Laws

This is an interesting website Megans Law operating in California.
Observe the distribution of sex offenders in an area and the idividuals themselves, their location and offence record. See if you can find any common facial attributes and thus revive the scientific fortune of phrenology - who knows its demise might be soley down to political correctness. Try to work out how John Reid will promise this sort of thing but get out of delivering anything at all.
Personally I dont care whether they introduce it or not, I might find it amusing if they did. Reason is on the side of those that say 'No' , but then reason is dead.
I used to watch/listen to Question Time years ago. But now I cannot bear to hear it.
If through error I arrive , via my remote control, at;
1) Question Time
2) Bazuka that ferruca
or
3) The advert with the hordes of aggressive women marching into some city square demanding sanitary towells.
I immediately change channels.
I am not sure what the connection is between this stuff and the Megan's Law bit but since reason is dead there doesnt have to be one.

Fête

Just this minute returned from the annual Church fête at the vicarage.
Won a very small bottle of indian tonic water on the bottle stall and bought a bottle of home made elderflower cordial. Brecon Town band playing well.

Tea in the refreshment tent only 25p in a china cup and saucer. I gave them a £1 and told them to keep the change. Does that make me a Philanthropist?

Not too well attended while I was there but it began filling up as I left - I dont think the two events are connected.

Now Ive got to spend 3 hours cutting our grass and probably will have to go into the office sometime before Monday for another 3 hours to sort out my work. I have noticed recently that if I have a problem case I have this ability to 'walk away from it in my head' - I dont have to 'walk' very far before it is lost completely .

Pork Sushi

They say we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
I think I might just have.
My son at 15 marinated some chicken.
I came home from work as he was going out and he said to me.
“There is some chicken in the fridge you can have”.
When he’d gone I took out the chicken and ate some.
It tasted lousy but as he had made it specially I persevered but even so gave up half way through the dish.
When he came back late at night he asked me if I liked the chicken.
I lied ‘yes but I couldn’t eat it all’.
He went to the fridge and saw the remains.
“You did cook it?” he asked nervously , and I swiftly realised my error.
My sausages arrived from France at last.
I began eating a long thinnish one at the beginning of the week.
It smelled disgusting and wasn’t very pleasant but nevertheless I ate my way through about a fifth of it.
Today I fried the rest and it tasted quite good, quite civilised.
Here is a picture of the wrapper. I cant see anything to suggest that I shouldn’t have eaten it in its original form but I know more sophisticated pallets than mine occasionally drop by here so perhaps they could pass judgement.

Grandmaster

The shame of it - I wasnt going to show you this, and not just for aesthetic reasons. I went to the Gouesnou chess club and played this young chap (thats the one seated nearest the camera). I lost the first two games!! uuuugh!.I won the next 4 thank God and toyed with the idea of letting it be known that I had allowed him to win the first two.
The last time I played a difficult 10 year old was at Gwbert on Sea at least 10 years ago. He was very strong although it is possible that his feet didnt quite reach the floor while seated. I really needed a win but my position was deteriorating until the best I could hope for was a draw. I couldnt even be sure of a draw though and so I was obliged to adopt some shameful tactics. I lit a cigarette and gently blew the smoke towards him. I can still see him now, poor little chap, rubbing his eyes and looking like it was well past his bed time. I did get the draw though.

More excitement

3 weeks ago while hanging on the phone waiting for, first Norwich Union and then Legal & General to put me through to a human being I traced my mothers ancestry from my mother back to 1801 in Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire. All I had to help was my grandmothers maiden name Hudson, her year of birth 1880 and the annoying music coming from the Norwich Unions automated switchboard.

Iv’e got a life and this is it

For more than a year now, every month, I get a monthly statement from Citi- bank showing 50 pence outstanding on a credit card account I cancelled more than a year ago.
Businesses strive to increase their profit margins and I would like to increase my pleasure margins by taking the next paying in slip that they send and paying in 49 pence. This would reduce the balance outstanding to 1 penny. A bit like a kind of financial homeopathy the less there is the more potent is the effect . (so Im told)
I don’t want to trigger anything like an intelligent response that might cut off these letters though. Decisions , decisions.

Are they still up?

Searching the net for the whereabouts of Richard O'Sullivan , 'Man about the House' and occupant of 'Robins Nest' I find him resident in a nursing home having suffered by all accounts a stroke, alcoholism and manic depression.
While in bad taste Death List does at least reveal the names of some people you perhaps will be surprised to learn are still alive.
Lady Bird Johnson for example.
I think it was Lyndon Johnson who said something like, 'He has pissed on his last campfire' , which is quite a good way of describing my own attempted despoiling of the awful Pearl Assurance sales meetings I was forced to attend.

Call of Duty

We had the Mothers Union round to our house on Tuesday for a meeting.
This is a very good Christian organisation for women.
Unusually the leader of the group engaged in some kind of semi scripted exercise which involved asking the members. “What is the biggest gift you have received?”
Nobody spoke and so my wife Ann to be helpful replied ‘A bicycle’.
This was duly acknowledged and then one other of the group volunteered the probably more sought after answer “Well I suppose the gift of life”.
I was on the computer killing Germans while this was going on.

From your Dance Critic

Here is a picture of a Welsh Dance troupe that accompanied us on the ‘twinning’ to Brittany. They looked pretty good but the jigging didn’t strike me as ‘Welsh’ – not that I would know anything about it. It seemed to me rather like something contrived –‘this is how we would imagine Welsh dancing to be if there were such a thing’.The Breton dancing though really did feel as if it had been around for centuries evolving like one of Darwins finches in the isolation of an enclave.

The Ontology of the Sausage and other trivia

Captain Oates would never have turned up again a few days later stuck his head in the tent and announced 'I've just come back for a bit.'
Anyway I have returned but it may not be for long.
Here is a picture of a 'cheese and wine party' attended during the week.
Thats Lord Bingham talking to our vicar.
A few years ago I remember the vicar, worried about possible lack of attendance at the Church fête, saying. " Ive managed to persuade Lord Bingham to open it so at least the IRA should turn up".
On the subject of food I inadvertently left my sausages in Brittany last week.
Our host has arranged for somebody staying on for a further week to bring them back. I wanted to take a picture of myself with knife and fork at the ready and insert a caption along the lines of 'and even as he sat his sausage had set sail for the shores of Wales'. I wasn't sure about the expression 'set sail' and also 'even as' and so used the Yahoo question site to ask someone. A lady called Vaness said she was French and gave me the translation. However she pointed out that I should use the plural of the word sausage, as there is a possibility it might be confused with a penis. I was brought up on 'Carry on ' films and so I find such pathetic jokes hysterical and it is of course what I intended. I don’t know whether she meant this as a genuine correction or if she was merely expressing her contempt that I should think it was funny. By the way in this part of Wales the plural of sausage is indeed sausage. They don’t ask for a pound of sausages but a pound of sausage.
Although each sausage is unquestionably a separate entity the apparently illogical unity imposed upon these spatially separate entities illustrates a different way of thinking about it/them. He who says sausage and not sausages thinks of the world differently just as he who ends his sentence with a verb has a subtley different world view. Thats why I wish I could speed up learning French as I am getting a bit bored with the present perspective.

Hay Festival starts today

I'm just going outside, and may be some time

Lie in at the Home Office

2,000 people wrongly labled as criminals

The Home office says it makes "no apology for erring on the side of caution"
Interesting statement. Gives the impression that these were not errors at all.
If what they say is true then there should be no cases of the third type ie convicted criminals who were missed by this process. I bet there are good few of these too and the "no apology for erring on the side of caution" line is just a bit of opportunism like John Reid's catching of the illegal immigrants on their 'first' visit to the Home Office.

Trade with China

Ive just had this idea for a novelty Christmas present suitable to give to a UK boss.
I don’t know anything about porcelain but maybe there is some thing minimalist and shiny white available in China that could form the elegant basis of my product.
The idea is for the buyer to compose a suitable insult which is then translated and hand painted onto the cup/mug/teapot in Chinese. If they cant think of anything suitable there would be a readymade list of insults from which to choose allowing them to combine the correct sentiment with the artistic expression thereof.
I am sure it would look extremely elegant – the boss would have a nice present and the employee would have the satisfaction of knowing that every time he raised the cup to his lips he would be announcing to the world ‘May this gweilo burn in eternal damnation.’ Or something better.

A few more Bits near the bottom

Galileo said that the earth moved around the sun instead of vice versa and ever afterwards we laugh at anybody who talks of the sun going round the earth.
But as I understand it we can use either description without being wrong its just that one explanation, the Galileo explanation is simpler. I doubt whether most of those who laugh at the sun round the earth model are up to the simpler mathematics necessary to describe the Galileon orbit never mind anything else. Neither the sun nor the earth are fixed in space and so to grant the sun real priority is as unjustified or as justified as regarding the Earth as the centre of the universe.


Ann’s Aunty Sunday 28th October 2005
‘Ive lost interest in that old Millionaire. They are playing for charity. I suppose they don’t care whether they win or not.’
And on another Sunday in 1992
‘They are both very poorly – him and her- you know they asked S where they could get a cooked chicken for Christmas’

Russian Proverb
You can feed the wolf but he still looks towards the forest.

I see I made a note of a Henry Blofeld commentary in August 1996 as a bouncer was delivered.
‘He backed away from that and it was so close it almost knocked the drip off the end of his nose’

Chess and the No Claims Bonus

Here is another idea for the psychologist to research.
If you play chess regularly you get a grade, a number, and this number accurately reflects your playing abilities – unfortunately.
I saw a TV program years ago about good driving. It was proposed that good drivers recognise changing patterns in the road as they drive – bad drivers dont. Seemed plausible to me.
Back to chess – a good chess player is one who above all else recognises changing patterns in the game. A good chess player contrary to popular notion is not primarily a good calculator.
Given those two pieces of information it occurs to me that a good chess player should be a better motor insurance risk than a bad chess player. The chess grading system puts a number to, quantifies, the players ability and if the idea holds the chess grade should correlate with the driving ability.
To test the theory would be simple and would cost hardly anything – comparing chess grades and claims records. It would also be a cheap piece of publicity for the insurance company doing the research as it is just the kind of thing the press love.

Table turning

Mon 8 May 2006 @ 13:45 Pivot Tables Mon amour Post #1

Douglas Mcleod I have just discovered that Pivot Tables are magic. I think I will go on and see if there is anything in these new fangled portable telephones.


Mon 8 May 2006 @ 15:50 Re: Pivot Tables Mon amour Post #2

alan johnston is that like a swivel chair, ma cherie?Alan Johnstonwww.morelandinsurance.co.uk

Waiting for Egg O

I have just been looking up some hotels on Trip advisor very good for the invaluable contributions of disgruntled guests getting their own back for having an almost full English going cold on their plate while they wait their turn to take delivery of a separately cooked fried egg. That’s always a problem though isn’t it? Not the fried egg – but have they remembered me?
I noticed a reference to a ‘turkey & tinsel weekend.’ My sister has been on a couple of these – surely one real Christmas is sufficient?
She was the youngest on this coach trip a mere 57 year old. I think it was early November, about 4 weeks after the shops first start hard selling Christmas proper.
They were taken to a hotel by coach and then over the next 4 days inside the hotel, it was Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and then even more anachronistically New Years Eve , while outside in the real world shop salesmen fretted about their targets and wondered whether a Christmas bonanza was ever going to take off.
What I thought was funny though was New Years Eve in the hotel.
Just like all the other days the owners strove for authenticity and New Years Eve in early November consisted of a New Years Eve party with the climax being the countdown to midnight. However due to the advanced age of most of the revellers it was requested that the hotel clock be put forward two hours so that they could all get to bed by 10.30 real time.

Nigel Tokely in my sock drawer another mystery solved

Me to them

Dear Sirs,
I wonder if you can help me .
While cleaning out my sock drawer I found a small circular buttonlike object with Nigel Tokely Broadstone G.C inscribed on it. Any ideas what it is and how I may have come by it?
Only idle curiosity on my part.
thanks

Them to me
Dear Mr McLeod
Nigel was the Head Professional from 1984 until last week. Nigel often had ball markers made, such as you suggest.

Kind regards

Still there

Just received the following disapointing email from the Pledge Bank

We are sorry to have to inform you that the pledge to which you
signed up did not meet its target in the required time. It
required 100000 other people, but achieved only 150.

The pledge, created by Tim Ireland, read: 'I will pledge £10 to
a cash prize fund to be awarded to the person who proves Tony
Blair is a liar and prompts that PM's removal or resignation as
a result, but only if 100,000 other people will too.'

Play this

Humiliation

I am an expert jay walker. I worked in the Strand for a number of years and in the City before that..
I could squeeze through the narrowest of quickly closing gaps, my spatial awareness bordering on the miraculous. I could have been a bull fighter of the most artistic kind but I didn’t like the idea of killing, or the idea of flying to Spain come to that.
Today in this hick town of Llandrindod I was humiliated in the most dreadful manner. The road is an ordinary two way road of moderate traffic density. I looked right – one car in the distance. I looked left – a stream of cars moving at less than 30 mph but an easy gap between the leading taxi and the next car. I walked into the centre of the road and waited for the taxi to pass me when I would quickly move in behind it cross the remaining six feet and the car behind the taxi would not even have to slow up.
Elementary jaywalking well within my city developed abilities. But the bastard taxi driver stopped and waved me across with his index finger like I was some old pensioner!
Still I suppose from a driver’s point of view it is an excellent stroke to pull and I was reminded of that book/film about Lifemanship written by Stephen somebody or other and starring Alister Sims, Terry Thomas and Ian Carmichael.