Thinking Clearly About Nothing

Full disclosure. In case some poor benighted soul thinks that the title of this post is spiritually related to the title of this blog, tough. Go seek enlightenment on someone else's doorstep! I believe Mother Carey welcomes dreamers.
I picked up on the Brain Pickings post about alcohol and the brain. The conclusion of this (Canadian (?) aren't we all now) comic strip is that the Devil's Buttermilk enables us to think clearly about almost nothing. A little harsh I feel, especially as I gave up the DB almost 2 years to the day now under starter's orders.  I do not consider myself to think clearly as a result and I am buggered if I can remember what it was that I was thinking about anyway... The U Tube video gives a link to all sorts of helpful little videos about drugs and a very useful reminder about hangover amelioration. May come in useful this time of year. I'm off to make a cup of tea, lashings of hot tea! It's cold enough to have the nuts off a nun here and the starter would judge my efforts to cut down on the caffeine as woeful anyway. One drug at a time sweet J, I say, one drug at a time.

Prentice Hand

I came across the phrase in Driftwood and Tangle by Margaret Leigh.
Chapter 10 - At the Peats - is set in 1940. It is, in part, a reflection on WWII.
Leigh also describes her kackhanded cutting of the peat leaving the bank gashed and uneven...

as if it were a huge chunk of butter at which a boy had been hacking with a blunt penknife.

For those of us that have not put 10,000 hours in the meter ours will always be prentice hands.

Every state should have one

A programme in the poverty series on BBC 4 drifted across my shortening attention span the other night. All good stuff and the pilgrim, an earnest young Swiss, was questioning the set up in Zambia in relation to the past disposal of assets, specifically the copper deposits. The VP of Zambia, Guy Scott,  happens to be white and the earnest pilgrim questioned him on his lack of pigmentation and, delicately, asked if this was linked to colonialism and exploitation. I have little knowledge of the Scott's politics, background or probity but I really chuckled at his reply. Obviously, he has been tackled about this before. He indicated that such a situation, having a white VP,  was not uncommon and that he believed the US had one!

Cause of Death?

A blog by Paul Mason  about Yang Jisheng. He is the author of Tombstone which is claimed to be the 'Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine'. At least 36 million dead!

Giles Fraser has a comment piece in the Grauniad about images of dead children.
Contained within it is  a twitter feed giving a link to the picture of his concern, 4 children in a morgue in Gaza.
Please be aware it is a very disturbing picture. No doubt there will be further horrifying pictures to come.

We certainly know how to kill!

Misty, Moisty, Morning

Off to avail myself of the democratic facilities at the urns in the Tithe Barn I slipped the old point and snap in my pocket.
A few photo opportunities ensued.
A web of deceit

A few (fig) leaves of respectability

 

 
In the graveyard of freedom.

Herself was concerned when she returned to find the house locked up, the fire out and the kettle boiling. Not a sign. I had passed into the churchyard and was presenting a damp, solitary figure to the memorial masonry of previous generations. Lost in contemplation of my own mortality.

(So the sun didn't cleave the woodwork then. God, but you can be a miserable bugger sometimes...Ed!)

The Usual Suspects

Nice little blog from our Paul  at the Great Hall.

Certainly nobody in the press made trouble: not even me, nor Channel Four News, nor The Guardian. We sat, watched, recorded.

Eee Paul, you becoming a southern softie? Few years in the Laogai; toughen you up a treat lad.

Certainly seemed to be a shortage of people considering it's their hall!
I have come to appreciate Paul's journalism and reportage. I sincerely hope Fatty Pang and the Posh Posse don't do too much damage!

Fun Guy

We may have missed the 5th November but I would hate anyone to say that I am not a fun guy or appreciate such in others.

Not much room for these sorts of things, I'll just squeeze in here.

Recycling

We do our share.
The council provides for the collection of garden waste, paper, cans and cardboard. We recycle glass (Did I not hear that you had forsworn the devils buttermilk...Ed? ) Herself is partial to a drop of red wine, possibly a nightcap of the finest blended, and who am I to object. Besides, there are always pickle and jam jars, bottles of this, that and the next thing for which our consumer society requires the finest vitrification. I could believe the bloody milk bottles keep some fellow and his mafia cousins from Murano in clover. I religiously take a few rags from my back that have threads bared, the furniture that the mice have had condemned by the parish authorities  and assorted electrical devices that still have their valves glowing to the town dump, AKA the Recycling Centre, to avoid the horror of landfill. As a result of my efforts for the environment I may be responsible, personally, for the failure of the publishing industry because I take my surplus reading matter to the shop that combats famine in Oxford. (I think we get the point, could you move on for the love of god and his blessed mother... Ed!)  Well I also take the little cardboard tube that appears when the toilet roll is exhausted (I share its pain...Ed.) and flatten it, putting it in the recycling. I feel an enormous pressure to do this.

I believe that I could more likely cull badgers, hunt foxes or other defenceless beasts, perform cruel and painful experiments on small animals than fail to recycle the small but dutifully flattened cardboard tube.
Strange isn't it?

Whistle Bright Star

A grandmother's joy at the setting sun.

A hard day.

Flatland, a stage for light.

The Great Wen boils with smelting gold,

A febrile heart.

Whistle bright star, a beacon home.

Romancing the Wind

Very uplifting, no pun intended for once and if you are not as high as a kite after watching this video well, shame. Ray Bethell, an 85-year old resident of Vancouver, is romancing the wind with kites near the Burrard Street bridge. Here he flies three kites in a ballet set to "The Flower Duet" from Leo Delibes opera "Lakme" - with Joan Sutherland and Jane Berbie. Robert  Holbrook is credited with the video.

Many thanks to Jean for the link. 

Pleutering with Swans

I had been off pleutering about and taking an easy road out of the village paused to catch breath and the sights and sounds on a bridge over the mighty river of ours which feeds the Little Ouse. Needless to say it was quiet. A good excuse to absorb the last sunshine of September, feel bones warmed and spirits lifted. Cheers, but in a good way. I thought I was on my own but a loud beating came from under the bridge. The trickle beneath my feet must have produced a huge fish if some previously unseen angler was landing his catch and dispatching it. The beating continued, increased even, but I could not identify the cause. Moving to the other side of the bridge I saw a swan paddling about in a very shallow pool going about its business of grooming and looking truly magnificent, as white as an angel on a Christmas tree.

Further on I noticed a bird scarer. The farmers use these kites, in the shape and with the motion of real birds of prey.
I watched for some time in grudging appreciation of the mimicry. I suppose they work but they probably displace real birds of pray and sometimes mistakes of perspective and general stupidity make me think that the folk at Mildenhall or Honnington have invented silent helicopters. I was mulling these daft thoughts about in my head when the bird scarer dropped like a stone into the field. It was an accept no imitation Kestrel. The real thing!

I thought of

 If you've seen the hawk, be sure, the hawk has seen you. 

 (Findings, Kathleen Jamie. p 32. I thoroughly enjoyed this book like all of hers that I have read and must attribute the pleutering to her; p51 to be precise.)
  

A Great Way to Start the Day!

Tuning half an ear to the British Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday morning at about eight am I was greeted by the  Huapango. I have met this creature before and it does put a bit of a shine on the day despite plague, famine, war and devastating floods. Just thought you might like to know.

Gustavo has a  passable rendition here.

(That's what I like to see:- clarity, brevity, fully referenced and a bit of a punch, it's what blogs were made for...Ed)

Is it a bit of a punch you're after?

A Shell of Myself

Shells, don't you just love 'em

Shell companies, now that is another matter. A blog  by Nick Shaxson on the ever popular Treasure Islands site gives the details but I prefer to let my imagination roam.
The companies - Unbeliezeable,  Delawho;  the officers are Umberto and Desiree, your name will never be mentioned!?
Umberto will do what you tell him to do... Also included in the starter pack was a resignation letter signed by Desiree
undated!
The reporters start to have fun with things they might be able to do. “Can we have Unbelizeable sue Delawho?”
However there are safeguards and due diligence will be done.

“The beneficial owner promises that the company will not be used for the purposes of distributing drugs, money washing, financing of terrorism, production and/or distribution of kiddy porn, and some other activity that you are promising not to run through Unbelizeable.”

Oh Yeah!
So Senor Zeta do you swear to be a good boy, a very good boy?
You may wholesale huge quantities of non prescription medications, be in the premature undertaking business, sex, rock and roll, not necessarily consensual, with the liddle people but you would never lie would you? Good I'm glad we have established that.
Now we can do bidness together and, if you wan, Desiree can have your babies!
Ocala!

Paranoia - Signs of the Times

I had the pleasure this week of noticing that one of the drugs I take had been increased in its dosage.
(Now you know herself prefers you speak of medication rather than drugs... Ed)
I am an old and foolish man with a bad memory but I am quite clear that neither the hospital nor the GP had suggested that the drugs medication should be increased in dosage, still less had they consulted me. Herself who was there at the last hospital consultation agrees and anyone who suggests that she is foolish, old or with failing memory - well peace be upon him as he is not long for this world.

Imagine my paranoia, my increasing paranoia, when I saw this sign in the car park of a local village hall.

No respect at all, it will be compulsory youth in Asia next.

Books glorious books

What a great idea! Virtual Library contained in public QR codes. Projekt Ingeborg.
From the ever popular ( in our house) and useful Collaborate (Previously known as Thriving Too)
(I did enjoy the little fishes, though (I could play with them for hours))
(Are we not becoming a mite parenthetical...Ed?)
(I am not in the same bracket as yourself!)

Lots of other ideas about books and libraries in this Books and libraries link.

Accounts Receivable

 Elif Batuman is a writer that I had picked up on in the London Review of Books.  I had seen she was giving a talk at the British Museum - Cervantes, Balzac and double–entry book–keeping, the title of the talk caught my imagination. She has  written The Possessed  which I have just read in paperback.  Ian Sansom gives a whiff of it in the Guardian review link. The book reads like a short ride through Russian Literature in a fast machine - see John Adams   for rest and relaxation.
Her wit limbo dances under the academic bar. On p57 in the paperback version she reports being accused  by a colleague at a seminar of not fully understanding Lyutov's ( a character in Bable's Red Cavalry)  "specifically Jewish alienation."

Her reply  -

Right ... As a six foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman growing up  in New Jersey, I cannot possibly know as much about alienation as you, a short American Jew.

It may show irony in the soul but it is lost on her colleague who nods and replies -

So you see the problem.

There are nightmares about penguins as homestay hosts, ice-houses for connubial blisters, inspirations for conspiracies and attempts on Tolstoy's life. Do keep up there at the back.

Omposable

Not Staged, honest. I wouldn't go anywhere near digging the garden.

Omposable was 'e

You know I think herself is trying to tell me something.

Salad Daze

A Cabinet re-muffle, an Indian Summer and Salad Daze.
We are blissed out, lucky S o Bs.
I will pass over the occupants  of the deckchairs of state on the  good ship of the coalition and move on to the weather.
The Bees, even the S o Bees, have been making up for lost time.

We visited Hackney, not to indulge in Para-Julibumpic watching, but for a literary soiree!
Persons who are known to us and may even be re..(don't start on that bollix again, we will take the disclosure as being full frank and filigree transparent ...Ed) OK then we enjoyed the launch of Salad Days - see the link. Great stuff. Get a copy while it is good and hot!
After the event we wandered down the Lower Clapton Rd. The Blue lights still flashed and the sirens screamed but the old place is definitely on the way up! The party, stout and otherwise, foregathered in the Clapton Hart.
Before it was Chimes (or Crimes) we knew it as Dougies. I did not see this myself, being safely tucked up in bed, but in its Dougies incarnation a drive by shooting once upon a time produced return fire rather than the usual hitting of decks, allegedly. I seem to remember Lady BP going out for a night with the girls there but she claims I am old and foolish and my memory is failing!

Anyway,  we are making the most of it, the weather that is, not the failing memory.

Lest We Forget

Last year I referred (Somewhat disparagingly I thought... Ed) to graphs concerning the economy.
Ann Pettifor has returned to the subject and blogged her notes for a presentation to a conference entitled Just Banking.
Ha! Ha!

The arguments are well worth trawling through if you have any doubts at all that it is going to be a cold, cold winter.
The ground is also being prepared to blame us and those like us for the pickle we are in. The idea that it was a big boy called Gordie wot did it, and ran away, can only stretch so far in the collective Alzheimer syndrome that clouds The Mail, The Current Bum and the Torygraph! So now:-

Blaming the Victim
And, it is implied, those responsible for this spontaneous combustion are the victims.
‘Sub-prime borrowers’ are frequently named and blamed. Michigan hairdressers on $7 an hour with a mortgage sold fraudulently by the agents of banks at a very high rate of interest – are the innocents deemed culpable of bursting the vast global credit bubble.
Blame has been passed from criminal to victim: from the private banking system to government and to the public sector.

And for those who like to see pictures, graphs even...

Busy Bees

Lloyd's Bank in BSE has a sign which incorporates a bee hive.

This goes back to the name of the bank before it was absorbed into Lloyds
The bank may be absorbed into the Coop Bank as the TSB(ee).
Ho Ho.
Nice though for us romantics - cooperation, mutuality, bees (workers, queens, drones, fleets of drones no doubt; see where all that misty eyed nonsense has got you... Ed)