Hic Leges Icenorum Observantur
I returned from a trip of 18 days in Japan last Friday. I don’t think I will return.
In that time, I lost around 4 kg of, admittedly, unwanted weight. It wasn’t entirely due to the extra miles / kilometres that I walked – but was definitely down to the fact that my system and, more importantly, my taste buds simply rebelled at raw tuna, prawns, crab and other stuff that, normally, I thoroughly enjoy…
Continue reading “In Praise of Cooked Food, Knives and Forks”
I am a cynic. I’ve seen too much ugliness and been around too many people who have experienced infinitely worse than I ever will to be anything but. I am also well past the illusion that “my side” is somehow more virtuous. Continue reading “Hypocrisy and Filthy Lucre”
I’ve often heard that those under about 35 will be the first generation to be poorer than their parents. This, my, generation will be “generation rent” — those who cannot afford to buy a house, will struggle to live to the same standards as their parents. This, it is said, is proof of a broader societal failure. Continue reading “Wrong Priorities”
A blank page. White. Snow? Snow in May? Hay, hay, hay..
I trudge through the emptiness, the whiteness, the ice. Ice! Ha ha! The only water or concentrated fruit juice is in the title.
Trudge. Snow. Ice. Not a Frost-Giant’s daughter in sight. Just my luck. Or is it? I’m not a Cimmerian. Good chance I’d be Frost-Giant steak.
Then I see it. A block. Not a writer’s block or a mitre block, just a block. Like me..
In this Godforsaken world, there’s just the two of us.
Well, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The Tories have been in power since 2010. The hapless/hopeless/charmless/unloved/useless Toxic Tess’s government has a 29pc approval rating. Saint Jeremy of Islington walks on the Thames every day on his way to Parliament. The enthusiasm of young voters will make historical gains inevitable. Wandsworth, Westminster and Barnett will go Labour causing a Tory collapse in all parts of London, blah, blah, bloody blah. So far, neither party has done especially well but the Tories have held their own. That Labour are so desperate to spin an underwhelming performance as a great success makes one wonder if Saint Jeremy is even more useless and Toxic Tess.
I have long advocated an electoral system that requires a minimum level of qualification. The great and the good have always countered that such a system would be undemocratic and even raising the subject bordered on fascism. So it is with a sense of sweet irony that I read this article in the Guardian, written by none other than a black lady from Zambia, (formerly Northern Rhodesia) in which she extols the benefits of a qualified vote. Has she really forgotten what Rhodesia was all about? Anybody from any race was able to vote, provided they met certain qualifications. Whether those qualifications were too rigorous is a moot point, but the principle remains. And that, hopefully, is the thin end of a wedge which for one will certainly welcome.
When I was in California I noticed a profound change from just half a year earlier. Continue reading “Drift”
The problem with planning a trip nearly five months in advance is that you can never know what last-minute hiccoughs will arise. Travelling from Dorchester South to London Waterloo is generally speaking straightforward. I drag myself out of bed, clamber awkwardly through Dorset’s county town and board a direct train. Track work and industrial action made this impossible on the one day I had to travel to London.This necessitated drastic action; namely, National Express. Continue reading “California Dreaming (Via Sweden)”
It’ll soon be the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. On that Sunday 500 million viewers worldwide tuned in, mostly on black and white TVs, to watch the Lunar parking. I missed it myself, only three at the time, and probably in jammies in bed. Now for the older, wiser (?) me the buzz words “over eyes” and “pull the wool” knit my brows. Was this a big hoodwink?
You could say I am an agnostic Moon Landing conspiracy theorist because I believe it could be 50% right. Firing a rocket with men in it to the moon seems possible. It’s the getting them back that puzzles me. The spaceship has shrank, there’s no scaffolding on the moon that can support/straighten Apollo’s back to earth trajectory and the computerised age of steering things is in its infancy. No drone technology here, only rotary dial phones. Cars in the 60s were basic beasts and prone to breakdown, what chance a ship going all those light years without any wear or tear? I mean, even the communication system was on the blink and the sound man missed an a on Armstrong’s rehearsed script.
I blame Concorde. Continue reading “Ripley’s believe it or not!”
How in God’s name can a 78 year old be dragged off by the pigs on a murder charge when defending himself and his home?
So some lowlife gets hoist on his own petard, in this case a lowly screwdriver, and snuffs it. Jolly good, one less piece of lowlife, give the guy a medal who achieved it, certainly not a murder charge. Ironically it was the pensioner himself who called the pigs, pity he didn’t just drag the corpse out into the gutter and leave him there!
