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Saturday, 30 July 2016

Merkel for the chop? Well, for about five minutes or at last as long as it took you to read a recent Daily Mail story. And ‘the will of the people’: just how bloody inconvenient is it going to become?

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Browsing as one does — OK, ‘as I do’ — browsing as one does the Daily Mail online website, I came across this story and it occurred to me ...
Saturday, 23 July 2016

OK, so which of the current stooges (one’s now dead) will cause the most havoc for us before breakfast? My money’s on Erdogan – Trump hasn’t yet grown a moustache

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This blogger likes to think he is not much given to hyperbole. Perhaps he is wrong. But watching Donald Trump strut the stage in Cleveland a...
Thursday, 21 July 2016

A few last words for no very good reason at all...

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I am writing this in the couryard - the 'smoking' couryard of The Horse in Moretonhampstead, pretty much the back of beyond on Darmo...
Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Spielberg gets just two cheers from me for his Berlin Wall epic, but klezmer music gets all three. A shtik naches

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It’s odd how, when and why thoughts come to you. Last night was the second in our concerts this time around, and we were at a wine chateau c...
Sunday, 17 July 2016

No, this honkey believes that blue men can’t always sing the whites and sometimes shouldn’t even try (but no, I’ve not crossed over to the LibDems, no sir, life’s far too short). As for Turkey – well, what did we expect from an apprentice dictator such as Erdogan? That last remark will pretty much mark my card. If he staged his own coup, he wouldn’t be the first, but then, if…

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There was a jokey question years ago, originally posed, I think, by Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band – and, no, I wasn’t a regu...
Saturday, 16 July 2016

Consternation in France when I turn down lunch (yes, really), but if that’s too boring (it is a bit), an odd response to Turkey’s military coup (in that we’re all supposed to cheer along democrats even when they are nothing of the kind) and the ‘Brexit was the right move’ line gets a sound analysis

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Illats - Day Three I am in my third full day down here in the south-west of France, but we have not yet attended any concerts. We have thr...
Friday, 15 July 2016

Boris (hereafter and in view of his unprecedented, not to say bizarre, coronation as Britain’s New Foreign Secretary to be referred to as ‘Johnson’) and a tale of woe, woe, woe when there was no room at the inn for this traveller and, bugger me, if not one Wise Man turned up. As for surly, unhelpful French bastards, I present a prime example

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Illats – July 15 (Bastille Day plus 1) The baffling, baffling, utterly baffling appointment of Boris Johnson as Britain’s new Foreign Sec...
Saturday, 9 July 2016

The easy way out again in which Mystic Pat admits ‘The future of the EU? I don’t have a sodding clue, and nor does anyone else’, so it looks like a coming boomtime for snake oil salesman (still, surprisingly, allowed to practice under EU regulations, although they are working on rectifying that by 2026. It seems the Portuguese are being difficult and claim it will destroy their snake oil industry)

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On 9 Jul 2016, at 09:04, — — — — —  — — — — — — — — — wrote: The threat of invoking Article 50 will be pre-empted by the French and the Ge...
Thursday, 7 July 2016

In which I take risk of offending a distant family member who I don’t think reads this blog but just might come across it. Oh, and a hearty hello to a reader from Eye, in Suffolk, who seems to be a regular visitor. I’ll explain how I know in a let blog entry (although the eagle-eyed might find out for themselves)

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This started as an email to a friend (who reads this blog). I far prefer writing long emails and would even write letters if my handwriting ...
Thursday, 30 June 2016

Until now omnishambles was a joke on TV: but welcome to a real complete, 24-carat omnishambles as Britain votes to ditch the EU and no one, but no one knows what to do next

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Haven’t written here for a while, because I would only have been writing about one thing and would simply have been repeating myself. In fac...