Down the Bog

Since moving to Canada I’ve not really been an avid newspaper reader and I wrote a bit about this in an earlier blog entry.

But I still try to keep up to date online with what the newspapers are saying and in particular the UK publications. So I read with interest a story about the collision of two planes last week at Heathrow Airport in England. They were both on the ground at the time but as a SriLankan Airlines Airbus 340 passed by a stationary British Airways Boeing 747 it sliced off the winglet of the plane. No one was hurt but likewise both planes would certainly not be flying that day.

The Daily Mail now reports that on the following day the SriLankan aircraft was due to take off but seven passengers refused to travel once they realised it was the same plane and insisted on getting off.

Now if you read this story the curious thing is that the report talks at length about how passengers refused to fly with the winglet sliced off even though the airline insisted that it was safe but this account doesn’t ring true because it was the British Airways 747 that lost it’s winglet. The picture clearly shows that. So why was there any discussion about the winglet on the Airbus? It was still intact.

I think this is a good example of a newspaper being a little “creative” in it’s reporting and trying to make the story a little more shocking. I certainly don’t have trouble in understanding that passengers might not want to travel on an aircraft that twenty-four hours previously had been involved in a collision but the story sounds much better if it’s suggested that a chunk of it’s wing is missing. So as I say it’s all a bit confusing to read and make sense of unless you allow for the fact that the newspaper might be garnishing the story just a bit.

It’s a bit like the Madeleine McCann story. Apparently the tabloid press in the UK have had an absolute field day with this tragic event and goodness knows what they’ve found to talk about each day and how much of it is not just a bit of creativity on the part of the press. We need to be selective in our reading me thinks.

Following on from my previous post about Abby walking and making the house child proof it got me thinking about what I’d like to do with our home decor when the kiddies are a little older and we can start having nice things again.

Nicola will tell you that I’ve a passion for clocks and that I don’t need an excuse to buy one but the ultimate clock to own would be a grandfather clock. It’s not really fair to describe such a beautiful thing as simply as a clock because it’s so much more than that. In my eyes a grandfather clock is a very fine piece of furniture that I imagine almost becomes a part of the family and creates a presence of it’s own.

As I say I’m not sure whether we’re quite ready to get one now because of our young children but before they grow up too much it would be really nice to have one in our home (I imagine in our hallway) and I have a picture in my mind of it looking over our children’s activities in a-not-quite-approving way and in return them looking up at it with a kind of awe filled respect. My imagination is running away with me!

When looking for such an item grandfather clocks are not the the kind of thing that might be typically found in a local furniture store and certainly not a range of them so a very good place to start is 1-800-4clocks.com. It’s a website dedicated to clocks with a large and wonderful selection to browse through.

I really, really like this Howard Miller Harper Grandfather Clock although there are so many to choose from. I like this one in particular for it’s dark windsor cherry finish which favours my liking for a traditional look. It’s also such a visual treat with it’s crystal cut glass and brass finished weights with pendulum in an illuminated case. A real treat to my eyes. If it seems like I’m waxing too lyrically here it’s just that I do see these things as items of real beauty!

How about listening to it’s chime? If you follow the link for this clock you can hear it’s westminster chime by clicking on the chime buttons near the description. The westminster chime is a big part of the personality of the clock.

I’m pretty certain that this is the grandfather clock that I want but there is a big selection and sometimes whatever it is that we are buying it’s not always easy to make up our minds and choose. Even now as I write this I’m not completely sure. So maybe we just need a little help? Take a look at this interesting blog entry that might just be useful. It talks of how prospective buyers can take a survey to build up a personality profile that can help identify just what kind of clock will be right for the kind of personality that we have.

So that’s got me thinking and I find that idea an enticing one. I’m not sure I’ve ever done such a thing before but the way I see it is a grandfather clock is an important purchase and will be a valued addition to the family. A personality profile would ensure that we’d all get along!

Watching children grow from birth all the way to adulthood is a series of milestones. Some big and and some small but all of them significant and we reached another milestone yesterday with Abby taking her first tentative steps.

This is the kind of achievement that every Mum and Dad gets very excited about and then the significance starts to dawn as to how much more trouble this walking thing is going to cause for everyone. Just like crawling does. The new freedom of movement that leaves in it’s wake a trail of destruction!

Abby’s been standing against things and moving around holding on for quite a while and she’s also been able to just stand and balance. But now with Mummy’s encouragement she can take a few stuttering steps. If she feels like it of course!

So soon as she masters this next stage we’re going to be evaluating the house for yet further hazards as gradually her crawling is superceded by her walking.

One day we’ll be able to have our home back to how it used to be with nice ornaments and stuff but it won’t be anytime soon.

You’d think that with all of the bad things going on in the world today that there’s nothing left to shock us. But there is.

Christine Lakinski, a fifty year old woman making her way a long a street in Hartlepool, England collapsed to the ground and proceeded to die there. A man called Anthony Anderson, aged twenty-seven thought it would be an idea to throw water over her, urinate over her and then cover her face with shaving foam.

Having smoked a cannabis joint and also under the influence of alcohol this guy became the lowest of the low by not only acting in such an inhuman way but being so proud of his antics that he encouraged his mates to film the incident on their cell phone for Youtube.

It’s not Youtube’s fault of course or the cell phone manufacturer or anybody really. It’s just the fault of Anthony Anderson who apparently has not the slightest degree of human decency in his body and leaves me struggling to find the words to describe what kind of person he must be.

I know that there are many, many bad people out there but this kind of account just brings it home to me as to the hardness of the human heart at times. I hope he’s made to feel “comfortable” in his prison surroundings for the next little while.

I was listening to an interesting debate on the radio a couple of days ago regarding supermarket plastic bags. I know that over in the UK aswell as here in Canada that there are efforts being made to do away with the one-use bag and encourage shoppers to utilise more robust and reusable bags to carry home their shopping.

Where we normally do our grocery shopping the supermarket charges 5 cents per bag but we’re quite bad for remembering to take any bags with us so rather shamefully we normally end up paying out for half a dozen. We have in fact bought a couple of the strong reusable bags but as I say we’ve yet to discipline ourselves into remembering to taken them with us and two is not enough anyway. Reusable bags do make sense though because for one thing the handles don’t break and you can actually get your shopping home in them and they’re good for the environment.

Supermarket plastic bags are not biodegradable so they normally end up on landfill sites for a long, long time so it makes sense to find a better way. However just as some people refuse to recycle their rubbish by sorting out the plastic and the cardboard for collection (where local authorities have such collections) so supermarkets dare not take a first step of not having plastic bags available for fear of losing customers who can’t see the bigger picture and just want endless plastic bags for their shopping.

Still, it was a very interesting discussion on the radio and it got turned slightly on it’s head by a guy coming on the line to say that if we really want to sort out global warming (By the way I’m not completely convinced of global warming but I do believe in looking after the world we live in) then we should all become vegan because cows are one of the largest producers of methane gas through their burping and…ahem…farting. Get rid of all the cows and you’ll drastically reduce the amount of methane gas in the atmosphere which will reduce the greenhouse effect of warming up the earth.

Well, it’s a thought isn’t it. I read earlier today that the amount of cows on the earth has doubled over the last forty years so perhaps the cow population is playing it’s part in causing global warming. Sheep also have a responsibility in this and would probably have to go too.

So what would we prefer? A cutback in cars, industry, airplane travel and free supermarket bags or maybe just give up eating meat and start to eat lots of veggie burgers and drink soya milk shakes.

I don’t know what to make of all of this you know. But as far as the cow thing is concerned here you’ll find a clearer explanation about the farting, burping animals that need to fart and burp a little less.

One of my all time favourite movies to watch is There’s something about Mary. I find that it’s a film that can keep me chuckling throughout and actually leaves me feeling quite cheerful afterwards. Shouldn’t a movie do that? Be able to change our mood or maybe even our outlook? Ah well perhaps I’m forgetting that we’re just talking about a movie and not therapy.

Still, it’s a great movie and if I’m pushed to say I think my favourite part of the film is the early scene of Ben Stiller’s character with his mouth full of steel catching his private parts in the fly of his trousers. Definitely an eye watering scenario.

Actually whats really caused me to write this entry in my blog is to draw attention to the closing credits where the cast lip synch to a song called Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations. It’s a great song by probably a little known group from the sixties.

Whenever I hear that song to me it has the sound of a group like The Temptations. I see in my head typically four or five black singers in garish 70’s matching suits, each behind a microphone. While one sings the lead the others dance and twirl in unison doing the backing vocals. It really sounds like that kind of presentation. But no. Check out the Youtube video of The Foundations singing Build Me Up Buttercup. The video is black and white and poor quality at the start (although it gets better) but it reveals all and The Foundations are not how I imagined them at all.

It’s probably just me but it’s funny how we can picture something in our minds and how it can then be so different when we see the reality.

It was a bad weekend for UK sport. As far as England were concerned they lost to South Africa in the Rugby World Cup Final and in terms of British motor sport Lewis Hamilton failed to win the Formula One World Championship.

Living in Canada I’m far away from the intensity that seems to exist in Britain as far as certain sports are concerned. Football (soccer) is of course the real big thing and has massive support. Rugby and cricket follow on and whatever the sport is if we Brits think there’s a chance of us actually winning something we all get very excited. If we then lose (which is normally the case) there’s always a big debate after about why did we lose? Are we taking it seriously enough? Are we investing enough? What’s wrong with us?

I think people from other countries look on and think that we are expecting to win and that we are in some way looking down on everyone else as if our nation should be the only winners. That’s such nonsense but is probably some kind of throwback to British Empire days which was a long time ago but understandably causes resentment. No brit seriously thinks that we are still some centre point of a mighty empire. Britain is just a small country with a large and big hearted population who’d really like to win something sometime.

Here in Canada where it’s a big country with a relatively small population ice hockey rules which unfortunately leaves me cold (excuse the pun). Canadians clearly have a passion for it and are also very good at it which means that in an international competition Canadians want their team to do well. But I don’t pick up on any real passion here just an excitable interest. When Canada was recently represented in the Cricket World Cup and Rugby World Cup I’m not sure just how many Canadians even knew about it.

It’s this kind of feeling that conveys to me a sense of being isolated over here. Sometimes I feel that all the big parties are taking place over in the rest of the world.

I can remember being aged about 18 or 19 when I realised that I was going to lose my hair. It wasn’t really a surprise as my Dad lost his hair although his Dad kept a fine head of hair until his death so I was hopeful that it might not happen but not really surprised when it did.

I hated losing my hair and 26 years later I still do. On and off during those years I’ve encountered the occasional person who thought that they could have a joke at my expense because of my hair loss and I laughed it off through gritted teeth.

I’ve often thought about why it’s considered so unacceptable for men to wear wigs. I don’t know why it is because male pattern baldness is so common but I’ve never been tempted to because of the stigma attached to it. If everyone else did it then it would be odd not to but instead it’s an opportunity for people to point and snigger.

I can remember a guy I knew years ago who just suddenly started wearing a hairpiece. He was very bald and went from that to having quite a long hairstyle. He was very brave and wore it for quite a few months until one day it disappeared and he was without hair again. Somebody must have got to him.

So I keep what hair I do have very short and have never attempted the comb-over by allowing it to get long and somehow drag it across the top of my head. Nicola kindly gets the clippers out every other week or so and does the once over and leaves me with a hairstyle built for speed!

Last friday after my latest trim I opted to shave off my goatee beard that I’ve had for around four or five years. I wanted to remember what my chin looked like and although it kind of shocked both myself and Nicola I wasn’t ready for the reaction of my 11 month old daughter Abby. She really didn’t seem to recognise me and just looked traumatised without taking her eyes off me. She’s not great with strangers and at I think at least she thought she should recognise me but it was going to take some convincing.

Well, over the weekend she’s got used to me and all is good again but I’ve decided to grow it back. My Mum won’t be pleased because she never liked it but she’s in England and doesn’t yet know that I’ve shaved it off.

We bought a new phone last weekend from Future Shop. It’s a regular land line phone made by vtech but it’s also designed to be used with Skype.

I’ve used Skype on a regular basis since moving to Canada because it offers very good call rates for me to phone my Mum back in England. She doesn’t have a computer and so although we can’t talk to each other just with computers the service offered by Skype to call from my PC to her phone is very good. In the main I get a great connection and we can hear each other very clearly.

Of course, if a call is made with Skype, computer to computer then there’s no charge made at all.

So as I say we’ve bought this new cordless phone and it’s base unit plugs into the regular land line socket and also into the USB socket of the computer. There’s an easy software installation required to set the phone up and that obviously also means having a Skype account too. Once that’s all done the phone can be used as normal and with Skype.

Pressing the phone button on the handset will bring up the dial tone and pressing the PC button will bring up the list of Skype contacts previously set up on the computer. I’m then able to scroll down the list of contacts on the LCD display and it shows up the people who I can call for free because they have Skype installed on their computer and also the list of people that I use Skypeout with. (Skypeout means using Skype to call a regular phone or cell phone)

For those contacts that have Skype installed a tick will appear alongside their name if they are online with Skype and then I can call them and they can receive the call on their computer. Skypeout contacts can obviously be called anytime because the call is made to their phone.

For overseas Skypeout contacts we buy credit in advance and we also paid $35 for unlimited calling to landlines in Canada and the US for twelve months. We weren’t able to get what we thought was a good deal with Bell Canada for long distance in North America which is why we’ve gone this route and so far it’s been fine.

We’ve used the phone to make calls within Canada using Skype and most of the time the quality of call has been good. Occasionally the connection seems to go quiet for a second or two but then it’s back again and doesn’t happen everytime. My daughter in England doesn’t have a landline to use but does have high speed internet so now she can get onto Skype and call our new phone directly without it costing her a penny because it’s effectively a call from computer to computer. She’s done that a couple of times now and it’s a great way of staying in touch.

So then. So far so good. We’re very pleased with the phone. It cost us $100 so it wasn’t cheap and we didn’t shop around for it so we might have got it at a lower price elsewhere. But I can recommend it as a way of using voip to make calls that are either free or low cost.

I was most definitely amused by the news that JK Rowling has revealed that the character in her Harry Potter books, Albus Dumbledore is gay.

I’ve never read the books although I did start to read the first one to Ruth when she was younger but we didn’t get that far into it and the whole thing has pretty much passed me by ever since. I’ve seen one of the movies but it didn’t leave me on the edge of my seat wanting more so it’s fair to say that I’m not a fan. I’m trying not to say that I think the whole Harry Potter thing is over the top because I know it’s wonderfully popular but…well…you know. Just not my cup of tea.

Anyway I don’t think a lot when an author feels the need to fill out details on a character from outside the book. They may well have a fuller insight of how a personality has developed to become who they are in the story but unless it’s in the book it shouldn’t be mentioned. It should be there to be read about or left to the reader’s imagination to draw their own conclusion during or after they’ve read the story. It may well lead to massive debate but the writer should keep quiet at that point and say no more. If it was important for the reader to know then it should have been in the book.