Friday Frippary

Thursday lunchtime I took the airport bus, air stewardess included as always, to the good quality charity shops.  There the rich dispose of their worthy items long before you and I would do so.  I searched all four shops, although this was difficult in one as it was closed, but found nothing whatsoever worth looking for.  How mean of them, don't they realise I need a new jacket?  
I did however visit my favourite card shop, Oxfam!  
There is no doubt the cards on offer here, often misusing old photographs, are very clever and full of wit, something missing in so many 'funny' cards today.  I had to buy some as with all these wimmin having birthdays I found my collection of cards were all aimed at men.  This was unfortunate.  Now I am ready for the next woman as long as she does not want anything like money to go with it...
Lovely short bus journey passed green fields, Barley almost ripe, sun glinting on farm machinery and one single farm worker as he prepared his field.  No EU workers on sight, I suspect Theresa has sent them all home so it will be big crops around here from now on.  

The problem with birds is their great ability to see something they wish for and then go get it.  The trouble they then fond is they cannot work out how they got in and therefore how to get back out again.  The Robin has been in, a Blue Tit the other day, another one was found on the window today and yesterday this young Starling worked out how to get in and then screamed blue murder because he could not get out.  
You will notice the mess on the window, this comes from the dust from the stuff they are feeding on these days.  The shop cannot get the usual seed pellets, someone appears to be arguing over money, and what is on offer is not good enough for these brutes.  It also has left a lot of dust down the wall and with no rain to speak off it is not getting washed a way. My neighbour might speak to me soon...

Today the plan was simple, eat a good breakfast and then eat little until evening, great idea.  
I had a good breakfast and fell asleep.
After this I spent all morning on this laptop either reading the grubby papers and arguing with Brexiteers or listening to the 'iPlayer,' sorry 'BBC Sounds.'  It was indeed better as the iplayer but there you go, someone has £10 million to spend and so it must be spent even if in a daft and needless manner.
The radio was good and it took me till after two to remember to get out and get milk, but I fell asleep instead.  This has not been a great day...

I see that nice Mr Farage has been taken apart twice this week, once by Andrew Marr of Sunday and then by a Channel 4 newsman the other night.  The vast wealth he has been given by Aaron Banks, who does not disclose where his cash comes from, is helping him with his Brexit Party as it did with his dying UKIP party.  It is interesting to note he has arranged it so no 'member' of his new party can influence decisions, only he can, with two others, very democratic.  
The sheep rose to the occasion claiming all this was a smear campaign against Farage by the 'establishment.'  How he has them hoodwinked.  There is a kind of blindness which hangs over Brexiteers, facts do not deter the need for Brexit, the emotion goes deep and no fact lies behind it so it cannot be opposed.  The opposite is occurring and if a second referendum is given they will all vote 'Leave' with more belief and yet with few facts.  I see Scunthorpe is losing 900 jobs because of Brexit from the plant that is the mainstay of the economy yet North Lincs voted strongly in favour of Brexit, what did they expect?  
The more I hear of Farage the more I think of  Alcibiades the chap Thucydides wrote about after the death of Pericles through the plague.  His view was that Pericles spoke for the good of the nation, Alcibiades was in it for himself, and it appears so.  It is also interesting that Boris Johnson is a great Thucydides fan, I wonder who he sees himself as?
I would explain this on the 'Daily Mail' forums but the sheep would not comprehend.  Anyway they would see them all as foreigners!  

We can always take our minds off Brexit by watching the US attempt another war this time against Iran.  It is unknown if Trump realises what he is doing here or indeed if he knows what is going on but Spain, Germany and the Dutch among others have withdrawn their forces from the US alliance in the Gulf.  The US will be on their own in Iran, bar the Conservative Party that is.

Wasting Time.

Just an old picture to try and remember what life was like before the rain began to fall.  Gray skies and wet roads all around.  I also forgot to write something here as I was busy doing nothing all day.  It has to be said I did it well and avoided the crowded shops and dreich weather.  Of course I did nothing anywhere bar write a couple of emails, they have waited a while for a reply.  Tonight I was going to post something wonderful but got into a twitter argument I was losing so I came away and found last night match was on the iplayer, that now fills my life, well for another 45 minutes at least.
In spite of the BBC stupid idea of fiddling with the iplayer I can still find most things I want there, but they have not improved the thing in any way.  Why change what works and at great expense (£10  million) wasting time and money when it is not required, that is Theresa May's job.
I did spend time however watching this today, I find these fascinating.

The Benefits of the Wireless

Now OK, I realise most folks call it a 'radio' today but I always find the word 'wireless' appearing in my head and so I might as well use it.  When young we did indeed have a 'wirelss,' a great big box with an aerial that looked like a bent birds cage which hung outside the window do obtain a good reception.  I wonder if this was obtained second hand or possibly through my aunt who worked in 'Jenners' Edinburgh's principal shop, the one where all the rich women spent much time drinking tea with their pinkie sticking out and discussing the merits of other women's lives.  My mother did not have the cash for that pleasure and merely gossipped with the neighbours.  
Anyway I recall, possibly before I began school, a large 'Radiogram' appearing in the corner.  This vast cupboard had a lid which when lifted exposed the large dial for the wireless on one side and a record layer (ten '45's at one go!) on the other.  This my elder brother and sisters much enjoyed though I also took happily to their choice of 'Rock & Roll.'  
On the large dial, over a foot in length and several inches wide, there was a list of foreign places from far away.  I cannot mind now but I suppose both Long, Short and Medium wave were available on their however if we listened to the radio we most probably only had three stations at that time, the BBC 'Home Service, the BBC 'Light' programme and Radio Luxembourg which in those days played music young people wished to listen to, the BBC remained rather stuffy until the pirate radio ships gave them a shove in the 60's.  I spent many a Sunday afternoon with my head up against the speaker listening to the 'Billy Cotton Band Show,' 'The Goons' with their 'pictures in the mind' and other comedy shows that abounded in the afternoons.  During the week the 'Tony Hancock Show' brought in an audience of 25 million!  This of course before TV was common and then did similar when transferred to the telly later on.  Those days have long gone and even the dreadful 'soaps' only get 13 million by adding the two showing of the programmes together.

The Internet has been a blessing regarding listening to the wireless as the BBC iplayer allows me to catch programmes I usually miss and indeed many of those programmes once hear while munching mums salad rolls on Summer Sunday afternoons.   Now we possess the updated (though the names do need updating once again) Radio's 1,2,3,4, plus 5Live, the rather juvenile station, plus the World Service once the best of them all now dumbed down and as PC as the rest of the BBC and Radio 4 Extra, a station that plays old programmes, mostly sad to say dramas, stories and pap.  However via the iplayer I can catch some wonderful programmes and today I have been working my way through the Radio 3 excellent 'Essay' series.  In particular I have been enjoying some of the 'Free Thinking' programmes, I listened to the 15 minute ones where one person spouted their opinion on a topic (many wide and varied) and dis so in an intelligent and thoughtful manner.  I did not always agree, some were spectacularly wrong, but I had to listen and wanted to hear more.  There are so many talk shows on Radio 4 that are decidedly middle calls and usually aimed at women with problems that when you hear grown up women talk on Radio 3 you wonder if it is not time for a change in the programming layout somewhere.  Maybe the Radio 3 audience is more open to reason?

I must confess that I have had a fill of thinking talk for a while and may well retire to the West Wing and place my dull ear to the speaker again and listen out for something that either takes me out from this box or makes me laugh, I don't as yet now which.  Either way it will be better for me that glueing my face to the box in the corner where 50 channels, when they work, offer me little of value.  Once again there I must reach for the TV iplayer and seek something worthy.  

Flutterby

This boy has been sat here on my bathroom wall for three days now.  Sitting there, face down, as if he expects to be fed somehow.  What is he doing there? The door, a large wooden thing that fills a hole, is wide open, leaving a large empty hole through which he can leave, this is positioned only six inches from his face, yet he stays there.
His mate flew in the other night and fluttered about for a while in the bedroom banging his head on the window before he worked out to go through the open bit.  He flew out to join several other butterfly's fluttering by and yesterday there appeared to be a great many of the things around.  This can only be good as the beasties are suffering a lot with the muck we pollute the air with.
I may however have to call the bailiffs in for this visitor.

The BBC iPlayer is down!  It is impossible to get programmes to arise!  How can I live without listening to something I could not hear when originally broadcast? This great boon to mankind now lying broken somewhere in White City or wherever is more important than anything else to those of us off an intellectual bent.  And I have often been informed my intellect is very bent indeed!  I was listening to the 'Essay' on Radio 3 and it would not work. Last weeks was about the first world war and offered interesting insights as to how it effected people in various nations today, very clever programmes.  This week we have had A.L. Kennedy talking about Scotland!  You would not wish to miss this!  I canny agree with Kennedy on some things but I find her short talks very interesting and clever. Well worth a listen, once the blasted thing comes back up that is!!! Bah!!!  

No iPlayer and it's back to this.....

Now I'm not one to complain but....

Why I ask, when something works perfectly well, do we need some cretinous minded lout coming along and 'improving things?'  The BBC website is one such example.  Having moved into new Manchester, sorry, Salford, studios it has been decided to 'upgrade' the excellent BBC website in keeping with the new layout in Salford and BBC London.  This means the football pages are full of white space and absurd yellow banners, meaningless unrelated content is pinned for weeks where it is not wanted and required content is not always easy to find.  The 'upgrade' to the BBC iPlayer has gone the same way. The screen above is the 'simple' layout some fourteen year old geek has offered us, and as you will expect it does not quickly lead to the sought after item. WHY can 'designers' not design things to be simple enough for stupid people to operate rather than fancy enough for someone who will only admire the layout and not actually have to use it?

There now follows a few minutes quite as I lie on the floor chewing the ends of the rug.

When I got this laptop it came equipped with 'Windows 7,' while before I used 'XP.'  'XP' was excellent and gave me all I required, it also allowed me to use the 'Outlook' Mail service which is far better than 'Windows Live,' a system that fails to live up to its name!  However someone somewhere insisted on changing things, needlessly!  Bah!  

  
Google Maps have done this also!  The old system was perfect and I used this often.  Now the thing is not straight forward, lists appear at the side unwanted, the wee man will not land on the street chosen, the tools are useless, pictures arise from the bottom for no reason and 'my location' does not work yet the location is there on the absurd space taking list at the top left!   I click on the map to move it and the address, with picture, appears at the top left.  I don't want it!  If I want a picture I will ask for one! Just give me the map!  This is a needless and failing upgrade!  Go back to the old system Google!!!!


Now look, that rug is frayed at the edges.....

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