Please, please, please label depressing Christmas/death/other world stories either as such or as part of some competition or the other!
I desperately try to avoid such for obvious reasons. I have just read Bo’s by mistake, no doubt a laudable attempt but too bloody close to home to actually appreciate the composition!!!
I do my damnedest to keep my days far too full to maunder, an activity of which I strictly disapprove, but festive seasons are pretty bloody grim however hard one tries.
It was just after midnight on the night of December 24th 1936.
The steel-hulled square-rigged ship “Caspar” 140 days out of Callao, beyond Cape Horn, with 3,500 tons of nitrate fertilizer in her holds, was just into the English Channel. Her destination and homeport was the town of Ipswich, now less than 200 miles away. The weather in the channel was bad and getting worse. In heavy snow, driven by gale force winds out of the East, the big sailing ship was fighting for every inch of windward progress she could make and had tacked to the northward far over by Guernsey Island in an attempt to get beyond Start Point and buy a little extra room to make better eastward progress.
Continue reading “The Gray Ghost – December CW Comp.”
In bygone days, when facing ruin,
They did whatever needed doing.
It follows and it’s not a mystery,
A man agreed his kids were history.
She woke. The weak sun-light filtered through the curtains. She felt a bit like that sun: light, but remote and far distant from the earth. She stretched. The aches and pains that usually assailed her body when she woke were not there. What a pleasant change to have no physical discomfort. Don’t question it – accept it and be grateful! Normally it was such an effort to find the energy to get up. This morning she didn’t feel weak and wan. In fact, she was almost, but not quite, full of energy – ready to face the day: Christmas Day. Continue reading “The Promise – December CW”
(BBC, Scotland, yesterday)
A stranger was seated next to a little girl on the airplane. He turned to her and said, ‘Let’s talk. I’ve heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.’
The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to the stranger, ‘What would you like to talk about?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the stranger. ‘How about nuclear power?’ and he smiled.
OK, ‘ she said. ‘That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass. Yet, a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?’
The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl’s intelligence, thinks about it and says, ‘Hmmm, I have no idea.’
To which the little girl replies, ‘Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don’t know shit?
Yesterday, Mrs FEEG and I caught the train to London and had a decent nosh in a Cafe Rouge chain restaurant in town. After that, we caught a tube to Earls Court and went to the British Military Tournament, the revived but somewhat modified Royal Tournament.
You may remember that the treacherous barsteward, Tony Blair, cancelled the original one, ostensibly on the grounds of costs, but really because it conflicted with his ideas of Britain as a part of Europe!
We had seen a Royal Tournament before it was cancelled so could compare directly. The main elements were all there, the horse, massed bands, demonstrations of military tactics and so on. It was themed on the “Special Relationship with the USA” and had some very good displays from the US Army, and diplomatically they forgot to mention that they always turn up late for World Wars :-). There was even a Field Gun Race which, held between two teams of Sea Cadets from Wellington College using half sized guns, was still exciting. Since the idea of all this was to raise money for Military Charities, it was all very worth while and money well spent. In spite of all the cuts the UK military is still extremely capable and competent.
I hope David Cameron has seen this, since he saw fit to write a foreword in the program. We need the military more than ever so STOP CUTTING MILITARY EXPENDITURE AND MAKE CUTS WHERE THEY SHOULD BE MADE!
An idea brought on by my Military Wives post. Let’s put together a Playlist of favourite carols from all of us? For Ferret:
So happy that she’s finally ‘caught up’ with her big brother – just look at the gleam in her eyes 😀
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
Wilkins Micawber
Sounds perfectly sensible to me, but then I’m no economist!
Now moving on to the bright ideas of John Maynard Keynes:
Boadicea's Chariot 
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