Did you see the morning news today, dear reader? You may have seen this headline...
You may not care too much about this issue, but the story gets my wife Lois and me talking animatedly over the breakfast table, no question about that.
We ourselves haven't taken a train ride for 10 or 20 years, so it doesn't bother us personally, but our son-in-law Ed is a kind of a legal-advice director for a couple or so of the UK's train companies. Will Ed's job be safe if Labour's plans to renationalise the companies under a Great British Railways banner goes ahead?
Well Lois and I can talk about it till kingdom come, but we just don't know what our son-in-law Ed thinks about it, and whether his job will be safe, so we'll just have to wait till our weekly phone call to our daughter Alison takes place this evening, when hopefully we'll find out more.
This is a topical issue for Lois and me at the moment - not because we're likely to be invited to go on any stag parties - I haven't been on one since that night in Baltimore Inner Harbour in 1985 - the evening of my life that I'm most trying to forget - my goodness, yes! It wasn't really my type of thing at all, thank you very much!
"Nationalise" ?????? - that's a word that hasn't been heard too often in political debate in the UK over the last 40 years. So much so, that the automated chatbot who gives me the morning's headlines on my phone doesn't even know how to pronounce the word, and says the middle part of the word (nation) to rhyme with station - what madness !!!!
a typical chatbot stumbling over unusual words
when reading out this morning's headlines
10:00 We're both trying to take it easy today, Lois and I, so the day vanishes in a cloud of marital chat.
Both of our stomachs are in a delicate state following my adverse reaction to some medication earlier in the week, and Lois's adverse reaction to my adverse reaction. So we don't want to focus on rail renationalisation in case it affects our son-in-law's job, so we settle down on the couch with our morning coffee and turn to the local press (Onion News Worcestershire) for a bit of light relief.
Lois and I are both shy people, and it turns out that local news is dominated by some heart-warmingly good news for shy men - something you can't say most days, which is nice!
Stag nights aren't any good for shy people really, are they. It's just a question of getting through them and back home in one piece, isn't it.
Bertha's Mussels, Baltimore, the starting location, now closed,
for a stag party I went to in 1985 - but don't remind me please!
However, one of our favourite sitcoms at the moment, BBC3's "Dinosaurs", is going to feature a stag party tonight for shy bridegroom-to-be Ranesh, and we're hoping that poor Ranesh doesn't get forced into any embarrassing situations. His bride-to-be Evie has no inhibitions, so we're a bit scared to see how she spends her hen night. But we'll see later today, that's for sure!
14:00 Lois and I tend to be in each other's pockets 24/7 these days, so when we get into bed this afternoon for nap-time, we're got to find a fresh subject to debate,
As McLennan points out, there are 2 main reasons for this continent becoming British: (1) Australia isn't on the way to anywhere people might want to go, as Henry Kissinger himself observed, so it failed to attract initial interest at all. And (2) although discovered by the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese between the 15th and 17th centuries, they weren't interested in establishing any colonies there, because there was nothing much of value for them to plunder - unlike China it had no silk, unlike the Indies it had no spices, and unlike Mexico it had no silver.
Our choice of topic is one we've often tossed around before - the British Empire: perfect subject, whether in bed of out of bed, wherever you are, isn't it!
flashback to 1886: the British Empire before its big expansion
in late Victorian times
Lois tends to write the British Empire off as being solely about plunder, which I think is unfair in many ways. I think that British colonial policy tended to be conducted in a more enlightened way than was the case for many of our European neighbours, and also there's the fact that we led the way in banning first the slave trade, and then later, slavery itself.
So today I'm delighted to see that one of my favourite pundits on the website, Keith McLennan, has been highlighting this other side of the picture, while weighing in on the vexed subject of "How did Australia become British, despite being discovered by Dutch explorers?"
flashback to 1770: Captain James Cook lands in Australia
and claims the continent for Great Britain
Captain James Cook RN, however, was interested in Australia, primarily as part of his thirst for knowledge. First off, he wanted to observe the transit of Venus, and later he explored this part of the world, purely as part of his quest for knowledge about this little-known part of the world. He circumnavigated New Zealand as well, and ventured as far south as Antarctica.
He said himself, that he “had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had been before, but as far as it was possible for man to go.” A bit like his near-namesake, Captain James T. Kirk of the fictional starship Enterprise, whose mission was to "explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, and to boldly go, where no man has gone before".
Game set and match to me, I think initially, for once in our nap-time debates!
But no, Lois doesn't let me have it all my own way, and I have to admit that she's got a point when she says that it didn't make it any better for the Australian aborigines that Captain Cook had some selfless "scientific" goals in mind when he seized their land for the Empire.
Well, fair enough - I have to concede that point, and yet again, our naptime "barneys" have ended in a bit of a tie - but one which we're both quite happy with, which is nice.
19:00 Our phone-call with Alison, our daughter, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with husband Ed and their 3 teenage children.
Guess what - Ed actually met with, and spoke with, the Labour Party's Shadow Transport Secretary Angela Rayner in London today. Yikes, exciting or what?!!!!
Angela Raynor, Shadow Transport Secretary, getting off
a train with Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, this week.
Apparently the train companies are still trying to influence the way that Labour would renationalise the industry if and when they come to power. Also, the companies have been expecting this development for some time, and they're not panicking over it, Alison says.
In any case, as far as Ed's job is concerned, it's going to take a few years for Labour to complete the renationalisation, because they will have to wait for the individual regional franchises to come up for renewal, so we're talking 6 years minimum. And if Ed is forced to leave the industry, he's become such a respected figure that he's not going to find trouble switching to a new position, Alison thinks, so that's all right.
Phew !!!!
Who would have thought, that day long ago in South Wales in 1997, when Lois and I celebrated our silver wedding with Ali and Ed, at that time humble students at Cardiff University, that Ed would one day be mixing in such exalted circles.
flashback to 1997: Ali and Ed (left) when they were just
humble university students at Cardiff, seen here with
our other daughter Sarah, and Lois, at the stepping-stones,
Ogmore, S.Wales, the ones that my mother crossed every day
to go to school in the 1920's
Yikes!!!!
Ali also sends pictures of their eldest daughter Josie (17), trekking over Dartmoor as part of her Gold Duke of Edinburgh award project, and some alternative stepping stones come into view, English ones this time, which is nice!
Josie, our 17-year-old granddaughter,
about to cross some stepping-stones on Dartmoor
Rather her than me, though - my goodness !!!!
20:00 Later we unwind for bed with the much-awaited "stag night" episode of "Dinosaur" on BBC3.
Oh dear - feisty bride-to-be Evie and her girl-pals are getting high on absinthe on their hen night in Rothesay and getting a bit too close to their drug-dealer friend Lee.
uh-oh, feisty bride-to-be Evie getting too close
to her girl-pals' drug-dealer friend Lee on their hen-night in Rothesay
However, I'm happy to report that, meanwhile, shy bridegroom-to-be Ranesh is spending his stag night quietly, at home in Glasgow, and that he manages to find a suitably shy way to spend the evening with his best buddies.
And Ranesh won't even call it a stag night, which is a nice touch.
And what could be a better stag night for a shy man than to spend it with close friends playing an environmentalist board game, which Ranesh also wins, which is the icing on the cake.
Awwwww!!!!
Now that's what I call a stag night for a shy man!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
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