Eight random facts about me

This is a curious meme. I know that there are blogs which are focused, on topic and on target. But this ain't one of them. This whole blog is a collection of random facts, mostly about me. (Or at least my take on them.)





I was tagged by Katie Allison Granju. One of her random facts is also true for me. She hates mayonnaise. Blecchhh. I think it's disgusting. Get it away from me. I could say that was my random fact, too - but here's a slightly different one to start off with:





1. Off and on I keep a small jar of Hellman's Mayonnaise at the back of my cupboard. It remains unopened until I have some mayo fiend guest demanding their stuff for a sandwich. The last couple of jars expired and got chucked out before ever having been used. Best way to do mayo, in my opinion. There's not a jar there right now, but I might get one before my mom comes to visit.


2. Although most of my life has been spent in the great state of Tennessee, the greenest state in the land of the free, I've lived longer in my current London house than any other place I've ever lived in. After that, a house in Knoxville. After that, my grandfather's house in Lawrenceburg.


3. The job I've held the longest was at a garden center in Knoxville. Oakes Nursery. I think it's shut down now. I didn't hold the post continuously though - as the work was seasonal. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about plants and people. Everyone should work retail (or wait tables) for at least three months.


4. Shortly after I started blogging, I saw an online discussion about me - and who I was. This blogger said something like "For all, I know we could be cousins". And it turns out that we are, distant, but still. Heck, we've probably been at the same family reunion (at the picnic shelter at David Crockett State Park). I was the surly teen trying to figure out a way to sneak off for a cigarette. Well, given our genetic disposition - that's probably not much of a clue.


5. I have SunDrop in my house right now. It's liquid gold. I only refrigerate one can at a time so I don't go through it too quick. My husband put an empty can in our transparent recycling bag, and I grant is a perfectly normal thing to do. But I had this paranoid fear that some SunDrop addict would walk by our house, see it and then break into our house to steal my stash. That's the grip SunDrop has on you.


6. I use commas and dashes, way too much. Regular readers will know this. I'm aware of the problem - but I just can't stop. Every time I stop typing, I add a comma or dash. I paused, I want you to pause. Just think of it like a blog conversation, and I sigh and take deep breaths a lot. Don't think that's your opportunity to start talking though. No. Just leave something in the comment section when I'm done.



7. I can play the fiddle, but I haven't for five years. And I want to start back, but I'm finding it hard to pick up the bow again.



8. I can't stand for the sappy works of Celine Dion to played in the house while I'm in it. (This random fact prompted by someone forgetting that very important rule.)




OK, so with memery - the idea is to pass it on. I'd like to see some random facts from Rachel at Women's Health News, the eight random facts could be about women's health. I'm going to randomly pick the rest of my tag-ees from my blog roll once removed (somebody whose on the list of somebody on my list who isn't on my list.)

From Mel's Diner I choose Dixie Peach and wouldn't you know, her most recent entry is about mayonnaise.
from Ginger Snaps I choose My Quiet Life (actually I'm not sure why he's not on my blog roll, he's in my Flickr contacts, which is a great pleasure)
from Haiku of the Id I choose Change over the waters
from Jen's Den of Iniquity I choose Noble Savage (another one I don't know why isn't on my list)


OK, that should be enough to be getting on with

Coals to Newcastle

Apparently there's a writer's strike in America. The only way I can tell, is that we no longer get our daily dose of the Daily Show. It will be months before it bites here, since series are lagged by quite a bit.

Unlike the last writer's strike, we now have a host of reality tv formats to fill the viewing hours. NewsComa has some great ideas for more.

And I have another idea.

Since America has given the British many, many, many hours of American talk shows (Jerry, Maury, Ricki, Phil, Montel, Sally and Oprah are on each day) - I think it's only fair that y'all should get to watch back-to-back reruns of Trisha and the Jeremy Kyle show. It ought to strip the anglophiles among you of any notion of British culture and aplomb.

We all have our diversions

That's Cletus playing with his toy, while I watch some trashy daytime tv. Jeremy Kyle, who some say is the British equivalent of Jerry Springer. I say he has the tiniest touch more class. Every day is a DNA test special.

TCP movie review

Pretty much why I won't be seeing the new Beowulf movie. I think Aunt B has covered nearly all the points.

• Judging by the trailers it just looks creepy, but I grant that's a matter of personal taste.
  
• This is really the first literary work of a fabulous English language literary tradition. Why do you want to go messing it up?

I always thought Beowulf, or maybe some combination of that and John Gardner's Grendel, would make a great film. But I wanted something that would help kids cheat through 12th grade English, not something that would give kids a completely distorted view.

Very dull, don't bother

I have a funny little thing in my Flickr account. It's a widget that generates a set of my least interesting photos. Why bother? Well, I thought it would be interesting to see what Flickr's algorithm decided were my most dull photos*.



This picture was taken on a bike ride in the New Forest. I agree that the photo is dull and a little washed out.


This was some kind of miracle foot cream that I bought in Florence, Italy. It cost a fortune in a chi chi pharmacy. But it turned my cracked, dry and painful tourist feet into something almost normal within 36 hours. It's probably made of Chinese dissident belly fat.


Last year's cornbread for Thanksgiving cornbread dressing.


Houston Alred and Miss Alexis on New Year's Eve at a tiny wee bar in San Francisco. Celebrations with my friends Q-Vol and Vol K. Apparently Miss Alexis was later fired for reasons unknown. How could that be uninteresting?


A local burger bar where terror arrests were made in the weeks following 7/7.



If you'da seen how high my husband jumped when we saw this snake, you wouldn't think it was so uninteresting.


My fantasy faux lawn.


My friend Q Vol and I wandered around this essentially deserted play area on a wet December day in Oakland, California.


Condiments in my local caf

OK, maybe they're not exactly prize winning shots, but they represent some interesting moments in my life.

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* The set is automatically generated, so you may get a different batch of dull shots.

Low-grade phobias and serial killers

I'm afraid of heights and that's pretty normal, though I wish I weren't. But I also have some weird low-grade phobias. By low-grade I mean I'm very afraid of it, irrationally so. But I also understand that the likelihood of encountering my trigger is pretty low - so it doesn't exactly rule my every day life.

I did have a low-grade phobia of being sued. And I was sued. And it was pretty awful.

Currently, there's a story in the UK press which has aroused my sense of fear relating to another low-grade phobia I have.

Here's how the scenario plays out.

There's a knock on the door. It's the police. It's probably a plainclothes officer. He has a warrant. But it's not because of anything I did. It's because some psychopathic nutcase who used to live in my house is suspected of hiding human remains on what's now my property. And now the police want to dig up my garden. My beautiful garden, with its perennials and shrubs and layers of bulbs and small but perfectly formed magnolia.

You know you can't refuse, because the police have a warrant or will get a warrant. And you also know that no matter how careful they are, all your horticultural effort will be gone in a couple of days.

So what brings this up? Police are currently digging up the garden of someone in Kent, because Peter Tobin used to live there. Human remains have been found, but not the ones they were looking for.


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Peter Tobin was convicted for the slaying of a young Polish woman, Angelika Kluk. Her body was found in a church and I remember the story because during the investigation it was revealed that she had had an affair with the priest. Although it had broken off, and he was entirely innocent of her slaying.

I don't think any of the former owners or occupiers of our home were sex killers, but you never know. I know a lot of them were odd, because of their post that we're still receiving. Psychics and scientology mainly.

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There may be some illegal remains in our garden though. Our cat is buried there, and I think, technically, we're not supposed to dispose of animal remains that way. But we were careful, we buried her deep.

feet first

Not much to say today.

I took off to do some shopping in Wimbledon. I'm not much of a shopper, but I can poke around the shops and come back by bus without being gone too long. I bought myself some Sharpies, which I'm very excited about. They've only recently become available in this country.

In the past, when I've left Cletus along with the Vol-in-Law he's been, uncharacteristically, good. But today he let his true colors shine through. Much screaming. Demanding to be taken out. My husband said he couldn't get anything done with the baby screaming like that.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The key to the garden of stone

Yesterday we took Cletus to the re-dedication of a WWII civilian war memorial. Although Remembrance Sunday is about fallen soldiers, it was good to remember the loss of life locally during the war. From the collection of names on the memorial, some must have been sleeping in their beds or gathered round the dinner table or sheltered together in the space under the stairs when the bombs fell.

This was how they were remembered:




with plastic lettering slipping away.

But the memorial has been redone, with nice bronze plaques and raised lettering and new paving leading up to the memorial. And indeed it looks lovely. So yesterday, the rededication was held and they released doves and everything. We really, really meant to be on time. But we weren't. You see, the memorial is at one end of the cemetery and although we come from that direction we have to walk down to the middle of this very long graveyard to get to the entrance and then walk all the way back. It's probably about 2/3ds of a mile and to be honest, we really just didn't allow enough time. We're still not factoring in how much time it takes to get a baby ready.


Baby and war memorial

So by the time we got there the doves were gone and the folks were breaking up. But we did get invited to tea and we were given the combination to the nearest gate. Obviously we can't abuse that, but it saves us a quite a long walk along the busy road.

And I used the combination today to slip easily into the graveyard and funnily enough, the doves were back, just milling around, waiting. Two lovely white peaceful doves.

Last week, I also made my usual trip to the Garden of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey. I noticed that the wreath to Arkansas soldiers wasn't there, I wondered if the old man who always brought a wreath for the Razorbacks who had treated him so well as a boy during the war was gone or if he just hadn't made the trip yet. I also noticed the crosses from the DoD (I guess) were the same ones from last year.


It's now US dead 3860, UK 171 and Other 133

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Here's what I said about Remembrance Sunday last year and here's what Kathy has written this year helping us to remember the living and the dead.

If they freed me from this prison

I love cable. I'm watching Johnny Cash singing from the Tennessee State Prison 30 years ago. He's doing a train song medley. Everybody's hair looks horribly dated except, oddly enough, for the styles of about 90% of the prisoners.

It wasn't just Johnny playing. but also Linda Ronstadt and Roy Clark and a comedian called Foster Brooks. Anybody remember Foster Brooks? I don't. Is that what passed for funny back in the 70s?

Do folks play prisons anymore? Do prisoners have cable now and watch Johnny playing to inmates of three decades ago? (I guess some of those guys are still in prison.)

Wasn't there a song about a guy who wanted to see Johnny Cash and he got into all kinds of scrapes and so forth and ended up in prison where he got to see Cash. Heh.

Traffic

Today we were stuck in a traffic jam. Not really a surprise in a city of over 7 million people with a road system designed in the day of the horse and cart.

But the cause of the jam was a back up of demolition derby cars on their carriers trying to enter demolition derby arena.

I didn't leave Lawrenceburg, Tennessee and travel across a mighty ocean to live in one the most cosmpolitan (and expensive) cities in the world to be stuck behind a beat up, windowless car with a name like the Spud-a-nator.

Just sayin'.

with Friends like these

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) is what I would describe as a radical Islamist group. To put this in perspective a fundamentalist Muslim I know thought they were a dangerous cult. This group is proscribed in a number of European countries, but not the UK.

I would guess that many of the members of HT in the UK are of a Pakistani origin. I don't know what the ethnic breakdown is, but I'd guess there are enough that they feel they it's legitimate for them to turn their organisational attention to the situation in Pakistan.

And it's no surprise what they feel the right solution is for Pakistan - more Islam. Sharia law - the whole thing - the establishment of the Caliphate or Khilafah. That's what a brochure I found on the street in my neighborhood says anyway:



And here's the text:

Since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has been tormented by failed dictators and political parties.

The US and UK, constantly meddling in the affairs of Pakistan, are desperate to save their only hope in the region, General Pervez Musharraf, by working to ally him with failed politicians such as Benezir Bhutto. They have thus brought about an alliance between the most treacherous leader and the most corrupt politician in Pakistan's history.

Pakistan is in need for anew type of leadership which look after the needs of the people according to the Quran and Sunnah, and implements a system which is truly representative and that has an independent judiciary: the Khilafat State.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, Britain has organised a conference to artculate the need for a new leadership and new system for Pakistan - an alternative to the failed leadership and systems of the past 60 years.

It doesn't really disturb me that HT is calling for a Caliphate state. Yep, that's what they want - what they've always wanted for all countries, not just Pakistan. What does disturb me is that Friends House - the home of the peace loving Quakers in Central London is hosting this conference. Why oh why oh why are they providing a venue for a group which would give all Christians and all women second class citizenship or worse.

For many years of my childhood we attended Quaker (Friends) meetings. I'm pretty sure that Quakerism is incompatible with the establishment of a global Caliphate. I'm pretty sure that message of tolerance and forgiveness that I learned in First Day school are not in line with the harsh, biased justice of Sharia.

With friends like these....

weed in the sky

This is something like Queen Anne's lace - or it might be Queen Anne's lace, but anyway like that flower and carrots I'm pretty sure it's in the parsley family.

I found this in a ditch on Wimbledon Common.

I hate Gordon Brown

I haven't been following Gordon's premiership as closely as might - but I hate him. He's full of dumb ideas. He's spiteful and petty and controlling and not as smart as he thinks he is. He comes up with dumb policies. He did this in his old job and he's doing it now.

Jen has a rundown.

Who's the daddy?

I never knew that the daytime talk shows essentially drive the DNA paternity testing industry. It seems like everyday at least one show features are paternity testing special. And as sick as this is, I never get tired of it. I watch a lot of talk shows while nursing a baby. And while I'd like to say I spend my time watching documentaries - that just wouldn't be true.

I'm getting pretty good at guessing if daddy really is the daddy. Mostly by judging the demeanor of the mom. On American shows, they often show a picture of the child next to the daddy which does provide a clue. On British shows, small children aren't shown or brought out, so it's all down to the body language of the purported parents.

Recently I saw a show where the baby was cute as a button. He was about eighteen months old and dark as a berry. I mean this kid was black. Well, that's fine. But momma was white and so was daddy. Both parents were blue eyed and dirty blond. I know that genetics is a weird and wonderful thing, but I really think that maybe Daddy ain't daddy. Mom had brought him on the show to reveal the secret and dude was shocked. I mean shocked. And when the DNA results were read out, the man was devastated. The power of denial. I know it's a tragedy and to this man, in a way, it was like his son had died - or at least the dream of his son. But I had to laugh. There weren't no way that kid was his - at least not in a biological sense - and he'd managed to convince his heart that his eyes couldn't see. Of course, the really sad part is that the apparently the bond was broken and he no longer sees the child.

Sometimes more than one man is tested, and none of the candidates is the father. Ooops. That's got to be pretty embarrassing - unless, of course, you have no shame. No shame and the desire to see New York one more time on Maury Povich's dime. Do you feel sorry for the fifth man tested, the poor schmuck who's alleles match up? Maybe you shouldn't - I mean if you don't want unintended consequences maybe you should keep your trousers zipped. But I know a guy this happened to. One of my brother's friends got tested in the third round up of suspects. The one night stand with the extra strong swimmers. And he's a nice kid*.

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*Well, actually he's coming up to 30 now - gosh, I'm old.

Crocs

One of the blogs I read regularly is Girl from the South. I don't see eye to eye with her on every issue. Adrienne hates feminists. Adrienne hates the left. Adrienne hates Crocs. Hey, one out of three ain't bad.

But Adrienne's a hypocrite. She's now the proud owner of a pair of Crocs. But they're orange and emblazoned with a Power T. What's not to like? Well, except they're crocs.

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Until about a year ago I could read Adrienne's blog and her croc-hating posts and just snicker and sneer. Crocs hadn't yet crossed the pond. But now they have - and the foam footwear have taken the country by storm.

When I was in the hospital with my three day, failing-to-progess-labor, many of the obstetrical staff were wearing Crocs. How could I trust their medical decision making skills when clearly they couldn't choose decent shoes?

And yesterday, I saw a woman in the full black burqa and face covering niqab in the local grocery store. She was a big woman, tall and probably pretty bulky, too. She filled the aisles with her presence and her eery black garb. And she was wearing Crocs - in black, of course.

And I thought of you, Adrienne.

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Photo of crocs from Flickr user mstephens7 under creative commons license. Great image, crap shoes.

Smart as a whip

No matter what Cletus does, my parents put it down to his intelligence.

Alert and active. Because he's soooo smart.

Waking in the night: Because he's sooo smart.

Throwing fits from apparent cabin fever: Because he's sooo smart.

Watching tv like a couch munchkin: Because he's sooo smart.

Later on in life, they may be saying the same thing. Disruptive in class? He must be bored, because...well, you know.

Who knows if he's a smart baby or not. But here's some new evidence that says there may be a reason why he's sooooo smart. Katie Allison Granju has more on the link between breastfeeding and IQ.

Readers write in

I've had a little bit of interest about the cat in the sidebar. You know the cat wearing the orange sweater. I've had some comments in the last few days, but because I don't check my mail that frequently (yer, I know, I'm bad) I didn't pick up on it.

Here's her story:

She's seven years old. We've had her since she was born. She's special, special as in short bus special. She hates being picked up. She hates visitors. But she looks good in orange.



You can pretty much dress a cat in a baby sweater one time only. So I'm glad I got it on camera. The sweater was made by a work friend. She loves cats more than babies, so she was more than happy to see this picture.


And here's the baby in same

Two minus what equals one

I don't know much about pedagogy. Don't know much about the science books. But I do know one and one is two.

Well, yes and no.

I was visiting a local school today as a school Governor. And it was a lovely day. The kids were, for the most part, well behaved. I dipped in and out of a number of lessons. I was invited to color. I was complemented on my coloring ability. I told them I'd had a lot of practice over the years.

But they were teaching kids using some kind of new fangled method of math teaching. It looked like algebra. But it wasn't. For addition it was like algebra, but for subtraction I didn't have a freakin' clue what they were doing. And I feel pretty confident about my math ability.

I witnessed one of the kids getting the right answer but using the subtraction method incorrectly. I could see what she was doing. And she was getting the right answer. The teacher told her she didn't care about the answer, only that she was doing it the right way. She wasn't doing the method.

The child looked sad and perplexed.

And I felt sad and perplexed.

During a number of our evening meetings the teachers have talked about teaching the parents how to help the kids with their maths homework, because of the new way. Now I understand why that's necessary. Necessary, I guess.

Blogging block

I think I'm having a little blogging block. Partly because I'm really, really tired. I don't do well without sleep. You know those torture techniques, I think I could keep a secret through pain and threats of pain. But deprive me of my sleep - I'll tell you everything.

Anyway, in place of any actual blogging, here's some random thoughts about today's ripped headlines:

Writer's strike: Well, I don't care, since I'm mostly watching the Rockford Files, Columbo and four year old Maury shows. That Maury, he's timeless.

Pakistan and martial law: err, still lawless. Obama's idea of kicking butt and taking names seems more sensible all the time. Although I don't really mean that, because I think we should take a little break from invading countries until we can get it right.

The Vols - hey, we got our sacrificial homecoming win. Hurray. Go Vols. Now, to beat Arkansas - all you true orange blooded Volunteers should get busy writing poetry for the weekly Hail Mary Haiku contest. And in other football news, did y'all see this? Those kids must have a lot of character built up by now.

Oh...and since I also blog about babies now - here's a picture of the tyke - the reason why I'm getting no sleep.

Five months old

He's five months old today

Sunset in Richmond Park

Grave policy implications

More seasonal policy pronouncements. This time about the disturbing trend of making graves safe by absolutely ruining them, laying headstones flat or tying them to giant dowel rods hammered into the ground. The idea is that some people somewhere were killed by falling headstones, and so local authorities must test the stability of all stones (using a topple testing machine) and then make them safe.

Finally someone's standing up to the topple tyranny; John Mann, a Labour MP for Bassetlaw.

John Mann says no-one has been killed by falling headstones in churchyards in the past 10 years. Yet families are being forced to pay for graves to be made safe in local council graveyards because of "inaccurate" risk assessment tests. Headstones are made safe by a process known as "staking", in which wooden stakes are driven into the ground next to the headstones to prevent them toppling over.

The Local Government Association states that most councils pay to make graves safe themselves, but where grave owners are charged to make graves safe the costs are reasonable. I'm not sure what reasonable is, but our local cemetery manager told us the cost and it was somewhere around £200 or £300 ($400-$600).

I'd say that roughly between 70% to 80% of graves in our local cemetery have been staked.



And as Mann points out, these aren't necessarily the old graves, but rather ones less than a decade old. He paid for a topple test and claims that 95% of the staking is unnecessary.

These things simply don't fall on people. There is much more chance of people dying on their way to church," added Mr Mann.

New health and safety guidelines for gravestones were issued in 2004 after reports of five deaths caused by falling headstones. But Mr Mann said councils were being "tremendously over zealous" in their application of the rules and "a whole industry" had sprung up around "topple-testing" of graves. He said the graves being tested were often too small to topple over and cause injury let alone death - but they were still being "staked" by private contractors, at a cost of "hundreds of pounds" to berieved families.

Oh yes. We had a run-in with one of these contractors back in March.

The ViL pointed to the staked marker at our feet. The plastic straps weren't even touching the headstone, which was one of those low lying ones that barely rose 12 inches from the ground. Sure it was at risk of crumbling - if you jumped on it, a bunch - but the stake rising from the ground at a 45 degree angle posed a greater safety hazard.

In a radio interview yesterday, Mr Mann also claimed that the stakes themselves were a greater risk to health and safety, being trip hazards. I'd concur. I've seen headstones that stood no more than ten inches off the ground staked - with the stake standing dangerously high over the marker.


a martyr to health and safety


Mr Mann further states that trees and branches are a bigger hazard to the cemetery visitor. Certainly in our local cemetery many branches hang hazardously from old and cankered trees and the footpaths are dangerously uneven - an elderly person might easily fall and break a hip.

Really. This staking is just plain insane, especially when one can spot greater risks with an untrained eye. And how this fits in with the policy recommendation to make better use of these dead spaces is beyond me.

Happy Run-up-to-Christmas Day

By 4pm yesterday, I had bought no Halloween candy. Last year, we got no trick or treaters and I had to bring the candy in to my work (and eat a fair bit of it myself). But in a last minute glow of Horror Holiday nostalgia I rushed to the local grocery store to find the shelves picked nearly bare. I managed to find some Werther's originals and some kind of strange candy stick thing in boxes, probably the politically correct offspring of candy cigarettes.

I also checked the "seasonal aisle" to see if I could find anything to top up Cletus's outfit. Nope. Where accessories had been reasonably well stocked only days before, there were only a few vials of fake blood and some tatty witches hats. An Arabic speaking father and daughter where tearing through the remnants in search of costuming for a little boy and they sought my help. I pointed to some novelty skull spectacles in a child's size and he seemed happy enough with that, but the distressed daughter was pointing to the spot where £1.50 ($3) capes used to sit.

On the way home I noticed two jack-o-lanterns on my street. Two more than I had ever spotted before. And it warmed the cockles of my halloween heart.

We had two sets of trick-or-treaters - though I did have to go out for a while during peak trick-or-treating time, so we might have had more. At any rate, I did give away some candy - although we do have an awful lot of Werther's original.

Anyway, despite much sneering for many years by the English about this "American" holiday, they finally seem to be taking to it. I've always wondered why folks haven't taken to it more - I mean c'mon, dressing up and free candy. What's not to like? Who doesn't have room on their calendar for an extra fun holiday?

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And as we all know, Halloween is no longer All Saint's Eve, but the Run-up-to-Christmas eve. And in recent years it marks the beginning of the "War on Christmas", too. And here's the first story in the gruesome advent calendar. Because this story appears in The Daily Mail - it's hard to tell exactly what the truth is. They distort everything to make it "political correctness gone mad" - I know this because this happened to a project I worked on.

But it appears that a favorite Labour think-tank, the IPPR is about to issue a report calling on us to "downgrade" Christmas. Leaked recommendations include:

"If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too. We can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one in any sense.

Britain may no longer be particularly religious, but this country is still ethnically and culturally Christian to a large degree. And folks still love their Christmas.

I'm all for celebrating other holidays - as long as they're about fun and feasting and not scourging and fasting. But I don't see why we need to downgrade any existing holidays to do so.

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Slight digression:

Another finding of the IPPR report was that the state should make a bigger deal of the birth registration.

The system in which parents are required to register a new baby at a register office is dismissed as "purely bureaucratic". The occasion should be transformed into a "public rite", using citizenship ceremonies for immigrants as a model, the report says. "Parents, their friends and family and the state [would] agree to work in partnership to support and bring up their child."

Hell, NO! I'm not working in partnership with the state to bring up my child.

And anyway, this shows a leaning toward a particular ethno-religious tradition - infant baptism. I guess there are parallels with some other religions, too - the Bris for Jewish boys and I think there's some kind of thanksgiving sacrifice traditional made for Muslim children (two lambs for a boy, one for a girl, if I recall correctly). But in my religious tradition - hard core Protestantism - we don't hold with such things.

And besides, the report authors (two men) have clearly never had a c-section. You have to register the birth within six weeks - but at that point I couldn't even get myself down to the town hall never mind organise some stupid statist ceremony.

Ghoulish policy

Today, on Halloween, CABE (The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment)
issued a report on the uses of cemeteries as open spaces for all, not just the dead.

The report found that up to half of all open spaces in some local authority areas were made up of burial grounds - and that this is an untapped resource.

Sarah Gaventa, director of CABE Space, said “Cemeteries should not be considered solely as resting places for the dead, they should be designed with the living in mind too. The great Victorian cemeteries were designed and maintained as beautiful public parks for the enjoyment of all. Every local authority should have them in their green space strategy and ensure that their full value is realised.”

Our nearest green space is a graveyard, and we go walking there almost every day. I occasionally see other people using the cemetery for walking (even jogging once), but it's very rare. The cemetery workers are used to seeing me now, and they certainly don't make me feel unwelcome. But I reckon a lot of people wouldn't feel entirely comfortable recreating in a place of eternal rest.

quoth the crow

give me more

Happy Halloween

feeding the crows at Wimbledon Common

Darth Saudi

The King of Saudi Arabia is on a state visit to the United Kingdom. That means Saudi flags are flying on the Mall. That means that King Abdullah is serenaded by British military bands.

Guess what they played as he strolled up to meet the Queen.

The Imperial March - aka Darth Vader's march.

Heh.

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Update

This is so unbelievable, so apt yet so daring, that I started to doubt myself. But someone else saw it, too. Here's the clip from Channel 4 news - under a story called Saudi funded literature in British mosques I wish I knew how to get that up on YouTube, but here's one to tide you over:




FURTHER UPDATE - Noon 31 October 2007

Of course it's on YouTube now - spotted via Conservative Home.

Best line is "King Abdullah may not be head of an evil empire" - but then again, he might.

Contact me

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And in other sporting news...

I don't really much care for baseball. But I just want to acknowledge Jen - my expat blogger near neighbour - and her team winning the World Series. That must be amazing. That must feel like, well, like your team winning the World Series.

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I don't much care for NFL Football either. Tennessee didn't have a team when I left the US and no other team ever captured my loyalty. But apparently the NFL is looking to win hearts and minds on foreign soil. Namely British soil. In the Independent:

Rebuilt Wembley Stadium hosted the first regular-season NFL game in Europe, and fans of all teams have flocked to northwest London to see the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins 13-10.

But instead of drawing lots of British fans, a lot of the folks there were American.

Many in the sold-out stadium came from the United States, and the dreary sky poses no problem.

I'm sure the expat contingent in London put up a good showing, too. There's no firm estimate of how many Americans live in London, but we could probably just about fill Wembley stadium*. But the story nicely captures the feelings of a small contingent of Brits who love them some American football - all apparently hooked from catching a game on tv.

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* but not Neyland stadium.

TennViews

R Neal is the East Tennessee blogger who inspired me to start blogging. The outlet which captured my imagination is long gone, but he's set up other community blogging outlets - like KnoxViews and now TennViews.

TennViews is described as Liberal views and opinion by Tennessee Volunteers for a progessive America.

Now while I wouldn't classify myself as a progressive in a global sense and I'm disillusioned with leftists and what I perceive as a growing divide between the liberal and the left. I'm fairly right wing by British standards, but I also fully recognise that compared to most Tennesseans I'm a way-out wacky lefty. At any rate, I'm glad to see this new outlet and I hope it becomes a vibrant online community that contributes to the political conversation in Tennessee and beyond.

And, I wouldn't mind if this meant that KnoxViews was more focused on Knoxville and Knox County than the recent drift towards national politics.

Time shift

Now y'all know I love the Vols, but I love my sleep, too. And lately, with the baby's night wakenings, I'm really not getting enough. So when a night or evening game comes on, I don't listen live. With a five hour time difference between London and Knoxville, yesterday's game against South Carolina would have started after midnight here, and I really need to catch my Zs when the baby's asleep.

We turned on the game this morning - they keep the free audio up at UTSports.com for several days. I stayed away from the Internet, I didn't check any scores. I just listened as live.

But of course, it isn't live. So if things get a little boring (say with a big old lead like 21-0 at half time), then there's a temptation to switch away from the game and just check the score. But it ain't over 'til it's over - and anyway both times that I've quit listening at halftime this season, UT lost. So I couldn't stop listening.

And then things started to turn sour. Very sour. All of a sudden South Carolina were up and then it was tied. And we remembered the other thing that's made a difference. Whenever the baby hasn't been dressed in orange, UT lost. And the little guy hadn't a scrap of Tennessee orange on. The Vol-in-Law scrambled around the house looking for orange accessories, which to be honest aren't actually that hard to find.

Of course, the truth was that the game was already decided. But it's amazing, how you can get wrapped up in the moment passed.

But setting that aside with Cletus suitably dressed we appealed to the gods of football to turn back time - to reach back through the hours and change the outcome, because there was no way that Tennessee was going to pull this one out of the bag.

And in those long final minutes of sickening, growing dread that Tennessee was going to lose despite the fact that all the teams that needed to lose to keep us contenders actually had lost (Kentucky and Florida) it was tempting to turn to the score and end the pain.

And eventually my husband had to go out, so we succumbed to temptation. And you know what, Tennessee lost. Just as I suspected. And I turned to another website to get the story -and realised that I had somehow misread the score (I do blame sleep deprivation). Holy Moly, Tennessee won. All our last minute appeasements to chance had shifted time and resulted in the right score. Even the Vol-in-Law screamed in glee. (Of course, this set the baby to crying.)

Go Vols.

Bumbo cuteness

We have a little foam molded baby containment device called a Bumbo.


They've recently been "recalled" - because they're not really safe on elevated surfaces. Several babies have flipped out and fallen. Well, duh. We do use ours on elevated surfaces, largely because we're too old and crickety to really get down on the ground, plus Cletus likes to be able to look us in the eye. But you don't leave a baby unattended on a raised surface - or even on the ground - in one of these things.

But the recall isn't really a recall. All you get is a sticker saying not to use it on an elevated surface. My packaging and I think the Bumbo itself say not to use on a raised surface. But I've never been that good at following instructions.

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Some people love the bumbo, some babies don't really take to them. Our little guy really likes to be upright, so it's been a really good product for us. Plus he looks so cute in them.




But even I gotta admit, it's not as cute as these Bumbo movies.

Bumbo I
Bumbo II
Bumbo III

And unlike most series - the sequels are better. Bumbo II and III are hilarious.

Trickertreat

I'm sorry I missed this she first posted it. Here's Ms Coble's conundrum. She has some spare Bibles. I'm gathering maybe she has quite a few spare Bibles. She's wondering if she should give them out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

I think I would have been coolly indifferent if I'd gotten a Bible in my treat bag. I'd have been OK with it if there'd been a mini Snickers bar that came with it.

Of course, I didn't need any Bibles growing up. I had access to plenty. Candy was a rarer treat.

But it's kind of a neat idea. Giving away surplus items at Halloween. I did once give away a ray gun that I had used as a Halloween costume prop to a trick-or-treater because I had no candy. He was really excited. It's too bad we just gave dropped off a bunch of books at charity shop only yesterday. We could have left a stack by the door.

Sorry, kids - no candy. But how 'bout this unreadable and depressing tome: The Losing Battle with Islam. All out of chocolate, but here's a John Irving novel - sorry, it's not one of the better known ones. Wild Swans is good, if a bit depressing. Take this Harlequin romance, when I was 12 I found them quite exciting. You might like this pulp fiction in Spanish that I thought I could use to improve my foreign language skills but languished unloved on my shelves for years.

And if we had a mad rush, I could give away pairs of shoes I no longer like and maybe scarfs or old sweaters.

Oh yes, Halloween could take on whole new dimensions.

Sicko crosses the pond

Michael Moore's film Sicko is finally being shown in British cinemas*. I'm sure many Brits will take this as an opportunity to gloat and to bask in the reflected glory of the sacred status of the National Health Service. Apparently, Mr Moore paints an overly rosy portrait of the NHS.

Don't get me wrong. I'm like many who can say "At least it's there." I've used the service for the normal, the chest infections and the sprains. I've used it for the stupidly self-inflicted wounds (I got glass in my eye from an art project gone wrong). I've used it during my pregnancy and emergency c-section. And through all that, I've never paid a penny for services and I've paid very little for prescriptions. Although, of course, I have paid. I pay through my taxes.

I've probably experienced some of the worst of the NHS. London gets a raw deal from most national services. We really don't get what we pay for. I could complain a lot about my maternal care. I didn't have a continuous relationship with any single person on the obstetrical staff. The conditions in the post-partum ward were extremely unpleasant (lack of privacy, noisy, hot and piss-poor decor**) and I rarely saw the same professional twice. But on the upside, they supported my home birth until I passed out of their clinical guidelines (baby was 16 days late). I could have chosen another, prettier hospital. But the hospital I chose was across the street from our house and is a center of excellence for obstetrical emergencies. And, at least, it was there.

And I never had to worry about how I was going to pay or what it was going to cost.

I never had to skip appointments because I couldn't pay. I never had to negotiate a payment plan with a hospital and hope it didn't go to c-section because then I'd have a bill I couldn't afford. This happened to women on the American baby discussion forum I participate in. Some folks on this forum even now have worries about their babies' health but are putting off visits to a pediatrician because they're waiting for new insurance to kick in.

We all know that there are problems with American health care, but there are problems with the NHS, too. Just different problems. Problems which Michael Moore didn't raise: From Peter Bradshaw's review of Sicko in The Guardian.

By way of contrast, Moore visits those countries with free healthcare: Canada, France and Britain. And this last visit is the one to make us sit up. With much elaborate comedy and saucer-eyed cod-acting, Moore visits the NHS hospital of Hammersmith in London, and deploying many a gasp and double-take, refuses to believe that the sick folks aren't charged hundreds and thousands of dollars. He doesn't mention the waiting lists, the filth, the degrading mixed wards and the MRSA that are a staple of all media coverage of the National Health Service. So perhaps he's got a starry-eyed view of our healthcare.

And he goes on to suggest that maybe Mr Moore has the right idea:

But isn't it obtuse to focus so excitably on what goes wrong with our health service, when so much more routinely goes right and when, incidentally, there are those with a vested interest in promoting these scare stories as an excuse for privatising it? Isn't it, for all its faults, exactly the miracle that Michael Moore portrays it?

Actually, no. The NHS is not the miracle that Mr Moore portrays. It's a system, designed by humans. Humans with good intentions, but humans who get things wrong. Like all systems it has its flaws. And when we ignore the flaws and make the system sacrosanct then we have no chance to learn from other systems and to correct those flaws, to innovate and improve.

The same with the American healthcare system. It's not the envy of the world any more. It's inadequate and does not provide the American people what they pay for. It's the most expensive health care system in the world and it's no longer delivering the best outcomes.

But yet, there are some really good things about American health care. There are some wonderful things that need to be kept and nurtured. Americans, like the British, need to look with a clear eye to their health care, keep what's right and fix what's wrong.


________________

*I won't be seeing it - at least not in the cinema. I don't like the cinema and what with the baby and all, it's not really easy. But I anxiously await the DVD release.

** You can say that this matters little, but I think that people do fare better in nicer surroundings. Partly things were bad because I gave birth in June - and a new maternity ward was due to open in September.

Real names

I named lil Cletus after my grandfather, my mom's dad. He also has my surname as a second middle name and, of course, his dad's last name. Yes, it's a poncey, long-winded four moniker solution. It's a lot of name for a little guy. I couldn't not give him a second middle name though - since his middle name and his last name put together are the name of a college in Tennessee. Yep, he might have been Cletus followed by Freed Hardeman, David Lipscomb, Carson Newman, Austin Peay or Volunteer State without the clever inclusion of an additional name. I'd be looking into possible scholarships, but that would mean he'd have to go to one of those schools.

Like any expectant couple, we played the name game. Only with boys' names, there was no contest, no discussion even. I was firm on my selection. And everybody, and I mean everybody seemed happy with that. This is largely because my grandfather was a widely respected, well-liked fellow who exuded integrity and honesty and affability. On girls' names, we struggled a little. He likes girly names and I like names that conjure up images of iron maidens. For example, I really like the name Gudrun. Even though I'd never have the guts to use it, I really like it.

I have some very strict guidelines about names. It has to be a real name, in common (though perhaps not frequent) usage in English speaking countries. It should not be a faddish name - either in beginnings or endings. (Here's a great post from the Baby Name Wizard blog about trends in name endings). And I have some other pet peeves, too. Are you using a surname as a first name? That's fine - but is that a family surname? Are you actually entitled to it? I hate youneek (unique) spellings, too. I also dislike nicknames given instead of full actual names - like Will, not William on the birth certificate. Seriously, parents they don't charge more for the extra ink.

Are any of these you - or your kids? Well, sorry. Sort of. I guess. No, actually not really. And some of my own family have done these things.

On my baby discussion forum there were endless, endless polls of names - people wanting feedback on a potential baby name and then getting really upset when they got it.

Here's one:

What do you think of the name Lacey Lane Lastname? Be honest.

OK, honestly? Honestly, that sounds like a stripper name. Yep, thanks mom and dad for saving your baby from a fun night of coming up with a porn star alias.

But that's hardly the worst of it. Over at Suburban Turmoil, Lindsay (is that a family name?) has compiled a list of some the worst baby names ever. My nomination - Truly Scrumptious* - made it to the finals. But the best (worst) one in my opinion is....Crystal Meth.


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*a co-worker's friend's partner named his daughter from a previous relationship Truly Scrumptious, a character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Who watches the watcher?

Head of UK Government Audit steps down after loads of tasty meals

Sir John Bourn, the guardian of the public purse who ran up bills of £356,000 on travel and £27,000 on meals, is to step down from the post in January, it was announced today.

This just tickles me silly.

Every two hours

Cletus was always a good sleeper. At just over a week old, he would go four, five or sometimes up to six hours at a stretch. At just over six weeks old, he was "sleeping through", going down somewhere between 8:30 and 10 pm, and waking up somewhere between 5:30 am (on a bad night) all the way up to 7 on a rare lucky morning.

Wow! I praised my lucky stars. I believed I might have stumbled on some kind of slacker method of baby control.

Of course, on the downside, Cletus was a skinny little fellow and a slow gainer.

Well, lately he seems to be chubbing up and growing and now he's waking every two hours through the night - ravenous. I'm tired.

Baby's first trip to the pub

We're baaad parents.

It was only afterwards that we noticed that his hand is actually on the pint. Don't worry, though it's not as bad as it looks. This is only a shandy - half beer and half lemonade (Brit lemonade - it's like Sprite)

This was the night of England's loss to the Springboks in the Rugby World Cup and Tennessee's unfortunate loss to the Alabama.

At least we got one thing right, notice the boy's little socks.

That bites

Man, I hate it when UT loses to Alabama. Sucks. Sucks. Sucks.

-0-

We left at half time to go to a party in a pub. We took Cletus, which might have been a mistake. Folks were watching the rugby world cup finals in the pub (England v South Africa). England was looking for a second championship in a row. Emotions were high. Cheers were loud. Everytime England scored or had a chance, the pub roared and Cletus burst into tears. Maybe it was the noise, or maybe he's a budding South Africa fan.

Of course, we're raising him to support England in football - soccer and rugby, too I guess - and Tennessee in football (football). Not a good time right now.

Death threat

Wow.

Goodbye old friend

Our beloved coffee maker has given up the ghost. It's just a filter drip thing, but it has a lot of nice features that we've grown used to, that we rely on:

• spring loaded valve thingy, so you can get a cheeky half cup before the brewing cycle has completed
• removable water tank, so you can take that to the sink and back - also so you're not tempted to use the carafe which would introduce coffee to the innards of the machine
• thermos carafe - instead of the glass decanter with hot plate beneath - this means that your coffee never scorches.

It also has some other features, like a timer and strength modulator and I think you can reverse the polarity, but we don't really use those. But the ones listed above, we need them now.

The pump on the machine has packed up, it's caked with lime scale. London water is ridiculously hard, it's well 'ard. If you fink your appliances can escape unscaved, yer having a larf.

C'mon mister coffee, come and haff a go if you fink yer 'ard enough. Yeah, you and yer coffee mate.

We've had a few close calls with the coffee maker - for a couple of years we had a paint brush stuck to the bottom of the carafe with blue tack because I'd broken the spring loaded valve thingy and without the extra height We nearly gave in and got rid of it a couple of times, just because we were tired of people asking "Why do you have a paint brush stuck to the bottom of your coffee pot?". And yet we could hardly blame them for asking. But we persevered with our rigged appliance because we couldn't find a replacement. The market is saturated now with one cup encapsulated coffee makers with their expensive tied brands of coffee or cappuccino-latte frothy extraordinaire jobbies which look complicated and difficult to clean and likely to cause steam burns and I don't even like cappuccinos and lattes and poncy coffee drinks. Eventually the Vol-in-Law found, ordered and installed a part which allowed us to dispense with the brush.

But there's no such easy cure this time. I've tried some home descaling methods - I've run three and a half bottles of vinegar and two doses of oxyclean through the thing. It's improved the situation somewhat - since I've caught quite a bit of calcite grit coming through the machine, but it's still not working right.

In the mean time we've been using a coffee press, which produces unsatisfactorily small amounts of coffee which goes cold all too quickly. And on Thursday we bought a filter drip machine for such a cheap price that we can view the machine as disposable (it cost the same as two and a quarter venti Americanos). And the taste? We probably should have spent the money on the two and a quarter coffee shop coffees.

I've identified a replacement coffee maker that has all the features of our old one - plus a descaling mode, but we'd have to take a second mortgage out. But we're getting desperate. Might be time for a call to the banker.

Beat Bama

It's just a darn shame I don't know any Alabama expat bloggers. When I had the bet going with Chris for the Georgia game, it sure added a little extra sparkle. It would be fantastic to make some Bama baby in England (heck, anywhere in Europe would be fine) wear the beautiful Volunteer orange.

The best part about it was that the Vol-in-Law finally felt like he had a bit of a stake in it - given that his only son might have to wear the red and the black. For once, he listened to the game and said "we" when referring to Tennessee. He's never really seen himself as a fan - merely a Vol-in-Law.

As for Cletus, my husband knows the boy has only one option in the NCAA fandom stakes, on my side it's all UT. In the UK, universities and sports don't really go together - although Cletus will be free to support Daddy's alma mater in the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

The Mysterious Mister Cletus

The Vol-in-Law is always asking the baby "Who's that mysterious Mister Cletus?"

Great Leap Backward

This morning on BBC Radio 4's Today Show, there was a feature on a Chinese family and their privations under the new economic system. The reporter told the very sad story of a family with multiple health problems and the struggle to make ends meet. They were separated by great distances and the father was working in the precarious black economy in order to keep bodies and souls together.

But the reporter kept going on about how this family were the victims of the new China, the losers in China's booming new economy.

I'm not saying that this family weren't suffering. I'm not even saying that a little bit of socialist intervention might not have made their lives a little easier (like, you know, socialised health care or universal access to good education, or even an agricultural extension agent). But let's not compare the realities of present day China with the rosy, lies of China's Maoist past.

Sure the dad might be working all the hours coming in a Chinese boomtown and Granny might be gleaning wheat from the side of the road. But in the Great Leap Forward, they wouldn't have even had that much to eat. During Mao's time there wasn't even the freedom to travel to the city of your choice to have your labor exploited. China's Communism didn't even attempt a proper welfare state - it was just grinding, totalitarian misery.

Bringing up baby

Channel Four has been showing a series called Bringing Up Baby, which features six sets of parents trying three different baby care methods.

• The 50s method of Truby King which is all about strict routine, seems similar to Ferber or BabyWise methods.
  
• The 60s method of Dr Spock - trust your instincts.
• The 70s continuum concept - basically hard core attachment parenting, wearing the baby all the time, co-sleeping, etc.
  

The parents were supported by mentors who espoused these approaches. Each of these women was completely nuts on her own approach, so although this was called an experiment it was really about pitting these opinionated women against each other. It was supposed to stir strong feelings, and it did. (For example, two of the three mentors though that breastfeeding in public - even discretely, was simply beyond the pale.)

The 50s method, which involved only cuddling your newborn for 10 minutes a day and letting the baby cry it out from birth, and leaving the baby in the garden for "fresh air" for four hours unattendend made people on my British parenting forum go insane. And rightly so. To me it seemed like the sort of treatment doled out in Romanian orphanages. But if you keep the baby to a strict routine but painful routine at first, apparently you can get it to sleep conveniently from 7pm to 7am and take naps and generally not cause too much bother. That does sound tempting in a way, but the whole thing strikes me as a bit pointless. Why did you have a baby if you were simply planning to shut it up in some other room like some pet you don't like?

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One of the things that's surprised me about the whole child rearing lark is that there actually isn't any consensus on the best approach. That it seems like doctors and health visitors and everyone else have a variety of conflicting information that they'd like to force upon you. Feeding, schedules, weaning, bedtime routine. There are no answers. I know that every baby is different, but we have been having babies for quite some time and we've also had the scientific methods of observation and even experimentation at our disposal for a while now, too. So why haven't we actually put the two together to come up with some decent answers. It seems like the only thing there is some scientific clarity on is breast milk is the best thing you can feed a baby - advice which most of the population in the English speaking world ignore. Of course, that's probably because you get so much conflicting advice about what's the best way to go about it.

Anyway, I've decided that it's probably more about what the parent finds appropriate than what the baby will thrive on. After all, the little mite knows no difference.

Too old

The leader of the Liberal Democrat party, Menzies Campbell, has resigned. And although it's all over the UK news, American readers will be forgiven for not knowing or caring. The political equivalent in the US would be Dennis Kucinich dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination. It would be Who, Who Cares, and Just how do you pronounce that anyway? (As far as I can make out Menzies is pronounced Ming - like the Dynasty).

But what is interesting about the whole thing is how this came to be. For a long time, almsot since he took over the party leadership 18 months ago, critics inside his own party and the chatterati have been saying he's too old to lead the party and would be too old to fight a general election. It's true that the guy looks about 80, but he's actually only 66. And while 66 is pretty old, really, it's not exactly ancient - and there are many, many successful politicians that age and older.

Now my personal opinion is that the guy was just lame. It wasn't that he was too old, he was just wrong. Maybe his slightly quirky, fuddy-duddy manner is a winner inside the Lib Dems, but to everyone else, he just seems dull as a cardboard sandwich.

So why is everyone ducking the issue of his incompetence and lack of charisma and blaming it on age? Are baby boomers trying to push out the last remnant of the pre-1945 generation? Do folks think that somebody's too old is somehow nicer than saying they just can't cut it? Maybe Menzies Campbell is too old to be fooling himself about his abilities.

Postal strike

We haven't had any mail for the past couple of weeks. Nothing. Not a bill, not a postcard from a vacationing pal (not that we get those anymore), no gardening catalogs or the bizarre mailings (mostly Scientology, psychic fairs and woodland preservation) addressed to the previous residents of our house. Nothing.

There's been a postal strike, you see. And though theoretically there has been some post coming through in some parts of the country in the breaks between strike days, we've had nothing. But now the strike is off, apparently.

But still no post. Until today. After two weeks, we got an American Express bill and some cultist mailing to a previous resident of our house.

Ferris fall update

Remember how I posted about the woman who fell off a ferris wheel a couple of weeks ago. Well, her son got married yesterday and she managed to go to his wedding. She wasn't exactly leading the rhumba, but she saw her over-30 son get hitched (that is old, old for Lawrence County) and is apparently in good spirits. She does have long, hard row to hoe though.

Congrats Carter and get well, Gracie.

Oh, and this being the age of the internet, there's a YouTube video of the incident. Thankfully, you can't see anything.

Snap back

Last week, I'd barely posted about the possibility of a snap election and Gordon Brown ruled it out. There won't be an autumn election, after all. I guess it shows how much I've become acclimatised to political life in England. I couldn't fathom the notion of an autumn election. Oh, pounding the pavements (the sidewalks) in the waning light, the slick layer of damp autumn leaves underfoot, knocking up voters in the gathering gloom. (American readers - that merely means knocking on their doors and asking them to vote.)

But of course, in America we do have Autumn elections. In November - gloomy, gloom, gloom. But it's a lot different when all you have to do is mail your ballot in on time. Even the campaigning we do as expats (there are at least a quarter of million votes in this country) is largely over by the end of September and is darn right wrapped up by the time we lose daylight savings.

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Speaking of gloomy, gloom, gloom- the press now senses weakness in the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He was accused of bottling it by calling off the election. And then this week, in the pre-budget report (a sneak preview of the budget announcement later on), the new Chancellor Alistair Darling announced tax policies which had been proposed a mere days earlier at the Conservative Party Conference. The tiniest of tweaks and it's Government policy. Now one could say that this was Darling's doings - as he's supposed to be in charge of matters financial. But no one believes that Gordon Brown, who until recently held that same job for 10 years, doesn't retain complete control over his old domain.

Now, I don't mind - because on one policy I'm fairly neutral (a poll tax for non-domiciled residents) and on the other (a rollback on the inheritance tax) - I'm in favor, though it's not likely to benefit me given the crap financial position of my in-laws. But it does look like blatant political plagiarism - and since these same tax cuts could have been part of an election budget, well it looks like Labour has run out of ideas of their own. And for once the press called them on it.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne used the announcements to goad Gordon Brown about his decision to abandon thoughts of a snap election.

He said: 'We all know this report was brought forward so it could be the starting gun for the campaign, before you took the pistol and fired it into your foot. (Metro, 9 October)

Of course, they still seem to have got away without many commenting that it's a set of measures that will actually raise taxes over all. It's a strange political magic this Government seems to have, I don't know how they do it.

On Wednesday, in a sad attempt at humor, Gordon Brown pointed derisively to a petition on the Downing Street Website calling for an autumn election. It had only 26 signatures then. The next day it had over 8,000. Gordon, Gordon, Gordon - don't call attention to things online that you're just trying to dismiss.

Everything the PM does now just looks a little bit lame. I knew this would happen eventually, because he is a man of limited soul, a control freak who just isn't as smart as he thinks he is and he hates fun. But the Labour party faithful are surprised. Surprised, but they're noticing. Here Iain Dale highlights left wing faithful Polly Toynbee sticking the boot in to Gordon. Et tu, Polly?

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Although the Downing Street petition website does nothing and seems to influence policy not at all, I still think it's a nice idea. As blogger-supreme Iain Dale once suggested, (if I recall correctly and I'm paraphrasing) it would be a fine thing if say the top ten petitions were presented daily or weekly to the Prime Minister. I agree. There needn't be an obligation to do anything with the petitions, since these things are obviously subject to manipulation and internet chicanery - but yes, folks in power should be looking at these on a regular basis.

Can you imagine a similar thing for the White House or the Governor's mansion? Power to the People.

Very demanding

The Vol-in-Law's teaching load is now in full swing and Ol' Cletus is ever more demanding of attention, which is leaving me little time for blogging or anything else.

How soon is too soon to send him up the chimneys or down the mines?

Lawrenceburg Vice

I've had several hits on the site this morning looking for information about the availability of liquor and the freedom to smoke in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.

Like I'm some sort of authority on low-level vice in Lawrenceburg.

Really Mom, I'm not. I haven't had that depth of knowledge for years.

Dreaming of Knoxville

Last night I dreamed I was in my tiny little two-up-two-down terraced house front room watching tv with my brother. I have about a million channels - and it seems that new ones do get slotted in all the time. My brother found UT Sports TV. We couldn't believe it. It was nothing but a continual loop of UT Sports and sports commentary- and it was airing a football game that we could only just make out through the screen snow. We reckoned it was the Arkansas State game and I was frantic figuring out how I could subscribe to this channel (and how much it might cost me) - when the snow began to clear and the image was nearly perfect.

Later on in my dream, my husband and I went for a little walk and took a back way from our house that we hadn't taken before. We walked a little under ten minutes and came out into that West Knoxville shopping center that houses the Dollar Movie theater. Wow, we thought - we can finally go see some movies, but then we noticed the Dollar Movie place was boarded over - and we couldn't tell if it was a temporary condition or if $1.50 movies were no more.

They wear it well

Hey look y'all - Chris in Oxford comes good on the bet. I'm sure you're thinking it's bad enough that Georgia loses, but to have to wear our colors must rub salt in the wound. And then you had to dress your baby and your dog in the beautiful Tennessee hues. But to put the old Volunteer logo on your bbq grill well, I gotta hand it to you - that's good sportsmanship.

Your little feller always looks adorable even in red and black, but to this Tennessean's eyes he looks even better in orange. That's one fine picture for the baby album.

I'd say better luck next year, but I wouldn't mean it.

How 'bout them Vols?

Well, hey hey - Go Vols. What a fantastic game - (Tennessee wins 35 to 14) Between you and me, I wasn't quite sure they had it in them. Well, I thought the Vols definitely could win, but I wasn't sure they would win and I certainly didn't think they would trample. Phil Fulmer must have found a can of whoopass he'd forgotten about way back in the back of the cupboards.

Or maybe Phil told the Volunteers that there was a little tiny boy across the big, big ocean who would have to wear Georgia kit. Yep, I bet against another expat blogger - a Georgia fan - that if the Bulldogs won I'd dress my boy in Georgia gear.

"Y'all don't want to see that baby Vol wearing red and black!" Coach Fulmer told the assembled kids in the locker room. "Y'all don't want to see that sad baby's face when he sees himself wearing red and black. Men, think of the children."

On the upside, a young boy in Oxford will soon be introduced to beautiful Tennessee orange. His daddy, even posted a Rocky Top mp3 on his Georgia supporting blog. Magnanimous in defeat - I got to admit that's more than I would have done. Rocky Top has hardly ever sounded so good.

sleepy Vol

Shhhhh - the Vol Baby is sleeping.

We've nearly woken him up FOUR TIMES in the first half of the UT - Georgia game. It's hard to keep quiet when you hear Tennessee Touchdown.

Things are looking good for the Vol household in the SEC expat blogging feud.

Keep it up y'all.

Go Vols!

The other UT

Hey, boys and girls - while this week I might be obsessed about a game pitting beautiful orange against dreaded red, so are some other folks. Different shades of red and orange though. It's the Red River Rivalry, the Texas-OU game.

I don't really have a dog in that fight, but I know a lot folks from Texas who do much gnashing of teeth over this one. So good luck, Texas.


And it's a nice excuse to post this photo of a yellow rose I took this week.


Hook 'em, Horns.

Snap

Maybe I'm getting older and times moves faster, but it seems like we've hardly finished with one election before starting with another.

Of course, I'm also watching two cycles. Britain's and America's. So that doubles the fun.

The next big one due was supposed to be the 2008 US presidential race, but now we may be facing a snap election in the UK.

The Prime Minister has the privilege of dissolving Government and calling a general election at any time he or she wishes, but must call one every five years. And once parliament is dissolved there are 18 days until the next election. (Details from politics.co.uk at the end of this post)

So when they say snap, they mean snap.

According to political wags, PM Gordon Brown is holing up with his advisors this weekend to pour over polling data deciding whether to dissolve or not to dissolve. Political opponents and the press are taunting the PM. Call the election and it's political gamesmanship, going now because he thinks his chance will be too slim in future when his policy chickens finally come home to roost. Don't call the election and it's because he's a coward, too timid, overly cautious and afraid of losing.

If an election is called in the next couple of weeks, there will be an absolute frenzy of political activity. Lots of leafleting and canvassing and general electioneering. For myself, I've already started to think about how I can participate while dragging around a baby.


_____________
Information about general elections in the UK

How an election is called:
Under law a Parliament has a maximum duration of five years starting from its first meeting following a general election. These means that a general election has to be held every five years, although the Prime Minister of the day can call one at any time within this five years. The current Parliament started on May 11 2005 so the Prime Minister has until June 3 2010 before an election needs to be called. Typically though, a general election is called well before it has to be by law. An election in 2007 would be unusual in coming just two years after the last general election.

After deciding to call an election, the Prime Minister will visit Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament. A proclamation will then be published dissolving the current Parliament and calling a new one.

Once Parliament is dissolved MPs cease to be, even if they are standing for re-election. During the election period they are not permitted to enter the Palace of Westminster or use any of its facilities. However, they and their staff will continue to be paid up until polling day.

Unlike MPs, the Government will continue to be the Government until the election results are declared.

Election timetable
The election timetable runs for a total of 18 days, starting with the dissolution of Parliament on day zero and ending with polling day on day 17. Weekends and public holidays are not included as part of the timetable.

If the Prime Minister goes ahead with a November 1 poll, then the timetable for the general election will be as follows:
Day 0 – Tuesday October 9 - Proclamation and issue of writ
Day 7 – Wednesday October 17 – Last day to register to vote or for postal vote
Day 17 – Thursday November 1 – Polling day

Ratcheting up

Goodness the rhetoric is strengthening in advance of the UT-Georgia game. This expat blogger declares a feud. Well, he might be from the swamps of North Florida, but he's rightly reckoned that folks from the hills can be dangerous, especially when challenged.

And the challenge is getting mean - strong talk from a team with a junkyard mutt as a mascot.

There were strange folk up in the hills, you see - moonshiners, hillbillies, people who didn’t understand the principles of genetics. If you looked at them wrong they would start a feud with you and never rest until your entire family was hunted down. Well, turns out you can take the Vol out of the hills but never the hills out of the Vol.

First off, there's nothing wrong with a little entrepreneurial distillation action, all the folks on Rocky Top get their corn from a jar and it tastes better by far that way.

And as someone who's worked in politically correct England for a while, Chris should know better than to throw around racial epithets like "hillbilly". I'm proud to have been born on a mountain top in Tennessee (technically the ridge running through Fort Sanders affording a beautiful view of the Knoxville campus) - and I prefer the term Appalachian-American, thank you very much. Under the Race Hate Act, you can actually be thrown into jail (gaol) for stirring up cultural hatred - and then who's gonna be wearing the prison orange? But don't worry, I won't be making a complaint - I know it all arises out of pure jealousy from the swamp dweller - for we all know what rolls down hill.

And as for the fighting Volunteer spirit, well hell yeah - bring it on. I don't care if you have raised the stakes. Now that we're calling our stadium Fort Neyland your dawgs will find this a much less hospitable locale.

My boy, myself and my dog will all don orange if by some bizarre act of the devil the Vols and their fat little coach manage to slip past the mighty Dawgs. By accepting this bet, you are succumbing to the inevitable fate of adorning young Cletus, yourself and your little cat in glorious red and black.

Dress my cat? That's just crazy talk. And in red and black? You know how the English feel about animal cruelty. But if by some chance, the puppies squeal through - we'll see what we can do about the cat.

And so honor must be satisfied

Well, well - you can understand why Georgia might be feeling a little confident going into this game what with the bizarre reverse home ground winning streak.

But what this fellow describes is just hubris. Pride goeth before a fall. And to say we've had a decade of bad football in Tennessee is just a lie. Hmmm - we've had a national championship somewhere in the last ten years. Sure, it's now at the outer edges, but still.

And we've got something else, too. Phil Fulmer knows that he can't play choke artist on this one. The Big Orange Army will be taking scalps this Saturday - and they can be from Dawgs or they can be from coaching staff.

The Bet

My brother didn't lose a tooth down in Athens "defending Smokey's honor" just to see his nephew dressed in red and black. But I've been challenged - one expat blogger against another with the ultimate stake: one tiny expat SEC fan against another - his son vs. mine. If the Vols win - little Zach will finally be dressed right - in Tennessee Orange. If Georgia wins, and though it sickens me to write this, poor old Cletus will have to don Bulldog colors.

Which would be a shame, because as we all know, my boy looks so good in orange.



I do note that like a wily, welching Georgia fan Chris has already laid the foundation for a get-out clause.

Would it be inappropriate to use our sons in a bet? Son of losing fan wears colors of the winning team? Or will our respective better halves step in…

Mine sure won't. Although he's from Northern Ireland and doesn't even much care for college football, he perversely likes to see Tennessee squirm. (Grounds for divorce, I know) Although even he can appreciate a win like the thumpin' we gave the Dawgs last year.

So here's what I propose. Losing team's fan dresses son in winning team's colors - for real. With team logo (this can be photoshopped, since NCAA baby gear is impossible to source in the UK). Photo to be posted on the loser's blog by Wednesday. First in a post, then kept in the sidebar for a week.

Go Vols

Southern gothic

In a strange way, this story typifies some of the reasons I sometimes miss living in the South and at the same time why I don't. And I think it also proves that smoking meats is a great means of preservation.

talkin expat trash

This week I'd like to highlight the blog of a fellow American expat, Chris Della Vedova. His blog is pretty, it has music clips and interesting posts about science and politics and sports and stuff.

We have some other things in common besides our nationality. He has a brand new baby boy, too. He's also a recovering smoker. He thinks Steve Earle isn't quite so good since he got so politically bitter. I don't know for sure, but I bet he thinks the SEC is the toughest football conference in the nation. Anyway, that's where his heart is.

And that's where the similarities end. You see last week he combed the baby clothing aisles of Oxford (England, not Mississippi) for suitable team colors for his little Zach. But instead of choosing a beautiful golden orange, he chose red and black.

He's raising that kid to support Georgia. And to my mind, that's just bad parenting.

Hey Chris, I hope the sound of your bitter wailing come Saturday night when Tennessee woops your Dawgs doesn't wake up your baby.

UPDATE: I'm challenged, and I accept.