Respect

I have an old friend, a fellow teacher, whose views on life the universe and everything are very different to mine. He is a Christian and is a man for whom I have the greatest respect. I respect him for what he does and the way that he goes about his life, and because he was one of the best teachers that I ever met.

We are constantly told that people deserve respect because they have faith, and this is something that needs to be brought into question. Religious leaders are held in awe because they "have faith" and of course because they wear the fancy dress associated with their particular club. We are supposed to hold these people in awe and of course many people do.

Why should the fact that someone has a strong belief, give them the right to be respected? There are many who believe that the Earth is flat, others that we are constantly visited by UFOs and some that think that a conservative government is a good thing, and these people are rarely held up as pillars of society or as anything else other than figures of fun. Yet Barmy Bishops, Mad Mullahs and the rest of the leaders of those unwilling to think for themselves are held in high esteem by society at large.

One of the most dangerous men in the world is coming to Britain along with a huge entourage, and we as tax payers will be contributing three million pounds as a contribution to the expenses. The Pope will of course be welcomed by the masses, although he can expect to be met by some degree of protest. As leader of his dedicated band, he has a lot to answer for, but in his position he can justify anything on the basis of dogma, and so will probably stand aloof from the protesters, maintaining his stand on abortion, paedophilia and contraception.

I have never met the pope and have no wish to do so. I do not respect him nor his office and I fail to see why we as a nation are shutting our eyes to the perils that he and others like him are inflicting upon the world as a whole. Respect is not a divine right, but alas there are many who believe that is the case.

Irrationality

Anyone who knows me will verify that I am reasonably placid and not easily angered. For some that in itself is an irritation as i don't rise to provocation. However odd things do make me feel really irked and often it is trivialities that other people see no harm in that get me going.
The other night, whilst staying in my daughter's house, I found myself watching the X Factor on the TV. I should have left the room and gone for a walk or gone to bed but I chose to stay. For those lucky enough to live abroad, the X factor is a "Talent" show. The word Talent is in inverted commas as I feel that such a word has no links to the X factor. In this show, a panel of judges, none of which seems to have a shred of talent themselves, let alone personal skills or even charm, preside over appalling performances by anyone who has the brass balls to stand up on stage and make idiots of themselves. Occasionally someone crops up who can copy a current pop song and it is they that get the plaudits from the panel and the privilege of going on to the next round. As the weeks go by the numbers get thinned out and the TV viewers get to vote on who should survive. This of course costs them money which goes to swell the bank accounts of the judges.
I believe that talented musicians emerge from years of practice and study and not through singing karaoke whilst out of their heads on cheap lager. However this is not the feeling of X Factor fans and those fat cats who run the show. It is about raising someone from the gutter to pseudostardom, whilst making huge profits from those who can least afford it.
The parade of contestants last week, and most likely next and the week after was like a queue of unemployables with an audience selected from a care in the community programme.
This show is extraordinarily popular and represents the terrible state of the popular music industry that is pushing tasteless pap down the throats of the youngsters of today.
I feel better now!

Being Granddad

I have spent the last week, well a considerable part of it with Oscar. He is a lovely little fellow and as babies go, he is very good. Having said that he is also exhausting. How mothers cope, especially single ones, is way beyond me. A baby is a full time occupation and a drain on ones energy.
I seem to be able to get him to sleep now and then, but his mind seems always on the go and he wants attention all of the waking hours. It also seems that attention alone is not sufficient. I can carry him around for hours or even stand with him, but will he allow me to sit down? It seems that I must be uncomfortable in order for him to be settled. How does he know i wonder? He can be fast asleep in my arms but as soon as i sit down, he wakes up.
Having said all that, he is a joy to be with and most of the time he is a smiling chuckling little chap who is fast becoming a little boy rather than a baby. I already tell him stories even though he understands not a word, and i look forward to the pleasure of doing the same when he is able to.
I know that he won't remember me next time i see him, but there will come a time when he does and i hope that he anticipates seeing me with as much pleasure as I anticipate seeing him.

Innocence

Originality

I don't think that I have ever had an original idea. The vast majority of us are in the same boat, and what to us may seem novel is not and has almost inevitably been thought of my someone else. Someone said that there are only a small number of stories, and that all the novels ever written are just variations on that limited supply of themes, all new novels being dervatives of those that have gone before. Being original gets harder and harder as time goes by as each field of human endeavour must have its limitations. In the early 20th century an eminent physicist was quoted as saying that we knew all there was to know about physics, and of course that was how it appeared before the discovery of sub atomic particles and radioactivity. All of a sudden, physics became the new frontier all over again.
There are still vast areas of science that remain huge challenges and for the prepared mind there is still much scope for discovery and new ideas. An there lies the rub. So few of us have minds that are open and prepared. Modern society does nothing to encourage free thinking. We educate or children to jump through hoops and pass examinations that require little more than memory of facts, and because educational institutions are bound by accountability and the production of standardised products, this sausage production line continues through to the majority of universities. These are churning out graduates, some of which can barely look after themselves let alone get jobs and push the frontiers of knowledge back.
We are so fortunate to live in enlightened times. We have all the advantaged and are no longer suppressed by the stupefying blanket of the churches. Throughout our history those organisations have tried their hardest to block freedom of thought, and have failed spectacularly, with pioneers prepared to risk their freedom or even their lives in order to pursue that freedom. Only in recent years has Rome apologised to Galileo for jailing him for asserting that the Earth orbits the sun. It has taken them hundreds of years to reach the same conclusion.
No government wants a free thinking populace, and with the controlling element of the church losing its power, the media, Television in particular, has been the tool by which we are regulated and steered. I was at a dinner party the other night, where Gordon Brown was being attacked by many of those around the table. Not one of those people had any personal knowledge of the man, had never met him and yet, they were all able to say how awful he was. They were basing their argument on nothing more than what they had read in the tabloid Tory press and had seen on the television. All spouted the same lines and of course will have been led by the nose to the polling booths to vote for the ConDems, and for a while will think that the new government are wonderful.
Many times i have said that I have a yearning to write. I read a lot and admire so many that are masters of their craft, and when i sit down to make an attempt at doing so I find myself overwhelmed with my own lack of originality and so i get nowhere. I have ideas of course but cannot claim them as my own. Maybe the only way would be to forget everything that I was ever taught and start again from scratch; maybe then I'd even discover myself.

World Cup Willies

Apart from the really dedicated fans, and the multinational community that live here, the World Cup is over and done with for another four years. Our team, so feted by the press before they left, have returned this morning, creeping into the country at sparrow fart, unsurprisingly without a reception to welcome them home.
The excuses will be made and the deep analysis will begin, millions of words will be written about why our national team was so deplorably bad and yet the truth of the matter is that fundamentally we are just not good enough. The rest of the world has improved and we have not.
England was once a major world player in more or less everything, but those days are long since gone and there are few fields in which we can claim to have some sort of lead. We are still there in the arts, and hanging on by the skin of our teeth in some aspects of technology, but sadly we no longer excel in very much at all.
We have become a society driven by greed and the desperate urge to acquire as much material wealth as possible whilst doing as little as possible to attain it. We are alcohol fuelled has beens, with a whole generation prepared to settle for poor standards in more or less everything and it is no wonder that so many prefer virtuality to reality. Thatcher's declaration that there is no such thing as society has borne fruit and with the CONDEMS in power, the fragmentation of what little remains will continue.
We need people to accept rewards that do not involve vast sums of money, job satisfaction should be a reward in itself and those that work should be paid a good living wage. Is a football player worth more than say a doctor or a policeman?
Our players have become vastly overpaid and overindulged, and like overfed animals they do not have the hunger to win. I'd like to see a world cup in which all the teams were comprised of amateur players. They would train together as a team and play together as a team, and although we may not see the dazzling individual performances of the likes of Messi or Ronaldo, we may see more sides either winning or losing as a team.

A narrow thing

Well England managed to squeeze a result from the game and will go through to the last 16 in the finals, meeting the old enemy on Sunday and probably having to suffer the traditional penalty shootout. The press and the country are of course rallying behind them again because this time they did their jobs properly and so they ride on a small crest, that is until the next game.

There did seem to be a reduction in the number of St George's flags everywhere, especially on cars, but that I reckon had more to do with the facebook story that the government had requested all men with small penises to sport a flag on their car so that a survey could be taken. That seems to have been forgotten very quickly - oh the short memory span of the Sun reading Condem supporters!

Grandson

World cup woes

Writing is a strange occupation. Some days it is easy to sit and write a few pages, the words just seem to fall out and assemble themselves appropriately , or not, onto the page, while most days it is a real struggle. I often feel that I have something that I want to say but cannot seem to generate the energy needed to express myself.
Since I last wrote anything, the world cup has been the all consuming news, in such a timely fashion burying the fact that we have a "Condem" alliance running the country. The machinations that will see us all suffer from a death of a thousand cuts are going on largely un-noticed as everyone's attention, The England Team excepted, have their attention on football.
South Africa is under the world microscope and so far, things seem to be going well. The pitches and stadia seem to be good, crowd behaviour has been benign, buried under the roars of the awful vuvuzelas, and there have been good games as well as bad ones.
The English press of course have been up to their usual tricks; building up the team as if they were the next best thing to gods, and then as soon as they fail to produce miracles on the world stage, condemn them as the worst things since sliced bread. That is the price of fame here and it is no wonder that some refuse to join the bandwagon and set themselves up for the merciless attacks from press and fickle public alike.
At the moment, the St George's flags are still flying hopefully. They adorn the walls of the housing estates and flap noisily from the roofs of bay racer's cars, and a lull of disquiet reigns waiting for the decisive game on wednesday afternoon, that could see the England squad of ridiculously wealthy ball kickers either save their embarrassment or leave South Africa to the teams that are able to put that new ball into the net.
Should the unthinkable happen, it will be the first time since 1958, and the players may have to sneak back into the country under cover of darkness or individually through various backdooors. The manager, so feted by the press in recent years will have to resign and the flags will come down and no doubt litter the gutters for weeks.
Football needs to come to the attention of the axe weilding chancellor, and the ridiculous wages that these primadonnas are paid need to be taxed heavily. Maybe then, like many of the filth rich, they will leave the country and some proper footballers who love the game can be used to replace them.

Vive La France

I have just got back from a trip to what has become my favourite country, France. As we all do, I found myself making comparisons with home, and although being on holiday is not the same as living somewhere, I find France to be a refreshing change. The roads are excellent and driving on them is a pleasure compared with say the M25 or any major road at most times of the day. Drivers seem more courteous and considerate of other road users and maybe this has a lot to do with the low traffic density as much as the attitudes of the people.
I love the way that the people, wherever you go, acknowledge your presence. People talk to each other and greet each other, something which we seem to have forgotten how to do.
On the downside, France has a number of drawbacks and I am slowly learning that for most of France, work is something that they like to keep in perspective. Sundays are hopeless as everything is closed, not that ther was much to be open in the village that we were staying in. Lunchtimes are impossible too - again everything closes for at least 2 hours from midday, so you might as well just go back to bed or go for a long walk until things start to move again. Many places also close on mondays or tuesdays and then there is the half day closing on wednesdays. Most of the time we were there, people were notable by their complete absence, and frankly that suits me very well.
The ferry crossing was tolerable because we had booked a cabin on the way over, and on the return trip the boat was free from the infection of school parties. I was reminded though of the huge drawback of public transport - that being the public!
However, my love affair with France continues and I will quite happily go back there at any opportunity. One day I might even learn French, though that would mean that I'd have to speak it!

Lake Balaton

Summer seems to have come with a vengeance. Only days ago we had to have fires going and now every door and window is wide open and the house is really warm. It seems such a waste of time to spend it indoors, but there are still things to do and too long in the sun, we are told, is bad for you. It never seemed to bother us as kids, though I suppose we wore more clothes in those days and rarely lay about soaking up the rays. Sun screen was for us a thing of the future and sunburn a lesson that you didn't easily forget.
I think the last time that I got sunburned was in 1969 after a bunch of us canoed our way across Langstone harbour and spent a few hours sunning ourselves in the sand dunes. The pain that night and for the following days was intense and debilitating, and although the ministrations of some rather lovely fellow students were quite interesting, there was no compensation for the stupidity of my actions that day. Since then I stay in the shade where possible, and for the sake of other people I keep my body covered.
No doubt the sun worshippers will be out on the beaches today and white flesh will sizzle in the heat, skin will redden and peal and global warming will get the blame. The sun also brings out the summer outfits, some of which are actually attractive to look at, but I am sure that some should be made illegal, if not on the grounds of decency, then on the grounds of bad taste.
Today will see scores of disposable barbecues pouring out smoke over every common, beach or park as people fall for the supermarket practice of dressing up unsaleable cuts of meat and past their sell by date vegetables as barbecue fare. These will be ceremonially burned, polluting the air and creating a litter of aluminium foil, unburned charcoal and scraps of inedible food.
Drinkers will join the smokers outside the pubs and shopkeepers will bemoan the lack of sales whilst wishing that they too could be at the beach or the park.
The same will be happening all over Europe as the weather seems set fair for a few days and i am sure that even the shores of lake Balaton will be festooned with bikini clad beauties as well as beached whales in lycra.

Stupid questions

Of all the questions that are meaningless and impossible to answer, I would guess that most of them start with why? Try conversing with a four year old if you disagree.
"Why is that picture up there?"
"Because it looks better there than on the floor."
"Why?"
"Because we can see it better there."
"Why?"
"Because the light shines on it better."
Why?
"It just does -ok!"
"Why?"
You know what I mean, and it isn't just children that ask that question. How often are we asked for our opinions only to have that awful follow up - "Why?"
Most of the time the Why question is impossible to answer fully without incurring the inevitable repeat. Even fundamentals like "Why did you make Chilli again?"
"Because i wanted to."
"Why? we had it yesterday."
It's probably because that's all i could find or all i could be bothered to do but I have no idea really.
From a purely scientific point of view, asking why is rarely productive. "Why are there rainbows?" for example can produce all sorts of stupid answers that offer fairies, leprechauns or God as perpetrators. It is much more sensible to ask What is a rainbow. That can be answered reasonably lucidly by most intelligent people, but there is usually some dimwit at the back who will follow your explanation with a "But Why?"

Why did I start this??????

Keeping abreast

The press are being castigated for trivialising the role of women by, for example commenting on Theresa May's outfit and shoes. Now I don't wish to defend the media in any way shape or form, they are as best a pretty pernicious bunch and would sell their own grandmothers if that had any left, but on this issue I think that castigation is rather unfair.

There are huge differences between men and women and many of us celebrate that fact. Having said that, most women are rather obsessed by their appearances and seem to spend a small fortune on maintaining an image, a habit that becomes increasingly expensive as gravity and weathering take their toll. While most men seem content to let nature take its course, women struggle to keep up with the latest fashions. Some become obsessed with shoes and with some it may be collecting underwear.


Some women love to show as much of their skin as possible, with skirts up to their armpits and fleshy bosoms hanging out of their tops, and then moan and complain when men stare at them. Who are they kidding when they say that they dress like that just for themselves. Most women want to be admired by both men and women, they yearn to be looked at and compared to those around them. Just watch two women meeting for the first time - don't bother to listen to the conversation just watch the eye movements as they scrutinise each other comparing outfits and makeup; and if both are wearing the same thing, watch how the sparks fly.

Some women pay a fortune to have implants to accentuate their breasts, some to the extent that they can no longer walk properly and pay scant attention to the fact that in later life those prostheses will level out around their knees.


How many women; of course there will be some: would be content to turn up to work in a shirt and tie along with sensible shoes and trousers? Until they dress in the same way as men, they must expect to be treated differently. Just because I might glance at your cleavage or admire your thighs does not mean that I cannot take you seriously.

Eyjafjallajokull

So the small volcano in Iceland is creating air travel mayhem once again. It would sem that much of the UK airport system is again to be paralysed as millions of tons of ash and carbon dioxide as well as sulphur compounds are pouring into the air with no sign of abating.
I hate flying, not that I am scared of crashing, lets face it most pilots would rather do anything than crash. What does it for me are, primarily, airports. As soon as you enter an airport you become part of a queue that seems to never go anywhere. The check in is a pain in the bum and then there are the lounges, where people mill like sheep waiting for flights to be called, haemorrhaging money on vastly overpriced food and beverages. Shell suited parents with their fat kids predominate and are not easy to ignore, and the noise of the assembled throngs penetrates every cubic centimetre of space. If ever I am tense it is in such diabolical situations. Then there are the departure lounges where everyone sits in plastic rows eying up the fellow sheep and hoping that you don't get to sit next to the huge woman who takes up two of the seats in the lounge, or the noisy kids with their games consoles and bags of sweets.
Then there is the plane - an aluminium tube with seats packed so close together that there is room for either you or your legs, and you know that once in, it is almost impossible to get out.
There was a time when the cabin staff were pleasant almost to the point of servility, but now it seems that they are doing you a favour. The food is awful, drinks are hard to get hold of and expensive and the flight is occupied by the dreadful thought that you have the prospect of getting out of an airport at the end of the journey, while breathing in air that becomes increasingly contaminated by the bodily odours of all those on board.
Holidays are allegedly about relaxing and one that involved flying is as far from that as one can get. So next week i am off to France - on a boat. Eyjafjallajokull can do what it wants and I will remain calm and relaxed in the knowledge that if it stops the boat from sailing then we are in deep trouble.

Day Two

Day one

Here we are, day one of the new Tory/tory coalition and already the unemployment figures are rising. It is amazing what can be accomplished with almost no effort at all. It was sad seeing Gordon Brown leave office yesterday but he did so with dignity and I have no doubt that before long, many people will be wishing that he was back.

Change has a way of percolating slowly through the food chain, the pain usually being felt from the bottom upwards and getting diluted as it goes up, while the benefits work the other way around. I recall a tale, perhaps apocryphal, about a tribe of South American Indians who held a particular mushroom species sacred. The reason for this was that it, when eaten produced a wonderful high and the high ranking priests were the only ones allowed to go tripping. However, many pharmaceuticals pass through the body unaltered and the high priests, no pun intended, would urinate into jars that were passed on to the lower echelons in the priesthood who would then drink the pee and experience a trip all of their own. They in turn would pee into jars that would be passed down and so on, until the lowest of the low would get to drink the pee and receieve no benefit. This is the future folks and I hope that you are higher up the ladder than I am.

Apparently Oscar was awoken this morning by his bowel movement. These eruptions can be startling and messy too, and we all hope that this sort of event is not something that we can look forward to.
It seems fitting that this should happen on election day. The polls have been open since seven and no doubt there has been a steady trickle of disenchanted folk just itching to scratch their cross on the ballot paper, before carrying on with their day, which they know will probably not change very much regardless of the outcome. I would imagine that those who have been campaigning all these weeks are having a lie in, in preparation for being up all night to find out what sort of conservative government we will have for the next five years. Whatever happens the damage will soon be done and we as a country will blunder on towards the next crisis and there will be someone else to blame; there always is.
What happened to society? What happened to personal responsibility? What happened to truth? Today there is no such thing as an accident. Someone is always to blame we are always looking for scapegoats and looking for someone other than ourselves to take the blame for whatever goes wrong in our lives. The no win no fee legal system is partly to blame of course but that in itself has grown in a place where there was room for it to grow, and no-one bothered to pull out the weed until it had seeded and spread.
Whatever the outcome tomorrow, there will be no change, at least no change that is discernable to most of us. Yes times will get tougher, money will be worth less and all of us will have to make sacrifices but the filthy rich will still get richer while the majority pay for the mistakes of the few. Oscar will still grow up in a better world than those who grew up in the thirties and forties, but in many ways he will be less well off. I hope that he learns that there is more to life than material gain, that people matter more than property, and that you do not have to follow the doctrines of others in order to live a fulfilling life.

Gardens

I am not a gardener but I potter about trying to get things to grow and usually failing miserably. When you have a garden ther seems and unwritten obligation to keep it looking like something, but unless you have the will and the ability, it is hard to keep it up. I like a nice lawn, and I work quite hard on keeping my little patch of grass healthy. I feed it and cut it regularly, trim the edges and reseed or returf the bald spots each year. It gets more attention than many ladies nether regions and yet it manages to look good for few weeks of the year only. As soon as it starts to get warm, it starts to let me down and by the end of the summer it looks like one of the less fertile areas of the Gobi desert.
This year I decided to get on top of the vegetable patches too and assiduously dug, raked and weeded them so that they would be ready to accept the seedling that I had started off in the greenhouse. Then we had to go away for a ten day period and of course it chose to be warm and sunny and when I got back, all my seedlings had died. I now have a choice - to say sod it and forget the garden this year, or to buy lots of plants from a garden centre and let them die when we go away on holiday again. The former option seems more attractive but then the whole place will become overgrown and shabby and I'll have to spend hours getting it back to a reasonably tidy shape. It all seems pretty futile and I can understand why many people cover their gardens with paving or gravel. Even that though is a lot of work and expense, and it looks pretty awful too.
I suspect that the size of the garden, along with a body that is failing will be the trigger that initiates a move, and probably away from the island that has been home since 1971. The mainland, or at least one of its inhabitants beckons and it cannot be long before the siren call has to be answered.

Change?

OScar has been here for a week and I am amazed at how much time and space he can occupy.

The media are flooded with the forthcoming election, and it is beginning to look as if the country will get the government that it deserves. This is unfortunate as the nation as a whole has yet to recover from the greediness and grasping philosophies of the last Tory government, and few can remember what they are really like.

The tory mantra this time seems to be the word "Change", and this taps into the nature of a society with a short attention span. Management and middle management seems to flourish on change for the sake of it, and everyone taking on a position feels the necessity to bring about changes regardless of need and regardless of what has gone before. Workforces get tired of seeing the same cycles repeating themselves and so become cynical; but it is the way of the world.

A worrying statistic is that almost 50% of the population are below average intelligence and it is this group that are most likely to be persuaded to vote in the direction that the tabloids lead them. Unfortunately most people cannot remember what a tory government is like and that is a great pity as we are likely to find out once again to the cost of most of us and the benefit of the few.

Fortuanately Oscar is oblivious to all of this and as yet unable to stand on his own feet. With his mother to cater for all his needs that is fine for now, but in the future he will need to change that. Woe betide anyone who cannot.

Mistakes

We all make mistakes, and some learn from them. Clearly women all over the world have been making a huge one in dressing immodestly, and therefore, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. According to learned Islamic clerics they should desist immediately so that the Earth can settle down. These people expect to be taken seriously?

Yesterday I lost concentration for a while and made a mistake that caused me a great deal of regret for a couple of hours. I have no excuse, I should have seen it coming but I didn't think about it at all until the damage was done, however I am pretty sure that I won't do it again.

I had spent some time in the garden and realised that in my recent prolonged absence, I had lost most of my seedlings. Now i don't grow much but I do like Chilli peppers and so decided to deseed a fresh one and try once again. I am a hands on type of person and so I split the tiny red chilli by hand and separated out the seeds to dry them. Then the phone rand and I dashed off to answer it. That was the distractor, and once I'd done there I went to the loo. That was the error. I had no sooner finished and washed my hands when i realised that I had done those things in the wrong order. Part of me began to burn-intensely and all I could do was thrust it under the cold tap. It didn't help, the stuff must have been absorbed into the skin and the pain was horrible, all i could do was squirm and curse my stupidity. I dashed around the house hoping that a frenzy of activity might distract me. Believe me when that part of you is on fire there is nothing that can distract from it, and so I suffered in a silent scream for the rest of the afternoon.

So lesson learned and contrary to common wisdom, it is best to wash your hands BEFORE going for a pee.