pumpkinstrokemarrow

Further into the biography of Napoleon (which I had forgotten was simply his first, rather than his family, name) I find an excellent quote - originally, I think, from Samuel Butler - to the effect that with women being endowed with so much power by nature it is foolish to add rights and powers in law.

Also reminded that great men do not usually come to be so without a good deal of hard work. Some of which, in his case, was to do with juggling the various competing forces so that they drifted him to the top of the heap. The forces in question not being terribly cuddly - it seems that in the early days he went to banquets carrying his own cutlery, crockery and food (as a precaution against poison) and that he survived at least one serious attempt at assination by bomb.

Time for a rant about boilers - which I am sure are the subject of a conspiracy by the boiler industry to extract money from the long suffering and more or less defenceless consumer. The nub of the matter being that they keep changing the regulations about boilers so that one has to buy a new one more often than one might otherwise, and now with the added twist that the new boiler can't be in the same place as the old one. This means that the fitter does not only get his percentage on the sale of the boiler but he also gets to fit a whole lot of new pipes. And there is a spin off to his mate the painter who has to tidy up after all the alterations. Presumably what happens is that the fitters who don't like actually fitting get to sit on the committees which write the regulations where they can look after their old mates. They probably get expenses paid visits to Brussells to confer with their European colleagues on these matters. All in the interests of reducing the life time risk of a boiler flavoured accident from something negligible to something even more negligible. Maybe we should get the accountants to work on a cost benefit analysis.

In parallel, I also have a solid fuel stove which I installed myself without the benefit of heating engineer advice some years ago. Since then we have installed double glazing in the containing room which means that we have no vent, let alone the sort of vent beloved by the gas board that cannot be shut. So if I were to light the thing and go to sleep downstairs it is a fair chance that I would not wake up again. This I think is dreadful and I shall write to the DT at once requiring the establishment of a committe of inquiry to look into the matter and make recommendations. In the meantime I think the bottom half of our house should be sealed off as a probable crime scene.

And lastly, perturbed no doubt by the parlous state of my onions (see above) which are now drying out of the garage floor - I had a very disturbing dream about rotting onions which collapsed on the first touch and turned out to contain no onion at all. No doubt the more dubious parts of this promising dream have been suppressed.