Irish dancing

I do find Irish Dancing totally erotic. Maybe, it's those flashing legs and short skirts.

My daughter did it once and it had little effect on me. So maybe it's a case of growing older. Today, I do find them quite ravishing.

Assemblies of government

I am talking here about governement assemblies, plenary sessions. You know the ones where they all get together - House of Commons, European Parliament, House of Congress - in the spirit of democracy with the intention of debating issues for the public good. They talk for hours at times but little or nothing changes the outcome for that is decided by the majority of the government of the day.

You get local interest questions like, 'Will the Minister comment on the need for better child care facilities in Doncaster?' He answers politely but in your heart you know he doesn't give a shit about Doncaster, its kids, its people or anything else in Doncaster. Why should he? It's solid Labour and as a Conservative, he knows that nothing he says will change the vote.

Then you get some other bloody idiot (only really interested in getting her question in the local newspaper) asking the Prime Minister what he is doing about new bus stops in Barnsley. He answers politely but in his mind, he thinks, 'Fuck all.'

Bottom line is that politicians should only pay attention to marginals. Fuck the rest.

Nowadays we get hypocrisy in the House of Commons about Afghanistan which is sickening. Prime Minister - 'First let me express my sincere condolences to the family of Lance Corporal Harry Williams, tragically killed yesterday by a land mine.' Widespread nods from all parties none of whom know bugger all about Harry Williams or his family. No one dares to stand up and say, 'Get the fuck out of Afghanistan and leave the bastards to kill each other.'

And that's the point really, it has all got rather too genteel. Not only that but the vast majority of Parliament are passengers seeking to appease their constituencies and with no great involvement with the world at large. I see little evidence of a desire to change the wider world for the better.

We need to go back a couple of centuries when Parliamentary members spoke their mind. This was something I always encouraged in Management meetings. Let's have more of this:

Bollocks
Absolute fucking crap
Talking through your arse
Cunt face
Shit on you

Maybe we could do with a little violence too. Nothing too harmful but a bit of shoe throwing wouldn't come amiss.

But it won't change will it? And that is why I am not in politics

My earliest memories

These are obviously very vague but I think they are true because when I recounted them to my mother in later years, she said I was probably right. So here goes:

1. It is dark and I am outside in my pram. There are bright lights and fire crackling but I am OK. My mother says it was the street bonfire party for VE Day so that makes me just less than one year old. She said she pushed the pram into someone's garden.

2. It is dark but I can see the glow of the fire. I am wet and uncomfortable but no one is around. My mom says that would have been the cast iron cooking range and maybe my nappy was wet.

I can see these faint images even now.

Koran burning

Dunno what the fuss is all about. Is it perhaps idolatry to regard such a book as so sacred. It's pretty much the same with flags.

As far as I am concerned, you can burn the Bible, shit on it, piss on it. And the same goes for the Union flag. Do what you want to it. I don't really care.

You see, it's very simple. We are stronger than the abusers. We shall prevail long after you are gone. And we don't fucking care about you. Got that?

Superstitions

You'd think, wouldn't you that having no belief in any God that I would have no belief in superstitions. But this is only partly true. Superstitions are buried in your mind from your childhood and despite all your adult logic, you cannot get rid of all of them. There are some that remain and frighten you and make you remain cautious.

Friday the 13th? Couldn't give a shit. Ridiculous.
Walking under a ladder? In my case I look up to see what the workers are doing and assess the possibility of injury before making my choice.
Black cats? Love them, see nothing strange there.
Magpies? Far too many of them now to notice how many. I do not find them sinister.

BUT:

I don't ever cross knives. Comes from my mom.
I will not pick blackberries after Michealmas because the Devil owns them.
If I see a hole in a fire, I will break it.

Irrational isn't it?

Probabilities

People like certainty and I am no different but the basic fact is that the world we live in far from certain and dominated by probabilty.People need to come to terms with that. Scientists, politicians and their like need to come to terms with that and explain things more clearly to people.

When I was a kid at school, our teacher talked about half lives of radioactive isotopes. I was confused. I mean if half a gram of cobalt 60 decayed in 60 years, why didn't the other half go in the next sixty years. Got nothing out of the teacher but later I came to understand that no atom has a definite lifetime, it just had a probable lifetime and that's why half of cobalt 60 goes in the first 60 years and half of what is left goes in the next 60 and so on and so on.

So let's go to weather forecasts. They tell you that there is a 60% chance of rain tomorrow afternoon. What they do not realise is that many people do not understand percentages. Many years ago, I did a presentation to my workforce on quality and I was rabbiting away about percentages. A brave lady put her hand up and said she didn't understand percentages. Stopped me in my tracks.

So I took time out to explain them. You see for the public at large, it would be far clearer to say we have 6 chances in 10 of rain tomorrow but we have 4 chances in 10 of no rain. Folks gamble on horse races and understand the odds so why not portray it in those terms.

But we must go further and make people understand that the whole world is uncertain and little more so than in the world of economics or even in their home life.

Ask anyone what time they will serve lunch next Sunday and they will answer with something like around 1pm to 2pm. Point out their uncertainty and imprecision and ask them why they expect the weather forecast to be any better. You will find that they understand if you are patient.

Wait until your father comes home

How many children have heard that? Millions, I suspect. And what happens when you do get home, tired after a long day, stuck in a traffic jam for 45 minutes and just wanting some peace and quiet. Maybe read the paper, watch the news.

But no. What you get is a screaming wife and a toddler looking bemused because at his age he is quite unable to relate his minor crime of 4 hours ago to the hysteria he is now witnessing.

‘Do you know what he did this afternoon?’
‘No, did he microwave the cat?
‘No, worse, he pulled up all the border plants I planted yesterday.’

(I should point out at this stage that when my mom gave me a little patch of garden in which to plant seeds, I pulled them up regularly to see how the roots were going. I soon realised that they didn’t like this. MY mother, being my my mother let me get on with it. She knew I would learn, maybe the hard way.)

‘Well replant them then’
‘OK but what are you going to do about it.’

Fuck all was the obvious answer. If you cannot handle it at the time of the incident, then there is nowt anyone can do later. There is a lesson here. Children and animals can only associate the consequences of their actions over a very short time span. Punish them quickly or they will never learn.

And don’t put the burden on dads. That is demonising them.

Going back

People say never go back and by and large I would agree with them. Certainly, I would never attempt to rekindle the relationships that I have had with several women. Sure we can be friends (most are) but you can never recapture the magic of the first time and, sure as hell, the reasons why you split will resurface. If you do go back, my advice is 'Fuck them' literally.

Then there are experiences like the time a Peacock butterfly came out of its pupa in the warmth of my hand; like to see that again. Same with the Golden Eagle on some pine in Scotland - the evening sun shone on his head and then you understand why they call it the 'Golden Eagle.' I have been to 2 total eclipses of the sun - 1st was in Plymouth but it was cloudy so the sky went dark and that was it - 2nd was in Turkey on a cloudless day, utterly magical. Yep I'd do that again tomorrow. Trouble with eclipses though is that they do naughty things like appear in the middle of the Pacific where you can't get to.

Places? Been to many several times but they were kinda casual visits. So where to go again? Antarctica - been twice - the most beautiful place on Earth. Sit with the Mountain Gorilla - oh yes for that is unforgettable. New Orleans? I love the feeling of being surrounded by sin. And London and New York get me buzzing like nowhere else in the world.

BUT, no really big urge to go back. I want to see new things!!

Women in uniform

I have heard that many men find women in uniform very sexy. Can't say it ever aroused me except in one case - nurses. They are quite irrirestable. The rest just leave me cold. I mean look at those butch army women - horrible. Nurses are like mothers - maybe that's why we like it. Mind you they can be buggers but weren't mothers?

Missed my vocation in life

My former boss told me that I missed my vocation in life. I should have been a barrow boy in the East end of London. There's a grain of truth there: I think I would have loved it. Think about it. You get the chance to talk, you get an audience, you can bullshit and you can make money. (I tell you there are days when I even believe myself.)

OK, OK, next. A full set of towels, two bath towels, two hand towels and two face cloths.

Feel them darling (to the woman at the front). Bet you'd like a rub down with these?

Lovely aren't they. Finest Egyptian cotton (which they are not). How much you reckon? You there, the one in the pink blouse at the back, what you think? Come on love, give them a feel.

I know what you are thinking, all of you lovelies. Worth every penny of 25 quid. And you're right cus that's what I paid for them.

Trouble is, I am short of readies and her indoors wants to go up West tonight so I gotta sell them. Only 10 sets left.

What did you say my darling? 5 quid? You are pulling my plonker, ain't you?

OK, let's be serious. What do you want to pay? You love, the pretty one. What you reckon?

A tenner? Gor blimey, I am losing my shirt here but you're pretty so done.

etc etc

Women and their feet

As you walk this world, you see most men walk on their own two feet and when they are standing, they have both feet placed squarely on the floor, sometimes apart, sometimes together. Sometimes they are at angles; sonetimes they are parallel but they don't fidget with them.

Women are entirely different. There are endless varieties with feet placement and in general, they cannot keep them still. Girl in the bus stop today sat with crossed legs and constantlty wiggled her right foot. Girl yesterday stood in the bus stop on the outer heels of her feet with the soles facing each other - didn't look comfortable.

Then you get the slipping out of the shoes - partly. Why? Are they so uncomfortable? And if you go to the cinema, you will be very familiar with their scrabble for shoes when the lights come up.

And you also get the feet crossed while they are standing or alternatively they stand with one foot on the other. Next there is the backwards cross whereby they stand on one foot and the other is behind. And then you get the standing with the toes pointed inwards towards each other.

The list is endless. And I just don't understand it.

Badgers

There is a lot of fuss down here in Wales right now over a proposed cull of badgers in West Wales. There is even more fuss now that the Court of Appeal has declared the cull unlawful.

On the one hand you have the farmers who believe that they carry tuberculosis and infect their cattle. On the other hand, you have the usual bunch of greens and conservationists who simply shout ‘No.’ Truth is that badgers carry TB and so do cattle and they cross-infect each other and I cannot get a straight answer out of anyone about which is the main culprit. Indeed, there may not be a main culprit; maybe they infect each other in equal measure.

Then you have to ask yourself if the problem is really serious. Of course it is serious for the farmer who has his herd quarantined but let us look at the wider picture. In 2009, in Wales, 1.8 million cattle were tested for TB and there were 1,175 new incidents. Of cattle taken to slaughter, 9,951 were classified as reactors meaning that they showed a positive response to a TB test. But guess what? If you like me had a TB vaccine as a child, you would be a reactor because you carry the antibodies all your life.

I spoke to a vet about this and uncovered the real problem. We could inject all cattle with a TB vaccine although more trials are needed. The problem lies in the subsequent testing. All cattle will then show up as reactors and as yet we have no way of knowing if they really have TB or are just reacting to the injection. No solution expected until 2015.

I have another problem here. We in the West berate the poorest people of the world not to harm their wild life even when a child has been killed by a tiger or gorillas have raided the banana crop. Yet we seem unable to tolerate a little attrition of our domestic livestock when even the cause is in doubt. Hypocrisy, I call it.

But I am biased. I have sat in a little dell at sundown and watched them all around me.

BNP

This acronym stands for the British National Party a group of white supremacists who want no truck with people of darker skin. Recently, it was revealed that all members’ names and details have been posted on the internet. Well tough fucking shit. If it were up to me, I’d brand ‘BNP’ on their foreheads and maybe on their arses as well.

Regrettably, the names of kids with family memberships have been published too; that’s not nice and I hope they don’t suffer. As for the adults who are members, I couldn’t give a shit.

In the past week, the Chairman of the BNP, one Nick Griffin, had his invitation to one the Queen’s Garden Parties revoked. He got an automatic invitation because he is an MEP but the Palace said that his invitation was withdrawn because he had used it for ‘political purposes’ on his blog. Maybe they were telling the truth from their perspective and given their position I guess they had to be nice.

I am constrained by no such limits so my message would have been a little different – ‘Look, you racist scum, we don’t want your or your like here. The sooner you die in the gutter, the sooner the better.’

Maybe if the Nazis had been nipped in the bud like that we would not have had WWII and the holocaust. I don’t know and I certainly do not know if I would have had the courage to speak out.

What I do know was written 200 years ago by Edmund Burke:

‘All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’

So fuck off Nick Griffin and do not pollute my world nor that of my children and my grandchildren anymore.

Food rationing

During and after WWII, food was rationed in Britain. Understandable because we were fighting a war and quite a bit of food came from abroad. Supplies were limited and the ships that carried it came under attack especially from German submarines. Many were sunk and many lives lost.

I cannot say that I noticed it from the start for I was only born in 1944. However rationing continued until 1951 and was well aware of it by then. For those of you unfamiliar with this I should explain that you were rationed on pretty much everything foodwise and it was prescribed in detail – x ounces of this, y ounces of that, so many eggs etc. all per week. It was probably meagre by today’s standards but I do not recall going hungry and since the rations were balanced, we probably had a pretty good diet. I do recall being particularly fond of the little bottles on concentrated orange juice. Don’t think I ever saw a real orange for years.

In order to prevent corruption (which happened anyway) families were issued with coupons in a booklet and coupons were cut out for each purchase. I don’t remember the details but I recall that there were different coupons for each type of commodity. You had to go to a distribution centre periodically to obtain a new ‘ration’ book as it was called. The place was packed and the queues were long so I would wander off around the hall. The world was pretty safe for little children then.

One time I got lost amongst the crowd and for this one and only time in my life, I thought I had lost my mom. I screamed and screamed and my mother soon found me.

I have few other memories apart from one. At the top of the road was a sweet (candy) shop run by a lady called Miriam. My mother used to give Miriam the whole sweet coupon page and if I bought sweets, Miriam would cut out the relevant coupon after I had left. Sensible arrangement I think with hindsight. You don’t want your little child wandering around with a complete ration book.

Apparently, (and I only knew of this later) some woman watched me buying sweets and not handing over a coupon. She reported Miriam to the authorities but it all came out in the wash and Miriam was exonerated. Pity the woman didn’t check things out before she made the accusation.

Over all, I cannot say that rationing did me any harm.

Compensation

For donkey’s years, the photographic industry has limited compensation for damaged film to the value of the film itself rather than the cost of the holiday on which you took them. We didn’t like it but we had to put up with it. No other deal was on offer.

Now after the volcanic ash debacle, Ryanair is saying that its liability should be no more than the price of the flight. I agree with them for once. You cannot reasonably expect compensation many times greater than the price you paid for the original transaction. If you think you should, then the price of the original transaction must go up considerably to cover the contingency. Are you prepared to pay for that?

Many years ago, Range Rover placed a fuel pressure regulator (which I sold them) costing £4, behind their V8 engine and against the bulkhead. If it failed, which it did occasionally, then it was engine out to get at it. Cannot remember the cost now but it was something of the order of £250 or even more. So I told them to piss off and offered them £20 which they grudgingly accepted.

We live in a compensation world, fuelled by lawyers who are after making their own profit as they have always done. The hypocrisy of all this lies in the fact that people who take no fucking risks expect those that do, to look after them in every conceivable way.

Let me digress. One of our engineers, got a PCB plot wrong – a mirror image. It cost £7,500 to correct that mistake. Our Finance Director, a nice lad, said we should sack him. I asked why? You make mistakes too but all it takes to correct yours is an eraser or the F2 button. Just be grateful that your errors are cost free.

Let’s move on to Hull where there were considerable floods years ago. A lot of people were uninsured and clamoured for Government help. As one newspaper writer said, ‘If a lot of them had 32” LCD TV’s instead of 42” ones, the savings might just have funded some insurance.'

But back to Ryanair. Our TV screens were full of families who had forked out as much as £3,000 on their holidays but failed to take out insurance. Fuck them, I say, swim home!

I am not a fan of insurance and certainly not insurance companies who will wriggle and squirm to avoid their obligations but they are a necessary evil.

Bottom line is that this world does not owe you or me a living and it’s high time we all understood that.

Razor blades

I like wet shaving. It is effective and after you have finished you have a wonderful clean and freshness of face which is unmatched by any electric shaving. Over the years we have gone from razor blades which cut you when you made the slightest error. Given the three moles, two on my face and one at the base of an ear, that was a particular hazard because the buggers bleed like hell with only a slight nick.

But the blades have improved and have protective guards so that I only cut myself if I am really clumsy and get them at the wrong angle. When these protected razors came out, they had a single blade but nowadays you can get up to 5 of them. The argument goes that the first blade cuts of some hair but the residual hair springs back up and you need the second blade to catch it. That makes sense to me but to be honest, I have seen no improvement beyond 3 blades. In my case and I suspect, in most others, my facial hair grows at different angles. So no matter how many blades on the razor, I have to go back over parts of my face to catch residual hairs.

The latest razors vibrate and they do seem more effective but I do think we have entered the realm of diminishing returns here. I could happily live with three blades.

The razor companies cannot live with that of course. Their very being depends upon improving returns and they have one of the oldest marketing ploys of all – sell people the basics cheaply, get them hooked and then rip them off on replacements. I don’t really mind – they have to make a living just like you and me. Strategy no. 2 is to bring out a new product and portray the earlier one as obsolescent. That works too.

All I can say that in all my years of shaving, razors and blades have improved immeasurably and that’s a darn sight better than you have seen in windscreen wipers.

Imagine

Yeah a John Lennon song. It encapsulates my life. You may say that it is stupid to imagine these things and I would agree that many ideas are impractical. BUT, is there anything wrong with dreaming of a better world? Don’t you want a better world?

Don’t you want little children to have clean water and sanitation? Don’t you want people not to live in starvation? Lennon posed the question, ‘Imagine, no possessions?’ No, I cannot imagine that for we are not that good and anyway as socialism has demonstrated the enforced sharing of possessions just doesn’t work. But that is but a detail.

Few weeks ago, a friend of a friend called me an ‘old romantic.’ Yes, I plead guilty. All my bloody life, I have tried to make this world a better place for those around me. I haven’t been very good at it in the main but I guess I have changed a few for the better. It’s not been a mission; rather it is something that comes naturally. I suppose I got that from my parents. My Dad certainly believed that tomorrow would be better and my Mom gave me the strength to fight and challenge.

Indeed, I would say that I have not always been pleasant to those around me. I have been harsh at times but so what? My Dad was strict with me. Guy once told me a Roman proverb, ‘Those whom the Gods love, they chastiseth.’ I see a lot in that. Told people I worked with, ‘Never worry if I am bollocking you. Worry when I don’t for that means, I no longer care.’

Just me dreaming again but then that keeps me going. If you cannot dream you have lost hope.

Just try it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLgYAHHkPFs&feature=related

Canal trips

Only ever did one canal trip and it was utterly delightful. I and my partner travelled up the Oxford Canal with two friends and their two children. Weather was pretty good and the pace was tranquil. The boat is very confined so you have to travel with friends with whom you get on really well. We all got along fine.

I like a lie-in: still do. So when the others got up, they’d pick up Catherine who was about 6 months old and chuck her into bed with me. That way we’d sleep on to say 10 am while the other silly buggers did things like breakfast.

We had maps and things and sometimes we got off to explore the local neighbourhood, usually some local pub. But then whole thing was a bloody pub crawl as we moved up and down the canal from pub to pub. I think on the penultimate day we moved just a few hundred yards from one pub to the next.

Washing facilities onboard were primitive and Jonathan, my friends’ son didn’t like the shower. So when his Dad took him in there we had screams of ‘No, Daddy, no.’ Passersby gave us strange looks but we just smiled back at them. Jonathan had a little life jacket and he was very very careful. Only his dad actually ended up in the canal. It wasn’t deep so only up to his thighs.

Water and shit are important issues on a canal trip. As you can imagine, you have to take aboard the former at regular intervals and offload the latter likewise. Food and booze are no problem because there are always stocks near to where your moor.

All in all, a bloody good holiday, one of the best.

Giving away the bride

Big fuss in Sweden over the fact that at their Crown Princess's wedding, she was 'given away' by her father, King Gustav XVI. Up go the shouts, 'Sexist', 'Backlash for feminism' and even the bishops have joined in condemning it. Nine of the buggers condemned the whole idea, not that it stopped a bunch of 4 of them attending. Did they get a fee I wonder?

Well, in the first case, the girl herself asked for a ceremony like this and surely we should respect her wishes.

My take is this. 'Giving away' is probably the wrong term and maybe the use of it arouses these stupid reactions. The woman is not a piece of property. I see it as giving away the duty of care from the father to the groom. You always have a duty of care to your children, whatever sex they be but here I believe the dad is making a statement. 'Look, mate, she's yours to look after now.'

Anything else is a load of bollocks.

Instruction manuals

Terrible things, are they not? For the most part, you get the impression that they are written by morons for a public with all the talents of Einstein. Truth is that like software they are written by asocial nerds with very limited experience of the way the rest of us live our lives. But let me go back to the beginning.

As a student at University, I was, for the first time out on my own and that meant getting clothes washed. So you go the launderette. Rows of machines and large instructions on the wall. I failed immediately. Did I put the money in before or after I loaded the washing? If I had put the money in first as the instructions suggested (sequentially), would the bloody thing start off its cycle without my washing? I asked an older lady next to me who condescendingly told me told me that it was obvious that I put the clothing in first. Obvious? Was it fuck? Money in was no.1 and clothes in were no.2 on the list on the wall.

Yes I know that all instructions confuse me. That is because I am not stupid and quick to spot the ambiguities and paradoxes in most manuals. If I had the time and inclination (of which I have neither) I reckon I could do a better job on most of them.

Last night, I decided to record something for the first time on this digital TV playback recorder I bought a few months ago. Simple as the 6 page leaflet said – press the ‘Record’ button and it will record the programme you are watching. What ‘Record’ button? No bloody button marked ‘Record’ on the entire remote control. Well I ain’t daft for I had already downloaded the full instruction manual onto to my PC so I go look at it. And guess what? The so-called ‘Record’ button is the one with a red spot on it. Obvious? Well not to me. And in any case there are loads of buttons with a written legend so why not this one? Not only that but we have what is known as a ‘red button’ feature which brings up all sorts of info about a programme. Of course that ‘red button’ has an oblong red spot on it.

Then we move to the DVD recorder which I have had for years. It plays and records DVD discs but also has a hard drive. I usually use the HDD but sometimes burn things to disc. Every time I do this out comes the manual but I have sorted it now. You need to consult say pages 6, 34 and 276 and flip back and forth. So I have written little notes on each page like ‘Now fuck off to p34 for the next step.’

Same with camera manuals and that’s from someone who has been driving SLR’s for 36 years.

And to cap it all, you get fewer and fewer printed manuals these days, just some bloody CD that you have to load and scroll through.

I blame much of this on those software nerds. Unlike the actual manufacture of a product, software is a one-off cost which can be used to pile in functions that few want but expands the manual to gargantuan proportions.

Guess I am getting old.

Crap food

We live in a world of processed food, well those of us in the West at least. Sure you can buy fresh produce and even unprocessed things like some meats and cheeses but even then you simply don’t know how much crap has been involved in the food chain. You know, cows fed on shit, farmed fish fed on God knows what and pigs up to their thighs in muck.

Watched a programme about this the other week. Didn’t realise that cheese slices (which I never eat) contain no more than 11% cheese and often less. And then of course, there is that liquid cheese, aka Squeezy Cheese. Buggered if I know what is in that but I bet cheese doesn’t feature highly. Surprisingly, when I went to a kitchen cupboard, I found the packet cheese sauce actually contained 32% cheddar cheese powder.

I could do a whole programme about this myself, indeed a whole series and you’d probably be vomiting well before the end. Ever tried Kentucky Fried Chicken, Southern Fried Chicken or any of its imitators, all alleged to be coated in a secret recipe batter? I bet it’s a secret alright; they’d probably get prosecuted if they ever published it. A dubious piece of chicken of unknown origin coated in a chewy batter shit. If it’s chicken nuggets, which are supposed to be breast meat but could be reformed parson’s noses, then they have a similar consistency to sawdust.

We all know how suspect mass produced pork pies are but over here a firm called Ginsters has taken the concept to epic heights. Based in Cornwall and making much of that, they sell a wide range of rubbishy stuff – pies, rolls, lattices – all filled with an anonymous mush of meat and veg, each of which is virtually indistinguishable from others. I know about these buggers: they are ubiquitous at our motorway serving stations and other watering holes. Sure they may say things like 27% beef but what beef? Mechanically recovered beef, cow’s cheeks? You can bet your life it ain’t ground sirloin steak.

Then we get cabbage which your mom tells you is good for you – lots of iron. I concede that you can just about cope with cabbage in sauerkraut where its abominable taste is smothered by vinegar and I don’t mind it chopped and stir fried a la Chinese but I wonder why I bother. Of course the nadir of cabbage concoctions is coleslaw. Chopped bits drowned in that awful mayonnaise and it still stinks of cabbage. (I cannot forgive the French for mayonnaise, not that I can forgive them for much at all. How on Earth they came up with this substance defeats me, all the more because I generally think that they cook well.)

The world of crap food does not end with the processed stuff. There is plenty of other muck around and some of it is even natural. Consider lettuce and rocket leaves. The first must approach 100% water and is the stuff that padded out the salad that your mom used to give you. I suspect grass would taste better although I understand that it is harder to digest which is why cattle have 4 stomach compartments to break it down. Rocket is just a middle class fad but you look at any recent cookery book and they are bunging the stuff into every salad. Sounds much more up to date than watercress, doesn’t it? Yet the latter has a more peppery taste.

Fruit has taste but root crops have so little which is why we need to dress them up. I could live my life without carrots, turnips, swedes, parsnips and the like. Strangely I actually like potatoes be they be in chip form or boiled little ones swirled in butter and crushed sea salt.

I could go on but I guess you are bored by now so just turn to that semi-processed crap which you are told to eat everyday – cereals. Basic cereals are mushy shit so the Americans with their fondness for mixing 12 to 20 flavours in one dish, dress them up with sugar, honey, nuts, raisins and pretty much anything which will remove their blandness. Who in their right mind would choose porridge over smoky bacon? Sure they may help the digestive tract and help you shit well but there are other ways to solve this problem.

Only ever had a shitting issue me and that was back in the 70’s when I ate really crap food. Since then I have stuck to things like meat, fresh/frozen veg especially pulses, bread, cheese and I have had no problems. My daily shit takes less than a minute. I dump bulky turds quickly and it’s all over. No time to read the newspaper even.

It’s all getting like the third world. The only stuff worth eating must come in its own skin and you’d better wash that first. And of course those poor buggers have to put up with eternal rice and ugali.

Community leaders

Who the fuck are they? Speaking for myself, I simply don't feel anyone is leading me. Indeed apart from friends and family, I doubt if anyone gives a bugger about me.

But out they come on the news when tragedy strikes, be it a natural disaster or a riot or some other event which causes trouble for people. You have all heard it, 'Community leaders are calling for peace tonight,' or 'Community leaders are trying to help the community to get over the shock,' and so on and so on.

Quite honestly, if my house was torched by some raving bastards, I'd want the fire brigade here first and then the police hunting for the sods that perpetrated the attack.

More often than not, these so called community leaders are of a religious brand; you know the sort you have neither seen nor met in the last 20 years or ever. Do I really need to be told that 'God is merciful' in the aftermath of an earthquake? My last contact with religion was but a week ago when I met two nice Mormon lads in the street. Apart from that, I cannot recall any contact with any church of any type for donkey's years.

Local councillors and parliamentary candidates might be thought to be community leaders but all they want from me is my vote. Actually, that may be a bit unfair. They do respond when I harrass them and some have been helpful but more often than not, it has been me leading them rather than the other way around.

So I am lost. I suspect these community leaders are a media invention.

Self belief

Never forget that some of you are only where you are because of me. That is not conceit. It is a fact.

All I ever had to do was to have faith and show you the power and ability of your own self. I just had to show you to believe in yourself.

You were the one with skills, skills I never had. All you needed was courage.

A girl once split up with me because she said that I would change her. She was right. I did not set out to change her. Dammit, I fell in love with her as she was. But yes I would have changed her. Nobody taught me this; it just happens and I have no control over it.

Management games

Back in 1988, Lucas Industries, my employer thought that we all needed 'Strategic Leadership' training. The top brass were sent on a course to INSEAD at Fontainebleu in France, allegedly Europe's top business school. It consisted of daily lectures and practicals plus a management game after dinner. (Not exactly the best time or situation to manage a business but we'll let that go. After all Churchill once said that he had taken more out of alcohol, than alcohol had taken out of him. All he ever did was manage a war on brandy and cigars. Try that INSEAD.)

My boss enjoyed it although he was well pissed when two of his team got so bored with it all that they buggered off home on the pretext that they had real businesses to run. They were French of course and you know they are far more interested in wine and women.

We lesser beings, aka middle management, were despatched to a hotel in Telford, Shropshire in the middle of bloody nowhere. (Telford is like Milton Keynes. You know, 'Happiness is Milton Keynes in your rear view mirror.) Same format though and lecturers from INSEAD. When the lectures were over, we repaired to the bar and then to dinner. Then around 8pm (well oiled) teams of abt 6 of us retired to hotel bedrooms to play the game. Think we had to quit at 10 pm which was OK cus we could go back to the bar.

The game was driven by Lotus 123 and you were given data on the company you were supposed to be managing. You then had to make the usual decisions on revenue and capital expenditure and things to grow the company profitably. At the end of the session, you saved all your data to disc and handed it in to the supervisors for analysis and then you got an outcome disc the next day.

It was fiercely competitive and even the lecturers warned us that we may have been taking it too seriously. As ever, the academics missed the bloody point; real life is fucking competitive. But I digress.

Our team decided, first night, that the game was a load of bollocks and we set about discovering the algorithms that drove it. Hard work for they were well hidden. No hitting F2 to discover the formula. We took about 1hr 45 on this each night so we only got 15 mins to enter our data. It was of course complete guesswork and we were last of the lot on the first and subsequent nights.

Things went from bad to worse for us but we finally cracked it on the penultimate night. On the final night we did what we knew what we had to do. Not quickly enough though. On the final day we rose from bottom to 2nd. Given another day (which you would get in real life) we would have thrashed their arses.

I should point out that each session represented a year in the life of the fictitious company we were managing. Fair enough in itself but you cannot realistically compress a year's decision making into 2 hours. Add to that the fact that the way we played it would have put us in liquidation in year 3 and you can see how unreal the whole thing was.

As I have said before, nothing in this world fits you for running a business, like actually running one. That's 'cock on the block' time.

Bloody idiocy

The Sunday Times yesterday pointed out that although we are broke and we need some cuts in public spending, our local government bodies continue to recruit as if nothing has happened. We are not talking about the ‘front-line’ services here like nurses, teachers, policemen, garbage collectors and the like. Oh no, we are talking about jobs that are far better paid than the front line jobs such as these:

Brighton and Hove City Council – 4 x Strategic Directors on £125k each. (That's half a frigging million and if you go to the website and watch the council's Chief Executive talking utter bullshit about these jobs, you'll be no wiser.)

Sheffield – Internal communications change consultant @ £400/day
Unknown – Intelligence Officer – to be paid £5,000 pa more than an MI5 officer
Suffolk – Head of communications @ £700/day, ie about 20% more than the Prime Minister
Hertfordshire – Putting people first programme manager: Up to £54,412
Unknown – Empowerment partnership coordinators @ £70,000 each
Unknown – Communications chief @ £182,000
Derby – Ambassador to its twin town Osnabruck – salary unknown
Derby – Head of Streetpride: up to £55,482
Derby – Strategic Commissioning Manager: up to £38,961
East London – Community Development Coordinator: £42,000
Medway – European Projects and tourism officer: £36,313
Newham, London – Media Officer (to deliver positive stories about the council): £36,306
Liverpool – Totem Pole Artist – salary unknown.

You are going to love this:
Elmbridge, Surrey : Health, Safety and Wellbeing Adviser : Up to £34,524. (When the Sunday Times asked about the wellbeing bit, the answer was, ‘We are not really sure yet as we have only just added that to the role. We’ll want someone to make sure that the staff take breaks, go for walks – that kind of stuff.’

That’s the Sunday Times for you. I decided to look at my local patch. Here’s Cardiff for you:

Play Strategy Implementation Officer : Up to £23,708
Senior Equality & Diversity Specialist : Up to £32,706
Service Delivery Advisor (Manage) : Up to £19,126
Equalities Network Officer : Up to £28,636
Coordinator – Butetown : Up to £28,636
Geographic Information Systems Officer : Up to £26,276

You have to admire the self importance and imagination of the job titles here but in your heart you know that they are all wanker's jobs. I have nothing against the people themselves: they are people like you and me. It's just that we don't need them.

I am reminded here of Geldof’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ Judging by the above, our councils think it’s Christmas every day.

Parliamentary reform - numbers

Our new Prime Minister, pretty boy Cameron has talked about reducing the number of MP's in the House of Commons. Not before time in myopinion. I have written about it ages ago but God knows where. The USA is far from perfect but numbers wise it makes more sense:

Population : 307m
Represenatives : 435
Senators : 100

And what do we have?

Population : 61m
MP's : 650
Lords : 736 (and that doesn't count the hereditary ones who were kicked out)

We don't need to have an inquiry or a Royal Commission on this. Let me run it. Target 400 MP's (which is generous) and 100 Lords. Put all the names into 4 hats. Why 4? Well we don't want to have an accident and end up with all the Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish one's escaping. The axe must fall there too, big time. And anyway, they are all so fond of their proportionality stuff so now they'll get it.

Then I take the names out of the hats one by one and announce 'OK Sid Smith, you're fired.' Course I would add around 100 extra Harriet Harman tickets just to make sure she has no fucking chance. Any arguments from any of them and their pay would be halved tomorrow.

I'll be generous though. I'd give them 6 months notice to allow the Electoral Commission time to redraw the boundaries before I closed the Electoral Commission.

Dunno how much cash this will save but at least we'd have to put up with a lot less yap.

Street dancers

I realise that many of these are black but my remarks are not meant to be racist. They apply to people of any hue. And now we have got white kids joining in.

I am heartily sick and bloody tired of these fucking groups who bounce around on stage and in the street to incomprehensible rag bag music waving their hands about, spreading their legs, stamping and mouthing gibberish. Many of them wear baseball caps turned at 90 degrees to the side or the rear which lends them nothing in attractiveness. I mean if just one band did it, it might look original but when so many do, it looks like a bloody uniform. And of course that betrays their adolescent youth. Adolescents are on the first stage to being individuals but lacking the knowledge and experience to define their true individuality, they just simply do the bloody opposite of the adults around them.

Michael Jackson was one of the progenitors of all this and the best thing he ever did for this world was to die. They lack grace, they lack beauty, they dress as if they just come off the dole queue – well apart from that little dot in Diversity – and even she will have a skirt up to her arse by the time when she gets to 16.

Actually, I do think there is a bit of racism here but not on my part. If a bunch of whites did similar routines and some do then they’d be dismissed as crap. OK a couple of white kids did something like this on BGT tonight but they did not win nor should they.

The roots of all this crap go back further. Just look at Gladys Knight and the Pips doing their stuff. There she is singing her heart out and I do love her so. Either side of her are a bunch of guys swaying from side to side making silent finger clicks and occasionally mouthing echoes of her song. If I had been her, I would have sacked the bastards and kept all the money to myself.

Just another day

Let me think what I have done today. Well first and foremost I wrote on this subject earlier, did a preview and lost the bloody lot. Pissed me off big time. So here we go again in no particular order.

- Got up say 11 am.
- No breakfast. Never do but ate a sausage left over from last night.
- Looked at email. Deleted crap. Answered Erik in Sweden and Alan in Northern Ireland whom I shall visit in September after baby Eleanor's wedding.
- Got myself in a foul mood with the USA in general and Obama in particular over their attitude to BP on the oil spill. So wrote preceeding blog.
- Long message interchange on that subject with a mate in North Carolina. I have tried, I really have to give Obama the benefit of the doubt but he is turning out to be what I said earlier - another Jimmy Carter. My mate agrees. Fucking useless.
- Answered an email from cardiff Council asking about what I thought of sustainable transport. Refrained from taking the piss which is always difficult.
- Phoned them and asked them if they ever investigated the bus system in Curitiba, Brazil, rated by many as the best in the world. I'd have got more sense if I'd asked about the bus service on the Moon so I patiently explained it to a sweet young lady. Plainly 4 facts in a row were too much for her so she asked I put in an email which I did.
- Phoned the school of which I am a governor and had a long chat with the headmistress. She confided a secret with me. I had hoped it was her undying lust for my body but no such luck.
- Phoned the hotel in Ireland for El's wedding reception to ask where is my email confirmation. Lass said it had been sent and spelled out my email address as she perceived it. Got the first letter wrong. She said 'o' so I said 'e' as in e for echo. OK she said, you mean 'o'. Spent 5 minutes on this and I am none the wiser nor have I received an email.
- Posted Peter, Paul and Mary's Puff the Magic Dragon on Facebook and told people to listen and become a child for a moment.
- Nice ox tongue and sheep's cheese sandwich for lunch.
- Watched BBC news. Wondered why it is that everyone who dies tragically is 'absolutely wonderful,' 'the nicest person you could ever wish to meet,' 'everybody's friend,' etc etc. You know what I mean. It would be a refreshing change one day if someone came out with, 'Fucking tosser, no loss.'
- Refrained from putting garbage out. It was raining and I create little rubbish anyway.
- Had a shit. No problem as ever.
- Watched CNN news and emailed them bollocking them for their failure to mention all the American companies involved in the oil spill.
- Watched BBC Democracy live for a good 2 minutes. House of Commons 3 parts empty as usual and most of our other assemblies not even active.
- Emailed a lecturer in non human primate behaviour at Stirling Uni to say I'd got the book he recommended. It's all about us humans cooking and if you don't know, it is almost certain that we are the only animals that do so.
- Emailed the keeper of penguins at Edinburgh Zoo and told her that the Japanese are now flogging krill in frozen blocks. Feed her Gentoos that and their beeks might just turn from yellow to red, just like they are in Antarctica.
- Tried to change the ring tone on my cell phone and ended up being told I was subscibing to 3 new ringtones a week for £4.50 a week. Killed that bastard idea.
- Checked the value of my shares and found I lost £2,250 today. Bugger. Could almost have bought a good bottle of Chateau Petrus for that.

And the day is not over yet.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill

I am angry about this, very angry. Obviously I bitterly regret the environmental damage but that is not what I am angry about today. I am angry about America's response and that really pisses me off big time. Obama has been down there three times now, done fuck all and ranted on and on about BP paying for the mess. I said he was going to be another Jimmy Carter long before he was elected and now he is proving my point. Then the media does nothing but focus on BP to the extent that they are marching on the street calling for a boycott on BP's gas stations.

Consider:

BP own 65% of the well, which is to say the oil at the bottom. Anakardo Petroleum (American)own 25% and Mitsui (Japanese) own 10%. You ever heard the latter two mentioned?

The failed drilling rig is owned and manned by Transocean, another American company. Obama mentioned them? NO! They have made a statement to say they were only drilling to BP's specifications. Absolute bollocks. In my time in the motor industry, meeting the specification of the car producer was no excuse. If the product wasn't good enough and we pleaded that we met the spec in self defence, their answer was simple. 'Look we employed you as experts in your field. If our spec was deficient, then it was up to you to point it out.'

The well head was capped by Halliburton, another American company. You may have heard of them because they were big buddies of Dick Cheney and made lots of money out of the war in Iraq.

And to cap it all, if you will forgive the pun, someone sent me a video link on Texas trials on an oil eating microbe. Seems they trialled this many years ago and the little buggers chewed up all the oil in days, left no toxic waste and promtly died. Not only that but the cultures can be dried, stored and brought to life and squirted through fire hoses. So why haven't those whining gulf states stockpiled the stuff?

Fuck Obama. He's lost my vote, not that I had one in the first place of course.

Supermarket kids

Supermarkets seem to bring out the worst in kids, Much as I love children, I could cheerfully slaughter many of the little bastards who haunt our shopping aisles. Yes I know I should address my anger to their parents but I still have the urge to maim one of the little shits. As they rush around I sincerely hope that one of the little fuckers will crash into that huge stack of Heinz Baked Beans tins or better still a pile of wine glasses. And all the while some simpering mother will quietly say, 'Don't do that darling.' Not dissimilar to what we said to Hitler over the invasion of the Sudentenland and look where that got us.

Occasionally God intervenes and it's nice. Last year I was 2nd in the queue at the check out in Tesco's. Mom puts one item in shopping bag and the little sod runs off to climb the windows. Mom goes off and grabs him. 2nd item in the shopping bag and he's gone again. Repeat. And so on and so on 4 times. At the 5th escapade, mom dragged him back and he smacked his head against the check-out. Crashed to the floor and wept but at least we got on with our shopping.

My friend Gillian had the right idea. When Catherine or was it Jonathan lay on the floor of Marks & Spencer's Banbury screaming, she took the child's ankle and dragged him/her across the floor and out into the street.

Garbage fascists

We have a great garbage collection service here in Cardiff and it all seems pretty flexible and aimed at providing a good customer service. The guys are cheerful and they actually run down the road collecting rubbish.

We have a black wheelie bin for collecting unrecyclable waste and a green one for compostable waste including food. To contain the latter, we get free biodegradable bags so no vermin or flies. These bins are collected weekly. Then once a fortnight we put out green plastic bags (again free) for recyclable stuff like glass containers, tin cans, plastics etc. The only ‘no-no’ as I found to my cost are wire coat hangers. They apparently jam up the sorting machinery.

The free bags incidentally are available over the counter at local small shops and in my case that means a 5 minute walk.

We also have a free service to collect large items. Understandably, this is by appointment but all you have to do is put such items out in front of the house on the date agreed. My son and his family live in London and there they charge for it. No wonder ‘fly tipping’ continues in our country lanes.

Sadly the same is not true in many parts of Britain and it is getting worse and in some places nasty. Many councils are considering reducing all waste collection to fortnightly intervals or have even implemented such a policy. Some will fine you if you put so much garbage in the bin that the lid cannot be closed flat. The latest trick is to get us to do their sorting for them. This will be achieved by issuing people with up to seven different coloured containers for various types of garbage. Crikey, I'd have to pin the list to the fridge door to make sure I didn’t make a mistake.

And woe betide you if you do make a mistake or overfill your bin. The Gestapo at the council will descend up you and issue a heavy fine.

This is one of the sad things about Britain today and quite possibly other countries. Cardiff has taken the ‘give them a carrot’ approach but far too many only offer the stick. Paradoxically, the people dreaming up these policies and implementing them are called ‘civil servants’: they are neither.

Disenfranchisement

We had a general election recently and I learned that 3.5 million people in the UK did not even register to vote. Fine because I think that is their democratic right. I do not believe, unlike Australia, that people should be forced to vote.

However, the act of not bothering to register raises deeper issues for me. If you cannot be arsed to participate in the most basic factors of a democratic state, then why should that democratic state afford you its protection and benefits? Disenfranchisement can work two ways you know although I do not expect the unregistered to recognise that.

OK so you do not wish to operate within the democratic process? Fine, then piss off and do without any benefits, the NHS and much else.

It’s like the so-called travellers, who like to consider themselves romantically as gypsies. Wander around, paying no council tax or possibly pretty much else, yet they expect to squat where they like, shit all over your lawn and get away with it. Read somewhere about one of their sites where passersby on the adjacent motorway were said to be shouting insults at them. So the local mad council built them a fence to screen them from passing cars.

It’s very simple. Do you wish to be part of this society and enjoy its benefits? Yes? OK, pay up and understand that rights only come with obligations. No? Fine then bugger off and do your own thing and expect no help from me.

It’s their kids I feel sorry for because they have no choice in all this. What is worse, those kids will be raised with the same attitude

Teachers and my kids

When my daughter was very young, 5 or so, I and my wife were summoned to her infant’s school by the headmistress. She, in sombre tones, told us that she was concerned that Caroline was becoming uncontrollable. This was news to us. Caroline had always been stubborn but she seemed to be doing really well at school and had got along fine with her first teacher.

It appeared that Caroline had been told to do something by her second teacher, a Mrs Garscadden to do something. Well we had an inkling that all was not well between Mrs. Garscadden and Caroline so it was no surprise, to me at least, that Caroline had stood up and said, ‘I shan’t and you won’t make me.’

My reaction was, ‘That’s my girl!’ at which point my wife punched me and told me to be quiet.

Caroline flourished with her third teacher and the others that followed.

Separately, at secondary school, my son, Peter, was doing badly in English and with our consent he was demoted to the ‘B’ stream and a new teacher. He too flourished in his new stream and gained an ‘A’ grade at GCSE.

They are both successful in their chosen fields.

And now the role reversal has emerged and they are teaching me. Is that not wonderful?

A letter to Wales and Scotland

I am an Englishman living in Cardiff, one of the best cities I have ever lived in. However, I am increasingly growing tired of Celtic abuse towards the English plus their continual demands for greater autonomy in their local affairs. It’s more a government/media thing than a general feeling among the people on the street and your friends. But, it’s there and it nags away at you.

These people need to understand that the English are equally growing tired of all the bloody moaning and the way in which England is subsidising the economies of Wales and Scotland.

Barnett formula, Wales? Why should that be changed on the basis of need? Of course you need more: you always have. Even in its heyday, the South Wales coalfield had the highest rate of absenteeism in Britain. Are you asking us to subsidise your historic fecklessness?(Back in the 60’s, a coal miner was paid for 6 shifts if he worked 5 shifts a week. If you took a day off and worked 4 shifts, then you only got paid for 4, which is a 33.3% reduction on the full week. And no coalfield did that more often than South Wales.)

You may well say that the Celtic position is born of the wealth of the SE of England and I would agree for much of England generates negative wealth compared to the South East. Indeed there seems to be an inverse relationship across the British Isles between wealth and moaning. The less they have: the more they moan.

No, bugger off Celts. Go your own way and we shall go ours. We shall close RAF Valley, St Athans, Rosyth and Faslane, leave you to your own fisheries protection, remove the ONS office from Newport, move Companies House from Maindy, shift the DVLA from Swansea and throw RBS to the wolves. Pay for your own bilingual signs and utility bills. Sort your own little TV relay stations in your hills and valleys. Cough up to pay for broadband plans for your remote areas (thereby eliminating the 50p monthly telephone tax for every Briton). And we need to give some serious thought to closing down BBC transmissions and offices in Wales and Scotland. ITV can sort themselves on the basis of advertising revenue.

And if Wales needs a new nuclear power station to replace the existing one at Wylfa, then bloody well pay for it yourselves. Mind you, maybe it’s not a bad idea putting the new one there. It’s quite a way from England so if it goes bang, it will only destroy Anglesey.

Another compelling reason to let Scotland go would be to see what a frigging mess Alex Salmond would make of independence. As ‘leaders’ go, I cannot recall seeing such a display of smirking, arrogant, dismissive behaviour in any politician.

Remember Quebec.

England can do without the Celts. What they need to ask is if they can do without England.

I love living in Cardiff but I am tired of all this crap.

Philtrums

In case you didn’t know it, the philtrum is that groove on your face between your nose and your upper lip. In some cases it is barely visible: in others it is quite deep and when it is, it affects the shape of your upper lip turning it into something like the shape of a crossbow.

I have no idea whether or not it has a function. It could be a drainage channel to move nose dribbles to the mouth. Sounds gross I know but as far as I know your own bodily fluids will add no harm. I mean, let’s face it, if you have got something, you ain’t going to get anymore by adding to it, not that I have a particular affection for any of my bodily secretions.

Maybe it's one of them decorative things and that would figure for I do find philtrums attractive, especially on women. Makes their lips more sexy.

Wasted food

We in the UK are said to waste enormous amounts of food. Here in Cardiff, they even provide us with biodegradeable bags to put the stuff in and it is collected weekly with other compostible material. Most of the stuff I put in there is inedible anyway - bones, husks, outer coating of pineapples, orange peel etc. And I am someone who doesn't peel potatoes or carrots or the like so you can hardly call me wasteful.

But it isn't all the consumer's fault. So much stuff is sold in quantities that defy complete usage even if you have a family of say 4 or 6. Celery is a real culprit. It doesn't keep fresh for too long although I dare say I could blanch it and freeze it. However most recipes call for one stalk or two and all the supermarkets sell is the whole bloody bunch. Do I really want to spend all day preparing different things with the stuff to save the planet?

Our Government wishes to discourage or even ban 2 for 1 food offers saying that much is wasted. They can piss right off as far as I am concerned. I live alone but I am quite happy with the savings I can make on '2 for 1' providing I can freeze the 2nd portion for another day. If I cannot freeze it, then I don't buy it.

British Empire

This beyond all doubt was the largest empire ever seen, bigger than that or Rome or even Alexander the Great. As such, it has come in for a lot of criticism and it is true that a lot of nasty things were done in our empire. I don't apologise for that. Times and social values were different when the empire was created and who is to say that the colonial countries would have behaved differently if they had been colonial powers? You wouldn't want Robert Mugabe to be the Emperor of Europe would you?

'Ah,' I hear you say, 'but we never had any colonial aspirations.' Really? Are you telling me that given half a chance you would not have knocked seven bells out of the neighbouring tribe or country? Given the history of conflict over the past centuries, then of course you would. It still happens to this day.

And if the British Empire was really so very very bad, why is it that its political ideals - democracy, free press etc. - are still held in high esteem today? Even the worst dictator still pretends that things are democratic. The USA kicked us into touch in 1776 but they still hold many of our values dear, as does Canada,Australia, India and many, many smaller places.

But was there ever a British Empire? I am biased here for I really believe it was an English Empire. Yes the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish were drafted in to support the expansion but it was led, largely, by the English.

Next point. For most colonies it's been about 60/70 years since they were given independence and what's happened since? India has moved on and Canada/Australia/USA have done so too but they became independent earlier. South Africa seems to progress in fits and starts.The majority of the rest have not moved at all or even gone backwards. Despite this, British colonialism continues to be blamed for the woes of today. Yes indeed we could and should have done more but that's no excuse for the state of many countries today.

Well, let's just think about the state of things before Britain arrived. People wandering around with tea towels over their genitals, holding spears, fighting and earning a subsistence living. (India was different.) Our main fault is that we hardly improved on that.

Age of criminal responsibility

Back in 1993, two 10 yr old boys took a 2 yo toddler from a shopping mall. The little one went freely and CCTV shows that he held the hand of one of the older boys. The older boys took the toddler to a railway track and killed him by bashing his head with a brick and a car battery. The killers were released on parole in 2001 and given new identities. One of them is now back in jail for what are said to be serious criminal charges but we don't know what they are.

That is the background to the fact that this case and others have reawakend the debate on what age should we set for criminal responsibilty. In Britain, it is 10 yrs old (8 yrs old in Scotland) and that is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, in Western Europe. The simplistics amongst us are clamouring to raise the age to say 14, 16 or even 18. Are they saying that we have to change because France or Germany are different? If we used that logic, we'd be changing all sorts of laws.

Each country is different. Go to Amsterdam and you see the glass covered tourists boats moored on the canal sides at night; it was no different when I went there the first time back in 1970. Try doing that in the UK and they would be bricked to oblivion in just one night.

No, any decision on this issue must be based on local circumstances not what is happening in the Congo.

But there is a wider and much more important issue here - why should there be a fixed age anyway? Children develop at different speeds and much depends on parenting in the first 5 years. Some parents infuse their kids with moral values and others don't; many do it half heartedly. So who is to say that all children below a given age are not criminally responsibe whilst those above that age are. It all depends on the child and his/her upbringing.

In an ideal world, you'd scrap the fixed age limit and make an assessment of the child before deciding upon the way it was to be treated much as you do with adults with respect to insanity. Trouble is the assessment would be made by sociologists who are only too willing to play the 'there, there, it's not your fault' card.

I don't have an answer here. But of this, I am sure that any 10 year old from whatever background would know that bashing a 2 yo's head until he died was wrong.

Original artefacts

The possession of originals like artefacts and paintings is an obsession with many people and the source of a lot of friction between nations. Can’t see the point of much of this generally. Let’s look at a few:

Egypt understandably would like the Rosetta Stone out of the British Museum. Let them have it, I say, for we could make a perfectly acceptable copy. Enormous quantities of Egyptian artefacts were taken abroad over the years and they don’t moan too much about most of them. Maybe that’s because they have plenty left. Nonetheless, I’d return the bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.

I am far less sympathetic to Greece’s request for the return of the Elgin Marbles but that is born of the fact that they have just bloody well moaned for years and are a pain in the arse. Melina Mercouri made it an obsession and that only increased my resolve to tell her to piss off. As an actress turned to politics, I suspect she made this a cause to further her political profile. The Greeks have a wondrous history but I see little that they have done to promote it. I mean it took the Brits to kick off the project to create an ancient trireme.

Iran wants to borrow the cylinder of Cyrus the Great, arguably the world’s first declaration of human rights. Well, first they do some pretty fine full size replicas for sale in Iran so why do they want the original, even if as they say, they only wish to borrow it? Usual reason, we want the original, it’s ours, it’s part of our history and so on. The British Museum is behaving as though it does not trust Iran to return it; can’t say I blame them. Well we could swap the original with one of those tourist replicas and surely that would be good enough for the researchers who say they wish to study it more. Let Iran have it and if they destroy it with a car bomb, what the heck?

Now to the arts like painting and sculpture. Well they are easily reproducible and have been, so what’s the fuss? This is where I compare the museums with the airports on which I wrote earlier – testosterone. All a bit like kids really – ‘I’ve got the original Guernica, so go suck,’ ‘I’ve got the Mona Lisa, so bugger you.’ I have but 3 original paintings in this house plus a silk embroidery: they are lovely. If they were copies, it would not bother me a bit.

And then there is the value of the originals. Those in the public domain are generally worth nothing because the very museums and galleries that hold them are unlikely to sell them. Maybe we should rethink this – like ‘Hi Egypt, we’ve racked up a lot of debt, how much for the Rosetta Stone, in gold, of course?’ Trouble here is that the sellers are often richer than the prospective buyers and that’s certainly true of Greece right now with an economy that is truly buggered.

Private ownership is another issue entirely. Private ownership is a matter for the individual and you could argue that it is based on the sin of coveting not that that is particularly relevant. The beauty of private ownership is that if you keep it secret, no other bugger knows and therefore won’t make a claim.

I have some rare stamps. I have no unique ones but I have 2 examples of which there are only 3 others in the world and no photocopy would satisfy me. No one out there is clamouring for mine.

Finally you get the mixed private/public ownership such as the Koh-I-Noor diamond in the Crown Jewels – privately owned but we all know about it. Bhutto (Ali not Benazir) of Pakistan once asked for it back which is a bloody cheek since it was found in SW India. I guess you might make a replica of it in cubic zirconia but it wouldn’t be the same.

So where has this ramble led me? Nowhere really. Guess I’d hand back the really crucial artefacts (except to Greece) that could be copied and keep the rest.

Michael Foot

Michael Foot died this week at the ripe old age of 96 – a Labour politician and one time leader of the party who led them to a disastrous election defeat in 1984. That would not have been difficult given that Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party were riding on the crest of the wave following the defeat of Argentina in the Falklands. However I have to ask myself if he would have done any better if the Falklands dispute had never happened: I doubt it.

Tributes have poured in since the man’s death from people of all political persuasions:

Passionate
Intellectual
Honest
Kindly
Brilliant orator
Idealist

You name it, he’s done it or so they say, but did he? I don’t believe so for his impact on this world was bugger all. I did not know him personally but I have seen him speak many times and read some of the things he had written. So let us look at just a few things.

Brilliant orator? Oh for sure he could speak well and at length. His speeches were quite fluid and dotted with a gentle humour that would make anyone smile. However, they were hardly captivating or inspiring. Sure they got his supporters clapping but would they have got them or me out of bed early on a frosty morning? No.

Leadership? He showed no signs of leadership whatsoever, only rising to be the Leader of the Labour Party in order to fill a vacuum. No visible evidence of an ability to get people to do that little bit extra. And how could you possibly campaign for unilateral disarmament at a time when the USA and USSR had enough missiles to destroy the planet. If the West has disarmed, the tanks of Russia would have been rolling across the north German plains the very next day. MAD may have seemed daft but it kept the peace.

Some have commented on the fact that he did not enlist for WWII, preferring to spend his time in his London flat reading and writing. Others have said that he may have been a ‘conscientious objector’; it is possible. He may have been unfit to enlist but we have never had any details. I don’t know the facts here but I do know that my grandfather managed to enlist with lousy lungs and only got thrown out when they found he had understated his age.

Note however the words, ‘London flat,’ and the fact that he is reported to have died in his ‘Hampstead villa.’ Now even a box room in Hampstead would cost a small fortune so that tells you that he was well off. Hardly surprising since him and his equally left wing brothers were the children of a well heeled solicitor from Plymouth. So, he’s just one of many middle class socialists that have never experienced the hardship of the working class but pretend to empathise with it.

I won’t miss him and I doubt if many will given a week.

Becket and compliance

Henry II made Thomas Becket, his friend, Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping no doubt that Becket would follow Henry’s will. Becket did not.

Neil made me CEO of AB Automotive in 1996 expecting me to carry on as he did. I did not. In many ways, I did not follow Neil’s way but set my own course, did things differently and this led to months and months of conflict. He gave me a very poor assessment after 6 months. There was a box in which I was allowed to make my own comments. I just said, ‘Mr Rodgers has not judged my effectiveness objectively. He has simply judged me according to whether or not I did it his way.’

I just carried on in my way and eventually it worked out and we are friends. Henry and Becket did not and Becket was murdered. Unlike me though, Becket was later canonised.

Simple lesson here. However much you love and admire your successor, never ever expect them to do it your way for by virtue of the very quality of the abilities you admired in them, they will do it their way. Accept it.

Cock on fire

Once and only once in my life did I go to the toilet to urinate after I had been chopping chillies and not washing my hands beforehand.

An unforgettable experience.

Bells

If you have never rung them, big bells I mean, then you will never understand. They are quite simply glorious. Unlike other musical instruments, ringing bells make their sound on the move and that gives their sound a special quality not found in static instruments. Add to the fact that they do not generate a single note but several.

In ringing bells, you get many notes of differing intensity, the key ones being:

Strike – that’s the main note generated from the clapper striking the sound bow.
Hum – that’s an octave below the strike
Tierce – minor third above the strike
Nominal – 4 notes above the strike although some would argue that it is an octave above the strike
Quince – 5 notes above the strike

Older bells were not tuned to give all these notes by skimming metal off the bell. In the latter part of the 19th century, a Canon by the name of Simpson came up with this idea. People still argue about the idea, some saying it’s fine, others saying that only the strike counts.

High speed photography will show a bell contracting and expanding in different parts after the strike. I don’t care; I always think a well tuned bell sounds lovely.

And of course, they have to be made of 80% copper and 20% tin. Muck around with that proportion much and it will be disastrous.

Frozen Planet

In 2011, the BBC will launch a nature series called Frozen Planet, understandably a documentary about the Arctic and the Antarctic. It has been 4 years in the making. Look out for it for I am sure it will capture the most beautiful places on this Earth. And then perhaps you will understand why I went and in the case of Antarctica, twice.

Guild Gazette

This was the student newspaper at Liverpool University and it came out once a fortnight. I joined it in my final year, first as the pop music correspondent and eventually as Assistant Editor. We were lucky in two respects.

Firstly, we were subject to censorship in that all copy had to be submitted to the Vice-Chancellor prior to publication. I don’t recall him interfering much, if not at all. However we were registered as a newspaper so we could legitimately claim to be Britain’s only censored newspaper. This we exploited with a banner across the top of the front page proclaiming ‘Britain’s only censored newspaper.’ So we had a campaign to flaunt.

Secondly, we were very fortunate to have an editor who had previously worked on a proper newspaper, the Huddersfield Advertiser. Paul brought in professionalism to writing and editing and we all learned a lot from him. He changed the layout to a tabloid and modelled it on the Daily Mirror. Many looked down on the Mirror in the early 60’s: many still do. But then as he pointed out, the Mirror was the newspaper of the working classes and had to get its message home simply but with a punch. Think we did that.

He also brought colour, just orange, on the front and back pages. That meant two passes through the printing machine but it also meant that we could charge a little more for coloured adverts on the back page and that covered the costs. Our advertisers never realised that since we were using orange on the front page then orange on the back page had no on-cost.

Since the paper came out fortnightly and there were no PC’s in those days and we all had lectures to attend, we were very busy. This meant that we had to get the copy written, the photographs collected and all down to the printers very quickly. Then we had to collect the galley prints and proof read them as quickly as possible in order to meet the final print deadline.

It was all worth it for in 1965, we won ‘The Best Student Newspaper of the Year’ award and the Vice-Chancellor removed his censorship.

Maybe, if I had paid more attention to my studies, then I would have got a better degree. But then, I would probably have had a different career path and I doubt that that would have been as much fun as the one I have had. And anyway, Guild Gazette was an experience.

(Our Student's Union had a capacity of around 2 to 3,000 for Saturday night dances so that meant we could hire pretty much anyone to play there. As pop music correspondent, my job was to interview them in the bar during the interval. I even had an expense allowance to buy them a pint each. How else do you get to have the likes of the Hollies and the Animals to yourself?)

Climate change and global warming

I am really confused on this one but, of this I am certain, the issues are clouded by poor scientific rigour, vested interests and a lack of a satisfactory climate model. Taking the last one first, there are so many variables affecting the climate of this planet even at the macro level that we fall short of making reliable predictions for the near to medium term, let alone the long term. Much the same as economics actually. We simply don't have an effective long term model that encompasses all the variables.

Tonight on the BBC News, we hear that the British public is becoming more disillusioned about man made effects on climate change AND global warming. However, the first question asked of the public put the two together which is utter crap; a question so poorly phrased that it inevitably lead to a misleading answer. I do not deny that over time, a few centuries or more that one may link one with the other but right now I believe it is important to consider the two separately.

Global warming? Yes as a graduate chemist I know that Carbon Dioxide will absorb the infra red rays emitted from the planet and, in effect it will act as a blanket keeping heat in the lower atmosphere and on the surface. In the long run, all other factors being neutral, the rise in CO2 which is said to be at record levels, will lead to global warming.

The trouble is all the other factors are not neutral. Our climate and our weather are influenced by so many things. The CO2 may well try to warm us up but other forces are at work. Read this if you will:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html

The argument here is that the oceans are a powerful force shaping our climate. Isn’t that bloody obvious? Most people have heard of El Nino even if they have heard of no other ocean current. The commentary on cyclical mini ice ages has a special appeal to me. I know this is only anecdotal but I kept a record of my hill walks over 20+ years and noted the shift in the seasons. Only later did I hear meteorologists confirm my conclusions.

Go to sunspots. We know what they are but we are not too sure of their effects on climate. We have just pulled out of one of the greatest solar sunspot minima in decades and we have no clue as to what the next cycle will bring in terms of sunspots or their effect.

Another anecdote if you care to indulge me. I went to Svalbard in 2006 and landed at the island of Kvitoya. They said that the free water north of Svalbard was remarkable and evidence of global warning. Maybe but it was free of ice in the 1890’s when balloonists were trapped and died there because they could not reach the mainland. And anyway as the Daily Mail article I cited above says, the Arctic ice has been growing for the past 3 years. Don’t believe me? Go to NOAA and the others.

Before moving on to vested interests, let’s look at our politicians. In most countries only a paltry few of them have any scientific background at all. Tell them that climate change is subject to 49 or so variables and that you need several supercomputers to sort it with no guarantee of success and you have them flummoxed. These are not unintelligent people so a simple description of the IR absorption of CO2 and its growing level will be easy for them to buy in to and give support to CO2 reduction. And then, of course, politicians being politicians will react in the only way they know how. Smack the public with a stick and raise some taxes. Flight taxes are horrendous these days but I have no idea where the money goes to reduce or offset CO2 emissions. Booked a couple of air miles flights recently and the tax was a staggering €250 each way.

So to vested interests and there are many of these. You get the scientific institutions like our discredited University of East Anglia who are dining out (literally) on government grants to look at the ‘problem’. They also get to go to great conferences in nice parts of the world. Let’s have the next conference in Malawi in a hut and eat like the locals.

We have in the UK something called the Carbon Trust which is something to do with reducing C02 emissions in the UK. Well, as Tony Blair said a few years ago, ‘If Britain ceased all CO2 emissions tomorrow; China would put it all back in 2 years.’ Not my favourite politician but that makes a lot of sense.

Then I get the airlines trying to look nice and asking me for money for my ‘carbon offset’ for my next flight. The money is supposed to go to ‘green projects’ but I see scant evidence of where it goes. When did you last hear of the money going to the Amazon or Indonesia to evict the loggers and plant 100,000 sq. miles of new forest?

And no show would be complete without the voice of farmers, a sector of society (in the West at least) whose hand is the first out for any subsidy going. Now I am being told to support them and not eat strawberries in winter because they have been flown in from Kenya. Do I honestly want to go back to the days of the poor fruit and veg they served us in the 50’s? No.

And finally scientific rigour. This is quite disgusting possibly for reasons noted above and vanity or maybe ignorance. Once I went to an Open Night at my son’s school and there in the chem. lab were a bunch of kids testing the pH (acidity or alkalinity) of common substances we found around the home. Nice I said, so what is the pH of the water you are using. ‘7’ they cheerfully said for pH7 is neutral. ‘Go on and test some plain water,’ I said, which they did. The result was pH4 which is slightly acid. They were shocked. Quite simply, their teacher had failed to teach them first to test their starting point. Well, if you cannot teach them scientific rigour when they are young, what chance do you have when they are older and habits have become ingrained?

As for vanity. Scientists are always vying to publish papers, maybe even cause a sensation and most certainly gain honours. As my Prof at UMIST said to me, the numbers of papers you publish are a key factor on the road to promotion. Malcolm did not earn his professorship on the number of papers he published; he published a few. He earned his position with a reputation for meticulous and rigorous research. Pity there are not more like him.

As my dad told me, quoting Shakespeare, ‘To thine own self be true.’

My position here is very simple:

Yes, growing CO2 emissions might well lead to global warming BUT climate change is subject to many other forces and they will remain for the forseeable future to be the shapers of our weather.

You may also care to read my notes on the Permian Extinction written in Dec 10, 2008. Sure global warming killed off 95% of all species on this planet. It just took 100,000 years to do it.

I don’t know the answer here but I do know there is a heck of a lot more work to be done.

Footnote: In all this noise, you hear little about the acidification of the oceans. Somewhere I read that the oceans absorb around 30% to 50% of the CO2 and slowly their pH is diminishing, albeit only by decimals. However some scientists claim that the rate of absorption is slowing down indicating saturation. If the CO2 absorption continued, some argue that it will have a damaging effect on carbonate creatures like corals. But then again if absorption is genuinely slowing down, the increase in atomspheric CO2 will get faster. Now there could an argument here for reducing CO2 emissions. But then, this isn't headline stuff, is it? And anyway, we need more good science.

Sacking people

This is never easy and mercifully I have done it little. Yes I have had at times to do it but it is distasteful for the manager and cruel for the recipient.

All but one of my 'sacking's were redundancies which is to say part of a company wide headcount reduction as a consequence of economic circumstances. However, you cannot blame it totally on economics. You have to ask yourself if you were not a little complacent on hiring people in the good times.

When I first got the CEO's job and Head Office told me to fire 20 people, I fiddled things in every way possible. Like we have 6 approved vacancies and 3 people have handed their notice in so you only need 11 to satisfy your forecasts. Worked most times. But then you have to get down to it. Made the mistake the first time by trying to do it democratically. Sat with each director and talked about who might go or what numbers from his department. And what do you end up with? No numbers, no names.

Moved on to a different tack. Sat them in the boardroom and told them you sit here until you get me the numbers. Then left them to it. Think I had to do that on two other occasions - worked each time.

The only guy I personally sacked was absolutely bloody useless. My fault for not seeing that at interview. Thought he was going to have a heart attack but he didn't nor did he hit me.

Being happy

I have to tell you that this world is so funny. I giggle and laugh so many times every day.

But research seems to tell us that kids laugh so much more than adults. Is that not so sad?

Despite all the wars and the cruelty, this world is so full of wonder. Yes I see the news but it does not faze me. Haiti is quite awful and few are smiling. But they will.

Soon it will be Spring in the UK. So then you just have to walk out on your street and see the new shoots on the trees. Give them a little while and they will be buds and then leaves or flowers will follow.

Go to the supermarket and see the little tot at the checkout. Some I could cheerfully smack but for the most part, they are lovely

Better still, talk to the checkout people, talk about the day. It brightens your life and I am sure it brightens theirs.

You don’t have to travel the world to be happy. You just have to walk this world in happiness and people will do the same.

Being lucky

A lot of people think I am lucky. Indeed I feel the same myself. I have this innate feeling that this world will be kind to me and I dare say that statistically I have been more often lucky than unlucky. Of course this perception depends on what you want out of life so maybe we look at a few aspects.

Money
Health
Kids
Education
Travel
Love
Peace and contentment
Space
Friendship
Gadgets
Food availability

Well, when I cast my eyes down that list then I do indeed feel I have been lucky. There may have been bad moments but the good outweigh the bad. At least, I think so.

So is there a reason why I am lucky? Never really thought about it until I read some report, American, of course. They said that you cannot be consistently lucky at things which are pure chance. Interesting because I have only played roulette twice and I won both times – not with that black/red stuff or even odd/even numbers. I just put my money on one number each time and it won. You may say ‘same with the children.’ But then my wife and I chose each other and we chose to have children. OK we split up later but we brought each through their first 5 years of life which people say forms a person for life.

However, they also said that in other walks of life, some people are more consistently luckier than others because they think farther ahead and map out alternative scenarios. Makes sense to me. Certainly, I think my parents did.

Hence the expression, ‘Born lucky.’

9/11

It’s like the death of JFK, you just remember what you were doing at the time. In that event, I was a student on a Liverpool bus going into town when a man slumped into the seat next to me and muttered some thing like that I would be called up(for the army). I think that he was drunk even though it was only 7.30 pm. I was going into town to watch a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s ‘The Master Builders.’ Boring bloody play which put me off Ibsen for life.

On 9/11, I was quietly sitting in my office working when my secretary came in and said that Pete Simmons (Facilities Manager) has just said that a plane has crashed into the Word Trade Centre. ‘Not surprised,’ I said, ‘planes fly round there like bees around a honey pot. Had to happen some day.’ Carried on working. Then she comes back and tells me that another plane has hit the Twin Towers. Now I am interested.

We all dashed home at the end of the day to see what was happening and then, of course, we saw the towers collapse. I said to my partner something like, ‘Now they have a taste of terrorism, maybe they will stop supporting the IRA.’ I was told that I was callous but it came to pass.

Went back to New York in March 2003 and put flowers on the fencing for the firewoman. It was cold and the wind moaned over the site.

We had lunch at the top of one tower once. Let’s face it: it could have been you and it could have been me.

Eva Peron

All I know about her is from what I have read and the musical ‘Evita.’ She seems to have been a charismatic lady but whether or not she did any good, I do not know. What I do know is this.

One day in Buenos Aires, I went to visit the cemetery called ‘La Recoleta.’ I walked there; it was a nice sunny day. There is a map at the entrance showing you which tomb was which. It didn’t help much as most of the tombs were like monuments so you could not see very far and you soon lose count of the different avenues and pathways. Truth is you do not need to count all.

Walk down the main aisle from the gate and glance right and left at each intersection. You will find it easily because it is the only tomb which gathers a crowd even today.

It is not actually her tomb alone but a mausoleum to the whole Duarte family. It is strewn with flowers and surrounded by people talking quietly. Went back again 2 years later. It was just the same.

My favourite elements

Programme on BBC4 now about chemistry. You may or not find it exciting; I did. So I thought I would write about the elements that fascinate me. This is a personal view but it is not an uninformed one. I am a graduate chemist so here is no particular order are my favourite elements

Mercury – wonderful stuff, the only metal which is liquid at room temperature. Gallium comes close for it will melt in your hand but it’s not the same. Mercury is heavy and feels cold. When we were kids at school, we regarded it like gold. We had a wooden floor in the chemistry lab and little globules of mercury found their way into the cracks. So when the teacher wasn’t looking, we’d get them out and put them in a little bottle. It was almost a competition to see who got the most.

Of course we didn’t have all this Health & Safety stuff then, so we ignored the fact that mercury gives a poisonous vapour. Get enough of it and you go mad (Mad Hatter’s Disease) before you die.

Bromine – the only halogen that is liquid at room temperatures although even then it gives off fumes. Both the fumes and the liquid are a wonderful dark red brown colour. Saw it but rarely but it was always a great sight. Nasty stuff though.

Iodine – a solid halogen which forms into dark violet crystals at room temperature. Warm it up and it sublimes which is to say that it goes from solid to gas without passing through the intermediate liquid stage – as does solid CO2 or ‘dry ice.’ The vapour is stunningly beautiful, a deep violet/purple maybe with brown tinges. Loved playing with it in school.

If you put it into concentrated ammonia, it will form a blackish sludge of what is supposed to be nitrogen tri iodide but is actually a combination product NH3.NI3. When wet it is dormant but dry it out and it becomes one, if not the most, sensitive explosives in the world. So sensitive in fact that for all practical purposes, it is useless. When dry, you only have to touch it and it goes off with a loud bang and emits that violet iodine vapour.

So I used to make it and keep it in a test tube, wet. Again when the teacher was not looking I used to dribble the suspension in the cracks of the chemistry lab floor. Once it dried out it would crackle and splutter as you walked over it. Later I prepared some in the VIth form room. Too much with hindsight. It dried by morning and I tried to separate some before Morning Assembly. Bang and I was blinded and deaf and it took a couple of hours to recover. My next plan was to put some of the wet paste on the bottom of the legs of the headmaster’s chair in our school Assembly Hall. He always had the same routine; walk across the stage, stand in front of the chair, pull it forward and sit down. I planned to do this on the final day of term when he would address those of us leaving school for the last time. Never liked him. But one girl in class by the unfortunate name of Ruth Ellis (same as the last woman hanged in Britain) said she’s split on me. So I gave it up; you never know in this life whom you might call on for reference some day.

Later at University when I was in a hall of residence, I put some of the wet sludge in them little rubber bungs under the toilet seat. Did it late at night so it dried out by morning. Spectacular results but unfortunately, my fellow residents found out. A few nights later, they distracted me to take a telephone call in reception and while I was away, they threw all my bedding in the showers. Bastards with no sense of fun.

Potassium – a violently reactive metal in the presence of oxygen so you have to keep it in oil. It has the texture of cheese so you can cut it easily. Put a little bit in water and it whizzes about like a scalded cat with a beautiful lilac flame as it emits hydrogen. Once the teacher took a gauze container and put a bigger lump in it. He held it underwater and placed a gas jar above it to capture the emission of hydrogen. Misjudged that. The lump was too big and the water trough shattered so we kids had to jump back to avoid the floods.

Phosphorus : What a bloody element? And even if you know little about its chemistry you know about its use in matches and phosphorescence. Phosphorus will quite simply react with anything. When it gets to air, it has a go at the oxygen and thereby gives rise to its eerie glow. Think I was about 16 when my teacher allowed me to create PCl3 aka Phosphorus Trichloride, the only person allowed to do so – but then I was good. This is a dangerous experiment so it had to be carried out in an armoured glass fume cupboard. OK I followed the rules up to a point but then there was an enormous explosion and the fume cupboard was destroyed. Luckily the armoured glass buckled but did not rupture so we were spared injury. Extraction fan was destroyed too. I was quite proud of myself.

End of term report, my teacher wrote, ‘David is very good at this subject but he must learn that there is more to Chemistry than the creation of explosions.’ Personally, explosions fascinated me.

Cobalt – nothing special in its pure form, silvery, shiny but then so are many metals. It is the single metallic atom at the heart of vitamin B12 so it’s important to us. My attraction to Cobalt was the colour of its salts and their variability, some red or pink and some blue. Hydration had a lot to do with it.

But then there was an experiment that I did in the wash house down the yard which my teachers could not understand at the time and neither can I to this day. Dissolve some cobalt chloride in water in a test tube and slowly pour in hydrogen peroxide from the side as gently as possible. At the interface, you got a ring of some exquisitely purple substance maybe 3 or 4 mm thick and the oxygen bubbled from it as the hydrogen peroxide broke down. Once that finished, the purple disappeared. So what was it? No idea, nor anybody else. So probably an intermediary product which accelerated the breakdown of the peroxide.

And finally I have a denture for the loss of two teeth. It is made of cobalt and some other metal. It has served me well for over 35 years.

Hydrogen – you can’t see it, you can’t smell it yet it is the most abundant element in the universe. It is fascinating, quite fascinating. Lightest element of all and the simplest. The stuff of stars. Easy to make; just drop some light element into an acid. Loves oxygen and goes off with a pop. Its beauty lies in the fact that it is the most fundamental element of all.

Add a neutron or two and there we have atomic weapons, well hydrogen bombs.

Sulphur - now here is a pretty element, yellow mostly. Can be powdered or crystalline or even an amorphous dark brown platiscky rubbish. Was once called brimstone which I think is a pretty name. Now this is the stuff of volcanoes; its crystals can be found on the vents. Once went to get a sample on the Greek island of Nissyros with my Swiss Army knife. OK I got it but I burned my fingers with the hot sulphur dioxide venting from the orifice and the knife is stained to this day.

Versatile too. Mix it with charcoal, saltpetre (aka Sodium Nitrate) and you get gunpowder. Combine it with hydrogen and you get Hydrogen Sulphide, the so-called rotten eggs gas but then when did you last have a rotten egg by which to compare it?

Copper – this has to be the most beautiful metal of all, beating even gold in its untarnished state. What colour can you give it for there is nothing like it? It’s just copper and therefore a colour in itself. It is not surprising that such a wonderful metal has been used in coinage around the world; it is not just beautiful but it doesn’t corrode quickly although over the years when used on roofing, it acquires a green patina of oxides, sulphates and carbonates (maybe wrong there but cannot be arsed to look it up).

But that is the beauty of copper, so colourful in itself and a generator of colour in its compounds. And I adore the way it gives that intense green colour in a flame.

Magnesium – well a very light shiny metal but nothing exceptional. When alloyed with aluminium, it makes a strong metal used for car alloy wheels and other things. My first digital camera had a magnesium/aluminium body which always felt good and somehow remained cool even in the highest temperatures.

That’s all very nice but what gets to me about magnesium is the way it burns. Set alight a piece of magnesium ribbon and it burns like no other, well no other that I have ever seen. It is so brilliant that you can imagine the brightness of the stars; quite stunning. I don’t think in my life that I have ever seen something burn so bright.

Chromium – Another silvery metal. You all know it because you know about chrome plating.

For me, its attraction came not with the metal but its compounds for they are colourful. My first was potassium dichromate, an exquisite orange powder although I do believe you can get it in crystals. Then there was the oxide, well Cr203, think chromic oxide but you can’t be sure without looking it up for chromium has several valences.

Gold and Platinum – So now we come to perhaps the most famous metals of all time even for non-chemists. We can dispense with platinum easily. Another silvery metal of extraordinarily resilience but otherwise boring. Its sister elements like palladium and rhodium are just as good but attract less attention.

But then you move on to gold and you can understand why it has captivated the human race through the ages. It is simply quite beautiful. No metal like it. Heavy and yellow and does not tarnish. Gold is eternal and will last forever whatever shape into which it is formed. Prized throughout the world for centuries, it remains the metal of the gods. Seen the death mask of Tutankhamen but now I want to look upon his gold coffin.

Do I have a favourite? No. They are all wonderful in their own way. It’s just some appeal to me more than others.