Spaced Out Saturday

How the hacks must be happy tonight.  Tim Peake the 'Brit' in space has returned safe.  This means they can move on from the tale of the shot MP and talk about something different.  The caring media love a new story as yesterdays news does not sell, especially when the story has been told and you are merely filling space in both print and sound and vision rather than acting like a journalist.  A new story, and this man has been a news story since he went up six months ago, a new story is a delight to the media.
For me it means nothing.  Certainly he has had fun in space, certainly he has done decent experiments and taught children from up above live into their classroom or school hall, certainly it is a difficult thing to be weightless for six months.  However as a woman 'Brit' has already been up in the shuttle some time ago I fail to see the adventure here.   Add to this the fact that the 'Brit' had to take US citizenship before he could go means that he is now a 'US, Brit' and not a 'Brit!'  Add also the fact that a Russian and an American were also up there with him and they were almost never mentioned at any time and I see the union flag waving as a wee bit of rampant English imperialist xenophobia.  That at least is something they are good at.  I suppose it would be tedious to point out that such flights into space have gone on for years and this man is not therefore that special, so I will not point this out in case it upsets someone.
He knows a great deal, he has done his job, he has had fun but spare us the rest please.

At a few minutes before seven this morning I stopped to allow the defibrillator to be used on me at the top of the slope and cogitated at the sky above.  It may interest you to know that according to some Monday the 20th of June will be the longest day this year, that is the Summer solstice!  Today is the 18th day and the weather is not yet very Summery.  I may have burnt myself on one of the two days hot weather we have so far noted but I wish summer to be more of a length than this.
It's just no fair so it's no!

 
Sad for the relatives and especially the husband of Jo Cox the lass who was gunned down.  The man accused when asked his name in the dock did not answer "Thomas Mair" as he ought but "Death to traitors, freedom for Britain."  One suspects he will be locked up under a law which regards him as mentally insane and unfit for prison but given a kind of life sentence in a secure unit.  
This is hard for some and a friend of mine today notes a year since his wife passed on.  How hard this has been for him even allowing for the many friends praying for him.  In the end he goes home alone and still has that empty space beside him.   Jo Cox's husband is young enough to remarry, and indeed with two young children ought to, but many others are alone and no-one can comfort them.

 
One more football game tonight.  From tomorrow the games will be played at a more social time, five in the evening and eight for the last game.  How glad am I to be able to get some sleep at last!  All this action has been ruining my social life.  Social life in this context is not to be confused with actually having a social life!  My life has however been out of context, I have missed many radio programmes I would otherwise have heard, missed much sleep and trips to far off towns to buy cheap meat and other requirements.  Little has been done in the abode either, not that this makes much difference as you know.  Roll on tomorrow.

Unending Euros, Boring Work and Murder

These Euro games are unending.  They are on three times a day every day until the sections have been decided and then some form of normality returns sometime next week.  This means I miss my afternoon siesta when I have to enter the historical world and even on my days off I miss the sleep that my beauty desperately requires and it is beginning to show.
Work today was slow, my mind was slower, little happened to keep me awake and with so many missing the place was quiet.  Much time was spent watching threatening clouds pass over.  These refused to drop rain on the town until after I left and went to Tesco's.  On the way home I was drenched thank you so much!   Fair drookit I was and I had hurried home to watch the Wales v England match in the afternoon.

 
This was a disappointing affair, not only did the referee not allow Wales to win he did allow two lucky goals for England (BOO!) which were not what I or the rest of the world ordered.  Hopefully however the Welshmen can still progress when England (BOO!) lose their last match against Slovakia on Monday while Wales manage to beat shoddy Russia.  Hope spring eternal mush.

Unbalanced gunmen however are not it appears the sole property of the USA.  This afternoon a Labour Member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was attacked in her home town outside her constituency office by a member of the public.  She was it appears both shot and knifed.  A few hours later she sadly died in hospital.  Some reports claim the attacker cried "Britain First," as he assaulted her.
'Britain First' is the name of one of the lunatic far right parties but it could just be that his cry was in some strange way support for Britain leaving the EU which he clearly thought she opposed.  At this time his motives and mental health are unclear however a 52 year old man is in custody and the police are looking for no other regarding this attack.
I grumbled rightly that the gay lobby were using the Orlando assault as an attack on them, their usual 'victim hood' status.  That man chose that club as it was there, and he apparently knew it well, however had that club not existed he would sooner or later have turned his guns on someone somewhere as his problem was not Islamic or gay but mental unbalance.  Today we see the British version of this.  Many questions must be asked, the gun for instance is not something the man in the street here would carry nor find easy to obtain, so where did it come from and what does possessing one say about him?  
What does it say about us?
We tend not to attack people in the normal course but just how much, or indeed little, pressure is required to lead us into a situation where we lash out in anger and destroy another life?   As john Bunyan said when watching a man being taken to be hanged There but for the grace of God go I."
Jo Cox leaves a husband and two children, she was 41 years of age.