Life in the trenches

I'm disappointed, but not surprised that the Political Pygmies (apologies to any pygmies reading this) have been playing their games at the Tower of London.  What should be just a fleeting memorial to the casualties of the Great War, has been seized on by politicians of all colours to gain an extra point in the popularity polls.  The poppies took several months to install, and will take several weeks to dismantle (my turn for picking is this weekend, after planting back in August), so there was never any question that they would magically disappear over night.  Sometimes.  No not sometimes, usually, politicians make me want to wretch.

The title of this post is rather a poor joke reflecting that today is Remembrance Day, and actually refers to our current distraction.  We are having building work done.  It started in October and will continue until April, at least.  They've done the demolition, and if drilling piles down ten metres can be considered progress, we are already into the construction phase. But the back garden does still resemble the Somme.

A complete family

I'm pretty upset to have been reading some statistics recently.  The average salary of a quoted company CEO is 130 times that of the average wage.  5 million people in the UK live beneath the official poverty line.  How can that possibly be?  What has happened to the concept of a fairer society.  One where we are all rewarded for our endeavours?  The poverty line statistic is utterly disgraceful, the CEO statistic is shameful.  How come 'Greed is good' has ceased to be a satirical line in a Hollywood movie and instead a life philosophy?  The salaries of top earners are way way beyond what they can spend in any way, let alone whether they deserve it or not.  I've often pondered what might be a reasonable annual salary for a top earner..one that allows them to live a luxurious lifestyle, but that does not represent exploitation...I rarely get above a few hundred thousand quids.  That's a massive amount by any standards, and beyond that it is just pure evil greed.  Having met and socialised with people whose wealth would make your eyes water, it never ceases to amaze me how clever, clever they think they are, how deserving they think they are and how resolutely detached they feel from the dreadful state that western societies are in.  The rapid concentration of wealth in the bank accounts of fewer and fewer people cannot be anything other than bad...and sooner or later it must bite back.

 I wonder if any of my Facebook friends have noticed that I've stopped clicking the 'like' button...I will comment on posts, or share, but not click like.  I saw somebody had suggested as a way of  'transforming my Facebook experience'.  I wouldn't say it's done that, but it does make me think a little bit more about what people are posting and why..so I'd say I get more out of it than I used to.

If you're wondering, and there's no reason you should be, I'm currently running about a fortnight, nearly three weeks in fact in fact make that four weeks), behind with my blog posting...so a bit like looking at a nebula, all the action happened a little while ago.

It was my brother's birthday in early October, and we always meet up for dinner. There's one thing he always is.  Prompt.  To the second.  He's never late.  So it was of some concern that we were sat in the restaurant for quite a while without him and his other half.  Eventually I texted, and a few moments later they walked in.  I'd say a little sheepishly; they'd deny it.  As it happens the reason they were late was because they'd been in the car park.  Not just sitting there.  They'd bought a new campervan...practically on the way to see us, so were excitedly exploring their new purchase.  No doubt they'll have many happy weeks exploring the English countryside...but hopefully not at the moment as we're currently enjoying the tail end of a hurricane the Atlantic has sent us.

The next day we jetted off to Cyprus for a few days to see Grandma and Grandpa.  It's a trip we've been promising for months, but it has proved difficult to juggle all our commitments...if only they lived just down the road we could drop in for a cup of tea and piece of cake every week.  A five-hour flight, and the clock being two hours ahead mean that flying out there effectively you lose a day.  So we left  comfortably in the morning and arrived in time for a late dinner.  A few days in Cyprus is lovely...enough to get some sunshine and a bit of relaxation and to catch up on how life is for Grandma and Grandpa in Cyprus.  My brother followed us a week afterwards...and even sent back a photo of the local launderette for the launderette blog

Bloody immigrants

I can't believe we allow any damned foreigner to come into the country, steal our jobs, our food, our houses....and our women.  It's a disgrace.  They're just slackers.  I'd put them all back on a leaky boat to where they come from.

Anyway, here's a picture that's currently being used by the Tirolean Tourist Board to promote the region.  The skier on the right is McFred.  What a fine lad...and how adventurous of him to have got a job in Austria last year, found somewhere to live whilst he romanced the local girls and enjoyed the local cuisine.

Completely exhausted

I've somewhat lost the thread of this post which I wrote a week ago and then forgot to post...it may not be finished, but I don't have the energy to re-read it....

We had a somewhat eclectic weekend the one before last.

Friday night was high culture with a performance at the National of Ballyturk.  I hadn't been paying too much attention so had assumed it was a dance piece called Ballet Turkish.  We were four rows from the front which is normally good, but in this case it was a bit of a shame.  I have developed this incurable habit of dropping off during Act 1 of anything, and this was a one act play.  I'm sure it's the perfect actors play, and the parts were played very well, especially Stephen Rea who we last saw on TV in the Honourable Woman.  But, but, but you know it's emperors new clothes when even the programme says you don't need to understand it to enjoy it.  Essentially from start to finish it was two men screaming at each other.  That was the performance.  Two of us 'got it'...it was inside a traumatised child's head.  You may enjoy it, and I wanted to but no.

Saturday evening was spent in the company of John Richardson who is a very funny man indeed.  I'm not a great one for stand up comedy, but he pulled it off very well and it was a very enjoyable evening thanks to my friend Graeme and his girlfriend Vetty.  They enjoyed themselves too, but the evening ended badly for them when they returned to their parked car to find they had a flat tyre...and no spare.  We'd already left so didn't find out until later when we were cursing the rubbish Tube service.  We got home about 11.30, they finally arrived home at 2.30, short of £200.

That was unfortunate for Graeme, as the next day he was taking part in a 45 mile cycle from Palace (Buckingham) to Palace (Windsor) (Yes, I know it's a castle...don't split hairs.

I arrived nice and early at the start line clad in lycra...the penalty of being sponsored by a corporate.  Still I was able to take this view from Waterloo Bridge.  Glorious eh?

We all set off for a very, very pleasant ride through the south of and west of London...the absolute highlight for me was to see the stags in Richmond Park which were absolutely magnificent...I wish I could have got pictures.  Here are our team:

I was lucky enough to be caught by one of the professional photographers

I was pretty relaxed at the end as it had all been done at a leisurely pace...

Complete nonsense

I may have suggested in my last post that I hadn't been up to much.  A quiet weekend?  Complete nonsense.  I have ants in my pants.  A couple of weekends ago we spent the Saturday wandering round the Henry Moore Foundation...I've mentioned it before, and then on the Sunday we spent most of the day wandering around the Olympic Park.  This was unfortunate as we'd left the lights on the car which meant we were left stranded outside the Aquatic Centre.  Fortunately I've always relied on the kindness of strangers, and sure enough one came along and agreed to let us jump start off their car.  The reason for our wanderings was my need to take some pictures for my photocourse...sadly the aim was not to make great works of art, but rather understand some technical challenges.