The booze

Mrs H and I have been social drinkers since the beginning of time. Okay perhaps not quite that long but for all of our adult lives. We don’t drink alcohol excessively and never every day so we might be classed as moderate drinkers. In winter it is port or wine in front of the log burner while in summer it is a glass of wine or beer outside while the sun goes down.

However, over the past year or so we have been drinking less and less alcohol. Sometimes we don’t drink any at all for a week or two - often longer. Hardly makes us teetotal but for some reason we are losing the taste for a tipple. We don’t enjoy it as we used to and we don’t miss it.

We don’t know why either, but in part it probably has something to do with the effects of alcohol on ageing brains. Something within us is telling us that alcohol is not as harmless as drinkers tend to think. It is not worth delving into the fiendish complexities of alcohol consumption, I merely offer this as a personal experience.

We still drink alcohol every now and then but sooner or later I suspect we’ll give it up and I also suspect we’ll feel better health wise. That’s the issue but it isn’t easy to explain. It could be an illusion, a result of all that anti-alcohol propaganda which is impossible to ignore completely.

At the moment not drinking feels like a slightly enhanced but indistinct sense of mild well-being where nothing specific has happened yet some change has occurred which more regular drinking would reverse. What could it be? Here’s one idea.

We no longer watch television and television is mildly depressing. Not only is it depressing but it is also has a definite association with alcohol. Alcohol is part of life and part of numerous lives we see on television. Always has been. In which case the effect could be psychological after all. 

Twilight

Yesterday evening I sat outside reading while the sun gradually set behind the trees. As we all know, after a hot day a welcome sunset usually settles a delightful veil of peace on the world. Night comes, the air cools and the sweaty clamour of a long day is gradually forgotten.

However the England v Sweden World Cup football match seemed to add something else to the late evening atmosphere. The sound of barking dogs in the twilight, faint strains of pop music drifting across from somewhere, the shouts of a drunken lout in the next street, an occasional shriek of raucous laughter.

It added a slightly oafish tinge to a waning day, unwelcome ripples and echoes from the shallows of human life. No matter - we get used to it and maybe it has always been necessary. 

Trumpery tactic

From the Independent we have an interesting story

A gigantic balloon, branded “Trump baby”, which depicts Donald Trump as an angry Tango-coloured baby has been given the green light to fly near parliament during the US president’s controversial visit to the UK next week.

Permission has been granted for the 20ft (6m) high inflatable to rise above Parliament Square Gardens for two hours on the morning of Friday 13 July to protesters by the Greater London Authority...

London mayor Sadiq Khan and the American leader have engaged in a long-running war of words over issues like crime and terrorism...

Mr Khan has described the balloon as a symbol of “peaceful protest”.

As an anti-Trump tactic this one is so infantile that one wonders who is really behind it. If the idea goes ahead then any other anti-trump protest could be overshadowed by this single stunt. All other protests and all other protesters may be seen as infantile by association. 

As a tactic the idea is so dire that maybe we should ask if Trump supporters are really behind it – at least that would make tactical sense. If so then it certainly fooled Sadiq Khan.

On the other hand, infantile stupidity is the simpler explanation, but Khan doesn’t look good either way.

No magic here

Sky has a piece about JK Rowling's mockery of a Donald Trump spelling mistake where he wrote 'pour' instead of 'pore'.

JK Rowling has mocked Donald Trump on Twitter, pointing out an unfortunate typo in a tweet he posted to brag about his writing ability.

Ms Rowling could have tried erudite or witty as a response to Trump’s error but apparently she opted for juvenile. Maybe she should stick to the day job. Preaching to the choir is fine but even that isn’t something she does well.

A fragment of fiction

I’ve been roaming through my old writing, bits and pieces of stories I abandoned years ago. The piece below is twelve years old and where it was going has leaked from my memory. I can’t even recall who the characters were supposed to be, yet whatever ideas were floating around in my mind would have been driven by those characters.

No great surprise of course. Ideas can be annoyingly ephemeral unless linked to something already familiar - which probably  explains a chunk of the human condition. Use it or lose it really does seem to be the message. The title of this fragment was Johnson.

Johnson

“We have to be careful.” Johnson stood by the window in familiar pose, staring at a thin line of distant sea. We were on the fourth floor of the Tower and the window was dusty. Beyond the second floor all windows were out of reach of any window cleaner – because of the blades. The sun shone brightly, Johnson squinted and rubbed his chin.

“What shall we say to the others?” Johnson spoke like that – as if he valued the opinions of the people he was talking to.

Somewhere upstairs the Master Lavatory flushed. Pole the Butler must be using it. Using the Master Lavatory while the family was away was one of Pole’s perks – one of a series of perks he had devised for himself after he rose to the long-coveted status of Butler to the Tower. As the Master Lavatory sluiced and gurgled to silence, Pole’s heavy tread trundled back downstairs to his lair on the fifth floor. Pole never used the lift.

“I said what shall we say to the others?” Johnson repeated. One of the turbine blades sighed past the window squirting a few more watts into the National Grid.

Oceans of plastic - a recycling snafu

For those who haven't seen it, this GWPF video is entertaining. The video text on YouTube has the key points.

An explosive report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that efforts to recycle plastic are a major cause of the marine litter problem. The report, written by public health expert Dr Mikko Paunio, sets out the case for incinerating waste rather than trying to recycle it. 

* Most of the plastic waste comes from just a few countries, mostly in Asia and Africa. 

* 25% is "leakage" from Asian waste management processes -- the rest is waste that has never been collected, but is simply thrown into rivers. 

* But European countries ship inject huge quantities of waste into Asian waste management streams, ostensibly for recycling. As much as 20% -- millions of tons every year -- ends up in the oceans and will continue to do so. 

* Since the Chinese banned waste imports at the start of the year, shipments have been diverted to other Asian countries with even weaker environmental controls. 

* EU recycling is therefore a major contributor to marine waste and increasing recycling will therefore simply increase marine litter.

King of the Air

This is a book I haven't read but I do like the cover so I took a photo of it. As anyone would guess it is an adventure story for boys. A presentation label inside tells us that this copy was probably a school prize presented in 1930 to a young chap whose name is now illegible. 

It was written by Herbert Strang who was not one person but two. 

Herbert Strang was the pseudonym of two English authors, George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and Charles James L'Estrange (1867–1947). They specialized in writing adventure stories for boys, both historical and modern-day.

King of the Air was first published in 1908. It's the cover I like - so evocative of a time when the world was smaller and thrilling adventures were still possible.