When did Margaret Thatcher first appear on the BBC? Which was the last
band to appear in session for John Peel?
I'm taking my Polish Vodka collection on its first road trip down to see my brother in Wales today, and I have found some more calls to arms at Toast a Drink in Polish.
Vodka is your enemy, so pound it in the gullet.
Wódka to twój wróg, wiec lej ja w morde.
To the drunkard: who lives half as long, but sees everything twice.
Pijany zyje dwa razy krócej, ale widzi dwa razy wiecej.
Drink up, the glass is getting spongy.
Pijmy, bo szklo nasiaka.
For my own contrubution, I put "Until The Incredible Hulk takes up Macrame - Make Mine Marvel!" into http://www.poltran.com/ and came up with:
Przed Niewiarogodny Kadłub statku bierze *Macrame* - Wyrabiają Kopalnia Podziwiać !
Calling out around the world:
A votre sante, to France!
Alla Salute to Itlay!
Cheers! to Britain!
Egé szé gé re, to Hungary!
Kanpai to Japan!
Na Zdrowie, Poland!
Ooogy Wawa, for the Zulus!
Prosit, Germany.
Salud! Spain.
Saúde! Brazil.
Skal! Sweden.
Slainte! Ireland.
Wen Lie! China.
Yasas! Greece.
Za vashe zdorovye! Russia.
Zivili! Serbia.
Zum Wohl to Austria.
Seemingly random italicised letters were included in the 71-page judgement given by Mr Justice Peter Smith, which apparently spell out a message.
Mr Justice Smith said he would confirm the code if someone broke it.
"I can't discuss the judgement, but I don't see why a judgement should not be a matter of fun," he said.
To green fields set with golden flowers
In ancient days St. Illtyd came
And there he set his college towers
Where scholars flocked drawn by his fame.
Green and gold, green and gold
Strong be our hearts and bold
To keep unsullied our great name
Adding to ancient glory modern fame
And ever honoured hold
The green and gold.
I went to see Mistress of Spices yesterday. It got at best lukewarm reviews, but since I could quite happily while away an hour and a half looking at a poster of Aishwarya Rai, that carried very little weight with me.Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
I spent a rare evening noodling round on the piano last night.It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place
Except you and me
So set 'em' up Joe, I got a little story
I think you should know.
It's quarter to three, there's no one in the placeWas that so hard? But wait, P J Clarke's has another claim to fame. It also stood in for Nat's Bar in Wilder's 'The Lost Weekend' in which Ray Milland (born Reginald Truscott-Jones in Neath January 1905 and hereby inaugurated Welsh Born Icon) declaims:
Except you and me
So set 'em' up Tom, just like back in high school
No date for the prom.
It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra.I've already had a Bloody Mary in Harry's Bar in Paris. Do I need to pencil in a nervous breakdown in PJ's before I die, I wonder?
Conn was leading and had only three more rounds to go and his corner was telling him to stick and move, stick and move, you can't lose if you stick and move. And Billy's saying, "Nah, I'm going to knock him out." And he came out in the 13th and started to mix it with Louis and down he went. And in his corner - it's a classic - the manager's saying, "Goddammit, Billy, didn't we tell you to stick and move?" And Billy, lying there on the ground, says, "What's the use of being Irish if you can't be stupid?"
Now that my five year old is in school and subject to peer pressure, it seems that all my work on inculcating Welsh chauvinism in him may come to nothing. Soccer is in the ascendancy over rugby and he has become - of all things - a precociously dyed in the wool gooner. (A gooner, for my New York readership, is a supporter of the Arsenal football club.)-739229.jpg)
I emerged from my house just before 8 am on Good Friday - on my way for a swim before hitting the road with my five year old on an Easter Holiday trip to see family in Wales - to find that some scum sucking sons of bitches had thrown paint over my car and the cars belonging to about half a dozen of my neighbours on a rampage through our street.Hate Crime Any hate incident, which constitutes a criminal offence, perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate.
Hate Incident Any incident, which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate.
Racist Incident Any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.
Homophobic Incident Any incident which is perceived to be homophobic by the victim or any other person.
Transphobic Incident Any incident which is perceived to be transphobic by the victim or any other person.
Faith Related Incident Any incident which is perceived to be based upon prejudice towards or hatred of the faith of the victim or so perceived by the victim or any other person.
Sectarian Incident Any incident which is perceived to be sectarian by the victim or any other person.
Disablist Incident Any incident which is perceived to be based upon prejudice towards or hatred of the victim because of their disability or so perceived by the victim or any other person.
Etymologically, vodka in Russian means 'little water.' And because the average Russian guzzles a world-best 5.2 gallons per year, a little water has gone a long way in damaging the collective body politic. A few years ago, the Finnish physician directing the Russian office of the World Health Organization explained: 'If you did this in Finland, half the population would be dead in a year. This is clearly not normal.'
The Russian people disagreed. 'It's our way of life. How can we stop drinking with a climate like ours?' said one. From another: 'Our people are willing to live in poverty, but if the government tries to make them stop drinking, it might lead to social unrest. Nobody can make us stop drinking.'
Not that the powers didn't try. In 1917, the Bolsheviks banned vodka and condemned drunkenness as a 'social evil irreconcilable with the proletarian ideology,' perhaps because they believed, as Friedrich Engels had stated, that drinking was the bane of the working classes. It is probably closer to the truth to say that work was the bane of the drinking classes. No vocation without intoxication, cried the workers, and in 1924, the ban was reversed - an early instance of Soviet utopianism succumbing to Russian reality.
In one of the splendidly baroque meeting rooms of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, the 263rd successor to St. Peter as Vicar of Christ hobbled slowly to his presiding chair before an assembly of bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.Think of all the subtle meaning of that joke in those circumstances and then imagine having to explain it to someone incorrigibly literal-minded.
It was 1994. John Paul II had fractured his right thigh in a bathtub fall, triggering a news-media torrent of frail-Pope-is-dying stories, but, more accurately, ending the 73-year-old Holy Father's getaways to the ski slopes.
The bishops watched him in silence. John Paul sat. He spoke. 'Eppur, si muove,' he said. 'And yet, it moves.' One wonders how many bishops got the joke.
Allegedly this was Galileo's defiant declaration to his Inquisition judges in 1633 after they sentenced him to life imprisonment for declaring the Earth orbits the sun, not the other way around as implied in Scripture.
ONE OF THE LEAST VISITED memorials in Washington is a waterfront statue commemorating the men who died on the Titanic. Seventy-four percent of the women passengers survived the April 15, 1912, calamity, while 80 percent of the men perished. Why? Because the men followed the principle 'women and children first.Perhaps we can remember them today, nintey four years after their sacrifice. The valour of Flight 93 notwithstanding, similar solidarity is difficult to imagine today and something valuable has been lost.
The monument, an 18-foot granite male figure with arms outstretched to the side, was erected by "the women of America" in 1931 to show their gratitude. The inscription reads: "To the brave men who perished in the wreck of the Titanic. .
. . They gave their lives that women and children might be saved."
Today, almost no one remembers those men.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God
Salaam
You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha-
He spoke; and Sohrab smiled on him, and took
The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased
His wound's imperious anguish; but the blood
Came welling from the open gash, and life
Flowed with the stream: all down his cold white side
The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soiled,
Like the soiled tissue of white violets
Left, freshly gathered, on their native bank,
By children whom their nurses call with haste
Indoors from the sun's eye; his head drooped low,
His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay--
White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps,
Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame,
Convulsed him back to life, he opened them,
And fixed them feebly on his father's face;
Till now all strength was ebbed, and from his limbs
Unwillingly the spirit fled away,
Regretting the warm mansion which it left,
And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world.
Last night as part of our continuing campaign to eat your way around the world in London after work, Paul and I lit on the Lebanese Cedar Restaurant.Since the beginning of time, everyone who stepped onto the Lebanese soil has paid tribute to the fertile land called : The Bekaa Valley. This stretch of land has been known as the cradle of the biggest empires. The Bekaa Valley is where the Romans chose to build one of the biggest jewels of Lebanon - The Temple of Bacchus - holding within its walls the hymn of love and the mystery and secrets of wine Winemaking is an art.
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After discovering Hanami recently I was delighted to see the vision on the left when I opened the bedroom curtains this weekend.Through my front window
Spring blooming cherry blossom.
Where is the corkscrew?
Through the cherry tree where the spring of my frontal window blooms.
As for the cork plug pulling out it is somewhere?
The words were written by Pontypridd weaver Evan James beside the river Rhondda, and set to music by his son James on a harp in 1856. Some 50 years later, it became the secret weapon that helped to defeat the all-conquering 1905 All Blacks, and in doing so became the first national anthem to be sung at an international rugby match.Listen and learn Wales' lesson to the world: limitless self assertion coupled with hugeness of heart. Hence, "our anthem is the finest in the world by a long chalk" is married with "it doesn't matter if you don't understand the words".
Many anthems express the desire to slaughter enemies. Land of My Fathers expresses a love of home and the hope that Wales and its language will live forever. Bryn concludes that Land of My Fathers is the greatest national anthem in the world...ever."
"Fifteen people were involved in Robert's murder, the attempted murder of Brendan Devine, and the clean-up operation. Only two people have been charged. There's still a lot of work for us to do."
Well, we bowled up for Vodka University in Harvey Nicks on Monday and it was absolutely great.Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?
The arrival of spring raises an important question. Is it better to admire the cherry blossoms drunk or sober? In Japan, the consensus is 'drunk'. When the sakura bloom, Japanese people sit in parks getting raucously sloshed and contemplating the transience of life, as symbolised by those briefly spectacular flowers. Everyone agrees that alcohol heightens the experience.This week's Economist introduced me to a Japanese festival - Hanami - of which I was previously unaware.
Come out to view
the truth of flowers blooming
in poverty
Police Chief Rounds Up A Posse Of Seat Belt SheriffsMy distaste - in its intricate image - strides on two levels.
Thousands of youngsters are being recruited by Cleveland's Road Policing Chief - to ride "shotgun" in the family car.
Insp Eric Robinson wants posses of Seat Belt Sheriffs to ensure that the clunk click rule is followed for every trip.
Around 8,000 letters are being sent out to nine and ten-year-olds asking for their help in ensuring family and friends always wear seat belts - and the drivers don't use hand-held mobile phones when driving.
.....
Insp Robinson said: "We want to save lives, not deal in the aftermath. We all know that not wearing a seat belt is an offence, but more importantly is that children and their families are safe - and who better to make sure everyone belts up that the children themselves."
In his letter Insp Robinson asks youngsters to ensure their mums and dads, brothers and sisters wear seat belts for every journey - even if just to the shops or on the school run.
"Crashes can happen at any time so I need some Seat Belt Sheriffs to keep an eye out for me," he wrote. "We all know it's against the law not to wear a seat belt, but it's more important that you and your family stop yourselves from getting hurt."
Insp Robinson plans to recruit his first posse at Rossmere Primary School in Catcote Road, Hartlepool on Monday April 3rd 2006 at 11.00am.
"I can't raise people's children for them...but what I can do is provide the right system of sanctions and support for families where they need them."The supercilious arrogance of that remark and its implicit contempt for ordinary - though I prefer the adjective 'normal' - people is so hair raising that I thought at first that it must have been a slip taken out of context. Not so. It is trumpeted on Downing Street's own website - http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page8890.asp.
When a male child was born in Sparta soldiers came to the house and examined it carefully to determine its strength. The baby was bathed in wine rather than water, to see its reaction. If a baby was weak, the Spartans exposed it on the hillside or took it away to become a slave (helot). When the child reached the age of seven, he was taken from his family. Boys were organized into age groups or Agelai (meaning flocks ) and lived communally in dormitories. Once assigned the Agelai, the child became subject to the Agoge. The Agoge was what allowed a Spartan child to become a citizen. The training that went on throughout the Agoge was brutal. Always under the control of someone older than themselves, the specific Agelai were subjected to numerous competitive events and staged battles. After the Agoge, the Agelai, were reintegrated into society slowly, by undertaking the krypteia. The krypteia was undertaken by select individuals rather than by the entire agelai, during it, armed with a small knife, but without shelter, clothing, or food, the youths hid during the day, and in the evening as a sort of 'secret police' patrolled the helot land plots in search of potential revolts, and roamed the mountainside.
