Rhyming Slang...

It seems that Cockney Rhyming Slang is still going strong and new phrases being added all the time. Apparently celebrity rhymes are quite popular now, so you can now go down the pub for a couple of Brittany Spears (beers for my American friends) or if you want to borrow 10 quid you can ask someone for an Ayrton Senna. And wouldn't you know Brad Pitt's name has been adopted into the lexicon.

There is a web site now to translate your plain old English into Cockney Rhyming Slang. (How do people get the time to create such elaborate things?) The same site offers variants for Scouse, Brummie, Geordie and many more dialects - even an Ali G version.

The French Referendum...

We Californians think we have too much election material when we have to plow through our voting information booklets with all the propositions and candidates for this that and the other (and we do). However, the poor old French voters have each been sent a 191-page document on the EU constitution ahead of their upcoming referendum. It contains some 448 clauses, protocols and annexes. Apparently quite a large percentage of the population have read parts of it and something like 10% have read the whole darn thing.

They take their democracy seriously over there.

So proud to be English...

Lonely Planet have just published a new travel guide to England. Among other things it describes my fellow countrymen as being "uninhibited, tolerant, exhibitionist, passionate, aggressive, sentimental, hospitable and friendly".

Things have certainly changed, not only does England now have the best restaurant in the entire World - The Fat Duck in Bray (according to at least one survey), it also has people that can be described as uninhibited and passionate, once terms only used to describe those Mediterranean folk.

However, everything is not moving in a positive direction, Slashdot picked up on some potential candidates for the Darwin awards - Home Made Star Wars Movie Injury adding perhaps stupidity to our character traits.

Marathon Training....

It is now four weeks away from the Midnight Sun Marathon in Anchorage. (That is the other part of my plan for the summer – after riding the bike to Anchorage, I am supposed to run the Anchorage Marathon). The training is going about as well as it usually does – I run at the weekend, then do nothing all week until the next weekend. This weekend warrior stuff is not the best way of training and I know that, but I just don’t have much mid-week motivation these days. I did one 20 miler so far (2 weeks ago up in Eldorado Hills) and all I need to do now is get one more 20 + miles run this weekend and that will have to do. Anchorage here we come.

Mr Galloway goes to Washington

Wasn’t it great to see George Galloway in action in the US Senate this week? They are not used to such pugnacious and combative behavior in the Senate – it is by no means as rough and tumble as the House of Commons is. Poor old Senator Coleman didn’t bargain for the tongue lashing he got and it was nice to see him squirm.

"Now I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice."

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies."

It was quite a piece of showmanship - he even had the audacity to do some sanction busting and smoke a Cuban cigar outside the hearings.

I must admit I wasn’t aware of Mr. Galloway and his career in politics, but after checking I see he has quite a colourful past in recent years. A Scot, an ex boxer, a Labour MP expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for encouraging soldiers not to fight in Iraq. He stood in the last election as member of a new party the Respect-Unity Coalition, winning his seat against an up and coming young Labour MP (Oona King).

A change of plan....

So tomorrow was the day that my niece, Helen, was supposed to arrive from the UK to stay for a couple of weeks and then accompany my mother back to the England at the end of her stay. That plan changed a little yesterday when Helen let us know that she wouldn’t be able to come over.

So that left me with a bit of a dilemma - how to get mum home? She is too frail to travel by herself, and the only option really is for me to travel back with her. I got a little bit of a shock when I first checked with British Airways for a flight - to travel back on her flight to London and then to return the next day would cost $2300. A bit excessive, I thought! The reason for the high price was falling foul of the Saturday night stay rule, which still seems to make a difference. If I stay a couple of more days and come back on a Sunday, then I get the ticket for less than half that price, at just over $1000 (it is the peak summer season after all).

The remarkable thing is that these tickets, even the $2,300 one, are non-changeable, non-refundable. If you want a changeable ticket you pay even more (double the price). Is that something new, I don't recall seeing totally unflexible tickets before. Such variances in ticket prices and such seemingly arbitrary rules are the things that make us love those airlines so much. So many of them are losing money in these high price fuel days, but I just can’t muster much sympathy. I wouldn’t mind paying more money provided their ticket pricing was a bit more fair and logical.

Anyway, I have my ticket now, and, all being well, I am off for a short 4 day trip to the UK in a couple of weeks.

Preparation for the Anchorage Trip.

Things are progressing with the preparations for the Anchorage trip. I have been adding a few extras to the bike ready for the trip. A nice new tank bag to carry all those necessities up front. I have also added valve cover protection guards and some engine protection bars, just in case I happen to lay the bike down. You see the bike is of the BMW boxer style – opposing twin cylinders sticking out from the side of the bike, and if the bike goes over then there are some expensive bits that can get damaged. So a little bit of protection could keep things functional in the case of such an event and could avoid an expensive repair.

Of course the goal is to not lay the bike down, on account of how that could also be damaging to my own well being. To that end I have enrolled in a riding skills class at the Thunderhill race track, in Willows, just north of Sacramento. It is not a class to develop racing skills its just a chance to practice some street driving skills in a safer environment than the public highway. It should be a good thing.

Life with Mum – Part 4

This weekend we went up to Lake Tahoe and stayed in my friends George and Elaine’s townhouse on the North Shore over Saturday night. It was a nice little get away, but Mum is not up to enjoying these things as much as she once did. Apart from a little drive around part of the Lake on Saturday evening we did not do much of else.

Of course the fact that it rained on Sunday didn’t help it made it not so nice a ride back to Sacramento. My mum is amazed at all the bad weather we have been having lately and blames it all on global warming. Interesting that she does that, she is not particularly scientific minded nor one who keeps up on the day to day machinations of the political world, but somewhere along the way she has been seeded with the idea that all this strange weather is a global warming phenomenon. I think it is a sign that global warming is much more an accepted and discussed issue over in Europe than it is here in the US. Over here of course even the President thinks it is bad science.

Clapton at 60

There is an excellent interview with Eric Clapton on the BBC Radio 2 site - a two hour interview covering his entire career and commemorating his 60th year. The audio will only be on the web for a week. I am not sure why the BBC are limiting access to just one week, it seems like a very un-BBC thing to do.

Anyway, it is well worth listening to if you are a fan, and indeed I am. However, it did remind me that back in the 70’s Mr. Clapton did voice his support for Enoch Powell’s immigration policies which were by any standards a little extreme for that time and any time. Not the sort of thing that you expect from your rock music guitar legend.

Last Monday night, Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker re-united for a Cream concert at the Royal Albert Hall. It sounds like it was a good show, I trust that they filmed it and we will all be able to see the video.

Wanky the Elephant

So it was with great dismay that we all learned this morning of the death of Wanky the elephant (an interesting name for an elephant, but we don’t want to go there do we?). I hadn’t really been aware of the elephant controversy at the Chicago Zoo where it appears that 3 elephants have died in quick succession. Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame) and PETA have been involved and there's even an Elephant Free Zoo association to take up the cause. Although it is all very sad and I am no fan of zoos, I don’t think I will lose sleep over the matter. But what I did find interesting was the accompanying announcement that grief counseling was being made available to zoo staff. Now is that a sign of a highly evolved society or what - grief counseling for zoo workers. I wonder if they get it for any animal or if its only for the large mammals – pity those guys in the penguin exhibit, I bet they die like flies and nobody gives their keepers counseling.

Meanwhile today 16 more people were killed by a car bomb in Iraq – I doubt very much if any of the survivors will get grief counseling.