[seagulls] where's the party, jon?

In the years I was living in Australia, my parents' house, as distinct from my city apartment, was down on the beach and they had quite a lifestyle. My stepfather, whose birthday would have been tomorrow, was a keen fisherman and a member of the local boating club.

My goodness it was idyllic. We'd go down for barbecues on the patio built over the water out from the beach and the sounds, the smell of the beach, seaweed and salt air and the freshness were bracing.

Fabulous stuff, burnt into my very soul even now.

I myself sailed further down the coast and thus I'd always stop in on the way down and on the way back in the evening, boat on trailer behind the car, with or without my lady.

One little thing we'd always do [more often than not, I was alone] was to go to the best l'il fish'nchip shop, a short hop from the foreshore. They always knew I would visit and the crumbed whiting, chips and dim sims were the best.

But here's the thing - I'd always order too many chips.

Halfway down the hill there was a place you could stop and park and it was a lookout area. Of course the views were panoramic but that wasn't all.

Picture this:

After the first two minutes, the first gull would glide in on an angle and land on your bonnet [hood]. If you didn't mind the mess and scratching, you waited and two or three more would come. Then out came the chips and very gently you'd reach around out of the window and flick chips to them in the air. They'd flap, jump up and catch them in their bills.

There was always one who was left on the roadside and often you'd fling a chip to him but the Ornery Critter always took it so you'd fling one to the Ornery Critter and another immediately to your little friend.

Now they were everywhere and the word had gone out that the party was going down on the car. The braver tried to waddle onto the side mirror and some on the roof tried peering down through the window but would fall off and flutter away. The screeching was unbelievable. The drumming of their feet on the roof was like light rainfall, except for the scratching.

It genuinely was a party. Even passing children would stop, watch, gesticulate and smile.

Then the chips would run out.

Oh that was sad 'cause I knew that only the most loyal [or greedy] would now remain and eventually they too would head for the next party.

That's why, when I read the following, there was a real nostalgic twinge:

A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to chips. The bird walks into a newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese-flavoured corn chips. The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for the chips.

For sure. Absolutely. I'd buy a dozen serves to watch that.

[cattle class] how much will you put up with

In September, 2006, I ran a piece on "cattle class" in aeroplanes.

While ostensibly a discussion of the problems for tall passengers and a new device to stop the person in front putting his seatback back on you, it soon descended to an entertaining bitching session about airlines in general, for example:

Weight, height, overhead luggage compartment space, shoes removal, toilet queues, "overtaken spaces", reclined seats, "gases", sweat and smells … [they] annoy me even more than seat recliners ...

Bill Bryson's take on the shoddy Northwest Airlines followed and I commented at the time:

If Bryson can be believed on this, it’s a staggering indictment of the attitudes of airlines towards the paying customer.

Iceland Review girl Sara has now chipped in with this comment about cheap flights:

A four-hour chorus of crying babies? Sure, I’ll take it if the flight only puts me back ISK 35,000 (USD 587, EUR 424) to get to North America.

[K]eep in mind that the most common buzzword when talking about Heimsferdir is “budget.” Which it is—you have to pay for drinks, sandwiches, cans of Pringles aboard the plane—but the flight itself is a bargain.

If you can occupy yourself for five hours of noise and semi-chaotic conditions, then this is the way to go if you’re a starving student or an airline price shopper. But when I mean noise, I mean noise—screaming babies in front, behind and beside you for more than Four Straight Hours.

When I say filth I mean watching the girl next to me spread cheese on her cracker with her finger and then wipe that dirty finger on the chair. Not to mention her kid who stepped on potato chips all over the floor.

Borderline hilarious/maddening. I have no idea which movie was screened because it was too loud for me to hear through the speakers.

And what of the other end of the spectrum? Charlie Brooker at The Guardian [via the Age] flew First Class and commented:

There are three classes of air travel - misery, misery lite and slightly comfortable.

In first class, I had a seat that reclined far enough to become a flat bed. I drank champagne and ate smoked salmon from a china plate with weighty silverware, while watching a flat-screen TV.

When I got bored with that, there were a couple of framed pictures on the wall. That was the weirdest, most needless touch.

"If a terrorist shoe-bombs a hole in the fuselage right now," I thought, "and the plane corkscrews towards the ocean at 1000kmh, I'm going to fix my gaze on that gilt-framed photograph and remind myself that I'm dying in the lap of luxury."

The way airlines really think about all this is of great interest to me and was partly revealed via Via magazine:

Klaus Brauer, who surveys 90,000 passengers every year as Boeing’s resident expert on passenger comfort, is quoted in Air Transport World as saying:

“We’ve always known intuitively—and it’s correct—that if we increase pitch [he means seat angle here], we make people more comfortable and if we reduce pitch, we make people less comfortable. Seat pitch is the ‘throttle’ by which airlines can increase or decrease comfort.”

However, according to Boeing spokesman Sean Griffin, the real indicator of passenger comfort is neither seat width nor pitch.

First, it is on-time departure and arrival. According to this theory, if the plane is late departing, the passenger who is worried about making a connection or arriving on time will be tense and there is not much the carrier can do to make the flight pleasant.

Second, and perhaps most important to creature comfort, Griffin says, is sitting next to an empty seat. That has the effect of adding up to an extra 41/4 inches in seat width, according to the Boeing experts, as well as a feeling of privacy.

For me, flight duration is perhaps the biggest factor. It's going to be a messy day anyway so "on time" doesn't mean as much as it does on a train, for me. If it's a shorthaul flight, I don't care - I go into Dr. Who mode and shut eveything out, we land, it's all over. Cheapest seats possible on a reputable airline please.

On a longhaul - oh what a different matter. Now all the factors mentioned above come into it, plus safety.

[nourishing obscurity] navigation [1]

First in a small series to let you know about changes. The results of the survey will come tomorrow on the blog birthday.

Header

This is seasonal - I have four altogether in the old Blogger [classic] style. The template doesn't accept new blogger pics. Next change in late August.

Navigation bars

# The Blogger bar remains what it is.
# My top [golden bar] is fairly static although profile often changes and testimonials sometimes.
# Lower [golden bar] changes constantly and is well worth checking out each time you visit.

Blogroll

Also constantly changing, thanks to Blogrollingdotcom, it depends on traffic, interaction and how I'm placed with other bloggers. A friend who goes away for a week will drop down then return again. Some less active older sites are there on sheer loyalty.

More explanations tomorrow.

[desert island dilemma] five from ten

Imagine that this island is uninhabited and you're forced to leave a sinking ship to go to it.

It's been done to death but let's do it again, just this once. You have to choose five of the ten variants, [no combining two as one and no other choices]. The island is as in the pic, no more, no less.

You reach it by a boat which can hold four people but two places are filled with the things you're taking. There are birds in the trees but not many. The boat is too small to take to sea but it can be used around the island and there are fish in the vicinity.

There is a patch of nice soil on the shady side of the island. It gets quite cold at night. There are no predators either on the land or from the sea or air. Rain does fall seasonally.

1] Combination blow up mattress and blanket for two;

2] Fishing gear but no bait;

3] A nice, strong man*;

4] Water desalinator which works on solar power;

5] A delectable, yet useful girl*;

6] Flint type fire maker;

7] Cutting and digging tool combination set;

8] All kinds of seeds in a pack for food and for growing trees;

9] Two months compact food pack until things grow;

10] The last variant is a choice of your own but must have cost under $US200 and can't be a form of transport.

* If you take both, you also lose two from the five choices because the extra person would occupy the space. That means you'd take the two people and only one other item.

[happy birthday] to bag's blog

Happy Birthday to Bag's blog [and his granddaughter]
Happy Birthday to Bag's blog [and his granddaughter]
Happy Birthday to Bag's blog [and his granddaughter]
Happy Birthday to them!!!

2 years old - yippee!!!

[boris johnson] and the sound of breaking glass

Note the Bullingdon eyes. This is one aristocratic Rottweiler of a candidate.

Just a few words on Boris Johnson's former club:

‘I like the sound of breaking glass’ is one of the Bullingdon society’s mottos and particularly true of one member who, at L’Ortolan in Berkshire, took it upon himself to eat his wine glass rather than his Michelin starred meal. At another infamous Bullingdon garden party, the club invited a string band to play and proceeded to destroy all of the instruments, including a Stradivarius.

Harry Mount, George Osborne, Alan Clark, Lord Bath, David Dimbleby, Boris Johnson and "it has recently emerged", the Tories’ man of the people, David Cameron, were trained to the pressures of fame by the champagne quaffing, bellicose Bullingdon.

Cameron was a member of the club at a time when it was de rigeur to engage in the ‘man of the people’ pursuits of washing down “a cocktail of drugs with an honest, working class box of chips and a five pound bottle of wine”.

The boys at Asadodo put it like this:

So irresponsible was the Bullingdon indeed, that to this day those invited to join the Club's 20-strong membership are welcomed by having their rooms trashed (something which, admittedly, many students are capable of achieving without the aid of some chinless types in dinner dress) and then required to book a private room at a local establishment where the Club's members can drink themselves into near insensibility before reducing the room to a state where it would look far from out of place in Central Baghdad.

Compare this to Lady Ellee of Ely's take on Boris:

The reason I like Boris Johnson is because he is obviously very intelligent (and I have a weakness for brainy men), and the way he tends to smile and charm his way through life, through his various gaffes. At the end of the day, we know he is not perfect, but then who is? Ken Livingstone, perhaps?

Who said the female of the species doesn't have a weakness for the "bad boy"? And Ellee is 100% right about Red Ken.

Now whilst my own youth was spent, with the lads, starting forest fires, smashing milk bottles on doorsteps, taking harpoons to parties, creating crop circles of beer bottles in forest clearings around the fire, marrying girls I'd carried off into the woods to have my evil way with and brawling on ships - still, there's something ultimately far more destructive [except the forest fire of course] in the Bollinger antics.

Maybe you can't accept what I'm driving at here but there is a deep disrespect for and indifference towards what others hold dear in the Bollinger modus operandi and by extension, in Boris himself.

Board up your windows and hide the plates, that's all I can say. Lady Ellee hopes he can create dialogue in London. Boris would explain, as Claude and Eustace did in Jeeves and Wooster before going out on their all night rampage:

Well, Lady Ellee, you've got the agenda almost right.

This girl obviously thinks Boris is the goods. I do too. Vote 1 for Boris! Anyone but Ken.

[dr. johnson] meet david campese

Click on Wiki pic to see Johnson in his glory

Dr. Samuel Johnson bestrode the literary world like a colossus and is known by centuries of educated people. David Campese was an Australian Rugby Union winger, known by a few generations of rugby lovers.

Johnson was extraordinary for his ordinariness. After all, what did he bring to the pool of world knowledge? The Hegelian dialectic? Existentialism? Did his work eventually blight nations around the world like a Marx?

Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke, said of him in 1775, quoted in Boswell:

Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary were it not for his bow-wow way.

This is to misunderstand what he did. He took snippets of truth, simplified them and expressed them. So did Dickens. So did Monty Python. Many put these latter into the genius class.

People are down on Johnson, not for his ability but for his willingness to accept the entourage, the Boswellian praise - surely not sycophancy because it was at least deserved. He lived the life of one of the greats. He would have driven a Rolls.

People won't forgive him his lack of humility. After all, Walter Scott had this humility in full measure, writing in 1826:

The Big Bow-Wow strain I can do like any now going … The exquisite touch which renders … commonplace things interesting … is denied to me.

Once Johnson turned to a party of literary ladies who were deeply in awe of the colossus of letters, noticed their reticence and addressed them:

Ladies, I am tame. You may stroke me.

Don't we put extraordinary conditions on our heroes? Not only must they be genii but they must be self-effacing, doing their work unpaid, giving selflessly to the young and leading the exemplary life of a saint.

It's the Unwritten Law of heroism and is almost as important in our minds as the genius itself.

Take David Campese and many who remember him admit his genius on the field, as long as they're not English and you don't mention 1991. You may mention the Lions of 1989. One never knew what was coming next. The Penguin Book of Australian Sporting Anecdotes [1996] quoted Nick Farr-Jones, the Australian half-back as saying:

He [Campese] is the sort of player whose brain doesn't always know where his legs are carrying him.

Bob Dwyer, the coach said:

We all know there's a loose wire between Campo's brain and his mouth.

Campese himself said:

It's always good to be a big mouth as long as you can back it up on the field - and I'm lucky I can do that.

The book put it:

David Campese had a long career making acidic comments about anyone who had a difference of opinion with the mercurial winger. It was not surprising that one of the chapters in his biting autobiography, On a Wing and a Prayer, was entitled The Loner.

Wiki dislikes the article on him and additionally posts:

The neutrality of this article is disputed.

By their own lights, both these men were great. The reason grandparents don't extol their virtues to their grandchildren is that they both broke the Unwritten Law. They'd both stepped over the line into the realm of self-regard and became caricatures of themselves, like Chesterton in his ridiculous cloak, hat and cane.

But does that make them any less the genii they were? I'm still big rap for both - I think they were both extraordinary men, the like we will not see again for a long time.

Oh I clean forgot to include a Johnson quote:

Every man has the right to utter what he thinks truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

[favourite room] what would yours look like

Richard Hannay, in the 1915 thriller, The Thirty-nine Steps, briefly escapes his pursuers and finds himself ensconced in the country home of Sir Walter Bullivant, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office:

We went to his study for coffee, a jolly room full of books and trophies and untidiness and comfort. I made up my mind that if ever I got rid of this business and had a house of my own I would create just such a room. [John Buchan, Chapter 7, The Dry-fly Fisherman]

Therein lies the theme of this post. What would be your ideal room? My new header for the remainder of the summer is Bilbo Baggin's room at Bag End and the circular windows and doors are quite appealing to me, together with the woody colour scheme I've tried to run through the template.

Let's make this interesting, shall we? Let me challenge you to post a picture, on your own site, of a room which would come close to being very, very liveable for you.

Would you do that and then please provide the link?

[valentine's quiz] know your massacres

1] It took place in:
a. New York, New York
b. Chicago, Illinois
c. Los Angeles, California

2] Al Capone led the:
a. Northside gang
b. Westside gang
c. Southside gang

3] Leader of the other gang was:
a. Bugs Moran
b. Bugs Malone
c. Bag's Rants

4] At the time, Capone had arranged to be on vacation in:
a. Bermuda
b. Paris
c. Florida.

5] The 7th man shot was not one of the gang but:
a. a mechanic fixing one of the cars
b. a passing policeman on patrol
c. one of Capone's gang

6] The weapons used were:
a. Gatling guns
b. Thompson sub-machine guns
c. FR-249s

7] The only survivor was Johnny May's Alsatian dog, named:
a. Stinker
b. L'il Al
c. High Roller

8] Moran hadn't been there but later lost his empire to the Chicago Outfit under:
a. Frank Nitti
b. Dutch Shultz
c. Legs Diamond

9] The Act which caused Capone to gain his empire was:
a. The Volhead Act
b. The Volstead Act
c. The Volmouth Act

10] Which two of these fought Al Capone:
a. Andrew Mellon
b. Frank Nitti
c. Eliot Ness

Answers here.

Crowd waiting to see the bodies brought out

[birthday survey] thank you so far

I'd like to thank all those who've taken the survey so far [top left sidebar or popup] and the responses, especially the written ones at the end, have been invaluable. However, it's thrown up the eternal problem again:

Long or short posts

What to do, what to do? All right, one can run very witty little comments on something someone wrote [usually not quoted but linked to save space] and providing the links don't exceed three, it works. Tim Worstall and UK Daily Pundit use this method very successfully but it's more suited to a political blogger commenting on current events.

What though, if the blogger wants to create his own longer piece - such as Chris Dillow? Chris uses a strict 7 or 8 paragraph restriction and point form. If it doesn't fit into the space, it doesn't go in. Then it forms part of another post. Blogosphere attention spans are notoriously short so this is a good method. Chris also uses smaller fonts.

What if you need to include a fair bit of info because you're composing a serious piece using much quotation? Is there a place for these on a blog? I suggest there is.

For example, I can't see how I could have refuted that Marxist without quoting Marx and others. This takes space and then there's your own comment. Suddenly you're up to 29 paragraphs. Aaaaagh!

So some people suggested [on the survey] that the trick is to run a one paragraph summary at the start and link it to another blogpage. Yes, good idea but how many people will follow that link?

If, however they start reading and it looks like it's getting a bit long, they might stay with it because they see it's almost finished.

I don't know the answer to all this.