Today’s walk was the worst by far: a boring landscape, overgrown paths, and we often walked beside the river that stank like a monkey’s latrine. The management of those responsible for this disaster should be made to pay for the damage they have done and the disposal of the sewage they have poured in the river.
What do you make of Keir Starmer? He has a bland, featureless face and looks more or less the same as he did when he was six. He has all the charisma of a Mormon actuary. He claims not to have a favourite novel or a poem that makes him cry, nor does he dream. He has no religious beliefs, and he is not long on self-deprecatory humour. He is a Pharisee who loves the law. I wonder what he will be like when several wheels fall off at the same time. In recent times, Gordon Brown was faced with the collapse of the world economies, May faced the meltdown of the Commons, Boris had to deal with Brexit, Covid and Putin. We presently face Gaza, Iran, N Korea … Just what will explode next?
I suspect Starmer doesn’t know what he will be like himself until he is faced with having to sort out a series of hog-whimpering and unsolvable disasters.
Poor Rishi Sunak was underestimated. He was balanced, talented, very hardworking, disciplined, and in my view a good Prime Minister, more or less destroyed by the cartoonists who continually sought to portray him as a childish dwarf.
I think he will be delighted to get back to money-making in California.
Those Were the Days
LP Hartley told us that the past is a foreign country, and they do things differently there. And this has never been truer than in the steamy-sex-before-marriage/co-habitation debate.
Jane and I are blessed with clergy children and a good many grandchildren. We “big talk” all sorts of stuff. Often sex.
Adrift at Sea
Nowadays, it’s about “My truth”, “Who are you to tell me anything?” and so-called “freedom”. ZANE supporters of a certain age will remember that when we were young, the Christian ethos was a good deal stronger than it is today and social pressure more vivid.
Today’s parents have lost confidence in whether they have the “right” to say how their children should lead their lives and whether their relationships are “wise” or not. Who dares say, “Monica darling, when you are off your smartphone, please listen. Is that man with the delightful ponytail, covered in NAZI tattoos, yes dear, the one with a dog on a rope, is he the very best you can do?”
Or who has the courage to observe, “Henry, your nice girl has told me she wants to become a ‘pole dancer’. Darling, what on earth does she do?” for fear of being labelled an old fart. The concept of “family” is today blurred, leaving the young adrift in a choppy sea without a compass or a map – and all because parents fear giving offence. They want to be “nice” and to have their children as “friends”. But our children aren’t meant to be our friends…
In my day, when we tiptoed down the corridor with our shoes in our hands at 2am, at least we knew that what we were about to do would not be approved of by family, our schoolteachers or the church. It made illicit sex even more fun – or so I was told!
That’s mostly gone now. My own view is that I’m all for change – provided it’s for the better.
Anything is better than today’s confusion, though. Of course, there was a good deal of hypocrisy and cruelty in Victorian times, but we have long since hurled the baby out with the bath water. There has to be a middle way, a compromise. Think of the words today that have lost meaning: chastity, virginity, purity. Of course, girls are more vulnerable than boys, although this flies in the face of the bollocks bleated by today’s tawdry media.
Within a short time of meeting a possible romantic partner, our grandfathers would have been asked by the woman’s father or brother, “Please may I ask your intentions?” And if a man didn’t pass muster, he would be booted out and not always politely. And if he didn’t play by the rules, he’d be told, “You’re a bounder taking advantage, Sir! My Gad, you need a horsewhipping!”
Those were the days.
Sew Gifted
Jane is amazed that I enjoy sewing. I tell her that anyone who has spent time in the army can sew – and to tell you the truth, I find it rather relaxing.
She is also impressed that I can thread a needle. And now I come to think about it, given my age, so am I!
2 comments
I agree that Rishi Sunak was under-rated and unappreciated while in post; however, I cannot forgive him for calling an election months before he needed to and leaving us to suffer at the hands of the devil.
“Today’s walk was the worst by far: a boring landscape, overgrown paths, and we often walked beside the river that stank like a monkey’s latrine. The management of those responsible for this disaster should be made to pay for the damage they have done and the disposal of the sewage they have poured in the river.”
What is “a boring landscape”? What do you expect it to do? As for “overgrown paths”, they were made by humans trampling parts of that “boring landscape”, even destroying part of it. Never in all my travels have I come across “a monkey’s latrine”. Why should one smell? How about a giraffe’s latrine? I doubt very much that the river you walked by actually “stank”. Was that stink not in your imagination? What is the name of that river? As for any actual sewage in the river, was some of it yours? Some of the smelliest waterways I have smelled have been natural stagnant ponds far from any human habitation.