Yesterday was Blog Action Day for climate change. I did my ha’peth of course (under comments on the FCO blog) but it was heartening to see the Prime Minister was active too, declaring the government’s intention to make serious changes at Copenhagen in December. One senses though that the PM is reluctant to go if the big players (USA & China) don't. Obama has not committed yet either.
On one of the other comments on David Miliband's blog you can see there’s a petition so you can add your voice to the growing chorus demanding concerted and equitable action by all governments.
Probably the unanswerable question:- How loud do we have to shout so the world's leaders don't duck the issue? Unless the answer is till we are blue in the face!
Friday, 16 October 2009
Thursday, 15 October 2009
350 what?
Scientists estimate that 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit for humanity. Currently at 387, there is already need to mitigate the effects of climate change.
This month I’ve got caught up with supporting Oxjam. All across the nation musicians and poets are performing free to raise funds for victims of climate change. I’ve just been helping to steward the events in South Wales, where for example a gig at the Gate in Cardiff organised by Max Hoare raised enough by charging £2 entry to enable several families to raise their home above flood levels.
Particular mention must go to Susan Richardson who gave a recital of her remarkable poems on climate change. If you cannot support the live events, check out her book or broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live where she is a resident poet. She will be giving another performance on October 24th at Oxjam Brecon where bands are playing at half a dozen venues around the town as part of International Day Of Climate Action as part of the build up to pressurising governments to act with determination and commitment at the Copenhagen conference on December 7th.
Please come out and support it if you are local, or click the links to see how you can support the big push away from the Wasteland that beckons if we don’t get back to 350 by mid-century.
This month I’ve got caught up with supporting Oxjam. All across the nation musicians and poets are performing free to raise funds for victims of climate change. I’ve just been helping to steward the events in South Wales, where for example a gig at the Gate in Cardiff organised by Max Hoare raised enough by charging £2 entry to enable several families to raise their home above flood levels.
Particular mention must go to Susan Richardson who gave a recital of her remarkable poems on climate change. If you cannot support the live events, check out her book or broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live where she is a resident poet. She will be giving another performance on October 24th at Oxjam Brecon where bands are playing at half a dozen venues around the town as part of International Day Of Climate Action as part of the build up to pressurising governments to act with determination and commitment at the Copenhagen conference on December 7th.
Please come out and support it if you are local, or click the links to see how you can support the big push away from the Wasteland that beckons if we don’t get back to 350 by mid-century.
Friday, 9 October 2009
Twitter ye not?
Monday, 5 October 2009
That's how the light gets in
Firstly, a brief progress report on Poppy for Medicine. Well, not much really. Nothing on the link as you can see nor response to my email but at least the US government has abandoned its policy of poppy eradication in favour of providing farmers with incentives for growing alternative crops.
So what have I been doing to ask the Right Question these last few months? On the premise the Wasteland has no prospect of becoming a fruitful basket of plenty for all if our planet is riven by war, I have been applying my knightly efforts in another region of cultural tension, the Middle East. Having done all I can to assist western policy on Afghanistan for the better, in my quest to build bridges I have been down to the Negev desert in Israel to see what is happening to bring Arabs and Jews together via the medium of cricket.
A favourite sport of mine, I have been making efforts to help the charity Cricket For Change whose purpose is to take the game to places you wouldn’t normally find it, beneath flyovers perhaps or on derelict land at the edge of some large city in the UK. Now however they are also out in the Israeli desert with plastic bats and wickets, tennis balls wrapped in electrical tape and Street 20, their particular brand of the game tailored for quick and easy application.
The rationale is that when children share experience with each other and get to know their fellow competitors as equals on the field of play, trust is built for their future together as adults determining how they should share the same land and resources. Everyone said it wouldn't succeed because there was no tradition of cricket in arabic Israel. But the result was the contrary. The Bedouin there took to it with great enthusiasm. Within 10 minutes of us entering the playground there were about 50 children playing. They loved it and they said they wanted to play with Jewish kids.
So my attempt to ask the Right Question will not result today in the miraculous transformation of the Wasteland as the question is not mine. It’s more than relevant to my quest though. If the Cricket For Change project succeeds, it will provide a inspired answer to the famous rhetorical question asked by the writer CLR James: "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?"
My determination to move onto other things and not get paralysed by inaction as I became frustrated with the situation in Afghanistan was emboldened by some lines of Leonard Cohen:-
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Big change will come about by a series of small changes, as the children of Israel learn to have fun together. By happy chance, as if in answer to my meditations, the great man was playing a one-off concert in support of his Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace just as I was about to fly out of Tel Aviv. This was despite Len collapsing on stage the previous weekend and having to overcome storms of protest from political forces as described in this article. You can read also about how uplifting the concert was, and get a flavour of the music by clicking the links.
So what have I been doing to ask the Right Question these last few months? On the premise the Wasteland has no prospect of becoming a fruitful basket of plenty for all if our planet is riven by war, I have been applying my knightly efforts in another region of cultural tension, the Middle East. Having done all I can to assist western policy on Afghanistan for the better, in my quest to build bridges I have been down to the Negev desert in Israel to see what is happening to bring Arabs and Jews together via the medium of cricket.
A favourite sport of mine, I have been making efforts to help the charity Cricket For Change whose purpose is to take the game to places you wouldn’t normally find it, beneath flyovers perhaps or on derelict land at the edge of some large city in the UK. Now however they are also out in the Israeli desert with plastic bats and wickets, tennis balls wrapped in electrical tape and Street 20, their particular brand of the game tailored for quick and easy application.
The rationale is that when children share experience with each other and get to know their fellow competitors as equals on the field of play, trust is built for their future together as adults determining how they should share the same land and resources. Everyone said it wouldn't succeed because there was no tradition of cricket in arabic Israel. But the result was the contrary. The Bedouin there took to it with great enthusiasm. Within 10 minutes of us entering the playground there were about 50 children playing. They loved it and they said they wanted to play with Jewish kids.
So my attempt to ask the Right Question will not result today in the miraculous transformation of the Wasteland as the question is not mine. It’s more than relevant to my quest though. If the Cricket For Change project succeeds, it will provide a inspired answer to the famous rhetorical question asked by the writer CLR James: "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?"
My determination to move onto other things and not get paralysed by inaction as I became frustrated with the situation in Afghanistan was emboldened by some lines of Leonard Cohen:-
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Big change will come about by a series of small changes, as the children of Israel learn to have fun together. By happy chance, as if in answer to my meditations, the great man was playing a one-off concert in support of his Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace just as I was about to fly out of Tel Aviv. This was despite Len collapsing on stage the previous weekend and having to overcome storms of protest from political forces as described in this article. You can read also about how uplifting the concert was, and get a flavour of the music by clicking the links.
Monday, 23 March 2009
New policy on Afghanistan
The American Government will be announcing its policy on Afghanistan later this week.
Having left a message with the British Foreign Secretary on his FCO blog, I will keen to hear if he has passed my question on to Richard Holbrooke.
Having left a message with the British Foreign Secretary on his FCO blog, I will keen to hear if he has passed my question on to Richard Holbrooke.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
With the volume of calls for an end to British involvement in Afghanistan getting louder, the question is what is the British Government’s current policy toward Afghan poppy cultivation? Now Bush has gone, perhaps the US-backed anti-narcotics strategy will be replaced by a program that will bring the war to an end.
It’s encouraging that President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke has been quoted as saying the Bush government plan to destroy the poppy crop "which costs around $1 billion a year, may be the single most ineffective policy in the history of American foreign policy. It’s not just a waste of money. It actually strengthens the Taliban and al Qaeda, as well as criminal elements within Afghanistan .”
Good on yer, Richard. Now let’s see if that leads to Poppy for Medicine which involves granting international licenses to poppy farmers in Afghan villages, where the crop would be turned into opiate-based medicines such as morphine or codeine, and then shipped out to the legal market. It would keep local farmers in business, deprive the Taliban of support and revenue and hasten the day when our troops can come home.
Saturday, 30 August 2008
High on pi and phi
Here’s another crop circle built according to pi but also on phi, the Golden Mean spiral, the mathematical ratio found in various natural forms, such as a sunflower seed head and pine cones as well as seminal works of art. 
The Woodborough Hill 'sunflower' formation is a series of interlocking Fibonacci spirals. You draw a Golden Mean spiral by using a square and applying the phi ratio (1:1.618) to generate the various compass points required to grow the spiral.
My Sufi friend Bahauddin tells me in the case of the Woodborough Hill 2000 crop circle, this would have to have been repeated 22 times, reversed and then overlaid. Fourteen concentric rings would then have to be inscribed to complete the matrix. Then the crops would have to have been laid down in alternate segments. If you’re feeling a trifle lost here, then you’re getting the point. This is not a simple nocturnal task.
The entire 'sunflower' crop glyph consists of 22x2 spirals (clockwise, and counterclockwise), followed by 14 radial circles. Effectively this produces 44/14, or 22/7 – that other most significant mathematical ratio - the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry (3.141...) - or pi. Isn't this thrilling stuff, appealing to the aesthetic sense and intellect equally?
I feel I am getting close to an answer when something so coherent emerges from these fundamental principles.Bahauddin starts to lose me though when he refers to the Fibonacci curve being also a proto fractal, self-referential and mandala-like at any point down its curvature. For all my years spent on this planet trying to get my head around the right question, I'm still a boy who believes the answer will reveal itself to the simple mind as well as the clever.
The Woodborough Hill 'sunflower' formation is a series of interlocking Fibonacci spirals. You draw a Golden Mean spiral by using a square and applying the phi ratio (1:1.618) to generate the various compass points required to grow the spiral.
My Sufi friend Bahauddin tells me in the case of the Woodborough Hill 2000 crop circle, this would have to have been repeated 22 times, reversed and then overlaid. Fourteen concentric rings would then have to be inscribed to complete the matrix. Then the crops would have to have been laid down in alternate segments. If you’re feeling a trifle lost here, then you’re getting the point. This is not a simple nocturnal task.
The entire 'sunflower' crop glyph consists of 22x2 spirals (clockwise, and counterclockwise), followed by 14 radial circles. Effectively this produces 44/14, or 22/7 – that other most significant mathematical ratio - the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry (3.141...) - or pi. Isn't this thrilling stuff, appealing to the aesthetic sense and intellect equally?
I feel I am getting close to an answer when something so coherent emerges from these fundamental principles.Bahauddin starts to lose me though when he refers to the Fibonacci curve being also a proto fractal, self-referential and mandala-like at any point down its curvature. For all my years spent on this planet trying to get my head around the right question, I'm still a boy who believes the answer will reveal itself to the simple mind as well as the clever.
Saturday, 19 July 2008
P4M & Pi
You might think a Knight of the Grail’s work is very high profile and sensational but actually most of it takes place unglamorously behind the scenes. I can’t actually call myself Sir Percefal in public and expect people to listen, you see, hence my only chance of stimulating debate about ways to stop the war in Afghanistan is to use my alterego as commoner. That way I ensure some success getting press coverage for the campaigns I wage as part of my quest.
It was a trifle frustrating though to see my last blog published in the South Wales Argus yesterday with the points omitted I was making about the Labour Party failing to live up to its Bevanite principles. The support of the European Parliament for “Poppy for Medicine” didn’t get a mention and so there went begging an opportunity to embarrass our party of government into defending its refusal to back P4M as EU policy. The Argus focused on the one point: how the poppy crop eradication policy is driving the impoverished farmers into the arms of the Taliban, thereby prolonging the war, if not making it unwinnable. Well, presenting half the argument is better than publishing none, so thank you, Argus.
Speaking of crops, it’s the time of year when those wonderful circles start appearing in the wheat fields of Wiltshire. I was interested to read this Times article explaining the numerical significance of the design of one that appeared last month, depicting the first ten successive digits of pi (3.141592654) by means of ten successive angles of rotation within a right-handed spiral.
Call me a naïve fool but isn’t there something going on in the sophistication and precision of these number theory demonstrations that’s not attributable to a gathering of engineering students with planks and string executing their designs in the dark during the short hours of our summer nights?
In one of my first blogs, I told you how it was that my Sufi friend Bahauddin, the Arabic genius with numbers, passed his lore to Fibonacci who brought it to Europe. Though from another tradition, like me Bahauddin is on a quest that means he may not die till it is fulfilled. The time has come I feel to catch up with him again and see if he has any insight into the significance of the numeric revelations in this and other crop circles that have appeared. This depiction of Pi I suspect is just a starting point.
It was a trifle frustrating though to see my last blog published in the South Wales Argus yesterday with the points omitted I was making about the Labour Party failing to live up to its Bevanite principles. The support of the European Parliament for “Poppy for Medicine” didn’t get a mention and so there went begging an opportunity to embarrass our party of government into defending its refusal to back P4M as EU policy. The Argus focused on the one point: how the poppy crop eradication policy is driving the impoverished farmers into the arms of the Taliban, thereby prolonging the war, if not making it unwinnable. Well, presenting half the argument is better than publishing none, so thank you, Argus.
Speaking of crops, it’s the time of year when those wonderful circles start appearing in the wheat fields of Wiltshire. I was interested to read this Times article explaining the numerical significance of the design of one that appeared last month, depicting the first ten successive digits of pi (3.141592654) by means of ten successive angles of rotation within a right-handed spiral.
Call me a naïve fool but isn’t there something going on in the sophistication and precision of these number theory demonstrations that’s not attributable to a gathering of engineering students with planks and string executing their designs in the dark during the short hours of our summer nights?
In one of my first blogs, I told you how it was that my Sufi friend Bahauddin, the Arabic genius with numbers, passed his lore to Fibonacci who brought it to Europe. Though from another tradition, like me Bahauddin is on a quest that means he may not die till it is fulfilled. The time has come I feel to catch up with him again and see if he has any insight into the significance of the numeric revelations in this and other crop circles that have appeared. This depiction of Pi I suspect is just a starting point.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Grave New Labour
While the British Government continues to support the US State Dept policy of forced crop eradication being applied in Afghanistan that was already failing in Columbia against coca plantations, you will recall I took heart on discovering the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the ICOS proposal “Poppy for Medicine”. This is a trial scheme whereby farmers would be allowed to grow their opium and sell it as morphine, providing a much-needed supply to the 80 per cent of the world's population currently lacking access to effective pain relief. It could also help rural communities sever ties with the Taliban and the illegal drugs market. Now at last my MEP’s office has reported back about Labour policy on the issue. Not good news. Despite INI/2007/2125 being adopted by 368 votes in favour to 49 against, the Labour group of MEPs will attempt to block the EU Parliament’s recommendation from becoming EU policy.
Yesterday I attended the funeral of Sgt Major Michael Williams in Bedwas, my neighbouring village.
Killed last month in a fire fight with the Taliban, he was buried with full military honours. It is probable that those he was fighting were villagers I had met in Helmand province this winter, whose livelihood making morphine was destroyed with no compensation or alternative income available. Will we still be witnessing such waste of life and opportunity ten years from now because the wise policy makers in Afghanistan and Strasbourg are pursuing a futile policy that drives Afghans into the arms of the Taliban and will not use their wit to try something different?
In Wales also yesterday, Labour leader and First Minister Rhodri Morgan was turning a clod to inaugurate the start of work on the £50m new hospital in Ebbw Vale, to be called Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan. Nye I am convinced would have supported the trial of Poppy for Medicine as it offers a reasonable chance of saving the lives of our soldiers, providing a living for poor farmers who have no compensation for the loss of their crop, and cheap painkillers for the sick in the developing world who cannot afford morphine at multinational drug company prices.
The great architect of the NHS was no doubt turning in his grave.
Yesterday I attended the funeral of Sgt Major Michael Williams in Bedwas, my neighbouring village.
Killed last month in a fire fight with the Taliban, he was buried with full military honours. It is probable that those he was fighting were villagers I had met in Helmand province this winter, whose livelihood making morphine was destroyed with no compensation or alternative income available. Will we still be witnessing such waste of life and opportunity ten years from now because the wise policy makers in Afghanistan and Strasbourg are pursuing a futile policy that drives Afghans into the arms of the Taliban and will not use their wit to try something different?In Wales also yesterday, Labour leader and First Minister Rhodri Morgan was turning a clod to inaugurate the start of work on the £50m new hospital in Ebbw Vale, to be called Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan. Nye I am convinced would have supported the trial of Poppy for Medicine as it offers a reasonable chance of saving the lives of our soldiers, providing a living for poor farmers who have no compensation for the loss of their crop, and cheap painkillers for the sick in the developing world who cannot afford morphine at multinational drug company prices.
The great architect of the NHS was no doubt turning in his grave.
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
Red Flag on Mt. Everest?
You may have been wondering what’s kept me from my blog these past weeks. Well I’m in Kathmandu at the moment nursing some sore feet after trekking through forests abloom with rhododendrons on the Annapurna trails. The views from Poon Hill were stunning as you can see.
Numb soles though still don’t stop me feeling the earth shaking from the Maoist election victory earlier this month. While their past struggle hasn’t shown them to have been entirely beneficent toward the rural population, the Maoists seem to have received an unprecedented democratic mandate to devise a new constitution. The civilized nature of the election bodes well for a smooth transition from a feudal society if the following article is to be believed. What also interests me is the parallel it makes between the victory of Maoism and the spread of Buddhism all those hundreds of years ago.
However things turn out in Nepal I sense I have witnessed a moment of history, even if it meant we were obliged to leave Kathmandu to start trekking earlier than we had intended to. A splendidly inspiring trek in such good company though it was, my poor feet at least have more time to recover before I head up to Afghanistan again. As well as monitoring the politics of the coming poppy harvest in Helmand province, I shall be looking to see how UN sponsored repairs to the Buddhas of Bamyan, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world that were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, are getting on.
Numb soles though still don’t stop me feeling the earth shaking from the Maoist election victory earlier this month. While their past struggle hasn’t shown them to have been entirely beneficent toward the rural population, the Maoists seem to have received an unprecedented democratic mandate to devise a new constitution. The civilized nature of the election bodes well for a smooth transition from a feudal society if the following article is to be believed. What also interests me is the parallel it makes between the victory of Maoism and the spread of Buddhism all those hundreds of years ago.
However things turn out in Nepal I sense I have witnessed a moment of history, even if it meant we were obliged to leave Kathmandu to start trekking earlier than we had intended to. A splendidly inspiring trek in such good company though it was, my poor feet at least have more time to recover before I head up to Afghanistan again. As well as monitoring the politics of the coming poppy harvest in Helmand province, I shall be looking to see how UN sponsored repairs to the Buddhas of Bamyan, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world that were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, are getting on.
Thursday, 27 March 2008
The Wastewater
I know my mission is to restore the Wasteland but let’s not forget about the water. Plastic waste in the oceans poses a potentially devastating long-term threat to the food chain, according to marine scientists, by attracting toxins like DDT and other pollutants. The question is do those chemicals get released to marine organisms if they eat the plastic? If so, the poisons will reach the polluters eventually as they move up the food chain. We reap the watery harvest we sow.
And what about space? I was appalled to hear people are making funeral arrangements to have their ashes sent to the moon. What a massive waste of our living planet’s energy, to burn tons of fuel just to consign ones dusty remains to a dead world! Are we so conditioned to accept the inevitability of the Wasteland we can think of nothing better than to be associated with it for eternity?
And what about space? I was appalled to hear people are making funeral arrangements to have their ashes sent to the moon. What a massive waste of our living planet’s energy, to burn tons of fuel just to consign ones dusty remains to a dead world! Are we so conditioned to accept the inevitability of the Wasteland we can think of nothing better than to be associated with it for eternity?
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Monstrous talk
While Easter traditionally heralds good news, the broadcasts this year have been hijacked by cardinals and bishops putting pressure on MPs to oppose the government's human fertilisation and embryology bill. Talk of hybrid embryos becoming Frankenstein's monster seems designed to scare folk but embryologists are surely using their godgiven brains to investigate how cells of organic origin, whether human or animal, can be made to alleviate disease.
Since it's Easter Day, my question today is aimed high. God, aren't you pleased to have created people who are using their intelligence in the noble cause of saving lives? If the answer is yes, please call off the dogs.
Since it's Easter Day, my question today is aimed high. God, aren't you pleased to have created people who are using their intelligence in the noble cause of saving lives? If the answer is yes, please call off the dogs.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Blushes for blue ignoring red trying to be green
It was gratifying to see the leader of the Conservative Party looking the fool today for taking liberties with the traffic laws. A journalist had filmed Dave breezing through a red light, just one of his several misdemeanours. I do it all the time of course (play the fool I mean, and not just on the odd illicit cycling shortcut) but for all his naughtiness, we should give David Cameron credit for showing the genuine nature of his green credentials, that his cycling to work isn't purely for publicity purposes.
It's refreshing to find a politician who is not afraid to be viewed as a cyclist. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, in the UK and America you are what you drive and cyclists are considered by the policy making elite as lower class citizens. Which is why we are so poorly provided with safe cycle lanes here.
Another of Cameron's crimes was to cycle the wrong way down a one-way street. These are designed to be one-way due to their narrowness for cars, not bicycles. Cyclists should be allowed to use them in both directions. My question today therefore is will Dave ensure we see such radical measures as part of Conservative policy in the next manifesto? Or will he just resort to the ungreen limo from now on to hide his blushes?
It's refreshing to find a politician who is not afraid to be viewed as a cyclist. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, in the UK and America you are what you drive and cyclists are considered by the policy making elite as lower class citizens. Which is why we are so poorly provided with safe cycle lanes here.
Another of Cameron's crimes was to cycle the wrong way down a one-way street. These are designed to be one-way due to their narrowness for cars, not bicycles. Cyclists should be allowed to use them in both directions. My question today therefore is will Dave ensure we see such radical measures as part of Conservative policy in the next manifesto? Or will he just resort to the ungreen limo from now on to hide his blushes?
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Too busy at the trough?
‘I am also keen to make this blog a real dialogue.’ So says David Miliband on his FCO blog but I’ve had no response from him. OK, he’s been a busy chap explaining how HM Gov were conned (Condied?)over rendition and why we can’t have a referendum on the European constitution, but why shouldn’t we expect his officials to respond? Nor have I heard from my MP nor 4 MEPs in response to my petitions for information about Poppy for Medicine. I’m souring about the motivation of those running our democratic institutions. I fear the FCO blog is just a publicity vehicle for pushing the HM Government line - that is not open government. Where is the evidence of a real intention to consult?
Some observers have attributed such lack of response to a failure to take seriously the petitions of someone claiming to have been born in 524 A.D. I take the point but these parliamentary representatives I have petitioned know me by my alias, a tax-paying resident of the borough of Caerphilly born 1953, not as (Sir) Percefal. In light of the current news, I suspect they’re too busy filling out their inflated expense claims to be quick off the mark addressing obscure foreign policy initiatives that might just help bring the troops home, on the prompting of a Grail Knight or his alias.
Some observers have attributed such lack of response to a failure to take seriously the petitions of someone claiming to have been born in 524 A.D. I take the point but these parliamentary representatives I have petitioned know me by my alias, a tax-paying resident of the borough of Caerphilly born 1953, not as (Sir) Percefal. In light of the current news, I suspect they’re too busy filling out their inflated expense claims to be quick off the mark addressing obscure foreign policy initiatives that might just help bring the troops home, on the prompting of a Grail Knight or his alias.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Mastermind
With India still in mind, I bumped into a chap yesterday who'd reached a Mastermind semifinal, subject Clive of India (a relative apparently). 
A tortured soul, I met the first British Emperor once. Not on the battlefield - the Code of Chivalry forbad me fighting imperial wars - but sailing back to England after Plassey in 1757 (my Grail quest in India is an annal in itself for future publication). Poor fellow was taking excessive doses of opium to ease the abdominal pains that afflicted him throughout his career. I think of him sometimes when I mingle with those blessed herders addicted in Afghanistan I told you about.
Manic depressive too Clive might have been but this Mastermind chap said he was an inspiration in the heat of conflict. His genius was the art of surprise and he led by example, persuading his men to follow him willingly into battle against dreadful odds. The subject of my friend's first round was Bob Marley so I asked him what in God’s name have they got in common? Charisma he replied. Bob and Rob could get all types of people, implacable enemies even, to follow them anywhere.
Earnest though this Mastermind fellow was, he really didn’t know diddly-squat general knowledge. But then I’ve the advantage of several hundred more years learning about the world than any Mastermind contestant. It wouldn’t be principled I know but I could surely win that cut glass trophy, with the Holy Grail as my specialist subject.
The program is being shown next Monday Feb 18th on BBC2 7.30
A tortured soul, I met the first British Emperor once. Not on the battlefield - the Code of Chivalry forbad me fighting imperial wars - but sailing back to England after Plassey in 1757 (my Grail quest in India is an annal in itself for future publication). Poor fellow was taking excessive doses of opium to ease the abdominal pains that afflicted him throughout his career. I think of him sometimes when I mingle with those blessed herders addicted in Afghanistan I told you about.Manic depressive too Clive might have been but this Mastermind chap said he was an inspiration in the heat of conflict. His genius was the art of surprise and he led by example, persuading his men to follow him willingly into battle against dreadful odds. The subject of my friend's first round was Bob Marley so I asked him what in God’s name have they got in common? Charisma he replied. Bob and Rob could get all types of people, implacable enemies even, to follow them anywhere.
Earnest though this Mastermind fellow was, he really didn’t know diddly-squat general knowledge. But then I’ve the advantage of several hundred more years learning about the world than any Mastermind contestant. It wouldn’t be principled I know but I could surely win that cut glass trophy, with the Holy Grail as my specialist subject.
The program is being shown next Monday Feb 18th on BBC2 7.30
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