Away days: Four very good friends of mine are currently lolling about on the white sands of St. Lucia no doubt drinking daiquiris or whatever, whilst another couple are about to fly off to Naples, Florida for two weeks sunshine and American hospitality. Consequently, the little 'Memsahib' dropped a few hints and to re-enforce the message she rather ostentatiously fetched her karate suit out of the wardrobe. I assured her that I would take her off to somewhere so exclusive that hardly anyone else would be there - and booked a cottage for three nights in Mudeford! Well, you can never do too much for a good wife, I always say. For those of you so impoverished that you can only ever dream of the jet-set life style, Mudeford is a cross between the Riviera, Dubai and Martha's Vineyard - but, er, in a quintessentially English way. Actually, I have never been there but it lies on the coast south of Christhchurch surrounded by the New Forest. Its main attraction for me is that it is about two hours drive from here! It is, of course, one of the few remaining delights of England that a car journey of two hours will take you into a totally different landscape. Considering that these days you require at least two hours merely to get through security at Heathrow, I am well pleased, although the little 'Memsahib' didn't exactly turn somersaults when I told her. Honestly, there's no pleasing some people! Anyway, I am leaving you this Sunday Rumble to chew on until I return on Thursday evening.
Utrinque Paratus: "Ooooh, get him!" I hear you cry, "Latin forsooth, there's posh!" Well, like almost everybody else the only Latin I know, despite being taught for one year at school, is a motto. The one above is that of the Parachute Regiment and it means "Ready for Anything". In practice, alas, it means ready for a piss-up, or ready for a punch-up, or all too often, ready to put an unendurable weight of kit on your back and carry it for bloody miles! I mention all this, not out of an old man's nostalgia, but because not only are all three battalions of my old Regiment about to start operations in Afghanistan but the entire 16th Airborne Brigade, that is, sappers, gunners, signals, logistics and all, are going into action as one formation for the first time, I think, since WWII. I wish them well against a foe who appears to be exceedingly brave and resourceful. Should be quite a punch-up!
Experts should come with a government health warning: I was amused, and delighted, to read a story in today's papers showing yet again that one should only accept the word of an expert with due caution. It concerns a young couple who were expecting their first child and who were warned by all the medical experts that the baby would be born so deformed and damaged that it was unlikely to survive for more than a few hours. Termination was strongly advised but these two 'brave hearts' decide to ignore the experts and today I am please to tell you that young Brandon Weatherall is a bonny, bouncing baby boy whose first teeth are appearing. I will not 'name and shame' the dimwit whose prognostication has proved to be hopelessly wrong except to say that she is, God help us, "Assistant Clinical Director and Head of Gynaecology at Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust. In time honoured tradition a spokesman said, "Due to confidentiality reasons we cannot discuss the details of individual cases". The fact that the story is all over the Sunday Mail apparently makes no difference. Still, if you're an expectant Mum in the Cardiff area and you're being, er, 'looked after' by Dr. Jane Herve(*), ask for a second opinion. (*) Sod it, I changed my mind about not naming and shaming!
Cheers, make mine a large one, Doc: More on doctors - don'cha hate 'em? Especially when they appear constantly on the 'Telly' sermonising about the dangers of demon drink, like so many old temperance preachers. It is, of course, a well-known part of everyday mythology that the biggest boozers of the lot are GPs, so it was no surprise to me to read that the BMA is in a tussle with its local licencing authority over it s desire to extend the opening hours of its Bar in the BMA headquarters in London. Physician, heal thyself! Incidentally, they always prate on about this or that number of units of alcohol. I haven't the faintest idea what a unit is. Does anyone know?
Pakistan ponders its problems: I have no idea what effects the result of the recent election in Pakistan will make to that country's future. Considering, with some apprehension, the hefty nuclear arsenal it possesses, I can only cross my fingers and hope. Some reports indicate that the overwhelming majority of voters elected moderate candidates and ignored the fundamentalist loonies. Another analysis suggested that it didn't really matter who was elected because the people who own and control Pakistan and treat it as a private stock company, are the army whose business interests are worth billions. Aside from the politics, is there a more handsome race of people than the Pakistanis and Afghanis? It is startling at times to see a face in the crowd which you just know has come down the generations from the armies of Alexander the Great.
Ideology trumps commonsense - again: A while back I wrote on the depressing fact that so many otherwise pleasant and able people can be so intoxicated with ideology that it leaves them blind to the obvious, an example, I suppose of there being "none so blind as them wot don't want to see". Here, in a post entitled "Save Southall Black Sisters", Janine tells the tale of an organisation set up specifically to aid black and brown women in the Borough who suffer from bad treatment from their families or husbands. Personally, I think that is a splendid notion and I wish them every success, but their complaint, backed by Janine and her readers, is that the local council is cutting back on their funding and putting the money in "mainstream" projects. Reading between the lines, I assume (and am thunderstruck at their sensible thinking!) that the council realise that taking money in council taxes from everyone, black, white and polka-dot, and spending on just one group based on ethnicity is highly unfair and even illegal. I pointed this out to Janine et al only to be met by a barrage of obfuscation and a blind refusal to accept that racism is a two-way street which moves from white to black and back again. The comments thread is worth a quick skim-read if only to see how ideology can turn otherwise sensible people into myopic automata.
The Hill and Bill and Brack and Mac Show - this one has run and run!: My sympathies to my American readers whom I imagine now look like hollow-eyed veterans of the Vietnam war, staggering out of the jungle, muttering to themselves, "Oh, the horror, the horror!" And still it goes on. As an Englishman I look on, partly amused, partly worried and, dammit, partly envious. I'm amused because the whole American election fest is just so, well, American. Bigger, longer, brassier than anything we effete Europeans can come up with; and worried because it so obviously matters to me and mine who sits in the White House; and envious because in its eccentricity this American election process really does show the candidates up for what they are. There can be no excuse, least of all ignorance, for any American failing to judge the character and worth of their prospective president. Unfortunately many millions of them appear to be doing just that as they root and toot for their favourites. This is an Oprah election and the tissue-thin charm of 'Brack', and his dangerous wife, appears to have worked his supporters up into the sort of messianic frenzy you might see on a Jerry Springer show, let alone Oprah Winfrey's. Still, at least the cooler heads have had a chance to really guage the true worth of the candidates which is more than we can do with our miserly three week election which is entirely run and obfuscated by PR men and spin doctors. The sort of long-distance endurance race that American politicians have to run really sorts the wheat from the chaff.
Back on Thursday.
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