View From The WIndow

It's early and nothing stirs, not even the wind, no, there goes Irvine off to the church to commence his duties, Irvine has lived in the village all his life and is a local character, he was once one of my paperboys albeit he was in his 70's at the time. Even on a holiday he would be outside waiting from 6.15 which basically meant I had to get up early, it took several years before he changed to 6.30. Every now and then he brings us three boxes of eggs, I have no idea where he gets them but they are twice as big as the 'large' eggs you get in the supermarket and on many occasions they have two yolks in them. He takes nothing in return but now and again we give him a donation for the church, he has collected thousands of pounds over the years for the church.

Washington House is getting a make over, two ceilings are being replaced and of course once they were removed it was found the joists were rotten, so another job, and the damp problem which caused the damage to the ceilings has also to be fixed. On top of that the builder has to check with whoever has the last say on historic houses to make sure the work is certified. I believe the price has now come way down from the original, I suspect it will be a long time before I have new neighbours there.

Here in the UK you can sign an online petition and Parliament has to debate it if it gets so many signatures, 100,000 I think, anyway like everything to do with government seemingly that is not true, they can still make a decision not to debate if they really don't want to, it is only a promise to maybe debate the issue. I signed up for them to look again at having ring fenced 0.7% of our national wealth for overseas aid, I could say here that I have no problem with overseas aid but I do, I have read Private Eye, I also know that we give money to countries with nuclear weapons and space programmes, I also know that some of that money ends up in the hands of people who hate us. Anyway the upshot is that I got an email about the 'debate' sent to me and I popped on to see who had been standing up for me and the other 99,999 people who signed up. No one, every single person on the debate (not many it would seem from the transcript) was gushing in how magnanimous, kind and unselfish Britain is and how our standing in the world depended on giving money away willy nilly. Only one person complained and she was not against stopping the 0.7% just about where some part of it went, having been blanked several times she accused the man in charge that he "wilfully will not look at this" and that about sums up the 'debate'. Oh, and the 0.7% was not just plucked out of the blue in case you did not know, it is a UN figure which we have signed up to.

Once again the missus has decided not to watch the news with me because of my running commentary, but this time it was my fury at the man delivering the sports news. Normally I have switched off at that point but because the football is deemed more important than the normal schedule I have to suffer Granada Reports before the real news comes on, hence I am still in front of the box when the sports guy is there. And what is the problem which has caused uproar in the Anderson household, he holds a tablet! He stands there night after night clutching a tablet which he never looks at, why has he got that when he is reading off an autocue, is it to show Granada News is hip and with it and technologically savvy because there can be no other reason to hold the thing. The two at the desk also have abandoned their dust gathering laptops in favour of two more tablets, one each to ignore. Real newsreaders use ..... paper, they always end the night gathering it together, hitting the desk and arranging it in neat rectangles, you watch.

I am on Facebook, there I said it, but as usual I would like to add that I only ever look at wargame pages and of them there is only one I am interested in, the others are standby until an event happens. It really means I can look at nice photos of other peoples wee sojers and be .... wait ...... I'll get it ..... inspired, inspired to paint my stuff. But you get this rubbish on the side from Facebook and one intrigued me the other day, Bindi Irwin shared a photo of self wearing tank top. Who the hell is Bindi Irwin and what was she doing with a self wearing tank top, and why would anyone be interested, I just had to click. Bindi is the daughter of the late, annoying Steve Irwin and her job is TV Personality and she wore a tank top, when will this madness end.

This is Bindi Irwin.

Have you ever been pulled up for pronouncing food incorrectly, this is the latest fad to allow people to feel superior to you, do we really have so much spare time we have to take lessons in pronouncing espresso, Sriracha (?), Chipotle or Quinoa correctly. If I ask the girl at the deli to give me a piece of choreezo she and I both know what it is and I have no fear of being sent to the corner with a pointy hat on.

The big news this week of course was the murder of MP Joe Cox. The only thing more disgusting than the vile murder of Jox Cox is the frenzy surrounding the motive of the madman who perpetrated the act.

So, it is fathers day, I have opened my cards from my sons and enjoyed the well wishes from my grandchildren, my wife has promised to make me a fry up and you cannot beat a fry up to start the day. There are several gardens open to the public in the village today, and if the rain stays away I might pop around to look at a neighbours, I am not a gardener but I can appreciate a nice garden and it will also get me out of the house, that is if the rain stays away.