Sometimes Everybody Wins
I was getting out of a tube at Oxford Circus tonight and I was away of something low running across the floor of the platform rushing towards me.
I put out my right foot and whatever it was hit me right on the toe padding. A couple of metres away sitting on a seat were two young ladies; one black and one oriental. The black lady was laughing as she had picked up the pound coin she’d dropped , which had then rolled and hit my foot, but luckily had bounced right back to her. She thanked me for my efforts.
I explained it was just luck and we all laughed together.
So sometimes everybody wins.
Is Eurovision Promoting National Stereotypes?
I don’t usually watch Eurovision, but hey, what else is there to do tonight, after the awful Mancunian double?
But are countries promoting their own sterotypes?
After all the Irish entry was about humour! The Greek one had no chance of making any worthwhile sales! The Russian one was all about male machismo and was probably written by someone with lots of talent like Vladimir Putin. I did like the singers for Hungary and Estonia and if they played their cards right ….
The French entry was calling out for someone in the orchestra to open a bottle of brown ale at the right moment, to enliven the proceedings. You may laugh about that, but a friend once played in the 1960s in the backing orchestra for such high-brow touring productions as The Desert Song. You quickly learned what was the best time to get a drink.
But quite frankly Eurovision isn’t the same without Terry Wogan.
The 400th Anniversary of the Opening of London’s New River
You don’t get too many four hundredth anniversaries in the world, but in 2013, there will be an important one for London.
Melvin Bragg did a program on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible this year and he has been on television talking about it. But where is the program about the New River, which brings fresh water to London? And has done since 1613!
I was brought up in Southgate and cycling around the area as a child it was something you couldn’t avoid. I now live near its southern end and every time I go to the Angel, I see the statue of Hugh Myddelton on Islington Green.
The story of this great undertaking gets a good mention in Wikipedia, but surely the 400th anniversary deserves something more.
For a start, how many schools along the river are doing projects or having parties to celebrate the anniversary?
In some ways, the history of the river has lessons for the modern world, where water is such a precious commodity.
Surely, this anniversary is something that should interest someone like Griff Rhys Jones or Adam Hart Davis.
An Eye for an Eye And We All Go Blind
There is this horrific story from Iran today.
That’s not justice, that’s vengeance. Iran’s justice sentence may be worse than the United States in that they execute more people, but surely this is a new low?
The Anonymous Widower 