St. George.

Who was he, why is he England's patron saint, and why don't we make more of his day on April 23rd? These are questions which circulate every year around this time. Well, there are various takes on the story, but the most common is that he was an officer in the Roman army who was martyred for refusing to deny his Christian beliefs and make sacrifices to pagan gods. So what is his connection with England? None really - there is no evidence that he ever set foot here - but there are stories that he magically appeared to the Crusaders before they went into battle, and so they adopted him as their patron, and then brought the idea back with them to England. Where the dragon came from is anybody's guess, but this story of a heroic figure slaying a monster was a common theme in medieval narratives. And St. George's Day? Well I think this is more a matter of self confidence. The Scots, Welsh and Irish feel the need to parade their national identity and make a big thing of their saints' days. We don't.

And now for the weather...

Is it my imagination, or as the Met Office's equipment has become technologically more advanced, have the forecasts become more unreliable? These days, every forecast seems to be different - and not just a bit different, but substantially so. At the weekend, they were saying that tomorrow (Thursday) would be showery, by Monday, it was going to be sunny, and now today, they're forecasting a day of rain. Will be interesting to see what finally transpires!

What the...!

Nothing is straight-forward anymore. The women's marathon on Sunday was won by a German with a very non-German, eastern European name, and a Briton with a very Japanese name came second. All very confusing!

Fancy that.

Did you know the Queen owns Piccadilly Circus? Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but the Crown Estate, which manages the monarch's property, holds the freehold there, as it does for a fair chunk of central London. And apparently the Crown Estate has decided that the discount clothes store TK Maxx is not sufficiently upmarket to be allowed to open a branch in the Circus. The site involved has been empty for several years, prior to which it was a Virgin Megastore - which I would have thought was equally downmarket, but there you go.

Moot?

Friday's post raised the question of the meaning of "a moot point". To me, it has always meant a matter open to debate, and that is the sense in which I used it. This is quite different (in my usage) from saying that something is "moot". This means that it is irrelevant, not worth bothering with. The word originally meant a meeting called to discuss something specific and come up with a decision, but in recent times has come to be more associated with hypothetical debates at Universities and Law Schools and such, the end results of which are of no real practical importance. So "a moot point" follows the former usage, whereas to describe something as "moot" uses the latter meaning - for me, anyway!

In memoriam

Red is the colour, apparently.

I don't envy the Chancellor, who now has to make the best of a very bad job, but reverting to Labour's traditional roots by "clobbering the rich" doesn't strike me as particularly sensible, as it's penalising the very people who we are going to be looking to to lead us out of this mess. History tells us that the most likely effect of punitive tax rates on the rich simply results in them taking their money-making talents elsewhere. It may play well down the Working Men's Club, but it's a moot point as to whether it is in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Leave well alone.

They say you should never go back, and certainly in the case of the new "Red Dwarf" episodes, that is advice they should have taken. Very disappointing, and their decision to couple it with repeats of some of the best of the original series just demonstrated how bad it was. I think I'll just pretend it never happened.

Ha ha.

Following his death, there have been many reports of Clement Freud's witticisms. Here's one I came across the other day which I liked. He was on a train and took to task a woman who was smoking a cigarette. She retorted that she was only a few yards away from the smoking section. "Madam" he replied, "we are only a few yards away from the toilet - is it alright if I piss on the floor?".

Book post

(see post dated 18/11/06)

My latest ten reads -

Stella Rimington - Secret Asset - 8
John Grisham - The Appeal - 8
Dick Francis (with Felix Francis) - Dead Heat - 8
Tom Rob Smith - Child 44 - 9
Peter Turnbull - Chill Factor - 8.5
John Connor - A Child's Game - 7.5
James Patterson (with Maxine Paetro) - 7th Heaven - 7
John Connolly - The Reapers - 8
Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning - 7
Rosemary Rowe - A Roman Ransom - 7