I'm
a tad annoyed with myself as I meant to start my last post with the
news that I'd travelled to London to look up old friends. And that,
in the words of the old joke, it'd been a horrible sight. But I
forgot and have now lost the opportunity.
Another
thing I forgot to write was that, when I was at the Williamson art
gallery last Sunday, I stopped at a large picture showing British
troops arriving in a home port, after service in India. I was shocked to
see that the title was Return of the Herpes, before I realised
I'd misread one of the letters.
One
thing you notice in the UK - and perhaps in London more than
elsewhere – is the relentless march of new technologies. Or at
least new applications of new-ish technologies. So it was that I
could check out my items in the W H Smith station shop using one of
the machines you see in supermarkets. Except I couldn't, as it went
haywire and gave me one pound fifty of someone else's change.
Eventually I gave up and went to the counter, where there was a human
who gave me a free copy of the Daily Telegraph when I bought a
Times. Which struck me as odd. Like getting a free Whopper
when you buy a Big Mac.
Technology
also went a bit haywire on the train back to Liverpool this
afternoon. After telling us elegantly about which train we were on,
which station we were now at and what the next station would be, the
PA system got ahead of itself and welcomed us to a Liverpool to
London train. Someone clearly noticed that – still ten minutes away
from Liverpool – this announcement amused the home-coming Scousers
so much it'd be fun to repeat it. So they did. How we laughed!
Back
in Spain, there's a new joker on the block. A professor at a
Valencia university has come under fire from politicians and students
for allegedly preaching that women had a duty before God to stay with
unfaithful or violent husbands, homosexuality was 'curable' and that
abortion following rape was 'intolerable'. She allegedly
told students during a class on Social Doctrine of the Church that
becoming pregnant through rape was 'something good which comes out of
bad' and was effectively God's way of compensating the woman for her
ordeal. 'Even if your
husband is unfaithful, the proof of your love is to carry on loving
him with tears in your eyes, just as Jesus wept on the Cross.'
There's little need to criticise the Catholic Church when it has
comediennes of this quality in its ranks.
Finally
. . . The police are now so worried about so many things in the UK
that they're decked out like troops in the midst of a battle in
Afghanistan. Which means they can't walk but have to waddle. Even if
they're not real cops but only Railway Police. There's no way they
could run to catch a malefactor. But I guess they could let the train
take the strain.
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