Monthly Archives: April 2006

Reflections on the British Empire

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For some inexplicable reason, the hotel we stayed at in Sicily last month had a rather magnificent reproduction of this 1886 map of the world, depicting the extent of the British Empire:

British Empire Map

It’s a real Ripping Yarns-type map, with gathered natives and animals from our conquered/discovered lands standing around the edges, looking remarkably happy with their lots. The imperial territories are marked in red: the British Isles (including Ireland), the Falklands, Canada, India, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand…

After studying the map for several minutes, an interesting thought occurred to me: how jolly clever of us only to conquer countries that speak English!

The Aeroplane Games

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Our journey home from Sicily last week was eventful. There were three pissed Mancunian louts with silly haircuts being loud and obnoxious across the aisle from us on the flight from Gatwick to Manchester. The steward had a quiet word with them, not that it did any good.

They were so obnoxious that I spent the entire journey confined to my iPod. Bloody tossers, I thought to myself. Who do they think they are, Oasis or something?

It turned out they were an Oasis tribute band.

Anyway, being on an aeroplane game me the perfect opportunity to play both of my aeroplane games:

Aeroplane Game 1:

When the captain comes on to the P.A. system and begins with words along the lines of:

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain John Mitchell welcoming you aboard flight BA1234 to Manchester…”

…you should turn immediately to the person next to you (who, in my case is nearly always Jen, and, therefore, fully familiar with the game), and blurt out in an alarmed voice:

“Not Captain John Mitchell! He’s rubbish! He’s the one they struck off last year, isn’t he? How the hell did he get his licence back?”

But, as the captain continues his announcement with words along the lines of:

“My co-pilot on today’s flight will be Andrew McTavish…”

…you (or, if they are familiar with the game, the person next to you) should sigh with relief, saying:

“Oh, that’s good! Andrew McTavish is great! He’ll look after us OK!”

That’s it, basically. A harmless bit of fun which greatly amuses your fellow passengers.

Aeroplane Game 2:

As you are disembarking from the aeroplane, either down the steps or walking through the tunnel, you should call out:

“Hello, Cleveland! Rock and roll!”

(It’s a quote from This Is Spinal Tap, and is, therefore, extremely funny.)

Hunting the hunter

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Sparrowhawk

Sparrowhawk (click for larger version).

Nature is still red in tooth and claw in Hebden Bridge. Well, in beak and claw at least:

I had just settled down with a cup of tea and the latest LRB at the dining room table this morning, when I glanced out of the window and spotted a male sparrowhawk underneath our bird feeder, dismanting (rather appropriately) one of our sparrows. I must say, he was making a bit of a meal of it: no finesse whatsoever.

I watched him for about half an hour before I realised it would probably make sense to try to get a photo of such a rare spectacle. So I grabbed my camera and took a few shots through the window before sneaking outside to try to get a bit closer. It proved to be disappointingly easy: I managed to get to within five yards of the bird, firing off dozens of shots through the driving snow, before he finished his meal and took off. The light was extremely poor, so I’m pleased with the result.

More bird photos »

Market research

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Talking of oranges, when I was in Sicily the other week, I spotted a bloke selling oranges from a stall. He had set it up under an orange tree which was full of fruit.

I’m no businessman, but I reckon that guy needs to do a bit more market research.

Check it out

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This article misses the point:

BBC: Alarm over shopping radio tags

…We are all familiar with barcodes, those product fingerprints that save cashiers the bother of keying in the code number of everything we buy. Now, meet their replacement: the RFID tag, or radio frequency ID tag.

These smart labels consist of a tiny chip surrounded by a coiled antenna… While barcodes need to be manually scanned, RFID simply broadcasts its presence and data to electronic readers.

The article goes on to explain how these RFID tags will introduce all sort of (legitimate) privacy concerns, whereas the big supermarkets simply want them to help automate the transport of goods to the shelves.

That’s as maybe, but the real reason why the supermarkets want to introduce RFID tags—the one you never hear them mention—is that the tags will save them the bother and expense of employing hundreds of thousands of low-paid checkout and shelf-stacking staff, thereby increasing their already massive profits.

And will we be prepared to stand for that? Of course we will, if it makes our tins of baked beans a couple of pence cheaper. Even more so if it means we don’t need to go to the supermarket at all.

Fowl deeds

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I’ve been putting two and two together:

BBC: Swan tests confirm deadly virus

A swan found dead in Scotland has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

BBC: Gene Pitney found dead in hotel

American superstar Gene Pitney has been found dead aged 65 in his bed in a Cardiff hotel…

The cause of death is not yet known but is not suspicious.

This one has cover-up written all over it. Remember, you heard it here first.

The man who mistook his hat for a telescope

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Jen and I were sitting at a Sicilian coffee table last week, drinking (as seemed only appropriate at the time) coffee, when we noticed a whole pile of Italians behaving very strangely. Nothing unusual there, you might think, but this lot kept rushing out of their shops to look into the sky. I deduced (correctly) that we were in the middle of an alien invasion a partial solar eclipse.

What to do? Caught during an eclipse without any dark plastic to view the sun through. So I borrowed Jen’s sunglasses and looked through them at right-angles to my own sunglasses, hoping that the polarised filters set at 90° would cut out most of the light. It’s a trick I used with polarised camera lens filters to take photographs of another partial solar eclipse in 1986, but the sunglasses’ filters were clearly of inferior quality, so the trick didn’t work.

Like I said, what to do? Then I had a flash of inspiration and whipped off my rather dapper Akubra hat. Carefully angling the hat so that the sun shone through the ventilation holes, I placed a copy of that morning’s Guardian newspaper in the hat’s shadow. As if by magic, a near-perfect image of the solar eclipse was projected on to the paper. It was, in effect, a slighly lower-fi version of the trick I used in 2004 to document with great accuracy the transit of Venus.

Hatescope

Step 1: Set hatescope at jaunty angle.

Image of eclipse

Step 2: View image of eclipse.

…I must say, I was rather pleased with myself, re-inventing the telescope in the land of Galileo.

Auntie Stense

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Stense became an auntie today. Her niece, Sian Rachel Something (she did tell me the third name, but I forget) was born in the early hours of this morning. Congratulations to Stense’s sister (The Doc) and her brother-in-law, Rob.

By a strange co-incidence, today (5th April) is the date that Stense has consistently yet mistakenly believed to be my birthday. She finally got it right this year, even though my presents didn’t arrive until this afternoon. There was a definite Seventies ring to them. Stense was evidently getting her own back for all the hippy jibes.

Auntie Stense, eh? That’s going to take some getting used to.

Balloon

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A ballon and me

A balloon (left) and me (right) today.

I met Carolyn for coffee this lunchtime. She turned up with a belated birthday present for yours truly: a helium-filled balloon. She had brought it to work with her on the train. She made me walk through the streets of Liverpool, trailing it behind me. Carolyn said people were laughing at me behind my back.

I got some funny looks in Starbucks, but I’m used to that.

It’s the thought that counts.

Culture shock

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View larger image

An amphitheatre last week.

We forget, you know. We Brits forget that we didn’t invent civilisation. We forget that Johnny Foreigner might have something to offer us when it comes to matters cultural.

This time last week, I sat in an amphitheatre built almost two-and-a-half-thousand years ago. While the Ancient Greeks (who were in charge of Sicily at the time) sat and watched plays and poetry recitals with Europe’s largest active volcano as a picturesque backdrop, the equally ancient yet illiterate Britons were still living in huts, daubing themselves with woad. Politically correct cultural relativism notwithstanding, I know where I stand in the poetry vs woad debate.

Even today, as you walk through the streets of Taormina, things feel very different to back in Blighty: there is no litter; there is no chewing gum polka-dotting the pavements (presumably because everyone still smokes); even on Friday and Saturday nights, there are no drunken louts and loutesses yelling their heads off and vomiting—people simply go for a walk down the main street, windowshopping; the coffee is superb (although the tea, it has to be said, is dire); the food is proper food; people are courteous and friendly (although I did wonder whether they don’t go a bit over the top with all their male-on-male kissing); the shop-fronts have retained their individuality, and have not degraded into the standard, British corporate monoculture; there are no in-your-face street hawkers (apart from the occasional flower-seller); there are no advertising hoardings; there are no broken paving stones; everyone seems relaxed and totally unstressed. Yes, you think to yourself, this is all very civilised. Maybe there might be something in the continental lifestyle after all. Maybe, just maybe, we Brits might be able to learn something from our European cousins.

And then you go back to your hotel, and you look down at the bidet, and you think to yourself, Those dirty, dirty bastards!