The Thames Barrier Park
Yesterday, I went to the Thames Barrier Park to have a walk.
It is a great place for a walk and the coffee in the cafe there, is very good. Just take the Docklands Light Railway to Pontoon Dock station.
Chinooks Over Canary Wharf
I was a bit slow to catch them with my camera, but what were these two Chinook helicopters doing over Canary Wharf.
Chinooks Over Canary Wharf
If you look to the left of the Blackwall sign, you should just about be able to see them. I can’t find any reference to them on the Internet. I suppose they were some dummy security exercise for the Olympics
One Line Spam E-Mails
I have seen a large increase in the number of one line spam e-mails over the last week or so.
Typically, the e-mail has the following characteristics.
- There is rarely a Subject
- The sender maybe someone you know and the e-mail address is not encoded.
- The e-mail is copied to lots of other people, who often are connected to the sender. I’ve just received one from Australia and it is copied to masses of people in the country.
- The body of the e-mail consists of a single complicated link. Don’t click this, as you’ll get infected with a virus or an advert for a drug you don’t need.
So what should you do if you get such an e-mail?
Ask Leo has the details here. Read it.
He says that the sender’s e-mail account has been hacked, so contact them immediately and get them to run a virus check on their computer and change their password and account recovery questions.
I would also advise, that if they use HOTMAIL, GMAIL, YAHOO or any other free e-mail to move away from that account and get a new account. I know it’s a pain, but they could use your account to send other things that you might not like, as they have your current ID and password.
Read Leo as I said and if you don’t believe me, believe him.
I have had five of these e-mails in the last couple of weeks; two from friends, a couple from Australia and another from who knows where.
The frequency seems to be increasing.
Hayley Turner Rides for the Queen
Hayley Turner is riding Momentary for the Queen in the Ribblesdale Stakes today.
Hayley is a coeliac and now is the best lady jockey in the UK. Many will say the best lady jockey ever to ride in the UK.
Wedding of the Century Ends in Jail
Kirsty Lane wanted an amazing wedding. So she nicked £200,000 to pay for it. It’s all here in the Mail.
She’ll have 0f plenty of time to mull it all over in jail. Jail might also help her to lose a bit of weight!
One of the Worst Days of my Life?
Today, my youngest son, George, would have been forty, which we always think is an important milestone in a person’s life. We tried to arrange a party or even a drink, but gradually everyone has cried off, so I shall celebrate this all by myself. I understand more and more the fortitude with which Aung San Suu Kyi endured her isolation. All of those birthdays and important milestones, that I’ve missed. And I will miss in the future.
But hey, at least I’m still here, despite the efforts of the Devil.
Luckily, by chance, I was given an overdose of survival gene at conception and that keeps pulling me through.
All I can say, to others now, is make sure your children don’t ever start smoking. George’s smoking probably led to his pancreatic cancer, especially if he was an undiagnosed coeliac and thus had a compromised immune system because of his gluten-rich junk food diet.
Aung San Suu Kyi and the DJ
Years ago, I can remember Dave Lee Travis on Radio 1 on Sunday mornings, whilst I was writing Artemis. I suspect as a young mother in Oxford, Ms Suu Kyi was listening to the same program.
Aung San Suu Kyi then went back to Burma to care for her dying mother and for twenty four years she couldn’t return to the UK, as she feared any return to her family would mean the Generals wouldn’t let go back to Burma. She couldn’t even return for the death of her husband, Michael Aris.
But during those years of isolation in Burma, she did at least have the BBC World Service, which kept her in touch and she listened to the shows of Dave Lee Travis, who briefly met her yesterday.
In some ways I can understand her isolation, although I’ve never suffered like she has. When I had my stroke in Hong Kong, there was only CNN, that I could understand on the television. But at least, I could get BBC Radio 5 at most times through the Internet. Never has a broadcasting channel been so important to my sanity.
Today, Aung San Suu Kyi is praised in the first leader of The Times. The last sentence is something we should all remember.
She not only represents a better future for Burma, but testifies to the resilience of the human spirit in extreme adversity.
I very much agree with that. She has also been an extreme example to me, as to how to cope with the worst that life can throw at you. But then I’m not alone and thousands of miles from my friends and family.
In
What’s Wrong With Society
Helen Wright, headmistress of an independent girls’ boarding school in Wiltshire has her view on this and says it is all summed up by covergirls in underwear.
Her views are published in full in this report in the Daily Mail. Here’s an extract.
Kim Kardashian is the poster girl for ‘almost everything that is wrong with Western society’, according to a leading headmistress.
The reality TV star is part of a culture that glorifies women’s physical appearances over their character, claims Dr Helen Wright, head of a private girls’ boarding school.
In a speech tomorrow, Dr Wright will show Miss Kardashian posing in her underwear on the cover of men’s magazine Zoo.
The headline, from an edition last month, praises Miss Kardashian as ‘the hottest woman in the world’.
‘It is not too strong a statement, I venture to suggest, to say that almost everything that is wrong with Western society today can be summed up in that one symbolic photo of Miss Kim Kardashian on the front of Zoo magazine,’ Dr Wright will say.
‘The descent of Western civilisation can practically be read into every curve, of which, you will note, there are in-deed many.
In the 1960s, girls like Miss Kardashian, were generally labelled by that wonderfully complimentary term, scrubbers.
But then it has always been thus. At present, I’m watching Royal Ascot and a Royal historian has said that it was the place where George IV went to show off his mistresses.
There has always been a class of woman, who felt the quickest way to the top, was lying on their back, with their legs in the air and their knickers, if any, around their ankles.
What Do You Call a Second Hand Horse?
Riding horses and ponies are probably unique amongst common animals in that they are sold from one owner to another for the same purpose. After all you generally don’t sell your dog or cat to anybody else, unless it’s a puppy or kitten, you’ve bred.
You get some horses and especially ponies, that have passed from family to family upwards of ten or a dozen times.
I was looking for some more information on coloured horses for the previous post using Google and after typing coloured horses, Google gave a few suggestions. One was “coloured horses for sale pre-loved”. I suppose it’s an equivalent to pre-owned for cars.
The Anonymous Widower 