Soup Kitchens.

It is that time of year and that point in the political cycle when our thoughts turn to the stock pot. Stock jobbers, hedge funders, merchant bankers, off shore tax dodgers and any members of the Bullingdon Club who have fallen on hard times might like to warm the cockles of their trust funds with the following soup.

The recipe is my take on the
Special Lentil Soup p25 of
The Happy Herbivore
By Jamie Lass
Published by Conongate Edinburgh 1979
ISBN 0 903937 89 0

An interesting aside, one among many, in this age of debate about books and publishing:-
All 129 pages and covers were produced by Jamie from hand written masters and illustrated with a Parker ball point pen.

Serves 5, allegedly, or 3 at a pinch.

1. Cook 225 grams red lentils in 1ltr good stock; add ginger and cayenne to your taste.
2. Half cook 2 chopped onions with oregano and a bay leaf in oil; add 4 cloves of Garlic peeled, squashed and chopped.
3. When the onions are soft chop 225 grams mushrooms thickly and fry off with the onions. Turn them until they have colour, about 2 mins. If you overcook they will dry or go rubbery in the soup!
4. Season the lentils to taste and combine with the onions, garlic and mushrooms; this needs to simmer further for a minimum of 15 mins. The longer the better.
5. Before serving add a good slug of lemon juice and sherry!

So many people have asked me for the recipe!

And the wine to go with it Sir?
The odd bottle of 1990 Château Pétrus, allegedly laid on for David Cameron and friends by the Tory party treasurer, Michael Spencer, at their party conference in Birmingham. It should go well!

34,000 sovs a case since you ask!

What's that smell?

I don't know if you have ever been near enough but occasionally you catch a whiff off a politico.
In my mind Major will be forever linked to the aroma of curry, Peter Mandelbrot the rictus inducing bouquet of Arsenic and Old Mace and Tony the decay of stinkwort (Datura stramonium). The unholy quartet of Dave, Gideon, Nick and Vince will, in my memory, have the odor of sanctimonious dead skunk. You don't have skunk in this country - as Mr Wainwright III said on one famous occasion- think of a politician you don't like.

Enjoy!

After 20 October the blood and guts are going to make you swoon!

Cuts, what cuts?

We just sat down to our last Sunday lunch before the, so called, cuts.
Possibly the best Sunday lunch I've ever had. Not a cheese sarnie, no a cheese roll, wholemeal.
It had tomato, pickle and lettuce. I thought I had died and St Vincent de Cable had taken me to heaven.

As I savoured my glass of cheap (2 bottles for £7.50) white wine I thought on the hard times to come.

As I may have mentioned before, you aint seen nothing yet.

Hard Times

We need to be more nosey

Interesting post on the long nose of innovation by Bill Buxton in Business Week.
The idea of the long nose or snout has occurred to my good self (and others) before.

The heart of the innovation process has to do with prospecting, mining, refining, and goldsmithing. Knowing how and where to look and recognizing gold when you find it is just the start. The path from staking a claim to piling up gold bars is a long and arduous one. It is one few are equipped to follow, especially if they actually believe they have struck it rich when the claim is staked. Yet the true value is not realized until after the skilled goldsmith has crafted those bars into something worth much more than its weight in gold. In the meantime, our collective glorification of and fascination with so-called invention—coupled with a lack of focus on the processes of prospecting, mining, refining, and adding value to ideas—says to me that the message is simply not having an effect on how we approach things in our academies, governments, or businesses.

To cut a long nose short. His contention is that, even in the fast changing world of computers where it is almost impossible to keep up, the span from light bulb moment to the quotidian can be a nose spanning tens of years. So the major whizbangs passing into common as muck/cheap as chips category in the next ten years will be based on technology that is ten years old?

I've always thought that the driver for innovation was the transfer of technology on the hoof.
Maybe it also requires a certain amount of crying in the wilderness, about 20 years!

Hamming it up

I am fond of the pig. If a man, or woman for that matter, can live on potatoes alone then how much more pleasant and nourishing to prosper with the addition of cabbage and bacon.

Our travels in Spain resulted in frequent stops in places of refreshment where the legs of your porkers hung in the tobacco smoke with inverted paper umbrellas below them to catch any precipitation. We also spent a happy week in cork oak country and indeed watched the sweet little beasts rootling for the acorns. Your Spaniard does like his or her pig; every bit of it! This love affair has not gone unnoticed.

In Galicia they eat everything.

In Andalucia, in Jabugo, a slice or two of pata negra with your manzanillia would leave you thinking you had died and gone to heaven.

However, as with all things, the bad guys noticed too. The Grauniad reports that -

Ham inspectors put 17 tonnes of pig meat into quarantine yesterday as they cracked down on what they suspected was a massive fraud involving Spanish hams that – purportedly – come from the haunches of free-range pigs that feast daily on acorns.

By their arithmetic ye shall know them.
1 pig = 4 legs
X = the number of pigs happy rootling acorns and producing jamon to the required standard.
8X = the number of legs on sale purporting to be of the required standard.
I’ve seen some things in my life but an eight legged pig is not one of them!

Authorities in southern Andalucia said that, to provide the quantity of ibérico hams that now hang from supermarket meat counters, the region would need to double the number of locally bred, acorn-fed pigs…

By the way if you have not seen Jamon, Jamon by Bigas Luna get yourself a plate of pata negra, some fresh pan, a bottle of fino and be prepared for fun.

The Evils of Capitalism

Nice little blog in the grauniad. The case against uppercase.
I've always been lowercase myself, I'm sure it shows.
Good to note that there are occasions when uppercase makes all the difference:-

Capitals do have their uses, of course. As the Urban Dictionary puts it: "Capitalisation is the difference between 'I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse' and 'I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.'"

Capital, capital!

Networking, if that's OK with you

An Article in the New Yorker

Why the revolution will not be tweeted, by Malcolm Gladwell October 4, 2010

In 1960 four African American college students sat down at the segregated lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. The action became part of the growing civil rights movement. Necessarily, it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter. These tools are available now and it is claimed by some that they have had a significant effect from Iran to Moldova. Would the technology have made a significant difference. Gladwell claims that it is one thing to be loosely connected in a network that believes in equality, god mom and apple pie and another, as in Greensboro, where you are required to stand shoulder to shoulder with an exposed, non violent group, about to get its head beat in! You may need a little more than the ethereal connection of ewaves and 500 e-friends to sign up for that one.

Networks are very important and can bring about change and he quotes a report of an example that really inspires:-

In a new book called “The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change,” the business consultant Andy Smith and the Stanford Business School professor Jennifer Aaker tell the story of Sameer Bhatia, a young Silicon Valley entrepreneur who came down with acute myelogenous leukemia. It’s a perfect illustration of social media’s strengths. Bhatia needed a bone-marrow transplant, but he could not find a match among his relatives and friends. The odds were best with a donor of his ethnicity, and there were few South Asians in the national bone-marrow database. So Bhatia’s business partner sent out an e-mail explaining Bhatia’s plight to more than four hundred of their acquaintances, who forwarded the e-mail to their personal contacts; Facebook pages and YouTube videos were devoted to the Help Sameer campaign. Eventually, nearly twenty-five thousand new people were registered in the bone-marrow database, and Bhatia found a match.

Certainly there is a role for the new tools and the new ways of working. Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”, is a very good exposition of that. They are not the panacea for all our ills, and I would accept that I am susceptible to panaceaitis, maybe more that the next person. Where I might differ from Gladwell is that he believes:-

…if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy.

You have to be well organised and have your members committed but we all know the dangers of hierarchies from churches to political parties.


Commenting on the better known protest:-

The Montgomery bus boycott required the participation of tens of thousands of people who depended on public transit to get to and from work each day. It lasted a year. In order to persuade those people to stay true to the cause, the boycott’s organizers tasked each local black church with maintaining morale, and put together a free alternative private carpool service, with forty-eight dispatchers and forty-two pickup stations. Even the White Citizens Council, King later said, conceded that the carpool system moved with “military precision.”

He finishes the article with:-

The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.

However, consider in turn that if you want to read the truth, write it on a wall. If you want to be free, pull the wall down. But make sure it is not a structural member, it is not of historical or architectural interest, you have planning permission to demolish, you have carried out a risk assessment for the demolition, you have consulted widely on this and genuinely believe that a majority of the relevant population are in favour, that the minority who have fears about the demolition have been reassured, and that it has zero carbon impact and that David and Gideon could find a slot in their very busy diaries if there was a suitable photo op. with the common people, there was provision for drinkie-poos afterwards, no press, and………..

Chilly Chilies

It has been a good year for chillies. Herself has grown a range in our extensive greenhouse provision round the back of our baronial pile in this pleasant Suffolk messuage which time has gratefully forgotten.
While they have fierce names and impressive ratings on the Scoville Scale adding them to our dishes raw and cooked has resulted in an increase in flavour and not any great heat! Obviously it has something to do with the humour, airs and graces of the village.
A recent overnight trip had herself in fear for her chillies. She had forgotten to zip up the greenhouse. All is not lost and our chillies did not get too chilly.

A far cry from a story in the Grauniad about a chilli measuring 1,176,182 on the Scoville Scale.

Evil, pure evil.

Just heard news that pope on the grope was last seen heading to Holyrood with a tartan scarf round his neck.

Could almost forgive him the Hitler Youth thing, the covering up child abuse for the greater glory of god and the Catholic Church, condemning a large section of the world to poverty and exploitation because he refuses to accept that they should have access to contraception, the fact that HIV infection will progress and deaths from AIDs will increase because simple prevention, condoms, is denied to believers -

BUT A BAY CITY ROLLERS FAN

AAAARGH!

Watering Workers Beer

The decision has been taken to scrap the £3.3m Community-Owned Pubs Support Programme

I am the man, the very fat man, who waters the workers' beer.
I am the man, the jolly fat man, who waters the workers' beer.
What do I care if it makes them ill; if it makes them terrible queer!
I've a car, a yacht, an airoplane from watering workers' beer.

Or words to that effect.
What would you think of the man, the terrible fat man who took the beer out of the workers and peasants hands. That's what he is about to do for some communities.
Shame! I hear you cry.
What can you expect from the man, the oleaginous fat man, who destroys the Audit Commission with the stoke of his pen!

Eric von Pickles has always struck me as a throwback to the days of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist. Possibly to those interminable B Movies of my yoof about brave RAF guys escaping from a hell hole of a prison camp run by, you've guessed it, a chubby and totally evil Gauliter played by Eric von Pickles.

"For you Tommy the war is over. Have some beer, it is warm as you English like it; I leave you to guess why!"

However, help is at hand, not for the films, mercifully they all sank without trace.
As Social Enterprise reports:-

Co-ops step in to support community pubs.

Good guys!

An island not much visited

According to Boswell, Dr Johnson reported this after his visit courtesy of the wind and waves. This is a good thing for the few who find lodging on it and are able to enjoy the views, beaches, flora and fauna in relative peace.

Much restored after a week here, battered by beauty and the wind (but not rain) we return with glorious colour worthy of a tropical sun, at least from the scarf up!

Goodwill Bunting!

We had a meeting today in our village hall.
For some time we have been trying to get affordable housing to buy or rent for local families.
There are so many people out there who know the score and are trying so hard to make it happen. It would bring tears to the eyes of a stone needle!
However, there are those who do not want it to happen for a variety of reasons! NIMBY being one.

It begs the question when it will not be in their backyard and the only real objection is the colour of the brickwork that will be employed.

A number of ideas/phrases surfaced during the course of the afternoon.
The first was that you can not have a good public meeting without bunting, obviously goodwill bunting. Herself admitted, under duress, that she had colluded with the man in the Town Hall in Hackney to secure bunting whenever there was a public gathering at the heath centre, often it was tatty bunting.

Later through the haze of the evening meal it was reported that one of the nieces had been appointed as the Curator of Yurts.

Maybe we should get a few yurts, plonk them on the village green and have a festival of Mongolian Throat Singing. Now that would stick in the craw of the the bad guys!

Felbrigg

And so to Felbrigg!
Our journey was set about by ambulances, police cars and helicopters.
Arrival at the hall was soothed by a walled garden. I am very partial to a walled garden.
There were many beautiful flowers, nigella, or love-in-a-mist, being one of them.


I think we may return!

Debenham

We travelled to The Mid Suffolk Village of Debenham for our August perambulation.
It is described as “unspoiled without being a showcase” and well worth a visit but might provide more interest on a working day! The building that caught my eye, grand but not very beautiful, was the former Chapel of the Ancient Order of Foresters. It was built in 1905 but is of significance as it was the local branch or lodge of a Friendly Society formed in 1834. The society which, is still in existence, provides its 70,000 members with insurance policies against sickness and death; an example of the small society?

Forward to the Horse

I have been riding this particular donkey(buddhistpizza - the blog!) for some years now. It was with considerable alarm that I read on my Grauniad website the claims that the poor beast was dying on it's feet. With my girth, you might unkindly comment, that is not surprising!

Cory Doctorow links a report from The Economist on the Death of Blogging.

A report last month in the Economist tells us that "blogging is dying" as more and more bloggers abandon the form for its cousins: the tweet, the Facebook Wall, the Digg.

Do a search-and-replace on "blog" and you could rewrite the coverage as evidence of the death of television, novels, short stories, poetry, live theatre, musicals, or any of the hundreds of the other media that went from breathless ascendancy to merely another tile in the mosaic.

Of course, none of those media are dead, and neither is blogging. Instead, what's happened is that they've been succeeded by new forms that share some of their characteristics, and these new forms have peeled away all the stories that suit them best.

Have I played Sancho Panza too many times to Hidalgos on their Rocinantes?
Forward to the horse!

Passion

Regular readers who are looking for confessions from your correspondent about being overwhelmed by the hots for some floozy will be disappointed.
We spent a relaxed few days in the garden with the company of family and friends and the blessings of good weather, simple food and some drink. The weekend was rounded off at a concert by Fugata. You can read about them here. The music and the playing were summed up in one word for me, passion.

We pootered home and caught the news that Spain had won the World Cup of Football. No doubt from the pictures of fans in Madrid that they were rather pleased with the result.

Pleasure at 25p a foot!

A village walk, a good lunch, and on a sunny Sunday afternoon the proximity of the beach beckoned. We arrived at the car park and, because it was after 4pm, we were only charged £1.
What else can you get for that? We headed hot foot for the sea. Rolling up trouser legs to a demure height below the knee we immersed the lower appendages in the brine. The tide appeared to go out but it could just have been evaporation.

We stood and reveled in the pleasure of it. Since there were two of us and we were both bipedal our delight worked out at 25p a foot!

Who do the Palistinians Support?

A very nice little article in Open Democracy about the reach of the World Cup of Football.
Who do they support in Ramallah? Read all about it here.

Like the author, Khaled Hroub, I too

... would love to have seen, the ultimate surrealism of watching the games projected live onto the “separation wall” in Bethlehem. Al-Jazeera and other media report the wall’s use as a huge screen draws massive and cheerful crowds from the city and its refugee camps. This is something really exciting: conflated resistance and cynicism are precariously interwoven in one big transcending act that allows the besieged Palestinians to set themselves virtually free and go global.

When is a separation wall not a wall? When it is a window on the world!

The Rapacious Coalition Forces

So there I was. Left home at 10 past sparrowfart, caught the train at sp.41, even though the display at the local station said , and headed for the great Wen!.
I thought, coffee, sniffed my way to a dealer and nearly tripped over St Vincent de Cable. Having made the deal and slumped into a corner to savour my hit who should pass before my eyes but Ian Drunken Smith! He was attended to in much the same way as the owner of a small yappie dog by a civil servant. What did they put in that Americano?
They were going to have a Cabinet Meeting OOp North. Why? You are going to shaft the livelihoods and family fortunes of milliones de paisanos why should you give a f**k where you do it?

Interesting though.
You can organise, as a certain Mr J. Hill mentioned.
Just say;- take your nasty rapacious capitalist hands of ma assets.
Ma community owns them and you must not touch them!

http://www.newstartmag.co.uk/files/bid.pdf

Probably what we need to know and why !

John Naughton is promising a new book about Tinternet!
Some stuff is here in Th'Observer.

You could read it to take your mind off upcoming events in the World Cup of Football.

The End Times!

I've just finished reading Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland.
Counsels of perfection, of course, but we would all like to think there was room for improvement.

Then I saw this in Bong Bong.

Do these guys have the inside skinny on something?

I find myself glancing skyward more frequently now, nervously scanning for PCOs
(Porcine Flying Objects since you may not be a regular reader)

Ties that bind us together!

Oh this did strike a chord, or cord.
Once upon a time, long, long ago my life used to depend on this.
How to tie a bowline!

The bunny goes out the hole and round the tree and down the hole again.
Finish with a half hitch. Jesus, to think we used to hang on these things.
A waistband of hemp and all the good things of life!

And now a big boy who did these things so much better.
Gaston!

Conspiracy! What Conspiracy?

At the back of the Baramara, a tacky club in Sitges, it is very dark, dingy and very, very quiet.
This may be due to the judicial police squad with enough firepower to blow away a small Mexican drug cartel. It could be the large men in undersized shirts and jackets with various bits of electronic equipment in their ears. It could be the bulges in their clothes in places which even the clientele of the Baramara would find strange. Or it could be that such watering holes are not what they used to be and have to tart themselves on the market for whatever they can get!

In the gloom, if you could be there, you would see the figure of
Kissinger, Henry A. - Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
radiating sufficient gravity to cause a perturbation in Einstein's calculations. He is muttering incoherently in a signature gravelly voice to his most attentive audience, himself.

A man approaches. Apart from the adjustment in the massed cohorts and weaponry all is well! He is in his fifties, but looks good, has grey and black hair swept back. He has a mischievous smile playing round the corners of his eyes and his mouth.

Enry, viejo perro, como se saja? Madre de puta, estas bien?

Speek en Englesh pleese, for the tape!

Ho K Enry, whatever you say, conejotito!
The reason I drag you out of the Bilderbergs is I want to ask you a question.
Dit you put the pressure on the Espanish Supremes to have me fired so you can come to Sitges? There, I seddit.

Henry descends into a monologue which is inaudible and unintelligible but sounds like a cement mixer with a bad dose of indigestion. The youngish guy says that he will take that as a yes then.
He reminds him he is off to the Hague and that it might be a bit premature to plan any Christmas shopping in Madrid or Paris!

The various forces pack up the sub-nuclear arsenal attendant on each and sweep up behind their charges. Some of them head for a better class of bar!

Long time ago.

I'm not sure why I should remember this now but it is a clear recollection.
In the back entry's of the classic Salford slum I sat transfixed watching a mate's Dad line up match sticks in the dirt between the flags in their back yard.

He then took out his kukri applied a steel or stone to the edge and sliced through the matches.
They didn't collapse, or burn, or fall over. He didn't treat us like admiring idiots, although we were.

He parked his fag in the corner of his mouth and explained how it was his weapon in the last war and he had been shown how to use it by the Gurkhas. It kept him alive and that was important for him and his family!

We carried on with the daily round of football, cricket, school, rounders(included girls) and getting the ball back from the the backyard of Mrs Humphries the eyeball scratcher, shudder!

Life! Ojala!

I may be going gaga but...

I had occasion to visit the British Library this week.
Little did I know that deep in the bowels this sort of thing was going on.
Still, I have a great weakness for librarians and their work as regular readers know.
I know life is short and there are many important things to do but take 4:23 out of a wet bank holiday to enjoy this and think of the good guys and gals down at your local, library, and don't forget the databases.
Thanks to Bong Bong for the link and understanding about librarians!

Gideon's People

Article by George Monbiot published in the Grauniad and on his website.

People of my social background (upper middle class, public school) dominate every economic sector except those - such as sport and hard science - in which only raw ability counts. Through networking, confidence, unpaid internships, most importantly through our attendance at the top universities, we run the media, politics, the civil service, the arts, the City, law, medicine, big business, the armed forces, even, in many cases, the protest movements challenging these powers. The Milburn report, published last year, shows that 45% of top civil servants, 53% of top journalists, 32% of MPs, 70% of finance directors and 75% of judges come from the 7% of the population who went to private schools (6). Even the beneficiaries should be able to see that this system is grotesque, invidious and socially destructive. (6. The Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, 2009.Unleashing Aspiration. Figure 1f, p18.
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/227102/fair-access.pdf)

I'm not sure his solution would work even if you could prevail upon the universities to adopt such a selection process though the idea of screwing, at a stroke, the ability of the pluted bloatocrats to purchase advantages for their saucepans at the very real disadvantage of others would be welcome.

And now a link for Gideon. See what you missed, poor wee thing!
And of course the common people and their place in the great order of things

Fibet will be tree!

A thought from Bong Bong. What have those guys been smokin' now!
Still, freedom seems to be in short supply around and about.
Poor old Mr Vanunu is headed back to the slammer, read all about it in the Grauniad.
His particular crime involves meeting his girlfriend. What a bummer!
So when you celebrate your Amnes Tea on 28 May, raise a cup of chai for Mordechai and don't forget the yak butter. Go on, go on, go on!

Things change and the whole world is turned upside down.

I want to be free!

Free beer!
Free love!
Free Nelson Mandela with every 10 gallons (sorry 50 litres)!
Interesting meditation on the sloppy thought that

Information wants to be free (IWTBF)

by Cory Doctorow in the Grauniad

It's time for IWTBF to die because it's become the easiest, laziest straw man for Hollywood's authoritarian bullies to throw up as a justification for the monotonic increase of surveillance, control, and censorship in our networks and tools. I can imagine them saying: "These people only want network freedom because they believe that 'information wants to be free'. They pretend to be concerned about freedom, but the only 'free' they care about is 'free of charge.'"

Oh no they don't!

They want open access to the data and media produced at public expense, because this makes better science, better knowledge, and better culture – and because they already paid for it with their tax and licence fees.

Amen. Here endeth the first sermon, and while you're at it where is that free beverage and the dancing girls!

Lady of the Camellias.

So, two thoughts to be going on with.
A camellia, cut down in its prime but not by me, phew!
Herself, once again, came to my rescue.
Things I have learned after the event:-
A nosebleed from one nostril is possibly just a nosebleed.
If it is from 2 nostrils and lasts more than an hour you should go to A&E; probably half an hour ago!

I'm an NHS baby; god bless the NHS and all who sail in her!

Gracias a la vida que me he dado tanto!

And then there were...

One last heave and we're there.
You get at the back Peter and push him.
What's that wee numpty doing on the box?
I thought he was north of the border sh*%%^ng sheep.
What about the rainbow? What about ginger?
Oh F*%k! Here comes the dark Mountain.
Bugger this.

Step out, approach microphone, on my right, not too close...
It has been a privilege...
Not the trappings of power but the power to change...
All my fault...
Tremble lip, catch in voice, glance to right, christ better move on quick...
Get the kids, I'm off to see Brenda.

Walk up the street...
What number was it, 10?
Yes I know it's a bit small, but the weekend drum is ok-ish...
Approach microphone, yes on my left, back a bit, lots of space give em the Dark Madonna...
Strong government...
National interest...
Hard work...
Rebuilding family...
Crisis...
Honest...
Back to door, see that, 10
Cuddle, peck, not too much...
Open the door...
Gus! I'm home....

To rephrase a certain Mr Wislon...
Thirteen years of Tory misrule and we never won the World cup of Football once.
What a waste!

Master of the Dark Arts

I would not want anyone to think that I approve but this YouTube video shows what a master of the dark arts Alastair Campbell is. Appearing entirely reasonable he manages to get Adam Boulton to loose it. As much as a gelded sausage dog with false teeth in hock and chained to his lord and master can loose it, or that you would even notice.

Interesting times; oh what fun!

The Day Tomorrow

Off to the urns tomorrow!

And Giordano Bruno shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that casts his vote with me
Shall be my brother.

Ah but which way? Just vote, you numpty, just vote; it's a start.
If you feel you have had enough I suggest Johann Sebastian Mighty Bach might lift your spirit and the video might convince you that things are not too bad after all, mustn't grumble!

Let no one believe that there are not evil men out there.

Men who believe we should waterboard the political wing of the NHS en masse.
There are creatures who have enriched themselves with the blood of lambs, allegedly,
and much, much worse.

Democracy, you canna wack it laddy.

Delay! The Thief of Accountability.

It may have escaped your notice in the fever surrounding the news cycle on both sides of the pond that Buddhist Pizza Inc. has been subject to a certain amount of investigation, in open session, by governmental committee. As a Global Non-Profit tasked with general philanthropy and alleviating poverty and suffering in the highest earning 1% of the population we are totally transparent and operate to the highest ethical and moral standards. We do not fear detailed questions, we do not reject scrutiny, we welcome intelligent and informed interrogation.

However, under god and the (unwritten) constitution we exercise our democratic right to delay, and have prepared accordingly.

Excuse me, I have to go and watch hell freeze over.

Many thanks to the daily dose for the link, and the daily dose.

Sluts and gonifs

I have to confess that I did not know what a gonif was. Susan McCarthy helpfully, provides a link in her blog commenting on the moral failings, allegedly, of dinosaurs.

Well no one is perfect. I have been known to indulge in Vin Santo myself and give voice but sluts, gonifs and divine retribution?

Three Blind Mice

Less than ten days before the whole sorry mess is subject to the will of the people. There seems little point in adding to the tons of stuff out there but if you have one of these bloggy things and are true netizen of tinterweb it seems a shame not to share.

El Cameron seems to be slightly bemused as to why his obvious breeding and wealth and the manifest failure of his so called opponents have left him looking like the kid who insists it is his turn and you have to give him the bicycle now!

Giordano Bruno is still slugging it out after all these years. The boxer who never fails to get up on the count of eight. Get me the Balham Basher, Peter. I’m sure I can still beat the Balham Basher. But you are the Balham Basher!

The Cleggster or is it the Cleggstar! Haven’t we been here before, 1997?

I have to confess to using the Beeb’s seat calculator with the latest polls to see the likely outcome. You can also put a decent margin for polling error in and the whole thing has an oracular and soothing effect on a fevered brow.

What a relief, chaos and anarchy, it’s official.

Manos Limpias

Thoughtful piece by Giles Tremlett in Th'Observer today about Baltasar Garzon.
You may have heard of him because of his attempt to extradite the slightly chilly General Peanuckle. However he goes back much further than that.
It is interesting that he effectively brought down the controversial socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez, which was mired in Caso Gal, with allegations of corruption and a dirty war against ETA. Felipe, a much underrated character in my view, hits the sweet spot as usual and is quoted in response to an attempt by the supreme court to dismiss the judge ...

"I don't have a very special relationship with this man, but what they are doing is inexplicable and unjust."

So to sum up..

Judge Battasar Garzon

Fought crimes long gone.

The Spanish Supremes

Said only in your dreams.

What we did on our Brithday (63 in a series)

The weather was kind for my sixty third to heaven.
We took ourselves off to the coast and there after a spot of lunch inspected the Navy, much reduced now we are in a period of austerity...
We had a brief artistic interlude where we inspected the front and rear of old Babs...




Then off to the seaside and a good time was had by all. Gracias a la vida.

Not Canadian Enough

Nice little story via the Grauniad Newsbucket.
Open Data not only good like Mom and Apple Pie but also saves money.
It is alleged that 3.2 billion dollars was being illegally sheltered from the revenue in Canada.
The use of open data meant that this was exposed and the abusive activity closed down.
One question; that would pay for an awful lot of red jackets, big hats and horses, wouldn't it? I suppose you do have to buy oats for the horses, hmmm...

Is the Pope a Catholic?

Even though I handed in my papers many years ago I still enjoy seeing a lump or two knocked out of the old theocracy.

Steven Fry makes a very good case for disbanding the old firm and sending it out there to do something worthwhile. It will have a hard time making up for all that evil!

Thanks to John Naughton and his contributors for the link in his blog.

Posh Toffs

So Ian Jack had this article in the Gauniad today, whinging on about the Toffs, and the schools, and Eaton. God, you think he could find something better to do!

He accuses Sir George Young of going to Eaton. Na na Na na na; is what I say.

I saw the Right on Bart earlier in the week, on the telle and I thought to myself, yes, this is tomorrow's man. God he could have your goolies, your liver and your lights off you before you even noticed the difference, and you would say thank you. Lovely chap! Such silky elegance in the face of Paxoid or some other dull, grey Grammar School Slouch. Such charm, such understated wit!

I don't know what his Mare and Pare paid for the sod to be educated at Eton but worth every sov! Today, to educate the old duckling between the ages of 11 and 18 would only set you back about 200k sovs without allowing for the inflation, worth every penny!

Da Liddel Guy

Not to demean old Simon Singh, his height, or even to suggest that he is any age at all, compared to myself, a spring chicken I'm sure. However, if there are any of you out there, double figures at the last count, and you have not already done so please sign the petition at the Libel Reform Campaign site. Go on, go on, go on!

There that didn't hurt did it and those very brave souls who risk their time, sanity and home to hold up some semblance of rationality in this crazy world deserve a wee bit of support.

Sermon over. Now phwat was I saying about that nice Mr Murdoch.

To think it could be so!

Hmm!
Another cracker from Susan McCarthy

And a nice flower

for Easter.

Life is never simple!

So Memex has a nice post. Yes you would want Myriad Genetics to have its socks rot on their dainty corporate feet, even as we speak. So hats off to the lads and lassies at the ACLU for digging in on this one. I have had differences of opinion with them on some things, including the decision about Skokie Illinois.

That is the nature of democracy, of course.

Talking about life, DNA and all that business. No further on with the synthesis of the chemicals or even precursor chemicals for life? Come on there sharpen up. Forget about the old Large Hardon Colander. Bugger the Higgs Boson! We all want to know where life comes from, so to speak.

Up to a Point Lord Co-oper

Aaaahhh!
The sound of a civil society; peace, harmony, and cooperation.
Yes Geoff, they are all jumping on the wagon with the non-hierarchical music collective on the back. Geoff Mulgan blogs in the Grauniad about the recent change in attitudes across the political spectrum towards social enterprise and the publication by the Carnegie UK Trust of a Report, Making Good Society, into the future of civil society. I'm sure I'll have some thoughts when I've read it but (that little word, three letters, and it gets me into so much trouble) I have some thoughts of my own.

It's good to see Dirty Dave and Fuzzy Osborne launching themselves at the back of the collective bandwagon. Welcome aboard. The Coop, that bastion of, well, the Coop, has opened the silos, a little, and there has been some movement. Not perhaps as much a we would like or with the self awareness that we would want, still mustn't grumble. According to my slightly bemused reading we are about to be overwhelmed by a Tsunami of Social Enterprise which will wipe away all ills and inequalities and heal our poor, broken, divided society. Er, perhaps not. I can see a lot of jobs for those aparatchicks, 'merchant bankers' and ere do wells who are thrown out on their ears in the not too distant socially enterprising future.

As a volunteer, I am often p'd off in some useless meeting. Notionally, it is meant to advance the causes near to my altruistic heart, making the world a better, more equal, and less violently hate filled place for me to live in. To fuel my inner devil I play count the cash. How much are people payed to attend this meeting for its duration, including travel, expenses, and organisation on costs. Oh give me the money Barney because I know a little mutual enterprise that creates jobs, gives people support in their endeavours to build their lives in the way that they want, provides homes that are affordable to rent and hangs on to community assets that would be given away to private enterprise at knockdown, fire sale, prices!

Naar, you don't want to do that, might make the world a better place for me to live in!

My Left Foot

Sad but inevitable.
Michael Foot was derided by many during his life and now
'he's dead, dead and never called me muver'
The bastards are saying he was the best thing since, consecrated, sliced bread!
Even Lady Dagenham had 'kind' words to say. I wonder who put them in her mouth?

When the wind blows the grass bends

Hang on to your hats this is going to be a wild ride.

Giordano Bruno, the man (no relation to G. Broon Esq.) his picture below, I am sorry about the cheap lighting effects.
He suffered a long drawn out trial and torture and death at the stake, which took place on 17 February 1600 in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome. (still no relation to G. Broon Esq.) Alas; it was for, amongst other things, believing that the earth rotates about the sun in a manner of speaking, relatively. (Enough wriggle room there to keep the old Inquisition off my trail!)

So we have left all that kind of torture and human rights abuses behind us? Wrong!

Blair, Broon, Straw and the lot of them can equivocate till the cows come home; and they will. They have been accused of complicity (or stupidity) in the use of torture by that well know group of hate filled pinkos, the judiciary.

The point of my tale, if you still have your hats on, is contained in this report from Open Democracy by Roberta Bacic, concerning the abuses in Chile in the not too distant past and the almost unbelievable courage of those who spoke out against it. The importance of speaking truth to power and using such things as arpilleras.

The first requirement to fight injustice is to report it; otherwise we are accomplices.

God, I don’t know what I would do if I was threatened with all sorts of stuff to recant, give away secrets or just conform. I do make a point of sitting down during the national anthem on the few occasions when it is played. Well it’s never going to be my national anthem!

Here’s to the brave buggers who did a wee bit more!

The Toffs ATM

So then Lord Cashcough!

Dave's mum said that you don't have a domicile.
It's sad really because you seem to have so much money, give so much of it away and yet you don't have a home of your own. Charity begins at home, so they say.

I'm sure the Turnip Taliban hereabouts would be able to find a house for you. Many of them have more than one of their own!

When in Rome Frankie!

Occasionally life throws up contrasts.
In a street in Rome recently I noticed a shop selling smart dresses and such. Not the sort of thing that would catch my eye apart from the name. Pinko.


Directly opposite there is a plaque on the wall!

Sore Throats

Good morning!
Please turn to page 92?
I may have mentioned San Blas or St Blaise once or twice before in these lectures.
The devout among you will have noticed that Wednesday this week was the feast day of the holy man, himself.

He is the patron saint of sore throats plus a few other things. Well, after martyrdom you need some interests as, in the left footer's version of heaven, there are no virgins made available.
Your man St Blaise makes a bob or two responding to prayers concerning the throat. Was he an ENT specialist, I hear you ask? Well no, I think his main qualification for the job was the fact that he had his head cut off, and like King Louis XIV, it spoiled his constitution. However, it did give him a unique insight into maintaining health and integrity in the region between the head and shoulders!

He was, allegedly, Armenian but has a great following in the north of Spain, Campoo, where we lived for a while. I do not think the Campurrianos have weak throats but I do know there is a tradition the storks appear and start building their nests on San Blas. We have seen them and therefore it must be true.


If you don't believe me have a look! They are ungainly, ponderous, inefficient, build their nests out of the most unsuitable sticks in the most ridiculous places and look complete arses while they do it. You can't help feeling a little stab of joy when, eventually, you see the head of the young stork appear above the edge of the nest.



Thank you.
Next weeks lecture will be on the importance of the
South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics (SWISH) in the development of interfaith hegemony and security in the tribal areas.

Wee Boots

Amazing what you can find in a house after 50 years.

Genes

I listened to Start the Week with Andrew Marr this morning. His guests included Steve, my job is to make sex boring, Jones the geneticist. Steve covers the usual ground of how the popular and misconceived view of genes is that they are specific indicators of everything from being shy and retiring to a proclivity for genocide and mass murder. I may exaggerate, but not much.
"In fact", says Steve and in my minds eye I can see a devilish twinkle in his, "they have found the one that makes your ears stick out!" or words to that effect. To give him his due, a true professional, Andy the wing nut only hesitated a demi-semi-quaver before moving on!

Hard Times

One of the songs that popped up around the McGarrigles offerings on UTube was Hard Times, hard times indeed for their family.

I got to thinking about our times. We are about to have a general election (not the 6th of May, Shirley!!!). We think things are bad now, for many of us they are not. In the hard times to come, courtesy of the dreadful Dave and his mates, things will be bad. The little people, the underclass, the people who never saw employment in the Blair/Broon years, yes they are going to be screwed. They were screwed before and Dave, the caring, sharing, compassionate Dave, is happy to see them screwed again! However, the problems we face in the economy, the environment, in the fabric and security of our society, mean that many of us, significant numbers, will be screwed regardless.

Hard times; you ain't seen nothing yet!

Sad

Kate McGarrigle died this week. There is a lovely picture on the McGarrigle's website at the moment.
If that's not enough try this.

Makers and Hackers

I've been reading a bit of Sci Fi including Makers by Cory Doctorow.
Interesting little noodle. Imagine if you made a machine that was a 3D printer eventually the printer would be able to print a copy of itself!

It would, amongst other things, need to run on some pretty amazing gloop.

Then I saw this - Sugru.
It's not (just) that I am a sucker for Irish lasses with enthusiasm and the kind of accent that would make a straight archbishop kick a hole in a stained glass window but I do like the idea of making and mending. Hacking, I believe it is now called. I hope the gloop does not frighten the horses or give wee birds the vapours and cost an arm and a rain forest to produce.
Amen.

Another little cracker

God knows where I picked up the recommendation; glad I did and glad the Library wallahs delivered the reservation in double quick time.
Short and not very sweet, Peace by Richard Bausch. Maybe not your cup of tea; death, deceit and humanity on the slopes of Monte Casino, go on, go on, go on, have a cup!

The sins of the leaders

So Dave you have been caught interfering with the muesli again.

A rare phrase from Polly Toynbee in the Grauniad:-

Cameron is a serial abuser of social research.

As evidence M'lud she offers

In his recent Hugo Young lecture on poverty, Cameron badly misused the ground-breaking work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level. He acknowledged their incontrovertible proof that "the more unequal countries do worse according to every quality of life indicator", but in the next breath he ignored the very foundation of their work when he said: "That doesn't mean we should be fixated only by a mechanistic objective like reducing the Gini coefficient" – the measurement of the inequality that causes social dysfunction, crime, drugs, drink and all the social evils that put Britain near the bottom of the league for civility. But no one could be a Conservative and want to narrow the gap between top and bottom. Instead Cameron said he would seek to "focus on the gap between the bottom and the middle". Leaving the rich untouched is, of course, exactly what his inheritance tax plans do.

I rest my case and for god's sake man, take your hand out of the muesli jar!

Yes... we can!

So, then, Mr O'Bama.
Not much new under the sun.


I guess we are all as Canadian as possible under the circumstances!
There is a link here.

The Terrors of the Night

The Grauniad had a profile of Tony Judt.
This was presented on the same page as Night, an essay by him. In it he outlines his thoughts about the time when most of us fall into blissful sleep. He has a very different perspective of the night and the terrors large and small which he copes with; he suffers from a motor neurone disorder .

I was interested and intrigued and looked up an adaptation of a lecture given at New York University on October 19, 2009 which is to be found at this link from the New York Review of Books; Volume 56, Number 20 · December 17, 2009.
What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

The article, a plea not to abandon the benefits of the collective provision by government, concludes with the following:

A social democracy of fear is something to fight for. To abandon the labors of a century is to betray those who came before us as well as generations yet to come. It would be pleasing—but misleading—to report that social democracy, or something like it, represents the future that we would paint for ourselves in an ideal world. It does not even represent the ideal past. But among the options available to us in the present, it is better than anything else to hand. In Orwell's words, reflecting in Homage to Catalonia upon his recent experiences in revolutionary Barcelona:

There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

I believe this to be no less true of whatever we can retrieve from the twentieth-century memory of social democracy.

I share the fear that we can so easily dismantle and forget the importance of the collective.
Nevertheless, I believe there are many of us that keep tapping away at the process of creating the commons and demonstrating its benefits.
Good Stuff!

New Year

A good new year to all our readers!
You know who you are and we know where you live.
Paz y amistad.

So what will the new year bring?
In part, what we want it to and what we are able to work to bring about.

You don't have to switch books on but putting up book shelves is a real bummer.

I know I haven't done my sums but it seems to me that the tree is a really smart, sustainable, carbon sequestration device. More bigger trees now! Preferably giant redwoods, they tend to be around for a while.

The defining sound for me, a non twitcher, for the year was presented in the Late Junction programme last night 30/12/09. It was the sound of:-
the Skylark, Oystercatcher and Dunlin, recorded June 2004 at Yell, Shetland Islands, by Alan Burbidge.

You may disagree. Indeed, you are entitled to, that being the nature of our society.
However, it is a great sound and the whole programme was such a joy. There is not much of that around these days.

The iBoot

So; the good Lady BP and I were discussing important matters over the smoked fish in parsley sauce. We both agree the best bit is when you get to mash up the last of the spuds in the parsley sauce! (Sorry Melissa I couldn't resist it)
In addition to the fact that you can download the podcast of Mr Broon's New Year message
- We're doomed I telt ye. We're all doomed!-
there was the possibility of a good legal punch up between Apple and Nokia with m'learned friends taking refreshers and lots of boodle or whatever!
So herself drops this bomb in with the last of the tatties.

Nokia started off making boots, you know; rubber boots!

BeJaysus, says I; yes, says herself. A quick Google seems to prove the point!
Well now that produces a whole new kettle of herring. (Come on Melissa, keep up, if you don't ring those roll mop out we'll be up to our nostrils in wet fish!)

Along with the wild associations that float through my brain is this idea of the iBoot.
Apple strikes back!

The Blair Rich Project

Groan! Only the Grauniad could come up with such a title. However, a nice little tale to illustrate how you can arrange your tax affairs relatively efficiently, legally of course, and still keep the greedy little people from grubbing through your finances like ferrets in a rabbit hutch.

Given that you may have overindulged recently I would recommend going back to Mr Murphy's analysis to give the old brain a run through. You know those mince pies, chocolates and port will be the death of you.

All irrelevant, of course, if you accept that certain tax documents are matters of public record and should be made available. Oh and while you are at it could we have a league table of who pays what. Thanks Peter, see you on the yacht later no doubt!

Spanish Kings 1

I have been thinking about our time in Spain.
We absorbed a lot, almost by osmosis.
One of the things we noticed was that they gave their kings delicious soubriquets.
So there have been 13 (or 14?) named Alfonso:-
Alfonso I el Católico
Alfonso II el Casto
Alfonso III el Magno
(Ooh,ooh Alfonso Froilaz el Jorobado)
Alfonso IV el Monje
Alfonso V el Noble
Alfonso VI el Bravo
Alfonso VII el Emperador
Alfonso VIII el Noble
Alfonso IX
Alfonso X el Sabio
Alfonso XI el Justiciero
Alfonso XII el Pacificador
Alfonso XIII

So 5 and 8 can slug it out to determine who is the most Noble, 9 and 13 were sufficiently strong or bland not to need a label (how unlike our own dear wing nut.)

My own favourite was 10:- Sabio, wise, got to be good and besides he liked a good tune.

As we plodded through the highways and byways of northern Spain we invented names for the Alfonsos,

So here we go -

Alfonso I el Católico - the eclectic
Alfonso II el Casto - the cunctator
Alfonso III el Magno - the ineluctable
(Ooh,ooh Alfonso Froilaz el Jorobado - the humpheback)
Alfonso IV el Monje - the thelonious
Alfonso V el Noble - the magnanimous
Alfonso VI el Bravo - the assassin
Alfonso VII el Emperador - the penguin
Alfonso VIII el Noble - the unoxidisable
Alfonso IX - the tailor
Alfonso X el Sabio - you done fine kid
Alfonso XI el Justiciero - the ealdorman
Alfonso XII el Pacificador - the dummy
Alfonso XIII - the infellicitous

Christmas

So; here is one to get your head round.
The tree has been decorated; herself takes delight in this and if you look hard you can see Linda the moose, and Gladys the penguin(who I insist is Linux!) All good stuff and if you combine it with 9 lessons and Carole's with a little bit of Fizz you could almost believe the world could be a better place.


Felices Fiestas!

Public Disservice

Roy Mayall purports to be a postie, a blogging postie, who has 'stirred the conscience of the nation'. I offer in evidence M'lud the following editorial from the Grauniad Newspaper.
Dear Granny Smith, reviewed in the link by Norman Crumb, is a slim volume drawn from the blog.

At this time of year when we ponder the real meaning of Christmas, obscene profit, we do well to think about the poor devils who accept that the job they do will never command 6 figure bonuses, that they have little or no say in how their work is organised or how it could be done better. They will be downsized, rationalised and used as expendable poor bloody infantry by individuals clawing their way up the greasy pole! But most of them render a valuable public service and manage to do it with a degree of civility or friendliness even that beggars belief!

Sermon over! If you know your postie, milkperson's etc name give them a token of your appreciation.

A slight misunderstanding about fish

I received an email recently from a well known Foodie website, from Melissa the Editor and Community Developer to be exact.
She had by all accounts been trawling the web (I know but I couldn't resit it!) for Arbroath Smokies. Smart girl, you would want a few of those. She came upon my recent post Arbroath Smokies, and wanted to offer me the opportunity to have embeddable widgets in my blog, possibly about my person too! I was promised that links from Melissa's site to my site would help increase my traffic and improve search engine optimisation (SEO). I'm up for a bit of optimisation. However, I live in a small Suffolk village to avoid traffic and if it is a euphemism for 'being regular' then I find a judicious balance of red wine and bioactive yoghurt takes care of my needs in that department. I suppose linking the smoked fishblog to the title of my blog, Buddhist Pizza, she had me down as a bit of a foodie. I may be and my profile offers substantial evidence to that effect.

I would respectfully suggest that was to miss the point of the blog and the blogging. So thanks but no thanks Melissa! Feel free to whack yourself around the chops with the above picture just to prove you are a person rather than a bot!

The cost of living.

Recently I listened to a short story by Lionel Shriver. Exchange Rates was an entry for the BBC National Short Story Competition. It didn't win but then winning isn't everything though(as Linus and Jonathon were wont) losing is nothing.

I know Lionel will forever have Kevin hanging round her neck but she is better than that.
I enjoyed Ordinary Decent Criminals many years ago and the above short story has convinced me she knows a thing or two about families.
Even if we do not admit it, we all see our parents in ourselves. The traits, the ticks and twitches cause a certain amount of discomfort. We recognise the results of shared genetic material, DNA busting out all over. There comes a point though, when you feel that for whatever reason, nature or nurture, your soul has been crimped and curled to a rough approximation of the folks. Not true? Maybe, but it can make you think!

Another thing, makes me think how fast the world is changing.
I was able to listen to all the short stories in my own time and at a speed that included making cups of tea, lashings of tea, and doing other things, courtesy of the iPlayer, downloads, and the generally benevolent wizardry of the Beeb, praise the Lord Reith!

It has made a huge contribution to the quality of my life.

Preparing for winter

The autumn had taught 'em


To hew the yew

A short break in the mountains 2

He had had no pain since yesterday. True, the night had been disturbed but he attributed that to the eating of a substantial quantity of mountain stew and more than his share of rough red wine. The mountaineers had booked a restaurant near the end of the walk. They had enjoyed the meal late in the afternoon. They had lingered in the restaurant and while he had not had a copa, a 'bowlful' of brandy or other spirit, he had gone on sipping the red wine. It was very pleasant to be part of a group relaxing and socialising in another language. The group had sung local songs in a chorus and individually, the women competing with the men in the strength of their voices and, he suspected, in the suggestiveness of the lyrics. The allusions were beyond his command of the language. It was the language of their bodies and eyes and the tone of their voices that convinced him of the acceptable ribaldry of the words. They had been called on to sing and together with the other teacher, an Irishman, had made a brave stab at 'Sweet Molly Malone'. The Irishman couldn't remember the word and she couldn't carry the tune and so he was the only one in there at the end. His light tenor voice a bit of an anticlimax. There was applause for their faltering efforts. It was kindly and undeserved.

That Sunday had been no different from many of the others they had spent in Spain. He had been a little tired, a little anxious about the pain in his chest the day before and as always annoyed by the few drivers on the small country roads all giving him a hard time because of the GB plates.

When he had started into the hairpin he had felt nothing. Then he had become aware that he was losing consciousness. That was when he said "shit". It was as if part of his brain was still awake and part had disengaged from the conscious world. The bit of his brain that was still out there knew it had to bring the car to rest. Why did he put the indicator on? The nearest car must have been twenty kilometres away. He put the car in neutral. Did he put the handbrake on? It was a narrow hairpin, he had to get the car as far off the road as possible. Did he know the hairpin was into the mountain? Would he have run the car off the road if the bend had been the other way?

She called his name, twice. He had started to go red in the face. Panic! What could she do? Was he still alive? Was he still breathing? She tried to raise his head and free his neck from obstructions from her position alongside him in the passenger seat. Still no response. She got out of the car and went round to the driver's door, opening it. She looked round for help. No cars, no people, no houses, there was nothing but the steep mountain road and the mist.

Her mind came back into focus, subconsciously tackling the mundane things first. She leaned over and put the handbrake on the car. She turned the engine off. Then she lifted his face calling his name. She struck his face, gently, and called his name again. He stirred, he was breathing, his head moved and his eyes flickered. How long had he been unconscious. It seemed like an age. It could have happened so fast. Her mind had no way to measure the the time from when she heard him swear to the point she was convinced he was breathing again.

He had slipped from consciousness. His brain was still active. He was aware he was dreaming but little else. The contents of the dream were beyond him. He was aware of a large lake to his left. The surface boiling and billowing, which was strange as there was no storm or bad weather in his dream. Somewhere in his brain he translated the lake as the sea of mist surrounding the car. That small rationality gave him some comfort. His awareness subsided and he relaxed with his dreams beside the lake. There was light over the lake, the sun looked as if it were rising. The fact that it was rising in the west disturbed him. She was calling his name. He was irritated, the sunrise was so beautiful and he would miss it. She called his name again and consciousness came flooding back almost painfully. Awareness rushed through him as the dreams that he would never remember ebbed away. His tongue was heavy but the words came out breaking like a wave.

"I do love you"

He rested confused as she questioned him. Was he in pain? Was he able to breath easily? Was he all right? The familiar words reassured him. In a few moments he was strong enough to get out of the driver's seat. Holding on to her and the car he moved round to the passenger side. His mind cleared, he became more aware of his body, he had lost control of his bladder. This troubled him more than realising that he had been unconscious. He drank some water and they decided to go back over the pass to the nearest houses to get help.

The houses they had passed on the way turned out to be farm buildings by the side of the road. There was no one around. They went on. He felt very weak but they agreed that they would get closer to help if they drove on. By the time they reached Cervera again he was still weak there was no pain, he was still conscious and alert. They decided to head for 'home'.

It exhausted him to get to the apartment on the second floor. He stripped off his clothes and had a hot shower to warm himself. She kept the bathroom door open as she made some camomile tea. Her ears were tuned to the noises in the bathroom for any sudden changes, any loud noises. He rested in a chair and drank the tea. About an hour after getting back to the flat he felt strong enough to go out.

The doctor in the emergency room at the small health centre checked him out. He was poked and prodded by the doctor and a nurse connected him up to various machines. The doctor asked questions in very simple Spanish as if he were dealing with a slightly backward child. He understood most of the questions and was able to explain the events. They had looked up the unfamiliar words in the dictionary before coming to the emergency room. Where he stumbled over the tense of a verb or forgot the technical term she supplied the correct Spanish, glad to be able to contribute in some way. The doctor was a mountaineer and made some comment about the factory group being "locos" or crazy. The doctor only seemed to be concerned about his blood pressure. Everything else was working, and as far as they could tell he had not had a stroke or a heart attack. His blood sugar was low but he had eaten very little at breakfast and nothing during the day.

He was given pills and eventually his blood pressure came down to something like normal. He was released and told to come back early in the week to have his blood pressure checked.

They went out into the cold night, the rain had stopped and the cloud cleared. There was a good moon and it cast its light into the valley that had become their home. They looked up to the horseshoe of mountains that surrounded them and offered protection. He felt very uncertain, very scared. He reached for her hand.

A short break in the mountains 1

That Sunday they stopped at noon in Cervera, parking in the square where the market was held during the week. They walked under the buildings that stood out on columns over the pavement. That feature was common in this part of Spain. It offered shelter from the sun in summer and the snow in winter.


It was December but there was no snow in the valleys. It would be another mild winter and in their town the snow would rarely fall more than thirty centimetres in a night. The storks would return by the feast of St Blas, in February, and start building their nests laboriously, twig by twig.

He wanted a coffee and she wanted to go to the toilet. He ordered a black coffee as he had slept very badly, normally he would have had it with milk but today he needed something stronger.
Yesterday they had been out walking with the mountaineers from the factory where she taught English. It had been a long day, walking for over six hours at heights of around fifteen hundred metres. The group had started off early in the morning when the temperature was below freezing. Dawn came up far off over the high plains of central Spain. The group paused almost in silence waiting for the sun. The day began with a few muttered expressions of appreciation and the inevitable wrangling about which far off landmark was silhouetted on the horizon against the dawn sky. Despite the warmth which the sunlight seemed to bring to the mountain there was a chill wind which cut through their clothing.


The pain began in his chest as soon as the ground started to rise steeply. It continued for an hour until they crested the ridge. He had noted a tightness before, never very bad and never for long. This time traveling fast in the cold early morning there was no chance to adjust his speed, slack off to the point where the pain disappeared. He told her that the pain was bad and they dropped to the back of the group. Once they had gained the ridge the pace eased and the pain leaked away, he followed the group with relief. They discussed it briefly. He said he must go to the doctor next week she said very little.

When she emerged from the gloom at the back of the cafe she perched on a stool and had a coffee with milk. they made the small talk they had become used to. Exiles in a foreign language, their words together the only easy communication. They talked about the day, the English preoccupation with the weather, and commented about the early morning trade in the bar. It was too early for any serious business, the people in the bar were fortifying themselves with a coffee or brandy after mass or before getting the bread for lunch. He settled up using the familiar phrase for this kind of transaction, watching the man behind the bar trying to place them. Out of season tourists, he would have known about them if they were local.

"Shall we go?"

They walked about the small town in the weak sunlight, moving from the the shaded pavements to the narrow streets outside the centre. Wherever they stopped on these trips there was always something to see, stone houses large and small, a family coat of arms carved on the house walls, buildings with functions known and unknown. In the smaller villages there were cobbled streets where old men and women walked, raised above the mud and animal muck on the platform soles of their wooden clogs. In the larger towns there was always "Todo por la patria" (all for the fatherland), the letters cut out above the Civil Guard building. Somewhere in their recent past this had been commuted to "Todo por la pasta" (all for the money), a slang expression, said with the rubbing together of the thumb and forefinger, a suitable sign of corruption. Spain had its fair share of corruption and other difficulties. The government was reaching the end of its spell in power and it had been tainted with more than the whiff of corruption and nepotism. The recent exposure of the bizarre lifestyle of the head of the Civil Guard, who was now on the run, gave it all the feel of a bad comic opera.

They had slipped into a genuine interest in the country as they had acquired their knowledge of the language and culture. they enjoyed living in Spain, in a small town. It was a great contrast to their previous life in London. At times they felt isolated and they knew they would never be part of the community. There was peace, though, and great beauty in the mountains.



They went back to the car. The weather was changing and they were heading for Piedrasluengas, a porto or pass. A detour took them up a valley to look at a possible walk to the source of the river Pisuerga, one of the rivers that flows south out of the mountains only to be gathered in by the Duero to irrigate the vines all the way into Portugal. The weather was closing in fast. they got back to the car glad there was an excuse to play tourists, driving about the area in the little red car with the GB plates.

By the time they had reached the puerto and the appointed stopping place the mist was swirling. The enjoyment of the countryside would have to be left to another day. Appreciation was confined to the steepness of the contours on the map and an image drawn from them of what the view might have been. It was getting late to consider lunch even by Spanish standards. It would be almost four o'clock before they reached Potes and they would have to spend some time parking and sniffing out the best value restaurant. They had sunk into the gloom of the late afternoon each contemplating the deteriorating weather and the prospect of missing their Sunday lunch, a meal which had become an institution for them, usually a small treat.

They were heading downhill. The road lost height quickly in a series of small hairpins, not very spectacular and no great effort to drive. One good turn followed by another. She felt the brakes go on for the corner, but there was no release to enable the car to drive through the turn. Instead the braks continued to bite. He put the indicator on and drew the car to a halt at the apex of the bend. Just before this he had said "shit". the car was at rest off the road, with the engine idling, out of gear. She thought it might be a puncture or something wrong with the car. It wasn't the car that had packed up. She turned to look at him and his head lolled on his chest.