We had a phone call at 7.30 this morning. The central heating engineer (who lives in our town) was going to call on us first because all his booked calls were many miles away and the roads were treacherous. There was a couple of inches of snow on the ground so Sue decided to walk to work rather than drive and I decided not to go in at all. I had hoped to sort the archive room out but that will have to wait until after Christmas now.
The engineer called around and took the boiler apart. His face was red when he found a bolt that he hadn't tightened last time he was here. There are other faults and he's ordered more parts, but it safe to use (as long as you empty the drip tray regularly)
While the engineer was working away I decided to listen in on Terry Wogan's last morning show. It was brilliant as ever and his producer Barrowlands chose all the tearjerkers that he could find. We had Nat King Cole singing "Stardust" followed soon after by Eva Cassidy singing "Over the rainbow". And another Janet & John story that was so full of single entendres I almost blushed. Wonderful stuff.
My back has cleared up and I only get the odd niggle. My immediate plan is to keep warm over the weekend and then it's back to the clinic for round three of the chemo on Tuesday.
I'm still shouting at the TV. There's plenty to get wound up about. I shout a lot when I look at the antics of the new Global Warming high priests. Their hypocrisy astounds me. They tell me that my car is responsible for the increase in CO2 and as a result we're all going to drown as sea levels rise. And they all arrive on private jets. So many that there isn't enough tarmac to store them all. They have to fly them out of the country and park them in Norway. Then they get into gas guzzling limos and drive around town- so many limos that they had to bring in over 2000 of them from all over Northern Europe. And they don't see the hypocrisy!
There are very few leaders who lived by the rules they sought to apply to the rest of us. I can count them on the fingers of one hand. (and have a finger or two left over).
I'm reminded of a man who was born in poverty and died a criminal, yet his followers changed the world.
No not Che Guevara, but Jesus of Nazareth. Just like the new Green Religion, whose high priests have learjets and live in airconditioned luxury (yes I mean you Mr Gore), the high priests of Christianity also live in palaces and attend summits and conferences and issue wordy statements and declarations. You can't change the world by issuing orders from above, and implementing them with a big stick. Plenty of despots and dictators tried that, and their statues are ground into the dirt.
That's enough. There's a TV that needs shouting at.
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Dave Clemo's account of living with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Don't forget to add your comments when you drop in.
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My recommended reading
- "The Stars my Destination" by Alfred Bester was published in 1956, so it stands as the last of the pre space-age sci-fi novels. The hero is Gully Foyle and he is a man on a mission. He is out to exact retribution to the occupants of a space liner who ignored his distress signals and left him to die in deep space. It's a brilliant epic story, and is Bester's best novel by far. Neil Gaiman writes in the forward that it stakes a claim to be the first cyberpunk novel, albeit thirty years before the genre was established. I've read it at least four times in the last forty years, and I can highly recommend it. 10/10.
- "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner. First published in 1968. This is a stunning book, written in the 1960s but set at the turn of the 21st century. The title refers to the fact that if every person alive was given a space 2ft by 1ft, they would all fit on the island of Zanzibar. By the time the novel ends, they have overflowed the island and are standing in the water. It deals with the pressures of conflicting world ideologies, overpopulation, how advertising and propaganda can shape our worldview, and features a character called Chad C Mulligan, a socioligist who was so appalled at mankind that he just dropped out. But not before publishing a book called "The Hipcrime Vocab" which was duly banned by the authorities. Brunner predicts legalised recreational drug use, intelligent computers, politics by assassination, and a state of war between conflicting ideologies. And spontaneous riotings and "muckers"- people who just go beserk and run amuck, killing as many people as possible. Spooky. 10/10
- "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. First published 1957. Over 10 years in writing, this is a stunning read. Set in the near future (from a 50s viewpoint), it sets out what inevitably happens when socialism is allowed full rein. Eerily prescient. 10/10.
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