The law I do is concerned with blood splatter patterns, bodily fluids and firearms residues as opposed to the more esoteric (and lucrative) commercial stuff. I am also a published novelist ('twentytwelve' published by Adonis and Abbey in 2006) which you should all order immediately in support of my desperate attempt to get its amazon.co.uk rating below half a million!
An explanation for the late despatch of the last post is in order. Last Tuesday morning, having completed the last post in draft the previous evening, I set out to court fortified by bacon butty and infusion of coffee feeing perfectly content with life. The court is less than 5 minutes from chambers Birmingham office.
I break rules 1 (look where you are going) and 2 (pick up your feet) and do yer pavement tripping production, going over like a tree on to my left hip. A crowd of concerned people gather. I ask a couple of blokes if they would help me to my feet as I can't do it on my own. They sportingly oblige. I stand clinging to a lamp post and wobbling. Two of West Midlands finest thereupon appear. They take over and - rightly - insist I get off to A & E in an ambulance. I was still - just about - in mad bugger mode and ready to keep walking to court despite being - erm - unable to walk.
The ambulance people were great, as was everybody else I met that day and I trundle off to City Hospital Birmingham, strapped to a trolley. I know what's coming next: x-rays, that's what.
X-rays to elbow and wrist are fine. The registrar isn't sure about the x-ray of my left hip but concludes that the x-ray of my hip is fine too and I can go on a pair of crutches. I'm given crutches. I can barely walk on them.
Consultant is summoned. He concludes that I have fractured my hip and he's the man to put this right by insertion of screw and plate. Nothing more to eat or drink except 10mg oral morphine. This is still morning and I am admitted as inpatient and await surgery. The anaesthetist comes for a chat. General anaesthesia can loosen teeth he warns me. Any problem teeth? he asks. I indicate a couple. He didn't lie. They are not long for this world after the general anaesthetic. I am wheeled into whatever they call the anteroom to the operating theatre sometime early evening.
I already have two cannulae in my right hand. One for the saline drip and one for the anaesthesia I have a jokey little chat with the anaesthetist. Don't remember a thing after that...
I come round on the ward. The non-saline cannula will feed me intravenous morphine on demand. I make a discovery...
Intravenous morphine is rather nice.
I was on the intravenous morphie for the next two days, then I decided to ask them to switch it off. Although nice it makes you very woozy (not to mention constipated) and I needed to focus to get outta there. Just before going to sleep on the Thursday evening I treated myself to a great big toot of intravenous morphine and asked the nurse to disconnect it on the Friday morning, which she did.
Hospital is mostly boring. You just lie there. I read a 70-odd page novella called Water Source by a 11 year old called Will Goddard. It's very good and he deserves a big shout out, which he just got. I also started reading a Patricia Cornwell crime novel, which I may blog about sometime. Otherwise my new mate Pete - the seriously tattooed bloke in the next bed, he was in there after being bitten by an alsatian - brought me a paper in the morning as he was more mobile than me. I chatted to Pete and listened to Radio 4. That's about it...
Well there was the physiotherapy. I was the physiotherapist's teacher's pet - I got seriously stuck in because I really, really wanted outta there. I was released today (sounds like a prison sentence) and a good friend is putting me up for the next week or so while I recuperate.
Oh and every cloud has a silver lining. I stopped smoking and it was dead easy. I'd started smoking again during stresses and strains of last year as per posting below and it had developed into a serious hobby. No smoking in hospital of course and I had been told that smoking is a particularly bad idea after hip operation. Something to do with circulation of the blood.
I say it was dead easy. With all the morphine I couldn't have cared less about cigarettes. By the time I had stopped the morphine I was pretty much through the withdrawal stage. It's a pretty drastic way to stop smoking but it worked for me...
This posting has been delayed for about a week for reasons about to be explained...
The above clip has recently come to the rabbit's attention and is presented without further comment, say to say that it was put together by some very naughty Australians, hence the prominence of Australiaon the maps so helpfully proffered to the interviewees.
It is equally true that lawyers are not stupid. Well-known fact innit? Or is it? The rabbit is shocked to discover in The Lawyer that the intelligence of lawyers is declining towards the mean. This is apparently something to do with Ally McBeal. All lawyers of goodwill should do their best to contribute to this decline. The rabbit will be leading the way.
The following is pretty old stuff but there may be a few people who haven't come across it yet. Some of it may suggest that lawyers actually are dumb! They come from a book called Disorder in the American Courts and are real courtroom exchanges from court transcripts.
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there
(I think that's my favourite)
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shittin' me?
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that?
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?
There are clearly some fine minds at work in the legal system, despite this stuff in The Lawyer...
On a completely different subject and as a public service, it has come to the rabbit's attention that many Man Ure supporters are - poor little pets - in a state of great distress after their 4-1 home thrashing by Liverpool, a condition not helped no doubt by losing 2-0 to Fulham last Saturday (complete with Shrek aka Wayne Rooney being sent off). So sad is the confusion and hurt that there is now a dedicated helpline for distraught scummers - sorry Man U supporters, I don't know what came over me...
I've been meaning to do a couple of blogs of late, one serious one on the revolting Avigdor Lieberman and one not so serious one following a report about which words and phrases have disappeared from the language - my take would be what words and phrases ought to disappear from the language. Hopefully both soon...
So a few random comments...
I pinched the above from Jailhouse Lawyer - the new style Conservative posters are so susceptible to parody. I liked this one...
Will on cricket blog The Corridor (link to left) is very pissed off indeed. I liked his comment 'England quickly reverted to type and approached their innings with all the testosterone and impetus of a fucking flamingo stuck in quicksand'.
Nice metaphor Will...
There is also a blog in why nobody listens to anybody these days. I recently approached a bloke in Balham Sainsburys wearing the staff uniform finding myself caught a little short.
A dread warning from history: before even my time the late mother of well-known jailbird Jeffrey 'Lord' Archer (apparently she was named Lola) used to write a column in the local paper about her dear son 'tuppence' setting out the endearing history of his - erm - formative years. And look what happened to him...
Julie Myerson appears incapable of learning the lessons of history. For the uninitiated, Julie Myerson is a British novelist and appears on Newsnight Review regularly where she equally regularly shows up her shallowness in contrast to the commentators on that august arts magazine who actually have something thoughtful and knowledgeable to say.
She is also a relentless self publicist for whom no detail of her family life seems to be beyond milking for her 'literary' ends. She has a son called Jake (pictured). I should declare a slight connection: when Jake was Jacob, he was in the same class as my younger son in primary school. He was the class 'boffin' and apparently a decent cricketer. I began to notice that articles began to appear in the Guardian from la Myerson concerning her family life. They grated for two reasons: their insufferably smug, narcissistic tone and the fact that she was milking matters which really belong in the private sphere to sell articles in the press. What child wants or needs their mother endlessly gushing about them in the popular prints? One particular piece that sticks in my mind was one concerning the joys of nappies (that's diapers for American readers) and the description of her son's penis as a 'tiny comma'.
Okay guys, hands up if you would like your mother to burst into print describing your penis as a 'tiny comma'.
Thought not...
So far so cloyingly awful. But along has come trouble. On her version, Jake who is now 20 has become a skunkhead and his erratic and violent behaviour was so bad and disruptive of family life that two years ago his parents changed the locks and threw him out. Since then he has apparently been living with friends' parents and in squats. He works in the music industry. He claims that he has not seen his mother in over a year.
Now this was just be sad and a private matter except for one thing...
She's written a bloody book about it! Is there any aspect of her family life that this woman considers too difficult, delicate or - if she has any concept of the word - private to be used a source material to advance her literary career and presumably bank balance?
Apparently not...
Jake has hit back. Our heroine claimed in an interview in a magazine appropriately enough named The Bookseller that her son read a manuscript and was 'generous enough' to understand her need to write about the trauma. Jake's response to this is to the effect of 'no I bloody wasn't' and that he didn't want the book published although she apparently paid him £1,000 to use some poetry he had written in the book. The temptation to speculate that the money went up in smoke is irresistible. I record without comment that he describes his mother as 'slightly insane'. He further complains 'my mother has been writing about me for the past 16 years'. I can see his point.
The media commentariat have seized gleefully on this story. La Myerson has not come out of the media barrage well. Nor does she deserve to. Maybe consider the lesson: whoever you may be your children are private individuals and not a source material to be milked for your literary career.In other words 'just shut it!'
The link is pretty contrived but it's as good an excuse as any - here's The Kinks with Lola...
Here's the incredibly violent French revolutionary song Ça ira. Not unreasonably, it's all about stringing up aristocrats. the Youtube clip doesn't actually say who the singer is but it has to be Edith Piaf. Surely?
I'd like to dedicate this to that little numpty 'Prince' Harry.
Ça ira Ça ira Ça ira...
On a completely different note, the occasional TV advert achieves cult status. This seems to have happened with an advert for a certain UK chocolate manufacturer. Yes, it is funny. take a peek...
I don't really like blogging as confessional stuff but I guess an explanation is in order to the kind people who have left messages during my period of absence, for which many thanks. Okay, it goes something like this...
2008 was an - um - interesting year. As is relevant, events start in February when I was red carded out of marriage. I'm hugely not going there as to why - not that there is anything scandalous or even exciting to tell - sometimes things just run their course and I was and remain fine about it. 'Nuff said.
The practical effect was that the house needed to be sold because of the seperation and because the (not exactly tiny) mortgage had come off its discounted rate and financially it was all getting too much - that's like literally too much. Now in 2007, this would have been a doddle. Name a monstrous price, form an orderly queue, no pushing at the back and no offers. The house would have gone in days. But that was then and just before - as we were fond of saying in my youth - capitalism collapsing under its own contradictions. We had an offer. The guy totally gave us the runaround. I don't know what he was playing at but end up concluding that he was never serious about buying the house in the first place. This went on for months as the wheels came off the financial wagon. In the end we accepted a second offer - lower but still okayish. This was from a couple who were as present as the original bloke had been elusive. It seemed they were round every ten minutes with builders etc. They had to complete by early September so as to get the building works completed in time to move in by Christmas. So far so good.
Then the couple announced that building works would be more expensive than originally expected and wanted to drop the price by £20,000. Over a barrel and desperate to sell we agreed. Things dragged on. The previously very - in fact irritatingly - omnipresent couple went to ground. In the end they resurfaced with a last minute reduced bid trying to slice a further £60,000 off. The by then divorcing rabbit and wife were as one on this one. They could fuck off and die. But what do do? We desperately needed to sell. The estate agent came up trumps - it must be said that contrary to the general reputation of estate agents he was a nice guy - he got punting on the phone and found a developer. The developer visited the house on the Wednesday, made an acceptable offer, and instructed solicitors on Thursday and exchanged on Friday. One week completion. The reaction of the generally annoying conveyancing solicitor was comic when told of this timetable. 'But they'll have to raise enquiries' he said weakly. 'These are developers' I explained patronisingly. 'They don't do that'. They didn't either.
In the interim, I'd put a deposit on a rather nice rented flat with two rooms - one for me and one for the (now adult) children for whenever they wanted. Some friends agreed to put me up for a couple of weeks until the flat became available in mid-October. My furniture etc would go into storage for a short period. So I was outta there on the Wednesday before the Friday (do keep up at the back) and installed with friends in Dulwich.
Then things went radically wrong. Because my credit rating by then sucked bigtime I needed a guarantor for the rent in the flat. A digression: if the government wanted to do something genuinely popular as opposed to endlessly bossing us about they would cut the credit reference agencies down to size (preferably very small indeed) and make the banks do their own dirty work. They won't. A friend agreed in principle to be guarantor but when he saw the guarantor form threw a wobbly. It was, it must be said, a very intrusive form and in particular wanted his bank details in full. Not unreasonably, he didn't want to give anyone and everyone with access to the form his bank details.
'Ever heard of identity theft?' he asked. This was fair enough.
So that was that. Flat fell through. I couldn't stay at the place I was at more than a few more days, which was fair enough too.
'Oh shit', I thought. I'm actually homeless'.
Another digression. Shortly after I moved out of ex matrimonial home and before becoming prospectively homeless, I met Charon QC (see link to left) for a very congenial evening's drinkies in Chelsea. As the trains from Sydenham Hill (nearest station to where I was staying) were - as I discovered on arriving at the station - not functioning (usual ballsaching reason: planned engineering works) had to get a cab back from Brixton, the nearest point on the underground to where I was staying. I came out of the tube and stood on the nearest traffic island on Brixton High Street. A dodgy looking bloke shuffled up to me.
'Skunk?' he enquired.
'No thank you' I replied.
There was then a pause for thought on dodgy looking bloke's part. A process I suspect he found problematc.
'Rock?' he eventually ventured.
'No thank you' I replied again.
Then he just stood and stared at me.
'Have a very good evening' I said, distinctly insincerely. He took the hint and shuffled off.
Anyway, there I was imminently homeless. I rang a friend about something completely different but at the end of the conversation, told him I was homeless.
'No you're not' he said. 'You're a mate'.
So I moved in with him for the rest of the year. It was a lifesaver. There is homelessness and homelessness and an en-suite in a gated estate in Beckenham is pretty good as homelessness goes. The guy from the first place I stayed at drove me and a pile of possessions (loads of stuff in carrier bags, partly because the Polish guys who packed for me and moved my stuff to storage packed away a big suitcase I meant to keep and partly because you accumulate all sorts of random stuff living like this) over. When we got to the gate he asked me.
'Should I tell them I've got a homeless person with a load of carrier bags here?'
'Best not to' I replied.
I got to like Beckenham and was very well looked after. My host eventually said to me:
'You can stay here as long as you like but you'll never get your life back until you've got a door you can close behind yourself'.
It was true.
I found letting agents who didn't want to have the guarantor's banking details, give him a rectal probe or anything alarming like that. They found me a flat in Balham (apologies to those not familiar with the geography of South London). I moved in on the 30th December. Or rather I almost didn't. I arrived with keys and Polish removal guys only to discover that there was a deadlock to the front door I hadn't been given a key to. Eventually a neighbour appeared, let us through to his back garden and provided a ladder one of the Polish guys climbed over, into the back garden and opened up the flat via the garden door, which I did have a key to. The flat is fine for my present purposes and is wonderfully well located for tube, shops, restaurants, bars etc.I haven't spent much time there as I've been working in the Midlands mostly and pretty much flat out workwise, which is good.
This is all very well, I hear you say, but why no blogging? Well, just after my last posting whenever I tried to go online I bluescreened out. After this happening several times I contacted Dell. They ran a test. 'It's your hard drive!' they exclaimed. Don't even try to log on or you'll create huge problems for yourself. My itinerant lifestyle meant that it took me forever - okay until last night to finally resolve the programme. I had my lappy checked out - nothing wrong with my hard drive. Updating and de-fragmenting in order but that was it. I collected lappy and tried to log on. Bluescreened out again - this was last night. Then I tried the simple expedient of restoring Internet Explorer. Problem solved...
So that's plenty enough about me. Normal service hopefully restored. I'm now officially divorced. Apparently you get a certificate - which is nice - but I haven't got it yet. I'm quite content and, as Scarlett O'Hara observed 'tomorrow is another day'.
That's all very well, I further hear you ask, but where do you stand on Marmite?
Can't stand the stuff.
Have some Dead - Franklin's Tower for no particular reason apart from why not...
This story has been running for a couple of days but still merits comment. Preppy Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had the brilliant idea (or more likely some moron in his office/party headquarters did but he clearly went along with it) that what the great British public would love above all was a cold call recorded message from him. A lucky 250,000 copped his automated message. There was apparently an opportunity after our hero's two minute peroration to provide feedback. An option starting with 'why don't you' and ending in 'off my line' Was presumably not among the options for feedback.
Helpful explanation for Mr Clegg: people hate cold calls and hate automated cold calls most of all. Hate probably understates it. Loathe may be getting warmer. Imagine the happy scene, there you are cooking dinner/putting the baby to bed/transfixed in front of Emmerdale when you are interrupted by the phone ringing. You drop whatever you were doing (preferably not literally dropping the baby) and hurry to the phone. 'Hello this is an automated message from Nick Clegg who would like to talk down to you for a couple of minutes' How many nanoseconds before the slamdown and stream of invective from irate voter in marginal constituency?
How stupid can the political class be? It has to be a sign of their disengagement from reality that they apparently imagine anyone would be remotely pleased to receive such a call or interested in the contents. And they seriously imagine this sort of stuff is going to make the great British public more likely to vote for them? Send for the men in white coats...
Still far too busy for proper blogging at the moment but a quick peep at Mike's blog (link to left as per usual) reveals that he has been to Las Vegas. Put me in mind of the Gram Pasons song of the same name...
Have the words too..
ooh, Las Vegas, ain't no place for a poor boy like me,
ooh, Las Vegas, ain't no place for a poor boy like me
Far too busy with all sorts of stuff to do any serious blogging at the moment so have a little reggae...
First clip is Toots Hibbert in his Toots and the Maytals manifestation with 54-46 Was My Number from way back. Don't ask me what the title means. Prison number? Some wag commenting on YouTube comment 'bump up the volume if you not rocking your dead'. Happily, empirical researches reveal that I am still alive ;)
Second clip is Buju Banton - the connection is that he recorded a fine version of 54-46 in duet with Tots Hibbert but annoyingly it's not on YouTube so have his Destiny instead. There ya go...
I don’t usually do memes but an invitation from Charon QC has to be complied with. Charon does a law blog (link to left) and asks for 5 favourite non-law blogs to be nominated. He tagged me among others. I think that the good news is that the nominees don’t have to do anything. This is the end of the line. It’s a bit invidious and indeed arbitrary. How do you choose 5 blogs over the rest? Will the bloggers not chosen take offence? Please don’t – all the blogs linked to WR have considerable merit in my opinion – that’s why they’re there. I haven’t nominated Mr Bastard and Never Mind the Bollix because Charon already did. I say this in an attempt to avoid a middle of the night visit to the foot of my bed by distinctly displeased Glaswegian gentlemen.
At its best, blogging creates links between people in different places with different backgrounds, interests and world views. Not only that but the personalities and narratives of people you have never met – and almost certainly never will – can come over. Provided that you don’t treat the virtual world as a substitute for the real one, some sort of faux panacea for actual discontents, then this is a good thing. Okay, on with the nominations…
1. Bug Eyed Blog
Some bloggers put up profile or other pics of themselves but most I wouldn't recognise if I bumped into them in the street. Earl would be most easily recognised by the back of his right calf (above). I confess I'd like to have a beer with Earl one day should I ever find myself in New York. He likes his beer. He also likes movies, applying his mordant wit to a range of topics and his beloved Gia. Total top bloke...
2. Daisy's Dead Air
Daisy is the ultimate ageing hippie (no offence Daisy!). She's a serious Deadhead, a herbalist, a feminist and a polemicist of gale force 9 proportions. She blogs on politics, music and religion mostly. She regularlly confuses the US religious right - which has to be a good thing - they don't get her at all. One e-mailed her plaintively...
'I can't figure out what kind of Christian you are.You claim to be Catholic and then you quote Buddhists and Hindus. You talk about the saints and then you welcome people with gender confusion and affirm their psychosis. You casually use the F-word. What kind of Christian are you, anyway?'
'The fun kind' she replied.
3 Renegade Eye
Renegade is that most rare and exotic of creatures - an American Trotskyist. He also likes movies, tango, flamenco and jazz. What I like about him is that he has created an open blog with a range of commenters, many of whom disagree with him strongly on pretty much everything. This is not the political equivalent of the narrow sect of the saved talking to itself - it's a heterodox free forum. I like that.
4. The Corridor (A Cricket Blog)
I'm an unashamed cricket anorak and here I can indulge my addiction with fellow sufferers. Oh, and the site meter currently shows 1,206,810. Eat your hearts out! Doubleoh, and at the risk of causing transatlantic offence, a quote I came across today: 'there is a limit to what Americans can understand. That lmit is cricket'.
5. Ron Knee
This is the blogger in full on rant mode. I've an immense soft spot for Ronald, even if he does occasionally make me wince. Mainly because he's so bloody funny - and despite outbursts that would make a Tourette's sufferer blush - he obviously has a good heart. Not to mention his revenge against a certain Troll - one of the great moments in blog history - some of you know what I mean ;)
It occurred to me that I haven't done a Yer Rock and Roll in ages - plenty of clips but not a yer Rock and Roll. It was inevitable that I would get round to Bob Dylan sooner or later and so here is the elderly gent. I only ever saw him live once - at Brixton Academy in the mid-1990s - the conventional wisdom is that he either turns up ready and willing to perform or he - well - just turns up and goes through the motions grumpily. Fortunately, the time I saw him he was willing and able and a fine concert it was too. I'm not going to all the stuff about Dylan's merit or lack of it as a poet etc so straight into the songs - two (very) oldies.
The first is Subterranean Homesick Blues. The clip is well-known - it must be the original promotional video. Watch at the end when our man get completely out of synch as regarding discarding the cards in time to the music...
The second is Highway 61 Revisited. I said I wouldn't launch off about Dylan as poet but the lyrics are very fine. The artwork is by an Italian guy called Giovanni Rabuffetti.
Things aren't looking too bright on the economic front, are they? The media is full of tales of gloom and doom. Inevitably, I start with house prices - the national obsession - now the picture no doubt variies from region to region but the general scenario seems to be that they are going south at a startling rate of knots. Further and faster than the headline figures suggest, I rather think. I talked recently to someone I know who is in banking in a serious way - 'down 35-40% over the next two to three years' she said. This has causes and consequences. The cause is well-known: the huge losses made by the banks with the collapse of the sub-prime market. Consequently, banks don't trust each other - let alone the punters - and the supply of mortgage finance dries up. I heard on the radio the other day that a couple with a 5% deposit wanting to make a first time purchase had onlly a year ago a choice of literally hundreds of mortgage products. Now they have two - and both are apparently bum deals. So the pool of people able to buy diminishes rapidly. So people having to sell drop the price and drop the price but still can''t sell. When they eventually do the discounted price sets a new benchmark.
Of course, even if not buying or selling, the property crash still impacts on people's perceptions. London in particular is full of people who have for years lived on the feelgood factor of having literally hundreds of thousands of pounds of equity simply by being an owner-occupier (subject to monstrous mortgage). The financial security blanket contracts or even disappears at a rate of knots. Feelgood turns into feelbad,
There are a couple more goodies in the pipeline: Firstly, in October the Government guarantees to the banks runs out if not renewed. Tax revenues must be plummeting and government finances under severe strain. Secondly, you will all have noticed the building sites with banners outside 'a development of 32 (or whatever) luxury apartmments by Spivco'. I always look at them and think 'I bet you wish you so hadn't bothered!' No doubt they do and many have been mothballed but a lot are beyond the point of no return and no doubt there will come a point when the developers cut their losses and dump the huge collection of identical two bedroomed apartments on the market. Watch this space (as it were)...
And apart from that, how is the wider economy? Well, 'apart from that' doesn't come into it. The whole thing is interlinked but the economy, while heading for recession, is also highly inflationary - petrol, fuel and food prices all rocketing. The Bank of England can't reduce interest rates because its primary duty is the control of inflation and the Banks wouldn't take much notice if it did. Sales of top of the range cars are through the floor as are sales of organic 9and therefore expensive) food. Personal savings have halved and a million people have dropped out of personal pension schemes (not that I blame them - they are a load of old rubbish). The only people who are doing well are apparently the discount supermarkets of the Lidl variety.
It's the Chinese curse - may you live in interesting times.
Someone said to me - why not nationalise the banks? Well that's so not going to happen but his argument was that we all need finance - we have a money and not a barter economy - so it's a kind of social service. Except it isn't a service and the only people who make money out of it are the clowns who award themselves stupefying sums of money by way of salary and bonuses for getting it about as wrong as can be possible.
Come the revolution, they'll be first up against the wall.
Okay, time to lighten up. Whatshername Palin has an unfortunate fringe known in the hairdressing trade as an Adolf Hitler. Like the late unlamented Fuehrer, she also has brown hair. With hat tip to Jailhouse Lawyer, imagine my shock at seeing this. Such disrespect!
I haven't raided the consistently excellent Beau Bo D'Or (link to left) in a good while but he's saved me the trouble with a rolled-up 'rough animation' of some of his best-known images, complete with seriously bizarre music. Just sit back and - erm - enjoy!
I play the lottery on and off. I know it's a waste of money but I do. I've won the odd tenner but that's it. The lottery is generally a bad thing - a device for getting poor people to voluntarily pay extra tax. I rather liked the description of it as 'the desperation tax'. But that isn't the point I wanted to make. Last night I pottered into the living room just as the lottery results came up. The result was another example of the phoenomenon I call 'bunching'. There were three consecutive numbers, 33, 34 and 35 among the six balls drawn. This seems to happen fairly regularly - not necessarily consecutive numbers but sequences of two or three closely linked numbers. Conclusion: that the devices for juggling the balls before the draw are inefficient or the juggling is too short. Discuss...
Historical anecdote: after the Bill for the abolition of slavery was passed with an overwhelming majority William Wilberforce asked sidekick Henry Thornton “Well, Henry! What shall we abolish now?” Thornton replied, “The Lottery, I think.”
They did as well.
Random Thought: After Bill Clinton's performance at the DNC yesterday the question came to mind: why does he always remind me of the saying 'Sincerity! That's the thing! If you can fake that, you've got it made'.
You would have to be a pretty serious newshound to follow this one. There has been an israeli naval blockade of Gaza - a glorified holding pen - since Hamas inconveniently won the Palestinian elections. The resultant hardship includes - but it is not limited to severe shortages of medical materials.
The California based Free Gaza movement decided to try and break the blockade with two boats - checked by international monitors to make sure there were no armaments or dangerous materials on board - and a symbolic cargo of hearing aids and balloons (for the children). There were 47 crew members in the two boats, including an 81 year old nun and our very own Lauren Booth - but only one Israeli (I'll come back to that one). The boats set out from Cyprus - about a 30 hour journey.
Cue much Israeli huffing and puffing. 'A provocation' they whined. They were in a dilemma as to what to do. The military wanted to stop the boats by force and seize, interrogate and generally give a rotten time to the crew. This of course would attract huge international publicity and be public relations poison for the Israelis. So in the end they let the boats through and they arrived in Gaza to a rapturous welcome. Smart move by the Israelis, though. The story dropped off the radar. They made clear that this was a one off. The naval blockade remained and it ought not to be assumed that future boats would be let through.
A modest proposal: keep doing it and doing it with two refinements. Firstly, take actual as opposed to symbolic cargoes of medical etc supplies. Secondly, the preponderance of western activists in the crew makes it easy for the Israelis to dismiss the project as the usual western pro-Palestinians at it again. Maybe next time crew the boats with Israelis and Palestinians.
The rabbit has been quiet of late - part of the reason is that I have been tearing about the Midlands plying my trade in assorted courts. Commuting is stupefyingly expensive on the early trains as well as exhausting (never an enthusiastic driver, I have sold my car - no regrets - and don't really do long distance hauls anyway). So, on an economy drive, I get the cheaper off peak trains and stay overnight in -erm - inexpensive hotels and B&B's (bed and breakfast accomodation for any overseas reader mystified by this acronym). I can tax deduct travel and hotel expenses but still have to find them upfront. I'm becoming some sort of expert on the cheaper end of the accommodation industry. Some thoughts...
The picture is very varied. Some cheap B&B's etc are actually fine - the odd one is very good value. The horrors are - well - horrific.
Let's call it the Fleapit Hotel, Stoke. I'd come up on the Sunday night and stayed in a very nice place a few minutes from the court at weekend rates. For weekdays the rate went up sharply so, remembering the economy drive, I rang the Fleapit Hotel for the Monday night when it became clear that my trial would go into Tuesday. They had vacancies - why am I not surprised? The Fleapit was at least secure. The front door key I was issued engaged in a battle with the lock just about every time. The interior was gloomy with the usual collection of rubbishy 'ornaments' on every available surface and fussy patterned carpets everywhere. The carpets had plainly seen better days and were apparently in the later stages of death by vacuuming. At least my room was clean and had plain white walls. Both room and bed were small but it was passable for one night. One particularly classy touch was the plastic mug supplied for in room tea/coffee. Presumably they didn't trust me not to break/steal a porcelain one.
I got talking to a guy who was also staying there. He was - I would guess - in his mid sixties.
'I've been put here by the council' He said. He'd just suffered relationship breakdown and had left his council place in Chesterfield and, coming from Stoke, had headed back there like an elderly homing pigeon.
'They're showing me a bungalow tomorrow. It's in a nice area. I'm going to take it. I've hit rock bottom. The only way is up for me after today'.
My heart really went out to him. He had no children and was a cancer survivor. I hope things worked out for him. It became clear that several of the residents had been put there by the council. Obviously this is done because the place is cheap but this seemingly guaranteed income stream provides whatever miscreant owns the place no incentive to improve it. One of the homeless persons was a friendly soul. I met him briefly in the evening and again at breakfast. He got up after eating his meal.
'One more beer and then I'll go to bed' he announced cheerily. It was about 8.30 in the morning. Another resident, a young man, looked as if he was in withdrawal.
I should say something about the surrounding area. Almost directly across the road from the Fleapit Hotel was a boarded up pub. They seem to do boarded up bigtime in Stoke with commercial and shop premises in various states of dereliction left, right and centre. I noted that 'Adult Shop' and 'Bargain Booze' seem to have survived this commercial holocaust as had a halal takeaway shop just down the road from the Fleapit. I had shish kofte and chips from there for dinner. It wasn't at all bad.
'See you later' said the duty staff bloke when I left in the morning.
'No you wont' I thought.
I moved on with much relief to Stafford and the Spittal Brook Inn - I've blogged on the Spittal Brook before and love the place and its gloriously crazy landlord to bits...
After a weekend back in London, it was Wolverhampton on Monday and a nice little earner. So up on off-peak train on Sunday night and, the economy drive still being on, a night in - let's call it - the Dog Hotel. I've looked at it online and comments by former guests are venomous. I copy and paste from the hotel website: 'All of our thirty-three bedrooms are en-suite, tastefully decorated and maintained to a high standard of cleanliness'. Erm, really??? A traveller review paints a somewhat different picture: 'Absolutely disgusting. Tiny, dirty and dangerous room. Stairway littered with broken plant pots, soil and dead plants (still there the morning we left). Reception area strewn with broken furniture and dirty bedding: an obvious health hazard and fire-hazard. 'Non-Smoking' room stank of smoke and had an ashtray near the bed. This was a week AFTER the smoking ban came into force, so clearly illegal. This hotel needs to be closed down before there is a serious accident there'.
Oh lighten up! Okay, the Dog is a dump but it is so awful it is pure comedy, unlike the Fleapit, which is just oppressive in its dreadfulness. I arrived to meet a very nice guy who seemed to be in sole overnight charge. The carpet in the foyer was waterlogged.
'We've had a flood' he explained.
'What caused it?' I asked.
'Just rain' he replied.
Righty... My room had a number of interesting features such as the wall mounted light which wasn't wall mounted any more but hung from the wall by its electrical cable. The en-suite had an interesting collection of cracked tiles. I thought at one point in the middle of the night that my bed was going to collapse. I wasn't doing anything energetic, just turning over. Usual nasty patterned flowery wallpaper and swirly threadbare carpet. Though as I say, the guy in charge was very affable and brought a late night beer to my room. Tuesday night, I stayed in a B&B in Leicester for pretty much the same price as the Dog Hotel. It was very nice indeed. Better than many hotels. I'm learning rapidly where to stay and where not to.
Parting shot - JoJo (again link to left) commented that Throwing Stones would be a more appropriate Dead song than Eyes of the World to go with my posting on Georgia. Here it is, then, complete with gnomes...
The rabbit has been very much out of the loop lately. It seems that while everybody else is on holiday, the rabbit is being run ragged workwise and has just returned from a week out of town hopping from criminal court to the next criminal court and back to the first. Hat Tip is due to Ron Knee for the above image, taken at a motorway service station. Ronald was less than impressed by the service as was apparently someone else who took the opportunity to arrange the pen holder display so as to send out a message.
To the main business: I go away for a few days and a new cold war starts! Like the enormous majority of westerners, I knew next to nothing about Georgia but was suspicious of the news spin that seemed to portray Georgia as a latter day 'gallant little Belgium' of World War I fame. Fortunately, a friend who is a university lecturer and Russia specialist came to dinner last night. This is mostly his take on recent events.
Russia: the Russians have a overwhelming sense of national humiliation as regards the post cold war settlement of the 1990s (echoes of Versailles). They have some grounds for complaint as regards broken treaty commitments etc. They also have a deeply held belief that they are being encircled, particularly by NATO. The very pro US Poland in particular drives them crazy, principally as regards the possibility of US missiles being located in Poland. There have even been mutterings about placing Russian missiles in Cuba if this is done. They are seriously pissed off and intend to put themselves about, in particular in former satellite countries. Many of these countries have sizeable Russian minorities.
Abkhazia/South Ossetia: Stalin 'gave' these regions to Georgia in one of those arbitrary imperial line drawing exercises that has caused so much trouble subsequently when mutually hostile peoples with different and incompatible cultures/languages/religions/aspirations find themselves within the same borders. The South Ossetians for example are a tribal Muslim mountain people. They have nothing in common with the Christian Georgians and hate their guts. The general consensus is that if these regions were given a fully free and fair vote on their constitutional arrangements, Abkhazia would vote for independence with some form of association with Russia and South Ossetia would vote to become a part of Russia (and thus be reunited with North Ossetia, which is in Russia). The ceasefire following the uprisings in these regions in the early 1990s (involving Russian peacekeepers) held pretty well until Thursday before last.
Georgia: The Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili is incompetent, unpopular and hardly the paragon of democratic virtue he has been portrayed as in the west. He decided to boost his popularity with a military adventure to reassert Georgian authority over the dissident provinces. This has backfired badly on him as the unsuing disaster has made him even more unpopular than before.
What happened goes something like this...
1. 7 August - Georgian troops enter South Ossetia. This is entirely gratuitous and disturbs a status quo that had kept the peace.They meet resistance from the Ossetians and trash the Ossetian capital with rocket fire. They also attack lightly armed Russian peacekeepers. The timing is clever - the eyes of the world are on Beijing.
2. The Russians are predictably enraged and Putin hot foots it back from Beijing. A successful counter invasion is mounted. My expert informant expresses the view that if the Russians had confined their activities to occupying South Ossetia, driving the Georgians out and restoring the status quo, then he wouldn't have criticised them. But they didn't...
3. The Russians set about teaching the Georgians a lesson. Russian troops penetrate deep into Georgia proper. the objective - apart from punishment - appears to be to disable the Georgian military. Atrocities follow.
4. The unreconstructed cold warriors in the west (and particularly the US) think Christmas has come early. Much huffing and puffing from the State Department. There is talk about fast tracking Georgia into NATO and even the EU. The EU is split as to how to respond between Atlanticists on the one hand and the very worried Germans and French (and Italians - a little surprisingly) on the other. Ceasefires are eventually cobbled together. At least for now...
My friend pronounces himself deeply worried. Incidentally, he is an American and an Obama supporter. He thinks these discontents may play into McCain's hands as he hangs tough and plays on his military background and experience. We shall see...
I use he phrase 'eyes of the world' above. So as a parting shot and to lighten the mood, here are the Dead with Eyes of the World...
Quiet in blogworld at the moment, I notice. It's a seasonal thing. Real life interrupted blogging for the rabbit last week and will do so next, but this story is irresistible. Mention Joyce McKinney to a British male of a certain age and a gigglefit will ensue. For the unintiated, here is the story. We go back to 1977.
Joyce McKinney was a former cheerleader and beauty queen from - why am I not surprised - North Carolina. She had also been, despite her claimed virginity - a topic the great British public heard much of - a soft porn actress and images of her as such can be found on the web (wholly unsuitable for a family blog, of course!). She conceived a passion for a 19 year old Mormon missionary called Kirk Anderson and when he set off to England to do missionary things, our heroine cashed in her life savings and set off in hot pursuit. So far so passing odd, then it gets seriously weird.
Arrived in Britain, McKinney recruited a stooge called Keith May and kidnapped Anderson at gunpoint (okay it was an imitation firearm but bear with me), drugged him with chloroform and drove him to a rented cottage in Devon. What happened then was that Anderson - another virgin apparently - was chained, spreadeagled, to a bed, with several pairs of mink-lined handcuffs (nice touch, the mink lining), and over the next few days he was repeatedly required to have sex with McKinney. She later helpfully explained that she had been anxious to bear his child. By way of further explanation, she added that the handcuffing had been necessary as Anderson had a dominant mother and thus such aids were necessary for him to attain - erm - satisfaction.
Anderson managed to escape and McKinney and May were arrested. Court proceedings ensued. the great British public found the case the most hilarious news story in years - it just pushed so many British buttons. The tabloid press were drooling. Sympathy for Anderson: zero. There was only one court appearance, an old-style committal with evidence. McKinney unburdened herself in those proceedings of the following immortal line: "I loved him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to." Quite so. At least she said nose. Her counsel summed up the national mood with the equally immortal line "methinks the Mormon do protest too much".
Unfortunately, the fun was spoiled when the dynamic duo were granted bail and took the opportunity to abscond to Canada disguised as mime artists. Don't ask, I don't know why mime artists either. End of story? Not quite.
Earlier this week someone called Bernann McKinney was in the news. She denied being Joyce McKinney but she obviously is. Her pet pit bull - erm - Booger has been successfully cloned by a team of South Korean scientists. I have no idea why this needed to be done but our heroine seems very happy with her collection of little Booger clones. Thus located, in theory, she could be extradited to stand trial for kidnapping. I don't suppose she will, though. A Scotland Yard spokeswoman commented when contacted by the press "I'm sorry. I haven't a clue what you're talking about." That was then. This is now...
A couple of updates on recent postings on this blog. The Israeli Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the rubber bullet shooting of his prisoner in Nil'in (postings 21/25 July) has been 'reassigned' and charged with 'unworthy conduct', a minor offence not carrying a custodial penalty. The sergeant who pulled the trigger has been demoted to private and faces the same charge. Apparently, penalties would be much more severe if they had been caught smoking a joint. Other events in Nil'in: a 10 year old and an 18 year old have been shot dead by the Israeli army (headshots as usual) and one person at least is in custody - the father of the girl who took the film footage that busted the shooting incident. He is under house arrest charged with something not very serious. Injustice prevails as usual.
One good news story: Majid Ahmed, the straight A student who was refused a place to study medicine at Imperial College because of an isolated and spent conviction for burglary when he was 15 (posting 3 July) has secured a place at Manchester University instead and can hopefully realise his ambition to become a doctor..
An explanation for the late despatch of the last post is in order. Last Tuesday morning, having completed the last post in draft the previous evening, I set out to court fortified by bacon butty and infusion of coffee feeing perfectly content with life. The court is less than 5 minutes from chambers Birmingham office.
