Wildlife Therapy
I went for a lovely walk this afternoon at Fen Drayton Lakes. Is trying to spot and identify birds with my perhaps less than perfect eye-sight, good therapy after a stroke? It won’t hurt, that is for sure. But I did see a common tern, lots of swans and lots of dragonflies.
I also spent an hour walking the stud. Sad to say that there is now only one baby duck, as the moorhens or something else has killed or eaten the other eleven. Saw quite a few hares too!
I’ve also taken to walking around the stud carrying a 2 kilo dumbell, throwing it sometimes from hand-to-hand to try to improve my left hand. Is this a good idea?
Mo Farah
Mo Farah is another who delights me and brings a smile to my face.
Over the years, I’ve done business on telephone billing systems with quite a few immigrants of Somali origin. I’ve never had a problem and those that I dealt with were a pleasure with whom to do business. They all seemed to work hard to do the best for themselves and their families. We even put in a joint bid for the billing system for a Somali telephone service, based on redundant analogue mobile phone kit.
Mo was born in Somalia and by hard work, has become our best male middle-distance runner for several decades. Let’s hope he gets a medal in London 2012! I sometimes think, I could have been a good club runner, but I didn’t have the dedication and I was an undiagnosed coeliac.
So why is it, that the Somalis I’ve met and people like Mo are a credit to their homeland, but the country continues to be a total basket-case, with lots of death and piracy?
Is This A Greater or Lesser Spotted Woodpecker?
I can’t tell, as I’m no expert and my hand wasn’t steady enough to get a clear picture.
Here is a quick video. I’m afraid I couldn’t get close enough and the woodpecker didn’t co-operate.
Commotion in the Night
The ducks are in two ponds outside my bedroom window. There was an awful lot of irate quacking in the middle of the night as the duck was probably protecting her young.
This morning I could only see four ducklings.
It would appear it could be the moorhens.
A Statue of Arthur Lowe
It is being unvieled today in Thetford according to the California Chronicle. The reference shows how far the much-loved TV series, Dad’s Army, has penetrated the world’s pysche.
Perhaps, the UK and especially England’s beleaguered sportsman could learn a lot from Captain Mannering’s ragbag collection of heroes.
Don’t buy a Nokia X6 if you’ve had a stroke!
I have one of these phones and for my situation, they are designed all wrong.
My biggest problem is that I have had a stroke and I drop things or knock them on the floor. If I dropped my Nokia 6310i, it just carried on working. The X6 falls apart and you need to reenter date and time. It is totally unfit for my purposes.
It is a bit of a pity really about this lack of robustness, as I liked a lot about the phone.
I have just phoned O2 and they have agreed to swap the phone for something hopefully more suitable. So that at least is a positive thing and a couple of stars at least for O2. But they are generally very good over the phone and I’ve stayed with they for nearly 20 years.
SIngle Click Unsubscribe
I get masses of junk from all over the world and as I have two main e-mail addresses, it is often difficult to unsubscribe.
The best companies have a single-click unsubscribe, which is coded with the e-mail address.
Others however ask you to type in the e-mail address. I then have to check to find out to which the errant e-mail was sent. before typing it in.
All unsubscribes should be like the first. How about a £10 fine for every e-mail sent that didn’t have a single click unsubscribe? Governments need revenue and this would raise a lot of money, cure a problem and the only payers would be unprofessional companies. They could always get their act together to avoid the fines.
Incidentally, I’ve just unsubscribed from the Sky Player. It was one click to get the unsubscribe page and then another to actually unsubscribe. That is acceptable, as I didn’t type anything.
A Mallard with Twelve Ducklings
Mallards can have up to 13 ducklings, but I’ve never seen this many where I live.
There is no cat around here, but I hope the foxes don’t find them!
What a Waste of Money!
The Saville enquiry cost £200,000,000 and didn’t find anything that most right-thinking people didn’t really know. Read the statements of sensible politicians like say John Major, and they would probably have predicted the findings about ten years ago.
The population of Northern Ireland is just under 2,000,000 according to this report on the BBC. So that means the report cost about £100 for everybody there. Wouldn’t it have been better to have given the money directly to the people, especially as about 11% are pensioners?
We must move on and even some of the most controversial characters from the depth of the troubles have done so.
Take Glenn Barr He is still a controversial character to both the British and the Nationalists because of his involvement with the Ulster Defence Association and politics. Now though he has retired from active and conventional politics and devotes himself to community projects in Derry, often concerned with high unemployment.
This is also in his Wkipedia entry.
He has also worked closely with Paddy Harte, a former Irish Government minister, on promoting awareness of Irish Catholic participation in both World Wars.
I first saw Glenn Barr on a BBC Panorama program in the 1970s. Asked by the interviewer, what would happen if the British pulled out, he said that the Protestants and Catholics would probably fight for a couple of days and then realise they were all Irish and had a lot more in common. He was also asked if he had any regrets. He said that he couldn’t watch Derry City, as he wouldn’t be safe. I hope he can now!
In about 1980, I heard report on BBC Radio 4, about a guy called Paddy Docherty, who had found an abandoned coaster in Derry harbour. He was filling it with Irish cast-offs like hand sewing machines and was going to sail it to Ethiopia, where such would be appreciated. The trouble was that they couldn’t get the Deutz diesel engine repaired. So I sent him some money to help, as did aot of others. He sent me details of what he was doing and he was running the YTS in Derry. His major supporters were Robin Eames, Cardinal Daly and others I knew to be on the right side. His number two was Glenn Barr. Iremember, I phoned Paddy up and had the most enlightening hour with one of the real heroes of Northern Ireland. Years later, I met Jim Prior and he spoke appreciatively of Paddy.
Just thing what £200,000,000 would have done in the right hands in Northern Ireland, rather than in the hands of expensive lawyers.
I’d love to know what happened to the coaster.
Onshore Oil Extraction in the UK
They’ve just talked about this on the BBC. I once discussed this with one of Britain’s foremost experts on natural resources. He told me that the most promising area was actually Surrey for oil, but they would meet lots of opposition. On the BBC they were talking about Dorset being very promising.
His solution to the opposition was very simple. For each barrel of oil or tonne of mineral ore, there should be a local extraction tax paid to the local authority. At present all goes to the Treasury to waste, but just imagine how an English county could be tranformed with the revenue, spent according to the needs of the local people. They would welcome the inconvenience and jobs, but on their environmental and contractual terms.
The Anonymous Widower 