You know, the good folks of my adoptive county are so full of themselves sometimes…'Appen today is Yorkshire Day.
I'm sorry, call me unpatriotic and old-fashioned, but, if you stamp on a chap's nuts, you don't deserve to win a local five-a-side pub soccer match, let alone the sodding World Cup. That's not the English way of doing things.
Wayne Rooney, if you're reading this (read a lot, do you, Wayne?), you are a disgrace to your team-mates, and to your country. Unfortunately, as is not usually the case with Man U players, your country also happens to be my country. I hope you're bloody ashamed of yourself.
What am I talking about? Of course you're not.
How long before Colleen dumps him, do you reckon?
I had another bird trauma on Thursday evening. Jen and I were eating our dinner, when a wren flew straight through the open patio door and into the kitchen. While I made a strategic withdrawal (allegedly to close the dining room door to prevent the bird from escaping into the rest of the house), Jen went to help the wren. Sadly, it was already dead, having broken its neck colliding with the kitchen window.
Don't believe any nonsense you might hear on The Archers about country folk knowing their nuthatches from their treecreepers, and their pigeons from their wigeons: when it comes to bird identification, they haven't a clue. It's only shruburbanites like me who seem to take an interest in that sort of thing—which is why, whenever I identify a bird to her, our farmer friend refers to me ironically as Country Boy.
Jen told the farmer about the dead wren yesterday, and came out with a good one:
"So how did you know it was a wren, then?"
"I didn't. Richard told me."
"Aren't they the ones with the turned up tails?"
"Everything was bloody turned up by the time I got to it."
Taken from an upstairs bedroom window earlier this evening:
It was a pretty amazing storm.
Oh, Lordy! I've just realised that this Monday just gone marked the 20th anniversary of this.
I feel so bloody old.
Text message to Stense yesterday:
I think they're on to us. Initiate Protocol Delta-2 and rendezvous at the safe house. The codeword is FREMSLEY. P.B.A.B.
Stense's reply:
You are completely bonkers…
(You are completely bonkers is spook code-speak for message received and understood.)
More text message frivolity with Stense:
Richard (08:03 BST): HOLY SHIT!! IT WORKED!
Stense (08:53 BST): What did?
Richard (08:58 BST): Don't know what you're talking about, mate. But MAJOR NEWS: I've finished building my time machine. Going on test run back to 8am today. Will keep you posted.
(I don't think Stense got it.)
Richard (12:42 BST): Time travel sucks. Am trapped inside Einsteinian time-paradox loop. Just queued behind five other mes in M&S butty dept! I was literally beside myself!
Still no reply. Evidently, Stense is no sci-fi aficionado.
BBC: Crowe's wife gives birth to a son
Actor Russell Crowe has become a father again after his wife Danielle Spencer gave birth to a second son.
The baby, weighing about eight pounds, was named Tennyson Spencer Crowe after 19th Century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.
From a couple of weeks back:
BBC: Scots should back England—Blair
Prime Minister Tony Blair has told the BBC he thinks Scots should support England in the World Cup…
Mr Blair said neighbours should support each other.
So, by the same token, all us English should be supporting France in the final against Italy tomorrow.
Yeah, right!
New Scientist: The hidden cost of wind turbines [subscribers only]
… [Richard] Lindsay [, University of East London] is an advocate for renewable energy but has become concerned by the scale and number of wind-farm developments on peat bogs in Europe. "This is the Cinderella ecosystem," he says. "Peatland is busy performing a series of important functions for us and we just don't see it." Bogs often play a critical role in providing clean drinking water. More significantly in the context of renewable energy, they store three times as much carbon as is held in tropical rainforests. "We build wind farms in order to reduce carbon emissions," Lindsay says. "Yet peatlands represent the one land-based habitat in the world that is a major long-term carbon store. By building on peat, we release this carbon store as carbon emissions into the atmosphere."…
To calculate carbon savings, [Mike] Hall [,Cumbria Wildlife Trust] uses the [wind powerstation] developers' own predictions, which generally give figures for overall electricity generation of about 30 per cent of the maximum rated capacity of a turbine. The average achieved output for existing wind farms is actually lower than this—25.6 per cent according to industry figures. Using the conservative "minimal scenario", Hall calculates that a 2-megawatt turbine built on peat moorland 1 metre deep will take 8.2 years to pay back its CO2 cost. The figure for the "high scenario" is a whopping 16 years. Even the minimal figure is a substantial portion of a turbine's normal lifespan of 25 years, and considerably higher than the industry's own figures, which range between three and 18 months…
Research into the ecological impact of offshore renewable energy developments is even sparser than for onshore projects. Writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology last year (vol 42, p 605), Andrew Gill from the Institute of Water and Environment at Cranfield University in Silsoe, Bedfordshire, UK, noted that only 1 per cent of all papers on renewable energy published in the past 15 years considers environmental impacts onshore, and none offshore.
From a conversation with Carolyn this lunchtime:
Carolyn: Did I tell you I've entered a trampolining competition?
Me: [Hysterical laughter] Why?
Carolyn: It was an accident.
And, before you ask, unfortunately, no, you won't be seeing any photographs of Carolyn trampolining: I already asked, and was rather robustly refused.
Earlier in our lunchbreak, I decided to embarrass Carolyn (as I had threatened to do on dozens of occasions) by re-enacting the events of 20th November, 2001, when a babe jumped into the same compartment as me as I passed through a revolving door. During this re-enactment, however, Carolyn (unwittingly) performed the rôle of Yours Truly, and Yours Truly played the babe.
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'VE ACTUALLY GONE AND DONE IT!" gasped Carolyn, as we shuffled awkwardly through the revolving door outside her office.
Neither could I: I went bright red, apparently.
Carolyn had her hair cut on Thursday. She usually agonises about it for days beforehand, trying to decide whether to have her hair cut really quite short this time, then plays it safe and has about a quarter of an inch taken off. On Thursday, however, she sent me a text message to say she'd had four whole inches cut off. So I gave her a call to see if she had recovered from the trauma. She was driving her kids in the car at the time and answered on her hands-free set:
Me: So how did it turn out, then?
Carolyn: Oh, it's not too bad, I suppose.
Me: What do the children think of it?
Carolyn: They haven't noticed it yet.
Aran (her son): What haven't we noticed, mum?
Me: Your mum's new haircut. How does it look, Aran? Do you like it?
[Long pause as Aran inspects his mum's hair.]
Aran: Mum, you've been eating Kit-Kats!
Carolyn: No I haven't!
Aran: Yes you have: I can smell them!
As I believe I have made abundantly clear, I have no time at all for the snake-oil-peddling charlatans that go by the name of homeopaths.
Criticising so-called complementary medicine comes second only to suggesting that we should cut smokers a bit of slack when it comes to provoking virulent email attacks. For a bunch of tree-hugging hippies with flowers in their hair, the alt.therapy brigade sure can turn pretty belligerent when you call a placebo a placebo. Here is some recent feedback:
Material doses of medicine are very last century. Physicists are realizing that there is so much out there that we don't understand and just because we don't understand it doesn't make it bad or mad or wrong. The world was believed to be flat and people died because of their belief that the world was round.
For material doses, read actual doses. And note the almost obligatory use of the we-used-to-think-the-world-was-flat argument. Well, at least they didn't try to rope in Galileo as a persecuted predecessor this time. In an earlier email, the same correspondent advised me (in capital letters) to:
THINK before you speak and learn the true facts
…and pointed out:
Homeopathy at least has never KILLED ANYONE
To which I rather wearily replied:
You are correct when you say that real medicines sometimes kill people, whereas homeopathic ones never have. Just listen to what you're saying. Don't those facts tell you anything? Real medicines have active ingredients which sometimes affect people in undesirable ways (they're known as side-effects). They also happen to have rid the world of smallpox, scarlet fever and (very nearly) polio. Homeopathic medicines have no active ingredients, so cannot possibly harm (or cure) anyone.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe homeopathy isn't so harmless after all:
BBC: Malaria advice 'risks lives'
Some high street homeopaths claim they can prevent malaria, a Newsnight investigation has found.
Secret filming revealed homeopaths were claiming their preparations could be used instead of anti-malarial drugs to protect travellers in high risk areas such as sub-saharan Africa…
Dr Behrens [of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine] has treated patients who fell for the homeopaths claims "We've certainly had patients admitted to our unit with the malignant form of malaria who have been taking homeopathic remedies and without a doubt the reason that they were taking them and not effective drugs was the reason they had malaria."
It's time someone put a stop to this nonsense. They'll be trying to tell us our kids don't need MMR jabs next.
Whoa! STOP PRESS! I've just realised something:
That BBC news report I quoted in my previous item about homeopathy says the following (my emphasis added):
The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital is run by doctors who are also homeopaths and who treat conditions such as hay fever and rheumatism. They are also furious that some homeopaths are making these false claims about malaria.
The hospital's Director Peter Fisher told Newsnight "I'm very angry about it because people are going to get malaria—there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won't find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice."
But hang on a cotton-picking nanosecond, what about this other BBC article which I have referred to previously (again, with my emphasis added—and I have merged some of the paragraphs to save space):
BBC (10-Apr-2005): Malaria row inspired homeopathy
…This weekend, supporters of homeopathy are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann—the man widely accepted as the founder of homeopathy…
[I]t was while translating medical texts that he made his biggest breakthrough—the realisation that taking quinine to treat malaria produced the same symptoms as the illness itself. Dr Hahnemann found a piece by another doctor, Cullen, who was examining the use of quinine (which he referred to as Peruvian Bark) to treat malaria—or Marsh Fever as it was then known. Dr Cullen said the bark was successful because of its astringent and purgative properties. But Dr Hahnemann took issue with this. He argued that other medicines had the same properties—but had no effect on malaria. To prove his point, he decided to experiment with quinine, taking the drug himself. The results were to prove hugely significant.
According to John Saxton, president of the faculty of homeopathy which promotes the academic and scientific development of the discipline, they effectively laid the foundation stone for the creation of homeopathy. "He took a dose of Peruvian Bark—four drams—and developed all the symptoms of malaria apart from the fever. For as long as he continued to take the bark, he had the symptoms and when he stopped it, they stopped. It set him thinking." Dr Hahnemann came to the conclusion that it was the very fact that quinine produced symptoms so similar to malaria itself that made it a useful medicine—in effect he discovered that like can be used to fight like.
In other words, although "there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria", the belief that like can be used to fight like specifically with malaria "laid the foundation stone for the creation of homeopathy".
I'm sorry (actually, I'm not), but doesn't that totally destroy the supposed foundation of homeopathy?
Not content with dumbing down history, Madame Tussauds, it seems, now wants to dumb down the entire universe:
Guardian: Where have all the planets gone?
There is splodge from an egg on the side of the pale green copper dome on Marylebone Road that could have been hurled at the former London Planetarium by a furious astronomer.
But the wonders of the cosmos no longer bring crowds to a reverent halt and yesterday Madame Tussauds reopened the rebranded "Stardome" with a cartoon about an alien boffin who believes every resident of our planet is a celebrity. "It's a no-brainer," said Nicky Marsh, marketing director of the waxwork attractions. And, in several senses, she was right.
Hitchin and I visited the London Planetarium during August Bank Holiday weekend in 1990. I can confirm that, even then, it was hardly pulling in the crowds. There were three different queues: one for Madame Tussauds, one for the planetarium, and one for both. Hitchin and I were the only people in the queue for the planetarium, while the other two queues stretched out into the street.
As we waited patiently for the next show, a management gorilla in a penguin suit approached us and demanded to know why we weren't in either of the queues for Madame Tussauds.
"We just want to see the planetarium," explained Hitchin.
"What's wrong with Madame Tussauds?" whooped the gorilla.
"Nothing. It's just not our sort of thing."
"Why not? What's wrong with it?"
"Well… I just don't like dummies, I suppose."
"Why on earth not?"
"Erm, well… I'm allergic to wax."
We didn't like to mention my unpleasant experience with a candle as a child.
Last Monday evening, I felt a bit peckish just before I went to bed. So I looked in the fridge and found some pickled beetroot. We don't usually have pickled beetroot, so I tucked in. It was delicious.
Next morning, I discovered why you shouldn't eat pickled beetroot on its own. How can I put this delicately? Well, let's just say it comes out beetroot-coloured.
Yes, I know: too much information!
It was Carolyn's son Aran's eighth birthday on Monday. Carolyn tricked me into agreeing to go along to the party to take photos. She was pretty devious, asking me if I wouldn't mind taking a few photos of Aran, then, after I'd agreed, pointing out that it would be his birthday, and there would be 21 other kids there.
Actually, it was a pretty good do, which was held on a local organic farm, where the kids got to ride in a tractor trailer, feed farm animals, play in a lavender maze (which was really cool) and have a hay fight. It was a glorious day, and the views over the Welsh hills and Dee Estuary were magnificent (albeit marred by the new off-shore wind powerstation).
Aran is certainly his mother's son all right. Guess what he wanted (and got) for his birthday present. Go on, you'll never guess…
A water butt.
In the second greatest highlight of his golfing career (the greatest, of course, being meeting Jack Nicklaus), my dad, age 71, is finally taking part in the Open Golf Championship this year. OK, it's only as a course steward, but he reckons that kind of counts. Look out for him on the fifth hole every day this week. You can't miss him: he's the one who looks like Jim Rockford.
My dad and uncle and I attended one of the unofficial practice days on Monday. It's the closest thing we have to a Carter family tradition. We've gone to a practice day every year the Open Championship has been held in the North West of England since I was this high to Sam Snead. This year was extra special, because the Open has finally returned to the Royal Liverpool Golf Club on the Wirral—just down the road from where I was brought up.
You'll notice I'm not referring to it as the British Open, by the way. Dad's very particular about that: there's the US Open, and the Irish Open, and the Scottish Open, and so forth; but, when it comes to the British Open, the adjective is superfluous: there will only ever be one The Open. It's a bit like in soccer: so-called derby matches can happen in any locality, but, when you talk about The Derby, we know you mean Liverpool beating Everton.
The famous Open Championship Claret Jug is perhaps the most tasteful trophy in the whole of sport. Interestingly, I learnt from a display at Hoylake this week, there are two claret jugs: the genuine one (which resides at the British Golf Museum at St Andrew's), and the replica one that the championship winner is presented with and gets to keep for a year. As dad pointed out on Monday, surely that makes the replica trophy more genuine than the so-called genuine one. The British Golf Museum seems to agree: their website describes their claret jug as the replica.
Those golfers are crazy.
Is it unbelievably hot this week, or is it just Stense?
To quote the Good Captain, sun's all hottin' and a rottin' hot. If this is global warning, then I'm against it. 38°C it was in my car yesterday afternoon. That's Gas Mark 2 in old money.
I went for a meeting in a hot and sticky, pokey little conference room on Tuesday, with only a noisy fan and an empty water cooler to alleviate our suffering. Just before the meeting started, a colleague's phone rang with a ridiculous, plinky, unrecognisable ringtone.
"Oh good, the ice cream van's arrived!" called out another colleague. "Two choc-ices and a cornet, please!" he added, as the first colleague left the room to answer the call.
Occasional Gruts commenter and Friend of Charles Darwin, Peter McGrath, gets some great publicity for his big project:
BBC: Darwin's Beagle ship replica plan
Plans are being drawn up to build a £3.3m working replica of the boat that took Charles Darwin around the world at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire. Fundraising for the project, which would mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth in 2009, is under way. The aim is to built a seaworthy vessel identical to the HMS Beagle on the outside, but with a modern interior…
Mr McGrath said the ship would look identical to the original Beagle on the outside but would have a 21st century interior with diesel auxiliary engines and generators. He said he hoped the fi[ni]shed vessel would inspire the scientists of the future and be used by researchers and scientists from across the world.
This afternoon, I promised Stense I'd send her my chilli, crab and lemon spaghetti recipe, so I've put it on Gruts for everyone to see.
You should give it a go: it's rather easy, and extremely tasty.
A bit like Stense, in fact.
To what on earth is this once-great country coming?
Call me old-fashioned. Call me pedantic. I'm probably both. But this sort of thing goes some way to explaining how we managed to lose an entire sodding empire:
I know it's a hell of a claim, but I don't think I've ever been quite so ashamed of a British government of any political persuasion:
BBC: Minister urged to condemn Israel
Margaret Beckett repeatedly rejected calls by MPs on all sides to condemn Israel's actions in the Lebanon.
The foreign secretary said she had condemned Hezbollah but bowing to MPs' demands on criticising Israel was not the most effective policy.
I'm sure Mrs Beckett would claim that condemning Israel for is blatant over-reaction in the Lebanon would make it harder for us to broker a peace deal in future. A peace deal is clearly of highest priority for Tony Blair and George W Bush: they have cleared their diaries for this time next week to have a chat about it. Anyone might think they were employing delaying tactics.
In the meantime, Israeli parents are getting their children to scrawl messages onto shells that will be fired into the Lebanon.
That should help a lot.
It must be great to have God on your side.
BBC: Hoylake ready for golfing glamour
…Hoylake, a former fishing village nestled on the Wirral peninsula, is playing host to the world's best golfers and the 600 members of the media that follow them.
It is providing a profile boost that not even George Clooney can overshadow as Open play gets under way at the Royal Liverpool course for the first time since 1967.
There's a perfectly simple explanation for 'George Clooney' having been spotted at the Open this week. You should be able to piece together the explanation yourselves after consulting the following stories from the Gruts archive:
New Scientist: This is no way to save the whales
For a graphic example of science being abused for political and sentimental ends look no further than the debate over whaling.
I'm not going to comment on the above article (the bulk of which is locked away behind a New Scientist, subscriber-only paywall), but cop a load of the author's name: James (I kid you not) Hrynyshyn!
Do you see what he's done? He's taken his real surname (which is presumably some foreign equivalent of Harrison) and replaced all the vowels with the letter y. That is so totally cool.
Some time ago, I toyed with the idea of changing my name to Richaard Caarter in a sort of tribute to Søren Kierkegaard, but this idea with the ys is so much better:
Rychyrd Cyrtyr, just imagine that! Don't you just love the (for want of a better word) Welshness of it?
Or is it just a tad too Lynyrd Skynyrd?
A top photo is worth repeating…Flickr: Comments on Tiger Woods:
jonathonkirkham says:
The Police officer in the background is my dad. He's acting as Tiger Woods' Bodyguard, along with another officer, during the open at Hoylake. :-)
Hebden Bridge Times: Station Goes Off the Rails
Commuters at Mytholmroyd Rail Station watched in horror as a man injected himself with what appeared to be heroin in the middle of a busy platform.
Good job he didn't light up a fag as well: he might have landed himself in real trouble.
I had a good-old chin-wag on the phone with Stense on Friday. She told me she was going to a jazz concert being given by one of her friends.
So I took the opportunity to tell her about the Encore Game:
The Encore Game is a partial misnomer, because it can be played at any point during a music concert, not just during the encore. It is best played when the artist is between tracks, and is making polite banter with the audience. At such points, some pillock from the audience will usually call out the name of their favourite song by the artist, hoping that will in some way encourage them to play it. Other pillocks then usually join in. It's all a bit embarrassing.
Anyway, as the calls begin to subside, you make your move, shouting out:
It always gets a laugh, and, on one of the occasions when I tried it, the Archdrude himself was good enough to admit that he didn't know all of the words.
Important Note: Do not attempt to play the Encore Game at a Cliff Richard concert. People will just think you're a pillock, rather than a postmodernist comic genius. Mind you, if they're at a Cliff Richard concert, who are they to cast nasturtiums?
Carolyn came second in her accidental trampolining competition. Apparently, during her second routine, she landed on one foot off her backdrop and they wouldn't mark her after that, so she got a really bad score.
That's ridiculous! Landing on one foot has got to be harder than landing on both. It stands to reason (no pun intended). I mean, if Tiger Woods had won the Open yesterday standing on one leg, we'd have said he was a genius. If Dago Maradona had hopped through the entire England defence beforehand, we might have stopped harping on about the Hand of God incident by now. If Jonny Wilkinson's last-second drop-goal to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup had been made without the use of his left leg, we'd have said it was the most amazing drop-kick ever.
It was a fix. Carolyn was robbed.
Every so often, Carolyn sends me an incomprehensible text message. And she's not even one of those tw@s who use stupid abbreviations; Carolyn spells and punctuates impeccably. Her latest effort went as follows (I have replaced certain numbers with x's for privacy reasons):
None available round here. xxx/xxxx, xxx/xxxx, xxx/xxxx, xxx/xxxx, xxx/xxxx. Could you check in your area?
I phoned her back straight away. She burst out laughing when she heard who it was: "I take it you got my text message, then," she said.
It turned out Carolyn wanted me to pick up some stuff for her at Argos. "It's an absolute bargain," she explained. "Don't you think a combustion engine will make a great Christmas present for Aran? Well, for the Christmas after next, maybe?"
I suppose any kid who asked for a water butt for his birthday will be delighted with a combustion engine for Christmas. Even if he does have to wait for over a year.
Remember my London Irish rugby photos that, after an altercation with the Powers That Be, I encouraged all and sundry to make use of free of charge? Well, one of them has made it onto the Wikipedia Rugby Portal homepage.
That'll do nicely.
I know what's been keeping you awake at night: did Stense try the chilli, crab and lemon spaghetti recipe I sent her last week, and what did she think of it? I know, I've been losing sleep over it too. This afternoon, I was relieved to receive the following endorsement via text message:
Did I tell you that the crab recipe was absolutely delicious? Thank you!
To which I replied:
No, you didn't, but I already knew that, thanks!
Seriously, though, you should give some of the recipes a go some time. You'd be doing yourself a big favour. They have all been tried and tested by Yours Truly, they are all (therefore) pretty damn easy, and they are all extremely tasty. This evening, Jen and I had the spaghetti carbonara, and there were only two words to describe it: fan tastic!
I walked past one of the cleaning ladies in the corridor at work today. "Good afternoon, John," she said, cheerily.
"Good afternoon," I replied, just as cheerily. I have long since given up trying to explain to her that my name is Richard.
"Hey, Mike, the cleaning lady just called me John again," I said to a colleague, once the cleaning lady was out of earshot.
"She calls me Brian," said Mike.
Times: In the doghouse, the pensioner told to remove 'offensive' sign
For 32 years it prompted little more than a wry smile. But now a pensioner who has a sign on her garden gate warning Jehovah's Witnesses that their presence could result in them being eaten by dogs has been ordered to take it down.
Hampshire police received a complaint that the notice outside Jean Grove's cottage, which reads "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses", was "distressing, offensive and inappropriate".
Apparently, it's not seen as offensive and inappropriate to turn up uninvited at someone's door and preach total bollocks at them. The last time it happened to us, Jen dealt with the Witnesses magnificently: she strung them along for several minutes, until they started talking about how lovely God had made the world, with all the animals and flowers and stuff:
"Why do you lot always go on about animals?" asked Jen. "What about all the people living in poverty in Africa? Why doesn't God help them? Have they done something wrong?"
The Jehovah's Witnesses said something along the lines of the Lord moves in mysterious ways, but added, yes, basically, the Africans must have done something wrong.
"The poor are always with us," said Jen.
"Jesus said that!" chirped one of the Witnesses.
"I know he did, and he was bloody wrong!" said Jen, closing the door.
We never saw them again.
BBC: Mayor mulls bicycle number plates
Number plates for bicycles are being considered by the mayor [of London] in a bid to improve cycling standards. Ken Livingstone believes bicycles and their owners should be registered so that law-breakers can be caught…
Peter King, chief executive of British Cycling, said only a "tiny minority of cyclists" were at fault of flouting road regulations.
Yeah, right.
I can't see how bike number plates could me made to work without compulsory insurance and licences for cyclists too, but that's probably a damn good idea.
I dare say Irish Mick would disagree. Last week, I learnt that he is no longer Irish Mick, in that he is now living in Manchester. He's got a new job with Sustrans, the sustainable transport (i.e. bike) charity as Co-ordinator of Rangers in the North of England—which is so Tolkienesque, I think I'm going to start calling him Strider.
Liverpool Echo: Gormley: I want statues to stay
Artist Antony Gormley has given the campaign to keep his iron men statues on Crosby beach a massive boost—by fully supporting the plans.
Mr Gormley told the Daily Post he thought making the beach the permanent home for the Another Place work was the "best future" for it.
It would be great if the statues could stay in Crosby: they have transformed an otherwise uninspiring beach into a truly wonderful experience (and a major tourist attraction).
I did my accounts the other day, but I couldn't make them balance. I had £10.21 more than expected in the bank. It turned out I had received an unexpected electronic transfer credit from Amazon UK: my first referral payment for books and stuff I have mentioned on this website. Not bad, I suppose, considering I'm not exactly using hard-sell tactics. As promised, a cheque for £10.21 is now making its way to Amnesty International.
When I delved a bit deeper, I discovered that £9's worth of the £10.21 was due to multiple sales of one book: Fossils, Finches and Fuegians by Richard Keynes. This was particularly pleasing because, not only is it an excellent book, but I received my copy free from the publishers. This website malarkey does occasionally have certain perks, you know.
But the really strange discovery, when I looked into my referrals history, was that I had earned a (very small) referral fee for a book I have never read nor mentioned on this site: Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, whose synopsis on Amazon goes as follows:
It began in Scotland, at an ancient stone circle. Claire Randall was swept through time into the arms of James Fraser whose love for her became legend—a tale of tragic passion that ended with her return to the present to bear his child. Two decades later, Claire travelled back again to reunite with Jamie, this time in frontier America. But Claire had left someone behind in her own time—their daughter Brianna. Now Brianna has made a disturbing discovery that sends her to the stone circle and a terrifying leap into the unknown. In search of her mother and the father she has never met, she risks her own future to try to change history—and to save their lives. But as Brianna plunges into an uncharted wilderness, a heartbreaking encounter may strand her forever in the past… or root her in the place she should be, where her heart and soul belong…
OK, you chaps, hands up who's been reading historical romances.
Jen: Robbie Williams has done all right for himself, hasn't he?
Me: Yes, he's come a long way since Mork and Mindy.
Actually, Mork and Mindy was years ahead of its time: it is credited with making the first ever reference to nanu-technology.
I'll get my coat.
Hey, has Clarkson been nicking my material?
I'm sorry, it's only just occurred to me: have you ever seen Graham Norton and Jason Donovan in the same room?
We have a right to know.
Some bloke just chose Robert FitzRoy as his specialist subject on Mastermind. I got ten answers right, which would have left me in joint-second place going into the general knowledge round. I'm kicking myself for not getting 12.
OK, OK, so I need to get out more!
