Category: General

Undervalued: Jeremy Clarkson

The pre-season rumour mill has Manchester United purportedly offering Barca £24million for Cesc Fabregas. For just over half that sum the Red Devils could buy Jeremy Clarkson. The divine JC took home a £14million salary from the BBC last year for his work on Top Gear. That’s fourteen million reasons to pay the license fee, if you ask me. Continue reading “Undervalued: Jeremy Clarkson”

St. Jean to Ile Jeanotte to St. Antoine July 7-9 2013

Several days out of touch electronically, so this one is kind of dated, will try to catch up if communications allow.

Started at Lock 9 on the Chambly Canal  (they are numbered from North to  South) at 9:15 am. Saturday  We had talked to the lockmaster and bought our passes the day before and he gave us the first opening, two trawlers 44 and 40 both 16 feet wide in a lock 85 by 20 feet, tight but workable.  I chose the starboard wall (wind was blowing that way) leaving Archie in the other trawler the task of keeping to windward.  He was single handed and was obliged to hire a line handler before they would clear him through to Chambly.

Here’s Archie following us in a wide bit between hazards.

Arch s

Continue reading “St. Jean to Ile Jeanotte to St. Antoine July 7-9 2013”

Kings v Stormers

My programme

Ja well, that’s our last home game done and dusted 😦

Our visitors The Stormers, that’s the classy Springbok filled outfit from Cape Town, hugely experienced and although perhaps playing slightly under par this season still tough opposition. The Stormers finished top of last years Super rugby log!

We were offered tickets for the Royalty Lounge at R150.00 each, (£10.00) that’s the most I’ve ever spent on a ticket to watch local rugby but, hey, it’s great there, right on the half way line, I like it and it was the final home game of our Super rugby season, so we splashed out!

We met at a local coffee shop at 11.30 for brunch and the Lions / Aussie match, what an entertaining couple of hours that turned out to be, then off to the stadium for our game (kick off 5pm)

We had high hopes of a result today, none of our 3 wins this season have been against an S.A. franchise and having only lost to the Stormers down in Cape town by 8 points our hopes were high.

We started well, 6 – 0 up after 15 minutes or so which quickly due to (more) ill discipline by my Kings quickly became 6- 6 all, we had a player sin-binned but were holding on. And then the dreaded score 2 minutes before half time, not for us, for them. The second half continued in much the same vein as the first, we got a couple of penalties, so did they and then a late try.

Our hopes were dashed, we lost (again) 12 – 24 Continue reading “Kings v Stormers”

A toast to the Laughing Cavalier

There have been many men of words that have written essays on how to brew a nice cup of tea. Amongst them have been celebrated literates such as George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens. It seems futile to follow in their foootsteps so I’ll leave the tea bags to the experts and concentrate on a more stronger brew.

McEwans Export has been my poison for all my adult life. Naturally, I do drink other beers when the occasion arises due to supply issues but given the choice I’d swallow ME firstly and foremostly. If I ever won the lottery and I was luxuriating in the Ritz, Bali, Indonesia I’d demand a McEwans Export from the proprietors. Demand. Because I’m filthy rich. Cue a Milk Tray Ritz Lady (role reversal time) storming the Seven Seas to Scotland to bring me back some brews. Continue reading “A toast to the Laughing Cavalier”

Mandela

From the front page of my daily read this morning.

It would appear that the ANC are preparing their supporters for bad news. I liked him, may his last days (if that is where we are) be comfortable.

Splendid bit of aggro going on in Brazil.I

Splendid bit of aggro going on in Brazil.

I really don’t blame the Brazilians,who have notoriously poor public services, protesting vigorously against the use of their funds for the ludicrous aggrandisement of a few sports fans.  Plus all the associated graft, corruption and backhanders to officials.

I have never been able to understand why public money in any country should be wasted on providing stadia for exceptionally rich football clubs to make further profits.  Any outfit that can afford to pay their moronic employees millions per year can afford the grounds should they want to.  Why the public should subsidise any voluntary activity is beyond me.  I include the Arts, Opera, Olympics etc.  Those that want them should pay for them, not the rest of us!  I’ll add other people’s brats to that list too!

With any luck all these events will be cancelled in Brazil.  It is a great pity the UK didn’t respond likewise to the Olympics last year and save the country a great deal of wasted money.  It is high time, if these events are wanted, that the moving and shaking officers located permanent arenas world wide and shared out sufficient contributions to the relevant participants to maintain such, rather than sucking at the public teat.

And send the bloody Olympics back to Greece with sufficient funding to keep it there forever. Think of the backhanders that will no longer have to be paid.

Well done the Brazilians.

PS I derive a degree of sardonic amusement re the current disintegration of the NHS and that appalling mawkish nonsense in the Olympic self stimulating mish-mash last year showing ‘tender angels of mercy ministrating to the sick’.  More likely bumping them off any which way they can!!! i remember many here actively defending the NHS, I wonder if they are still quite so insouciant and trusting in their attitudes to the NHS?  Had the money wasted on the Olympics been spent in the hospitals instead I doubt things would have come to quite such a pretty pass.

Oh, if only for a good revolution, any revolution, the UK sorely needs it. Never seen such a mess made in all my life.

And now for something completely different

Yesterday we were privileged to visit the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, opened by the Queen last month.

http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/

It is a very impressive building indeed, designed to look like a chromosome from the air. (I of course would not recognise one from any angle!) Our names and car registration had to be provided in advance and we were issued with visitors’ ID at reception and warned not to stray from our host. Scientific espionage is presumably prevalent.   The money for the building was provided by the Medical Research Council from its income from patents.  Many of these discoveries were made in the LMB on its old site.  “A Nobel Fellow on every floor” is the title of a book about the nine Nobel prize winners from this one laboratory, though most are now dead or retired.  The spaciousness of the whole place, not just the atrium, was beautiful.  There are even spaces for people to meet and sit and think and talk about science – or have parties, as empty wine bottles testified.  There are rows of cupboards full of equipment to be used as required.

Outside wild flower seeds were scattered, now providing beautiful natural meadows to cover the bare earth and builders rubble.  The most impressive thing to me was that not a penny of tax payers’ money was used to build this.  Britain should be proud of what its scientists can achieve and I hope the Open Day on Saturday will be well attended.