Goodness! It’s been a busy, busy week – outings and visitors galore! The weather appears to have taken a very autumnal turn – brisk and fresh and what colour we do see around and abouts has begun to show the first blushes of red and orange. Before you know it, we’ll be in the depths of winter – doesn’t time fly when you are enjoying yourself?
The visitors we welcomed at the beginning of the week were two of our former lovely neighbours who had recently moved out of Moreton Pinkney and up to the Lake District. They were down in the vicinity for a funeral and a hospital appointment and we were more than delighted to have them here for a couple of nights.
Thursday evening we were off with another couple of our lovely neighbours to the cinema in Banbury for a National Theatre Live streaming of Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer. “Astonishing” doesn’t begin to do it justice! It’s a one-woman show and Jodie Comer won a gazillion awards for her performance. She’s on stage the whole time, of course, just about two hours, and she doesn’t stop speaking for more than a few seconds.
Tessa is a young, brilliant barrister. She has worked her way up from working class origins to be at the top of her game; defending; cross examining and winning. An unexpected event forces her to confront the lines where the patriarchal power of the law, burden of proof and morals diverge.
A stunningly powerful performance with an equally powerful message. Absolutely fabulous!
Saturday, another outing! This time with the Moreton Pinkney Garden Club to the RHS Garden at Wisley just outside London. We’ve been once before but there is so much to see. The weather was just about perfect – sunny, blue skies, not too hot, not too cold. Some of the least bad photos . . .
We are getting increasingly excited about our upcoming trip to the States to visit family and friends in October. Those of you who have been paying attention will know that this is, essentially, the same trip we had planned to undertake in February before Mr Sciatica came to call. We’ll start with a visit to New Hampshire and Vermont and impose ourselves on my two brothers and youngest sister. Then, on to Utah for a few days with my elder sister and then on to LA for some time with Ben, Brex-Anna and Max – there also happens to be a high school reunion for me to attend somewhere along the way. Finally, on to Hawaii to visit with friends. We’ve never been to Hawaii so we’re very much looking forward to that part of the trip. Heck! We’re looking forward to all of it!
After a week in Hawaii we’ll retrace (most) of our steps and make our way home via Boston – fingers crossed for outstandingly great weather everywhere we go. We’ll be gone for virtually the whole of October, returning to the UK on the day before the US election kicks off. For some reason I didn’t fancy being in the US the day after the election! So, those of you who care will need to brace yourselves for the (probable) absence of the Picayune during that period. You’re welcome.
For those of you who I have not seen in the five years since we were last in the States, I would like you to remember the splendid attributes of the men of the Bodi tribe in Ethiopia. Bigger is better!
In the You Could Not Make It Up department this week – a report by Transparency International UK highlighting the £15bn of corrupt contracts awarded by the crooked Conservative government during the pandemic. Their analysis found evidence of systemic bias, opaque accounting and uncontrolled pricing in the procurement of PPE.
The scale of corruption risk in the former government’s approach to spending public money during the years of the Covid pandemic was profound.
That we find multiple red flags in more than £15bn of contacts – amounting to a third of all such spending – points to more than coincidence or incompetence.
The Covid procurement response was marked by various points of systemic weakness and political choices that allowed cronyism to thrive, all enabled by woefully inadequate public transparency. As far as we can ascertain, no other country used a system like the UK’s VIP lane in their Covid response.
Daniel Bruce, the chief executive of Transparency International UK
The new government has promised to appoint a Covid Corruption Commissioner to bring those responsible to court and to recover some of the money these friends of the Conservatives pocketed. I’d love to see Boris and Hancock and Sunak in the dock but naturally they will almost certainly escape justice. But the Michelle Mones of this world should (hopefully) be concerned. Very concerned.
And finally, I ran across this story somewhere which demonstrates the health benefits of cycling.
In 1951, Nils Gustaf Håkansson signed up for the Sverigeloppet endurance race traversing virtually the entire length of Sweden. His submission was rejected because of his age – he was 66.
Their reasoning was that he would have neither the strength nor the stamina to compete with the 50 other racers, all of whom were less than half his age.
Nevertheless, having ridden 600 miles to get to the starting line, Håkansson was there on race day in the saddle of his roadster complete with mudguards, a headlamp, front basket and panniers. He wore a homemade bib with the number 0 on it.
Due to the volume of racers, Håkansson crossed the starting line about 20 seconds after the race had started, but five days, five hours and 1,000 miles later, he crossed the finish line first – more than a day ahead of the next rider.
Håkansson had not been bound to one rule that the other ‘official’ participants were obliged to follow. As part of race regulations, competitors were expected to meet and stop at a checkpoint at the end of the day to recharge and restart the next morning.
Instead, Håkansson took just an hour’s rest before setting off again in the middle of the night. This allowed him to make up for the 10 miles he was behind after 300 miles and put a 20-mile gap between himself and the rest of the pack.
After three days and only five hours’ sleep, Gustaf was leading the field by more than 120 miles. At one point the police tried to persuade him to stop for a medical examination, but he only laughed and pedalled on.
Eventually, with only 800 yards or so to go, Stålfarfar or “Steel Grandpa” as he became known in the villages he’d passed through, came to an abrupt halt. But it wasn’t sheer exhaustion that had stopped him – the old man’s bicycle had suffered its first and only flat tyre.
Unperturbed, Gustaf dismounted and set towards the finish line where, with only a few yards to go, he remounted to cross the line at 2:15pm on July 7, 1951.
Despite the albeit unofficial victory, a subsequent audience with the king of Sweden, and generally being showered in fame and honour, Gustaf’s greatest satisfaction came from proving wrong the doctors who had thought he was better suited in a rocking chair than he was in a saddle.
The Steel Grandpa continued to ride bicycles until his death in 1987 at the age of 102 and if that isn’t a testament to the health benefits of riding a bike, then I don’t know what is.
Meanwhile, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees – we need all the pollinators we can get.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg