Thursday August 1st 2024 "It's official - Britain to blame for 'everything' !!!"

Did you perhaps not know, dear Reader, that our country, Britain, is ultimately to blame for everything that's ever gone wrong in the world since its "inception" 4.6 billion years ago, as scientists say? Well, not quite that long ago - I suppose the country itself can only be said to have come into existence in maybe 1707, with the Union of England and Scotland, so that that particular "accusation" or "charge" is not as bad as maybe you were thinking (!). Phew!!!!!

I found this astonishing fact out thanks to an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who yesterday passed me details of how to buy this astonishing new book from best-selling-author Richard Poe.

And from Poe's revelations it turns out that the British not only invented communism but that our intelligence services also were also to blame for pretty much all the other really big upsets in world history - even the French Revolution. What madness!!!

The synopsis of the book reads:

And that's not all we Brits have done. We've also "spoilt Venice" - of which more late in this very blog post (!).

[I can't wait! - Ed]

Sorry to "bombard" you with questions today, dear Reader (!), but have you also ever found yourself waiting for a train that somehow doesn't appear at the time when you're expecting it to? 

A lot of us have, haven't we. It's a phenomenon that seasoned train-travellers tend to refer by the word "delay", or the phrase "running late", which you tend to hear a lot, and if you travel by train regularly, you're probably aware of that, already.

If you're one of those "seasoned" people also, you're probably getting fed up to the back teeth with feeble excuses like the legendary "unexpected leaves on track". Am I right? Or am I right?!

That's why it's so nice to hear about a train service that finally really "comes clean" with its customers, as New York's MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) is reported to have done this week [Source: Onion News]:

A heart-warming story isn't it, and browsing the article this morning puts me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois something to smile about later, as we do our morning walk through nearby Polly's orchard in the lee of the 700-million-year-old Malvern Hills. 

our morning walk today through Polly's orchard

And we pause to note that the 10:50am train from Worcester to Hereford is late again - what madness !!! [That's enough madness! - Ed]

11:30 We come home and continue avoiding the Olympic Games for a bit longer. We're not sure how Team GB is doing, but according to the political magazine Private Eye, which "plopped" through our letter-box yesterday, Great Britain in with a chance for Triathlon Gold this year, if nothing else!

We also sense from the magazine that the general mood amongst athletes from all countries is not happy, to put it mildly!

What a crazy world we live in !!!

16:00 Later we get news of our daughter Alison, her husband Ed, and their 2 daughters and son, who are currently at London's Gatwick Airport preparing to jet off to Mauritius for 10 days.

our daughter Alison with husband Ed,

pictured last week in Bristol

They're due to take off about 4:30 pm but we late find out that departure was delayed (yes, that word "delay" again - what madness! [Just watch it! - Ed]) by one hour - so they'll arrive in Mauritius at presumably around 8:30 am local time tomorrow, unless the pilot can make up for lost time. 

Lois and I are both keen history buffs, and I can't resist doing doing a bit of googling on Lois's Huawei when we're in bed this afternoon.

The European colonial powers never seemed to make their minds up about Mauritius. The Portuguese "discovered" it, as a group of uninhabited islands, in the early 16th century but they couldn't think of anything to do with it. Then the Dutch East India Company came, and the Dutch stayed for just over 100 years (1598-1710), before eventually abandoning it. Nothing of their occupation survives, except for the current name, deriving from an obscure Dutch prince, Prinz Mauritz.

Then the French came, and administered the islands from 1715 to 1810, and during the Napoleonic Wars they used it as a base from which to attack British commercial shipping. The British got fed up with this eventually and invaded the islands in 1810, taking them over, an event that was legitimised a few years later by the Treaty of Paris (1814).

flashback to 1810: the British invade the French

colony of Mauritius, and take it over

Under the terms of the treaty the British undertook to "respect the language, customs, laws and traditions of the inhabitants", a promise that we kept, until finally granting the islands independence in 1968. And today the language in use by the ordinary residents is still French, even though the official language is English.

What a muddle !!!!

21:00 "But what about your promise to reveal how Britain not only invented communism, but also 'spoiled' Venice?", I hear you cry! [Not me - I don't care! - Ed]

Well, we hear about this in tonight's final part of the fascinating 4-part series, "Francesco's Venice" on BBC4, presented by Francesco da Mosto, whose ancestors have lived in Venice for centuries.

Francesco's thesis is that tourism has ruined Venice and it all started with Lord Byron, the British poet, who made the city famous throughout Europe by his writing and also by the affairs he enjoyed in the city.

The city was already in a pretty poor state after the ravages of Napoleon, but Byron famously preferred Venice like that. 

"In Venice", he wrote in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1818), "silent rows the songless gondolier. Her palaces are crumbling to the shore. But beauty is still here. States fall, arts fade. But nature doth not die. She to me was as a fairy city of the heart, even dearer in her day of woe, than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show." [my italics].

Byron's libido, and his affairs, became notorious throughout Venice and Europe, and became the "hot gossip" of English society, Francesco says.

After reading Byron's writing, tourists began flocking here, Francesco says, and this started the tourist boom that eventually came to ruin his city as it is today.

At least one of Byron's female conquests took little bit of early revenge on him, on behalf of the Venetians, when she succeeding in giving Byron "the clap" (gonnorrhea). 

And who was this woman? Step forward, Elena da Mosto, one of presenter Francesco's ancestors, Elena da Mosto.

Byron later wrote about the encounter: 

So Great Britain 1, Venice 1, was the "score-line" at the final whistle.

But what will we Brits be blamed for, next, Lois and I wonder - the eruption of Krakatowa perhaps??!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!

Wednesday July 31st 2024 "Have YOU ever climbed up the Eiffel Tower 'the hard way'?"

Let's admit it, our country's in a mess, isn't it!

And, as if to confirm that for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, what should "plop" through our letterbox this morning but my copy of "Private Eye", the fortnightly political magazine, with its heart-stopping cover and, inside, a revealing exchange with a visiting political leader. Pictures are worth a thousand words (each!), aren't they, so 2000 words in this case (!).

First the cover.....

...and then all over the inside pages.... just one example.....

Maybe it's time for Keir to quit - we must have been "suffering" under 14 days of Labour Rule by now (!), and the UK's problems still haven't been solved. It's surely time for Keir to step aside now and let a 'proven successful business man', take over, like Donald Trump did in the US in 2016. 

And who better for the job than this thrusting young local guy Matthew Stuart, who seems to be making a lot of waves locally in his efforts to turn around Worcester's ailing Tea Market business [Source: Onion News Worcestershire Desk] !

Worcester's ailing "Tea Market" business - could Stuart's unconventional 

approach be just the "shot-in-the-arm" that the business needs?

Could Stuart's trademark "unconventional" approach be just what our whole country needs at this critical time?

I wonder..... !!!

11:00 Of course one of the things that area whizz kid Stuart is most famous for, locally at least, is that fact that he gets into the office each day really early, way before everybody else, and his co-workers report that "there's always a pot of nasty, weak coffee brewing when the rest of us get in".

And it makes me wonder whether Stuart has a clandestine, second job working at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop (!), where Lois and I drop in this morning after a difficult walk in the hot sunshine over Poolbrook Common. 

Certainly my iced coffee could do with a "boost" of something or other, a bit like Lois and me after our walk (!) in today's blisteringly hot weather.

we relax with an iced tea (Lois) and an iced

coffee (me), and cakes, at buzzing local eatery,

the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop

Today is officially the last day of the current 3-day mini-heatwave, with temperatures as high as a crazy 82F / 28C: the weather is predicted to "break" tomorrow (Thursday).

Phew, what a scorcher !!!!! But weathermen say, things will start to get back to normal, beginning tomorrow, which is a relief, to put it mildly (no pun intended!). Look at how "balmy" things are going to be in just over a week's time!

And despite today's boiling hot weather, Lois's wit is as razor-sharp as ever as we leave the coffee shop and spot this removal van parked just two doors down from the shop, outside some local resident's house:

All well and good, you may say.  But as Lois incisively points out, the locally-based Warren's Elite moving business's slogan "A moving service like no other..." isn't necessarily a recommendation. It may be just us, but we think this statement surely requires further clarification. Are we right? Or are we right?!!!

And should we tell Warren?

Your answers to these, and all other questions in this blog (!) welcome - and on a postcard please (!).

[That's enough exclamation marks in brackets (!) - Ed]

Warren with co-worker, seen here in happier times,

organising "promo" pictures for the business's website

21:00 Still feeling a bit hot and bothered after another evening on the couch, Lois and I wind down for bed with an interesting BBC4 documentary about the building of the Eiffel Tower.

Lois and I visited Paris in 1992, when we were young-and-thrusting 46-year-olds, and I remember that I went up the Eiffel Tower, just in the lift, nothing more adventurous than that (!), although I don't know where our pictures of it are - we downsized to this new-build home in Malvern about 20 months ago, and a lot of our old photos are still in boxes under one of our spare beds, gathering dust, and I couldn't even start to work out which box to try looking in [Thank goodness for that! - Ed].

Even without the "prompt" of a few badly-taken photos, however, I expect you can recall that it was the era when Lois was sporting her shiny-new "shorty" haircut. Aha - you remember now, don't you! [No! - Ed]

Lois (46) on our trip to Paris in 1992: (left) on the balcony of our hotel room in 

Montmartre, and (right) in front of the Folies Bergère nightclub

I remember myself having used the lift to go up to the Eiffel Tower in 1992, eschewing "the hard way", i.e. the "climbing option" (both on the outside and the "extreme" one on the inside (!)), and I suspect Gustave may have done the same for the opening ceremony in 1889, when, aged 60, he insisted on being the person to unfurl the French flag on the top. 

What a guy!

flashback to 1889: the inauguration of the Eiffel Tower

with Gustave Eiffel's unfurling of the French flag

And there are lots of other fascinating facts in tonight's programme. Lois and I knew that Gustave Eiffel, creator of the tower that bears his name, had already "cut his teeth" on the Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States to mark 100 years of independence.

We didn't know, however, was that Gustave had also designed hundreds of bridges all over the Francophone world, including over a hundred in Vietnam, many of which were still around in the 1960's, although several were destroyed either by the fighting in the Vietnam War, or just by general urbanisation.

the Rach Dia Bridge in Saigon, one of over a hundred

such bridges in Vietnam, designed by Gustave Eiffel

Gustave took tremendous care with the health and well-being of his workers: not a single worker died during the construction of the Eiffel Tower, although some got "the bends", like a deep-sea diver gets, when they were digging far under ground to construct the foundations. What madness !!!

A lot of "poncey" French artists, sculptors etc initially complained that the tower wasn't beautiful, calling it "useless and monstrous". However, to his credit, Gustave took no notice, pointing instead to what he called the tower's "elegance".

What madness !!!

The finished tower was originally intended to stand for only 20 years, but somehow Gustave managed to get its life extended several times, and its permanent status was eventually assured after he incorporated a wireless telegraphy station into its structure, making the tower a giant radio antenna. And by the time of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 the tower had begun to be acknowledged as essential for national defence.

It's a pity that Gustave got his fingers burned by his involvement in the building of the Panama Canal, which ended with accusations of fraud, lawsuits and criminal charges. Compared to some of the other defendants, however, he got off fairly lightly, with a 2 year prison sentence and a 20,000 franc fine. He died in 1923, aged 91.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!