I say, old chap...

Like, I suspect, many a male of my generation, I was brought up on the Biggles books of Captain W E Johns.  And damned good they were too.  But what I've only now found out is that what Captain Johns actually wrote was heavily "sanitised" by his publisher - perhaps with a view to being suitable for a juvenile audience.  So "My God!" (which back then would have scandalised polite society) became "My Gosh!", and Biggles drank lemonade rather than the whisky which was in the original Johns stories.  Johns himself was a WWI pilot in the RFC (which later became the RAF) and therefore knew exactly what he was writing about.  It would be really interesting to be able to read the uncensored versions of the stories. The only puzzle is where the "Captain" came from - there was no such rank in the RFC or RAF - see also my post of 9th July 2009.

Les feuilles mortes.

So once again my local authority have decided that there will be no need for any further collection of garden rubbish until next April.  They do this every year.  I wish somebody would tell the trees, which are still laden with leaves yet to come down.  I can only assume that the council officials who make these decisions are not gardeners!

What next - sprinklers??

In Sweden, there's a hotel made entirely out of ice.  Each summer it melts, and each winter they rebuild it,  But this year, they have been told that in order to get the necessary planning permission, they will have to have smoke alarms fitted! Nice to know that there are bureaucratic barnpots in other countries as well.

Ha ha.

Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper?
He sold his soul to Santa!

Oh dear, oh dear.

Have been watching Masterchef Professionals and learned to my chagrin that what I have always called kwinowah (quinoa) should be pronounced keenwha. Oh, the shame!

You've been framed... Your Majesty?

At the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall last Saturday one of the small girls in the poppy girls choir was reduced to tears when her R.N. officer father - whom she believed to be serving in the Seychelles - appeared in the Hall.  Loud applause and many a secret tear in the audience at their reunion.  Anybody else find that creepy and rather disturbing?  These are real people for Heaven's sake - not puppets to be manipulated for our entertainment. And I can't help feeling that, if you were intent on doing that sort of thing, you could scarcely have chosen a more inappropriate time and place - a solemn ceremony in the presence of the Queen??  What next?  Strictly Come Poppying with Bruce Forsyth?

Better late than never? No, not really!

The Americans have an expression "Monday morning quarterback" for those who come up with wise-after-the-event ideas.  I don't want to be seen as such, but I can't help feeling that there is something worrying about the response to the typhoon which struck the Philippines last week.  This was not an earthquake or a volcanic eruption which came out of the blue and caught people by surprise - the existence of this weather system and what was likely to happen to it and its probable track had been known days in advance, so surely we should have been far more ready for it and prepared to move in with assistance at the earliest possible moment.  I find it scandalous that it has taken virtually a week for us to even begin to get our act together.

Music Man

As an addendum to last Sunday's post, for those who don't know, the tune to "I Vow To Thee My Country", which is known in the church hymnal as Thaxted, is in fact a slight re-writing of the middle tune of "Jupiter" from Gustav Holst's suite "The Planets".  Apparently, according to Holst's daughter, he was asked to set the words to music at a time when he was very busy and over-worked, and was mightily relieved when he realised they would nicely fit the "Jupiter" tune.

When is full not full - part 2

This is a continuation of the post of 3rd November.  I think my problem is that I'm being too logical.  We have two statements - (1) all rooms are occupied, and (2) I can create an unoccupied room, and clearly these two statements are mutually exclusive - they cannot both be true.  Either all rooms are occupied, or they're not. So the paradox doesn't make sense on a logical level but, because we are dealing with infinity, it does on a mathematical level, and Hilbert (who was a real person) was a mathematician.  There will always be a "next room" for each occupant to move into, but that room will be occupied, so that occupant will have to move into the next room, which will be occupied, and so that occupant will have to move into the next room, which will be occupied, and so on ad infinitum.  In fact it's worse than that - Hilbert claimed he could not only accommodate one extra guest, he could accommodate an infinite number of extra guests.  How? Well he would ask each guest to move to the room whose number was double that of the room they were in - so 1 would go to 2, 2 would go to 4, 3 would go to 6, 4 would go to 8 and so on. This would free up all the odd-numbered rooms, and as there are an infinite number of odd-numbered rooms, he could accommodate any number of extra guests.  And I don't know about you, but my head hurts!

We will remember them.

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them
Czeslaw Milosz