X marks the spot.

The Electoral Commission has suggested that voters should have to prove their identity at the polling station before being allowed to vote (passport, driving license etc.).  We've talked about this before and, whilst a perfectly sensible idea, it completely ignores the main problem with electoral fraud, which is not people turning up at polling stations pretending to be someone else (I'm sure it happens, but very infrequently I would think).  No, the biggest problem is the postal vote. I'm simply rehashing what I've already said, but at the heart of our voting system is the principle of the secret ballot, and postal voting is just inherently incompatible with that, and I don't see any way of rectifying that situation.  If we are determined to expand the use of "home voting" then maybe we should look at mobile polling booths - like mobile libraries - which come round to your house and at least ensure that when you mark your cross you are on your own and nobody gets to know where you put it.  

Of course I'll come shopping with you, darling...

Damned clever, these Chinese!  Apparently big stores in China are starting to open up "husband cloakrooms" where wives can deposit their husbands while they go on a shopping spree.  Said cloakrooms have comfy chairs, TV, wi-fi and some even have a bar.  Everyone's a winner - genius!

Take the baubles off first!

What do you do with your old Christmas tree?  Stash it somewhere until the council deign to start collecting garden refuse again (and that's April round my way)?  Take it down the tip and then spend the next 30 minutes vacuuming all the pine needles out of your car boot?  Well in Weidenthal in Germany they hold an annual Christmas tree throwing championship, with competitions for distance and height, and of course all the trees are disposed of at the end of the day. What a good idea.

Ha ha.

A psychoanalyst shows an inkblot to a patient and asks what he sees.  "A man and a woman making love" replies the patient.  The psychoanalyst shows him another one.  "That's a man and a woman making love" says the patient.  When he makes the same response to a third blot, the psychoanalyst says "You're obsessed with sex".  "Me obsessed?" replies the patient "you're the one with all the dirty pictures!".

What's in a name?

In Welsh "f" is pronounced as "v".  So the Welsh village of Y Farteg is pronounced Uh-Varteg, but the villagers have decided by a large margin not to use the Welsh spelling but to retain the Anglicised version of Varteg - and you can perhaps see why.  Mind you, I remember when I was younger we used to go blackberry picking at a place down Evesham way called Wyre Piddle, and I don't recall the locals having any problem with that.

Over the top men!!

Oh God, that bloke Gove is at it again.  It's not that he's an idiot - indeed I'm sure he's very clever - but he's a classic example of the old adage that you should "put brain in gear before opening mouth". His latest rant - and I don't think that's too strong a word - is against what he sees as a "left wing" bias in the way the First World War is portrayed.  So "Oh, What A Lovely War" and "Blackadder Goes Forth" and anything else (Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen??) that suggests that the War was anything other than an unmitigated success and an example of brilliant generalship is to him a travesty designed to "denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage".  I don't remember either of those shows or any of that poetry denying that those that fought were not patriots, honourable men and courageous.  Doesn't alter that fact that on all available evidence, the whole thing on both sides was for the most part a shambles and many, if not most who died, did so pointlessly.

Oh, come on....!

I've not been affected by flooding, and the high winds, although a nuisance, have not caused any real damage and the lights have stayed on.  I feel sorry for those who have not been so lucky, but most of them seem to accept that this is the price they pay for living where they do - which tends to be in the sort of nice places where we all like to go on holiday.  But there are always those who seek to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and it certainly seems that some of the power companies and local authorities have fallen short of the mark, but to blame the government - or even more bizarrely the Prime Minister personally - goes too far.

Sherlock

So... he's back.  Wad'ya think?  I'm sorry, but I felt cheated, disappointed, angry.  I don't know what I really expected, but I didn't expect to be played with, led down the garden path and taken for a mug. There was a feeling that the writers were being clever for the sake of being clever rather than with any intent of moving the story forward.  Let's hope that, now that that episode is out of the way, normal service will be resumed.

The headless man.

No, not a ghost story - this is another for us oldies who remember 1963.  The Great Train Robbery, the assassination of JFK and... the divorce case between the Duke and Duchess of Argyll.  In support of his case, the Duke produced several Polaroid photographs of the Duchess in various compromising situations, including a famous one of her performing what was delicately referred to as "a sex act" with a man whose head was not shown.  Much speculation then and since as to who it was - Duncan Sands, then Defence Minister, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. were favourites, but now her daughter-in-law has come out to say that it was in fact her then current lover, Bill Lyons, sales director of Pan Am.  Bit of a let-down, if true.  

Oh no - he's come to pillage!

Happy New Year.  Looking back through previous posts I noticed that a couple of years ago I mentioned "first footing" and the fact that I was not allowed to go first footing as a young man because I had fair hair back then, and I wondered what that was all about.  Nobody really seems to have a definitive answer, but the best guess - and I find this really interesting - is that it may go back to folk memories of the Vikings, who being Nordic, would probably mostly have been blond-haired. So a fair-haired man was to be feared, or at the very least, not trusted, and as your first footer effectively was supposed to determine your fortune for the year, you would want to play safe by ensuring he had dark hair.  My hair went from fair to dark over the years, and now what there is left of it is silvery grey - so I don't know where that would leave me today!