The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY.

Posted on 16/08/2020 by The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

It seems like only yesterday but how quickly a year has gone by since we had to say goodbye to our dog Theo who was the most wonderful dog in the world and I loved him to death.

He was the daftest dog sometimes and yet the cleverest, he could tell you he wanted a biscuit or he wanted to go and do a tiddle, or it was time for dinner.

We took him to have his hair cut the day before and he seemed a bit reluctant to go but he usually comes back full of the joys of spring and walks about with his majestic walk as if to say, “look at me, how smart am I?”

This time however he didn’t have his usual spark and was having more trouble than usual walking, his arthritic back leg seemed a little worse and he was having trouble with his front leg.

We knew this time was coming but you hate to have to admit it, he lay on his chair and was very subdued and during the next day he became quieter and started showing signs that he was in pain.

Having phoned the vet and made the appointment we stayed with him talking to him and stroking him until it was time to go.

I thought he would be unable to walk into the vets but when we got there he did his best and walked in with dignity and piddled on the floor by the reception desk, well if you have style it’s always good to announce your arrival with flair.

We were with him all the time and he went very quickly and quietly and I burst into tears, I’m not very good at the stiff upper lip thing.

What a majestic dog he was, he had a good life and a long life amongst people who loved him and you can’t ask for much more than that.

Goodbye Theo, we love you. xx

The Afghanistan has now taken the dubious honour of having the worst army of all time, much to the relief of the Italian army of World War Two.

No longer will there be jokes about the Italian army having tanks with one forward gear and five reverse, for the Afghanistan army having been trained and equipped by the British and Americans, with considerably more men and much better equipment didn’t even need a vehicle with one forward gear as they ran away the minute they saw the Taliban coming.

They say they were demoralised as they hadn’t been paid and I suspect this may well have been the case however I feel if this were the British army the Sergeant Major would have made damn sure the men fought and fought well and argued about their pay after they had won the battle.

How on earth could the well equipped Afghanistan army with considerably more men and better equipment not beat a ramshackle Taliban whose main weapon is an anti aircraft gun mounted on the back of a pick up truck with the vast majority of them travelling on motorcycles carrying AK47 machine guns?

It seems that the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash, the four cars were full of money and they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit so some of the money was left lying on the tarmac, which may go some way to explain why the army weren’t paid.

How very sad that the population of Afghanistan should just let the Taliban walk in and take over their country, one feels that if a similar thing had happened in Great Britain our army would have gone down fighting and should they have lost us older folk would have been taping a carving knife to a broomstick ready to join dads army ready to lay down our lives to save our country.

Sadly, it seems that if the people of Afghanistan are not willing to fight to defend their country and its current way of life, unfortunately they deserve everything they get.

Went to Hyde Hall with the Bentley Drivers club for a picnic, very nice to meet all the old and some new members, luckily I took my wind up gramophone and some dance and swing 78’s which were well received.

The founder, motor enthusiast and creator of one of the world’s most desirable high performance grand tourers, W.O. Bentley, died aged 82 on this day 13th August 1971.

I recently came across the following which was an article in a bastion of the British upper classes since 1901, the Tatler magazine.

Huzzah! The trailer has dropped for the 2nd season of ‘The Great’

Back in February of this year, we were riding a joyful wave of top-notch period dramas. Admittedly, Bridgerton and The Great – one fictional the other a revisionist history – were only comparable through genre, but what they also had in common is that they were both confirmed for a second season. Now, quite incredibly, they’ve wrapped on filming the second season of The Great – and a trailer has dropped evidencing all the hilarity, irreverence and haughtiness we’ve come to expect after watching the first (plus a highly pregnant Catherine).

Upon checking with wikidodah my thoughts were confirmed that Tatler is a British magazine published by Conde Nast Publications focusing on fashion and lifestyle, as well as coverage of high society and politics. It is targeted towards the British upper-middle class and upper class and those interested in society events. Its readership is the wealthiest of all Conde Nast’s publications and was founded in 1901 by Clement Shorter.

I am slightly disappointed that a British magazine so well established as Tatler and seemingly aimed at the highest standards should use the expression; a trailer has dropped as this seems to be more of the sort of thing we might find in a magazine published in the Americas, perhaps the modern Tatler reader is more au fait with the multicultural London accent than one might have imagined.

I am going to the Thames Traditional Boat Festival at Henley-on Thames in a couple of weeks time where two of my favourite things are featured, the Dunkirk Little Ships and the Battle of Britain Memorial flight, I can’t wait!!

Alok Sharma our climate change Minister has flown to 30 different countries covering tens of thousands of miles over the past seven months to prepare the ground for the COP26 global environment summit this autumn.

There has been quite a hoo-ha about his actions which have been described as a tad hypocritical when telling the rest of us to try not to fly too often for the sake of the planet, he was also criticised for not quarantining having visited six countries which were on the UK’s red list.

Apparently he has a ministerial exemption from hotel quarantine and said that ministers conducting essential travel such as this are exempted from quarantine, as set out in the rules and this would also apply to his return from these countries.

He has secured ambitious action as a result of the discussions he has had and following his visit to Japan and South Korea the governments there committed to ambitious net zero targets, which was a key ask from the UK, although it doesn’t say how much success he has had with the more major polluters of the world.

This is all well and good but I notice that with all this travel he seems to have forgotten to visit the two top polluters of the world, China with more than 10.065 million tons of CO2 released and the United States with 5,416 million tons but I suppose he still has time for a flying visit.

In the meantime my addition to global warming was a visit at the weekend in my 1947 Bentley Mk VI to Brooklands in Weybridge, I think Grete Thunberg would have been proud of me, compared to Alok Sharma, I’m virtually saving the world single headedly.

Yet again the proportion of A-level entries awarded an A grade or higher has risen to an all-time high after exams were cancelled for the second year in a row due to Covid-19.

Apparently pupils were only assessed on what they have been taught during the pandemic and hundreds of thousands of students have been given grades determined by teachers, rather than exams.

Overall, the proportion of entries awarded the top A* grade this year has surged to 19.1% – the highest proportion since the top grade was first introduced in 2010, with more than two in five (44.8%) of UK entries were awarded an A or A* grade this summer – up by 6.3 percentage points on last year when 38.5% achieved the top grades.

So yet again everybody is going to University all having attained top marks and yet it seems some of them are demanding a refund on their tuition fees as they will be doing their courses remotely and not attending lectures.

I would have thought they should have to pay more, for they can do exactly what they did for their A levels, work remotely, don’t attend lectures and wait for the end of their course where everyone will be awarded a First Class Honours degree, as they say on the advertisement, “simples.”

My friend has his rather splendid 1965 Aston Martin DB5 for sale so I’m putting it here just in case there are some fairly well off people who would like to purchase this superb example of a DB5 who just happen to be reading my blog.

Went to Brooklands Museum today, some of you may have seen the programme on the television called The Secrets of the Transport Museum which takes place at the Museum and what is left of the racetrack.

The track itself was built by Hugh Locke King in 1906 and was the worlds first purpose built race track with massive banked corners on which, if they didn’t get it wrong and fly off the top, men and women would reach some remarkable speeds.

I took a few photos, this one is of the Napier Railton which has a massive 24 litre engine and was built in 1933 and raced by John Cobb who has the all time lap record at Brooklands of 143.44 MPH which was achieved in 1935.

It was also famous for aircraft manufacture and Barnes Wallis, inventor of the famous bouncing bomb and many other things was based there during World Way Two, there is also a bus museum and a real life Concorde and many other aircraft on site and is well worth a visit.

I am a Club Member so my wife and I had a very pleasant lunch in the Members Bar and managed to drive home in my 1947 Bentley Mk VI all the way without getting caught in the rain, as they say, a good time was had by all.