Gloomy 'Yerdy-Burdle-Durdles': I watched the first episode of the Swedish police story on BBC4 last night and went to bed even more depressed than usual. What is it, or, why is it, I wondered, that these Scandinavian 'Yerdy-Burdle-Durdles' always look so depressed and miserable? I mean, the story line was all about shooting high finance crooks so you would think there could be a touch of humour to be derived from it, but no, all the detectives in this special investigation squad continued to look as though someone had nicked the best bits from their smörgåsbord! Actually, I think I may have the answer to this Scandinavian mystery. Last week even I, your favourite 'Sunny Jim', began to feel distinctly gloomy and it was some time before I realised that it was probably this bloody-bloody arctic weather we have suffered not for days, not for weeks but for months! I am fed up with having to take about ten minutes to get dressed like an eskimo just to trudge through an icy wind to buy a paper. Of course, the estimated size of my forthcoming heating bill might have added to my misery. Oh, and the Scandi thriller failed to thrill. I'll give it one more chance next Saturday but if it doesn't cheer up then it's adjö!
Nippon No 1 . . . but No 1 what, exactly? Alas, dear reader, with the sort of efficiency which you have grown to expect from D&N I have mis-filed a report I saw during the week that provided a strategic over-view of the Pacific region. Recently I have become somewhat over-fixated on China and that has led me to ignore Japan. Big mistake because 'the times they are a-changin'' in Tokyo. A new government has introduced money printing as an economic tool which has led, naturally, to a devaluation of the Japanese yen which indicates a belligerent attitude towards what is beginning to look like a world-wide currency war. According to (my memory of!) this report there are also signs of an increase in Japanese military belligerency which is unremarkable given China's swaggering posture in regards to the South China Sea and the lunatic antics of 'Fat Boy' Kim in North Korea. Apparently many small nations on the Pacific rim actually want Japan to give up its non-aggression policy which has been in place since the end of WWII because they are looking for a counter-weight to Chinese hegemony. Watch this space . . .
Sir Edward Elgar . . . 'pompous and circumstantial' Edwardian toff and musician?
Nah! A deeply ambivalent man with a host of insecurities which, naturally, surfaced during his life and in his music which you may, just, detect if you listen to it carefully enough. Unfortunately, to fully detect the contradictions and the struggles within the man you need to be able to understand the language - music! I have mentioned before my deep regret at not having learned the two most important languages after English - music and mathematics! This personal deficiency of mine was embarrassingly emphasised by an excellent programme on BBC4 last week investigating Elgar's life in which various emminent musicians were filmed listening to his musical 'language' and obviously hearing things I could not detect. However, as a Catholic son of lower-middle-class parents born at the heights of the British Empire and in a society in which class was everything he had much to struggle with. In addition, he was a vain man - see the myriad of carefully composed photographs - and an intensely romantic one as well. Oddly, although his 'pomp and circumstance' music is taken as a musical portrait of the Victorian Empire and all it stood for there is throughout a vein of deep melancholy. A man worth studying but, dammit, I wish I could speak the lingo!
The lights are going out all over . . . er, my house, actually! And if I find the man responsible for fiitting all those smart, trendy lights that fit flush to the ceilings and which contain titchy little bulbs with two tiny metal prongs which have to be slotted into two equally minute channels which you cannot see, I will personally stick his fingers in a mincing-machine! In order to get at the dead bulb it is necessary to first remove the chromium 'thingie' which holds the fitting flush to the ceiling. In removing it, of course, you bring down half the ceiling - well, I do at any rate. Removing the old and inserting the new-fangled micro-bulbs is a test of intense concentration which must be sustained whilst standing on a wobbly step-ladder as the blood slowly but implacably falls down your arms leaving your hands and fingers looking like they will a day after you are dead! I am trying to convince the 'Memsahib' of the advantages of torches but so far . . . well, you can imagine!
I can't bring myself to write it: A few days ago I started to write a post entitled "I'm beginning to give up on America". I couldn't finish it, indeed, I had difficulty knowing where to start. And that was quite apart from the genuine pain and anguish in even attempting to marshall my thoughts. I simply cannot envisage a world in which the USA, with all its vices and virtues, was not around as final arbiter. I suppose British Edwardians living in the '20s and '30s felt much the same as they sensed the rapidly approaching demise of the Empire. I will not live long enough to see the full effects of the decline and fall of America - thank God. However, I will try and grapple with the subject later in a proper post.
Mark Steyn hones in like a guided missile: Happily, for you, I cannot improve on Mark Steyn's laser-guided wit which is impeccable even if the target was as soft and large as Maureen Dowd:
He who controls the language shapes the debate: In the same week the Associated Press announced that it would no longer describe illegal immigrants as “illegal immigrants,” the star columnist of the New York Times fretted that the Supreme Court seemed to have misplaced the style book on another fashionable minority. “I am worried,” wrote Maureen Dowd, “about how the justices can properly debate same-sex marriage when some don’t even seem to realize that most Americans use the word ‘gay’ now instead of ‘homosexual.’” She quoted her friend Max Mutchnick, creator of Will & Grace:
“Scalia uses the word ‘homosexual’ the way George Wallace used the word ‘Negro.’ There’s a tone to it. It’s humiliating and hurtful. I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive, merely vigilant.”
For younger readers, George Wallace was a powerful segregationist Democrat. Whoa, don’t be overly sensitive. There’s no “tone” to my use of the word “Democrat”; I don’t mean to be humiliating and hurtful: It’s just what, in pre-sensitive times, we used to call a “fact.”
OUCH! A direct hit!
You choose: Who would you rather be in a position of influence, an honest but dim teenager with a mouth, or to be precise, a tweeting finger, bigger than her miniscule brain; or Mr. Keith 'Vazeline' Vaz MP, a man who took payments as an MP but failed to declare them, a man who concealed payments from the Hinduja brothers via his wife's company, a man who made false accusations against a police officer and was suspended from the Commons, a man whose office expenses ranked 45th out of 647 MPs and whose second-home expenses ranked 83 out 647. Needless to say, he lives in Stanmore, a mere 45-minute journey into Westminster.
Read The Mail for the details of this young lovely who, in so many ways, stands for the contemporary 'youf' of this septic Isle and as an example of our wonderful nationalised edukashun serviss. The fact that she was placed in a position to be made a fool of is, of course, the result of the sort of soppy-daft, pc-non-think so beloved of our 'glorious leaders'.
This creepy-crawly politician is only stuck to the sole of my shoe because the mostly Asian voters of Leicester East are so dim they actually believe he is going to protect their interests rather than his own. What's "sucker" in Punjabi?
My rumbles for the day are now at an end - you will be glad to know!
