7 April 2011

This afternoon, Douglas Gordon, my erstwhile stockbroker- now retired – husband of Cecilia, my erstwhile piano teacher, kindly spent the best part of the afternoon with me. He arrived in a magnificent open top Bristol which he has owned for 25 years. In addition, regular readers might recall he also owns a very beautiful ancient Rolls-Royce, which once belonged to his father that had been sold out of the family Amazingly, some years later, Douglas somehow came across this car when it was on the open market and bought it back. He came here to take me out to lunch on 6 May last year, the day before I fell off the train at Bishops Stortford, and break my leg, and turned up with this fantastic car, but sadly I found it utterly impossible to mount the high running board, so the poor old chap had to go home again and bring back a modern car. In the meantime, I returned to my office and having weakened my legs attempting to mount his car, fell backwards onto the lawn, fortunately, the first of a number of falls when I could have easily broken my neck! No harm was done, on that occasion, and when he returned we went off to the Axe and Compasses, for lunch, in the adjacent village of Arkesden

Douglas very generously bought me a bottle of Cotes du Rhone, 2005, a delightful reminder of the wine he served at the party to celebrate his 70th birthday, a party which I was able to attend. Sadly I missed the 75th but will enjoy drinking the earlier bottle and remembering times past..

Douglas is an amazing man who, for many years has edited the best village magazine in the country, The Newport News. He is fascinated by people and their history, which is what makes his magazine so very readable but, in addition, he commissioned a local writer to write the history of his family from one of his great-grandfathers, born in 1814,. I think he said that they had eight children and five of those married and had children and so. I might not have these numbers absolutely right, but no doubt the book, now published, will be absolutely fascinating, tracing, as it does, the lives of all of these offspring. The book is now published and being distributed amongst the lucky members of the family, most of whom are featured in it

6 April 2011

Lke so many things when I have one ear cocked to the radio in the early morning I heard something which gladdened my heart this morning. The. newscaster mentioning the government’s new policy on social mobility. They were concerned about unpaid internships (short periods of work experience) gained through networking) . but as, The Times acknowledged, ‘Fair work experience could boost social mobility but mentoring could help more‘ Mentoring would be fairer and more effective in giving young people from poorer families a better chance in life. Again, to quote from The Times, ‘Those who find it easiest to secure desirable experience in the workplace are, indeed, invariably those who require it the least. For the children of professional, well-connected parents, horizons are already broad. A week in the offices of, say, a law firm may only serve to point them in the direction of one sort of affluent success rather than another. For a child who knows nobody who works in an office, meanwhile a week in one can change your life. Inevitably, though, such children have little notion of how to secure work experience in a top profession or, very possibly, much real understanding of what one is.

Readers might recall my letter to the Prime Minister concerning mentoring which I initially sent prior to the last election as I thought it would be an excellent boost to the Conservative campaign. I got no reply then, and only the briefest of acknowledgements to my last attempt to promote this idea to the Prime Minister. (See 11 February entry). The Times article acknowledges, quote ‘Mentioning, unlike work experience, is easily targetable at those committees and schools that can benefit the most. It also provides a direct link between underprivileged teenagers and those in a position to grant them the internships that otherwise they might never think to ask for. At present, few professional mentorship programmes exist and those that do are ill documented …… Still, if there is to be a Big Society answer to a lack of social mobility, it is hard to envisage a better one. I believe the Prime Minister missed a great opportunity. now the idea of mentoring is coming home to roost. I certainly did not expect him personally to read my letter but I would have hoped that one of his aides might have done so and drawn to his attention. ‘Maybe I would have more luck with Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems!

Having written this note I thought I might Google mentoring to see if there was anything current on the subject. I was delighted to come across a web page called Kids. This is an organisation which was set up 40 years ago to assist disabled children, young people and their families to develop personal skills. Precisely what I’ve been banging on about, without success, and something about which the government now appears to be taking some notice.

If any of my readers are interested in finding out more about this organisation they can do so by going on to their website, which they will find under www.kids.org.uk

I was also glad to hear today that the Commons are going to debate the possibility of making St Georges Day ( England’s patron saint’s day) a public holiday. For some reason this year there are two dates, 23 April and 2 May. In any event, if this idea is adopted, it would not come into play during next year-that’s the good news.

The bad news is that Labour Day, the 1 May holiday would be abolished. No bad thing as the very name smacks of the old communist era. As a matter of interest, Scotland has had its patron saint’s day, St Andrew Day as a public holiday since 2006, so again England is lagging behind.

5 April 2011

Being a Tuesday it is geriatric golf day again. However, the weather forecast was not good, a light drizzle, overcast and a chilly wind was forecast, so I decided to skip it this week. After all it is only the beginning of April and will be plenty more opportunities.

I’ve finalised my invitations to Lord’s today. 14 guests on eight different occasions. I hope I’m not being too optimistic. and that I will be able to cope. Most days that good Barry will be taking me and picking me up but on three of the days, when one of my guests is a big strong lad, I shall go with them and pray they do not drop me!. Without wishing to sound unduly pessimistic, this might well be my last season then I make it, so I intend to try and make the most of it.

The last day of the current financial year. I’ve never quite understood why it falls on 5 April, when most of us, for tax purposes make our year end the 31 March, but there you are. From today on the coalition governments changes in taxation, benefits etc will start to impinge one way or the other. They claim that 80% of the population will be better off and the bulk of the pain will be felt by the higher paid. I can see nothing in the current proposals which assist those prudent people who have saved up all their lives and rely on the interest from their savings to supplement their income in a period when the interest rates are as low as they have been for the last 40 years or so

I have written much over the past year about the big bang and the scientific evidence for the existence and evolution of things made possible without the hand of God. It was therefore interesting to read. The reason for lack of faith by Levin’s dying brother, in Anna Karenina, was that the contemporary scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crashed out the possibility of faith

4 April 2011

A second painful night in a row. Not only knees, hips and shoulders this time, but also a thigh muscle and buttocks. As it is, I seem to take enough painkillers to tranquilise an elephant, so I’m going to request my GP to refer me to a pain consultant. The problem stems from lying too long in one position and not really being strong enough to turn over. We have ameliorated this to some extent by pinning a medical rubber mat three quarters of the way down the bed onto which I can put my feet and get some sort of purchase. I had thought that we might buy a 1 x 2 m.. Piece of the cheapest rubber backed carpet that we can find, and wrap this around the bottom 3 feet of the mattress but, after moving the rubber mat lower down the bed. I realise that to have it across the entire width would probably mean I could not move my feet at all, so I have abandoned that idea. If I find a perfect solution, I will, of course, reported for the benefit of others in the same position. In the meantime we are about to purchase some saint to make a top sheet, which hopefully will reduce the friction between my nightclothes and my bed covering the making the process of turning them much easier.

I am now well through rereading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and I’m fascinated, this time round, to realise what an incredible piece of pre-revolution Russian social history. this book represents. It goes into the greatest detail of the daily lives of the aristocracy. How they behaved. their customs, habits, dress and lifestyles, even down to the smallest detail of some of the food they ate. For example, the wonderful description of the wedding between Levin and Kitty. What they wore and every detail of the betrothal and the marriage service. In addition, there are similarly detailed accounts of the serfs and peasants. Indeed, the abolition of serfdom and the rise of the peasantry to a position where they began to get some control over the land that they had worked for generations before. purely, for the benefit of their masters, who literally had complete control over virtually every aspect of their lives. In other words, this book can be read as a piece of social history. quite apart from the poignant love story between Vronsky and Anna Karenina.

It is even prophetic in that the state of the Russian nation, almost 100 years ago, has a spine tingling resemblance to the state of Europe today. It recognises the need for agricultural reform (the abolition or reform of EU farming subsidies); the facilities of communication such as railways, leading to the centralisation in towns, (the world wide web; the mobile phone) the development of luxury. (The cavalier spending by the bulk of the population om borrowed money for material goods and holidays, they could otherwise not afford) The development of manufacturing, credit (the explosion of personal borrowing. Particularly the housing at 100 or 125% of the ascribed value) and this accompaniment of speculation (last year’s banking scandal and the speculation in currency, leading to the current credit crunch) Having said that, in today’s fast moving society, how many people, except thw retired. (and the idle rich!) can possibly plough their way through the hundreds of pages of this book. That is probably why Amazon give it away free to their Kindle customers!

3 April 2011

Mother’s Day. A commercialisation I fear we have imported from our American friends. Anyway, what’s wrong with telling our mother, once a year,. how wonderful she is with, I hope, a strong degree of sincerity. (Indeed, I am told by one or two of my friends that I should be telling my wife how wonderful she is every single day!) We are extremely lucky with our children, in that they are only too aware what a marvellous mother. they have. The card from daughter Chloe was what one has come to expect from her, genuinely loving and thanking her mum for the dedication and devotion. she is showing towards me in these difficult times.

The card from son Smile was no less sincere but as always, being a bit of a wag, he managed to add an amusing twist to it. He found, what I imagine, is a fairly typical American card,’ For my Mum from your Son, with the following message.

“Dear Mum, Sorry I can’t be with you on Mother’s Day but I’ve got no washing needs doing and I’m all right for cash…”.

.

We are very fortunate in having two this lovely children who we hope, have been brought up properly, mainly due to their mother’s influence, no doubt, as I was away working. long hours during the week, much of the time, who really seem to appreciate what they have. Contrast this with what I heard this morning on the radio about many of today’s young being ‘benefit socially reliant’. One mother even went so far as to say quite proudly that her son had done very well, “he had managed to get himself on the benefit.”. This is desperately sad and such a waste of our wonderful. youth and something I’m glad to say that is being very seriously tackled by our government. The government announced today that it intends to interview every person who is claiming incapacity benefit and from a trial, they have already conducted have found that at least 50% would be capable of doing some sort of work.. I gather that many university students sign on for unemployment benefit, and also possibly jobseekers allowance during the long summer vacation, most of them having no intention whatsoever of taking a job even if it’s offered to them but using the money to enjoy an extended holiday. I must say I was very proud of my own son nearly, 30 years ago, when he refused to sign on. during the long vacation from Cambridge and instead took a job with a removals firm lumping furniture about all day.

2. April 2011

Another weekend. Most of today will be devoted to watching the final of the World Series Cricket between India and Sri Lanka. (Thank goodness, I hear some of my readers say. Seven weeks, I agree, is a long time for such a series. However, be warned the cricket season starts at Lord’s with the first test against Sri Lanka r on 3 June). What about today’s match? India always started as favourites in my mind. and so it proved. Despite a valiant effort by Sri Lanka, India had a comfortable win. Despite the match being held in Mumbai . I was not aware that the Sri Lankans went on the rampage after the match as a result of losing it has undoubtedly would have happened in this country with opposing supporters even from the same city.

. I suppose one of the most encouraging aspect of this particular series for me, was the semi-final between India and Pakistan and seeing the presidents of those two countries sitting side-by-side in the VIP box. Then watching the two teams going down the line and shaking hands with their opposition. All of this. after many years of hateful accusations thrown backwards and forwards across the border between the two countries. It’s wonderful to think that something like the game of cricket may be the plaster their bridges the years of hatred between these two countries.

The situation in Libya becomes even more convoluted. The Foreign Minister-a long-term friend of Gaddafi’s- has defected and not sought political asylum.

As such he is therefore being deeply ‘debriefed’ by the intelligence service, particularly over the Lockerbie bombing. It seems that he may not be immune from some sort of ‘crimes against humanity’ trial. At the same time, we are told that an envoy from one of Gaddafi son’s has visited London and been involved in secret talks with the British government but no details have been released. The implication is, however, either the Gaddafi is seeking a ceasefire-which would considerably strengthen his own position-or he may be looking for some sort of dignified exit strategy. In the meantime the battle between government troops and the anti-Gaddafi mob goes on with the mob being outgunned 10 – 1, so the odds are stacked against them.

Whenever they make ground they seem to lose it again quite quickly and there seems to be a reluctance, at least from the Western world, to provide these rebels with weapons or armoury. Maybe somebody like Qatar will step into attempt to equalise the firepower.

1 April 2011

Known as April Fools’ Day. The day on which traditionally pranks are played upon people.

Even the respected BBC in a programme called Panorama in 1957 played, what has become one of the most famous hoaxes of April Fools’ Day. It concerned, what they described as the spaghetti harvest. The programme announced that due to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper crop. It was accompanied by pictures of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti from trees. As a result, a huge number of viewers contacted the BBC wanting to know how to grow these trees. To this the BBC diplomatically replied ‘place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best!

I heard on this morning’s news that a schoolboy had been accused of assault against another classmate with a marshmallow and the police had been called to his school to deal with the complaint. The newscaster went on to say what a dreadful waste of public money, the thingwhich made me believe that it might be true but perhaps, after all, this is yet another April Fools’ Day hoax. What isn’t a hoax is another announcement, I heard where British manufacturers were complaining that the young people. they employed, in effect, as apprentices, were incapable of doing anything with their hands. In my time there were such things as carpentry and metalwork classes for those interested in the subject, but today, apparently, schools are not allowed to teach such handicrafts in case a child gets injured and sues the school. What absolute nonsense.

Now for a bit more nonsense. My readers deserve something a little lighter than the heavy astronomical stuff. I got into yesterday. Here is a sketch, which has shades of the famous one between the two robbers Fork Handles (Four Candles).you can actually see this sketch alongside this, one on U Tube. This one, doctors however,is with Ronnie Corbett & (I believe) Harry Enfield skit.    over 13 million people, have already logged into this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

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31 March 2011

Barton and Judith W-P came to tea today .I think it’s about the first time we have seen them this year and it was only last June, on our way down to Cornwall to see my in-laws, that we stopped off, for lunch, at the W-P’s family home, Caddy.. They were sighing with relief at the return of their youngest son Tom, and his family, who had just returned from a stint of teaching in New Zealand. They were, in fact, living between Mt Cook and Christchurch and experienced the first of the two recent earthquakes-the minor one. Fortunately they left a few weeks before the recent massive earthquake.

The W-P’s go back a long way. In fact, they were probably the first of the ‘old faithfuls’ that we came to know in this village. When we returned from Aden, in Southern Arabia, in 1964,. we decided to rent. whilst we looked around the area for a suitable house. We ended up at the Od Police House in Little Hadham, Hertfordshire. At that time we were sent details of a number of houses in our area of search, including some in this village, one of which we were particularly interested in, only to find that the W-P’s had beaten us to it. Those two coincidences forged an early friendship which has continued ever since.

It also helped that our children were of a similar age and went to the same primary school. I recall that none of us were very enamoured with the little primary school in Clavering, at the time, and decided that we would prefer to send our children to a much more avant-garde primary school in a nearby village, Great. Hormead. Gaining consent from the local council, to make this move, meant that we had to jointly complain about the lavatories!. A subterfuge. admittedly, but one that worked. Today, Clavering has a very fine new primary school with an excellent reputation.

Judith is an absolutely smashing cook. Learning early on about my love of rich fruit cake she has generously baked a wonderful traditional Christmas cake for me every year since..

After the WP’sr left. I watched the last episode of the BBC programme, Wonders of the Universe, a programme I thoroughly recommended . my readers to watch, a week or two ago. I have gained a great deal of superficial knowledge about the universe from these four episodes which I found absolutely fascinating. For example, recognising early on that sound travels at a certain speed, which was observable to thr human ear (I think it is 12,000 km/hr, known as Mach one) . Most of us today have observed this for ourselves in hearing the sonic boom, when a supersonic aircraft goes through the sound barrier.

The fact that light also travels at a certain speed throughout the universe and was discovered about 350 years years ago and then subsequently that speed. ultimately calculated.. Prof Cox illustrated this in the simplest of fashions.. He explained that Galileo observed that Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io orbited the planet in exactly 42.5 hours. Sometime later, a Swedish astronomer realised that, depending on the time of year, Io appeared to emerge from behind Jupiter at different times. This, of course, could not be so as it was known that Io orbited at a constant speed. The explanation turned out to be quite simple. Depending on the time of year, the closer earth was to Jupiter, the earlier Io appeared and the converse, the further away the earth was the later Io appeared. This gave a clue that there was a finite time which, light travelled and from this observation. it was eventually possible to calculate that speed close enough to 300,000 metres/sec, or 186,000 mi./s, or put another way, 10,000 million, million kilometres per year, which is near enough, for our purposes, to what’s known as a light year. This clearly can be translated. therefore, into distance – the distance light travels in one yea. From this it has been possible to calculate the distance of any distant star or Galaxy within our observation and using such instruments as the Hubble Radio telescope in space, observe stars at the very end of our known universe.

From these observations, it became clear to the astronomers that the universe was expanding at a constant speed. Therefore< ipso facto if the universe is expanding and has been since time began by reversing the calculation it was possible to ascertain that the”Big Bang’ occurred 13.7 billion years ago from a single speck in a void, or the beginning of time itself. I must not go any deeper into this subject as I know superficially very little about, except I hope to have enthused at least some of my readers to watch this wonderful program. which is essentially about, Who we are and Where did we come from? I do hope that I have not bored too many of my readers with my own enthusiasm and interest in this subject stop I know that’ my lovely’s’ eyes glaze over whenever I get onto that topic!

30 March 2011

C A quiet day. Jane the ‘sheep’ came as usual at lunchtime for a couple of hours and we were able to go through a large bundle of attachments to the dentists defence. Most of it was dental records etc and there was virtually nothing new in it that we had not dealt with before. However, Jane is now be in a position to write her short note about what went on, and, more particularly, what forms she signed on my behalf. It’s rather bad luck on her to get involved in something like this but under the circumstances, it cannot be helped. In any event, it is fortunate that Jane is of a like mind with me that where injustice exists, and, in particular, were elderly people might be being exploited, then this must be fought.

Jane recently attended a gathering of ladies interested in spinning wool .. Her expertise for years has been rare sheep and washing, combing and spinning wool, so I’m sure she was a great help to these enthusiasts. Indeed, I suggested it might be something she could develop as there are obviously a great number of this small groups of dedicated ladies, dotted about the country, who are determined to keep this ancient craft alive. Alice first met Jane when we had to farm out two of our orphan sheep about which one of our neighbours complained were making too much noise. They were obviously not attuned to the sounds of the country. She even complained once about the leaves from our trees blocking her gutters in the autumn. Fortunately, it did not take her too long for her to realise that she would feel far more at home in a town. .

On the world front of disasters we hear little now of what is happening in New Zealand, although the last we heard was that the ultimate death rate could be around 30,000 with something like 200,000 other people. displaced.

The situation in Japan is becoming more serious by the day with radiation leaking into the ocean and turning up, albeit in a weakened form, far afield in other countries. There still exists. the danger that the residents of Tokyo and surrounding cities are exposed to radiation thousands of times higher than is safe and then heaven knows what happens to this country and its economy and therefore the effect on the economy.. on the rest of us. That is, of course, leaving aside the horrors of the effect on the population, which, in the short run, is far more important. A very worrying scenario and one which is making all of the Western world,. considering the building more nuclear power stations, to increase the protection against similar disasters.

The third concern, on the international front, is what is happening in Libya. What started as a ‘fly-free zone’ seems to have developed into intervention on the ground and even suggestions that the ‘rebels’ be armed by the Western world, but with a cautionary whisper from some quarters that they may well be infiltrated by Al Qaeda. Similar uprisings are continuing in other parts of the Middle East, but most of them seem minor compared with the Libyan situation and, at present, appear to be being controlled by the governing party by offers of more freedom of speech and varying moves towards some form of democracy. Whether or not these relaxations ever take place. I think is another matter.. However, this does beg the question and if any of these states start getting heavy with the protesters, like mowing them down with machine guns, do we stand back and say this is their business or do we get involved?. As I’ve said before, a truly difficult moral dilemma. I would like to think we would always get involved. but then would we find ourselves in another Iraq or Afghanistan situation? My solution would be to have a large standing army under the auspices of the United Nations, at least on standby, which could moved into such situations and hopefully sort them out very quickly before they escalated into a long-term terrorist battles and being multinational. this would hopefully deny the offending country the opportunity of claiming that they were being invaded by a foreign power.

 

29 March 2011

My apologies to my readers. My blog has been down for the last couple of days. I thought it was something to do with routine maintenance by the server but, according to my good friend, Richard Morris, who is the administrator of this site, it may have been something to do with a corrupt file, or just as likely that I stupidly pressed the wrong key somewhere.. In any event we are now back in business.

We were blessed yesterday with another one of those very beautiful English spring days. Even more so from my point of view as it was the geriatric golf day at Worlington and I was able to pay a visit to the club with the usual buggy ride for nine holes, alternately driven by John Stevens and Griggsy, then lunch with a bunch of old pals. As usual, Scott and Barry between them were marvellous in manoeuvring me from car to wheelchair and. In the dining room, John Fellows (Lord de Ramsey) assumed the role of nanny and fed me when my arms got tired. These outings really cheer me up enormously even though I cannot participate in the golf , except, of course, in my mind and watching my friends play. I seem to know every mistake, they have or are going to, make! As I said before I haven’t missed a single putt or chip for a couple of years, but then when I was actually playing, why was it not as easy as it appears to be to me now?!

Althea came this afternoon to do my nails and then I watched the end of the New Zealand. the Sri Lanka quarter-final of the World Series cricket. A fairly predictable result with Sri Lanka going through to the final.

‘My lovely’ picked up a prescription for me, this afternoon, from the local surgery and at the same time was given a rather alarming looking kit called Just in Case. Heaven knows who ordered it or why, it all sounds rather alarming. It is rather like the time I came round from my radical prostatectomy operation only to find the local vicar standing by the side of the bed. As it turned out it was a social call but my first thoughts were that he had come to read the last rites, perhaps like Bertrand Russell, he was hoping for a deathbed conversion. I would much rather be remembered for my last words like King Edward VII, (I hope I got the right King) iwho at the time was being asked about Bognor, with his last breath, apparently, he said. “Bugger Bognor.” We will have to check with Mary, the continuing care assessor, who was probably responsible, not for what the king said of course, but for the Just in Case box..