislop is an ex-schoolmaster who edits “Private Eye”, the organ of elderly undergraduates. Nothing more. Yet he was allowed to bad mouth Andrew Marr without interruption. Surely it does not matter how belatedly Marr rejected his own decision over super injunctions? He did so. Hislop is society's disagreeable terrier whose proper province is the heel.
Meantime your sympathy is sought.................................
Despite paying annual salaries of hundreds of thousand of pounds, BBC Director General Mark Thompson claimed it was “extremely hard” to fill executive roles as the broadcaster tried to cut costs.
In the past year, the BBC has pledged to reduce what it pays in some executive roles after repeated criticism.
Mr Thompson is trying to find a new director of television after Jana Bennett left the public service part of the BBC to join BBC Worldwide, its commercially-funded arm.
Miss Bennett’s remuneration in the last financial year was £517,000, but it is understood that the salary on offer to her replacement could be less than £400,000.
How can anyone live on that!
On a luxury note: We celebrated my first day as a monarchist with fish n' chips and champagne. God Bless the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who have the good sense to live on Anglesey, guarded by Meyricks, with whom any upstairs servant who gossiped with downstairs servants was sacked. When we lived down the road, the Meyricks had a game keeper who terrorised an entire district. Glad I am no longer the island news gatherer.
Saturday, 23 April 2011
A DICKENS OF A MESS
Tear down the statues of the ancient gods, smash to smithereens the busts of Pericles and Alexander, the later monuments to the Madonna and the crucified Christ. We have a new God to worship. Let the trumpets sound for......
MR MICAWBER
His prophecy has come true: annual Income £1, annual expenditure £1 and sixpence; result misery.
This is the new economy of the Western world which is led by the nation with the biggest debt in the history of mankind. Currency experts say that it is inevitable that America will default on its debt. The likeliest method would be to pay off its debts by inflating its currency to a level which makes it worthless. That is progress. It makes the Weimar Republic, in which household debts were paid with wheelbarrows full of Deutsch Marks a haven of prudence.
In 1939 Britain went to war to preserve the freedom of Poland. Four years later it abandoned that luckless country to fifty years of slavery under Stalin. Once again we are going to war to establish the right of the Middle East to be governed by the Wahabi, standard bearers of Arab fundamentalism. We are so deep in debt we cannot afford a navy or an air force and our soldiers fight for their lives under the banner of redundancy. Yet we are spending millions in a failing attempt to defeat Gaddafi, the Mad Mullah of Libya, and we are sending military advisers to train the rebel army. Familiar? The United States of Micawber did just that in every pointless war with evil - which they later lost.
At home our government denounces local councils who make savage and unnecessary cuts in essential services whilst hoarding reserves of many millions. In this campaign against windmills the Quixote is fittingly bucolic Suffolk. Its chief executive runs the Croesus Fan Club. Its new fire chief has charged council tax payers almost £20,000 in decoration and removal costs – while plans to cut front-line services go ahead. Public cash helped David Johnson move to the county of Suffolk, even though he heads the Essex brigade. The fire chief and his senior colleagues clocked up tens of thousands of pounds in other expenses – including billing taxpayers for gentlemen’s clubs, lavish hotels and lobster dinners. Mr Johnson’s moving costs included £3,704.60p for new carpets, £3,466.93p for floor tiles and £324 for Laura Ashley curtains. The £20,000 total included £3,877.50p in estate agent fees, £2,402 in removals and £4,563 for a mortgage redemption penalty. The fire chief used to live even further afield – Nottinghamshire – but had a temporary base in Essex until his move to Suffolk.
The disclosure comes at a sensitive time for Essex Fire and Rescue service, where Mr Johnson is in charge of slashing staff numbers from 52 to 24. The brigade is trying to cut £10million from its budget.
Not to be outdone, Manchester Council has handed out free mobile phones to nearly two out of every three of its own workers. More than 7,000 town hall staff in Manchester have been given mobiles, with the bill of more than £1.2million a year paid by the taxpayer. Where our leaders cry “Onwards and It's-All-Up words” we follow.
A friend paid £250 for new spectacles with which he couldn't read a word or even see my PC screen. The optician explained: “You need to let them settle. There should be a settling in period.”
“But I can't see a word on a page.”
'Yes, well, the optician did say cataracts are developing.”
“Yes, but not that quickly.”
“She has allowed for some deterioration in sight by your next eye test in a year's time.”
“But I can't see to read now - or, more importantly, type and teach.”
“Yes, but has she explained the Varifocals have been manufactured to give you balanced sight when you raise your head?”
“But I still can't read.”
'Well, maybe you'd better come back for a repeat eye test...”
Yesterday he emailed me: “Been back to Specsavers - they say it's the way I hold my head, all wrong.”
Reminds me of the time when I bought my first stereo and complained it sounded like any other bloody gramophone. The man said: “Ah, there is a difference but your ears are not tuned to hear it. Your dog will know.”
Or the time I had difficulty buying a computer in Wrexham because the machine said there was no such island as Anglesey.
When a crater swallows the economy the first fissures invariably find press freedom. Now we have the Super Injunction. As always, the present threat is from lawyers. There is a game which is traditionally played in the Bar Mess during Assizes. Comic cases are brought which stretch the credulity of the listeners. Now the Judges are doing it as a day job. From the French Revolution onwards lawyers have been the catalyst for unwelcome change. One should be grateful for anything that shields one from the pranks of priapic peasants or cavorting celebrities but now these super injunctions are been used to deny a victim a voice against authority, and attempts have been made to gag parliament. We may be roaming in the gloaming but the Dark Ages beckon.
I cannot for the life of me see why people are surprised that Gordon Brown, who tested the Micawber Theorem to our destruction, should be a front runner for the top job in the International Monetary Fund. There is a precedent. They made Blair Envoy for Peace in the Middle East - and look what a good job he has done.
I have just the signature tune for our leaders. Reader Neville Stack sends this from YouTube:
“The Rogues' March used to be played to drum out dishonoured soldiers from the Army. During the playing they were stripped of rank, badges and buttons, then normally flogged, the Drum Major counting the amount of lashes, and then they were marched out of the camp with dishonour.”
Homeless Big Issue sellers are to be equipped with smartphones so that they can begin acting as news gatherers, the charity has said.
The vendors will be encouraged to blog and use social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook to capture and upload images and audio, according to Big Issue founder John Bird.
“Big Issue vendors stand on streets up and down the country come rain or shine, hence they are uniquely connected to their local area,” said Bird.
“We want them to become the eyes and ears of their neighbourhoods, offering a unique perspective and simultaneously developing the skills which will get them off the streets.”
P.S. I have just learned that Decca pays £ 2,500 (minimum) a table for the pop stars on its label and guests at the Classical Brit Awards (whatever that is).
MR MICAWBER
His prophecy has come true: annual Income £1, annual expenditure £1 and sixpence; result misery.
This is the new economy of the Western world which is led by the nation with the biggest debt in the history of mankind. Currency experts say that it is inevitable that America will default on its debt. The likeliest method would be to pay off its debts by inflating its currency to a level which makes it worthless. That is progress. It makes the Weimar Republic, in which household debts were paid with wheelbarrows full of Deutsch Marks a haven of prudence.
In 1939 Britain went to war to preserve the freedom of Poland. Four years later it abandoned that luckless country to fifty years of slavery under Stalin. Once again we are going to war to establish the right of the Middle East to be governed by the Wahabi, standard bearers of Arab fundamentalism. We are so deep in debt we cannot afford a navy or an air force and our soldiers fight for their lives under the banner of redundancy. Yet we are spending millions in a failing attempt to defeat Gaddafi, the Mad Mullah of Libya, and we are sending military advisers to train the rebel army. Familiar? The United States of Micawber did just that in every pointless war with evil - which they later lost.
At home our government denounces local councils who make savage and unnecessary cuts in essential services whilst hoarding reserves of many millions. In this campaign against windmills the Quixote is fittingly bucolic Suffolk. Its chief executive runs the Croesus Fan Club. Its new fire chief has charged council tax payers almost £20,000 in decoration and removal costs – while plans to cut front-line services go ahead. Public cash helped David Johnson move to the county of Suffolk, even though he heads the Essex brigade. The fire chief and his senior colleagues clocked up tens of thousands of pounds in other expenses – including billing taxpayers for gentlemen’s clubs, lavish hotels and lobster dinners. Mr Johnson’s moving costs included £3,704.60p for new carpets, £3,466.93p for floor tiles and £324 for Laura Ashley curtains. The £20,000 total included £3,877.50p in estate agent fees, £2,402 in removals and £4,563 for a mortgage redemption penalty. The fire chief used to live even further afield – Nottinghamshire – but had a temporary base in Essex until his move to Suffolk.
The disclosure comes at a sensitive time for Essex Fire and Rescue service, where Mr Johnson is in charge of slashing staff numbers from 52 to 24. The brigade is trying to cut £10million from its budget.
Not to be outdone, Manchester Council has handed out free mobile phones to nearly two out of every three of its own workers. More than 7,000 town hall staff in Manchester have been given mobiles, with the bill of more than £1.2million a year paid by the taxpayer. Where our leaders cry “Onwards and It's-All-Up words” we follow.
A friend paid £250 for new spectacles with which he couldn't read a word or even see my PC screen. The optician explained: “You need to let them settle. There should be a settling in period.”
“But I can't see a word on a page.”
'Yes, well, the optician did say cataracts are developing.”
“Yes, but not that quickly.”
“She has allowed for some deterioration in sight by your next eye test in a year's time.”
“But I can't see to read now - or, more importantly, type and teach.”
“Yes, but has she explained the Varifocals have been manufactured to give you balanced sight when you raise your head?”
“But I still can't read.”
'Well, maybe you'd better come back for a repeat eye test...”
Yesterday he emailed me: “Been back to Specsavers - they say it's the way I hold my head, all wrong.”
Reminds me of the time when I bought my first stereo and complained it sounded like any other bloody gramophone. The man said: “Ah, there is a difference but your ears are not tuned to hear it. Your dog will know.”
Or the time I had difficulty buying a computer in Wrexham because the machine said there was no such island as Anglesey.
When a crater swallows the economy the first fissures invariably find press freedom. Now we have the Super Injunction. As always, the present threat is from lawyers. There is a game which is traditionally played in the Bar Mess during Assizes. Comic cases are brought which stretch the credulity of the listeners. Now the Judges are doing it as a day job. From the French Revolution onwards lawyers have been the catalyst for unwelcome change. One should be grateful for anything that shields one from the pranks of priapic peasants or cavorting celebrities but now these super injunctions are been used to deny a victim a voice against authority, and attempts have been made to gag parliament. We may be roaming in the gloaming but the Dark Ages beckon.
I cannot for the life of me see why people are surprised that Gordon Brown, who tested the Micawber Theorem to our destruction, should be a front runner for the top job in the International Monetary Fund. There is a precedent. They made Blair Envoy for Peace in the Middle East - and look what a good job he has done.
I have just the signature tune for our leaders. Reader Neville Stack sends this from YouTube:
“The Rogues' March used to be played to drum out dishonoured soldiers from the Army. During the playing they were stripped of rank, badges and buttons, then normally flogged, the Drum Major counting the amount of lashes, and then they were marched out of the camp with dishonour.”
Homeless Big Issue sellers are to be equipped with smartphones so that they can begin acting as news gatherers, the charity has said.
The vendors will be encouraged to blog and use social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook to capture and upload images and audio, according to Big Issue founder John Bird.
“Big Issue vendors stand on streets up and down the country come rain or shine, hence they are uniquely connected to their local area,” said Bird.
“We want them to become the eyes and ears of their neighbourhoods, offering a unique perspective and simultaneously developing the skills which will get them off the streets.”
P.S. I have just learned that Decca pays £ 2,500 (minimum) a table for the pop stars on its label and guests at the Classical Brit Awards (whatever that is).
Saturday, 16 April 2011
ENGLAND! PLEASE CAN I COME IN ?
To hospital to book a date to have yet another skin cancer removed. It is the Acne of the Aged.
The girl said, “Don't forget to bring proof of your nationality.” I was shocked. I said, “Young lady, the badge on my blazer denotes membership of the finest regiment in the British Army, the Veterans' badge was given me by a grateful country for the blood I spilt in the service of the king in NAAFIs all over Europe.
“My ancestors were invited to this benighted country by Edward the Confessor in 1033 AD to build castles to keep the Welsh at bay. Had they known that a thousand years later you were to insult us, we would have stayed in Normandy and you would be scraping cancers off hordes of chapel goers in suits made from old prayer book covers.”
She said, “Oh, wouldn't it be fun if you brought evidence of that!” “Your wish is my command, I told her.” I am taking my two-volume family tree. I I am not a fan of the Fenland countryside but it is still England, which is more than can be said for the rest of the country. We have a large immigrant population but they are working on the land, doing jobs that our own people scorn. . Having said that and speaking as an unashamed tribalist, I am delighted that the Government has decided there are too many immigrants. I object to the way a large Muslim population do not assimilate and in many places have stolen my country. They bring their home country with them.
That would not have been permitted in Ancient Rome. I am reading Bettany Hughes's delightful book on Socrates and I suspect there was a movement in Athens as well to control outsiders. In both cases, this was achieved by limiting the right to citizenship. Citizenship was much prized. Pericles introduced a law that said a person could only become a citizen if both his parents were.
Citizenship should be a qualification for the benefits of the Welfare State. By the same token (lovely phrase,)I cannot see why women cannot decide for themselves whether to hide their faces or adorn themselves with a crucifix. The idea of using relics of instruments of torture as expressions of faith puzzles me but it is no affair of mine. Are heavy veils to be banned as signs of mourning?
In the Late Middle Ages sumptuary laws governing dress were instituted as a way for the nobility to cap the conspicuous consumption of the prosperous bourgeoisie of medieval cities, and they continued to be used for these purposes well into the 17th century. But I see no reason for them now. The only necessary law would be against wearing full veils through customs. Simple to say that if you cannot show your face you cannot come into or get out of the country. Robbers wear masks to hold up cashiers. Are we to ban their use at parties? And what of the Venice carnival?
Our poor country. My son in Baghdad told me this morning he is appalled at the way our diplomats crawl to the sheiks,
ALL >>>>>> AND WIND
The instruments of destruction of the long green silence of countryside are of course Wind Turbines. The Triffid de nos jours.
According to Stephen Mitten in his book on cognitive archaeology “Prehistory of the Mind”, our world is a play that has gone on for six million years but all the action is confined to a hundred thousand years. Human life has appeared in 25,000 of them. If this, as he claims, is the last act it has been a tragedy in which the human race has played Feste the Clown. The EU imposes laws governing the use of natural resources. We respond by offering energy providers huge sums to create wind farms on land which the farmers are glad to rent to them to ease their own financial difficulties.
…........................................................
Sometimes I dislike my trade. At the moment Catherine Zeta Jones is the butt of journalistic self righteousness because of a speech she made at an awards ceremony. They suggest it proves she was barking mad. It doesn't. It shows how delighted she was to get the award and she made that clear in a speech which was generous to her production team and her parents, touching in its innocence, and evidence of how much she loves her husband. For me, it just proves what a very lucky man he is.
The Welsh call it 'hwyl' and the Sais could do with a portion of it.
THIS IS WHAT SHE HAS TO PUT UP WITH
Dawnette Knight, 35, stalked and threatened the Hollywood star, claiming she was in love with her husband, the actor Michael Douglas.
She was ordered to pay $200 (£115) to Zeta Jones, who branded Knight "evil".
Knight had denied the charges but entered a plea deal and admitted one count of stalking and three counts of making criminal threats.
In a letter read out to the Los Angeles court, the actress said: "You have profoundly affected me in how I conduct my life.
"Your actions will be with me the rest of my life - how I will be constantly observing, looking over my shoulder."
She was accused of sending threatening and violent letters to Douglas.
One letter said: "We are going to slice her up like meat on a bone and feed her to the dogs."
Knight apologised in another letter, claiming she had been in love with Douglas.
Giving evidence, Zeta Jones said she was so shaken she had come close to a nervous breakdown and had feared she was going to have a heart attack.
The girl said, “Don't forget to bring proof of your nationality.” I was shocked. I said, “Young lady, the badge on my blazer denotes membership of the finest regiment in the British Army, the Veterans' badge was given me by a grateful country for the blood I spilt in the service of the king in NAAFIs all over Europe.
“My ancestors were invited to this benighted country by Edward the Confessor in 1033 AD to build castles to keep the Welsh at bay. Had they known that a thousand years later you were to insult us, we would have stayed in Normandy and you would be scraping cancers off hordes of chapel goers in suits made from old prayer book covers.”
She said, “Oh, wouldn't it be fun if you brought evidence of that!” “Your wish is my command, I told her.” I am taking my two-volume family tree. I I am not a fan of the Fenland countryside but it is still England, which is more than can be said for the rest of the country. We have a large immigrant population but they are working on the land, doing jobs that our own people scorn. . Having said that and speaking as an unashamed tribalist, I am delighted that the Government has decided there are too many immigrants. I object to the way a large Muslim population do not assimilate and in many places have stolen my country. They bring their home country with them.
That would not have been permitted in Ancient Rome. I am reading Bettany Hughes's delightful book on Socrates and I suspect there was a movement in Athens as well to control outsiders. In both cases, this was achieved by limiting the right to citizenship. Citizenship was much prized. Pericles introduced a law that said a person could only become a citizen if both his parents were.
Citizenship should be a qualification for the benefits of the Welfare State. By the same token (lovely phrase,)I cannot see why women cannot decide for themselves whether to hide their faces or adorn themselves with a crucifix. The idea of using relics of instruments of torture as expressions of faith puzzles me but it is no affair of mine. Are heavy veils to be banned as signs of mourning?
In the Late Middle Ages sumptuary laws governing dress were instituted as a way for the nobility to cap the conspicuous consumption of the prosperous bourgeoisie of medieval cities, and they continued to be used for these purposes well into the 17th century. But I see no reason for them now. The only necessary law would be against wearing full veils through customs. Simple to say that if you cannot show your face you cannot come into or get out of the country. Robbers wear masks to hold up cashiers. Are we to ban their use at parties? And what of the Venice carnival?
Our poor country. My son in Baghdad told me this morning he is appalled at the way our diplomats crawl to the sheiks,
ALL >>>>>> AND WIND
The instruments of destruction of the long green silence of countryside are of course Wind Turbines. The Triffid de nos jours.
According to Stephen Mitten in his book on cognitive archaeology “Prehistory of the Mind”, our world is a play that has gone on for six million years but all the action is confined to a hundred thousand years. Human life has appeared in 25,000 of them. If this, as he claims, is the last act it has been a tragedy in which the human race has played Feste the Clown. The EU imposes laws governing the use of natural resources. We respond by offering energy providers huge sums to create wind farms on land which the farmers are glad to rent to them to ease their own financial difficulties.
…........................................................
Sometimes I dislike my trade. At the moment Catherine Zeta Jones is the butt of journalistic self righteousness because of a speech she made at an awards ceremony. They suggest it proves she was barking mad. It doesn't. It shows how delighted she was to get the award and she made that clear in a speech which was generous to her production team and her parents, touching in its innocence, and evidence of how much she loves her husband. For me, it just proves what a very lucky man he is.
The Welsh call it 'hwyl' and the Sais could do with a portion of it.
THIS IS WHAT SHE HAS TO PUT UP WITH
Dawnette Knight, 35, stalked and threatened the Hollywood star, claiming she was in love with her husband, the actor Michael Douglas.
She was ordered to pay $200 (£115) to Zeta Jones, who branded Knight "evil".
Knight had denied the charges but entered a plea deal and admitted one count of stalking and three counts of making criminal threats.
In a letter read out to the Los Angeles court, the actress said: "You have profoundly affected me in how I conduct my life.
"Your actions will be with me the rest of my life - how I will be constantly observing, looking over my shoulder."
She was accused of sending threatening and violent letters to Douglas.
One letter said: "We are going to slice her up like meat on a bone and feed her to the dogs."
Knight apologised in another letter, claiming she had been in love with Douglas.
Giving evidence, Zeta Jones said she was so shaken she had come close to a nervous breakdown and had feared she was going to have a heart attack.
Saturday, 9 April 2011
CHARITY BEGINS AT..........WHOM ?
My mind is haunted by the picture of an elephant, aged and worn, being belaboured by a couple of thugs.
It was taken in secret by a group of animal activists and when it was aired on TV it launched a nationwide howl of protest. Capitalising on their success, the activists picketed the circus and succeeded in driving its audience away.
There was a second heart-rending photograph of which few took notice. It showed the elderly couple who own this small circus. The man is bewildered, the woman weeping. Obviously they knew nothing of the cruelty which had wrecked their lives. They were asked how long they could survive without an audience. About a week, the old man said, and no doubt in the shallow hearts of the acne-ridden, greasy-haired mob who picketed the circus a little flame of joy was lit.
Few people of my great age have been left with any affection for the human race. If there were a divine force that created it in its own image, my advice to it would be get a face lift. The image is dreadful.
Has no one else any sympathy for the old people who owned the elephant? Their way of living is so precarious that a week without an audience drives them into poverty. Yet this couple have kept and fed an elephant for six months in idleness whilst they searched desperately for a home for it where it could spend its life in easy retirement. Inevitably no one they approached would take on this expensive act of charity. That is, until it was on TV, when the prospect of worldwide publicity for their kindness brought Samaritans in droves.
I suspect great waves of charity. Children in Need makes millions, we are told. I used to take part in it every year on BBC Wales but it was some time before it struck me that my voluntary efforts were giving the BBC days of free broadcasting. It was surprisingly difficult to get the BBC to pay me for my appearances so that I could give the fee to charity.
I do not know whether the stars of today who tour Africa making films about starving children
and life in shanty sums are paid. But I wonder how many stars there are like Ricky Tomlinson who plays the slobby father in the Royle Family?
In 2008, Tomlinson donated £200,000 as Patron of the Human Milk Bank of Cheshire and North Wales. The charity provides babies on Special Care Baby Units with milk from donor mothers, significantly improving their chances of survival and long-term development. He is quoted as saying: "Due to my own recent experiences with my health, I know how much hospitals and appeals appreciate help and assistance. This is such an important service which can help so many families and I'm very honoured to be the patron."
In November 2010 it was reported that Tomlinson had donated £1,000,000 to the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool two years previously.
It is heart-warming the way people all over the world hurl gold coins at the heads of victims of natural disasters, but I wonder how many of those gold coins hit their target. This gloomy view has been brought on by reading some very worrying statistics in a recent book ,“War Games”, the story of aid and war in Africa, by Linda Polman.
She examines aid on the ground. In Dafur, where soldiers demanded money for every well the aid workers dug and levied sky high taxes thought up on the spot for every sack of rice, every tent, every box of medicine that was flown in. The money they raised was used to buy weapons which they used to drive yet more people into refugee camps.
Florence Nightingale believed aid fails in its purpose if the warring parties use it to their own advantage. Henri Durant, who founded the Red Cross, believed we have a duty to help no matter what.
Nowadays there are hundreds of Non Governmental Agencies. The International Red Cross estimates that every major disaster attracts about a thousand international and national aid organisations, and in 2004 there were twice that number in Afghanistan. The United Nations Development Programme estimates the total number of NGOs exceeds 37,000. In 2008, 11.2 billion dollars was given for emergency humanitarian relief. There is now an industry round humanitarian aid competing for the biggest share. It is striking how in Hiati,say, little has been done to help the people
On a personal level, I only give money to charities which can prove to me that at least 80 per cent of their funds goes to victims.…..... I am looking into the possibility of adopting an elderly elephant - BUT NOT THROUGH THE WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, THE RSPCA, THE RNLI or other giant charities with massive overheads.
It was taken in secret by a group of animal activists and when it was aired on TV it launched a nationwide howl of protest. Capitalising on their success, the activists picketed the circus and succeeded in driving its audience away.
There was a second heart-rending photograph of which few took notice. It showed the elderly couple who own this small circus. The man is bewildered, the woman weeping. Obviously they knew nothing of the cruelty which had wrecked their lives. They were asked how long they could survive without an audience. About a week, the old man said, and no doubt in the shallow hearts of the acne-ridden, greasy-haired mob who picketed the circus a little flame of joy was lit.
Few people of my great age have been left with any affection for the human race. If there were a divine force that created it in its own image, my advice to it would be get a face lift. The image is dreadful.
Has no one else any sympathy for the old people who owned the elephant? Their way of living is so precarious that a week without an audience drives them into poverty. Yet this couple have kept and fed an elephant for six months in idleness whilst they searched desperately for a home for it where it could spend its life in easy retirement. Inevitably no one they approached would take on this expensive act of charity. That is, until it was on TV, when the prospect of worldwide publicity for their kindness brought Samaritans in droves.
I suspect great waves of charity. Children in Need makes millions, we are told. I used to take part in it every year on BBC Wales but it was some time before it struck me that my voluntary efforts were giving the BBC days of free broadcasting. It was surprisingly difficult to get the BBC to pay me for my appearances so that I could give the fee to charity.
I do not know whether the stars of today who tour Africa making films about starving children
and life in shanty sums are paid. But I wonder how many stars there are like Ricky Tomlinson who plays the slobby father in the Royle Family?
In 2008, Tomlinson donated £200,000 as Patron of the Human Milk Bank of Cheshire and North Wales. The charity provides babies on Special Care Baby Units with milk from donor mothers, significantly improving their chances of survival and long-term development. He is quoted as saying: "Due to my own recent experiences with my health, I know how much hospitals and appeals appreciate help and assistance. This is such an important service which can help so many families and I'm very honoured to be the patron."
In November 2010 it was reported that Tomlinson had donated £1,000,000 to the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool two years previously.
It is heart-warming the way people all over the world hurl gold coins at the heads of victims of natural disasters, but I wonder how many of those gold coins hit their target. This gloomy view has been brought on by reading some very worrying statistics in a recent book ,“War Games”, the story of aid and war in Africa, by Linda Polman.
She examines aid on the ground. In Dafur, where soldiers demanded money for every well the aid workers dug and levied sky high taxes thought up on the spot for every sack of rice, every tent, every box of medicine that was flown in. The money they raised was used to buy weapons which they used to drive yet more people into refugee camps.
Florence Nightingale believed aid fails in its purpose if the warring parties use it to their own advantage. Henri Durant, who founded the Red Cross, believed we have a duty to help no matter what.
Nowadays there are hundreds of Non Governmental Agencies. The International Red Cross estimates that every major disaster attracts about a thousand international and national aid organisations, and in 2004 there were twice that number in Afghanistan. The United Nations Development Programme estimates the total number of NGOs exceeds 37,000. In 2008, 11.2 billion dollars was given for emergency humanitarian relief. There is now an industry round humanitarian aid competing for the biggest share. It is striking how in Hiati,say, little has been done to help the people
On a personal level, I only give money to charities which can prove to me that at least 80 per cent of their funds goes to victims.…..... I am looking into the possibility of adopting an elderly elephant - BUT NOT THROUGH THE WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, THE RSPCA, THE RNLI or other giant charities with massive overheads.
Saturday, 2 April 2011
MYTH STRESS
I am, by nature, a fan of myths as entertainment, though not as arguments for belief. I hate it when people get their myths in a twist. Particularly sad when the National Trust does it, but there is something about Snowdon that goes to its collective head. I was present at a dinner where the Trust congratulated itself for keeping Snowdon in Wales. I had a picture of a Horde of the Yellow Peril invading Wales with wheelbarrows, filling them with bits of Snowdon until they had enough barrow loads to rebuild the mountain somewhere south of Kyoto.
I see the NT is at it again, claiming they should be given the money to buy Lake Idwal, where they seem to believe two dragons fought, the White Saxon Dragon and the Red Saxon Dragon. I commend to them the Mabinogion, a superb collection of Welsh myths collected by an English woman.
When Lludd ruled Britain (c.100 BCE), a hideous scream, whose origin could not be determined, was heard each May Eve causing infertility, panic and mayhem through out the realm. Lludd's brother Llefelys, a King of Gaul, explained the cause was battling dragons. The scream would be uttered by the dragon of the Britons when it was fighting another alien dragon and was being defeated. Lludd captured both dragons in a cauldron filled with beer when they had transformed themselves, as apparently dragons did, into pigs. The captured dragons were buried at the hill later called Dinas Emrys. At the summit is a circle of tumbled stones where the dragons were hidden.
Another legend tells of the attempts of Vortigern to build a castle on Dinas Emrys. Every time it was built, it collapsed. Merlin explained the reason was that the dragons were fighting underground. The truth of the myth is probably that the primitive Welsh saw the long pennants the Roman legions marched behind that “wriggled” in the wind. To further banjax the foe, the Romans attached whistles to the flags that screamed in the wind. It was just a case of mistaken identity. Having said that, I will be contributing to the NT fund because such a beautiful spot should be in public ownership.
I am far too fond of God to have any truck with the myth we call religion. Religion diminishes God because it fashions him in the image of man, a querulous, self-absorbed, jealous, unforgiving and unbelievably cruel creature. And let's face, it a lousy father. My God is the Creative Force which hides the snowdrop inside a tiny bulb, sculpts the mountains and sets out the endless Universe .
Identification is beyond our little mind grasp.
Religion I despise and fear. We stand on a crumbling cusp. America, which represents religion at its most benign, no longer leads the world. Destroyed by its massive debt, it must yield its place as Guardian of the Sacred Oak - to speak in terms of the most fascinating book ever written, The Golden Bough. Two new and muscled youths stand by to fight to become America's successor. They are China, which has no discernible religion, and the Muslim world which is piloted by the Wahabi sect, intolerant, vicious and puritan.. India is too mired in corruption to take part in the struggle to rule the world.
Britain is Ruritania Recidiva. We are major contributors to the Muslim ire. How about this, from the splendidly named Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, secretary of state for war nearly a century ago? "If the Arab population realised that the peaceful control of Mesopotamia ultimately depends on our intention of bombing women and children, I'm very doubtful if we shall gain that acquiescence of the fathers and husbands of Mesopotamia to which the Secretary of State for the Colonies looks forward." He was referring to Iraq in the 1920s; he could have been talking about the Middle East today, in which are about further to mire ourselvesw.
Lemsip remains the great myth inducer. I have started dreaming page leads, which to non- newspaper persons means the story which leads the page and the source of great revenue to freelance journalists.
Last night in a dream I came across a lady in a cafe who told me of a worrying experience she had when she went to buy a pepper mill in John Lewis's. The only ones she could find were mills made in the image of policemen, from which the pepper emerged from the pointed end of the helmet. She blushed when she told me there was something disturbingly phallic about them and added that when she turned one over she saw the description “Penismill”.
The story took a bit of writing but it was OK once I had thought of an introductory paragraph. Then I had to sell it to a newspaper as an exclusive. That took hours. As a result, I woke up exhausted.
Reminds me of the old German proverb: “All skill is in vain when an angel pees in the touchhole of your musket.”
The Herr who thought of that was mainlining Lemsip.
NOTES FROM KEN
Teachers in Wales were last year given paperwork equivalent to five copies of War and Peace by the Assembly Government, it has been claimed.
A study by the Welsh Conservatives uncovers the vast amount of policy papers, strategy updates and guidelines sent to schools by the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills.
It found that in 2009-10, the Assembly’s education team processed 8,468 pages of documentation that, when stacked in a pile, would stretch to more than a metre in height.
According to the Welsh Tories, the volume of paper- work equates to reading all seven Harry Potter books twice or Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace five times.
AND.....
A cafe owner who was ordered to tear down an extractor fan because the smell of bacon offended Muslims was celebrating a 'victory for commons sense' today. Beverley Akciecek has won her appeal against the ruling by Stockport councillors.
Mrs Akciecek's neighbour's had claimed their Muslim friends were refusing to visit because they 'couldn't stand' the odour. And the Lib Dem-run council ruled the smell from the fan, which has been in Bev's Snack Shack for more than three years, was 'unacceptable on the grounds of residential amenity' and told her to take it down.
OR....
Customers who fancy some salt on their fish and chips will have to ask for it in Stockport, after the council asked takeaways to place cellars under the counter.
JUST A NOTE FOR... ( I forget what for)
Most of what humans experience as perception is actually furnished by the memory. This is because the conscious brain can only process a trickle of data. Psychologists agree that only one to four 'items,' either thoughts or sensations,
can be held in mind, immediately available to consciousness, at the same time. Some have tried to quantify these constraints. According to the work of Manfred Zimmerman of Germany's Heidelberg University, only a woeful fifty bits of information per second make their way into the conscious brain, while an estimated eleven million bits of data flow from the senses every second
MY FAVOURITE FUNERAL ORATION
Chris Greaves, speaking at the funeral of his dad, Bob Greaves, oft-married TV presenter and former Daily Mail man (obit was in Ranters last week)...:
"So who was Bob Greaves? He was my dad, of course...a beloved granddad...and to some here he was a colleague and a valued friend. But to most of you, he was a husband."
(With thanks to Revel Barker)
I see the NT is at it again, claiming they should be given the money to buy Lake Idwal, where they seem to believe two dragons fought, the White Saxon Dragon and the Red Saxon Dragon. I commend to them the Mabinogion, a superb collection of Welsh myths collected by an English woman.
When Lludd ruled Britain (c.100 BCE), a hideous scream, whose origin could not be determined, was heard each May Eve causing infertility, panic and mayhem through out the realm. Lludd's brother Llefelys, a King of Gaul, explained the cause was battling dragons. The scream would be uttered by the dragon of the Britons when it was fighting another alien dragon and was being defeated. Lludd captured both dragons in a cauldron filled with beer when they had transformed themselves, as apparently dragons did, into pigs. The captured dragons were buried at the hill later called Dinas Emrys. At the summit is a circle of tumbled stones where the dragons were hidden.
Another legend tells of the attempts of Vortigern to build a castle on Dinas Emrys. Every time it was built, it collapsed. Merlin explained the reason was that the dragons were fighting underground. The truth of the myth is probably that the primitive Welsh saw the long pennants the Roman legions marched behind that “wriggled” in the wind. To further banjax the foe, the Romans attached whistles to the flags that screamed in the wind. It was just a case of mistaken identity. Having said that, I will be contributing to the NT fund because such a beautiful spot should be in public ownership.
I am far too fond of God to have any truck with the myth we call religion. Religion diminishes God because it fashions him in the image of man, a querulous, self-absorbed, jealous, unforgiving and unbelievably cruel creature. And let's face, it a lousy father. My God is the Creative Force which hides the snowdrop inside a tiny bulb, sculpts the mountains and sets out the endless Universe .
Identification is beyond our little mind grasp.
Religion I despise and fear. We stand on a crumbling cusp. America, which represents religion at its most benign, no longer leads the world. Destroyed by its massive debt, it must yield its place as Guardian of the Sacred Oak - to speak in terms of the most fascinating book ever written, The Golden Bough. Two new and muscled youths stand by to fight to become America's successor. They are China, which has no discernible religion, and the Muslim world which is piloted by the Wahabi sect, intolerant, vicious and puritan.. India is too mired in corruption to take part in the struggle to rule the world.
Britain is Ruritania Recidiva. We are major contributors to the Muslim ire. How about this, from the splendidly named Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, secretary of state for war nearly a century ago? "If the Arab population realised that the peaceful control of Mesopotamia ultimately depends on our intention of bombing women and children, I'm very doubtful if we shall gain that acquiescence of the fathers and husbands of Mesopotamia to which the Secretary of State for the Colonies looks forward." He was referring to Iraq in the 1920s; he could have been talking about the Middle East today, in which are about further to mire ourselvesw.
Lemsip remains the great myth inducer. I have started dreaming page leads, which to non- newspaper persons means the story which leads the page and the source of great revenue to freelance journalists.
Last night in a dream I came across a lady in a cafe who told me of a worrying experience she had when she went to buy a pepper mill in John Lewis's. The only ones she could find were mills made in the image of policemen, from which the pepper emerged from the pointed end of the helmet. She blushed when she told me there was something disturbingly phallic about them and added that when she turned one over she saw the description “Penismill”.
The story took a bit of writing but it was OK once I had thought of an introductory paragraph. Then I had to sell it to a newspaper as an exclusive. That took hours. As a result, I woke up exhausted.
Reminds me of the old German proverb: “All skill is in vain when an angel pees in the touchhole of your musket.”
The Herr who thought of that was mainlining Lemsip.
NOTES FROM KEN
Teachers in Wales were last year given paperwork equivalent to five copies of War and Peace by the Assembly Government, it has been claimed.
A study by the Welsh Conservatives uncovers the vast amount of policy papers, strategy updates and guidelines sent to schools by the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills.
It found that in 2009-10, the Assembly’s education team processed 8,468 pages of documentation that, when stacked in a pile, would stretch to more than a metre in height.
According to the Welsh Tories, the volume of paper- work equates to reading all seven Harry Potter books twice or Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace five times.
AND.....
A cafe owner who was ordered to tear down an extractor fan because the smell of bacon offended Muslims was celebrating a 'victory for commons sense' today. Beverley Akciecek has won her appeal against the ruling by Stockport councillors.
Mrs Akciecek's neighbour's had claimed their Muslim friends were refusing to visit because they 'couldn't stand' the odour. And the Lib Dem-run council ruled the smell from the fan, which has been in Bev's Snack Shack for more than three years, was 'unacceptable on the grounds of residential amenity' and told her to take it down.
OR....
Customers who fancy some salt on their fish and chips will have to ask for it in Stockport, after the council asked takeaways to place cellars under the counter.
JUST A NOTE FOR... ( I forget what for)
Most of what humans experience as perception is actually furnished by the memory. This is because the conscious brain can only process a trickle of data. Psychologists agree that only one to four 'items,' either thoughts or sensations,
can be held in mind, immediately available to consciousness, at the same time. Some have tried to quantify these constraints. According to the work of Manfred Zimmerman of Germany's Heidelberg University, only a woeful fifty bits of information per second make their way into the conscious brain, while an estimated eleven million bits of data flow from the senses every second
MY FAVOURITE FUNERAL ORATION
Chris Greaves, speaking at the funeral of his dad, Bob Greaves, oft-married TV presenter and former Daily Mail man (obit was in Ranters last week)...:
"So who was Bob Greaves? He was my dad, of course...a beloved granddad...and to some here he was a colleague and a valued friend. But to most of you, he was a husband."
(With thanks to Revel Barker)
Saturday, 26 March 2011
CHRISTMAS SHOPEING>>>>>>
I find I am a stoic. One of the teachings is that we are constanly yearning for material thuings but when we have got them we no longer want them. The Stoics teach that one should only value the things we already have. The problem is that I have a secret vice. I love shopping and it is true, the only thing I have ever bought that I still value is my Kindle.
I even get a vicarious thrill from Christmas shopping. If that isn't mainlining with a carrier bag........
We have Christmas shopped in Bruges and Vienna and it was like joining a Christmas card. Bruges was hauntingly lit by pendants of white light, outlining houses, looped in trees, crossing streets.
In two of the squares there were Christmas markets straight out of Hans Andersen. Little wooden villages of shopping booths; chips, waffles, spiced wine bars and a hurdy gurdy all grouped round a Christmas crib. The market in the main square had an ice rink and the other in Stevinpleinhas blazing braziers and an ex-Sabena pilot called Chris Van der Veeren.
Imagine a face which looks as though it has been lived in by at least ten people. A face that has missed nothing in life. This is Gandolf the Grey, who, if you recall “The Lord of the Rings” gets Hobbits into trouble. I was Frodo Baggins, the suggestible Hobbit. I ordered a banana Geneva gin at his wine booth. “Not for you,” said Gandolf. He poured me a giant 47 proof Geneva and in a trice everything seemed to be happening a long way off. I swear one of the Three Kings in the Crib winked at me.Geneva? A Gollum of a gin. I was Smigol transformed by his “Precious”.
We spent the evening at Chris’s bistro, predictably called “The Hobbit”. Candle-lit, with a roaring fire on which spare ribs, the house speciality, are grilled. You pay for one portion. As many more as you can eat are free; though the wise leave room for the classic apple pie that follows. We finished the meal with an Irish coffee where the cream was no wider than a clergyman’s collar and the Jameson deep enough to sink the Titanic.
Next morning in the other market a pretty girl poured a dark substance into test tubes, schnapps and a mixture of mountain herbs good for stomach, brain, voice, feet and probably the international situation. Like drinking an Alpine meadow. Wouldn’t you know? It was another Gandolf outpost.
Vienna is where I hope to go when I die. Laughter and eager goodwill bubble like waltz time throughout the city. At the Emperor Franz Josef’s Schonbrunn Palace the whiskered attendant smiled when he saw my own extravagant whiskers. “Welcome home, your Majesty,” he said.
We went to Schonbrunn to see “The Magic Flute” performed in the palace theatre by the resident marionette company. Confusingly, the palace has two theatres and we went to the wrong one. Came within an ace of sharing a Kabuki evening with an audience of Japanese tourists. To lessen our disappointment at missing it, the girl in the ticket office gave my wife a bottle of Guerlain perfume. When we found the Marionette Theatre in the Palace Orangerie, we learned the performance had been cancelled because a puppeteer was ill. But Christine Hierzer, who with her husband Werner founded the company, was waiting to pour champagne and play a video of the performance before manipulating one of her puppets to give us a backstage tour.
I think if I lived in Vienna I would be smiling all the time. It must be the loveliest and least aggressive city in Europe, with the most helpful population. Not only in the city. The two hostesses on racing motorist Nicky Lauda’s airline flashed smiles like sun bursts at least five times at each of the fifty passengers during the two hour flight to Vienna. On boarding, when they handed out free newspapers; immediately on take off when they brought round hot towels; again when they served a delicious lunch on pottery, not plastic, and finally when they offered second helpings. Children got extra smiles when they were given toy bags and sweets. More than two smiles a minute must be a record.
The breathtaking Ringstrasse is a circular boulevard of palaces and galleries, commissioned by Emperor Franz Josef to replace the city walls. Grinzing is a wine making village that links Vienna with its woods. We were toasting the late Empress Elizabeth in Heurigen, the new “green” wine which costs 60 pence per half pint, is recommended for diabetics and tastes deliciously like a frosty October morning. We tried four more Heurigen at a dinner of assorted warm specialities that included smoked pork and dumplings and finished the meal with an ambrosial schnapps, a local speciality distilled from the must of the grape.
Always careful of my diabetes, I took further Heurigen medicine on our tour of the Vienna Woods the next day. We were taken to Mayerling, the hunting lodge where Franz Josef and Elizabeth’s deeply unpleasant son the Crown Prince Rudolf, after a supper of venison and champagne, murdered his teenage girlfriend, Marie Vetsera, before committing suicide. A Viennese aristocrat told us what he claimed was the real story. Vetsera could not persuade Rudolf to get a divorce and marry her so whilst he slept drunkenly she performed a Bobbit on him. Understandably, when he awoke, he murdered her. In what must be the ultimate spin doctoring, Franz Josef demolished the room in which the couple died, replacing it with a Carmelite chapel. When the bodies were discovered, two uncles of the girl lifted her corpse onto a carriage, propped it between them, using a broomstick to keep it erect so that passers by would think she was still alive, and drove to a burial chapel at the Heiligenkreuz Monastery, a superb medieval building which was the next stop on our macabre tour.
I could not face the last and most sinister attraction. It was to Seegrotte, billed as a pastoral visit to the largest underground lake in Europe. In fact during the war it was a slave labour factory where hundreds of civilian prisoners starved to death. Fortunately there is a diabetes destroyer at the gate and I was able to wait there for medicinal reasons.
I doubt if it is possible to find a bad meal in Vienna. We ate splendidly in the grandeur of the Rathaus; magnificently in the scarlet damask dining room of Hotel Sacher, rightly billed as one of the world’s great restaurants; stylishly at Noodles, a chic Italian restaurant next door to the Musikverein, But the taste that lingers was a delicious Berne sausage, coated in egg, which the night porter cooked for me over a portable stove in our hotel, the Deutschmeister.
We saw the vivacious statues of Strauss and Mozart, the inn where Schubert wrote The Linden Tree, the house where Beethoven composed his Ninth and Pastoral symphonies and the dance hall where the Strauss waltzes were first heard. We drank delicious punch at a rustic booth to raise funds for St Stephen’s Cathedral, we took coffee and Torte in fashionable cafes and wondered how Viennese women can eat so much cake and stay so slim.
But the ultimate joy was the Figaro House, in a quiet street near the cathedral where Mozart lived and wrote The Marriage of Figaro. In every room there is a sophisticated sound system. Put on a head set and you can hear Fischer- Dieskau singing Figaro in the room where it was written.
That was the true magic of Vienna.
I even get a vicarious thrill from Christmas shopping. If that isn't mainlining with a carrier bag........
We have Christmas shopped in Bruges and Vienna and it was like joining a Christmas card. Bruges was hauntingly lit by pendants of white light, outlining houses, looped in trees, crossing streets.
In two of the squares there were Christmas markets straight out of Hans Andersen. Little wooden villages of shopping booths; chips, waffles, spiced wine bars and a hurdy gurdy all grouped round a Christmas crib. The market in the main square had an ice rink and the other in Stevinpleinhas blazing braziers and an ex-Sabena pilot called Chris Van der Veeren.
Imagine a face which looks as though it has been lived in by at least ten people. A face that has missed nothing in life. This is Gandolf the Grey, who, if you recall “The Lord of the Rings” gets Hobbits into trouble. I was Frodo Baggins, the suggestible Hobbit. I ordered a banana Geneva gin at his wine booth. “Not for you,” said Gandolf. He poured me a giant 47 proof Geneva and in a trice everything seemed to be happening a long way off. I swear one of the Three Kings in the Crib winked at me.Geneva? A Gollum of a gin. I was Smigol transformed by his “Precious”.
We spent the evening at Chris’s bistro, predictably called “The Hobbit”. Candle-lit, with a roaring fire on which spare ribs, the house speciality, are grilled. You pay for one portion. As many more as you can eat are free; though the wise leave room for the classic apple pie that follows. We finished the meal with an Irish coffee where the cream was no wider than a clergyman’s collar and the Jameson deep enough to sink the Titanic.
Next morning in the other market a pretty girl poured a dark substance into test tubes, schnapps and a mixture of mountain herbs good for stomach, brain, voice, feet and probably the international situation. Like drinking an Alpine meadow. Wouldn’t you know? It was another Gandolf outpost.
Vienna is where I hope to go when I die. Laughter and eager goodwill bubble like waltz time throughout the city. At the Emperor Franz Josef’s Schonbrunn Palace the whiskered attendant smiled when he saw my own extravagant whiskers. “Welcome home, your Majesty,” he said.
We went to Schonbrunn to see “The Magic Flute” performed in the palace theatre by the resident marionette company. Confusingly, the palace has two theatres and we went to the wrong one. Came within an ace of sharing a Kabuki evening with an audience of Japanese tourists. To lessen our disappointment at missing it, the girl in the ticket office gave my wife a bottle of Guerlain perfume. When we found the Marionette Theatre in the Palace Orangerie, we learned the performance had been cancelled because a puppeteer was ill. But Christine Hierzer, who with her husband Werner founded the company, was waiting to pour champagne and play a video of the performance before manipulating one of her puppets to give us a backstage tour.
I think if I lived in Vienna I would be smiling all the time. It must be the loveliest and least aggressive city in Europe, with the most helpful population. Not only in the city. The two hostesses on racing motorist Nicky Lauda’s airline flashed smiles like sun bursts at least five times at each of the fifty passengers during the two hour flight to Vienna. On boarding, when they handed out free newspapers; immediately on take off when they brought round hot towels; again when they served a delicious lunch on pottery, not plastic, and finally when they offered second helpings. Children got extra smiles when they were given toy bags and sweets. More than two smiles a minute must be a record.
The breathtaking Ringstrasse is a circular boulevard of palaces and galleries, commissioned by Emperor Franz Josef to replace the city walls. Grinzing is a wine making village that links Vienna with its woods. We were toasting the late Empress Elizabeth in Heurigen, the new “green” wine which costs 60 pence per half pint, is recommended for diabetics and tastes deliciously like a frosty October morning. We tried four more Heurigen at a dinner of assorted warm specialities that included smoked pork and dumplings and finished the meal with an ambrosial schnapps, a local speciality distilled from the must of the grape.
Always careful of my diabetes, I took further Heurigen medicine on our tour of the Vienna Woods the next day. We were taken to Mayerling, the hunting lodge where Franz Josef and Elizabeth’s deeply unpleasant son the Crown Prince Rudolf, after a supper of venison and champagne, murdered his teenage girlfriend, Marie Vetsera, before committing suicide. A Viennese aristocrat told us what he claimed was the real story. Vetsera could not persuade Rudolf to get a divorce and marry her so whilst he slept drunkenly she performed a Bobbit on him. Understandably, when he awoke, he murdered her. In what must be the ultimate spin doctoring, Franz Josef demolished the room in which the couple died, replacing it with a Carmelite chapel. When the bodies were discovered, two uncles of the girl lifted her corpse onto a carriage, propped it between them, using a broomstick to keep it erect so that passers by would think she was still alive, and drove to a burial chapel at the Heiligenkreuz Monastery, a superb medieval building which was the next stop on our macabre tour.
I could not face the last and most sinister attraction. It was to Seegrotte, billed as a pastoral visit to the largest underground lake in Europe. In fact during the war it was a slave labour factory where hundreds of civilian prisoners starved to death. Fortunately there is a diabetes destroyer at the gate and I was able to wait there for medicinal reasons.
I doubt if it is possible to find a bad meal in Vienna. We ate splendidly in the grandeur of the Rathaus; magnificently in the scarlet damask dining room of Hotel Sacher, rightly billed as one of the world’s great restaurants; stylishly at Noodles, a chic Italian restaurant next door to the Musikverein, But the taste that lingers was a delicious Berne sausage, coated in egg, which the night porter cooked for me over a portable stove in our hotel, the Deutschmeister.
We saw the vivacious statues of Strauss and Mozart, the inn where Schubert wrote The Linden Tree, the house where Beethoven composed his Ninth and Pastoral symphonies and the dance hall where the Strauss waltzes were first heard. We drank delicious punch at a rustic booth to raise funds for St Stephen’s Cathedral, we took coffee and Torte in fashionable cafes and wondered how Viennese women can eat so much cake and stay so slim.
But the ultimate joy was the Figaro House, in a quiet street near the cathedral where Mozart lived and wrote The Marriage of Figaro. In every room there is a sophisticated sound system. Put on a head set and you can hear Fischer- Dieskau singing Figaro in the room where it was written.
That was the true magic of Vienna.
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