pumpkinstrokemarrow

A propos of them, I see from the Evening Standard (8/1 business 34) that Mr Branson must be another member. It seems that he has all sorts of grand schemes on the go. One of which is a group of 12 apostles to save the world - and he may even become one. Nelson Mandela has already signed up. Another is to flood chunks of Africa to sort out the problem of rising sea levels. Maybe Palestine would be a better choice - that way he would kill several birds with one stone.

I also see that a young lady, now around 18, has lived on more or less nothing but chips since she was a baby. She looked OK in the picture. But what did she look like in real life? Have all the diet people got it wrong after all?

And last but not least that the McCanns are negotiating to make a film about the losing of their daughter. Will they never learn?

Now being the proud possessors of an invalid buggy which is invalid - that is to say that it is not working, having been sat in a shed, from new, for 15 years - we went over to darkest Egham to see the people from whom it was bought to see if we could get a key. The theory being that, since we had been informed by the very helpful maker somewhere in Kentucky, that they all had the same key, the service people in Egham might keep some spares. Which indeed they did. So now we can turn the thing on. Sadly, still no locomotion despite the battery charger saying that the batteries are full. The concensus is that the charger is telling porkies and that the batteries are finished. There is also the problem of the contact breaker which I broke in an effect to get the thing moving and now declines to un-break. The story seems to be that there is some cunning sequence involving the key needed to un-break the thing - a secret only known to authorised dealers. All in all, given that the market for second hand buggies seems to be very soft, not clear that it is worth spending much more time on the thing. Although I had been rather looking forward to driving the thing to TB. (I would have to go very early as the thing has no lights. It does not strike me, despite being a well made contraption, as being terribly waterproof either).

The back of Egham, various varieties of Thorpe (including the water park), was a very odd place. Stranded just inside the M25. We were looking for a place to picnic up Clockhouse Lane East and found that it ended in a rubbish dump just in the lee of the motorway embankment. Clockhouse Lane West continued on the other side, but without connection. Not a wasted journey though as there was a small pile of good condition pallets, three of which are now on the allotment. Two of them non-standard sizes, presumably why they were on the dump, and one of them, something I did not notice until I had used it to replace one of the rotton panels of the compost heap, had chipboard blocks - cubes with a side of perhaps four inches - holding them together. We will see how long they last. Never seen such a thing before.

Then there was Thorpe village which contained a large number of very old houses - but no shops or pubs or anything like that. Half the village, houses and all, seemed to have been bought by some suspicious looking educational outfit - supicious in the sense that it smelt a bit of exotic faith. But the church, despite being described on the brown sign as being of the 10th century was firmly shut. Runnymede is in the vicinity and presumably the place was not chosen because there was nothing there at the time - a further coincidence being that I had my first sight of a contemporary copy of the Magna Carta in Salisbury the previous week. About A3 in size, covered with very neat and very small handwriting. And modern enough that one could even make some of the words out - unlike that stuff the Saxons used to knock out.

Then on to Cherstey and inspected the church and charity shop there. The church was most unusual with the nave roof having been replaced in the first half of the 19th century with a most unusual pastel blue vaulting supported on what looked like wood encases steel columns. A sort of fan vaulting where the fans had no veins as was usual in the older form. There was also an 18th century memorial to someone who claimed to be the 31st child of someone. He couldn't have done too badly, have been too runtish, having made it to more than 60. I wonder how many wives the father had to get through to get to 31 children. Borrowed a devotional book called Screwtape by C S Lewis - which I learn since was a best seller in its day. Hard to see that it would be now. Not sure that writing amusing letters as from a senior fiend to one of his nephews, an apprentice, is quite the evangelical thing any more; indeed, a bit odd that it ever was. Maybe a high church, late life convert sort of thing.

Which book prompts me to wonder, having seen that Diana has covered a good chunk of the front page of today's DT, whether the fiends in purgatory take pity on her at coffee time, between grillings as it were, and let her tune into all the media coverage she is getting back on earth. It would warm her heart to think that she is nearly as good at pulling the coverage dead as she was alive.

Yesterday lunch time, pork soup. Kidneys for dinner. More pork soup for dinner today. Would all be very healthy but for my learning recently that kidneys, like pork, are a good source of chloresterol. Perhaps I can metabolise it all into steroids and get whatever benefit they bring.