The View from the Hill on Saturday 7th November

Tried to book some cheap train tickets yesterday, wanting to travel from Newark to London on National Express, and in the past advance tickets were about £40 - now the Government have taken over the running and the cheapest tickets I could get were £235.00 - no wonder this country is in such a bloody mess!

Anyway booked tickets from Nottingham and it was just over £90 for two return tickets, trouble being that the journey takes twice as long, but at least we will have some money left to spend when we get there.

On the work front, conducted a funeral yesterday for a lady who had fled Nazi Germany at the start of the war, lived for a while with the Russians before finding her way to the UK and making a life for herself. She had long hair and she wove money into it and thus managed to smuggle it with her and secure her start and a new life.

At her funeral were members of her family and her neighbours and friends - the chapel was full but I was struck by the diversity of those gathered there to mourn her loss.

There were several African - Caribbean ladies, there was a family who had Indian origins, there were old and young, there were half a dozen Hell's Angels, there were smart and scruffy, able bodied and less able bodied, it really was an eclectic mix of people that this lady had gathered around her in her life and it struck me that she must have been a very open person, not like so many I meet who are closed off to the possibility of being friends with someone who is not like them.

I commented about this to her family afterwards and they agreed saying that the one things she had taught them above all else was to never judge another person, just accept people for who they are.

I like my job.

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On this day in 1872, the Mary Celeste set sail from New York heading for Genoa, carrying its cargo of alcohol and a few passengers, it was famously found adrift near the Azores almost one month later. The story of the ghost ship was born. The ship used to be called Amazon before it was changed to Mary Celeste and did you notice where it was found?

AZores AmaZon. A and Z...first and last, well, I leave you to draw your own conclusions from this discovery.

What you might not have known is that the various reasons for the ship being abandoned missed one vital clue. The explanations range from pirates to hallucinations caused by bad flour, tidal waves to poor seamanship, but what about hide and seek?

One of the crewmen was a distant relative of mine, Parker Behab (yes, the Behabs are back).

Parker was a great jester and one for games and I suspect as the ship was carrying alcohol, and that as nine of the barrels were found to be empty when the boat was checked, I suspect that some serious party was held and during that party Behab would have found his urge to play games irresistible. He would have suggested hide and seek and the rest of the crew agreed and even to this day are still hiding on the bottom of the Atlantic. They should be in the Guinness book of records for the longest ever game of Hide and Seek. The Guinness Book of Records is available from Amazon! OMG! It all makes sense now...

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Friday 6th November

It is either a misty morning or the residue of a thousand fireworks still hangs in the air - perhaps I might go outside and sniff the fog to find out.

Even with the TV turned up nice and loud the poor old dogs were left a little shaken by fireworks party our neighbour held, and I have to say that our already strained relations were not improved by this very loud and very long event. They now have a flag pole in the garden...anyway.

Watching an episode of the West Wing (as we do every night) I heard the quote 'good fences make good neighbours' and all though that quote was a warning about separating ourselves too much from the rest of the world, I think having a clear dividing line between you and people you don't really care for can be useful!

I tried to watch Question Time last night but it was Robert Kilroy Silk and he is just too difficult to watch and hear, and when you combine that with Peter Hain and his holier than thou attitude to the whole world, well I just got fed up and fell asleep on the settee. Talking of Kilroy though reminds me that we will soon be visited by the return of some not very well known people eating insects in the jungle - and I'm sort of looking forward to it, in fact I suggest they take Jedward and put them in the jungle and then force the contestants to dance a waltz around the camp fire as they sing, in this way combining the very best of British TV all in one show.

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On this day in 1814, the inventor Adolph Sax was born. He invented the saxophone.

On this day in 1854, John Philip Sousa was born. He invented the sousaphone.

It's a good day for phone inventors...

My relative, Brightling Norgay, was part of the team that invented the Iphone. He was on the team to find a name for it and decided initially to call it the 'phone of many applications, comes in any colour you like as long as it's black' - he was then asked to leave the room.

Whilst out of the room he saw a snake crawling across the car park of the office at Apple and it reminded him of the opening titles to I Clavdivs - and he immediately had a bright idea - he ran back into the office and shouted at the top of his voice - 'Let's call it the I I I Ph ph ph, III, Ph ph pho phone"

He now works for Talk Talk

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Thursday 5th November

I suppose anyone who has read this blog will be aware that although I support our troops I find the waste of their lives in Afghanistan to be totally unnecessary. The official line seems to be that we need troops on the ground as this is the front line in our battle against terrorism. Our troops are there to train the locals and then they will man this front line themselves, but I have one question. Where are the terrorists going to go to?

Surely they are not just going to pack it in and go home? They will just find another cave or dark corner of the world to plan their evil and spit their poison from. In fact I bet there are some in this country who given a chance would let the world know what they think about western christian attitudes to their religion.

I know it sounds defeatist and hopeless, but we are stuck in a cycle of terror, there are bound to be times in the future when they get lucky and we get killed...very much like this latest incident where British troops are killed by one of those who is supposed to be standing at the front line with them.

Let them have their country, let them sort it out and let us all come home and pull up the drawbridge.

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On this day in history, nothing happened. In fact that isn't quite true, it was just on this day in 1605 that nothing happened. Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes failed in their effort to test out the big bang theory. But here we are 404 years later, celebrating nothing happening by spending thousands of pounds, burning, maiming and killing a few people, scaring all the pets in the area, annoying people who want to go to bed at a decent hour, and basically being a bloody nuisance.

This is the start of the season of misery, from now through until January 2nd, utter crippling misery. Fireworks signal the start of Christmas and I just recovered from last Christmas.

Bugger Bugger Bugger.

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Wednesday 4th November

The Moon has been very full of itself the last few nights, shining through our bedroom window like a huge search light. I never fully understood the phases of the moon, but I think it wanes now and becomes a gibbous moon, and there are more wonderful words used to describe orbits and the way it moves through the heavens, like apogee and perigee, libration and sidereal rotation period.

The Moon has affected our language too, Monday, Month and Menstrual all being derived, etymologically speaking from Moon.

Poems and songs and books all written about the Moon, and still it goes on hanging there in space, a big rock, dead, as far as we know.

But we as Human Beings cannot look up into a sky and see a lump of rock reflecting the light of the Sun, we romanticise and we weave magical tales around it, and that is the same way we created gods.

The British Humanist Association, The National Secular Society and the like campaign for a secular world, a world where religion and superstition is abolished. It will never happen, not as long as the Moon hangs in the sky, because the magic of the universe is too immense to consider without poetry, without romance - and although I don't need god, I need a bit of magic now and again.

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On this day in 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the first Black President of the US. Whatever happened to him?

Today is also the Feast of Qudrat in the Baha'i Faith, and the Catholics with their millions of Saints today celebrate the feats days of St Charles Borromeo, St Emeric and St Vitalis.

Borromeo got his sainthood through nepotism, in 1031 Emeric was a Prince in Hungary who was killed by a boar whilst hunting - he was aged about 24, after he was buried several miraculous healing's happened near his grave (please) thus he was canonised.

St Vitalis is the patron saint of hair tonic.

I am happy to report I am not related to any of these saints.

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Tuesday 3rd November

Graham Norton isn't as funny on BBC 1 as he was on BBC 2. Just a random thought there but I had to get it off my chest take make room for the ever increasing levels of phlegm! Sorry, but I was raised to tell the truth.

I was reminded yesterday how easy some people find telling porkies, in fact I was made aware that a funeral I had conducted was a farce, the lady instructing me and who wept so easily over her dead friend, was actually misrepresenting herself, her relationship to the deceased and the story of his life.

All I can ever do is take people at face value, but how people can bring themselves to lie like this is beyond me? Don't get me wrong, I tell the odd lie, as we all do, to smooth our way through life, but to construct such an elaborate web of deceit just to get your greedy mitts on money, well that seems a little heartless.

The worst thing is that you can't go back, you can't unsay the things I was asked to say, you can't have the funeral again...I have offered those affected the chance for a memorial ceremony and I await their response, but it shakes you a little and I don't want to sit in the front rooms of grieving families and have the thought in my mind, "how much of this is true?"

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On this day in 1926, the sharp shooter Annie Oakley died at the age of 66. So affected by her death was her husband Frank Butler, that he starved himself to death, succumbing 17 days later. That part wasn't in the musical was it?

That musical about her life that you all will know, Annie Get Your Gun, was more famous than the musicals written by a relative of mine. My grandfathers second cousin Roger Sammerstein. Roger was the most famous confused,dyslexic and spoonerism ridden composer of his day, he wrote Annie Get Your Gnu, the story of one women and her wildebeest.

Other songs of his are:

Hello Young Volers, from Anna and The Siamese Cat, the story of a cat who hunts for voles...what else.

There was North Pacific, Singing in the Wind, Clam Eating Jane, one of my favourites, Gee Gee, the story of a singing race horse, the most famous song being 'Thank Heavens for Little Jockeys'.

I also loved his musical about the rather large family going to the fair, 7 Rides for 7 Brothers, there was also the musical about the man who spent his life urinating down chimneys, Piddler on the Roof, and who can ever forget the wonderful story of the nun who rescues a load of children and walks them over the mountains where they all catch cold and die - The Sound of Mucous.

As a family we will always treasure those musical gems, in fact I think I should record an album and release it for christmas... Drew sings Roger Sammerstein and The Sound of Mucous.

It's got hit written all over it (where does this S belong) ...

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Monday 2nd November

Now sit down and pay attention, it's time for a serious talk!

Is Danyl Johnson the most hated contestant on X Factor, are the Twins really simpering twats, is Stacy as irritating in real life as she seems? I bet those who watch the show will have an opinion.

I got a reality check this week when I came face to face with someone who I didn't know but who I had made a decision about - and I have to be a little vague due to the circumstances.

This person had passed my way a couple of times and I had thought that he was an arrogant bully, but when I was sat with him and learned about his past and what had happened to him in his life, suddenly his actions took on a whole new meaning - I had to reappraise my decisions.

We are very fond of snap decisions, and sometimes following our gut instinct works out well, some innate survival sense perhaps, but sometimes we need to learn a little more before we can make the best decision.

On a side issue, and as I have already vented on FaceBook, why have a sing off and then keep the person who performs the worst? If you want to let the public decide, just have the votes read out and don't prolong the issue.

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On this day in 1913 the late great Burt Lancaster was born. Lancaster was a trained circus performer who was renowned for doing much of his own stunt work during his career, from The Crimson Pirate right through to Tough Guys, he was a true action hero. He was a very loyal friend too, always finding work for his associate Nick Cravat.

In a career of varied interests you might also like to know that Lancaster assisted Mr Kipling in the development of a exceedingly good upside down cake, he also had fencing lessons from Sir Christopher Lee and then erected his own garden fence at his mansion in Beverly Hills.

Lancaster also famously threw tea parties for all his young male friends where he gave them a taste of his charm and an upside down cake.

Lancaster was also very kind to a distant relative of mine, Quincy McClean. Quincy was his dentist and responsible for that famous flashing smile, and Lancaster always got Quincy complementary tickets for the opening night of all the new musicals on Broadway.

Quincy and his long term partner Oliver, enjoyed going to see musicals and at their home, which they shared with hundreds of cats and a room of Judy garland memorabilia, they had a little shrine to Lancaster. When he died, they added a set of his false teeth to the shrine, sat on a crimson cushion, set in a smile, illuminating the whole room.

Ha ha ha

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Sunday 1st November

It's raining, it is a miserable wet morning and no doubt it will be a long miserable wet Sunday with only the thought of a lamb chop later this evening keeping me going.

We survived last evenings onslaught of Trick or Treaters thanks to the few surviving Haribo's that avoided Mrs B and a last minute purchase of some Smarties. Is it me, or have Smarties gotten smaller?

Some of the kids that came to the door had really gone to town on costumes and face painting, some older kids had just bought cheap masks and I suppose to older folks could have seemed a bit intimidating - but they still only got Smarties at our house!

The cost of a few sweets kept the car aerials intact this year anyway.

I went to the cinema last evening to see ZombieWorld, it was quite gory but very funny, with lots of little movie reference in jokes and a great cameo from Bill Murray. The adverts for forthcoming films showed clips from two movies I am going to see, one with Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxxxx called Law Abiding Citizen and the other with George Clooney and Ewan McGregor called The Men Who Stare At Goats - that looks very funny.

I don't go to the cinema as much as I should and I am going to try and see 2012 when it opens and the new Holmes film with Robert Downey Jr, and the new Iron Man film with Robert Downey Jr, and The Robert Downey Jr Story - not sure who's playing the lead in that.

Time for a second cup of tea and I feel the sacrifice of another little pig should not be in vain, so bring on the bacon!

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November The First - this day is World Vegan Day. Oh dear, and I just mentioned bacon, lamb chops and Zombies, who are not known as great proponents of non dairy vegetarianism!

It's an old joke and as a good Humanist I have removed the God word but if man is supposed to be a vegan why make animals out of meat?

I do recall once hearing a man talk about the fact that he was trying to become more vegetarian by only eating animals that had died of natural causes or in accidents - what he didn't say is that he was constantly luring cows to the top of the stairs and....

I don't think I could be a vegan, but I have a cousin who is a freegan, they never pay for anything, they didn't always used to be called freegans, they used to be called shoplifters.

Vegan is a made up word from the first and last letters of vegetarian, supposedly to indicate that a follower of this diet is devoted to the beginning and end of that eating style.

I have just invented the word 'bacty' and I am going to devote myself to the beginning and end of a bacon butty.

And that's a fact!