tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76865495764187873142024-03-19T03:55:23.360+00:00TruckshuntersCherries is what life is not just a bowl ofIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.comBlogger627125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-27162772183385924852016-04-10T18:04:00.003+01:002016-04-10T18:04:45.887+01:00It’s true. A lot of stuff has happened since Christmas. It’s not showing any sign of letting up, either. I’m still grappling with side-effects and consequences.<br /><br />But I thought I’d stop by to say Hello, specially as this is posting number 600.<br /><br />Yes I know.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">SIX HUNDRED. </span> <i>How did</i> that<i> happen?</i><br /><br />Anyway...<br /><br /><b><i>Hello.</i></b><br /><br />AND MORE IMPORTANTLY...<br />
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<b><i>Is there anybody still there?</i></b><br /><br />* *<br />
CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-66616353058292067722016-02-13T17:39:00.000+00:002016-02-13T17:41:12.062+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">599</span></b></div>
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<i>The way we were...5 years ago...</i></div>
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Today marks the first anniversary since our wonderful Hildie died.</div>
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So I thought it would be nice to post the text of an email I received from her dughter Kelly a few days ago.</div>
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<i> 'Hi Ian<br /> </i></div>
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<i>Just a quick news bulletin to let you know our baby boy arrived on 20th Jan, we have named him Albie Christopher Adair, he weighed 9lb 1oz and is already looking like he'll be tall! I had a lovely calm home birth in a water pool, just as we had hoped. How lovely it was to just go up to our own bed with our new addition!<br /> </i></div>
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<i>The last few weeks have been a whirlwind to say the least! Nothing quite prepares you for this, hard work but amazing. <br /> </i></div>
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<i>Anyway, Albie needs a feed so I'll send this now. Hope you are in good fettle!<br />Kel xxx'</i></div>
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When Kelly sends a photo, I'll post that, too!</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-33385908925596508002015-12-30T15:16:00.000+00:002015-12-30T15:16:21.100+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">598</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdVd3nSEGttOQwtEKrbrcXajwW4aXXrq8kaELWgeTtqbWC4BeDnG9Ny4ZFNc4TAIU2WZ8XH2wEmE0314Z1f-CSWWFnpHsaZ-ip4vKY5wdfmOo5ynjyMeXO4iy5AzBHm2KoHz9WSqS1luU/s1600/JS78892759-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdVd3nSEGttOQwtEKrbrcXajwW4aXXrq8kaELWgeTtqbWC4BeDnG9Ny4ZFNc4TAIU2WZ8XH2wEmE0314Z1f-CSWWFnpHsaZ-ip4vKY5wdfmOo5ynjyMeXO4iy5AzBHm2KoHz9WSqS1luU/s320/JS78892759-1.jpg" width="245" /></a></div>
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<i>Kathy Secker</i></div>
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<i>1945-2015</i></div>
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Kathy Secker, who died just before Christmas, would be deeply embarrassed to hear me calling her a broadcasting goddess but that’s exactly what she was. She had the knack - shamefully rare in tv and radio broadcasters - of making viewers and listeners feel important, valued and even loved. She didn’t talk <i>at</i> us; she engaged us in conversation, listened to us and responded like a best friend.<br /><br />And these are not just empty and predictable eulogising platitudes. This is how Kathy was, in private as well as in public. It’s a shame that charisma like hers cannot be emulated or learned; it has to come naturally, and it did.<br /><br />I have just attended her funeral and left wishing I had known her much better than I did.<br /><br />This is the verse her daughter chose to recite for us there. It was written by Joyce Grenfell. <br /><br /><i>'If I should go before the rest of you<br />Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone<br />Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice<br />But be the usual selves that I have known<br />Weep if you must<br />Parting is hell<br />But life goes on<br />So sing as well.'</i></div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-6306426487699942462015-12-25T19:06:00.001+00:002015-12-25T19:06:15.499+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">MERRY CHRISTMAS</span></b></span></div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-42799941986665356222015-12-23T19:44:00.000+00:002015-12-23T19:44:33.240+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">597</span></b></span></div>
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<i>My visit to Paris had been planned well before the horrors of 13 November. In an annual ritual that goes back many years now, I go there every mid-December to pay my respects at the tomb of Saint-Saëns in Montparnasse Cemetery; he is my favourite composer and a personal hero, the anniversary of whose death falls on 16 December.</i></div>
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<i>His is a family, 'sentry-box', sepulchre - very common in France - and this is the interior. Other visitors have left flowers for his anniversary; for some unaccountable reason, I always leave an apple. You can see it on the right of 'altar' shelf. </i></div>
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<i>His memorial tablet</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_UkzjLz8yjimIGpJ6SfIMOMsiZDF4skmAKkljoqeE6_mU2usezwYddOZ5RC0nBm7VXsr0OTAbcFobouBwTWVUtn2J8gKoe0w_VRZR4GBsqYPRxvl9HlHa-omuvf2Vwr6cHCpjpsa-0eA/s1600/IMG_1769.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_UkzjLz8yjimIGpJ6SfIMOMsiZDF4skmAKkljoqeE6_mU2usezwYddOZ5RC0nBm7VXsr0OTAbcFobouBwTWVUtn2J8gKoe0w_VRZR4GBsqYPRxvl9HlHa-omuvf2Vwr6cHCpjpsa-0eA/s320/IMG_1769.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This burial took place while I was there. The granite 'tabletop' had to be moved aside - no easy task - so that the coffin could be lowered - upright - into the family vault below.</i></div>
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<i>The Saint-Saëns family sepulchre is at the top, second from left.</i></div>
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<i>Amongst the more usual tabletop and sentry-box graves there are some rarer and more idiosyncratic memorials. This striking tomb belongs to Sylvia Lopez, a model and actress who died in 1958. </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhorgqqOce2kgZEOozhhjwq0CBS_Nq0xkMI8GfE7s73y0QLt8rmoU0CP8LrAE5MC1lSyOa-U6b8g1UoWb7AjbKDuwgwD8c6hkdu6LlXaqxXEgLsCYmum4fBBKYiANcsIdD_2vXZSocqS3A/s1600/Sylvia_Lopez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhorgqqOce2kgZEOozhhjwq0CBS_Nq0xkMI8GfE7s73y0QLt8rmoU0CP8LrAE5MC1lSyOa-U6b8g1UoWb7AjbKDuwgwD8c6hkdu6LlXaqxXEgLsCYmum4fBBKYiANcsIdD_2vXZSocqS3A/s1600/Sylvia_Lopez.jpg" /></a></div>
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<i> Hers was a proverbial household name at the time but her life was cut short by leukemia; she was only 26 when she died.</i></div>
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<i>Just across the avenue from Ms Lopez lie the remains of Maryse Bastié, a pioneering aviator who set or beat many flying records during the 1930s - including a first solo flight across the South Atlantic.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0VAaigpTjE46dUl-JSPdYTYMXB9gW0SpDfHDkFyJBRX42DAFHWJvApM0yyNYF-tgSNev6rk7uclnVbo9sJCnVK5UmqnJhMqTZJ54ccXW37DAvGAl68BJa_ClTdZlno0ptE4kVjLpfUAM/s1600/220px-Maryse_bastie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0VAaigpTjE46dUl-JSPdYTYMXB9gW0SpDfHDkFyJBRX42DAFHWJvApM0yyNYF-tgSNev6rk7uclnVbo9sJCnVK5UmqnJhMqTZJ54ccXW37DAvGAl68BJa_ClTdZlno0ptE4kVjLpfUAM/s320/220px-Maryse_bastie.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
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<i>She flew for France during the Second World War and, like Saint-Saëns, was awarded the Legion of Honour. She died in 1952.</i></div>
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<i>This isn't a grave at all; it's a sculpture by de Max called </i>The Separation of a Couple<i>. Death is drawing a woman into her tomb as she blows a final kiss to her grief-stricken husband. De Max made it for the nearby Luxembourg Gardens but, for some reason, it was regarded as 'too obscene' and was moved here in 1965.</i></div>
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<i>I love looking at it - even though it could do with a good clean-up.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHnIOGRx5tUhZz3hmMrhDjtZ89yPsjaemEubkGkFAmNeg-bnTP-OfOeGavznJavoG6SY8GASAoAn_lM6CuaXn5hdDkn0L2FwbQSxnYKHQ4GKHtZQzfuUA7bs1kH8tPfE7L1KmfE9vYkuI/s1600/IMG_1778.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHnIOGRx5tUhZz3hmMrhDjtZ89yPsjaemEubkGkFAmNeg-bnTP-OfOeGavznJavoG6SY8GASAoAn_lM6CuaXn5hdDkn0L2FwbQSxnYKHQ4GKHtZQzfuUA7bs1kH8tPfE7L1KmfE9vYkuI/s320/IMG_1778.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This is the flamboyant tomb of sculptor César Baldaccini, who died in 1998. Each year, on the anniversary of his death, a white camellia is placed in his left hand.</i></div>
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<i>This is the most unadorned gravestone I came across. Under it lies Yves Haguel, who died in 2009. I haven't been able to find out anything about him - unless he was a scion of the Haguel company of solicitors in Paris, which is what comes up if you Google his name...</i></div>
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<i> </i></div>
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<i>The art of cinema was invented in France - I have visited the home of the Lumiére brothers in Lyon several times.</i></div>
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<i>Under this extraordinary tombstone, decorated with movie stills and film reels, lie the remains of cinephile Henri Langlois, an early pioneer in film preservation and archiving. </i></div>
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<i>He co-founded the Cinémàtheque Française and was given an honorary Academy Award in 1974 for his work in, and love of, cinema. He died in 1977.</i></div>
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<i>This man's grave describes him as an 'illustrator, humorist, journalist, novelist, author and playwright', but it fails to give his name. Which is sad, because the words on the headstone translate as:</i></div>
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He was above religions that make men fight;</div>
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He - he had found the best one;</div>
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He loved everyone.</div>
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Love each other and pray for him</div>
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According to your faith. </div>
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<i>This is perhaps the most visited grave in Montparnasse Cemetery. Jean-Paul Sartre (who died in 1980) and Simone de Beauvoir (1986) are buried here. There are always pebbles strewn over the foot of the grave like this - interspersed with used Metro tickets (a peculiarly charming Parisian tradition of showing respect at the graves of the famous).</i></div>
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CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-4159586663309047422015-12-19T20:56:00.001+00:002015-12-19T20:56:08.940+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">596</span></b></div>
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It’s now over a month since the slaughter on that terrible night in Paris when a gang of rampaging killers saw fit to murder 130 people - and injure many more. Although other news stories have inevitably taken over the international headlines, an urban orgy of bloodshed on this scale - specially in western Europe - is as difficult to forget as it was to comprehend in the first place.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtEudKnFu9NVgdPQHS3NUwVv8LcXLNMKqQ_jvkdgX0dJQ-ZtQiS2GdAIQ3wpqHcBhcVpHnaQhHezBrwZzLgoIkUmoRBO3fFg32LKz2eaEoj5ZM4Y9aCPvhL9yTUa-OmfDJObQgwpGUjyc/s1600/IMG_1790.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtEudKnFu9NVgdPQHS3NUwVv8LcXLNMKqQ_jvkdgX0dJQ-ZtQiS2GdAIQ3wpqHcBhcVpHnaQhHezBrwZzLgoIkUmoRBO3fFg32LKz2eaEoj5ZM4Y9aCPvhL9yTUa-OmfDJObQgwpGUjyc/s320/IMG_1790.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />When Parisians, and many other French people, feel that France is in trouble or in crisis, they customarily head <i>en masse</i> to Place de la Republique, near the centre of Paris, to show their solidarity and support for each other - liberty, equality and fraternity in action, if you like.<br /><br />Last week I visited Paris and joined many of them there.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8E7kgim9og1KKXZtabkFAhXR3pSlUkKVAa3K3ecwd4cB6rxuI8oRWe_dONSZHnyXN19IPvT0AOkmJxI_p6CsjaDoCsBcZk7JJbb9g8zz3yK4P_3yj8SzrVKGtd4JJnDqmtKULhQVxsI/s1600/IMG_1796.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8E7kgim9og1KKXZtabkFAhXR3pSlUkKVAa3K3ecwd4cB6rxuI8oRWe_dONSZHnyXN19IPvT0AOkmJxI_p6CsjaDoCsBcZk7JJbb9g8zz3yK4P_3yj8SzrVKGtd4JJnDqmtKULhQVxsI/s320/IMG_1796.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtEudKnFu9NVgdPQHS3NUwVv8LcXLNMKqQ_jvkdgX0dJQ-ZtQiS2GdAIQ3wpqHcBhcVpHnaQhHezBrwZzLgoIkUmoRBO3fFg32LKz2eaEoj5ZM4Y9aCPvhL9yTUa-OmfDJObQgwpGUjyc/s1600/IMG_1790.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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Republique lies only a few minutes’ walk from Dominique and John’s flat; it’s even closer to most of the places where so many lives were cut so brutally short by the agents of Allah. This means that its place at the centre of France’s ongoing public reaction to November 13th is especially poignant.<br /><br />And that poignancy was not lost on me as I walked onto the square and saw national grief (as it were) in physical form. I had seen pictures on tv and in newspapers but nothing prepared me for the sadness, shock, despair, incomprehension, anger and loss I saw and felt there. It was palpable. It hung in the air.</div>
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<i>Même pas Peur - Nevertheless, no Fear</i></div>
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I spent as long as I could looking at the thousands of candles there; visitors and local people make sure that at least some of them are burning day and night, and new ones, like the one I laid there, are being added and lit all the time.<br /><br />And there are flowers - many, many thousands of flowers - and flags, banners, letters, posters, cards, photographs, placards and achingly scrawled messages. Impromptu and defiant Christmas decorations have started to appear now, too.</div>
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The noble and historic monument at the centre of all this outpouring cannot cope with the burden of grief laid upon her; the bouquets and wreaths and candles are spreading ever outward over the pavement now - and into the hearts of everyone who visits this overpowering and heartbreaking symbol of the savage butchery of innocent people.</div>
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I cried. And I wasn’t alone with my tears. People were weeping and hugging all round me. The memory of my visit there is having the same effect on me now, as I write.<br /><br />Like everyone else, I hope that the souls of those who were murdered that night are at peace in whatever version of paradise gives them most comfort; a paradise forever beyond the reach of thugs, terror and tears.</div>
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This is going to be an awful Christmas for those they left behind.</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-53649210836860453802015-12-14T11:31:00.000+00:002015-12-14T11:31:21.093+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">595</span></b></span></div>
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<i>I took this photo of my new great-nephew Arthur last Friday; that's his grandma with him - my sister-in-law Jean. Isn't he just SCRUMMY. (Jean too, of course.)</i></div>
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My philological creation of ‘misislamy’ in the last posting has prompted yet another long-absent truckshunter to contact me. This time, it’s the lovely Martin in Houghton-le-Spring, whom God preserve.<br />
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He wonders why I’ve never quoted - in any of my previous 593 posts - one of the most famous and laugh-out-loud criticisms of the vagaries of English spelling and its wayward conflict with English pronunciation.<br />
<br />
I quote…<br />
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<i>'If non-native English speakers find it tough going, they should not despair. Multi-national personnel at NATO headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents and pitfalls, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labour to reading six lines aloud. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Try them yourself.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF</i><br />
<i>Dearest creature in creation,</i><br />
<i>Study English pronunciation.</i><br />
<i>I will teach you in my verse</i><br />
<i>Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.</i><br />
<i>I will keep you, Suzy, busy,</i><br />
<i>Make your head with heat grow dizzy.</i><br />
<i>Tear in eye, your dress will tear.</i><br />
<i>So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Just compare heart, beard, and heard, </i><br />
<i>Dies and diet, lord and word, </i><br />
<i>Sword and sward, retain and Britain. </i><br />
<i>(Mind the latter, how it's written.) </i><br />
<i>Now I surely will not plague you </i><br />
<i>With such words as plaque and ague. </i><br />
<i>But be careful how you speak: </i><br />
<i>Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; </i><br />
<i>Cloven, oven, how and low, </i><br />
<i>Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Hear me say, devoid of trickery, </i><br />
<i>Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, </i><br />
<i>Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, </i><br />
<i>Exiles, similes, and reviles; </i><br />
<i>Scholar, vicar, and cigar, </i><br />
<i>Solar, mica, war and far; </i><br />
<i>One, anemone, Balmoral, </i><br />
<i>Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; </i><br />
<i>Gertrude, German, wind and mind, </i><br />
<i>Scene, Melpomene, mankind.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Billet does not rhyme with ballet, </i><br />
<i>Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. </i><br />
<i>Blood and flood are not like food, </i><br />
<i>Nor is mould like should and would. </i><br />
<i>Viscous, viscount, load and broad, </i><br />
<i>Toward, to forward, to reward. </i><br />
<i>And your pronunciation's OK </i><br />
<i>When you correctly say croquet, </i><br />
<i>Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,</i><br />
<i> Friend and fiend, alive and live.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Ivy, privy, famous; clamour </i><br />
<i>And enamour rhyme with hammer. </i><br />
<i>River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, </i><br />
<i>Doll and roll and some and home. </i><br />
<i>Stranger does not rhyme with anger, </i><br />
<i>Neither does devour with clangour. </i><br />
<i>Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, </i><br />
<i>Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, </i><br />
<i>Shoes, goes, does. </i><br />
<i>Now first say finger, </i><br />
<i>And then singer, ginger, linger, </i><br />
<i>Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, </i><br />
<i>Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Query does not rhyme with very, </i><br />
<i>Nor does fury sound like bury. </i><br />
<i>Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. </i><br />
<i>Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. </i><br />
<i>Though the differences seem little, </i><br />
<i>We say actual but victual. </i><br />
<i>Refer does not rhyme with deafer. </i><br />
<i>Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. </i><br />
<i>Mint, pint, senate and sedate; </i><br />
<i>Dull, bull, and George ate late. </i><br />
<i>Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, </i><br />
<i>Science, conscience, scientific.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Liberty, library, heave and heaven, </i><br />
<i>Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. </i><br />
<i>We say hallowed, but allowed, </i><br />
<i>People, leopard, towed, but vowed. </i><br />
<i>Mark the differences, moreover, </i><br />
<i>Between mover, cover, clover; </i><br />
<i>Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, </i><br />
<i>Chalice, but police and lice; </i><br />
<i>Camel, constable, unstable, </i><br />
<i>Principle, disciple, label.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Petal, panel, and canal, </i><br />
<i>Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. </i><br />
<i>Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, </i><br />
<i>Senator, spectator, mayor. </i><br />
<i>Tour, but our and succour, four. </i><br />
<i>Gas, alas, and Arkansas. </i><br />
<i>Sea, idea, Korea, area, </i><br />
<i>Psalm, Maria, but malaria. </i><br />
<i>Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. </i><br />
<i>Doctrine, turpentine, marine.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Compare alien with Italian,</i><br />
<i> Dandelion and battalion. </i><br />
<i>Sally with ally, yea, ye, </i><br />
<i>Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. </i><br />
<i>Say aver, but ever, fever, </i><br />
<i>Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. </i><br />
<i>Heron, granary, canary. </i><br />
<i>Crevice and device and aerie.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Face, but preface, not efface. </i><br />
<i>Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. </i><br />
<i>Large, but target, gin, give, verging, </i><br />
<i>Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. </i><br />
<i>Ear, but earn and wear and tear </i><br />
<i>Do not rhyme with here but ere. </i><br />
<i>Seven is right, but so is even, </i><br />
<i>Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, </i><br />
<i>Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, </i><br />
<i>Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Pronunciation -- think of Psyche! </i><br />
<i>Is a paling stout and spikey? </i><br />
<i>Won't it make you lose your wits, </i><br />
<i>Writing groats and saying grits? </i><br />
<i>It's a dark abyss or tunnel: </i><br />
<i>Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,</i><br />
<i> Islington and Isle of Wight, </i><br />
<i>Housewife, verdict and indict.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Finally, which rhymes with enough -- </i><br />
<i>Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? </i><br />
<i>Hiccough has the sound of cup. </i><br />
<i>My advice is to give up!!!'</i><br />
<br />
Thanks Martin - it’s wonderful.<br />
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-78989817981027481612015-12-13T00:36:00.003+00:002015-12-13T00:36:54.214+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">594</span></b></span></div>
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<i>Jonathan Ruffer</i></div>
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ART IN BISHOP AUCKLAND…<br /><br />...of all places.<br /><br />In blogpostings 252 and 266 (way back in 2011) I got myself agitated over the future of 12 amazing paintings by the great Spanish ‘Golden Age’ painter Zurbarán. They were bought in the 1750s by the then Prince Bishop of Durham, Richard Trevor, who built the Long Dining Room in Auckland Palace specially to house and display them - thus creating the first <i>de facto</i> purpose-built art gallery in Europe.<br /><br />The last I’d heard was that they had, at least, been saved from sale at the philistine hands of the greedy bishopric of Durham, who were shamed by the generosity of businessman Jonathan Ruffer; he donated £25m to secure their future as well as the future of Auckland Palace itself.</div>
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Well things have moved on since then. I’m glad to say that Mr Ruffer’s plans have been developed and enlarged; if all goes well, sad old Bishop Auckland will soon be adorned not just with the Zurbarán pictures but also with works by other Spanish <i>Siglo Oro</i> painters - El Greco, Ribera and Velázquez (no less) - as well as priceless sculptures, most of them newly-acquired.<br /><br />The Auckland Castle Trust has said that although the Zurbarán paintings will stay where they are, the other artworks will be housed in the town’s new Spanish Art Gallery and Research Institute - two adjacent buildings in the Market Place that were once a bank and a school/pizzeria.</div>
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With any luck, it may soon be unavoidably necessary for me to change my admittedly jaded opinion of Bishop Auckland. - and I’ll be very, very happy to do so.<br /><br /><i>And Thankyou, Mr Ruffer - you made my day.</i></div>
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ERRORS AND CLARIFICATIONS<br /><br />In posting 583, I claimed responsibility for inventing a new word - <i>Islamogyny</i> - ‘hatred of Islam’. Peter in South Shields has pointed out that, for someone who prides himself on his love of words and wordlore, I came grievously unstuck.<br /><br /><i>‘Ian<br /><br />If </i>Islamogyny<i> were to mean anything, it would simply be ‘Muslim women’'. You were right to split </i>misogyny<i> and </i>misanthropy<i>, but you used the wrong bits! It’s the </i>mis-<i> part that means ‘hatred’; ‘hatred of women’ and ‘hatred of men’.<br /><br />So 'hatred of Islam' would surely be </i>misislamy<i>, or something like that.’</i><br /><br />Thanks Peter. You're right - and you’ve made me feel thoroughly ashamed.</div>
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CONTACT ME</div>
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Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-50265109844213950832015-12-08T23:41:00.000+00:002015-12-08T23:42:06.874+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">593</span></b></span></div>
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Another big Thankyou (not to mention an even louder <b>Welcome Back</b>) is called for - this time to Peter in South Shields. Until yesterday, I hadn't from him for 18 months and had assumed that he'd found new outlets for his talents and enthusiasms, which were legion.</div>
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But no. In his quiet, South Shields kind of way, Peter's still around and remains safely within the truckshunter fold. To prove it, he has sent me a poignant collection of cartoons which, between them, seem to home in on many of the aspects of modern life that disappoint, anger or puzzle old stagers like me. And (presumably) Peter himself.</div>
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I'd like to give credit to the illustrator who devised these brilliantly clever drawings but Peter has told me that he doesn't know his/her/their identity. If <i>you </i>do, please get in touch.</div>
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Thanks again, Peter.</div>
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Peter also sent me what he called 'the last word' about my birthday.</div>
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<i>'Ian...you share your birthday with Pamela Stephenson, Jay-Z and Ronnie Corbett, who is now 85.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>And it was on 4 December in 1872 that the American ship </i>Mary Celeste<i> was found drifting off the Azores. She was in good, seaworthy condition and her cargo was intact. Her crew, though, had completely disappeared. Even now, no-one knows what became of them. 56 years later to the day, </i>you<i> were born...'</i></div>
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Hmmmmmmm.</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-31467618067508987942015-12-06T18:59:00.001+00:002015-12-06T19:06:22.965+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">592</span></b></span></div>
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<i>The Madagascar Serpent Eagle - saved from extinction when I was 45; </i></div>
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<i>today, there are about 350 of them </i></div>
<br />
Firstly, a very, very BIG <b>Thankyou</b> for your emails, txts and cards. I promise to reply to each one personally but, until I do, be assured that you’ve helped to make an old(er) man very happy indeed!<br />
<br />
To be honest, it turned out to be a more interesting birthday than I’d imagined. A friend reminded me of a guest we once had on the Blue Bus Programme who explained that life for ordinary people like me and you had changed more in the last sixty-odd years than it had done in the previous two thousand.<br />
<br />
So rather than spend the day in glib self-congratulation (isn’t ‘glib’ a lovely word?) I got to wondering about exactly how much life really <i>has</i> changed since I arrived 67 years ago - not just for me but for the world into which I was born. And a wonderful website, created by the BBC (naturally) was able to tell me much that I wanted to know…<br />
<br />
<i>So here goes…</i><br />
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- My heart has beaten over 3 billion times. The heart of a Blue Whale would have beaten ‘only’ 211 million times in 67 years, whereas a Hummingbird’s would have beaten an amazing 44 billion times.<br />
<br />
- Although I am 67 years old here on Earth, up there on Mercury I would be 278 - years on Mercury last only 71 days. On Venus, I am 108, on Mars I am 35, on Jupiter I am only 5, on Saturn I am 2 and on Uranus and Neptune I haven’t even reached my first birthday - a Uranian day is 6,213 Earth days long and on Neptune, one day lasts 35,718 Earth days.<br />
<br />
- In my lifetime I have travelled over 63,433,602,500 km round the sun and counting. (Since I started typing this sentence, I’ve travelled a further 210km.)<br />
<br />
- This also means that I have travelled 528,613,420,250 km through the Milky Way; as I write, I’m travelling at about 500 km per second.<br />
<br />
- A house-fly my age would have a family of 37,248 generations by now. A mouse, 446. <br />
A rabbit, 115. A penguin, 13. And a killer whale, 4.<br />
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<i>The earliest important wildlife discovery made after my birth was that of the Golden Poison Frog, found in Colombia when I was 25</i></div>
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<i>The creature most recently discovered in my lifetime is the Squat Lobster, </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>found off New Zealand when I was 64</i></div>
<br />
- There have been 307 major volcanic eruptions since I was born - none of them my fault. The largest was in 1991; it measured 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (of which I had never heard until this very moment).<br />
<br />
- In my lifetime there have been 692 major earthquakes - the largest, in 1960, measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale.<br />
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- I have reached a height of 1.83m in my lifetime. A California Coast Redwood tree has grown 26.31m.<br />
<br />
- There have been 147 solar eclipses since I was born. The next will occur in 92 days.<br />
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- The world’s population grows by about 4 births every second. This means that there are, on balance, about 4,884,162,000 <i>more</i> people on Earth now than when I was born. There are now about 10 more. And counting.<br />
<br />
- This is also partly because life expectancy worldwide has increased by an incredible 26 years in my lifetime.<br />
<br />
- Sea level has risen by 15cm since I was born.<br />
<br />
- The number of mammal species classed as ‘critically endangered’ when I was 51 was 169; it is now 211. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCku_MJ02N8A1KwONxjcy3X9HQPutYpjlOyhQZMs0x7pOJiR0Y5Arwe9V-aXtqmB2Q2VrHpA_r_fRveqG9xYe7lAFLnoEk4-zXTczO1teoO7a6VJQgpCqFaiZP0BZqEjRgl1oPth4bc1M/s1600/tumblr_mzia7wk1rr1tpuw8ko1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCku_MJ02N8A1KwONxjcy3X9HQPutYpjlOyhQZMs0x7pOJiR0Y5Arwe9V-aXtqmB2Q2VrHpA_r_fRveqG9xYe7lAFLnoEk4-zXTczO1teoO7a6VJQgpCqFaiZP0BZqEjRgl1oPth4bc1M/s320/tumblr_mzia7wk1rr1tpuw8ko1_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>There are just 1,500 Borneo Pygmy Elephants left in the wild</i></div>
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<br />
- The same figures for birds are 168 and 198 respectively. <br />
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<i>There are just 500 Philippine Eagles left</i> </div>
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- Fish are faring much worse - their figures are 157 (when I was 51) and 424 (now). </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Reports suggest that the Goliath Grouper became extinct only in the last few weeks</i></div>
<br />
- Things aren’t looking good for plants either. Critically endangered when I was 51 - 909 species; now - 2104. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTTmGA2x16FTNFLd8AV6xbKkCD7ow6sqfujO1yEViMwid4A1AtBMF-CcokAVDHcjkSSG8FjBqG4_CPIUW1DaL2qh6x_QWFDcelNpq5sA42mYqHfPol8F9ZijbFRFOD0Y7xDowJ9S25wP0/s1600/georgia-aster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTTmGA2x16FTNFLd8AV6xbKkCD7ow6sqfujO1yEViMwid4A1AtBMF-CcokAVDHcjkSSG8FjBqG4_CPIUW1DaL2qh6x_QWFDcelNpq5sA42mYqHfPol8F9ZijbFRFOD0Y7xDowJ9S25wP0/s320/georgia-aster.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>There are just 100 populations of Georgia Aster left on Earth</i></div>
<br />
- At current rates of consumption, the Earth’s oil reserves will run out when I am 119. And there’ll be no more coal after my 121st birthday.<br />
<br />
- Almost 20% of the Earth’s forests have been lost in the last 67 years. <br />
<br />
- On the other hand - and to end on a slightly more cheerful note - several animals have been saved from extinction in my lifetime…<br />
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<i>The Black Rhino was saved when I was 57; there are now about 3,725</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ygML4u9yAYZMmfxC8CCPzhEinclSFe4vzXqXvWp7mnGTMr3e9P3A3-YjR5PR5ba7-2qWior42GXtA5UjkAWY5Kw8lU4eYHLuo05PVgDXA6FIcK4s7YfxnGyjy5ZnwhKkHBFhH6oOHrQ/s1600/Male-saiga-copyright-Navinder-Singh.568.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ygML4u9yAYZMmfxC8CCPzhEinclSFe4vzXqXvWp7mnGTMr3e9P3A3-YjR5PR5ba7-2qWior42GXtA5UjkAWY5Kw8lU4eYHLuo05PVgDXA6FIcK4s7YfxnGyjy5ZnwhKkHBFhH6oOHrQ/s320/Male-saiga-copyright-Navinder-Singh.568.jpg" width="320" /></a> </div>
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<i>The Saiga Antelope was also saved when I was 57; there are now over 40,000 of them</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvyUdl6yk1lix7hWBONSlUWAng25sBpb2BPMkKFyiX9j2NF22K3pTn5IPIPxC79qe6wZXNZhu8u3b2nkJBOiStjd_nFBRK4eeTWKumnGw-BOajoInaTRj58r6RmYvUKZsoDoOp1Lm10u0/s1600/48700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvyUdl6yk1lix7hWBONSlUWAng25sBpb2BPMkKFyiX9j2NF22K3pTn5IPIPxC79qe6wZXNZhu8u3b2nkJBOiStjd_nFBRK4eeTWKumnGw-BOajoInaTRj58r6RmYvUKZsoDoOp1Lm10u0/s320/48700.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The Mountain Gorilla was saved from extinction when I was 43 </i></div>
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<i>but there are still only about 400 of them</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghMwJWaC2yE7yQEWtIhKcsH8mEOGwih4t67HDivfe1lIRH7w1DuAh6xDtPSYuARQvneVHtEYDl8S7ev7Tqne-jCPVcM6N9q1zeIuK54hl1P1Z1-5V33dUVNxT8j1aPJlZkSiTvcruVl30/s1600/Lion-Tamarin_624.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghMwJWaC2yE7yQEWtIhKcsH8mEOGwih4t67HDivfe1lIRH7w1DuAh6xDtPSYuARQvneVHtEYDl8S7ev7Tqne-jCPVcM6N9q1zeIuK54hl1P1Z1-5V33dUVNxT8j1aPJlZkSiTvcruVl30/s320/Lion-Tamarin_624.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<i> The Golden Lion Tamarin has been safe since I was 23; there are about 800 of them now</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwU38Vm_Rgy8hztjN0Z3uJm3vJMjJyrfcFV_XdDlSWxOMTYggC1ayrQrNNZByUNjr3PqVnVdl5mgXQn-cwYQmvLZrqFyhvnxYoMa-IHp5I4WAKei54furaR_dw2AmhICXGAw0ZIPqwIA/s1600/latest-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwU38Vm_Rgy8hztjN0Z3uJm3vJMjJyrfcFV_XdDlSWxOMTYggC1ayrQrNNZByUNjr3PqVnVdl5mgXQn-cwYQmvLZrqFyhvnxYoMa-IHp5I4WAKei54furaR_dw2AmhICXGAw0ZIPqwIA/s320/latest-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The Grey Whale was saved from extinction the year I was born; </i></div>
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<i>happily, there 21,000 of them 67 years later</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3l6cUzMIxCijG-BzZ3kAV4PeJVXNrTY350UmaUrj33pcIneTH37g3UFQTVe58RBv15jkY-2phqSaPBcbf4rCLYLamQ0JDvC7VAJmBiSC8rAYNXiFYH6-NeC9eYF2KzbLcF8SYHVAukMM/s1600/ivory-billed-woodpecker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3l6cUzMIxCijG-BzZ3kAV4PeJVXNrTY350UmaUrj33pcIneTH37g3UFQTVe58RBv15jkY-2phqSaPBcbf4rCLYLamQ0JDvC7VAJmBiSC8rAYNXiFYH6-NeC9eYF2KzbLcF8SYHVAukMM/s320/ivory-billed-woodpecker.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
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<i>The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was rescued when I was 56 - </i></div>
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<i>but there are still only about 50 in the wild </i></div>
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So now you know what I did on my birthday - well at least until Paul Wappat arrived with his partner Penny to disrupt proceedings.<br />
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<i>And I finished the day at a live Matt Berry gig in the Town with John, my old friend. Nick Roberts was there, too. How cool is </i>that<i>?</i><br />
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CONTACT ME</div>
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-75669864083486909302015-12-04T12:41:00.001+00:002015-12-04T12:41:18.705+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: magenta;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">591</span></b></span></div>
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Today is my 67th birthday.</div>
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My thanks to my friend Dominique in Paris for composing the picture above. I think I'll be spending most of the day trying to figure out what he is trying to tell me...</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-80976172117206462682015-12-03T00:19:00.002+00:002015-12-03T00:23:43.291+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">590</span></b></span></div>
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And this is the man to whom I dedicated my journey to London. Hector Berlioz, no less.<br />
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In blogposting 223 I was vain enough to list my eight Desert Island Discs, for what they’re worth. One of them was Berlioz’ <i>Requiem</i>. This is what I wrote about it way back in September 2010.<br />
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<i>‘….Berlioz was a pre-Raphaelite renegade of the first water. Like The Beatles, he consciously fought to move music forward, to experiment with new forms and new effects, to shake up the musical establishment of his era (up to about the 1850s).<br /><br />He succeeded magnificently. His works, all of which are orchestrated to within an inch of their lives, bounce down the decades and still stir the hearts of his many fans today. Rousing overtures like </i>The Corsair, Les francs-juges, King Lear<i> or </i>Roman Carnival<i> were years ahead of their time. And he didn’t </i>number<i> his symphonies like everyone else - he </i>named them<i>; </i>Harold In Italy<i> and </i>The Fantastic Symphony<i> (which includes a heart-stopping musical representation of a beheading by guillotine).<br /><br />But he really knocked spots off people’s preconceptions with his funereal works. His </i>Symphonie funebre <i>includes one of the most famous and most stately funeral marches ever written. And the </i>Grande Messe des Morts<i> - the ‘great Mass for the dead’, more usually called the </i>Requiem<i> - must have had its audience gibbering in the aisles when it was first performed in 1837.<br /><br />With astonishing Romantic-era panache, Berlioz’ score for the </i>Requiem<i> requires....<br />*a 180-piece orchestra, including 16 kettledrums, 10 pairs of cymbals, 20 'cellos and 18 double-basses;<br />*four brass bands (placed at the corners of the auditorium) - 38 players in all;<br />*a choir of 210 voices, made up of 80 sopranos, 70 basses and 60 tenors; plus<br />*a tenor solo.<br /><br />Despite the numbers involved, though, it’s not all deafeningly thunderous. Berlioz was clever enough to intersperse the volcanic eruptions with areas of wistfulness and calm. Nevertheless, it’s the deafening thunder that clinches it for most people.<br /><br />It’s not often performed, of course. The cost is prohibitive, for a start. So I’m lucky to have seen it twice. Which means that I have felt that my life will never be the same again - </i>twice<i>.<br /><br />The part of the </i>Requiem<i> that makes you wonder what on earth Berlioz was on when he wrote it is the </i>Tuba mirum<i> - the massed trumpet call to the Last Judgement of the Lord. (Even typing those words has given me goosepimples.) The whole ensemble - all 429 of them - take part. The trumpets blare at you from the four corners of the world, the whole of humanity calls to the Lord, who calls back using all those kettledrums, cymbals and double-basses….’</i><br />
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As I said then, it’s rarely performed because the number of people involved - and thus the cost - is prohibitive. And a performance with a regular-sized orchestra and chorus would sound half-hearted and even silly. You need at least something approaching Berlioz’ preferred scale, and a very big auditorium indeed, for the full effect.</div>
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And that’s what I got on Monday night - as you can see. That’s the Royal Albert Hall, with a capacity ensemble waiting for the conductor to walk onstage. Rank upon rank of singers and an enhanced Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; there are twelve timpani - kettledrums - and two enormous bass drums, one of which was bigger than the drummer himself.<br />
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And the four brass bands which Berlioz’ score calls for aren’t even in the picture; they’re ‘up a-height’ in the ‘gods’ of the auditorium.<br />
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As you can imagine, the concert was visually and aurally spectacular. The <i>Tuba mirum</i> was powerful enough to shatter windows, ribs and illusions - which made the quieter sections of the <i>Requiem</i> sound all the more longingly poignant. And this was especially so because the performance was dedicated to the people of Paris, in their grief and their loss.<br />
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You can watch and hear a Lyon performance of the <i>Requiem </i>here - the <i>Tuba mirum</i> starts at 16:00 and ends at 23:12 - <br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZfDbANFL88">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZfDbANFL88</a><br />
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This (older) performance under Leonard Bernstein brings out the power of brass even more (between 17:20 and 24:30) - <br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkqaMZmB9js">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkqaMZmB9js</a><br />
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As far as I know, Berlioz’ <i>Requiem</i> has never been performed in Newcastle. On the train home, I decided to dedicate at least part of the time I have left to rectifying this deplorable state of affairs.</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-89809022082779321272015-12-02T00:19:00.000+00:002015-12-02T00:26:18.088+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">589 </span></b></span></div>
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As I was walking down to Central Station last Friday, to catch a train for yet another trip to London, it occurred to me that I’ve given overseas train travel a lot more attention on this blog than I have to our home-grown railways. So I decided there and then to post some kind of record of my journey to the capital - a journey I’ve made countless times over the years and with every inch of which I am affectionately familiar. Mostly.<br />
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I’ve always felt an almost personal sense of disappointment with the recent development work at Central Station. Although it was a sensational idea to ‘glass-in’ the portico, the resulting space is wasted on a couple of coffee outlets, a florist and some ticket machines.<br />
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Newcastle lies at the hub of the birth and development of railways. So why no public art in the ‘new’ portico to mark its importance? Why no themed design on its flagstones or artwork on its magnificent glass arches? And why no fountain on the large wasted space that’s been created immediately east of the portico?<br />
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<i>Anyway...</i><br />
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The security gate I jousted with was a much more formidable barrier than was strictly necessary. As I passed through, its powerful and unforgiving jaws closed on the suitcase I was trundling behind me and refused to release it. I had to summon a ‘platform customer comfort and safety assistant’ (or whatever title they labour under these days) to set me free. She told me that this kind of thing happens all the time; ‘we’ve asked for a software update’.<br />
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My train was due to leave from platform 3 and, sure enough, there was a train waiting there. Being a sensible kind of fellow, though, I checked the platform train indicator - just to make sure that, if I boarded it, I wouldn’t end up in Plymouth or Reading or somewhere equally as unsettling.<br />
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The indicator, though, told me that the train was in quarantine or something, even though there were clearly people on it. <i>‘This Train is Not in Service. Do Not Board This Train’</i>. So I didn’t - along with several other people milling about on the platform.<br />
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Eventually I plucked up the courage to seek enlightenment from a bored-looking man wearing a Virgin Trains East Coast uniform. ‘Yes’ he said, ‘this <i>is</i> the 1225 to London.‘ <br />
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‘That’s not what the train indicator says.’<br />
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‘Just ignore that’ he said. I asked him if he was absolutely <i>sure</i> and his wordless look - an unhappy mixture of frustration, anger and enforced ‘customer-service’ politeness - convinced me not to pursue the matter further. I did however venture to suggest that the train indicator might also need a ‘software update’.<br />
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Just looking at the trains makes me seethe uncontrollably. The company has found the money to repaint the entire East Coast train stock in its Virgin livery...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA560-N1klcoPkk9zFV3HZmEer1Ggcbr8UyUXqQfYDneqVgXZTxIqAj1AAC8y96dKWlUE9M1cD-Ud6dWuQNw-kVvVJ_rEhJPNdt8QmKsQKFGwYP8j3M6BM0krNX7AFUDRb1tP62KXJAI8/s1600/IMG_1732.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA560-N1klcoPkk9zFV3HZmEer1Ggcbr8UyUXqQfYDneqVgXZTxIqAj1AAC8y96dKWlUE9M1cD-Ud6dWuQNw-kVvVJ_rEhJPNdt8QmKsQKFGwYP8j3M6BM0krNX7AFUDRb1tP62KXJAI8/s320/IMG_1732.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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...but hasn’t been able to afford any improvements once you get inside.<br />
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<br />
No refurbishment here. Just the same old weirdly uncomfortable, worn
out seats from decades ago packed in so tightly that some people don’t
even get a window to look out of.<br />
<br />
As we pulled away and over the Tyne, the ‘customer catering, refreshment
and pleasure manager’ announced that drinks, snacks, sandwiches and
(for all I know) casual sex were available in Coach Haitch, thus setting
my pedantic teeth on edge by ignoring one of the language’s two most
obvious firetraps. Namely, that H is pronounced without an H. (The
other is that pronunciation is not pronounced <i>pronounciation</i>.)<br />
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<i> The Angel waves goodbye. See it?</i></div>
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<i>Durham City. </i></div>
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<i>I used to think that this was one of the finest views you
could get from a British train. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>But I was wrong. It is THE finest
view...</i></div>
<br />
Durham is not a county of noble mediaeval church spires. Chester-le-Street has a good one but I was too late with my camera. This is a good one too - it’s St Cuthbert’s, Darlington.<br />
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(Lincolnshire, on the other hand, has a splendid collection of ancient spires. Next time you’re on a southbound train, look out for the graceful, soaring and delicate spire at Newark (on the right) and at Grantham (on the left). One of England’s most beautiful parish churches - at Claypole - graces the view from the train window just south of Newark.)<br />
<br />
Between Darlington and Northallerton, the ‘train cleaning, tidying and rubbish disposal operative’ passed through the carriage. Emblazoned on the back of his jacket - in big white letters - were the words COMMITTED TO ENHANCE YOUR EXPERIENCE, a phrase with no actual meaning whatsoever. <br />
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<i>These 'Heath Robinson' instructions are a diverting feature of Virgin East Coast train toilets. Once you're inside, they tell you how to lock the door - in 5 easy steps.</i></div>
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<i>Notice that: </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>1 - They don't tell you how to unlock the door</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>2 - They are helpfully printed in English only; God only knows how many head-scratching tourists have been caught with their pants down (as it were)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>3 - 'Continuously' is mis-spelled</i></div>
<br />
The cleaner's job obviously excluded enhancing our experience of the carriage’s toilet, which didn’t work. It stank. European trains have aircraft-style toilets which empty by suction rather than gravity. I guess that Virgin Trains East Coast, having disbursed so much money on repainting the carriage exteriors, had no more money to bring the toilets into the 21st century. The poor cleaner may be committed to enhancing our experience but the company itself is not.<br />
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If you can be bothered to look very, very closely indeed at the low-lying range of grey hills in the distance, you may be able to make out a small shape near the top of one of them - it's just about in the centre of the photo. This is the Kilburn White Horse, a few miles east of Thirsk. I’ve seen it several hundred times on my road and rail trips to and from the north-east and this is the first photograph I have EVER taken of it.</div>
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By the way, I think that we should all offer up a prayer of thanks to the Cleveland Hills and North York Moors; they hide Teesside safely out of sight.<br />
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York Minster is England’s largest ancient cathedral - but Durham’s magnificence dwarfs it. Much further down the line, the glories of Peterborough Cathedral are completely lost on railway travellers - although it's not far from the line, it’s hidden by modern developments like shopping centres, office blocks and car parks.<br />
<br />
Poor Peterborough; it was recently assessed as having the worst public transport in all of western Europe.<br />
<br />
<i>And so to London...</i><br />
<br />
I’ve been quite vituperative about King’s Cross in the past. Now, though, it’s been transformed into a showpiece of modern station design - worth a trip to London in its own right!<br />
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The clock in the central tower was taken from the Crystal Palace when it was moved after the Great Exhibition of 1851.</div>
<br />
The sculpture is by Henry Moore and is called <i>Clunky Writhing Torso With Hole Number 3</i>.<br />
Not.<br />
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@gmail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-14599622327715118642015-11-27T22:50:00.000+00:002015-11-27T22:50:41.410+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">588</span></b></span></div>
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<b><i>Speaking of France...</i></b></div>
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To the untutored eye, this photograph may look fairly unremarkable - dull, even. A road runs between some featurelessly pleasant fields. In the distance there are woods and the merest hint of a farm or perhaps the outskirts of a town or village. The road is fairly busy and there is a van in the right-hand field; it could be moving or simply parked there.</div>
<br />As I hope you’d expect, however, there’s a lot more to this picture than meets the eye. In truth, it reveals something which - to me at least - is a surprising and regrettable aspect of French life.<br /><br />Yes, we’re in France. We are in Beaujolais, looking north on the old main road between Lyon and Paris. We are on the edge of the town of Villefranche-sur-Sâone, which lies immediately behind us. Ahead of us lies St Georges de Reneins (Serge’s home village, which you can see in the distance) and Belleville.<br /><br />At great personal risk to myself, I pulled the car into the lay-by that you can see and quickly ‘snapped’ the picture. I did this not because I think the view is memorable or interesting - it isn’t - or because anything dramatic is happening - it’s not.<br /><br />The object of my attention is the white van in the field. It is parked in exactly that place all day, every day (as far as I know) and performs a function which is still sadly regarded as essential and normal in France.<br /><br />To all intents and purposes, the white van is a brothel.<br /><br />Everyone who drives past knows it’s a brothel because it wears the accepted uniform; it’s white and it’s parked on a farm track facing a busy road from which it’s clearly visible - and with a conveniently placed lay-by. Hundreds of vans just like this one are parked in very similar locations all over France.<br /><br />Passing drivers in need of its occupant’s services need only glance at the van’s windscreen. If it is partly obscured by a Venetian blind, madame is available. If the blind is fully drawn, madame is busy.<br /><br />in my photograph, madame must be available. There are no cars parked in the lay-by or on the farm track. Interestingly, the feint blue lights of two police cars are just visible on the road ahead of the farm track. But madame need not worry; they are simply doing speed and safety checks.<br /><br /><i>Unless....</i><br />
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CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-29954723138764066722015-11-24T21:14:00.000+00:002015-11-24T21:14:39.285+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: purple;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">587</span></b></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Mison Sere, winner of 'Mr Ugly', is on the left. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Whereas the real ugliest man in Zimbabwe is on the right.</i></div>
<br />
I rate this story as amongst the most macabre and ‘unsettling’ I’ve come across recently. I’m not sure why it makes me feel so uneasy and unhappy. It just does.<br /><br />It seems that some of the crowd at Zimbabwe's annual Mr Ugly contest have complained that the winner was not ugly enough.<br /><br />Winner Mison Sere wore torn overalls to compete but the runner-up and his supporters said his ugliness (<i>see above</i>) wasn't natural since it was based on missing teeth.<br /><br />Mr Sere won $500 (£330) and plans to start a TV career.<br />
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Runner-up William Masvinu (<i>above</i>) has won every previous year of the competition. He took home £100 this year. And apparently, his wife supports him. Winning the competition in previous years has brought him fame (by Zimbabwean standards) and a few minor marketing contracts. ‘To be rewarded is a good thing; this competition has done a lot for me; it's changed my life’, he said.<br /><br />Now, Mr Sere is hoping for the same fame and fortune. He said that he already goes around schools performing and, as he put it, ‘showcasing my ugliness’. He sees winning the competition as a chance to make it onto TV.<br /><br />The organiser, David Machowa, said that models make money from their looks, so ugly people should have the same opportunity. And he hopes that the contest is just the start of it. He is planning Mr Ugly World, to be staged in Harare in 2017.<br /><br />Personally, I’m not sure if this is good news or not. Or why.<br />
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Three loud cheers for Andrew Neil - not something you’ll hear me say very often. But this time, he very definitely deserves it.<br /><br />His anti-IS tirade on tv has gone viral on YouTube. I’ve watched it several times and have applauded loudly each time. His list of historic French contributions to literature, music, sculpture, film, cuisine, education, language, science, philosophy, medicine and almost every other aspect of civilisation is deeply impressive, even though it’s by no means exhaustive.<br /><br />Fortunately for Mr Neil, he includes Saint-Saëns, in whose honour I will once again be visiting Paris next month.<br /><br />And I just can’t wait.<br /><br />If you haven’t encountered his uplifting and inspiring statement of defiant contempt, you can watch it here. (If the link doesn’t work, cut and paste it into your internet browser’s ‘search’ box.)<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKg3Qexn7U">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKg3Qexn7U</a><br />
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CONTACT ME</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-84495738475255518692015-11-23T00:14:00.000+00:002015-11-24T00:02:37.293+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">586</span></b></div>
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<i>Helene and Melvil...</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<i>[This is a re-edit of the blog I posted yesterday].</i><br />
<br />
Antoine Leiris’ wife, Helene Muyal-Leiris, was among the 89 people murdered in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris nine days ago.<br />
<br />
Here is Antoine's response. It was broadcast by the BBC five days after the attacks.<br />
<br />
<i>'On Friday night you stole away the life of an exceptional human being, the love of my life, the mother of my son. But you will not have my hatred. If the God for whom you kill so blindly made us in His image, each bullet in my wife's body would have been a wound in His heart.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I will not give you the gift of hating you. Responding to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. <br /><br />You want me to be afraid. To cast a mistrustful eye on my fellow citizens. To sacrifice my freedom for security. <br /><br />You lost.<br /><br />I saw her this morning [in the morgue]. She was just as beautiful as she was when she left home on Friday evening; as beautiful as when I fell madly in love with her more than 12 years ago. <br /><br />Of course I am devastated with grief - I will give you that tiny victory.<br /><br />But this will be a short-term grief. I know that she will join us every day and that we will find each other again in a paradise of free souls, which you will never have access to.<br /><br />And I will raise Melvil, our son, happy and free. Because No, you will not have his hatred either.’</i><br />
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<i>Antoine</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
Brenda has sent me another of her poignant jokes. As a reminder about
the fallibility of religions of all kinds, I reckon it’s worth a
blogposting all to itself.<br />
<br />
<i>Several centuries ago, the Pope
decreed that all the Jews had to convert to Catholicism, or leave Italy.
There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a
deal: he'd have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish
community. If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy; if the Pope won,
they'd have to convert or leave.<br /><br />The Jewish people met and picked
an aged and wise rabbi to represent them in the debate. However, as the
rabbi spoke no Italian, and the Pope spoke no Yiddish, they agreed that
it would be a 'silent' debate.<br /><br />On the chosen day, the Pope and rabbi sat opposite each other. The Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers.<br /><br />The rabbi looked back and raised one finger.<br /><br />Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head.<br /><br />The rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat.<br /><br />The Pope brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine.<br /><br />The rabbi pulled out an apple.<br /><br />With that, the Pope stood up and declared himself beaten and said that the rabbi was too clever. The Jews could stay in Italy.<br /><br />Later, the Cardinals met with the Pope, and asked him what had happened.<br /><br />The
Pope said, ‘First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He
responded by holding up a single finger to remind me there is still
only one God common to both our faiths. <br /><br />Then, I waved my finger
around my head to show him that God was all around us. The rabbi
responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here
with us. <br /><br />I pulled out the wine and host to show that, through
the perfect sacrifice, Jesus has atoned for our sins. But the rabbi
pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin. <br /><br />He bested me at every move and I could not continue.’<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered to ask the rabbi how he'd won.<br /><br />‘I haven't a clue,’ said the rabbi. ‘First, he told me that we had three days to get out of Italy, so I gave him the finger. <br /><br />Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews, but I told him emphatically that we were staying right here.’<br /><br />‘And then what? asked a woman.<br /><br />‘Who knows?' said the rabbi. ‘He took out his lunch, so I took out mine.</i><br />
<br />
Thanks, Brenda.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">
CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-62289454592217947272015-11-22T00:19:00.000+00:002015-11-22T00:19:55.526+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">585</span></b></span></div>
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As I write, there’s a region of France - more south than north, more east than west - that’s going raucously and gloriously berserk. There’s singing and dancing; the telling of risqué jokes; the swapping of scurrilous gossip; the construction of tall stories. There’s good fellowship, acres of mutual common ground - and the kids are being indulged by being allowed not just to stay up and watch but to join in.</div>
<br />
Most of all, though, there’s the scrutiny of full wine glasses, the sipping then slurping of the wine inside them, and the familiar hugs and smiles of righteous self-congratulation for another successful year.<br /><br /><i>This, ladies and gentlemen, is Beaujolais Nouveau Weekend.</i><br /><br />It began two days ago, on the third Thursday in November, as it always does. This year’s vintage was released to the world with the usual fanfares - and the even more usual over-indulgence in the land of its birth; the gentle country north of Lyon and west of the Sâone where France’s most popular wine has been grown, harvested, fermented and bottled since Roman times.<br /><br />Parisian wine ‘connoisseurs’ and their counterparts elsewhere, many of whom should know better, often turn their noses up at the mere mention of Beaujolais. It’s too young when you drink it, it doesn’t age well, it’s too cheap, it’s too course, its ‘nose’ is too indelicate….<br /><br />Poppycock. Beaujolais is generally light, refreshing and - as British wine-experts say - extremely ‘quaffable’. It is also by far the most popular wine in France. It’s so popular in nearby Lyon that they float barrels of it down the Sâone to keep the thirsty citizens supplied. And even in Paris, they drink more Beaujolais than any other wine.<br />
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I know that popularity does not equal quality - think of the <i>Jeremy Kyle Show</i> or the <i>Daily Mail</i>. But this is a different kettle of fish. We are talking about France and wine. If Beaujolais wasn’t reliable, pleasant, slurpable and more-ish, the French wouldn’t drink it in such vast quantities. And neither would we.</div>
<br />If you want to join in the celebrations, you can nip out for a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau over the next few days. To avoid the premium that’s always charged on wine so-labelled, though, go for a regular vintage Beaujolais. Try a Beaujolais-Villages (made and marketed by a co-operative of villages in the region), a Fleurie, a Brouilly or a Chiroubles.<br /><br />Or better, you could splash out on real Beaujolais quality; try a Morgon, a Juliénas, a Chénas or a Moulin-à-Vent (‘Windmill’). They’re rich, full-bodied, aged and quite expensive - even in France.<br /><br />(I really got a kick out of drawing up that list, by the way - simply because I habitually visited many of the places on it!)<br /><br />I hope the wine is flowing freely throughout Beaujolais tonight. Now more than usual, French people need something to celebrate - and celebrate in style.<br />
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<b><i>Salut!</i></b></div>
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CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-31830388986105842112015-11-19T00:01:00.002+00:002015-11-19T00:04:51.426+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">584</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"></span>LIGHT RELIEF</div>
<br />
Apropos of nothing in particular, a truckshunter called Mike has sent me some quotations which, he said, might provide me with ‘light relief’ - or at least distract me (and you) from the turmoil of the last few days.<br />
<br />
He’s right - they did the trick.<br />
<br />
<i>I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.</i><br />
Lord Grocott<br />
<br />
<i>I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I will go to it laughing.</i><br />
Herman Melville<br />
<br />
<i>There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.</i><br />
Pearl Buck<br />
<br />
<i>The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.</i><br />
Alfred North Whitehead<br />
<br />
<i>The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.</i><br />
John Adams<br />
<br />
<i>Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.</i><br />
Anton Chekhov<br />
<br />
<i>What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.</i><br />
Paul Valery<br />
<br />
<i>Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.</i><br />
Franz Kafka<br />
<br />
<i>To the most trivial actions, attach the devotion and mindfulness of 100 monks. To matters of life and death, attach a sense of humour.</i><br />
Zhuang Zi<br />
<br />
<i>The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.</i><br />
Conrad Zuse<br />
<br />
<i>If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.</i><br />
Thomas Edison<br />
<br />
<i>Physical deformity calls forth our charity. But the infinite misfortune of moral deformity calls forth nothing but hatred and vengeance.</i><br />
Clarence Darrow.<br />
<br />
<i>Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying.</i><br />
George Orwell<br />
<br />
<i>Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.</i><br />
Samuel Johnson<br />
<br />
I think that last one’s a cracker.<br />
<br />
Just for good measure, Mike also sent me some of his favourite Groucho Marx quotations…<br />
<br />
<i>I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.<br /><br />Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.<br /><br />The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.<br /><br />A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.<br /><br />Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.<br /><br />One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.<br /><br />She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.<br /><br />Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?<br /><br />I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.<br /><br />I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.<br /><br />From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.<br /><br />Either he's dead or my watch has stopped.</i><br />
<br />
Thanks, Mike. You made my day.<br />
<br />
(Unlikely as it seems, Mike also sent me some information about a church he thought I might consider joining - of which more later.) <br />
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-23796699023191047272015-11-16T18:59:00.002+00:002015-11-16T18:59:45.516+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">583</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="color: black;"><i>My thanks to Vivienne for sending me this image of the symbol that has quickly come to represent the stoical and uplifting reaction of Parisians to Friday night's barbarities </i><b> </b></span></span></span></div>
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<br />Over the weekend, I was privy to two splendid examples of defiant English ‘pluck’.<br /><br />My friend John - who now lives in Paris - happened to be in London during the Paris attacks on Friday night. He was spending some time with his sister and was due to travel back to Paris yesterday, via Eurostar. I asked him if he intended to change his plans, specially as his home is within spitting distance of the attack sites. The Place de la Republique, the Canal St Martin and the 11th <i>arrondissement</i> are all just a few minutes’ walk away. I’ve wandered round those streets myself - often.<br /><br />John’s reply to my question was typically phlegmatic, not to say scatological. He scolded me for even suggesting that he might change his plans. To be honest, his exact words (look away now) were ‘Fuck the terrorists.’<br /><br />Coincidentally, Brian - my oldest friend and a balletmaster of international reputation - was due to travel by train to Paris on Saturday morning to do some teaching and assessment there. Many years ago, he lived there for five years and fell in love with it (as you do) and enjoys these occasional weekend assignments there.<br /><br />And again, it didn’t even occur to him to change his plans. Cancellation or postponement were not even options. He caught his train on Saturday morning, took the classes, stayed overnight in an apartment in the city centre, took more classes on Sunday morning and returned to London in the afternoon. He may easily have said ‘Fuck the terrorists’ as well.<br /><br />I’m undeservedly lucky to have friends like Brian and John, aren’t I?<br />
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There are a couple of little tail-pieces to their stories.<br /><br />Both men reported that the Eurostar trains they caught from London were uncommonly empty; a reflection of the regrettable tendency of so many people to be cowed by the actions of Friday night’s murderers, thus giving them precisely what they want.<br /><br />Even more regrettable, though, is the taxi-driver who picked Brian up from Gare du Nord after his arrival in Paris on Saturday morning. The normal fare to his destination is less than €30. Because of the dislocation of public transport, however, the driver extorted €70 from Brian.<br />
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<br />A very big Thankyou to everyone who has enquired about our friends in France. I can confirm that everyone is safe and unharmed - including Laura, Ada’s granddaughter, who is studying in Paris. I have passed on your good wishes.<br /><br />Thanks again to everyone.<br /><br />
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<br />Finally…<br /><br />A couple of people have commented that my last blogposting was faintly Islamophobic. Nothing could be further from the truth. A ‘phobia’ is an irrational <i>fear</i>; <i>arachnophobia</i> is an irrational fear of spiders, NOT a <i>hatred</i> of them.<br /><br />I do not fear Islam at all. A better word would be Islamogyny. Think of ‘misogyny’ and you’ll get the idea.<br /><br />Hey - I think I’ve invented a new word!<br /><br /><i>Islamogyny.</i> Says it all.<br /><br />
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CONTACT ME</div>
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Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-14878244514671979022015-11-14T23:32:00.000+00:002015-11-14T23:32:07.605+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">582</span></b></div>
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<i>Durham Cathedral pays homage to the people of France earlier this evening</i></div>
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One day last winter I arranged to meet my brother for a coffee in the Town. Although there wasn’t much snow, there was a very great deal of thick ice all over the roads and pavements. As I crossed the road on my way to the bus stop, I slipped on the kerb and fell flat out on the pavement.</div>
<br />As well as the usual feelings of humiliation and shock, I also felt considerable pain in my shin and elbow, both of which had borne the brunt my fall. After the initial gasp and yelp of the fall, I lay there moaning and groaning for a few seconds, trying to assess any damage and pull myself together!<br /><br />A woman was walking toward me. As is not uncommon in these parts, she was wearing a burqa and was thus covered from head to foot in black; not even her eyes were visible. A formless, faceless black wraith…<br /><br />What happened next astonished even <i>me</i>.<br /><br />I was laying flat-out right across the pavement, moaning sorrowfully (as you do in such circumstances).<br /><br /><i>And the woman stepped over me.</i> <br />
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She didn’t divert from her chosen course at all. She didn’t walk <i>round</i> me. She just stepped <i>over</i> me and continued on her way.<br /><br />I couldn’t tell whether she looked at me, of course, because you can’t. But there was no <i>are you alright?</i> or <i>are you hurt?</i> or <i>can I help you?</i> I was simply ignored. I might as well not have been there.<br /><br />In a way, her actions - or lack of them - did the trick. I was so taken aback by what seemed like her unbelievable thoughtlessness - or even malice - that I forgot about how much my leg and arm were hurting. I struggled slowly to my feet and walked very gingerly indeed to the bus stop.<br /><br />I know perfectly well the religious constraints she was under. As I understand it, she is forbidden to even look at - let alone speak to - any man she does not already know. Preferably, the only men she should have any contact with at all should be members of her family.<br /><br />I did not fall into either category and so her religion dictated that she ignore me completely, no matter how atrocious my injuries may have been. I wondered afterwards what she would have done if I had called out to her in my distress. Would she have stopped to help if, for example, she had seen me knocked down in a hit-and-run incident? Or if she had witnessed me being mugged?<br /><br />I needn’t have wondered. The answer is No. She would have continued down the street with a clear conscience, knowing that she had done God’s will.<br /><br />To my mind, it is a short step indeed from ignoring a person in distress to <i>causing</i> their distress and <i>then</i> ignoring it. And from there to causing distress <i>so that </i>you can ignore it - because it is God’s will. <br /><br />And from there to <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> in January and the carnage in Paris on Friday night.<br /><br />
Looking back now, I realise how lucky I was that day. After all, it is an Islamic tenet that all non-believers (like me) should be killed. She could easily have kicked me to death. Or pulled a kitchen-knife from somewhere under the folds of the voluminous black tent she was wearing and stabbed me several dozen times.<br /><br />My shock and distress that day are, of course, insignificant in the extreme compared to the Islamic slaughter inflicted on Paris yesterday and I don't intend to cause offence by comparing them. Nevertheless, I believe that the same callous disregard for other human beings - the same unspeakable malice - runs in a straight line from one even to the other.<br />
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I wonder what that grotesque woman is thinking tonight…<br /><br />
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<br />If you think I am wrong to draw these conclusions, say so. <br />
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Think of the mediaeval savagery inflicted on Paris yesterday; think of the pernicious and hateful religion that prompted it; then tell me I am wrong.<br /><br />Listen to the mealy-mouthed sophistical weasel-words of the many unapologetic imams who will be dragged into tv studios over the coming days and tell me that Islam is a peace-loving religion.<br /><br />Tell me I am wrong. But also tell me <i>why</i> you think I am wrong.<br /><br />
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<br />I wish I could be with my friends in France….<br /><br />
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<br />CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.comIan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-25929377181693581992015-10-17T00:12:00.000+01:002015-10-17T00:12:50.177+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">581</span></b></span></div>
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<i>Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015</i></div>
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<i>This is the winner of the 'Under Water' category. It's a Bryde's whale ripping through a sardine 'bait ball' off the Transkei coast of South Africa. The picture was taken by Michael Aw, of Australia.</i></div>
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In a world as wayward and as unpredictable as ours, things don’t always turn out the way we would have liked. And sometimes, the world surprises us into laughter or rumination - or even both. </div>
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Which is another way of saying that I reckon it’s about time we had some more….<br />
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NEWS FROM NOWHERE<br />
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* A bungling burglar has been jailed for 26 weeks after getting trapped in a petrol station’s security shutter. Essex police received a 999 call from Paul Davies (47) saying he was stuck in the Asda petrol station in Basildon. When the burglar alarm went off, the shutter came down and he was trapped under it when he tried to get out. Ouch.<br />
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* Scotland has been found by language researchers to have historically used 421 words relating to snow, dwarfing the number famously used by Inuits. Definitions listed in the online Scottish Historical Thesaurus include ‘small flakes of wind-driven snow’ - <i>spitters</i> - to ‘a ghostly figure in a blizzard’ - a <i>snaw-ghast</i>.<br />
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* A macaque monkey which took ‘selfie’ photographs should be declared the copyright owner of the photos, rather than David Slater, the nature photographer who positioned the camera - or so says the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco.<br />
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* The Royal Mail has fixed a large sign to a red postbox in Penzance, Cornwall, stating that dogs repeatedly urinating on it pose ‘a significant health and safety risk’. The company said it would have to remove the postbox if urine continued to soil the letters inside.</div>
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* An Indian man who hasn’t cut his fingernails since 1952 has made it into the Guinness Book of Records. Shridhar Chillal officially has the world’s longest fingernails ever on one hand, with a 2-metre thumbnail. The 78 year-old’s obsession began when he was at school and a teacher beat him for breaking one of his nails.<br />
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* A stowaway kitten which arrived in Britain in the cargo hold of an Emirates jet is set to be re-homed after the airline offered to pay her quarantine fees. The cat - named Cairo - was found at Birmingham airport in a shipment from Egypt.<br />
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* The UK is the best country in the world in which to die, followed by Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, according to The Economist’s latest index which measures end-of-life care. The index uses 20 indicators to measure the effectiveness of care in 80 countries, placing the UK on top of the world.<br />
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<i>And finally…</i><br />
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* An astrophysicist has won the coveted ‘golden spurtle‘ trophy at the world porridge-making championships. Simon Rookyard, of Tyldesley, Manchester, beat 20 international competitors - including a Finnish biochemist, a Swedish doctor and a South African chef. The contest was held in the village of Carrbridge, in the Cairngorms.<br />
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-37407680152241419682015-10-12T18:34:00.002+01:002015-10-12T18:34:18.611+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">580</span></b></div>
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‘BRUSSELS: DAWN: OCTOBER 12TH, 1915’<br /><br />It’s become traditional, whenever I’m in London, for my old friend Brian and I to have a coffee (and occasionally even a cake) sitting at a table outside our favourite West End branch of <i>Pret a Manger</i>. It’s at the point where Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane join together and run into the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square.<br /><br />Within a couple of metres of ‘our’ tables stands this impressive monument. It commemorates the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell in Brussels at the height of the Great War. Brian and I have often sat in its shadow watching the London world go by. After all this time, we tend to take the monument for granted, not giving it much thought.<br /><br />But, if I was there today, I would be giving it a very great deal of thought. It would again be the centre of my attention, as it most surely deserves. I would be thinking very hard about the selfless and loving things she did, and the sacrifices she made, in the most dangerous and frightening circumstances. I would be thinking of what motivated her and about her thoughts and emotions as she faced the firing squad.<br /><br />And I’d be wondering what she would have thought of all the conflicts that have followed her actions and her death, some of the most brutal of which are, of course, still continuing 100 years after she laid down her life.<br /><br /><i>Because, as you can see from the inscription, today marks the centenary of her execution.</i><br /><br />The anniversary will not be marked in any grand fashion, either here or in Belgium. But we must not let it pass completely unnoticed. For, as long as there are self-aggrandising politicians and generals willing to send young men and women to their deaths in war, and as long as young men and women agree to go, there will be a need for those like Edith Cavell who are prepared to put humanity above all other considerations.<br /><br />That’s why it’s written, simply and starkly, at the top of her noble monument.<br /><br />Please spare a thought for her today.<br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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I wrote about Edith Cavell over 3 years ago, in posting 364. To save you the trouble of scrolling all the way back, this is the reverie I tried to put into words at the time... <br /><br /><i>‘They don’t build monuments to the right things.<br /><br />Kings and Queens, great statesmen, military men on horseback. They are all very well but they are pompous and proclaim uncritical praise where it may not necessarily be due.<br /><br />Closer to the mark are the few paltry statues and plaques to Clever People Who Did Great Things. Discoverers, seekers and finders, creators and questioners.<br /><br />They make a strong case, yes. But they are </i>still <i>not the right people or things to build monuments in memory of.<br /><br />I remember first thinking thoughts like this when I lived in London and saw the statue of Nurse Edith Cavell just off Trafalgar Square. Nearby, Nelson is raised on his column in memory of a battle he took almost no part in winning. He gazes down on London’s countless statues of royalty, aristocracy, clergy, military and government.<br /><br />Edith, though, stands on a small plinth at a cramped crossroads. In the First World War, she nursed and cared for soldiers from </i>both <i>sides. ‘Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone’. Someone whose statue in Germany is probably much more vainglorious than hers ordered her to be shot by firing squad for her trouble.<br /><br />The origin of straightforward devotion and love like this is immaterial. Nurse Cavell or Greyfriars Bobby; it doesn’t matter. Their monuments and memorials and statues should be several times grander than they are because they provide a focus for us to remember good things - the humanity (or caninity) of devotion, loyalty and tenderness.<br /><br />Why are there no monuments to flowers and trees? I want to see a giant, bronze statue of tulips and bluebells and sycamore keys and apples.<br /><br />Why can’t someone design a sculpture to the glory and wonder of chaffinches and robins and blackbirds - and to how very much we love them, and to how much joy and pleasure they bring us without asking for anything in return?<br /><br />There should be a sculpture somewhere in honour of sunsets or thunderstorms or heavy rain or deep snow or butterflies or bats or walruses.<br /><br />I want to build a tower. <br /><br />It will be very, very high so that it can be seen from many lands and by people speaking lots of different languages. You will be able to climb to the top and watch the sun rise or forests turn from green to brown or feed the birds or feel the wind kiss your face.<br /><br />People will want to come from miles around and from across the sea to visit my tower. Their hearts will beat faster when they first glimpse it from a distance because they will know that it is a monument to </i>them<i>. It will have to be very grand indeed because it will have been built to honour humanity and all the things that give us grace and beauty and all the graceful and beautiful things we love and that have no monument or memorial.<br /><br />My tower will be a recognition of selflessness and courage, devotion and care. It will honour all the millions and millions of people who care for each other unrewarded and unnoticed. People who seek no praise - not even the praise of self-satisfaction.<br /><br />People who doggedly persist in facing difficulty, tragedy and adversity because of a love they cannot even clearly define deserve a tower like the one I have in mind.’</i><br /><br />I felt a lot better after I wrote that than I had felt before.</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-86465572637815570922015-10-10T17:26:00.002+01:002015-10-10T17:30:03.763+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">579</span></b></span></div>
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The award of this year’s Nobel Prizes in Sweden has been popping up in the news over the last few days. Truckshunters do not, however, concern themselves with such trivia. We set our sights much, much higher - or at least way off to the side - and focus our collective attention on the kind of scientific research and innovation that really matters: the kind that doesn’t just make us think but makes us laugh as well.<br />
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Which is why it’s time once again to report on this year’s Ig Nobel prize recipients who received their awards at...<br />
<br />
<b><i>The 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony</i></b><br />
<br />
...which took place on Thursday 17 September at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre (which, for some reason, uses the British English spelling of ‘theatre’).<br />
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You can watch a webcast of the whole shebang here:<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqVCl2VoZqU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqVCl2VoZqU</a><br />
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I can confirm that it’s great fun. I can also confirm that it takes almost two hours. So - in case you (mistakenly) think that you may have better things to do with two hours that you’ll never get back - here’s a summary of this year’s Ig Nobel Award Winners.</div>
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CHEMISTRY PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a joint team of researchers from Australia and USA for ‘inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg’.<br />
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PHYSICS PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a team from USA and Taiwan for ‘testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds)’.<br />
<i>This seems to be broadly true - I’ve tested the theory myself several times over the last few days.</i><br />
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LITERATURE PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a team from the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and USA for ‘discovering that the word <i>huh? </i>(or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language - and for not being quite sure why’.<br />
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MANAGEMENT PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a dedicated team scattered amongst Italy, Singapore, USA, India, UK, France, Luxembourg, Germany and Japan for ‘discovering that many business leaders developed in childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that - for them - had no dire personal consequences’.<br />
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ECONOMICS PRIZE<br />
Awarded to the City of Bangkok Metropolitan Police for ‘offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to accept bribes’.<br />
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MEDICINE PRIZE<br />
Awarded to teams from Japan, China, Slovakia, UK, USA and Germany for ‘experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities)’.<br />
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MATHEMATICS PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a team from Austria, Germany and UK for ‘trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco <i>(above)</i>, managed, during the years from 1697 to 1727, to father 888 children’.<br />
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BIOLOGY PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a team from Chile and USA for ‘observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked’.<br />
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DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE PRIZE<br />
Awarded to a team of researchers across Canada, UK, New Zealand, USA, Bahrain, Belgium, Dubai, India, South Africa, China and Syria for ‘determining that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps’.<br />
<i>Special congratulations to the Syrian researcher - Abdel Kader Allouni - for partaking in what must have been ‘difficult’ circumstances.</i><br />
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PHYSIOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE<br />
Awarded jointly to two people:<br />
Justin Schmidt (USA), for painstakingly creating the <i>Schmidt Sting Pain Index</i>, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects; and<br />
Michael L Smith (UK), for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft).<br />
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As the citations say, research that makes us smile and then think. <br />
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-44997579240558397882015-10-07T23:17:00.000+01:002015-10-07T23:17:27.042+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #674ea7;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">578</span></b></span></div>
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<i>Mr Saddlebags</i></div>
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<i> </i><br />I’m always deeply suspicious of - or at least, profoundly disappointed with - anyone whose toilet doesn’t have a pile of books for me to dip into (as it were) while nature takes its lavatorial course. To my mind, the availability of reading matter, or the lack of it, in the cludgie (as they’re known in Sheffield) says a lot about someone’s personality, or lack of personality. After all, you can’t be blessed with much of a sense of wonder or curiosity if all you want to do is just sit there and get it all over with as quickly as possible, can you?<br /><br />On reflection, I’d say that I’ve had some fairly profound experiences in the jakes (as I think it used to be called in Gateshead) - both my own and other people’s. It was in a friend’s toilet that I first read the poems of W B Yeats and another friend’s bathroom library introduced me to gardening - now, sadly, a skill I seem to have lost.<br /><br />At present, the bookshelf in my own netty keeps me occupied, one way or another, for hours on end. So much so that, if I didn’t live alone, there would always be someone knocking on the door asking if I was ‘nearly finished’. (My Nana used to do this all the time; as a kid, I got no peace at all.)<br /><br />For a start, there’s a cracking little book called <i>Dirty French</i>. It lists the kind of phrases you don’t find in official French dictionaries but hear all the time on the streets of Lyon. Such as…<br /><br /><i>Ce cassoulet m’a donné la chiasse</i><br />That cassoulet gave me the runs<br /><br /><i>Une louise</i><br />A long, thin, whistling fart<br /><br /><i>Il a une téte à claques</i><br />He has a face made for slapping<br /><br /><i>Un panier à salade</i><br />A ‘black maria’ - a prison van. Literally, 'a salad basket'.<br /><br /><i>Vingt-deux!</i><br />Watch out!<br />(Literally ’22!’ - nobody knows why)<br /><br />Next to <i>Dirty French</i> is a wondrous volume called <i>Queen Elizabeth’s Wooden Teeth</i>. It’s a digest of many historical facts which everybody believes to be true but which are actually complete fabrications…<br /><br />Queen Elizabeth I did <i>not</i> have wooden teeth, Winston Churchill was <i>not</i> born in a ladies’ toilet, Sir Walter Raleigh did <i>not </i>introduce potatoes from the New World (or tobacco either, for that matter), Abraham Lincoln did <i>not</i> write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope, King Cnut did <i>not</i> try to hold back the tide to prove his regal powers…<br /><br />Good, solid, meaty, <i>QI</i> stuff like that.<br /><br />Next, there’s a book called <i>The Old Dog and Duck: The Secret Meanings of Pub Names</i>. Hildie gave it to me as a birthday present years ago and it’s been in my toilet ever since.<br /> </div>
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It tells me why the pub near where I used to live in London was called <i>The Eagle and Child</i> and why there are<i> two</i> pubs in London called <i>The Case Is Altered</i>. Then there’s <i>The Cat and Fiddle </i>(and in Rotherham, <i>The Cat and Cabbage</i>), <i>The Pig and Whistle</i>, <i>The Bag of Nails</i>, <i>The Tumbledown Dick</i>, <i>The Swan With Two Necks</i>, <i>The Quiet Woman,</i> <i>The Trouble House</i>, and <i>The Tickled Trout</i>. To name but a few.<br /><br />The next book on the shelf is called<i> One Hundred Favourite Poems</i>. I love this book - it calms me down when I’m agitated (and who has never been agitated in the toilet?) and lifts my often beleaguered spirits by turns - which is what poetry is surely meant to do.<br /><br />Who would have guessed - for example - that care for animal welfare is nothing new or that it could be expressed as elegantly and as simply as this…<br /><br /><i>'Twould ring the bells of Heaven <br />The wildest peal for years, <br />If Parson lost his senses <br />And people came to theirs, <br />And he and they together <br />Knelt down with angry prayers <br />For tamed and shabby tigers <br />And dancing dogs and bears, <br />And wretched, blind pit ponies, <br />And little hunted hares.</i><br /><br />My book tells me that that was written by a man called Ralph Hodgson, who was born in Darlington in 1871. That being the case, I’m ashamed never to have heard of him - especially as ‘he was one of the earliest writers to be concerned with ecology, speaking out against the fur trade and man’s destruction of the natural world.’ Reading just this one poem makes me want to know more about yet another of our forgotten local heroes.<br /><br />As if all this weren’t enough - and to stop me pondering the meaning if Life, the Universe and Everything as I sit enthroned - there’s <i>The Ivan Morris Puzzle Book</i>. I’ve had this vexing book for so long that I can’t ever remember not owning it.<br /><br />The puzzles, mostly of the logic or lateral thinking type, are genuinely infuriating. Here’s one to take to the toilet with you…<br /><br /><i>Three professors of philosophy have applied for a job at the university. As a test of their logic skills, the Dean tells them: ‘I will draw a blue or a white dot on each of your foreheads. If you see a white dot on anyone’s forehead, raise your right hand. As soon as you know your own colour, lower your hand.’<br /><br />He then puts white dots on each of their foreheads and of course they all raise their hands.<br /><br />But soon, one of them lowers his hand and says ‘Obviously, I must have a white dot.’<br /><br />How did he know? (...assuming there were no mirrors in the room.)</i><br /><br />But for quite some time now, my favourite toilet book has been <i>The Book of 1,339 Facts</i> - yet another present from Hildie. I’ve quoted it on the the blog before - here’s a second helping…<br /><br />*<i>The longest recorded flight of a domestic chicken lasted 13 seconds</i><br /><br />*<i>The world’s largest jigsaw has 552,232 pieces</i><br /><br />*<i>The official State Dance of North Carolina is the Shag</i><br /><br />*<i>Nazi uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss</i><br /><br />*<i>The Arabic word for a hamster translates as ‘Mr Saddlebags’</i></div>
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CONTACT ME</div>
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Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686549576418787314.post-56735868173303920762015-10-01T23:13:00.000+01:002015-10-01T23:13:18.362+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: purple;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">577</span></b></span></div>
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<i>Please spare a thought for one of my favourite creatures - the magnificent Scottish Wildcat, Britain's only surviving native 'lion'. It's been persecuted for decades and now, despite its protected status, it's on the verge of extinction. Some estimates suggest that the remaining population may be less than 100 animals - even as few as about 35. And now there are reports that even these few animals are vulnerable to a virulent new strain of 'feline immunodeficiency virus' (FIV), which spreads to them via feral domestic cats.</i></div>
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<i>We may have to say Goodbye to the Scottish Wildcat within a year or two.</i></div>
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Here are some more unusual words for you to drop into everyday conversation. They're lifted from <i>Foyle's Philavery</i> (like the words on posting 571) and they all begin with B...</div>
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<i>basial</i></div>
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related to kissing</div>
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<i>batterfang</i></div>
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to attack with the fists or nails</div>
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<i>bavardage</i></div>
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idle chatter</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>beal</i></div>
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a boil; to fester like a boil</div>
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<i>bedizen</i></div>
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to dress gaudily or in bad taste</div>
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It rhymes with 'horizon'.</div>
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<i>bellibone</i></div>
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a woman of exceptional beauty and goodness</div>
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It's derived from French <i>belle-et-bonne</i>, surprisingly enough.</div>
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<i>bident</i></div>
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a two-year-old sheep</div>
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Do we really <i>need</i> this word at all?</div>
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Or <i>this</i> one, for that matter.<i>..</i></div>
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<i>blennophobia</i></div>
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an abnormal fear of slime or mucous</div>
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<i>borborygmus</i></div>
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the rumbling sound of gas and fluid in the intestines</div>
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Yes, it <i>has</i> a name and this is it.</div>
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<i>bragget</i></div>
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an alcoholic drink made by fermenting ale and honey with spices</div>
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Sounds good to me.</div>
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<i>bratticing</i></div>
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wooden boarding, often temporary, used to partition off something dangerous or to divide a space</div>
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This one came as a revelation to me. In my grandparents colliery house on Blackhall, the front door was separated from the front room (into which it would otherwise have opened) by what my Granda called a <i>brattish</i>. I had no idea it was a 'proper word'.</div>
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<i>bumbass</i></div>
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a projectile thrown by a bombard</div>
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I don't know about you, but I'm none the wiser.</div>
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CONTACT ME<br />
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com</div>
Ian Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06398143513915223362noreply@blogger.com4