I have just watched the opening of the British Memorial at Gold Beach, Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, what a splendid ceremony, especially considering the restrictions because of Covid-19 and a marvellous tribute to all those who died.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
I am a great believer in using old language with proper old expressions and was reminded of the fact when I asked my wife when going to bed what her plan of action for the following day might be and would it require us “getting up with the lark.”
The moment I said it my mind was set wondering as to where the expression had come from, logic dictating that the lark must be the first bird to awake in the morning, hence “up with the lark.”
It turns out that this is not correct and is in fact far more complicated for the Lark it seems is not the first bird to sing in the morning chorus with the first to sing being a Robin, then Blackbird, followed by the Thrushes who all apparently start singing at 4.30 in the morning.
These birds are then followed by woodpigeons, great tits, blue tits, sparrows and finches, the earlier birds are up to catch worms while the later birds wait for the morning to warm up as they wish to catch insects who are also late risers.
On the subject of birds eating habits we have “the early bird who catches the worm,” another old expression which I find odd in that it is viewed from the bird’s perspective and not from the worm who has also made the effort to get up early only to end up as a birds breakfast.
During my research for this post I was reminded of another expression which I use, “to get up at the crack of sparrows,” which by all accounts is from Australia, the full form of which is, “to get up at the crack of sparrows farts,” which relates to the sparrows habit of breaking wind when it wakes up, although who on earth first climbed a tree to discover this fact I have no idea.
I am not a great lover of early rising but at least my efforts to get up early are not as complicated as those of the bird community especially the sparrow, which has just reminded me of another expression, “I’ve heard ducks fart before,” an explanation of which I shall leave for another day.
Where on earth do I start with this story without appearing to be too controversial, I have no idea but I will present the facts and see where we go from there.
Six asylum seekers who were housed at the Napier Barracks in Kent have won a case in the High Court where Justice Linden found that the Home Office had acted unlawfully when deciding the former Army barracks was suitable accommodation for hundreds of asylum seekers.
It seems the men objected to the barracks style dormitory with 28 people per block and two toilets and showers shared between all of them and only being allowed out for two hours a day to go the beach, especially as some of the inmates had symptoms of Covid-19 although the dormitory had been previously thought to be adequate for members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.
The Home Office defended the barracks as being safe, warm, secure and with three nutritious meals served a day and all paid for by the British taxpayer but the asylum seekers layers said the squalid barracks was a breach of their human rights and could amount to false imprisonment.
Following a five day hunger strike, one of the asylum seekers was relocated to a London hotel with others following soon after whilst their claims for asylum were being assessed.
Following the case Justice Linden said, “Whether on the basis of the issues of Covid or fire safety taken in isolation, or looking at the cumulative effect of the decision-making about, and the conditions in, the barracks, I do not accept that the accommodation there ensured a standard of living which was adequate for the health of the claimants.”
The Home Office and the six men must now agree on damages however lawyers acting on behalf of the men were unable to comment as to how much compensation they will be seeking but said they expect the amount to be modest.
Which leaves us where, is this a terrible case of injustice metered out to these poor asylum seekers who have walked from as far away as Syria and Iran, distances of somewhere around 3898 miles and a journey passing through Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and finally Great Britain.
There was also a suggestion that there should not be camps for asylum seekers and they should be accommodated in hotels, but with 4000 coming to this country so far this year this would incur considerable expense especially as they would all demand a room of their own.
Without wishing to appear too flippant, one assumes that having travelled such a distance through so many countries and choosing not to stop at any of them along the way, perhaps their expectations of what this country had to offer may have been a little high as there are plenty of people already living in this country who would be only too happy to have a roof over their head and three square meals provided free on a daily basis.
In an ideal world we would all be living at the Ritz but we don’t live in an ideal world.
There was a question recently as to whether it was ok to sunbathe in your underwear in public and I think I can help with the answer to this debate.
My friends and I recently tried this at our local recreational park and had thought we were cutting quite a dash, unfortunately a group of women together with the park keeper chased us from the park whilst shouting some fairly uncomplimentary things about our attire.
So in answer to the question, is it ok to sunbathe in your underwear in public, it seems that under certain circumstances it may not be well received.
Tesco workers have won a massive equal pay victory in an EU court meaning that workers in the store can now compare themselves the same as those in the warehouse which will be worth an extra £3.00 per hour for them.
I was somewhat surprised they had won this victory in an EU court as I was under the impression we had left the EU, which would suggest the case started some considerable time before we left.
There are two points of interest in this story, firstly the majority of workers in the store are women, whereas the majority in the warehouse are men although not all are men or women in either department.
The second point which I imagine would have had a bearing on this case is that neither of these jobs are equal, in that the warehouse job is more physically demanding and has an element of danger from falling heavy goods and being run over by a fork lift truck etc.
I may be wrong but I would have thought that these jobs are about as equal as an apple and a banana in that whilst an apple is indeed a fruit, there is some debate as to whether a banana is a fruit or a herb.
However, I am a modern man and can accept that if an EU court rules that two jobs which are completely different are in fact the same I am willing to accept the ruling as this may have set a precedent for a case I am thinking of bringing.
I imagine that the law firm of Leigh Day may have acted on a no win, no fee in which case I wish to proceed with a case which concerns my pension and the lack of equality with another well known pensioner.
Ex Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair has recently become a pensioner and is allegedly receiving £80,000 a year pension, my case therefore is that we are both pensioners and are in fact more alike than an apple and a banana and yet I am not receiving anything like this amount.
Should anyone from Leigh Day happen to read this and wish to take up the case on my behalf I would be extremely grateful and just think of the publicity they would receive with headlines in the national press saying, “Downtrodden pensioner wins massive pay-out in equal pay dispute.”
Yet more evidence that the entire world has gone mad has come to light and although some of you may think I’m making this up as it seems so farcical, I can assure you it is all true.
A British doctor who was struck off some years ago for suggesting that the MMR vaccine was the cause of Autism has taken flight from this country and taken up residence in the United States of America, the home of the snake oil salesmen and is unsurprisingly doing a roaring trade selling snake oil treatments to cure Covid-19.
Struck off Doctor Andrew Wakefield has become a leading light in the anti-vaccers movement and is amongst a fairly large group of people who it seems are making considerable sums of money selling amongst other things some form of bleach on the grounds that it will kill Covid-19, you couldn’t make it up, could you?
Just a little note to make this story even more surreal, his girlfriend is Elle Macpherson the famous model and there are rumours that they will marry as he has recently divorced his wife Carmel.
As I said the world has gone mad for in Florida a right wing pastor Rick Wiles who is also an anti-vaccer has been hospitalised with Covid-19 a matter of weeks after saying the vaccinations were part of a mass death campaign.
He reported from the Flowing Streams Church on TruNews.com that he had Covid related pneumonia and had difficulty breathing, adding that his daughter-in-law was in the hospital with extreme dehydration and vomiting, and that at least four other family members, including his grandson, had developed Covid-related symptoms.
He wrote that “this was a full-frontal hit from Hell on your TruNews family, but because Jesus Christ lives in us, we shall live too,” and asked for prayers for the family members and team.
Continuing, “I’m going to be one of the survivors. I’m going to survive the genocide, I am not going to allow the Covid maniacs to convince me to be vaccinated or vaccinate me against my will.”
He added, “I know what I’m reading. I know what I’m seeing, there is a mass death campaign underway right now and the only good thing that will come out of this is that a lot of stupid people will be killed off.”
About a month ago, Wiles said he was “not going to be vaccinated.”
Pastor Wiles of Flowing Streams Church, a nondenominational congregation in Vero Beach, Florida has spouted homophobic, racist, and other conspiracy theories from his pulpit ended by saying Covid-19 was God’s way of punishing China for having a Godless Communist government.
So this right wing conspiracy theorist and Covid-19 denier and altogether fairly nasty piece of work, who thought the only good thing to come out of the Covid pandemic was that a lot of stupid people will be killed off has himself caught Covid-19 which just leaves me with the thought, that God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform!
At long last we in the country have finally got the opportunity to have fibre optic broadband which apparently goes at warp speed 6 on the Enterprise spaceship scale of whizzyness!
Last week they came to check the cable outside our property was working and we got the go ahead to have them connect us up this week which was all very exciting, especially as we have had nothing remotely stimulating since the last lockdown in 1907.
This week two young men came to connect us up by joining the house to the outside terminal and having pointed out a couple of potential problems they set about with their machine which I had thought was going to cut a small trench across our lawn but in fact just cut a small slit into which they put the cable protected by an outer pipe.
All seemed to be going well and they drilled through the wall placed a box on the wall and I believe connected the fibre optic cable, however after some walking about outside they came back with a photograph of an external box which seemed to be flooded with water which stopped them finishing the job.
I got the impression that all that was needed was to sort out whatever was wrong in the box outside and we’d be away on a hack, although the fact that it appeared to be flooded didn’t seem to bode well for the future.
The young men left and I went off to a classic car auction at the IWM Duxford, so it wasn’t until my return that I noticed that the cable where it came through our fence was not underground leaving some three feet either side exposed.
As we live in the country and have wild animals some of whom are partial to chewing on electric cable as I know only too well from the mouse that fused the lights in my garage and it took some time to find the fault but sadly the mouse had paid the ultimate price for his little snack.
I have no idea if fibre optic cable is worth stealing as it would be if it were copper but I do know that certain young people might find it rather amusing to grab hold of the cable and “pull it up for a laugh,” a statement which in itself says a lot about the sense of humour of the youth of today.
Having phoned Gigaclear to explain about the exposed cable, the following day I set about the problem equipped with a spade, hand trowel and a small pruning saw to cut a small trench for the cable which would go under the tree root and under the fence and continue on the other side of the fence in another trench to be able to join up with the other part of the exposed cable.
Although I was assured that they would be back to correct the problem I didn’t want them having any excuses as to why it was not possible to do it, as their machine was too big to get close to the fence, we don’t have a spade, or what, you mean dig by hand, or some other nonsense.
I could foresee a situation where these excuses would come into play and they would attempt to persuade me it should be left as it was and it wouldn’t surprise me if they try this even though I have done the work for them, all they now have to do is pull up the 12ft outside the fence poke it back down my trench and reconnect it.
Should they attempt to come up with excuses as to why they didn’t dig under the fence I feel a history lesson may be in order where I shall inform them of the fate of British troops who were captured in WW2 and placed in prison camps by the Nazis but did these brave men give in, no they did not for they were made of sterner stuff than the youth of today.
They most certainly did not give in, they succeeded in escaping by digging tunnels to crawl down and make their way to freedom with the aid of a few bed boards to prop them up, candles made from lard to see by and nothing more than a desert spoon to dig with.
Let this be a lesson to you Gigaclear cable layers!
One doesn’t like to court controversy when writing a blog post but sometimes circumstances dictate that whatever one might say will involve the placing of one’s foot in the doo doo and a discussion about the forthcoming drama about Anne Boleyn is an example of this.
By now I imagine most people will be aware of the hoo-ha created by the casting of a black actress to play the part of Anne Boleyn who as history tells us was a white woman and wife of Henry VIII.
I was unsure whether to post on this subject but was prompted to comment by a brief conversation with an American fellow on Facebook when I expressed the opinion that I felt a little uneasy with a historical role of a white woman being played by a black person, merely on the grounds of historical correctness.
My point, along with many others was that there would be outrage if one were to cast a white person to play Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks and quite rightly so and then to make matters worse an American fellow commented that I should; “Smile. It’s actually gonna be good.”
How could one not respond to a comment like that, which I did with the following. Gonna is not a word in English and this is an example of why older British people may have a problem watching this drama. There is a trend in modern TV and film to write a piece with modern Multicultural London Accent when no such accent was used at the time or to place modern music into a period drama which completely takes away the feeling of the moment rather than compliments it. To make a period drama correctly one has to have the script, the dialogue, the accent, the music and the right actors playing the right parts. I’m sure you would see my point if they made a drama about Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks where the actors were white people, that too would be completely wrong.
As they used to say in the old days when a tabloid newspaper reporter wrote a piece about a brothel just prior to the sex act taking place, “it was at this point that our reporter made his excuses and left the room,” which is pretty much what I myself did, however some further 6.7 thousand stayed and made a further 9.4 thousand comments, mostly negative.
I hate period drama which feels wrong, a recent example was The Pursuit of Love, which was based on the book by the well known author and friend of Adolf Hitler, Nancy Mitford which like a curate’s egg was good in parts, the bad being the dreadful soundtrack of 70’s and 80’s music which I felt did not remotely fit with a drama set in the 20’s to the 40’s.
This current trend is obviously caused by “de yoof dem” taking over film and television production which is a natural progression, however I would imagine the majority of the audience for a historical period drama might be the older members of the community who I think would prefer the right actor for the part, with the correct accent, together with suitable period feeling music, which then makes the production an absolute joy.
Should any young members of the production team of any future period drama productions require any assistance with this I suggest they merely view a few episodes of the virtually perfect Downton Abbey.
I came across a topic on Facebook which started with an image of an envelope being readdressed to return to sender and was putting forward the idea that the BBC should be defunded.
I was somewhat surprised as to why anyone would wish to do this as without funding there is obviously no BBC, so I left the following comment.
Why on earth would you wish to defund one of the best broadcast companies in the world?
I received the following comment.
Maybe because it’s not impartial anymore, maybe because their presenters put forward their own agenda, maybe because they are anti Brexit, maybe because we have no choice but to pay for a TV license or be hounded by their goons, maybe because they lie and manipulate, maybe because they have forced pensioners to pay for a license where it used to be free. They delude themselves, they are outdated, it should be free or charge a subscription and let’s see who pays for it, it’s certainly not value for money in my eyes. It’s rotten to the core, not to mention protecting paedophiles
I thought the reply was a little harsh on the poor old BBC so went gently to its defence with the following.
I think quite a few of those comments could be used against many modern broadcasters. This is a problem with getting old, I can remember when I was young we paid a TV Licence for the right to receive all the TV broadcast channels and the money from the Licence funded the BBC as the other channels were funded by advertisements. Now, nothing has changed with the BBC but those channels that were as such “free” have changed in that as well as having the revenue from advertising they now feel the need to charge us to receive their channels. I think there is a better case for getting upset with these broadcasters rather than the BBC.
I do not have the technical ability to remove the profanity to the bottom right of the envelope so I apologise to any readers who may be of a delicate disposition and hope that none take offence.
Is it time to leave the Eurovision Song contest and endeavour to leave with some dignity, or are we to continue to suffer the humiliation of coming last with nil points from both the jury and the public vote for ever.
I know the programme is exceedingly popular amongst the gay community who arrange special Eurovision party nights with drinks and nibbles and the like and really get into the serious business of screaming at the television for the evening, but I have to say it’s not for me.
Now, I don’t want to sound like Mr Donald Trump, an embittered man if ever I saw one, but in this case I would suggest the vote was indeed rigged, so much so that we will never be able to get close to winning ever again, whilst there are so many countries who don’t like the British.
Obviously I haven’t watched it for some considerable years, probably since the days of Bucks Fizz when we actually won but it is definitely time to pack up our toys and leave the playground.
From what I can gather the Europeans don’t like us and there is some spat going on with the Eastern Europeans who don’t like the folk from the Balkans, or something like that and I have no idea whether the Russians even take part, but I’m fairly certain they along with Israel who won some time ago are not even in Europe.
We can do better than this, walk away, walk away I say, turn our backs on the façade that pretends to be a song competition called Eurovision, walk with dignity and never look back.
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 