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incorporating |
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and 'living with' |
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Comment | Opinion | Questions |
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[Entries are in reverse date order, latest at the top. Comments and contributions are welcome to the email address at the bottom.] |
2023202220212020 |
Tuesday 31st January |
![]() This is uplifting, a beacon of light amidst the challenging gloom of climate threat and food poverty, a welcome counterpoint to the rotten antics of our government. We've just been invited by friends to an evening at The Long Table, as worthy a Stroud institution as you can get. ![]() Stroud Film Festival The Seeds of Vandana Shiva Saturday, 18 February 2023 5:00pm-9:00pm Here's some more blurb from the Long Table website: ![]() "The Long Table was founded by Tom Herbert and Will Mansell in an old Brimscombe warehouse in 2018. This happened after Tom met with Will Mansell, who is part of The Grace Network of which The Long Table is now a key part. They shared a mutual dismay of how society is doing food badly, leaving people unwell and lonely. Shamefully, one third of all food grown and produced is never eaten. And so a new kind of Community Interest Company was born, with a team from a variety of social roots that shared one vision. Our aim is to make locally sourced and lovingly prepared food available to everyone, regardless of their social or financial background. Something we now call Food Equality." Visit the website here: ![]() |
Monday 30th January |
![]() ![]() How telling that the number one story yesterday should have been about the sacking of the chairman of the Conservative Party. Not news of economic progress, a break-through scientific development nor justice achieved for a deserving ordinary person. Nope. Just self-seeking Tory sleaze and dishonesty. What a shame that I should have been scouring the GOV.UK website not for useful guidance or explanation but for the official #taxgate letters sent by Sir Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak and Nadhim Zahawi. Yes, they are there ... but what a waste of time and money, documenting the transgressions of our leadership rather than their achievements. I'm sure you've seen them but for the record here they are: Magnus to Sunak ![]() ![]() ![]() Sunak said: "It is also with pride that I, and previous Prime Ministers, have been able to draw upon the services of a Kurdish-born Iraqi refugee at the highest levels of the UK Government." Zahawi commented in reply: "I arrived in this country fleeing persecution and speaking no English. Here, I built a successful business and served in some of the highest offices in government." Which privilege he then abused. This is the government hell-bent on making more difficult the lives of the desperate seeking sanctuary. |
Sunday 29th January |
The joke's (almost) over now. No first match fairy tale victory, cruelly denied in extra time:
![]() ![]() I reckon Big Dunc told the lads to get stuck in: ![]() Meanwhile, I have the answer to my vegan question of two days ago: "The earth is warming up, isn't it?" No shit, Dunc. Would this have helped tired FGR legs in the dying moments of the game? Son Ben sent a photo of Thursday's birthday lunch in Bilbao: ![]() |
Saturday 28th January |
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Friday 27th January |
Football and Forest Green Rovers again today. Apologies to those not interested - but it's quite a story.
![]() A bit of background for the uninitiated. "Big Dunc" - 6' 4" - was in his playing days a robust No. 9 for Scotland and most prominently for Everton. Good with his head, both on the pitch and ... ... off. Here's a chunk of his Wikipedia entry: "Ferguson has had four convictions for assault - two arising from taxi rank scuffles, one an altercation with a fisherman in an Anstruther pub, and one for his on-field headbutt on Raith Rovers defender John McStay in 1994 while playing for Rangers, which resulted in a rare conviction for an on-the-field incident. The first incident led to a £100 fine for headbutting a policeman and a £25 fine for a Breach of the Peace, while the second resulted in a £200 fine for punching and kicking a supporter on crutches. He was sentenced to a year's probation for the third offence. For the 1994 on-the-field headbutting, he received and served a three-month jail term for assault." Ferguson was burgled in 2001 and 2003. On both occasions the robbers were hospitalised. They clearly hadn't done their homework. Sounds ideal. It's going to be a scrap to avoid relegation from League One, so we need a bit of a brawler. I like his second nickname even more: "Duncan Disorderly". It gets better. According to ClassicFM and other sources, little-known Finnish composer Osmo Tapio Räihälä dedicated one of his works to the centre-forward. It's called "Barlinnie Nine", presumably a reference to HM Prison Barlinnie where Ferguson served time and his Everton shirt number. The orchestral piece was premiered on the same day in 2005 that Ferguson scored the only goal in a game against Manchester United, Everton's first win over ManU in 10 years. It's true. Räihälä said: "I got the idea for it when he was facing jail and had just become something of a cult figure for Everton. It takes into account the contradictions in him: he has an aggressive side but there is a lyrical undertone, as the fact that he keeps pigeons shows." I don't expect you to listen to all 12 minutes of the premiere performance, but for the record here it is, on 20th April 2005 at the Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, played by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo: The appointment has gone down well with the FGR faithful on the Twittersphere. Announced the day after Burchnall departed, Dale Vince must have had this in the pipeline. A canny move? I'm off to the bookies to find out what odds I can get on FGR escaping the drop. I should have gone two days ago. ![]() Has anyone told him he's a vegan from now on? |
Thursday 26th January |
Oh dear. Forest Green Rovers hit the buffers.
![]() Manager pays customary price. ![]() ![]() Too much red: ![]() It didn't stop Dale making a trip to Vienna last week (OK, he went by train) to give Arnie some diamonds. ![]() Maybe that's why FGR are bottom of the league. Distracted by bling. Chris Taylor writes from Udine: "Meanwhile Udinese have refound their winning ways (Sampdoria 0 Udinese 1) and are respectably well above halfway in the Serie A table. I and my son-in-law will be at the Stadio Friuli on Monday night to see what they can do against Verona. Watch this space." Alè Udin!
Happy Birthday to son Ben in Bilbao!
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Wednesday 25th January |
This poster went up in a Middle Street window two days ago:
![]() As you can see at the bottom right, the Stroud Red Band will be playing. Their website explains: "We are an extension of the London Big Red Band, which has been in existence since the 1980s. Like them we play music from the heritage of the labour, socialist and international solidarity movements. We play at demonstrations, marches and benefits when we can." ![]() Here we come, sadly, to some evidence of conflict in Stroud. I wrote in December last year about opposition to the peddling of The Light newspaper in the High Street 👉. You will have noticed in the poster at the top that certain groups are not invited to the memorial event on Sunday: "Everyone is welcome - except for Holocaust deniers, antisemites and their apologists". I saw on YouTube these placards displayed by supporters of the Stroud Red Band as they busked in town: ![]() It will be deeply regrettable if the Stroud (Mis)InfoHub go large on this over the weekend (the official memorial day is 27th January, this Friday). They wouldn't show up on Sunday, would they? Please no. To read more about this weekend's events you can visit the website of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), a charity established and funded by the UK Government, by clicking below: The HMDT has a theme for 2023 of "ordinary people". It's a provocative thought: "Genocide is facilitated by ordinary people. Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, join murderous regimes. And those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide aren't persecuted because of crimes they've committed - they are persecuted simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group (eg, Roma, Jewish community, Tutsi). Ordinary people were involved in all aspects of the Holocaust, Nazi persecution of other groups, and in the genocides that took place in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Ordinary people were perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers, witnesses - and ordinary people were victims." Here is the full text of the theme document (6 pages): ![]() It contains a beautiful comic-strip image from the graphic novel "Irmina" by Munich-based Barbara Yelin, which I highlight here (click to enlarge): ![]() |
Tuesday 24th January |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I've been trawling the international output of the political cartoonists on the topic of Jacinda Ardern's resignation. There has been plenty of criticism directed at her in words - jump-before-push, economic crisis, rising violence - but I can't find any from the cartoonists, apart from the two below (the first repeated from Friday), both of which are comments on other world leaders rather than an attack on her. The sketches of her are not very flattering, but the joke and disdain are firmly aimed at the rest. Very unusual. Normally - look at the stuff above targetting Sunak and cronies - any weakness, any whiff of hypocrisy, any incompetence is exposed with merciless glee. The absence of such scrutiny speaks positive volumes about her. ![]() ![]() Sadly, we are left with the sleazeballs. |
Sunday 22nd January |
My dreams get odder every night.
This time I was an airline pilot. On my first flight from somewhere in the Middle East I was forced to crash land. Also on the second. Before the third - there seemed to be no move to ground me pending investigation, I was straight back into the pilot's seat - I felt obliged to give the passengers a choice. "This is your captain speaking. I cannot reliably assure you that you will arrive at your destination in the normal fashion. All of you who would prefer to take another flight, please feel free to leave the aircraft now." On this occasion I landed in a New York suburb, the nose of the 'plane nestling in an apartment belonging to a large Italian family tucking into pasta and meatballs. They welcomed me with a generous portion. "Vieni, mangia!" No casualties at any stage, no drama. I can't begin to find an explanation. |
Saturday 21st January |
They don't get any better, do they? New crap every day.
![]() ![]() ![]() The seatbelt error is just dim, isn't it? Broadcast a jolly levelling-up video that shows my mistake, why ever not? Zahawi and tax - we expect this kind of Tory slime. The car battery fiasco is, however, the long-term outcome of wilful, systemic and idealogical incompetence. Thatcherite destruction of our motor-manufacturing capability had already left Britishvolt with no national customers. Given the barriers to trade and logistics raised by Brexit, which European car maker would choose to buy from go-it-alone Blighty? ![]() |
Friday 20th January |
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Tuesday 17th January |
Absence from the blogosphere for a few days. I've had a lurgy. Not Covid, nor 'flu, just the common cold. Still reasonably debilitating. Unhelpfully, I've not been able to keep awake in the day, nor manage to sleep at night - connected, of course. Friends and neighbours have said that their dose went on for weeks. Mine's still here, but I hope it's fading now.
Grandson Marlie put up with me for the weekend. I barely went out. Fortunately his current passion is suitable for indoor activity: ![]() He came up with all kinds of "extension" activities: guess-the-flag, draw-the-flag, how-many-flags-do-you-know-with-stripes. There's a whole lot of story and detail behind each flag, like date adopted or who invented it. What's behind the selection of colours and shapes? Half of Marlie's ancestry is Jamaican: ![]() The flag was adopted on 6 August 1962, Jamaican Independence Day. 60 years to celebrate this summer. There'll be a party, won't there? The 1962 interpretation of the colours - "hardships there are but the land is green and the sun shineth" - was updated in 1996 after a review initiated by then prime minister P. J. Patterson to (courtesy of Wikipedia): "Black representing the strength and creativity of the people which has allowed them to overcome difficulties, gold for the wealth of the country and the golden sunshine, and green for the lush vegetation of the island, as well as hope." I thought I'd got Marlie with one question, but he knew the answer! It is currently the only national flag that does not contain a shade of the colours red, white, or blue. Hmmm, shade of white? Here's a quiz question for you, the answer to which is contained in previous pages of this blog. What are the only two national flags that display the country's map? |
Friday 13th January |
At the Goodwill evening before Christmas Stroud District Together with Refugees (SDTwR) ran a stall in Lansdown Hall. Visitors were invited to write a message of support to refugees and hang it on a tree. Ninety-one people did so. Here are two pictures, the first in the hall, the second after the tree was moved to the Christmas tree festival in the parish church of St. Lawrence (click to enlarge):
![]() ![]() Jude Emmet of SDTwR has recently drawn this to the attention of Stroud Conservative MP Siobhan Baillie: Dear Siobhan, (Stroud District Together with Refugees)
1. Welcome to England. 2. Welcome to Stroud. Hope you feel safe and happy xx. 3. You are so welcome here; I hope you settle in well x. 4. Welcome to everyone who needs a home! 5. Assume good will / Judge others by the content of their character. 6. You are so welcome here in Stroud. 7. Dear refugees, wherever you come from you are welcome here. 8. I hope you find warmth and kindness. 9. You are welcome here. 10. Refugees always welcome here! 11. Welcome to Stroud💖. 12. Welcome to everyone seeking sanctuary in Glos! 13. Wishing you love and peace. 14. My heart goes out to you all, much love xxx 15. Warm welcome, may you always feel at home. We need you xx. 16. Welcome all. The people of this country are not the government. 17. You have been through so much - we are here to welcome you and support you. 18. We are all migrants💖! 19. We welcome refugees. 20. Welcome! Wishing you a warm and welcoming time💖. 21. We'll enjoy a colourful Stroud with contributions from lots of different backgrounds. 22. Hope you feel happy soon. 23. Rest in peace in Stroud. 24. Thinking of you all💖. 25. You are all WELCOME here x. 26. I love and I will look after you. 27. You are so loved x. 28. Thinking of you all with love and welcome arms. 29. Welcome and good luck! 30. Welcome in Gloucestershire! 31. Refugees, we don't care where you're from everyone is welcome here! 32. Love💖. 33. The warmest of welcomes to you xxx. 34. Make yourselves a home here! 35. A warm Stroud welcome to you all x. 36. Welcome home💖love💖. 37. Hello, you are safe here. 38. Welcome! We hope you enjoy your Christmas in Stroud. 39. You are welcome everywhere, be brave. 40. Thinking of you for a better 2023, welcome. 41. We welcome you with love and warmth xxx. 42. Love knows no borders / everyone always welcome x. 43. Our very best wishes to all refugees. 44. You're welcome to stay. 45. Welcome to Stroud x. 46. Welcome. 47. Hope Hope Hope and Love. 48. Warm wishes and welcome. 49. Good you are here. Welcome. May the new year bring better times. 50. Come on in💖! 51. We welcome you all into our hearts xx. 52. The warmest of warm welcomes to one and all with love x. 53. Refugees one and all we welcome you! We welcome your experience, skills, culture, language. You enrich us all! 54. Welcome to Stroud xx. 55. Love and peace this Christmas in Stroud🌠. 56. May Stroud be a place of safety, welcome and support. 57. Wishing all new lives filled with peace and happiness! 58. You are very welcome here - as a child of refugees I hope you feel safe and at home. 59. Welcome. 60. Welcome to this part of the world. 61. Welcome/Hello! A warm welcome to you. I truly wish you a bright day and joyous future. You are always welcome. 62. Welcome to the UK! Hope you find all the things you need here! Welcome. 63. Welcome to the UK, hope you like it. 64. Welcome and safe haven here. 65. We are all migrants. We welcome you with love x💖. 66. May all the luck and kindness come to you. 67. Hope you find safety and peace here. 68. Wishing you good luck and success. 69. Welcome to Gloucestershire. I hope you're made to feel welcome. 70. We love you xxx/💖💖💖. 71. Hope you find peace here. Lots of love xx. 72. We welcome refugees here! 73. May the rainbow appear for your thoughts x. 74. We wish you well you are welcome here! 75. Welcome to Stroud!💖Hope you will find peace and happiness xx. 76. All are welcome because we are all one - karibuni! 77. My arms are open to welcome you xx. 78. You are safe, you are welcome, you are loved. 79. Welcome to Stroud. 80. Goodwill to all refugees. 81. So many people welcome you here💖. 82. You are welcome to Stroud. I hope you stay safe and happy this Christmas. 83. Merry Christmas! Sending lots of love and care xxx. 84. Welcome to UK - may you find a good life here! 85. Season's greetings and welcome to all. 86. You enrich our country / peace and love x. 87.🌞There is always beauty around us🌱. 88. Welcome refugees, we love you all. 89. Refugees, good luck. I hope you find peace and happiness. 90. Selamat Datang [Malay/Indonesian: "Welcome"]. 91. You are so loved.
Stroudies, be proud. Refugees, welcome. |
Thursday 12th January |
RIP Jeff Beck (24 June 1944 - 10 January 2023, aged 78). Remember the Yardbirds? Guitarist's guitarist: made an art of distortion, picked with his thumb, master of the whammy bar (aka grooving stick), tone to die for (and now he has). Here he is with another old diva performing one of my favourite songs, Curtis Mayfield's 1965 "People Get Ready":
People get ready, there's a train a-coming You don't need no baggage, you just get on board All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming You don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord People get ready for the train to Jordan Picking up passengers from coast to coast Faith is the key, open the doors and board them There's room for all among those loved the most Now there ain't no room for the hopeless sinner Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own Have pity on those whose chances are thinner 'Cause there's no hiding place from the Kingdom's throne So people get ready for the train a-coming You don't need no baggage, you just get on board All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming You don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord It's always the "diesels" that get me. |
Wednesday 11th January |
Eleven days into the New Year and I'm going to abandon my self-imposed moratorium on cartoons. I admit defeat. A few have leaked into the blog in the last days, but here's a whole lot more. The cartoonists say it for me, save me wrestling with prose - and most of all make me laugh. That's a gift I can't spurn, a smile rather than despair or anger.
I wonder at how the English press busies itself with the really important issues. Harry, do we need to know? (With apologies to my Irish correspondent, who commented: "Good to see that the blog is a Harry-free zone.") ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Then this charade bled across into ... the Virgin Orbit fiasco ... and threats to Sunak's authority: ![]() ![]() ![]() Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world the usual nutters are at large: ![]() ![]() |
Tuesday 10th January |
I haven't written about Covid for a long time, except in a historical sense. But it's still around. We're "living with" the virus at a different level. Anecdotal Middle Street intelligence tells me that it's rife in Gloucester Royal and even in Stroud Hospital round the corner. After a lunch with 20-odd people from our walking group last Saturday, a friend tested positive, so others have done a lateral flow. I've got a mild cough and cold, but have had a negative result two mornings in a row. It's a while since I reported one of these:
![]() Looking back through this blog, I counted occurrences of the words "coronavirus" and "Covid". In reverse order: 2022 - 80; 2021 - 380; 2020 - 315 (I began the blog on 22nd March). Consider this ONS report of causes of death in England published at the end of November last year: ![]() Covid is in eighth place. Other conditions demand greater concern. Contrast the above with three charts - not a like-for-like comparison, but indicative of the change - I posted two years ago in the first two weeks of January 2021: ![]() ![]() ![]() At the time we were in deep shock. Very frightened. I didn't know how we'd get out of it all. Except the vaccines were just about to roll out. NHS staff were working round the clock at considerable personal risk. Baroness Mone had made £millions out of PPE contracts. Check out the red numbers below: ![]() ![]() |
Monday 9th January |
Some minor reflections on social media, specifically related to the debate about the Twitter-monolith-owned-by-evil-Musk versus Mastodon-or-any-other-egalitarian-decentralised-uncorporate-platform.
I'm enjoying Mastodon. I like being part of the right-on sandal-wearing free-open-source-software community. However, as I've explained before, I've kept my Twitter account open for one passive reason alone - so that I can hear from or about people I don't like, horse's-mouth from the other side. I only actively "toot" on Mastodon. For example, I learnt yesterday that you can buy this calendar, for £13.95 via Amazon. Don't worry, I definitely won't be making a purchase. Far too much for a relatively small joke, and Amazon? ... no thanks. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It was JR-M himself who alerted me to its publication through his Twitter account: ![]() Beyond this, I benefit from direct unfiltered access to his views. Here's a selection tweeted in the last two months:
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Sunday 8th January |
I'm allowing myself one cartoon today:
![]() There's a reason for this choice which you can't possibly guess. Before going to university in 1970 I spent six months at a "prep" Ivy-League-feeder school - Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, USA - as an exchange student. Not an altogether comfortable experience, as I bridled at its smug sense of privilege, and shouldn't really have still been at school (you can read my account here: 👉). However, I made some great friends. One was a lovely young man, kind, caring, laughing, easy to be with. He had a dramatic mane of thick long black hair, a heavy black stubble on his chin. His name was Harry Cocaine. Why "Cocaine"? His antecedents had migrated from Greece in the early 20th century. The story goes that the immigration official on Ellis Island looked at the family name Kokkinis, thought it wouldn't do and renamed them Cocaine. He must have had a good laugh with his wife when he went home. Harry has since reclaimed the original name. In 2003 he - I don't know where he was in the intervening years, apart from studying at Amherst - joined the family firm founded in 1924, Table Talk Pies ("America's Favourite Pie"), in Worcester, Massachusetts. Yes, we shared the same home town name. He became chief executive in 2015 when his father Christo died. The company website suggests that he is still in charge. ![]() ![]() Here's a Boston TV station report on a new factory they opened up: I envy him - or I would have done in the 1970s when I was lorry-mad - the fleet of semi-trucks: ![]() So here's the plan. Harry and I said an emotional farewell 52 years ago and haven't been in touch since. I have no idea why I failed to maintain such a friendship. Tomorrow I'm going to send him an email at Table Talk and follow that up with a 'phone call a couple of days later. There's a risk. If I manage to connect, will he still remember me? What the hell, I'm going to try anyway. Nothing ventured ... |
Saturday 7th January |
No great desire to comment on anything today. Harry? Oh, pur-lease. Nope, it's time for the first Mapfest of 2023. In descending order, from serious to silly, informative to downright foolish. Click/tap to enlarge any.
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Alasdair Rae - Map of global population density
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Strategic Forecasting Inc - Population density map of China and Asia
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Amazing Maps - Countries surrounding Poland pre-1990 and post-1993 - all change!
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Amazing Maps - Parts of the Republic of Ireland are further north than Northern Ireland
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Amazing Maps - Map of the Internet in 1969
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Amazing Maps - Map Kiwi - Nobody lives here
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Amazing Maps - Straight 13,500km line from Liberia to China without crossing an ocean
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Terrible Maps - What pedestrians look like across Europe
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Terrible Maps - Iceland to Ireland
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Terrible Maps - Railway map of Antarctica
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Terrible Maps - Roman air bases in 2nd Century AD
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Friday 6th January |
Whoopee! The Iron Maiden postage stamps have been announced, available from 12th January. You can pre-order now - hurry! rush! - at the Royal Mail shop: ![]() ![]() Hmmm ... still with the head of Queen Liz II. Planned for some time, then? A whiff of hoax? Apparently not. Iron Maiden manager Rod Smallwood said: "It's incredible to think that Her Majesty, may she rest in peace, saw these and lent her iconic silhouette to them." This is my kind of news, perfect for a lighter 2023. Not only snaps of band gigs over the years, but also a selection honouring "mascot" Eddie: ![]() The Maiden website explains the four above:
![]() I have never wittingly heard an Iron Maiden song, nor watched a video, let alone been to a gig. BUT ... I have been flown to Corsica by lead singer Bruce Dickinson, who used to moonlight as a pilot for charter airline Astraeus in his music downtime. I discovered yesterday that we attended the same school; he was six years my junior ... and sensibly got expelled. ![]() ![]() Maiden commissioned an Astraeus 757 as transport for their "Somewhere Back in Time" tour in 2008 and nicknamed it Ed Force One ... driven of course by Captain Dickinson: ![]() ![]() |
Thursday 5th January |
Some days you need a little something to get going. Oliver Reed called his first drink a "heart-starter". I've listened to this the last two mornings:
"Don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to" RIP (25th July 2020) Peter Allen Greenbaum. Off his head, bless 'im. Danny Kirwan - typical of Green, the greatest English blues guitarist, that he let other people play the lead solos on songs that he had written - is also sadly no more. But I still have a copy of the "dustbin" album: ![]() Jeremy Cedric Spencer - maracas in the video above - is still playing: ![]() ![]() |
Wednesday 4th January |
Please indulge me today as I go personal and reflect on the family visit at Christmas ... and beyond ...
What pleases me as much as anything is how the children thoroughly reject in thought and action the mean-spirited concept of Brexit ... and embrace Europe, indeed the world. The boys also seem to have adopted my liking for offal (warning for those who are not fans of seriously anatomical food, see below). Nikko was back from Vienna with his daughter, who is half Serbian Viennese. He returned to Austria in time to celebrate New Year in the wilds of Slovakia with his girlfriend, who is Iranian. The food included meze and Basque haggis, a present from Ben. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Ben and partner Soph are heading back to Bilbao today. They managed a trip while over here to remote Powys, staying near Machynlleth in the house belonging to our friends Liz and Martin Whiteside. To date there is no "hard border" at Chepstow. ![]() ![]() Meanwhile, I'm still here in Stroud. But about to put my Christmas gift from Ben in the slow cooker ... morcilla and alubias de Tolosa: ![]() ![]() To hell with the 2016 referendum 🖕 |
Tuesday 3rd January |
Just one map today. In 2022 the planet's (human) population passed 8 billion. Where are we all? Click/tap to enlarge this chart (courtesy of Visual Capitalist) - then zoom-and-scroll or whatever you usually do:
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Monday 2nd January |
This new year I've decided not to do a summary of the previous twelve months. We all know too much about it already. Instead - the only looking back I'll do - I'm posting a charming and ingenious Sgt. Pepper "in memoriam" tribute by graphic artist Chris Barker to many (187) of those we lost in 2022. A picture, numbered key and list of names. You will have to "click to enlarge" to see the detail, preferably on the largest screen you own.
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Sunday 1st January |
![]() I hope you all had a good Twixmas. Resolutions, eh? I've decided that I have only one, which I will apply to all of those others I have carried forward from previous years with consummate procrastination. "Do it differently". This means that when I falter, for example when tempted to break the promise I've made to go to the gym, I'll seek a way to get round my objections or substitute an equally beneficial alternative. The Christmas break has been marked in this house by a notable absence of news consumption, with consequent lifting of the spirits. Kids, cooking, eating, visits to the local, breezy outings on the common. Precious little "doomscrolling". Although I've spoken in these pages about the effect of digesting grim media output in recent years, I'm late in coming to this term, which Mark Barabak of The Times defined as "an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news." Odd, because it grew out of lockdown-induced Covid pandemic distress, which is where this blog started. It was one of the "words of the year" chosen by the Oxford Dictionary in 2020. Merriam-Webster had this at the time: "Doomscrolling and doomsurfing are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. During times of crisis and uncertainty, some of us pay more attention to the news, looking for answers. And this might not surprise you, but we have to say it: a lot of the news is bad. And yet we keep scrolling, keep reading article after article, unable to turn away from information that depresses us." Guilty as charged. So ... do it differently. I can't ignore world events, nor should I. That would be "news avoidance", another phenomenon I've missed that has grown in the nearly three years of this blog. It's a natural reaction for many - I've been tempted - but not necessarily a good thing, as evidenced in the title of a September 2022 paper I spotted - "How News Feels: Anticipated Anxiety as a Factor in News Avoidance and a Barrier to Political Engagement", by Benjamin Toffa, University of Minnesota, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, University of Oxford (19 pages): ![]() I don't want to be politically disengaged but I need balance this year. Concentrate on useful action rather than moodily over-observing, like giving support to Stroud's refugee campaign group, anything that will remove the Tories from office, mitigation of Brexit damage. I may throttle back my love affair with political cartoons. Here's just one for the New Year, courtesy of Kevin "Kal" Kallaugher, cartoonist for The Economist and the Baltimore Sun. I intend to give less mental house room to these people (click to enlarge): ![]() |
© Charlie Lewis 2023
Email: charlie_c_lewis@hotmail.com Mastodon: @charlieclewis@mastodonapp.uk |