Not a Merchant Banker

Muhammad Yunus sought an ending
to extortionate lending.
He thought microfinance more appropriate
and became a Nobel Laureate.

So What's a Little Isaiah between Friends?

A lovely picture of Izzy Stone and his wife at the start of a New York Times review of the biography by Myra MacPherson. I was led by a film of his life to Middleton's selection of his Weekly to the Trial of Socrates. It is a journey I am glad I made.

The quote in the title comes from an article of 27 Jan. 1969, vol. 17, no.2 and contrasts the hypocrisy of presidents at the time, swearing the oath on a bible open at Isaiah- quote "Come let us reason together" as they bombed the F... out of various small nations. Particularly apt that Nixon had the book open, allegedly, at the page where the prophet speaks of beating swords into ploughshares.

Hands up anyone who thinks this has a certain resonance today!

Thanks to John Naughton for the link in his blog.

Secretos pequenos de mi pueblo 2

Traveling out of the village the other day I hit a pigeon. Since I normally travel on narrow country roads with a domingero like concern for safety and the wildlife I suppose it was inevitable that the poor bird was not killed outright. I got out of the car prepared to finish it off. The driver behind me had also stopped and gone to the bird and it had disappeared. I assumed he had killed it and put it in the hedgerow where it belonged. I asked if he had finished it off and thanked him. He hesitated and then said that it was dead but that it was now in the boot, for the ferret. He claimed to hoover up a lot of road kill.

I related this to A at the dinner table, the story goes well with Spanish red.

She asked if the ferret man was wearing a pink shower cap with his hair sticking out through the holes! It was only when she speculated that he might have been called Skink that my confusion was resolved.

Which reminds me, we have books about direct eco-action in the swamps of Florida to give away or sell.

Blogging Crease

You know how you fall into conversation on trains. We had said god knows what anyone makes of our discussions. Earwigging on a journey recently I was captured by the idea of the blogging crease and the angle of tilt of the laptop.

We had joined a train south. It was crowded and I had completely failed to establish it was going in the right direction. I wanted to say is this the train to Peterborough. I could only form the words for is this the train to Penzance! Needless to say I remained mute!

Having found seats, I was staring out of the window purposefully and listening to the man next to me. He was bemoaning the fact, to his mobile phone, that he was in the middle of a messy divorce and that he had been made redundant. The man opposite was bemoaning the fact that he had had to take an employee out to lunch who he had made redundant, while discussing another employee who he had not been able to make redundant because he had a sick note. Both were using phones and typing away furiously. There was an unequal sharing of the space of the table between them given they were using similar laptops. Immediately I saw the need for a blogging crease down the middle of the table. Then I realised that would not be enough and that the angle of tilt of the laptop screen would be crucial and that one contestant/traveler would be able to sneak an advantage by tilting their screen forward!
Ah but if trains had men in long white coats festooned with pullovers and sunglasses with floppy white hats they could adjudicate and sell tea and cakes at the same time.

Arturo Perez-Reverte

A day spent opening boxes, sorting possessions and sifting through the detritus of a life.
Some good things though! Books that you definitely want to keep.

And so to the first limerick:-

Arturo Perez-Reverte
Said I love it when you talk dirty.
His wife said Art
Don't be such a fart,
It's late, it's well past ten thirty!

La Vida Es Un Haya

See it on a T-shirt near you.
Life is a Beech!

Chefs' Comma

The National Trust are giving away a free hectare with every bowl.
Only joking!

Shortsighted?

Los secretos pequenos de mi pueblo 1

Little secrets of my village.
It seems remiss that I should be about to complete my 6th decade and have not yet read Don Quixote. Suffolk Libraries have provided a copy of Edith Grossman's translation so I will tuck into that after finishing off those fabulous banking boys, the Medicis.
I was known, affectionately, as Don Quixote by some friends in Spain. I think I would have quite liked the association with such a figure in a strange way. However, the joke was on me as El de La Mancha did not refer to a kindred spirit of the chivalrous hidalgo but to the original meaning of mancha - stain.
I am a very messy eater!

We have a windmill in our village. (And much else which I hope to reveal in due course.) It is "en obras". The sails are still in (re)construction but I believe there is a motor to supply power for milling from time to time. I wonder what the Don would have made of it.

I also wonder what he would have made of the huge cylindrical bales of hay scattered about the fields, or the bales which are covered in black plastic. I guess he would have seen them as armies of cristianos y moros fighting it out on the meseta of Mid Suffolk.
As deluded as the folk up the road at Mildenhall.

OK I lied I'm not vegetarian

An image captured in March in the garden just below the bird table. The attack was swift, deadly and of course this was the only shot I was able to take through the window before the batteries on the camera gave out. By the time I had changed them the bird was off to the trees to feed its young or partner.

A has fed the birds for years. One of the inevitable consequences of this has been the increase in birds on the table and in the surrounding vegetation. As a vegie she would be mortified by the thought that this only increases the opportunities for top level predators.

I don't have any problem with this.

It also encourages rats.

But that is a story for another time.

The sun also rises

A had not been well for over a week; visits to the doctor and tests gave no definite answer.
We wait in the lower circle of hell, A&E, for several hours before being dispatched to the purgatory of the assessment unit for several hours.
We watched the changeover of the shifts move about the ward like a caravan traveling in camel like fashion. Eventually it appears at the bed next to us. The elderly woman in the bed is confused, weary and probably just wishes to lay her head, finally, in a place where she will be looked after.
The outgoing, ehem, nurse explains that it is not possible to move the woman to a ward until there is a bed free and there will only be a free bed when a patient goes home or goes to..... Wisdom and sensitivity intervene and the nurse moves on to more pressing matters.
I look at A feverish exhausted and at the end of her tether and can't resist whispering that I am glad the nurse left that sentence unfinished. I receive a weak dig in the ribs and we both 'corpse' into fits of giggles. The matronical caravan passes with a collective look of confusion on its face!

After several days, in what A describes as Bedlam, pneumonia is diagnosed and she returns home with enough antibiotics to bring down avian flu at 50 paces!

Boggis

I have been troubled by the name Boggis for some time.
I had grown used to the fact that, in Hackney, small children would walk past me, in the winter especially when I allowed my beard to grow, and mutter
"...it is init, Father Christmas?"
However, when I walked into, one, of our locals in Suffolk and ordered a pint of bitter there was a silence and some sniggering and the telling phrase; -
"it is 'im init?"

'im was Boggis - who, allegedly, had done something to the coastline which was regarded by God, the established church and the planning authorities as unnatural.

I never ventured further. I have a delicate constitution and suffer as you know from extreme paranoia and nervous dyspepsia.

Now, any wavering faith in the name Boggis has been dispelled by the excellent and highly commendable John Boggis QC, I noticed in the Grauniad.

He is reported as dismissing a prosecution for theft brought by DEFRA against a Ms Tree-Hillman for ".. brown chantrelles worth £28"

How so,when the aforemetioned dam was caught yellow handed, as it were?

The case was, according to the Grauniad, dismissed on the grounds of pettiness as Boggis claimed he was there to try muggers and drug dealers not ladies who pick mushrooms!

The article, by Peter Marren, points to other aspects of fungal cropping on an idustrial scale which may cause problems, but it does reassure me that there is good in Boggis!

Amigos, Paz y Amistad

So then Uncle Fidel, been a bit poorly lately.
Well it catches up with us all, believe me. You'll just have to cut down those interminable speeches.

You may not remember but I did say hello 25 years ago.
I still have the poster: -

No los olvidaremos, queridos y entranables amigos.

I will not forget you but I'm not sure how the rest of them will remember.


I have to admit I was, as is frequently the case, under the affluence of incahol.
The best Cuban rum I have ever tasted before or since.
I was wandering around the park in Habana quite happy and mellow and there you were.
In the front seat of a jeep, surrounded by oficionarios and guardespaldas.
As I waved and said hello one of the said guardespaldas picked me up bodily, gently and with no malice, and set me down out of the path of the jeep.

Although I probably only weighed 95 kg at the time and had only reached the height of 1.82m
your man had no difficulty in moving me out of harms way.

I wish you well in recovery. Perhaps you have done evil in your life and you don't have the benefit, like Che, of dying a hero before the hard bit. I do think you have done some good in the world.

Who knows how long it would have taken to defeat apartheid without Cuba's intervention!

No los olvidaremos querido y entranable amigo.

Trees 1

Justus ut palma florebit ; sicut cedrus Libani multiplicabitur.
Psalm 91: 13, 14 for Catholics;
Psalm 92:11-13 for followers of King James;
for we are nothing if not sectarian.

Cedars and just men seem to be in short supply in the area at the moment.

The horror of what is happening is beyond belief but reinforced daily by pictures and reports.
To put a further emphasis on the obscenity I hear the drone of planes daily to and from Mildenhall.

Where is Masefield's Quninquireme now.
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine?
I doubt its cargo would contain ivory, apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

It does not make a difference if a child's life is cut short by what comes out of a Katyusha or an F16 or if it just dies of starvation and terror. It is still a smaller, meaner and more terrible world when that happens.

Somebody makes these weapons, sells them and uses them!

Banana Straits and Level Seas

OK! Jokes about bananas aside, there was a recent story in the Grauniad to suggest that EC regulation may not be all bad.

It seems clear to me, when sober anyway, that the way to a calm sea and a prosperous voyage is to start at sea level.

The bloody Belgians and nasty Netherlanders could not agree.

Inspire (www.ec-gis.org/inspire/), a European directive, seeks to end the situation in which neighbouring countries cannot make plans to deal with common issues because their national geographical databases do not line up. These differences can be as basic as the height of sea level. For example, notes Dr Max Craglia of the European commission's joint research centre in Ispra, Italy, there is a two-metre difference between Belgium and the Netherlands in the official height of low tide - essential data for flood prevention.

Michael Cross, Thursday July 27, 2006, makes the point that, of course, the perfidious Brits are trying to kill this at birth!

Obviously what the Brits want is a measure of compromise and the bloody Belgians have to drop the height of low tide by 1 metre and the nasty Netherlanders have to raise their sights and sea level by 1 metre; or make that 39.37 inches if you would.

I see the Commissioner for Sea Level in the distance festooned by white pullovers, hats and wrap around sun glasses, crying -
"Over"!

Is it time for tea already?

Newbeginings

Took some time out from work in Bristol recently to look at this garden. A gap in the planting seemed to indicate where some selfless soul gave his life in a runaway vehicle to save others. Gazing at the modest sign that records this I became aware that it was also the bedroom of those who did not have a home to go to. People still sleep rough!

So the boxes have been delivered, life moves on, shelves are being put up. The first communalist activity in the village we participate in is a garage sale. My wish is to open the garage and offer the contents for 5 GBP, if and only if they take the lot, including the picture frame, car rack and strange bits of plastic left by the one careful previous owner! A on the other hand goes out and mingles, and in the spirit of community acquires more books. This is a blow. To my certain and accountable knowledge (we have been paying the bills for 4 years) the aforementioned garage contains at least 33 boxes stuffed full of, you guessed it, books.

Please see my previous posts on the value of libraries and librarians.

Still you can't get too upset when you have a home to worry about.

Listening to the prom.

"Soave si il vento"
So what is that all about eh? Buggered if I know, but it is the kind of tune that would make an archbishop kick a hole in a stained glass window as someone once said.

Regarding the Archbishopric, had a nice one in the FT, Cinephile: -
Archiepiscopal dress (4)

Clue; I believe it is also referred to as a Desmond in some universities.

A weakness, crosswords, but it is reassuring to find we can still do them after all that heavy lifting.

Ladies Night on the A14

A few weeks ago A was making the trek along the A14 from Cambridge. Rather than the usual grind in evening traffic she found herself driving along a relatively uncluttered road. A few miles further on she realised that most of the cars she passed or that passed her were driven by women. Perhaps this was Ladies Night on the A14. She shared this particular piece of whimsy with me when she arrived home.

I pointed out that probably Great Britain were playing an innings in the world cup of football and most of the male population would be glued to a TV. I can be a real spoilsport sometimes.

In Praise of Librarians

It is a great joy to use the library.
A friend suggested 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. I ordered it from the library over the interweb and eventually a message came through the e-waves to tell me it was ready. I read it and on the strength of that experience ordered two books Lionel Shriver had recommended;
'Harbor' by Lorraine Adams and
'Tortilla Curtain' by T C Boyle.
These were delivered in the same fashion and a wet Whit weekend was spent very pleasantly with my nose in books. A part of the pleasure taken in these books is that I don't have to acquire them with serious cash money, look after them, except when they are in my charge, store them, fret about them, lend them to others and forget who I have given them to. I just have to get them back to the kind folk who lend them with the additional treat at the back of my mind that they will be enjoyed, if that is the right word, by others long after I have gone to the great recycling bin in the sky!

All this and heaven too as my mother said on many occasions.

I have a modest proposal to make. Why don't we take the money we currently spend on Weapons of Mass Destruction and spend it on other useful things such as libraries and of course librarians? I would add a note of special pleading for the Stakanovites in Suffolk County Libraries they deserve an extra bob or two.
When my local library was housed in a 4m x 3m cupboard in historic Lavenham, tourists would wander in and say, without fail:- 'Books! Is this some kind of library?' despite the big sign on the door saying - 'Some kind of Library' but then we have all been there.
I never once heard the reply 'Yeah. Really subversive isn't it.' But you knew they were thinking it.

Bucolic Plague 3

Arty Artichoke and Busy Bee

The Wink-a-choo Bird

We have been here in the foothills of the Suffolk Alps for nearly four years. When we first arrived it was a real contrast to life in Lower Clapton. One sound seem to greet us every day. It was the song of a bird which neither of us recognised. I must admit being a townie I only knew that birds came in two varieties, big ones - probably pigeons, and little ones - probably spadgers.

The bird song consisted of a trill followed by a phrase which sounded for all the world like 'Wink-a-choo'. Enquiries of more experienced twitchers and country persons drew a blank.

It took some time, determination and a good pair of bins to determine that the wink-a-choo bird was the common chaffinch. Birds with a Suffolk accent?