The BBC’s Obsession With Manchester Music of the 1970s
They keep banging on about this and it bores me stiff. I suppose in the 1970s, C and I were bringing up children and our musical tastes were still in Liverpool in the 1960s and with Dory Previn.
When I hear the rubbish from Manchester in the 1970s, I reach for the off button.
Also if the Hacienda was so great, why doesn’t anybody remember Tommy Ducks?
It all goes to prove that the move to Salford of the BBC is a disaster for the rest of the country.
I’m Now Air-Conditioned
For a few days now my living room has been air-conditioned.
My Air-Conditioner
It’s certainly made me feel a lot better and hopefully, it will get rid of a lot of the bad health I have been suffering from.
As an example., now over the last few days, my left arm has been a lot better and I can type with two hands if I need to!
A Big Spelling Mistake
I photographed this in a shop window in the Kingsland Road.
A Big Spelling Mistake
I thought spelling mistakes like this on products were a thing of the past.
The Death of the Flannel
The Daily Mail amongst other media, is reporting that we’re not buying flannels any more. The BBC drive program is making great fun of their demise, with various jokes being sent in. Some of course are saying that flannels are towels for diminutive people, like the presenter, Peter Allen. Others are sending in jokes. One just said.
I have two flannels; one for upstairs and one for downstairs.
I can’t actually remember any flannels in my house for many years. I think we got rid of the last ones when the children left home. When I changed all my towels for the new house, I didn’t find any flannels to throw out. I think C used one of the last ones to clean out our first basset hounds ears.
Indian Ocean Made Me Cry
I’m watching a new series on the BBC, called <Indian Ocean, where Simon Reeve circles the ocean of that name.
He started at the the Cape of Good Hope and of course he had to show the African Penguins that inhabit the coast.
Those penguins always make me cry as I remember a wonderful holiday C and I had there in one of the first winters of the new century.
She loved those penguins and I’ll always remember the day we saw them in Boulder.
They Were Buried Facing South
There has just been a fascinating documentary about Frank Wild, a little known Antarctic explorer and his relationship to Sir Ernest Shackleton.
It ended with Wild’s ashes being united with Shackleton’s grave on South Georgia.
In respect of their prowess in Antarctic exploration,they were buried facing south towards the pole.
The Waitrose Self-Service Tills
I have used self-service tills in Marks & Spencer, B & Q and I think Sainsburys for some time and it has only been in the last month or so, that they’ve installed them in my closest branch of Waitrose at Upper Street.
At this point, I should say I’ve had a stroke and although unrelated, my left hand is not the best, as my arm was broken fifty years ago, by the school bully.
Consequently, I find Waitrose’s system of bags on the self-service tills to be totally unacceptable, as it is impossible to put goods into the bags with one hand. The Marks system is very much superior and I have no problem. The bags Waitrose use seem to be much more difficult to separate than those of other shops. But it has always been thus!
Thinking about it, the Marks system is much more right-handed than the Waitrose one, although both feed goods from left to right.
I now find, I’m shopping much more in Marks on a daily basis, because I prefer to use a self-service machine, so that I’m on my way quickly. As sometimes at Upper Street, the self-service tills are completely free with long queues at the manned check-outs, others might think as I do about the new tills.
I could shop at another branch and frequently do, if I travel across London, but Upper Street, is the only branch that does Home Delivery for me and it is the only branch on a single bus ride from my house.
Eat Your Heart Out, Chloe Jennings-White
This was the last words on Melanie Reid’s excellent article in yesterday’s Times, where she describes the lifestyle of a post-op transsexual called Clive Jennings-White, who through choice lives most of his life in a wheel-chair and wants his spinal cord cut, so he can be a paraplegic. Obviously, Jennings-White is as they used to say is as daft as a brush. He reminds me of an American psychiatrist, who deliberately got pregnant and when the child was born, had her adopted, so she could understand the feelings of mothers, who had had their children adopted. C used to know the daughter and to say she was disturbed and difficult would have been an understatement.
We have enough disturbed and disabled people in this world, who ended that way through no fault of their own, so I hope Clive/Chloe Jennings-White doesn’t get his or is it her wish!
Melanie, who broke her back in a riding accident, leaves everyone in no doubt about where she stands. This is one paragraph from her article.
Indeed, in the race to see who can be the most disabled, in this age of barmy victimhood, Jennings-White puts many a nose out of joint because she is hard to trump. Especially disabled gay women, a fearsome pressure group, who on the internet froth with rage. “It is already so hard for disabled lesbians… this man is appropriating so many identities and causing so much harm,” posted one.
She admits to not having enjoyed researching anything as much for a long time.
The Scandal of the European Court of Justice
I’m not talking about any judgements, as that is for the court to decide.
But they have just said, that they have a waiting list of 150,000 cases. That is a true scandal.
I think in some jurisdictions, which might include Scotland, there is a time limit, before which a criminal case must be started, if the defendant is in custody. If it isn’t then the defendant is released.
We need more thinking like that!
Olympic Tickets
Everybody has had their views on the problems with Olympic tickets.
The difficulty in obtaining tickets depends on many factors.
The first thing, is that the various stadia are probably not quite large enough. But they were designed around the number of tickets sold at previous Games and of course within the more limited budget available for these Games.
I think too, that people like corporate sponsors are taking too many of the prime tickets. But again, because of the straightened times we are in, we need the sponsors to keep the costs down.
But the biggest problem we have an immense number of people who can get to the Games. Obviously, there are all those, who can get to London for the day, but we have to include all of those, who have a friend or relative in the city. Let’s say you are Austrian and your daughter works in London. With both the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee, this summer, what better time to come and spend some time in the greatest city in the world, even if you have to sleep on the sofa or even the floor.
Many of these people, like the Irish, the Scandinavians and some of the smaller European Union countries will never get to host the Olympics in their lifetime, and as they have a right to buy tickets, then why will they not come?
So London is probably the most convenient city to hold the Olympics. The only European ones that come near are Paris and Berlin. The next city, Rio di Janeiro may be a fabulous city, but it’s not exactly easy to get to. just like Beijing and Sydney.
We’re all suffering from excess demand and not enough tickets.
If the Olympics had gone to Paris, the same problem would have happened.
