Good Friday

Maybe I did the same thing last Good Friday, but I'm not going to look, and that way, I'll know if my beliefs change and grow from year to year.

So here, if anyone's bothered, is my Credo. Yes, I know that's tautology, since credo means 'I believe'.

I believe in God who is neither male nor female, who embodies all perfections, but without an actual body and who may or may not be the Prime Mover, but if yes, then did no more than light the blue touchpaper and started evolution and such like.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was an extraordinary Jew who was born of two earthly parents, whose mother was not married when she got pregnant, and who must have had her own very supportive parents who helped her through, and whose intended, Joseph, stepped up and did the right thing, even though he may not have been the biological father.

I believe that those parents and grandparents, somewhere along the line, realised they had a very special lad on their hands and the Jewish community in Galilee must have thought so too, because somehow, he was educated in their ways.

I believe that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were both extraordinary and ordinary in that they took a direction in which the Pharisees of the time were already headed, erasing the difference between the sacred and the profane and allowing ordinary Jewish people to have far more responsibility for their own rituals and care of their faith, Jesus pushed this further, right out amongst the people. He took the community's pre-existing strengths, such as community itself, caring for others, feeding others, teaching and sharing, and he preached about the underlying essence of it, he made those qualities the most important part of the faith.

I believe that Jesus was the son of God in the way that all of us are sons and daughters of that God.

I believe that he was charismatic and assembled an entourage of ordinary men and women. Very ordinary.

I believe he included the one more educated member of his group, Judas Iscariot, in his own plans to fulfil the prophecies of the Jews because he believed in the future of Judaism.

I believe that Pontius Pilate did not want to execute him, but he also had a prefecture to run. He had to do the dirty work of the Sadducees so that Passover would go smoothly without the feared disruption. I also believe that in telling them that he had written what he had written and that he wouldn't change, 'King of the Jews', he was saying something about the impact Jesus had made, even on the Romans.

I believe that crucifixion is a horrifying death and that Jesus could have avoided it.
I believe that his mother suffered appallingly.
I believe that the world was changed by that death and by the testimony of his followers, but I don't believe that God needed the death of a human to propitiate the sins of humanity.
I believe that the crucifixion focuses us on the teachings of Jesus and it is from these that we learn right from wrong.

I believe that through Baptism and through the act of communion from the Last Supper, John the Baptist and Jesus, gave us all the opportunity to be part of the faith. Baptism replaced circumcision as the covenant of faith and the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine passes the responsibility for continuing the faith to us all.

I believe that Christian Faith is strengthened by acknowledging the ordinariness of Jesus rather than the supernatural and that we make ourselves ridiculous when we get too far away from that.

But hey, that's just me.

Maundy

Maundy Thursday - best Thursday of the year, it's like a Friday. Fab.
I must have missed the Queen distributing the Maundy Money, or maybe it's just not news anymore.

I'm looking forward to just not having to get up, and eating turkey and drinking wine. Oh, and going to my place(s) of womanly worship several times.

Kevin investigated the French netbook mystery and discovered that in fact, the OS had been set as French. Future shop exchanged it and all is now well.

So, to counteract Sienna Miller undermining other women, here's Jo Brand being...well, Jo Brand.
Loving it.

Coolness and Hotheads

We're planning for the summer at Schloss Schneewittchen. Austen, Sue and the grandkids have now booked their tickets and will be arriving as soon as term finishes at the end of July.
This is cause for extreme levels of excitement.
And like I said, planning.

We have had sunshine and warm temperatures and it has been fine. The hummingbirds have been aggressively buzzing each other, the males are feisty little fellas who protect their territory like Napoleon defending Paris - only more successfully.
The photographers, they of the $10K cameras, have also almost come to blows today. It's weird and a little creepy. They all line up with their big old pointy lensed penis extensions trained on the bird-feeding area, those are the ones who came to blows (almost) today, but then there are others who look as though they are focussed on our office windows, due to the fact that the hummingbird feeders are outside our windows, as is a white currant bush in flower - much visited by said birds.
I feel paparazzi-ed.

One of my other lads, the one who lives here, has bought a new notebook. Very nice it is too, and a bloody good price. The particular one was in Future Shop for one price for the black or white version, but $30 more for the red.
'If you want the red,' said I to he, deliberately whilst the salesperson was still in earshot, 'we'll have to get it at Best Buy, it's the same price as the other colours there,'
Without missing a heartbeat, the salesperson was back at my side offering to sell it at the same price.
Cool.
Now however, my boy has pressed something on installation (Canada: French instead of Canada : English) and the OS is now showing up in French. Now I always felt I spoke French until I had to plough through Windows' French. Still, on the other hand, I've more or less had to learn Windows' English as a separate language. I've changed everything offered to me as a language change and yet it remains stubbornly French.
Ah well.
That'll learn him.

Iron in the Soul

Must have some iron in the soul.
Been listening to Metallica, and there is something very stirring about 'Unforgiven'. Oh well, just Metallica in general then.
I passed over Nirvana, just not in the mood for deep and meaningful.
Currently I have Pink playing, so there's a certain amount of difficulty typing.

Last Sunday, in church, we had the return of the 'The Bible never claimed to be a Science textbook' priest. Passion Sunday. He hit the Krazy Kristians - the ones who could just as easily be Muslim Fundamentalists. [Generally they don't listen to the teachings of Jesus, just use the 'Jesus-code'. The Jesus-code ignores all real meaning and uses catchphrases containing the word 'Jesus' to justify anything they do. They don't see that Jesus was a Jew and that Christianity is really Judaism-lite.] All in square brackets is my opinion, not his.

Anyhoo...the iron in the soul...he was setting up a visualisation of Palm Sunday (tomorrow) the Roman army approaching Jerusalem from the west, coming as a show of force to quell any Passover misbehaviour that might occur. And from the East, this raggle-taggle bunch of lowly-born (apart from Judas Iscariot) Jewish men and women, with one riding on an ass. At the end of the week, the ones from the west would have killed the leader of the ones from the east, and set in motion a world-changing set of events.
A potent visual.
But I keep thinking about that disciplined, uniformed Roman army, marching in formation. Must be from watching too many films.
In spite of what the Romans brought to their prefectures, crucifixion was an evil way of executing someone.
Evil.

Rammstein now, 'Eins, hier kommt die Sonne......' I love their ability to just sing the most mundane lyrics in German and it stirs....something.....

Flora, Madge, Chelle.

Crikey, is it Friday already? How'd that happen? It seemed as though it had been Wednesday all week, then suddenly, bingo, Friday.
Mustn't grumble.

The weather - constant preoccupation - is now brightening up and we're promised a warm and sunny weekend. Monday, the temperature is set to reach 18º.

I was very happy to hear that this season I will be fashionable, since the style will be 'crumpled chic'.
I must say, that reminded me a bit of Colin and Justin's 'Home Heist' in which the first thing they have to do before designing anything, is to give it a name. Once you have named your design, it just creates itself.
Clearly.

My storytelling must now be rather convincing. During the 'Signs of Spring' programme, I tell of Flora, the Explorer, who stops under a fictional 'Bunjeebap Tree' whose sap is green and sparkly. I produce a small bottle filled with water and....green sparkles. Three times this week I have been asked by adults on the trip if the sap is real. I'm sure there must be a more profitable outlet for my newly found lying skills.
Politics perhaps.

Presumably, Michelle Obama will now have to be executed for High Treason. I believe that Capital Punishment is still technically legal in the UK, but only for High Treason. I also believe that High Treason encompasses the wearing of the Union Flag as knickers, and interfering with the persons of the Royal Family. Hugging the Queen must be in there somewhere. Ah well, sayonara Mrs. O, you never did quite make it in the fashion stakes.
Apparently.

Couldn't Madonna just shell out for some head shrinkage instead of annoying the government of Malawi? I kind of do admire her for her bizarre adoption attempts, but I most certainly don't get her.
But then I'm sure that doesn't really bother her.

The Grocer

From blustery to Wellie weather. And everyone else around here got snow mixed in with their cold, pounding rain. I try to be even more hyper whilst trying to deliver a programme entitled 'Signs of Spring' because it's hard not to notice a lack of springfulness.

As I came back from the hairdresser's, through Zellers, my eye rested for a moment on a flimsy, black, buttonless jacket. It felt like voile. Then I noticed a label on it that said, 'This garment is not a swimsuit'. How useful, I thought, and how could anyone EVER think it was.
I felt it was in the same class of 'duh!' statements as the one they show as 'Bones' begins, 'May contain graphic, forensic content'. I should bloody well hope so.

My history reading has now gotten me to times I actually remember, and yet remember the surface of. The days of constant swapping back and forth between Labour and Tory parties in power, Wilson and Heath. And then there was the scandalous leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, a 'notorious homosexual'. Well, clearly not that notorious, I seem to remember it coming as a bit of a shock. Then Jim Callaghan, ex-pupil of Mayhem, long before it was Mayhem of course, in those days it was Northern Grammar. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

My least favourite of all these was Ted Heath. A Tory, so he didn't score very highly with me politically, but that wasn't it. If he was a character in a play, he would be an unsympathetic character. And it seems it wasn't just me, Andrew Marr portrays him as exactly that. A Premier that no-one particularly liked. He describes him as friendless.
Yet he was friendless because he was the first to occupy such a position who wasn't part of the Old Boys' network. He wasn't from an upper middle class background, he broke through the barriers.
Hmmm....interesting, never thought of any of them in that way.

And then....I remember this happening, but in a million years wouldn't have seen how amazing it was. In a government driven by anti-immigration public feeling, with Enoch Powell constantly rotweilering him and with a recently introduced piece of immigration legislation that was basically colour-biased, against all criticism, when Idi Amin came to power in Uganda, Ted Heath had 28,000 Ugandan Asians airlifted out of Uganda and brought to Britain.
Hell I hate it when you find out the people you dislike are just human.

Bluster

So the City of Richmond tied for last place in saving energy during Earth Hour. It seemed we were the only participants. It was, however, a very pleasant, calming experience. Kevin had just finished cooking the dinner when it started, so we were able to eat by candlelight, then we sat and listened to low-Wattage music on the slim-server, no TV, laptops and lights off. In fact we overran by a quarter of an hour.

I can't think.

Today was a very blustery day. Tree branches were falling. Eagles were flying very low and hummingbirds were hovering for dear life.

For some reason, I can't upload a picture. Bugger.

Earth Hour

Just over half an hour until Earth Hour. I am bizarrely excited about this. The idea that around the globe, at 20.30 local time, everyone will turn their lights out, it's like a kind of huge great Mexican Wave of tree-hugging.

Ikea, *genuflect* sent me an e-mail to say that they had met their commitment to reduce their own energy consumption by 25%. They rock. Because it's bloody hard. Well, it's hard at the Schloss because we are already fairly good about turning lights off and keeping the temperature reasonable and so forth, but Kevin has been round with the special meter-thingy that measures how much juice individual appliances are using and has made significant adjustments, and we are now turning off things we'd just have left plugged in before, such as the coffee maker and the microwave. The electricity company, BC Hydro are good at sending tips and ways of saving energy. They even have a higher rate for higher users, we don't even get halfway to that threshold.

So, no rants tonight, The Pope, the other misogynists and the bad drivers can cool their jets, I'm loving my planet tonight.

May the Force be with you.

Snip 7*ck

Grahame Norton - fab TV, supremo entertainment, but he has to work twice as hard when he has American actors on there. I dunno, somehow the dynamic doesn't work. The ONLY one that was ever almost up to it was Susan Sarandon. Here's an example. Tonight's line up was John Malkovich (worshipped by all) and Alan Davies (found to be irritating by all). OK?
So what happens ? Malkovich drivels and bores. Davies scintillates and amuses. Norton is as funny and naughty as ever, but Davies just sits as though he's with mates in a pub, and runs rings around the cumbersome Malkovich.
Last week it was Alicia Silverstone and the now-past-her-sell-by-date Joan Rivers. Silverstone had a face like a slapped arse and Norton had to work quadruple overtime to keep the show going.

Then there's the ads. So the advertising for Tide, is woeful. There is a new ad where women in the same blue dress walk down the street together, only one of the dresses hasn't been washed in Tide, so is faded. Not sure which one is supposed to be faded, since there's little difference, even in Hi-Def. But then the main Tide advertising claims that their product has 'much more cleaning ingredients'. No, seriously, they actually say that several times.
Talk about dumbing down.

Police in Germany have been chasing Scotch Mist it seems, for 15 years. The same woman's DNA has shown up in a number of cases and they have even nicknames the mystery woman. But it turns out that she never existed, that the DNA kits they were using were probably contaminated by a worker at the lab where they were produced.
Oops!
Thanks Michael for that one.

In Italy, more horrific, horrifying violence against women. A repeat of the awful Austrian story about the man who kept his daughter incarcerated and raped her continuously. Dun't bear thinking about.

And blaming women for everything seems to continue to be de rigueur. After a previously gruesomely flawed piece of research indicating that removing the foreskins of adult males in Africa reduces HIV transmission, US scientists try again. This time, two scientists from Washington State, both with oddly Jewish sounding names have come to the conclusion that circumcising African (adult) males will stop the transmission of HPV and Herpes. (Rather than, say, changing their misogynistic sexual practices).

In response.....

"Dr Colm O'Mahony, a sexual health expert from the Countess of Chester Foundation Trust Hospital in Chester, (UK)said the US had an "obsession" with circumcision being the answer to controlling sexually transmitted infections.

He said: "Sure, a dry skinned penis is a bit less likely to contract HIV, herpes and possibly genital warts but it will get infected eventually."

Dr O'Mahony also said pushing circumcision as a solution sent the wrong message.

"It suggests that it is women who infect innocent men - let's protect the innocent men.

"And it allows men who don't want to change their irresponsible behaviour to continue to sleep around and not even use a condom."

Keith Alcorn, from the HIV information service NAM, also warned against a knee jerk reaction.

He said: "We have to be careful not to take evidence from one part of the world and apply it uncritically to others. "

Burned!

Harsh Words

Non-inclusive language is a real bugbear for me, and I think that's fairly obvious since my for most of my professional life, language was my area of expertise.
Today, however, it played a small joke on me.
I was updating one of the programmes at work, and this year, one of the male characters, Jack Frost, was a Jill Frost. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, Word will do that for you in two simple moves. Then I realised I'd have to change the his to hers. Bosh, bosh, done.
Then as I checked through the script, I noticed that Word had done too good a job. 'This' had become 'ther', 'whisper' had become 'wherper'.
D'oh!

Goddamit! Red Dwarf is back after nine years and I can't even play the sodding trailer on the Graun's website!
Bugger.

This is most surprising. The Pope, according to the medical establishment, is distorting science when it comes to condoms. Woah, harsh words.
Heeheeheehee.

Class

In my experience, Canada is pretty much an example of a classless society. I remember our Current Events teacher in the sixth form telling us how we were moving towards a classless society. We were so not.

Oh, they talk about people being 'middle class' or 'lower class' here, but it's got nothing to do with class, it's about money. So, strange. Huh.

Last night, we went to the opening night of a play our friend Steve had a lead role in. But it was in the grim part of town, so not the West End then. We decided not to park there, we chose instead to park near a Skytrain station and walk from another. Suddenly, as we crossed East Hastings, I realised we were surrounded by the in-your-face down-at-heel, sellers of flesh and drugs, I don't think I'd ever been so close to so much street trade. And yet it was also like an island that your ship passes. It didn't rush up and try to interfere with our ship, it was just there. An underclass.

Our friend was brilliant, I love to see my friends engaged in their work, and so good at it.
A class act.

Homecoming

A useful tip for ensuring that the traffic lights are always on green, is to have your camera beside you on the seat, ready and waiting to take a pic. Thus, I had to take my only opportunity and couldn't do much about the ugly monster car in front of me.

The hummingbirds have returned to the Nature Park. I have to take this on trust, since I haven't seen one myself, but the first sighting was yesterday. At last. They're normally here by St. Patrick's day, and whilst they were overdue, I was picturing them on one of those in-flight screen maps you get, winging their little way up from Mexico, their wings beating 900 times in ten seconds. Or 600, depending on how tired they are.
We call it the hummingbird homecoming, but I wonder how they think of it. Meh - maybe they do think of BC as their home - it is where they come to nest and fledge their young.

After a second beautiful, spring-like day yesterday, wet and cheerless today.

Spring!

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, but no need WHATsoever to wonder where the birdies is. They're all over the bloody shop, shagging like it was going out of style.

I have gardened. Yep, no bloody garden, but I have gardened my little - well, moderate - arse off and now I feel all blooming and somewhat tidier on the decks.

Home Depot - what service. I thought I'd buy one of their watering cans and wrestled one from the display, only to discover that it was pre-filled! Who knew? I had an enjoyable outdoor cold shower. Oh well. I decided against buying it.

Coming back from the Depot, we followed a car with Alberta number plates. An interesting little style of driving. He (for it was a he) cut off a pedestrian, crossing on a crossing light, cut off a person on a moped, erratically changed lanes several times on the highway, then on the on ramp to the connecting highway, had some kind of quantum physics dilemma whereupon he attempted to occupy the same spacetime co-ordinates as us. And I thought the driving in Richmond was bad enough.

The spring-like day was a wonderful interlude. We've been promised more rain on Monday, I know this because on Friday, we suddenly had horizontal rain, lightning, thunder, more of the same, sunshine, rain... and the radio weather lady, of indeterminate accent - it sounds North of England/ Australian/ lived here a long time - assured us that was the back end of the weather system and the next one would be coming on Monday. Good-oh!

Mothering Sunday tomorrow, and I received a beautiful bunch of flowers today from my kids. I'm looking forward to the bewilderment on one son's face when I thank him.

Terseness

I now have the dreaded lurghi, and 'tis not pleasant. I shall give no details. But drinking Marmite is featuring heavily in my recovery.

Thusly, I will be terse.

What a terrible tragedy that Natasha Richardson has died, however I am astonished that her death has received more coverage as Liam Neeson's wife than as a woman in her own right. If anything, I think of her was the great Vanessa Redgrave's daughter.
It also makes me realise how lucky my nephew has been, considering the accidents he has had ski-ing.

The sentencing of Josef Fritzl for the incarceration and continual rape of his daughter reminds us of how unjust life can be sometimes. Just as with the hanging of Saddam Hussein, nothing could be done to in any way even the balance for what either of them had done. The ultimate is just not enough, so we have to trust in a higher power, whilst always remembering Portia's speech from the Merchant of Venice...." though Justice be the plea, consider this ; that in the course of justice, we none of us should see salvation...." Amazing stuff you learn at twelve and then remember for the rest of your life. (Gott bereit sein).

Meanwhile, one of the top news headlines in our Province has been an injured owl. What can you say? People love owls. And polar bears.

Right rainy weather today.

Mad Week

Mad week, mad.

Kevin sicker than a parrot.
Sunday, every weather condition known to humanity.
Sunday, visited Kev's folks.
Monday, Writers' group.
Tuesday, Church council.
Wednesday, Lent Meditation which I am leading this week.
Thursday, Wine bottling and shopping.
Friday, out and about to Science World and the Space Centre, then my friends' kiddie's birthday in Vancouver.

But in amongst all that, I was stopped in my tracks, as Kevin, barely able to sit up and take sustenance has a fit over the Pope's latest piece of trash-talk.

Oi! Pontiff-Plonker! Pay attention!
If African people use condoms, it WILL stop the spread of AIDS, it won't make it worse and I thought we'd agreed (well I did) that The Bible isn't a science textbook, and if it were, there wouldn't even be a line about AIDS, let alone a whole chapter that you could mis-interpret.

Just...STOP SAYING THINGS.

Discoveries

On Thursday, we went to an afternoon meeting at the 'Fraser River Discovery Centre'. What I discovered was that tugboats pull logs down the river (see photo), which was quite fascinating, and that the aforementioned centre is so hot that the meeting participants mostly turned a flustered shade of reddish-purple.

An interesting survey by an Economist at the University of California shows that in the US, mixed race people fare the worst in terms of pay. He surveyed 3million US Americans and found that the average pay for mixed race people was $15.74 per hour, $17.39 for black and $22.04 for white. Bizarrely, this didn't even tie up with their qualifications, since 18% of the mixed race respondents had degrees, 11% of the black, and 28% of the white. Obambi is damned lucky he's Pres then.

On Friday, we had a staggeringly busy day, with three programmes out of a possible two-per-day. Yep. In the afternoon, in one class, were autistic twins, which seemed just so harsh for the parents to me.

In the evening, I went to my book group. It's a real blessing to spend time with like-minded women, and yet how odd that the two groups that I define that way, are both groups of Christian women, who, you would think, should be rather more conservative. Far from it, they are the most open-minded people I know.

Sleepy's i-pod (John) has shown signs of AI and has its own musical taste, not always in tune (sic) with Sleepy's. I don't have an i-pod, but I have discovered that when playing tunes on YouTube, my laptop ignores what I tell it and selects Melissa Etheridge tracks. I'm not actually complaining, it's just that it's being a bit aggressive about it.

The Final Frontier

On a Wednesday evening in Lent, a group of us meet to do...well, Lenty things. Meditation, quiet times, prayer, sharing.

Last night, our theme was 'preparing for death'. It was food for thought. Last year, our friend Bruce spent much of the year preparing us for his death.

But the question pertained to us personally, how do we prepare for our own death?
I found everyone's thoughts interesting.
My answer was, by trying to live an authentic life, not filling it with things that don't matter, by fighting for the things I believe in, picking the fights that are important; by stewardship of the physical, the world we will leave behind and our physical self. By spiritual gardening, allowing the spirit to grow and flourish. By not becoming overburdened with and overly attached to material things.

The final frontier.

The Other Brown

No, I'm not. Sick of it that is. This snow, yesterday's snow, was perfect. It was coming down full on as I walked to work and it had already snowed during the night so that there was a lovely carpet and general blanket of it.

At the moment, we are running a 'Mammals' programme at work. At some point, I ask the children how many brothers and sisters they have, in order to compare human family sizes with those of some (other) urban mammals. Whenever I ask a kid who is a twin, they never count their twin. This happened again on Friday. Two sets of twins in the class, same thing for each.

Modern History. George Brown. Not Gordon, another legendary socialist, Harold Wilson's number two, and almost Prime Minister - were it not, according to Andrew Marr, for his inordinate drinking.
At an official function in Peru, Marr tells us, Brown, rather the worse for wear, approached, and was turned down by, 'a willowy figure in scarlet'. Brown informs same that he is, 'Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs,' and wondered why he couldn't have a dance?
'For three reasons Mr. Brown,' came the reply, 'firstly, because you are disgustingly drunk, secondly, that music is not a dance, but our National Anthem, and thirdly, because I am the cardinal-archbishop of Lima.'
I think he'd have been rather a good PM myself.

International Women's Day

International Women's Day. Rock on!

In church, we had an elderly, male, guest preacher. Yes, a man. An elderly man. He was also a Canon.

He started talking about Darwin, and this caught my attention after the weird Darwin-related conversations of recent days.
He told us that Darwin had been going to be an Anglican priest, but thank God he didn't become one, because Darwin went on to do far more important work.
The white-haired man went on to tell us that Darwin's ideas were pretty much what Christianity was all about anyway, that Humankind is part of Nature, of which we are stewards, and that Darwin's work, like that of Christ, showed us how equal we all are.
He talked about inequalities suffered by women. He talked about the ridiculous stance of some members of the Anglican communion who liked to claim that homosexuality was wrong. Neither Christianity nor Darwinism could support this.

And then he said it....
'The Bible is NOT a science textbook,' he said, 'it is ridiculous to make claims about science by reference to the Bible.' He went on to show how the Bible is our spiritual book, but in terms of science, we have learnt so much since the times it was written. And it never claimed to be a book of science anyway.

He was no greater a speaker than our vicar, Margaret, but sometimes, someone else reinforcing your point can be immeasurably powerful. This elderly, white-haired man, probably got the attention of the more conservative elements in our congregation, but he gave the same message as the women speakers.
All hail.

In honour of International Women's Day, here is a poem by Welsh poet Gillian Clarke, from her collection, 'Making Beds for the Dead'.

'Front Page'.

It's the photograph that does it.
A man howling for his child.
You can't forget it
despite a let up in the rain,
sunlight on a river,
a flight of geese over an estuary.
It's a rucksack of sorrow
on your shoulder, on your mind.

Try leaving it on the platform
to be defused like a suspect package.
Try leaving it on the train,
personal belongings
they remind you to take.
Try to lose, bin, burn it,
indestructible as the polythene
of flowers in a filthy stairwell.

Maybe just this once
we should forego the minute's silence.
Maybe this time, in supermarket,
street and school and public square,
studio, station, stadium,
standing together, eyes closed,
we should throw back our heads
for a one-minute howl.

Castles in the Air

The weather.
Yesterday, cold, but sunny. As I walked home, I thought, 'The perfect sky for eagles,' and I looked up and there were two, circling. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you might just about be able to see a speck, and that is one of the eagles.
The weather.
Then, we were promised snow. Last night, the wind raged and rain, or hail, or frozen snow slapped against the window. First thing, clear, blue sky again. By afternoon, lowering and then hail.

I have just finished a strange book. 'Sea of Poppies' by Amitav Ghosh. It was rich and complex, and weird and ...opium-filled, and at first, I had to make myself continue with it, but after a while, I got into all the characters and their strange language and ultimately was sad when the story ended. Not that it has ended, since it was the first book in a trilogy.

Barbara Castle. Fabulous, down-to-earth socialist minister, Barbara Castle. Hopeful of becoming Home Secretary in Harold Wilson's cabinet, she was offered transport (sort of like being sent to Coventry in British Politics) in 1965. And, being Barbara Castle, she did a sterling job. She introduced the Road Safety Act, the breathalyser, a maximum speed limit of 70 and compulsory wearing of seat belts. She received VILE letters of abuse, but she saved literally THOUSANDS of lives, and these days, no-one would think of NOT having any of those. That's a politician's job, to do unpopular things that make things better and to take the crap people throw at them.

In Canadian politics, our PM has just said he was going to spend 3 billion straight off the bat, to improve the economy. The Leader of the Opposition asked him to account for where that money was going to go, and Stephen went into orbit.
What a plonker.

Tarnished Stars

My friend Michael sent me an article that he thought might amuse me, and it did. The BNP - or British National Party, who like to send foreigners back, and the more foreign, the more they want to send them back - are having a pop at the Polish. Oddly timed, since after an initial influx to Britain of Poles, they have in fact also returned whence they came in their droves. They have produced a rather splendid poster to spearhead the latest campaign, featuring that iconic symbol of true Brit, the Spitfire. The Spitfire, you will remember, repelled the Bosch. (Not the kitchen appliances company you understand, the naughty, Messerschmitt flying ones).

An odd choice of photo, however. The Spitfire they chose to keep Britain for the British and free of Poles, is in fact, clearly identifiable as belonging to a Squadron of the Polish Air Force.

Tesco, the British supermarket giant, who e-mail me from time to time, presumably they have noticed I still use their services sporadically, have let me know that for
£3.97, I could purchase U2`s latest album. Clearly they haven`t been paying attention.

I have to support my friend Gail, who posted on her Facebook wall, about how we have come to constantly reward children just for doing what they`re supposed to do anyway, (giving them gold stars) instead of punishing them for not doing what they should.
Quite right.
This is the bane of the teaching profession. You can spend hours praising every kid who`s doing ANYTHING righr, `Thank-you Megan, for not picking your nose,` instead of getting rid of the one git who`s wrecking the class and then being able to get on with teaching them. And do you think the good kids actually appreciate it? No, they want you to get rid of the disrupters and teach them.
Gail also mentioned how this generation, when they come to the workplace, now expect the same treatment. Well, guess what? Good luck out there bozos. Your mummies and daddies won't be able to protect you from the American Border Guard.

Another story that Michael tipped me off about, and believe you me, anyone who has crossed the border here can relate to this, is about a Canadian man of Portugese extraction, who simply asked the guard to say 'please'. Natural enough, Canadian border guards are polite, and generally speaking, so are the U.S. ones, but every so often, you get a complete troglodyte.
The Canadian was pepper-sprayed, knelt on by a number of guards, and interrogated for three hours. One bright spot was that when they realised he was Hispanic and not Middle-Eastern, they eased up a little.

In the Slipstream

Yesterday morning we had two claps of thunder. That's probably our quota for the whole year.

I was reading my Andrew Marr History of Modern Britain book in the bath. Now, I have to read it in small chunks because Marr is no great scribe, a great historian undoubtedly, but wordsmith, not so much. But the section about the Suez Crisis was just unputdownable!
I may have to re-read it.

Reaper is back. Yesssss.

The vile piece of human scum who beheaded an innocent victim on a Greyhound bus last year has pleaded not guilty. Huh. Yeah, cos his imaginary friend made him do it. Jeez.

I so love Lent. I really do.

I'm living in the slipstream.

1st March!

St. David's day again! Only this time I was allowed to speak on the subject in church. Hurrah! (Maybe not for them).
Whisky will be drunk later, not because the Welsh are especially fond of whisky, but my dad was, and it's his birthday.
And yes, I know that dragon's green, but I just liked her.

Canada and Britain have worked together (presumably) and had a breakthrough, which is possibly world-changing, in stem-cell research. Or maybe it wasn't co-operation, perhaps it was like Nylon, perfected simultaneously in NY and LONdon. So the new technique will have to be called EDITOR, putting Edinburgh and Toronto together.

Who knew that University Challenge could generate so much controversy? First, a WOMAN showed herself to be so brilliant that she just HAD to be virulently attacked by all and sundry on the basis of what she looks like. (Remind anyone of Hillary?)Then, being even unable to agree on whether she was sexy as well as smart or just the usual speccy-frumpy and smart, they have to have a bloody witch hunt until it is found that some team member didn't get funding for his PhD and thus was no longer a student.
But the opposing team, Manchester, are being very gracious, they're giving the whole thing the full body swerve and saying, 'No, please, let's just agree that Corpus Christi, Oxford are totally brilliant, we really, really, REALLY don't need a re-match.' And they don't. Gail Trimble seems to have won the thing almost single-handed in any case, and there's no doubt that SHE's a student.
I believe my daughter's friend Hazel is at Corpus, and she is fecking brilliant too.

Muddy Waters

What the hell happened to Friday? Meh, it came, it was cold but sunny, I had lunch with my friend, then it went.

On this, the last day of February, as I get ready to preach in church about Saint David tomorrow, matters ecclesiastical are pre-occupying my thoughts.

This week, I realised something, How far the so-called Creationism has muddied the waters of Christian thought.

There is a bizarre sect of Christians who believe that everything came into being six or ten thousand years ago, and that evolution is just an illusion.

This is quite different from what many Christians believe, ie that God created the world. Or you could call that moment of creation, the Big Bang, or whatever the current theory is. No difference really. And then evolution follows.

But it seems that many people think that believing that God is the creator means we don't believe in evolution. It seems odd to me that some group of nutters are thought to represent what all Christians, who have largely been responsible for scientific advances, believe.

Another muddy area, which I believe I mentioned before, is that of Godparent. Perhaps I didn't. On a recent episode of 'Being Erica', the eponymous, Jewish hero, thought she was being asked to be Godmother to a friend's child. I wondered how a Jewish woman could promise to bring up the child in the Church. I asked friends from church if this could be, 'no,' they said.
Yet others maintained that anyone, even an atheist could be a Godparent.

Today, as it happened, I came upon my certificate and list of duties as a Godparent to Ellie.
Having renounced Satan, I have also promised to,
Pray regularly for her,
Set her an example of Christian living,
Help her to grow in the Faith of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in which she was baptised,
Give every encouragement to her to follow Christ and to fight against evil,
Help her to look forward to her confirmation.

See, I'm thinking that atheists would have a problem with most of that.

Muddy waters indeed.

Rechtfertigung

This week, a couple of injustices have been righted in Welt Schneewittchen, and that's a good feeling.

The first was personal, it concerned my 'illegal shed' or compost bin as we English speakers call it. This had to be discussed by the Strata Council - who didn't do much discussing of it by the sounds of things, they simply said, 'It stays, everyone should be encouraged to compost'. Yes, yes, I know it sounds bleedingly obvious, but with Strata Councils, you can just never tell.

The second, and really more important one concerned someone I worked with at Mayhem. Having had the sword of Damocles hanging over his head for quite a few months now, he has been vindicated. Bloody good thing too. I won't give details, but it was pleasing news.

Further to pinkness, I loved this interchange between Ugly Betty and Amanda,
'Shut up Amanda, this is SERIOUS,'
'Oh my god, what is it?' (looks at Claire Meade), 'is pink back? Is that it, is pink back, no, don't tell me, I can't...just don't....'

Ashes

By the time I left work, mid-afternoon, the rain had turned to sleet. I had another shift to do, an event in the Mall, 'Science Jam'. We set up. Strangers approach me when I'm a moving target in Superstore, in the Mall I'm a sitting duck. And I'm wearing a pink top because it's 'wear pink for anti-bullying' day. I'm a pink sitting duck.
I perform my social service and try to do it with good grace because it's Ash Wednesday.
I've pre-warned the organiser we're packing up at 18.30 because it's Ash Wednesday.

We get outside to the car park and the sleet has turned to frozen snow. We're being pelted with little balls of frozen snow. I think about Kevin cycling home in it.
I haven't eaten since lunchtime.

I get to church and wait a few moments in the car. Then I brave the snow in my thin, pink jumper and still damp jacket, and go inside.

We have ashes put on our foreheads.

I'm hungry and it's been a long day, and it's snowing outside, and as I approach the altar, I can smell the blood of Christ. It smells so inviting, comforting, I have a moment of want, and then just that one, single sip of the shared wine, sends warmth through my veins to every part of my body.

It was a sublime moment, even if just a touche sensuous.
I love that.

Pancake-less Day

I always worry, when parking on the street, that something will happen to my car, and indeed, last night I do seem to have acquired rather a nasty and inexplicable scratch. Unless it happened in the church car park on Sunday. It has pissed me off no end, either way.

And I'm blaming this Comet Lulin that Sleepy told me about. Apparently it's still coming at us and will be visible in the southern skies tonight. Not here though, since it's overcast and raining. Higher levels are expecting sleet later.

I'm also blaming the comet for me feeling too tired and grouchy to make any pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Hopefully it's not a compulsory part of the deal, although I do feel deprived. One of the pancake houses were having some kind of deal on pancakes today, but they only sell those thick ones, which just don't do it for me.

I was gobsmacked and yet cheered, since this is something that occupies my mind a lot lately - for reasons I may discuss at some point, but which has nothing to do with my own personal life (just in case Kevin is reading this and worries I may have gone off him) - that in China, attitudes towards the LGBT community are finally changing. I was equally gobsmacked to read that homosexuality was illegal until 1997 and regarded as a mental illness until 2001.
That must have been odd.
Imagine you have an actual mental illness, say, having a psychosis and then suddenly, you wake up one morning and see on the news that your psychosis is no longer classified as a mental illness. Where does that leave you? Probably more psychotic than ever.
I don't imagine that any gay or lesbian people in China actually believed they were mentally ill, so the joke's on the other people....what's the technical term I'm looking for...oh yes, bigots.

But in China, I can see there being a bit of an imbalance. For example, it would be rather convenient really, if some huge percentage of the male population suddenly realised they were gay, or that area just outside of gay where you could go either way, or that bit just along the line from that, where you're not really gay, but then you happen to fall in love with someone of the same sex.
Happiness all round! Instead of there being abso-freaking-lutely no chance of your finding anyone to spend your life or have sex with, you are snuggling up with the man of your dreams.

On t'other hand, not so good for women who desire a same sex relationship, because that takes even more ladies out of an already sparse potential breeding pool.
Oh well, maybe not such a bad thing after all, I believe the Chinese government are still rather concerned about the size of the population.

And moving along.

I, like Sleepy, still snigger at some of the amusing uses of the word 'beaver' heard here.
But I was chuckling like an adolescent this afternoon, because a bloke at work came in and complained about how his company had issued the men new helmets and his was uncomfortable. He needed some felt to make his helmet feel better. Someone said we had some fun fur in the storage room, but he thought that would make his helmet too warm.
I dunno.
Maybe the humour doesn't translate, or maybe I'm just much too old to still find this funny.
But I bloody did.

Paschendaele

There really must be something going on with the planets today.
I witnessed a bit of subversion elsewhere today, but that's not for here.

In a 'suburb of Vancouver' there was a rally, a protest against gang violence. Yes, it's been bad of late, but a protest? The gang members will, I'm sure now stop doing what they're doing. Or...maybe the police will now try to stop it, like they never thought of that before.

We watched the film 'Paschendaele' this wet, Sunday afternoon. It was interesting, a good, Canadian film marking a Canadian campaign and victory, but there was a very cheesy scene where Paul Gross goes out through the mud of the trenches (Calgary) to recover his friend who has been blown out of a trench in such a way that he appears to have been crucified.
The Germans recognise the symbolism and stop firing while Gross carries the cross on his back, weighed down by injury and by the cross itself. He stops and looks at the camera in the way that the stations of the cross are always depicted. Cheesy and yet so powerful.
I cried.

I am, not unexpectedly, disappointed that yet again, a female politician has been passed over in favour of a male one. In the Israeli elections, Tzipi Livni won one more seat than Ben Netanyahu and yet it is he who has been called upon to form a government because.....he has the support of the right wing and religious parties. So yeah, let's not have change, let's not have a woman who has already shown herself to be a firebrand on the international stage. They're still talking. And I'm still watching.

Anyone notice that Obambi's a left-hander?
Just saying is all.

Planting

Planting has begun. Technically, we have no garden, but we have balconies. On one I have flowers, on another I have - not much really, and the one at the back has the barbecue on it and thus will also have veggies. This is much how I was able to garden at the old house, except that I had a vanity window at the front of the house, with a big ledge, that was not much use for anything but growing on seedlings. Thus there was a rather inelegant time of year, but productive.

Last year the pots at the Schloss weren't very fruitful, partly because we moved just when the seedlings were just that, and partly because we had a very late snowfall.

This evening we finally managed to see 'Slumdog Millionaire' - hotly tipped for an Oscar. My opinion was that - meh - it was moderately engaging. I'm sure it will win something though. I think the excitement about it is because the west is currently obsessed with India and Africa, we all want to be poverty-tourists, see the destitution of others and feel real feelings and shed real tears to atone for our plenty. Gandhi-ji is a saint and the British Empire was morally corrupt. But also the British Empire leaving India was morally corrupt.

The truth is both that Britain had to leave India in 1947 because she had been bankrupted by fighting Europe's war. The Canadians and Australians may have joined in unreservedly to safeguard democracy and freedom, but the US exacted a high financial cost which was only finally paid off a few years ago.
And she was also supporting the colonies that, unlike Canada and Australia, were not self-supporting.
And the other part of that truth is that it was an old love-affair between Britain and India. They cherished and valued each other. It was a harsh parting, but one that was being demanded by Gandhi and his supporters, and there was nothing left in the coffers to carry on.

Personally, I enjoyed hearing the English language spoken properly. Oh, and a small boy covered in poo.

It is my custom when watching a film, to be courteous enough to watch the credits to the end. Increasingly my good manners are rewarded, and at the end of this film - no exception. The beginning of the credits were the best part - the entire cast doing a Bollywood-style set at a railway station. In fact, apart from the scumbuckets next to me, who had made foul smells and munched popcorn all through the film, the entire audience were riveted to their seats.
That's the ticket.

Doc Com

I was asked to write a reference yesterday, so today, after programming, I applied myself to finishing the task and submitting it electronically. Only to do so, you had to sign it electronically.
Now at Mayhem, at some point, the secretaries got us all to sign a piece of paper and then scanned them. On this website however, you had to sign a special box, using the mouse.
Ever tried writing in Paint? Yeah, well it was like that. It's difficult enough when Old Navy or Home Depot have those little electronic slate things you have to sign with a stylus, but this was a hundred times more awkward. Fortunately, it allowed you to try it as often as you wanted, so when I reached the point where my signature looked merely imbecilic as opposed to being produced by an illiterate rodent, I decided to save.
The result looked far from worthy however. I went back to the top of the page where I'd typed my name and added my letters. Then I went back and added the things in brackets that go with the letters. Then I clicked my heels, turned around three times and pressed send. If my friend doesn't become a doctor it'll be because of my poor mouse skills, and I'll have to live with that.

Doctors. William Beveridge's vision and Nye Bevan's determination to give post-war Britain a National Health Service, almost came to naught because of them. Ironic what?
The right-wing BMA, the professional body of the hospital doctors that Bevan so needed to actually work for the NHS, held out until Bevan, the ultra socialist Bevan, had to give up his ideal of a fully nationalised Health Service, with no private fees allowed, in order to give the majority of the country, particularly women, children and the elderly, free health care. He had to allow consultants to keep their outside consultancies, he had to allow GPs to be paid based on the number of patients in their practices rather than a flat salary, in short, Bevan said he had had to 'stuff their mouths with gold'. But the NHS was worth the sacrifice.

Obambi has been and gone. He even got to talk to the sensible one of our politicians, Michael Ignatieff, but I doubt there was time to pass on Canadian wisdom about Healthcare.
But he was given a pastry. If he didn't learn anything about Health Reform, at least he may have realised that a pastry is just that, and that a cake is NOT a pastry.
Baby steps.

Dal and the Art of Shopping

One thing that always bothered me about the starship Enterprise was how they managed without TV. But now, I kind of get it. Suddenly, there is too much. Overload. And there is SO much that it's difficult to plough through it and find what is worth watching and what is sucking up your time like a vampire sucks the lifeblood from you - only without the sexual aspect.
I'm sorry the L-Word's ending though. They have explored some really interesting angles. The current storyline with Max is very thought-provoking. I'll miss les girls, just not Jenny.

The turf war continues unabated. This morning, the talk on the radio is about 'Propmasters' who are licensed to bring guns into Canada. Apparently, film prop guns have to be real ones, which the propmasters then modify so that they shoot blanks, and somehow the crims get hold of them and modify them back again.
Hey ho.

What IS it? Why, just because I have two large bags of lentils in my shopping trolley, but I've got them from the Indian food section, so they say 'Dal' and a large packet of turmeric, do people think it's reasonable to address me, a complete, but rather blonde and fair-skinned stranger, in some Indian sub-continent language? How does that work ? Eventually my shrugging elicited some complaint in English or English-ish, about the price of 2% milk. This I get. I am quite used to people in Superstore coming up and asking me things, ridiculous things, reasonable things, outlandish things and just...things.

Canada awaits the arrival of Obambi. He'll be in Ottawa tomorrow. Apparently we're excited about this. Apparently we love him more than we love Stephen Harper. Meh. Neither of them's Hillary.

Ho-Hummus

I do love me some hummus, and I love the one I make at home even more than any I can buy. This may seem obvious to most, but my cookery skills fall somewhere below my skills at speaking Russian, and the ONLY thing I can say in Russian is, 'I do not speak Russian.' Which...COULD come in handy some day, especially if I'm about to be involved in some freak taser incident involving the Russian police.

But, much as I enjoyed the film 'Don't Mess with the Zohan', and I really did enjoy it until my sides ached, Adam Sandler has slightly tainted my enjoyment of hummus. When I eat it now, I can't help thinking about Zohan brushing his teeth with it and putting under his pits.

So today, my new Dragons programme had its first outing. And I have to say, it was enthusiastically received. The teacher loved the interactive poem based activity, then the dragon hunt on the trails, the kids loved the large coroplast dragons we put out, and a good time, it seemed, was had by all. Except that we overran slightly, and then the other group got lost.
Not lost exactly, just missed the turning and went off on another trail. I call that lost, but whatevs.

Yesterday, after the 'Love the Planet' programme, a kid asked me if I were really Mother Nature.
'No, just Janis,' I said.

So, Obambi's protectionism is already beginning to bite. It seems that tightening of cross border security has meant a scarcity for the Heroin trade and this has driven the price up. There is some huge gang war going on. Every morning on the news there is a new shooting. Yesterday a young woman was shot dead whilst driving her car with her four-year-old kid in the back. A targeted shooting apparently. That's the code.
The mean streets of East Van and Surrey are not safe to drive if you are a drug runner.
The mean streets of Richmond aren't safe to drive because of the drivers, but that's another story, and one which I've whinged about a lot.

Ganja Queen

Ah, sweet mystery of life. Although far too early for Spring, today was quite springlike. Sunny, but cold, birdsong and shoots from bulbs coming through the soil.

Our viewing last night included the documentary film, 'Ganga Queen'. This is about the trial, conviction and sentencing of Schapelle Corby, a young woman who was the victim of a terrible injustice in Bali, and who now rots in a Balinese gaol for a crime there is not the slightest possibility she committed.

Schapelle was accused of smuggling a HUGE amount of top of the range Marijuana into Bali, this was found in the unlocked case of her Boogie Board. The sentence for smuggling dope into Bali is normally death, and before she had even been tried, there were scumbag locals protesting with placards that she should be executed.

The day she was arrested, a ring of baggage handlers were apprehended for involvement in a drug smuggling operation between Sydney and Brisbane, the exact route Schapelle had taken on her way to Bali.
The then Prime Minister took the unprecedented measure of writing an official letter to the Balinese Government, giving details of this.

A convicted criminal, with no motivation to do so, risked his own life, because he was still in prison, to report a conversation he had heard between two other inmates, detailing how the dope that Corby was found with, had been put in her bag by accident, it was supposed to be put in a different bag that was stopping at Brisbane. He testified at her trial.

I remember being horrified at the time, and now, having seen the film, there is a lot of actual footage of the arrest, the time before the trial and the trial itself, I am quite haunted by this. The film tried to show everything possible on both sides, they squirrelled out anyone they could who knew Corby and had ever been known to be involved with the weed, but they couldn't make any connection at all. Corby herself had never smoked it and her own blood tests were negative for it.

A university researcher who was an expert in profiling in this exact field, showed that she registered nowhere on the profile scale. She had none of the factors whatsoever.

We were able to see her real time reactions to everything and, as someone in the film said, 'She's either the most skilled actress ever, or she's innocent.' She was innocent, but she was found guilty, in the face of no evidence whatsoever and plenty to the contrary.
Even the evidence of the weed itself seemed to work more for her than against. Her bag was zipped, but not locked. She opened it unquestioningly when asked, but then saw the ten pound bag of marijuana and zipped it up again. Who would do that if they knew they were smuggling drugs?
The dope itself, was not DNA tested to show where it had come from, the bags were never fingerprinted and the weed was continually handled by various different people until it was destroyed, so it was also not available for either of her appeals.

It's haunting, because it's so random. You set out one morning to go on holiday with your family. You have never done anything illegal in your life, and you are going on holiday in any case, because your dad with cancer is living with you, and his treatment is about to be stepped up a notch.
You don't lock your luggage because - well why would you, and we're now told not to in any case.
Then as you arrive at your destination you become embroiled in some horrific nightmare that never ends. Kafka couldn't have written this real story better.
The more that surfaces that shows you couldn't have committed this crime, the more hopeful you become, and yet none of it has the slightest effect on those who are judging you.

Apart from anything else, it seems wildly ridiculous to lock someone up for 20 years, or execute them for smuggling marijuana.
But today, when I was doing anything normal, banal, that woman kept coming into my head, and I thought, 'you can't do these normal things, and it's just wrong.'

Same Old

The main thing is - the countdown to the Olympics. A year to go. It's a bit like waiting for Christmas, only the wait has been six years and when it's over there will be one helluva communal hangover.

This could get so much more tedious before it gets better.

I was reading a post on my friend Raymond's blog about an incident where a bloke got on a bus and complained about 'Chinkos taking over'.
Meanwhile, Gail noticed that Tonka toys' pamphlet shows only boys in its illustration and assures us that there's a toy for every boy. I remember their TV advertising, it used to say, 'Real life toys for real live boys,' or some such old tosh. This bugs me too.

I don't concern myself so much with racism as with misogyny, I guess you could argue that I'm not really affected too much by the former, but I like to think that it's more because racism is pretty well covered. I would certainly challenge it, and do, if it ever comes within my radar.
But misogyny doesn't get challenged in the same way and by everyone.

And yet, everyone has women in their lives, and I mean a great many people have both men and women in their households, we live side-by-side, men and then the second sex.

This is reflected in the law of this country.
On the radio last week, I heard a man talking about how people can be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred or homophobia, as hate crimes, and well they should, but, and this was his point, misogyny did not qualify under the law as a hate crime.
So games, TV programmes and general anti-female behaviour cannot be challenged per se unless there is actual discrimination.

Today, my friend Anne sent me an article from one of the poorly written Canadian rags, about the gender pay gap. The article was suggesting that one reason this happens is that women choose to marry rich men.
Michelle Obama, it seems, was earning $274K as a hospital doctor - do I detect a raised eyebrow? And a further 50K by sitting on various corporate boards.
So you can see how this works. No? No, me neither. I would imagine that had she not been married to the future President of the United States, she may well have continued to earn a high salary.
In any case, she was already earning less than him, and pardon me for pointing out that this is because there are fewer women in politics and even fewer who make it to President.
None, in fact.
Women have no choice, no choice at all, precisely because of the gender pay gap.

Furthermore, as I mentioned not too long ago, men who support equality between the genders, are also financially disadvantaged over misogynistic men.
And so the beat goes on.

Riders on the Storm

A storm front split the sky this afternoon, behind it, grey and threatening, before it, blue and beckoning.
And then, three eagles, circling, riding the stormclouds.

In the pond, motionless, two frogs, at first it seemed like the first of the season, but then we realised they were motionless in a sort of a....dead kind of way. And in fact they were dead. One had no eyes. The ice had melted on that part of the pond and the bodies must have floated to the surface.

Flurries

Flurries, we've had flurries. Tantalising speckles of snow blowing around sporadically. We woke up to a sprinkle like the icing sugar on a Victoria Sponge.

Yes, more snow news. May the beat go on.

Frank Spencer - remember him ? I can't say I ever enjoyed that show, but I think my mother must have done, because it was on in the house. 'Some Mothers do 'ave 'em.'
It's just that...I can't help thinking about him whenever I see Obama on TV. Of course, he'd have to get an old mac and a beret...but that's a look that could work for him.

Politics in Israel are usually interesting for reasons other than who's in charge, but not so this week. Has there ever been such a closely run election? And they could end up with, in fact the likely winner seems to be, Tzipi Livni, who has already stirred up much interest as foreign leader. In fact, dare I say it, Tzipi's position at the moment, is not dissimilar to that of Kanzlerin Merkel after the German elections.

Pink Planet

17.35 and still light out. Not light enough to type by, but I can still make out the mountains. The lights on the piste are twinkling. Why do they do that I wonder? Lights twinkling at you are very enticing, and I could have been up there today at a conference - free lunch and snow-shoeing, but I only found out about it Thursday and I had so been looking forward to my Saturday morning lie-in.

Yesterday evening's 'carnaval' was surprisingly enjoyable. The atmosphere was lively, the temperature was cold, the smell of hamburgers was tantalising, and unlike last year, I had quite a few people stop by, a number of whom spoke French to me. But...it all made for a long day.
What a wimp I've become to whinge about one long day when no-one in particular either threw anything or shouted any abuse at me.

Does your list ever get done? I seem to always have something lingering at the end of mine. It's not always the most tedious job either, it might be something I have to remember to find a staqmp for, or bring up a hammer for, or some small detail that just stops me from completing, but there has to be a mental block involved somehow. If Kevin ever has something to do he just gets on with it, gets everything out that he needs to complete it and doesn't leave anything to just 'brew'.

Last night, my activity at the event involved some colouring in of the planet Earth. I had carefully..oh alright, semi-carefully, coloured my example blue and green. But all the boys seemed to want it to be blocked in dark blue or black or scribbled in brown, whilst the girls almost all favoured a pink planet. And that reminded me of how our thinking had changed, and it had to go through that stage in order to change.
Before, we would have tried to encourage the girls to use colours other than pink, now we stop ourselves and acknowledge that there's nothing wrong with pink or indeed anything 'girly'.

A Pink Planet. Imagine.
I do believe there's already a TV show called that, in fact I've seen it.

Slug Night

Not a great picture, but it was so far up in the trees. It spoke, well, it made its chattering, squeaky eagle noise, and I looked up and there it was.

I see that the moron Clarkson (whose name I couldn't remember until now, presumably because I had repressed it) has shot his stupid mouth off again, this time about the Prime Minister. Why don't they put that fuckwit down? (Clarkson of course, not the PM.)

I'm enjoying an evening of slug-like behaviour. Not, as you might think, chomping up forest debris and pooping it out as compost, but rather...well, doing nothing. Last night a meeting, tomorrow night, an event thing, tonight - slug-night.
Luverly.

Boris

No sign of Boris this morning, so throughout the day, I careful emptied my boots when changing from shoes, felt inside the puppets, checked everywhere warm. We decided he must have got outside and thus, perished. Alas poor Boris, we knew him .... meh, how well can you know a snake?

The whole Boris fiasco did however provoke a philosophical discussion at work, whether 'tis better to die or to be incarcerated. My view was that Boris was probably better off gently succumbing to hypothermia than spending another 15 or so years in a glass tank, but I was alone in that thought.

This morning, I noticed an old news article from last year in a local paper. It was about the LGBT community in Richmond - not very obvious as communities go, I must say, but in this article I noticed they had tagged on another bunch of people. I mean personally, I would have thought that Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender, pretty much covered everything, but apparently not the 'Two-Spirited'. Hmmm....well, it turned out that the Two-Spirited are the Gay and Lesbian Aboriginal community. I do have tremendous respect for them coming out. We have so many ethnic communities here who still refuse to believe they have any non-hets. And one of the perfectly acceptable het activities for some of these is wife-beating.
One of these gay-free communities in Richmond is the Chinese one, of whom thousands apparently protested same-sex marriage, including both the Conservative and Liberal candidates.
The Liberal, and former MP, Raymond Chan, also protested Human Rights Violations in China. Isn't there something wrong with that? Liberal, protests human rights violations in another country but is OK with them here. Just saying.

Meanwhile, I noticed on the BBC website, that Papal Infallibility is not what it once was. Adolphe Benedict the 13th has had to accept that it was a bit of a bungle to un-excommunicate one of its Bishops who denies the Holocaust - which in my view should be perfectly sufficient grounds for being certified insane.
Angela Merkel was gobsmacked,

"This is not just a matter, in my opinion, for the Christian, Catholic and Jewish communities in Germany but the Pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial," she said.

Just before home time, Boris fetched up outside the toilet. He seemed dazed and confused, but none the worse for his Big Adventure.

Snakes - but not on a Plane.

Bloody Aquarius. Can't trust it, fecking air sign. Not that I like to wish life away, but roll on Pisces.

We lost a snake today. It escaped and we couldn't catch it. As I left we hadn't recovered it, so could be interesting in the morning, but most likely, that snake will die. The native ones are hibernating right now.

Britain is snowed in it seems. Mayhem was closed yesterday, yep, actually closed. I never had that experience the whole time I was there. Austen sent me an audio file of the kids telling me about their snow, I must check that feature out on my laptop.

Our neighbour, the one who blocked up the firelane and parked in front of our garage with two cars and then babbled at me in Chinese, has complained about our compost bin. He says that it's 'an illegal shed'. He didn't do it in any acceptable way, just pinned a notice by the mailboxes.
Pillock.

Why has Steve Martin been allowed to make another Pink Panther film? I mean, Steve Martin - lot of people like him, Pink Panther movies - fabbo when Peter Sellers did them, but put the two together and somehow - it just does not work.

Simple Heroism

Crikey me, what ever is occurring? I haven't blogged since Thursday.
Oh well.
Britain is getting the snow she so richly deserves, would have been nice to be there for that, even Pompey has had a few flakes I gather. The grandkids have been able to taste snowflakes and have been unduly influenced by me in other ways. Not radical acts of feminism as you were probably thinking, but Teddy is now picking up things with his toes and they describe food as 'yummers'.

My current reading material is filling a few gaps in my education - the real education from school days. In history, we learnt about everything up until the Cold War, except that I'm now finding we didn't learn too much detail. Well, I s'pose that's fair enough, there's an incredible amount of British History and a startling number of sea battles.

Andrew Marr's book 'A History of Modern Britain', explains a few things to me, things which perhaps should have been glaringly obvious, and yet weren't. The Second World War pretty much bankrupted Britain. I think we just take for granted the extraordinary war effort from our parents' and grandparents' generations. We know how resources were scarce and everything was thrown in to stopping Nazi German from taking over Europe.

At the same time, Britain was still responsible for and administering various parts of the Empire, and this too was a tremendous drain. But the shortages didn't stop as soon as the war was over, in fact it got worse.
In 1947 even bread was rationed - something that apparently had not happened even during the war - and you could only turn your heaters on at certain times of the day. Severe weather came in from Siberia (as it is doing right now), bringing exceptionally low temperatures and deep snow. The country almost came to a standstill. The mines could not be worked, nor coal moved, workers could not get to London, Scotland was totally cut off from the rest of Britain and even television, admittedly in its infancy and not available to all anyway, was suspended.

Having lived through not only the war, but this sort of deprivation, it was no wonder that our parents would not tolerate pickiness over food and that habits of thrift, recycling and conservation never really died within the country.

We were brought up on stories of heroism, but what it would take many more years to understand was that heroism did not mean just the achievements of Florence Nightingale and Biggles, but of every woman, man and child who lived honourably through those years.

Makes me proud. Proud to have come from such an extraordinary nation.
And it makes me ashamed. Ashamed that I never realised quite how extraordinary those people, the ordinary people, my parents and relatives and my friends' parents and relatives were.