Bankers

It is so nice to know when you have been missed. I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I get nice responses to my blog and i guess that is what keeps me coming back.

We are living in interesting times, just like in the old chinese curse, and many of us are probably going to feel the real pain of this financial turmoil before much longer. We have all been encouraged to save for the rainy days, trusting out hard earned cash into the hands of bankers (no rhyming slang intended!). Now it seems to be raining and of course we find that those same "bankers" are quickly snatching back the umbrellas.

I have no idea what it means to me at the moment. I have savings and various policies that I never expected to benefit from anyway, but I dare no even enquire as to what they are worth right now.

It still baffles me where all the money has gone!!! Someone somewhere has made a huge amount of money from us all - again!!!
At least it gives me something to rant about!

Thanks to all of you for reading :-)

Please Hold!!!

I have been without an internet connection for a week. Dealing over a phone line with an ISP is not something to be recommended, though I have to say that the persons with whom I have been in long and tedious conversation have been very good at their jobs. They are well trained and handle customers politely and reassuringly, though when you have spoken to a dozen or more over a few days, you realise that they are rather clone like and respond in an almost Pavlovian way. Each one gives the feeling that they actually care about your problem, which of course they don’t, but even so, it is very hard to get really pissed off with them as individuals.

What does really annoy me though is the system that passes you on from one department to the next with of course the inevitable period of time “on hold”. I used to love Beethoven’s sixth symphony, but having heard it almost without a break over a crackly phone line this week, I think I may give it a miss for a while.

Anyhow, as I write this in WORD, in eager anticipation, a technician is replacing the line to the house in the hope that my online world will soon be restored.

I have felt deprived all week and only managed to catch up with email by visiting a friend, and I do hate to impose on people.

It is only when disconnected for a period of time that you realise how dependent that you have become. I know all about cold turkey now, and have been like a headless chicken, finding all sorts of displacement activities. My desk has been tidied, retidied and messed up again. My bookshelves have been re-organised and I have thrown away so much rubbish.

I have tried and failed various computer games, and got frustrated with them too. I have shredded tons of garden waste and tinkered with a little writing, but I hve not settled to a damned thing.

I have missed friends and online shopping as well as my daily news fix, and my fantasy football updates. I have missed catching up on the odd TV and radio programs that I don’t get to watch live, and I have even neglected my blog. I could have written in word of course as I am now, but somehow my heart hasn’t been in it.

I have everything crossed in the hope that soon I will have my lifeline reconnected. He is running a few tests and I should know within the hour. Wish me luck!

Toxicity

Autumn can be a dangerous time. It seems that most bad things in my life have happened at this time of year, and as I guess that i am in the autumn of my life, the situation can only get worse.

Recently, two local women collected wild fungi from the botanical gardens here. This is a common passtime as the woodlands and fields are full of mushrooms and toadstools of all descriptions. Most of them are safe to eat and some of them are delicious and highly prized. There are so many species out there, and luring among them are a handful that are highly toxic. Most of the nasty ones are fairly easy to identify, but the worst of them all is not. It has a significant name - The Death cap, and in its immature state, at first glance it looks much like a button mushroom. They are easily harvested by mistake and they even taste good.

The unfortunate women ate some of these, and one has since died, the other as far as i know remains very ill. The toxins in the Death cap have no antidote and a 90% mortality rate as the toxins destroy both liver and kidney function. These innocuous looking things are clearly best avoided.

There are a few bits of advice that can be offered to those who delve into the woods for free and delicious food.

1. If you are not 100% sure about identifying the really nasty ones, then stick to the supermarkets.

2. Never eat anything with white gills. Field mushrooms have gills that range from pink to dark brown.

3, Avoid anything with a ragged skirt as shown in the photo.


I had a friend for whom Autumn is a favourite time. At this time of year I remember so many good things and yet I always feel a sense of apprehension and foreboding. Personally I always heave a long sigh of relief when springtime returns. Right now, springtime seems a long way away.

Quandary

I have a friend, ( ok don't look surprised, some people do you know! ) that i have known for many years. We have never been close, but he always had a sense of humour and was fun to be with. We share a taste in music, a certain amount of history and a few mutual friends.

In recent years his eyesight has diminished, due to a genetic disorder and now he sees very little, or so he would have us believe. He lives alone and seems to manage to get around in daylight, but is very hampered by darkness. Consequently he is becoming increasingly reliant on the goodwill and help of others. I am perfectly happy to do odd jobs for him, and even run him to the doctor or the dentist from time to time, but he is becoming more and more demanding.

Several years ago, he signed up with an agency that puts him in touch with young and available eat european women. Each week he would receive the CVs (resumées) of a number of nubile and gorgeous women, all of whom seem to be willing to do anything to get their hands on an English man. Now I find this very odd in the first place, but he insists that this company will find him the woman of his dreams and that she will marry him and look after him. It all seems to go in cycles, he chooses a short list and sends it in. They invite these women to come to see him. One will agree and arrange to visit on a specified date. He gets excited and when the day comes - she has not been able to make it. Reasons include surprising lack of Visa, inability to afford ticket, lost in Vienna, etc etc. THis has been going on now for three years and all he has to show for his money is a few well thumbed photos, and a diminished bank account. All of us have pointed out the pit that he is digging but he insists that he wants a Russian, Ukranian, Georgian, whatever, woman to cater for his needs. He has failed to tell them about his disability altogether! I worry that one day one might turn up, take one look and vanish immediately.

That is not my problem however and if he chooses to dream and have those dreams shatterered on a regular basis then so be it.

My quandary lies elsewhere. He is becoming a nuisance. To begin with, he is letting himself go in terms of hygeine and appearance. He is dirty, his clothes are rarely washed and he smells. His fingernails are long and ragged and utterly filthy, and the source of that filth appears to be something unspeakable within the confines of this blog. He drinks heavily and is clearly suffering with chronic depression. He refuses to do anything about it except that he calls people on the phone once he is in his cups. This can be very late at night. He started with me, and I am afraid that I give him very little time on the phone, and eventually i gave up answering him during the night.

He has now turned his attention to someone else. And phones her several times a day. She is softer than i and will listen to him, or should I say would listen to him. She has now taken to ignoring the calls to, but he persists and leaves long and rambling messages on her phone. Whenever we meet he grabs her and slobbers all over her and franky she is not happy. So much so that she is now avoiding coming over here in case he is there.

He has a very short fuse and does not take criticism well. I don't know what to do. He is already depressed and I do not want to push him over the edge of that dark pit. I know it all too well. I feel that I should confront him with what is making him into someone that everyone avoids, but I don't. That in turn makes me feel that I am taking a cowardly stance. I do not want to take on all his issues and problems and yet I feel so sorry for him. What can I do?

Knowledge

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!
I have a little knowledge about all sorts of things and quite often that has got me into trouble, none more so than in the wonderful world of DIY. All too often i will take on a job that seems ok at the outset and then, because i know less than I ought to have done, a small job grows into a bigger one or even sets off a chain reaction of DIY. Recently, someone that I know well, installed a new light fitting in their front room. It is an attractive, but very heavy unit that had to be firmly screwed to the ceiling.
Now ceilings are varied in their construction, but all have certain features in common. One of them is the supporting beams that we call joists. It is essential that anything heavy should be attached to one or more of these.

To cut a long story short, last time i went there, there were deep cracks in the ceiling around the fitting, and only a week later, the ceiling came down along with the heavy and expensive fitting. Fortunately there was no-one underneath it. The fitting had been screwed into the plaster only and it is a wonder that it had stayed up that long.

Basically what i am saying is that you can never have enough knowledge. Knowledge is empowering and gived us increased autonomy and freedom. Without it we are no different to other animals that inhabit the earth.

Yesterday I was reading about the Pope's latest announcement, made at a Mass in Paris. Allegedly, he condemned "pagan Ideals of materialism, money, power and knowledge." Now i find this a bit hard to take as the Vatican is a hugely wealthy organisation, with vast powers and probably one of the most extensive libraries in the world. What is he condemning? Is it everyone outside of the church?

I suppose as far as religious leaders of all persuasions are concerned, a little knowledge is ok, what they cannot handle is people who know too much , as people in those positions have minds of their own and are less easily manipulated.

As time goes by, the knowledge base increases exponentially. If only more people would make more use of it!

smells

Of all of our senses, i think that the sense of smell is grossly underrated. To have an olfactory capability of a dog must be wonderful indeed.
This morning I was walking through fields, in an attempt to take some pictures of National Trust properties, and though hampered somewhat by low flying clouds zipping in from the south west, I did manage to make it to St Catherine's Oratory, or what remains of it. This place was built on a very high spot as a penance for being found in posession of wine belonging to the totally incorrupt church. Anyhow, that is not really relevant and if I were to go on I'd have to look up dates and i am frankly not that interested. What I wanted to talk about was the ability of smells too evoke strong memories, and the abundant cowpats that littered the fields, did just that. I was transported back to my childhood and to the enormous freedom that I had in my life between leaving the house and going back to it.

I was a country boy at heart and I guess that in many ways I still am. You can take the boy from the countryside......blah blah you know the rest.

In those days there were two things that one always carried in ones pocket. We had no money, but everyone that I knew had a knife, and some string! How sad it is these days that carrying a knife has different connotations, and kids that carry them may be doing so for totally different reasons. I still carry one more or less wherever i go, but am aware that there are some places that it is best not to.

With a knife you could do so much, we were rarely bored. A Knife can be put to all sorts of good use, and we made all sorts of things. Bows and arrows were a staple, and a good bow became a prized posession. Alas most of them were not good and would break at the first use, and arrows would split or get lost as soon as used. Willows grew in abundance along the river banks and they provided most of the materials that we needed. String was essential of course for the bowstring but also for tying branches together to make camps. We could spend a whole day building a camp by the river bank only to find next day that someone else had wrecked it. It didn't matter, if we found another one that someone else had made, we'd wreck that and use the raw materials. We made spears too and pretended to hunt wild animals. WE never came close enough to any self respecting beast, but we liked to imagine that we might.

Later we'd make fishing rods, Tom Sawyer style, tying a length of string or line to the end, and with worms or bits of bread, we'd catch minnows and other more stupid fish all day long.

I can still smell the willow bark as it was stripped away, revealing the cold damp creamy white heartwood, I can smell the river and the nettlebeds that we seemed impervious to, though no doubt we were stung so often that we didn't notice, and i can smell the cowpats that we'd occasionally drop someone in.

It is an amazing sense, and it also works in reverse. If i think hard and focus on an event in my life, quite often it is a smell that comes to me before anything else. I wonder when this sense fades away like the others tend to, if memories of smells will still persist. I do hope so.

Spring to autumn

As always, friends and the family that I choose to share things with, have been very supportive, and I know that some people really do care about me and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I don't think that I have ever been one to court attention, and it is really only through my blog that I tend to really dislose what is in my mind. I do not indulge in self pity, and I can honestly say that when things go wrong with my body, I do not think "Why me?". That always seems a strange thing to contemplate. I mean why NOT me? LIfe is to a great extent random. WE like to think that we have control, and yes we do have the facility to make decisions, but it is not a game, there is no referee, and there is no game plan. If there were then any real choice that we make would have no meaning at all.

To me, when things go wrong, I usually think something like "Oh shit - not again!" and I put myself in the hands of those who i assume know what they are doing, and then hope for the best. So far i have been fortunate in that those responsible for cutting me up and putting me back together seem to have been pretty good at their jobs and each operation has given me back a quality of life that I really do appreciate every day of my life. I do not consider myself to be unlucky. Quite the reverse in fact, I feel that I am enormously fortunate to be here at all, and then to be in a position where I have no real worries any more and I seem to have developed a mental state where I am always OK. I do not seek extremes any more, as in the pursuit of those extremes, lie so many pitfalls and the potential for much suffering, and we all know that physical pain is no match for the other kind.

I am lucky that I know so many wonderful people, a few of whom I would call my friends. I hope they know who they are, as they do bring much into my life and although i am not very demonstrative, i treasure them more than any material things (except maybe my computer :-) ) Those people enrich my days and I am well aware that it is much easier to lose them than to gain new ones. I have reached a state in my life when I try hard to be nice to everyone. There seems no point in being otherwise. I smile at strangers, and quite often they smile back, and doesn't that make a difference to the way that you feel?

I do not fear death. I fear the process I think, and maybe the thought that I may be missing something. My own belief is that this is it! There is nothing afterwards, why should there be? Religions have grown through a fear of nothingness and an inability to comprehend the futility of an individual life. I know that most of my life has been futile, and the only things that matter are the positive things that one leaves behind, whether they be children, or the effect that one has on those around you.

Through children, our genes are perpetuated and through our actions, our thoughts and feelings can be passed on. Some are able to pass on words, art or music and a tiny group, through this will become immortal. I cannot imagine a time when people are not aware of Mozart or Shakespeare, but most of us will quickly fade into oblivion, remembered only at a molecular level.

In my own genes are echoes of my own ancestors, most of whom I never knew. They too had lives that were meaningless and as far as i know, they left little behind but their DNA. Sometimes i think that it would be interesting to trace a family tree, but then, when i look at the challenge that it poses, I don't get around to it. Maybe, unless my own genome meets a dead end street, my ancestors will take the trouble to look backwards, and my name may crop up as some anonymous figure from the 20th and 21st centuries. All it will say is Paul Cotton - Teacher. It would be nice to imagine that I'd be remembered for more than that, but it is unlikely!

Wednesday

Well the day is here and so far so good. The world has not come to an end for all of us though undoubtedly it has for some. Each of us thinks of ourselves as central to the universe, and that is quite natural i guess. Everything goes on around us and so we have to be the pinpoint singularity of our own existence. One of the hard things about dying must be, leaving things undone. Perhaps it is like leaving a party early, against ones will. You know that behind you, people will go on having fun and that your departure is largely unnoticed.

Perhaps the world did come to an end and that we just haven't noticed yet! Maybe there are parallel worlds out there and we just slip from on to the other and that everything is infinite.

Anyway enough of that rubbish! I have the news that you have been waiting for! :-) Yesterday I saw the consultant. A lovely softly spoken gentleman who showed me the scan of my head. I was expecting to see my brain, but there was no evidence of it at all. What did show up though were the cavities in my skull that contain my ears. It was odd, knowing what i was looking at - i could see all of the tiny ear bones in the left ear and the air space that makes up the middle ear. Even parts of the inner ear could be identified. The right ear however looked very different and the space that should be filled with air is filled with a growth of some sort. Probably not vegetable, it has basically taken over like some alien invader and it has to be removed before it seeks out and finds my brain. Having said that, I couldn't find it, though i know that it is hiding in there somewhere.

So anyway, i have an october appointment with a knife, or a drill and hammer and chisel. I suspect the latter as they have to get inside the skull and attack the damn thing from the inside. It sounds quite gruesome and so pardon me if i don't talk too much about it now. Maybe if i am able, i will do so post the event. The doc was very keen to tell me that there are risks of nasty infections, nerve damage, loss of balance and not much hope of getting the hearing back, so all in all I am less than ecstatic. However, plenty of people go through far worse than I do and so i will not complain.

In a way i was hoping that a black hole would engulf us all today. I know it sounds selfish, but I'd hate to think that if i went alone, that people would not be talking about me after I'd left! I hate being ignored. :-)

May you all have a perfect day and be grateful that the loonies are probably wrong every time.

waiting

I am not very good at waiting, though I seem to spend a lot of my time doing just that. At the moment I am waiting to meet an appointment at the hospital to discover the outcome of my CT scan. I know that being nervous is pointless but I do admit to having the faintest flutterings of butterflies in my stomach, and am making more trips to the little room next door than normal.

It is the whole hospital thing again. I really get very worked up at the prospect of going back in there every time, and even though I know that it is only a consultation, it makes no difference.

I hate impunctuality, so of course I will be there early. i will find a seat in the waiting room as far from anyone as possible and I will sit nonchalantly reading a woman's magazine, (there are never any others!) and pretend to be comfortable and relaxed. All the time though my insides will be in turmoil.

I will listen and nod as the results are explained to me and when i come out I will think of countless questions that I should have asked, and by then of course it will be too late.

In a couple of hours that part will all be done and dusted and I thin have to wait for the day of the surgery. That however isn't for a few weeks and so for now i will bury it and bring it out again nearer the time.

For some strange reason i am reminded of an experience i had when waiting for a bus. Two women were talking about the death of a neighbour, the bus was late and the conversation was more interesting than the rain - One woman asked the other what he had died of. The other's reply was astonishing - Nothing serious, just his heart!! I still cannot be sure what was going on in her head, but that has stayed with me all those years.

Anyway This has passed some time and in a few minutes i can set off. Wish me luck!

The end is nigh

One of my favourite songs is Collide - by Howie Day. It has a lingering connotation that is hard to shake off.

I mention that, in advance of tomorrow, when, if we are to believe the loony fringe, the world will come to an end.

Tomorrow the CERN particle collider goes on line, and experiments begin that involve causing collisions between sub atomic particles. Protons will be accelerated around a huge tunnel and crashed into each other at speeds approaching the speed of light, and as a result, they will be shattered releasing all sorts of bits an pieces for vast numbers of scientists to observe and measure.

One possible outcome, and this is a very slim possibility, is that mini black holes will be formed, as conditions are likely to be similar to the big bang, albeit on a small scale. Steven Hawking hopes so, as any radiation detected from them would almost certainly result in a Nobel prize for him.

Now a black hole is a scary thing. It is effectively a tiny lump of matter that is so dense, it has a gravitational pull that nothing can escape from. They draw in matter around them and become more dense and this becomes a vicious circle. There are some that believe that on wednesday, we will all vanish into a man made black hole, and the world will cease to exist.

One of the scientists working on the project is reported as saying that anyone who believes that is a "complete twat!", I do love the use of scientific terminology.

I am wondering how, if the world is going to end, I would spend my last 24 hours. Maybe if anyone is reading this they might like to share their own thoughts on that one.

Roger McGough gave this some consideration in the 1960s






At Lunchtime - A story of Love

by Roger McGough

When the bus stopped suddenly to avoid
damaging a mother and child in the road,
the young lady in the greenhat sitting opposite
was thrown across me, and not being one to
miss an opportunity i started to makelove
with all my body.

At first she resisted saying that it was too early in the morning and too soon
after breakfast and that anyway she found
me repulsive. But when i explained that
this being a nuclearage, the world was going
to end at lunchtime, she took off her greenhat,
put her busticket in her pocket
and joined in the exercise.

The buspeople, and there were many of them,
were shockedandsurprised and amused and annoyed, but when the
word got around that the world was coming to an end at
lunchtime, they put their pride in their pockets with their bustickets and
madelove one with the other. And even the busconductor,
being over, climbed into the cab and struck up some sort of
relationship with the driver.

Thatnight, on the bus coming home,
wewere all alittle embarrassed, especially me and the younglady
in the greenhat, and we all started to say in different ways howhasty
and foolish we had been. Butthen, always having been a bitofalad, i stood up and said it was a pity that the world didn;t nearly end every lunchtime and
that we could always pretend. And then it happened.......

Quick asa crash we all changed partners
and soon the bus was acquiver with white
mothballbodies doing naughty things.

And the next day
And everyday
In everybus
In everystreet
In everytown
In everycountry

people pretended that the world was coming
to an end at lunchtime. It still hasn't
Although in a way it has.

Sarah Palin

So Sarah Palin could become the Vice President of the USA. Now to some, that may seem like a pleasant prospect. She is after all an attractive and vivacious young woman who at least looks good in front of a camera, and along with John McCain promises big changes in American society (don't they all!).

I can handle the idea of Republicans being re-elected, after all the USA is fundamentally a conservative country and is driven along on its path to world domination by the interests of big business, and not much can change that. I have no problem with them electing a woman to a powerful position, let them have a taste of it! What concerns me is that she (allegedly) is a creationist!

Vice presidents, can do and have become presidents. America likes to shoot its presidents from time to time, and there is a possibility that should the Republicans come to power, that she could become president.

Creationists are blind followers of religious doctrine, they abandon all attempts at original thought, accepting the words of middle eastern philosophy that was written down almost two thousand years ago. This is the equivalent of reading Grimm, and accepting as absolute truth that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden!

Ok much of the central American Bible belt will back her up, but I find it really scary that people with such limited ability to grasp facts can find themselves in positions of power. I am sure that she sees America as the promised land and that Americans are the true soldiers of her god, and who knows where that might lead?

They say that we elect the government that we deserve. Electing creationists to powerful positions is a step backwards to wards the dark ages of ignorance and bigotry, and of course that is what Conservatism is about.

September

It seems like september in all senses. The weather, well, what can you say that hasn't already been said? Summer has gone un-noticed and now we slip downwards to the dreaded winter, and there is no going back.

I thought I had an appointment to see the surgeon today but it seems i got it wrong again. My appointment is next week so I will put that away again, and think about the present. I feel listless today, and am distinctly lacking in direction. I have no projects on the go and as term hasn't started, no students either. I find myself inventing tasks and even doing things that don't need doing just to fill my days.

I have found an Open University course on Writing Fiction and attempted to register online this morning. It wouldn't let me on the grounds that my details are a close match to other details on their database. Well it is hardly surprising as i am a returning student! Dammit, that means i have to print out and fill in an application form and put it in the post! Writing by hand is almost a forgotten skill - like so many things that I used to be able to do, it is vanishing into the fog of the autumnal years.

I have found a pen however and must do something about this today! If I leave it any longer i know what will happen, i will forget it and that would be a shame. Who knows, I may find it in me to write something worthwhile one day.

My friend Holly has been very productive recently and has added two more songs to her ever growing catalogue. She never ceases to amaze me in terms of her abilities and I just hope that she gets the breaks that she deserves. This is a link to her latest offering!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCcqI12Qhs&feature=email

another day

Just back from yet another visit to the hospital. I know the place pretty well by now, and as I wandered between endoscopy and audiology, I passed a number of departments that i have spent many an hour in. I even saw the surgeon who last spilled my blood. There are still some departments that I have yet to visit but no doubt if I hang around long enough I will get to see them too.

I seem to have spent a significant part of my life in the hands of the NHS and i guess that i am grateful to still be here, to be walking and seeing clearly, and yet here i am grumbling about the time i spend there. There are many people who go their whole lives without any intervention by the medical profession, and they are so lucky.

Just entering a hospital fills me with feelings of dread. The smells, the noises and even the decoration on the walls, are all triggers to me. They bring back memories from childhood that are best left alone, and whenever i leave the premises it wis with great relief.

The outcome from today was good, and a weight has been lifted for sure. next week it is my turn again and I will learn the outcome of my CT scan. Oddly I don't look forward to it at all. I wonder if i have a brain?

Sod's law

My understanding of Sod's law, is that if anything can go wrong, then it will. There are many variations on this of course, one of them being that if you drop a piece of buttered toast then it will always land butter side down.

Yesterday I had a CT scan. An interesting experience andI have to say that our health service is a wonderful institution. My appointment was at 1.30m and i was seen as soon as I arrived. The women in charge were courteous and kind and made me feel very relaxed.

As I lay on the conveyor belt, everything that I needed to know was explained and all I had to do was lie still, while the wonders of modern technology whirled around me. It was rather like a giant, soap and water free washing machine, all controlled by the appropriate program, and as it whirled, I slid in and out of the aperture, like a hollywood cliché. Then i got an itch on my nose! It is almost impossible to stay still when you have an itch, and that is all I had to do - just stay still. In and out i went like a slow moving piston; round and round the scanner went, and the itch got worse and worse. Never have I lost interest in technology so swiftly, as all I could perceive was the itch which by now had grown out of all proportion in its significance.

Then the whirring stopped, I was withdrawn from the cavity and it was all over. I sat up and of course the itch had run its course too.

Now i have to wait a week or so for the results!

Personal spaces

It has been a while since I received any comments here. Clearly I am not being controversial enough, either that or my reader is agreeing with me.
I was reading the other day about a woman who was injured on a plane. She was suing the airline because she was crushed by the passenger sitting next to her.

Whenever I have flown, I have waited with a great deal of trepidation in the departure lounge, examining the assembly of fellow passengers and assessing the ones that I really did not want to sit next to. There are many stereotypes that are always present. The ones with the loud voices, loud shirts or worse, loud children, then there are the ones who look like they might be terrorists, the very tall, like me, whose legs will spread through necessity into the surrounding spaces. There are the elderly who one guesses will be up and down visiting the toilet throughout the flight, there are those that look as if they are about to die of fright, and those that just look ill. By far the worst nightmare though has to be the enormously obese person who cannot possibly fit into a normal seat without overflowing into all the surrounding spaces.

When such a person arrives in the departure lounge, you can see the feeling of panic spread through the passengers each trying to glimpse the seat number on the boarding pass, checking it against their own. The nightmare has to come true for someone, and everyone hopes that it isn't them. More people pray at this time than they do at take off and landing. If I had any proclivity for prayer, this would be the time for me to do it.

I, like many others, loathe invasions of my personal space. I am not naturally gregarious and treat most people distantly and hope that they will remain that way. When i enter a room, i will choose a seat as far away from anyone as possible, and hate being touched in any way by strange people. To be overwhelmed by folds of adipose tissue is my idea of hell.

According to the story, the husband of the large woman, had requested that he sat somewhere else, and so a poor unsuspecting woman was saddled with the experience. Fat lady was so vast that the arm rest between the seats had to be removed and so the poor soul next to her was crushed and needed hospital treatment.

A doctor friend of mine tells me that there really is no excuse for obesity. Even though there are many contributing factors, a fat person fundamentally eats too much. For whatever reason, they eat more than they need to and that is a personal choice.

Everyone who flies is limited in the weight of baggage that they can carry, regardless of their own mass. So a 120lb passenger has the same limitations as one of 600lb. THis is a ludicrous situation and maybe it should be redressed. Perhaps there should be a restriction on total weight carried and that penalty tarriffs for those whose combine mass exceeds a reasonable norm. I am tall and probably carry more pounds than I should and would accept this system, even though we tall people are discriminated against by the ridiculous seat pitch of most airliners.

Discrimination is part of life and maybe by discriminating in favour of the non obese, that might provide some incentive for some people to make life style changes, even if it is just choosing not to fly!

There is no point!

I feel that I should be outside in the sunshine, soaking up every last photon while it is here, but I have been doing a little gardening after having played golf and frankly I feel weary. There was a time when i could go on doing physical stuff all day, but clearly those days are behind me and I am on the slippery slope downhill.

Yesterday I ranted about the ill informed and ludicrously self aggrandised member of the ruling classes and his attempts to inform the public of his perceived disasters. Today the press is full of the same sort of arguments and so I feel quite justified in my comments. Having said that, i haven't seen the sun or the mail, and either or both of them are likely to be sucking up to the royals as usual.

I wish that more people would listen to the arguments put forward so eloquently by Richard Dawkins. Now he too is highly opinionated, but at least he bases his opinions on solid facts and not on whims and fairy tales. If you really want to see a cage rattle, then ask Mr Dawkins about his opinions on intelligent design, a topic that because of religious sensibilities, is being mooted as a valid theory in many schools, both here and in the United States. How on Earth can people, when faced with the facts, even begin to believe what was written down by men in the middle east, long before people began to understand the world around them. It isn't as if the process of evolution is subject to dispute. It is very simple and is borne out by evidence. Evidence is of course what the creationists lack but is does not deter them even for a second.

Basically Evolution is based on the following observations

1. Living things reproduce sexually and produce far more offspring than they need to replace themselves.
2. Within the offspring there is variation, due to the process of cell division that produces the sex cells.
3. There is a struggle to survive - eg a female plaice may lay a million eggs, but only two of them need to survive to breed.
4. Some of the offspring may be better suited to survive in the conditions that prevail.
5. They are the ones that become adults and breed, passing their genetic code onto the next generation.

A simple set of ideas put forward by Charles Darwin in the late nineteenth century, and since then more and more evidence is being unearthed that supports what was once referred to as a theory. Evolution is fact and once you accept that there can be no turning back.

Perhaps that is the problem with the creationists - to open your heart to your faith is one thing, but to open your head to common sense and scientific principles might just undermine the shaky ground upon which their faith is based. Once one accepts the principle of evolution as a series of chance events, then the question, why are we here? becomes an irrelevance and we can stop looking for a supernatural raison d'etre.

GM food

I have never been much of a fan of the Royal Family, and cannot really appreciate the arguments that people put forward for maintaining them. I am sure that Oliver Cromwell hoped to have got rid of the institution and probably turns in whatever grave he is in, at the current state of affairs. We have a priveleged and wealthy bunch of "Aristocrats", powerless to do very much other than make public appearances for the sake of the readers of the sun and the daily mail, who seem to think that millions of pounds of tax payers money is well spent on their upkeep and maintenance, and all they seem to do is produce more mouths for the public purse to feed.

The reason for my outburst, is the recent attacks made by "wingnut" Charlie on the whole of GM technology. According to him, and this guy has no qualifications in Science that I am aware of, the whole GM experiment has been a catastrophe. The evidence that he has, seems to be in his own imagination.

Man has been genetically modifying foods since farmers first bred livestock and cereal crops. Each time a breeder selects a characteristic that he deems apt, and carries out a program leading to that character's development is guilty of genetic manipulation. Without that having taken place, we would have little in the way of food and would of course probably be still living in tribes and painting our faces blue.

It is all part of evolution, which of course is based upon natural selection or the survival of the fittest. The difference is that instead of allowing natural processes to make the selection, man is giving the process a hand. Should he produce something that is unfit to survive in the wild then it will simply die out, which is of course the fate of inbred lines!

GM technology is simply extending our abilities to produce food that will be required to feed the ever growing population. Agreed it needs to be regulated and secure safeguards built in, but surely this is a technology that can produce miraculous results, given time and sufficient research.

Wingnut's problem is that he comes from a long line of inbreds, whose own gene pool has become dangerously limited. His own understanding of the technology is very limited, but in order to justify his own existence, he feels that he must pontificate on all issues that have any degree of controversy. I am sure that he means well, but the problem is that too many people actually listen to him and believe that he knows what he is talking about.

Football fans

Generally speaking, football fans have a pretty poor reputation. Yesterday I was one of then, travelling by train to Wembley, along with thousands of Portsmouth fans. Being a Manchester United follower, I kept myself to myself and sat reading a book to while away the journey.

There was much banter, a great deal of noise, and even at 8 something in the morning, a lot of alcohol consumed. There was however nothing in the way of bad behaviour or even unpleasantness. This continued on the London Transport system as 84,000 fans, half in red and half in blue, converged on the Mecca of English football, to witness the fundamentally friendly game that heralds the start of the season.

I met up with my son and we joined the masses heading for North London. Fortunately we had been given tickets, and very good were the seats. Arriving in plenty of time, we were able to spend ridiculous amounts of money on food and drink - (Non alcoholic!), while watching the stadium fill. We were on the halfway line and had an excellent view of the entire pitch. The reds to our right and the blues to our left. I have to say that the Portsmouth fans made the most noise - until they lost of course, and then they went quiet - in fact most of them went home very swiftly, while the red fans, including yours truly stayed behind to watch the presentations and all that goes with it.

Leaving the stadium is an experience not to be repeated. It is hard to describe what it is like to be in a column of 84,000, all heading for the same tube station, all being herded onto the same trains. I guess it is quite close to being a sort of hell on Earth, and it is as close as I ever want to come to the great British public. At least being taller than most I didn't have my nose in anyone's armpit, and i did feel sorry for those vertically challenged.

At no point was there any sign of aggression or of friction between the fans. Ok they are loud, crude and devoted to their teams, but what is wrong with that? I felt no shame for being a part of the day.

Pain

Something happened to me yesterday that has not happened in a long time. I was reaching up to harvest a fresh and very ripe fig from the tree next to the greenhouse, when a sharp pain shot through my hand. I had bee stung by a wasp, who i can only imagine was irked with me for stealing his lunch. The pain grew and coursed through my palm, and could i remember the best treatment? Is it vinegar or baking soda? I couldn't remember whether the wasp sting is acidic or alkaline and so i opted for vinegar. It didn't make it any worse, nor do i think it made it any better.

I know that for some people that such stings are life threatening, and I once had a friend who carried an epipen, as she was so subject to anaphylactic responses to such things. People have died from single stings, and so really in the whole scheme of things, my own discomfort was trivial.

It reminded me of other occasions when i have been stung, and to be frank they are few and far between. I can only recall two other events, though there may have been more. The first time i remember being stung, i must have been about 17 yrs old. I was fishing on a river bank and keeping very still and very quiet, concentrating on the fish or lack of them. A wasp managed to get into my mouth when i wasn't looking, and promptly stung me inside my lip. That hurt! My lips swelled and the pain was like no other. The wasp escaped unhurt and lived to sting someone else. My fishing day was over, as i stumbled home feeling sorry for myself.

I still feel the remnants of yesterday and there is a small red spot where the assault took place, and as before the individual responsible has escaped to fight another day. I picked some more figs this morning, but this time took a lot more care about where i put my hand. Pain is a great tutor!

Cowes Week

Well it is Cowes week, the big sailing festival of the year, and it is raining. The forecast for the rest of the week looks to be pretty much the same.

The town of course is full, and the locals welcome all the visitors with inflated prices and hand over your money ingratiation. The town loves Cowes Week as it brings in money and also keeps Cowes on the map. It may be a tiny seaside town with only one hotel, but it has the accolade of sailing Mecca for the rich and famous for one week in the year.

I guess there were times when it was just for the upper classes, and was part of the "Season". Nowadays it is for everyone who wants to drink all day and sit watching people passing by. Even since I have been here, I sense that it is gradually slipping down the same slope as everything else, into a fully accessible, commercialised miasmic plateau of dumbed down mediocrity.

The town at night is becoming the meeting point for the chavs, who occupy the bars, and with their carrier bags full of cheap supermarket vodka, generate an atmosphere that is becoming less and less appealing and to some extent even threatening. They bring little to the festivities other than an erosion of freedom for others.

Dumbing down is a slippery slope with no ending. However we wrap it up, society is a mixed bag and always will be. Making everything accessible to everyone is sheer nonsense. I agree fully with equality of opportunity, and there should always be ways out of the holes that people dig for themselves, or that they fall into, but should everything be downgraded to accommodate the lowest common denominator?

Should Jemima, with her three grade D GCSE's be encouraged to become a doctor or an airline pilot? Should we make sure that all books are produced as cartoons? Should the Royal Opera House open a McDonalds franchise while reducing perormances to bursts of 5 minutes in order to take into account short attention spans?

I worry about the way that we are heading. I'd like to think that there are pinnacles that are inaccessible to me, and places that I cannot go and targets that I cannot meet. Such things raise aspirations for self improvement as well as adding to life's mysteries.

Groucho Marx once said that he wouldn't want to join a club that would have him as a member. Oh how right he was!