Europe Under Siege

From Africa, from the Middle East, and from parts of Asia, they come in their thousands. By boat, by train, by car and on foot, with no invitation and nowhere to go they come week after week. A human tide of migrants and refugees pouring into Europe looking for salvation and a better life. 

Some are genuine refugees from war and strife and others are merely economic migrants, taking this opportunity to merge in with the rest that are fleeing for their lives. By so doing they don't need passports or identity cards, just the clothes they're standing in. Their hope is that force of numbers will enable them to overcome all obstacles and enter where otherwise they would have been sent back lacking as they do any papers.

Hundreds and hundreds of them have already perished at sea attempting the crossing of the Mediterranean, others on land in the back of lorries, but they still come undaunted, convinced that thus may be their only chance before the doors close as more and more European countries take action to limit the incomers.

Many will indeed be taken in and many others corralled until a decision on their future can be taken, and many of these will be returned to their countries of origin. Many of those may well make further attempts to get back into Europe and some may succeed, it's hard to know. Their need makes them obstinate and bold and even foolhardy and they no longer fear the police or border guards.

I suppose the question to be asked is how many migrants and refugees can Europe take? Certain countries, such as France, Germany and Great Britain, already have large immigrant populations, sections of which have never really integrated, let alone been assimilated. The migrants are overwhelmingly black Africans, Arabs, and Asians, most of them Muslim, and the countries they're making for are overwhelmingly white and Christian and with very different cultures, all potential points of conflict. But the migrants have little care for this and they keep coming, and the more that are taken in the more are encouraged to try their luck. 

When the flow of wretched humanity will come to an end no-one knows and in the meantime Europe is at a loss as what to do. Send them back is easier said than done and may be condemned on ethical grounds, but to let them all in, hundreds of thousands, may well destabilise Europe and create social unrest and upheaval, a terrifying prospect. That is the last thing that is wanted. But when people feel threatened by large numbers of incoming foreigners, so different in their looks, speech and faith, they become less tolerant and more resentful and often there is a violent backlash from them. That is a normal reaction.

I may come back to this in the ensuing days as this human tragedy unfolds, as it is unlikely to end anytime soon and there may be worse to come.

A Day Called 'Frustration'!

You know those days in one's life when hardly anything goes the way you want and when you wonder why you bothered to get out of bed in the morning. They are not tragic days or days of great sadness, and in terms of serious setback they rank very low and I would not even pretend they come anywhere near, but they do end up with you trying to pull your hair out and fuming as you stomp around in less than righteous anger at the frustrations of that day. Well, I had one such day a little while back and this was it:

 

I decided after lunch on that day that I would take a break from my work to get a long-overdue haircut. I work for myself, so in theory I can do this anytime. I stress the 'in theory', as it's seldom that straightforward, but alright, it's nothing out of the ordinary.

 

As I was on the point of leaving the house the phone rings and, not wanting to lose a possible job, I answer it. However, the caller drones on and, though it is about a possible job, it does not result in anything and I put the receiver down, irritated at the needless delay it has caused me.

 

On checking my change, I find I don't have enough cash to pay the barber and there's nothing for it but to make a stop at a cash dispenser in the high street to withdraw a few readies.

 

So I drive off to the high street where all the cash machines are, but, as luck would have it, I cannot find a parking-place even after two passes down the length of the street and I am forced to use the local car park where I have of course to pay a parking charge and then walk all the way back to the nearest dispenser.

 

On arrival at the nearest dispenser I see a message on the screen informing me that it is out of service. As it's starting to get a bit late in the afternoon, I decide to phone my barber and find out what time he will be closing on that day, as he is in his late sixties, works alone and closes earlier than the normal business hours. However, as try to make a phone call, I find that my mobile phone is switching off at each attempt and I realise it's out of charge and that I cannot use it.

 

With little cash, no working phone, I decide to drive to the nearby supermarket where I can do a quick shop and get some cash-back at the till and then head for my barber's in the hope that he hasn't yet shut up shot.

 

At the supermarket, madness befalls me and I take a large trolley which requires a refundable fee before it will be released and, still gripped by some sort of lunacy, I make for the gardening section to load up with a bumper-size bag of compost, only to find there isn't any of the supermarket's usual, just smaller bags twice the price, and so as my blood begins to boil I drop that and content myself with a couple of items which I didn't really need anyway but which will enable me to get cash-back at the till.

 

I join the queue at a cash-desk - well, when I say queue, it's composed solely of one little old lady - and when the moment of payment arrives she asks for a cash-back of £50, the maximum. When my turn comes I too ask for cash-back but I am duly informed that that is the last bit of cash available for the day and that instead I can use the cash dispenser in the supermarket, which is what I do, realising at the same time that I could have done that in the first place and not bothered with the handful of groceries. But there you are, we are always wise after the event or at least we are not to know that at the time.

 

By now, of course, it's getting late and I realise it's too late to go for my haircut, as I will have to pay to park and the chances are that the shop will already be closed, so I decide to admit defeat and leave it for today. There can surely not be two days like this one in the same week, can there? My laughable ill-fortune is however not over for the day. There is more to come to crown it all and assure my complete frustration!

Before returning home, however, I drop by the petrol-station to fill up. On arrival there, all the pumps are busy and so I join the queue to await my turn. Eventually my turn comes and, having filled up, I go into the shop to pay and join another queue there. On coming back out, I see an uninhabited wilderness before me: not a single car to be seen on the forecourt and all the pumps available for use. It seems the congestion only occurred for my benefit and once I had been through the mill everything cleared up again. Nevertheless, to disprove this cockamamie theory of mine I decide to linger at the forecourt for a moment and see when the next car comes. After waiting in vain for some time, with the forecourt still deserted of all life and with my theory of my supernatural persecution confirmed, I start up the car and just as I am heading out I spot in my rear-view mirror one car and then another entering the forecourt. Theory empirically proven!

The final indignity comes when I get home and realise that I have forgotten to collect my anti-cholesterol pills from the self-same supermarket in which I had been earlier on in an attempt to get some cash for the barber's. As I'm too drained of energy by now and weakened by frustration, I decide it is best left for tomorrow when, hopefully, Sod's Law will have eased up and allow me to get something done. Today nothing can be done, at least not without maximum frustration and loss of the will to live!

This has been a day to forget. Over and out....

Into the New Year...

We're well into another year, 2013, and for the superstitious the 13 on the end may not be too welcome, but could it be worse than the last year, or, come to that, the last few years with all economic crisis and all the doom and gloom that accompanies it? We'll see, and we haven't long to wait. By all accounts, it's more of the same and so far doesn't look very different, but let's be fair and give it a chance, it may surprise us.

After the Christmas festivities and the emotions of New Year's Eve, the entry of the New Year can only be an anticlimax. I had hoped we might get some snow around Christmas, but it was not to be. Last year it came in February and was substantial and made up for none around Christmas. Weather patterns have changed quite a bit since I was a boy and the seasons seem to have shifted. But why should the weather not change over the years, everything else has!

The world today is a very different one from that just 2-3 decades ago, and if we go back a little further it's like being on another planet! Thanks to scientific discovery and technological invention our world is in constant rapid change, with computers and mobile phones and other electronic devices leading the way and transforming our lives for better or worse. Either way, we have no control over these developments and we strive to at least keep up with them, not always with success. But there seems to be no other way to go even if we wanted to.

As our world around us changes, we too change with the advancing years. Some of us change in tandem with the changes going on around us and some of us lag behind, the gap growing wider with each successive technological innovation and new way of functioning in an ever more complicated society. I know that as electronic gadgets and devices become ever more advanced and supposedly easier and more intuitive, instead of simplifying things for me they complicate my life. The phone and the computer which were so easy to use once upon a time now require a lot of concentration and effort from me, as they are so replete with functions and options that I hardly know what I'm doing anymore. Even what seems to be a straightforward list of options presented to me becomes an almost insurmountable barrier of proposed new changes that leaves me spoilt for choice but confused for the same reason, so I tick one box and hope it's the right one for me!

Well, we've had the snows, the cold frosty weather, the icy winds, the flooding rains, the gradual thaw, and now in mid-February things have warmed up a little, but there's no guarantee that the sudden onset of mild weather will take us into spring. Many times before we've had worse weather as we've gone into March and April, and there have been years where we did not get any consistent warm-to-hot temperatures till July! From this you will deduce that here in the United Kingdom the weather is highly changeable and unpredictable from day to day, hence the reason we Brits talk about it so much and have made it our number one topic of conversation calculated to bore the pants of any non-Briton! But there you have it - it is what it is and has made us what we are and this isn't likely to change for several millennia to come when there might occur a massive meteorological upheaval. 

And this is where I finally conclude this post which has gone on for rather longer than I had anticipated and has been revisited various times by me over several weeks in an attempt to complete it before the end of this year and the advent of a new year, namely 1914! 

An astronomer and a gentleman

A few days ago I was saddened to hear of the passing-away of Sir Patrick Moore (aged 89), astronomer and broadcaster extraordinaire, who, among many other pursuits and accomplishments, was best known for hosting his flagship tv programme 'The Sky at Night' for a record 50 years plus. It is not my intention to list his many talents and achievements, these can easily be ascertained on the Web and elsewhere. The point of this post of mine is simply to record his passing and his significance for me.

In a way, Patrick Moore bears a similar relationship to me in my later adolescent and early adult years as did  the comic books I read in my childhood years (see 'Death of a comic book'). He represented a particular phase of my life which left its indelible mark on me. Through his programme he contributed to arousing in me a strong interest in astronomy which led me to read books on the subject and eventually, when I had the money for it, to buy a decent refractor telescope so I too could survey the heavens and identify cosmic bodies. 

Patrick Moore was perhaps the last of a dying breed of gentlemen scholars and amateur enthusiasts: eccentric but not over the top, enthusiastic but not ostentatious, passionate but not exaggerated, meticulous but not pedantic. I suppose the word that best describes him and which appears here more than once is 'enthusiastic'. And his enthusiasm was contagious to all those who had an interest in his field of expertise. He had the knack of carrying his viewer or listener along at a fast pace and of holding his attention right to the end. And by the end of his programme one always felt that one had learnt something.

With his monocle, rapid speech, single-mindedness and rather sedate manner of dressing, Patrick Moore may have looked every bit the part of the absent-minded and unkempt professor but he was certainly not absent-minded, rather very quick-witted, and his ungroomed appearance betokened a man more interested in sharing his field of expertise and his enthusiasm with his public and his followers than in preening himself! With Patrick Moore, you got what you saw and the impression I got was of a very genuine man absorbed in his subject and eager to share his knowledge with us.

The very little I have written above hardly does justice to the man but I have tried to portray the essence of the man in a few words and convey the place he held in my esteem and the part he played in my life as a teenager and a young adult. Later in life I got caught up in the maelstrom of adult life and all the responsibilities that come with it, but from time to time I would tune in to his programme late at night and somehow it was a comforting feeling knowing that he was there as always. Now that he's gone, it won't be the same without him, and I will miss the old soldier! 

Farewell, Patrick, Gentleman Scholar, may you rest in peace among the planets and stars in the heavens which were your playground since your boyhood years!

Death of a comic book

And so it is that on its 75th birthday the Dandy comic, which saw the light of day in 1937, has now passed away as a tangible palpable paper publication and has migrated to the Internet to exist only in the ether, in cyberspace, for those who are still interested in its brand of humour.

Its sister publication, the Beano, born a year later in 1938, ironically on the eve of World War II, still hangs on for dear life, having recently been granted a reprieve, whilst the Topper and the Beezer, later arrivals, also issuing from the DC Thomson stable, in 1955 and 1956 respectively, long gave up the ghost and were consigned to the comic book graveyard in the sky in 1993. I doubt that it will be long before the Beano goes the way of the Dandy. Still, unlike their two former bedfellows, they will still be available online, for now, and it remains to be seen what their eventual fate will be.


For me personally, these four humorous comics (for, despite their name, not all comic books are humorous, witness many of the American super-hero publications and others), accompanied my childhood and played an important part in entertaining me. Every week I would traipse off to my local newsagent's to collect them, but, as they did not all come out on the same day and I was impatient to have them as soon as I could, I often did not wait for all of them to be saved for me by the newsagent and would have to make more than one weekly trip before I had them all. But I did not mind and even relished the trip to the newsagent's and the anticipation that built up inside me.

These were the comic books that injected laughter and mirth into my childhood years and that preceded in my life such DC Comics as Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and The Flash, to name a few, which engrossed my early adolescent years. I would spend many a moment chuckling to myself as I read the antics of such iconic characters as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, the Bash Street Kids, Roger the Dodger, and Lord Snooty. Some of the others worth a mention were Desperate Dan, Biffo the Bear, The Three Bears, Little Plum, Ball Boy, Ivy the Terrible, and Billy Whizz. No doubt there were others which do not come to mind at the moment.

By the time the Beezer and the Topper were in financial straits and had to be merged into one between 1990 and 1993, the year of their demise, I was very much grown up (!), and I don't now even recall hearing about the merger at the time. Given my 'advanced' years, I had long ceased to read any comics and, as it was still the pre-Internet era (indeed the pre-desktop pc era), I was busying myself in my spare time reading factual books, composing poetry and trying my hand at painting. The comics of my childhood were reaching the end of the line and I was no longer part of their world, and it seems the children who were buying them were dwindling rapidly, as they defected to other publications more in tune with the changing world. They had become too innocent for the 1990s generation of children who now needed more realistic comic books to feed and fire their imagination... I guess. 

I suppose these developments and demises were to be expected and had been on the cards for some time. Very few things last very long in our modern world of constant change and renewal, where tastes and fashions come and go as swiftly as they never did before in this society of the fleeting and the transient. Now we live on a diet of instant impressions and overnight successes, and the thirst for more and bigger stimuli to keep us from getting bored consumes our lives. And yet, I can't help thinking that the simple comics of my childhood left a more lasting impression and a deeper mark in my psyche than all the wealth of clever novelties, gimmicks and innovations ever will before I too check out of this life.  

The Dandy, the Beano, the Topper and the Beezer, became my constant companions as soon as I was able to read, and together with such other pastimes as marbles, picture cards, toy soldiers, yo-yos, train sets, and stamp-collecting (philately), they filled my out-of-school hours and provided me with the stimulus and fun that I needed without all the mad intensity of today's electronic games and the vagaries of computers that seem to complicate our life today rather than simplify it in spite of all the nonsense spouted by their purveyors. And all these pastimes and hobbies were all the more important as the monochrome television of the time was still very much in its infancy and did not provide the interest, variety and stimulation which it now does with its multiplicity of channels and the huge flat-panel screens that try to mimic the big cinema screen experience.

My childhood world was one consisting of hands-on experience and I interacted directly with the tangible environment around me, not with a cyber world that can only be experienced indirectly. Was this better? I think it was for me the child but I will not press the point. In any case, it is now an academic one in this world of electronic this and electronic that which promises everything but which delivers much less. What I can say for sure is that in the grey post-war world of my tender years, these four comic books introduced a good bit of colour and laughter and amusement which made all the difference, and for that at least I am forever grateful to them and saddened at their demise or banishment to the Internet.

The 'Houses' of my School

I have little recollection of my time at primary school, whether in the infants or juniors, which feels like a century ago, but I do remember a fair amount of my years at secondary school (which nevertheless also feels like a century ago). 

One of the features that really stands out about my secondary school was the five 'houses' of allegiance into which the pupils were divided. Each of these houses was headed by its own Master who usually presided over the morning house assemblies (always religious) that took place there 3 to 4 times a week, when there was no general assembly in the main hall taken by the Headmaster or Deputy Head Master (these titles had not yet been changed to the new genderless title of 'head teacher' for political correctness). 

The names and associated colours of the various houses were as follows:-

Brunel (blue): Named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel (9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859), the English mechanical and civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.



Fleming (green): Named after Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He also wrote many penetrating articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy.


Rutherford (red): Named after Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937), a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He is considered the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867). He did a lot more besides and his accomplishments and accolades were considerable, but what's more to the point here is that this was the House I was allocated to when I was admitted to the school and I stayed there right to the end. And after all these years I still recall the name of my House Master, one Wynn Owen, a true-blue Welshman of impeccable morals (though this did not stop him from using corporal punishment on his young charges, a common practice in those days).


Stephenson (yellow): Named after George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848), an  English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. Renowned as being the "Father of Railways", the  Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. His rail gauge of 4 feet 8¹⁄₂ inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge.

Telford (white): Named after Thomas Telford (1757–1834), a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. He designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and bridges, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads, and in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.



These were the Houses of allegiance at my school and to indicate our respective House we wore the appropriately coloured ribbon sewn across the top of our blazer pocket which bore the emblem or badge of our school. At the time I had little idea who were the men after whom the Houses were named, not because we hadn't been told but because we paid scant attention to such things at our young age. Now of course I see things differently and, having watched many tv documentaries on great men of the past, I know more about them and my curiosity has been awakened, for these were great men indeed who changed the face of our world with their discoveries, inventions and creations. 

I'm glad that my school chose great men of science and technology to represent our 'Houses', worthy men dedicated to their specialist field, men with a vision, men who revolutionised our lives and our surroundings, men who put Britain squarely on the map of greatness. But that was then, and this is now, and today endless fawning adulation is lavished on pop idols, piss artists, footballers and shallow celebrities who love to love themselves and be loved by everyone. So perhaps today the school's houses of allegiance would be given the names of media celebrities, overpaid footballers and movie stars instead of truly great men of inquiry and dedication to a cause higher than themselves. Times have certainly changed.

The Olympic Flame for the London games was round our way yesterday, so I decided to down tools, so to speak, and go out and meet it. I would never have the opportunity to do this again in my lifetime and so I convinced myself that it was worth the effort. Certainly the hot sunny weather left me with no excuse not to do it, unless of course I were to make a case for it being too hot and therefore too exhausting! Well I didn't.

I headed out of the house, using Shank's pony,  just after 3pm, at a leisurely pace, crossing the park nearby and making for the high street. Half way there  I regretted not having taken any water with me, as the walk and the exposure to the sun was already making me thirsty. But never mind, it was all in a good cause. What cause, do I hear you whisper? Why, my cause of course! The cause of my seeing the Olympic Flame, as I've said at the start of this piece.



On reaching the high street I merged into the flow of people that were making their way to the road through which the Flame was expected to pass. Within minutes I was there and milling about in the crowd already lining the road on both sides. As was to be expected, there was an overwhelming preponderance of mothers and their darling little sprogs and after spending a little time on one side of the road, I decided to cross over to the other side where, I judged, I would be in a better position to follow the Flame.

Big mistake! I came out of the shade on one side of the road and entered the other shadeless side where the sun shone on us relentlessly. However, I was now there and couldn't be bothered to go back. Soon the advertising lorries were parading past, and our eyes were regaled with the sight of Coca-Cola, Samsung and Lloyd's TSB, among others, a truly unforgettable sight! Aboard them were young people smiling and waving to us. So I waved back. As one does. 

The next moment someone on a loud-haler informed us that the Olympic Torch would be arriving in five minutes, at which point a loud cry went up from the crowd in anticipation, though my mouth remained resolutely shut, which helped to conserve body moisture, or so the theory goes. We all waited expectantly as the sun beat down on us. Because of the bend in the road, it was not possible to see far ahead, so we could only go by what our ears reported to us.

Then, as I was beginning to wonder where the flippin' flame was, I heard  loud cheers and clapping from the crowds just ahead and I realised that the the Olympic Torch was about to make its appearance. I whipped my camera out in readiness and took a few pics of the assembled throng and then waited for the 'apparition' I had come to witness. The next moment I espied police outriders gliding along and then, yes, there it was, held aloft in the hand of a runner who was coming towards us. Click, click, click, went the countless cameras, while other cameras, cellphones and camcorders recorded it all silently.

No sooner had the Torch appeared than it was passing us by and in one body we surged forward after it, still snapping and filming. I held the camera aloft as I went, trying to avoid heads that rose above me, and take pics of the flame instead. Tall people have a definite advantage here. On reaching the road junction, the runner stopped and another runner took over with his own torch, and then they were off again. And so were we! 

Round the corner we went and along the next road, where all traffic had been halted to let the runner go by. I followed part of the way but owing to the crowding and the distancing of the runner (whom it was difficult to follow at the same pace through the throng of people) I gave up further pursuit and turned back. After all, I had done what I came to do, namely to see the Olympic Flame and take a few pics of it. I was now tired and thirsty and a bit sweaty and it was time to go back home.

On the way, feeling in a bit of a celebratory mood, I availed myself of the local patisserie to get myself some honey-balls. And that was that, folks! I could at least say in years to come that I had been to see the Olympic Flame 'in the flesh'. Sounds much more exciting than it was but that's not my fault. I made sure I was there. The rest was not in my hands. 

“Give me a child until he is seven..."

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”

This Jesuit motto is the mantra of a television series in thee UK that has filmed a group of individuals every seven years from the age of seven in 1964 till the present day at the age of 56 and it looks likely to continue, which means that we will eventually face the prospect of the participants dying off one by one as they go into old age, including the producer, Michael Apted, and that’s when questions may well be asked as to whether it ought to go on. Whatever happens then, I do hope it will go on a bit further and accompany the chosen subjects well into their sixties. And if any pass away in the process, I suppose we could be there at their funeral, or at least speak with their friends and family about their lives. Having said that, your humble blogger is no spring chicken and may pop his clogs before any of the series participants do and not witness any of the attrition that will occur one day. This is real life, not a scripted tv drama.

For me it has been a fascinating and revealing series so far, witnessing every seven years both the visible physical changes in the subjects and the no-less obvious and natural changes in their mental development, but also, and just as fascinating, the changes taking place in the world around them. We start from a first black-and-white episode showing a truly suffocating dark and dismal environment and progress in subsequent episodes to a world of greater colour and light and growing optimism. The series develops in a very natural way as we follow the participants through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and on to what may now be termed their later years. Admittedly it is all in the form of brief snapshots, but it is nevertheless a potent window into the growing-up process, evolving society and a rapidly changing world.

Although the programme focused on a specific group of children, it is in a way about each and every one of us. Though the course of our own lives may differ somewhat from that of those individuals, the process is the same and the successive stages are the same and we see ourselves in those children as they pass through the various ages and stages of man. We have many common points with them and we recognise many of their experiences in our own. We witness their joys and sorrows, their successes and failures, their triumphs and defeats. The older we are, the more nostalgic we are about the early years, the years of our childhood, our youth, and the younger we are, the more we are intrigued to see how life is faced at an older age. We look back or we look forward and in both cases their life is a reflection of ours and ours of theirs.

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” But is this really so? It sounds good, has a good mystical ring to it, but if the series demonstrates one thing it is that this is so often not the case after all. Several of the participants have gone on to lead lives that we could not have imagined from seeing them at age seven. Some have had better and some worse lives as adults than we might have imagined. And some have been a real revelation. But all have been a slice of human lives at various stages and moments, divided into 7-year intervals, and I for one have been spurred to think long and hard about life and our journey from the cradle to the grave. We can do nothing about the one or the other, but we may do a great deal about the in-between. And that is what really matters in the end.

So now the seven-year-old children of 1964 are the fifty-six-year-old adults of 2012 and, if we are fortunate enough, we may hope to revisit them in another seven years’ time when they are sixty-three. By definition it is a process that cannot go on forever and it is already nearer to its end than its beginning, given the average human age-span, but so far it has been an intriguing and moving journey and for the moment it continues. I personally have learnt a lot from it in ways which are more to do with attitude, perception, approach and acceptance than any concrete practical skill or aptitude or technique. Being older than them by a few years, I have seen myself in them and recognised the grey grim world they were born into.

Seven Up has, as I've said, taken us through a large part of the cycle of life in seven-year leaps and by so doing it has set before us the reality or realities of life and an ever-changing world. It has shown us the hopes, dreams and aspirations of a representative group of individuals, and the many things that life throws at us all along the way. There is joy and sorrow there, happiness and sadness, triumph and tragedy, goodness and badness, and we can all identify with that and recognise ourselves in them and the scheme of things. If I am still around to see the next episode in 2019, I will do so… if only to say: "Their journey through life has reflected my own and the challenges they have encountered along the way have also been my own." The differences are only really in the detail.

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”  I’m not so sure about this, but whatever the truth of it, the contrast between us as children and us as adults, as poignantly witnessed in the Seven-Up series, is such a huge one that it is difficult to believe that we are the same individuals. And therein lies the fascination in the series. We see the child become the man, mentally and physically, and we are transfixed by the transformation. We note with astonishment the power of the years to transform us into something wholly different from what we were when we came into the world. The inexorable passage from cradle to grave - a journey that we all must make, in a life that may be short or long, happy or sad - is a truly gripping experience and must be the core reason why this documentary series has been so successful. It is I suppose a concrete witnessing of the flame of life that eventually and ineluctably weakens, falters and goes out and we thus pass into history. Sic transit gloria vitae.

Night Fright!

Do you ever wake in the middle of the night with an inexplicable feeling of uneasiness or anxiety, even downright anguish, a sort of 'existential angst', and, try as you might, you cannot get off to sleep again? Do black thoughts flood into your head and torment you in the blackness of night, in one form or another, effectively banishing further sleep? If this "nocturnal numbness" never happens to you, you're one of the fortunate few, of which alas I am not, in which case you need not read on. But if you're a fellow sufferer, then perhaps the following is more or less familiar to you.

Where am I?

The other night I awoke just after three in the morning in a somewhat confused and anxious state and, try as I might, I could not get back to sleep. It seems I had been having a rather heavy dreamlike experience, not exactly a nightmare, but one that I'd rather have done without and which must have instilled a certain uneasiness and disquiet in my subconscious that looks to have been the reason for my waking up all of a sudden in a state of some anxiety. I had a strange sense of being ethereal, disconnected from the world and out of touch with everyone, as though unable to retrieve my past and re-connect with people and events that had been part of my life.

So there I was, awake, nervous and apprehensive, with a deep sense of abandonment and aloneness (rather than loneliness) that precluded sleep but which demanded stimulation, both visual and auditory if I was to get over it. So what would most people do in such a situation? Turn to drink? Gulp down a few pills? Try and get themselves sexually aroused?Well, I did none of those: I just turned the telly on to good old BBC 24-hour news and sat back to absorb some of the world's goings-on to take me out of myself. And it was the usual merry mixture of civil unrest, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored massacres, natural disasters, gruesome murders, all-consuming arsons, high-level fraud, political scandal, economic chaos, drug wars, widespread deceit and deception and the like. Have I missed anything out? You can fill in the gaps for me. All in all it made a great way for me to forget my own sleep-induced desolation and despair.

Yes, all this misery and mayhem in the world managed to take my mind off my own less tangible fears and envelop me in a general feeling of revulsion at the state of the world which is never free of upheaval and unrest. Half way through my viewing or revulsion, if you prefer, I got up, went down to the kitchen, found some strawberries in the fridge and washed them down with pure orange-juice whilst listening to something silly on the radio. Back upstairs I siphoned the python, as they say (well some of us still do), and so with belly assuaged and bladder emptied, I got back down to calming the mind and the spirit, an enterprise not so easily achieved. It was back to the world news and a further serving of calamities and conflicts, followed by a review of the day's major international sports events. That's where I drew the line and turned the tv set off.

Where am I?

Having set the television screen on a red mood light that allowed me to faintly perceive my surroundings once the main light was off, I settled back down to re-enter the world of sleep. It was now more than an hour later, around 4.30 am, and being summer, it was already beginning to lighten outside and the dawn chorus had struck up: an ideal backdrop for me to drift off. I hate the dead silence and darkness of the night, and the faint glimmer of light and chirping of the birds were a welcome sight and sounds. 

Within a few short minutes I was in the arms of Morpheus, transported back to the land of Nod. With my night fright dispelled and my spirit calmed, I slept soundly, though I knew that it was not an isolated occurrence and was bound to recur soon enough. Fortunately, I had devised an effective means of combating it (thank God for BBC 24-hr news!) and having the remedy made me less frightened of the malady. 

When is a Drought Not a Drought?

That is the question that is exercising my mind at this moment: When is a drought NOT a drought? And the answer? When it's been raining nearly every day for three weeks! At least it's not what we normally understand by the term 'drought'.

Rainy drought conditions!

You see, my friends, ever since the "drought" was made official and a water hosepipe ban was put in place, as well as other restrictions on the use of water, heaven's sluice-gates have opened up and it has rained on us almost every day to some degree or other, which is just as well, really, as our gardens get watered at least during this extreme spell of dry weather!

And believe me, there's nothing worse than a wet drought! A dry drought I know how to deal with, but a wet drought... now that's a different thing altogether and the "rule-book" says nothing about that. How does one begin to tackle a wet drought? The Authorities tell you one thing and your senses witness another. Is the weather just being bloody-minded to wrong-foot meteorologists and hoodwink the rest of us or are we seeing contradiction where there is none?

As rainy conditions stop us from going into the garden to deal with the drought by chucking a few buckets of water over our more precious plants, we see all the vegetation really taking off with all this dry rain falling on us and before we know it we have a jungle to cut down!. What are we to do? Brave the rain to counter the drought or weather the drought and let the rain do its worst? Either way, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't! 

Could this be the future?

And to make matters worse, my confounded brolly gave up the ghost the other day before a sudden powerful gust when I was out and I was left helpless before a possible imminent downpour of drought-induced rain. Fortunately the drought held off till I was back home before unleashing its stores of rain. Now I'm brolly-less and can't find a shop that sells them. Cue to go online at Amazon and get one from there together with a pair of garden secateurs and perhaps a revamped mackintosh and some sort of cat repeller to stop cats pooping in my garden every day!



09.05.2012
It is three days later and the drought continues with more rain every day. Wet boggy ground and mud patches in gardens and parks are visual testimony to the cumulative effects of a watery drought. The hosepipe has become irrelevant as Nature is being kind to us and supplying in abundance what we may not obtain from the water companies. But the special drought restrictions continue and there's no sign yet of their ending. With dry weather like this, umbrella sellers will be doing a rip-roaring trade.

Should a period of real dry weather, not to say drought, come upon us one day soon, we'll need a new word to define it, given that drought now conjures up visions of constant wet and rainy weather! The only viable terms that come to mind at the moment are 'real-drought' or, 'drought-for-real' or better still 'dry-drought'. Yes, the last of these has a certain pleasant alliterative ring to it. We will have 'droughts' that are wet and then 'dry-droughts' that are true periods of dry weather. Bingo! Problem solved! And the English language is the richer for it.

I rest my case and spare the reader's patience.

Din among the Dead or No peace for those who rest in peace!

The other day I went to the cemetery to pay my respects at my mother’s grave, as I have done for many years now since she passed away, and what met my eyes and ears was, to put it simply, a scene of commotion and convulsion. For a city of the dead, there was a high level of activity going on, shattering the peace not only of the dead but of the living too. All around changes had been wrought in the landscape since my last visit there some weeks back, evidently to accommodate more dead persons within an area of land that had remained the same as the numbers of the dead had grown over the years; naturally, if there's one thing that the living never stop doing it's dying! That's why undertakers will never be out of a job. But I digress...

Entrance to the World of the Dead

The changes that had come about were so great that I hardly recognised the landscape around me. Since my mother had been laid to rest there in 1987, more and more land that up till then had been unused and unoccupied, covered in grass and trees, had had to be brought into use to accommodate more graves. When my dear mother went into the ground well before the biblical three score years and ten, the section of the cemetery she was buried in was only about half full, if that. Over the intervening years I have seen that section fill up with graves till it could take no more and I have then seen another site across the way and over to the right denuded of its vegetation and opened up for fresh graves. As that site too has spread and filled up, another patch, on higher ground immediately opposite the site where my mother is buried, has been commandeered for further graves. The turf has gone, the trees have been felled, and the grateful dead have moved in to populate it.  And so it has gone on. With every further visit of mine there, the necropolis before me is ever bigger, enhanced by an intake of many more deceased who have come to the end of a road that we all must take and which leads to the same place. Gosh, I wonder where I'll end up?!

But on this last visit of mine, there were major changes afoot, substantial reconstruction and expansion, re-alignments and fencing-off, upgrading of simple rustic paths into mini-roads, one-way systems, and embankments. Added to that was the ‘refurbishment’ of the Jewish section, with a stockade-like perimeter filled with thousands of stone fragments and encased in a wire enclosure around the perimeter wall. A long low edifice of marble, with rows of compartments that I supposed were ossuaries inside it, fronted by small glass doors and vigil boxes, that curved its way from the catholic section round to the orthodox section has sprung up - a veritable Roman-style structure that somehow looks out of place with its surroundings. There's been a newly enclosed area of sunken ground housing the very old graves which are still being preserved, perhaps because of their historical significance, I’m not sure. And new routes have been cut through the cemetery to accommodate the motor-car and avoid congestion; yes, folks, even in a graveyard there can be traffic jams!

Sunlight upon tree-shaded graves

With all this renovation and reconstruction going on, the landscape was peppered with diggers, trucks, cement-mixers and earth-moving equipment in general, all accompanied by an infernal din calculated to wake the dead and unhinge the living! The place was more a construction site than a place of rest, and with a funeral then taking place to boot, there was more activity and noise in the damn place than on any high street or school playground! The dead must have been turning in their graves! 

Anyway, I then did what I came to do. I lit a candle, after several abortive attempts thanks to a lusty wind blowing the match out each time, and positioned it in the vigil box, placed the flowers I had brought in various locations around the cross, re-arranged more neatly what was already there and generally tidied everything so that I left her grave neater and sprucer than I had found it. After a brief prayer, a few words of reverence and a moment of silence, I slowly moved off and made my way back to my car. A few minutes later I had left behind me this noisy bustling metropolis of the dead and was driving back home through… noisy bustling streets! I would be back soon, hopefully as a visitor still rather than as a resident (!), though who can be sure of anything  when one is no spring chicken anymore and has more reason to look back than forward! In life we are constantly aware of death but are never ready for it.


Rest in peace/Requiescat in pace, Mother... I've missed you, the time we had together was too short and your life too brief.

Easter and a Visit to the Barber's!

I was originally going to do a post about my three-monthly visit a couple of days ago to my barber’s who’s always talking dirty and telling me sick jokes (and who on this occasion nicked me just below the ear!), but then I thought that as Easter had caught up with me, it being Good Friday today, it would be more in keeping with the moment if I said something about the paschal season, though what exactly I’m not sure. Hey, that was an awfully long sentence!

I say it's Good Friday today but in literally a couple of minutes we lurch into Shopping Saturday and it's farewell Good Friday! So I've just made it. But now I've got to get my thoughts together and say something awesomely profound and thought-provoking about this specific moment in the year, second only to Christmas in this part of the world but superior to Christmas in other parts. It's really six of one and half-a-dozen of the other because if Jesus had not been born (Christmas) Christianity might never have come into existence. On the other hand, if Jesus had not become the Christ and then risen after being crucified, it could have had the same result again. So it's hard to decide which of the two is more important and perhaps there's no point in even trying to do so. Both conditions are indispensable for the outcome that we want and for Christianity to exist. 

My Barber

Have you ever wondered why the day on which our Lord was vilely abused, lashed, tortured, and cruelly put to death by crucifixion is called Good Friday? No, not the ‘Friday’ part, clever cloggs, the ‘Good’ part. I mean, what’s good about all that? Well, there are a couple of possible explanations and they're all available on the Internet, as is everything else, so don't expect me to waste valuable virtual paper and real time setting them out here. Just take a virtual trip to the virtual place that provides information on this... virtually! And remember: if it ain't virtual, it ain't real!


I could say that I went for a haircut so as to smarten up for Easter, and I'm half tempted to say that, but the truth of the matter is that my head of hair, though slightly thinner at the top than it was a few years ago, was taking over my head and face and I was beginning to look a bit like John the Baptist without the beard and moustache. At least I assume he had a beard and tache because we're led to believe they all had that in those distant days, especially the prophets (though not the women, I should add!), as it gave them an air of gravitas and wisdom and was also all the rage at the time. Apart from a few fugitives from the 1960s, who think that a long untidy mop of hair is still in fashion, most blokes nowadays are either purposely bald or have a number one haircut, which is the next best thing to a bald bonce! Of course one day they will all end up bald or as good as and won't have the option they have now, but it seems we never miss it till we've lost it.

But coming back to the Easter theme, Holy Week doesn't seem to deter killers and terrorists from going about their usual business of... well... killing and terrorising! If one watches the news bulletins, it's business as usual all over the world and general all-round beastliness is not suspended even in nominally Christian nations. The business of aggression and assault is too important to break off, even for a day or two. There are too many people to kill and terrorise to let a backlog build up. Besides, it could set a bad precedent for the future and end up interfering with the wicked ways of evil men, a breed that abounds in the world and always has. 

Easter Party for Druggies

Well, there you have it, loyal readers, just a few of my random ramblings, a new angle on Easter and a quick word on my haircut and on my delightful toilet-mouthed sex-fiend of a barber! How are they related, you may ask, and, though I confess it is a tenuous link, a link it is nonetheless and it is that of coinciding chronologically. Haircut Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. It all ties in. And if you think this all a little odd, just feast your eyes on the rocambolesque scene in the picture here which would have done Alice proud as she wandered around her Wonderland! It's all going on here and it rather resembles the unchecked lunatic content of some sick sod's sleep-induced imaginings!


As I drove home from the barber's sporting a brand new haircut, I thought long and hard about the Easter story in the context of the state of the world today and it was then that the seeds of a blog post began to germinate in my sick mind. The state of the world was a subject that was bottomless and fathomless, but my visit to the barber was not. Christ's suffering and sacrifice were clear enough and his overriding message was clear too. My silly haircut was not so easy to understand and wasn't even worth contemplating. When I got home and looked in the mirror, it looked even sillier and I had no wig in the house to cover up my embarrassment. If long hair was good enough for Jesus, why was it not for me? Can you imagine the Messiah with short back and sides? Had he worn his hair short, as short as I wore it then, the course of Christianity might have been very different. Indeed, Christianity might never have taken hold! And that is just too awesome to contemplate!! 


I look forward to Sunday morning when Christ the Lord is resurrected, though it is painful to think he will be put through all of it again just a week later for the benefit of Orthodox Christians, a sort of ultimate double whammy! If I needed to visit the barber's twice in the space of a week or so I'd be hopping mad - how much more for something a trillion times more serious than a silly haircut! And if you saw the haircut I got, you would think it silly too! In fact, this past twenty years or more, all my haircuts have been silly and embarrassing, no matter what barber I go to. Perhaps that's the difference between a barber and a hairdresser?

Sod's Law

We've all heard of Sod’s Law, but what exactly is it in practice? Once unkindly known as Murphy’s Law, we can recognise that it is in full operation against us when frustrating situations such as the following occur time and again no matter what we might do to avoid them. See if any of these are familiar to you: 

As a pedestrian, you arrive at the traffic lights just as they’re turning green and have to wait the full length of time for them to change back to red so you can cross. As a driver, you arrive at the traffic lights just as they’ve turned red and have to wait out the full change-over time before you can continue on your way. And you draw the short straw every time at the same bleedin' lights whether you’re on foot or at the wheel of a car. It's as if the law on mathematical probability ceases to function at that set of traffic lights and the law that provides that you should be held up for as long as possible whether you're walking or driving kicks in.

Uuuuuuuuuuuu!!

Still, as a pedestrian you leave the house in dry sunny weather and you’ve scarcely gone more that a hundred yards or so when the sun goes in, the clouds come out and the heavens open up to disgorge their load of water which inevitably soaks you to the core. The irony of your situation is compounded when just as you arrive back home, the rain dries up, the clouds part and the sun comes out! “Now why does this not surprise me”, you think.

Still as a driver, you arrive at a petrol station when it is chock-full of cars and have to wait ages in a queue till there is a vacancy at one of the pumps. Having filled up and paid inside, you re-emerge to behold a wilderness before you, not one single car on the forecourt - it is a vehicle-free petrol forecourt! You realise the queues at the pumps were there for your benefit and now that you’ve been served and cannot be further inconvenienced they’ve vanished as if by magic!

And yet still as a driver, you come out of your house to go to your parked car. Up to now the street has been quiet and relatively free of traffic, “too quiet”, you think. But now, as you get into your car to pull out into the road, the street has suddenly become the highway from hell. Every motor vehicle within a radius of a hundred miles seems intent on passing through your street, and at breakneck speed, and you find yourself stuck there at the kerbside for what seems like ages before you’re able to pull out. But even then, as you move out into the road, another car, inevitably a mean-looking offroader, has appeared as from nowhere within a nanosecond and is bearing down on you with homicidal intent. So you instinctively hit the gas and hare down the road like a man (or woman) possessed, at a suicidal pace, terrified you might slow down the driver from hell and he might kill you with his death-dealing machine!

I can't stand it anymore!

As a shopper you join a reasonable queue at a supermarket check-out desk which seems to be the most likely to move quickly, especially as it’s shorter than the others to either side of it, and are  surprised to find that just about every other check-out queue has moved on and on and on while yours has remained almost stationary due to some hiccup ahead. Even shoppers that joined another queue well after you have checked their groceries through and left the store while you’re still waiting to be served, with smoke fumes coming out of your ears!

As a cinema-goer you sit down somewhere that looks just right and then a group of yobs turn up at the last minute and sit behind you. They then proceed to indulge in a non-stop binge of burgers, chips, crisps, popcorn, chocolate bars, all washed down by various soft drinks, whilst pushing with their legs on the back of your chair. In between mouthfuls of fast food, they can’t stop yapping and laughing, with the result that you reluctantly decide to leave and come back to see the film another day in the hope you might have more luck then. But of course, as we all know, you won’t fare any better!

As a park-goer, you decide to go for a stroll in the park, but on entering the park you find a tranquil and relaxing haven has unexpectedly turned into some sort of kindergarten and fairground rolled into one, with kids on scooters and bikes everywhere, mothers with buggies, men with giant vicious dogs the size of a wolf, joggers brushing past you, ball-players launching footballs that uncannily hit you on the back of the head or land between your legs and trip you over. The commotion and the hazards are so great that you do an about-turn and return to the peace and quiet and safety of your home!

This is it, buster!

As a television viewer, whenever you turn the tv on to a channel that has commercial breaks, it’s always in a commercial break and always at the start of it so that you have to wait the maximum time possible and then when the commercials finish and the programme is resumed you find it wasn’t worth waiting for anyway! This may be repeated any number of times but it’s no use, Sod’s Law ensures that you land every time smack-bam in a commercial break that doesn’t want to end!

As a pub-goer you line up at the bar to give your order but it seems that wherever you choose to stand, the bartender is always somewhere else, and though you might switch around to occupy more advantageous points along the bar the bartender has already moved back to where you were before and you become a nervous wreck trying to determine where the bartender will be next so you can make a bee-line for them and get yourself noticed. When you’re finally served and gingerly make your way across a crowded saloon with a perilously overfull glass, a youth in a rush accidentally brushes past you causing you to lose your balance, let go of the drink and land face down on the shocking purple carpet in a puddle of ginger-beer (or whatever)!

As a customer in a bank, you’ve had to join a ridiculously long queue which was not joined by any other person behind you. When you’ve finally transacted your business, after a punishingly long time, and re-emerge into the street, rushing off to pick up your parked car before you receive a parking fine for going over the time, you arrive at your vehicle to see a parking ticket slapped on it for having exceeded the time by ten milliseconds and you note with bitter irony that the parking fine is greater than the cheque you paid into your bank account! Suicide is naturally not far from your thoughts but you content yourself with a few swear words!

Pass me a copy of The Sun, will you?

As a diner at a cheap café-cum-restaurant, you order your food and sit back to wait for it. You’ve ordered an English breakfast for lunch and a cup of tea. When the tea comes, it’s weak, milky and lukewarm and about as tasty as a sodden dishcloth, but you make the most of it and look forward to the meal. The food eventually arrives and it is soon apparent that the bacon is all fat and underdone, the sausages are burnt on one side and raw on the other, the yoke of the fried egg has coagulated and the white is like rubber, the grilled tomatoes have scarcely seen a flame and are sour, the toast has not felt the heat of a grill and has scarcely been introduced to butter, and the mushrooms are soggy and raw. Great!

Finally, you need to use public transport to go somewhere and you decide to go into the nearby Underground to catch a train. As you near the bottom of the escalator you hear your train pulling out of the station and realise you’ve missed it by a billionth of a second! The platform is now almost deserted but it’s not long before it fills up again and, with the train being late, the throng on the platform builds up so that by the time your train arrives it’s a mad Titanic-like scramble to get aboard and inevitably you end up standing after you’ve allowed pregnant mothers, geriatric codgers, women of all ages, priests and little children, to take a seat before you. Having stood for almost an hour with all the sitting commuters glued to their seats as though they were staying put just to spite you, everyone suddenly stands up and gets off one stop away from your destination. Hardly anyone gets on and now, as you survey rows of empty seats and are spoilt for choice, you stubbornly refuse to sit down because you’re a man (or woman) who’s been transfixed to the spot by uncontrollable anger and the mother of all frustrations!

Why the two-timing s.o.b!!

And so the run of bad luck goes on and on day after day. You soon realise that Sod’s Law is at its most vicious when you’re out and about and almost inactive when you’re in your own home, unless of course you hit upon a bad patch of Sod’s Law-induced bad luck which comes home with you and wreaks havoc with your domestic life. Suicide suddenly starts to look like the lesser of two evils and you hastily grab hold of the gun you had hidden in the bread-bin and shoot yourself through the head. Goodbye, cruel world… But no, there is no sound and no brain-shattering bullet to put you out of your misery - the thing you grabbed hold of was not a firearm but a French baguette and you’re still alive. Sod’s Law has thwarted you again!