Good Things 22

Vaccuum flasks

So good for saving from constantly buying coffee, and great for days out. Mmmmmm.

The wrong kind of policing

The area of Colchester has been mercifully free so far of any civil unrest that has ravaged so much across Britain's inner cities these last few days. It seems that the most volatile areas are those where the policing is sadly at its most liberal or at its most under-funded, whereas in Colchester - an area not unfamiliar with rowdy, chavvish behaviour - any reciprocal violence in response to any other acts of vandalism has been quietly kept in check.

For those removed from the danger, it seems exaggerated and aloof. For those in the midst of the terror, the sense of insecurity is palpable. All one can do is carry on going about one's normal lives. Carefully.

That's Out!

The complacent decision by Ian Bell to return to the pavilion at the tea interval and subsequent "run out" at the Second Test, is, as time will tell, a likely storm in a teacup, but it does draw attention to how players continue to ride on oblivious to umpiring, an attitude actively encouraged with the Decision Review System, that allows them to dissent further from the figure of authority in the field.

It was also, as much as a sporting gesture by the Indians to "the spirit of the game" (for whom it did otherwise very little good), a way of taming the angry and mostly drunken Trent Bridge crowd, who only minutes before were gleefully Mexican waving, and equally oblivious to the on-field action as Ian Bell was at teatime.

Ian Bell misguidedly heads to the pavilion for his teatime cuppa - before the umpire has told him to, meanwhile the Indians have whipped the bails off.

Is it any wonder?

...that the News International corporation should have stooped so low as to hack the mobile phones of murder victims, giving families false hopes that their young ones were still alive.

The surprise perhaps, is that it has taken this long for the rest of the media to rise up against Murdoch (although there are some dissenters who fear for the "freedom" of investigative reporting), after so much scandal, over knows goodness how many years. The Milly Dowler case is the straw that broke the camel's back.

I can't feel any huge amount of rage towards Rebekah Brooks, as she is very much one major cog in the wheel of an enormous, monstrous machine, which has encompassed governments (including the present one) as well as once respectable newspapers.

The only good of writing about this now, is that hopefully a thorough clean-up of the whole sleazy mess is made. It would be too much to hope for the end of tabloid journalism.

You're as young as you feel

40 this year (coming soon - Manhattan Diary commemorating the event!), and yet as I stood waiting for a bus this afternoon, beside a steep wall along Mersea Road, I climbed up and sat on top of it, just like when I was a kid at school.

Despots

It's been a momentous weekend, just a day or two after the anniversary (April 29th) of the death of Adolf Hitler, now comes the world's other great bogeyman.

Many years ago, I was asked in R.E. class the hypothetical question if ever Colonel Gaddafi came on a school visit: would I shoot him if I had the opportunity? Given some due thought towards self-preservation and security, I honestly answered that yes, I would. With Gaddafi and his kind very much in the limelight once again, I feel the tiniest amount of pleasure, and the far greater sense of relief, to hear that Osama Bin Laden is reported to have been shot.

There are other dictators floating around (Robert Mugabe's controversial presence at the Vatican is a case in point), but in the case of Bin Laden, and I say this in all sincerity: God rest his soul. I fear also those dreaded reprisals, but they could surely not be so much as the awfulness of September 11th.

I also note that today - in the 2011 Christian calendar - is St. George's Day; in the grounds of the United Nations in New York is an allegorical sculpture of St. George - the figure of good - slaying evil, in the shape of a double headed nuclear missile dragon. The imagery is appropriate.

A World without Women

That was the sight that practically beheld me on Friday morning, the 29th of April (the same date as the wedding of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, by sinister coincidence), when I walked through Colchester - as indeed was probably the sight throughout most of Britain during the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton.

I'd seen the beginning of the ceremony, and their betrothal, and that was that.

May they remain in happiness and an all-round happier marriage than their seniors in the Monarchy who have trod the uneven path. Time, as ever, will tell.