Posts for September 2003 (13 entries)

Distressed gentlefolk of Dorset

28th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (2)

I read in this week’s Blackmore Vale (our local magazine) that for over 100 years an organisation known as the Elizabeth Finn Trust has helped families who’ve fallen on hard times. Well done them…

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Hornets

28th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

I’d just returned from a very good morning’s tennis (three hours) when Dad spotted some hornets in our apple tree.

I’ve never got too close to hornets before (I thought they were too aggressive), but these seemed to be quite relaxed. Once I got within about a foot I could clearly hear the sound of their jaws scraping away at the apple…

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Slim Dusty

27th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

From Slim Dusty’s 1957 hit, The Pub With No Beer:

It’s lonesome away, from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night, where the wild dingos call
But there’s nothing so lonesome, so morbid or drear,
Than to stand in the bar, of a pub with no beer.


Rex and the conker

27th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (2)

My parents have just come back from a dear-friend’s funeral, a chap called Rex Haythornethwaite.

Rex’s Claim to Fame was that he was once quoted in the national papers in Britain as saying women weren’t strong enough to enter his village Conker Championship; a competition he had devised and organised…

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New chickens

26th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (6)

A few weeks ago, my parents went to a bird auction and came back with a bunch of new chickens. The best, and funniest looking, of the ones they bought are called Silkies. They look like little, fluffy chicken-llamas…

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Young men at war

26th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

The following is an except from Young Men at War: A Case by Case Study of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by Patricia Barber, Ph.D. M.F.C.C. Duke University Press, 1986…

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Major-General Alois Siska

25th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

The behaviour and bravery of people during war time never ceases to amaze me. Here the Daily Telegraph reports on the death of Major-General Alois Siska:

Major-General Alois Siska, who has died aged 89, spent six days in an open dinghy on the North Sea before being captured on the Dutch coast and sent to Colditz Castle; however, when he returned to Prague from two years’ hospital treatment in England after the war, he was not welcomed as a hero, but jailed and forced to do menial jobs…

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Hands off our milk jug

24th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (1)

I don’t remember much from my childhood — my very young childhood — but I do remember the day my mum cut her hair for the first time. It was shorter, it was different. I wouldn’t look at her for days.

I don’t like change…

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The good life

23rd September 2003, lunch time | Comments (1)

I do love the fact that my parents have a large vegetable garden. We rarely have a meal where the fruit or veg doesn’t come from out back, and when the farm used to be active we’d have our own meat as well…

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Happy birthday

20th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (1)

Alastair diving into a swimming pool

I am not easily scared by the advance of time. I don’t spend my days huddled in dark corners thinking Good God, I’m 27, I should have a house, car, wife and baby by now! — these things will happen with time, and I may be better off for the wait.

In fact, everything in my life seems to have worked out for the best with little effort on my part. I’ve said this from an early age; I certainly am a lucky boy.

However, there are certain things that will, well, not exactly shake one’s confidence in the “everything will turn out alright” philosophy, but rather make you wish the damn thing would hurry up and kick in with some big results. One of these events is your brother turning 30 (and, incidentally, having a house, car, wife and baby).

Today is such a day.

Happy birthday, Al.

Damn you, you old bugger.


Talk Like A Pirate Day

19th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (5)

So, it’s TLAPD today. It’s also the day Becky and I realised we hadn’t written each other poems for ages. A little scratching of the head over dinner and this was produced in honour of both occasions…

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The Great Antonio

19th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (2)

The Daily Telegraph always has interesting obituries:

Anton Barichievich, otherwise known as “the Great Antonio”, who has died aged 77, earned two entries in the Guinness Book of Records, first in 1952 when he pulled a 433-tonne train along the tracks for 19.8 metres, and secondly in 1960 when he pulled four buses loaded with passengers along St Catherine Street, Montreal…

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Throw off the bowlines

6th September 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

Mum pointed out a quote by Mark Twain in today’s paper:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I wonder if she’s hinting at anything?