Pleeeeeez!!?

When I was a young lad and the hormones were raging, I always had this idea that my perfect job would be a bra-fitter.  But now, as a result of a Wimbledon edict, there is the opportunity for an even better one - ladies' underwear checker!!

How to start the day?

I have no particular views on the worthiness - or otherwise - of Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the European Commission, but what on earth is wrong with having cognac for breakfast, as he is said to do?  It's pretty common (or used to be) in Spain and Italy to start the day with a carajillo (coffee with a slug of Spanish brandy) or caffè corretto (the slug in Italy being grappa).  Just because we have this "not until the sun's over the yardarm" approach here, doesn't make it wrong for others to have a different attitude as to the appropriate time to have a drink. And Churchill by all accounts was over the limit most of the time.  Rather think those who aren't keen on Juncker in that post are frantically scrabbling around for negative things to say about him.

World Cup

So we're now down to the final 16 and it's time to ask yourself if you think you've seen the winner, and if you are so inclined, to put your money where your mouth is.  Brazil understandably are favourites, but the best you can get on them is 7/2 which I don't think represents value for money. I'm not sure that Germany at 4s is any better.  Holland at 8s is much more attractive and if you want a real punt how about Costa Rica at 50/1?  Or you can do as I do and keep your money in your pocket - at least for the time being.

The Lazy Cook

Mentioned scrambled eggs to my daughter-on-law (of Punjabi heritage) the other day "Oh, you really want to try Indian eggs" she said,  So here's her recipe -
Beat your eggs and put them to one side to rest.
In your frying pan, or wok, put a small handful of cumin seeds and dry-fry them until they start to crackle and pop
Add some crushed garlic, crushed ginger, chopped onions and green chillies
Sauté until the onions start to colour
Add some chopped tomatoes and cook until they have gone into a mush
Now add a little butter (ghee if you want to be authentic) and the eggs and stir until scrambled
And there you are - like most Indian home recipes the quantities are left to you, particularly when it come to spices - you may for instance wish to consider whether to de-seed the chillies.

But Doctor....

As someone well into his 70s - indeed closer to 80 - I was gobsmacked (there's a good oldfashioned word) to find that my doctor can throw me off his list (de-register is the official expression) even though I have done nothing wrong - indeed done nothing, full stop.  Not that I have any reason to think he will do any such thing, but apparently there are those like me around the country who are being de-registered simply because their doctor has too many patients.  Of course the immediate reaction is that if a doctor cannot cope with any more patients, should he or she simply stop taking any new patients on, rather than getting rid of existing ones? The cynic in me wonders if this is about time and money - are older, probably less healthy patients more demanding and expensive?  Touch wood, I am in reasonably good health, but it does make you think, doesn't it?

One law for them...

Can I add my name to the list of those expressing annoyance (or even anger) at the fact that a Headmaster of a primary school in Leicester has taken a fortnight off in term time - apparently so he can go to Brazil and watch the World Cup.  Given that he seems to be a good Head, and assuming that appropriate arrangements were made to cover his absence, you might think that there's little wrong with that, but of course the negative emotions arise from the fact that parents are now forbidden from taking their children out of school to go on holiday - indeed for any reason - on pain of being heavily fined.  So it's "Do as I say, not do as I do"?

Get thee behind me...

I see the Church of England is set to simplify the service of Baptism by removing references to the devil.  Depending on which particular order of service is being used, parents and godparents are presently asked whether, on behalf of the child, they "renounce the devil and all his works" or some similar wording, and it is felt that this can put people off.  Reading this, I was reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story of a man on his deathbed (usually given as Voltaire) who was asked by his priest to renounce Satan, and is said to have replied something like "Oh, come now, this is no time to be making new enemies".

Strewth!!

Cressida Dick, who is apparently our "anti-terrorism chief" has gone on record warning about the threat to this country arising out of Islamic extremism in Syria and Iraq.  Now remind me - isn't this the same Cressida Dick who was in charge of the bungled operation which led to the death (oh, come on, let's call it what it was - execution) of Jean Charles de Menezes back in 2005?  I don't know whether I find that ironic, or just very, very worrying!

I can see your knickers!

A headmaster at a school in the Isle of Wight has sent some 200-odd girls home for having skirts which were too short.  He maintains that he was merely enforcing the school's uniform code.  Now I know that schoolchildren - boys as well as girls - will "push the envelope" on uniforms and vie with each other to see what they can get away with, but there's another aspect to this, which is that children have this annoying habit of growing, and what was a skirt which fell well below the knee at the start of the school year, may well have crept above the knee by year-end, and most parents wait until the long summer holiday to re-kit their children for the new school year.  Given that we're just coming up to the six-week holiday, did the Head take this into account?

World Cup postmortem

How could the same starting eleven players who played so well against Italy (albeit they lost) play so dismally against Uruguay?  I know very little about the technicalities of football and I have no answer, but against Italy we looked (for the first time in ages) like a team, like we knew what we were doing, like we had a plan, and like we were capable of scoring goals.  Yet against Uruguay we were back to looking clueless, disjointed, and lacking any sort of penetration.  And it doesn't take a footballing genius to point out that three (and you could argue all four) of the goals scored against us were the result of basic defensive errors, so perhaps that's where we should be concentrating our efforts to improve.  Anyway, that's it for another couple of years. Hope springs eternal!

We have border controls, don't we?

There seems to be a real danger that some Brits who have gone to Syria or Iraq to fight with the hardline Islamists will come back to this country and seek to cause atrocities here.  But surely we must know who these people are?  And given the difficulties and delays which we all face in trying to get back in to this country when we go abroad, we ought to be able to intercept these people and either deny them entry, or hold them in detention centres until they can prove they are not a danger to us.  Let's at least get something positive out of our opting out of the Schengen Agreement, eh?

Wishful thinking.

So there is no truth in the old story that there is a correlation between the size of a man's feet and the size of a certain other part of his anatomy?  Good news for me (size 7) but I think my late wife would be disappointed.  I once asked her how women judged a man on first acquaintance.  "Oh, simple" she said "Face first, then fingernails, then shoe size".

Book Post

(see post of 18/11/06)

Ed McBain - Jigsaw - 8.5
Nick Holland - The Girl on the Bus - 5 
David Baldacci - The Innocent - 8 
Ed James - Ghost in the Machine - 7
C J Sansom - Dominion - 8
Lee Child - Running Blind - 7
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief - 7 
Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling) - The Cuckoo's Calling - 6.5
Gordon Ferris - Truth Dare Kill - 8 
Mark Sennen - Cut Dead - 7.5

Law of (un)foreseen consequences?

If you've not come across John Oliver on HBO's "Last Week Tonight" I urge you to have a look - you can find it on YouTube.  He's a British comedian (in fact he's a Brummie) who takes a humourous look at topics in the news.  His take on the World Cup and Fifa really is a must-see.  Anyway, one of his topics was about the "right to be forgotten" business with Google - see post of 16th May.  And he made the point that the man who started all this is now known world-wide as the man who once had to put his house up for sale to pay his debts - precisely the fact that he wanted concealed!  What brought this to mind is the recent go-slow protest by London taxicab drivers who are complaining about an app called Uber which allows you to find and book a cab online, and as a result what was a little-known app is now known to just about everybody and far more people are likely to use it.  Think it's called shooting yourself in the foot.

We should be ashamed.

Remember Christopher Tappin?  If not, read my post dated 18/2/12.  And then read his account of what happened to him after he was extradited to America.  It's a sorry and shocking indictment of the American justice system and prison regime, and if there's any reason why we should look again at the extradition treaty between our countries, this is it.  But has our Home Secretary got the guts or the will to do anything about it?  I'm not holding my breath!

It is your destiny...

Iraq is back in the news for all the wrong reasons, and a town which seems to be in the thick of things at the moment is Samara, some way to the north of Baghdad. And this brought to mind an old old story concerning a rich Baghdad merchant who sent his servant to the market one day to buy provisions.  The servant returned quickly very upset, and said that he had seen Death in the marketplace and Death had given him a strange look, and the servant begged his master to lend him a horse, so that he might ride off to Samara and safety.  And his master was a good man and agreed, so the servant saddled a fast horse and rode away.  Then the merchant felt cross that he had lost a good servant (not to mention a horse), and determined to go down to the market, find Death and give him a piece of his mind. So he did that, saw Death and asked him what he thought he was playing at.  "Oh, I'm sorry" said Death "I didn't mean to frighten him.  It was just that I was surprised to see him here in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight - in Samara".

Pass the dictionary...

OK - define "racist".  I ask because lately it seems to have become a catch-all word - one of those which, in the words of Humpty Dumpty "means just what I choose it to mean".  Back in simpler times, it meant someone who didn't like coloured people, or more specifically, treated them differently because of the colour of their skin. But today it seems to have an extended meaning of anyone who objects to anybody coming here from anywhere else.  What would at one time have been called a xenophobe.  Of course, what constitutes "here" and "anywhere else" can vary from person to person. It all depends on whether you see yourself as English (or Welsh or Scottish), British or European.  So - are you a racist?

Friggatriskaidekaphobia!

We all know that Friday the 13th is unlucky - but I imagine most of us just ignore the combination of day and date and get on with our lives.  But apparently, there are enough people who take the superstition seriously to cause significant changes in certain aspects of life.  A website which tracks the cost of air travel has found that flying today can save you anything up to 25% compared with other days this month. And it's not just in this country, but over most of Europe it seems.  By the way, if you want to know why it's considered unlucky, see my post dated 13/10/2007.

Finger-nail biting time?

Back in January or February I countersigned a passport application for a friend of mine.  I asked her when she was going away and she said "Oh, not until August, but I want to get ahead of the game".  It would appear that there are some thousands of people who would have done well to follow her example, because the Passport Office is at present struggling to cope with a backlog of last-minute applications and it may well be that some people will not be able to go on the holiday they have booked because their passport will not arrive in time.  Never bank on a Government Department doing what it says it will!

The what??

As an aside from yesterday's post - why do we call it a "Trojan horse"?  If you know the story you will know that the horse was in fact constructed by the Greeks and left outside the city of Troy for the Trojans to find and bring inside the city, whereupon the few Greeks concealed inside it crept out under cover of darkness and opened the gates to let in the Greek forces who then took the city. So if there's any logic, it should be called the Greek horse - the Greeks themselves by the way just refer to it as the wooden horse.

Calm down, folks!

This local "trojan horse" business (see post dated 17th April) seems to be in danger of spiralling out of control.  As I see it what is being categorised as "Islamic extremism"  is for the most part no more than Muslim parents wanting their children to be brought up as Muslims.  Problem is of course that the national school curriculum is based on Christian beliefs and standards which some Muslims (including many of those who would be considered as "moderates") see as a denial of their cultural values.  Of course, I have no doubt that there are those who are seeking to use this groundswell of opinion for their own, destructive ends, but I think we need to separate the two, rather than, as at present, tarring everybody with the same brush.

Do you want salt and vinegar on that?

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later - somebody has come up with fish and chip flavoured ice cream!

Owzzat?

Bit of a palaver the other week when England were playing Sri Lanka at cricket, and a Sri Lankan bowler ran out the English non-striking batsman when he had left his crease before the ball was bowled in anticipation of scoring a run.  "Just not cricket" seems to be the general opinion - cricket of course being the game that prides itself on being played in a sporting spirit.  Whether it was ever thus is questionable and certainly if it was, those days have long gone.  And in any event I would suggest that stealing a march on the opposition by halving the distance you need to run is just as much "not cricket".  And apparently that bowler had warned that batsman twice before that that is what would happen if he tried it again, so the moral high ground - if there is one - is more with them than us, I think.

The Great Escape

Loved the story of the 89-year-old WWII veteran who was told by the authorities of the care home where he lived that he was not allowed to make the trip to Normandy to join in the 70th anniversary commemorations of D-day.  So what did he do?  He put on his medals, covered them with his raincoat and sneaked out to catch a cross-channel coach with his friends.  All power to his elbow - you can't keep a good man down!!

Pick a card...the solution

Yes, of course it can be done, and in fact the solution is very simple, although somewhat obscure.
Point to the middle card and ask me the question "Is the card to the left of this card, as I look at it, an ace?"  If I answer "yes" choose the card to the left, if I answer "no" choose the card to the right.  You will always have chosen an ace. Reason?  If the middle card is an ace, then I must answer truthfully, so if I say "yes" then the left card is an ace, and if I say "no" then the left card must be the jack, which means the right card must be an ace.  If the middle card is the jack, then both the other cards must be aces, so it really doesn't matter what I say or which of the other two cards you choose, you will have chosen an ace.

Pick a card...

If you've followed this blog for any length of time (Oh, come on, there must be some of you!) you will know I have a penchant for logic puzzles.  So here's another one - 
I place three cards face down on the table in a line.  Two are aces, the third is a jack.  I know which is which.  Your job is to find an ace.  To do this, you are allowed to point to one of the cards and ask me one yes/no question.  If you are pointing to an ace, I will answer truthfully.  If you are pointing to the jack, I will answer yes or no completely at random - so I could be telling the truth, or I could be lying. Can it be done?  Answer tomorrow.

That's the way it is...

"It's a fact of life" is a well-used expression to describe a situation of which we don't approve, but feel is not going to change.  Recently a female chef has complained that there are not enough female chefs on TV, and those that are there have been chosen as much on their looks (dare I say sex-appeal) as for their culinary skills. And she's right, isn't she?  It's a fact of life that male presenters tend to be judged on their ability, but female ones tend to be judged on their looks.  That's not to say that they don't have to be good at their job, but dimples or a nice pair of legs sure help their case along.  It's unfair, but that's the way it's always been and probably ever will be. There are exceptions of course - Two Fat Ladies spring to mind, and Fanny Cradock could hardly have been called a looker - in fact I found her a bit scary.  So is this because those who appear on TV tend to be selected by men?  Or do women executives, in fact, also favour the more attractive members of their sex on the basis that it brings in the viewers? Masterchef was won by an attractive Asian lady - co-incidence?  I've got no answers - it's just a fact of life.

Ha ha.

It seems a long time since my retirement magazine came up with a decent joke, but this one made me smile -
A man and his wife lived in a nice riverside property.  They were well off and each had an expensive car. One day the wife came back from a shopping expedition. "There's a problem with my car" she said to her husband "there's water in the carburetor". "Don't be silly" said the husband.  "I'm telling you" said the wife "there's water in the carburetor".  "Oh, come on" said the husband "you wouldn't even know where the carburetor is.  I'll check it out.  Where's the car?"
"In the river" said the wife.

Connections?

Apparently it is seriously being suggested that sleeping with the curtains open can increase your risk of being obese.  A professor has said that the ostensible connection is "intriguing".  I think I will need a lot more convincing that there is any connection at all.  After all, it was only recently that someone pointed out that if you plot consumption of margarine over the past decade, and then plot the divorce rate over the same period, the two graphs are virtually identical, and yet no one would seriously suggest that eating margarine makes it more likely that you will get divorced.  So for the moment I remain to be convinced that this seeming connection between a light bedroom and obesity is any more than a weird coincidence.

Who said what to whom?

The current gefuff about the Chilcot inquiry into the run-up to the Iraq war, which has been stalled for some time (years actually) over the extent to which the report can or cannot include correspondence between Tony Blair and George W Bush, seems to me and my (admittedly rusty) legal knowledge, rather straightforward and I find it difficult to understand why it has caused such a delay.  So, if I write a letter and send it to you, you own the letter (the physical piece of paper).  You can do with it what you will - destroy it, give it away, sell it, whatever.  The contents of the letter (what it says) on the other hand, belong to me, and you cannot publish that without my agreement. So what GWB wrote to TB can only be published with GWB's agreement, and equally what TB wrote to GWB can only be published with TB's agreement.  Simple enough?  Mind you, the question of whether they are willing to agree to publication is an entirely different matter, but as TB has said he is anxious for the report to be published, he presumably will not wish to hold it up by denying access to what he said??