Everyone’s favourite dead GP serial killer, Dr. Harold Shipman is back in the news almost four years and six months after pulling the lever on himself in his gaol cell.
The facts of the matter; he wrote regularly from prison to a couple who were ex-patients as well as friends, and when they died their son was clearing out their house when he found the letters. Now, he is putting them up for auction.
Seriously. He wants people to pay to get ahold of the letters of Dr. Shipman.
I suppose the purchaser could bind them up and put them into book form. Or wants to examine them to see into the mind of this killer? But then suppose the person who wants to publish or examine them can’t afford to bid any higher? (It is an auction after all). But then who apart from a publisher or someone who studies the psychology of such events and types would want them?
And what kind of mentality would put them up for sale?
The locals, across Hyde, Shipman’s hunting ground, are disgusted and offended, especially the families of the murdered. I’m not, although I was pals with more than one victim, I’m just absolutely shocked that anyone would want to get involved in such doings.
Of course, the real question to be asked, is who in the name of reason would want to privately own a set of letters written by a dead serial killer? What on earth would you do with them? Boast to your friends? Can you imagine a party or social gathering of some kind. And people are discussing their possessions;
“I’ve got one of those flat screen forty-two inch televisions.”
“I’ve got a four poster bed that was once slept in by George IV.”
“I’ve got a coffee table made from ebony flown in and carved specially.”
“I’ve got the letters of a dead serial killer.”
Beyond my ken. . .
IS THIS WHAT HAPPENS?
CAUGHT AT KISSES
I caught my two babies Domino Basset and Lyra Tab kissing on the wicker chair in my living room.
Here is photographic proof.
Actually, the sad thing is that this event is a one-off as they are usually hissing and spitting and scrapping at one another.
BOASTING ON BEHALF
This evening, my middle sister swam thirty lengths of the local swimming baths.
Thirty lengths.
She is forty-two, not necessarily a sportswoman, and she has swum thirty lengths. She said she could have done more but she got fed up.
I’ve not been to the swimming baths for twenty years, and I remember getting all excited because I managed to do a breadth and a half. My middle sister, a hard working woman as well as a wife and a Mother swum thirty lengths and said she could have done more but she got bored.
She can play music, too. Any instrument, she can get ahold of and play, although she’s never had a lesson.
My middle sister is very talented.
Quick addendum: if my Dad had been less keen on me, as eldest, being the sports person in the family, and stepped over me and actively concentrated on my middle sister, he wouldn’t have been as thoroughly disappointed.
MORE FROM THE MARTYDOM FRONT
Shirley Chaplin. Who’s that then? A Christian nurse who has been told she can no longer wear her cross/crucifix on a chain around her neck because it interferes with health and safety regulations. For instance, what if an elderly and/or confused (maybe coming around from an op) patient grabbed at a dangling chain and hurt the nurse or herself? Or suppose the chain links have a bug living cosily on them and the patients and other nurses catch ahold of it? MRSA is causing a lot of deadly harm on the wards and it’s policy to get everyone to wash their hands before going onto the ward and there are no longer lending library services on the wards. She said no, she wants to carry on wearing her chain. So she has been taken off front line nursing duties on the ward and put in admin by the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, where she has been a nurse for ‘about thirty years’ and has never before had any problems. She is retiring soon and wants to be allowed to wear her crucifix on her chain as she is a true Christian and feels she is being persecuted for not being allowed to wear it. In case you’re thinking ‘bloody not fair, pc gone mad’, she was given a choice to wear her crucifix as a lapel badge but she said no.
It’s a health and safety matter. I know health and safety goes too far the other way, with conkers being banned, home cooked food being banned from school fêtes, steeple clocks remaining unwound up and Christmas lights not being put up because of the wrong kind of ladder being the only one available, but there is no way this woman is being persecuted or singled out for unfair treatment because she is a Christian, as she insists.
On top of this, any Christian knows wearing a crucifix is not necessary for Christians. I was one for almost a quarter of a century and never wore any adornments (the first church I attended described this wearing of jewellery as somehow unchristian and it rubbed off on me). It says in the Bible that a person’s faith should be shown through their actions, and not what they wear, especially women.
All this Shirley Chaplin wants to do is cause a fuss, get attention.
Now, this country is far from being, as some not believers may call it, a Christian country. It is a secular democracy. But there are bishops in the house of Lords and whenever a prominent Christian (usually of the official CofE Protestant bent) says something, people in authority take notice. I bet a pound to a pile of horse droppings that those who have never seen the inside of a church will step up and take her side, and another bet, it will end up forcing the hospital to review it’s policy, just like Nadia Eweida who wanted to wear her cross and caused the massive British Airways company to back down.
And now, to get to my point; I wear a triquetra (look it up, you’re not stupid) in memory of Jessica Moonbeam (because her first name in numerology adds up to three) on a chain around my neck. Suppose I got a job (ha, ha, ha!) which entailed close contact with ill or disabled human beings (sure I will)? Suppose the elf and safety johnnies said ‘we don’t mind you wearing your triquetra, but not on a chain because it might result in harm being done’. Then suppose I kicked up a fuss and complained and cried ‘persecution’ because it was in memory of a dear feline baby who died. I would be forced to exit stage right to the sound of the scornful laughter of the participants/spectators in this great play we call life, and rightly so. So, why, because she is making her stand in the name of her religion, is it all right to not mock, but to defend her?
No way is any participant in any theistic belief persecuted while this kind of thing is going on. End of discussion.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : STICK IT OUT
This weekend’s song is the Comic Relief number from 1993, ‘Stick It Out’, by ‘Right Said Fred & Friends’. Written by Richard and Fred Fairbrass and Rob Manzoli, it reached number four in the charts back in the February of ‘93.
Strangely compelling, a lively tune and interesting lyrics with a video that goes with it containing all the red-nose tipped exuberance we’ve come to expect from the Comic Relief songs. You can have fun spotting the stars who give their entertaining all for Comic Relief.
And no, I don’t know what the title actually means. Stick it out? Go the whole hog? Put up with it? A double entente?
Anyhow,
As always,
Enjoy and
A good week whether from the top of a tall erection (building, building, it’s a building!) you shout in their direction or not.
TO CURE BOREDOM
If ever you’re bored and can’t find anything interesting to occupy your time, stick on a CD of ’70’s music, preferable of the disco genre, you know, the O’Jays, Rose Royce, Tina Charles, The Village People and the Bee Gees etcetera, then sing along in an educated British accent. Don’t change any of the lyrics or the idioms. You’ll end up laughing. . .
THE CHOICE, THE CHOICE
Sometimes, you get Fundies saying that homosexuality is a choice and can be cured.
First of all, that isn’t logic. I’ll give you an example; suppose I choose to read books about murderers and nothing else. I don’t have to be cured. It’s a choice. I love reading/ reading about ‘His Dark Materials’ by Philip Pullman. so I choose to read. I don’t have to be cured. It isn’t all illness. It’s a choice. Get what I mean?
Second of all, homosexuality isn’t a choice. If it is, then to all those Fundies;
When, exactly, did you make a concious choice to be heterosexual?
If you are totally honest with yourself, you will say, I was born this way. I was born straight. So, why not give that same right to homosexuals, or bisexuals, like me, who can easily fall in love (and I have done) with members of each gender? (I don’t know how it works, or if it’s a common event, but I seem to fall for male female, male female, one then the other).
By choice, I mean, you can decide whether you want to read crime books, or ‘His Dark Materials’ or becoming a Christian. But deciding that being straight is for you, or being gay is for you. Never. It doesn’t work that way. It just doesn’t.
Unless any Fundie out there can stand up and say ‘I chose to be straight, I remember making the choice, just like I chose to become a Christian’ and say it honestly, then they can’t say that being gay is a choice.
I know what you might be thinking; Yes, but straightness is the default, and any other way (being gay) is a deviation and therefore not inbuilt but a choice. But who says heterosexuality is the default? That’s right; heterosexuals. Who have made the rules for the past five thousand years or more. Being straight is no more the default than being right-handed or white skinned or blue eyed or Anglo Saxon male. It’s just that those types have held the positions of power, and made the laws and rules. They have made it the default position. Let’s play a game, where we are in an alternate universe where homosexuals (of both genders) have been the dominate power for thousands of years. And a Fundie in a meeting stands up and says that heterosexuality is a crime and a sin, a disgusting weakness, a stubborn choice deviating from what normal people do. And hetties (nickname for heterosexuals) are the perverts who are crying for more than acceptance and equal rights, but want everyone to be the same as them, they are dirty deviants who can only breed like animals, but they shouldn’t be allowed to bring children up because they infect their offspring with dangerous, subversive, hettie ideas. Ugh!
Yeah, I know. It sounds offensive. But logically, in this alternate universe, the gay way is the right way, and the hettie way is a deviation, a perversion, and the hetties should be kept in their place and there should be kind loving organisation that try and heal them from their deviation and back to the normal, homosexual way.
That is, I truly believe, the only difference; Straights have made the laws for so long, and because of this it’s gays who are the deviants.
So, next time you think ‘gay is a choice’ remember, when did you choose to be straight?
GROWING NICELY
This picture of Lyra Tab was taken when I first got her, when she was six weeks old.
This was taken about a week back, now she’s approximately five months.
I’m not sure why one eyes is partly shut on this one. She hasn’t got a sore eye or anything. Still. . .
Can you see the difference? She really HAS grown, hasn’t she? Matured as well, looks older.
To be honest, though, because I see her every day, I hadn’t noticed. It’s only pictures, even rubbishy ones taken on mobile phone cameras, that help me plot her growing path.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : THE GALAXY SONG
This weekend’s song is ‘The Galaxy Song’ by Eric Idle, from the film ‘The Meaning of Life’. It’s set in this video to NASA graphics of the universe itself.
Not just funny but packed with facts. The last line is absolutely priceless, showing again that Eric is the best Python and works at genius level. There aren’t enough words in any language to describe how singularly superlative this song is. If either existed, Satan could have my soul if I could write as half as good as this.
So, as always,
Enjoy, and
A good week, whether you feel that you’ve had quite enough or not.
AND IT’S GONE
A couple of years back, I set off to look at my old home.
The house was still there, one of two in which was once, before my time, a terrace of houses, the others having fallen foul to council planning. The garages where I used to play, the spare ground where we used to pile bonfire wood for our yearly Guy Fawkes extravaganza, where all the street came together to supply fireworks or parkin or baked potatoes.* It was a day very much like today out, dry, sunny but not oppressively hot. Pleasant for a walk.
Anyhow, for lack of anything better to do, I decided to have another albeit virtual, walk down the street, thanks to my favourite internet map program (NOT Google maps, in case you haven’t guessed). And when I opened the correct map I got a shock that went right through me, knocking the air out of me.
At first I didn’t believe it. I checked again, from different angle, from various approaches, and hovered over the street itself, but it’s true. There is no denying it.
And I wept.
It’s gone.
Everything. The house, the street, everything. There are some damn modern flats built on where I used to play and where the bonfires used to be ritually lit yearly. The council planners haven’t even allowed it the dignity of keeping the name I knew that still awakens happy memories of wonderful times.
I’ve only ever loved two places in my life, one where I am now, which I probably will have to leave soon due to not being able to manage to stairs, and that street, that house, where I grew up, which in no more.
Bloody shame.
It will still exist in my heart and my mind, they can’t take my memories off me no matter what they erase, the landscape will still be as it was as long as I can remember.
*You have not lived until you have eaten potatoes baked on an open bonfire. There is no taste on earth like it.
AT LAST
From the Prime Minister, to all those who signed the petition to get recognition and an apology for the grossly unfair treatment received by Alan Turing;
Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection a chance for
Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who
came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred
in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British
experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to
honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches
of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which
have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take
up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am
both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists,
historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and
celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of
dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.
Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on
breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that,
without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could
well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can
point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt
of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that
he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross
indecency’ in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he
was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical
castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own
life just two years later.
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing
and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt
with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his
treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance
to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and
the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted
under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more
lived in fear of conviction.
I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this
government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT
community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most
famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long
overdue.
But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to
humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united,
democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once
the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in
living memory, people could become so consumed by hate, by
anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices
that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European
landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls
which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is
thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism,
people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war
are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.
So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely
thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved
so much better.
Gordon Brown
Hurrah, yes hurrah! As a B of the LGBT community, I understand that there is a sense of justice at last.
Thank you, Mr Brown!
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : COCKTAILS FOR TWO
This weekend’s song is ‘Cocktails For Two’, and of course it’s the novelty version by Spike Jones and His City Slickers, with vocals by Carl Grayson. The original was written by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow in 1934, and rumour has it that Coslow didn’t like the way Spike Jones messed the song up.
A well sung song full of crazy sound effects with a funny accompanying video. Can it get any better?
Anyhow,
As always,
Enjoy and
A good week, whether you are so glad you are alive or not.
