Category: General

March Creative Writing Competition

THE SECRET
There were not many newly installed world leaders who, when told the secret, ended up with a smile on their face, in fact, non did. Some of them aged almost overnight while others took it on the chin and just got on with things. A few, a very few, ignored the warnings given at the first briefing and paid for it with their lives. The first was Gandhi who was assassinated in 1948, two years after his first briefing and, having decided to ignore the prime directive, was snuffed out.

The next was John Fitzgerald Kennedy who battled long and hard against disclosure and the instructions given to him on a regular basis but in the end, he had to go, and he died.

The last was also the quickest in terms of being elected and then killed. Pope John 1st was elected by the College of Cardinals on August 26th 1978 and was found dead in the Papal bed 33 days later. To date these are the only leaders who have dared to disobey the prime directive since its inception in 1945, this says more about them than those who came after. Continue reading “March Creative Writing Competition”

Identity – where is one from and where does one belong

Firstly, my apologies for taking so long in making my debut blog. You are all so impressive and deal with this phenomenon of internet communication so easily that I am a little scared of looking silly, stupid, naive and not worthy. But, you are a kind lot too so I shall try!

I have always been fascinated by national identity and migration – it one of the few things I actually studied with interest at QMW in the early 90’s. I have often asked myself the same question and the answer seems to differ as to the context and timing and where I am at the time.

In the Chariot we have a wonderful collection of well travelled and well educated people, including many who no longer reside in the same country as their birth.

I am also a ‘typical’ man in my love of sport this passion often links in when people who know me ask “for whom did you cheer in last night’s game?”

The Norman Tebbit test doesn’t seem to apply to me which I find odd as I was born in England, live in England and have one of the hideous purple EU UK (EUSSR for Bearsy!) passports.  I have a wonderful home counties accent, a grammar school education and work for Her Majesty (I crossed my fingers behind my back when I started – I revel in being a hypocrite!)

Does that still make me English? It should but it doesn’t seem to. I don’t feel English, and I dislike an awful lot about this country and would love to live elsewhere, which I would were it not for my children. I’m certainly not a European, although I adore so much of it as I was lucky enough as a child to be shown so much of it.

Another useful and interesting debate I often use in conversations concerns human nature. I, living in the East Midlands, would naturally support a fellow east midlander in a theoretical debate that was location based against another part of England, say Manchester. However, I would be on the side of the Mancunian in a debate with a Scot. Then, I’d support a Scot over a Frenchman (or woman), then any European over an American. What is it about our psyche that causes this?

So I ask all of you ex-pats and succesfully mobile people here in the Chariot – is where from now more important as to what your identity is? Do you still introduce yourself as your birth identity?

I’d be fascinated in your thoughts as to who we all are!

I was impressed – well, it makes a change!

On Monday arvo, as I vigorously strode my daily anti-diabetic penance – well, no … as I strolled idly around my occasional gentle walk – well, possibly somewhere between the two, a flash of lightning pierced my left eye.   And again.   In fact every time I looked left and then right, the same flash of light shot around the left hand edge of my field of view.   Disconcerting, to say the least. Continue reading “I was impressed – well, it makes a change!”