It's good to have a plan

The following copied from the Yahoo News page:

As the Isis (now known as Islamic State) terror group continues to consolidate its self-declared "caliphate" in territory seized in its march across north-eastern Syria and northern Iraq, a map has been released that details the "ten-state solution" it hopes to achieve over the next decade.

Walid Shoebat, a former Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) terrorist turned Islamic scholar, has translated the Arabic map of the expansionist caliphate to show the Balkans, Spain and Portugal are long-term targets for the militants. 

The group, which stemmed from al-Qaeda and the Salafist ideology, rejects the notion of nationalism, aiming to remove secular governments and replace them with a pan-Islamic caliphate.

Worringly, the Balkan states would fall under "Orobpa" and Portugal and Spain would fall under "Andalus", according to this expansionist vision.

In the ten-state solution, Kurdistan, Iraq and Syria (Sham) would be the primary fixtures of the caliphate, with Lebanon included in Sham. 

Further secular states that would fall under IS's control include Turkey (Anatolia) as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States (Gogaz), which include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

"Khorasan" would include Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and potentially Indonesia, while Hijaz would include the Gulf States and Yemen would stand on its own.

"Qinana" would see Egypt, Sudan and Somalia in the caliphate, while the other states of North Africa - Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania - would fall under "Maghreb".

There are worries IS will continue to grow as Islamic militants from Afghanistan and Pakistan, linked to the Taliban, consider joining forces with the group. 

An Afghan militant commander, named as "Mirwais", said if IS proved to be a true caliphate, his forces would pledge allegiance to the group. 

"We know Daish [Arabic term for Isis] and we have links with some Daish members. We are waiting to see if they meet the requirements for an Islamic caliphate," he said.

"If we find they do, we are sure that our leadership will announce their allegiance to them. They are great mujahideen. We pray for them and if we don't see a problem in the way they operate, we will join them."

As the Isis (now known as Islamic State) terror group continues to consolidate its self-declared "caliphate" in territory seized in its march across north-eastern Syria and northern Iraq, a map has been released that details the "ten-state solution" it hopes to achieve over the next decade.

Walid Shoebat, a former Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) terrorist turned Islamic scholar, has translated the Arabic map of the expansionist caliphate to show the Balkans, Spain and Portugal are long-term targets for the militants. 

The group, which stemmed from al-Qaeda and the Salafist ideology, rejects the notion of nationalism, aiming to remove secular governments and replace them with a pan-Islamic caliphate.

Worringly, the Balkan states would fall under "Orobpa" and Portugal and Spain would fall under "Andalus", according to this expansionist vision.

In the ten-state solution, Kurdistan, Iraq and Syria (Sham) would be the primary fixtures of the caliphate, with Lebanon included in Sham. 

Further secular states that would fall under IS's control include Turkey (Anatolia) as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States (Gogaz), which include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

"Khorasan" would include Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and potentially Indonesia, while Hijaz would include the Gulf States and Yemen would stand on its own.

"Qinana" would see Egypt, Sudan and Somalia in the caliphate, while the other states of North Africa - Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania - would fall under "Maghreb".

There are worries IS will continue to grow as Islamic militants from Afghanistan and Pakistan, linked to the Taliban, consider joining forces with the group. 

An Afghan militant commander, named as "Mirwais", said if IS proved to be a true caliphate, his forces would pledge allegiance to the group. 

"We know Daish [Arabic term for Isis] and we have links with some Daish members. We are waiting to see if they meet the requirements for an Islamic caliphate," he said.

"If we find they do, we are sure that our leadership will announce their allegiance to them. They are great mujahideen. We pray for them and if we don't see a problem in the way they operate, we will join them."

Pipile pipile

This is the Piping Guan of Trinidad, a seriously endangered endemic. It has some wonderful vernacular names:

English: Blue-throated Piping Guan, Common Piping Guan, Trinidad piping guan, Trinidad Piping-Guan

Spanish: Pava de Trinidad

Estonian: paruk-pugalhoko

French: Pénélope à gorge bleue, Pénélope siffleuse, Pénélope siffleuse de la Trinité

Italian: Guan fischiatore di Trinidad

Japanese: torinidaadonakishakukei

Polish: Grdacz trinidadzki

Russian: Белошапочный гуан, Синегорлая абурри

A bird like this is worth saving!

God bless Queen Alex!

So, it looks as if Her Majesty Queen Alex Salmond is going to win the battle for an independent Scotland. How do you feel if you are English? I can only speak for myself and the irrational feeling I have that if the Scots don't love me any more, why should I love them? Then, warming to my theme of alienation, I comfort myself that I don't like their cuisine, I don't like their accent, I don't like their weather, I don't like their music, I don't like bloody Hogmanay - in fact, I am feeling really good now about the impending divorce. Who needs friends whose idea of good food is haggis or neaps and tatties, whose idea of music is the strangulation of a bladder with a pipe attached, whose idea of manly dress is a pleated skirt and no knickers?

Goodness, I feel so much better now. Queen Alex, you can kiss my a...e, it's good riddance to the lot of you.

But if, against the odds, the Scottish people vote NO to independence, I want you to know that I love the Highlands, I love malt whisky, I love the romanticism of the Isles, I love the poetry of Robert Burns, I love Scottish wildlife, and I once kissed a very pretty girl from Edinburgh. Welcome back, even if you never left.

Plod plays it safe

The following is based on a recent item in Yahoo News.

QUOTE

 An investigation has found that at least 1,400 children were exploited in the UK town of Rotherham*** between 1997 and 2013 and that there was a “collective failure” by authorities to stop the abuse. The Rotherham Borough Council published a report today which said that it is “hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered”.

“They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated.”

The inquiry was launched last September to look at how Rotherham Council’s children’s services department dealt with cases involving child exploitation.  The report gives examples of children who had been doused in petrol, threatened with guns and made to watch brutally violent rapes. The victims were told they “would be next if they told anyone”.

Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators, the majority of whom were of Pakistani heritage.

The independent investigation concluded that this abuse is “not confined to the past but continues to this day”. The report says that over the first 12 years covered by the Inquiry, there were “blatant collective failures” of the political and officer leadership. The author, Professor Alexis Jay, also said the council underplayed the scale of the problem and that South Yorkshire Police failed to prioritise the issue.

This is the fourth report into the situation in Rotherham. 

UNQUOTE

Why, do you think, were the local authorities and the police so reluctant to investigate this situation? Careful with your answer or you might be accused of being racist.

If this is the FOURTH report, the chances are that still nothing will be done. In the meantime, let's all have fun following the prurient accounts of the Yewtree pursuit of Cliff Richard, Freddy Starr and other geriatric celebrities, against most of whom no evidence has been produced.

***Sadly this kind of abuse is happening in several other UK cities. More here.

Threatened species!

House Sparrow is on the Red List of serious conservation concern. My garden is full of them: at least forty feeding on ground-strewn seed at any time.

Starling is on the Red List of serious conservation concern. My garden is full of them: anything up to forty feeding wherever there is something to eat.

In fact, I realise that the only truly endangered species on my property is me. I am male, I am white, I am heterosexual, I am old, I am mildly conservative, I am a carnivore and I am a Catholic. How many of those do you know still walking around unthreatened?

Life is getting interesting again

A bruising performance last night from His Majesty Queen Alec Salmond, which is causing the chattering pundits to predict a YES vote in the Scottish Independence referendum next month.

There are always two equal and opposite forces at work in geopolitics. On the one hand, the centripetal force towards greater integration of elements: the USSR, the USA, the European Union, for example. And on the other the centrifugal force towards greater fragmentation of elements:

the balkanisation of the former Yugoslavia, Catalan, Galician and Basque separatism, a Kurdish state, for example. And, of course, an independent Scotland.

It is tempting to indulge in a reductio ad absurdum argument here. If Scotland becomes independent, then so should Wales. Then England will be an independent country too. But wait. Yorkshire folk have always seen themselves as different, separate. So why not an independent Yorkshire? But wait. In that case, why not an independent Cornwall, historically part of the Celtic fringe?

We are going Appalachian here. Queen Alec's wish to be independent is partly because he loves Scotland, but it's partly because he dislikes England. Only a matter of time before the Highlands demand to be separated from the Lowlands, which really do feel like two different countries. Soon, every valley will have its clan that wishes to be independent from all the other valley clans, and if there's any argument, they will fight to defend their freedom. Clan feuds r Us.

In fact, if the village of Haddenham where I live makes a UDI, I personally will ask for my particular road to become independent of the rest of the village, because some very weird folk live up there.

France today, where tomorrow?

A Russian video about France which cannot be shown in France. It beggars belief.

Vidéo interdite en France... Mais pas en Russie ! Soon in Canada

 http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CDcQtwIwAQ&url=http://fr.gloria.tv/?media%3D527837&ei=e1L6Upm_Kcajhgeh9YDQDA&usg=AFQjCNH5JR7_oNPuXzos8YZVJODUgGNRIQ&sig2=xZ5g04yzF-QmaefmVbj9GQ&bvm=bv.61190604%2cd.d2k

I wish I'd said that

  A few gems from various well-known people. My favourite is the Chateaubriand anecdote. The same seems to be happening to me....



Plaisirs d'humour !
Un bon mot que j'aime à citer de Louis XVIII sur Chateaubriand "M. de Chateaubriand croit qu'il est devenu sourd depuis qu'il n'entend plus parler de lui" 
 
Au milieu d'un dîner bien arrosé, un invité assommant se vante auprès de Marcel Aymé :
- Moi, monsieur, je me suis fait tout seul !
 L'auteur rétorque :
- Ah, Monsieur, vous déchargez Dieu d'une bien grande responsabilité.
  
 Au restaurant, Alphonse Allais examine avec soin la carte et le menu, puis finit par commander :
 - Donnez-moi, pour commencer, une faute d'orthographe. 
 Le garçon, imperturbable, répond :
 - Il n'y en a pas, monsieur Allais.
 - Alors, dans ce cas, pourquoi les mettez-vous sur le menu ?
>  
 En fin d'une conférence d'Agatha Christie, une jeune fille lui demande :
 - N'est-ce pas un choix étrange, Madame, pour une romancière, d'avoir épousé un spécialiste des fouilles en Orient ?
 - Au contraire ! Épousez un archéologue ! C'est le seul qui vous regardera avec de plus en plus d'intérêt, au fur et à mesure que vous vieillirez !
 
 - Monsieur Guitry, comment voyez-vous la vie amoureuse ?
 - C'est très simple : on se veut et on s'enlace ; puis on se lasse et on s'en veut...
 
 Anne-Catherine de Ligneville, encore très belle veuve d'Helvetius, ayant vainement attendu Benjamin Franklin, l'accueille ainsi à sa visite suivante, un peu piquée :
 - N'auriez-vous pas oublié notre rendez-vous ?
 - Certes non, Madame ! J'attendais simplement que les nuits fussent plus longues...
  
 Ce n'est pas pour rien que Rossini laissera son nom à une fameuse recette de tournedos. A l'issue d'un repas trop frugal, il s'entend dire par son hôte :
  - Maître, j'espère que vous nous ferez bientôt l'honneur de dîner à nouveau ici.
  - Mais bien sûr ! Tout de suite si vous voulez .......
  
 Isadora Duncan admirait sans réserve Bernard Shaw et lui murmura un jour:
  - Quel miracle ce serait d'avoir un enfant ensemble. Imaginez qu'il ait ma beauté et votre intelligence !
 - Oui ... mais .... supposez que ce soit le contraire ..........
  
 L'acteur et écrivain américain Dan Spencer regarde la télé avec un ami qui s'extasie devant les programmes du câble :
 - Sais-tu qu'il existe maintenant des chaînes qui ne parlent que de météo 24 h sur 24?
  - Quand j'étais petit, on appelait ça une fenêtre !
  
 On s'interrogeait sur l'âge exact d'une illustre sociétaire du Français.
  - Cinquante ans ? avança quelqu'un.
 - Plus les matinées, précisa Robert Hirsch. 
  
 Une suffragette interrompit un jour Churchill au milieu d'un discours pour lui lancer :
  - Si j'étais votre épouse, je mettrais du poison dans votre thé.
   - He bien, moi, madame, si j'étais votre mari, je le boirais !
 
 Pour finir ce mot d'Alexandre Dumas
  "J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, car parfois ils se reposent."

Is it that time already?

I had just wished everyone a Happy New Year when they announced the Summer Equinox. Time is speeding up and I wish it wouldn't.
My blog silence is occasioned by a huge - but enjoyable - amount of work on conservation-related matters, notably the Cambridge International Swift Conference, nearly 150 delegates from 24 different countries. I am now working on the Proceedings, and once that is finished, I will start the annual rounds of the Barn Owl boxes to see what's going on.
Family are also taking up a lot of my time, of which not millisecond is begrudged. I think I need to make a pact with myself to post to this blog at least once a week!
Thanks to Mike and Ann for prodding me to let them and the world know that the old scrote is still alive and banging the rocks.

Therapy

At last, someone who knows how to console me in my hour of need...

Controversy

A woman in Rugeley has been the victim of a hate campaign after someone posted a photo of her breastfeeding in a public place. It has aroused an unbelievable reaction on the social media, vehemently for and violently against.
I have to confess that on the few occasions when I have seen a woman breastfeeding in public, it has disconcerted me, though I cannot tell you why. One thing's for sure: I would not condemn her, but I would probably avert my gaze.
For those of you who are all in favour of public breastfeeding, sit back, relax and enjoy this videoclip.

Set phrases

A friend of ours / came round / the other evening / and / it took us ages / to get rid of him.

The man who wrote that sentence on the blackboard (yes, this was a long time ago) during a teacher-training weekend gave me a fine piece of weaponry in the battle to teach English to foreign learners. I stole his idea - we called it eclecticism in those days - and drummed that sentence and a hundred like it into the heads of generations of young folk. I like to think that even today in Zurich or Stuttgart or Toulouse there are ageing bank managers and tooth doctors and masseuses who, at the drop of an idiom, can talk about a friend of theirs and about it taking ages to get from here to there and how they'd love to get rid of dandruff, etc.

It was a new idea but the methodology was as old as Moses: to commit to memory sentences containing whole phrases which, individually, did not yield easily to analysis. Go on, mock if you wish, but it worked. And if you are a teacher of English as a foreign language, please eclect.

Envoi: the writing of this piece was provoked by discovering two of my old workbooks from the nineteen-sixties, their pages creased and yellowed just like me, but full of happy memories and good stuff. Just like me.

Finding a wife

A man wanted to get married. He was having trouble choosing among three likely candidates. He gives each woman a present of £5,000 and watches to see what they do with the money.

The first does a total makeover. She goes to a fancy beauty salon, gets her hair done, new makeup; buys several new outfits and dresses up very nicely for the man. She tells him that she has done this to be more attractive for him because she loves him so much.

The man was impressed.

The second goes shopping to buy the man gifts. She gets him a new set of golf clubs, some new gizmos for his computer, and some expensive clothes. As she presents these gifts, she tells him that she has spent all the money on him because she loves him so much.

Again, the man is impressed...

The third invests the money in the stock market. She earns several times the £5,000. She gives him back his £5,000 and reinvests the remainder in a joint account. She tells him that she wants to save for their future because she loves him so much.

Obviously, the man was impressed.

The man thought for a long time about what each woman had done with the money he'd given her. Then he married the one with the biggest tits.

Smart kid, French-style

 Dans une salle de classe la maîtresse interroge le petit Pierre:
"Pierre, 4 oiseaux se reposent sur une clôture, si tu tires sur un oiseau avec ta carabine, combien d'oiseaux reste-t-il ?"
"Zéro" répond Pierrot, "Parce que si je tire sur un oiseau, les autres vont s'enfuir en volant."
"Hum...la réponse que j'attendais était trois" dit la maîtresse, "mais j'aime bien ta manière de penser."
Alors, Pierrot lève la main et dit : "J'ai une question pour vous maîtresse :
"Trois femmes sont en train de savourer des cônes MIKO, la première lèche son cône, la deuxième mord son cône et la troisième le suce, laquelle des trois est mariée ?"
La maîtresse rougit jusqu'aux oreilles et répond d'un air gêné : "heu...je ne suis pas sure. J'imagine que c'est celle qui suce le cône..."
"Non" dit Pierrot, "c'est celle qui porte une alliance, mais j'aime bien votre manière de penser.

PEEL ME A GRAPE

If Diane Krall doesn't curl your toes, it ain't her fault! She does an amazing rendition of this old Blossom Dearie number, Peel Me a Grape.

The Old Scrote's Knicker Drawer

I guess it is the experience of most married men to be aware of the mystery which is their everloving's knicker drawer. You never went there, and she damned well didn't want you to. At best you caught a glimpse. Terrifying. And, again most of you married men reading this
will recall the occasion when your wife decided to have a clear-out of her knicker drawer. Again, mysterious, terrifying. You, of course, were banished from the bedroom for the duration. Clearly the drawer contained a much greater variety of bits and bobs than its name suggests, but that is enough about that. Job done, leaving a tidy drawer (one assumes) and a smug expression on the lady's face.

The reason I mention all this is that I have just had a blitz on the male equivalent: my sock drawer. Goodness, what an accumulation of tat! How can I have been such a slut over the years? Socks of every shade and shape, hole-ridden, crusty and pilled; horrible from every standpoint. The only consolation is that I found a couple of things that I had been looking for in vain over the years, including my father's ARP whistle (don't ask). Anyway, the drawer is now cleared of two-thirds of its contents, and what remains is very tidy and totally identifiable. The whole exercise gave me a fresh respect for my late wife, God bless her.

PS I don't apologise for the misleading title I gave to this piece: it was the only way I could be sure of attracting your attention.

Henley again

Recently, spurred by the phrase “bloody but unbowed” in an email from my friend Johanna, I posted the poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley from which the quote came. A second phrase “I am captain of my soul” taken from the poem was used by the Economist on the occasion of the death of Nelson Mandela. I had not heard of Henley before, so I became curious about him, and particularly why he had written such a defiant poem. It appeared in 1875, and (to quote Wikipedia) “was written as a demonstration of his resilience following the amputation of his foot due to tubercular infection.”

He is well worthreading about. Amongst other things, he was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's character, Long John Silver, in Treasure Island. Altogether, a good bloke was William Ernest Henley.

A Christmas Mouse, The Sequel

50p for size comparision only: not a bribe

You all know the story of the Christmas Mouse from a few years back. I was on my own for Christmas, so decided not to put up any decorations. Three days or so before Christmas Day, I was sitting in the sitting room, when I saw a mouse emerge from down the chimney (The fireplace was unused), run along the bottom of the wall, under the door and away into the hall. I went next morning - and this is the truth - to the garden centre and bought a Christmas tree, on the grounds that I had company for the festive season, albeit nothing more congenial than a diminutive rodent with no conversation to speak of.

A few days before this Christmas gone, while watching television, I noticed a sort of bulge on the aerial cable. It moved as I approached it. It was a mouse. It ran down the cable, along the bottom of the wall, under the door and away into the hall, just as its great-great-great-etc-grandfather had done all those years ago.

I didn't see it again, but found droppings from time to time in unfortunate places: kitchen and bedroom in particular. How do you catch a mouse? Every method is unpleasant in one way or another. Well, it disappeared for a week or so and then three-four days ago, the droppings started to re-appear. Damn. Last night, making ready for bed, I noticed in the corner behind the door a small dark shape. It was so indistinct that I fetched a torch to see what it was: a walnut? a FerreroRochet? a trilobite? No, it was a mouse, nose in corner, tail outward, motionless. Dead, it seemed. I picked it up by the tail using a grabber. Immediately it began to wriggle and squeak.

I carried it, dangling on the end of the grabber, to the bedroom window and released it into the darkness. Wee sleekit cow'rin' timorous beastie. At least there is no panic in MY breastie: I am mouse-poo free again.

I hope.

Vus titzuch?

Le Président Obama fait venir le chef de la CIA et lui demande:

- Comment s’ y prennent les Juifs pour tout savoir avant nous ?

Le responsable de la CIA répond:

 - Les Juifs utilisent l’ expression suivante : "Vus titzuch?"

Et le Président de demander:

- Qu’ est-ce que cela veut dire?

- Eh bien, M. le Président, répond le Directeur de la CIA, c’est une expression yiddish, que l’on peut traduire, grosso modo, par "Quoi de neuf?". Ils s’interrogent l’un l’autre de cette manière et comme cela, ils sont au courant de tout.

Le Président décide d’ aller, incognito, vérifier par lui-même si la chose est vraie. Il se déguise en Juif orthodoxe (chapeau noir, barbe, longue redingote noire), un avion sans signe distinctif l’amène secrètement à New York, on le met à bord d’ une voiture ordinaire et on le dépose dans le quartier le plus juif de Brooklyn. Aussitôt un petit homme âgé vient traîner dans les parages. Le Président l’arrête et lui murmure à l’ oreille:

 -Vus titzuch?

Le vieil homme lui répond en chuchotant: 
- Obama est à Brooklyn.

My love is like a red red row of squiggles

My third-age friend H - and I love her dearly - has decided to learn Mandarin Chinese, both spoken and written. She couldn't really tell me why. I think it's the Mount Everest Syndrome (MES): people climb it simply because it's there.
Fortunately, as a life-long sufferer from Fluffy Kidney  Syndrome (FKS), the root cause of inertia, I have managed to avoid the likes of MES. All the same, I couldn't resist taking a peek at the peak that H has decided to climb. I watched a specimen lesson on youtube all about the five-tone system. Get your tone wrong and you could call your mother a horse.
On then, to a demo of the writing system. Here is the character for "love" and how you write it:

Doesn't look much like love, does it?

Invictus

A friend of mine described herself, after emerging from two weeks of hospital unpleasantness, as being "bloodied but unbowed". I thought, ah, must be another quotation from Shakespeare, but it isn't. Here's the poem, Invictus, from which it is taken, It is a new one on me, as is its author, William Ernest Henley.
Any ideas about the circumstances which caused him to write such a poem?

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance	5
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,	10
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:	15
I am the captain of my soul.

This birdie's not for tweeting

Twitter is a funny business. You decide to “follow” people you know and also a couple of conservation organisations This way, you hope to keep up with your friends' doings and to stay abreast of what's happening to protect the world's wildlife. But three reasons have prompted me to pull out of Twitter:

1. You get endless postings or repostings (retweets) from friends of friends of friends who talk about things you don't know about or aren't interested in; or who talk in a metalanguage that resembles one of those West African creoles that enabled the white man to order the natives about.

2. All the postings on conservation matters are negative, gloomy, gutwrenching. Every one tells of another catastrophe, another wickedness, another species on the verge of extinction. It's the stuff of suicide pacts. The worst part of this is that I know in some cases that the dire predictions are not based on solid evidence: they are there simply to scare the shite out of us. It does the conservation/green movement no good at all.

3. The three Tweet friends that I love the most are raging intellectuals way beyond my capacity. They know recondite stuff, they use arcane vocabulary, they quote medieval Provençal balladeers, they offer pithy wisdom in languages that I can't even recognise. In short, they make me feel inadequate. They give me the sort of uneasy feeling that would cause a man to check his flies even if he were wearing a kilt.

So, it's goodbye to Twitter. I still follow Facebook, though. Just.

Children talking about marriage

I don't usually go for these "cute kid" postings, but this one seems to me to have a lot of wisdom embedded in it.
 

1 HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY?
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff.  Like, if you like
sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the
chips and dip coming.
Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to
marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who
you're stuck with.
Kristen, age 10

2 WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
Camille, age 10

3 HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the
same kids.
Derrick, age 8

4 WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
Both don't want any more kids.
Lori, age 8

5 WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know
each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
Lynnette, age 8

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets
them interested enough to go for a second date.
Martin, age 10

6 WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
When they're rich.
Pam, age 7

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with
that.
Curt, age 7

7 IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone
to clean up after them.
Anita, age 9

8 HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a dump truck.
Ricky, age 10

Quick, drink up!

I bought a carton of cranberry juice and forgot about it for a couple of weeks, mainly because I don't like cranberry juice (gotta drink it, though, to put off the day when I end up in the bladderdaddy ward in Addenbrooke's). This morning, I gritted my tooth and opened it. The wording on the top caught my eye:
DISPLAY UNTIL  30 Jan 2014
BEST BEFORE     1 Feb 2014
Hell's teeth! Two days and it starts to deteriorate?!
I drank most of it anyway. Better than being catheterised. Just.

Virtual unreality

The smog in Beijing is now so bad that the authorities are posting pictures of the sunset, the only sighting of the sun most people are going to get during the winter.
A combination of traffic and indutrial pollution together with the extensive use of coal has led to this crazy situation.
And what is the message of these sunset postings? "If you can't experience reality, don't worry, we will provide you with a fun substitute"?
Life by proxy. It's scary.

Loopy

 Have you ever been trapped in a loop? Let me give you an example. We used to have an excursion programme for our students: Stratford, Stonehenge, Oxford colleges, that sort of thing. For our more techno-minded students, we would arrange visits to factories, mines, manufacturers and so on. As the school was close to Southampton, I phoned Fawley Oil Refinery to find available dates for a visit.

“We're fully booked for the next two years, sir.”

“No problem,” says I cheerfully. “Book us in for the first available day after that.”

Sorry, sir, we don't take bookings more than two years in advance.”

I could feel a loop coming on...

“What if I phone you again tomorrow, dear?” (You could call girls 'dear' in those days).

“Sir? But...”

The note of incomprehension in her voice said it all. I was trapped in a loop.

Never did book an excursion to Fawley Oil Refinery. Took the kids to London instead to see a Brian Rix farce; seemed appropriate somehow.

Comfort Trellis-style

The widow of Llanfairpg offers solace.

Dear Mrs Hollande, she writes, you too, dear? Another victim of men's lustings. I honestly don't know what the solution is apart from putting bromley in their cocoa. Try not to fret, dear, one day you'll be a widow like me and then it won't seem so bad.

Yours solidarily

Blodwen Trellis, Mrs, widow. retd.

Ebay 1 Old Scrote 0

I just bought a chimney mushroom on ebay.

But I will never see it.

If I am lucky I might get a refund, but the steps I need to take to claim the refund make Scott's trek to the South Pole seem like a stroll up the pub.

Please don't ask me to explain: I am cast down enough as it is by my inability to master something so simple as ebay.

Ask me, instead, why I wanted to buy a chimney mushroom.

Better yet, ask me what a chimney mushroom is.

Better yet, let's pour a drink and forget the whole thing.
Bloody Jackdaws.

A profound sense of something or other

Talking of mysteries, have a look at this, not a hardship if you are as dazzled by the female form as I am, though in this case I would like you to stop looking at their lovely legs and concentrate on the following little puzzle:

Labelling them 1 to 6 from left to right, put them in order of their weight from lightest to heaviest.

Ok, ok, you're smart and you smell a trap, the sort that QI indulges in. And you are right: these splendid ladies, despite appearances, are all the same weight, 154 pounds imperial.

Does that amazing revelation not give you a profound sense of something or other? In my case, it's the other.

Chuck it in here

I used to recycle my stuff at the village recycling station in various bins: paper in one, glass in another, alicans in another, plastic bottles (please flatten them) in another. Then I started to make trips to the big recycling centre in the nearby town because they also had bins for other recyclables (wood, metal, rubble, etc).

But now I have a wheelie bin with a blue lid courtesy of the local district council. And EVERYTHING (except organic waste) goes into it: paper, cardboard, glass, alicans, plastic bottles (please flatten them), metal etc....

Now, dear reader, I don't mind dumping everything in a blue-lidded dumpster, but I can't shake off the question that keeps buzzing in my head: how do they separate all this stuff when they get it to their Separator Plant (or whatever they call it)? Metal with a magnet perhaps, but how about the rest?

I'll be honest with you: I will go on saving the planet, singlehandedly if I have to, but my heart just isn't in it any more. Mysteries demoralise me.

RIP Mikhail

"MIKHAIL KALASHNIKOV died on December 23rd, aged 94. But his 66-year-old invention, the Avtomat Kalashnikova, has plenty more shots left to fire. Developed in 1947 and first used by Soviet forces in 1949, the AK-47 assault rifle and its many derivatives are now used by the armed forces of more than 80 countries, and by freelancers in many more. No-one knows quite how many are in circulation: 100m is a reasonable guess. As a proportion of all the guns in the world—another number no-one can be quite sure about—Kalashnikovs probably make up more than one in ten of all firearms. Why does an ageing Soviet invention still dominate modern warfare?" [courtesy The Economist]

For an answer, go here. There's no doubt that it's the nastiest killer weapon since David slew Goliath, and not so different in that it is so basic that it can be, and is, used by children in African troublespots.

Paul-Félix Armand-Delille

He's the chap who deliberately infected rabbits on his French estate with the virus myxomotosis. And it worked. It wiped out ninety-something percent of his rabbits. Unfortunately for him and rabbits, the virus escaped and in a very short time devastated rabbit populations across northern Europe, including Britain. Poor old Paul-Felix, he's been hailed as a hero and vilified as a villain by turns ever since.
Poor old rabbits too. If you have seen a myxied rabbit, you will know what a pitiful sight it is. It seems that there is evidence that rabbits have developed a resistance to the virus, but there are still too many infected rabbits around for my taste. What seems to happen is that new bunnies are fine while they are above ground during the summer. But when they dive into the burrows in the autumn, they pick up the virus again.
One thing's for sure: we humans have no equals when it comes to buggering up the environment.

A load of you-know-what

Courtesy BTO Atlas

Here's a quote from an email sent to me recently asking me to sign a petition:

The barn owl used to be a common sight in the United
Kingdom, but now the birds have become increasingly
endangered. One of the biggest causes of barn owl deaths
is rat poison -- and the government isn't doing everything
it could to help them.

Before you rush out and shoot a farmer or your local MP, let me tell you that the above statement is inaccurate, unfounded and alarmist. In other words, it's a load of bollocks. I send Barn Owl corpses regularly to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, and receive the results of their analysis. Yes, they test for rodenticides; yes, traces are often found, but nowhere near lethal doses. I do not know of a single case where rodenticide poison was the declared cause of death. The largest proportion of Barn Owl fatalities are RTAs. The main reason for the decline of Barn Owls in the UK was loss of feeding habitat and loss of breeding sites. From a low of 2000 pairs, the population has grown to 5000 pairs or more, thanks to sustained programmes of nestbox erection and the establishment of food corridors by pioneers like Colin Shawyer.
Of course we should continue to monitor the presence of rodenticides in animal corpses, and of course we should insist that the rules governing the use of poisons are strictly enforced, and of course we should always be looking for alternative methods of control.
But the reason I get so angry about petitions like the one above is that they bring the conservation movement into disrepute. I will go to war for the environment as long as I have breath, but I have no intention of winning spurious battles and then losing the war, particularly as I have no wish to be seen as an alarmist doom-mongering lunatic.
So there.
Envoi: 1913 was overall a poor season, which the Guardian reported as the species being on the verge of extinction. Silly Grauniad, get your facts right.

What was that you s-s-said?

Watched the film "The King's Speech" last night. it's about George VI's speech impediment and how it was cured. It led me on to speculation about the difference between stuttering and stammering. According to most authorities, the terms are interchangeable. Many years ago, I read (In Fowler's English Usage, I think) that there are only two words in the English language which were true synonyms: gorse and furze. So, as I am not ready to gainsay the gorse/furze argument, I poked around in my cerebral attic and came up, as you do, with a Venn diagram to demonstrate that the two circles have a huge overlap, but that there ARE situations when stutter seems more appropriate than stammer, and vice versa. Machine gun fire, for example, can be described as stuttering, but not as stammering. Go on, find some more examples!
Checking later in my trusty Chambers, I found a clue in the definitions. They suggesti that stuttering is primarily about difficulty with initial consonants, leading to repetition: t-t-t-tell it to the m-m-marines; whereas stammering is primarily about hesitation before uttering a word.

You'd think I would have something better to do with my time. But it's better than vandalising er er er telephone kiosks or molesting dwarves on their b-b-b-birthdays.