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Red Writing
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Today in 1938, on his return from Munich, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, told a crowd at Heston Airport, London: "I believe it is peace in our time," and waved the agreement he had signed with Hitler. So, Edwina and John, John and Edwina. Or, as the old school chant goes "John and Edwina up a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g...." Nearly 20 years ago. Do we care? Well, if it hadn't been for the strong "back to basics" on morality stand by the then Prime Minister, we probably would not. It just goes to show, once again that the world of politics is full of hypocrites, liars and betrayers. But should Edwina have made her revenge so public? Well, it probably wouldn't be so sweet to her if she hadn't but I can't help thinking she will still come off the worse for it. Perhaps she found Revenge Lady and got ideas from there. Come to think of it there is a stiking similarity to the picture and judging from the celebrity revenge of the week perhaps that's why there are so many bald politicians. Congratulations to Malcom Fraser Architects for winning the new Architectural Award (name escapes me just now but will add it later!) for their wonderful Dance Base design. Also congratulations to Scary Duck for winning the Guardian's best British blog 2002. Oh well, there's always next year. Must work on that colour psychology thing. And for all those who entered but who didn't win and are feeling a little unforgiving at the moment, here are some interesting nice thoughts for Friday We all want to be able to reassure our children, but what can you say when your child asks if we are going to war? I wish dearly that I could give them the reassurance I would like to and say "Of course not. We live in a civilised society. We have learned lessons from previous wars". Sadly, this morning I don't feel I can give that reassurance. One of the biggest questions to be discussed today, when the cabinet have read Tony Blair's 51 page dossier against Iraq, will be; should we go to war? The dossier reportedly states that it is already too late for UN weapons inspectors to stop Saddam Hussain's nuclear ambitions. My question is, should we make these decisions based on conjecture and possible dis-information? I would just like to be able to go home to my children and say with conviction, "no we are not going to war." Mine is a simplistic view and based largely on what I have read or heard about Iraq but how can we be so sure that everything we read or hear is the truth. How else are we to know? On another point about disinformation, am I the only person who thinks the reports of an earthquake in Dudley near Birmingham were part of a conspiracy? How do we know these news reports were not fabricated. How do we know that nuclear testing is not happening in this country? I just hope that the after today the UN will be able to reassure us all in a soothing parental way that everything will be fine....... This is a truly scary report and as Jamie Wilson from the Guardian says "is not only those with a guilty conscience who should be fearful: the level of detail and amount of information that can be gathered with such apparent ease means that, in the wrong hands, it could be used to play havoc with your life." I liked the daily motivator yesterday: The best way to handle criticism from others is not to respond with criticism of your own. The best response to criticism is to seek true understanding. Sometimes others may have a valid reason to criticize you, and sometimes they may not. Simply returning a criticism of your own will not help in either case. Sincere criticism is almost always an indicator of some kind of misunderstanding. Either the other person does not adequately understand what you are doing, or you don't adequately understand their perspective, or both. So the most appropriate response to criticism, the most positive and productive response, is to seek understanding. Seek to better understand, and seek to sincerely make yourself better understood. Sometimes those who criticize you simply want to pick a fight, but a fight is rarely going to do anyone any good. Certainly there are exceptions, yet in most cases understanding will bring you much more valuable results than fighting. Like most other challenges, criticism from others can represent a positive opportunity. Take that opportunity to create more understanding, and you'll be responding to criticism like a winner. You are who you live with? Today in 1967, the liner QE2 was launched from John Brown's yard at Clydebank. Help Breast Cancer Traditional Art fights back against the contemporary bias of the Turner Prize. I for one am all in favour of this. I never could get to grips with Tracy's unmade bed. Today in 1928, Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse, was shown in New York, to become the first cartoon talking picture. It's the start of London Fashion Week and the race is on to see which of the catwalk designs will be "streetified"........oh that I were so brave! Diaphanous and floaty with rose petals - the 60's all over again? There I was, trying to make sense of productivity ratios, staring into space - well actually I was looking longingly at the wine rack when, Eureka!! There it was. Hiding in the bookcase between videos and old LP's.... Zadie's, White Teeth Great I thought, I'll be able to start it now and get a chapter or two read before it goes on TV. Except I said I would start nothing new until I had finished off a few other things and this morning, in between studying, I was waiting on a delivery of a wardrobe for SED's bedroom from IKEA. It arrived shortly after I started page 4. An hour and a half later, wardrobe assembled (I'm quite good at these things - even if I do say so myself and an hour and a half was quite reasonable given the very limited space I was confined to whilst making it) I realised I still have a million things to do today. So it looks as if Zadie will have to wait a bit longer. Perhaps if I was more organised in the first place and tidied out the bookcase, I would have found it sooner....No, that's definitely a rainy day job and goes hand in hand with sorting out the cd pile which is doing a good impersonation of a certain tower in Pizza, before it was straightened. Call me synical but.... "The country's oldest seat of learning - which boasts Prince William among its students - came out best in the Sunday Times University Guide." It's not that I have anything against St Andrews University but I have a fair insight as to how many of these statistics are compiled. As Disraeli said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics". Sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to. I still don't have White Teeth (I have spent several minutes thinking about the obvious but quite funny side of this statement and how I could write quite a lot on the fact that I don't have Zadie's teeth, my Mother-in-law doesn't have Zadie's teeth (see currently reading) etc etc but things got a bit complicated and I think if I wrote what I was thinking I might get myself into one of these conversations there really is no way out unless you go down the road of cosmetic surgery, which I won't so I'll just stop now). But I really wanted to read the book before the dramatised version hits TV screens all over the country on Tuesday. It's all my own fault. I turned down the offer of reading it when we (well "he" really) first bought it. S.O. said it was good and would I like it before he took it north. I declined. Now I wish I had read it because I only have two days to do so and its whereabouts is a bit of a mystery. The hunt is compounded by problems with phone lines and weather making communications regarding the wanderings of the book limited. (If that last sentence makes you think of a set of joke shop chompers running round the countryside then you have as sick a mind as I do). Normally when S.O. recommends a book to me that's it, it's the kiss of death to whatever he recommends. I just won't read it. I've never really worked that one out apart from the fact that I am too bloody-minded for my own good and like to chose my own reading matter. When I do, I like the luxury of being able to go out and buy it for myself (or at least send amazon my credit card number and get it delivered to the door). Perhaps it's got something to do with being told what you have to read at school. God how sad is that! My whole adult reading life affected by teachers recommending dreadful books, overthumbed, dogeared and tired with missing pages. Anyway while I go away and ponder the psychological damage the above has caused, offers to lend me the book before Tuesday will be most welcome. (PS I've just been reminded I bought it for him, so I guess that's ok because I chose it in the first place!!!) Update on the finance report......12:56 and it's finished. Yippee! And.....the sun has just come out so I'm off out to play now and enjoy what was meant to be a holiday weekend. Except, that now I think I'll start on another work-book which is also a bit overdue. Oh well, at least there is a little light at the end of the tunnel. I am going to promise myself I will undertake nothing new until I have finished off something else. Falling Scottish Population!......No excuses, you know what to do ;-) Talking of birds and bees. Why do little birds always sit on the top of trees directly in front of the sun so that I have not a hope of trying to identify them? I am meant to be sitting writing a finance report which is currently approximately 11 months overdue. However my brain doing the usual mental leap frogging from one thing to another and not really concentrating on any one particular thing led me to remember a brief but very funny story a colleague told me last week. This is not one of these apocryphal stories this one is actually true. Background: Elderly mother staying with son for a few days. Story begins early one morning whilst son is in the kitchen, mother comes running in to kitchen in her nighty, shrieking, "I've just blown my nose on a mouse!" Son: Bewildered and slightly bemused, "A mouse? Don't be silly, it couldn't have been a mouse mother? Mother: Adamant and slightly shocked "No it was a mouse. It was definitely a mouse. I woke up, put my hand under my pillow to take out my hankie, blew my nose, put the hankie back then realised it wasn't my hankie. Come and see". She disappears back into the bedroom Son: By this time, convinced senile dementia had firmly taken hold of his mother decided this required further investigation and followed her. He walked over to the bed, lifted up the pillow and.............. sure enough there was a poor little mouse, lying twitching and half squished under the pillow! I won't elaborate on what happened next but suffice to say the little mouse will not be masquerading as a handkerchief again. It may not be the funniest story in the world but my workplace is not the most exciting and at the time I heard the story I was almost rolling around with tears running down my face at the mental image this story conjured up. I really don't like anything rodent like so the story was even more abhorant and shocking in a funny sort of way. I just cannot imagine the horror you would feel if that happened to you in an early morning, semi-conscious way. It reminded me of the Victor Meldrew/hedgehog slipper episode - now THAT WAS funny. PS: Yes I did check under my pillow that night! I feel terrible! I forgot the minutes silence yesterday. How could I have forgotten? What sort of person does that make me? Over 3,000 people and at 1.46 pm I forgot to keep my stupid mouth shut. I did have my own blog silence tribute so I was thinking and I was remembering throughout the day. But at 1.46pm I was working. I liked the 3,000 rose petals in St Pauls. I like roses. It was nice. A year ago tomorrow is a date everyone will remember. It is not something I have mentioned on this web log before, not because I was not affected by it, more because of the devastating effect it had on the world. I was off sick at the time and watched the whole horror unfold as it happened. Like so many, I could not believe it was happening. It is a day which changed the lives of many people. It is a day which changed the way the world thought about many things. It is also a day which caused a revolution in blogging terms too. For this reason it may seem strange that tomorrow I intend to have a blog silence in rememberance of all those who died and all those whose lives were affected then and now..... I simply would not know what to say. I am a fair-weather 'scooterer' and it was indeed very fair when I set off early this morning. However, there is something quite exhilirating about taking in your first journey through torrential rain, thunder and lightning. The rain hurts, it stabs your legs like a million tiny needles trying to pierce your skin, nae, the very bones of your legs and the cold drips of water go down the back of your neck when you are waiting at traffic lights. But it was fun nonetheless! I also saw what I think was a sparrow-hawk sitting on my window ledge at work. It shrieked a few times but was off before I could get a proper look at it. The first time I saw it was on Thursday, flying over the trees at the top of a nearby hill....I think it's following me. So baby Romeo says to his famous Dad: 'Dad, I know you wear Number Seven on your shirt when you play football, what number do you think I should wear...?' Becks replies: 'Wear four out there Romeo...'  What revolution are You? Made by  altern_activeI did a quiz to see which revolution I was! I've added a Paintings in Progress link to My Links, so you can all see I really am working! It is a sad indictment of the pressure parents feel to offer their children security, when a private nursery in Dundee is waiting for the all clear to be able to allow web cameras in the nursery, to keep an eye on their children and those who care for them. Are we all innately aggressive? According to Steven Pinker violence has an evolutionary logic and we should not be frightened of understanding the biologically-informed conception of what it means to be human. In his new book The Blank State, Pinker discusses fascinating alternatives to the social-constructionist mindset which has over the years led to some of the greatest atrocities in history. He says that "the first step in understanding violence is to set aside our abhorence of it long enough to examine why it sometimes pays off in personal or evolutionary terms." This he claims, requires us to ask "not why violence occurs, but why it is avoided". He claims that with violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is not only the cause but also the solution. Will the world powers please take note. Today in 1964, the Forth Road Bridge was opened by the Queen. The bridge links the wonderful Kingdom of Fife to the Lothians and took six years to build. It is 1828m long and contains over 30,000 miles of wire in its cables. Its more famous sister bridge, the Forth Bridge was constructed in 1890 by Sir William Arnold.
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