[justice] what lengths would you go to

Older readers would recall the Winslow Boy, the play by Terrence Rattigan, where a boy is wrongly accused of stealing and his father almost breaks his family in getting the boy exonerated.

Witness this one in the photograph. It was when a black soldier was accused of participating in a lynching and:

Despite their protests of innocence -- and the government's own secret investigation showing the prosecution's case was poisonously flawed -- the men were sentenced to hard labor and forfeiture of military pay and benefits, and were given dishonorable discharges.

Now they have finally been exonerated but at what cost? In Agatha Christie's Tuesday Club Murders and other stories, a similar theme appears quite often - that someone is accused but in this case is not punished but merely suspected for the rest of his or her life.

Example was the trusted servant whom the husband and wife then no longer trusted anywhere around money or valuables when a brooch went missing. She went to her grave, the servant, still under the cloud. Later the wife found her brooch down the back of a chest of drawers.

UPDATE Monday - the veteran who was the subject of the report has now died after receiving his apology.

[drunk passengers] rear deck urgently required

What the hell is going on these days? Here it is again:

Two drunk British women went on a rampage on a charter plane, trying to hit a flight attendant with a bottle of vodka and attempting to open a cabin door as the aircraft was cruising over Austria at 10,000 metres, police said today.

Just posted on that recently and so we have more evidence that we need a rear deck and railing on aircraft.

It's simple. Passenger gets drunk, is issued with an auto-opening parachute and food pack, then courteously shown the rear deck exit.

He or she does the rest.

[saturday caption] add your comments

From MSN

[the unexpected] never at a convenient time

Qatar interior from Wiki

I'm sorry to go on about yesterday's issue of the Qantas flight, when it has been blanket covered by the media but it still really chills me:

"Seeing the hole caused a lot of emotion. People were physically shaking. Many realised how close they were to their own mortality."

It's not just that I've done that run many times and with various incidents - it's something more.

I was once onboard when the flight took off on the second leg to Australia and they told us that a red light was flashing and they were returning to the airport. That delayed us and it turned out to be nothing.

Another was when we were about to take off [from Bangkok this time] and they then decanted us from the plane, all baggage was removed and placed in a large circle and passengers were asked to identify their baggage, open it and await inspection.

Yet another time, we were in the air and I was nervous for some reason. I told the stewardess [sounds really weak, this] about the feeling and she took me up to the cockpit where the flight engineer told me this was the flight which had indeed fallen 15 000 feet on it's last run to Australia from this airport. He explained that the autopilot worked on wave patterns in the air but sometimes these acted irregularly and the plane took some time to pick up on it. No one had been hurt.

More broadly, I was on a BA flight to Heathrow in 2000 and all was normal until we approached Heathrow. Suddenly we dropped 10 000 feet in a few seconds, the airbrakes outside the window shuddering but all the way down it had seemed a controlled drop and hardly anyone was badly affected.

The pilot had been told by aircraft control to immediately be at a different level and now he was told to loop round until a gate was found. What exacerbated it was when he came onto the intercom and said that if we cared to look out of the starboard window, we'd see another plane but not to worry. He'd also been asked to circle round London until a gate became available.

In April-May, getting away from aircraft for awhile, I was doing the usual routine, snug and secure in Russia, then found myself in Sicily in a whirlwind conjunction of events. I have to tell you that that was interesting but a bit jangly on the nerves. It's now possibly arising again in August, possibly not. It's up in the air [sorry for the excruciating pun].

Mortality - how things suddenly drop out.

How to prepare? You can't, simply can't. You just have to meet it as it comes. Promise not to get religious here but it definitely helps a hell of a lot to have some sort of faith as a way through. Also, I suspect all your pigeons come home to roost now too - as you've acted yourself, so it comes back on you now.

It might have just been an incident on a Qantas flight to Australia but it had me thinking very deeply about everything. Don't laugh but yesterday I was in the caffe sipping a coffee and watched them opening the bar in the roundabout between the caffe and the church. I saw the church door open and though I'm not Catholic, I went in there for a while.

Perhaps time to end this before it turns maudlin.

[flight] amazing how these things stay up there

Think they were pretty lucky but the procedures were obviously good.

[flying dutchman] on and on and on

Thinking about this lately:

The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship that is cursed to sail the seas for eternity. It is often said to have a ghostly glow, and like many other supernatural entities throughout folklore, it is said to herald danger or doom for those who see it.

Quite a few sightings of the Flying Dutchman have been reported throughout history, and stories about the ghost ship's origins abound. Many versions of the Flying Dutchman story set the scene of the ship's loss at the Cape of Good Hope, the Southern tip of Africa.

Nautical version of the Wandering Jew perhaps.

[your cash] in a shoebox in your cupboard

From the Asia Times:

Since a major effect of inflation is psychological, the fact that inflationary pressure has decisively moved back into the 1970s range is important.

At 5% per annum, inflation cannot be ignored. Investors cannot buy fixed-income securities without taking account of the fact that the principal of those securities will have devalued by more than half by the time they are repaid (if they are of 15 years or longer maturity.)

The combination of inflation and un-indexed income and capital gains taxes rapidly raises the tax rate on capital returns to an extremely high level, depressing still further the incentive to save.

For the layperson, this last seems the key to me - the disincentive to save. So in the light of this, what to make of Sackerson's post today, suggesting, via Mish:

The entire US banking system is insolvent.

In Russia there is a long tradition of keeping the money in a shoebox in the top cupboard, keeping it in hard currency and never trusting anyone's exhortations to part with it.

Griselda Writes ... Advice for the Lovelorn

Griselda Haveschott is the lady from Lower Titcup who opened her account as a guest blogger yesterday. You might recall her version of Stargazy Pie. True to her word, she's this day sent in part of her popular "advice for the lovelorn" column which she writes for the Greater Titcup Echo. She assures me that the two letters from the public below are as genuine as genuine can be.

Hello readers of James' blog, Griselda again with my July 22nd advice column in the GTE. James felt it might assist his readers with their personal problems as well:

Dear Griselda,

Please can you help me? Until a few weeks ago I thought I’d found Mr Right at last. This man is charismatic, witty, handsome and a wonderful lover. He brings me flowers and buys me expensive jewellery.

The thing is, though, that he won’t tell me where he lives or works and he won’t let me have his phone number – not even his mobile. He always leaves my flat before midnight and is never able to spend a bank holiday with me.

When he takes me out he makes me wear dark glasses, a high-collared Burberry and a headscarf tied just like the Queen ties hers. That’s not even fashionable, is it? And he says he has to keep his trenchcoat on and his trilby pulled down over his eyes everywhere he goes. I am beginning to think that we might look a little strange on Weston-super-Mare Pier in summer.

Do you think there could be a slight problem?

Mandy Eastborough
Love Lane

Well Mandy dear, we go back a long way, don't we and I know your thoughts on fashion. With the circle Her Majesty moves in, the Balmoral headgear is quite appropriate and you know there is still a vestige of loyalism in this country which likes to follow its monarch’s lead.

Now about your little problem. Are you talking about last Friday week when Brian came into the Brahms and Liszt with Jenny and while she went into the snug he was making eyes at you? Jenny tells me there was absolutely nothing in that, you know. No, I think perhaps you’re referring to another gentleman altogether and yes, there may well be a little problem there. Might I suggest you don your Queenly garb one more time, pop round to 51 Naseby Rd about 9.30 Saturday morning and have a quick peek?

Dear Griselda

Recently my wife and I gave a dinner party for eight at our new Tudor style near the north end of Rutting Forest. We'd toiled pretty much all day to produce the goods, only to have it ruined when one of the guests, who shall remain nameless, straight after the consomme, went out to his Beema for a CD which he then calmly came back and inserted in our player ... our player, mind ... after first switching off OUR background music, grunting, "Can't stand bloody Bon Jovi". Well, really!

What precisely is the etiquette regarding guests bringing music to get-togethers?

[Name withheld for fear of reprisals]

Ladies and gentlemen, Griselda now throws this one open to the readers for your thoughts on the matter. Should guests bring their own music, are we all being just a little oversensitive these days, could we not put up with our hosts' choice just for a couple of hours? Your responses gladly received.

Finally, two thoughts to leave you with, as I always do at the GTE:

Make sure you know where the main stopcock is in the house, that it is in working order and that everyone living in the house knows where it is. I pinched this from Woman's Realm: Tips and Wrinkles [Pan, 1972].

Also, I saw this in visiting some of James' blogfriends: Never trust a man with a beard.

A guide to the Yorkshire Dales - the jewel in the crown of Northern England

John Hirst reflects on the Yorkshire Dales:

A guide to the Yorkshire Dales - the jewel in the crown of Northern England

"The Yorkshire Dales is a region in the county of North Yorkshire in England. The Yorkshire Dales contains some of the most spectacular scenery on (and under) God's own Earth. Once you have set foot in a Yorkshire Dale, you will be touched with a magic that will stay with you all your life, as any local will tell you".

"Welcome to
digital Malham ...

On these pages you will find information on the areas of outstanding natural beauty which surround the Yorkshire Dales village of Malham.

We encourage you to take some time out and discover some of the geological treasures that lie within".

Malham Tarn






Malam Cove







Janet's Foss

"Foss is the old norse word for a waterfall or force and Janet (or Jennet) was belived to be the queen of the local fairies who lives behind the the fall in a cave".





Gordale Scar

"To the north of the Mid Craven Fault in the Malham Formation is Gordale Scar, which was carved as a meltwater channel beneath the Devensian ice-sheet. The sides of this gorge overhang to a considerable extent, suggesting that there was once a great cavern, the roof of which has subsequently collapsed".

Stargazy Pie and how to improvise

Today, Nourishing Obscurity has a scoop.

Griselda Haveshott is a lady I met on my last trek through the west country of England in Lower Titcup, not all that far from Warminster at the local watering hole. When she told me she was the editor for practically everything at the evening newspaper, I just had to get her to guest post on this blog.

She took some persuading but here’s her first piece below without comment. Welcome, Griselda.


James has been corresponding with me for some time, I’m not sure why, and he asked me some time back to do a guest post on his blog. Well I don’t know but I said I’d give it a try if he’d edit it like so I wouldn’t look a complete twat. I write for the Greater Titcup Echo, the evening paper in Lower Titcup, down here in the west country and there’s hardly any time for my own writing, what with being the fashion editor, cricket correspondent and personal advice columnist, let alone Graeme Pollard, that’s my editor-in-chief, giving me the food and wine column as well now that Enid Barnes has left to have a baby and the twin boys are doing fine except for a slight bronchial complication with Justin, the younger by a half-head.

When I asked James what he wanted me to write on, he suggested women’s issues but I’m not the woman’s editor, that’s Bridget Proops, sister-in-law of the well-known Geraldine Proops, wife of Sir Raymond Proops the local squire round these parts although he’s sold off most of the manor and they’ve just kept up the Foss Hill house (we call it the Big House), overlooking Balsall Bridge over the Isk River. Actually, it’s just a stream really before it joins the Aster further down towards the lock but it’s quite pretty you know, the view from Squire Proops’s hill like.

I suppose the best way to open my account (my cricket writing shows out here) is to give you the recipe for Stargazy Pie. I’ve been accused by mean-spirited people of pilfering this from Jane Grigson’s Observer book of British cookery but it’s not, it’s mine, well some adjustments are mine anyway. And I never took nothing from Mrs. Beeton who’s not so pure herself when it comes to pinching ideas, is she?




Stargazy Pie

Roll out pastry for double crust pie plate. Cover the plate, brush the rim with water and roll out another piece for the lid. Keep it aside. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C or 400 degrees F.

Clean and bone the fish …

NB: Anyone who knows the west country knows that pilchards went out long ago and now all you get is mackerel so clearly you have to compromise here. I suggest pigeons. Yes, I know, I know. You can’t get squabs anymore so the best bet is the readily available wood pigeon. Not as tasty but there you are.

Here we need to go to Mrs. Beeton (Ward Lock edition) who say lop off the heads of a brace of pigeons, cut each of ’em into four and lie ’em on their bed of gore (no, that’s Wallace, i’n it?). Well, all right. Let’s do the chopped bacon and hard-boiled eggs. Well actually, you need to lay the pigeon bits down first, making sure the heads are sticking off the edge of the plate, gazing up at the stars, I expect this dish has to be prepared at night or at the very least, mid-evening.

Push the mix in between the pigeon bits, put the pastry lid over the top, pushing it down to the pastry below so that it forms a wavy effect as if it’s all at sea, this dish like. Did I mention you have to do a pastry base first? Brush with beaten egg and bake for 30 minutes, though as it’s pigeons like well you have to give ’em 15 minutes extra at a reduced heat.

Serve with a jug of Malmsey wine. If James will have me here again, I’ll be back in a few days with advice for the lovelorn: you should see the hanky panky down our way, what with Joe Kelly and Anita Proops the younger (she’s one of the Proops, you know) but that’s a story for another day.

James, how did I go first time? I wanted to put in a photo of the quartered pigeons you know but I suppose you know best and all the pictures are from Wikipedia like.

Didn't have a photo of the pie with the heads sticking out so had to follow this idea and have a porcelain head sticking out of the middle of the pie.

Crossposted at Griselda's new site.