Spelling

My skills in this field have recently been questioned, specifically in relation to the word 'mackerel'. Well, really! I'll have you know I got what is now called an A* in spelling at primary school. I can even spell 'bee'. Put me to the test - write down any word you like and I'll tell you how to spell it. (Mind you, they've invented a bunch of new ones since then, so anything post 1953 is subject to fourth umpire adjudication.)

It's worth quoting the Chambers definition of 'mackerel' in full, because somebody clearly put a lot of loving care into it:

"n an edible bluish-green N Atlantic fish (genus Scomben) with a silvery underside and wavy cross-streaks on its back; a pimp (obs)" Poetry. Draw me one, reflecting both meanings.

Weather forecasts

Now I bet that caught your attention! Rant follows:

Why do they always start each new regional summary with 'Now'? 'Now, for Scotland and the rest of Northern Ireland ...' 'Now, for the rest of England and Wales ...'
And why do they give us the exceptions first, then the 'rest of' bit? I tend to listen out for the bits that affect me, which tend to be part of the 'rest of', but I risk missing a subtle exception that might just matter to me. The other day I swear that, as my ears belatedly focussed (or whatever it is ears do) I heard something like ' ... except for the eastern parts of Western Scotland and some parts of rural Berkshire, for the rest of the United Kingdom ...' I exaggerate, but not much.
And by the way, why are they so obsessed with Western Scotland and its isles? I know these places have their own wonder and beauty, but let's face it, most people don't live there. I'd rather have a micro-forecast for West Reading than Stornaway (populations roughly similar I'd guess). Is it simply because they do, actually, have much more interesting weather? (I'd also guess that the good people of Stornaway don't listen to this crud, preferring to look at the sky - see below).
They should also be wary of voicing emotive words such as 'hurricane'. Tomorrow, it's going to be a bit wet and windy across the U.K., as a depression swings in, tail end of a hurricane which blew itself out mid-Atlantic a few days ago. All the forecasts use the H word, and old people who live alone and are hard of hearing and anxiety-ridden pick up only that. Kate, who ticks all those boxes, complains about being unable to sleep through fear that the three loose ridge tiles on her roof will come crashing down and kill her. We had to soothe her with assurances - they always get it wrong, remember Michael Fish in 87 ... luckily I don't think she heard.
Does one barbeque a summer make??
Oh yes, and what are 'organised showers' please?

Now, as I write, there's a mackerel sky, and black cumuli bubbling up. Not a hint of red. Well, I know what that means.

Am I alone in thinking?

I sometimes wonder as I wander through the day. Here's a couple of recent examples:

1. I received a new chequebook today. The cover sheet explains that the number of cheques in the book has been reduced by five, 'to assist in fraud prevention, and in line with the general reduction in cheque usage'.
I can see the first point, yes, the thief will only be able to issue 25 fraudulent cheques instead of the previous 30. But what exactly can be the relationship between the number of cheques I write and the thickness of my cheque book?

2. At the entrances to several residential side roads that I pass going up the Oxford Road to Waitrose, signs have appeared saying 'ROAD SAFETY ZONE. PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY'.
I want to know what kind of zone I am leaving if I turn off into one of these roads.
Perhaps I should - maybe there are signs facing the opposite way which read 'ROAD IDIOCY ZONE. DRIVE HOWEVER YOU WANT'.

I'd resolved to do absolutely nothing today, but I see that I have emptied the dishwasher, Dysoned the living room, stewed the windfall apples and pulled up some weeds in the front garden.* I really must get a grip.

*In addition to writing this nonsense, of course.

Hardwick Hall

(The first in an occasional series on the stately homes of England.)

Bess of Hardwick (nee Bess Talbot) was the second most powerful woman in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Of relatively humble origins, she married her way (four times) up to this position, via (#2) the Duke of Devonshire (who built Chatsworth for her - after he died it went to his brother, so she had to do a career swerve). Whilst being obviously recognised and favoured by the Queen, she was also good mates with Mary Queen of Scots - which says something about her swerving skills.

Anyway, once she finally fetched up as the Countess of Shrewsbury, she had Hardwick Hall mark one built for her. It's now a ruin in the grounds of Hardwick Hall number two - it took her only a few years to realise she hadn't set her sights high enough. The 'new' Hall has, on its roofline, the letters 'E S', Elizabeth of Shrewsbury, on each side, high against the sky. The house, on three floors, has as its main feature huge plain glass diamond-glazed windows, which in her day flooded the place with light and illuminated her amazing collection of tapestry wall hangings, which are still there. The higher the floor, the bigger the windows and tapestries - apparently, the grander you were, the more stairs you had to walk up to achieve recognition of your grandeur, at least by Bess's lights. (The servants ate at a long table in the ground floor entrance hall.) The ceilings are, interestingly, completely plain; she didn't want people looking up away from her tapestries, or herself.

There are three original portraits of Bess in the new Hall. In all of them, she has the eyes of Lady Thatcher. A charming National Trust lady agreed with me that it wouldn't have been wise to mess with Bess.

I don't know whether it's sad or not that she only lived there for nine years, much of which time she spent in a rather poky little bedroom on the first floor, quite a long way from the main action, if there was any by then. Norma Desmonde. Howard Hughes.

Swine flu

First, an abject withdrawal of my prediction a few months ago that this was a scare which would vanish into the same black hole as SARS, bird flu etc. I was wrong. Hope nobody acted on my advice. (Although the bit about not snogging hogs stands. And while I think of it, how many pigs have died? They don't tell us that, do they, eh?)

But the advice we're getting, via the media, from a growing number of organisations which are crawling out from under their stones to pronounce their particular brand of wisdom (who knew of the National Childbirth Trust or the Royal College of Midwives before today? or the other one which acronyms as RCOG but is much too hard to spell in full), is becoming genuinely confusing, especially when the government, via the media, attempt to clarify it. Three examples, from today's BBC1 6 o'clock, will do:

1. Pregnant women, or those toying with the idea, should avoid 'crowds and unneccessary travel', but should nevertheless carry on with life as normal. (Presumably the rest of us can, well, just carry on with life as normal, right?)
2. The over-65s are amongst those at greatest risk. Last week, we were amongst those at least risk. Turns out that, though we're still at least risk of catching it, we're at greatest risk of complications should we be gaga enough to do so. I'm not sure how exactly to modify my behaviour to take this into account.
3. Amongst the measures to avoid contracting the disease, if you sneeze, do so into a tissue and dispose of it immediately. Leaving aside how exactly to achieve the latter, for example on the Tube - stuff it into someone else's pocket? - how does this prevent me catching it? Spreading it, maybe, but ... oh never mind.

I've checked my diary, and nothing planned over the next three weeks seems to infringe these or any other advice I've heard. Will someone please let me know when it's all over, so I can get back to risking the idea of not carrying on with life as normal but doing something different...

Exit Strategy

In the growingly converging worlds of media and politics, this expression is the new eye-watering elephant in the room. Today, I've heard it on the radio in the diverse contexts of Afghanistan and cricket, and a quick search will add in the financial crisis, a TV show called 'Lost', and (I kid you not) the Mohawk Indians' intention to withdraw from the US national electricity grid.

Before I use it myself in polite conversation ('gosh, is that the time? Better implement my E S!'), let's try for a definition, or at least a description. Exit strategies are what you invent when it's too late. You suddenly realise you're in this room, and hey, how did I get here, and, okay, there's the way out over there, but I can't see quite how to get from here to that door because there's an eyewatering number of elephants in the way. A youngster will be told 'well, you should have thought of that before you started down the hill on the skateboard/jumped off the bridge/dated those three girls at the same date time and place' ...

Did anybody, anywhere, ever, before starting something, define their exit strategy along with their entry one? I haven't come across an example.

Finn the Greyhound

Lazy dog.

Rocky

One of the many interesting characters I met on my recent visit to the Peak District. Rocky is a tame sheep who lives in Rosie and John's paddock with his platonic partner Maud (Maud is black, woolly and camera-shy). If he spots you leaning on the fence eating crisps, Rocky will climb up onto it and nudge the back of your legs with his nose.

Why can't I make this text align to the left?

Official - They're All The Same

My local MP, ggg ggg, has been much vaunted (by others as well as himself), for having claimed absolutely nothing on expenses during the course of his parliamentary career. So imagine my dismay on discovering that in fact, according to the officially released data, he put in £5.99 for a box of Ferrero Rocher.

My sense of betrayal is indescribable. This local folk hero, tireless champion of underdogs and lost causes, relentless scourge of injustice and official obfuscation, eats (or at least buys) Ferrero Rocher?

I find myself scrabbling for excuses for him. Perhaps he needed to bribe an ambassador or something?

Pigeon Post

As you know, I like to post incisive, witty, original thoughts on current affairs, politics, international crises, dangerous behaviour by rogue nations and such like ... Hence my absence from these pages recently, frankly that stuff's all been so humdrum and predictable that I find it hard to stir my interest beyond the sell-by dates at my local Londis (which, incidentally, seem to operate on some kind of inverse principle - start from today and work back).

But at last, the pigeon mating season has arrived! The activity levels are intense enough that I fear for the integrity of my copper beech tree and the roofs of some of my outbuildings - and that's just the male rivalries and the foreplay; it's worse than Reading Broad Street at 2 a.m. Saturday morning. Who would imagine that these dumb, bumbling, uncoordinated slow-witted creatures could behave like that? And the pigeons are no better ...

Ah, some Breaking News: The gggggggggggggggg is a pigeon ggggggggg

Neighbourhood Watch

Just got back from a boozy watch meeting, which was mostly about fending off invaders who take the form of predatory property developers. (Details on application, but rather you didn't.)

Anyway, we were sitting outside in Sarah's garden, discussing how we might get our locale listed or protected, to fend off said etc etc, when suddenly these huge insect things start dive bombing us. Stag beetles? Mayflies? Nigel, who's a professor of this sort of stuff, reckoned stag beetles, because they're the rarest and so most protected - we can get some kind of 'site of special scientific interest stag beetle' status and so fend off the predatory house-building invaders ...

At about this point Clare and a few others announced that they were getting insect bitten and so had, reluctantly, to leave. I hope the stags didn't get them on the way. I stayed on for a few more reds, as you can see.

Off to Sandbanks tomorrow, for some reason.

Battle of Britain

I have just watched my resident blackbird couple seeing off one of the local red kites. The enemy didn't stand a chance - blackbirds coming at him from every dimension, noise guns firing, swooping up out of the setting sun ... You could smell the cordite. Kite slunk back home, dripping feathers. The whole thing took about thirty seconds.

A couple of magpies were stood on aerials, observing from a safe distance, watching for any spoils, like black marketeers in their zoot suits and sunglasses.

Meanwhile, my robin persists in turning up and perching on the handle of the garden fork, eyeing me quizzically. 'Come on, keep digging', he says.

Paranoia time

Did you know that your IP address can pinpoint the exact geographical location of your computer, using GPS technology which I certainly don't remember ordering or installing? It's true - try it. I did, and as a result I now know that I am, in fact, either crawling around the Yorkshire Dales or perched on the railings of Holborn Viaduct in London EC. Or I may be somewhere in Southampton. They're closing in on me ...

MPs expenses, blah blah ...

If you haven't already, you must hear this one, from Anthony Steen MP (that's Member of Parliament for short, but not for long, ha ha - HAH!) for Totnes, Devon (Con):


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8062205.stm

He was quoted verbatim, with incisive cruelty, by Dimbleby on tonight's wonderful, possibly constitution-changing, Question Time; and I sensed a shift, or perhaps focus, in the mood of the panellists and the audience as we heard those words, and the insufferable arrogance they welled up from. (I gather he's since apologised, and is of course standing down at the next election - like, not now? - so that's OK then.)

As an aside (asides often interest me much more than the main road) I am intrigued as to how Totnes, a town I'd always pictured as one of the country's convergences of matted-hair bead-weaving alternative new age ley-lines, came to get this Tory landlord as their MP. Weird, man.

I once visited an artist in Totnes who made, and tried to sell, miniature sculptures constructed from the fluff you get out from the filter of the tumbledryer, an idea I'd have liked even better had it been suffused with even the merest hint of irony. Actually, now I remember, that was in St David's not Totnes. But hey, same difference.

Eurovision Song Contest

Hah! I bet you thought I was going to post some kind of ironic commentary on this: how Graham Norton is soberer than Tel; how all the songs are exactly identical (chord sequence Am/G/E/F) except for Lord Webber's variation on his usual C major arpeggio; how Armenia wins the 'most-exposed female skin' prize, or was it Estonia ... well, sorry, but I haven't watched a single pixel of it. I've spent the evening editing my contacts list, defragging my hard drive, surfing Spotify in a desperate quest for something, anything, to draw me away from that vile, vengeful, visceral ... Sorry, just had to switch it on. Norway have won. Great result - that'll put global politics into correct perspective.

Westminster trough

The more or less unanimous (not to say orchestrated) reaction from MPs caught, let's say, optimising the expenses/allowances system they themselves devised - 'we haven't broken any rules' - reminds me of one of Alexei Sayles' old jokes:

'People say to me: Alexei, why do you drink so much? I reply: because I can afford to.'

Inscrutable Irony?

I heard this on Radio 4 News this evening, and pass it on without comment.

China has opened a Museum of Espionage, in some small provincial town. Entry is, however, barred to foreigners, for reasons of national security.

Bluebells

Someone was blogging about these the other day - oh yes, the brother. Well, I reckon I've got one in my garden, thrusting up through the sage bush. Look:

Is that a bluebell, or what?

They're protected, aren't they? So does that mean I'm not allowed to dig or weed my garden any more, the government will have to come and do it for me?

No, thought not.

It's rant time!

I've been storing up several rant zones for some weeks, mostly to do with Gordon's mouth (my older readers may remember a post about this wierd organ, its behaviour and emissions - I may have to post separately about this). But the levee has burst, and it's burst all over, guess what, SWINE FLU!

First, some facts, as reported by media up to and including the BBC. We're all going to die. (Well, that's true!) Don't come back from Mexico, if you can help it. If you must, wear a blue gag, just like the reporters (That's the ones wearing the accessory, not the ones telling us they're useless, if not worse - and don't under any circs share masks). As of now, confirmed cases in the UK have increased from two to three: that's a 30% increase isn't it? Or is it 50%? Depends how you measure it. And, worst, one of them is in South Devon! That's not on! Mothers are terrified. Schools are closed. The WHO is poised to escalate from level 4 to level 5, because (I have to go into caps here) - A BABY DIED AFTER CROSSING THE MEX-TEX BORDER!!! National boundaries just don't mean nothing anymore.

So. Some real facts. Around 25,000 people died in England and Wales last year from secondary flu-related complications (bronchitis, pneumonia etc.) The Office of National Statistics is quiet about what proportion of flu cases this represents, probably because the numbers are too big to crunch, and it's pretty normal and boring. But let's guess that it's 5%. (That'd give us half a million flu cases, which doesn't sound unbelievable.)

In Mexico, so far, there are somewhere between two and ten thousand suspected cases, and about 160 deaths attributed to the disease. There hasn't been much information about proven causal links or secondary complications - in fact there's been no information whatsoever. But let's be cautious. On the worst case, we are looking at ten per cent fatalities. So this scary new thing is about twice as lethal in Mexico (or, to be precise, a few small ringfenced bits of Mexico) as normal flu is in the UK. Well, I can live with that. And I didn't even get my jab this year.

This media balloon will burst, or more likely deflate slowly, sadly, to the 'other news' columns on page 7, just like CJD, foot'n'mouth, SARS, avian flu ... If I'm wrong, sorry - I don't think I was the one who sneezed over you.

Meanwhile, just don't snog no wetback hogs.

Acknowledgment to Simon Jenkins of the Guardian for a serious article which triggered these facetious thoughts.

London Marathon

Several family members partook in this today, here are their results:

• Alex (nephew): finished in under 3 1/2 hours. An athlete, excels at all his usual sports (football, golf etc) but first time he's done a marathon, so good result!
• Chris (niece's fiance): finished in under 5 1/2 hours. Wouldn't claim to be an athlete, first significant sporting effort of any kind, I think he'd agree ... So he must be over the moon, think that's the technical term, at making it all the way round.
• Alan (brother-in-law): finished in under 6 hours. Alan has run quite a few marathons around the world over the years. He was worried this time, as a muscle in his right leg had been playing up a lot during training. On the day, that muscle was fine; but he tripped over a plastic bottle and did in the same muscle in his left leg ... The Law of Sod strikes!
• Linda and Georgie (sister-in-law and niece): got severely sunburnt as on-the-spot spectators.
• Tim (me): managed a good hour of watching the TV coverage this morning.

So, all have done well and all should have prizes.