Monday, February 25, 2008
Fame at last!
We have made it to the news at last, at one remove at least. Driving along what used to be called the Exeter by-pass, we came across a B&Q delivery truck at a very interesting angle with the cab in the air. It had been trying to unload a pallet of bricks into someone's front drive using one of those cranes mounted just behind the cab and had toppled over. Three police cars in attendance. Next morning fine picture of same across the front of the Express & Echo.
This on the way to, amongst other places, Tavistock. This was a very posh place considering it is old town on the edge of Dartmoor with no apparent means of support. Very flashy parish church, dedicated to the patron saint of the BH's family (St E********s). White barrel vaulted nave and aisles (three of them rather than the usual two), with the black beams nicely showing off how crooked the vaulting was. Very posh stock of records in the Oxfam shop and so now the proud possessor of two Deutsch Gramaphone boxed sets of Mozart string quartets interpreted by the Amadeus string quartet. One earlies with numbers in the one hundreds and one lates with numbers in the three hundreds. Maybe he stopped writing the things in the middle of his career. And as is often the case with boxed sets, the records look pretty much unused. A good find, given that I had been a bit light on this particular item. On the other hand, the bookstall in the pannier market was doing Oxford Classic's (apostrophe in the right place?) Trollopes for £3.50 - that is to say 50p more than the shop by Earlsfield railway station. But no rush as I still have one in hand. Probably able to wait until the next visit to Earlsfield.
Dartmoor itself rather wet and misty. Getting a bit to old to enjoy tramping through that sort of thing - never mind the company I was keeping at the time. And the Fox Tor cafe in Princetown is moving veggywards. BH's veggy lunch was a rather better bet, as it turned out, than my pasty and chips. Pastry of the pasty rather hard and chewy.
In the course of getting there and back we came across three mobile homes (perhaps chalets would be a better name for these things without wheels. But they live on trailer parks) on four lorries and four large new tanks, again on four lorries aka tank transporters. The sort of thing the Dinky version of which one would die for as a nine year old. Now I can understand the need for mobile homes, but now that we have done for the Iraqis, I wonder what we need these large tanks for? Just in case we decide to have a pop at the Persians? Maybe the same chap is in charge of this buying decision as the one who decided that we needed to buy a whole new lot of shiny H-bombs. Or maybe they were A-bombs. In any event, there are to be a lot of them and they would do a lot of damage if they were ever used.
And moved on three counts to record my opinion that we would do better to legalise heroin. First, we could then simply buy the crop from the Afghans rather than impoverishing them by destroying the stuff (and I dare say, some of them with it). Remembering that they do not need much impoverishment or encouragement to start banging off at whatever foreigners happen to get into their sights. Second, a good proportion of our ladies of the night might not need to be ladies of the night if there was some other way of getting their fix. And third, the present arrangements have completely failed. The street price of the stuff remains so low that it is cheaper to get high that to get drunk. And the only winners are the people who make a lot of money supplying the stuff and the people who get paid a lot of money to try to stop them. A win-win situation for both these lots. But the taxpayer lot loses. We have to carry the cost of all the burglaries needed to pay for habits. We have to carry the cost of all those people in prison because we have criminalised them. And we have to carry the costs of all those people putting them there.
But pleased to see a full page article in today's DT in support of assisted suicide. Never thought that this particular organ would countenance such a thing. Maybe, some time in the not too distant future, we will start treating ourselves with the same consideration that we treat our cats.
And now off to the allotment to harvest what is left of the Brussells tops. Not had any proper vegetables for four days.
This on the way to, amongst other places, Tavistock. This was a very posh place considering it is old town on the edge of Dartmoor with no apparent means of support. Very flashy parish church, dedicated to the patron saint of the BH's family (St E********s). White barrel vaulted nave and aisles (three of them rather than the usual two), with the black beams nicely showing off how crooked the vaulting was. Very posh stock of records in the Oxfam shop and so now the proud possessor of two Deutsch Gramaphone boxed sets of Mozart string quartets interpreted by the Amadeus string quartet. One earlies with numbers in the one hundreds and one lates with numbers in the three hundreds. Maybe he stopped writing the things in the middle of his career. And as is often the case with boxed sets, the records look pretty much unused. A good find, given that I had been a bit light on this particular item. On the other hand, the bookstall in the pannier market was doing Oxford Classic's (apostrophe in the right place?) Trollopes for £3.50 - that is to say 50p more than the shop by Earlsfield railway station. But no rush as I still have one in hand. Probably able to wait until the next visit to Earlsfield.
Dartmoor itself rather wet and misty. Getting a bit to old to enjoy tramping through that sort of thing - never mind the company I was keeping at the time. And the Fox Tor cafe in Princetown is moving veggywards. BH's veggy lunch was a rather better bet, as it turned out, than my pasty and chips. Pastry of the pasty rather hard and chewy.
In the course of getting there and back we came across three mobile homes (perhaps chalets would be a better name for these things without wheels. But they live on trailer parks) on four lorries and four large new tanks, again on four lorries aka tank transporters. The sort of thing the Dinky version of which one would die for as a nine year old. Now I can understand the need for mobile homes, but now that we have done for the Iraqis, I wonder what we need these large tanks for? Just in case we decide to have a pop at the Persians? Maybe the same chap is in charge of this buying decision as the one who decided that we needed to buy a whole new lot of shiny H-bombs. Or maybe they were A-bombs. In any event, there are to be a lot of them and they would do a lot of damage if they were ever used.
And moved on three counts to record my opinion that we would do better to legalise heroin. First, we could then simply buy the crop from the Afghans rather than impoverishing them by destroying the stuff (and I dare say, some of them with it). Remembering that they do not need much impoverishment or encouragement to start banging off at whatever foreigners happen to get into their sights. Second, a good proportion of our ladies of the night might not need to be ladies of the night if there was some other way of getting their fix. And third, the present arrangements have completely failed. The street price of the stuff remains so low that it is cheaper to get high that to get drunk. And the only winners are the people who make a lot of money supplying the stuff and the people who get paid a lot of money to try to stop them. A win-win situation for both these lots. But the taxpayer lot loses. We have to carry the cost of all the burglaries needed to pay for habits. We have to carry the cost of all those people in prison because we have criminalised them. And we have to carry the costs of all those people putting them there.
But pleased to see a full page article in today's DT in support of assisted suicide. Never thought that this particular organ would countenance such a thing. Maybe, some time in the not too distant future, we will start treating ourselves with the same consideration that we treat our cats.
And now off to the allotment to harvest what is left of the Brussells tops. Not had any proper vegetables for four days.
# posted by Jim @ 7:28 AM 
