I made the switch

One of my New Year's resolutions was to update my links list - and I thought maybe I should switch over to the new blogger before doing so.

But I've been afraid, so, so afraid.

I finally did it. I hope it will be trouble free.

Stunted

The parents of a severely disabled girl have had her undergo treatment so that she will never grow up. She won't be tall or get too heavy to carry or place in a wheel chair. She won't develop breasts, have periods or ever get pregnant.

Having received some harsh criticism on discussion forums, they decided to write about their decision. On a My Space blog.

I can't even imagine their situation enough to judge them. But I just think it's interesting that they were prompted to go public by a discussion forum and chose to tell their story via a blog.

No sickie

The teaser boards for tonight's London Evening Standard said.

Biggest sick day ever

Apparently, thousands skipped the return to work today. I went to work, but I did not like it.

When I woke up a little congested this morning, I did contemplate pulling the the old sickie. But there just wasn't enough snot to drown out the old protestant work ethic. And anyway, it all cleared up by nine.

Sorry for any imagery that may have produced.

Oops

My little cat Fancy has developed two little bald patches on her shoulder blades. I was just talking to her about them - in that "cute" little voice I have for the precious cat.

"Don't go bald on your shoulders, Fancy. Don't get little bald patches. It's quite to distressing to me. No one likes bald patches."

"Harumph," goes my husband in the next room.

"What??" I say

"No one likes bald patches...on cats - I'm sure you meant to say."

"Yes, of course." I reply.

Yep, the Vol-in-Law is so virile and testosterone laden that he's got a touch of the classic male pattern baldness - and the sensitivity that goes with it. But it's true, better a balding husband than a balding cat.

I resolve

The big one:

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. But occasionally, I'll resolve. I've already given up smoking, so there goes an obvious one. I've thought about self-improving ones, like eating more whole grains. But I've decided on one that I think will make me both more likeable and more satisfied with myself, but will also spread a little kindness through the world. I will praise more.

I'm a bit critical. So, in my relationships at home and at work, I will praise more. I will not wait until the right moment or use it (exclusively) to soften the blow of criticism. I will just praise.

(BTW, if you know me in real life, it may take me a while to work up to this. So don't pressure me. Also, note that I've not resolved to criticise less - just to praise more.)

Blogging resolutions:

• I will update my links list (before the end of January).
• I will link more to others - including more praising good writing by others.

Go Vols

I've been going through some photographs, uploading them to my Flickr account and pulling together image sets so that they can be printed in photo books.

I gave my parents this one for Christmas: A year in the garden 2006. And I finally pulled together all my pics from our holiday in France which includes lots of images of wallabies and war graves, but also this one:




..which is big and orange. Go Big Orange. Go Vols.

New Year's Meme - reminiscing

I've seen a couple of folks do this - I think TheoGeo, now Busy Mom (via Nashville is Talking), so like a slavish follower of fashion, I shall do it myself. Highlight the first lines from each month of last year.

January:
Well, my first post of last year was brief and such a contrast to the way I feel this morning (we had a very quiet and sober evening last night) that I'm reproducing the post in full.

1 Jan 06: Fantastic. The Deco Lounge in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Piano bar, master of the ivories the gay son of a former Texas governor. He called us yankees (my friends are from Texas and Mississippi) just to get a rise, but then played the Tennessee waltz.

We're in the San Jose airport on our way back to Vegas. I feel queasy. As I write this, I am lying on the filthy carpet with my head propped on my luggage.

And just for fun - a photo of Mr Houston Allred, which I wasn't able to provide last year - as I was busy lying on the filthy carpet of a California airport.




February:
There were two posts on 1 February, one event has been forgotten but both are worth remembering:

Cold dead hand:
The IRA has held on to some guns after its "final act of decommissioning". Shocker.

I'm Danicus
Newspapers across Europe are taking a stand by publishing cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed.

March:
I tried to find a suitable gal for my brother. 1 March is VolBro's birthday - and it was cheaper than sending a card, what with the trans-Atlantic postage and all. Go read the whole thing - he's still available.

Woman seeking woman for brother
When I was home over Christmas, VolMom oft lamented VolBro's single status.

April:
There seems to have been a gap in posting - my first post is on 4 April - where I lament the refurbishment of my local pub. It's been open again for ages. On the upside, I'm not ashamed or scared to meet people there now, but on the downside it's a lot more expensive and I do miss the atmosphere provided by the scowling, Chelsea supporting locals and their one-eyed dogs.

My local
My local pub is shut now for refurbishment. But it's less a refurbishment and more a metamorphisis from dark, cheap drinking den - a spit on the sawdust floor kind of place - to a chi chi gastropub.

May:
I publish a digest of links to my series of posts "liveblogging" my trip to Paris.

Je n'aime pas Paris, but it's OK
Vol K was over in London on business again and decided to she wanted to see Paris -I've made it a point of pride to say "I've live only a few hours away from Paris, and I haven't been in 20 years!"

After breaking the seal on my ban on France, the Vol-in-Law and I went on vacation there in September.

June:
On the first of June last year, I was pumped for the World Cup! Hurray, Go Vols! Wait - they weren't playing, and my other favorite team - England - might as well not have been.

Cup fever
The World Cup is not far away now. Vol Abroad readers get ready for some World Cup blogging.

July:
Oh, dear, my first post of July and this is how that World Cup thing turned out

It's over

England's out of the World Cup.

Loss on penalties. Again.

Tears in my beer.

August:
On the first day of August last year I blogged about donations to Islamic charities that ended up supporting terror. Be careful where you give your money.

Doing evil thru good
Where is your charitable donation going? Panorama- a BBC documentary news show had some interesting answers.

September:
In celebration of football time in Tennessee, I post a YouTube link to the cutest thing ever.

October: Although on the first of October last year, I blogged about the Conservative party conference, including McCain's speech there at. And I also blogged about that amazing sweet 15 party in Knoxville

But my first post in October was asking for reader advice on some changes to my garden.

How tacky is that?
I've been thinking about getting an articial lawn

Reader opinion was not divided.

November:
London Mayor Ken Livingstone shows his true colors - again - on the first of November.

Ken backs terror - again
London Mayor Ken Livingstone had to make a big old U-turn yesterday after supporting the employment of a convicted terrorist on the Underground system.

December:
Getting a jump on the New Year's resolution thing - my husband and I resolve to put my cat on a diet. Sometimes the threat of the law makes you do things you might not have otherwise.

Fat Cat
Two brothers are facing a private prosecution in the UK brought on by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). What's the charge? They let their dog get fat. Real fat.

Submission, tolerance and death: A review of Murder in Amsterdam

For Christmas, VolMom bought us a copy of Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.

Theo Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a radical Islamist. Van Gogh, a controversial Dutch filmmaker, was shot then stabbed when he cycling home one day. Mr Bouyeri then had a shoot out with Dutch police, was captured alive and later convicted of murder. Mr Bouyeri was not particularly poor and had received a good education. He had turned to radical Islam and then to murder.

But how could this happen? The Dutch pride themselves on their tolerance. A tolerance bred in native Dutch and inculcated in the immigrant populations.

Ostensibly, Van Gogh was killed over this film - Submission: Part I. A film he directed and which was written by Ayan Hirsi Ali - a Somali born asylum seeker - who eventually became a Dutch citizen and member of parliament. Go and look at the film and see if it was worth all that trouble - Van Gogh's death and Hirsi Ali's life spent on the run, the threatened removal of her Dutch citizenship, the end of her political career in Holland. Go and have a look at this deliberately provocative film, written by a Muslim woman. Bear with it - it's only 10 minutes long - and don't be put off because it starts in Arabic with Dutch subtitles; it quickly switches to English.

Ian Buruma, the author of Murder in Amsterdam is a journalist and academic living in the US, born and raised in Holland, and with a similar privileged background in the same area the Theo Van Gogh was raised. He went back to Holland after the murder to find out what had happened to the tranquil Dutch sense of tolerance - first abruptly ended by both the success of anti-immigration, anti-Muslim politician Pim Fortuyn and then by his assassination by a radical vegan. (Yes, that's right - fur is murder.)

Although Mr Buruma explores questions of identity, faith, politics, and tolerance in Holland - those living in Europe - particularly those in moderate, cool Northern Europe will see reflections of what is happening in their own countries. Perhaps in Holland, the situation is magnified, because of the peculiarities of Dutch culture and history, in particular the dichotomy between the bravery of some individual Dutch during WW2 in protecting the Jewish population but the stark reality that most Dutch said nothing and most Dutch Jews were exterminated.

The Dutch are proud of their role in the Enlightenment, their tolerance, their progressiveness. In many ways, rightly so. And this book explores how many on the left as well as the "Enlightenment right" (where I am increasingly placing myself) have begun to have deep suspicisions of not just political Islamism, but also Islam itself - and how it may roll back the hard-won advances in universal civil liberties.

Questioned about his hostility to Islam, [Pim] Fortuyn said "I have no desire to have to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again."

But the book also explores how second generation, Dutch-born Muslims can turn against the nominal, moderate or "village traditional" Islam. The problem of Islamism in Europe is not just a problem of immigrants and zealous converts, but a problem with a source in the host culture as well. What is it about European culture that prevents it from assimilating immigrants and bringing them into the host culture - at least bringing them in enough.

I am an immigrant to the UK myself - and though white, well-educated, Protestant and partly English by heritage, I can never become English. I could never become English the way my British husband could become American if he chose to embrace it. English people are shocked (but pleased) when I tell them I'm an ardent England football fan. Ethnicity and race and nationality and culture are too intertwined in Europe. So how much harder must it be for the brown, the truly foreign (at least the English don't consider me truly foreign), and the differently faithed to really integrate? Not that immigrants don't have a responsibility themselves to respect and interact with the host culture.

Buruma asks these questions, but he doesn't provide any answers. For a book of reportage, it curiously suspenseful.


What others have said:


Kevin Breathnach at Disillusioned Lefty leaves the book off his essential reading list because it doesn't cover the tenents of radical Islam:

...Buruma delves not into the world of radical and political Islam (that is ‘Islamism’) as explicated by Paul Berman. Not once do we read of Sayyid Qutb, Ayman al-Zarahiri, Hassan al-Banna, Abu al-Mawdudi or even Osama Bin Laden. These are the key figures in the history of fundamentalist Islam; to know them is to at least begin to understand the threat the West faces.

Well, yes. But almost as much of the book deals with the Dutch reaction to National Socialism and it doesn't expose the basics of Nazism either. Radical and political Islam isn't treated as a "well, maybe it's ok" - Buruma clearly does not approve of it. Radical Islam is not the topic of the book, the book is about how we in the West accomodate, tolerate, ignore or battle against Islamism.

Piers Dorsman at Peaktalk, understands that Buruma's, but rightly calls him on his failure to make the link between the fundamental teachings of faith (or philosophy) and the eventual extremes a faith or belief may take.

There has been a fair bit of criticism for Buruma, most notably that he failed to take a clear moral stance and was not sufficiently judgmental in taking sides in the conflict between free societies and nascent Islamism. To be frank, I was relieved to for once have a book in my hands that did not do that. Buruma is clear enough in what he thinks about jihadism, and instead gives us equal access to the Dutch and Moroccan cultures, and more specifically to Theo van Gogh’s life and Mohammed Bouyeri’s life.

...snip...

In the end of the book Buruma tries to explore ways where tolerance could neutralize the perils of radical Islam and hopes that religion can ultimately become the subject of reasoned debate, even for Muslims. This quote from the writer makes it clear where the boundaries between the Koran and fundamentalism are:

“Revolutionary Islam is linked to the Koran, to be sure, just as Stalinism and Maoism were linked to Das Kapital, but to explain the horrors of China’s man made famines or the Soviet Gulag solely by inviting the writings of Karl Marx would be to miss the main point”

Yes, correct, but this conclusion can also be explained in another direction by arguing that however well-meaning the basic tenets of Islam are, they have the potential to be turned around into a deadly totalitarian ideology. Theo van Gogh in his own distinctive way was not given to this type of socio-political analysis, but instinctively understood the dangers of history in the making. Yet at the heart he remained a Dutchman, a little too complacent and somewhat oblivious of the immediate perils. One can only imagine the panic he must have felt when he was butchered to death on an Amsterdam street.

And Richard at The Peking Duck said:

Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance is a slender volume with big type and lots of white space that nevertheless forced me to challenge some of my most cherished liberal principles. I loved this book because it made me think. It showed me a side of life in contemporary Europe that I didn't know much about. Yes, I had an idea of the Muslim 'ghettoes' that have become a standard feature of many great European cities, but I must admit, I hadn't realized how serious a threat they now pose.

...snip...

But Buruma goes on to describe the unique feature of many Islam immigrants in Europe that does indeed place them in a special category - a disrespect for the laws and values of their host nations. Living in Amsterdam's 'dish city' is one thing, but when young Muslims start to throw bricks through the window of a gay bar on the fringe of the nieghborhood and threaten their patrons, a great big red flag is raised. It's one thing to bring your culture with you. It is quite another to disrespect the culture and laws of your host. In the eyes of the radical Muslims Buruma describes (and he describes many types of Muslims, from the most tolerant and liberal to the most obsessively deranged), homosexuality is expressly denounced in the Quran and it cannot be tolerated. Do we welcome into our borders those who can rationalize the murder of gays?

I think this final point from Richard is important. The left must start to recognise that acceptance and tolerance do have their limits. And we risk throwing away the important social progress that has been made in the 20th century if we allow a radical political Islam to flourish by turning a blind eye to what it means. (And if you have any doubts, read this draft constitution for the caliphate).

Saddam is dead

Saddam Hussein, the ex-butcher of Iraq, is dead. I don't feel any differently about it than I did yesterday, when I anticipated his demise.

I mostly feel sorry for the Kurdish Iraqis who now won't have the centrepiece for the trial of those who perpetrated the horrible crimes against them.

Update: and here's an anecdote about those Iraqi Kurds and Saddam Hussein and substitute teacher in a Nashville school.

Big giant sloths

We've been like big giant sloths this Christmas. We have gone to the park and we did make one disastrous attempt at post-holiday sales shopping, but mostly we've been hibernating. We've been watching tv and reading books and lounging around the house like big giant sloths.

Not yesterday, though. Perhaps it was the slightly less grey sky or the warmer temperatures, but I spent the morning gardening and the afternoon at the Natural History Museum.

We haven't been in a while, but I thought it might be a nice idea to see the animatronic dinosaurs and maybe have a look at the gems and minerals and so forth. I knew it would be crowded, kids are out of school and many parents are off work and kids love dinosaurs and well... We'd been at Christmas time before and knew the drill.

I had no idea exactly how croweded it would be. Apparently, the Natural History Museum has been cashing in on its holiday appeal. There's now a Christmas fair and a giant ice skating rink (which costs about $20 a head - seriously!) and a carousel.



Oh...and there's a big, giant queue to get into the Natural History Museum.



This queue stretched all the way from the door to the street in a snarling tangle of impatient children and weary adults - and it didn't seem to be moving any too quickly.

I didn't want any of that, so I told the Vol-in-Law that we should just find another museum (the Victoria and Albert and the Science Museum are just around the corner). But when went around the side and up Exhibition Road - we found that there were no queues to enter the museum from that side. We had to wait no longer than a few minutes and that to have our bags searched by a very grumpy security man. It wasn't worth the wait, but we did go through the slightly more boring entrance - without a big giant dinosaur skeleton gracing the main entry hall. But, it's possible to snake one's way through the earth history section and the minerals and so forth and into the fantastic main hall.



And on your way, you can find out what happens to big giant sloths:



We didn't get to see the animatronic dinos - as the queue for that was very long indeed. But we did get to see a very outdated exhibition on human evolution and a very up-to-date indoctrination exhibition on ecology for children. It was geared for the young'uns and had just enough facts in it to turn them into little eco-warriors and brow beat their parents with environmentalism.

We did spend a minute or two looking at "being green in the garden" - where I could quite happily say "tick, tick, tick" to most of their green suggestions. After all, composting is the main good thing you can do - and that helps you reduce the need for chemicals and increase your yields all the while decreasing pressure on the landfills. I felt quite saintly, having spent the morning spreading compost I made myself. The little eco-warriour exhibit was comparitively empty though- despite the fact that it had gruesome displays of tigers disembowelling antelope and crows pecking out the eyes of hares. I guess kids prefer to see extinct animals eating each other in animatronic fashion rather than badly stuffed kitty cats stalking a bevy of badly stuffed rats.

A bloom a day

The sun emerged yesterday, weakly, but it was still there. Temperatures hovered just above 50, so I spent the morning in the garden catching up on garden tidying chores that I've been neglecting. I was mostly removing dead foliage and top dressing the beds with a layer of compost. I make my own compost out of garden waste and salad trimmings and so forth in a bin at the bottom of our garden.


Our compost bin, with decorative kitty lid.

It's good stuff and it was time to remove the finished compost at the bottom to make room for new material. As is the current fashion, I do not dig in the compost but top dress only and let the worms do the rest of the work for me. It takes a little longer for the organic matter to work fully into the soil, but it's less damaging to the soil structure. Plus my beds are chock full of bulbs and perennials, I don't want to disturb them either.

I got quite a bit of compost out and on the beds, but did not finish my garden work. There are still a couple of bucket loads to spread and I need to reload the fallen leaves and dead summer annuals into the bin. But today there's a return to the gray skies and a cold, slow rain and I don't much fancy getting out into that to finish up.

What's in bloom

It's my gardening goal to have something in bloom every day of the year. It might not be much - a tiny blossom here or there, but at least to have something. This year I still have some of my summer annuals in bloom in this last week of December. They don't look like much - a bit raggedy frankly, but the thunbergia and the osteospermum are still going as well as my mini-marguerittes. My little south facing, South London garden is sheltered and it has to be very cold indeed before things get hit hard by frost.


Not exactly as they look now.

But not only do I have some summer things still going, I also have crocuses about to bloom. The very same bulbs that didn't bloom until mid February last year. The weather is very strange indeed when you have blossoms from summer 2006 in competition with the bulbs of 2007.

Beyond our reach, dead or alive

It seems more likely than not that over the couple of days to a week that we'll find out that Saddam Hussein has died.

I'm not an advocate of the death penalty - I'll say that up front. But I'm also not a big fan of Saddam Hussein and I certainly won't shed any tears over that monster's demise. I have no doubt over his wretched guilt. And I think - in the long run - that the people of Iraq and the soldiers of the coalition will be safer without Saddam around.

But it seems to me that his trial and his imminent execution are kind of missing the point of what such trials ought to be about. Trials for war crimes or crimes against humanity or genocide or any of those acts which threaten to tip over from tragedy to statistics from the sheer weight of them aren't about punishing the guilty. People who order such atrocities are beyond our reach. Imprison them (to write books or hold out hopes of a re-established reign) or kill them to keep them out of the way, but you can't really punish them. Punishment requires an internal aspect a reflection on their acts which these people seem to lack. I imagine that Hussein will go to the gallows cursing his bad luck or his incompetent aides rather than his own rotten soul.

These trials aren't to make those who commit mass crimes to feel guilt. Their trials won't persuade the next megalomaniac to think twice before torturing and slaughtering their political opponents Their trials won't even produce a satisfactory explanation of why they did the evil they did. These big show trials for head honchos like those Nuremburg or Milosovic's trial at the Hague are about providing justice for the victims. A shoot-out (like the one resulting in the death Hussein's sons) or a suicide (like Hitler's) ends in the same result as Saddam's trial- a dead despot. But a trial allows the victims to have their story told. It allows the victims the satisfaction of making their perpetrator listen.

To be fair, trials of truth and hopefully reconiciliation probably need to take place in a world of relative calm and order to be of full value. And that is not the kind of place that Iraq is right now. But killing Saddam now, over a fraction of his crimes, robs his other victims of the chance to tell their tale on a world stage. Killing Saddam now ends the process of justice for the victims of his unspeakable acts.

dishwater

It is so grey. I don't think I've seen the sun for days, barring a brief glimpse as the sun set over the rows of terraced houses in Colliers Wood this afternoon.

I'm still off work. Our office is essentially closed this week. I'm using my time wisely. I watched half an episode of Dr Phil (I'd never seen it before) and a tv movie about a teenage mom (until I switched from boredom). Then we watched Serenity on DVD. Snooze. To top it all, the Vol-in-Law made me watch a show about British macho beefcake of the 70s. Believe it or not, they actually stretched that out to a full hour.

It hasn't all been tv. We did take a walk in the park today. But the sky is so grey I couldn't even be bothered to take my camera out to the park. But here are some I took earlier.

Happy Boxing Day

Today is Boxing Day - a peculiarly English holiday which has spread as far as Wales. This was the servants' Christmas - if my understanding of the holiday is correct. In years past, stores were shut up tighter than a drum on Boxing Day just as they would be on Christmas Day. But like their American cousins, retailers now see the day after Christmas as a grand, grand day to fling open their stores in a bacchanalia of consumerism.

I succombed and dragged the Vol-in-Law out to a PC store to look at super cheap laptops. (Yeah, turns out there were only 10 per store and they were long, long gone). The ViL was a little hungover from our Christmas with a friend up the road - and did not fulfill his supporting shopper role as well as he might have. The parking lot was full and full of enraged customers. Most people just glared at one another, but one fellow shared with me the traditional post-Christmas parking hand gestures. So full of holiday cheer we escalated to exchanging the traditional day-after-Christmas parking greeting of "Fuck You". I however, was restrained, and did not actually roll down the window.

We left without making a significant purchase and returned home to paint our Christmas toys. VolMom sent us some paint-your-own garden gnomes. The Vol-in-Law was less than thrilled as he is stridently anti-yard art. I'm sure he views this as a betrayal from his mother-in-law, as my mom has always told him to take care of me, but never to let me fill the garden with tacky statuary - as to tell the truth, would be my wont.


My (unfinished) gnome is on the left, the Vol-in-Law's is on the right and the camel - once filled with oasis and used for a florist's bouquet is used for paintbrush water.




The ViL's gnome on its own.



And released into its new home - a very, very dark corner of our garden.

Merry effin Christmas

I've been wished Merry Christmas at a number of establishments in London, which is a little unusual since the British way of saying it is "Happy Christmas". I don't think "Happy Christmas" is wrong, but somehow to me it takes away the specialness of Christmas, you know it's Happy Birthday, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy President's Day...so why not have one holiday with a slightly different kind of joy?

Since the UK is about a year behind America in a number of social trends, I think the whole counter-revolution to the "war on Christmas" has finally drifted across the pond. Folks weren't that bothered about it before, but now they kinda are. It's weird. Sure there were the rabid commies in Birmingham who had "Winterval" - but if memory serves that was in January, so why not. And last year a neighbouring borough - Lambeth - erected "holiday" lights instead of Christmas lights - and after some opprobrium changed them back to Christmas lights without switching a single extension cord.

My council which is cheap, cheap, cheap value-for-money, as far as I can tell, leaves the lights up all year - saving money on labor and storage. The lights are a kind of non-distinguisable geometric pattern - and they become different lights at different holidays. Happy Diwali, Happy Eid, Happy Christmas - the lights change for the dates (no Happy Hannukah, I'm afraid - according to the last census there are more Americans living in my neighborhood than Jewish people - hmm, maybe they should switch them on for 4th of July!!). And not only that, but if you - as a merchant - would like some festive (Christmas, Diwali, Eid) lights in front of your store - then you gots to pony up the dough. The merchants on my street are of different faiths, but almost all of them display a Christmas greeting in their windows, which I think they also get from the council. Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year it says. Most of them do a Happy Easter poster, too.

My work issues "Season's Greetings" to all of our clients, stakeholders and paymasters, but then again we are a Godless organisation full of former Communists and Labour party activists. As I blogged before, my coworkers have taken to not distributing Christmas cards - but instead emails with a salutation of "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" are circulated amongst comrades colleagues with a holier-than-thou message about making a contribution to some worthy [secular] cause in lieu of Christmas cards.

I joined the trend, since I'm lazy as all get-out. But I took particular delight in giving to the Salvation Army - you could hardly give to a more overtly Christian charity - unless maybe I'd given money to Jay Sekulow's (Pat Robertson's fave-lawyer) "Christian" defense fund. But a) I would never give money to those raving crackpots and b) my British colleagues might not get it. And I did wish folks a Merry Christmas - plus a Season's Greetings, but that was ironically.

Last year we were in Tennessee for Christmas, and folks were all up in arms. I don't think I heard a single "Happy Holidays". At Dollywood there were militantly "Merry Christmas" - the ticket lady wished us a Merry Christmas and then gave us a glinty stare until we echoed the salutation. The driver of the train of golf carts which delivered us to our area of the parking lot lectured us on the importance of saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Season's Greetings", which I had to say was a little less than merry. Apparently, the war on Christmas never made it to East Tennessee, but that didn't stop the locals of taking up arms in preparation. All that lecturing and glaring kinda took a bit of the joy out of the season for me.

The only person I met in Knoxville retail last year who insisted on Happy Holidays was my brother. According to him, he waited until he received a salutation from the Customer - and if it were Merry Christmas then he'd reply with a jovial "Happy Holidays" and a smirky smile.

Total law enforcement

The Vol-in-Law and I have just completed one of our annual Yule-time rituals. The paying of the parking permit.

Our parking permit expires around the end of December - and since we have no off street parking and we must pay to park in front of our own house (£66 or around $120 a year). I don't mind the permit cost for my borough - as in most things - provides pretty good value for money in terms of parking. Many other London boroughs charge far more.

But in the run-up to Christmas I often tend to forget to renew the permit and one year this resulted in some fairly staggering parking fines. Wandsworth gives a grace period, but when that's over, Wandsworth becomes the borough of total law enforcement. Firm but fair, if you park illegally - you will get a ticket. Those of you who enjoyed parking at the University of Tennessee will remember the student parking Nazis who revelled in ticketing for the slightest violation - or just ticketing because your car was there. I won't say that Wandsworth ticketers are quite so nasty as their comrades across the pond, but they do work on a similar quota system.

So, it was with some stress and anxiety that I "remembered" that we hadn't renewed our parking permit. We're cutting it pretty close now in terms of renewing by post, so I thought we'd have to make a little trip up to town hall and queue with the other supplicants for a new permit. But the Vol-in-Law phoned through and they told us that we'd have plenty of time to receive our new permit - what with the 7 day grace period. He's run out just now to post our application - (a necessary thing in the UK since letter carriers won't collect your mail for sending in the same trip). Let's hope it arrives in time.

UPDATE: It did arrive - before the end of the grace period. The Vol-in-Law installed the sticker in the car and we remained ticketless.

Fogged over

The fog is bad. In my time in London, I can't remember a fog like this. It's blanketing almost the whole country, but particularly the South East. It's a real pea-souper.

Heathrow has come to a standstill. (And for once it's not over labour dispute/terror). All domestic flights have been cancelled. Many flights to Europe have been delayed or cancelled. Long haul flights to the US or Australia are supposed to be running, but folks trying to get home for the holidays are spending a lovely festive time at Heathrow airport. They've decked the halls with emergency blankets.

I'm so, so glad we're not going anywhere this year.



We did go for a walk today, at the Vol-in-Law's special birthday request. It was foggy over Richmond Deer Park, too.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday, Vol-in-Law!

I've taken the day off work to cater to my husband's every whim (well, not really...). We're first off to our local caf, the greasy spoon where we'll have eggs cooked up by a Polish short order cook. We'll peruse the cafe's collection of tabloid "Red Tops", the Sun, the Mirror, the Express and Star while we eat - taking in a collection of photos of topless women (I shall just skim past that), celebrity gossip and tragi-comic tales of the lives of the British underclass.

Then we're off for a walk in Richmond Deer Park. It's the Vol-in-Law's favourite place to go in London. It should be a lovely walk. It's foggy and cold this morning. I can't remember such fog in the time I've lived in London - it's almost like the movies - a thick inversion, a real pea-souper. To be fair, it's not quite as thick and cloying as the old fogs, those fogs that killed, a combination of natural fog and thick black domestic coal smoke, inner-city power station smog and manufacturing emissions, but I've been waiting a long time to be able to say "a real pea-souper", so I will.

We'll come back home to have some ready-made lasagna I bought in moment of madness (I don't normally do that kind of thing) and salad with The Texan. That will be followed by my very own apple-spice cake, still warm from the oven, baked at the ViL's request. It requires buttermilk which I had to buy from the weird French-Muslim halal butcher that's opened up recently in our neighbourhood.

Happy Birthday, Vol-in-Law

Did you hear the one about...

...the Bishop of Southwark?

The Bishop of Southwark has been behaving most strangely. He's been accused of being drunk and getting in someone else's car (without their permission) and throwing the toys found inside it out of it. When challenged on his behavior - he reportedly said "I'm the Bishop of Southwark. It's what I do."

He says he couldn't, just couldn't have been drunk - and must have had a head injury - because he was able to get from Southwark (an area just south of the Thames, home to London Dungeons, the Globe Theatre and Southwark Cathedral) to his home in Streatham (a South London area - not too far from where I live - and home to a movie theatre, gay bath house and the Bishop of Southwark - apparently).

The Bishop said that his Oyster travelcard records show that he used public transport from central London to his home in south Streatham, a trip which he insisted would be difficult to undertake while drunk. "I really do defy anyone who’s had too much to drink to make that journey," he said.

I just had to laugh. Not just laugh, but bloody guffaw. Negotiate London Transport - drunk? Make the journey to Zone 3 - drunk? I defy anyone who's been on the Underground after 1o on a weekday and after 8 on a weekend to question the fact that millions of drunken journeys are taken on public transport every year. I've contribulated to that statistic myself.

kitty diet update

For those of you curious about our attempts to slim down our fat cats, we have a kitty diet update. It's not going well.

ViL: The cats are fighting
Me: They're probably hungry
ViL: Have you fed them again?
Me: Not since this morning.
ViL: Do you think that's enough?
Me: Probably not, but they're supposed to be on a diet.

Well, we've tried to have our cats on a kitty diet, but I don't think it's working out too well. They look hungry, they look sad, and they are begging for snacks. And we are very weak.

We bought two big bags of "light" or "senior" cat food as the first step in our kitty diet. The first bag we served up was French and appeared to have a high proportion of hay. During the Bible reading of the carol service we attended on Sunday we heard "and the lion shall eat straw like the oxen". I thought of our poor little lions at home eating French hay.

Trouble was, the kitty cats actually liked the French hay and I think they worked on us separately to get us to refill their bowl more frequently. "Miaow, miaow feed me," they said. And we would. Or we'd say "Aww, it's Christmas - let's give them a little more." We were not very consistent. We were bad pet owners.

But they've eaten all the French hay now and they're on to English diet cat food. I thought that England was a nation of animal lovers, but I guess the traditionally shoddy approach to English food has overridden that natural love and the poor kitties don't find their new food quite so tasty. In fact, they've eaten a lot less of the English food and begged for more human treats since we opened the new bag. This isn't the end of the world - because the really fat cat, the one who actually needs to lose weight - isn't allowed to eat human food because she has a whole series of weird food allergies that cause her to itch and scratch until she literally bleeds. So even though I do love to see cats dance on their hind legs for treats - it's not really worth having a disgusting scabby cat as the price.