Month: January 2014

Does anyone here have any experience of Japan?

Watching a movie yesterday afternoon, The Last Samurai, got to talking subsequently with spousal unit re Japan. Thought about it and realised that Japan never seems to contribute to foreign aid, never takes immigrants, never seems to take asylum seekers and the rest of the world doesn’t emit a peep of comment let alone tell them to share the load?

Why not?  considering all the ‘earole’ Australia gets over the boat people.  Nothing to stop the Indonesians turning left up the China Sea is there?  But they don’t.  All pictures of Japan appear to be homogenous native population, no blacks, browns, spotted or striped etc. The odd white appears to be tolerated if they live in their style.  Is that fair comment?

Any offers of elucidation?

When I was young, it was always said that proficiency at snooker was the sign of a misspent youth.  Snooker halls were considered the depth of depravity.  A friend and I were the first two females in the snooker room in our university union when the ban was lifted and since then I have been interested in it.

Yesterday I watched the first two matches in this year’s Masters Championship from Ally Pally and it struck me once again what a pleasant, courteous atmosphere prevailed.  A cue can be used for making a shot or tapping the table to signify praise for an opponent’s shot.  No sledging, (do female cricket players like those who beat Australia in Perth do that?) no abuse of racket, no shouting at the referee, no physical assaults on opponents, no diving.  Nothing at all unpleasant.  There are accusations of players having thrown matches, but that is true in all sports.

By the way, I am not at all proficient at snooker.

Shortly before Christmas there was an article in a local paper about the church clock and bells in a nearby village.  A decision had been taken to stop the church clock striking every quarter during the night.  I must say this seems reasonable to me.  I’m sure there is no long-standing tradition of bell-ringers ringing during the night, before the advent of clockwork mechanisms. I looked up this church on Wiki to learn a bit about the bells, a peal of six, each with its own history.  This reminded me of the Dorothy L. Sayers’ novel “The Nine Tailors”, which I then started to read again.  Not very cheery reading at Christmas, perhaps, but the narrative starts just before the New Year.

The story is set in the Fens where there are some outstandingly beautiful churches, and the hero, Lord Peter Wimsey of course, ends up stranded in a small village after a car accident. The village bell-ringers are intending to ring in the New Year with a record-breaking peal of Kent Treble Bob Majors, but an epidemic of influenza has reduced the number of change-ringers and Wimsey is pressed into service, having admitted some previous experience.  The whole book is centred on the fictitious village,  Fenchurch St Paul, its church and its bells.

What is still relevant is part of the foreword:

“From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells. … England , alone in the world, has perfected the art of change-ringing and the true ringing of bells by rope and wheel, and will not lightly surrender her unique heritage.”

It always annoys me when people who have bought a place in the country as a weekend retreat then complain about the church bells ringing on a Sunday morning,  as they have probably done for centuries.

For anyone who is interested in change-ringing, I can recommend this book.