Richard Hammond's crash TV

Last Sunday evening I wandered into our lounge to find the children hyped-up and excited. Not believing that e-numbers from teatime's graze had had chance to make an impact, I asked them why they were so buoyant. The answer was already playing out on the television screen. Top Gear was on and I was rather pompously informed that this was going to be 'the first chance to see Richard Hammonds' crash that nearly killed him.'

Not being in any way an alpha male or interested in 'boy's toys' such as cars, I don't watch Top Gear and find Jeremy Clarkson unfunny and really rather desperate. I hadn't even heard of Richard Hammond but knew of the crash when he reached over 300 mph in a jet-powered dragster four months ago. I wish Mr Hammond on harm - or hopefully anybody else for that matter - and am pleased that he wasn't killed. But was I pleased that he 'lived to tell the tale?' A laborious item about tarmac, scripted no doubt by the boorish Mr Clarkson, provided the trailer of Hammond's film and voiceover. For me the film was almost a metaphor of our fascination with near death experiences or thirst for injury to others, as graphically illustrated as possible.

Mr Hammond made two successful runs before taking a near-fatal third when a tyre blew and he crashed. It was almost as though the production team were disatisfied with speed alone, or perhaps they were on speed; perhaps we all are?

Is Wales open?

Whether a country like Wales is open or not is strange to say the least. Open to abuse? Open for business? Or just plain open?

Yet one of the questions posed to various visitbritain tourist offices was 'what time does Wales close?' This was accompanied by 'are there any lakes in the Lake District?' along with many others as reported recently in thelondonpaper and others. My favourite, though, was frighteningly similar to a real-life scene played out for me last week and reported in my Railwaylines blog . The question was 'whatever compelled them to build Windsor Castle on the Heathrow flightpath?'

Unfortunately, the answer could well be 'so that ridiculous questions from tourists visiting our truly historical attractions would be drowned out.'

Emirates: lights in the east

I pass Arsenal's Emirates stadium every day on the train into London and also look out for the old Highbury Ground. I don't follow Arsenal as viewers of my Soccer Special blog will know. Highbury has been a landmark for me ever since we first went for day's out in London from our home town in Peterborough but the North Bank has already gone and there isn't much left.

However, there are new lights in the east - from the Emirates Stadium. What I don't understand is why all the lights in the stadium were blazing at 7.30 this morning with absolutely nobody in sight. I can understand the red neon Emirates sign being lit as often as possible as a sponsorship requirement, but how can the planet be helped by such an otherwise blatant energy wastage. Arsenal may have energy to burn but I'm not sure the rest of us do?

Unnatural Carol Vorderman

So, not content with selling herself to apparently dodgy debt collectors, not to mention any camera lense vaguely in focus, I read that Carol Vorderman is now trying to get noticed by supporting a detox plan. This particular plan recommends the cutting out of sugar, salt, coffee, wheat, meat and dairy produce. It is alleged to flush out toxins from the body but researchers on the BBC's health programme - 'Sense about science' assert that detox diets do not work and that the body should be given sleep, water and the recommended intake of fruit and vegetables to do the job naturally. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be much that is natural about Carol Vorderman.

Home Office Debacle

'Debacle' is defined as a sudden, disastrous collapse or a defeat. The Home Office's demise has not been especially sudden but it looks disastrous to the outside world, the Labour Government and Dr John Reid, the Home Secretary.

Criminals have been let loose into the community - nobody knows where they are or whether they're still in the country. Paedophiles avoid jail because the Home Office has presided over too many custodial sentences and not enough new prisons. Reid, who enjoys solving crosswords in his spare time, must have believed, when his own sentence in Northern Ireland came to an end, that he would now enjoy words such as freedom instead.

Unfortunately 'Get out of jail free' cards aren't much good when you've paid to get out anyway and while your colleagues cruise around the block, apparently effortlessly, making handsome profits. You are as far away from Go as possible. Time to Stop?

Laughing Gnome

As novelty records go, this is undoubtedly one which David Bowie would want to forget. Although Decca dragged up some six years later, the record thankfully bombed when first released. In fact it was recorded forty years ago today. I still have a video of him performing it in his Lindsay Kemp-inspired mime gear. Even for a chameleon like Bowie, it is hard to imagine that this was one of his personas. I wonder if our digital outpourings on the internet will come back to haunt or silence us one day? 'Do no evil' but 'do no deletion' either!

Headache

I had a terrible headache this morning and, in the end, had to go back to bed and lie down until it passed. I had tried sitting up, lying down, fresh air and warmth - none of them worked. After a couple of hours in bed I felt much better. Sometimes I suppose you just have to let things run their course, knowing that to fight it is useless, even for those of us who hate to submit to anything or anyone. Now that I feel better it is hard to imagine the pain of just a few hours ago and how everything seemed to be in freefall and impossible. Unfortunately we rarely think on how good it is to feel good and how anything is within our capabilities when we do.

Winter Wonderland

A winter wonderland greeted me this morning as I went out early to defrost the car. The wind had dropped and ice had been replaced by a covering of snow. Sitting in the car, sipping my mug of tea, while the fan whirred away, doing its best to make sense of the changed landscape, I was reminded of Rupert Bear annuals from when I was a child. Rupert always seemed to see wintry scenes through snowy panes and longed to get out and have some fun. How great it would be if we could carry a little piece of Rupert into our adult years?

Goody, Goody to lose

The 'reality' TV show Big Brother on Channel 4 could scarcely have been covered by more column inches or polarised opinion by larger country miles than its creators could ever have hoped.

Jade Goody, apparently briefed (and manipulated) by Channel 4, evicted from the House and wondering whether her 'celebrity' career, including a possible talk show will go down the proverbial pan from where she seems to have come in the first place. Lewd and rude though everyone knew she was - and presumably why she was chosen to be the spice in the mix - people express shock at views that could be construed as racist.

I don't know why. Unfortunately these views are not underground secrets for many people in this country, either racist perpetrators or victims of such hatred. I suspect that a bullying attitude was as much to do with the backlash against her, given that some people like to pretend that that sort of thing ends with school days. Yet PR gurus are saying that damage limitation could yet save her and David Puttnam seems to want the channel to apologise to her. 'Everyone is talking about her' but the Carphone Warehouse aren't keen that those conversations take place through their mobile 'phones. Amid all the buzz, surely that is the real sting?

Kill animals first

To kill an animal is a horrific thought at any time, not just with animal lovers but, I imagine, anyone who values life.

I was reading this morning about a terrible car crash in Ebbw Vale, South Wales, where a couple and their son were killed, apparently swerving to avoid a stray sheep. When I was learning to drive my driving instructor always advised me to swerve only if a human or other vehicle was not involved, but never for animals. 'Human life is more valuable, kill animals first' was her motto.

I remember my father running over a rabbit when I was very young and have never forgotten the sudden bump or silence in the car. I've since avoided sheep on Exmoor and dogs and cats everywhere. Faced with an animal in front of you, just how can you run it down, despite often terrible consequences if you don't?

Isle of Ely

I drove my young son over to Soham this morning to attend a birthday party. It is a glorious day here in Fenland with a vast blue sky framing the various landmarks that are our markers in the flat landscape we know and love so well. Rising higher than all is Ely Cathedral, as it has done for over one thousand years. My son told me that its survival was because it was built on the Isle of Ely which was safer, higher and altogether more solid ground when this area was little more than a watery wasteland.

I replied that perhaps it had survived also because people had had faith. Faith in the knowledge that they were doing the right thing, in the right place at the right time. If we could carry just a little of that faith through the wind and rain, then we will all live to see that unblemished blue sky; even if we are then looking down on Ely Cathedral rather than up at it.

Taste and smell

Taste and smell are two senses I think we take completely for granted. I believe we consciously consider our hearing and sight far more as well as touch. When we can't hear what somebody is saying or strain to read something or feel something (mentally or physically) we are updated on each. We don't know how some things would taste or how strong they smell to us, so the contrast between what is and what should be is less acute. I'm just recovering from a cold and, this morning, sniffed a tea bag and tasted blueberries. I hadn't realised how both sensations had been removed from my daily life for the last couple of days.

January: sick and tired

'January: sick and tired, you've been hanging on me.' So goes the old song from Pilot and never has it seemed more apt.

Apparently last week was the key week for divorce petitions, following too much family time over Christmas. January is known for the blues (why did that beautiful colour become associated with heartache?) and they seem to be hanging over us like an old London smog.

We just need to hang on to the thought that this never lasts, any more than January does. Yes it will come round again one day, but then so will June.

Driving voices

I often hear voices when I'm driving. I took my daughter to a ballet class in Cambridge recently and it poured with rain almost the whole way there. I could hear my late Grandad telling me not to 'go too hard' in the slippery conditions. When I stopped at each set of lights I heard my driving instructor telling me to put my handbrake on and 'secure my car.' Are these voices the result of extra concentration, such that we draw on all facets of memory which have been stored away; or are they spirits from beyond the central reservation, come back to remind us of how close each of us is to death each day?

Primary School

I picked our daughter up from primary school just now and couldn't help thinking how much she has grown. She looks more sophisticated than her ten years and has a worldly air about her which I'm sure I didn't have at that age.

This was a picture taken last year when she and her mummy had a few days in New York. She also has a blog which you can view here: Primary School Days

There used to be three of them at the school but now just Hayley, as her brothers have moved on to High Schools. Many little girls would, I imagine, be lost on their own but she seems to have occupied that space effortlessly. I'm happy that she has but do wonder where our little girl has gone.

Sunshine breaks through

The afternoon sunshine broke through this afternoon, as I gazed out of our kitchen window. This followed what had been a rather dark and gloomy day here in Fenland. At once, the fields were bathed in golden light that somehow made me think of an Egyptian scene, full of treasure.



It reminded me that there is always light at the end of one day or the beginning of the next; it's just a case of looking out for it.

Ink and paper

Ink to write with and paper to write on have always been twin components of my life. If I travel with one but not the other, I feel like a twin must do - happy to be travelling but without its other half. I also have to have lots of paper - far more than I really need or am likely to need in that session. I hate the feeling of just having one or two sheets. It isn't just that there is less to lean on and thus the ink feels less smooth. It is the thought that I might have a string of thoughts, lots of words to express them and no physical means of getting them all down before the flow is stemmed.

EU are you?

I saw a piece on the BBC News last night about Romania and Bulgaria joining the European Community. It focused on the threat of immigration to this country including pseudo-fascist warnings of the threats on jobs and the need to police entry carefully. I totally endorse the need to stamp out illegality but not sure that this is a reason to oppose EU enlargement which is what the media seem determined to press upon us. Many of the jobs that migrant labour would be able to do are so low paid and undesirable that our 'home' workers won't do them. Rather then hounding people for whom this nevertheless represents an enormous increase in their standard of living, perhaps we should look at the lazy and work-shy who stay 'at home.'

We had a child minder whose husband, similarly, worked long and unsociable hours. Offered overtime he turned it down, wanting to spend more family (and no doubt recovery) time with their two young daughters. The woman reacted by giving up her own part-time job, citing his unwillingness to take on more work and thus why should she when she could get more from the State for not putting herself out. She now describes herself as a 'homemaker.'

By contrast, just before Christmas, we sold some furniture through the local paper to a man from Poland who had worked on a local farm for more than thirteen years, had just purchased his first house and was proud to have a mortgage as he felt it established his status and was a reward for his efforts.

Perhaps home is where the heart is rather than where the passport says it should be?


Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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New Year's hangover

We went for a browse around the shops in King's Lynn earlier. While the extra sales markdowns were as predictable as sales assistants asking us if we needed any help, I did find the number of sad and tired-looking people quite alarming. Obviously New Year's Eve had extracted it's usual toll of energy, money and liver longevity, but it all added up to a depressingly familiar scene rather than a step into the unknown of a new year.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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