SEPTEMBER 2001
Obviously the Summer Course is over; it's been raining ever since.
I've been looking at a study on what you actually get when you go shopping in your friendly local supermarket. Among the gems we have: Sausages: If your lucky you get some meat, but mostly they consist of "connective tissue" aka skin, rind, gristle and sinew bulked up with fat, rusk and water. Burgers: 100% beef usually means mostly fat stripped from cattle though up to 40% can be water, rice, pork rind and fat + chicken waste. Ham: Again a mixture of pork meat, fat, soya and milk protein and then, according to the small print, "re-formed with added water and gelatine. (Wasn't gelatine banned because of BSE?) Cheese: Most pizzaes and sandwiches use a cheese substitute made from skimmed milk and vegetable oil. I presume this will soon be advertised as healthier than real cheese; skimmed milk, you know. Chicken nuggets: I think I'll just omit this one; we're having dinner in half an hour. Orange juice: On an average made with only 5% fruit juice; the rest is thickeners, sugars and vegetable oil. But it is fortified with vitamins, so it's OK, then. Coffee creamers: I love this one. Silicon dioxide added to stop it from going lumpy in hot drinks. That's sand to you and me. Smoked salmon: I'ts not usually smoked at all, but sprayed with "Liquid Smoke Flavouring." Enjoy your meal.
Hull University has started a study into stress management for scallops. They are trying to find out how scallops react when they are scooped up in a trawl, chucked into a bucket and finally sold at a fish market before ending up as starters in a restaurant. So far there is no plan of offering councelling.
My favourite local shop closed down yesterday. Akrill's gunshop has been in Beverley since 1828, and 5 generations of the Akrill family has served the people of the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was an old-fashioned shop were they knew your name, and you were always welcome to drop in for a chat, have your Babour re-waxed, your gun serviced or your splitcane rod repaired. But unfortunately this kind of shop does not fit in with the government's plan for a modernised countryside. Unless you are part of a big, profit-driven chain that can afford to employ people to fill in forms for Whitehall you do not have the right to excist.
Life is never boring here in Yorkshire. The other day a gang of yobs got the shock of their lives when they attacked a 57-year old member of the Bradford Bowls Club. In the ensueing fracas his artificial leg came off, and the thugs took one horrified look at what they thought they had done - and fled.
In the midst of the foot-and-mouth crises Margaret Beckett, the head of DEFRA, has buggered off to France on a 5-weeks caravanning holiday. Presumably she and Tony Blair are hoping that all the animals have been culled and all the farmers have gone out of business by the time she returns, so that she can get on with her job of modernising the countryside.
Evidently there are 35,000 full-time Elvis impersonaters worldwide. It has been estimated that if the number keeps growing at the present rate more than one third of the world's population will have joined the ranks by the year 2019.
MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD. An American woman died last week when she saw Jesus Christ by the roadside amid people ascending into heaven. She went into a religious rapture and hurled herself through the sunroof of her car. What she had actually seen was a chap on his way to a fancy party dressed as Jesus carrying 12 helium-filled sex dolls as his disciples in the back of his truck. When the dolls came unstuck he stopped the car, but was unable to prevent them drifting skyward.
GEORGIA ON MY MIND. The Pentagon has finally admitted that they lost a nuclear bomb a 100 times more powerful that the one that flattened Hiroshima. It was dumped by a B-47 bomber in 1958 after a collision off the coast of Georgia. They say it can't be recovered as it's too dangerous to be touched, and anyway, they don't know the exact location. But we are all perfectly safe. Honest.
The Americans call them the sheeple, the sheep people. They are the people that are afraid of everything, and keep bleating to the Government that "something has to be done", and of course the Government is more than happy to oblige. As a result personal freedom is rapidly becoming something you just learn about in history lessons at school (except you don't really learn history at school anymore). A few examples: When I was at school a knife was regarded as a tool that you were actually taught to use properly. Everyone carried one at all time and bloody useful it was, too, for sharpening pencils, slicing bread or just plain whittling during breaks. I actually used to carry a 22 rifle to school in order to shoot small game for the pot on my way home. No-one batted an eye about this; in fact our homeroom master kept one behind the desk which he used to shoot rats out in the schoolyard. In the late sixties I once travelled down to Barcelona in Spain from Heathrow carrying a shotgun in the cabin of the plane. The only reaction I got was a discussion with the captain about choice of gauge. Like most Britishers he preferred a 12 bore, while I used a 16 bore.
I'm just reading about a chap who got drunk at a party, crashed his car and killed his friend while driving home. He is now suing the couple who hosted the party for giving him too much to drink.
I am supposed to be leaving for America tomorrow, but the terrorists have managed to stop trans-atlantic flights for the time being. The scenes of carnage coming in on the news from New are devastating, but as much as I hate to say this, rather predictable. Something like this was bound to happen; in fact I was involved in an intelligence exercise where something similar was envisioned more than twenty-five years ago. Centralization creates targets.
Update: I will be flying out on the 2nd of October all being well, (as well as things can be at the moment).