I went to Pizza Hut with the Bomber yesterday. Pretty much all the other dining spots in Abbey Mills are closed on Mondays. It was rather a sentimental occasion for me. In his early days in Singlegate Primary I used to take him once a week to ARTTES 4 KIDS which was a gallery and children's art school under my office. We would go to Pizza Hut after he was finished and while his painting was drying.
He is twenty tomorrow.
All I would like to be able to do BBC News et al is to be able to see my mother and father every now and then in the twilight of their years. Should that be too much to ask?
I was out at Southwark cathedral (or more accurately its library) last night to see Diana Darke talking about her book Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe. It was a lot better than I feared from the click-bait title. Apparently a possible Semitic root of Saracen is is srq "to steal, rob, plunder", more specifically from the noun sāriq (Arabic: سارق), pl. sariqīn (سارقين), which means "thief, marauder, plunderer." This makes "Stealing from Saracens" an hilarious phrase apparently.
It was quite tremendously tricky getting a drink in Borough Market before the event due to crowds and covid restrictions but the Whiskey and Ginger saved the day. There's a small room upstairs that appears to be little known.
Didn't see this great photo by @jamieacarter when it was taken/posted back in July when Comet NEOWISE was visible. Posting it now as you might like to see it too. Jamie's a science and astronomy journalist for Forbes and the BBC Sky At Night, based in Roath. Used with permission. pic.twitter.com/k8SKCoQl57
— I Loves The 'Diff (@ILovesTheDiff) September 21, 2020
It didn't previously occur to me to think that it might be beautiful.
Pamela Hutchinson, famed R&B singer with family group "The Emotions," has died at the age of 61, according to a post on the band's official Facebook page yesterday. The Emotions (Pamela plus sisters Wanda and Sheila) were best known for the song "Best of My Love," which reached number one on the Billboard Chart in 1977.
Don't get me wrong, there is room in my hear for "Best of My Love" but it is always "Boogie Wonderland," the Emotions collaboration with "Earth, Wind & Fire" that will make that same heart beat a little faster.
Worth a read given Icons passmin.Bassist Guy Pratt on Touring With Pink Floyd and the Time He Nearly Joined the Smiths https://t.co/7AChZ6ssDf
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) September 17, 2020
I got my DNA test result on my birthday back in 2018 (Icons passim).
I got an email yesterday:
As you may know, we’re constantly evolving the technology and methods behind AncestryDNA®. Using a combination of scientific expertise, the world’s largest online consumer DNA database, and millions of family trees linked with DNA results, we’re releasing our most precise DNA update yet.
You can see the update at https://www.ancestry.co.uk/dna/origins/share/2291dec9-b75e-427d-bf76-0da2e1479c99
I am now 98% Irish, 2% Scottish and 0% the rest of the world. Two years ago I was 79% Ireland/Scotland/Wales with assorted other ingredients including 2% European Jewish. I fully expect to be more than 100% Irish the next time they run the rule over my chromosomes.
The world may be going to hell in a hand basket but least Melvyn Bragg and In Our Time are back on Radio 4 on Thursday mornings.
They kicked a new series off with Pericles this morning. I haven't listened yet but I am sure that will be rectified soon.
One of the guests, Edith Hall, featured on the 'blog on this day last year.
Wharrarthachancesotharrappenin'?
No more visits to mum for the foreseeable due to COVID-19.
Dad needs a wedge, and a hoist, and a hospital bed.
Nesta Guinness-Walker (born 14 September 1999) is an English professional footballer who plays for AFC Wimbledon, as a left back. He scored against Northampton over the weekend.
Andy Tea Merchant told me on Sunday at the Wimbledon Brewery that Guinness-Walker is Alec Guinness' great grandson. This fills me with delight.
We whiled away much of the afternoon re-purposing Obi Wan Kenobi dialogue for the beautiful game.
To a defender "If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
To the referee "Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them."
That's no moon. It's a cross into the six-yard box!
You get the picture.
I will watch this tonight at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08p5ly5/radio-2-live-at-home-performances-9-tom-jonesMy band & I had a great time being able to perform together again (socially distanced, of course!)
— Tom Jones (@RealSirTomJones) September 12, 2020
You can now watch and listen to our @BBCRadio2 Live at Home performance on @BBCiPlayer / @BBCSounds. I hope you enjoy. https://t.co/dQvWr65zqP pic.twitter.com/YvKy0ONhxI
One day during her years at Radcliffe in the 1890s, Gertrude Stein sat down to write a philosophy exam. She just wasn’t in the mood, though, so instead of answering its questions she penned a short note to her professor, William James: “Dear Professor James, I am so sorry, but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today”. In due course Stein received a response from James: “Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself”. He gave her an excellent grade.
Jonnie is running some sort of competition to predict how the Premiership will end up this year. I don't know how it will be judged but here is my best guess.
1 Liverpool
2 Manchester City
3 Chelsea
4 Manchester United
5 Tottenham Hotspur
6 Arsenal
7 Everton
8 Wolverhampton Wanderers
9 Leicester City
10 Southampton
11 Leeds
12 Newcastle United
13 West Ham United
14 Sheffield United
15 Aston Villa
16 Burnley
17 Brighton and Hove Albion
18 Crystal Palace
19 West Bromwich Albion
20 Fulham
Yesterday, a Secretary of State told the House of Commons that a new internal market bill, due to be introduced today, will "reinterpret" the special Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland and break international law. This is beyond a disgrace. The head of the UK government’s legal department had already resigned so I imagine he agrees.
I have always a had a sneaking regard for John Major. I think he did most of the legwork that led to peace in Northern Ireland. Since Tony Blair got in though the phrase "this is the worst Prime Minister in living memory" has always been true. Boris Johnson is worse than Theresa May who was worse than David Cameron etc. etc. back nearly a quarter of a century.
Blair's cack-handed constitutional reforms are at the root of many of the problems we have in Parliament today. I am thinking particularly of the downgrading of the office of Lord Chancellor; separating judicial powers from the legislative and executive branches. Yesterday would have been inconceivable before that.
I have been writing a lot about the momentous, contradictory events of 1968 lately. It has also struck me that 1968 was the year that Peter Gill really broke out as a director when he presented three hitherto under-rated plays by D. H. Lawrence, as a group in the Royal Court Theatre.
http://www.petergill7.co.uk/works/lawrence_season.shtml
In October they took one of the plays "The Daughter-in-Law" to Milan, Bucharest and Belgrade on a British Council tour.
That must have been interesting in the year of the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
As a rule I take Peter our for his weekly grocery shop on Sunday mornings, and after that we go to the plumb cafe where he has breakfast and I have a flat white.
Last week, I got a parking ticket while were there. I hadn't realized that the parking restrictions around it applied seven days a week.
Yesterday I phoned https://myringgo.co.uk/ as the signs indicated to buy parking ticket and was rather unnerved to find that the automatic system knew my car's registration number and debit card number already. On reflection I imagine this may be because the same company runs the residents' parking for my local council, but I was still disturbed that all of this data was linked to my mobile number.
Coronavirus: Coyote Ugly in Cardiff 'could close' over social distancing
Coyote Ugly is disappearing in my niece's rear view mirror now that she is moving to London to go to drama school, but I have to say that everything I have heard about it suggests that it is very professionally run and they are top notch employers. I hope the bar survives.
I am back in Cardiff visiting Mum and Dad. A spam telephone call claiming to be from Amazon and asking me to cancel a "suspicious" order for an iPhone 11 just came through. I gave them very short shrift though I could imagine someone more vulnerable being taken in. It leaves a bad taste.
If you receive a suspicious phone call, e-mail or text message claiming to be from Amazon, asking for payment, personal information, or offering a refund you do not expect, please do not share any personal information, and disconnect any phone call immediately. Amazon will never ask you for remote access to your device e.g. by asking you to install an app. You can report suspicious spam in the UK to Action Fraud at https://www.actionfraud.police.uk,
P.S. Auctionfraud.police.uk is all but unusable I gave up on it. 07463617441 is the number the dodgy call came from.
After he was shot, in 1968, Andy Warhol needed a girdle to keep his innards in place. But he liked being topless. "Paint me with my scars"
The Selling of the President is the enduring story of the 1968 campaign that wrote the script for modern Presidential politicking--and how that script came to be. It introduces:
- Harry Treleaven, the first adman to suggest that issues bore voters, that image is what counts
- Roger Ailes, a PR man who coordinated the TV presentations that delivered the product
- Frank Shakespeare, the man behind the whole campaign, who, after eighteen years at CBS, cast the image that sold America a President
- And the candidate, Richard Nixon himself--a politician running on television for the highest office in the land
George Wallace ran for president in the 1968 election as the American Independent Party candidate. He carried five Southern states, won almost ten million popular votes and 46 electoral votes.
For most of his career, he was a Democratic Party politician who served as the 45th Governor of Alabama for four terms. Indeed, he sought the United States presidency as a Democrat three times, and only once as an American Independent Party candidate, unsuccessfully each time. Wallace opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. called Wallace "perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today".
He won election to a fourth and final term as Alabama's governor in 1982!
2020 is mad but 1968 was crazier.
Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Leave your preconceptions about race and US political parties at the door - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy is worth a read.
