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.”
Saturday, 8 January 2011
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
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Turkey Trotted
T
I keep going back in my mind to the Christmas when I was out
of work and this pal of mine said: "Do not suppose you will be
having much of a Christmas?"
I said: "If I wanted a mince pie I would have to buy it on
H.P. We will be out on Xmas Day because it is warmer out than
it is in the house. I have promised the kids we will go to
Radio Rentals to watch the Queen's Speech through the window.
Then we are going to a park to mug robins for their
breadcrumbs."
"Not having a bird on The Day then?"
"Not unless I can grab one of the robins as we steal its
breadcrumbs."
He said: "Why don't you nip down to the market just before it
closes on Xmas Eve? They practically give birds away.
"Then," he said, "come to the Press Party at the Continental
Cinema."
So I did. I picked up a chicken with my last ten bob and
went to the party. Where I set up a record for drinking free
scotch and eating vol-au-vent which was unbroken for many years.
Then this guest said: "Let's play rugby."
Another guest said: "We haven't got a ball."
A third guest said: "Yes, we have" and grabbed the parcel of
chicken from where it had been roosting under my arm.
Everyone but me applauded the skill with which the next
guest, a rather showy chap, executed a back pass with my
parcel between his legs.
I was less pleased than anyone when the next guest followed
through with a drop kick.
It was powerful, I will say that. It sent the parcel soaring
across the foyer, out into the street, over the heads of the
passers-by, to drop, perfectly positioned, under the tyre
of a passing bus.
They were all very apologetic. The manager of the cinema
particularly. He said he hoped the parcel hadn't contained
anything important. I said, no, it was just a chicken I got
for tea on Boxing Night.
For the rest of the party I was a bit thoughtful, though I
did manage to clock up a further freeloader's record of
eighteen scotch and a round dozen vol-au-vents.
At the death the manager came up and gave me a parcel. "I
hope you will accept this replacement with our apologies," he
said.
It was a twelve pound turkey. Which would have been
nice... but we didn't have an oven at the time, just a
gas grill. So we had to cook it a leg at a time.
THE EDITOR WRITES
FOR THE BAH HUMBUG XMAS HAT (given to me by the lady in the chip shop)
Dear
,
Thank you so much for the gift of a magnificent hat which accords with my deeply held resentment of what Xmas has become. I am a Buddhist so it has nothing to do with me and perhaps I ought not to complain. But I do. It is so sad that what in our childhood was such a magical time has become a Festival of Excess. It is, of course, the fault of the Americans who invented Santa Claus in the 1920s as part of an advertising campaign for a department store.
In our day people took it much more seriously. My grannie was fond of telling me how her brother taunted her by telling her there was no such person as Father Xmas. That Xmas morning he woke to find his stocking full of cinders.
I am also anti-Xmas cards which people send far too early, in the hope they will nudge you into sending them one back. I also loathe turkey which may be “bootiful” but has no taste. I would rather have your excellent fish and chips any day.
Many years ago on my BBC programme I invented the S.A.S., The Scrooge Appreciation Society, and was pleasantly surprised at the number of listeners who asked to join.
Alas, this generation is less literate. I wore my humbug hat in March and a small boy thought I was a cough sweet.
Perhaps I may still be permitted to echo the sentiments of that odious Cratchet and wish you a Merry Xmas, enjoyed, of course, with quiet dignity.
SOME THOUGHTS ON EERY EIRE
I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY ANYONE ISN’T EUROSCEPTIC, IF ONLY ON THE GROUNDS THAT ANYTHING HEATH ADMIRED WAS BY DEFINITION FLAWED. AND I MUST SAY I WOULD BE PRETTY PISSED OFF, IF I HAD BEEN BLOWN TO PIECES BY THE IRA, AT THE EASE WITH WHICH THEIR HEIRS, FIANNA FAILURE, HAVE GIVEN THEIR COUNTRY TO THE KRAUTS.
GEOFF MATHER WRITES; (read his weekly essay at www.northtrek.co)
A little oldish fellow trudged down the drive, his feet crunching in
the snow and ice. He looked neither to right nor left. He seemed cold
and full of woe. I would have said hello, but he did not look in my
direction. When he walked off, having put something in the letter box, I
took out the single thing there - a card with a picture of some stars.
The message said: Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
TALE PIECE
Gauteng Police announced discovery of:
An arms cache of 200 semi automatic rifles with 250,000 rounds of ammo,
10 anti-tank missiles, 4 grenade launchers, 2 tonnes of heroin,
R80 million forged South African banknotes and 25 trafficked Nigerian
prostitutes, all in a block of flats behind the Hillbrow Public Library.
Local residents were stunned: "We're shocked. We never knew we had a Library!"
I keep going back in my mind to the Christmas when I was out
of work and this pal of mine said: "Do not suppose you will be
having much of a Christmas?"
I said: "If I wanted a mince pie I would have to buy it on
H.P. We will be out on Xmas Day because it is warmer out than
it is in the house. I have promised the kids we will go to
Radio Rentals to watch the Queen's Speech through the window.
Then we are going to a park to mug robins for their
breadcrumbs."
"Not having a bird on The Day then?"
"Not unless I can grab one of the robins as we steal its
breadcrumbs."
He said: "Why don't you nip down to the market just before it
closes on Xmas Eve? They practically give birds away.
"Then," he said, "come to the Press Party at the Continental
Cinema."
So I did. I picked up a chicken with my last ten bob and
went to the party. Where I set up a record for drinking free
scotch and eating vol-au-vent which was unbroken for many years.
Then this guest said: "Let's play rugby."
Another guest said: "We haven't got a ball."
A third guest said: "Yes, we have" and grabbed the parcel of
chicken from where it had been roosting under my arm.
Everyone but me applauded the skill with which the next
guest, a rather showy chap, executed a back pass with my
parcel between his legs.
I was less pleased than anyone when the next guest followed
through with a drop kick.
It was powerful, I will say that. It sent the parcel soaring
across the foyer, out into the street, over the heads of the
passers-by, to drop, perfectly positioned, under the tyre
of a passing bus.
They were all very apologetic. The manager of the cinema
particularly. He said he hoped the parcel hadn't contained
anything important. I said, no, it was just a chicken I got
for tea on Boxing Night.
For the rest of the party I was a bit thoughtful, though I
did manage to clock up a further freeloader's record of
eighteen scotch and a round dozen vol-au-vents.
At the death the manager came up and gave me a parcel. "I
hope you will accept this replacement with our apologies," he
said.
It was a twelve pound turkey. Which would have been
nice... but we didn't have an oven at the time, just a
gas grill. So we had to cook it a leg at a time.
THE EDITOR WRITES
FOR THE BAH HUMBUG XMAS HAT (given to me by the lady in the chip shop)
Dear
,
Thank you so much for the gift of a magnificent hat which accords with my deeply held resentment of what Xmas has become. I am a Buddhist so it has nothing to do with me and perhaps I ought not to complain. But I do. It is so sad that what in our childhood was such a magical time has become a Festival of Excess. It is, of course, the fault of the Americans who invented Santa Claus in the 1920s as part of an advertising campaign for a department store.
In our day people took it much more seriously. My grannie was fond of telling me how her brother taunted her by telling her there was no such person as Father Xmas. That Xmas morning he woke to find his stocking full of cinders.
I am also anti-Xmas cards which people send far too early, in the hope they will nudge you into sending them one back. I also loathe turkey which may be “bootiful” but has no taste. I would rather have your excellent fish and chips any day.
Many years ago on my BBC programme I invented the S.A.S., The Scrooge Appreciation Society, and was pleasantly surprised at the number of listeners who asked to join.
Alas, this generation is less literate. I wore my humbug hat in March and a small boy thought I was a cough sweet.
Perhaps I may still be permitted to echo the sentiments of that odious Cratchet and wish you a Merry Xmas, enjoyed, of course, with quiet dignity.
SOME THOUGHTS ON EERY EIRE
I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY ANYONE ISN’T EUROSCEPTIC, IF ONLY ON THE GROUNDS THAT ANYTHING HEATH ADMIRED WAS BY DEFINITION FLAWED. AND I MUST SAY I WOULD BE PRETTY PISSED OFF, IF I HAD BEEN BLOWN TO PIECES BY THE IRA, AT THE EASE WITH WHICH THEIR HEIRS, FIANNA FAILURE, HAVE GIVEN THEIR COUNTRY TO THE KRAUTS.
GEOFF MATHER WRITES; (read his weekly essay at www.northtrek.co)
A little oldish fellow trudged down the drive, his feet crunching in
the snow and ice. He looked neither to right nor left. He seemed cold
and full of woe. I would have said hello, but he did not look in my
direction. When he walked off, having put something in the letter box, I
took out the single thing there - a card with a picture of some stars.
The message said: Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
TALE PIECE
Gauteng Police announced discovery of:
An arms cache of 200 semi automatic rifles with 250,000 rounds of ammo,
10 anti-tank missiles, 4 grenade launchers, 2 tonnes of heroin,
R80 million forged South African banknotes and 25 trafficked Nigerian
prostitutes, all in a block of flats behind the Hillbrow Public Library.
Local residents were stunned: "We're shocked. We never knew we had a Library!"
Friday, 3 December 2010
BALLETOMANIAC
Christmas for me has few essential ingredients and they are mostly DVDs. “A Christmas Carol”, “Pickwick Papers”, “Fledermaus”, “The Merry Widow”. On radio I listen to the Messiah and the carol service from King's College Chapel in Cambridge. The pinnacle of Christmas is reached for me when I watch, as I do every year, Miyako Oshida, the ultimate Sugar Plum Fairy, and her Prince, Jonathan Cope, dance the magical Grand Pas de Deux in the Royal Ballet's production of the “Nutcracker”, choreographed by Pepita.
I would forgo plum pudding, Christmas trees, Melton Mowbray pie, breakfasts with scrambled egg embroidered with smoked salmon and chaperoned by champagne, even the presents, rather than miss those few fleeting moments. They do not dance the roles, they inhabit them. There is nothing in literature, poetry, painting, even music, which moves me more.
It is an odd thing. Most of my friends think of ballet as Pouffs' Football which is very odd. A bevy of under-dressed beauties dance their hearts out accompanied by one male dancer. Yet it is the male they remember.
I have had nasty moments. I shared a birthday with the writer and TV presenter, the deeply missed Shelley Rohde. I would take her and her pride of children to a slap up lunch in the Cheshire countryside and in return she would take me to the ballet, alas on the same day. I fear I usually dropped off early in the performance,sleeping the sleep of repletion. On one dreadful occasion she took me to “Coppelia”. I awoke with a jerk in the scene where all the toys are dancing. Convinced I had got DTs, I leapt up with a scream and fled from the theatre. Nor am I happy that the sprites in “Giselle” are called “Wilis”.
Ballet, the exquisite art of “aristocratic etiquette”, this “science of behaviour toward others”, as a 17th-century ballet master put it, in which lovely young women perch upon their 10 little toe tips (actually, it is really just the two big toes that alternately support the entire body’s weight: think about it) and waft about where the air is thinner - but heaven is closer. As someone wrote recently, “Their pale tulle and satin pointes peek out from the crevices of war, of revolutions, of political machinations, and on the stages of the monarchies and empires of the kings and czars who gave birth to this improbable art.”
A new book “ANGELS: A History of Ballet”. By Jennifer Homans, the definitive history is high on my Christmas list.
“Ballets,” Théophile Gautier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.”
The tale of the tutu is the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy, who formulated shape and perfected the highest form of the human physique.The manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!
The first ballet, “Ballet Comique de la Reine”, which had its premiere in 1581 in the French Court, was an extravagant six-hour affair, performed among the guests in a large gallery at the Petit-Bourbon. The purpose of the ballet was “to raise man up a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God”. In1636 the Abbé Mersenne referred to “the author of the Universe” as “the great Ballet-master”.
Louis XIII designed costumes, wrote librettos and danced leading roles. Louis XIV made his debut in 1651 at 13 and studied daily for more than 20 years, his dancing master, Beauchamps, who first codified the five positions of the body, providing “the crucial leap from etiquette to art” and they remain to this day the base of classical ballet. The new art spread across Europe from its birth in France, with stopovers in Italy, Denmark, Germany and Austria, landing in Russia in the mid-19th century and then returning to Western Europe in the early years of the 20th century.
The ballerina Marie Sallé in the mid-18th century introduced the novel idea that women, including ones of humble origins, might dance, not just men and kings.
“The history of ballet is also a story of class; ballet is a language of vertical ascent, physicalized nobility. Ballerinas,” Homans writes, “acted like aristocrats even when in real life they most emphatically were not.” But mix they did, and more than one young dancer rose - or descended - to positions other than an arabesque in the famous corridors of the Paris Opera, “the nation’s harem”, as one police official termed it, where wealthy men trolled for pretty girls with limber limbs. “
A family friend, Arnold Haskell, invented the term “Balletomane”. I would rather have done that than invented powered flight. The best I have done is to invent a motto for the animal mad Daily Mirror when I worked there: “Every Day Has Its Dog” - but it nearly got me the sack.
A THING OF A CHIT
Six hundred MP's managed to grab three million pounds of expenses in as many months. One should not be surprised that on Question Time three Mps said the BBC should have kept back the disclosure that the FIPA is bent until we had won the World Cup battle. Unmoved by the fact that if it had it would have been guilty of aiding and abetting fraud for unlawful gain.
We had the same tale of missing millions of pounds in revenue as a result of losing the games. I tried without success to think of a city which held the Games and did not lose a fortune.
BIT BIT OF TAIL PIECE
Disney, no stranger to criticism that it perpetuates troubling gender dynamics, has decided that one of its most iconic characters needs a makeover. After decades as a beloved children's character, Minnie Mouse will get "leggy, modern and glamorous" thanks to a partnership with Forever 21.
Disney did not come right out and say anything was wrong with the "old" Minnie Mouse per se, but the makeover implies plenty. The "new" Minnie is stretched and has become a well-travelled fashionista who knows her way around the fashion capitals of London, Paris and Tokyo.
AND ALL THAT BULL_______
Is it something in the Westminster water? . Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester who is one of the arch critics of the new expenses system, has claimed more than £82 for toilet roll. He says it was a bulk buy. Bristol Labour MP Dawn Primarolo, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has claimed not only for toilet roll but for the holders as well.In an open letter, Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said that MPs and been “thoughtful and proper” in making their claims, and when they had been queried it had been due to “misunderstanding” of the new system.
And finally ...
It's not true that only the winners of the X Factor go on to fame and fortune
. Look at JLS, for instance. It's with this in mind that we turn to the first public appearance of one
of the show's two latest rejects, Wagner, who turned up in Dudley in the west midlands signing
autographs in a chip shop.o. THE SUN, P7
Christmas for me has few essential ingredients and they are mostly DVDs. “A Christmas Carol”, “Pickwick Papers”, “Fledermaus”, “The Merry Widow”. On radio I listen to the Messiah and the carol service from King's College Chapel in Cambridge. The pinnacle of Christmas is reached for me when I watch, as I do every year, Miyako Oshida, the ultimate Sugar Plum Fairy, and her Prince, Jonathan Cope, dance the magical Grand Pas de Deux in the Royal Ballet's production of the “Nutcracker”, choreographed by Pepita.
I would forgo plum pudding, Christmas trees, Melton Mowbray pie, breakfasts with scrambled egg embroidered with smoked salmon and chaperoned by champagne, even the presents, rather than miss those few fleeting moments. They do not dance the roles, they inhabit them. There is nothing in literature, poetry, painting, even music, which moves me more.
It is an odd thing. Most of my friends think of ballet as Pouffs' Football which is very odd. A bevy of under-dressed beauties dance their hearts out accompanied by one male dancer. Yet it is the male they remember.
I have had nasty moments. I shared a birthday with the writer and TV presenter, the deeply missed Shelley Rohde. I would take her and her pride of children to a slap up lunch in the Cheshire countryside and in return she would take me to the ballet, alas on the same day. I fear I usually dropped off early in the performance,sleeping the sleep of repletion. On one dreadful occasion she took me to “Coppelia”. I awoke with a jerk in the scene where all the toys are dancing. Convinced I had got DTs, I leapt up with a scream and fled from the theatre. Nor am I happy that the sprites in “Giselle” are called “Wilis”.
Ballet, the exquisite art of “aristocratic etiquette”, this “science of behaviour toward others”, as a 17th-century ballet master put it, in which lovely young women perch upon their 10 little toe tips (actually, it is really just the two big toes that alternately support the entire body’s weight: think about it) and waft about where the air is thinner - but heaven is closer. As someone wrote recently, “Their pale tulle and satin pointes peek out from the crevices of war, of revolutions, of political machinations, and on the stages of the monarchies and empires of the kings and czars who gave birth to this improbable art.”
A new book “ANGELS: A History of Ballet”. By Jennifer Homans, the definitive history is high on my Christmas list.
“Ballets,” Théophile Gautier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.”
The tale of the tutu is the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy, who formulated shape and perfected the highest form of the human physique.The manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!
The first ballet, “Ballet Comique de la Reine”, which had its premiere in 1581 in the French Court, was an extravagant six-hour affair, performed among the guests in a large gallery at the Petit-Bourbon. The purpose of the ballet was “to raise man up a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God”. In1636 the Abbé Mersenne referred to “the author of the Universe” as “the great Ballet-master”.
Louis XIII designed costumes, wrote librettos and danced leading roles. Louis XIV made his debut in 1651 at 13 and studied daily for more than 20 years, his dancing master, Beauchamps, who first codified the five positions of the body, providing “the crucial leap from etiquette to art” and they remain to this day the base of classical ballet. The new art spread across Europe from its birth in France, with stopovers in Italy, Denmark, Germany and Austria, landing in Russia in the mid-19th century and then returning to Western Europe in the early years of the 20th century.
The ballerina Marie Sallé in the mid-18th century introduced the novel idea that women, including ones of humble origins, might dance, not just men and kings.
“The history of ballet is also a story of class; ballet is a language of vertical ascent, physicalized nobility. Ballerinas,” Homans writes, “acted like aristocrats even when in real life they most emphatically were not.” But mix they did, and more than one young dancer rose - or descended - to positions other than an arabesque in the famous corridors of the Paris Opera, “the nation’s harem”, as one police official termed it, where wealthy men trolled for pretty girls with limber limbs. “
A family friend, Arnold Haskell, invented the term “Balletomane”. I would rather have done that than invented powered flight. The best I have done is to invent a motto for the animal mad Daily Mirror when I worked there: “Every Day Has Its Dog” - but it nearly got me the sack.
A THING OF A CHIT
Six hundred MP's managed to grab three million pounds of expenses in as many months. One should not be surprised that on Question Time three Mps said the BBC should have kept back the disclosure that the FIPA is bent until we had won the World Cup battle, unmoved by the fact that if it had it would have been quilty of aiding and abetting fraud for unlawful gain.
We had the same tale of missing millions of pounds in revenue as a result. I teied without success to think of a city which held the Games and did not lose a fortune.
BIT BIT OF TAIL PIECE
Disney, no stranger to criticism that it perpetuates troubling gender dynamics, has decided that one of its most iconic characters needs a makeover. After decades as a beloved children's character, Minnie Mouse will get "leggy, modern and glamorous" thanks to a partnership with Forever 21.
Disney did not come right out and say anything was wrong with the "old" Minnie Mouse per se, but the makeover implies plenty. The "new" Minnie is stretched and has become a well-travelled fashionista who knows her way around the fashion capitals of London, Paris and Tokyo.
AND ALL THAT BULL_______
Is it something in the Westminster water? . Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester who is one of the arch critics of the new expenses system, has claimed more than £82 for toilet roll. He says it was a bulk buy. Bristol Labour MP Dawn Primarolo, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has claimed not only for toilet roll but for the holders as well.In an open letter, Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said that MPs and been “thoughtful and proper” in making their claims, and when they had been queried it had been due to “misunderstanding” of the new system.
And finally ...
It's not true that only the winners of the X Factor go on to fame and fortune
. Look at JLS, for instance. It's with this in mind that we turn to the first public appearance of one
of the show's two latest rejects, Wagner, who turned up in Dudley in the west midlands signing
autographs in a chip shop.o. THE SUN, P7
I would forgo plum pudding, Christmas trees, Melton Mowbray pie, breakfasts with scrambled egg embroidered with smoked salmon and chaperoned by champagne, even the presents, rather than miss those few fleeting moments. They do not dance the roles, they inhabit them. There is nothing in literature, poetry, painting, even music, which moves me more.
It is an odd thing. Most of my friends think of ballet as Pouffs' Football which is very odd. A bevy of under-dressed beauties dance their hearts out accompanied by one male dancer. Yet it is the male they remember.
I have had nasty moments. I shared a birthday with the writer and TV presenter, the deeply missed Shelley Rohde. I would take her and her pride of children to a slap up lunch in the Cheshire countryside and in return she would take me to the ballet, alas on the same day. I fear I usually dropped off early in the performance,sleeping the sleep of repletion. On one dreadful occasion she took me to “Coppelia”. I awoke with a jerk in the scene where all the toys are dancing. Convinced I had got DTs, I leapt up with a scream and fled from the theatre. Nor am I happy that the sprites in “Giselle” are called “Wilis”.
Ballet, the exquisite art of “aristocratic etiquette”, this “science of behaviour toward others”, as a 17th-century ballet master put it, in which lovely young women perch upon their 10 little toe tips (actually, it is really just the two big toes that alternately support the entire body’s weight: think about it) and waft about where the air is thinner - but heaven is closer. As someone wrote recently, “Their pale tulle and satin pointes peek out from the crevices of war, of revolutions, of political machinations, and on the stages of the monarchies and empires of the kings and czars who gave birth to this improbable art.”
A new book “ANGELS: A History of Ballet”. By Jennifer Homans, the definitive history is high on my Christmas list.
“Ballets,” Théophile Gautier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.”
The tale of the tutu is the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy, who formulated shape and perfected the highest form of the human physique.The manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!
The first ballet, “Ballet Comique de la Reine”, which had its premiere in 1581 in the French Court, was an extravagant six-hour affair, performed among the guests in a large gallery at the Petit-Bourbon. The purpose of the ballet was “to raise man up a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God”. In1636 the Abbé Mersenne referred to “the author of the Universe” as “the great Ballet-master”.
Louis XIII designed costumes, wrote librettos and danced leading roles. Louis XIV made his debut in 1651 at 13 and studied daily for more than 20 years, his dancing master, Beauchamps, who first codified the five positions of the body, providing “the crucial leap from etiquette to art” and they remain to this day the base of classical ballet. The new art spread across Europe from its birth in France, with stopovers in Italy, Denmark, Germany and Austria, landing in Russia in the mid-19th century and then returning to Western Europe in the early years of the 20th century.
The ballerina Marie Sallé in the mid-18th century introduced the novel idea that women, including ones of humble origins, might dance, not just men and kings.
“The history of ballet is also a story of class; ballet is a language of vertical ascent, physicalized nobility. Ballerinas,” Homans writes, “acted like aristocrats even when in real life they most emphatically were not.” But mix they did, and more than one young dancer rose - or descended - to positions other than an arabesque in the famous corridors of the Paris Opera, “the nation’s harem”, as one police official termed it, where wealthy men trolled for pretty girls with limber limbs. “
A family friend, Arnold Haskell, invented the term “Balletomane”. I would rather have done that than invented powered flight. The best I have done is to invent a motto for the animal mad Daily Mirror when I worked there: “Every Day Has Its Dog” - but it nearly got me the sack.
A THING OF A CHIT
Six hundred MP's managed to grab three million pounds of expenses in as many months. One should not be surprised that on Question Time three Mps said the BBC should have kept back the disclosure that the FIPA is bent until we had won the World Cup battle. Unmoved by the fact that if it had it would have been guilty of aiding and abetting fraud for unlawful gain.
We had the same tale of missing millions of pounds in revenue as a result of losing the games. I tried without success to think of a city which held the Games and did not lose a fortune.
BIT BIT OF TAIL PIECE
Disney, no stranger to criticism that it perpetuates troubling gender dynamics, has decided that one of its most iconic characters needs a makeover. After decades as a beloved children's character, Minnie Mouse will get "leggy, modern and glamorous" thanks to a partnership with Forever 21.
Disney did not come right out and say anything was wrong with the "old" Minnie Mouse per se, but the makeover implies plenty. The "new" Minnie is stretched and has become a well-travelled fashionista who knows her way around the fashion capitals of London, Paris and Tokyo.
AND ALL THAT BULL_______
Is it something in the Westminster water? . Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester who is one of the arch critics of the new expenses system, has claimed more than £82 for toilet roll. He says it was a bulk buy. Bristol Labour MP Dawn Primarolo, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has claimed not only for toilet roll but for the holders as well.In an open letter, Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said that MPs and been “thoughtful and proper” in making their claims, and when they had been queried it had been due to “misunderstanding” of the new system.
And finally ...
It's not true that only the winners of the X Factor go on to fame and fortune
. Look at JLS, for instance. It's with this in mind that we turn to the first public appearance of one
of the show's two latest rejects, Wagner, who turned up in Dudley in the west midlands signing
autographs in a chip shop.o. THE SUN, P7
Christmas for me has few essential ingredients and they are mostly DVDs. “A Christmas Carol”, “Pickwick Papers”, “Fledermaus”, “The Merry Widow”. On radio I listen to the Messiah and the carol service from King's College Chapel in Cambridge. The pinnacle of Christmas is reached for me when I watch, as I do every year, Miyako Oshida, the ultimate Sugar Plum Fairy, and her Prince, Jonathan Cope, dance the magical Grand Pas de Deux in the Royal Ballet's production of the “Nutcracker”, choreographed by Pepita.
I would forgo plum pudding, Christmas trees, Melton Mowbray pie, breakfasts with scrambled egg embroidered with smoked salmon and chaperoned by champagne, even the presents, rather than miss those few fleeting moments. They do not dance the roles, they inhabit them. There is nothing in literature, poetry, painting, even music, which moves me more.
It is an odd thing. Most of my friends think of ballet as Pouffs' Football which is very odd. A bevy of under-dressed beauties dance their hearts out accompanied by one male dancer. Yet it is the male they remember.
I have had nasty moments. I shared a birthday with the writer and TV presenter, the deeply missed Shelley Rohde. I would take her and her pride of children to a slap up lunch in the Cheshire countryside and in return she would take me to the ballet, alas on the same day. I fear I usually dropped off early in the performance,sleeping the sleep of repletion. On one dreadful occasion she took me to “Coppelia”. I awoke with a jerk in the scene where all the toys are dancing. Convinced I had got DTs, I leapt up with a scream and fled from the theatre. Nor am I happy that the sprites in “Giselle” are called “Wilis”.
Ballet, the exquisite art of “aristocratic etiquette”, this “science of behaviour toward others”, as a 17th-century ballet master put it, in which lovely young women perch upon their 10 little toe tips (actually, it is really just the two big toes that alternately support the entire body’s weight: think about it) and waft about where the air is thinner - but heaven is closer. As someone wrote recently, “Their pale tulle and satin pointes peek out from the crevices of war, of revolutions, of political machinations, and on the stages of the monarchies and empires of the kings and czars who gave birth to this improbable art.”
A new book “ANGELS: A History of Ballet”. By Jennifer Homans, the definitive history is high on my Christmas list.
“Ballets,” Théophile Gautier wrote, “are the dreams of poets taken seriously.”
The tale of the tutu is the story of a bunch of crazy dreamers, dancers, warriors of anatomy, who formulated shape and perfected the highest form of the human physique.The manifestation of morality in muscle, truly Whitman’s body electric. What a noble and superb cause! What folly in the face of guaranteed evanescence!
The first ballet, “Ballet Comique de la Reine”, which had its premiere in 1581 in the French Court, was an extravagant six-hour affair, performed among the guests in a large gallery at the Petit-Bourbon. The purpose of the ballet was “to raise man up a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God”. In1636 the Abbé Mersenne referred to “the author of the Universe” as “the great Ballet-master”.
Louis XIII designed costumes, wrote librettos and danced leading roles. Louis XIV made his debut in 1651 at 13 and studied daily for more than 20 years, his dancing master, Beauchamps, who first codified the five positions of the body, providing “the crucial leap from etiquette to art” and they remain to this day the base of classical ballet. The new art spread across Europe from its birth in France, with stopovers in Italy, Denmark, Germany and Austria, landing in Russia in the mid-19th century and then returning to Western Europe in the early years of the 20th century.
The ballerina Marie Sallé in the mid-18th century introduced the novel idea that women, including ones of humble origins, might dance, not just men and kings.
“The history of ballet is also a story of class; ballet is a language of vertical ascent, physicalized nobility. Ballerinas,” Homans writes, “acted like aristocrats even when in real life they most emphatically were not.” But mix they did, and more than one young dancer rose - or descended - to positions other than an arabesque in the famous corridors of the Paris Opera, “the nation’s harem”, as one police official termed it, where wealthy men trolled for pretty girls with limber limbs. “
A family friend, Arnold Haskell, invented the term “Balletomane”. I would rather have done that than invented powered flight. The best I have done is to invent a motto for the animal mad Daily Mirror when I worked there: “Every Day Has Its Dog” - but it nearly got me the sack.
A THING OF A CHIT
Six hundred MP's managed to grab three million pounds of expenses in as many months. One should not be surprised that on Question Time three Mps said the BBC should have kept back the disclosure that the FIPA is bent until we had won the World Cup battle, unmoved by the fact that if it had it would have been quilty of aiding and abetting fraud for unlawful gain.
We had the same tale of missing millions of pounds in revenue as a result. I teied without success to think of a city which held the Games and did not lose a fortune.
BIT BIT OF TAIL PIECE
Disney, no stranger to criticism that it perpetuates troubling gender dynamics, has decided that one of its most iconic characters needs a makeover. After decades as a beloved children's character, Minnie Mouse will get "leggy, modern and glamorous" thanks to a partnership with Forever 21.
Disney did not come right out and say anything was wrong with the "old" Minnie Mouse per se, but the makeover implies plenty. The "new" Minnie is stretched and has become a well-travelled fashionista who knows her way around the fashion capitals of London, Paris and Tokyo.
AND ALL THAT BULL_______
Is it something in the Westminster water? . Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester who is one of the arch critics of the new expenses system, has claimed more than £82 for toilet roll. He says it was a bulk buy. Bristol Labour MP Dawn Primarolo, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has claimed not only for toilet roll but for the holders as well.In an open letter, Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said that MPs and been “thoughtful and proper” in making their claims, and when they had been queried it had been due to “misunderstanding” of the new system.
And finally ...
It's not true that only the winners of the X Factor go on to fame and fortune
. Look at JLS, for instance. It's with this in mind that we turn to the first public appearance of one
of the show's two latest rejects, Wagner, who turned up in Dudley in the west midlands signing
autographs in a chip shop.o. THE SUN, P7
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