And, we’re back again. I hope you enjoyed your week off as much as we did. We had a splendid weekend with friends on the south coast, a sweltering visit to a very impressive National Trust property, a great meal out and an excellent and highly amusing evening’s entertainment at the Brighton Dome. What more could anyone want?
It’s been SCORCIO! all week but looks set to cool down a bit during the coming days. Phew! Having said that, it’s all relative, of course and temperatures into the 80s are not actually going to be all that impressive for our many readers (both of them) who live in areas where the mid-80s is actually quite pleasantly cool. Hey ho.
Over the weekend we were down with some dear friends near Brighton – always a delight to spend time with them. Dinner at Terre à Terre in Brighton on Friday evening was excellent. We’ve been there once (or twice?) before – it’s a vegetarian and vegan restaurant with some truly superb dishes – several of us (including me) had the Rosti Revisited – a crispy fried potato, onion and garlic rosti, topped with sautéed buttered spinach, finished with cream, garlic, parsley and nutmeg, topped with a soft poached egg and toasted mustard rarebit topping. Mmm, delicious.
On Saturday morning we trooped off to visit Petworth House just down the road a piece. It’s a late 17th century country house rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset. For centuries it was the southern home of the Percy family, the Earls of Northumberland (amongst the many ancestors of ours I have found down the various rabbit holes of our family tree). The grounds are yet another Capability Brown project and it is famous for its extensive art collection with many works by J.M.W. Turner.
And then, on Saturday evening we made our way into Brighton again to see Dara Ò Briain, an Irish stand-up who is always great value. We’ve seen him a couple of times and he never disappoints (as long as you can get past the fact that every other word begins with “F” and ends with a variation containing the sequence “uck”.
He told an interesting story this time of which I was certainly unaware. He was apparently adopted, his mother having been unmarried at the time of his birth. During that time in Ireland this was, of course, outrageous and unmarried mothers were often shunted away into homes run by nuns and bullied into giving their children up for adoption. If you’ve seen the film Philomena you’ll have a feel for what it was like. Difficult to imagine this as an amusing story but he succeeded in making it so, especially when he set about trying to find his birth mother – the obstacles placed in his way by the Irish authorities made it a very challenging search but he did eventually succeed in finding and in meeting her. Ironically, he discovered that the woman overseeing his adoption was a woman (featured in Philomena) who served time in prison for “selling” babies for adoption, often to American families. He could easily have been “sold” and grown up in the States rather than Ireland. Great show, highly amusing and thoroughly entertaining – the two hours fairly sprinted by.
Back home I have finally finished my virtual cycle ride along the Underground Railroad from Mobile, Alabama to Owen Sound, Ontario. I would have been finished a couple of weeks ago but you may remember that my brother Steph invited me to continue cycling for another 303 Km to his wife’s family place on Lake Ahmic. So, in total, a mere 3,276 Km (2,036 miles) covered in 140 days of cycling. Typical Steph, though – when I got there, he was nowhere to be seen!
YCNMIU
The UK government is committed, by law, to achieving Net Zero by 2050. So, it’s a bit of a disappointment to read that it will take 4,700 years at the current rate to build enough onshore wind farms to make that a reality. Of course, I’ll very likely be gone by the time 2050 rolls around and certainly by the time 6750 comes to pass. But it does make discouraging reading to see that the current government’s effective ban on the building of onshore wind farms means that we are so far behind any coherent schedule to meet our statutory commitments. I reckon that should be an embarrassment but this government doesn’t do shame. How about this though – Ukraine built more onshore wind turbines than were built in England over the past year. YCNMIU.
And finally, he’s gone, at last, but certainly not forgotten. Like a bad smell similar to having stepped in some dog poo, he lingers blaming everyone else for his downfall, everyone, that is, apart from himself. I am, of course, speaking of the welcome news that Boris Johnson has resigned from Parliament in disgrace, having been found guilty by a Parliamentary committee of lying to Parliament. Of course, lying is what politicians do but Boris’s lies are in a realm of their own.
He flounced off before he was pushed – the committee investigating the accusation that he had been less than honest with Parliament about his partying during the Covid lockdown had recommended that he be suspended from Parliament for ninety days which would have led to a recall petition and a new election in his constituency. Who would have imagined that a man who was sacked for lying in at least two previous jobs, who lied to and was serially unfaithful to varous of his wives, who lied to the Queen when calling for the dissolution of Parliament, would lie to the House of Commons? Not only did he lie to the Commons about the partying which took place at Downing Street during the Pandemic, he lied about lying and then lied again about the lying about the lying.
In a piece straight out of Trump’s handbook, he denounced the committee claiming that it had conducted a witch-hunt to drive him from Parliament. Funnily enough, the committee was established by the House of Commons which has a comfortable Conservative majority and the committee itself also has a Conservative majority. Somehow, it’s everyone else’s fault but his. The comment by his former housemaster at Eton all those years ago has never been so apt:
I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.
Good riddance to bad rubbish – hopefully there is no way back for him but who knows – there is still a small rump of MPs and a proportion of the public who feel he’s been hard done by.
We’re looking forward to welcoming our lovely friends Chip and Leca Boynton from Boston for a brief visitation this coming week. Those of you with better memories than mine will remember that Chip is the one who kindly takes me to Fenway to see the Red Sox whenever we visit. This time I have the pleasure of taking him to some baseball, the Cubs v Cardinals in London next Sunday. I’m not sure Penny and Leca are delighted about the idea but Chip and I will try to have a fun time.
Meanwhile, keep happy, keep smiling, be careful, wear a f**king facemask in crowded places and keep your distance. And keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg