The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

I have mentioned before that I am one of a very small group of men who dislike football and have absolutely no understanding why the majority of men seem to be so obsessed with it, however I shall do my best to make sense of this story which I heard yesterday.

Apparently, the Everton board members have been told, I assume by the Police not to attend the match yesterday as they have been receiving threats of violence from their supporters who seem to be unhappy with the way the club is being run.

From the brief account I watched on the news, some of the fans interviewed seemed to be complaining that the board were running the club as a business and didn’t understand football, which leaves me to wonder how on earth would the board pay the enormous salaries the modern footballers earn if they were not running the club as a business?

There are always two sides to any story and in this case I am forced to wonder why the Police told the board members not to attend the match when it seems to me the people who should actually be banned from going are the fans who are threatening violence towards the board.

There we are, another example of the topsy-turvey world in which we are living nowadays, I’m sure they would never have had this sort of behaviour when the players were on £15.00 a week and grateful of it, together with the perks of a slice of orange and a fag at half time!

It seems allegedly there are more mistakes, untruths and downright lies in Harry’s book ‘Spare’ coming out with every passing day, there are so many holes in the book as to make a colander appear watertight.

It is said that the author is a J R Moehringer who is an American gentleman which may explain a lot, however in his defence he quoted, Mary Karr, the author of ‘The Art of Memoir’ who said, “The line between memory and fact is blurry, between interpretation and fact.

Now, would I be right in thinking the interpretation of a blurry line which is so blurred as to be untrue and then presented as fact would in actuality be a lie!

I’m wondering what’s wrong with Barclays online banking service as it seems some bright spark has updated the site and now all I’m getting is ‘bad request’ when I attempt to log in.

This happened the last time they updated the site, which I have to say was working perfectly well, so I would just like to pass on this piece of advice to Barclays Bank, ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’

I tried earlier to contact them and hung on the phone for ages and in the end I finally gave up having lost the will to live but later having refreshed myself with some hot sweet tea I felt sufficiently revived to have another attempt.

To my amazement I actually got through but was greeted by a gentleman with a very strong African accent, now I don’t want to stereotype people but there are an awful lot of scams which are alleged to come from Africa usually involving a request to deposit extremely large sums of money into your bank account.

With this in mind I was rather on my guard and was even more suspicious when the first thing he asked was my Bank account number and sort code without going through any form of security check at all and knowing that scammers have the ability to pretend to be someone else I reluctantly hung up.

I have a nasty suspicion that this may be Barclays way of forcing us to do online banking on our telephone but as I only do it on my desk top computer where I can see the full page without the need to keep poking my finger at the screen and jiggling it about, using my telephone is not for me.

So, all that’s left for me to say is the comment I wished to leave with Barclays when I tried to contact them earlier.

FOR GOD’S SAKE STOP CHANGING THINGS, IF IT’S WORKING PERFECTLY WELL LEAVE THE FUCKING THING ALONE!

Parents have claimed that Skegness Academy in Lincolnshire is too woke as the school has banned teachers from using sarcasm in the classroom.

I have to say I always found it rather amusing when I was at school, the remark from a teacher to a child arriving late to class, ‘glad you could find the time to join us boy’ always a favourite, never directed at my good self although I was frequently accused of looking out of the window and requested to ‘stop daydreaming boy.’

What if this trend were to spread and sarcasm were banned everywhere, I would have to give up writing this blog altogether and teachers would be unable to write on a child’s report, ‘he sets himself a very low standard and then fails to attain it.’

I saw this on Facebook and I have to admit I was a little confused as who or what had actually been involved in the conception and birth of this infant as there seemed to be far more people than are usually employed in the act of procreation.

I commented thus;

So, a man who thinks he’s a woman has had a baby with. No wait a minute. A woman who is now a man with presumably enough womanly paraphernalia to give birth has had a baby. The father of which has no idea if he’s Arthur or Martha has used sperm from a female donor and I thought when I first read this it was complicated. Whoever has had a baby I wish them luck, especially the little child.

but am fairly certain I am missing some salient points which might explain who exactly did what to whom, as I said modern life, it’s a tad confusing!

It seems with all the recent fuss about the Elgin Marbles I thought this would be a good time to repost this from a while ago, now I have to admit I’m not if favour of giving anything back especially where we have a bill of sale for the items and who wants to go round an empty museum?

INDIANS WANT THE KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND BACK.

Posted on 23/10/2022 by The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

I have to say I know very little of the history of the diamond or any of the artefacts we currently own nor on what grounds the previous owners are asking for them back.

However, some of their requests are not really cricket, an example being the Elgin Marbles which I believe the Greeks have been suggesting a return for some time now.

I would be strongly against the return of the Marbles, after all I would wager they don’t even know how to play the game.

Advertisements

My wife and I went to the Southbank Centre in London for the New Year celebrations and had a rather splendid time dancing the night away and thanks to Mark and Hoc for the wonderful novelty dance lessons, we are now almost competent on quite a few which is useful with upcoming forties events.

We had thought to become members of the Southbank Centre which gives access to the Members Lounge at the top of the Festival Hall but is also slightly nearer to the New Year fireworks which I have to say made quite a bang when you’re that close.

The only down side to the evening was the absolute chaos with the traffic when trying to leave which I believe was due to the Mayor closing numerous roads for the fireworks, although one would have thought it wouldn’t be that hard to open them after they were over to alleviate the congestion.

The traffic was gridlocked which meant we had to walk a mile to where we could get picked up to be driven home as did many others but then I suppose the Mayor must quite like the pollution from all the stationary cars which was a shame as it reminded me why I absolutely hate going to London as it is so unfriendly to cars.

Barring the intervention from the Mayor we had a splendid time and will not let him put a dampener on our optimism for the coming year although I have bought two Lottery tickets since the event with no luck as yet!

I would have posted earlier but we had a photo taken at the event but due to the modern way of retrieving the photo with a QR code which seemed not to work and when it did we had to trawl through hundreds of photos to find ours, hence this belated image but I think you have to admit it’s worth waiting for.

It seems that some 20,000 people have complained about the Jeremy Clarkson tweet concerning his dislike of Meghan Markle, apparently this is the highest number of complaints ever received.

Conversely, just to put this in perspective over 67 million of us didn’t complain!

I have no idea how many more episodes of the H & M show there are, nor how much longer they intend to carry on with this nonsense but I have to admit I have had enough and I haven’t even watched any of it.

Apparently, he was terrified when his brother shouted at him, this from a man who spent ten years in the Army and the grace and favour house they were given to live in was too small, both I would have thought were fairly petty things to deal with especially compared to the problems of a considerable number of people in this country at the moment who are more concerned with freezing to death.

These two within the Royal Family could have been the fairy-tale ending, after all she was an actress and one would have thought the role of Princess wouldn’t have been too taxing for her acting abilities, but instead they have done nothing but whinge and slag off their family, they are an ungrateful pair and most unlikeable, I have to say I am sad to admit it but we are far better off without them.

Perhaps their bullshit will appeal more to an American audience who are used to this sort of rubbish although I have my doubts.

I have written before when this first happened and was sceptical about the full facts of the matter not being available so I am posting it again with an update now the trial is over.

Having looked at the road it is clear that it is a fairly straight road in both directions from the entrance of the base and a 40 mph speed limit in place which one would have thought was more than ample distance to avoid an accident with a car emerging from the base and only travelling for a matter of 350 meters.

There are two sides to this story and I know I’m living dangerously to suggest it but Sacoolas had only travelled 350 meters and therefore one can only assume that she wasn’t travelling at a great speed especially as she seems to have had her children in the car with her and her lack of practice when driving on what to her was the wrong side of the road.

Is it right therefore to assume that although Sacoolas caused the accident Harry Dunn must have been the one going too fast to avoid the accident, for surely if they were both travelling at the 40mph speed limit with the amount of visibility and distance available it seems logical he would have been able to avoid the Sacoolas vehicle.

It seems from what I read that Harry Dunn first hit the bonnet then went over the car smashing the rear window on the way which suggests the impact speed must have been considerable and I realise that even if both Dunn and Sacoolas had been doing the 40 mph speed limit the impact speed would have been 80mph. However, had they both been doing 40 mph with the distance and visibility available one would have thought Dunn would have been able to stop or at least avoid the collision.

I think this may be why Sacoolas was given what may appear to be a comparatively light sentence as the Judge had apportioned some of the blame to Harry Dunn, perhaps for excess speed. You will only know the true facts of this case if you get to see the Police accident report.

However you look at this it is still a tragic story and I send my condolences to Harry Dunn’s family and am sorry for their loss.

Harry Dunn/Anne Sacoolas accident.

Posted on 22/01/2020 by The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

I have thought of writing about this subject for some time but once again the subject matter may be somewhat controversial which has delayed putting pen to paper.

At first glance this unfortunate death may seem to be the fault of an American woman driver unused to driving in this country, who in a moments loss of concentration accidentally drove on the wrong side of the road.

That much is I think beyond doubt but as with all stories there is always more than one perspective and this has made me want to examine the evidence a little closer.

I find it strange that there has been a suggestion that the Police are now going to give driving lessons to the Americans on the base at RAF Croughton for surely if you don’t think yourself competent enough to drive on the wrong side of the road you could use public transport or a taxi, or get a lift with a colleague.

As someone who has personally been driving across Europe for over 50 years I wouldn’t expect to embark from the ferry or the tunnel and be greeted by someone giving driving lessons on how to drive on the other side of the road.

In all the news items it is reported that Harry Dunn died when the car of Anne Sacoolas collided with him but sadly without a court case to examine the evidence we are left to speculate as to what really happened.

I have to admit that I am not personally familiar with the road where the accident took place so can only try to piece together the story from evidence from news items and research on google maps as to what the road looks like.

It has been said that the accident took place near the entrance to RAF Croughton which has a 40 mph speed limit and a clear field of vision in both directions for some considerable distance.

Looking at the map of the road it would appear that the road is relatively straight in both directions from the entrance of the RAF base, in fact for 1/2 mile and 1.1/2 miles respectively, although there may be some blind brows along the road which would obviously require caution when approaching if this is the case.

I have no idea what speed either Harry Dunn or Anne Sacoolas had attained prior to their collision but as a generalisation people who drive Volvo motorcars buy them mainly for the safety aspects of the vehicle and tend to drive fairly cautiously, conversely young men on powerful Kawasaki motorcycles may have a tendency to ride somewhat faster, this of course is pure speculation.

As an experienced driver of some 50 years I have to suggest that there has to be an element of excessive speed  which contributed to Harry’s death for if the accident happened outside the RAF base and they were both doing the 40 mph speed limit one would have thought they could have both slowed sufficiently to avoid a collision completely or at the least to be able to have avoided a fatality altogether.

If however the accident happened further down the road where the speed limit allows much higher speeds I still find it hard to see how a fatal collision was possible as the road appears to have good visibility through the bends and assuming some of the brows may be blind surely caution and a lowering of the speed would be in order.

If we assume excessive speed caused the crash we have to ask ourselves, were they both travelling too fast or was only one of the parties going too fast, had one of them managed to stop before the impact and in that case, who crashed into who?

The only conclusion I can come to without a shadow of a doubt is that excessive speed was a major contributory factor in this unfortunate accident and having presented the evidence as best I can I leave you to make up your mind as to what really happened.

I must say I am not keen on the actions of the “family spokesperson” Radd Seiger who seems to be acting more like an ambulance chasing lawyer, not something we are used to in this country; however he does have a point.

The only way we will get to the truth of this matter is for Anne Socoolas to come back and face the music and I would encourage her to do so.