Monthly Archives: September 2012

Escape ………….. or maybe not?

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It’s all over the UK news. This teacher has, apparently, disappeared to France with one of his 15-year-old pupils.

And, it brought to mind the time my sister disappeared with some guy.

I don’t, unfortunately, remember the details. I think she was about 15 or 16. The guy was older – maybe in his 20s.

They went off together and were away for several days (or was it a week, or maybe longer?).

I’m sure the police were involved.

I remember my parents being out of their minds.

And I remember thinking that:

a) she knew what she was doing,
b) that my parents, for the way they treated her, deserved it (to some extent) and
c) that she had finally ‘got away’.

Except that, in reality, she hadn’t. She was back soon.

I guess the same will happen with this story too.

So happy (well, I will be)

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F, as I have mentioned, is away. His flight back was set to arrive about 7 p.m. on Saturday. That’s a whole week plus half the weekend. I don’t complain – it’s work after all – and work keeps us all sane and brings in money to allow us to enjoy doing the things we like.

However, I don’t like him being away so long. Including for him, since he gets very tired.

But, a bit of good news just in. He has changed plans and will be home on Friday night and I shall go and pick him up straight from work – as I’m half way to the airport anyway.

I am very happy. I will be much happier on Friday night – even waiting at the airport for him to arrive :-)

Add water and wait a few days. Surely it can’t be THAT much different?

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The shock! The horror!

I sat down to lunch. Someone had seen, on an Italian news programme – Strichia La Notizia (which, apparently is very famous) – that the English can buy Wine Brewing Kits.

I was asked if this was true.

And, of course, I replied that it was and that’s it’s been around for years.

The Italians were horrified.

“It can’t be true!

“It would taste horrible!

“It’s simply not possible!”

The consternation this caused was mixed with some humour at the very idea of producing wine ‘from a box’. The idea that the taste could be anything other than vinegar – if, even, that good.

I further explained that, when I was a kid, my father used to brew Dandelion wine (and a few others, I seem to remember). Again, this was treated with some derision.

I CAN understand this – in a country where even the smallest patch of ground can be used for grapes and wine can be cheaper than water. However, their shock (and, frankly, disgust) at this was a little over the top.

As I tried to explain when someone said that you needed to use grapes and go through a fermentation process – but why not, at some point during that fermentation or before, extract the water from it and then, later, you can reconstitute it by adding the water back?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rushing to buy a kit just to prove to Italians that it can be good but I did suggest to one colleague that, the next time he goes to the UK, he should buy a kit and then, after he’s made it, do a blind tasting with his family.

Even he liked the idea of this.

And I do admit that getting a home brew kit for, say Chianti or Primitivo and bringing a bottle to work for colleagues to give their opinion (without knowing it was from a kit) would be kind of fun.

Especially if some of them (or even one of them) were to quite like it.

How would they EVER live that down? :-D

Bloody normal

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It’s not really unusual in itself – it was just more than usual last night.

F is away and, whenever he’s away I seem to have a bad night.

Last night it took me aaaaaaaaaaaaggggeeeeeeeeeees to get to sleep. I went to bed about 10.30 but probably went to sleep about midnight.

And, at 3 I was wide awake!

I got up, had a drink and a few cigarettes and, about 5, went back to bed.

But I didn’t sleep and got up about 5.30.

Of course, now, as I write this, I could sleep forever.

When I walk, my legs feel like tree trunks – big and heavy. My eyes are gritty and sore. My slight headache has gone (thank goodness) but I know that everything will be a real struggle today.

I feel, in a word, like crap.

I hope nobody crosses me today. My temper will be short.

Bah!

p.s. and the weather is crap too. Colder and rainy and miserable – (I suppose it is September) – which does not help my mood at all!

Accidental experiment (2)

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Last night was the same.

This time, they had the run of the house but I did shut the shutters. It seems it has the same effect as denying him the lounge :-) Maybe because there is no ‘outside’? I don’t know. I guess we shall see as it’s getting colder at night now, so soon the shutters AND the doors will be closed.

I like it a lot.

Accidental experiment

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It was a kind of accidental experiment. Accidental in that I didn’t purposefully set it up that way. Experiment in that, what I thought was true was ‘proved’.

Piero is a really good dog in many ways. OK but he’s a puppy so the chewing of a piece of furniture in the hallway is not unexpected. Fortunately, it’s not an important piece of furniture. It was given to me FOC and is more utilitarian than nice. It doesn’t fit with my other furniture, for certain.

The getting on the bed seems to have stopped since I moved all the little things on the bedside table to a place well out of reach.

When we go out for a walk, he nearly always does a pee within a hundred yeards of the front door of the building. He nearly always does a pooh on the first bit of grass/stony area where cars park.

Sometimes the pee is very long. Sometimes short. Sometimes the pooh is huge, sometimes small. The small/short ones happen if he has already peed or poohed in the house.

But, I KNOW he doesn’t NEED to do them, since, when we were away, he does nothing at all in the house, even if we’ve left him all day. So, in general, I know he can hold it. And my thought was that, even if I don’t put paper down any more, he still thinks it is ‘acceptable’ to do his toilet in that one place.

And, last night, with a friend sleeping in the lounge and them with me in the bedroom, I had proof that this is a psycological thing for Piero.

When I got up this morning, there was no pooh or pee to clear up whereas, if he had had access to the lounge, there defintely would have been.

Now I know it’s a psycological thing, I have to find a way to stop him thinking that this area is a toilet.

But it’s a big step forward.

It should be in the job description.

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I guess you’ve seen something about it. It’s certainly all over the British press.

First there was some drunken party games which involved stripping and, surprise, surprise, there was someone with a phone and the next thing you knew it was everywhere.

Then, we have some woman with her tits out and people are outraged. Well, the media is outraged – people can, of course, think what they like.

Now, if I get a job, say, as model, a job in the public spotlight, I don’t want to be caught gorging on burgers. Or a married TV presenter – I really don’t need to be caught kissing one of my colleagues in the park.

And, if you get a job as a royal, you don’t want to be caught with your bits out for all to see.

OK, for Harry, he didn’t get a choice about the job – he can’t really say ‘no’. Even so, can you imagine Charlie having a party like that and permitting someone to take a photo?

And, in any way, can you imagine the Queen being more than semi-naked (and by that I mean with a swimsuit on) in any place except the bathroom?

So, whereas one can argue that the photographer was wrong to take the pictures and that the magazine (or is it magazines, now?) was not really being nice by publishing them, the real question is this:

If Kate took the job of being the future Queen of England, what was she thinking of getting her bits out in anything other than a very private place (like the bathroom)?

Worse, still, is thinking that you should be suing the magazine! Come off it, you were there, without a top, outside. Act like a Queen – after all, you took the job when you married William and, I’m afraid, with the job (for which you will never have to actually work or be short of food or worry about what you can wear or anything that normal people do), come some responsibilities.

And, if the ‘thought didn’t cross your mind’, then you’re quite stupid.

Lost respect, now, I have.

p.s. not that the pics were any good anyway.

Religion, Lies Part 2 (and THAT film.)

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It was really not easy, yesterday, to find the ‘film’.

First I had to find the name of the ‘film’. Before that I had to find the ‘writer/director’ of the film. I looked all over the place. eventually I found the name of the guy and, from that, the name of the film.

Actually, it wasn’t a film but, supposedly, the trailer for a film. The film being The Innocence of Muslims directed and written by Sam Bacile.

People are upset. People have died.

Because of this ‘trailer’.

I read it had a budget of $5 million.

But, having watched the trailer, I don’t see how that is possible. Low-budget doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But the problem is not that it was low-budget, nor even that the ‘actors’ are more wodden than trees, nor that the ‘actors’ are, quite obviously NOT in a desert but floating some way above it, nor that the ‘actors’ voices seem to have been dubbed, nor that it is a ‘shitty little film’.

For it is all of those things and more. The fact that you can post a film or trailer on YouTube doesn’t make it good. In fact, that’s the whole point. You can put any old crap up there (and this trailer is most certainly that).

Nor is the problem that the story is, most certainly, a complete load of bollocks.

No, the problem is that there is any story about this at all. Worse, that people (who may have never seen it) have been incited to kill people who almost certainly never watched it and, certainly, had nothing to do with it.

And, the real story may be that it was made with the specific intention of causing this problem, of inciting this murder.

And, if the reports are true, by a group of people who are supposed to be religious. Again!

These so-called religious people are Coptic Chirstians – but not Coptic Christians in the actual country but ex-pat Coptic Christians who don’t live in Egypt and won’t have to suffer any of the problems that, almost certainly, the REAL Coptic Christians will now suffer on behalf of a film they had nothing to do with!

Intolerance of others is unacceptable. Inciting hatred is despicable.

Religion should be banned.

p.s. since I wrote this I found the ‘full?’ 15-minute film. As is normal, the trailer showed the ‘best bits’. The film is not only dire and a load of old crap but really shouldn’t even be called a film at all. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Religion, Lies Part 1 (and THAT newspaper.)

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The DailyHateMail is at it again.

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, apparently, in a speech that was issued (but not actually made), called the people opposing the right of marriage for gay people, bigots.

Today, the headline in the DM says I apologise for my gay marriage ‘bigot’ slur, says Clegg as he tries to limit fallout caused by remark

Clegg wrote a letter which, apparently, says:

‘Those extracts were neither written or approved by me. They do not represent my views, which is why they were subsequently withdrawn.

‘While I am a committed advocate of equal marriage, I would never refer to people who oppose it in this way. Indeed, I know people myself who do not support equal marriage and, although I disagree with them, clearly I do not think they are bigots. Nor do I think it is acceptable they, or anyone else, are insulted in this way.

‘My views on this issue are no secret, but I respect the fact that some people feel differently to me about marriage, often because of their religious beliefs.

‘I hope this explanation helps clarify what happened yesterday as well as my position, and I hope that the serious error that occurred will not cause lasting offence.’

Well, a couple of things here.

1. Clegg didn’t make the speech. And, in any event, these people don’t actually write their speeches. So, someone (but NOT Clegg) wrote the speech which was issued ahead of the event at which Clegg was going to speak. The to-do that occurred as a result meant that the words were changed (or, perhaps it really WAS a mistake).

2. The letter that Clegg subsequently wrote does not apologise for something that he didn’t say in the first place.

3. The definition of a bigot, namely a person having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of their own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others, seems to fit quite well. That’s religion for you.