Scenic Saturday

For some months I have been toying with an idea: finding a picture of something or somewhere in each county of England that encapsulates the spirit of that county. Part of the reason for doing nothing about the idea is that although I have visited or driven through every county in England - at least, I think I have - I have certainly not taken photographs wherever I have been. However, I have decided to set myself a challenge. My goal is to beg, steal or borrow pictures where necessary and provide a scenic tour of England by featuring a different county each Saturday.



The first county on the list is Kent, situated at the most south-easterly corner of the country. It seems a pretty good place to start as this is the county of my birth. It is also the nearest to the continent (as Europe is known to us), so it is the first county that many Europeans see when they visit England. Kent calls itself the Garden of England on account of the many fruit orchards and hop fields there once were in the county. Sadly, many of them have now disappeared and the county is better known as the route of the high-speed rail link to France and beyond as the route of the M20 motorway linking London to Dover, the busiest port in the world, and ferries for Europe. But Kent is more than that. There are the extensive marshes in the north of the county along the Thames and Medway estuaries and, in the south-east, Dungeness, a wild and desolate promontory which is the site of a nuclear power station and a landfall for many migrating birds. And Kent is also the cradle of British Christianity and the "home" of the Church of England's senior Archbishop, Canterbury. In past centuries Kent was also the site of two of the counties main naval dockyards - Deptford and Chatham. In fact, Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, was built at Chatham.

Talking of historic buildings, two of the county's castles are very well-known: Hever and Leeds.

My first thought for a picture was Canterbury cathedral but then I had second thoughts. Why not use a picture of something which is the first many people see of England? So here are the white cliffs of Dover.

Blue hydrangeas

We have no fewer than four hydrangeas in the garden, two of them having grown into pretty large bushes. Although she has never said as much, I reckon that the hydrangea is probably one of Mrs Pensioner's favourite plants. I have noticed that, apart from clipping out the dead flower-heads at the appropriate time, she never cuts back those plants. They must be about the only ones in the garden that never succumb to the secateurs. But, much to Her Ladyship's disappointment, all four plants produce pink flowers. That is because our soil is very chalky and hydrangeas in chalky soil produce pink flowers. One of them was bought for its blue flowers and even though it was planted in ericaceous compost in a tub, the flowers, which were blue when we bought it, came out pink the next year. We have tried other ways of producing blue. Mrs BP heard that one could bring out the blue by burying iron in the soil so, when we planted one of the them, I had to trawl junk yards for a load of iron and dig a hole large enough to bury said metal beneath the hydrangea. But it didn't work. Madam was, therefore, absolutely over the moon when she found we had a large (very large) hydrangea in the courtyard of the house we bought in France - and it has blue flowers!

Pensioner accepts challenge

Makes a good headline, doesn't it?

One of the blogs I follow is written by Jim 'Suldog' and he recently listed 100 things he loves about America. Having done so, he challenged readers to come up with their own lists, whether about America or their own countries. Now, there's one thing some of us Brits (Limeys, Pongos, Rosbifs) can't resistn, and that's a bit of a challenge. It might take us some time to really get a response going, but we usually get there in the end. And I have.

What follows is a list of 100 things I like about England. Some of the are essentially English, some uniquely English (or even British); some are sentimental, some quirky or downright zany. Some can be found anywhere, some can be found elsewhere than England but not everywhere. All of them can be found right here in the land I love. Yes, I am proud to be English. Anyway, here goes.

1	Cheddar cheese
2	Cricket
3	Country pubs
4	Double-decker buses
5	Big Ben
6	Fish & chips
7	Nowhere is more than a couple of hours from the sea
8	The temperate climate
9	Bovril
10	Cottage gardens
11	Village greens
12	Roast dinners on Sundays
13	Bonfire night
14	The way the scenery changes even in short journeys
15	Ancient churches
16	The National Health Service
17	The South Downs
18	Melton Mowbray pork pies
19	The British system of justice
20	The monarchy - especially the Duke of Edinburgh
21	Royal Marine bands
22	The Last Night of the Proms
23	A stable political system
24	Policemen who don't carry guns
25	Stately cathedrals
26	Free speech
27	Public libraries
28	Free bus passes for the over 60s
29	English apples
30	Fresh cream
31	Crumpets
32	Cornish clotted cream teas
33	Tea - made the English way!
34	Electric kettles
35	A tolerant society (on the whole)
36	Morecambe & Wise
37	Public parks with grass in them
38	Our love of animals
39	The English Channel
40	The Lake District
41	Clean water at the turn of a tap
42	Roast potatoes
43	Mince pies
44	Victoria sponges
45	Cadbury's crème eggs
46	Bournville chocolate
47	Chris Barber's jazz band
48	Elizabethan manor houses
49	Bright red pillar boxes
50	The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
51	People not wearing their hearts on their sleeves
52	The BBC
53	Lack of the death penalty
54	A TV channel devoted to repeats of old programmes
55	Christmas pudding
56	William Shakespeare
57	Red telephone boxes
58	The musical drive of the Royal Horse Artillery
59	Freedom of religion
60	Thatched cottages
61	A reliable supply of electricity
62	Bitter beer
63	The British banking system
64	Strawberry jam
65	Blue tits
66	Chelsea buns
67	You can drive from one end of England to the other in a day
68	The Old Crock's Run
69	Punch & Judy shows
70	English understatement
71	Branston pickle
72	Independence of the press
73	Internet banking
74	Steak & kidney pudding
75	Oxford colleges
76	Cambridge colleges
77	Postman's Park
78	Most people speak the same language as me
79	Buses with signs advising the next stop
80	Seaside piers
81	The Royal Pavilion
82	Thick-cut marmalade
83	The song of the blackbird
84	Toasted teacakes
85	Train-spotters are tolerated
86	The massed bands of the Brigade of Guards
87	Not too many dangerous wild animals
88	Men wearing socks with sandals (thereby giving me a laugh)
89	Going abroad is easy
90	Digestive biscuits
91	The white cliffs of Dover
92	Full English breakfasts
93	No land borders with other countries (except Wales & Scotland which, for the purposes of this exercise, don't count)
94	The ability to poke fun at ourselves
95	A wide range of affordable foods
96	Hot, buttered toast
97	Christmas cake
98	Sea water spray in a storm
99	My family is here
100	A warm bed on a cold, windy, rainy night

I've included just a very few links, but I'm sure you can find more if you want to.

An eye for an eye?

When I visited the public library last weekend I spotted a Grisham book that I had not read - The Innocent Man. I only came across it because it had been wrongly shelved in the fiction area. Part of the blurb reads: "If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you". Now, I do not agree with the death penalty - I don't think I ever have. My main problem with it is that there have been times when an innocent person was executed, but neither can I agree with the "eye for an eye" philosophy.

(As an aside, I find it a little confusing that the Old Testament talks of an eye for an eye, whereas in the New Testament we are urged to turn the other cheek and to forgive our enemies.)

Having stated my opinion, I must accept that proponents of the death sentence do have points with some validity. They might, for instance, worry that a life sentence is not quite what it purports to be and that some murderers will be released from prison after serving only 14 or 15 years. Do we, they ask, really want to release a murderer so he can do it again? But they are overlooking the fact that the vast majority of murders are committed against family members and the released murderer poses little or no threat to society in general. As I understand it, only seldom is a murder committed at random, and in those cases the guilty party is imprisoned for very much longer periods; indeed, they are often imprisoned for the rest of their lives.

It is when those who want to bring back hanging resort to complaining about the cost of keeping a man (or woman) in jail that I start to be concerned about their pro-death penalty stance. Yes, I know it costs many thousands of pounds a year to lock up someone, but that doesn't strike me as a very good reason for killing them instead.

Then there are the difficult cases, the people who might be described as truly evil, like Fred & Rose West, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Yes, their crimes were horrific, but I can't be sure that they were not insane as opposed to evil. Is there such a thing as a truly evil person? I'm not entirely sure there is.

But to get back to the book. Reading it, one forms the opinion that justice in the Oklahoma town of Ada was, back in the years when those events occurred, very much a hit or miss affair. But is that picture accurate? District Attorney Bill Peterson was sufficiently incensed to set up a web site to counter Grisham's alleged inaccuracies.

I suppose the reader pays his money and makes his choice, but it doesn't alter the fact that another innocent man was very nearly put to death.

I forgot to mention...

...that it rained yesterday evening. Although in the interests of telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth I suppose I should say that it nearly rained yesterday evening. What we actually had was three or four minutes of gentle (very gentle) drizzle, nothing like what we need.

Diamond Geezers

Brighton Lions Club is 60 years old this year and way back last autumn I took it upon myself to produce a history of the club during those 60 years. It was an interesting experience to learn just how enterprising were the Lions of Brighton in the years before I joined the club, some of the challenges they took on being quite enormous. At last week's meeting I told the club that the book was finished and ready to go to the printers. What I wanted was a rough idea how many copies to have printed, thinking that twenty or so would be ample. No, I was told, the club thought every member should be given a copy, some should be given to important people like the Mayor, and some should be kept to be given to new members. 60 should be enough. I was flabbergasted but agreed to order 60 copies.

I had said the book was ready to go to the printers, but in fact there was still a little more to do. I had to convert the file to .pdf format and burn it to a disc. Now that would normally cause no problems. Normally. But this time, of course, it did. I decided to finish off the August issue of Jungle Jottings before starting on Diamond Geezers (as the book is called). Now I always send out JJ in .pdf format having produced it in WordPerfect. Conversion is simple enough: I have a freebie program which converts as part of the printing process. But no matter how many times I tried to convert, only half of JJ would emerge in the .pdf document. I finally decided the .wpd (WordPerfect) file must be too large. With several pictures in this issue, it was a pretty big file. I reduced the size of the graphics, and lo and behold - problem solved.

It was the same with Diamond Geezers. No matter what I did, the .pdf file contained less than half the .wpd file - and there was no way I could reduce the size of the file. However, although the printers could not accept WordPerfect files, they could accept Word files as well as .pdf. So, I saved the .wpd file as a .doc file. But that threw up other problems, principally with the formatting.

(This is where I must insert a prescript.)

Flashback twenty years: PCs (personal computers) were not called that in those days - they were desktop computers. It was about then that, in my capacity as general manager of a small company, I bought myself my first computer. Well, the company bought it for me to use in the office. That computer didn't come with all sorts of goodies pre-packaged and any software had to be bought separately. I decided to use WordPerfect as my word processor. I can't remember why I chose WordPerfect: I don't suppose it was simply because I liked the colour of the packaging but it might have been for an equally inane reason. Whatever the reason, WordPerfect it was. And I still use it today. Eventually, of course, I upgraded my computer (several times, even since retirement) but I have loaded good old WordPerfect onto each one. I did try using Word, but because I had become so set in my ways with WP, I just couldn't get to grips with it. And I still think that WP is the better program for some things.

Anyway, Diamond Geezers was now on my desktop in Word format - but everything was skewwhiff! It took me ages to sort out - and I still can't get to grips with section breaks! But sorted out it was, so I burned it to a disc and went off to the printers yesterday afternoon. They checked it out and it looks good for printing, so in three or four weeks' time Diamond Geezers will be in print. And the printers gave me a very good price as well.

Talking of crops

Well, I was the other day.

It was on Friday that I picked the first peas of the year. There's something very special about the first picking, even though the peas are always very good when they go from the garden to the plate in no more than 30 minutes on any day. The first runner beans should be ready in a week or two.

On Friday I also lifted my entire crop of potatoes, onions and garlic. The garlic took very little time as the entire crop had failed. The onions weren't much better and those that had done anything are no bigger than shallots! And to think that we finished last year's crop only three or four weeks ago - both onions and garlic. The potatoes were an experiment - which didn't work. I have grown potatoes in the past, although not for many years, but this year I bought three planter bags with 15 seed potatoes as a special offer. There were just enough potatoes for one meal. I will not be repeating the experiment next year.

I also picked the first of the gooseberries and found a few more blackcurrants. Most of the blackcurrants were picked three weeks back. The raspberry canes produced a handful of fruit, but that is very early as they are autumn-fruiting canes. And this year, for the first time in many years, I managed to beat the birds to some of the cherries. All of three of them, and the birds have got the rest.

Rouen

Another picture snatched while at traffic lights. This shows, in the centre of the picture, the cathedral of Rouen with its three different towers. The building dates in parts from the 12th century so it was certainly there when Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in the city in 1431 having been found guilty of heresy. A particularly painful death - just for wearing men's clothing.

Crops

The farmer who owns the field next door to us in France has started rotating his crops. When we bought the house, the field was used for grazing cattle. Then last year, the farmer grew a cereal of some sort - probably barley. This year it's maize. Similarly, the field behind us was pasture up until this year and now there is a good crop of barley growing there. Maize next year?

Maize, or sweet corn, is a popular crop in the area but we were puzzled by the lack of corn on the cob in the local shops - it was just not to be seen. Then we discovered that the whole plant is cut and chopped by a machine, presumably for use as animal feed. In the early autumn tractors are constantly trundling to and fro with huge trailers loaded with chopped maize being taken to the farms.

Another crop which seems to be growing in popularity is this one:

We've never seen as many sunflowers in the western Loire as there are this year - and yes, that is maize growing beyond the sunflowers.

Good morning, chaffinch

I related on another blog how, when we were in France back in May, a hoopoe in the nearby trees spent all day every day calling his monotonous 'poop poop poop'. With the good weather we had then we left all the windows wide open during the day and even though the bird could have been as much as 100 yards away, we could still hear him even indoors. 'Poop, poop, poop.' Yet we caught not a glimpse of him all week.

By the time we returned exactly two weeks ago today, the hoopoe had moved on. But a chaffinch had taken his place. Granted, the song of the chaffinch is a little more melodious than the hoopoe's 'poop, poop, poop', and is distinctly more melodious than the town band from Pouancé or a caravan of heavy lorries, but it can become a little wearing when the bird sits on the electricity wires above the courtyard and insists on repeating his song from dawn till dusk. When I woke in the mornings I could hear him even before I opened the shutters (it was too hot to close the windows at night) and he continued until it was too dark for him to read his music. No, that's not strictly true: there was one day when he broke off for lunch and we had the relief of sitting under the wisteria to eat our lunch in blessed silence.

I did try shooting the wretched bird, but, close as he was, he was just too far away for the picture to come out well.



If you don't know the song of the chaffinch, try visiting this site.

The Windmills of Your Mind

My neighbour-over-the-road in France seemed a little surprised when I expressed the hope that a plan to install several wind turbines in a nearby field would come to nothing. He, along with many other Frenchmen, appear to be of the opinion that these machines are the best thing since sliced bread (not that I think sliced bread a particularly good thing). My concern is not entirely that of a NIMBY, although if the plan does go ahead the wretched things would spoil what little view we do have. I have yet to be convinced that wind turbines are sufficiently efficient at the production of electricity to justify (a) the ecological cost of manufacture and installation and (b) the spoiling of the countryside. Wind farms are springing up all over France - the one pictured is somewhere south of Calais - but there are many occasions when the turbines are not working. Whether that is because there is too little wind or too much wind or whether they have just plain broken down I have no idea, but they do seem to stop turning an awful lot. And I have read reports that the amount of electricity they generate is minimal.

So much for the efficiency of the machines: but what about the cluttering of the countryside? These things always have to be sited in a prominent position and, as a result, are usually visible for miles around. There have been proposals to site large wind farms in several sensitive environments in this country - Romney Marsh and the Scottish Highlands are but two examples - and off-shore farms have also been proposed. On the other hand, do wind turbines really spoil the countryside? We can't live in a vacuum and while it is undoubtedly a 'good thing' to preserve some of our best scenery, we do have to bear in mind that very little (in this country if not elsewhere) is entirely natural. Most English countryside has really been man-made. Over the centuries woods have been cleared, hedges planted and chocolate-box thatched cottages built: man changing the countryside. Nowadays we delight in seeing windmills - especially in Holland - but what are they if not the forerunners of today's wind turbines? How do we know what people will think of these turbines in, say, 100 years' time? Could it be that they will be looked upon as quaint and delightful antiques? I somehow doubt that, but I suppose the chances are that very few of them will still be around in 100 years' time anyway.

I do have to wonder if there is not a better way to produce the electricity that is so essential to our modern lives. Hydro-electric generation seems to work, so could this not be adapted to harness the power of waves or tides? I would have thought that would be more efficient than the reliance on variable winds and would probably be less intrusive to the eye.

But what do I know about these things?

Bastille Day

I know - Bastille Day was last Wednesday, 14th July. Of course, an American would write the date differently, as July 14. Very few people over here (and I include continentals) would write the day as month, day, year in the way Americans do. The main exception is the newspaper industry, which seems determined for some reason to hang on to what I always think is an illogical way to express the date. I've never understood why anyone would write it the American way. After all, we don't express time as hour, second, minute. But never mind - I'm digressing into something of absolutely no importance - and probably of no interest either!

Last Wednesday was the first time we have ever been in France on Bastille Day, although I think the French now more generally refer to the day as simply 14th July, and we were interested to see what form the celebrations would take. On the way down to La Prévière we pass through the city of Rouen. The city straddles the River Seine with a multitude of bridges and we noticed that one of them was decorated several days early. I managed to take a quick snap while waiting at traffic lights.

According to a poster we saw, there were going to be fireworks but we agreed it would involve far too long a drive for us to see them.

Nothing appeared to have been arranged for La Prévière, but I noticed on an information board outside the town hall in the town of Pouancé that they were planning a firework display. This would start at 11.00pm in La Fuye (a field opposite the castle) and would be preceded by a fanfare starting a procession from the town hall at 10.00pm. Given that Pouancé is only a couple of miles from La Prévière, this seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Our first few days saw blue skies and temperatures of 30+ (that's 90 or so in old money), which is hot as far as we are concerned, but on Bastille Day I threw open the shutters to find the sky full of cloud. The rain started just before 9.00am and continued all morning. In fact, about lunchtime it seemed to have reached monsoon-like intensity. I rang the village restaurant to book a table for the evening, convinced that the usual lengthy meal would not stop us watching the fireworks as there was no way the display could go ahead in that weather. Nicolas, the restaurateur, asked if we intended watching the fireworks, saying that he planned to take his younger son to see them.

Blue skies returned in the afternoon, and the service at the restaurant was quicker than we have ever known so we had no difficulty in getting to Pouancé in time.

La Fuye is a field which slopes gently down to a lake, on the far side of which there is a road skirting the walls of the castle. It was to be from the castle itself that the fireworks would be fired. Not only did we reach the field in time, we were actually very early. This, of course, meant that we were able to select a good spot to sit as dusk fell. The selection of music being played over the loudspeakers was not entirely to our taste, being French pop music which is usually pretty tuneless to our ears, but it did help to create an atmosphere - and was distinctly preferable to the band which led the procession onto the field at about 10.40. We had had the dubious pleasure of listening to a few of the members of the band on a previous occasion. The cacophony produced by the band at full strength was increased enormously from that of the two buglers and three drummers we had encountered before. It was something of a relief when the band stopped their attempts at playing and the French pop music restarted.

It was only a few minutes after the pop music resumption that it started to rain. Most people - but not us - had brought umbrellas and we resigned ourselves to getting wet while being unable to see anything of the forthcoming fireworks because of all the umbrellas. But it was only a brief, very light shower, and not that the fireworks would be forthcoming in the immediate future even though it was by now only about five to eleven. Eleven o'clock came and went and the DJ started getting agitated, watching the castle with a radio transmitter/received clamped to his ear. It was a French 11.00pm, ie 11.13, before the castle floodlights, the street lights along the foot of the castle walls and the temporary lights on La Fuye were extinguished. What followed was a superb display. At one time the castle was lit from within the walls by red fireworks to look as if the place was burning.

Having been involved for 25 years with the fireworks displays laid on by Brighton Lions (rated by The Times newspaper as one of the ten best displays in the country) I think I know a good display when I see one. And this was good. It lasted about 20 minutes - and was completely free of charge, laid on by the local authority. Small wonder that there was a crowd of 4,000-5,000 people - more than the entire population of the town!

Ban the burka

The French parliament has passed a law, although I believe it has yet to make it fully onto the statute book, banning women wearing the burka in public. The possibility of similar laws is being discussed in other European countries such as Spain, the Netherlands and Germany. There have also been calls here in the UK for just such a law, but over the weekend one of the ministers in the Home Office declared that such a law would not be introduced in this country. It would, he said, be anti-British to start telling people what they may or may not wear to walk down the street. We are, he went on, a tolerant society which should be able to accept that different people have different points of view.

That, I thought, was one of the most sensible statements I have heard from a politician in a long time. I fully accept that a terrorist might wear a burka to conceal a bomb but that terrorist could just as easily carry a bomb in the boot of his car. In my opinion it is when we start passing laws like this "in the interests of national security" that the terrorists have won.

The same goes for the plan to introduce ID cards for the entire population. When this was first proposed it was intended to make the possession of an ID card compulsory (I'm not sure if it was also going to be compulsory to carry one) but that was watered down and the possession of an ID card was going to be completely voluntary, although people applying for a new passport or renewing an old one would have to apply for an ID card at the same time. How was that voluntary? The then Government spent millions (or was it billions?) of pounds on a scheme which faced widespread disapproval and which would cost many billions more if and when it was brought into being. I am pleased to say that the ‘new' Government scrapped the scheme almost within hours of taking office. I hope they continue to show common sense.

At the barbecue

A great time was had by all - including my 3-years-old granddaughter Emily.

It's not really surprising that she manages to twist her grandfather round her little finger, is it?

Home again

Yup, we're back home again - although our house in France is also home, so I suppose in a way we never left home. Be that as it may, we are now back in Brighton after a very pleasant week of doing not a lot - no phone, no email, no television, no radio that we could understand, and no newspapers. World War Three could have broken out and we might have known nothing whatever about it.

The journey down took rather longer than usual as we fell foul of an irritating habit the French have when they are doing roadworks. They frequently just close the road and post a diversion. OK, that might not seem to bad, but those diversions can be pretty long and can add a good few miles and minutes to the length of one's journey. In our case, 15 miles, much of it on winding, country lanes, and half an hour in time. Thankfully, there was no rush and it was actually good to see some different scenery and one or two very attractive spots. I doubt that I could ever find them again if I wanted to!

So today is a day of catching up. Well, it was going to be until we listened to the final call on the answering machine. This told us that our younger son would be holding a barbecue this afternoon to celebrate his sister's birthday (which just happens to be this weekend and she just happens to have travelled down from Birmingham to see us). Two loads of washing have been put through the machine, I have read my emails and most blogs in which I am interested, fetched Fern from kennels and given her a run, now I must get ready for the celebrations.

Pre-school vision screening

I know that Lions Clubs in the States provide this service - our twin club is just one that does - but I have never given the matter much thought as I assumed our National Health Service would perform just such a function in this country. However, the other day I decided to ask a few questions of different people. I started, reasonably enough, with my son; he does, after all, have a 3-years-old daughter. He was not aware that there was any such screening undertaken. I widened my search, remembering that my good friend Chris's daughter-in-law runs a playgroup. I rang her. No, there is nothing like that done. It looked as though we have a gap in the service market that Lions Clubs generally might be able to fill. But just what is involved? I fired off an email to our twin club asking for more information and the answers to several very specific questions. In the meantime, I discovered a page on the LCI web site which actually gave very little by way of information, but there was a link to a guide for Lions Clubs. That told me there are two different screening systems. One involves taking Polaroid-like photographs of children's eyes, the other looks as though it provides a digital read-out.

Next came Google to try and find suppliers of the equipment. There was no trace of any supplier of the camera, but I did find a UK supplier of the autorefractor, the device which provides a digital read-out. With my limited knowledge, I had already decided this looked a better system as it did not involve analysis of pictures by people who would need training to undertake this. The I saw the price - a whopping £4,816, and that is probably before the addition of Value Added Tax at 17.5%.

I shall continue with my research when I get back from France (we are off tomorrow), but I suspect the club will be less than happy to fork out that sort of moey, even if it is a terrific way to mark our diamond jubilee.

The run is ended

I had to visit the doctor yesterday afternoon - the first time I have seen a doctor on my own behalf for just over seven years. There wasn't actually anything wrong with me, and it wasn't my idea to take up a doctor's valuable time, but it had to be. Many years ago I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was prescribed anti-inflammatory tablets (or capsules or whatever), one to be taken twice a day. Because this would be an ongoing matter, I was given a repeat prescription request form which I had to drop in at the surgery whenever I needed a fresh supply, which should have been once a month as the prescription was for 60 tablets at a time. Now I have an intense dislike of taking drugs but I went along with them at the start because I needed relief from the pain. But I also started taking a daily dose of cod liver oil and Mrs BP ensured that I ate more naturally oily foods such as mackerel. After about three months I found that the arthritis was causing fewer problems and I cut back on the drug. Eventually, one month's supply was lasting me between 12 and 24 months. I was supposed to have a review consultation with the doctor after 12 months, but it didn't seem necessary. The repeat prescriptions were issued as and when I wanted them. It was only in 2003 that I became aware of suffering side effects while I was working on the house we had bought in France, which meant that I was relying on the drug more than usual. I visited the doctor, who prescribed a different drug. Life carried on as normal with repeat prescriptions as and when - until yesterday. Our local supermarket pharmacy collects the prescriptions for me when I need them. I dropped in a request last week and went to pick up the drug yesterday, only to be told that the doctor had refused to renew the prescription until I had a check up. When I got home I rang the surgery and got through first time (a record). What's more, I was given an appointment just 45 minutes later. I was in the consulting room for perhaps five minutes. The doctor asked which joints were most affected, did I suffer from indigestion, do I smoke and how many. He took my blood pressure (normal) - and that was it. I came out with the prescription and went to the pharmacy again. Let's hope it's another seven years before I have to see a doctor.

Which one am I?

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I have come to the conclusion that there are three types of Lion. It seems that way in my club and I reckon the same situation occurs in most other clubs. One type is irritating, one exasperating, and the other exhilarating. We have far too many Lions who attend (most) meetings and frequently have an opinion on things. But they never - or rarely - volunteer to actually do anything. The only way to get them properly involved in any activity is to ask them directly, ‘Please will you help with this?' Then there is the exact opposite, the Lion who has to have a finger in every pie. They remind me of schoolboys always eager to please the teacher by raising their hands and saying, ‘Please, sir, me, sir!' Granted, they will sometimes come up with ideas or projects for the club - but then they insist on micro-managing the whole thing and refusing to delegate. The problem is that this type will take on too much with the result that everything is always left until the last minute - and frequently therefore not done as well as it should be. What a shame there are not more of the third type of Lion. These are the ones who will volunteer their assistance without having to be asked directly, but who are careful not to take on so much that they are unable to cope.

So what gave rise to all this griping? Basically, it is because I have ideas for two service projects, both of which - if taken up by the club - would require research before they could get off the ground. I am a little reluctant to put forward either of them because I'm not sure that I either have time for or want to undertake the research. And I have that nagging feeling that it would end up on my plate if I suggest the projects. Having said that, I have actually started researching one of the projects already because I need information before I can put it to the club. Watch this space!

Three at once

This wasn't what I had planned for today (see below to understand that) but was brought to mind by my friend's blog here.

The other day I watched with some amazement as a driver committed no fewer than three moving traffic offences - all at the same time! I don't think I have ever seen that before. I was driving along an urban dual carriageway with a 30mph limit when he overtook me doing well over 30. I know that as I glanced at my speedo and saw I was spot on the limit as he drew away. He then swerved into the nearside lane and passed another car (on the wrong side). What's more, he did it on the zig-zag lines at the approach to a zebra crossing. I didn't notice if he was using a mobile phone, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

The plans of mice and men

I'm pretty confident that I have it correctly that a certain Scottish poet wrote about those plans ganging oft agley, and mine have today as far as this blog is concerned. I had it all worked out, sitting there in the hospital corridor. I had taken Mrs BP for another session of therapy on the thumb she broke back in January, fully expecting this to be the final session. Having finished my book, I was passing the time by deciding what drivel I would impose upon the world through the medium of this blog and I had it all set out quite neatly in my mind. And then the therapist went and spoiled it all be saying she wanted another session in three weeks' time. (Please note the correct use of the apostrophe in that last sentence.) So, shall I save my thoughts for a post a few weeks down the line or shall I post them anyway? That, of course, is a purely rhetorical question as I cannot realistically expect a response from anybody, so I will have to make the decision myself.

And the winner is...















...You'll just have to wait.

Multi-tasking

I was waiting for her to lick the phone and put the ice cream in her ear!

I am deliberately avoiding mention of
that traitorous holiday known as
Independence Day as I gave it
a plug last year.

Rain wanted!

The first six months of this year have been the driest 'first six months' of any year since about 1970 and don't I know it!

One of my ancestors - a great grandfather or 2 x great uncle or some such - was a market gardener back in the days of Queen Victoria. He would not have had the benefit of modern inventions to produce his own micro-climates and would, like me, have been at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather. The difference is that he grew vegetables as a way of making his living whereas for me it is more of a hobby. The fact that my parsnip seeds failed to germinate this year is an irritation, not a disaster. No, wait a minute. The seeds have not completely failed to germinate. Two did. My garlic seemed to be coming along very nicely, but all of a sudden the plants have collapsed and now I have just three which might, just might, come to something. At least the runner beans and the first sowing of peas look as though they will produce a crop.

I have picked most of the blackcurrants this week, leaving a little under a quarter of the crop to finish ripening. We have just the one bush, but it produces enough fruit to last us through the year. I also picked three raspberries yesterday. Since they are supposed to be an autumn fruiting variety, coming on stream in September, that is a little early. Mind you, I gave some roots to my friend Tony two or three years back and he has already eaten two bowls of raspberries and cream for dessert!

Mrs BP and I went strawberry picking yesterday morning at a farm a few miles north. The fruit was so plentiful that in just 15 or 20 minutes we had moved only about 5 yards and picked three or four pounds - enough for Mrs to make this year's jam (we don't eat much of it) and leave enough fruit over for dessert on three days or so.

But I still want rain - a couple of days of steady, gentle rainfall - to liven things up. The water butt is bone dry, something I have never known at this time of the year, and I am putting on the hose (on the veg only) every couple of evenings. Can anybody give me the steps of the rain dance?

Lies, damned lies and...

...statistics.

I stumbled across some of these and, as I have recently Done My Bit to serve the Cause of Justice - well, I sat on a jury for a week and a half - my interest was piqued. They were produced by the International Centre for Prison Studies, an organisation of which I had never before heard and which, on investigation, turns out to be part of King's College, London. These statistics are in a report entitled World Prison Population List (eighth edition) and throw up some interesting facts. For example, the country with the highest percentage of its population behind bars is the USA with 756 prisoners per 100,000 of population followed by Russia with 629 and Rwanda with 604. China, perhaps surprisingly, has only 119, just three more than Canada (116). The figure for the UK is 131 and other European countries are Norway - 69, Italy - 62 and France - 96. India has just 33 prisoners per 100k population, and Japan 63.

What, I wondered, do these figures tell us? Is France, for example, so much more law-abiding than the USA? Or are the American police more efficient at catching criminals than are the French? And in any case, can we accept the accuracy of the figures? The Chinese figure, for example, appears extraordinarily low given what we hear of the country, or maybe they just execute more convicted criminals and that reduces the prison population. Or do the figures indicate a difference in the punishment systems in various countries? Could it be that Norway uses fines and/or community service sentences rather than imprisoning people?

Of course, the bare statistics alone really tell us nothing and we need much more information to interpret them properly. But isn't that the case with all statistics?

The phone call

We get an irritating number of phone calls from those automatic dialling machines, the sort that come up on the phone's caller display as "international" and "number unavailable". Nine times out of ten, when we answer there is nobody on the other end. The other time the caller is either a recorded voice telling me I have won a holiday in somewhere I don't want to go and that I should dial 9 to learn more or it is somebody calling from a holiday home rental company wanting us to advertise on their web site. OK, they are irritating but at least they are easy to deal with. Today's call was a little different, although as usual the caller display read "international" and "number unavailable". I answered the phone to find two people on the line - the caller and my echo. Everything I said was repeated to me by an echo in the system.

'Hello, I'm calling from the Microsoft technical department. You've downloaded a malicious (something or other) while browsing and your computer is at risk. Can you switch your computer on and...'

'I don't respond to phone calls of this type.'

'But your computer is at risk! I'm from the Microsoft technical department...'

Oh yes? I thought, and I'm the tooth fairy in my spare time, but I replied, 'So you say, but anybody could say that.'

'I'll give you a number you can ring which will prove that I'm from Micro...'

'You could give me any number but if somebody tells me that I've called Microsoft it doesn't mean I have.'

'But I really am!'

Persistent devil, wasn't he?

'Thank you for your call and goodbye.'

I suppose some people will fall for this type of thing.