Tag Archives: hellzapoppin

Tuesday 23rd September 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting all alone in my nice apartment. My visitors have flown the nest this evening due to wanting to put some tarmac underneath their wheels. They have an appointment in Limoges tomorrow evening and so want to break the back of the journey this evening.

They had a lovely lie-in this morning, though. My alarm went off at 06:29 – yet another morning where I slept right through, out like a light – and as there were no signs of life coming from elsewhere, I cracked on and wrote yesterday’s blog entry.

By the time that I had finished, I heard sounds of movement so I went and made some coffee for everyone. While it was brewing, I went to the bathroom to sort myself out and then we sat around drinking coffee and chatting.

One thing that I learned was that my camp bed was not very comfortable. In fact, not at all comfortable. I shall not be proposing that to anyone in the future unless the unlucky recipient brings an air mattress.

The nurse was surprised to see me with a house full of women. Nevertheless, he sorted out my legs and gave me the first of this series of five injections that I have to have a week after the chemotherapy.

When he left, my visitors took turns under the shower, and the first one in found out all about the length of time it takes the hot water to run through from the water tank.

After they had showered, I had to give a couple of porridge-making lessons to my hungry visitors and we sat down and had breakfast.

Almost immediately afterwards, the bowls were whipped from the table and the washing-up was done before I could even blink an eye. I told my visitors that they can certainly come again.

We had another long chat afterwards, and then I mentioned the sheet of chipboard that needs to be … errr … lost. A brief flurry of text messages, and it was cut in half with my circular saw and stuffed into a car from where it will end up in Limoges at some point.

After a coffee, my guests wandered off for a walk, and I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of those dreams where something went on at one of the testing stations while we were stopped en route somewhere and I didn’t have enough room for all my things. They were on one of the carts. This led to an argument and one of the inspectors was knifed but I was convinced that it wasn’t me who did it.

This is another one of those dreams of which I remember nothing at all. I like the bit “I was convinced that it wasn’t me who did it”. As if I would need convincing.

We were discussing the treatment of captured women spies by different States of the USA. There were some States, like, say, South Carolina who would really just interrogate them and then let them go where there were other States that were farther north like New York that would take them very seriously and execute them. But that’s all that I remember of this particular dream because the batteries went flat in the middle of dictating it, and by the time that I’d wired it up again, all of the memory that I had was gone.

It makes me wonder what the rest of the dream that I had forgotten was all about. I suppose, however, that this dream relates to what I have been reading about the American Revolution.

One of the players on the opposite side was called for a foul, and the referee called him over. She began to talk to him about the incident but he took absolutely no notice at all. She began to become a little sterner with him but again, he just totally ignored it. She began to take out her notebook, which was an electronic notebook, but he just took it from her. A couple of us tried to intervene to take the notebook back but in the end, he just hung on to it. She was obviously not able to deal with him so she sent him off but he refused to leave, so she called the police. In the meantime, he took the notebook and went into the buffet. There was an oily salad in there. We heard him inside there, soaking this notebook in the oily salad and then taking it into the kitchen and boiling it into the pan of orange juice that someone had left. We all thought that this was the strangest thing that we had ever seen. We then heard a car pull up outside and the sound of tramping feet but it wasn’t the police at all but something else. However, they didn’t come in, so we were sitting there in this kind-of impasse waiting for the police to arrive.

Yesterday at dialysis, I was watching an old football match in the Cymru Alliance – I can’t remember now which – where female referee Cheryl Foster was officiating. A mass brawl broke out and in the end when things had calmed down, she sent off one of the players

When the alarm went off, I had some kind of metal plate, an oval type of metal plate with three screw holes in it. What I was trying to do was to screw it to something like a porcelain dish or porcelain plate. I’d already done it once in the past because there were three screw holes in the plate. However, it’s really complicated to screw into something solid and hard like that, so I had to find the exact three screws that I used last time, so I was searching through my box of loose screws, trying to find the exact three screws. The aim was that this plate would have this bracket on it, and the bracket would support a tripod, a small desktop tripod, but I had no idea why I wanted to do this.

There is actually a mini-tripod on my desk. It belongs to the webcam but since I moved down here, I’ve positioned the webcam elsewhere. But screwing something into a porcelain plate is certainly a novel idea.

When my visitors came back, I showed them where the bread and salad were, and they made themselves some cheese salad sandwiches for lunch. I settled for a disgusting drink.

We had another long chat, reminiscing about all kinds of old times from school. We were so engrossed that it took us all the way up to tea-time.

My faithful cleaner had dropped in earlier to give me some sunflower seeds and an aubergine that I had asked her to buy. The sunflower seeds, I put on one side for future bread-making activities but with the aubergine, I made an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit for tea, which went down very well.

Once more, the empty plates were whipped off the table and washed before I even had time to think.

Finally, my friends left me for Limoges, with a promise to come back to see me again. And I really do hope that I do. I don’t have anything like enough visits these days, although it’s certainly more than it used to be.

But before I go to bed, making a sandwich reminds me of a conversation that took place in the film HELLZAPOPPIN’.
One of the actors was talking on the ‘phone –
"That’s good – that’s bad – that’s bad – that’s good – that’s bad – that’s good – that’s good …"
"Who are you talking to?" asked his sidekick
"I’m talking to my sister" replied the first.
"But what are you doing?"
"Why, I’m helping her sort a box of strawberries!"
If you want to know where shows like Monty Python and the like obtained their ideas, have a look at HELLZAPOPPIN’.

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Saturday 17th May 2025 – I AM CONVINCED …

… that they tried everything that they could at the dialysis centre this afternoon to make me run as late as possible. It’s been one of those days today.

In fact, it’s been one of those days all day today and it started last night, as a matter of fact. Although I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, I still managed to complete my notes by 22:30 and by the time that I’d done everything that needed doing, it was just about 23:05 when I finally fell into bed, hoping for a really good night’s sleep.

And believe it or not, I managed to stay asleep until all of … errr … 03:40 this morning.

Once I’d awoken, I tried as usual to go back to sleep seeing as it was such an early start, and eventually I did manage to drop back off, although it took quite a considerable while. I thought that it would never happen.

Having gone back to sleep, I awoke again at 06:15, and after trying for about 20 minutes to go back to sleep, I gave up and headed for the bathroom.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cure Consultant, I rounded up all of the winter coats and the like and put them in the washing machine so that the machine can do its stuff. It looked like a lovely day outside.

After I’d had my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And once more, I was surprised that there was so much stuff on it, bearing in mind how short a night it was.

There was some kind of confusion about Lee Dorsey and music. I think that Lee Dorsey used to write songs that were sung by females and Gerry Dorsey who used to write songs that were sung by males but I’m not sure why I thought of that and I’m not sure why it came into my mind.

In actual fact, not that it’s particularly important, Lee Dorsey is the old American pop singer who actually owned a car repair business and Gerry Dorsey is better-known as Engelbert Dumper truck

Later on I was being held prisoner in a house by some kind of weird kind of obscene bully. I was friendly with his daughter and he had a handicapped wife. The relationship between his daughter and me developed into something rather more than friendship. He was extremely unhappy about this and so were the rest of his children. They remembered her being with a parson and had spent eighteen months together. It was supposed to be the next big romance but it ended dramatically just before I came along. I was extremely resented by this man and his other children. The woman and I became quite friendly. I had a suspicion that this was going to be rather more than friends and I was trying desperately not to have any kind of involvement in anything that might be misconstrued in this respect because I was simply interested in the daughter despite all of the issues with her father. This woman and her husband began to have fierce arguments and I felt the situation becoming more and more uncomfortable until in the end the woman must have told her husband that she was going to leave him and run off with me. Of course that was the final trigger to an extremely unpleasant moment where I was quite literally forced into a room with all the family. The family first of all, that is, the other children of the man began to interrogate the daughter about the time that she’d spent with this priest guy. She was saying that what turned her off him was the idea that he was going to rescue all of these animals and keep them at home. They pointed out that she had a hamster or a gerbil or something. She replied “that’s hardly the same thing as that which this priest guy was trying to bring in to any kind of home where he would be living”. I could see that this situation was not going to turn out very well at all and I began to wish that I was somewhere else indeed. I didn’t really have much choice at that particular moment.

This next one was a return to the dream of that domineering, bully father where I was mentioning that I was being interviewed in the hope of tripping me up or of persuading the daughter of the house that I was not the man for her future. Either way, as the time passed, it was becoming less and less comfortable and I began to feel more and more anxious about the situation.

It’s been a while since I’ve had some kind of menacing dream like this one, and I certainly didn’t appreciate dropping back into it a second time. However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can in real life easily find myself stepping into situations just like that, quite by accident and with no real effort at all

And then I was in hospital again after the biopsie musculaire having the wound checked over again. On the way I’d noticed a huge advert on a roadside advertising tablet, advertising the National Folk Dancing Championships taking place in the town. I’d checked my agenda and found that I was actually doing something on that particular day which would have been a shame because I would have loved to have gone and maybe to have competed but it’s rather late in the day now … fell asleep here … anyway so I would really have liked to have taken part but being in hospital, it was not possible.

This is another one of those dreams about which I remember absolutely nothing at all. However, I can say that these hospital issues are really getting to me these days, that’s for sure.

Finally, I was back living at home. Looking through the newspaper I saw a room to let with shower. I rang up about it and a very polite young Afro-Caribbean voice answered and gave me some information. I asked where it was and he replied that it was in Tiananmen Square in Crewe. I’d heard vaguely of that at one time and thought that it was near Bedford Street but he told me that it wasn’t so I set out to go to look at it. My car wasn’t outside the house. I suddenly realised that I’d left it in Bedford Street in a car park there. I had to walk to Bedford Street and walked into the car park where there was my old white Luton Transit that was parked in the car park. I climbed into that and to my surprise it started so I set off to go to look at this flat.

Wherever Tiananmen Square might be in Crewe, I really have no idea. It’s certainly not near Bedford Street. And there’s no car park there either

The nurse turned up, early as usual. He didn’t have anything to say for himself which was just as well because for some reason or other I was spoiling for a fight. I’ve no idea why, because nothing had happened to trigger off anything.

So after he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still at Norham, discussing the civilian architecture of the castle and mentioning the odd tower and curtain wall here and there in terms that I find difficult to understand.

But one thing is certain, and that is that we aren’t explaining anything about the whys and wherefores of the military features of the castle.

After breakfast I hung out the washing in the living room and opened the window seeing as it was such a lovely day, in the hope that it would soon dry.

Back in here I drafted a few advertisements about the work that I need doing, having split it up into individual tasks, and then posted it on this Chamber of Commerce website. And within no time at all I was swamped … "well, sort of" – ed … with replies and before I left for dialysis I’d already spoken to a few and arranged appointments.

When my cleaner turned up, she fitted my anaesthetic patches and sorted out a few things ready for my taxi to turn up. It was one of my favourite drivers, the Belgian girl with twins in the first year of High School across the car park. We picked up our usual Saturday afternoon passenger and we had a lovely chat all the way to Avranches.

We were early arriving at the centre but so was everyone else and I was last to be seen, as usual. There was a problem with someone’s connection so for quite a while all of the nurses were congregated around his bed.

There’s one of the nurses there who is not quite so attentive as the others, so guess who I had. At first she tried to run my machine for four hours, and I had to explain to her, and not once either, that she’s not deducted the 700 grammes for my shoes. It took a while for her to grasp the issue, recalculate the figures and switch the machine to three and a half hours.

And then she had three painful goes at coupling me up to the machine. so once again, all in all, it took one hour from my arrival to the start of the process.

My machine was misbehaving all the way through the session, and then once more, right at the end I had to wait an age to be uncoupled from the machine. I was thoroughly fed up by all of this.

It was the same taxi driver who brought me home which was nice. We had another interesting chat. And then my cleaner was waiting for me to watch me up the stairs.

Tea was a breaded quorn fillet, and I notice that I’m running low of those. I shall have to think of a Plan B.

But not right now because I’m going to dictate my radio notes and then go to bed, in hope of a decent sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about dancing … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to one of these Country Dances in the local village hall, and I was so impressed. Everyone was leaping up and down and around quite energetically like some kind of Jitterbug Competition from the 1920s or like something out of HELLZAPOPPIN’
Finding a local standing around idly watching the show, I expressed my amazement.
"Don’t worry" said the local – a very vocal local yokel. "It won’t last long"
"Really?" I asked. "Why’s that?"
"They’ve sent for the caretaker" he replied. "He’ll soon turn off the underfloor heating."

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Saturday 23rd March 2023 – A FEW MONTHS AGO …

… I bought a cheap hamburger press, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It was rather like an old flat iron made of plastic, with all kinds of sizes that fit inside each other like a Russian doll

It was rather cheap, both in price and quality, so I didn’t think that it would be all that much good. However I have to say that despite all that, I really am impressed with it. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin, and that will stir a few memories from times long-gone.

Actually my friend in Munich sent me ages ago a packet of dried stuff that he’d found in a vegan shop down there and posted it to me. So today I added water and mixed it, left it alone to do its thing and then out came the hamburger press

It actually made a nice, professional job of the rehydrated stuff and I now have four big, really solid burgers and as I said just now, I’m almost as impressed with them as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

“Whatever happened to that?” I asked myself. The last time that I saw it, it was being used as a brazier to burn a pile of weeds down the garden when I used to have my raised beds and vegetable plots. It’s probably now thoroughly and completely overwhelmed with weeds and been pulled into the soil.

It’s 10 years ago since I last planted any veg down on the farm. I had quite a lot of stuff there that year too. The following year I cracked on with the bedroom all the way through the spring and summer ad finished it – and actually moved in.

But we all know what happened in the autumn that year, don’t we?

It was almost 10 years that I lived full-time down on the farm and despite the primitive conditions I really enjoyed it. I keep on thinking – and hoping – that I’ll go back to live down there once more but I doubt that I’ll ever see it again.

For a start, I can no longer drive, and that’s always going to be a serious consideration. And then regular readers of this rubbish will recall the photos of when I was last there and it was overwhelmed by brambles. I no longer have the energy to fight my way to the front door.

Last time it took three of us – Rosemary, Ingrid and Yours Truly – a whole afternoon to reach the front door, and the time before that it was with Terry and he had brought his industrial-scale equipment to clear the path.

Still, as Dan Quayle once famously said, "It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back"

So I shall go past into the back and say that for a change I was in something of a hurry to go to bed last night. I didn’t hang about at all.

It was another good sleep as well and I was fighting fit (well, sort-of) when the alarm aronsed me from my slumbers.

First thing was, as usual, to check the blood pressure. 15.1/9.0 this morning, up from 14.5/9.3 last night. So something must have annoyed me last night. And if you want to know what it was, you’ll have to read on.

After the medication I came back in here, but not for long. The nurse, having been late yesterday, was early today. Today’s moan was that the plastic bag I’d put out for him wasn’t big enough and that I need to wash my puttees. I wonder what tomorrow’s will be

The bread for my cheese on toast was delicious. I had a really nice breakfast later this morning. And then I had a pleasant relax and watched a film.

Another film that has come out of copyright is HELLZAPOPPIN’ so I spent a very pleasant 85 minutes watching it, and it was nice to relax for a change.

It’s not a film to everyone’s taste because it’s partly a musical and "YOU’RE NOT GOING INTO THE SONG WHILE I’M HERE" but where its interest lies is that if ever you want to know where all of the humourists of the 1960s and early 70s like Monty Python and Marty Feldman obtained their ideas, it’s all here, everything and much more besides, and it was done in 1941.

As far as comedy and humour goes, it was light years ahead of its time and will still run the course today.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We’d all gone out as a family together. We all had lifts with various different people so we were all spread out amongst the cars etc. A guy in a mobile home, the type that’s a shell that fits onto the back of your vehicle, took a fancy to one of my sisters. He persuaded her to travel with him. They disappeared but the rest of us kept going in a kind of convoy. We ended up stopping for the night somewhere at the side of a river. Just then this guy appeared with his camper. He wound down his window and said that he was terribly sorry but something had happened to our sister – some other people had come along, taken her, kidnapped her and carried her off. My mother said “I bet that she’s in the back of your camper”, just strode over there and wrenched open the door. My sister was in there on the bed lying down. She began to tell her tale of woe about everything that had happened to her, with my mother and brother becoming more and more angry as the story unfolded about this kidnap.

So there you are – that’s the reason that my blood pressure was up. I had the family round last night. I don’t ask them to come to visit me during the night but they always seem to, far too often for my liking. Why can’t I have Zero, TOTGA and Castor round as often as them?

But kidnapping my family members one by one sounds like a good idea. But you can all think of an idea for the ransom note – "pay us £5,000 or we’ll send them back".

That reminds me of the time when I fuelled up in Stoke on Trent only to find that I’d left my wallet behind at home. I had to leave my friend at the petrol station as hostage while I went to his house to fetch some money

When I told his wife what was the problem she told me not to bother going back, and to leave him there for good

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed we had a taxi job to do, to drive someone up to Newcastle upon Tyne for a meeting and then take them on to Edinburgh later. There was only one daytime driver and me about. The receptionist left a note for the daytime driver “be in the office 04:40 ready for a long trip”. I thought that long trips and office workers all on account etc don’t pay very much in tips if anything so I’d go to do that and let the driver carry on doing normal jobs. The only car we had was an old two-door Japanese thing from the late 1960s or early 1970s. It made something of a racket but I’d been out a few times in it and it seemed to do the job. A good long run like that would probably do it good. Of course Edinburgh – I had my niece in Edinburgh so I could go to see her. I tried to contact her but there was no luck. I thought “should I just turn up at the University there and speak to her?”. I thought that that’s probably not a good idea. But I was impressed that we had this job, going all that way but I was really disappointed that we didn’t have a better car available other than this old Japanese thing.

And that was an age-old problem too. We’d occasionally have some really high-quality work to do but never seemed to have a decent car available to do it, and when we did have a really decent car we’d never have the work. At times I despaired.

This afternoon I went a food-making.

Firstly, as I said, my friend in Munich had sent me some burger mix so I added the water, stirred it all in and then left it to fester for 20 minutes as according to the instructions

There was a box of do-it-yourself falafel powder on the shelves as I discovered when I did some tidying up a few weeks ago. So I added some water to that and left that to fester as per the instructions.

While that was doing its stuff the first lot was ready so with the hamburger press I made four really good and solid burger-types of things. They are busy freezing even as we speak.

As for the falafel, I divided that up into little balls and they are busy freezing too, along with a couple of balls that I made from the left-over stuff from the first mix.

But I’m pleased with this hamburger press as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s really simple and cheap but it made some really solid burgers and it gives me much more confidence about making more burgers from ad-hoc ingredients.

Finally there was the home-made mayonnaise. And once again, that seemed to work in spades. I made it rather more liquidy than before so we’ll see how that works out. It ended up making quite a lot more than I can use in its shelf-life, so I’ve sealed to top on the jars quite tightly.

Yes, having learned my lesson, I’ve put the mayonnaise in a better container or two.

Then we had the football – Y Bala V Connah’s Quay Nomads in one if the Welsh Cup semi-finals, played at Llandudno’s picturesque ground. And it was actually being broadcast on foreign carriers too after the disappointments of the last few games.

The first 75 minutes of the match were nothing to write home about, but it’s really hard to play creative football in a tornado.

However both sides made a couple of substitutions with 15 minutes to go and that kickstarted the game dramatically. Those last 15 minutes wee much more like the football we’d expect to see and Aron Williams scored a late winner to push the Nomads into the finals.

But spare a thought for Josh Ukek of Y Bala, who will probably go down in the record books as being on the field for the shortest period of time ever.

He came on as a substitute for Bala late in the game but almost immediately Kieran Smith, a central defender, was sent off for two bookings. Now a central defender down, Colin Caton, the Bala manager, now wanted to send on a central defender off the bench to shore up the defence.

And Ukek, who had only just come onto the field, was the man who was withdrawn to make way.

Tea was as usual a salad, baked potato and breaded quorn fillet. I know that it all seems to be the same, but I happen to like it so I don’t care.

And now rather late this evening, I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm in the morning for the nurse is coming (so I’ve washed my puttees already) so I’ll feel like death for the rest of the day. Today, I actually fell asleep for five minutes during the football.

But before I go, that story about tightly closing the lid on the mayonnaise jar did remind me of the guy who rang up his doctor
"You know those pills that you gave me to give me strength?"
"Yes" said the doctor. "How are they going?"
"I don’t know" replied the man. "I can’t get the top off the bottle".

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Friday 1st January 2010 – I’m blogging early this evening.

Yes, I won’t be up much longer as I’m going to have an early night – I’m shattered. Last night’s major revelling kept me awake until all of 00:45 before I crashed out, and I had a leisurely morning in bed until about 10:00. So I’ve no idea why it is that it’s just after 22:00 and I’m ready for bed.

It’s not as if I’ve done very much either. I’ve managed a stroll across to the barn to check on things over there but that involved dodging a deluge of snowy rain that’s been falling all day. Apart from that I’ve been up here doing not very much at all.

Christmas is of course not complete without watching “The Great Escape” on television. And for me, New Year always involves watching old westerns on DVD. You may recall that I bought a copy of John Wayne’s Fort Apache the other day but it wasn’t that I was watching. In Brussels at the Media Market in April I bought a boxed set of vintage westerns from the 1940s and 50s – 9 old hand-coloured “forgotten classics” and so I’ve been watching Vengeance Valley, Abilene Town and The Bells of San Angelo this afternoon.

The Bells of San Angelo is a “Roy Rogers and Trigger” western featuring a whole pile of singing cowboys. It’s as cheesy as anything you can imagine and I’m not sure whether, looking at it from today’s perspective, you could distinguish it from anything that Mel Brooks might put out. I’m not sure who might have ever considered it as being anything like a “serious” western but we are talking of the days before the idea of a parody had ever been set into anyone’s minds and when people were still scratching their heads trying to figure out what Hellzapoppin’ was all about.

On the other hand, Vengeance Valley is a much more interesting film. The plot revolves around an unmarried mother giving birth to a child out of wedlock and how much of a risque topic was this for that period? Especially as the film treats her with sympathy and reviles the doctor who refuses to treat her until he “has a request from the father”. But it’s quite interesting from my point of view as the film opens with a narrative about the loneliness of being high up in the mountains with nothing but the eerie wind whistling through the pines. Now have a read of this page that I wrote in 2002.

The prize for the most significant film however nust be given to Abilene Town. It’s an early Randolph Scott film and features a conflict between homesteaders and the cattle-barons. it introduces the concept of the “good” and “bad” sides of the main street – an idea that was developed in Kirk Douglas’ Gunfight At The Ok Corral. What is even more interesting is that there is a scene inside a music hall with a dancer and chorus line and as soon as you see it you will immediately say Blazing Saddles. Not only that, the film ends with a confrontation between the pacific citizens and rowdy cattle hands, just as in the aforementioned. And when towards the end of Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little invokes the name of Randolph Scott, it all becomes clear and you know precisely on which film Brooks based much of Blazing Saddles.

Not only that, in another one of those moments that can only be described as coincidence, I mentioned the music hall scene, that was absolutely horrendous, and a perusal of the full cast list reveals that the choreography (if that is what it was) was by Sammy Lee. No wonder he only lasted a handful of games as manager of Bolton Wanderers if that was the best that he could do.

And there are three items of news that have caught my eye today. Firstly, relating to the mysterious affair of the underwear bomber, we have an announcement from the UK Government. Now who reading this blog is surprised? Of course you will be saying that the British Government had no connection at all with the supposed detonation or not of this weapon (although if course anything is possible in this modern age) but you can see that they cannot pass up an opportunity to remove some more civil liberties from their citizens. What do you do if you need a gipsy’s towards the end of your flight? Of course the Brits will take it lying down as always – no-one in the UK has any backbone any more. It reminds me of the OUSA Executive Committee meeting when they learnt that I had been elected to a position within their august body, and a shiver ran round the whole meeting looking for a spine to run up.

But you’ll note that the UK Government targets Yemen in its prognostications. Those ideas are developed further elsewhere. So having targeted Iraq and having a good go at Iran they are now having a go at a third state in the area. No wonder the whole of Islam feels under threat from the west. All they really need to do is to have a good go at Syria, which will no doubt be forthcoming in early course, and they will have ringed and surrounded the chief culprit in the whole of the Al-Qaida network – namely Saudi Arabia. Of the 19 hijackers of September 11th, 15 were Saudis. They were trained by a Saudi, led by a Saudi and financed by a Saudi (who just happens to be a big pal of the Bushbaby’s daddy) and so the western world invaded …. errr …. Afghanistan. Of course with the west getting half of its oil from Saudi Arabia it was never likely to tackle Al Qaida and Bin Laden on their home territory in case Bin Laden’s dad, the fourth-richest man in Saudi Arabia, cuts off the western supply of oil. And as more and more of Iraqi oil is sold to the likes of China and Angola, then the west’s dependency on the spiritual home of Al Qaida for its oil is not likely to end any time soon.

Thirdly, it appears that the UK National Health Service is about to collapse underneath the weight of the drunks and binge drinkers in the country. So sozzled has British society become that the Brits are totally shameless about it. Someone on a certain Social Networking site not so long ago posted with pride that she didn’t remember anything after 11 o clock on one particular and woke up next day at 1:30 in the afternoon still in her clothes and shoes, so she must have had a good time, and she can’t wait to go out and get wrecked again. In fact so sozzled is the UK right at this moment that the answer is staring them in the face and they are too p155ed to see it. All you do, to solve the crisis is to put an extra 50p tax on the price of an individual drink, or £4:00 on the price of a bottle, and give all the extra tax raised to the NHS.

Problem solved.

Mnd you, knowing the NHS as I do, what they will do with the money is to engage thousands of extra consultants to advise on how to spend the money, and when they send in their bills the total will be about exactly the amount received, so nothing at all will reach the front line and the NHS will be back where it started.

No surprise there.

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