Court banquet

Y’see, Christina will be back soon, perhaps while I’m still conducting my family census in the home counties, dontchya know?

Now before she left for Cymru she let on that she’d be (and I quote) having a lawyer for lunch. From anyone else that would be a chance remark but from CO, our maitraisse d’hotel, it certainly heralded some serious cuisine.

Musing on’t, I reckon she’ll get him in a stew. Perhaps a glass of (old) Baileys as aperitif; traditional porridge to start with, served in chambers – rounded off with lashings of cream.

Any ideas for more courses?

Blinking lights

OK, I admit occasionally to watching Sky News (motto: Feeding pap to the masses), but this morning there was an item on their ‘vox pop’ slot by a chap advocating the removal of traffic lights in order to improve road safety, the premise being that drivers, however normally aggressive, don’t want to bend their car or themselves and therefore are more careful.

This radical proposal was immediately poo-pooed by the chunky Irishman and his hench-ladies, but hang on, let’s think about it.  Are you, however arrogant and self-possessed, gong to roar through a crossroads despite the fact that a fourteen-wheel forty tonner might be about to T-bone you?  No, you’re not.  You are going to slow right down and look first before proceeding in an orderly manner.  Job jobbed, says I.

Now let’s take this a stage further.  Idiots demand the right to drive, ‘normally’ for them, whatever the weather conditions.  They drive at the legal limit (or above) in snow, ice, fog, heavy rain or whatever.  “Where were the gritters”, they wail after a multiple pile-up leaves them and others on stretchers or worse, as if it were always somebody else’s fault for their failed attempt at a Darwin Award.

And something else.  I have driven on some very hairy mountain roads around the world and here in Portugal – narrow road, deep ravine below and no Armco or barriers of any kind, but there in nothing better to concentrate the mind and slow down than seeing an upturned, rusty wreck at the bottom of said ravine with only a forlorn little shrine to mark the occupant(s) demise.  Even the dirt track up to The Cave has eighty metre drops on the interesting side and will kill you if you get careless or cocky.

So, when I assume power, traffic lights will be removed, gritters will be left in the depots  and their crews employed removing barriers on mountain roads.  I’m not kidding!

OZ

Coin a word

We all use wellingtons, cardigans and hoovers; we bowdlerise and boycott; and use spoonerisms and malapropisms.

Now’s your chance to sanctify somebody you love or hate or simply ignore. Use a name to capture their essential qualities.

I’ll start you off, with a couple of shoe-ins:

A pompous bullying bore: a clarkson.

A mendacious hypocritical self-seeker: a blair.

To piggy-back and exploit another’s success: to hillary.

To get out of jail free: to oscar.

Over to you, coiners!

 

Department of meaningless surveys

The Danes just lurv to find out how well they rate against other countries. The obsession evinces itself every time a commentator spews forth his/her analysis of Denmark’s teams’ performance: ‘Less then world class’, ‘One of Europe’s best’, etc.

And now there’s this:

Click to access rankings_2015.pdf

Bet you didn’t realise that the US of A ranks 90th after Timor-Leste and before Morocco in economic globalisation! Nor did I. Overall the Yanks just beat Slovenia!

Good, ain’t it?

Decisions.

I am once again facing an uncertain future. I will teach my final class tomorrow in Huzhou. Their beloved American will arrive Saturday and can start teaching Monday which effectively makes me irrelevant. In order to assuage the concerns of Chinese contacts I agreed to at least grant a hiring agent an audience. It was supposed to be for a well-regarded boarding school in Zhuhai, just across a narrow strip of water from Macau. It wasn’t that at all. It was an agent for a Chinese firm that places language teachers with foreign nationalities with schools that need them. Despite my disgust I went along with it just to get it over with. No need to be rude to strangers, she didn’t mean any harm.

Continue reading “Decisions.”