The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

Cavity

Todays daily prompt for The Daily Post is as you can see Cavity, which is a shame, for after two days flushed with pride at my previous blogs, which were both on topic and mildly amusing, someone now comes up with the word cavity!

I have to admit initially I was lost for words, well that’s not strictly true, to be precise I was lost for suitable words to use, the obvious ones which came to mind involved an attitude more akin to a late night comedy club and involved the word orifice.

Having Googled the word orifice it came up with the answer; an opening, particularly one in the body such as a nostril or the anus and had a list of synonyms which included hole, crack, slot, cleft, cranny and slit which took me straight back to a late night comedy script again.

I had printed the list of words off to study before committing them to my blog and when I went to my printer to pick them up I found a page which I had printed earlier. I thought it strangely ironic when viewing the pages that one was an item about Donald Trump and the other was the definition of an orifice.

Not to be beaten I then searched for cavity which brought up an entire page of items and rather unsavoury pictures of tooth decay and a description; an empty space within a solid object, which at that time rather described the space where my brain used to be.

At this point I was beginning to think of giving up but carried on viewing the synonyms for cavity which included space, chamber, hollow, hole and lastly orifice, whereupon I realised I had gone round in a large circle and finally disappeared up my own cavity and decided to call it a day.

This would have been so much easier had they chosen my suggestion for the prompt of the day, discombobulate, a word that has such a pleasant ring to it and involves no unseemly smuttiness whatsoever.

Stifle

When I saw the suggestion for today’s blog I was initially worried that it might stifle my creative talents but decided to persevere none the less.

Actually the word stifle has a couple of meanings, one of which is; to (cause to) be unable to breathe because you have no air, an example of which is, he stifled his victim with a pillow. I imagine perhaps the word suffocated would be the word more commonly used, but I have to admit stifling someone to death has a certain ring about it.

You can stifle a cough, a yawn, a scream, a sneeze, or indeed one can stifle one’s anger, which brings me nicely on to my next topic, text-speak, mostly used by the younger members of society, although it seems to be coming more popular with older people as time goes by.

Should anyone be so foolish as to send me a text-speak message I generally don’t stifle my anger and together with the wife spend considerable time attempting to translate it back into English.

Now I don’t wish to upset our American cousins, of whom there are vast numbers on the interweb, as we are alledgedly about to negotiate massive trade deals, the like of which has not been seen since Franklin D Roosevelt initiated the lend lease agreement in 1941. Obviously I’m hoping for a better outcome this time round as Great Britain was effectively bankrupt at the end of the war, perhaps we didn’t read the small print.

Which brings me on to the subject of the Americans and their ability to stifle the English language, mostly by leaving a considerable number of the letters out of the words and I have a theory as why this happened.

I imagine that when the Pilgrim Fathers first went to The Americas they were limited as to the amount of luggage they were permitted to take with them, rather like the budget airlines of today.

Their first permanent colony was in New England and was founded in 1620, however the first recorded dictionary was available in 1604 written by Robert Cawdrey a former Church of England clergyman and yet it seems they omitted to take one with them. Perhaps, laden as they were with Bibles they were unable to take a dictionary as it would have gone over their weight limit.

Had they managed to get their hands on a copy of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, the first definitive English dictionary published in 1775 things may have improved but I rather imagine that The American War of Independence which started in the same year may have put paid to that.

This is only my second go at this topic of the day but I’m finding it quite enjoyable, I may even try to enter a topic myself and the word I will suggest will be discombobulate, a rather splendid word certainly found in English dictionary’s and I certainly hope also in the American ones too.

Inkling

I came across a page which was encouraging bloggers to blog on a daily basis and to take part in writing whereby a topic was suggested and one merely had to write on the subject supplied, all very easy it would appear.

However as with most things to do with computers and the interweb I had an inkling that it was going to be a tad more complicated and as it turned out I was correct.

I am of an age when we had no computer training at school, I don’t think we even had access to a typewriter, let alone a computer, so my knowledge of such things has been gained by trial and error, mostly error!

There are quite a few pages as to how to take part with instructions to set up pingbacks on your blog which seemed to involve going up your back passage to set these things up, needless to say having searched for some considerable time I could find no information of any use with regard to pingbacks whatsoever.

It seemed I would be encouraged to create a link to another blog and I know this will sound ridiculous to those of you who are computer literate but I’m having a devils own job of being able to find the blogs of other people, let alone connect with them.

Whilst I know I come across as a complete Luddite this is not the case, I am only to happy to embrace modern technology, however here is a suggestion for the clever clogs who write the computer programs. When you click on a subject in an article, pingbacks for example, it might be of more use for the next page which appears to say briefly,”do you wish to enable pingbacks, if so click here”. This to me would make considerably more sense than reams of gobbledegook which mean absolutely nothing to the likes of myself and I suspect quite a few other interweb users of a certain age.

I have copied and pasted a piece of text which I came across before starting my blog which seemed relevant to the task in hand but wouldn’t stake my life on it being of any use whatsoever. As I stated at the beginning of this blog, I had an inkling that this was not going to be easy and I am just about to find out as I press the publish button, more in hope than expectation.

Should I by some miracle have managed to connect with anyone out there please don’t hesitate to contact me with the good news, I wait with bated breath.

Allegedly some booksellers have removed David Walliams books from sale and yet on what grounds are they doing this I am forced to wonder.

David Walliams was paid to compere the Presidents Club Charity event and like any professional actor, he did his job and then went home, having not seen any of the alleged sleazy goings on which were supposed to have taken place.

Would the booksellers who have removed his books from sale have taken the same action had Mr Walliams been taking part in a West End play, where after the curtain call gentlemen had started to grope female members of the theatre staff? An unlikely scenario but none the less virtually the same set of events alleged to have happened at The Presidents Club charity event.

We live in very strange times, where people are being treated as guilty before any evidence has been produced and seemingly sometimes on the word of one person, actors are being black balled and replaced in films before any shred of evidence has been produced. Whatever happened to Innocent until proven guilty, the cornerstone of any civilised legal system.

It seems quite unusual that the media has, as yet not produced any photographic evidence of the alleged ungentlemanly conduct, this in an age when everyone films everything. When, for example a terrorist attack takes place and people are in danger of losing their lives, rather than run for safety they stop and film it to upload later, on a social media site, assuming they survive.

The same can be said for accidents at sea or aircraft crashes where, for example the obvious thing to do is get on the lifeboat as fast as possible, not stand about filming adding a voice-over,”we’re all going to die”.

I’ve always found it rather bizarre that people would film their breakfast or lunch before eating it, although I suppose it would be more strange if they took a film of the toilet bowl the next day together with the caption, “here’s what I ate yesterday”. The way things are going it would never surprise me if people do start to do a before and after shot of their daily food intake.

I was going to comment on this when the story first broke but thought I would wait until there was proof of the goings on, but as yet there seems to be no evidence available and I’m not sure what conclusions I can draw from this.

Firstly we have to assume, there is no evidence for in this day and age, surely if there was anything, by now the media would have found it.

Very few of the women employed as hostesses have complained, which leaves us with the fact that basically this whole story hangs on the word of an undercover journalist.

It is unfortunate that we live in a snowflake culture, whereby people get offended on behalf of others, I have no idea if this is the crux of the matter and the whole story has been blown out of all proportion by an over sensitive female journalist.

I look forward to some real evidence being produced so we can get down to the facts of the matter and see who is really telling the truth of this event.

Naomi Parker Franley who was the inspiration for the Rosie the Riveter poster which was one of Americas most iconic images and an enduring symbol of feminists died on Saturday aged 96.

The “We Can Do It” poster was by Pittsburgh artist J Howard Miller and was based on a photograph of a woman standing at a lathe and was published by many magazines but was never captioned. Millers poster was only displayed in house at Westinghouse electric plants only becoming iconic years later.

Geraldine Doyle who was a metal presser at a Michigan industrial plant thought she was the woman in the original photograph and over time her claim to being the woman in the photograph became widely accepted.

That was until James Kimble an associate professor of communication at Seton Hall University in New Jersey started to research the poster. Obviously Mr Kimble was very tenacious as he searched for six years for a version of the photograph with a caption.

Finally he found another image of Parker Franley and via a reverse image search he managed to trace it to a vintage newspaper with a caption which said. “Pretty Naomi Parker looks like she might catch her nose in the turret lathe she is operating”. “The women wore safety clothes instead of feminine frills and the girls don’t mind- they’re doing their part”. “Glamour is secondary these days”.

Naomi went to work at the Naval Air Station in Alameda and it was there in the workshop that the photograph was taken for the Acme photo agency.

Parker Franley had seen the famous poster and did think it looked like herself but didn’t connect it with the photograph of her taken earlier at her lathe.

Eventually Miller managed to trace Naomi and informed her that her earlier photograph was the inspiration for the famous Rosie the Riveter poster.

Well done Naomi, well done Rosie the Riveter, both icons.

Oxfam has just came out with a report which reveals that 82 percent of wealth generated last year went to the richest 1 percent and I have to say I’m not entirely surprised.

It seems that billionaires fortunes grew by £585 billion and whilst I couldn’t have come up with an exact figure I would have hazarded a guess that they had acquired more wealth. I am basing my guess on the fact that although I am not exactly on my uppers at the moment, my wealth has not greatly increased, the poor never have any money and so by a process of elimination, somebody must have got their hands on more.

Rather surprisingly it seems that 42 people now have the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent. 61 people, literally have the same as half of the worlds population. The three richest people in America have the same wealth as the bottom half of the country, some 160 million people, which you have to admit is quite an incredible set of figures.

A third of billionaire wealth is inherited and it is estimated that over the next twenty years, five hundred of the wealthiest people will pass over £1.73 trillion to their heirs, I’m sure I must be related to one of them.

Oxfam has said that it is unacceptable for our economies to continue to enable a tiny percentage of the super rich to accumulate enormous wealth when hundreds of millions of people are struggling to survive at all.

There are of course many rich people who in a spirit of philanthropy give away millions which at first glance seems very generous but when you work it out is no more generous as a percentage of their wealth, than us putting a couple of pounds in a charity tin.

Should this carry on there will surely be a revolution, the inequality is too great to justify and I’m tempted to join in when it starts as I’m not averse to redressing the balance and grabbing a few pound for myself.

Unfortunately I’m rather afraid that when the revolution starts, rather than grabbing something for myself it will be me and other people like me who will be at the gates of our property fighting off the hoards. The simple reason for this will be the fact that no-one will be able to get at the super rich as they will be aboard their luxury yachts in the middle of the ocean.

I don’t want to appear greedy but I do wish to hang on to what little I do have so I would like to encourage the worlds politicians to endeavour to adjust the tax system a little in favour of not only those at the very bottom, but those struggling in the middle too.

I have mentioned before that I wouldn’t be averse to going back and getting some acting work, I do however, should there be a revolution, draw the line at building a barricade at my gates and re-enacting scenes from Les Miserables, if at all possible.

What a strange thing time is, it always goes too quickly, there is never enough of it and yet when trying to recall things that have happened during the passing of time, to me, at least, it always seems like it was yesterday until you look at the date the event took place.

For some peculiar reason the thought came into my head that on 11th November of this year it will be one hundred years since the end of World War One and yet whilst it may not seem like yesterday, one hundred years ago seems an awfully long time ago.

My grandfathers took part in World War One and my father took part in World War Two and yet now we are hard pushed to find anyone who is still alive who participated in World War Two, proving the old adage, my how time flies.

My concept of time is abysmal, although it’s really only the time that has passed rather than the time that is currently happening that I have trouble with. Like most older people I am never late, mostly because I always allow plenty of time to get anywhere, unlike the youth of today who never allow enough time and rely on the fact that they have a telephone with which they can phone to communicate the fact that they will be late.

According to Wikipedia, time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future and who can argue with that.

Well it seems quite a few people would argue and have all sorts of suggestions as to what time can do. Myself I would quite like to have the ability to turn back time, not to regain my youth but to go back to the day when I first put a cigarette in my mouth and lit the damn thing.

My friends and I had gone on our bicycles to the forest and had bought some cigarettes on the way and having lit the thing I was at first taken aback by how awful it tasted, then by how dizzy it made me feel and lastly how sick it made me feel. However I persevered and over a period of time I managed to become an addict requiring eighty a day to satiate my habit.

It would be wonderful to be able to return to that day and have the guts to say “no thanks, these things are bloody awful”, however in those days when everybody smoked, peer pressure won the day.

There comes a time when your grandparents and your parents have all died, it does make you aware that you are the next one in the firing line and whilst not wishing to turn back time or stop it completely, perhaps slowing it a little wouldn’t go amiss.

Whilst accepting it will be my turn next, I am hoping that whatever I should die of doesn’t involve a long and protracted death.

I am reminded of the old joke of the fellow who said “I want to die like my father, quietly in his sleep, not like the passengers on his bus, screaming and shouting in fear of their lives”.

Apparently there are some three million people taking part in Dry January which is not a month for people to avoid rainfall but thirty one days to avoid alcoholic beverages, just the thought of it is enough to make you rush for a drink.

The thought of joining the Temperance movement is not one that I often have I must admit, I’m sure avoiding intoxication for a month would have a beneficial effect on my body although not perhaps on my mind.

Alcohol, even in moderation very soon becomes part of one’s daily ritual and I have to admit I can’t remember the last day I didn’t have a drink. There comes a time in every day when the clock hits lager o’clock and I find myself cracking a few tins until I finally drink the last one as a nightcap.

It seems worse when written down but to be brutally frank with you, dear reader, I have just realised the time and have started my first can of the evening.

There are, it seems, many benefits to taking the pledge, or going on the wagon as they say, the derivation of which allegedly stems from either, prisoners going to jail being allowed one drink before being put on the wagon and taken away and incarcerated, or not drinking because you were travelling on the water wagon.

Should one manage to partake in the Dry January experience, it is said, you will have more money, visibly better skin and not experience a hangover, although if you’re a regular drinker you rarely experience a hangover anyway.

Apparently alcohol dehydrates the body which may explain the feeling when it gets to lager o’clock, when one needs to take on board fluids to offset the dehydration.

The only two things which would encourage me to give up alcohol are the benefits to my liver, which in as little as two weeks will start to repair itself, assuming one believes you have drunk sufficient to damage it in the first place and the benefits to my waistline which could definitely be improved upon.

Having seriously considered taking part in Dry January I have drawn up a list with the pro’s on one side and the con’s on the other. My list on the pro’s side has healthy skin, healthy liver, more money, no hangover, better waste-line, no dehydration, and generally all round better health. Unfortunately it seems all these benefits are outweighed by the con’s side which contains the word lager.

Maybe next year.

It has been suggested that the easy solution to the shortage of houses is to build more houses, now I’m not involved in town planning but this solution seems to be a tad simplistic to me.

There seems to be conflicting evidence where the shortage of houses are concerned as I can’t see much point in building swathes of new housing if no-one can afford to buy the things.

Apparently it takes the average Londoner 14.5 times their annual salary to buy a home which means they haven’t a hope in hell of buying a house, unless of course they forgo their expensive foreign holidays, new lease cars every year, meals out on a regular basis, and expensive electrical equipment, new computers, wide screen televisions and the like.

Rather interestingly when the Queen was born in 1926 the average house in Britain cost £619 whereas today it is just above £290,000 which doesn’t seem that expensive.

Surprisingly a pint of milk would have cost the equivalent of 1.3p in 1926 which had it risen in line with property prices would now cost £612.57 which would make a cup of tea  quite an expensive beverage, although like most MP’s, I personally couldn’t tell you what the price of a pint of milk is to save my life.

It has been predicted that if house prices rise at the rate of 6.7% which has been the average over the last 23 years, that on Prince Charles 90th birthday in 2038 the average house will cost nearly £1.3 million.

Assuming this to be the case it will be rather like the days before World War Two in Germany where money had reached such a worthless figure that you had to cart it around in a wheelbarrow to have enough to buy a loaf of bread.

Now to the point of my blog which relates to countryside matters, there is a new development of houses some two or three miles from where we live that has just started and I have to admit to being a little bit of a NIMBY where this development is concerned.

I was somewhat surprised to find the development has been given planning permission on farm land and was for some one thousand two hundred houses which is bigger than the two villages between us and the new houses.

Building work has started and they have erected traffic lights on the quiet country road causing considerable hold ups already,Lord knows what it will be like when it gets properly into it’s stride.

One of the great joys I found upon moving to the countryside was the ability to get around at what seemed like the speed of light compared to the town from which I came and already I can see this ebbing away, I’m not happy!

I seem to have become more of a country person than I realised, although it’s too late to get out with a placard declaring I do not want this in my back yard.

The only saving grace is the fact that these houses will help to swell the housing stock to such an extent that they will be virtually giving them away which means all our children will be able to purchase houses which will be worth millions in the not too distant future.

Oh, and the other plus must be the precedent set by this development on farm land, as my wife just happens to own a farm where our daughter keeps her horses  and I’m wondering how many houses can you get on the piece not used by the horses, after all the farm is sufficiently far away for it to be, not in my back yard!

As a man I must say I have never knowingly used a product containing micro beads and I would suggest this would be fairly typical of the vast majority of men who’s facial cleanliness usually goes as far as a wash with soap and a quick shave.

I can honestly say that to my knowledge I have never exfoliated my face nor any other part of my body with any form of body scrub which leaves us with the inevitable conclusion that the vast majority of plastic micro beads in the ocean must have therefore been put there by women.

How the rest of the estimated 12 million tons of plastic deposited into the sea every year get there is beyond me.

It is suggested by Greenpeace that when plastic waste is transported to landfill sites it can be at risk of escaping into the environment and even when it’s it’s in landfill plastic is at risk of blowing away and ending up in rivers or oceans.

To say I was slightly gobsmacked by the revelation that plastic blows away when it’s at the landfill site, what on earth is it doing at a landfill site let alone being allowed to escape from said site?

Why do I painstakingly segregate all my plastic rubbish making sure as much as possible is deposited in the green recycling bin if all they do with it is dump it near the sea and wait for it to blow away, they could cut out the middle man and just dump it straight in the sea in the first place.

Greenpeace have also suggested a considerable amount of plastic enters the sea from holidaymakers visiting beaches and leaving their bottles and food packaging etc on the sand directly contributing to plastic getting into the ocean.

Now I don’t consider myself to be particularly Green but I have never gone on a beach or any other tourist beauty spot and spent the day there and upon leaving have not taken my rubbish with me, nor for that matter have I ever noticed any others leaving their rubbish, perhaps I only go to the tourist sites where the well mannered people go.

Obviously the oceans are full of plastic but the Greenpeace explanation as to how it got there seems a little flawed, now I live in the country and it would seem from their description that the place should be awash with plastic detritus blowing like tumbleweed when the most I see is the occasional beer can discarded on our front lawn by a passing late night reveller walking home from the pub.

I think I may have a solution for this problem, when I collect and sort my plastic rubbish and place it in the green recycling bin be so kind as to take it away and recycle it, do not put it in land fill, do not allow it to blow willy nilly from said site into the ocean,  I think this could help alleviate the problem, I didn’t think it was rocket science.