ACROSS THE POND.
Madness and sadness.
Why do the cowardly lunatics who carry out bomb attacks always pick on folk least deserving of their insane hatred?
Taking part in a marathon for charity calls for stamina and goodness of heart. The thousands of amateurs who devote their time and energy to such causes are among the best of humankind; people determined to do some good in the world. Any attack on them, or those who support them, is unforgivably evil and anyone who undertakes such an attack is a sociopathic waste of space.
An eight year old boy was among those killed in the Boston bomb blasts; a happy child waiting near the finishing line for his father to complete the run. The swift unmasking, pursuit and gunning down of the perpetrators may provide a satisfying outcome to many, but it will not bring back poor little Martin Richard or lessen the grief of the family left to mourn him.
By the same token an admirable attempt, by President Barack Obama, to introduce new legislation limiting the buying and ownership of guns in America was defeated in the Senate. That bloody gun lobby again.
So the current plethora of bereaved US families clearly matters not a jot to their weapons industry. Well, why would it? There is no sentiment in business and certainly none in that avaricious, death-dealing trade. They must be longing for Kim Jong-un or somebody - anybody - to start another world war.
AT HOME…
A quick thank you.
Pleasant messages provided footnotes to my last two posts. OK, so they came from my Leader’s niece, Dawn (mainland domiciled), and from island-based friend Anonymous John. The two have never met, but I guess their comments make them members of a somewhat select club and I am grateful for their support.
Cheers, you two.
ON THE MAINLAND.
What a palaver!
I liked neither Margaret Thatcher nor her acolytes, so kindly disposed Conservative friends who asked whether I saw the funeral did, I fear, obtain an abruptly negative response.
Oh, I know many of them thought she was the bee’s knees.
“She got things done,” I was once advised, loftily.
My reply was brusque then, too:
“So did Hitler.”
Well…along with mining and most British industry…it’s all over now.
What a palaver, though!
COMPUTERWISE.
No sooner the word.
Another session of weird happenings on my elderly computer resulted in an email to our son which went along the lines of:
“Hi Neil - Some cheeky bastard has managed to post a bunch of adverts on my blog. Any idea how I can get rid of them?”
This was followed by a telephone conversation where it was established that the offending adverts had somehow infiltrated my blog post list but were not visible on the published blog and that a last ditch attempt to rectify the situation, by disconnection of the mains plug, had resulted in absolute failure of the computer on/off switch.
The old Dell was dead again.
"I thought that switch was the trouble…I’ll be over in my lunch break,” said the computer lifeboat captain.
The confounded computer instantly sprang back to life.
True to his word, though, our rescuer arrived. He sat with a sandwich and a cup of tea and went to work; in no time at all he found the program (who thinks up these daft spellings?) responsible for the adverts and got rid of it. He also went to town on the myriad minor games and space stealers cluttering up the works. When he finished I was still custodian of The Chamber of Secrets, still held captive The Prisoner of Azkaban, had lost Finding Nemo and had parted company with assorted games that I could not remember seeing or playing.
For a couple of days after he left everything moved a little bit faster: Windows…Google…the hands on the clock…my chair…everything!
Then, a couple of nights back, the screen started turning itself off and on. Don’t know why. I shan’t bother the computer lifeboat captain yet.
Could be just tiredness: mine and the computer’s.
Ho hum.
BACK TO THE BOX.
Comings and goings.
If I had a system that would record half a dozen programmes and allow me to watch yet another, all at the same time, there are evenings on television when I could be using the lot. There are also entire prime viewing hours when there is such a paucity of anything worthwhile to see that Planner becomes an absolute necessity. Oh well…
Game of Thrones is back, with many of the good, the bad and the ugly still in evidence. Grimm came back, and Castle and Dr. Who and (all too briefly) Foyle’s War.
We have also been impressed by Endeavour, played by Shaun Evans (above right) a nineteen sixties return to the Morse saga wherein a young Morse’s early sleuthing abilities are recognised and nurtured by the excellent Det. Inspector Fred Thursday (Roger Allam - above left).
Apart from Foyle, the departing series we shall most miss is Person of Interest, a premise so implausible it rings true. Jim Caviezel (below right), playing John Reese and Michael Emerson (below left), playing Harold Finch, are perfectly cast as are Taraji P. Henson and Kevin Chapman as their - initially unwilling - police helpers. Great viewing.
AND LASTLY.
Almost a couple of conversations
Children in grandson Ellis’s class (7 - 8 years old) are now being given the opportunity to take swimming lessons in school time. Following assembly on Monday mornings they are taken to a popular Island swimming pool for tuition. The whole session takes about a couple of hours and Ellis loves it.
“But if it’s over before lunch,” his grandmother just had to know, “what do you do when you get back to school?”
“Lessons,” he replied with a shrug.
She, bless her, was suitably disarmed. I am made of sterner stuff.
“What lessons, buddy?” I inquired wickedly. “Pythagoras? Euclid?”
He eyed me for a moment and his eyes shone as he delivered the riposte:
“No-o-o-o, Boo, it’s not Hogwarts.”
We had four days of sunshine - which could be our entire summer - so I took the opportunity to go hatless on my afternoon jaunt to collect the little buddy from school.
He bustled across the playground, peering up at me with his head on one side and a speculative expression on his face.
“You’re white, Boo,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed that before.”
I accepted his book bag and his empty lunch box, in the way that a dutiful elderly retainer does, puzzling the while, vaguely, whether racism had finally become part of the modern primary school curriculum.
Sensing my confusion, he said: “Your hair…it’s white…I hadn’t noticed ‘til now…” then, tilting his head the other way and clearly bent on accuracy, he added: “Not that side, though. You’re still grey that side. You’ve just gone white this side.”
I grinned and shook my head. Well, what can you say?
As we set off for home I think I may have glimpsed, way away in the sky over the school, the flying figure of a departing Peter Pan.
Madness and sadness.
Why do the cowardly lunatics who carry out bomb attacks always pick on folk least deserving of their insane hatred?
Taking part in a marathon for charity calls for stamina and goodness of heart. The thousands of amateurs who devote their time and energy to such causes are among the best of humankind; people determined to do some good in the world. Any attack on them, or those who support them, is unforgivably evil and anyone who undertakes such an attack is a sociopathic waste of space.
An eight year old boy was among those killed in the Boston bomb blasts; a happy child waiting near the finishing line for his father to complete the run. The swift unmasking, pursuit and gunning down of the perpetrators may provide a satisfying outcome to many, but it will not bring back poor little Martin Richard or lessen the grief of the family left to mourn him.
By the same token an admirable attempt, by President Barack Obama, to introduce new legislation limiting the buying and ownership of guns in America was defeated in the Senate. That bloody gun lobby again.
So the current plethora of bereaved US families clearly matters not a jot to their weapons industry. Well, why would it? There is no sentiment in business and certainly none in that avaricious, death-dealing trade. They must be longing for Kim Jong-un or somebody - anybody - to start another world war.
AT HOME…
A quick thank you.
Pleasant messages provided footnotes to my last two posts. OK, so they came from my Leader’s niece, Dawn (mainland domiciled), and from island-based friend Anonymous John. The two have never met, but I guess their comments make them members of a somewhat select club and I am grateful for their support.
Cheers, you two.
ON THE MAINLAND.
What a palaver!
I liked neither Margaret Thatcher nor her acolytes, so kindly disposed Conservative friends who asked whether I saw the funeral did, I fear, obtain an abruptly negative response.
Oh, I know many of them thought she was the bee’s knees.
“She got things done,” I was once advised, loftily.
My reply was brusque then, too:
“So did Hitler.”
Well…along with mining and most British industry…it’s all over now.
What a palaver, though!
COMPUTERWISE.
No sooner the word.
Another session of weird happenings on my elderly computer resulted in an email to our son which went along the lines of:
“Hi Neil - Some cheeky bastard has managed to post a bunch of adverts on my blog. Any idea how I can get rid of them?”
This was followed by a telephone conversation where it was established that the offending adverts had somehow infiltrated my blog post list but were not visible on the published blog and that a last ditch attempt to rectify the situation, by disconnection of the mains plug, had resulted in absolute failure of the computer on/off switch.
The old Dell was dead again.
"I thought that switch was the trouble…I’ll be over in my lunch break,” said the computer lifeboat captain.
The confounded computer instantly sprang back to life.
True to his word, though, our rescuer arrived. He sat with a sandwich and a cup of tea and went to work; in no time at all he found the program (who thinks up these daft spellings?) responsible for the adverts and got rid of it. He also went to town on the myriad minor games and space stealers cluttering up the works. When he finished I was still custodian of The Chamber of Secrets, still held captive The Prisoner of Azkaban, had lost Finding Nemo and had parted company with assorted games that I could not remember seeing or playing.
For a couple of days after he left everything moved a little bit faster: Windows…Google…the hands on the clock…my chair…everything!
Then, a couple of nights back, the screen started turning itself off and on. Don’t know why. I shan’t bother the computer lifeboat captain yet.
Could be just tiredness: mine and the computer’s.
Ho hum.
BACK TO THE BOX.
Comings and goings.
If I had a system that would record half a dozen programmes and allow me to watch yet another, all at the same time, there are evenings on television when I could be using the lot. There are also entire prime viewing hours when there is such a paucity of anything worthwhile to see that Planner becomes an absolute necessity. Oh well…
Game of Thrones is back, with many of the good, the bad and the ugly still in evidence. Grimm came back, and Castle and Dr. Who and (all too briefly) Foyle’s War.
Apart from Foyle, the departing series we shall most miss is Person of Interest, a premise so implausible it rings true. Jim Caviezel (below right), playing John Reese and Michael Emerson (below left), playing Harold Finch, are perfectly cast as are Taraji P. Henson and Kevin Chapman as their - initially unwilling - police helpers. Great viewing.
Almost a couple of conversations
Children in grandson Ellis’s class (7 - 8 years old) are now being given the opportunity to take swimming lessons in school time. Following assembly on Monday mornings they are taken to a popular Island swimming pool for tuition. The whole session takes about a couple of hours and Ellis loves it.
“But if it’s over before lunch,” his grandmother just had to know, “what do you do when you get back to school?”
“Lessons,” he replied with a shrug.
She, bless her, was suitably disarmed. I am made of sterner stuff.
“What lessons, buddy?” I inquired wickedly. “Pythagoras? Euclid?”
He eyed me for a moment and his eyes shone as he delivered the riposte:
“No-o-o-o, Boo, it’s not Hogwarts.”
We had four days of sunshine - which could be our entire summer - so I took the opportunity to go hatless on my afternoon jaunt to collect the little buddy from school.
He bustled across the playground, peering up at me with his head on one side and a speculative expression on his face.
“You’re white, Boo,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed that before.”
I accepted his book bag and his empty lunch box, in the way that a dutiful elderly retainer does, puzzling the while, vaguely, whether racism had finally become part of the modern primary school curriculum.
Sensing my confusion, he said: “Your hair…it’s white…I hadn’t noticed ‘til now…” then, tilting his head the other way and clearly bent on accuracy, he added: “Not that side, though. You’re still grey that side. You’ve just gone white this side.”
I grinned and shook my head. Well, what can you say?
As we set off for home I think I may have glimpsed, way away in the sky over the school, the flying figure of a departing Peter Pan.
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