Unexpected visitor

Unexpected visitor

The Sinfonia was in town yesterday. It is most unusual for cruise liners to berth here in The Eastern Cape, most cruise operators take their guests to Cape Town and the more tropical Durban, I’d be surprised if we have more than a handful of visits each calendar year. This visit has a sad if somewhat humorous story to it. Continue reading “Unexpected visitor”

Australia Day 2012

Thursday 26th January is Australia Day.   It’s also Republic Day in India, but more about that later.

It’s a national holiday when we all enjoy ourselves, hold citizenship ceremonies and generally celebrate all that’s good about The Lucky Country.

This year’s Australian of the Year is a popular choice – Geoffrey Rush (Speech Therapist in The King’s Speech, and many other notable rôles).   I didn’t catch the entirety of his acceptance speech, but it was good-humoured and staunchly Australian.   Here’s a quote –

We love acting the goat, taking the mickey, cracking a joke, spinning a yarn …

Continue reading “Australia Day 2012”

Oil

A lot of folks can’t understand how we came to have an oil shortage here

in Britain .
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Well, there’s a very simple answer.
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Nobody bothered to check the oil.
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We just didn’t know we were getting low.
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The reason for that is purely geographical.
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Our OIL is located in The North Sea
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All Our DIPSTICKS are located in Westminster!!!

Any Questions ???

Not a nice man, but a good film

Last night we went to see Clint Eastwood’s latest film, “J Edgar”, with Leonardo Di Caprio in the title role and Judi Dench as his mother.  I would recommend it, even to people who, like me, have never found Hoover an attractive character. It taught me some more American history and had me googling people like Emma Goldman.  I didn’t know about the bomb and gun attacks on senators and returning servicemen after the First World War.

There were many little details, such as Bobby Kennedy’s crisp New England accent and the crewcut of one of Nixon’s  henchman, which demonstrated the trouble taken to get things accurate.  Nixon didn’t come across as lovable either.  There was only one scene of Hoover putting on one of his mother’s dresses and the relationship between him and Clyde Tolson was portrayed as that between two repressed homosexuals.  It was interesting to see Hoover’s insistence on the development of FBI forensic laboratories, which led to the arrest of Bruno Hauptmann, kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby.

The final scene of Hoover’s faithful secretary shredding his private files as soon as she heard of his death leaves one wondering just how many scandals were hidden.  Must have had Nixon wondering for the rest of his presidency whether something nasty was going to crawl out of the woodwork.

January Short Story Competition: What then is time?

Theme: Marking time.

“There was really nothing he could do but be patient. Freedom could come in the next hour, or the next century, or never.”

Hugo registered this thought and decided it was intensely irritating to deal with a creature who regarded any division of time smaller than a decade of no particular importance. Continue reading “January Short Story Competition: What then is time?”