the rest

is silence.

do not go gentle

into that good night


I think we've seen enough raging in these parts, particularly back in the early days, and that our work here is now done.


For those who require assistance with their pitiful mortal dilemmas we will remain accessible by email until such time as our holiday home freezes over.


~ if you have been, thank you for reading.

Age Appropriate?

Went shopping yesterday with a clutch of my christmas book tokens.

Bought Cormac McCarthy's The Road (which I note is a short book, spread out thin across the pages to look like a bigger book) and the latest John Grisham - on Buy one Get one Half Price - for myself, and three large, full colour wildlife and general reference books to keep on hand for my nephew.

He is due to visit next weekend, and last year when he came by there was a bit of a problem that we had nothing for him to do in the quiet times before and after lunch. We had tried at the last minute to buy a wildlife magazine at the local supermarket but hadn't been able to find one, and the failure was glaringly awkward.

It may sound like this is a worry about nothing, but with special educational needs our nephew has an interest level way behind his chronological age of 18+, so that nothing we have in the house these days is remotely suitable for him.

Better late than never then, I have realised we need to keep a Rummage Box ready for visits, where nephew can root around for something to catch his eye. And to this end I have bought the books, a couple of 'educational' games for early readers and counters, and the beginnings of a collection of plastic animals. Very small beginnings it has to be said, due to the outlay on other items.

Next time I will hope to add some larger and more dramatic models including items from the ever-popular dinosaur family!

Chewing the Fat

There's been a bit of a public debate this week about whether heavily obese people should be able to get weight reduction surgery free of cost on the National Health Service.

Different people have different views, but one opinion that's expressed quite commonly is that there are overweight people who have tried their best with diets over the years, but diets just don't work for them so that they need the extra help offered by surgery.

And I think I may have uncovered the reason why their dieting fails:

We were shown a short piece to camera by one woman who was making a sandwich while telling us about her failure to lose weight - and we watched her ladle that butter (or low fat spread, or mayo, or whatever) onto the bread in a layer thick enough to swim in, making sure to cover every minute corner.

The notion of a thin scrape of butter and not bothering to go to the edges, had apparently not occurred to her. Or to her health advisors.

Return Confirmed

of the wonderful chocolate superfood that is the Ritter Square.

After its strange absence last year, Christmas found supplies back on the regular shelves and to my great delight several examples found their way into my Christmas stocking.

There's just nothing quite like them!

New President - New Language?

Heard an interesting new word the other day - a radio commentator was talking about President Obama's administration and towards the end of the piece he came out with the brilliant contraction: Obamastration.

But perhaps people have been saying that for the last fourteen months and I've just missed it?

Those who can't ...

...won't be allowed to teach if the next UK government has its way.

News that there is a plan afoot to restrict teaching to top graduates only, reminded me of a rather mean joke I heard some years ago.

When a university lecturer walks in and says Good morning, the students take no notice.

When a polytechnic lecturer walks in and says Good morning, the students respond by saying Good morning.

When a lecturer in a teacher training college walks in and says Good morning, the students break up into groups and discuss it.

Oh dear.

happy new year!

we seem to have survived christmas without actual murder taking place - though there were one or two pretty vivid threats.

now packing for a few days away in our favourite villa-in-the-forest. hope threatened snowfall doesn't block the route.

moderately successful so far in blocking thoughts of work - still another week to go before we need to think about getting the packed lunches together...

the festive season

is about to get festiver in these parts.

Friday night is the works Xmas party (though Scrooge here is hoping to make the usual excuses and leave at the earliest possible moment), and Saturday sees us make the 400 mile round trip to visit family for the day and exchange gifts.

Which means Thursday evening, after the seasonal supermarket trip, fighting off the other shoppers no doubt, will have to be catch-up night for getting everything wrapped and ribboned for the trip south on Saturday.

So this might be my last visit to the blogosphere for a few days. We do have an outing planned for Sunday as well - a very civilized visit to an upmarket patisserie/tea shop for a Christmas special Afternoon Tea. We went last year for the first time and thought it was an absolute delight, and can't wait to try it again.

We'll let you know how it goes!

Fire and Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice."


All the newstalk about Copenhagen brought a half-forgotten snippet back to my mind.

I seem to remember being told in a school geography lesson that the earth is currently in an interglacial period that is overdue for ending - giving us all nightmares about waking up the following week to find ourselves surrounded by woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers, about to be pulverised by a huge glacier.

And now the talk is about destroying the climate with the heating effects of CO2.

So surely that's ok then - the CO2 blanket will preserve us from the upcoming glaciation.

Problem solved.

is progress good for us?

Just as I was leaving for work this morning an interesting moment launched itself down the radio waves into my kitchen.

We heard that the early humans used to potter about in their small groups hunting passing game; gathering a handful of berries here, digging a tasty carrot-ancestor there. And apart from having a lifespan of some 20+ years were by and large pretty healthy.

Then they discovered Farming. And proper villages grew up where the villagers spent all their time tilling and sowing and eating completely the wrong sort of food (sliced white and all that). And when one chap got a germ, he passed it on to all the others.

And really it's been pretty much downhill ever since.

So much for the man with the beagle then (wasn't that Captain Archer?), getting it all A over T. He should have been pronouncing on the survival of the UNfittest.

moral decline

I have just won a lengthy battle with the cellophane wrapping on a box of liqueur chocolates I had bought to give as a Christmas gift. I haven't yet decided whether guilt or a sense of triumph is the stronger emotion.

By the time I've eaten a few more of the chocolates I will probably be past caring...

bored, board, bored

We've been put on notice that over Christmas we have to play board games, board games, board games - and worst news of all, Santa will be delivering Monopoly City so there will be absolutely No Escape from that.

I would so much rather lose myself in a book, or one of my (25!) cds. Or even play a few hands of cards. Board games have never been my bag.

Except for one - a brilliant game called Careers, which has been with me since I was rising 13. You could choose to be a Film Star; a Sailor in the South Seas gathering happiness points; a Business Man; a University Student and increase all your subsequent earnings; or best of all and always my choice - an Astronaut, and take a trip to the moon. Heady stuff way back then!

WISE up!

It's been a busy year for astronomy and space travel - appropriately in this International Year of Astronomy.

The latest gadget to get off the blocks is the amazing Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer - the name tortured into shape so it could be known in brief as WISE.

This all-seeing eye can look at and look out for objects in the furthest reaches of inter-galactic space. The last infrared scope offered only four pixels (can you imagine such a thing?) while WISE has four million, so the quality of the images is expected to be outstanding.

As always at such times we hope the objects detected will not include candid snaps of yours truly at leisure with a group of willing nymphs; we must remind ourselves at those private moments to draw closed the curtains of invisibility.

only in england

With the UK hosting the olympics in 2012 they get a choice in which events will take place.

Last time out Team GB were a big success in the velodrome, in particular winning gold in both the men's and women's Individual Pursuit.

There has been a decision to level up the number of men's and women's events at five each (fair enough) and one of the solutions would include dropping the individual pursuits.

Surely this option wouldn't be considered. Would it??

Oh dear, it just has been. And adopted. Leaving two of our gold medallists without their specialist disciplines and with only a handful of months to rejig their training, their outlook, their optimism.

Only in England, indeed.