Royal Eating Places of Beauty

A place where food is prepared and sold to the public as cooked meals; restaurant, café, bistro, brasserie – all the foregoing are foreign words and I can’t for the life of me think of an indigenous British word. Come on – help me out!

Is it just me, or does Kate Middleton bear more than a passing resemblance to Koo Stark?


There’s a tribunal going on in the UK over a BBC presenter who claims she was dropped from a programme because she wasn’t young and pretty enough. There’s a dilemma here – should clothes designers be allowed to use only beautiful models? Should teachers, perhaps, be selected solely on the basis of their youth and thus empathy with their charges?

Conversely, should make-up manufacturers employ only ugly munters to demonstrate their products, thereby enabling the consumer to see the added value the product can provide in extreme cases?

When all is said and done, one’s age and beauty are attributes one can do little to nothing about and thus, logically, should not be used as a means of discrimination. However, could you imagine car manufacturers draping Anne Widdecombe over the bonnet of their latest creation? You have to be realistic. If something is aimed at a youth market, then it makes sense to use young people to advertise whatever the product may be; similarly you’re not going to take well to a young dolly bird being used to market a zimmer frame or incontinence pad.

As with everything, especially see-saws, there has to be a balance.

Toy Town Minds

Some idiotic tool in a toy company has decided to eliminate pigs from a toy farm set so as to not offend Muslims and Jews; however, I somehow suspect this to be a bit of a wind-up story.

Perhaps they should eliminate edible farm animals completely so as to not offend vegans.

Milk herds might offend the lactose intolerant.

Cereal crops would be for the boot too, in case those with a gluten allergy were offended.

A PC toy farm is not much of a toy farm at all really.

Goodbye Old Friend

My good friend Richard over at Falling Through An Endless Summer Sky (who had been suffering from cancer for a couple of years) slipped into a coma a couple of days ago and died at 3:30 this morning.

I spoke with him on the phone only last week and he seemed chipper enough, if somewhat tired; however, the final stages of cancer result in multiple organ failure, which produces a rapid decline, ensuing coma and fairly swift death.

Richard Collinson

Richard was one of a dwindling band of brothers who served in the HMS Conway, one of a triumvirate of schools with a deep nautical flavour – the others being HMS Worcester and HMS Pangbourne. Of the three only Pangbourne still exists (as Pangbourne College), but without the naval tradition.

Richard’s acerbic wit will be missed by all who knew him.

Missed Opportunities

Have you ever stood in a queue for something where there’s one of those lottery ticket dispensing thingies next to the queue? Have you ever though: “Mmm – I may just have a punt for a quid”? Have you then been totally confused by the sheer number of different types of lottery on offer and thought: “Oh sod it!”?

It’s happened to me on a number of occasions and I’m sure many others have had a similar experience. Why the hell can’t they just have a single lottery prize once a week? I’m sure the organisers are missing out on a large chunk of people, like me, who would indeed have an occasional punt, but simply can’t be arsed to spend half an hour reading all the differing rules for the umpteen options on offer.

Barry & Colin Outdoor Clothing Range

How the hell did early man end up living in Britain – or northern Europe for that matter? It’s freezing cold half the year and blowing a gale or raining for the rest. Whatever possessed humans to move out of Africa in the first place? It couldn’t have been a land grab – there were only a few thousand of us in the first place and Africa is a pretty large area. Some idiot ancestor must have made a wrong turning when chasing a herd of wildebeest.

You know all these cold weather clothing items and barrier creams that are marketed on the basis that fishermen use them? Well, Hay and I are thinking of launching a new version based on builders - our builders, Colin and Barry, are out in all weathers every day whereas fishermen only fish for about 5 days of the year before they run out of quotas, so what the hell do they know about survival in all weathers?

We could market a line of Colin & Barry’s thermal underwear, or Colin & Barry’s hand cream – as used by builders. Colin & Barry’s all weather shorts too – with added axle grease to prevent those embarrassing dribbles. Yesterday Colin was in camouflage – couldn’t see the bugger.

Spotted what I thought was an image of Bernie Ecclestone in a Santa outfit on the interweb. Turned out to be Andy Warhol. Do you think they are one and the same?

Bernie Ecclestone (left) : Andy Warhol (right)

Talking of Bernie Warhol, a Roy Lichtenstein ‘work’ sold this week for $42.6m. That’s rather a lot for what is essentially nothing more than a cartoon.


As I have said many times previously, I hope it has been bought by a private investor and not my bank or one of my pension companies. The chances are low though, as modern art these days is the preserve of financial institutions which are easily fooled into paying vast sums for intrinsically worthless shit sold by unscrupulous galleries having a vested interest in bigging up their personal protégés. It’s the gallery owners and speculators who decide modern art prices, not talent. Most modern art is fuelled by avarice; true art stands the test of time – but that’s a subjective analysis.

Gunboat Diplomacy & Universal Entitlement

Cameroon is hailing his China trade trip as a resounding success. I would suggest he focuses on selling Afghan opium to the Chinese in return for tea and if the Chinese don’t like it, send an aircraft carrier up the Yangtze or threaten to increase the university fees of Chinese students on courses in the UK.

I was watching a local news item about some hatchet-faced harridan who is fighting to get her grandmother into a private nursing home for which the fees are slightly above the level the social services have set as the maximum they will pay. She rounded off her tirade by saying it was a matter of giving her choice, as if her choice was a fundamental human right enshrined in some United Nations convention.

No it’s not – it’s a matter of the ability to pay! If you can afford to pay the extra, you get additional choices; if you can’t pay, you make do with what’s on offer as a minimum backstop or do the job yourself. The choice she has is whether she is prepared to pay for the upkeep of her familial elders or not. I fear many want the rest of us tax payers to foot the bill for their parents and grandparents. If your parents had the misfortune to look after you for 16 years plus, the least you can do is to look after them when they have the need.

The UK is, sadly, becoming a place where a sense of duty is fast being replaced by a rather nasty and self-serving sense of universal entitlement. How many times have you heard the shrill mantra: “I know my rights,” when it’s manifestly obvious that the person doing the shouting doesn’t have the faintest inkling of his or her rights (from a legal perspective) and is totally consumed by self-righteous indignation aided by an overdeveloped sense of their own importance in the grand scale of the universe?

I was listening to a debate on the wearing of fur by women. One wag suggested that fur is merely leather (which virtually everyone wears in some shape or form) with the fluffy bits left on. You can’t fault the logic, providing you don’t stray into Ethics – which is just north of Kent.

Hitler Hears Liverpool - Blackpool Result

A friend sent me this - it's hilarious. The language is a bit ripe, so be warned.

The Chairman's Conjecture

I’m reading David Deutsche’s wonderful book ‘The Fabric of Reality’ - for the umpteenth time (yes, I’m autistic). Reading about parallel universes always sends me off into Wiki-land to research some obscure aspect of quantum physics and my latest foray led me to Crabtree’s Bludgeon – a foil to Occam’s much overused (and much misunderstood) razor.

Crabtree’s Bludgeon states that: "No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated." I would posit that religion is eminently familiar with Crabtree’s Bludgeon, in fact using it to excess - which is a tad ironic when you consider William of Occam was a Franciscan friar.

Occasionally Hay will accuse me of being particularly verbose in written communications; I respond with The Chairman’s Conjecture, a variant of Crabtree’s Bludgeon which states: “Why use one word when ten will do adequately?”

It’s official – George W Bush has categorically stated that warterboarding saves British lives. Given the number of traffic deaths each year in the UK, I hear that the police will now set up motorway waterboarding booths and select random drivers to be waterboarded. It has been estimated that this will save hundreds of lives every year on UK roads.

The NHS may also start trials of waterboarding in hospitals - again to prevent unnecessary deaths.

Lexicography

It would appear Burma has redefined the word 'election'.

Abu Hamza's Allotment

Overheard in the caravan:

Chairman: “Shall I make some baked apples?”

Hay: “I like crème fraiche with my baked apples.”

Chairman: “We don’t have any - I’ll make some crème Anglaise.”

Hay: “Do you know how to make crème Anglaise?”

Chairman: “Well, we have some eggs, that should be a good start.”

Hay: “Great – baked apples with scrambled eggs.”

Despite it pouring with rain here last night, it still sounded like the Somme with all the fireworks going off for Guy Fawkes Night.

Abu Hamza, the jailed Muslim fanatic, has been allowed to retain his British passport due to the fact that his Egyptian citizenship was allegedly revoked. Without a British passport he would be rendered stateless, which apparently is anathema in human rights legislation.

It would seem that the solution would be to given him an alternative citizenship and then revoke his British passport. I would suggest he is made a citizen of Rockall – and just Rockall, but without the fishing or oil rights – and then deport him.

Hamza once said that the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was a sign from God of his displeasure with the Americans. Seems he interprets anything bad that happens in the west as a sign from God. I wonder then how he interprets the United States’ winning the war against Iraq and Afghanistan? Surely, if Hamza’s logic is to be believed, it can only be a sign that God is displeased with the Iraqis and Afghans for their wicked ways?

I’ve heard it said that Abu Hamza has a nasty left hook, as well as a nasty right hook. Mind you, it’s better than a poke in the eye.

Hay and her sister think Abu Hamza’s Allotment is a good, if somewhat surreal name for a rock group.