Saturday, May 31, 2008
Effing madness or what?
Effing madness or what?
I think it is a beautiful old mansion. The government pays £3.18M for the property 3 days after it was sold for £1.35M! Then English Heritage spends £4M restoring it, only to offer it for sale between £4.5M and £5M. The new owner, if anybody is mad enough to buy it, will need to spend another £6M on further repairs. Then, it is claimed that the public must have access! If I had that kind of money, I would not want a place open to the general public. I think it is wrong for English Heritage to expect it both ways, sell the property and still keep it open to the public.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Mrs Sat Nav knows best
Guest post by Harry Haddock
Aaaah. A week away in the Outer Hebrides shooting and fishing. No database servers that have become possessed by the devil. No clients to chase for money that should have been in the bank 30 days ago. No financial directors ringing you up screaming, telling you that the printer your company has installed doesn't work, and that you are all incompetent bastards, only to find he has unplugged the device to allow him to charge his mobile phone.
We're nearly there. Setting off at stupid 'o' clock in the morning, we fly up the M6, missing an accident that closes the motorway just in time for rush hour, by about half an hour. Nip past Manchester, and are munching some rather tasty ham sandwiches at Carlisle by 8 in the morning. Superb. It's also pretty fine weather for this far up north at this time of year ~ only a few dark clouds interrupting the sun.
As we get further north, the weather only gets better. We skirt around loch Lomond, which is so calm it looks like glass. No, really ~ actual glass. Not a single ripple disturbs the reflections of the mountains. A car load of chubby American tourists stop, seemingly in the middle of the road, to get out and take pictures. Everyone is in such a great mood, we don't mind. 'Don't blame you', I think as I manoeuvre around their RV.
Even the 'surf's up dude' chaps in their Toyota Hilux, with an overloaded trailer that has a wheel that is about to fall off, don't alarm us; I wonder if they made it through the highlands without loosing it. It's approaching half past four. The sat nav says it's only 60 miles to Mallaig. Why is it insisting that we will be a further 2 hours?
'At the next junction, turn left'
That doesn't look right, but I turn left anyway. Onto a jetty that extends out into a loch. Now, I'm fairly used to all of the features on Dave's car after four hours driving, but unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a James Bond style 'turn this car into a submarine' option. There does appear to be a ferry, however, on the other side of the loch. Zooming out on the sat nav, we see what the plan is. Get the ferry, and cut about 40 miles off your journey. Super. But why the two hours to travel less than 60 miles?
The ferry trundles towards us, and after paying our fare,we take the short hop across the loch.
'Turn left' the sat nav chirps. But everyone else is turning right. Never mind, Mrs Sat Nav knows best. Oh no she doesn't.
We wind our way around what seems like every loch and bay on the west coast of Scotland. On a single track road. At about 20 mph, with mad post men and builders keen to get back to their wives after a weeks hard work hurtling towards us at break neck speeds. Dave appears to be turning slightly red in the face. 'Um, I might have programmed in the shortest, instead of the quickest, route', he explains. Really? The road gets smaller and smaller, the surface more and more pot holed. I start to wish we had come in my Land Rover.
Exactly two hours later, we arrive in Mallaig, set up camp, lock the guns away, and set off to the nearest pub. After several pints of Stella, it doesn't seem that bad at all. After all, we got to see all the best bits of Scotland, despite the best efforts of the mad postman.
A week of fantastic weather, sunburn, plenty of rabbits and fantastic scenery followed, although the fish remained elusive and couldn't be tempted from the sea with our bait. Perhaps we should have asked the Sat Nav where they were as well?
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Is Milton better than Shakespeare
Furthermore it seems to me a little stupid even to want to compare them. Milton is generally thought of as the lesser poet: but his poetry still repays great attention. He was one of the greatest writers to have ever lived and some of his lines- 'better to reign in hell than serve in heaven' will survive as long as the English language. He was also an amazingly fecund political thinker- a republican who defended the English experiment in government without a king in the 1650s, he was an early advocate for divorce and for freedom of religion. To say he was worse than Shakespeare is a bit like saying Einstein was a less important scientist than Newton- so what? It doesn't mean that you cannot understand science without understanding relativity or that you cannot really understand English literature or history without reading Milton. Milton understood that himself writing a eulogy of Shakespeare and so did Newton, commenting that those alive today stand on the shoulders of giants. Lists that rank authors are often pernicious: the idea that there are authors who you should read- a kind of top ten or even top one or top a hundred is barmy. You should read everything with any quality.
And yet.... there is a reason this book has been produced and its not because the question is a serious question... rather the question is a means. It is a means for Smith to introduce all the ideas about Milton that academics have had over the last forty years to a general readership, smuggled amidst the idea that one could prove Milton was better than Shakespeare. It is like the virtues of an Everyman catalogue: the idea of a list is epistemic nonsence- but it is didactic sense- it helps people enter the wonderful world of literature and art to know which painters and authors to look at, then they can move on. That is the purpose of this book and of literary lists or any kind of list in general, they are not meant seriously but as aides to people entering a subject for the first time. A question like this is a crutch- before you can walk unaided it is useful, once you can understand the subject, you can throw it away.
Is Milton better than Shakespeare? For those who have read them, silly question- for those who haven't read either- start with Shakespeare and move on to the later poet.
Should the McCanns be subjected to a media blackout?
Watching the Breakfast News on BBC1 this morning there was a report on a genuine case of abduction. And when I heard that the abductors had asked for a media black out, I could not help thinking 'what a pity there was not a media black out in the McCann case'. Gerry and Kate McCann are still maintaining that Madeleine was abducted. Even though the evidence does not support this version of events.
Perhaps, the big tent on the McCann media circus is being pulled down by the PJ?
Yesterday, It was being reported that the PJ would not now be conducting a reconstruction because the PJ wanted all the Tapas Bar 9 to take part and 4 of them refused to return to Portugal. They are Jane Tanner, Russel O'Brien, and Rachel and Matthew Oldfield. Apparently, they are all concerned that they will be prosecuted for child neglect because, like the McCanns, they left their children unsupervised whilst out binge drinking.
Today, it is being reported that the PJ are seeking to prosecute the McCanns for child neglect.
Children and animals tend to get people all emotional. However, it is necessary to put aside all such emotions in the McCann case. The McCanns spin doctor, Clarence Mitchell, is claiming that their legal advice in relation to the McCanns conduct is “well within the bounds of responsible parenting”. I beg to differ, because the question is 'Is it safe to leave children under 4 years of age unsupervised?'.
My challenge to you all is to find on the internet support for the McCanns position that it is safe to leave children under 4 years of age unsupervised.
Under both English and Portuguese law it amounts to child neglect and/or child abandonment. If the McCanns lawyers are stating otherwise, I would argue that they should be sued for providing negligent legal advice.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
More on Sicily while we await the Master's Return
protective cover. Our excellent architect guide is in the blue shirt
for the baths and the heating system of the villa itself
antechamber to the main bedroom in the private quarters
I would consider my visit to this villa one of the highlights of my stay in Sicily and recommend it highly should you go there. As the Italians say, Vale la pena. It's worth the trouble.
Originally posted at Nobody Important. I apologize if you've read it before.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
La Sicilia
The Greek Theatre at Taormina
Monday, May 26, 2008
Silbury Hill
The May edition of Heritage Today has a very interesting article on the latest discoveries regarding the mysterious Silbury Hill. The hill is near Marlborough just on the edge of the A4.
In 2000 a large hole opened up and archaeologists and engineers teamed up to find a solution. The hole was caused by a shaft that had been sunk by the Duke of Northumberland in 1776. Furthermore the soil was seeping into various tunnels that had been channeled into the hill over the years. The largest tunnel was created by Professor Richard Atkinson in 1968. The BBC sponsored him to carry out the dig and Magnus Magnusson presented a programme from within. The entrance can be seen in the following picture (from Heritage Today magazine). To repair the hill all the voids had to be filled from the middle outwards with bags of chalk followed by a chalk and water mixture. The door to the entrance has now been placed in the nearby Alexander Keiller Museum in Avebury.
Due to radiocarbon dating using pieces of antler it has now been established that the hill was started around 2400BC and probably went on for several hundred years. It is composed of a series of layers secured by stakes, then gradually built on top of. The mound eventually got covered by different layers of local material; clay, chalk, topsoil, turf and even some sarsen stones. Whilst looking in the main tunnel the archaeologists realised that the hill had started off as several mounds which later joined into the single mound, initially it stood 5 metres high. The mound grew to 25 metres high, the top part consisting of chalk that had been quarried from an adjacent ditch. At this stage it appears that the mound was left for a while as there is a layer soil showing signs that grass had colonised it. After this rest period more chalk was piled on top until the hill eventually stood at 37 metres high. It is the largest prehistoric mound in the whole of Europe that has been hand made by humans.
Silbury Hill has been called the British equivalent of the pyramids, but why did Stone Age man build it? Nobody knows, exactly. Quite apart from any ritualistic significance Silbury may have had for its builders, just constructing it would have been its own reward. Having such a great shared purpose would have helped the community to cohere. Perhaps future generations will say something similar of the people who came to repair the monument in the early twenty-first century. why has Silbury been mended? Because our nation is strengthened through doing it.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Where Has James Gone?
Where do you think he will pop up from next?
Click Here to take the survey
I will compile the results and post later.
Let's hope it is not like this.
Seems that James's blog readers are pretty discerning.
[hiatus] not for too long - farewell
It's an interesting phenomenon - once you're over that lip at the top, there is only one way down and there is no choice but to lie back and let the skids become part of you, using miniscule bodyshifts to minimize bends, on e false move and I think you can imagine.
Therefore, even though the heart was doing awful things, you had to suppress it and get the breathing going for when you hit the compression bends. There was one particular bend to the left and I remember the overhanging trees as I came into a short straight and the skids came back to the fall line and picked up speed - you couldn't sneeze or move the head except to strain the eyes downwards but in so doing, this lost speed.
Fat lot that mattered to me, speed - perfectly happy to lop a few seconds off and live. Halfway down the straight and it became fairly obvious that ... er ... there was almost a right angle left at the end [or so it seemed] and to go from semi-vertical to semi-horizontal in a microsecond was going to do interesting things to the metabolism.
At this point I thought of putting the legs out to stop before the turn but then realized that the walls would snap the legs back behind me and anyway here it was ... aaagh. The turn was bad enough, crushing the chest but when I shot up to the ridge, hanging centrifugally before flattening out to the fall line again with the skids wobbling left and right, it seemed it might be a good idea to ... um ... stop if you don't mind ... please?
Vague feelings now of high up near the ridge on the left, snap back, high up on the right, back to the line and then the final drop where it felt like taking off before the tube became gradually shallow and then severely reversed upwards and the blades finally stopped.
Um ... right. Exhilarating? For some perhaps but you could keep it as far as I was concerned. Count me among the spineless please - I'd prefer not to meet my lunch coming up on my way down. With thoughts like these, the base of the chairlift was beckoning again and there was a free chair.
Seems to me there's a huge difference between you brave people who go on the Oblivion, Megaphobia and so on and actually trust the damned thing not to come off whilst you're flung out into space. In my case, it was always going to be in my hands what happened and somehow that was more comforting.
Tomorrow is entirely out of my hands.
I'd like to sign off now and hand over to Colin Campbell for some time, trusting and hoping you won't shun the blog but will come to read some of the guest posts. One way or another I'll let you know what happened. Thank you so much too, those friends who put up with the maudlin mood in the last few weeks and stuck with me.
Cheers and let's leave on a good note:
Thousands of private counselors are offering free services to troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems, jumping in to help because the military is short on therapists.
Now that's altruism for you. So don't miss out - apply today.
[sunday notes] bumbling around, getting it done
As Russia sweeps to Eurovision victory, this blogger quietly exits [yes that visa came through] Good luck to Russia who sustained me for so many years. 99% of the population and I got on fine but unfortunately, the wrong 99%.
Sorry to disappoint but there'll be no cutting expose from Higham - time to move on to new disasters [no, no - good things]. This week sees the action. As it will be pretty busy the next few days, I might not pop up again in that time, if at all.
In the meanwhile, may I leave visitors to this site in the most capable administrative hands of Haggiso, aka Colin Campbell, whose job it is to keep a motley collection of guest posters roughly in line or indeed - even posting.
Actually, we have quite appropriate weather just now - bitter grey skies, intermittent rain, plus 7 degrees and a chilly wind. It's been like this for some days but hey, this is meant to be summer, you know.
The big ask
Tomorrow, between 10 a.m. and 12 a.m. London time my companion and I will pass through a most dangerous time and a number of things can and might go wrong which will change the game plan so significantly that I end up in a different country to the one I had in mind.
Now, there is a passage in Matt 18:19-20:
Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Well anyway, I'll leave that one up to you.
Meanwhile
May I recommend to the romantics amongst you [sorry to be sickening] not a bad profile of Kate Middleton, the latest Gordo bashing is not worth the effort on Positive Sunday, we needn't bother either with the Hillary stirring in Florida but tomorrow being Memorial Day, here are a few articles about it.
Let's remember all vets everywhere.
So, best head off as a few people will visit today and I have nothing to put on the table just now. Back later in the day.