Who’s the Second Class Citizen?

Most of us have been brought up in a Judeo Christian tradition, where the bible has been used to shape our way of thinking and culture. The following verses have had a huge influence on the way the two genders have been treated, and are expected to behave:

Genesis, 2

v. 21:
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

v.22:
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

v.23:
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

And the rest, as they say, is history. But there’s more, read on …

Hitler and no WWII?

Posing with a smile is not something you may associate with Adolph Hitler but this picture sent a train of thought running in my mind.

Before Hitler began on his territorial ambitions to rule Europe,  if not the world, it was a well documented fact that anyone not fitting into the Aryan idea of racial perfection was probably destined for an appointment with a death chamber, Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, severley disabled were being put to death as a matter of routine. But then he started on his plan to dominate Europe and came to a sticky end in 1945,  with Germany in ruins and the third Reich crushed in its own rubble. So what if he had not invaded Poland, backed down at the last minute and went back to his own brand of ethnic cleansing within his own borders. Would  ‘we’  have intervened to save the Jews and the others or would we have just put it down to ‘It’s their business, let them get on with it’?

Incognito

On holiday, as at parties or here, I don’t really want to talk about what I do for a living.
So, when I was asked on the first evening of my recent holiday, I explained that I had been trying to think of an alias, something that would not appeal to people so they wouldn’t want to talk shop.
I thought pest controller might fit the bill.
The conversation diverted and we talked of more interesting things. Then it was time for an early night.
A couple of days later, I was walking beside Our Glorious Leader, as one of our group dubbed him, when he asked me if I had any advice to offer about getting rid of moles.
For a moment I was completely at sea, and then the penny dropped.
Presumably, someone had half overheard my conversation and believed that was my profession.
So if you meet someone just back from holidaying with a ratcatcher in Sicily, you’ll know it was me!
Next time, I’m going to be a debt collector.

A suggestion to the DnMyT owners

If I have offended anyone by using the word  ‘owners’, I apologise but you all know what I mean. Mrsoldmovie and I have been watching a programme on the old BBC of E called ‘Bombay Railway’ and it has inspired us to visit India next year to celebrate our 65th birthdays. She said to me, ‘apart from using ‘trip advisor’ where can we get the lowdown on tours to the sub continent, that may reflect ‘Bombay Railway’?

And do you know what?  I thought of you lot. Any suggestions of tour companies that you can recommend or ways that we can do it would go down a treat.

And my suggestion to the ‘owners’ is this: There is a lot of collective wisdom on this site, can we have a separate ‘bit’ where we can ask questions and get answers without it falling of the bottom of the page, if you get my drift. We all have different skill sets and thereby can help each other. Take my query as an example, who is to say that there is not an expert travel agent amongst us who knows exactly what I’m looking for? The possibilities are endless, why not share our skills together? Oh, and by the way, is there any way you can indicate how many contributors are ‘on line’ at any one time rather than just re-clicking ‘DnMyT’ in the vain hope that you may get a response?

Climb Every Mountain

There comes a point when you finally realise that you’re not going to be able to fit it all in before you pop your clogs. A bit of a relief, if truth be told, but no harm in remembering the bits you almost managed to do.

In 1965, I was a schoolboy in Scotland with certain urges and needs, I was rubbish at singing, but I had worked out that it would be a good idea to join the school choir. The girl/boy ratio was favourable and a  lot of the boys in the choir did not appear to have their heart in the concept of interacting with  the fairer  sex,  to be fair.

Continue reading “Climb Every Mountain”

Ever thought about Obituaries?

Let me introduce you to this rather solid looking gentleman who goes by the name of Mike Osborn. His obituary appears in todays DT and I have no connection with him whatsoever other than having read his obituary this morning. I have neither asked the permission of the DT for using this obituary or his family and if I cause offence by doing either I apologise unreservedly.

I picked Mike because he is so typical of the type of person who populate the obit pages of the DT, he is not famous, he is not a ‘celeb’ but to those who loved him he was the most important man in the world. I suspect not many of us on this site will make the heady heights of the DTs obituary page, I could be wrong, I suspect many a light is hidden from view only to be revealed when the holder of the light dies. A close colleague of mine had his obit published in the Times some years ago and although I thought I knew the person I was surprised to read that during the WWII he was the man who tested different type of parachutes and it was done in the only way they knew, by strapping one on to Harry and saying ‘jump’. I often read the obits in the DT especially the military ones and I marvel and wonder at the deeds carried out and the lives lead after all the ‘derring-do’, sometimes fairly hum drum lives and I wonder what it must have been like to go from fighting to the death in a theatre of war and being recognised for your bravery and then coming home to pick up the threads in the Town Clerks dept of your local council. I think if I were a teacher today I would read these military obits occasionally to my class as some of them read like something from the old ‘Boy’s Own’ comics of my youth and when I had the class gasping for more I would gently remind them that the person concerned was once a young man or woman but now they are old and frail and you probably laugh at them as they totter along or get angry and barge past them if the get in your way. And there I think is the essence of the obit. It reminds us that a life stretches behind us, billowing like a dusty cape through our past, constantly attached and growing ever longer until one day, it stops growing and turns from something we can physically add to, to our mark upon this world. So please read about Mike and do as I will later, raise a glass to a stranger who has lived his life for better or worse and wish him well on his last journey.

Colonel Mike Osborn

Colonel Mike Osborn, who has died aged 92, had an adventurous career in which he was awarded a DSO and an MC, and played a leading part in the arrest of Heinrich Himmler.

Continue reading “Ever thought about Obituaries?”

On This Day – 19th February 1700 in England (and elsewhere)

A Popish Plot!

… it was March 1st 1700 in Denmark.

In 46 BC Julius Caesar reorganised the calendar with months at fixed lengths, one year had 365 days, 12 months and every 4th year was a leap year with 366 days. To return the public feasts to their correct seasons an additional month was inserted in 46 BC which was called the “Year of Confusion” since it consisted of 445 days – and on 1 January 45 BC the Julian Calendar came into effect. But the Julian calendar did not account for the fact that a solar year is not quite 365 and a quarter days.

Continue reading “On This Day – 19th February 1700 in England (and elsewhere)”